A Comparative Study of the Anthropocene Factors in J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World and the Selected Modern Persian Eco-Poems Through Meteorological Hazards

ABSTRACT

The Anthropocene is a geological time scale when human beings have taken planet Earth outside of its natural capacity. In literature, this era is represented through the thematic genre known as climate fiction. This type of fiction paves a new path in literary works by imagining possible futures and alternative presents to reconfigure our dystopian eras. This article opens a dialogue between English and Persian literature that enables us to echo our voices, reconstruct the present, reconsider the status quo, and avoid future disasters. By employing the concepts of Das Unheimliche, The Judgement, and The Last Man, this comparative study revolves around the literary portrayal of the symbiosis relationship between nature and human beings in Ballard’s (1930–2009) The Drowned World (1962) and the selected Modern Persian eco-poems from different Iranian poets. Following this approach, the present inquiry proves that despite their uncommon nations and forms, both literatures share a convergent characteristic in unveiling the Anthropocene factors.

摘要

“人类世”是一个地质时间尺度，即当人类对地球的利用超出了后者的承受负荷之时。在文学中，这个时代通过被称为气候小说的主题类型来表现。这种类型的小说通过想象可能的未来和替代当下来重新构想我们的反乌托邦时代，由此为文学作品开辟了一条新的道路。这篇文章开启了英语和波斯文学之间的对话，由此重建现在，重新考虑现状，以避免未来的灾难。本文运用怪怖者、审判和最后的人等概念，围绕巴拉德（1930-2009）的《被淹没的世界》（1962）以及伊朗不同诗人的现代波斯生态诗中，对自然与人共生关系的文学刻画进行了比较研究。论文认为，尽管存在国别和形式上的差异，但是这些文学作品在揭示人类世因素方面，有着共同的特点

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropocene factors
• Persian eco-poetry
• English climate fiction
• J.G. Ballard
• modern Persian eco-poets

关键词:

• “人类世”元素
• 波斯生态诗歌
• 英国气候小说
• J.G.巴拉德
• 现代波斯生态诗人

1. Introduction

Anthropocene literature has been oriented toward internationalism and comparativism within the last few decades. Comparative literature in the limelight of Anthropocene studies adds a new building block to the cultural similarities along with divergences through the confrontation of the ecological degradations. Referring to Anthropocene literature and its latest ecological after-effect, climate change, Horn declares that “the discovery of anthropogenic climate change requires a new understanding of climate as a cultural force” (63). As the comparative literary study “involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary, and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literatures across both time and space” (Bassnett 1), it provides a prolific ground for analyzing Anthropocene literature. Furthermore, Anthropocene literature helps human beings to situate themselves in different ecological disasters and generate a convergent yet divergent platform that is cross-cultural in nature. To reach this intercultural competency and awareness, this comparative study tags along with the American school of comparative analysis since it provides more accommodation for exploring fiction with poetry and leaves more space to the matrix of concepts like “polyglottism” and “multidisciplinarity” (see Domínguez). This school pursues the similarities while “[…] discovering [the] differences, [that] orients a comparative project toward close reading and yet includes, via similarity, the necessary move away from mere description toward explanation” (Domínguez 75). Therefore, this comparative inquiry is not claiming that the two case studies are totally aligned with each other but demonstrates how they share similar factors to illustrate the ecological crises to form a universal and transcontinental understanding of meteorological hazards.

Climate fiction is best described as the literary emblem of the Anthropocene era. In other words, Anthropocene and cli-fi are two responses to one fundamental challenge known as global warming. To put it more succinctly, Anthropocene literatures suggest possible ecologically utopian ideas through the destruction of nature that help readers reach the apex of environmental alliance to abjure the adverse of the Earth’s calamity. Ballard, in The Drowned World, “makes an explicit connection between human acts and environmental apocalypse” (Tait 27) and tries to portray the panoramic vision of climate change by revealing how characters vainly fight against global warming. Therefore, Ballard aims to prove that climate change influences humans on the level of nationalism along with internationalism and forces them to contemplate the consequences of climate change as a global issue. Studying Anthropocene by means of climate fiction highlights the significance of reciprocity of cross-culturalism with the environment to manufacture a kind of universalism when it comes to reaching an eco-friendly future through the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. In other words, cultural ecology is not just scrutinizing literatures, but to picture a new form of possibility to construct a more equitable and viable world.

