Wendeln 1 The Inhumanism of Robinson Jeffers by Zachary Wendeln First addressed in the 1948 preface of The Double Axe and Other Poems, the concept of inhumanism served as a pervasive, driving element throughout the poetry of nature writer Robinson Jeffers. Primarily a philosophical code, Jeffers’ inhumanism evolved over time to address metaphysical, spiritual, and scientific concerns, answering the question, “Can man honestly justify the pervasive sense of humanism that dominates societal norms, that declares the superiority of man to flora and fauna, even to God?” Robinson Jeffers expressed his theory of inhumanism in his letters and selected poetry—primarily “Tamar,” “Cawdor,” and “The Inhumanist”—as a natural philosophy, theology, and scientific conjecture. Furthermore, this inhumanism is grounded in philosophical concepts, his intimate experience with the rugged California coastline, his negative experience with the World Wars, his rejection of his family’s devout Calvinism and his views of others religions, and his scientific studies.
An analysis of the poetry and philosophy of California poet Robinson Jeffers that primarily focuses on the writer's personal doctrine of "inhumanism," a belief that man should remove himself from his self and develop reverence of and emulate the simplicity and selflessness of the natural world.
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Wendeln 1
The Inhumanism of Robinson Jeffers
by Zachary Wendeln
First addressed in the 1948 preface of The Double Axe and Other Poems, the concept of
inhumanism served as a pervasive, driving element throughout the poetry of nature writer
Robinson Jeffers. Primarily a philosophical code, Jeffers’ inhumanism evolved over time to
address metaphysical, spiritual, and scientific concerns, answering the question, “Can man
honestly justify the pervasive sense of humanism that dominates societal norms, that declares the
superiority of man to flora and fauna, even to God?” Robinson Jeffers expressed his theory of
inhumanism in his letters and selected poetry—primarily “Tamar,” “Cawdor,” and “The
Inhumanist”—as a natural philosophy, theology, and scientific conjecture. Furthermore, this
inhumanism is grounded in philosophical concepts, his intimate experience with the rugged
California coastline, his negative experience with the World Wars, his rejection of his family’s
devout Calvinism and his views of others religions, and his scientific studies.
Jeffers foremost expressed his inhumanism as a natural philosophy. Joy Palmer notes a
direct correlation between Jeffers’ studies of “Lucretius, Herodotus, Nietzsche and
Schopenhauer, his four main philosophical pillars,” and the development of his inhumanism
(Palmer 183). Jeffers was particularly inspired by Lucretius’ opus De Rerum Natura. Like
Lucretius, “he studied himself and drew a distinct line expounding his image of God, the
universe, and the human species” (Milosz 232). One might consider Jeffers’ compilation of
works and his inhumanism as a reimagining of this classic essay, addressing the world from a
scientific and a metaphysical standpoint that encourages an environmentalist-minded respect of
nature while proclaiming the oneness of all things, human, nonhuman, and divine.
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Jeffers defined inhumanism as “a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to
notman; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence”
(Palmer 181). Through this philosophy, Jeffers urges man to remove himself from the ego (or
self) and enter into a communal relationship with nature. He views the solipsistic human
consciousness as a dangerous, selfish mechanism that impedes our understanding of something
outside and greater than ourselves. The “transhuman magnificence” speaks to the transience of
humanity, which Jeffers almost demands humans accept as inevitable and beautiful. The clearest
outline of inhumanism can be found in a letter Jeffers wrote in 1942:
First: Man also is a part of nature, not a miraculous intrusion. And he is a
very small part of a very big universe, that was here before he appeared, and will
be here long after he has totally ceased to exist.
Second: Man would be better, more sane and more happy, if he devoted
less attention and less passion (love, hate, etc.) to his own species, and more to
non-human nature. Extreme introversion in any single person is a kind of
insanity; so it is in a race; and race has always and increasingly spent too much
thought on itself and too little on the world outside. (Jeffers, Letters 291)
The first point argues insignificance of man versus the importance of nature, the main tenet of
inhumanism. While Jeffers considers humans as part of the natural, universal world, he
emphasizes how the world dwarfs their importance. The reason for nature’s superiority is
simple: the natural world will endure all time, while eternity will blow the remains of man away
like sand and fog. The second point offers mankind a remedy. We can escape our inherent self-
importance and self-absorption—and ultimately our decline—by focusing our attentions on the
world without. By doing so, humans not only achieve enlightenment or fulfillment but also “fall
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in love outwards,” becoming attached to the natural world and concentrating their efforts on
preserving it instead of their own ilk (Jeffers, Letters 196).
