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Too. 97 Ì a POET's TEMPORAL CONSOLATION: HENRY

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Too. 97 Ì a POET's TEMPORAL CONSOLATION: HENRY too. 97 ì A POET'S TEMPORAL CONSOLATION: HENRY VAUGHAN'S MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY Richard M. Summers "Sk. A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY June 1970 ABSTRACT Most critics of Henry Vaughan have strongly emphasized the mystical element in his sacred poetry but neglected his concern for the physical world, which he expresses in both the sacred and secular poems. That such neglect does less than justice to his work is evident from an examination of the com­ plete canon of his poetry, with particular regard to his meta­ physics, as it relates to classical thought and to his ethical awareness. A study of Vaughan's relationship to classical thought helps to clarify and to define his metaphysics, which largely informs his ethics. The conception of the single source from which all flows and to which all returns, for example, empha­ sizes the soul's descent to this world and ascent to the world beyond; that of dualistic worlds points up the instability and imperfection of the one and the absoluteness of the other; that of emanations, the most significant, stresses the importance of the soul's sojourn on earth to gain a limited perfection in preparation for ascent. Conduct, therefore, becomes a point of serious concern. Indeed, much of Vaughan's poetry attempts to bring this world into closer conformity with the other. His moral consciousness involves both personal and social ethics: in the one case, a preoccupation with moderation, temperance, order, courage, and justice; in the other, a fear of anarchy and oppression as well as a call for submission to the proper authority. The study makes clear that this moral preoccupation, which is strongest in Olor Iscanus (dedicated 1648), actually begins in Poems (1646) and continues throughout Silex Sciritillana (1650 and 1655) and Thalia Rediviva (1678). Thus, Vaughan's "conversion" of the late 1640's and early 1650's does not rep­ resent a fundamental change in either metaphysics or ethics. The apparently new ideas of grace, repentance, and faith, which are fully developed in the sacred poems and which define the extent of Vaughan's religious conversion, actually are alluded to in his first collection. In fact, the religious poetry of Silex Sciritillans and Thalia Rediviva is a development and ful­ fillment of his earlier work. » t ' It! TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. A NEW PERSPECTIVE ........................... 11 CHAPTER II. BACKGROUND .................................. 29 CHAPTER III. POEMS (1646): TWO RELATED JOURNEYS ........ 50 CHAPTER IV. OLOR ISCANUS (DEDICATED 1648): A SPECIFIC SOCIAL CONTEXT ................... 84 CHAPTER V. SILEX SCINTILLANS (1650 and 1655): CONVERSION AND A CONTINUING PREOCCUPATION . 112 CHAPTER VI. THALIA REDIVIVA (1678): RETIREMENT AND A LIMITED SOCIAL AWARENESS . 142 CONCLUSION ................................................ 156 NOTES ...................................................... 164 LIST OF WORKS CITED 191 INTRODUCTION While involved in discussions about ethereal flights and Hermetic influence, critics tend to lose sight of the simple fact that throughout his poetical career Henry Vaughan saw man as a fallen creature. This theme is a constant burden of his composition, and such a poem as "I Walked the Other Day," in which the speaker struggles in despair to free himself from the world through tears and contemplation, brings the vision of fallenynan/, to the fore. Most of Vaughan's critics would agree that this vision is a fact of human life acknowledged by Vaughan, but very few see him challenging the view that a fallen state is an ir­ revocable dilemma in this life, and no one, except perhaps Helen 1 White and James Roy King, recognizes the temporal consolation Vaughan continually seeks to find for himself and for his age. Much of his poetry, in fact, seems to take its effect from the tensions generated between the two thematic poles—the human condition of fallen man and the consolation in man's moral growth, which is partly made possible through mental states of withdrawal. Yet, while insight into man’s physical and spiritual condition is gained during withdrawal, the inspiration and even formulation in a great part responsible for Vaughan’s moral philosophy appear to have their origin deep in classical thought. -2- The first modern editor of Vaughan’s poetry in 1847 hints at the presence of mysticism, which involves the mental process 2 of awakening, purgation, and illumination. But only after the turn of the twentieth century did the notion begin to be accepted and modified with frequency. The point that must be borne in mind is that with few exceptions the commonly accepted approach to Vaughan invariably places the poet in the context of a transcendent world, whether the poetry is seen to reflect the mystical experience of il­ lumination or, on the other hand, to reject this world and all that is in it. In 1911 Evelyn Underhill in her widely