Contrary to English literature, no Persian literary work has been named after the genre cli-fi; however, according to Hughes, eco-poetry is “equivalent to cli-fi, which […] centrally addresses the issue of climate change and its associated environmental consequences” (2). By employing Persian eco-poems, the parallel of cli-fi, we can analyze the Anthropocene factors in Persian literature. Although there is ample evidence in Persian poetry, like Sepehrī’s works, concerning ecocriticism, the current scholarship in Persian literature is tied to the romantic perspective toward nature, not the Anthropocene. Taking Farzān’s article as an example, he claims that the nature of Sepehrī’s poems contains agglomerated panoramic images of nature that harmonize the conglomerated link between humanity and nature. This means that relatively no study scrutinized the Anthropocene factors in Persian literature and culture and in terms of scrutinizing J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, almost all the studies failed to investigate the factors of the Anthropocene. Although comparative literature is rich in scholarship, this study explores unreached territories of ecocriticism beyond Anglophone literature. The study at hand arches over this abyssal gap to affirm that even though Persian literature has no such genre as cli-fi, its early commencement shines on the most recent Persian poems of Panāhī, Šokatīyān, and a few others, whose poems highlight the ecological and meteorological issues. This study further aims to open a new horizon in Ballard’s The Drowned World and the selected Persian eco-poems by employing Freud’s Das Unheimliche, Andersen’s The Judgement—with supporting ideas from Latour, Serres, and Descartes, and Horn’s The Last Man with a new lens by relating them to the Anthropocene factors.

2. Das Unheimliche

2.1. The Drowned World

Ballard’s The Drowned World not only centers on humanity’s annihilation by nature’s power but also displays the Anthropogenic factors that actuate nature’s wrath toward humanity. In this case, Stephenson expresses that “Ballard’s portrayal of catastrophes through wind, flood, and drought all stand for the most profound and clandestine aspirations of the human psyche” (41). Further, he adds that “[…] the desire for [the] apocalypse, in the most literal sense of the word: a destruction that uncovers, a purifying process by which the false and evil are exposed and abolished” (41). Freud’s Das Unheimliche, rather uncanny, is a discourse in cultural and environmental criticism through which Ballard circumvents irreparable human activities. According to Freud, Das Unheimliche means “[u]ncomfortable, uneasy, gloomy, dismal, uncanny, ghastly; (of a house) haunted; (of a man) a repulsive fellow” (4). For him, one may sense Das Unheimliche when he “feel[s] that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (1–2). In this study, we take the uncanny as the representation of the “crisis of the natural” (Royle 1) and regard the Anthropocene as the authentic uncanny time; a time when the relationship between humans and non-humans suddenly falls. As Stengers declares, during the Anthropocene, “natural events increasingly become ‘unnatural’ by default, uncannily monstrous rather than homey and seemingly maternal” (Stengers 2015). In other words, nature and weather conditions in the Anthropocene narratives become more unpredictable by being defamiliarized through different stages. In order for an event to be considered uncanny, a known entity or situation should undergo the process of defamiliarization to anchor with unfamiliarity. This defamiliarized familiar entity or situation instills a sense of the uncanny due to the simultaneous occurrence of familiarity and unfamiliarity from which one is unable to recognize it as homely or unhomely.

In The Drowned World, the uncanny occurs when London turns into a tropical lagoon and returns crocodiles, as the previous dominant creatures on the planet, to the city. Vollmar believes that in the Anthropocene, “[c]rocodiles and alligators – monarch of the marsh— […] both horrify and fascinate” (ix), which brings the sense of monstrous uncanniness. This type of uncanniness is clearly discernible when Colonel Riggs calls their mission absurd as Europe has converted into a “confounded zoo” (The Drowned World 16). This conversion brings the sense of uncanniness as it blurs the boundaries between the hunter and prey, viz., as Giblett announces, it escalates fear in human beings in the form of “oral kind: about who gets to eat and who gets to be eaten” (15); since crocodiles are homicidal aqua-predators for their colossal body with brutal “[…] jaws and teeth as a potentially lethal weapon” (Giblett 15). The dreaded prospect of being devoured by crocodiles “highlight[s] the visceral nature of human bodily being and experience, particularly when it comes to food and feeding” (Giblett 15). When in The Drowned World, Bodkin reminisces about the pre-Roman lagoons; he attempts to display his uncanny feeling that is aroused by crocodiles and other reptilians, whose threat makes the bounding line of prey and predator grow dim:

However selective the conscious mind may be, most biological memories are unpleasant ones, echoes of danger and terror. […] And how else can you explain the universal but completely groundless loathing of the spider, only one species of which has ever, been known to sting? Or the equally surprising in view of their comparative rarity hatred of snakes and reptiles? Simply because we all carry within us a submerged memory of the time when the giant spiders were lethal, and when the reptiles were the planet’s dominant life form.

