W. S. Merwin’s Fabled Waters
In his two collections of short fiction, The Miner’s Pale Children (1970) and Houses and Travellers (1977), later reissued together by Copper Canyon Press under the title The Book of Fables (2007), W. S. Merwin gives agency and power to water. Linking the efficiency of the condensed format to the co...
Wedi'i Gadw mewn:
| Cyhoeddwyd yn: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse, |
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| Prif Awdur: | |
| Fformat: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Iaith: | Anglais |
| Cyhoeddwyd: |
Journal of the Short Story in English
2025
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| Mynediad Ar-lein: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Crynodeb: | In his two collections of short fiction, The Miner’s Pale Children (1970) and Houses and Travellers (1977), later reissued together by Copper Canyon Press under the title The Book of Fables (2007), W. S. Merwin gives agency and power to water. Linking the efficiency of the condensed format to the contents, Merwin’s stories question the boundaries commonly established between water in nature and water in the human or other bodies, but also between water and other elements, revisiting the categories that have informed the Western grasp of the natural world. The stories offer a rephrasing of an ancient philosophy through the use of animism and metaphors gone literal. Without giving a voice to nature directly, but letting the latter signify its mystery to our limited human understanding, they emphasize the interdependency of interlinked fates in the biosphere, with respect for the water of life in the whole of nature, in and of itself. |
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