The Literary Fly Fisher

Fishing, of course, can be described in terms of Buber’s worldview. Those who focus on the catch as the ultimate goal and who see the fish or the river as something to be mastered would be described in I-It terms; however, the mainstream of American fly fishing writers subscribe to a completely different perception: I-Thou. Fly fishing, for these practitioners, is a method for creating connections of various sorts.

Mark Browning, in Haunted by Water: Fly Fishing in North American Literature (1998). Browning refers to philosopher Martin Buber’s (pictured) brilliant Ich und Du (1923) or, in translation,  I and Thou (1937).

This entry was posted on December 5, 2013 at 1:39 PM and is filed under Fishing and Religion, Fly Fishing Literature, The Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.