(The Drowned World 40)

In the Anthropocene era, the pseudo-non-reciprocal connection between crocodiles and humans provides the bilateral relationship between the prey and predator. Therefore, reptilians are commonly considered as the blast from the past – the means of expression for the uncanny as the dominant species:

[…] [T]he reptiles had taken over the city. Once again they were the dominant form of life. Looking up at the ancient impassive faces, Kerans could understand the curious fear they roused, rekindling archaic memories of the terrifying jungles of the Paleocene, when the reptiles had gone down before the emergent mammals, and sense the implacable hatred one zoological class feels towards another that usurps it.

(The Drowned World 17)

Hence, when crocodiles, as a pre-authoritative species, regain their ascendancy, the non-reciprocal relationship between the predator and prey collapses and arouses an uncanny feeling. In The Drowned World, the characters experience a contradictory sensation of familiarity and unfamiliarity at the same time because alligators, like humans, are capable of acting as both prey and predator. The portrayal of the crocodiles as orally sadistic monsters made them the dominant species as “they have been playing for a long time, but only since humans have appeared on the Earth long after it” (Giblett 16). In The Drowned World, the monstrous uncanny is apparent when Kerans, Bodkin, and Beatrice engage in a dispute over food preparation for the next few months:

[…] What about food, Alan? How long will the stocks in the deep freeze last?” Bodkin pulled a distasteful face. “Well, […] I’d prefer crocodiles.”

No doubt the crocodiles would prefer us. All right then, that seems pretty fair.

(The Drowned World 73)

A similar justification can be observed when Kerans imbibes water while consuming a reptile in a residential room located near a swamp:

[…] Two corridors down he trapped a reptile in the washroom, killed it with a loose brick. He lit a fire of tinder with a lens of chipped glass, roasted the filets of dark stringy meat until they were tender. The small steaks melted in his cracked mouth with the exquisite tenderness of warm fat. Recovering his strength, he climbed back to the top floor and retired to a service cubicle behind the elevator shaft.

(The Drowned World 131)

Kerans’ eating provokes the uncanny feeling as the border between predator and prey alleviates. In other words, when humans sustainably utilize their territory, crocodiles become both the prey and predator; this is an uncanny experience, according to Rothenberg, since not only do human beings consume crocodiles as meat but also violate their territory by colonizing wetlands in a pseudo-non-reciprocal relationship. Ballard tries to show that besides human bodies mainly made out of water, the commencing steps of developing as a human being is in the womb, the watery world. (Giblett 3). Furthermore, human beings “also have vestigial reptilian parts in their brain. They are meat for crocodiles, [and crocodiles are meat for humans], but we are also very distant cousins” (28). Hence, for Ballard, human beings and crocodiles are both creatures of land and water and should live in a psychosymbiotic relationship in the same bioregion, the Earth.

2.2. Selected Persian Eco-poems

The intense urbanization in Iran is contributing to the manifestation of psychological feelings of concern, detachment, and insecurity among the citizens. These feelings create a sense of the urban uncanny, which is rooted in societal dissatisfaction and discomfort within urban environments. Persian eco-poets employ the urban uncanny to evoke feelings of nostalgia and melancholy for the past, once Tehran was regarded as an environmentally safe town, imbued with heimlichkeit or homeliness, depicting it as a homely town. The urban uncanny, in other words, “denotes the slippage or mismatch between our expectations of the city, as the organized and familiar setting for citizens, for their work, habitation, and living, and the often surprising and unsettling experiences it can evoke within them. The city is uncanny when it reveals itself in a new and unexpected light” (Huskinson 1), vis-à-vis, the moment the polluted sky and tarnished filthy streets suddenly appear strange and hostile, it arouses the feeling of nostalgia in individuals who long for an atmosphere that was once pristine and the streets that were spotless and clean. In his poem “The Environment,” Ali Panāhī (1979-) portrays Tehran as an uncanny city, where anthropogenic actions have turned the city unsafe in an uncanny way. Panāhī first draws attention to Tehran’s former state, characterized by immaculate streets and unpolluted watercourses that awaken a sense of nostalgia for earlier times:

Oh, what happened to the clear water of the rivers?

That used to flow through the alleys and streets.

It was fresh and flowing, next to which were many sparrows,

Happy and busy with washing hands and face.

People did not make the river dirty since perhaps in the distance

A dove wanted to drink water on the other side. (Panāhī lines 1-6)

This stanza indicates the poet’s sense of melancholic nostalgia toward Tehran, which is characterized as the homely and familiar place that prevents its citizens from being defamiliarized or alienated. Panāhī furthermore displays the current situation through the depiction of heinous streets full of waste, highlighting the feeling of unfamiliarity that evokes the sense of the uncanny:

But now it is like a load of garbage and dunghill,

That is rolling on its sullage, like balls.

