Geoffrey Hill: the Quest for Mystical Communion and Community Author(S): Henry Hart Source: Religion & Literature, Vol

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Geoffrey Hill: The Quest for Mystical Communion and Community Author(s): Henry Hart Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Spring, 2007), pp. 1-26 Published by: University of Notre Dame Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060052 Accessed: 08-01-2016 06:31 UTC

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This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GEOFFREYHILL: THE QUEST FOR MYSTICAL COMMUNION AND COMMUNITY

Henry Hart

FewAmerican readers had heardof GeoffreyHill when Houghton Mif- flin publishedhis first three books as SomewhereIs Sucha Kingdomin 1975. Harold Bloom's introductionseemed designed to raise the eyelids of a snoozing audience. "Strongpoetry is always difficult,"he declared with a stentorianflourish, "and GeoffreyHill is the strongestBritish poet now alive, though his reputationin the English-speakingworld is somewhatless advancedthan that of severalof his contemporaries"(xiii). With regardto Hill's place in poetic tradition,Bloom contended: "The true precursoris alwaysBlake, and the War in Heaven that the strongpoet must conduct is fought by Hill against Blake,and against Blake'stradition, and so against Hill himself" (xiii).As an Oxford student in 1953, Hill, in fact, had written a reviewin TheIsis criticizing Blake's Jerusalem for being too diffuse(he preferredBlake's shorter lyrics). And Hill had registeredhis ambivalence towardBlake in earlypoems such as "Genesis,""God's Little Mountain," and "Holy Thursday"(a tide taken from Blake's"Songs"). - Hill's "war"against Blake- if that'swhat it was arose from both sty- listic and philosophicaldifferences. Although he admitted that criticizing Blake'sapocalyptic project was like trying "to quench the furnacesof af- flictionwith one cup of cold water"(22), he neverthelessemptied his cup on Blake'sfurnace. He was not entirelyantagonistic toward Blake, however. He sympathizedwith the sort of Utopianidealism Blake espoused at the

R&L 39.1 (Spring2007) 1

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions I Religion& Literature beginningof his long poem Milton:"I will not cease from Mental Fight, / Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand / Till we have builtJerusalem / In England'sgreen & pleasantLand" (48 1). Hill was also preparedto fight for his ideal England- with his pen rather than with his sword- but he was more skepticalthan Blake about the possibilityof establishingthat ideal. He also disagreedwith the verboseway Blake had articulatedhis Utopian ideals in his propheticbooks. At the beginningof SomewhereIs Such a Kingdom,Hill acknowledgedhis own Utopianidealism by way of an epigraphfrom Thomas Hobbes'sLeviathan: "Sometimesa man seekswhat he hath lost; and from that place, and time, whereinhe missesit, his mind, runs back, from place to place, and time to time, to find where, and when he had it" (10). Having grown up duringthe Nazi horrorsof WorldWar II, Hill's quest for a lost paradise- a "green & pleasantLand" - was spurredin part by his keen awarenessthat during "a time of Warre,"as Hobbes famously remarked,"the life of man [is] solitary,poore, nasty,brutish, and short"(65). Hill'sanxiety about crusades for "Jerusalem"- whether poetic or military- arose from an awareness that quests for Utopiasoften ended up causing the sort of bloodshed and tyrannyUtopias were designed to avoid. Throughout his career,Hill has writtenimpassioned poems juxtaposingUtopian ideals with the historyof fear,suffering, and violent death that made shredsof those ideals. Hill'sreaders have often puzzled over what sortof lost kingdomhe hoped to find and resurrectafter searching "from place to place, and time to time." In his characteristicallyoblique way, he offereda clue in the title SomewhereIs Sucha Kingdom,which alludesto a poem byJohn CroweRansom. Ransom's "SomewhereIs Such a Kingdom" playfullycatalogs a motley group of birds as if they were people, and expressesa wish to escape the chaos of contemporarysociety in order to "see if God has made / Otherwherean- other shade / Where the men or beastsor birds/ Exchangefew wordsand pleasantwords" (23). Ransom undercuts his questfor Platonicand Christian idealsby hintingthat this "Otherwhere"might be an insubstantial"shade" at the backof Plato'scave, an elusiveChristian concept like Eden, or simply a story in a good book. He askshimself: "And dare I think it is absurd/ If no such beast were, no such bird?" Playingon the etymologyof "absurd" (ab-surdusin Latin means "awayfrom the right sound"),Ransom indicates that it's perfectlyreasonable to seek kingdoms of civilized behavior and civilizeddiscourse ("the right sound")even though they may be located in imaginarycontexts. At Oxfordand afterwards,Hill obsessivelyeulogized and elegizedPlatonic andJudeo-Christian "kingdoms" that were as enchantingas they were il- lusory.In his review of Jerusalem,he waxed lyrical over Blake'simaginary

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"Otherwhere"where "the imagination,the true life-sourceof man" flour- ished in an unfallenstate. In a 1954 articletitled "Letterfrom Oxford,"he spoke up for the seemingly absurdquests of modern visionarypoets like himself when he said:"the poet. . .hunchedin his mackintoshon the top of a bus in the BanburyRoad, sits apartfrom the crowd. Or he followsin the wake of a vision of life that goes before him and which he cannot grasp,a cloud by day and a pillarof fire by night"(72). AlthoughHill rathergran- dioselycompared his Oxfordbus ride to Moses' trekwith the Israelitesout of Egypt towardthe promisedland (when "the LORD went before them by day in a pillarof a cloud. . .and by night in a pillar of fire" [Ex 13.2 1]), he also distinguishedhis quest from Moses' by emphasizingthe elusiveness of its goal. If Moses possessedthe requisitefaith and grace to reach the promisedland, Hill impliedthat he did not. Hill'sideal kingdomwas always beyond the next horizon, alwaysglimpsed but never grasped. Fora poet, like Hill, devotedto divinevisions that remainedfrustratingly "otherwhere,"the literatureof Christianmysticism offered a helpful and consolingguide. Most criticswho have writtenabout Hill have touched on his interestin Christianmysticism only briefly.Hill, it is generallyargued, is too entangled in questions about religiousbelief to actually believe in Christiandoctrines; he is too preoccupiedwith the violent historyof Chris- tianityto contemplatethe transcendentmystery of Creatorand Creation. In his book The UncommonTongue, Vincent Sherry pointed out that Hill's "modelof the poet" is not "WaltWhitman naming the animalsjoyfully in a recoveredEden, but a martyr,an ascetic meting out speech, as though on a rack,to redressthe wrongsof the human tongue"(22). Embroiledin ethical issues relatingto the way language is used and abused, Hill resists the mystic'scontemplation of a Creator and Creation beyond language. Accordingto Sherry,Hill "doubts,if not the validityof religion,at least his own worthiness." Takinga similartack in "TwoModern Christian Poets," Paul Mackintosh comparedHill's "informed piety," with all its self-laceratingcontradictions, to BasilBunting's "mystic perception" that is "inlove with all creation"(205). ForMackintosh, Hill is a Christianpoet in so far as he submitsChristianity to a meticulouscritique: "[Hill's] Christian poetry comes from combining the immemorialportrayal of religiousdoubt with the farmore recent,more radicaluncertainty of the presentcentury" (204). Avril Horner argues simi- larly in "The Poet's True Commitment"that Hill speaks not for himself but for others in the twentiethcentury who felt both drawnto Christianity and skepticalof its propositions.According to Horner,rather than simply express"society's nostalgia for simple faith"or society'srejection of faith, Hill offsetsa "senseof loss concerningthe transcendent"with "theattempt

