Concepts of Harmony in Five Metaphysical Poets Disertační Práce
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Univerzita Karlova v Praze Filozofická fakulta Ústav anglistiky a amerikanistiky Mgr. Tomáš Jajtner Concepts of Harmony in Five Metaphysical Poets Disertační práce studijní program: anglická literatura vedoucí práce: Prof. PhDr. Martin Hilský, CSc. rok podání: 2006 IJIII/1111*2551145195* ll ll Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy v Praze Prohlašuji, že JSem disertační práci vykonal samostatně a s využitím uvedených pramenů a literatury. i ___-""<' .• ~ I (c l"~L .._ / /·'t '-'-''-<- I '1 l I / 2 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 7 PARTONE 13 I. The Conceit of Harmony: Harmony as the Principle of Cosmos 14 1.1. Heraclitus and Pythagoras: towards a concept of harmony 14 1.1.1. Introduction 14 1.1.2. The hidden harmony ojHeraclitus 14 1.1.3. The overwhelming harmony ofthe Pythagoreans 21 1.2. Socrates and Plato- the aspiration to song 32 1.3. Aristotle and the notion of mimesis (}líJ.111mc;) 35 1.4. Platonism and Neoplatonic frenzy- the commonplaces and the shifters 37 II. The Conceit of English Renaissance Poetics -how harmonies blend together 43 11.1. lntroduction 43 11.2. The problem of conceit 43 11.2.1. Types ojconceit 48 11.3. The problem of metaphor in Pythagorean scheme 52 11.4. Pre-modem self and the act of poetry 55 III. Towards the concept of metaphysical poetry 58 111.1. lntroduction 58 111.2. The rhetorical problem 58 111.3. The problem ofwit in early modem English theory 62 111.4. Metaphysical wit 69 IV. Breaking the Circle of Perfection 76 PARTTWO 84 I. John Donne- provocation of the metaphysical style 85 1.1. lntroduction 85 1.2. The problem of unity 85 1.3. Dynamism of love as the dynamism oflanguage 91 1.4. Harmony as an act of inscription 97 1.5. Harmonizing faith- Donne's Divine poems 107 II. Towards the Harmony of Religious Experience - The Adventure of George Herbert 114 3 11.1. From Geocentricism to Theocentricism 114 11.2. "The doctrine tun 'd by Christ"- Herbert' s musicality 116 11.3. Sweet phrases, lovely metaphors- the ingenuity ofHerberťs conceits 126 III. Henry Vaughan or the problem oftransubstantiation 135 111.1. Introduction 135 111.2. The problem of conversion 135 111.3. Vaughan' s "re-formation" 140 111.4. Vaughan's hermetic world- innocence ofthe first intuition 146 111.5. Harmony as an experience offaith 150 IV. Andrew Marvell- the garden ofwords 154 IV .1. Introduction 154 IV .2. Inverted cosmology- heaven 's the centre oJ the soul 154 IV.3. Green thought in a green shade- Marvell's retreats 159 VI.4. Oftears and music- harmony within infinity ofworlds 164 V. Richard Crashaw- the triumph of the Baroque 172 V .I. Introduction 172 V.2. The joy of weeping- harmony turned upside down 173 V.3. Un-selfing ofthe Self- the logic of ecstasy 179 V.4. The problem ofPresence- Crashaw's Christology 185 V.5. Images and music- the measure of abundance 190 Conclusion 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY 204 Appendices 211 České resumé 213 4 Acknowledgements Writing a dissertation is a long and complicated process, and its final completion calls to mind all the people that have helped me along the way. My sincere thanks goes to Prof. Martin Hilský, who carefully read parts of the manuscript and offered valuable advice and constant encouragement. I would li ke to thank him also for years of truly collegial debates on many different topics of Renaissance studies, which have always left me with a sense of new curiosity. My thanks goes also to Prof. Raymond S. Grant, whose lectures on Renaissance poetry offered the first impetus for my future work. More than anything else I admired his passion for inquiry: for making old texts a living tissue of questions pointing to the heart of our common western heritage. A great thanks is due to Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, where I could spend a year of peaceful and fruitful research. Seminars of Prof. P. Budra and J. D. Fleming helped to shape my research in an indirect, but important way by making my academic work more disciplined and more scholarly. My dissertation, indeed, would not have been completed without the help of various libraries and librarians. I researched all the main libraries in Prague (Národní knihovna, Městská knihovna and Knihovna Ústavu anglistiky a amerikanistiky FF UK), and the two big libraries in Vancouver, W C. Bennet lihrary at SFU, and the Library of the University o.f British Columbia. I enjoyed the company of my fellow doctoral students at Prof. Procházka' s seminars on modem literary theory, which offered a milieu for mutual encouragement and inspiration. Prof. Martin Procházka himself was both a passionate lecturer, but also a caring and inquiring older colleague, always eager to help with whatever was needed. My thanks goes also to my numerous friends and colleagues, namely to Tomáš Chudý, Martin Mikolajek and David