Instead of the pleasant scent of a garden, in the morning and night,

People of our city feel the unpleasant odors.

A gift from the Iron Age, the household sewage,

Blends in it like a comb in the hair.

The stream of fish has turned into the playground for mice,

Soil and mud have replaced the flowers next to the streams.

If you carefully search the houses and streets,

You will find people, sick and depressed. (Panāhī lines 7-16)

The urban uncanny is conjured up when the idealized past is juxtaposed with the current dystopian condition of the city, causing a sense of defamiliarization. This concept is reinforced by Freud’s demonstration that “[t]he better oriented in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it” (221). Aḥmad Alborz’s poem “Tehran and Pollution” is a stereotypical example of urban uncanniness that embodies this concept:

These days in Tehran,

As much as my uncle,

smoked in his lifetime,

I have swallowed the smoke.

Poor my friends, citizens

Of Tehran,

Their lung

Is devoid of oxygen.

Their rain is made by airplane.

A few inhales and exhales in the air

Is better than a lifetime illness.

Poor citizens of Tehran

are stuck in long traffic jams.

All they hear and see is smoke, honking, and cars.

Their heads are full of hidden

Parasites.

The air is filled with distress.

All windows are closed.

The doctor’s painful heart is longing for the clear air.

I know here is not the same as the old Tehran.

Previously the weather was nice.

Now it is unpleasant.

From a distance, Damāvand’s peak was visible,

But now is invisible.

Nothing is apparent other than smokehouses,

The voice of a hundred kinds of horns and

Thousands of fatalities and diseases.

Although Tehran is the capital and the center of science and culture,

It is polluted

It is the city of distress.

I know about its pollution,

But I don’t talk about it.

May the citizens of Tehran be filled with joy in their hearts. (Alborz lines 1–36)

The poet indicates that the experience of homeliness and unhomeliness in the urban environment, Tehran, culminating in the sense of urban uncanniness, is due to anthropogenic activities that interfere with the sense of familiarity and homeliness. By drawing upon the etymological origins of “home,” Alborz underscores the psychological significance of a city which “witness our indignities and embarrassments” (Ballantyne 17) while still providing protection to the citizens. The violation of this feeling of protection through anthropogenic activities leaves the urban environment unhomely and disrupts the sense of familiarity, contributing to the phenomenon of urban uncanniness. Concomitantly, it delves into the complexities of the urban uncanny, effectively blurring the demarcation between the familiar and unfamiliar, normal and abnormal. Henceforth, the city’s dual nature exposes the maladjustment between our expectations of what the city ought to be (homeliness) and our experiences of it (unhomeliness). In other words, “[t]he uncanny city is at one and the same time a suggestion of home and the definitively unhomely” (Huskinson 5). Huskinson further declares that “an uncanny city is one that is experienced as if alive and with a personal investment in its inhabitants whom it watches with judgmental eye” (6). What is abnormal about the notion of the urban uncanny is the fact that “we live as if most things are not uncanny. In other words, [when] there’s a largely expected environment of normality, which every so often is ruptured or violated […], we’re struck” (Phillips qtd. in Huskinson 6). The urban uncanny further “can be regarded as a symptom of the city, in so far as it brings attention to a disturbance or conflict in the otherwise apparently smooth and efficient organization of city spaces” (Huskinson 7). As a result of human activities, the natural environment is unable to reflect and provide a stable and homely habitat. Thereby, this discord is furthered by Freud’s theory of the “return of the repressed,” which forces our unconscious desires to long for the past, notably the natural and green environment. The urban uncanny, therefore, showcases the city as the site of alienation and defamiliarization from our surroundings.

3. The Judgement

3.1. The Drowned World

This factor depicts the conflict between humans and nature in which humanity strives to establish control over the environment and maintain dominance over nature. However, this behavior makes nature punish humanity in the form of climate breakdown, rendering the Earth uninhabitable. In this case, Mumford declares that “as [a] new urban institution urban-man sought to control natural events” (40). Similarly, in this novel, Strangman employs his power to drain the lagoons and reveal drowned buildings, allowing human beings to regain their realm, the city, from vindictive nature. However, as Hall suggests, the human realm is ultimately limited as the city emerges from the swamps. As such, “in the ending is the city. In the middle is the city in the swamp” (354). In The Drowned World, as Hall claims, the draining of the lagoons signifies the end of the world:

In the early morning light, a strange mournful beauty hung over the lagoon; […] the half submerged white-faced buildings of the 20^th century still reflected together in the dark mirror of the water, the two interlocking worlds apparently suspended at some junction in time, the illusion momentarily broken when a giant water spider cleft the oily surface a hundred yards away.