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 Religion& Literature to reintegratesome of the tenets of Christianitywithin a philosophy of languageand theologyparticularly tuned to poetry"(163). Poetry,in short, becomes his substitutereligion, or at least the arena in which he struggles with religiousconcepts and religiousterms. The Dominican scholarAidan Nichols offers one of the most incisive summariesof Hill's agonizing strugglewith faith in his essay "Graceand Disgrace."To Nichols'spoint of view, Hill is not simply a spokesmanfor twentieth-centuryangst and nostalgia;he also speaksfor his own feelings of estrangementfrom the presenceof Christand from the Church'srituals designedto representHim. Alludingto Hill'sinterest in Christianmysticism, Nicholsconcludes that Hill resiststhe temptationto escapehis personalagons in mysticaltranscendence:

Hill is tempted by the thought that a profounder mystical appropriation of - faith along the lines of, in particular,the Carmelite mysticsof the sixteenthcen- - tury might enable him to find in his darknessan experienceddawn. But would the price requiredfor a fullergrasp on God's transcendencebe too high? Fora poet - of incarnation not here theIncarnation, but the general principleof incarnation wherebymeaning is found in concretethings (in words,objects, persons, acts, events and not least in those entailed by erotic love. . .) the night of sense and spiritwhich St. John of the Cross...asks the believer to enter, seems too dark to contemplate. (352-253)

If grace allowsthe mysticto overcomethe pull of gravity,purge all attach- ments to the "concretethings" of this world, and pass through "the dark night of the soul"to union with an ineffableCreator, Hill typicallyadmits that he lackssufficient grace and sufficientdesire for the mystic'spurgatorial journey.If he glimpsesthe mysterybehind and withinthe Creation,he seems too rootedin history'scrucifixions and language'sentanglements to prolong the glimpse. In Hill's poetry,unions and communionswith the divine are momentary,precarious, and usually subvertedby a morose awarenessof the sins of this world. Despite, or perhaps because of, Hill's worldliness- his obsessionswith - incarnations and crucifixions the influence of mystics on his poetry and prose began early.But it wasn't until 1981 in an interviewwith John Haffendenthat he triedto clarifyhis complicatedstance toward mysticism. After Haffenden drew his attention to the critics who had chastisedhim for writing"poetry [that] has the air of mysticalutterance but lacksa true feeling for the passion of religion"(88), Hill angrilydenied he was trying to write confessionalpoems about his "truefeelings." He said he was try- - ing to write about mysticalexperiences and failed mysticalexperiences - in particular from a historicalrather than a personalperspective:

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The complex nature of religiousexperience, and religioussectarianism of a great numberof differentkinds, is an essentialpart of the complex historyof Europe.... I really do not see that it indicatesany shortcomingin a poet to be moved by the phenomena of religiousexperience both in its historicalperspective and in more immediateexamples. Since a failureto trulygrasp experienceand substanceis one of the characteristicfailings of human nature,I would have thought that the lyric poet with any psychologicaland dramaticsense is quite properlyinvolved with that kind of distancingand failure.... If critics...say that /seem incapableof grasping true religiousexperience, I would answerthat the graspof true religiousexperience is a privilege reservedfor very few, and that one is trying to make lyrical poetry out of a much more common situation- the sense of notbeing able to grasp true religiousexperience. (89) Nearly three decades after leaving Oxford, Hill was still preoccupiedwith the poet's "visionof life that goes before him and which he cannot grasp," but now he was speakingof the unattainablevision in mysticalterms. Hoping Hill would elaborateon his religiousviews, Haffenden asked him why he was "drawnso stronglyto the subjectsof mysticismand martyrol- ogy."Still bristlingat the implicationthat he was a failed poet of mystical experience,Hill replied: I am interestedin mysticismas an exemplarydiscipline, and I'm also interestedin the psychopathologyof the false mysticalexperience. Of course no one has been more accurate in defining and warning against the perils of false mysticismthan the medievalmystics; the genuine mystic is usuallya tough, practical,level-headed man, and I thinkthose iron-disciplinedmystics - unlesstheir charity overcame their scorn- would have hard things to say of the more self-indulgentmystical cults of the presentday. (89-90) Althoughmedieval mystics (women as well as men) were well awareof the pathologicalbehavior that theircontemplative exercises sometimes caused, Hill was no doubtthinking of WilliamJames, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and a host of othermodern psychologists who investigatedthe psychopathology of religiousexperience. If Haffendetihoped that Hill would explainwhy he didn'twrite about the redemptive,consoling, and joyous aspectsof "genuine" mysticalexperiences, he was disappointed.Hill said nothingabout the spiritualexercises and contemplativeitineraries leading to a sublimeunion with God that mysticshad followedfor centuries. In his interview with Haffenden, as in much of his early poetry and prose,Hill was determinedto avoidpersonal revelations about his religious beliefsand practices.If he was a mysticalpoet, he was an impersonalone; he focused on the mystical experiences- especially the failed mystical - experiences of others. But Hill's admissionthat he was fixatedon mystical failures suggested that the psychopathologyof his own experiences

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 Religion& Literature exerted a gravitationaltug he could not overcome.In a 1954 articletitled "AWriter's Craft," which he publishedwhile he was a studentat Oxford, he spokemore openly about workingin the force-fieldbetween personality and impersonality,neurosis and transcendence.Because "there is a tendency [in contemporarypoetry] to exalt the displayof individualneurosis for its own sake into a virtue, to applaud each brokenor complacentconfession as it comes," the writer,he argued, should modestly "keep himself in the background"(14). Immediatelyafter repudiatingthe confessionalmode, however,he confessed:"Yet that does not alter the fact that, as a person, I am perpetuallyengrossed in my own dogged and nuzzlingneuroses." Twenty-threeyears later, grappling with the religious dimensions of literaturein his essay "Poetryas 'Menace' and 'Atonement',"Hill revisited the questionabout personalexpression and the "psychopathologyof false mysticalexperience." Reflecting on his own strategiesto transcendthe self and to unify with others and with an impersonaldivine Other, he admitted: "Howevermuch and howeverrightly we protestagainst the vanity of supposingit to be merely the 'spontaneousoverflow of powerfulfeelings,' poetic utteranceis nonethelessan utteranceof the self, the self demanding to be loved, demandinglove in the form of recognitionand 'absolution'" [Lordsof Limit1 7). This awarenessof a selfishneed for love and recognition dismayedHill, but his sense of chagrin, he admitted,was "nothingcom- paredto the shockingencounter with 'empiricalguilt,' not as a manageable hypothesis,but as irredeemableerror in the very substanceand textureof his craft and pride. It is here that he knows the afflictionof 'being fallen into the "they"'and yet it is here that his selfhoodmay be made at-one with itself.He may learn to live in his affliction,not with the cynicalindifference of the reprobatebut with the renewedsense of a vocation."Hill's obsession with his own sins and failuresand with the imperfectionsof his linguistic medium, in the end, acted as a catalystfor furtherquests and furtherat- tempts to write redemptivepoems. For Hill, false mystical experiencesarose from the deluded belief that personal and linguisticimperfections had been transcended,that ideals- whetherpsychological, poetic, religious, or political- hadbtenattained, that redemptivequests had ended in euphoricunions with the divine.Although the final stage of the traditionalvia mystica- union with a transcendent - God has alwaysinvolved failures (the mystic realizeshis conceptualand linguisticpowers fail to adequatelyrepresent the divinemystery), Hill's sense of failurewas different.If traditionalmystics found the breakdownof language and thoughtat the moment of union to be blissfuland transfiguring, Hill'smystical personae consistently failed to experienceunion and foundthe failuredisillusioning and depressing.Entangled in the intractablerealities of

