
##4000077 Research on Kona slope shows promise for native ecosystem recovery <p> A half-dozen black feral goats looked up with a start as Robert Cabin emerged from the stand of trees . Wild and wary , they had been scrounging for food in the rough lava field on the Kona slope of the island of Hawaii . <p> " There 's the enemy right there , " said Cabin ( pronounced CAY-bin ) , a plant ecologist with the US Forest Service 's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry , in Hilo . Almost before he got the words out , the goats turned and darted over a ridge and out of view . <p> Goats , pigs , and other feral ungulates , or hooved animals , are " the enemy " on the Big Island and elsewhere in Hawaii because these alien ( nonnative ) species wreak havoc on forests and other ecosystems , eating native plants and digging up soil . Ungulates are a major reason Hawaii is the extinction capital of the United States . With less than 1 percent of the US land mass , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation 's endangered and rare species . More than 1000 native Hawaiian species are known to be extinct . <p> The particular ecosystem that concerns Cabin is the tropical dry forest . The dry forests of Hawaii receive about 20 inches of rain a year , while rain forests can get about 10 times as much . On the Hawaiian Islands , feral ungulates , cattle ranching , alien grasses , and other biological insults have eliminated 90 percent of the state 's original dry forests . By comparison , about 40 percent of Hawaii 's rain forests are gone . <p> But here at a region called Kaupulehu , Cabin and fellow biologists and conservationists have begun an important demonstration project for reclaiming Hawaii 's degraded dry forests . The demonstration site is protected from ungulates by a fence . In just a few years of research at the site , the biologists have begun to assemble much-needed information about how degraded forests respond to fencing out the enemy and about what other steps may be necessary for restoring the forests . <p> " We 're standing among all kinds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cabin said in June as he led a journalist through the upper part of the site . The upper part , called Kaupulehu mauka , is separated from the lower section by the main highway running upslope from the resort area of Kailua-Kona . The scene is sobering . Kaupulehu mauka , a mere six-acre fenced area , is one of the few remnants of the hundreds of thousands of acres of tropical dry forest that once blanketed the lowland leeward slopes of all the Hawaiian Islands . Many of these areas are slowly degrading , victims of alien animals and plants and the rogue fires that come with them . <p> Yet in just 3 years of weed whacking , spraying with herbicide , and other toil on these sun-baked slopes , Cabin and his colleagues have seen signs that the forest-with a little help-can restore itself . At the study site , native tree seedlings , shrubs , and vines are rising anew out of the shallow soil and rough lava amid dead , gray clumps of the invasive African bunch grass known as fountain grass ( Pennisetum setaceum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ natives are popping up here and there , regenerating on their own , " Cabin said . A devastated ecosystem <p> The devastation of dry forests is a common story everywhere in the tropics . They have succumbed to a modern-day crescendo of extinction that began with the original human settlement and grew with Western contact , large-scale ranching , and a rising tide of development . In Hawaii 's case , habitat degradation by alien ungulates was-and still is-the crowning blow . <p> Dry forest is one of the Hawaiian Islands ' most culturally important and critically endangered habitats . Native Hawaiians use plants from the forest for everything from medicines to building materials . Throughout the tropics , dry forest regions often were the first to be settled and their resources the first to be consumed . That was largely because these areas were the most hospitable in terms of climate and disease and offered fertile soil and accessible resources . <p> Hawaii 's native species , which evolved amid the oceanic isolation of the mid-Pacific islands , did n't need to adapt to a wide range of natural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thus , they were particularly vulnerable to disturbance by late-arriving alien species . Dry forest species were among the hardest hit , mainly because the forests were so accessible as habitat . " What 's left today are these tiny little fragments of dry forest , and we 're standing in one of the best in the state , " Cabin said . " It 's just this little bread crumb of what was . " <p> Behind him , down the parched slope to the North Kona beach resorts nearly 2000 feet below , spread an ecological desert , a barren carpet of black lava and sandy-colored alien grass dotted with single trees , many of them nonnative . Despite what today seems like an austere environment-hot and dry-North Kona , like the lowland dry side of all the Hawaiian islands , was once among the most species-rich areas in the state . <p> To try to reverse the all but completed trend of dry-forest destruction , a group of scientists , conservationists , and volunteers formed the North Kona Dry Forest Working Group in 1993 . The group is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizations , botanical gardens , and native Hawaiian and other local residents . Lisa Hadway , formerly a researcher at the National Tropical Botanical Garden ( NTBG ) , on Kauai , is coordinator . <p> The working group is confronting one of the fundamental challenges of conservation biology : restoring a native ecosystem without quite understanding how it functions , much less the precise details of what species and ecological linkages it contained before degradation began . Researchers know little about Hawaii 's dry forests , especially about how the ecosystem operates across the Kona landscape 's patchwork of different lava flows . <p> This challenge typifies the so-called Nero dilemma of conservation biology . Conservation biology project leaders can choose to make immediate tactical decisions about a conservation problem before they know all of the problem 's complex dimensions and range of solutions , or they can wait until all the data are in-that is , like Nero , they can fiddle while Rome burns . But the North Kona working group believes it has the tools to stop fiddling and start fighting the fire . Through research , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ endangered and rare species , mainly plants , can be recovered once the overall structure of the forest is restored . Kaupulehu still supports small populations of the endangered plants kauila ( Colubrina oppositifolia ) , uhiuhi ( Caesalpinia kavaiensis ) , aiea ( Nothocestrum breviflorum ) , kokio ( Kokia drynarioides ) , and hala pepe ( Pleomele hawaiiensis ) . <p> " This project is a wonderful example of integration of scientific experimentation and on-the-ground management , " says Marie Bruegmann , a biologist with the US Fish and Wildlife Service ( FWS ) in Honolulu and one of the working group members . " The work that Bob Cabin and Lisa Hadway are doing with research grant funding gives us a scientific basis for making management decisions . While members of the group do n't always agree on what should be done or how , we work through these issues and continue to make progress . " <p> The group 's work includes " outplanting " hundreds of individuals of federally endangered dry forest species-that is , transplanting nursery-raised individuals to protected areas . The work is funded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FWS , NTBG , and other sources . In July , FWS added $72,000 to boost the effort , hoping to provide habitat for the endangered Blackburn 's sphinx moth ( Manduca blackburni ) , the state 's largest native insect . Fences and fires <p> The spot from which the goats fled was at the uppermost edge of Kaupulehu mauka , just beyond the fence . From this location , the meaning of an ungulate-excluding fence for native species in Hawaii was clear : On one side were at least some signs of native plant life ; on the opposite side , seemingly nothing . <p> The site was chosen by the working group largely because it had been fenced 40 years earlier by the Territory of Hawaii , protecting it from damage by feral ungulates . " It 's not entirely clear why they fenced it , " Cabin said . " Somebody just took it upon themselves to do it . Now this is one of the only dry forest pieces that 's been fenced for any length of time in the state . " <p> The fence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paving , and other forms of clearing that destroyed dry forest elsewhere . But it was luck that kept the site from succumbing to fire . In the past few years , dozens of fires have raged across the North Kona slopes , taking with them many of the last few fragments of dry forest . Fountain grass , an extremely flammable and invasive alien species , is the primary culprit in Hawaii 's relatively new history of fire , a history that has been devastating to dry forest remnants . <p> Researchers believe that fires were rare in the past , and that most were probably ignited by lava , not lightning . Without the grass-layer fuel of today , those fires that did occur were probably quite localized . Native plant species therefore did not need to adapt to fire , so today they do n't recover from it easily , if at all . Even if the plants do come back , they must contend with goats , fountain grass , and other invasive alien species . In short , a fire today generally spells the end of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forest down there burned a couple years ago last fall , " Cabin said , pointing down the slope and to the north . " There was a huge fire on this whole side of the island . It jumped the highway in several places and burned a lot of the last pieces left . " Kaupulehu mauka was spared because it borders a lava flow dating from 1801 that serves as a natural firebreak . <p> Kaupulehu mauka was rife with fountain grass until 1996 , when Cabin and his colleagues began a campaign to wrest it out . " That and fire breaks are a big part of what we do now , " he said . " It 's just to keep this area from burning . When it has n't burned for a while and there 's been rain , the fountain grass can be neck high . And it 's just as dry as tinder . So when the winds pick up , it 's just a tremendous tinder box . " Overcoming rodents and grass <p> The research arm of the working group began its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . The study , the results of which were published in Conservation Biology in April 2000 , was conducted by Cabin , Hadway , Stephen Weller and Ann Sakai of the University of California- Irvine , David Lorence and Tim Flynn of NTBG , and Darren Sandquist of Stanford University . <p> The biologists began by comparing regeneration of canopy trees in the preserve with that in an adjacent , unfenced area that had been grazed continuously . They found the unfenced area all but devoid of trees and shrubs . The preserve had many older trees of several native species , but a census found almost no native canopy tree seedlings in the study plots of the protected site-this after more than 40 years of potential recovery time . <p> Cabin and his colleagues suspected that native tree regeneration had been kept in check largely by small alien animals and fountain grass . Three species of nonnative rodents thrived on the site : the mouse ( Mus musculus ) , black rat ( Rattus rattus ) , and Polynesian rat ( Rattus exulans ) . And fountain grass covered the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ level . <p> The researchers proposed that these invasive alien species played a major role in suppressing canopy tree regeneration-the rodents decimating the natural rain of seeds in the plot and the grass smothering any seedlings that might have successfully run the rodent gauntlet and sprouted . <p> To test these ideas , they placed bait traps with rodenticide throughout the six-acre site . They also painstakingly weed-whacked all the fountain grass , sprayed each remaining clump six separate times with a grass-specific herbicide to kill any newly emerging grass , and pulled out as many clumps as possible . They recorded subsequent developments within the reserve and in the adjacent unprotected , untreated area . <p> By 1996 , the grass was reduced to only 