Mirhady. Cyril Stránský carefully checked my Latin and Greek quotations. Since the beginning of my university studies the greatest persona! (and financial) support has come from my family, to which I owe a special thanks too. 5 Most of all I thank my beloved wife Karin - for her support encouragement and love. Many questions within the work would not have been raised, had we not met. As an act of gratitude I dedicate her this work, whose completion is so eminently bound with her presence in my life. 6 Introduction My interest in metaphysical poetry has always been tainted with a sense of amazement and awe: the poetry of the School of Donne, indeed, poses fundamental questions about the nature of modem poetry and the mission of a poet within a disenchanted world. The slow abandonment of the old Pythagorean system of ham1onious spheres rotating around a stable earth and the acceptance of the heliocentric Copernican-Keplerean universe marked a true "breaking of the circle of perfection''- to use the term of Marjorie Nicholson - and entailed a complex breach in the nature of representational arts. The old cosmology depicted the universe as truly universa!, i.e. turning around a single axis, a single principle, or a clearly defined centre. The order of creation was granted by the gradual chain of being, uniting the lowest with the highest in a scale of perfection. The nature of representational arts was, primarily, to re-present the order of creation: i.e. finding a means of transfer between the static order of universe and human understanding. Classical Renaissance literary theory - in fact, inherited from Antiquity - emphasised that poetry as the art of making was to "teach and delight": its delightfulness had to be firmly bound with instruction and initiation into to the order of harmonious cosmos. Indeed, Sidney emphasised that poetry must not be dull and has to delight; however, there was no room for any kind of l 'art pour I 'art movement in Renaissance poetics. What mattered was halance, a sense of decorum, which secured a truly proportionate and, after all, classically ''objective" art. What Renaissance thinkers associated with nature was obviously helia natura. i.e. embelished nature, not a wild and unbound nature of the Romantics. Nevertheless, in the framework of this concept, art could always aspire to a sense of classical proportion: i.e. harmony granted by the concept it was meant to re-present. The Renaissance inherited this concept from Antiquity: it is the concept of harmonious order oť universe as attributed to the teachings of Pythagoras of Samos. Classical Renaissance poetic theory is tully a poetics of correspondence: the order of universe - granted by the 7 immaterial substance of number - could be re-presented everywhere. This cosmological speculation secured the unity of creation precisely by its infinite repeatability: the whole was to be seen in part and vice versa. The new discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, however, made this concept unverifiable. Although Kepler himself- as we shall see later on - could not fully abandon the inherited lore, his discoveries managed to make the Pythagorean concept a mere metaphor, an abstract carrier of meaning with no apparent reference. This. indeed, is the world in which the Metaphysicals find their new, surpnsmg conceits. Once the mere re-presentation becomes impossible, the means of poetic work changes: metaphor and its nature become the prime focus of orientation. Indeed, the very possibility of harmonizing reality brings along a number of surprising discoveries: the in decorum of the Metaphysicals is not meant to undermine the old system. After all. its relevance is granted in the nature of our harmonizing intuition, in the intuition of correspondence, in the "naturalness" of metaphor making. What the Metaphysicals attempt to do is re-shaping poetic work in such a way, that it becomes apparent to what extent it is an act of conscious transformation of reality. In other words, to what extent our perception of harmony, of correspondence and proportion. is to be created. The universe of the Metaphysicals - I want to argue - is thus perverted; it rotates around an ad lihitum centre. With the re-shaping of the notion of infinity - from the prophetic intuition of Cusanus to the classical concepts of Decartes - the notion of the centre of universe became less and less plausible. This turned the interest of the poets primarily to the questions of language, to the very process of generating a meaningful, harn1onized and animated universe of man. The metaphysical school is seen primarily as a breach from the old poetics of correspondence - as e.g. S.K. Heninger says quite clearly in his classic book. This premise can be accepted only as long as we bear in mind the Jater developments of the respective theme: all the main aspects of Pythagorean cosmological lore are, indeed, still eminently 8 present in metaphysical poetry.