What is Pastoral?
Those who hear our pastoral podcast usually wonder, what is pastoral and why should people listen to discussions about it? Simply put, Et in Arcadia Ego exists because pastoral has a great deal to do with how people think about living in the natural world. Greg Garrad writes of pastoral that “No other trope is so deeply entrenched in Western culture, or so deeply problematic for environmentalism.” Pastoral is a motif that occurs everywhere in our culture, so we at Et in Arcadia Ego record our podcast to try and understand that motif as thoroughly as possible.
Back to the original question, what is pastoral? On the most fundamental level, pastoral is a literary convention. It is a highly stylized poetic form about shepherds, otium (restful contemplation as opposed to hard work), the simplicity of bucolic life, and a retreat from the complexity of urban life. For poets following in the wake of Virgil and other classical precursors, pastoral is the first step in a poetic career that was to culminate with the completion of an epic. In this sense, it’s a low, humble poetic form.
Pastoral: An Attitude Toward Life
Pastoral is also a mood, or an attitude toward life, that extends beyond poems about sheep and shepherds. Pastoral describes in many ways an attachment to nature (one that, yet again, stands in contrast to urban life). It can be the base assumption that the natural world is refreshing, or at least better than the strife and confinement of the civilized world. It can be the desire to recoil from responsibilities and light out for the territory on an adventure quest. Or it can be a basic thought mechanism that puts the complex into the simple (as William Empson phrases it).
Pastoral is a fundamental element of the human experience, for it is the expression of a deep attachment to nature that all humans share. Yet, the pastoral ideal is not uniform or simple, and it can even be co-opted in ways that are not necessarily “eco friendly.” For instance, Clorox markets a new line of “Green Works” natural all-purpose cleaning products. When I first saw an advertisement in the latest issue of Yoga Journal, the bottle blended in with a verdant, Edenic backdrop, as if the product itself were an outgrowth of nature. We can safely say that Clorox is exploiting the pastoral impulse typical of its consumers to achieve a paradox: that consuming yet another cleaning product somehow brings us back to nature.
Another good example is the recent obsession over “clean coal technology” that has enamored politicians and constituents alike. The desire for energy companies and other industries that benefit from cheap electricity is that we continue to extract and burn coal without further worsening the greenhouse gas emission problem. There’s an uncritical faith that we will be able to produce enough coal that burns cleanly and allows us to continue living as if coal extraction affects no one.
There’s a wealth of pastoral ideology in the above 30 second promotional spot by America’s Energy. “Throughout history, new ideas have often been met with skepticism,” the ad tells us. “But technology borne from American ingenuity can achieve amazing things,” the ad continues. We see brief flashes of scientists peering over a computer, and a small patch of green sod rests next to the monitor. The ad anticipates a future in which “our most abundant energy, coal” will be burned “with even lower emissions.” The pastoral desire displayed here inscribes a lot of emotions. We feel sorry that we’ve created released excessive greenhouse gas emissions, yet we also hope that we can engineer our way out of this mess by finding cleaner, more natural, ways of reaping mother nature’s abundance. Herein lies the pastoral dynamic: it is a thought process that evades, or appears to evade, contradictions.
Consider this video from the Discovery Channel’s “How Stuff Works.” It depicts a group of men out on a fishing trip. One confesses that the point of fishing is not to catch fish, but rather to “get away from the hustle and bustle and the work. The video proceeds to describe the advances that will make clean coal technology possible, yet neither this piece, sponsored by Hitachi, nor the America’s Energy spot, grapples with the very unnatural effects of mountain top removal and mass coal extraction that drives the American coal industry. We would like to believe that clean coal technology is possible, even a natural fuel alternative, but it’s just not possible.
Et in Arcadia Ego
The title of this podcast is an old Latin phrase that has been translated many different ways. Most likely, it means something like, “even here in the garden there is death.” This ambivalence that is associated with pastoral is the main focus of our podcast. We’re constantly looking for ways that pastoral ideology surfaces in culture. Clearly, scurrilous dismissal is not an effective rhetorical strategy, so instead we’ll talk about pastoral themes, attitudes, images, and ideas.
Podcasting is the ideal venue to do this. The longstanding pastoral tradition is to reflect extemporaneously on life. One of my favorite pastoral scenes takes place in Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler. It’s pastoral personae lounge around and wonder whether humankind’s true happiness if found more in contemplation or action. They sit around aside a stream and debate whether angling, falconing, or hunting is the most genuine and artful activity known to man. The discussion is about as consequential as John Milton’s Prolusions, in which he argues at length that day is better than night. Et in Arcadia Ego channels this spirit and brings it into the age of the podcast.
What Else is Pastoral?
Et in Arcadia Ego is not just about nature and envirionmentalism. Pastoral pertains to a range of concerns, including attitudes toward the past, forming of gender roles, and development of religious faith. If you’ve got ideas for future episodes of the show, let us know.
