Visions of Eco-apocalyp in Selected Malaysian Poetry in English Cecil Rajendra and Muhammad Haji
Abstract: This essay examines the apocalyptic visions of two Malaysian poets’ writing in English, Cecil Rajendra and Muhammad Haji Salleh, with special emphasis on ecological catastrophe and environmental wastelands. Rajendra’s vision highlights human accountability and the ethical aspects of environmental destruction while underlying Muhammad’s vision of a fragmented earth is the gradual loss of the Malays’ unique ecological consciousness and inheritance. Clearly, although each poet may approach the notion of world’s end from different perspectives, both express grave concerns about the environmental and cultural impact of a rapidly changing Malaysian landscape. 咖啡色
Key words: apocalyp wasteland responsibility Malay nature
阴道环
Author: Agnes S. K. Yeow isnior lecturer inEnglish Department, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya(Kuala Lumpur, 50603, Malaysia). She specializes in twentieth-century literature.Email:agnesyw@
标题：马来西亚英语诗歌中的生态末日景象：赛西尔•哈日德拉和穆罕姆德•哈吉•萨勒
内容提要：本文审视两位马来西亚诗人，赛西尔•哈日德拉和穆罕姆德•哈吉•萨勒的英文诗歌中的末日景象，重点在于他们对生态灾难和环境荒原的表现。哈日德拉强调人类为此因负的责任，关注环境破坏问题中的伦理层面；而隐藏在穆罕姆德对于一个支离破碎的地球的想象背后的是马来人独特的生态意识与传统的逐渐沦丧。显而易见的是，尽管两位诗人从不同的角度走进世界末日，他们都对迅速变化的马来西亚自然景观所带来的环境和文化的影响深表担忧。
360p2河北有多少个市 关键词：末日 荒原 责任 马来 自然 梦想总是遥不可及
绩效文化 作者简介：杨芮琴，马来亚大学人文和社会科学学院英文系高级讲师；主攻20世纪文学。
自驾游记
6个单韵母
An overview of Malaysian poetry written in English reveals that although poets are generally more preoccupied with metaphorical rather than material nature, the environmental subtext underscores an implicit concern for the land and the shifting relation between people and the land. This “green” concern manifests itlf in ways ranging from forthright protestagainst the environmental impact of rapid urbanization and industrialization to mythical expressions of the individual’s n of place in the real world. For one thing, the concept of a cular apocalyp has been and continues to be a powerful trope for Malaysian poets in their contemplation of all manner of cris in both the local and global contexts. In their engagement with the ecological crisis, Malaysian poets evoke apocalyptic wastelands in their works to communicate a palpable n of imminent ecological cataclysm. Underlying the rhetoric of destruction and desolation are a warning against an unqualified, unenlightened anthropocentrism and the clarion call, direct or implied, for environmental justice, sustainability and enhanced stewardship of the land. Furthermore, it can be inferred that, in overtly or covertly challenging the dominant master narrative of development, the third-world poets take the radical view o
f political disnt becau environmental issues are political issues, even more so in a developing nation. In this essay, I will discuss the apocalyptic visions of two poets, namely, Cecil Rajendra and Muhammad Haji Salleh. While Muhammad Haji Salleh’s vision and tacit warning of the end are tied up with his concern for the Malays’ eroding n of place in nature, Cecil Rajendra’s barren and ruined landscapes register humanity’s eroding n of responsibility towards both the human and nonhuman.
The first poem I wish to consider is Rajendra’s “Art for Art’s Sake”from the volume ??Bones & Feathers??, which is a hard-hitting indictment of the lf-indulgent pursuit of art for art’s sake as the title suggests. Lawyer and social activist Rajendra has often been criticized for producing artless ver that has no other intent apart from protest??①against hunger, poverty, exploitation and environmental degradation, all of which are interrelated and are often conquences of injustice, corruption and myopic political and economic agendas. His poems on ecological ruin are a direct, unambiguous diatribe against the process which are precipitating this disaster. In this particular poem and in a defiant mood, the speaker makes no bones about the futile aesthetic preoccupations of
poetry when all is destroyed and a devastated nature is the only thing left standing. In the first half of the poem, the speaker, in an ironic tone, exhorts the saving of poetry from becoming a mere tool in the hands of activists and propagandists: “Let us rescue poetry / from the barbarians / Tho who would reduce / it to a flag, a slogan / a vehicle for propaganda” (??Bones?? 67). However, the cond half destabilizes the proposal with its doomsday imagery and conscience-pricking challenge in the form of a rhetorical question:
