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On Walruses On Walruses
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Nature

On Walruses

Julia Fiedorczuk
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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

Towards the end of last summer, we started watching the Netflix miniseries Our Planet. I have my reservations about it. I’m a bit wary of the narration, which from the very start introduces the theme of a “stable Eden” that “nurtured our civilization for generations”. In my view, more-than-human nature is not, has not been, and does not need to be ‘Eden’, nor is it obliged to ‘nurture’ our civilization. Moreover, the Judeo-Christian mythology that speaks of lost Edens belongs to the outlook that is co-responsible for the present ecological crisis. We, humans, are not the apple in the universe’s eye. It’s high time we grew up and came to terms with this uncomfortable truth.

The images Our Planet offers are breathtakingly beautiful – and yet for precisely this reason they are dangerously akin to the capitalist logic of the spectacle, based on the assumption that beautiful and spectacular things or beings are worth saving, and not necessarily those that we, humans, cannot see, understand or use. It is precisely the logic that underlies the commodification of non-human nature: the market treats

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Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.
Publish date: 16.12.2019

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In Search of Silence In Search of Silence
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Photo: Ryan Stone on Unsplash
Wellbeing

In Search of Silence

Julia Fiedorczuk
Julia Fiedorczuk:
a poet, writer, translator and lecturer at the University of Warsaw, Institute of English Studies.

To write about silence—what a paradox. “When I pronounce the word Silence / I destroy it,” wrote Wisława Szymborska in The Three Oddest Words (translated by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh).

What could be said about silence except that there is less and less of it, just as there is less and less darkness (excessive nighttime lighting due to numerous sources of artificial light is the cause of the light pollution hindering astronomical observation of the sky, but it also interferes with the well-being of animals and plants adapted to living in darkness during the night)? In the civilized world, it is almost never completely dark—and never completely quiet. Like everything that is natural and rare, silence becomes an exclusive commodity—we leave the city to find ourselves away from its clamour, to wind down and rest. Silence is a luxury, being “out of reach” (with no access to the internet or a phone)—an extravagance few of us can afford, while there are fewer and fewer places where it is possible to really ‘cut oneself off’ from the world.

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