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 7 language,body, history, and physicaluniverse, they leapt towardheavenly "Otherwheres,"but gravityinevitably yanked them back to Earth. They blamed their inabilityto have authenticmystical experiences on a lack of grace, love, and faith, and suggestedthat whateverbliss they felt was due to the will o' the wisps of mania or religiousenthusiasm (as the etymological root- en theos- implies:the excitement occasioned by the conviction that God had enteredthem). One of Hill'searly models, Robert Lowell, used to call these manic "highs,"which were usuallyaccompanied by delusionsof divinepower, his "pathologicalenthusiasms." As ambivalentabout mystical flightsas Lowell, Hill addressedthem in similarpathological terms. Fora poet as devotedto Christiantradition as Hill, it'sodd that grace and transcendencecome not from Christianrituals and scriptures,not from the spiritualexercises of Christianmystics, but only from the "prolongedand intensivelabour" of writing.If his commentsto Haffendencan be trusted,he felt mysticalecstasy only once duringthe firsthalf of his career.His ecstatic moment came after he'd been pushing himself night after night to finish a translationof Ibsen'splay Brand:"Labour and excitementcombined to induce a state of euphoria,what you would call 'enhancement,'a kind of quite falselymystical ecstasy" (84). He added:"I do not in any way overrate it." In an interviewwith the Englishpoet BlakeMorrison, he repeatedhis claim that "unexpectedgraces of inspiration"come "only at the end of a work as a result of exhaustionand near-despair.. . [when] sheer tiredness breaksdown certain barriersof the conscious mind" (212). Comparedto the liminal experiencesof true mystics,Hill's experienceswere mundane ratherthan transcendent, psychopathological rather than godly.He received poetic words rather than the divine Word, poetic "gracesof inspiration" ratherthan divine grace. Hill has often quoted Coleridge'sobservation that "poetryexcites us to artificialfeelings, makes us callousto realones" [Lords 4). One of the reasons readershave complained about the lackof "truefeeling for religious passion" in Hill'spoetry is becausehis poetic craftand scholarlyrigor tend to obscure "true feeling."During the first half of his career,he deliberatelystylized all forms of passion,whether mysticalor erotic, until they appearedmore artificialthan real. Referringto Tenebrae,a book that drew on St. John of the Cross,Robert Southwell, Richard Rolle, St. Teresa,Thomas a Kempis, and other writersin the Christiancontemplative tradition, Hill told Blake Morrisonthat his poems were inspirednot by mysticalexperiences so much as by stylisticproblems: "Paradox, and the closelyrelated oxymoron, belong both to the traditionof mysticalpoetry and to the traditionof Petrarchan poetry,which are the main models for The PentecostCastle' and 'Lachri- mae.' Certain kinds of poetry contain certain kinds of in-builtproblems

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 Religion& Literature to be solved"(212). Morrisonreplied: "I suppose there is the danger that in using the phrase 'solvingproblems' you make poetry sound like a very cold, intellectualactivity." Perturbed by the implicationthat his poems were cold and overly intellectual,Hill respondedthat he believed with Milton that poetry shouldbe "simple,sensuous, and passionate,"but because con- temporaryconfessional poets had debased Milton'snotion of poetry "an extreme concentrationon technical discipline... [w]as the only true way of releasingthe simple,sensuous and passionate."Aware that most readers dismissedhis dense,formal poems as "coldand cerebral,"Hill wasn'tabout to alterhis stylisticprinciples for the sakeof accessibility.Critics could carp all they wanted about his tendency to bury mysticalfeelings of awe and reverencein ornate displaysof paradox, allusion, and syntax. He would remain faithfulto his arduoustask, which, as he explained to Haffenden, was to articulateca heretic's dream of salvationexpressed in the images of the orthodoxyfrom which he is excommunicate'"(98). To better understandHill's bafflingmix of hereticaland orthodox at- titudes,it's helpful to take a closerlook at how he representsChristian mysticism and "the psychopathologyof false mysticalexperience." Although the word "mystical"has been used in so many differentways that it is now shroudedin semantic mists, its etymologicalroots were once quite clear. "Mystical"and its cognate "mystery"derived from Greekwords meaning "secretrites," "to initiate in secret rites,"and "to keep a secret by closing one's eyes and mouth."Mustikos referred to an initiatewho was supposedto remainmute about the sacredrites of Greekmystery cults. Adapting these pagan conceptsof reverentialsilence to theirown practices,early Christians used the word "mystical"to refer to the secret or silent meanings behind the Bible's literal meanings. The mystical dimension of the Bible could be disclosedthrough rigorous interpretation of its stories.Christians later expandedthe word "mystical"so that it referredto the divine realm made accessibleby Christthrough the Eucharist,Scriptures, and iconographyof the Church. Christiantheologians such as Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius proposeda viamystica. Aided by meditationand contemplation,this "mystical way" followeda three-stageitinerary from purificationto illumination and union. The twentieth-centuryscholar of mysticismEvelyn Underhill, whom Hill has read,proposed a five-stagevia mystica, although it progressed in a similarway froma breakingoff of sensoryattachments with the world, througha purgatorial"dark night of the soul,"to a finalecstatic union with the divine. In some of his earlypoems, Hill wrotepassionately of the mystic'sawaken- ings to worldlyimperfection and divine transcendence,but he neverwrote about spiritualjourneys culminating in joyous unions or communionswith

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God. His divine comedies began well, but, unlike Dante's famous narra- tive, Hill's narrativesended tragically.Devoted to the possibilityof divine union and redemption,Hill's mystic pilgrimstypically bore witness to the intractablefacts of history that subvertedunion and redemption.In the poem "Genesis,"which he appropriatelyplaced at the beginningof his first book, Hill laid out a version of the mystic'sjourney that he would repeat throughouthis career.The poem opens with a bardicpoet stridingagainst "the burlyair" near an estuary- a place of creativecontraries "where the [fresh-water]streams were salt and full" (SK3). In this BlakeanEden, the poet appearsto be intoxicated(like "the tight ocean")with his godly pow- ers. A mysticenthusiast, he walksby the fertilesea "Cryingthe miraclesof God," celebratingboth the miraclesof the Creationhe finds around him and the miraculouspowers of the gods (Orpheus, the God of Genesis, Christ) that he finds inside himself. Having awakened to the divine, he boasts:"And first I broughtthe sea to bear / Upon the dead weight of the land; / And the wavesflourished at my prayer,/ The riversspawned their sand."Unlike the traditionalmystic, however, Hill's godly poet is blissfully at one with Creatorand Creationat the beginningrather than at the end of hisjourney. After fallingfrom Eden, he cannot returnto paradise. Hill's"crying" in "Genesis,"as in his later"Lachrimae" sequence in Tene- brae,is celebratoryas well as elegiac. His tears of joy quicklyturn to tears of sorrow.Like the "pig-headedsalmon" that swimsupriver to "the steady hills,"Hill tracesan abruptshift in perspectivefrom spawningto dying.In the poem's second section he observesnature's blood-thirsty violence with Darwinian candor.Animals and humans, whether in war or in the daily struggleto survive,"plunge with triggeredclaw, / Featheringblood along the shore,/ To lay the livingsinew bare" (SK3). In thissavage natural realm, all are predators"Forever bent upon the kill."Having recognizedwhat ex- ists behind the enchantingfacade of God's miracles,Hill's mysticvoyager renouncesthe naturalworld and entersa purgatorialdark night of the soul. "I renounced,on the fourth day, / This fierce and unregenerateclay," he declares,"Building as a huge myth for man / The watery Leviathan"(4). With a glance at the Bible's Book of Revelationand Hobbes's Leviathan, Hill uses the mythic sea monster as a symbol for barbarismand chaos, for the fallen world engenderedby Adam's "unregenerateclay." A painful purificationof self and worldoccurs when the Coleridgean"glove-winged albatross/ scourfs]the ashes of the sea." The scouringand burningof purificationpropel Hill's persona into a kind of disorientinglimbo. He then returnsto "theworks of God" to do God's work, "to ravageand redeem the world,"to commune redemptivelywith "Christ'sblood" (5). What he failsto achieve,however, is the mystic'stradi-