(The Drowned World 10)

According to Latour, global warming serves as a communication from nature, underscoring the active agency of the non-human realm in halting anthropogenic activities. Ballard’s The Drowned World, highlights the interplay between human beings and their natural environment, as illustrated by the thermal storms that Kerans witnesses seemingly communicating with humanity. However, the human-centric character, Strangman, symbolizes humanity’s obliviousness, recklessly exploiting nature’s resources. The repercussions come in the form of the “Equatorial rain belts moving northward” (The Drowned World 25), serving as nature’s punishment for humanity’s unsustainable behavior. This punishment is a kind of judgment that is invoked when nature transforms into an “uncanny animatedness,” preventing humans from perceiving nature as a sheer solid object. This animatedness serves as a protective shield against the Cartesian perspective, which holds that a lack of “immaterial soul,” in nature places humans in a position of superiority. By positing nature as an autonomous agent with rights and agency, Ballard subverts this perspective and highlights the interconnectedness and independence of all entities in the natural world. According to Freud, Andersen asserts that “[…] literature produces this effect not only because its animation of objects and beings confronts modern humans with an old animistic view they thought they had long repudiated” (163), but also he observes in this animation an advent of “something that has been repressed and now returns” (164). In The Drowned World, Ballard portrays characters who repress nature by disregarding its communicational cues. This disregard is brought to the forefront with “Riggs slapping with his baton at the vines entwined around the rail” (The Drowned World 13) as if he is punishing nature; however, “nature, over which we were supposed to gain absolute mastery, dominates us in an equally global fashion and threatens us all” (Latour 8).

In The Drowned World, nature poses a threat to human existence, manifesting in the form of skin cancer caused by solar radiation and the spread of contagious Anopheles disease due to the high level of humidity of the swamps. Through this depiction, Ballard critiques the Cartesian perspective and challenges “modernity’s anti-animistic understanding of non-human [world]” (Andersen 45). Nature’s revenge culminates when yielding any offspring becomes a rare issue due to biological evolution:

The birth of a child had become a comparative rarity, and only one marriage in ten yielded any offspring. As Kerans sometimes reminded himself, the genealogical tree of mankind was systematically pruning itself, apparently moving backwards in time, and a point might ultimately be reached where a second Adam and Eve found themselves alone in a new Eden.

(The Drowned World 22)

In climate fiction, the victory of human beings over non-humans is subverted as it results in The Judgement on themselves. To ameliorate nature’s revenge, Serres puts forth the notion of human beings entering into a contract with non-humans as a solution, an alternative that Ballard also endorses to prevent dystopia. Serres sees this as the purpose of the natural contract that drives human beings toward a compromise with the non-human world, thereby abandoning the Cartesian ontology in favor of the “ontology of symbiosis” (51).

3.2. Selected Persian Eco-poems

The presence of an “uncanny animatedness” in the natural world indicates that nature is not a lifeless entity; it possesses autonomy that should be respected. This viewpoint, indeed, disputes Cartesian perspective in which nature is defined as inferior to humans for lacking the “immaterial soul,” the root of reflection and comprehension. The detrimental effect of anthropogenic activities such as deforestation and combustion, as highlighted in Nīmā Šokatīyān’s poem “Warning,” illustrates how the natural world can, as the matter of fact, be deeply affected by anthropogenic actions, expediting a comeback to the “return of the repressed” consequences that demand humanity’s immediate concern:

Humans cut down the trees,

The delicate treasures of the Earth,

For the sake of firewood, timber, and fire

… polluting the world with their smoke.

Worse than that, they tear down

The ozone layer.

Indeed, civilization brought this on

And the pollution of Earth became part of it.

On the Day of the Judgement

They will be called the killers of the Earth. (Šokatīyān lines 23–32)

According to Latour, global warming can be regarded as a form of communication that lights up the “soul” of the non-human world. In other words, he illuminates that climate change is a means of communication for nature to “speak” and to be heard. Latour further argues that global warming is the catalyst for change, inspiring humans to recognize the interconnectedness of all beings and take action for a more sustainable planet. Mehdī Laṭīfī (1966-) has poignantly illustrated the impact of global warming in his poem “Environmental Crisis.” In this poem, he employs the metaphor of the Earth’s changing climate as a form of communication to bring out the very essence of nature:

Earth’s rebellion is certain.

This is definite.

The wounds of the Earth are contaminated.

The warning of the Earth is serious

Rain turned acidic,

And fell heavily on the ground.

The excessive heat

Swirled around the earth.

The world groaned,

And its heart filled with smoke.