10 percent of the pretreatment cover . Detailed rodent population data were not collected , but the researchers observed a general decline in activity by rats and mice , resulting partly from the rodenticide and partly from drought , they believe . <p> By 1997 , canopy tree seedlings had taken a dramatic hold in the preserve . For example , the number of seedlings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is so hard that native Hawaiians once used it for house rafters , jumped from zero in 1996 to 838 a year later in the site 's 53 study plots . <p> The main conclusion of the study is that the dry forest needs a helping hand in overcoming not only damage done by ungulates but also the choking effects of fountain grass and , possibly , damage from seed-consuming rodents . " Removing ungulates is a necessary and critical first step , but it is not sufficient in itself , " Cabin said . " Putting up a fence and walking away wo n't cut it . You 've got to do more . " Indeed , spraying and clump pulling continued , and by mid-2000 the grass covered only 4 percent of the site . <p> The regeneration heartened working group members and local resident volunteers , who , along with school groups , began to flock to the site to help plant seedlings and pull fountain grass on weekend work parties . " We had a lot of trees that people who had lived here all their lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We thought , ' Hey , this is it . You fence it , you get rid of the fountain grass , you poison the rats , and the system recovers . ' We got all excited . " <p> But rain had been plentiful in 1997 , and when a severe drought hit the next year , regeneration slowed dramatically . The researchers realized that with the original forest and its lower layer of shrubs and herbaceous plants long gone , the site had lost its " microclimate protection , " as Cabin put it . In other words , the preserve was still extremely vulnerable to periodic regimes of hot , dry weather , and when it comes to restoration , " shade matters , " Cabin said . <p> " We 're realizing now that it 's more complicated than we ever thought , and we 've got to do more , depending on the weather , " he said . The biologists have begun a series of experiments comparing regeneration in plots with and without drip-line irrigation . <p> Meanwhile , they are monitoring invasion by other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as much as the native plants do . In the study published in April , the researchers found 16 nonnative plants new to the preserve . " One of the species that 's really come in heavy in some places is this guy , " said Cabin , walking over to a milkweed plant and pulling it up . Milkweed was brought to Hawaii by an aficionado of monarch butterflies , which rely on milkweed as a host plant . " You 'll see monarchs flittering all around here , laying their eggs , " Cabin said . " The plant looks pretty innocent here , but there are places up the road where it 's just ' milkweed forest , ' where it 's 12-feet-high solid milkweed . " <p> For about 2 years , the biologists studied the invasion of milkweed , thistle , and other alien plants at the site to document how they competed with native species . " On the one hand , it would be really fascinating to just step back and see the natives and the alien species kind of fight it out , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ " Cabin said . " But from a restoration and political point of view , this forest is too valuable to do that . " So the working group now removes nonnative plants as frequently as possible . Searching for new methods <p> Below the highway , in the lower part of Kaupulehu , the working group in 1995 began work at a second site , a 70-acre dry forest patch known as Kaupulehu makai . <p> The focus at this site is larger-scale restoration demonstration and experiments . Group members want to show that dry forest can be protected from fire and restored using economical methods . Row after row of test plots spread across the site , around which a large fence and firebreaks have been constructed . Among other experimental variations , some plots have been irrigated , some covered with shade cloth , some outplanted with native tree seedlings , and some directly seeded . <p> " We want to come up with coarser , more efficient , bigger-scale projects , " Cabin said . The researchers hope that such projects will help the working group persuade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . At least one local rancher has shown interest in the group 's activities . But members acknowledge that building relationships with local landowners will be difficult , largely because of the history of polarization between many ranchers and environmentalists . <p> The working group has organized field trips to Kaupulehu for schools and local residents . Interest has grown , but the project must still overcome a widely held attitude that restoring the system is hopeless . That 's why demonstration is so important . <p> Despite learning much , the researchers admit they have a long way to go . Basic questions they are studying include the role of soil organisms and the physiology of key tree species , to better understand the ecological factors involved in regeneration . On a more practical research level , they have studied whether spraying herbicide from helicopters can kill fountain grass on a large scale ( it ca n't ) and whether the controversial approach of turning over the fountain grass-choked landscape with a bulldozer might give native plants an advantage . <p> Beyond these questions of how to restore the Hawaiian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : What exactly was the Hawaiian dry forest ecosystem ? If the biologists ca n't answer this question , how can they be sure that , if left alone , the system will regenerate into what it was before ? " Because nothing is left of any size , we do n't know what the model is to restore to , and that 's a big problem , both biologically and philosophically , " Cabin said . " Should you just do what works ? Should you try to restore in some image of what you think was here ? " <p> He bent down and pulled at another clump of dead fountain grass as vehicles whizzed past on the highway a hundred meters or so above him . " You could n't create a perfect replica of what was here if you wanted to , " he said . " The system has changed . The soil is all fountain grass litter . The dispersal agents in this system-the birds-are gone . Rats are here to stay . For me , as a pragmatist , I say forget about trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extinctions right and left , we 've got new species that are here to stay . Let 's do what works . " The important point , say working group members , is that the dry forest can come back . <p> Table 1 . Federally endangered dry forest species to be outplanted in the Kaupulehu preserve . PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> Robert Cabin , US Forest Service plant ecologist , examines ilima ( Sida fallax ) at the Kaupulehu preserve on the Kona slope of Hawaii . This and other native species have begun to take hold in the preserve since Cabin and his colleagues removed nonnative fountain grass . <p> Native vines like the awikiwiki ( Canavalia hawaiiensis ) have made a strong comeback since nonnative fountain grass has been removed from the experimental plots . <p> Lisa Hadway ( left ) , North Kona Dryland Forest Working Group coordinator , collaborates with Susan Cordell , US Forest Service plant physiological ecologist . <p> Experimental plots at Kaupulehu , on the Kona slope . Within this fenced area , the North Kona Dry Forest Working Group is trying to learn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forests . Covered plots are testing the effect of shade on seedling growth . <p> US Forest Service technicians Don Goo ( left ) and Alan Urakami have worked closely with Cabin and others on the restoration project . <p> By William Allen <p> <p> William Allen is a science writer with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch . He was a Hewlett Foundation journalist-in-residence in June at Environment Hawaii , a public affairs newsletter based in Hilo . Allen 's first book , Green Phoenix : Restoring the Forests of Guanacaste , Costa Rica , will be published in January . <p> 
##4000078 The biological diversity within soils and sediments may be orders of magnitude greater than that above the surface , but it has not been fully documented in any system ( Anderson 1995 , Wall Freckman et al . 1997 ) . In soils , only an estimated 10% of protozoa and 5% of mite species have been taxonomically described ( Brussaard et al . 1997 ) , and in marine sediments , Snelgrove et al . ( 1997 ) estimate that just 0.1% of species are described . <p> Although the identity of the vast majority of species in soil and sediments is unknown , we do know that assemblages of species ( " functional groups " ) regulate vital ecosystem processes such as decomposition of wastes , renewal of soil fertility , and purification of water ( Brussaard et al . 1997 , Palmer et al . 1997 , Snelgrove et al . 1997 , Covich et al . 1999 , Groffman and Bohlen 1999 , Snelgrove 1999 ) . A major scientific challenge is to evaluate the significance of the great diversity of life in soils @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . For example , we must identify " keystone " species ( those species that have a disproportionately large effect on ecosystem functioning ) and how soil and sediment biodiversity and the ecosystem functions they regulate respond to environmental or disturbance gradients . <p> In 1995 the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment ( SCOPE ) established the Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning ( SSBEF ) to synthesize available information and identify gaps in knowledge and research needs in this area . The first meeting of the SSBEF committee revealed the great extent to which activities of organisms dwelling within soils and sediments or the litter layer ( here defined as below-surface biota ) involve physiological or ecological interactions with organisms in above-surface habitats ( e.g. , the vegetation , the water column , or even the watershed for freshwater sediment organisms ) . These cross-surface interactions include decomposition of leaves by invertebrates and microbes in soils and sediments , nutrient cycling from below-surface bacteria to macrophytes and phytoplankton , mutualistic interactions between mycorrhizae and plants , and predator-prey interactions . Importantly , this interconnectivity appeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in all three domains : terrestrial , freshwater , and marine ( Wall Freckman et al . 1997 ) . However , the significance of biological diversity for this connectivity , and whether the ecological and physiological connections couple the biodiversity above and below the surface of soils or sediments , could not be ascertained at the first workshop . Synthesizing knowledge of the connections between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity was considered a priority to be addressed at a second workshop , since it would help to yield information on keystone species and interactions in ecosystem processes assess the extent of species specificity and , conversely , species redundancy in ecosystem processes , allowing improved estimates of the processes ' susceptibility to biodiversity loss yield a more accurate picture of overall biodiversity patterns and hotspots , which are currently defined primarily by biodiversity above the soil or sediment surface identify beneficial associations between species , functional groups , and biodiversity across the soil or sediment surface that could aid land management and restoration techniques improve our estimates of global change scenarios by increasing predictive understanding of how global changes occurring above @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities <p> The papers in this special issue result from the second workshop of the SCOPE SSBEF committee in Lunteren , The Netherlands , 11-16 October 1998 , at which over 40 ecologists and taxonomists with expertise in soils and marine and freshwater sediments assembled to synthesize knowledge on the linkages between biodiversity above and below the surface of soils and sediments . The first three papers reveal , for terrestrial ( Hooper et al . 2000 ) , freshwater ( Palmer et al . 2000 ) , and marine ( Snelgrove et al . 