Gramática parda [2011]: Saturn rings

GRAMÁTICA PARDA

Thoreau wrote of “this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society.” Is it possible that a society as a whole might stay on better terms with nature, and not simply by being foragers? Thoreau replies: “The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge, Gramatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.” The grammar not only of language, but of culture and civilization itself, is of the same order as this mossy little forest creek, this desert cobble. [Gary Snyder - The Practice of the Wild]

Saturday, April 23, 2011