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 10 Religion& Literature tional union with God. Hill acknowledgesthe efficacyof the communion ritualfor some- "byChrist's blood are men made free"- but he points to multitudesof the dead and livingdead who are beyondredemption. He also implies that Christianenthusiasts and fanatics,like zealots in all religions, "ravage"more often than they "redeemthe world."Their vehementlyself- righteousacts threaten to transformthe worldinto an apocalypticgraveyard where "Earthhas rolledbeneath her weight / The bones that cannot bear the light."Like John of Patmos,the author of the Bible'sRevelation, Hill envisagesa sea brimmingwith history'sdead: "Inclose shroudstheir bodies lie / Under the rough pelt of the sea." UnlikeJohn, however,he imagines no "NewJerusalem," no realm in which the dead are joyously redeemed, no mystic marriagebetween soul and Creator,no happy union between new heaven and new earth. "God'sLittle Mountain,"which followed "Genesis"in Hill's firstbook, Forthe Unfallen, resembles his other mysticalpoems in the way it movingly dramatizesa failed attemptto transcenda state of fallenness.Hill assumes the personaof Moses,just as he had in his "Letterfrom Oxford"(the poem was written at Oxford),to once again emphasizehis unlikenessto Moses. He alludes to the Biblical account of Moses climbing "the mountain of God" called Horeb (Ex 3:1), where an angel appears out of the Burning Bush and God informsMoses he will deliverhis people "untoa land flow- ing with milk and honey" (Ex 3:1 7). Hill conflatesthis mountainclimbing experiencewith the accountof Moses climbingMt. Sinai and receivingthe Ten Commandmentsfrom God, who appearsin "thundersand lightnings, and a thickcloud" (Ex 19:16) while "thewhole mount quakedgreatly" (Ex 20:18). In the Bible and subsequentwritings that appropriateMoses as the quintessentialmystic, these ascentsculminate in transfiguringmoments of union. AlthoughMoses admits to God "I amslow of speech and of a slow tongue"(Ex 4: 10), in the Bible he communicateswith God and God communicateswith him. God promisesthe diffidentMoses: "I will be with thy mouth"and "thoushalt do signs"(Ex 4:15, 4:17). Mysticsfrom Pseudo-Dionysiusto St.John of the Cross,the anonymous author of The Cloudof Unknoiving,and Thomas Merton have used these Mosaic encounterswith God to representthe apophaticor "negative"way to commune with God. Forthem, the darkcloud on the mountaininfused with divinity resemblesthe contemplative's"dark night" of sensory and spiritualpurgation. The foundationaltext in this traditionof the vianegativa is Pseudo-Dionysius'saccount in "The MysticalTheology" of the Mosaic mysticbreaking free of sensoryexperience and conceptuallimits to know what he cannot know:

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He plunges into the trulymysterious darkness of unknowing.Here, renouncingall that the mind may conceive,wrapped entirely in the intangibleand the invisible,he belongscompletely to him who is beyondeverything. Here, being neitheroneself nor someone else, one is supremelyunited to the completelyunknown by an inactivity of all knowledge,and knowsbeyond the mind by knowingnothing. (137)

Humblyaccepting the humanlimitations of thoughtand language,Pseudo- Dionysius'sarchetypal mystic achievesunion with an utterlytranscendent God (a God quite differentfrom the anthropomorphicfigure in Ex who can be jealous, angry,and tyrannical). At the beginningof his quest in "God'sLittle Mountain,"Hill's mystic mountain-climberfinds signs of divinity in himself, in the earth quaking beneath his feet, and in the stormy heavens above him: "The mountain stampedits foot, / Shaking,as from a trance.And I was shut / With wads of sound into a sudden quiet" (SK6). The thunder,paradoxically, deafens him (as if with ear plugs). When he enters the silent, trance-likestate of contemplation(the stateRansom playfully compared to the deaf-mute'sab- surdusin "SomewhereIs Such a Kingdom"),he expectsto communeor com- municatewith a divine presence,but he apprehendsonly divine absences. NeitherJehovah, Christ,nor the Holy Spiritspeak to him. No voice erupts froma burningbush, a fierycloud, or a skyriven with Pentecostaltongues of flame. Instead,like the disillusionedChristians in WallaceStevens's poems, Hill'saspiring mystic sees the heavenswiped clean of their lifelessreligious images;he sees traditionalChristian icons reducedto a tabularasa:

I thought the thunderhad unsettledheaven, All was so still.And yet the sky was cloven By flame that left the air cold and engraven. I waited for the word that was not given,

Pent up into a region of pure force, Made subjectto the pressureof the stars; I saw the angels lifted like pale straws; I could not stand before those winnowingeyes. . .

If Hill'smystic is feelingthe influxor influencefrom "star"poets like Blake, as HaroldBloom contends,he is also feeling the pressurefrom a large con- stellationof Christianmystics who have seen angels, communed with the Holy Ghost, and unifiedwith God. Having transcendedordinary discourse, including ordinary Christian discourse,Hill's climber falls off God'smountain and needs a doctorto cure him. His apophaticsensibility experiences a "winnowing"judgment rather than a sublime triumph. He resemblesan ancient mustikoswho has been

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 Religion& Literature initiated into a secret, disturbingrite; he would like to speak, but doesn't know how to speak.Trapped in a stiflingsolipsism, he can only write.Does he need the "speakingcure" of psychoanalysisto loosen his tongue and open his heart? Does he pine for the Confessionbox of the Churchor the confessionalismof the poet? Or does he simplywant to unburdenhis soul to a friend? Whateverhis linguisticwishes are, they are all stymied.At the end, he laments:"Now I lack grace to tell what I have seen; / For though the head frames words the tongue has none. / And who will prove the surgeonto this stone?"Although his head frameswords that are ultimately framed in a well-madepoem, he's unable to speak about his sense of religious failure.He can write, but he can't talk. He hints that ordinarylove would make conversationpossible, that faith would allow for communion, that grace might enable mysticalunion, but that he lacks the appropriate love,faith, and gracefor all suchforms of communionand communication. Cut off fromothers and the divine Other,he needs someone to deliverhim fromhis autistic-likeisolation. He needs a "surgeon"who knowssomething about "thepsychopathology of the false [or failed] mysticalexperience" to operateon his stony tongue and heart. In "AnArk on the Flood,"an ambitiousretelling of MobyDick by way of RobertLowell's "The QuakerGraveyard in Nantucket,"Hill tracesanother failed mysticaljourney. Moses and Ahab merge to form a compositefigure who questsfor signs of God in "the pillaredcloud, the waterspout,/ The whirlwindwrought of force upon the air" (Thehis 18). The possibilityof communing and unifyingwith the divine spirit appears auspiciousat the start:"We are moistenedby its [the spirit's]breath, / And we have caught the utterance of its mouth; / The flame gives tongue upon the hush of cold." The moment of spiritualawakening is transient,however, and soon the ocean overwhelmsall mysticvoyagers:

The wind has gleaned the waters;their slow fall, Our fall from Paradise, Commits us to the world from whence we came. No word, no dove, descends;only our loud Prayersecho in this sunkwilderness; the cloud Has gone from us; the altarbears no flame.. . (19)

The poem ends, not with a happy union, but with a recognitionthat God has died and all His traditionalsymbols have been "gleaned"or "winnowed" - - of vital meaning.The mystic'sprayers his criesin the wilderness simply remindhim that he is alone without any consolationother than the echoes of his own futile calls for help. In severalof his poemswritten at Oxfordand afterward,Hill drawson the

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 13 vocabularyof St.John of the Cross'sfamous poem "The Dark Night" and the treatiseon contemplationthat followedit, but once again to underscore the tragicor pathologicalconsequences of the mysticquest. In his poem and commentary,St. John used imagesof a stilland darkenedhouse to symbol- ize the sensoryand spiritual"darkening" of the self that preceded union with God. As in the Bible'sSong of Solomon and the mysticaltradition that made use of its sacredand profaneimagery, St. John dramatizedthat union as an amorousone of "The Loverwith His beloved,"and of the heart or soul with God. "On that glad night, / In Secret,"he wrote, the soul "Fired with love'surgent longings" and "sheergrace" {Collected Works 295) traveled towardan ecstatictryst. St.John's contemplativesoul possessed"no other light or guide / Than the one that burned in my heart." Hill's poem "The Revelation,"published in 1954, begins like St.John's "DarkNight." Hill's narrator is in a "blindhouse" {London Magazine 72) that is still, dark, and "possessed"by intimationsof divinity(wings that might be angel wings or signs of the Holy Spirit).When Hill's aspiringmystic leavesthe house to meet the divine Other,he at firstbelieves that something transfiguringwill occur. Religious and poetic inspiration,however, fail to invigoratehis heart, voice, and vision. What inspireshim to write is his disillusionment.Referring to his initialhope and faith, he declares:

But once beyond those walls I did not doubt My heart would quickenand my tongue renew.

And it was true I trod accustomedground, My eyes no longer blinded by the glare Out of that kiln of darkness.Yet I found The worldwas not transfigurednor laid bare,

Nor piercedwith singingvoices. I who had come Strenuousthrough fire stood, now, againstthe light, Encounteredshapes and shadowsthat were dumb. My heart, though it died not, lay cold and quiet.

In TheDark Night, St. John documented the trialsthat led to "the marvel- ous resultswhich are obtainedfrom the spiritualillumination and from the union with God through love" (295). In "Revelation,"Hill's unrequited - mysticmerely encounters "dumb" shadows presumablythe unresponsive creaturesof Plato'sreal world. Hill's typical mystic resemblesthe bidden guest in Jesus'sparable who is "cast.. .into outer darkness"when he arrivesat the king'swedding party withoutthe properattire. "Many are called,but few arechosen" (Matt 22:2- 22:14) Jesus says. Hill's personae are called but, because of failuresof the

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 14 Religion& Literature heart,cannot celebratespiritual marriages. In his earlypoem "The Bidden Guest,"the narratorwho believes"the surging of a host / Had chargedthe air of Pentecost"during a churchservice ends up feeling utterlyestranged from the divine spirit.He declares:

And I believe in the spurredflame, Those racing tongues,but cannot come Out of my heart'sunbroken room; Nor feel the lips of fire among The cold light and the chillingsong. (SK9)

Both attractedto and repelled by the ritualsand symbolsof the Church, this frustratedcommunicant mocks "the stiffly-linenedpriest" who offers communion. He also mocks the somber "muffledhead[s]" of those who pretendtheir wounds are "Healedby the pouring-inof wine."If Hill's"bidden guest"could open his heart to the mysteryof Christ in the Eucharist and unify with a transcendentGod, his spiritualwounds might be healed. Ratherthan signsof God'spresence, he merelyfinds signs of their absence in the church.He blameshis troubleswith communionon the Churchand his own hard-heartedness:"The heart'stough shell is stillto crack/ When, spent of all its wine and bread, / Unwinkinglythe altarlies / Wreathedin its sour breath,cold and dead" (10). If thereis a centralcrux that compels Hill to write,it's the conflictbetween his desire for mystical transcendenceand his skepticismof all modes of transcendence.He may glance at a mysteriousCreator, but his main focus is on the way Utopianideals are inevitablybetrayed or "crucified"throughout history.He repeatedlydramatizes the fall of "la mystique"into "lapoli- - tiquf to borrowphrases from the Frenchwriter Charles Peguy, whom Hill memorialized in TheMystery of theCharity of CharlesPeguy (1983). In his later books, Hill traceshis obsessionwith the politicalrealities that both inspire and undermine mysticalideals back to his upbringingin Worcestershire. In The Triumphof Love(1998), he tells himself with self-deflatinghumor: "Relatethe mystiqueof Cathem's End, / Worcestershire,to the politiqueI of incomprehensibleverse-sequences" (29). Cathem's End was a hamlet not far from Hill'sboyhood home in Bromsgrove;the adjacentforest was a sanctuaryfor fugitives.Hill's numerous verse-sequences from Mercian Hymns (1971) to Scenesfrom Comus (2005) attempt to eulogizethe "mystique"of boy- hood sanctuaries.Usually, however, they end up elegizingthose sanctuaries as figments of his imagination.In The Orchardsof Syon(2002), reflecting again on mysticalkingdoms, Hill declares:"I / wish greatlyto believe:that Bromsgrove/ was, and is, Goldengrove;that the Orchardsof Syon stand

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 15 as I once glimpsedthem. / But... the heartlandremains / heartless"(38). With Hopkins,who wrote "Margaret,are you grieving/ Over Golden- grove unleaving?"in "Springand Fall"(50), Hill grieves for a childhood innocence that has been replacedby an adult recognitionof cold-heartedness in himself and others- a cold-heartednessthat rendersthe boons of the viamystica inaccessible. He also grievesfor a monasticideal of orderly, contemplativelife that he associateswith the mystic Catherine of Siena and the Syon Monasteryin Middlesex.Founded in 1415 by King Henry V and temporarilypurged of priestsand nuns a centurylater by Henry VIII, who used the groundsas a prison for his fifth wife, Syon Monasteryis yet anotherexample of a mysticalideal compromisedby the callouswhims of politicians.In Hill's title and text, Catherineof Siena'sdevotional treatise IlUbro,which in the early 1500s was translatedat Syon Monasteryas The Orcherdof Syon,stands for the way a writercreates his or her sacredgroves out of words. If Hill's obsessionwith mysticalideals originatedin Bromsgrove,so did his obsessionwith the forcesthat destroythose ideals.In interviewsHill has made a point of revealingthat his mother was a devout Christian(first a Baptist,then an Anglican)descended from artisansin the cottage industry of nail-making.From her he inheriteda commitmentto well-madeart and a down-to-earthreligion. From his father,who was a local police constable, and from his grandfather,who was Deputy Chief Constableof Worcester- shire, he inherited a propensityfor detecting failures,making scrupulous judgments,and contemplatingpunishments. His poems and essaysdoggedly testifyto mistakes,sins, and crimes.Meditating on artistictradition and political history,Hill playsthe rolesof Joyceanartist-god and Jehovah-like judge, maternalartisan and paternalconstable, redeeming the past in poems that uphold ideals of order and condemn those responsiblefor violatingthose ideals. He repeatedlyechoes St. John of Patmoswho proclaimed:"I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and anotherbook was opened, which is thebook of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, accordingto theirworks. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell deliveredup the dead which were in them:and they werejudged every man accordingto their works"(Rev 20: 12-15). ImitatingSt. John's God, Hill judges the books and worksof the living and the dead with a moral vigilancerare among contemporarypoets. - FromHill's literary perspective, the apocalypticsea is "language" a great repositoryof authorialworks in need of judgment. He approachesthis sea of language the way his father or grandfathermight have approacheda crime scene. In his essay "Poetryas 'Menace' and Atonement',"he states:

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"It is one thing to talk of literatureas a medium throughwhich we convey our awareness,or indeed our conviction,of an inveteratehuman condition of guilt or anxiety;it is anotherto be possessedby a sense of languageitself as a manifestationof empiricalguilt. . . Under scrutiny,this is the essenceto which my term 'empiricalguilt' is reduced:to an anxiety about faux pas, the perpetrationof 'howlers',grammatical solecisms, misstatements of fact, misquotations,improper attributions" {Lords 6-7). Most writersrecognize that languageis an imperfectmedium, that they make mistakeswhen they write, that their writingsare interpretedin ways they didn't intend. Hill, however,thinks of writersas potentialcriminals: "It seems to me one of the indubitablesigns of Simone Weil'sgreatness as an ethical writer that she associatesthe act of writingnot with a generalizedawareness of sin but with specific crime, and proposes a system whereby 'anybody,no matter who, discoveringan avoidableerror in a printedtext or radiobroadcast, would be entitledto bring an action before [special]courts' empowered to condemn a convicted offender to prison or hard labour" (8). Hill adds that Weil's hypersensitivityto errorsmight be symptomaticof an obsessive-compulsive disorder.Nevertheless, he believesthat writers should take responsibility for the errorsthat they publisheven if it means going to jail. If Hill's obsessionwith linguisticsin, guilt, and judgment driveshis poems, what are his poems drivingtoward? Do they look forwardto the sort of widespreadpunishment St. John envisionedin the Book of Revelation? Do they entertainthe possibilityof redemption?Referring to Karl Barth's definitionof sin as the "specificgravity of human nature,"Hill has said that his poems aim to redeem and atone for sins by settingpoetic words at one with those sins: "I am suggestingthat it is at the heart of this 'heavi- ness' [or sin] that poetry must do its atoning work, this heavinesswhich is simultaneouslythe 'density'of languageand the 'specificgravity of human nature'"(15). Hill is speakingof an atonement that is an at-one-ment,a mimesis between the densities of language, human nature, and natural world. "Whenthe wordsare finallyarranged in the rightway - or in what he comes to accept as the best arrangementhe can find," Hill has said, quotingEliot, "[thepoet] may experiencea moment of exhaustion,of ap- peasement,of absolution,and of somethingvery near annihilation,which is in itself indescribable"(2). Lookingback at his poems that appearedto achieve at-one-ment during inspiredmoments of creation, however,Hill has conceded that perfect poems are as unattainableas perfect mystical unions. Although Hill strivesfor unions that are incarnationalrather than transcendental,that are forged between word and worldrather than between contemplativesoul and ineffableGod, he uses the vocabularyof mysticism to describethose "indescribable"moments of euphoria and "absolution"

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 17 when a poem seems perfectlyfinished. In the next breath,he characteristi- cally dismissessuch moments as false mysticalexperiences. One of Hill'smost sustainedexplorations of the nexusbetween mysticism and languagecomes in his book Tenebrae(1978). The title refersto ritualsin the early Catholic Churchperformed during the final three days of Holy Weekto commemorateChrist's crucifixion on Good Friday,His descentinto the tenebrousgloom of hell on Holy Saturday,and His ascent to heaven on EasterSunday. The final ceremonyin the darknessof Eastermorning was often spectacular:candles were lit, all but one were extinguished,and then the finalcandle was returnedto the darkenedchurch to signifyChrist's resurrection.Tenebrae rituals,like other church rituals, are intended to repeat sacred events, to re-presentthe presence of Christ, to allow com- municantsto experienceGod's agony on earth and ecstasyin heaven. Hill told Morrisonin an interview:

Tenebraeis a ritual, and like all rituals it obviously helps one to deal with and express - states which in that particular season of the church's year are appropriate suffering and gloom. Tenebraedoes at one level mean darkness or shadows; but at another important level it clearly indicates a ritualistic,formal treatment of suffering, anxiety and pain. (213) Yetif one readsHill's book hopingto find realisticaccounts of the Tenebrae ritual, one will be disappointed.The Tenebrae ritual in Tenebraeis more metaphorthan fact;it remainsin the book'sshadowy background as an al- lusionto all ritualistictreatments of suffering,and especiallyto the suffering causedby the failureof the Church'srituals and symbolsto re-presentGod in an upliftingway. Supposedly writing about the experiencesof othersand the experiencesothers have had of the divine Other, Hill again dwells on failures- failuresof artificeand failuresof communicantto enjoy a mystical union with God. When sectionsof "The PentecostCastle" first appeared in Agendamaga- zine, Hill acknowledgedthe mysticsRichard Rolle and St.John of the Cross as models. The poem's title also suggeststhat St. Teresa'sThe Interior Castle was a model. St. Teresa'sdevotional treatise describes a mysticaljourney in terms of passingthrough "a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparentcrystal, and containingmany rooms,just as in heaventhere are many mansions"(17). The journey ends in a bed chamberwhere the soul enjoys an ecstatic "celestialmarriage" with God (122). Aspects of sacred and profanelove merge in Hill'ssequence, too, but he is more preoccupied with the "terrible"vagaries of desire than with happy unions of the soul with God. He quotes Yeatsin an epigraph:"It is terribleto desireand not possess,and terribleto possessand not desire."Winning and losing lovers,

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 18 Religion& Literature for thisagonized romantic, are the same;both experiencesare terrible.Hill's loverin "The PentecostCastle" longs to unitewith a beloved,whether divine or human, but his longing remainsunrequited. Hill may have felt especiallyclose to his countrymanRolle because, by most accounts, he was a failed mystic. In TheEnglish Mystical Tradition, a. book Hill refersto in one of his essays,David Knowlesdescribes Rolle as a novice who never advancedmuch furtherthan his initialawakening to the divine:

Of purelymystical prayer and experienceRolle knowslittle or nothing.He is without questionperfectly sincere in describinghis experienceswith theirheat, sweetnessand song,which seem to havecontinued at leastfor manyyears, but these,even if there is nothing of auto-suggestionabout them, are physicaland psychologicalphenomena common in a relativelyelementary stage of the spirituallife, and as such are not found in those who have been raisedto pure spiritualcontemplation. (64) Comparedto Pseudo-Dionysius,the author of TheCloud of Unknowing,St. John of the Cross,and St. Teresa,Rolle was a mere beginner.For Rolle, as for Hill, the apophaticunion with the divine was ungraspable. Hill's lover in "The Pentecost Castle" keeps beginning sacred and profane quests for love that end traumaticallyor never end at all. At the beginning of the poem, he comes to a surprisingdead-end when, despite warnings"not to go / along that road"{Tenebrae 7)- presumablythe road - to his beloved he is slain. Deaths and wounds prefiguremystical dyings away from secular love and progressionstoward sacred love, but Hill's refrainsemphasize that these dyings are fatal ratherthan rejuvenating.In the second section, he repeatsthe deceased'sposthumous lament: "Down in the orchard/ I met my death / under the briarrose / I lie slain"(8). A symbolof the resurrectedChrist during a Tenebraeritual (the "Jessetree / of resurrection// buddingwith candle / flames the gold / and the white wafers / of the feast")promises to transportthis moribundlover from his death-in-lifeon earth into a transcendentrealm (9). Hill imagines such a place as a mountain "whereno man can climb,"where "love/ restsand is saved"(10). As soon as union with the divine belovedappears as a possibil- ity on the horizon,however, Hill's worldly lover withdraws, renouncing the boons of sacredlove: "Lovestood beforeme / in that place / prayerscould not lure me / to Christ'shouse." Christ appears as a "deceiver,"a seductive illusion,a fiction.The hope for the sort of "celestialmarriage" and ecstatic communion St. Teresaenvisioned in TheInterior Castle turns into a lament for the sacramental"bread we shall never break / love-runeswe cannot speak"(12). As the poem windsto an end, Hill diagnoseshis problem with mystical love