2000 ) domains , some evidence for correlations between biodiversity above and below the surface ( e.g. , similar biogeographical trends or responses to disturbance ) . They identify four primary mechanisms , shared across all domains , that can directly couple functional groups and , to a lesser extent , species above and below the surface . However , the authors also report some evidence against , and mechanisms that may limit , correlations between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity . The final three papers predict that global change will exert large effects on biodiversity within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sediments ( Lake et al . 2000 ) , and marine sediments ( Smith et al . 2000 ) by altering resource supply from above the surface and disrupting specific biotic interactions . By analyzing the feedbacks between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity , the papers provide a more complete framework for assessing scenarios of global change than do studies that examine above-surface or below-surface responses alone . Correlations between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity <p> Whether patterns of above-surface and below-surface biodiversity are correlated across space and time will depend on similarities in their response to environmental gradients or disturbance and the nature of interactions among biota across the soil and sediment surface . Some factors will promote correlations whereas others will limit their expression ( Box 1 ) . In all domains , participants found evidence both for and against correlations in above-surface and below-surface biodiversity ( Box 2 ) . Comparisons of biodiversity patterns are hampered by extremely limited knowledge of below-surface biodiversity , especially at large spatial scales and particularly in sediments . Ecological mechanisms <p> Across terrestrial , freshwater , and marine domains , four primary mechanisms were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interface may influence biodiversity at the other : Resource supply : Primary producers and decomposers play a vital role in connecting above- and below-surface organisms through resource supply . Timing , amount , and quality of these resources can be key variables determining community composition across the surface interface . In general , the presence of a resource across the interface enhances biodiversity relative to when the resource is absent . However , an overabundant supply of a resource , or toxic substances associated with some producers , can decrease diversity of the consumer community across the surface interface . For example , toxic algal blooms can reduce diversity of sediment biota ( Palmer et al . 2000 , Snelgrove et al . 2000 ) , and terrestrial plant community diversity may decrease with enhanced nutrient availability ( Hooper et al . 2000 ) . Physical and structural habitat heterogeneity : Organisms such as macrophytes , burrowing animals , and large animals that wade , wallow , or dig can increase the structural heterogeneity of soils and sediments , which is generally believed to increase the biotic diversity of soil-and sediment-dwelling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diversity of some functional groups . For instance , as Snelgrove et al . ( 2000 ) report , the roots of seagrasses can exclude burrowing organisms . Excessive disturbance to soil and sediment can also reduce below-surface structural heterogeneity and biodiversity . Organism interactions : Predators , herbivores , and symbionts directly connect functional groups or species across the soil or sediment surface . These interactions may increase , decrease , or result in no change in biodiversity across the surface . Hooper et al . ( 2000 ) note that in terrestrial domains , predation can reduce the abundance of dominant animal species across the interface , allowing subordinate species to flourish . Snelgrove et al . ( 2000 ) suggest that in marine domains , predation may reduce species biodiversity by eliminating slow-growing and rare species but note that exclusion experiments in some communities have shown predator and prey communities across the marine sediment surface to operate relatively independently . Cross-surface migration : Many organisms within soils and sediments migrate across the soil or sediment surface , at short time scales from minutes to hours ( e.g. , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their life cycle ( e.g. , larvae of many terrestrial insects reside in soils or freshwater sediments while their adult , reproductive phases live above-surface ; conversely , larvae of bivalves and hydrozoans occupy the water column while their adult form settles on the sediments ) . At each side of the interface , they will influence biodiversity directly by their presence and indirectly by their interactions with other organisms . Snelgrove et al . ( 2000 ) and Palmer et al . ( 2000 ) emphasized the importance of these migrations in linking biodiversity above and below the surface of sediments . <p> These four mechanisms will involve direct biotic interactions among organisms across the surface interface , or indirect biotic or abiotic stages ( Palmer et al . 2000 ) operate at various degrees of specificity , defined by Hooper et al . ( 2000 ) as one-to-one ( 1:1 ) species linkages ( e.g. , specific mutualism , parasitism , and predation , or supply of key resource by one species to another ) ; one-to-many species linkages ( e.g. , when one species or functional group supplies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; or many-to-many linkages ( e.g. , where high diversity at one side of the surface supplies diverse resources that promote high diversity at the other side ) operate to increase , decrease , or have no effect on biodiversity across the soil or sediment surface <p> Specific examples of how particular species , functional groups , or communities on one side of the soil or sediment surface influence those on the other through these mechanisms are provided in the first three papers in this issue . They yield many more examples of connections from above-surface to below-surface biota than vice versa , probably reflecting our biased knowledge of , and research focus on , mechanisms that originate above the surface . Most studies cited were of interactions in which the presence of a particular species or functional group provides a resource that can support a suite of organisms across the surface ( one-to-many interactions ) . Less was known about the extent to which biodiversity above and below the surface is linked by species-specific couplings ( 1:1 interactions ) , or whether high species diversity on one side of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many-to-many interactions ) . <p> Important differences in the processes connecting biota above and below the surface of soils and sediments within and across domains were also revealed . For example , in shallow vegetated aquatic habitats , biota above and below the sediment surface are coupled through inputs of complex organic matter , structural effects of macrophytes on sediments , and refuge from predation offered by the canopy . However , in deeper nonvegetated aquatic habitats , these effects are absent . In marine and freshwater habitats , filter-feeding bivalves living both in and on the sediment can exert strong effects on biota in the water column , altering their abundance and composition , stripping phytoplankton from the water column , and shifting the entire nutrient status and functioning of the ecosystem . Filter feeders , or an analogous functional group , are absent from soils . <p> Across the three domains , there were also considerable differences in the spatial and temporal scales at which the cross-surface linkages operate . Above-surface and below-surface biota may be most tightly coupled in terrestrial ecosystems , where exchange of nutrients and particles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to aquatic domains . In freshwater ecosystems , sediment biota are routinely affected by nutrients and particles from organisms in distant parts of the watershed or upstream ( Wagener et al . 1998 , Palmer et al . 2000 ) . In the open ocean , above-surface and below-surface systems are essentially decoupled , with virtually no production near the sediment and very slow and dispersed exchange of nutrients and particles across the sediment-water interface . Furthermore , in the deep sea , very few predators span the entire water column from surface to sediments , and most remain close to the sediments ( Snelgrove et al . 2000 ) . For oceans , information on above- to below-sediment linkages declines with depth , probably reflecting both fewer linkages and our poor knowledge of these inaccessible habitats . Impact of global change on connections between above- and below-surface biodiversity <p> Recent syntheses have predicted large effects of global change on biodiversity ( Sala et al . 2000 ) , but they primarily considered biodiversity above the surface of soils and sediments . In this issue , Wolters et al . ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Smith et al . ( 2000 ) predict that climate change , land use change ( including change in use of aquatic habitats ) , atmospheric change , and biotic exchange ( primarily introduction of invasive species ) will exert large direct and indirect ( resulting from physiological and ecological connections to the altered above-surface biodiversity ) effects on biodiversity in both soils and freshwater and marine sediments ( Box 3 ) . Across the domains , there are some similarities and some differences in the mechanisms by which the global change drivers may exert their effects . <p> Climate change . Below-surface biodiversity will be influenced by direct abiotic effects of climate change on soils and sediments , including alterations in temperature , wet-dry and freeze-thaw regimes , precipitation , terrestrial runoff , ocean circulation patterns , and sea-level rise . Across all domains , altered abundance , composition , and distribution of above-surface communities with climate change was predicted to have large effects on below-surface communities by altering timing and amount of organic inputs to below-surface decomposer food webs and by disrupting species-specific symbiotic interactions . <p> @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ concentrations may affect the abundance and composition of soil and freshwater sediment decomposer communities by inducing altered physiology of plants and composition of plant communities and thus altering organic inputs . Elevated CO2 was not predicted to have large effects on marine sediment biodiversity . Atmospheric nitrogen deposition contributes to acidification of soils and freshwater sediments , reducing the abundance and diversity of their biota through direct toxic effects or interactions with altered above-surface biota . The effects of atmospheric inputs on soil and sediment biodiversity can be magnified through interactions with other global change drivers . For example , atmospheric nitrogen deposition contributes to nonpoint source nitrogen pollution and eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems , which can dramatically alter sediment community composition and reduce biodiversity . <p> Land use change . Across all domains , land use change will affect soil and sediment biodiversity through habitat loss , increased disturbance , chemical inputs , and interactions with altered above-surface biota . Conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture affects soil and freshwater sediment biodiversity through all of these mechanisms . Freshwater sedimentary habitat and biodiversity is dramatically reduced by appropriation of water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biodiversity through disturbance and removal of key predators , and aquaculture increases chemical inputs . <p> Biotic exchange . Invasive species can influence soil and sediment biota directly though interactions such as predation and competition or indirectly by altering resource inputs and physical habitat . Across all domains , there was evidence that invasive species have already dramatically altered the trophic structure of some ecosystems and reduced the biodiversity in their soils and sediments . Predicting the impacts of invasive species at local scales is complex , however , and they may increase or decrease species richness . Nonetheless , invasions clearly displace native species and thus , at landscape scales , pose a great threat to diversity by homogenizing