Since inhumanism concerns itself with the distinctions between and unity of nature and
man, it is important to understand how two key encounters with each world shaped Jeffers’
philosophy. Building Tor House, his home in Carmel, California, was the first formational
experience. He documented the process in a letter to Dr. Lyman Stockey: “I spend a couple
hours nearly every afternoon at stone, masonry…or bringing up stone from the beach, violent
exercise; and physically I’m harder” (Jeffers, Letters 23). This physical maturation translated
into a mental and emotional metamorphosis, “a kind of awakening such as adolescents and
religious converts are said to experience,” according to his wife, Una (Jeffers, Letters 213). Like
sexual and spiritual awakenings, Jeffers’ communion with stone stirred within him an awe and
reverence for the natural world. Living with and handling stone gave him greater admiration for
it; growing with the material of his home allowed him to observe and appreciate its strength and
permanence.
For Jeffers, “rocks [served both] as teachers, revealing much…about the meaning and the
mystery of the world,” and as a gateway to the miraculous truths of nature (Karman 8). His work
on Tor House opened his eyes to the intransience of the nonhuman universe and diminished the
passing existence of humanity. In “To the House,” he refers to stone as “bones of the old
mother,” the “mother” in this context being Mother Earth (Karman 14). Stone is the foundation
upon which the rest of the natural world rests, its life-force. From here, Jeffers developed his
love of all things outside humanity. In his “De Rerum Virtute,” or “On the Virtue of Things,” a
clever homage to Lucretius’ famous work, Jeffers writes:
One light is left us: the beauty of things, not men;
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The immense beauty of the world, not the human world.
Look—and without imagination, desire nor dream—directly
At the mountains and the sea. Are they not beautiful?
…is the earth not beautiful? (Jeffers, “De Rerum Virtute” 21)
This excerpt speaks to Jeffers’ core poetic theme, that nature, not humanity, contains immense
beauty, and that it is through communion with this beauty that humans will find their salvation.
Like Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Nature, the earth herself, is the only panacea” (Hoagland 19).
Jeffers’ inhumanism embodies this notion that only the earth offers a remedy for all the ills of
mankind. Hence, the poet calls humans to discard their mortal flaws and adopt the majestic
fortitude, the glorious freedom, and the divine beauty of the natural world. Jeffers goes further
to say that “the beauty of things is the face of God…labor to be like it” (Palmer 184). The
morning sun shining on the flanks of the mountains, the dazzling azure sky mirrored in the seas
below, all the intrinsic pulchritude of the earth—all nature reflects the face of God. In urging
humans to be one with nature, Jeffers encourages union with some divine power greater than
humanity that could allow for a certain level of redemption.
Jeffers’ struggle to reconcile his conscious with the World Wars was a second major
influence on his philosophy. Between the Wars, Jeffers developed a sense that “Western
civilization was poised for an inevitable slide into decadence and barbarism” (Hunt 4). While he
initially viewed humanity only as a scar on the flesh of the universe, Jeffers, during the Wars,
began seeing his kind as a cancer, criminal and ignorant for giving into propaganda and violence.
Thus, his writing became “consumed by a pessimistic, fatalistic sense of human self-destruction”
(O’Leary 353). Because war is unnatural yet very human in character, it stands in the way of our
communion with nature, diminishing both the virtue of the human race and the physical beauty
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of the natural universe. Moreover, such conflict stems from human pride, the antithesis of
inhumanism.
In his writing, Jeffers warns against prideful human consciousness, while emphasizing
the importance of human values as key to our salvation. To Jeffers, the human consciousness is
a double-edged sword. On the one hand, “it enables transcendent awareness,” but if one “simply
contemplates nature’s flux rather than identifying with it and recognizing one’s final and
inevitable participation in it,” he or she cannot truly be one with nature (Hunt 7). While the
human consciousness potentially allows one to transcend his or her narrow, human focus to see
the wholeness of the universe, it more often alienates humanity from such insight. Thus Jeffers
presents this consciousness as self-centeredness that “encourages people to believe they are the
raison d’etre of the universe” (Karman 15). This egocentricity is the cause of the decline of
humanity. The mind entraps man in concern for self, for temporal and human things, and blinds
him to the truth and divinity manifested in the natural world. In this way, man “is like a new
born babe, conscious almost exclusively of its own processes…As the child grows up its
attention must be drawn from itself to the more important world outside it” (Jeffers, Letters 159).
