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Nature is not a passive background in everyday life nor literature, but rather an agent on its own – an actor that changes the human culture, says Maris Sõrmus, recent doctoral graduate in humanities of Tallinn University.

The agency of nature has many forms, such as its own voice, body, or actions that have a positive or negative effect on people. It is clearly visible in Andrus Kivirähk’s novel “The Man who Spoke Snakish” / “Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu”, which generally focuses on the problems regarding the Estonian nationality and language. Does that make Kivirähk a nature writer? What does reading about nature via culture and literature even mean? Is it post-humanistic reading?

Nature in literature can be explained through ecological literary criticism, or ecocriticism, which focuses on the image of nature, places and environments in literature. Material ecocriticism, which was inspired by neo-materialist theories, tries to redefine the human-centred understanding of agency, which claims that humans are the force behind change. At the same time, the connectedness of nature and culture is emphasised; for example Donna Haraway’s natureculture ethics see the human body as a naturecultural entity, which works in unison with other non-human creatures or forces.

If we look at “The Man who Spoke Snakish” from a neo-materialist perspective, the nature is an actor on its own. The former brothers of man – snakes – are capable of speech, and in addition have taught their language to man. Furthermore, the last few forest-dwellers are able to speak Snakish, diminishing the border between nature and culture. The last man to speak Snakish is therefore culture and nature at the same time: he hisses in Snakish and crawls in the grass like a snake.

The moss, dirt and bugs also possess agency as they become intertwined with the body of the forest-dweller Meeme, gain control and eventually turn it into mould. The border between Meeme’s body and moss cannot be determined – nature and culture are becoming one. Meeme himself notes that he does not only look like mould, but has become it – “Yes, I am decaying,” he says. Thus, the character of Meeme encompasses the fluid neo-materialistic understanding of nature and culture.

In the novel he is described as a human clump of moss or a leaf lying about. The human body is not as human as we would think, but rather a symbiosis of the cultural and natural. It is the same with all the numerous bacteria in the human body, or even viruses, allergies, bird flu or climate change, which all show that the human being does not affect the nature, but is formed by it.

Thus, Kivirähk opposes the anthropocentric ideology with a rather post-humanistic world where the nature acts and speaks, and the human being is naturecultural. Kivirähk breaks the borders between nature and culture, as well as the hierarchic understanding of them being passive/active, and many other binarities. The anthropocentric terms of ‘voice’ and ‘agency’ are transferred to nature, making nature a separate actor in the novel.

In May, Maris Sõrmus defended her doctoral thesis at the Tallinn University School of Humanities. Her research focused on the balance between nature and culture in British-Carribean and Estonian literature. She based her thesis on the assumption that nature is not just a passive background, but an actor that has an effect on the human culture.