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 19 as he has before:as a problemof the heart. Longingto unite with Christ's "unseen"sacred heart, the lover's scared heart flounders in a seemingly endless "darknight of the soul."The lover says:"the night is so dark/ the way so short / why do you not break/ o my heart."According to St.John of the Cross,the heart or soul mustpass througha "darknight" in orderto be purgedof intellect,will, and memory,as welLasall spiritualimperfections and sensoryattachments. Only then will it "meritGod's divine cure" and accomplish,in St.John's words, "the divine union of the perfectionof love" (303).Pining for a purgativenight with a happyend, Hill'slover asks: "how long until this longing / end in unendingsong // and soul for soul discover / no strangenessto dissever/ and lover keep with lover / a moment and for ever"(13). The poem ends not with St.John's "divineunion," but with the grievinglover at a "lovers'well" (14),washing his wounded heart "that will not heal,"and staringmasochistically and narcissistically("eye to eye") at his own weeping face in the water. The "nothing"and "depthsof non-being"he glimpsesin the well'sdark- ness resembleapophatic conceptions of God. In TheDivine Names, Pseudo- Dionysiusgestured toward God in a similarlynegative way when he saidGod was "no thingamong things"(109). For Pseudo-Dionysius, "the mysteries of God" abided in "the brilliantdarkness of a hidden silence,"in "the deep- est shadow,"and in "the wholly unsensed and unseen." Contemplatinga well-likedarkness similar to Hill's,he counseledhis followers:"Leave behind you everythingperceived and understood,everything perceptible and un- derstandable,all that is not and all that is, and. . .strive.. .towardunion with him who is beyondall being and knowledge"(1 35). Self-consciouslystaring at the mysterious"depths of non-being"(14), Hill's mystic in "Pentecost Castle,"unfortunately, communes with himself ratherthan with God. He sees the "enthusiasm"for God in himself,but he never manages to purge himself of his vigilant conscience and self-consciousness.He confessesat the end that he sees "perhapstoo clear / my desire dying / as I desire." The mysticalunion between loving soul and beloved divinitycan only occur afterdesire has been thoroughlypurged. Hill's end revealsthat desire has not ended, that the dialecticalvacillations of desirewill continue, and that his sacred and profanepassions will doom him to an endless Passion of worldlycrucifixions and resurrections. Lacking the faith and grace of the devotional writers who obviously attracthim, Hill in Tenebraesolicits Petrarch as a more fitting model. Like Petrarch,who wroteobsessively about his deceasedbeloved, Laura (a woman he may have neverknown and who may not have existed),Hill writesabout similarlyelusive lovers who entice and depresshim. In the sonnet sequence "Lachrimae,"Hill drawson Petrarch'ssonnets as well asJohn Dowland's

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 20 Religion& Literature music, BenJonson's masques, Lope de Vega'ssonnets, Robert Southwell's devotionalwritings, and EnglishRenaissance dances to expressthe travailof the loverwho fails to requitehis desirefor union with God. Hill sheds tears in "Lachrimae"for exemplarymartyrs and mysticswho sufferedunjustly, but he also shedstears for himself becausehe believeshe can neveremulate or even properlyarticulate their heroic devotionto God. Hill begins his sequencewith a meditationon the "CrucifiedLord" that is also a frustratedprayer for "at-one-ment."He imagines Christ swim- ming on a cross and getting nowhere.Christ is "the world'satonement on the hill"because He atones for the world'ssins and because,paradoxically, He appearsto be "at one" with His failuresto atone. In Hill'sview, Christ exemplifiesa stoicalacceptance of what alwayshappens when "lamystique" is incarnatedin "lapolitique"when divineideal meets and suffersthe world's brute facts.Although some criticshave contended that Hill is speakingfor Southwellhere, Southwellin his life and writingslived up to the ideal he espousedin his SpiritualExercises and Devotions: "to conform myself as far as possibleto Christcrucified and to striveto love Him with my whole heart, but also by the help of God's grace to give my labour,and, if need be, my life, with unstintinglove, for the salvationof my neighbour"(4). Southwell wrote that he imitated Christ "with the greatestjoy and alacrity."Hill is not so successfulin his imitationsof Christ. He ends his first Petrarchan sonnet with a judgment against himself and a confessionof his distance from Christ:

I cannot turn aside from what I do; you cannot turn away from what I am. You do not dwell in me nor I in you

however much I pander to your name or answer to your lords of revenue, surrendering the joys that they condemn. (15)

Hill'ssacrificial devotions end joylessly and tragically.The only triumphhe wrestsfrom defeat comes in the realm of poetic craft;he writes a master- ful sonnet about failing to unify with his potentialmaster, Christ. Like the charactersin Waitingfor Godot,Hill's persona in "Lachrimae"waits for a God-likevisitor who never comes. Hill'sunrequited desire for mystical unions and communionsmotivates as well as undermineshis equallyintense desire for mysticalcommunities. The convictionthat "somewhereis sucha kingdom"- thatsomewhere or at some time in the past an Edenic sanctuaryexisted that can be resurrected- has inspiredhis poetryfrom the beginningof his career.As examplesof Utopian

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 21 communities,he alludesto TomassoCampanella's "city of the sun"in "Men are a Mockeryof Angels,"St. Francisof Assisi'sorder of Grayfriarsin "The Assisi Fragments,"Gaughin's Pont-Aven School in "TerribilistEst Locus Iste,"Coleridge's "spiritual, Platonic old England"in "AnApology for the Revivalof ChristianArchitecture in England,"Peguy's "mystical socialism" (Basic Verities1 1 1) in The Mysteryof the Charityof CharlesPeguy, King Henry V's Augustinian"Monastery of St. Saviour and St. Bridget of Syon" in TheOrchards of Syon.Like Eliot, who memorializedthe seventeenth-century ecumenical communityof Little Gidding in his poem by that name, Hill eulogizes these communitiesand simultaneouslymourns their inevitable demise. They all representvarieties of "la mystique"that are doomed. One of Hill's most sustainedexaminations of the way historicalforces destroycommunities founded on mysticalideals of union comes in his book Canaan(1998), whose very title points to a philistinedystopia that parodies God'spromised land. In one of the book'sfive poems titled"Mysticism and Democracy,"Hill bitterlydescribes a political landscape in which sacred ideals have been ruined and betrayed:

an occult terrain: mysticaldemocracy, ill-gotten, ill-bestowed, as if, long since, we had cheated them our rightful,righteous masters,as though they would pay us back terrificfreedoms - Severn at the flood, streakedpools that are called flashes wind-beatento a louringshine. (55)

Flash floods reminiscentof the Biblical flood bury the "occult terrain" where mysticaldemocracies once flourishedas possibilities.The "rightful, righteous/ masters,"in this case, are not so muchAdam and Eve beforethe Fall and Flood, or Christbefore the Crucifixion,as they are the groupsof Anabaptists,Quakers, Seekers, Familists, Puritans, and other seventeenth- centuryProtestant "cults" celebrated by RufusJones in his book Mysticism andDemocracy in theEnglish Commonwealth (Hill acknowledged this book as a sourcefor the "Mysticismand Democracy"poems in Canaan). Concedingthat "theEnglish people are not as a rule mysticallyinclined" (12),Jones argued in Mysticismand Democracy that affirmative(kataphatic) rather than negative (apophatic)mystics sowed the seeds of democratic Christiansects in seventeenth-centuryEngland. The sects emphasizedthe sanctityof the individualover the hierarchicalpolitical and religiousregimes that governedthe Churchat the time. Democraticrights, according to Hill andJones, derivedfrom the "rightful,righteous / masters"who established