the Earth 's biota . <p> The articles in this issue yield more examples of how the effects of global change on above-surface biota will feed back to influence below-surface biota than vice versa . This is largely because global changes are enacted primarily above the surface , and below-surface communities are somewhat protected from their direct effects . The discrepancy may also reflect our much greater knowledge of global change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . <p> In general , Lake et al . ( 2000 ) , Smith et al . ( 2000 ) , and Wolters et al . ( 2000 ) predict that global change will weaken connections between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity , decoupling current associations between species and functional groups on either side of the surface . In particular , each driver of global change has great potential to alter the transfer of chemical resources from above-surface to below-surface habitats . Altered abundance , composition , and distribution of above-surface communities will change timing and amount of organic inputs for decomposition , which may decouple linkages to below-surface detritivores . Each global change driver also has great potential to disrupt specific cross-surface interactions such as predation , mutualism , or parasitism by reducing abundance or competitiveness of , or eliminating , the above-surface component from the ecosystem . In the short term ( tens to hundreds of years ) , we predict , the decoupling of current cross-surface biotic assemblages will reduce above-surface and below-surface biodiversity at patch to landscape scales . However , in the long term , new species @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ described in more detail in this special issue , indicate that in terrestrial , freshwater , and marine ecosystems , the same four primary mechanisms are important for connecting biota above and below the surface of soils and sediments . They also present evidence that connections between functional groups across the soil and sediment surface can be highly specific , and the presence of a particular functional group on one side of the surface can depend on that of another across the surface . The lack of species-level data from soils and sediments prevents generalizations about the species specificity of interactions across the surface . Some highly species-specific interactions are noted , such as parasitism of plants by nematode species ( Hooper et al . 2000 ) and the requirement of some freshwater bivalve species for particular fish species as hosts ( Palmer et al . 2000 ) . However , the species specificity of symbiotic associations can vary greatly , and many mutualists , parasites , and predators have broad host ranges . <p> There was also evidence from all domains that a high species diversity of producers can increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , chemical composition among plankton ) and promote high species diversity of consumers ( e.g. , detritivorous invertebrates or bacteria ) on the other side of the soil or sediment surface . However , in some instances , composition of producers rather than their diversity may determine resource heterogeneity . <p> The evidence for some species specificity in cross-surface interactions and for linkages between producer and consumer diversity suggests some degree of coupling between biological diversity above and below the surface of soils and sediments . However , we lack detailed information on which species are coupled and on the extent of this coupling . This limits our ability to : identify keystone species and ecosystem processes that cross the surface ; restore functioning communities ; and determine whether maps of biodiversity distributions and hotspots based on above-surface biodiversity hold true for the highly diverse below-surface biota , and are thus accurate assessments of overall biodiversity distribution . Research priorities to increase our understanding of the coupling between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity must include assessing the extent of species specificity in biological interactions between above-surface and below-surface organisms determining whether resource @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with their chemical composition independent of species richness directly comparing species richness and distributions above and below the soil and sediment surface <p> Using knowledge of global change effects on above-surface biota and of ecological links between above-surface and below-surface biota , these articles predict that there will be widespread disruption to current species assemblages and reduced biodiversity both above and below the soil or sediment surface , in time scales relevant to today 's decisionmakers and managers . Despite the important implications of such changes for natural resources and ecosystem functioning , direct studies of global change effects on below-surface biodiversity are rare , especially for freshwater and marine sediments ; such studies must be a research priority . We urgently need more information on how altered above-surface and below-surface biodiversity will affect ecosystem functioning . As Wolters et al . ( 2000 ) describe , ecosystem processes that are distributed continuously across a broad suite of organisms may persist if species are lost . However , ecosystem traits that are discontinuously distributed among a few species will be very sensitive to species loss . A challenge for the research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulate vital ecosystem functions the vulnerability to global change of the species or functional groups involved in these interactions the sensitivity of the ecosystem function to any changes in species or functional group composition and richness <p> This synthesis highlights the fact that soils and sediments are a dynamic habitat , connecting the ecology , physiology , and biological diversity of above-surface and below-surface domains . Understanding the composition and functioning of ecosystems and their response to global change will require that these linkages be routinely considered , because no domain exists in isolation ; indeed , large portions of the Earth are an interface between domains . Box 1 . Mechanisms that may promote or limit correlations between above-surface and below-surface biodiversity <p> Promoting factors Above-surface and below-surface species or functional groups show similar ( possibly independent ) responses to environmental gradients are influenced by similar historical , biogeographic , and evolutionary factors are connected by physiological and ecological interactions that promote biodiversity across the surface Limiting factors <p> Above-surface and below-surface species or functional groups respond to different environmental gradients respond to environmental conditions at different spatial and temporal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different historical , biogeographic , and evolutionary factors may be regulated by trophic dynamics at the same side of the soil or sediment surface , rather than from the other side are sampled by different methods that examine biodiversity at different scales are connected by physiological and ecological interactions that reduce biodiversity at the other side of the soil or sediment surface may be regulated by factors that depend on composition of resources from across the surface independent of taxonomic diversity Box 2 : Evidence for and against correlations between biodiversity patterns above and below the surface of soils and sediments For Diversity of several marine pelagic animals ( Angel 1997 ) and sedimentary bivalves , gastropods , and isopods ( Rex et al . 1993 ) generally show similar trends with latitude ( decreasing with increasing latitude ) and depth ( greatest at intermediate depths ) , based on minimal data . Disturbance from land use change decreases species richness and abundance for plants and soil-dwelling termites ( Eggleton et al . 1997 ) and nematodes ( Freckman and Ettema 1993 , Wasilewska 1997 ) . Forest floristic and mollusk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Mayhill 1999 ) . Against Deep-sea sediment nematode biodiversity patterns do not conform to the latitudinal patterns for pelagic and other marine sediment taxa described above ( Lambshead et al . 2000 ) . Plant diversity increases toward the equator , but diversity within some soil taxonomic groups does not-e.g. , earthworms ( Brussaard et al . 1997 , Lavelle et al . 1995 ) , nematodes ( Boag and Yeates 1998 ) , and mycorrhizae ( Allen et al . 1995 ) . At the continental scale , richness of termite genera corresponds more closely to net primary productivity than to tree diversity ( Eggleton 2000 ) . At the plot scale , Amazonian soil macrofauna diversity was positively correlated with plant biomass but not with diversity ( Barros 1999 ) . Box 3 : Primary drivers of global change and mechanisms by which they affect soil and sediment biodiversity Climate change <p> All below-surface domains Altered temperature , wet-drying , freeze-thawing cycles Increased disturbance from extreme climatic events Altered physiology and distribution of above-surface biota <p> Freshwater sediments only Altered volume and timing of water flow and fragmentation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loading <p> Marine sediments only <p> -- Sea level rise Atmospheric change <p> Soils and freshwater sediments only Altered physiology of terrestrial vegetation and composition of organic matter inputs Direct effects of increased nitrogen levels Acidification <p> Freshwater and marine sediments only <p> -- Eutrophication and resulting anoxia Land use change <p> All below-surface domains Altered chemical inputs ( e.g. , pollution from industry , fertilizers , and aquaculture ) Altered physical disturbance ( e.g. , through cultivation and development in soils , and fishing and dredging in sediments ) Altered composition of terrestrial vegetation and organic matter inputs <p> Freshwater and marine sediments only Direct extraction of above- and below-surface biota from fishing Eutrophication and resulting anoxia <p> Freshwater sediments only <p> -- Altered volume and timing of water flow and fragmentation of water bodies Biotic exchange <p> All below-surface domains <p> -- Invasion of exotic species above- or below-surface , altering competitive abilities and resource supply Acknowledgments <p> The second workshop of the SCOPE SSBEF committee was generously supported by an anonymous US foundation ; the Ministry of Public Housing , Physical Planning , and the Environment ; and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Netherlands . The SCOPE SSBEF committee is a component of DIVERSITAS , the international program of biodiversity science . We thank the participants in the workshop for their intellectual contributions and collaborations across diverse fields to address the issues in this series of papers . We also thank Drs . Jill Baron , Alan Covich , and Mark Dangerfield for their thoughtful reviews of earlier versions of this manuscript and Lily Huddleson for her administrative assistance for the workshop and assistance with preparation of the manuscript . 