Its soul and lungs

Floated in the smoke. (Laṭīfī lines 1–16)

In the context of global warming and its relation to literature, nature appears to communicate with human beings through destructive consequences. As far as humans continue to view nature from the Cartesian perspective, nature’s message, rather global warming, has not been fully taken seriously. According to Andersen, Rousseau “poses the idea of a social order that can prevent civil war. It is thus this contract between people that, according to Serres, must be expanded so that it also comes to include the non-human-world” (61). By signing this contract between humanity and non-human entities, humans can put an end to the destructive war against nature. Aḥmad Šāmlou’s (1925–2000) poem, “Then, the Earth Entered the Conversation,” points out that humans are perpetrators of violence against the Earth:

Then, the Earth entered the conversation:

I spoke to you in every kind of voice:

With breeze and wind,

And the gushing of water from rocks,

And with the falling of waterfalls;

And with the avalanche of the mountains

When I found you completely unaware,

And in the fury of thunderstorms and hurricanes.

Human said: I know, I know,

But how could I know the secret of your message?

Where could I refrain from the violent hands

That expect a passionate caress from me,

The man said again: I knew the secret of your message, but how could I find it out?

The Earth replied to him: You already knew.

And I sent you the message through a thousand sounds,

Telling you to raise your heart because the revelation comes from the earth.

I was all yours, and I surrendered to you,

Oh, my sin was to be under your foot!

But you pushed me away,

The human murmured: Such was the fate.

Did the sky want a sacrifice?

No, the grave is what it wants!

How can you speak of “fate” so indifferently,

Which is nothing but an excuse for mutual surrender?

If only it were love, there would never be oppression,

That a senseless injustice would emerge from it.

Now this is the cemetery that the sky has made justice!

Alas, I am a ruin without a result!

Now we have reached a crossroads.

You have no choice but to suffer from your infertility;

So be a man now that you have fallen prey to the deceitful fate!

But I, who am still your ruin, have not yet finished my cold work in this orbit

I will ponder how to break the painful absence of you, the broken ruler of galaxies with a foul spell;

And I will search for the trace of your fingers

On my hopeless body

In a weeping memory. (Šāmlou 70–4)

The abovementioned poem underlines a multitude of natural phenomena to underscore the Earth’s attempt to communicate with humanity. However, it encounters humanity’s lack of understanding and regard. Despite humanity’s purported naivete, the Earth has conveyed messages to humans through different voices, including wind, waterfalls, and storms. Irrespective of this communication, humans have failed to interpret the Earth’s message, which lies at the heart of their inattention to the fact that nature has its own agency. The poem further stresses that humanity has a role to play and should suffer the consequences of their activities and face the sky’s “cemetery of justice” that looks forward to those who violate the natural order of the Earth. Thus, the Earth’s communication instigates human beings to perceive their role as the guardians of the planet Earth and act accordingly or confront the repercussions.

4. The Last Man

4.1. The Drowned World

This concept acquires its revelatory potency from the notion of catastrophe, meaning “uncovering, lifting the veil, or revealing” (Horn 29) as it unveils the truth and discloses the ultimate power of nature. Horn believes that “[t]he end of the world is the unmasking of all things, the manifestation of their true essence” (30). In this regard, the apocalypse and the end of the world “cease to be imagined as an ultimate judgment and a new beginning” (Horn 31). According to Horn, the apocalypse shifts into the “naked or truncated apocalypse, an end without any hope for a new beginning” (106). For her, “The Last Man is in the paradoxical situation of being both the victim of the ultimate catastrophe and its last surviving witness and spectator. He is thus in a position both to live through and reflect upon the ultimate truth that only disaster brings to light. [Therefore,] [t]his position of ‘lastness’ is the specific epistemological perspective adapted to a modern understanding of an open future” (32). “Lastness” is the fictional position “[…] from which to analyze a cultural setting” (36). The Last Man, as Horn declares, is the “emblematic incarnation of a modern form of subjectivity facing disaster” (35). In climate fiction, the end of the world is beyond the supposed jurisdiction of divine power. As a result, “The Last Man represents the human not as a creature of God but as a natural living being” (Horn 35). The character of The Last Man discloses that futurity is not a predetermined destiny, highlighting the absence of divinity or eschatology.

The shrewd justification of The Last Man in The Drowned World is rooted in the characters of Kerans and Beatrice, as the second Adam and Eve, with whom the regeneration of human beings was abortive due to the irreversible changes on the Earth. The catastrophic events that occur during the Anthropocene manifest the inevitable end of humanity’s realm as the ultimate force, and the ultimate triumph of nature, which has been long-repressed by anthropogenic activities. In The Drowned World, the death of the last survivors is aligned with the “Day of the Judgement,” which is known as an ultimate Judgment in which The Last Man sees the naked apocalypse, without any hope for a new beginning:

Unable to advance, Kerans watched the huge emaciated figure on the ground before him. The man was no more than a resurrected corpse, without food or equipment, propped against the altar like someone jerked from his grave and abandoned to await the Day of Judgement.

