The fear is related to the forest, not the plants. This feeling is very old, it goes back to Roman civilization. For the Romans, the forest was the place of the “stranger”: It was in the forest that the barbarians hid. Moreover, the French word “forêt” [forest] comes from the Latin foris, which means “outside”. In English, the word “foreign” refers to what you don’t know, that which is far away. It may be due to the ecological legacy of antiquity that the tree continues to be considered a material for trade, which is not very commendable. We have remained within this fear of the forest and the desire to sell wood.
Francis Halle, A Life drawing trees, Interview with Emmanuele Coccia # 6
Why do you fear the forest?
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- But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, wh …
Cross Idea
The source of a river and the fear of the forest, what do they have in common? At first glance, both the river and the forest appear as quintessential elements of nature. However, these texts reveal that neither is as purely natural as they seem.
The river, instead of emerging from a pristine spring, begins in a drainage channel. The forest, feared due to historical conflicts between Romans and so-called barbarians, represents the clash of different cultures. In both texts, the boundary between nature and culture becomes blurred, dissolving the line between inside and outside.
The river’s origin cannot be confined within the borders of a single state; it transcends national boundaries, its source eluding precise location as it flows from country to country. Similarly, the forest—dreaded as the realm beyond civilization—paradoxically becomes the place where civilization itself is born.
of our Imagination