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communitiesbased not on the dictatesof king, pope, or priest, but on the simple belief that a divine "innerlight" inhabited all people equally and thereforemade them equal before the law.Jones explained: I am undertakingto show that the intense religiouslife of the period, togetherwith the creationof the self-governingtype of church,had a powerfulinfluence in bring- ing democracyto birthin the State.In a certainsense a true and genuinedemocracy is inherentlyand intrinsicallymystical in character.... A democracy in which the individualsare fused into a living organic group so that each individualfinds his wisdom and insightheightened through his group life and team work for common ends is at heart a mysticalorder. (25) Jones used the term "mystical"in the same down-to-earthway Hill used it, but he was more optimisticthan Hill about the possibilityof fulfilling mysticalideals on Earth. Jones asked: "Arewe foredoomed to have the vision of the UrbsSion Mysticafade out into the common day of party politics and machine rule, or can we come back to the taskof rebuildingour nation of the people, for the people, by the people, as our noblestprophets have alwaysseen that it ought to be?"(27). Jones believedthat mysticalSions could be rebuilt,and his Mysticismand Democracy provided many blueprintsused to constructideal communitiesin the past. Although some criticshave contended that Hill, following in the elitist footsteps of Modernistslike Eliot and Pound, has been a curmudgeonlyfoe of democracy,in fact he has remainedsteadfastly committedin his teaching and writingto his own conception of UrbsSion Mystica,He summed up his politicized poetics in his essay "Redeeming the Time" when he discussedColeridge's conception of the primaryand secondaryimaginations:

The firstrepresents an ideal democraticbirthright, a light that ought to light every personcoming into the world.In the event, the majorityis deprivedof thisbirthright in exchange for a mess of euphorictrivia and, if half-awareof its loss, is instructed to look for freedom in an isolated and competitivesearch for possessionsand op- portunity.Therefore the secondary imagination,the formal creative faculty,must awakenthe minds of men to theirlost heritage,not of possessionbut of perception. [Lords96-97)

In lectures,essays, and poems, Hill has struggledto awakenothers to "their lost heritage."He has paid homageto the sortof intense,disciplined perception and conduct demonstratedby mystics,both Protestantand Catholic, cataphatic and apophatic, that would make an enlightened democracy possible. If Hill's outlook has been elegiac, it's because mystical unions, communions,and communitieshave failed to materializeor ended soon afterthey began.

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DiscussingHopkins's vision of a "mystical"kingdom resembling Eden, Hill remarkedin his interviewwith Haffenden:

I thinkthere's a realsense in whichevery fine and movingpoem bearswitness to. . . [a] lost kingdom of innocence and originaljustice. In handling the English language the poet makes an act of recognitionthat etymology is history.The historyof the creationand the debasementof words is a paradigmof the loss of the kingdomof innocence and originaljustice. (88)

Hill's mystical questorsfor lost Edens always end up grapplingwith the grim facts of sin and fallennessin languagethat is the objectivecorrelative of history'ssins and falls.Hill's poems and essaysremind us that wordsare always already "fallen"from their original meanings, always already re- presentationsof lost presencesthat can never be made fullypresent. Poets and mystics,no matterhow hardthey tryto transcendlanguage and history, mind and matter,personality and society,inevitably end up fallinginto the nets that they try to escape. One can contemplatean ineffable,inconceiv- able God in silence, but to communicatethe otherworldlyexperience or "non-experience"one must grapple with worldlylanguage and concepts. God for Hill is alwaysa grammaticalentity, a propername with a long and complicatedhistory, an ordinarysubject or object in an ordinarysentence and story."I am willingto claim as an empiricalfact," he wrote in Styleand Faith(2003), "thatwhen you write at any serouspitch of obligationyou enter into the natureof grammarand etymology,which is a naturecontrary to your own. You cannot extricateyourself from this 'contrarynature' by some kind of philosophicalfiat or gesture of spiritualwithdrawal" (122). Contemplativewithdrawal toward the divine Other, according to Hill, alwayscycles aroundto the contrary"other" of language. Reflectingon Wittgenstein'slinguistic views in the long poetic sequence The Triumphof Love(1998), Hill contends: "Mysticismis not / affects but grammar.There is nothing/ mysteriousin grammar;it constitutes/ its own - mystery"(67). Hill is statinga truism that mysticalliterature "constitutes" or representsthe "mystery"of things throughconventional, grammatical languagethat traditional mystical exercises and itinerariesseek to transcend. Hill is also statinga preferenceand, to some of his readers,a shortcoming. Mysticaltexts are based on experiencesthat have affectedthose who wrote them, and those texts in turn have affectedthose who read them. Waryof the emotionalaffects of the viamystica - its depressinglows and manic highs, - its frightening"dark nights" and euphoric unions Hill is too devoted to language and reason to let go of them. As Aidan Nichols implied, Hill is not willing or not capable of paying "the price requiredfor a fuller grasp on God's transcendence"- a transcendencemade possibleby St.John of

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 Religion& literature the Cross's"night of sense and spirit"(352-353). Hill admittedas much in a discussionof the poet Henry Vaughan'sline: "Thereis in God (somesay) / A deep, but dazzling darkness."According to Hill, the poet's "mystical awareness.. . must be allowedto retainthat innate sense of being 'on one's guard'"against "a fearfulrapture" {Style and Faith 84). In a poem with the title TheTriumph of Love,one might expect Hill to follow the traditionalvia mysticatoward an experience of rapturouslove that unifies opposed fac- tions,whether of soul and God, or word and world.But Hill'sconstabulary - vigilance his preoccupationwith rooting out sin, passingjudgment, and prescribingretribution - turns his poem into (to borrowhis own italicized words at the end) "a sad I and angryconsolation? In The Triumphof Love,having blamed his "hardnessof heart"and the - - unions both sacred and secular complicated by such hardness on a "costlydislike of cant,"Hill beckonsa surgeonto cure his stonyheart in the same way he beckoneda surgeonto cure his stony tongue in "God'sLittle Mountain."In the wake of actual heart troubles,he ordershis imaginary doctor:"Remove my heart of stone. Replace my heart of stone. Inspire/ cardio-vascularprophylaxis" (35). A hearttransplant, he facetiouslysuggests, might cure him of religious,poetic, social, and other ailments.Elsewhere in the poem he uses religiousand medical terminologyto reflecton cures of his mind. He confessesthat in his own life "reprobation/ turned... / on the conversionor / reconversionof brain chemicals"(56). He admits that the chemical Serotonin was the elixir that initiated an experience comparableto mysticalgrace: "I / must confess to receivingthe latest / elements [e.g. Serotonin]...as a signal / mystery,mercy of these latterdays. / No matter that the grace is so belated" (56-57). Although he acknowl- edges he is stillprone to the "grace [that]is confused,repeatedly, with chill / euphoria"- the mania or enthusiasmthat he once associatedwith "the psychopathologyof false mysticalexperience" - his medication"commits and commends... [him] to loving"(57). When he checks his heart now, it seems neither cold nor closed, but full of the sort of sanguinepassion he found in the animalshe wrote about in his early poem "Genesis.""When I examine / my soul'sheart's blood," he says, "I find it the blood / of bulls - and goats" (33). "God'sworm" to borrow a phrase from "The Bidden - Guest" is still in his heart, but it has metamorphosedover half a century into a bull god or goat god. Looking over his first five books while compiling his CollectedPoems (1985),Hill must have concludedthat many of his personaeresembled the sin-obsessedJacob wrestlingan angel for a blessingin Gauguin'spainting "The Vision After the Sermon."A copy of the painting graces the book jacket. Or he may have concluded that his many strugglesresembled a

This content downloaded from 155.247.166.234 on Fri, 08 Jan 2016 06:31:32 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HENRY HART 25 wrestlingmatch between Adam and the angel that preventedAdam from returningto Eden- the "greenand pleasantland" that prefigures the other inaccessiblemystical kingdoms in Hill's poetry.Whatever the mythicalor mysticalscenario, Hill's main combatanthas alwaysbeen the fallen angel of language.Sentenced to a fallenworld in which he strugglesby the sweat of his brow to make sense of thingsand redeemthem in well-madepoems, Hill has consistentlyaffirmed that "somewhereis such a kingdom,"that at some time and in some place a mystical"Otherwhere" existed. He has also consistentlysuggested that such ideal statesonly exist in the minds of their makerswhen the fallen world has been set at one with their magnificent words.

HenryHart Collegeof Williamand Mary

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