##4000667 Ravelstein , by Saul Bellow , Viking . <p> IN Diana Trilling 's memoir The Beginning of the Journey she tells a story about Saul Bellow to illustrate the effect that Lionel Trilling had on people . Lionel , she writes , <p> always retained a certain air of unassailability . There were people whom this seemed to disturb . In middle life , he lectured at the University of Chicago , and Saul Bellow , who taught there and with whom he had become pleasantly acquainted in the early fifties when Bellow was writing The Adventures of Augie March , invited him to have a drink after his talk . For their drinking place Bellow chose a bar in a desperate quarter of the city ; it was the gathering place of drunks and deadbeats , a refuge of people who had been irreparably damaged by life . What other explanation of Bellow 's choice could there be than the wish to test Lionel 's ability to handle himself in such surroundings ? <p> We may know what she means , we may be able to imagine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complicity in this description is , as it were , part of the problem . And it is a problem that Saul Bellow has been unusually alert to in his fiction . It is the problem of culture , and particularly so-called high culture , as a version of pastoral ; but a version of pastoral that can be made to look unassailable because of the apparent complexity and subtlety and depth of its inclusions . A strangely modern version of pastoral , because it persuades us to forget that pastoral is what it is . At its worst it is a refuge masquerading as a profound engagement . If despite Diana Trilling 's rhetorical question this scene seems emblematic in more ways than one -- of two antagonistic Jewish ( and not only Jewish ) aspirations , of the composure of the cultured versus the disarray of what they hide from , of the need to know people by testing them rather than by taking them on their own terms -- it is partly because it stages so neatly the preoccupations , the obsessions , of both Trilling and Bellow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ravelstein of Bellow 's title is no exception -- are always wholeheartedly assailable , and above all attentive to other people 's airs ( and often their graces ) . And they are always men who live somewhere in themselves , in a desperate quarter ; and are , as everyone is , irreparably damaged by life . But unlike almost everyone else , they are astonishingly articulate , and learned , and poignantly moving and amused about their various predicaments . However abject , they luxuriate in words and things ( Humboldt , Bellow wrote , " spoke wonderfully of the wonderful , abominable rich " ) . Ravelstein , the great teacher dying of AIDS , is in this tradition of Bellow 's grandly destitute , and is at the center of what is , remarkably , one of Bellow 's finest novels . <p> Trilling is always trying to persuade us ( and presumably himself ) in his criticism that the culture he values is n't , and should n't be , a retreat from anything . And Bellow 's fiction , one way or another , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of culture and learning . For Bellow the drama has n't been only about connecting the prose and the passion , but more about seeing what the deadbeats and the professors make of each other . As both of them are sticklers for the noble life -- and are keen to tell us what we should be doing to ennoble our lives -- they are determinedly stylish about the crude and the vulgar ( in this sense Trilling 's composure and the brash eloquence of Bellow 's heroes are mirror images of each other ) . They are , in their quite different ways , both enthralled by , and at their most fascinating about , sophistication . <p> Writing in Sincerity and Authenticity about how the novelists of the nineteenth century were " anything but confident that the old vision of the noble life could be realized , " Trilling refers to Bellow 's Moses Herzog . " When , for example , " Trilling writes , <p> a gifted novelist , Saul Bellow , tries through his Moses Herzog to question the prevailing negation of the old vision and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we respond with discomfort and embarrassment . And the more , no doubt , because we discern some discomfort and embarrassment on the part of Mr. Bellow himself , arising from his sufficiently accurate apprehension that in controverting the accepted attitude he lays himself open to the terrible charge of philistinism , of being a defector from the ranks of the children of light , a traitor to spirit . We take it as an affront to our sense of reality that a contemporary should employ that mode of judging the spiritual life which we are willing to accept and even find entrancing when we encounter it in Shakespeare 's romances . <p> As terrible charges go , one might think , there are probably worse ones . And yet , as ever , Trilling has located , in his elegant , Freudian way , a conflict . Or at least some kind of paradoxical tension in Bellow 's work . If it is old-fashioned , if not actually regressive , to assert the value of the achieved and successful life , what else can be asserted in its stead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a phrase Allan Bloom , the putative original for Ravelstein , uses with reference to Shakespeare 's romances -- of these romances affront our contemporary sense of reality , then what forms of disarray are we going to put our money on ? <p> Ravelstein , the political philosopher and worshipper of Eros , has devoted his life to teaching the best that has been thought and done about the ordering of the soul and the ordering of the polis ; and he is now dying of AIDS . And he has asked his older close friend , a writer called Chick , to write his biography , the final testament to an achieved and successful life . Or rather , the contemporary genre in which the notions of success and achievement are both assumed and put into question . More than any of Bellow 's other books , Ravelstein seems like a wholly successful example of an utterly implausible genre : a contemporary , Jewish Platonic dialogue . Like the tricky romance of taking Trilling to that bar -- wondering whether it would end in tears , or just what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in this novel to explore the ways in which people are informed , in the most various senses of this word , by the people they love and admire . It is " the promise Chick had made years ago to write a short description of Ravelstein and to give an account of his life . " And as a kept promise of sorts -- the book we read is an account of preparing to write this biography -- it is an ironic vindication , against the grain of modern biography , that a short description of somebody , done with sufficient skill , can be an account of their life . Bellow intimates not ( quite ) that all biographers are failed novelists , but that all biographies are failed or ersatz novels . <p> The novel Ravelstein is , in other words , not a biography of someone called Ravelstein , nor of someone called Allan Bloom . It is a fiction about biography . And the much publicized connections made between Bellow 's close friend Bloom and Bellow 's ( and Chick 's ) subject Ravelstein are to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it were , integral to Bellow 's sense of , or joke about , biography in this book . Ravelstein , we are told on several occasions , loved listening to classical music played on " original instruments " : and what , we are made to wonder in a book about someone who wonders about virtually everything , does " original " mean ? What is involved in this fantasy of origins ? If Ravelstein is " like " Allan Bloom or " based on " Allan Bloom , he is also , unsurprisingly , like Moses Herzog , like Humboldt . And they are all , in their way , originals : original instruments , original voices . <p> It is one of Ravelstein 's projects to divorce his students -- who are always his devoted proteges -- from what used to be called their backgrounds . " He hated his own family and never tired of weaning his gifted students from their families . His students , as I 've said , had to be cured of the disastrous misconceptions , the ' standardized unrealities ' imposed on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and originality are at odds with each other ; he persuades his students to disown , as he has done , their supposed histories . But even though Ravelstein is , by definition , no Freudian -- and , as a committed European , no Emersonian either ( although Thoreau , as we shall see , puts in some interesting appearances ) -- his biographer-to-be , Chick , as he is aptly named , has a more familiar , literary-Freudian cast of mind . So he reads Ravelstein in a way Ravelstein would never read himself ; that is , through a particular canon of literary allusions . " His lot , his crew , his disciples , his clones who dressed as he did , smoked the same Marlboros , and found in these entertainments a common ground between the fan clubs of childhood and the Promised Land of the intellect towards which Ravelstein , their Moses and their Socrates , led them . " Bellow has always been able to pack a sentence ; and at its worst this can give his writing a kind of studied fluency , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down . But here , as everywhere in Ravelstein , there is no straining for effect in writing about a character who is , for all intents and purposes , doing virtually nothing but that . " Crew " refers us to Milton 's Satan , and " disciples " refers us to Satan 's rival ; " the Promised Land of the intellect " seems to marry Jerusalem and Athens . Ravelstein , we are told , was " Homeric , " a lover of Plato ; a Jew who devoted his life to Athens until he began dying , when he turned back to his forefathers . Chick , though , is not the kind of person who thinks along Jerusalem and Athens lines . If he is anything , in this debate that Bellow has so shrewdly staged , he is literary rather than political . And Bellow , of course , is mindful of what is at stake in such distinctions . <p> There is , in Ravelstein 's view , something childish about the way the literary tend , as it were , to overpersonalize things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are often at pains to conceal : that writing about someone turns too easily into writing on their behalf . That biographers can be sly when they use their nominal subjects as novelists use their characters , as a way of saying something . Ravelstein is Chick 's opportunity to voice his misgivings about the literary life , and the literary life story . <p> But Ravelstein might have argued that there was a danger of self-indulgence in it . Either you continue to live in epiphanies or you shake them off and take up trades and tasks , you adopt rational principles and concern yourself with society and politics . Then the sense of coming from " elsewhere " vanishes . In my case Ravelstein 's opinion was that distinctiveness of observation had gone much further than it should and was being cultivated for its own strange sake . Mankind had first claim on our attention and I indulged my " personal metaphysics " too much , he thought . <p> As " Ravelstein might have argued ... " ends up as " he thought , " Bellow conveys just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their own in our words ; that we are always speaking and writing from other people 's points of view , on their behalf . And often speaking in their voices back to them . That we might be full of other people -- engaged in endless mutual biography -- makes a more private sense of self difficult to account for . For Chick the privacy of the self is the self : " my feeling was that you could n't be known thoroughly unless you found a way to communicate certain ' incommunicables ' -- your private metaphysics . " For Chick 's Ravelstein , private metaphysics , " intimate metaphysics , " is the pastime of people intimidated by the publicness of public life . " A man , " Ravelstein believed , " should be able to hear , and to bear , the worst that could be said of him . " Being assailable is the point and not the problem . You make yourself out of what the world makes of you , and what you can make it make of you . It is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a willingness to let the self-esteem structure be attacked and burned to the ground was a measure of your seriousness . " In other words , for Chick 's Ravelstein shame is a protection racket . <p> So , much play is made in this novel by Ravelstein and Chick and Bellow of Chick 's New England retreat in the country . In his " fieldstone house " with its " old maples and hickory trees " Chick hears very little about what other people think of him . But he has to bear what Ravelstein thinks and that , in a sense , is what Ravelstein is there for . And why , by the same token , Ravelstein has chosen Chick as his biographer . Chick always wants to hear what Ravelstein has to say , and he enjoys bearing it . Ravelstein , who is bored by the country , comes to see Chick out of curiosity ; not curiosity about the country , but curiosity about Chick 's pleasure in it . " He had come to the country to see me , and the visit was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . Why did I want to bury myself in the woods ? " For Ravelstein this is quite literally a kind of death-in-life ; and the preoccupation with death , the worry about it , he considers definitely " bourgeoisie . " The " great-souled " live in the knowledge of death , but they do n't distract themselves with the terrors or the attractions of it . So for him , " the drama of the season lacked real interest . Not to be compared to the human drama ... to lose yourself in grasses , leaves , winds , birds , or beasts was an evasion of higher duties . " Thoreau 's " woods " that keep turning up in this book -- " I was not out of the woods , " Chick remarks as he begins to recover from his own near-fatal illness towards the end of the book -- are for Ravelstein a false solution to the problem of politics , to hearing and bearing what other people say about us ; and how this informs what we can hear and say and think about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be alive , and to be alive is to be in circulation . And once we are around other people our composure is on the line . " To lose your head , " Ravelstein believed , " was the great-souled thing to do . " It is only with other people that the great temptations of discretion and indiscretion are available . <p> And yet if Ravelstein were more of an allegory than it is -- and occasionally it seems like more of an allegory than it is -- there would be a simple schema at its heart . There is the solitude of Walden , and Ravelstein dying of AIDS : AIDS as the worst consequence of a certain kind of free association ; private intimate metaphysics -- burying oneself alive and working out how to get out and how not to -- as the worst ( or best ) consequence of withdrawal . Ravelstein , believing what he believes , and dying in the way he is dying -- " a serious person , not comfortable with himself , " as Chick says with Bellow 's infallible ear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at once an ultimate form of contemporary nobility , and a test of his fastidiousness as a writer . Ravelstein 's " tact " about his own homosexuality , and his contempt for certain contemporary manners -- " He despised campy homosexuality and took a very low view of ' gay pride ' " -- is matched by Chick 's curious blandness about the whole subject . And both Ravelstein and Chick conspire in Bellow 's familiar idealization of a certain kind of woman ( what analysts refer to as the wished-for mother of infancy -- Chick 's young wife , Rosamund , for example , is someone with whom " there was no subject raised which she did n't immediately understand " ) . In writing about Ravelstein 's homosexuality , Bellow takes the Greek tragedy approach : the terrible things happen offstage . <p> We are led to believe that Ravelstein has got up to all sorts of unmentionable things , but the main relationship in the book , with a much younger man called Nikki , is rather more of the loving and caring sort . Nikki is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is strongly drawn and , as usual with Bellow , remarkably vivid in his brief appearances , there is overall something overstylized about what we are allowed to see of Ravelstein 's more passionately fraught life . This is particularly striking given how often Chick refers to and reiterates Ravelstein 's devotion to the god Eros , to a virtual religion of longing and desire . You get the feeling that Chick ( and perhaps Bellow ) have Platonized Ravelstein 's homosexuality rather more than Ravelstein would always have wished . It is not that there is n't enough fist fucking in the novel , but that there 's a great deal of theorizing about the shady concealments people live by , and with : a too refined distrust of refinement . A gay bar , you imagine , would be a bar that Chick would not be keen to go to . <p> In generational terms Ravelstein 's age would have made a certain kind of discretion the order of the day . And yet Bellow 's sense of propriety , which is invariably accurate , serves another purpose here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ love between men -- and especially the hero-worshiping kind -- and the love between the generations . And yet it is one of the curious effects of his fiction to make it virtually unthinkable that two men could actually desire each other rather than , or as well as , admire or look after each other . In Bellow 's fictional world homosexuality is not so much invisible as implausible . And this again is where the putative connection between Ravelstein and Allan Bloom is also a cover story . Whatever Bloom 's attitude was toward homosexuality , or indeed to his dying of AIDS , Bellow is still making his own decisions as a novelist about Ravelstein . And he keeps reminding us , throughout the novel , that biographies are rather like novels , and that this book , Ravelstein , is not a biography , but a story about a man who wants to write one . " I am bound , " Chick tells us , " as an honest observer to make plain how Ravelstein operates " ; and he is referring both to the inevitable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this book , also called Ravelstein , operates . What Chick calls Ravelstein 's " endlessly diverting character " is never observed operating sexually , so to speak ; what is observed -- and Bellow writes with astounding tenderness about Ravelstein 's ill body -- are the terrible results of Ravelstein 's secret ( at least to Chick ) erotic life . Ravelstein may be diverting , but Chick is diverting us . <p> The complications that homosexuality throws Ravelstein into -- both the character , and the book itself -- are pertinent because Ravelstein is a novel peculiarly troubled by evasiveness . As a fictional character , Ravelstein , like many of Bellow 's heroes , is someone forever exercised and energized by other people 's concealments and duplicities . Bellow 's heroes unmask their fellow men and women by force of character , through a kind of demonic intuition . They are never programmatically suspicious -- they are never Freudians or Marxists -- they have , rather like novelists , idiosyncratic powers of divination . So Ravelstein is often getting Chick to face various facts -- a key word @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he idealizes the naivete of Eros , the primal intelligence of longing , while exposing the pernicious naivete of everyday life . Chick , for example , fails to spot the fascists among his acquaintances , refuses to see that his wife has put a hex on him , and so on . Ravelstein is an expert on moral cowardice . " Why does the century , " he asks , " ... underwrite so much destruction ? There is a lameness that comes over all of us when we consider these facts . " It is part of Ravelstein 's " teaching-vaudeville " to assail and assault Chick with the plain facts of the time : the fact , say , that Jews have to live with the knowledge that quite recently a significant number of powerful people wanted to wipe them out entirely , and nearly succeeded . And yet the great glaring facts , the " world-historical ringside seats " that these Bellow heroes promote with such amazing eloquence , keep running up against the centering image of the book , Ravelstein 's increasingly dying body . " @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ awkward moment , " destroyed by his reckless sex habits . " We should n't evade the big questions , but we should n't use the big questions to evade the other questions . Bellow has always had a truth-comes-in-blows sensibility , but in Ravelstein there is a new uncertainty about which blows matter and why . And a strong sense that there is a difference between talking , however grandly and wildly and wisely , about recklessness , and living recklessly . <p> If Ravelstein turned out to be his last novel , it would be an extraordinary valediction . But we should hope that it is n't because Bellow is beginning to say new -- and to use one of his words -- serious things about , among many other things , evasion and recklessness . Evasion is not news , but our evasion of recklessness is . <p> By Adam Phillips <p> 
##4000672 Of No Country 1 Know : New and Selected Poems and Translations , by David Ferry , University of Chicago Press . <p> The Eclogues of Virgil : A Translation , by David Ferry , Farrar , Straus &; Giroux . Naive and Sentimental Cowboys <p> WALT WHITMAN in conversation , circa 1890 : " You know Eakins ? the painter : he was sick , run down , out of sorts : he went right among the cowboys : herded : built up miraculously ... he needed the converting , confirming , uncompromising touch of the plains . " <p> In 1886 , the year he painted Whitman 's portrait , Thomas Eakins was fired from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for allowing his students to model for each other in the nude , boys as naked as girls . His Western journey , begun in late July of 1887 , was meant to clear the nastiness of the so-called " loincloth incident " from his spirit . He headed for the Badlands , where Theodore Roosevelt had found strenuous sustenance a few months earlier . @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future paintings . Dogs , guns , horses , saddles , broad-brimmed hats , cowboys -- these were the subjects his camera found . <p> They were found in turn by David Ferry , in the fourth of a series inspired by Eakins called " Photographs from a Book : Six Poems , " first published in Strangers : A Book of Poems ( 1983 ) and now republished in Of No Country I Know . The first two triplets of five : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> Look up this picture in Gordon Hendricks 's The Photographs of Thomas Eakins ( 1972 ) , and you 'll see that Ferry has taken liberties in his ekphrasis , as his endnote carefully , almost legalistically , concedes : " Several of the photographs evoked in the poems are related to photographs reproduced in ... Hendricks . " In his poem , Ferry has conflated two of Hendricks 's captions : Plate 134 is " Cowboy in Dakota Territory , " while the following picture , another cowboy , is captioned " Unidentified man in Dakota Territory . " It is possible that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Badger Company Ranch -- more likely it was shot near the B-T Ranch , Eakins 's tamer-sounding base in the Badlands . In short , Ferry has invented an ideal Eakins photograph , and an ideal cowboy , " a hero/Who has read nothing at all about heroes . " <p> Ferry 's poem is a sort of free translation of the Eakins photograph , and what he 's after is a certain state of mind and of language . PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> Ferry defines the cowboy 's perspective negatively , with his sequence of four prominently placed " withouts " : " without/The amazement of self ... without mercy ... without the imagination that he is/Without mercy . " Friedrieh Schiller , in one of the defining distinctions of the romantic movement , named this untrammeled condition of mind and of art the " naive , " which he associated with the poets Homer , Aeschylus , Shakespeare , and Goethe . In Schiller 's view , these poets had direct access to nature -- indeed , they were nature . Unreflecting , confident , realistic -- they wrote what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ along with the writers Kleist and Klopstock , in the opposing camp of the " sentimental " poets . Tending towards elegy , the sentimental poets have lost touch with nature , and have as their dubious reward a sense of higher , more " ideal " things . ( Among American poets , Whitman is naive , Dickinson sentimental . ) " They touch us by ideas , not by sensuous truth ; not so much because they are nature as because they are able to inspire enthusiasm in us for nature . " <p> With a final " without , " Ferry associates the naive point of view with the camera , PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> In his deadpan phrasing ( " Plate 134 . By Eakins . ' A cowboy in the West ' " ) and in his accumulation of realistic detail ( " His hat , his gun , his gloves " ) , Ferry tries to adopt the naive point of view of the camera . But the project is doomed , and in the tension between naive and sentimental lies the life of the poem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elegant enjambed triplets rather than Whitman 's cascading catalogs -- and in its diction . The cowboy may not know what is " to the East of him , " but Ferry does , just as he knows all about heroes and mercy and the amazement of self . And all this awareness , which Schiller , with no derogation , would call sentimental , comes together in the " Heartbreaking canteen . " The only heart that can be broken here is Ferry 's , for we know -- since Ferry has convinced us -- that the cowboy 's heart is invulnerable . <p> There is no canteen in Eakins 's photograph . Where you 'd expect to find it , on the broken , sun-bleached ground , there 's a reclining dog peering out sleepily at the camera . The cowboy himself , to my eye , looks more self-conscious and pleased with himself , in every way more " sentimental , " than Ferry wants him to be . Clearly visible on the cowboy 's hip , in a picture in which many other things are n't , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his rather foppish chaps . ( Eakins reveals in a letter that he had his cowboy shave before he photographed him . ) The cowboy 's cool stare recalls James Dean in the familiar photographs from his ranch in Indiana . Eakins is evoking an idea of the cowboy as dandy . <p> Ferry 's is a strong misreading ; he wants his cowboys to be " uncompromising " like Whitman 's , and the evidence to the contrary breaks his heart . We can see the same split in Stephen Crane , a writer that the art historian Michael Fried has compared to Eakins . " Damn the east ! " Crane wrote in the fall of 1895 , before setting off for Nebraska . " I fell in love with the straight out-and-out , sometimes-hideous , often-braggart westerners because I thought them to be the truer men .... They are serious , those fellows . When they are born they take one big gulp of wind and then they live . " Crane fell in love with naive cowboys , but put sentimental ones in his stories . The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Comes to Yellow Sky " is Eakins 's cowboy as dandy : <p> A man in a maroon-colored flannel shirt , which had been purchased for purposes of decoration and made , principally , by some Jewish women on the east side of New York , rounded a corner and walked into the middle of the main street of Yellow Sky . In either hand the man held a long , heavy blue-black revolver .... And his boots had red tops with gilded imprints , of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys on the hillsides of New England . Hairy and Shaggy Horses <p> David Ferry was born in Orange , New Jersey , in 1924 , a few miles from where Crane , another Jersey man , is buried . I know there are readers who have followed Ferry 's career all along the way , from the poems collected in On the Way to the Island ( 1960 ) and Strangers : A Book of Poems ( 1983 ) on to the late flowering of his work during the past decade . But for many of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ epic ( a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in poetry in 1993 ) , then of Horace 's odes , and most recently of Virgil 's eclogues . Concurrently , he published a terrific book of poems and translations called Dwelling Places ( 1993 ) . This late cluster of books has in common an abiding concern with a single theme , the same question that was bothering Schiller two centuries ago . In poem after poem , translation after translation , Ferry asks : What have we given up in relinquishing our intimacy with the natural world , with our ever diminishing inheritance of " wildness " ? Even in the supposedly classical poems of Horace and Virgil , Ferry is attuned to moments of vulnerability and second-guessing . His Rome is not the braggart Empire of Lowell 's Vietnam-era Near the Ocean , but a nervous realm of partying citizens and unsettled farmers ( Eclogue 9 : " A stranger came/To take possession of our farm , and said : /I own this place ; you have to leave this place " ) . <p> Why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like to look -- at wildflowers , Schiller wondered , or at streams and mossy stones , birds and animals , children at play ? It ca n't just be their beauty of form , Schiller maintained , but must be a satisfaction " not aesthetic but moral . " We love in them " the tacitly creative life , the serene spontaneity of their activity , existence in accordance with their own laws . " And Schiller concluded , in an italicized sentence , " They are what we were ; they are what we should once again become . " When I read the first stanza of Ferry 's wonderful " When We Were Children , " a translation of a late thirteenth-century lyric PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> -- I think of Schiller 's devastating remark : " Our childhood is the only undisfigured nature that we still encounter in civilized mankind , hence it is no wonder if every trace of the nature outside us leads us back to our childhood . " <p> Or consider Ferry 's horses , in a translation of Jorge Guillen 's " Unos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Eakins 's cowboy , the " naive " perspective of the horses is defined by an accumulation of negatives : " Motionless ... untroubled ... Silently ... before the beginning of anything human ... unyokes ... show no sign/of understanding ... Know nothing ... obliviousness . " <p> Many readers will recognize this poem of Guillen 's from an earlier translation by Richard Wilbur , of which I will quote only the first quatrain for contrast : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> I know nothing much about the biographies of these two poets , Ferry and Wilbur , except that they are roughly the same age -- their late sew enties -- and attended Amherst College , the Amherst of Frost and Brower , during the 1940s . What I have to say has nothing to do with how or whether their lives have overlapped and everything to do with the lapping of their language , in these dueling versions . You ca n't take a stab at Guillen 's horses without knowing that Wilbur has been there before , circa 1960 , and staked out the territory pretty firmly . <p> @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 's horses are radically constrained in their " barbed enclosure , " weighed down by their shagginess , their " thick and cumbrous manes . " Even their inactivity weighs on them ; they are , in the second quatrain , " Doomed to be idle , /To haul no cart or wagon , wear no bridle . " They " fatten like the grass . " Their compensation for their imprisonment is Keatsian soul-building : " Soul is the issue of so strict a fate. /They harbor visions in their waking eyes , /And with their quiet ears participate/In heaven 's pure serenity . " Like many sonnets , this one , at least as Wilbur translates it , encodes its own definition : " Pent in a barbed enclosure which contains , /By way of compensation , grazing-land . " Another version of why nuns fret not . <p> When we turn back to Ferry 's version , it 's as though the horses have grazed a little longer , and cleared more of the ground . What a difference between their unyoked ease grazing in the field and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eleven lines to Wilbur 's full-sonnet fourteen , Ferry 's version of Guillen is less a retranslation than a translation of a translation . The English of Wilbur is what Ferry does not write in . For Wilbur 's hammering rhymed and " pent " quatrains , Ferry substitutes rhymeless and loose pentameter couplets ( with Stevens , subject of Ferry 's Amherst thesis , again as liberating model ) . And Ferry 's language is striking in what it lets in : the colloquial " There are " ( an unimaginable opening for Wilbur ) and chiming " growing there " two lines later , picked up in the final " grazing there . " The loose , easygoing enjambments looping from couplet to couplet ( " Silently growing there in the light of the natural/Morning " ) are foreign to Wilbur 's form and meaning . Really , these are two different poems in just about every way that counts . One way to put the difference is this : Ferry 's horses , hairy and unyoked , retain their naturalness , their naivete . Wilbur 's shaggy prisoners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heaven they dimly sense . <p> Enkidu is the wild man , hairy and unyoked . Call him naive . And call his occasionally shaggy companion Gilgamesh , who knows both civilization and the charms of wildness , sentimental . The selections from Gilgamesh included in Ferry 's Of No Country I Know concern the death of Enkidu , and Gilgamesh 's lamentations for his partner . Here we can see how , for Ferry as for Schiller , elegy emerges from this conflict of wild and tame : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> Am I the only reader who hears in those dosing lines an echo of another famous elegy , Rilke 's familiar " Herbsttag , " translated by Ferry and included in Of No Country I Know : " Will write long letters ; wander unpeacefully , /In the late streets , while the leaves stray down " ? <p> The figure of the " wild man " is everywhere in Ferry 's recent work , though whether the wild man in his various European and American guises led Ferry to Enkidu or whether Enkidu led him to his feral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opening epigram , " Strabo Reading Megasthenes , " to Dwelling Places : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> I love this epigram but ca n't quite say why . I 'm drawn to the arresting clash of " flowers blooming " and " faraway roasting meat , " to the fussy scholarly evocation ( " According to Megasthenes ... with which to eat " ) of a " natural " existence , and to the deft and barely noticeable rhyme of " eat " and " meat . " Stupid Questions <p> Ferry 's quest for the wild man 's guileless perspective , Enkidu 's point of view , has led him to build whole poems around innocent questions . Some of the grandest , most familiar poems in English -- " Ode on a Grecian Urn , " " Among Schoolchildren , " Elizabeth Bishop 's " Filling Station " -- use questions conspicuously . But Ferry 's ubiquitous questions , in early and late poems , are striking for their naivete , as in this early poem , " My Mother 's Dying " : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> These are lovely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the questions every other line verge on the faux-naif , especially on rereading . I 've come to prefer the bolder patterning and thematizing of questions in Ferry 's great ( and to my mind pretty much definitive ) version of Baudelaire 's sonnet " The Blind People , " which begins : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> The unmaking of the sonnet as Frost and Wilbur conceived it escalates here . The enjambments are even more vigorous than in the Guillen sonnet , really yanking the lines into a single snake of a poem . As with the casual use of " there " in Guillen 's horses , I 'm struck here by the boldly colloquial placement of prepositions : " they walk in this ridiculous fashion through " ; " a denial I walk through " ; " What are they looking up at the sky for ? " There 's an angry edge to the questions that speaks of experience rather than innocence . <p> Sometimes a whole poem of Ferry 's will circle around questions , implied rather than explicit , as in his recent and very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ photograph gives rise to the poem , this one a snapshot of a family outing in New Jersey in 1916 , " a picture taken years before I was born . " Ferry tugs a few secrets from the stance and expressions of the various figures grouped around a car : his aunt Sis Nellie 's " frustrated sexuality turned/Into malice abetted and invigorated/By the cultural verve and ignorance of the place " ; his grandmother 's bad teeth " As seen by the conformation of her mouth , /Smiling without opening the lips " ; his vulnerable infant sister . He 's intrigued by his father 's straw hat in this wintry scene , but puzzled most of all by his mother : PREFORMATTED TABLE <p> One of Ferry 's Eakins poems , the sixth , is based on a photograph of another excursion into the Jersey countryside , with Eakins -- his bulging paunch reflected in the water -- and two other naked men ( like three of Whitman 's twenty-eight bathers grown up ) staring towards the camera . The ending is strikingly like that of " At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ river is hard to see//In the washy blankness of the light ; the sallow/Flat South Jersey landscape , treeless almost , /almost featureless , stretches vaguely beyond . " The cowboys , the horses , the blind , the wild men , the children -- all of them traffic in the blankness of the sky . And this blankness yields , in the end , to an ordinary afternoon in New Jersey . The family photograph , in which all the features are familiar , is stranger for Ferry , more ultimately foreign , than anything he found in Eakins . The concluding line provides the title for Ferry 's " new and selected poems " : " of no country I know . " It sums up , in its awkwardly confident uncertainty , all the quests and questionings , sentimental and naive , of his distinguished body of work . <p> By Christopher Benfey <p> 
