Describing the indescribable, or the (un)translatability of the language of nature in British, Polish and German nature writing

Abstract

It goes without saying that words can distort or illuminate the way we perceive and emotionally experience the surrounding world and nature. Following this observation, the main objective of this paper is to pinpoint the possible linguistic expressions of nature. The underlying question can be formulated as follows: How can we adequately, accurately but nevertheless emotionally describe the subjective experience of nature and the relation human-nature? The analysis is based on three publications documenting growing interest of the literature in environmental issues: Robert Macfarlane’s “The Wild Places” [2017], Michał Książek’s “Droga 816” [2015] and Peter Wohlleben’s “Das Seelenleben der Tiere” [2016]. They represent the so-called nature writing: a well-established literary tradition in the Anglo-American literature, little-known in Polish and German literary landscapes.