Wendell Berry on "Wild and Domestic"

Orion Magazine has recently published Mr. Berry's reflections on the troubled and troubling relations between the terms "wild" and "domestic." Orion has also made this brief essay available online. It begins:

I. GARY SNYDER SAID that we know our minds are wild because of the difficulty of making ourselves think what we think we ought to think.

II. That is the fundamental sense of “wild” or of “wilderness”: undomesticated, unrestrained, out of control, disorderly.

III. There are two ways to value this, as exemplified by the sense of “wild party”: from the point of view of the participants and that of the neighbors.

IV. To our people, as pioneers, “the wilderness” looked disorderly, undomestic, out of control.

V. According to that judgment, it needed to be brought under control, put in order by domestication.

VI. But our word “domestic” comes from the Latin domus, meaning “house” or “home.” To domesticate a place is to make a home of it. To be domesticated is to be at home.

VII. It is a sort of betrayal, then, that our version of domestication has imposed ruination, not only upon “wilderness,” as we are inclined to think, but upon the natural or given world, the basis of our economy, our health, in short our existence.

Read the complete article HERE. And subscribe to this great magazine if you can.

 

Wendell Berry at the Kentucky Book Fair, November 17

Wendell Berry, always one of the bestselling Kentucky authors at the book fair, will speak at noon [Saturday, November 17] on the UK Main Stage, then will sign “The Farm” beginning at 1 p.m. Larkspur Press originally produced a limited run of Berry’s illustrated poem, “The Farm,” in 1995. A new offset printed edition from Counterpoint Press has reproduced that gorgeous work in a lovely, understated gift package. Berry – an essayist, novelist and poet from Henry County – was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2010.

Read more at The State-Journal.

The Kentucky Book Festival

Columbia State to host presentation on Wendell Berry's 'The Hidden Wound'

The Columbia State Community College philosophy department will host a philosophy invitational featuring Dr. Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University professor of philosophy, and Dr. Peter Kuryla, Belmont University associate professor of history, Nov. 15 at 6 p.m. in the Community Room located on the Williamson Campus.

At the invitational, the presenters will discuss “The Hidden Wound,” by Wendell Berry, in acknowledgement of the work’s 50th anniversary.

“The tumultuous events of 1968 prompted Wendell Berry to reevaluate how his childhood experiences with racial relations on a Kentucky farm informed his awareness of the festering social problem of racism, which he deems unavoidable until the source can be examined within the framework of our social inheritance and we truly begin to recognize the humanity in every individual."

Find more information at The Williamson Herald.