Jeffers hopes that as humanity matures it will begin to break out of itself, recognizing its
insignificance in the grand scheme of things. While “we can’t turn back the civilization, not at
least until it collapses,” humans can move forward and better themselves individually (Jeffers,
Letters 159). The only way to attain salvation for the race is to achieve it as individuals. By
purging ourselves of the collective human consciousness and emerging as individuals, we can
also enter into a synthetic relationship with nature.
This synthesis is realized through the persistence and evolution of human values,
specifically freedom and integrity. While it may seem paradoxical that our escape from
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humanity should come from human values, Jeffers makes a point to distinguish these virtues
from our vices. To Jeffers, humanity refers to human vice, our introversion and gluttony, and he
believes we must rid ourselves of this in order to commune with nature and bring harmony,
enlightenment, and peace to the universe. Unlike humanity, human values are long-lasting. As
Jeffers wrote about values, “The states of the next age will no doubt remember you, and edge
their love of freedom with contempt of luxury” (Carpenter, Values 359). Values, like the natural
world, are permanent, and therefore deserve our reverence. The greatest values are freedom,
“the cornerstone of [Jeffers’] house of human values,” and its evolution, integrity, the
transcendental value of the unity of man and nature (Carpenter, Values 355). Jeffers saw
freedom as the liberation of oneself from the human self and the embracing of the natural world.
Through the acceptance of inhumanism, man might find freedom, which in turn leads to
integrity, “the wholeness of living things, the divine beauty of the universe” (Carpenter, Values
362). Once mankind integrates with the rest of the world, it can become part of that divinity,
completing the universal puzzle.
Robinson Jeffers’ inhumanism also carries strong spiritual overtones. Jeffers’ father, Dr.
William Hamilton Jeffers, was a Calvinist minister and heavily educated his son in theology.
However, the son felt at an early age a certain tension and animosity between his father’s faith
and himself. Robinson’s wife, Una, cites the emphasis on what Jeffers realized to be “the
unimportance of loving humanity in toto” as the root of this ill-fated relationship with religion
(Jeffers, Letters 265). Jeffers could not accept a faith that idolized humanity as God’s direct
offspring and dominant over the earth. Moreover, the concept of a Savior sent to redeem
mankind baffled Jeffers, who believed man must save himself. Because of this disagreement,
“he turned to a faith diametrically opposite, to a conviction of the utter insignificance of man…
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and of the folly and futility of a devotion to man’s preservation and salvation” (Johnson 159).
He saw in Calvinism, and in most other religions, the subtle manifestation of that same self-
consciousness and self-adoration against which he wrote and lived. Hinduism serves as another
antithesis of his message. In a letter to Lawrence Clark Powell, Jeffers wrote, “the Indian feeling
that the world is illusory and the soul—the I—makes it, is very foreign to me. The world seems
to me immeasurably more real” (Jeffers, Letters 184). Inhumanism developed, in a sense, as a
philosophical alternative to such humanistic ways of thought, proposing that the soul is a
transitory illusion, while the outer world is real and divine.
What faith, then, did Jeffers subscribe to, if any? A letter to Sister Mary James Power, a
Carmelite nun, suggests the poet most closely aligned himself with Deism:
I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the
same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each
other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (Jeffers, Letters 221)
Jeffers, like Deists, believed in a God who flows through every living being, natural and human
alike. This divine connection binds humanity and nature, but is weak enough for solipsism to
knot and constrict it. Salvation, according to Jeffers, can only be found “in turning one’s
affections outward toward this one God, rather than inward on one’s self, or on humanity”
(Jeffers, Letters 221). Only men attuned to nature deserve God’s forgiveness and love. God
does not give preference based on supplication and sacrifice, but based on respect for Him as He
appears in nature. Furthermore, it is necessary for man to commune and empathize with the
universe outside his own race in order to end the world’s—and God’s own—suffering. Jeffers
reasoned that “if God is all, he must be suffering, since an unreckoned part of the universe is
always suffering” (Jeffers, Letters 240). Because humans and nature are one being, any harm
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inflicted on oneself is felt throughout the cosmos; therefore, we damage both God and ourselves
by harming or diminishing the environment. Jeffers poses a moral argument, then, that we
should adhere to his doctrine of inhumanism if not for ourselves then for a greater purpose.
