Week of January 27th:
This week, we talked about a poem by Andres Bello named "Ode to Topical Agriculture." I found the poem to be very interesting as everyone had a different interpretation of what they thought Bello was talking about. I feel like having 2 days really helped me understand more of what the poem was really talking about. Originally, my thought was that Bello was talking about how agriculture was superior to city life and that destroying nature, in general, was wrong. But, contrary to my belief Bello believed that destroying the land for a city was wrong compared to destroying the land for agriculture was good. During, our learning community activity I was a spy and during my time with a different group someone brought up the idea of organized nature was better than chaotic nature. I found this to be really interesting because that is really what Bello was talking about. He wanted to tame the chaotic nature to where humans could industrialize the land so they could control nature, not the opposite way around of nature controlling humans. I find this to be ironic because as humans we have actually had to work around nature and even today that still holds true. I think that nature is an untamable thing and that while we can find ways to so call "tame" it there is always going to be a backlash.
I had the same first interpretation when I read this poem. I thought it was a romantic poem, glorifying nature, but it turns out the author wanted nature to be destroyed instead! I was pretty confused afterwards, so the two class sessions definitely helped me to understand more. I also agree with you on the fact that nature in a way is untamable. Yes, much of nature is being destroyed today, but some forces of nature still persist and are immovable in their strength.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jayden, for your post. I like what you say about nature being "an untamable thing." In fact, I read somewhere that if we, humans, don't change the way we treat the environment, we will only end up destroying ourselves because nature always finds a way to come back.
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