1972

Snyder, Gary. Poetry and the primitive. In : Co Tinneh (1972).
By civilized times, hunting was a sport of kings. The early Chinese emperors had vast fenced hunting reserves ; peasants were not allowed to shoot deer. Millennia of experience, the pour knowledges of hunting magic – animal habits – and the skills of wild plants and herb gathering were all but scrubbed away…
One finds evidence in T'ang and Sung poetry that the barren hills of central and northern China were once richly forested. The Far Eastern love of nature has become fear of nature : gardens and pine trees are tormented and controlled. Chinese nature poets were too often retired bureaucrats living on two or three acres of trees trimmed by hired gardeners… 'Wild' in the Far East means uncontrollable, objectionable, crude, sexually unrestrained, violent ; actually ritually polluting. China cast off mythology, which means its own dreams, with hair cocks and gaping pudenda, millennia ago…