acclaimed book on mysticism was not at all convinced of the presence of mysticism in Vaughan's poetry, and yet she singled out for comment the sus- 3 tained vision which enables Vaughan to catch a glimpse of eternity. Carolyn Spurgeon in 1913 placed Vaughan and Wordsworth in the same category, telling us that both are "almost exclusively occupied 4 with one theme, the mystical interpretation of nature." For the 5 next three decades, criticism does not differ on this point. Generally speaking, the last fifty years have been spent placing Vaughan solidly in the tradition of the world's great il- luminati. By 1945 Bush can say that what T.S. Eliot thought to be fa "adolescent retrogressiveness" in the childhood motif (which sees Vaughan very much a part of this world) was instead the major theme of the "exiled soul’s longing to return to its heavenly home, the world of the light."'57 *T his viewxwas elaborated by Itrat Husain who turned it into an archetypal journey, composed of the three -3- mystical steps of awakening, purgation and illumination. In trac- g ing these stages in Silex Scintillans, Vaughan’s major work of re­ ligious poetry, Husain accurately concludes that the poet did not attain to complete union, as far as the poems themselves reveal. Even though Husain’s work dealt with fragments (unfortunately he made few applications to whole poems), its significant value to Vaughan’s religious/mystic poetry is twofold: 1) because he saw the central theme as a journey to another world, Silex Scintillans for perhaps the first time took on a sharply defined unity of theme and subject hitherto merely implied, and 2) because of this, Husain clearly helped to set the direction in Vaughan criticism, as will 9 be seen in Mahood and Durr, for the next twenty years. If Husain's study lacked thoroughly developed specifics, Margaret Mahood missed few. In Poetry and Humanism, she worked very hard to place Vaughan among the seventeenth-century humanists; he becomes a "theocentric humanist" who believes that the center for man is God, that man is at once a sinner and redeemed, and that 10 "the Christian concept of grace and freedom is operative." She explained that Vaughan sees in nature the "signature of the Creator and that this signature symbolizes union with all planes of being." But, though her study worked to place Vaughan back in the physical world of sense, she made frequent allusions to the theme of es­ trangement anfl/ exile. Moreover, the qualities which separate Vaughan from such humanists as Milton or Herbert—his strong belief that the "body impedes and corrupts the soul," his failure to share in the -h- "baroque delight in the body and the senses," and his lack of con­ cern for the tension between "being and becoming"—seem to outweigh the delight we are told Vaughan does have in the life of this world. Furthermore, she went beyond Husain in her pronouncement that Vaughan experiences divine union, pointing out the frequent veil images (clouds, darkness, storms, and the trivial distractions of the world) and stone images as symbols of the limited physical world that can obstruct complete transcendence. It never becomes clear whether he is a humanist, a part-time humanist, or a mystic with some misgivings. What is obvious is that Miss Mahood more fully developed what Husain first presented, but added the experience of union to a poet already involved in transcendence. In 1960, with more than a century of critical inertia behind him, Pettet devoted his entire first chapter to the "ex­ periential nature" of Vaughan’s poetry.^ He discerned in Vaughan's emotional experience three pervasive moods and themes—two of which already have been discussed by Bush, Husâin and Miss Mahood: estrangement and exile, a sense of otherworldliness, and a "vibrant exhilaration," generating from "moments of visitation and divine 12 presence." This last goes beyond mere withdrawal and suggests the final mystical state of illumination^ In one sense R.A. Durr’s study in 1962, On thé Mystical Poetry of Henry Vaughan, is an outgrowth of earlier views. For two reasons in particular the book requires closer examination in con- nextion with mystically oriented criticism. For almost the first -5- time, Durr has gone outside the internal evidence and beyond the biographical material in an attempt to understand what 'Vaughan was responding to and the kind of response he was making. Durr looks to other mystics—those who have experienced conversion, such as St. Paul, Francis of Assisi, Suso, Fox—and finds an "essential pertinence" to Vaughan’s life and poetry. To answer those skep­ tical of Vaughan’s mysticism, for instance, on the ground that he wrote secular or occasional poetry after his sacred publications in the 1650’s, Durr simply compares Suso’s lament with Vaughan’s "Disorder and Frailty": both attest to the fact that "the flesh 13 is weak, and relapses sadly inevitable." The second distinguishing mark is a statement in the preface that brings into sharp focus an underlying assumption about Vaughan which has grown and developed since the middle of the nine­ teenth century.
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