##4000675 Darwin 's Worms , by Adam Phillips , Basic Books . <p> Darwin and Freud live in many of our reflective reveries , shape our assumptions , bear down on what we think of our origins or how we think of our wishes and worries . In schools across America the teaching of evolution has become a subject of fierce controversy ; every weekday afternoon Oprah and her television guests recite their psychopathology , even as the newspapers , through advice-giving columnists , have made our dreams , our moments of yearning , a fit subject for daily discussion . For Adam Phillips the result has been a decisive cultural shift that informs the way we think about the world and our prospects in it . " We can see Darwin and Freud , " he tells us , " as among the people involved in taking God out of the picture , leaving us with nothing between us and nature . " Such an observation is meant to remind us that past existentialist outcries of anxiety , fear , and sorrow were prompted not only by personal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that have become for so many of us a believable reality , buttressed by scientific observation : a biologist 's scrutiny of Brazilian jungles , and indeed , the attention he gave to his own native soil , to its worms which make all the difference , he learned , in how the grass grows ; and a physician 's surmises about the reasons his ailing , recumbent patients think and feel and dream as they do -- a one-time clinical office become a mirror to the minds of millions . <p> Phillips links Darwin to Freud as if they were brothers under a modern skin of skepticism with respect to the received religious and philosophical pieties of the nineteenth century and before . He calls them " naturalists -- great natural history writers , " but they were also powerfully engaging , suggestive essayists who favored a dramatic presentation of our long ago human struggle to survive and prevail ( Darwin ) , and of our everyday effort to keep our wits about us , to keep our mood and manner reasonably solid and equable , no matter what distractions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and deeds ) put in our way ( Freud ) . Both these observers of the human scene became not only analytical commentators , determined to pursue their speculative forays , but insistently persuasive rhetoricians whose say became a kind of secular gospel . Phillips frankly calls their work " scandalous , " by which he means their books " disfigured people 's cherished ideals , and so compelled people to revise their hopes for themselves . " He stresses the writer 's charm , the conceptualist 's infectious imagination evident in both Darwin and in Freud : they " made it very difficult for us not to use a certain kind of vocabulary when we refer to ourselves ; words like sexuality , competition , childhood , the past , became compulsory in our self-descriptions . " <p> The two were idiosyncratic seers , willing to go it alone , not lodged in the universities or in politics , where many get to address faithful followers . Their written ideas appealed to readers prepared to break with the past -- the religiously sanctioned versions of the distant past , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it . Darwin gave us a new past , one plagued by grasping yet vulnerable animals , among which he numbered emerging humankind . For him our life today is a climax of sorts -- all those accidents and incidents that became , over millennia , the fateful emergence of a particular species : we the heirs of random chance and favoring circumstance ( hardly the decisive biblical story of lordly creation , willfully executed for reasons no one can ever know , since God 's ways are not ours to know , never mind investigate ) . Freud gave us a no less mysterious earlier time , obscured by clouds of forgetfulness , ever hovering over us , blurring our memories . He attended closely our ways of talking , our stray musings , our surprising dreams , vivid and pointed enough to stay alive in a morning 's awareness . It was Freud 's distinct genius to figure out the expressive purpose of those daydreams and nightmares , to use them as narrative clues , to see their recurrence , their symbolic insistence , as a telling revelation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wounds shunted aside but granted continuing power -- a secret hold on our brain 's workings , so the world 's first psychoanalyst realized as he tried to comprehend fixations of attraction and fear : a mental life that simply wo n't let go of us , no matter the press of custom and law and , not least , biblical commandment . <p> " My father worried about his patients a lot , " Anna Freud once remarked , and then revealed a surprising candor less easy to acknowledge , because it broke ground with the cherished posture of the selflessly hard-working doctor : <p> He worried about what would happen to him , his reputation . I was one thing to treat greatly troubled patients ; it was another thing to explain their complaints and symptoms -- their ways of thinking and acting -- to everyone else , the so called " normal " people in Vienna and elsewhere . Some of his patients were written off , as it is put in English , but it did n't take long for him to be dismissed , ostracized ! @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ books , but I 'm not sure even his enthusiastic admirers back then or now , have realized how determined , how stubborn , he had to be -- maybe words like " brave " or " courageous " do apply here , because he became who he 's now known to be because he dared stand up for his ideas , and I 'd add , stand up to certain people . <p> There she stopped , even as she was promptly asked to be specific , to spell out the nature of the reproving opposition her father took on . A smile , as if she wanted her listener to know that her answer was unnecessary -- it had become part of history 's lesson . Finally , a brief , understated comment , wryly made : " In the universities , in the churches , what The Interpretation of Dreams , The Psychopathology of Everyday Life , had to say all fell on deaf ears . " <p> We know Adam Phillips as one of Freud 's eventual followers -- he is a distinguished psychoanalyst and essayist -- @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Darwin , literally in time , but also as an excited , believing reader . Now Phillips brings together these two intellectual giants , writes of them cogently and suggestively , summons his ready , clear-headed capacity for sharp comparison of ideas , for penetrating psychological interpretation , conveys to us more than we may have known about them , and , in so doing , echoes what Anna Freud was indirectly putting on the record : the challenge that psychoanalysis once presented to religious and secular authority , even as Darwin , to this day , stirs fear and resentment in certain American communities . Here were two thinkers who had to be battlers -- or else they 'd have hedged their writing , cut and trimmed it to suit the principalities and powers of their time . We meet sides of them , through Phillips , that others have been less inclined to emphasize : Darwin 's effort , late in life , to understand the manner in which worms spend their lives ensuring the productivity of his beloved England 's topsoil ; Freud 's worry , early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ naught at the hands of future biographers -- his worry , really , that he would never be given his due . <p> Darwin and Freud are , of course , credited with much today . They were ambitious intellectual leaders , anxious to survive the constraints of mere mortality ; they were dying to live and live -- to survive over the centuries through the faith others would put in their proposed hypotheses . Phillips comes at them as a knowing , appreciative ironist who wants to give us some pause , some new thought , a surprise or two that jolts us from the easy passivity of latter-day exaltation , which is a kind of burial call for past historical personages . He brings to life these two thinkers , brings them close to the modern-day reader -- enables us to comprehend the manner of their emergent eminence . The book 's very title awakens us , and soon enough we are amused , stirred by the Darwin who would turn from his adventurous storehouse of observed factuality and speculative historical reconstruction , enabled by those Brazilian forests and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his book 's title has it ( The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms , with Observations on Their Habits ) , a daily miracle takes place : the lowly worm ploughs the land , accomplishes so very much , while big-shot human beings , so much " higher " on their own scales of capability and performance , take no notice -- and thereby miss something of great importance to their own welfare . Phillips becomes properly , instructively elegiac as he salutes those worms which commanded Darwin 's late-in-life attention : " They were inadvertently generous ; not designed for altruism . Not intentionally collaborative ; but the way they straggled for survival had spin-offs for other parts of nature . " <p> In Darwin 's hands the worm becomes a benefactor : an instance that affirms the prophetically leveling claim of the preaching Jesus , who paid the price for such sweeping radicalism -- that " the last shall be first , and the first last . " We think of Darwin as a challenger of biblical platitudes , and so this book has him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studied at Cambridge University , and surely the biologist who never missed a trick as he contemplated nature had good cause to enjoy its casual modesty , its sly turns of fate , as it asserted various possibilities , not the least of which Darwin , spellbound , had come to witness with awe -- a smart man nodding appreciatively at the dumb worm . The point , by implication , was that we mighty ones now and then might stop exalting ourselves by looking upward to heaven , as the place where miracles are granted us , and , instead , cast a glance downward and nearby , where inadvertent magic happens daily -- here heralded ( through the form of the worm as a mighty doer ) by an author who wants to bring us closer to the " reality " his profession 's founder kept espousing as important for us to heed . <p> No question , in that regard , Freud was ever the practical striver , anxious to doff his hat to Realpolitik . For others he claimed the necessity of an obliging deference to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforced them , and thereby molded our aims and misgivings , our loyalties and our aversions -- the " they " children keep mentioning , the burgher mothers , fathers who raise their voices , use their hands , make clear what has to be , and therefore what is . Still , even the practicality of perceived power , much embraced by readers and professional colleagues , as well as the young , can only go so far . In no time , an open-minded visitor can arrive , turn critically away from established viewpoints , report unfavorable news to others , who , however , even as declared admirers , can turn so very adverse . In a sense Freud knew in his bones that the more he became revered , the more tempting it would be for others to belittle him , mock him -- become challengers to his orthodoxy , even as he had taken on the powers-that-be of conventional psychiatry . <p> The Freud in Darwin 's Worms is the young conquistador ( so he once called himself ) already worried about his future biographers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ misinterpretations or their willful errors of judgment . The brilliant neuropsychiatrist who claimed to have learned the secrets of others , and who narrated them tellingly in his articles and books , might himself be inaccurately understood and described -- so he worried , as Phillips reminds us , to the point that the very art and act of biography became regarded as suspect by the one who had become so accomplished at figuring out the lives of others , and who , at the end of his life , wrote of Moses , no less , and of his monotheism . Like Darwin , Freud could look at religion with decided disfavor ( as in The Future of an Illusion ) , yet feel impelled to give it an almost awed attention , his Judaism a voice within him that very much wanted expression . So it went for these two shrewd and earthy iconoclasts , their scientific breakthroughs no bar , ultimately , to their spiritual memories , a legacy each would have to address by implication , notwithstanding the clear-headed rationality , the preoccupation with palpable reality , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ <p> By Robert Coles <p> 