The final tenet of spiritual inhumanism is the rejection of a Savior figure. Since Jeffers
believed that the “only hope for the world…is in the destruction of mankind as it now exists,” a
Christ-like messiah refutes his doctrine (Johnson 161). The word “savior” implies an individual
whose sole purpose is to save humanity. If the only hope for the world is humanity’s ruin, then a
Savior would, by saving mankind, destroy the natural world. Therefore, “it follows that the role
of the savior, love of mankind, the rescue and salvation of men, is dangerous, immoral, and to be
resisted” (Johnson 161). Jeffers chose instead to lay the burden of salvation on the shoulders of
man himself. It is our responsibility to recognize and discard our introversion, not the
responsibility of an intervening demigod. Worse yet is the Savior’s embodiment of ego and self-
importance. Jeffers addresses this concept in his poem, “Dear Judas,” in which he explores the
possessive love of the Savior, which quickly descends into “self-love and love of power and is
made dependent on discipleship, and discipleship is used to further inflate the ego” (Johnson
165). A Savior who depends on followers for affirmation and power, instead of deriving these
from the natural environment, fundamentally opposes Jeffers’ philosophy and prevents faithful
individuals from following the doctrine of inhumanism.
Jeffers’ inhumanist poetry is also heavily entrenched in scientific understanding of the
world, particularly from analytical, psychological, astronomical, and geological standpoints. An
early education in the sciences provided Jeffers with a deep understanding of a range of medical
and environmental knowledge. In 1906, Jeffers attended the University of Southern California
Medical School; in 1910, he enrolled in a forestry course at the University of Washington in
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Seattle. While he ultimately pursued a career as a writer, “the implications of the science with
which he was acquainted as a medical student” and his education as an environmentalist “had
become the dominant elements in his philosophy of life, and he had learned to fuse belief,
knowledge, and experience in creating his poetry” (Waggoner 276). Jeffers’ poetry presents
itself as a complex blend of scientific data and analysis and a deeper, more personal relationship
with truth, spirituality, and humanity. His inhumanism and writing absorbed medical and
environmental concerns and address morality and man from an analytical standpoint. Thus, his
poetry came to “contain many words of scientific flavor,” such as “atom, planet, galaxy,
universes…cancerous, tissue, cell, ulcer, artery, vertebra, test-tube, bacteria, and electrons”
(Waggoner 276-277). Instead of speaking of concepts like humanity, love, or sin in vague terms,
Jeffers drew concrete analogies between solipsism and cancer, between the break from humanity
and an atom splitting, between the relatively microcosmic Earth in comparison to the greater,
metaphysical universe.
This concreteness both lends a certain validity and scholarly weight to Jeffers’
inhumanism and makes his writing—and in conjunction, his philosophy—more approachable.
The incorporation of science into his writing also “turned Jeffers from romantic preoccupation
with the state of his own emotions to scientific preoccupation with people and things as they
really are” (Waggoner 287). By focusing on the issue of inhumanism with a scientific eye,
Jeffers pulled himself out of an introverted mindset, allowing his writing to better address
concerns in a general, universal manner. This embodiment of inhumanism also modeled Jeffers
into the perfect archetype of inhumanism: a man who, having recognized the error of his
internalized lifestyle, strives to better himself and others, both human and inhuman, through
communication and communion. Jeffers realized that “we cannot take any philosophy seriously
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if it ignores or garbles the knowledge and view-points that determine the intellectual life of our
time,” and so he took great care to incorporate facts with feelings in his writing (Palmer 185).