(The Drowned World 170)

Kerans experiences a meteorological apocalypse on Earth devoid of the intervention of the ultimate judgment of God. This notion centers on the factor of The Last Man, as he perceives himself as a natural living being who faces the consequence of his actions. This experience reveals the absence of divine purpose or guidance, leaving him to confront the overwhelming power of natural forces. When Kerans finds out that “[t]he steady decline in mammalian fertility and the growing ascendancy of amphibian and reptile forms best adapted to an aquatic life in the lagoons and swamps, inverted the ecological balances” (The Drowned World 21) or when “[b]oth eyes were almost completely occluded by corneal cancers” (The Drowned World 170), he discovers that he should tolerate his overthrow by nature. This means that, in climate fiction, the end of the world is not in the realm of God’s sovereignty; as a result, “the [concept of] The Last Man represents the human not as a creature of God but as a natural living being” (Horn 35). Concerning his predicament, Kerans’ sense of hopelessness is reflected in his decision to cease his work, which serves as evidence that he, as The Last Man, resigned himself to the fact that the regeneration of human beings is no longer possible. The Last Man, as Horn explains, is “a “naked man” deprived of the protections of civilization, of social bonds, and resources for his survival (106), and “he is subject to a disaster that is no longer part of an eschatological course of history” (35). In The Drowned World, the same rationale is discernible when Kerans thinks:

“This is a waste of time. These records are insane; you can put any interpretation you like on them.” He settled his heavy limbs uncomfortably in the narrow cot. Despite the heat, there was little sweat on his face and bare chest, and he watched the fading embers of the electric fire as if reluctant to see them vanish.

(The Drowned World 34)

In this excerpt, Kerans is disposed as being bereft of the protective elements of civilization and is consequently confronted with the unyielding demands of the hostile environment. This is evidenced in his reluctance to witness the “fading embers” of the Sun, which serves as his sole source of sustenance in the inhospitable nature. As Horn explicitly declares, The Last Man is no longer subject to “divine justice” but rather “the blind natural laws” (52). Therefore, this recognition lies at the heart of the remnants of humanity’s extinction. Horn further points out that The Last Man is “melancholic or develops anxious [sensation], he wanders through the ruins of civilization and human culture and looks at what remains after the end of the world” (35). In The Drowned World, Kerans wanders over the ruined cities melancholically and finds himself “surrounded by the last vestiges of a level of civilization now virtually vanished forever” (The Drowned World 9). Kerans, similar to the factor of The Last Man, is an isolated individual and “often gets lost in valleys of dry silt and wanders through them before finding his way again” (The Drowned World 174):

Limping through the shallows, he beached the craft, then sat down with his back against one of the drums. Staring out over the immense loneliness of this dead terminal beach, he soon fell into an exhausted sleep.

(The Drowned World 167)

The abovementioned context indicates that The Last Man realizes how humanity brought itself to the end. However, this end does not indicate the end of the Earth, but human beings. This is inspired by the notion of the eternal return of history, showing that time and history are always returning to the same spot when the Earth is transitioning to the Triassic period.

4.2. Selected Persian Eco-poems

In Persian eco-poems, the ultimate truth is revealed to The Last Man, inciting the acknowledgment that humans were commissioned to maintain the symbiotic relationship with the non-human world. Instead of being characterized by their overconsumption, humans should have constructed a harmonious contract with nature. In The Last Man’s acknowledgment, he concludes that if he had known and respected the Earth’s communication, everything would have been different. In other words, this realization implies that The Day of Judgment occurs without the intervention of the ultimate judgment of God, but rather it is governed by nature. This character, according to Horn, “generates no hope for a new beginning” (106). The notion of hopelessness for the regeneration of human beings in the character of The Last Man is prominent in Amīrhossein Tavakolī’s “The End of the World:”

… and this is the end of the world.

Full of doubt and nostalgia,

Full of pollution and despair

In the cold and pale color.

The air is bitter and dusty.

The earth is loose and tiresome.

Fast steps and weary at times,

Dead looks and faded laughter,

The broken heart, the closed door.

Not even a drop of light

In between vague and awkward moments.

A sense of dullness

Our heart is empty and devoid

Do something, my friend

There is no beginning.

Is there?

