A CRITICAL RESPONSE: "THE EROTIC LANDSCAPE"

Terry Tempest Williams’ Self-characterization and Physical/ Geographical Setting in "The Erotic Landscape"                     

Terry Tempest Williams’ "The Erotic Landscape" underscores the author’s idea of uninhibited, undistorted eroticism that urges us to engage passionately into a profound physical and spiritual dialogue with nature, thus sharing and in turn complementing each other. To Williams, “eroticism relates to all the highest and finest things of life”; it “calls the inner life into play”; and it serves as a “source of power and information” (29-30). Nevertheless, the author fears that the suppression of true erotic feelings or fear to express them may dissociate us from nature leading the both to abuse each other neglecting the importance both reserve for one another. Such abuse, to the author, corresponds to “pornography” that emphasizes on “plasticized sensation” and denies the “power of the erotic” (29).

In this relation, hence, the author seems opposed to the conventional notion of “eroticism” that draws its essence heavily from what is regarded as “pornography”. She idealizes the erotic as a force reconciling both body and soul and characterizes herself as advocating this ideal. In her visit to a museum in Copenhagen, Denmark, she witnesses the erotic being silenced, objectified into a “vase”, “bronze statues”, or a “wax tableau” and put up on display within walls; and she criticizes it: “I wonder what walls we have constructed to keep our true erotic nature tamed” (28). She also finds herself “confronted” with a six-foot golden phallus erected on a pedestal, which, she says, she “refrained” to touch, for it did not appeal to her. Besides, her description that visitors are “assaulted” with a montage of pornography showing on television screens tells us how sorry she feels to find the erotic being aligned with the pornographic (28).

On the other hand, however, her account of a visit to a country in southern Utah bespeaks how she feels the “magnetic pull of [her] [body] toward something stronger, more vital than simply [herself]”. She feels this pull to be yet stronger while she sees a juniper in the clearing and has an urge to climb into its arms—no different from the affectionate human arms—and to “dance with longing”: “With both hands on one of its stronger boughs, I pulled myself up and lifted my right leg over the branch so I was straddling it, then leaned back into the body of the juniper and brought my knees up to my chest, I nestled in [...]”(29). The preceding quote characterizes the author as seeking a refuge in the arms of a juniper tree from the growing heat, thereby longing to reconnect her wild self to the natural world where she originally belongs and feel literally erotic by participating herself.

The author hence sets out to settle the differences the dichotomy of “eroticism” comes with and upholds the idea of the erotic as being in a physical and spiritual dialogue with nature just in the way it has to be with another body. Williams’ visit to a museum disillusions her from the perceived notion of eroticism, which since old times has objectified and tamed our true erotic nature mistaking “pornography” for “eroticism”. This disillusionment thus prompts her to defy the conservative eroticism and advocate that which brings a human into relationship with nature, within and without, and that which comes from direct, unchecked experience. To the author, to revel in watching others experience the erotic is “voyeurism” in which one rather than engage in the sexual act oneself delights in watching others do so. And in this view, she finds onlookers or photographers who seek to capture a fragmented feature of nature no different from voyeurs who “distance [themselves] from natural sources” (29).

Further, whether it be the author’s detailing of a naked woman draped in a fabric that cascades over her breasts corresponding to the natural landscape outdoors or her shrewd employment of the setting in two different spaces, it helps one see a plausible relation to what she attempts establishing. The museum set up in an urban locale, Copenhagen with artificial walls to tame the erotic spirit objectified into a statue, tableau, or a golden phallus underlines the fact that we fear expressing the erotic explicitly through our own experience. We suppress our true emotions and look for them in objects. It also shows us a true picture of the distance that intervenes between us and the wild, in effect promoting “voyeurism”.

Notwithstanding, Williams’ use of another setting in a canyon of southern Utah is a means to bring us all into nature and get us to imagine and long for the same emotions she has while she listens to the enchanting songs of coyotes, watches an awe-inspiring dawn, and seeks refuge in a juniper nestling in to hide from the heat. This is what she upholds as “eroticism” that identifies her instinctually and emotionally with nature. Similarly, she also details a desert where her friends gather at the confluence of the Little Colorado and the Colorado rivers in the Grand Canyon on a June day. They sink themselves waist deep in the river, turn and roll over, paint themselves in mud, bake in the sun with the fantasy of becoming lizards, and later dive into the river in their erotic engagement with the wild to meet their urge: “In time, they submerge themselves into Little Colorado, diving deep and surfacing freshly human […] laughing, contemplating, an unspoken hunger quelled (30).”

 The dichotomy of “eroticism”, in the essay, hence, decidedly invites the readers’ acknowledgement of the true erotic urge and the denouncement of the pornographic: “We need a context for eros, not a pedestal, not a video screen.” Besides, the self-representation of the author partly owes to her reluctance to disengage from nature. Probably, relating others’ experience of true erotic moments means nothing but “voyeurism” to her and thus offering her own account of both the distasteful, weary experience of the pornographic and the exciting, rejuvenating experience of the erotic in the wild, she temptingly calls for our physical and spiritual interaction with nature. The representation thus, in effect, is authentic and compelling, evoking our suppressed feelings of eros to embrace the wild as the author puts it, “to be in relation to everything around us, above us, below us, earth, sky, bones, blood, flesh, is to see the world whole, even holy.” Williams, in fact, sees connectivity where there is a seeming dualism disconnecting the self with the other, and the human with nature.