Jeffers’ poetry deals mostly with the sciences of analysis, psychology, astronomy, and
geology. As Waggoner points out, the style and voice of Jeffers’ writing changed during the
early 1930s, becoming more analytical of certain concepts, such as love, rather than merely
critical. While the “young” poet was content with generalizations and sweeping remarks about
the insignificance of man, “in the later volumes he gives us, usually, reasons for that
insignificance—reasons that derive to a great extent from science” (Waggoner 278). Around
1932, Jeffers began concerning himself more with specific, evidential poetry, writing that
explained his dismay at society rather than simply stating it. Much of his writing is also heavily
imbued with psychological analysis and tropes. Inspired primarily by Sigmund Freud and Carl
Jung, Jeffers penned characters who seem more like “psychological theories” than people
(Waggoner 278). He mainly focused on characters ruled solely by emotions, as opposed to ones
governed by emotions, will, and reason. Thus, Jeffers’ characters, stripped of reason and
freedom, “are impelled by passions, and restrained by the blind forces of the external world”
(Waggoner 283). These individuals become models of Jeffers’ “humanist,” one who allows his
or her irrational, selfish whims to push and pull him or her against a backdrop of an almighty,
divine landscape, a nature that punishes man for his folly. Studies of astronomy and geology
also contributed greatly to Jeffers’ writing. He uses astronomical images “to give point to the
brooding on human insignificance or the beauty of the inanimate” and describes landscapes in
great detail, right down to the shades and shapes of grains of sand (Waggoner 280). Through
such imagery, Jeffers contextualizes his message of inhumanism, presenting his thoughts on
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humanity within a context that emphasizes its irrelevance while glorifying the wonders of the
natural world.
Three specific poems stand out as Robinson Jeffers’ prime inhumanist works: “Tamar,”
“Cawdor,” and “The Inhumanist.” Each piece expresses various key tenets of inhumanism
through artfully crafted dialogue, characterization, and symbolism. The first, “Tamar,” tells the
tragic tale of the titular character, whose passionate affair with her brother, Lee, both literally and
figuratively consumes their household, serving as a warning against human solipsism. In the
opening scene of this epyllion, Jeffers conveys the indifference of the cosmos to human affairs,
stating, “The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little accident” (Jeffers,
“Tamar” 26). Jeffers establishes the events of the narrative as insular and isolated from the
natural world, purely human in nature and therefore self-absorbed and of little importance to
anything not-man. This notion of human solipsism, to which inhumanism is both the antithesis
and the remedy, takes form in Tamar and Lee’s affair, in the passion and vanity of two fallible
humans. As Tamar exclaims while bathing with her brother, “What are we for…to want
and/want and not dare know it” (Jeffers, “Tamar” 32). Desire and sin enslave humanity, forcing
our thoughts and actions to turn inward on trivial wants while neglecting the greater importance
of the external world. What is worse, we cannot realize our folly, condemned to live our days
with eyes turned inward, blind to the natural, divine world.
Moreover, “Tamar” suggests that humans are doomed to repeat their transgressions for
generations, as Tamar’s father, David Cauldwell, carried on a similar relationship with his now-
deceased sister, Helen, “a ghost of law-contemptuous youth” (Jeffers, “Tamar” 37). Just as the
Cauldwell family is literally haunted by its past—the spirit of Helen possesses Tamar’s Aunt
Stella’s body throughout the poem—so, too, is humanity eternally plagued by an incest of a
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different sort, a toxic relationship of the self with the self. Thus, “life is always an old story,
repeating itself always like…the lips of an idiot,” and solipsism is a trap “laid to catch you when
the world began” (Jeffers, “Tamar” 60, 38). Furthermore, our inherent incest feeds on itself like
a fire, expanding to encompass and consume all around us:
…as a fire by water
Under the fog-bank of the night lines all the sea and sky with fire, so her
self-hatred
Reflecting itself abroad turned back against her, all the world growing hateful.
(Jeffers, “Tamar” 49).
The negative energy exuded by our self-consciousness shrouds the world, making it more human
and less natural. By the end of the poem, Tamar becomes the fire, enflaming her loved ones with
similar crazed, obsessive passion, just as our “incest” infects others. Her house represents Earth,
completely humanized and sheltered from the surrounding woods and river, and she pleas with
God to raze it with lighting and flame. When her prayers go unanswered, Tamar takes it upon
herself to scorch the inhabitants of the house with “something/Worse than arson” (Jeffers,
“Tamar” 93). She literally drives her father and brother insane and causes her mentally-disabled
aunt Jinny to actually embrace and feed the flame of a candle, setting the house and its residents
ablaze. Unless mankind changes its ways, the only end in sight is “Eternal death, eternal wrath,