Here is the end of the world. (Tavakolī lines 1-17)

The aforementioned excerpt portrays the hopelessness and despair of The Last Man toward human regeneration. This hopelessness is represented by “[n]ot even a drop of light” as this character acknowledges “[t]his is the end of the world.” Therefore, the idea of ultimate judgment prevents him from imagining a new beginning for his species because, as previously mentioned, the Day of Judgment unveils the naked truth of the world and human beings’ wrongdoings toward the Earth and nature. This apocalypse creates an insight into The Last Man to literally regard himself as the last spectator of the extinction of his species. The Last Man, as Horn declares, is the “emblematic incarnation of a modern form of subjectivity facing disaster” (35). In Aḥmad Šāmlou’s (1925–2000) “Human and the Earth,” nature which is represented as “the sorcerer” severely laments The Last Man for his anthropogenic activities:

That sorcerer teaches you that justice is higher than love.

It is a pity that if there were love, there would never be oppression.

There is no need to ask for help for an unjust justice.

Then nature will set your eyes on the edge of the sword,

From the iron that I, the Earth, gave you to make a plow blade! (Šāmlou 72-3)

This stanza elucidates that The Last Man can no longer be survived or protected by modernization, “iron,” or social bonds. As a result, he develops a melancholic sensation while wandering through the remnants of a ruined civilization, which means that he beholds what is left for humanity. In his poem, Šāmlou further depicts the “lastness” of The Last Man as a wavering character who regrets his anthropogenic activities:

… and the last man was tired, lonely, and thoughtful.

He was sitting on a rock,

Remorseful of his deeds and actions.

And the earth spoke to him in this way:

I gave you grain to eat,

And grass for your sheep, and cattle, and leaves

Tender enough to make bread crumbs.

The last man was thoughtful, tired, and ashamed,

Lamented deeply in pain.

He said: I know. (Šāmlou 69)

Šāmlou attempts to highlight the relationship between anthropogenic activities and environmental degradations, including the alterations in meteorological systems. The Last Man learns that even though humanity is incapable of carrying on with its life without nature’s services, the possibility of nature’s survival without humanity is plausible. Accordingly, as Serres declares, a natural contract is needed to reinforce the symbiotic interrelationship between humans and nature to secure human survival on Earth in the future.

5. Conclusion

This research explored the relationship between selected Persian eco-poems and J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, in regard to anthropogenic factors and climate change, namely Freud’s Das Unheimliche, Andersen, Serres, Latour’s The Judgement, and Horn’s The Last Man. While this study presented an additional perspective into the relationship between Persian eco-poems and J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, it was limited by the number of samples used. A more substantial sample size of Persian eco-poems could have further strengthened the findings. However, due to the textual limitations on length, it was impossible to provide more samples in this study. Central to the comparative analysis, this article reveals that incompatible settings and environmental space elicit diverse types of psychological uncanniness. As a result, the findings indicate that the reemergence of the reptiles as emblems of the monstrous uncanny, in Ballard’s The Drowned World, triggers feelings of alienation toward the familiar setting of London in the case of global warming. Although the selected Persian eco-poems provoke the environmental uncanny feeling, the representation of the environmental uncanny is illustrated in a different form. To provide more details, the selected Persian eco-poems demonstrate the mismatch between the past environmentally friendly condition of Tehran as the familiar city with its current urban landscape, which turns into the urban uncanny due to the sense of defamiliarization, creating a contradiction between the expected and actual hometown. Further findings depict the ramifications of climate change on human beings in The Judgement in Ballard’s The Drowned World and in the selected Persian eco-poems. Both case studies unanimously expose that climate-related disasters are nature’s judgment and punishment toward humanity. Additional investigation shows that regardless of the protagonist’s incapacity to control the environmental catastrophes, The Last Man is no longer subject to divine justice but the laws of nature. Similar to the character of The Last Man, Robert Kerans, as a miserable and lonely character, sees what is left for humanity: the collapse of civilization. Therefore, he becomes aware that the meteorological apocalypse on Earth is not dependent on the intervention of the ultimate divine judgment. Correspondingly, the selected Persian eco-poems depict that the last human on Earth acknowledges that by ignoring nature’s communication signals, humanity resulted in its extinction. Indeed, the diction of both J.G. Ballard and the modern Persian eco-poets is convincing enough to synchronize readers and attain the Anthropocene conclusion that nothing matters but the natural contract of symbiosis between humanity and nature in the given texts.

Acknowledgments

The current article is an edited version of a section from the author’s Master’s thesis entitled “A Comparative and Anthropocene Study of ‘Cli-fi’ and ‘Eco-poetry’ in English and Persian Literatures: Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Ballard’s The DrownedWorld, and the Selected Persian Poetries.”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).