Irish Romanticism and Climate Change

Like many of my friends and neighbors in Spokane, Washington this summer, I have been preoccupied with a second consecutive year of major wildfires. We have endured prolonged stretches where the Air Quality Index has been deemed “unhealthy” or even “hazardous.” For me, the smoke has been an inconvenience, but for others it has meant tragedy-- lost property and even lost lives. The Spokane Reservation, home to the Spokane tribe of Native Americans, has seen 10% of its 13,000 acres engulfed in the flames. In nearby Wellpinit, firefighters have used so much water that residents must rely on bottled water for drinking and washing. Elsewhere, another 70,000 acre fire is moving ominously towards the Hanford Nuclear Reactor.  

While 2016 has beaten out 2015 worldwide as the hottest summer on record, serious environmental discussions have been conspicuously absent from the U. S. Presidential campaign.

I take refuge in the work of the Irishwoman Mary Tighe (1772-1810), one of the most insightful writers on environmental issues in her day. She understood the long arc of history in the natural world and the way humankind can be terribly short-sighted. For example, in “Written at Rossana, Nov^r 18. 1799,” she asks:

Oh my rash hand, what has thou idly done?

Torn from its humble bank the last poor flower

That patient linger’d to this wintry hour… (1-3)

I am moved by the contrast of her “rash” hand and “patient” nature; she has “idly” plucked a “last” flower, with the dual sense of “idle” meaning lazily but also vainly. We have a tendency to waste resources fruitlessly even to their ends. 

In her sonnet “On leaving Killarney, August 5. 1800,” Tighe laments leaving the natural setting she loves, convinced she will never see it again. But she sets aside her own pain and considers the environment for its own sake:

Tho’ lost to me, here still may Taste delight

To dwell, nor the rude axe the trembling Dryads fright. (13-14)

This powerful conclusion still resonates today. Tighe argues that there is a quality in nature that is good in itself, not for its utilitarian value, and that humans, the wielders of the “rude axe” ought to leave it be. Tighe’s wish is for the natural world to persevere, even though, as a dying woman, it is “lost” to her.

But Tighe’s work speaks to our own moment in another distressing way.  Tighe came from an important political family, and her husband and brother-in-law were minority voices in the Irish Parliament that, bribed and cajoled, voted itself out of existence.  Her poem “There was a young Lordling whose wits were all toss’d up,” which was too incendiary to publish until recently, blasts the corruption, miming the pro-Union side:

“I want no advice, give your vote, take your pay

Hold your tongues you old fools & get out of my way” – (31-32)

Today, as well, we see big campaign money apparently influence politicians to vote against the interests of their constituents, particularly on environmental issues where energy companies have millions to give. What Tighe understands is that our environment has meaning and value beyond the often-petty and short-term measures we assign it. Her wish that it will endure and thrive beyond our own time is one we still need to embrace. My broiling summer spent in a landscape that is drying up and burning, makes me yearn for a national dialogue on a topic Mary Tighe addressed with remarkable insight more than two hundred years ago.

Brian C. Cooney is an associate professor of English at Gonzaga University and co-editor of The Collected Poetry of Mary Tighe.

Additional resources:

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/northwest/wildfire-near-hanford-site-larger-than-first-thought-high-winds-a-concern/

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/23/mandatory-evacuation-lifted-for-wellpinit/

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/08/26/spokane-reservation-engulfed-smoke-wildfire-rages-165591

http://www.livescience.com/55469-2016-could-be-hottest-year-on-record.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change