Preface

Abstract

An open question: Is the renewed interest in nature nowadays a true element of today’s Zeitgeist, or is it merely a typical phenomenon, a by-product, as it were, of renewed interest and awareness on the part of the editors of Delos, who suddenly are seeing signs of such interest everywhere, after having selected the theme of “Literature and Nature” for this spring 2019 issue about twelve months ago?

Certainly, there are some signs of an extraordinary resurgence of interest in nature, for example, the best-selling author, a forester by profession, Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees (2015), and his companion work The Inner Life of Animals (2016; both works translated from German by Jane Billinghurst, 2016 and 2017). For writers and their translators as well as for artists, the human connections to the world of plants and animals are of particular interest. Research and startling discoveries in the context of the era of environmentalism and sustainability go back a few decades, such as Jane Goodall’s work with primates and the Dutch primatologist Frans De Waal’s famous book, Chimpanzee Politics (1982).