17 - Love III Flashcards
intro
Poem is from his collection ‘The Temple’ published in 1633 by Ferrar after Herbert died. Includes the features of the Church, based on the act of communion. Poem depends on orthodox structure of belief, Eucharist, bread and wine = body and blood. Host is wafer in poem and also God. Complex theological Idea in domestic terms so that concepts become accessible = symbolic and allegorical. Takes every day and familiar and Imbues with allegorical meaning – based on Luke 12:37 (son of man is coming at an unexpected hour)
On a literal level, the poem is about a host welcoming a guest, but in line with Biblical tradition, God is personified as Love: the host. The person enters the presence of God and expresses an unworthiness as a result of his sin, yet also shows a desire to be loved. There is a dialogue between the host and the guest in which the crucifixion is explored and God grants forgiveness to the persona. At the end of the poem the persona acquiesces and recognizes the place he has been given by God.
The speaker narrates an action that has evidently already taken place, but despite the past tense of the verbs, the experience described is powerful and immediate, in part because the poem is structured as a dialogue. Herbert is often thought of as a person of a secure and lasting faith, but many of his poems reveal that beneath such a faith is a large amount of tension and worry. In “Love” (III), the persona’s nervous uneasiness is gradually overcome by the gentle words of a kind lover who has an answer for every question.
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
- Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back = Personification and incarnation of Love. In John, Jesus describes God as love. compare Song of Solomon 5:6. “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had with drawen himself”. On a literal level, Love is in a house. On a metaphorical level, Love is God and the guest is man, house is heaven (metaphysical!)
- My soul drew back = speaker feels unworthy. Psychological states, Hamlet. Temple explored man’s inability to love God properly. Voice represents man. Dualist view of humanity, soul vs. body, only soul will survive death (Neoplatonic)
- Guilty of dust and sin = love must defeat guilt, Augustine, man’s fallen state. Dust recalls words of burial service
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
- Quick-eyed Love = ocular imagery, Petrarchan – figuring it as sensual, secular love (intertwines secular and sacred). Eyes an integral to birth and maintenance of love.
- Slack = Compare Herbert’s use of the word in his poemThe Church-Porch: “Who keeps no guard upon himself, is slack, / And rots to nothing at the next great thaw.”
- Sweetly questioning = God is masculine in paternal figure, but here, God assumes female qualities. Proverbs, Book of Solomon
- If I lacked anything = echoes a version of Psalm 23, which begins: “The Lorde is my shepehearde: therfore can I lack nothing”
“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”:
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”
- Worthy to be here = motif of faith and doubt characterises century. Echoed in speaker’s anxiety. Wants to go to heaven but does not feel worthy. Contemporary debate about what it takes to go to heaven.
- You shall be he = modal verb, powerful. Ability to grow and charge, positive endorsement.
- Ah, my dear = Elongated vowels, feminine. Figuring man’s relationship with God as sexual. Church as bride of Christ. Hopkins adopts this phrase in “The Windhover”. As Norman H. MacKenzie notes, “Hopkins as an undergraduate was strongly attracted to George Herbert, an anglican divine and poet, and traces of that influence can be found throughout his writings”.
- I cannot look on thee = the pp acknowledges his unworthiness here, conveying shame and sinfulness. This links back to the OT understanding of God as someone too powerful to be seen face to face, hence an intermediary was required. Epistemic distance
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
- Love took my hand = dramatic action and stagecraft of the gesture. Pivotal gesture of connection, dependent on audience.
- Who made the eyes but I = on one level, it figures a secular courtship, on another is suggests God as a sacred creator
“Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
- Truth, Lord = Love modulates to Lord. God as love, analogy becomes explicit
- Marred = marred his body, destructive bodily harm
- Let my shame = still feels unworthy, key idea of deserving. True rest only comes in death with God. Devotional life of man is a continual cycle of restlessness only resolved ay death. God defeats sin of despair, Calvinist
- And know you not = colloquial, deceptive simplicity given complexity of themes
- Who bore the blame = voice in conflict with himself. Voice’s stratagems are dismantled, theologically complex. JC buys back our souls from the devil in his crucifixion.
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.
- My dear = turning point. Intimacy in relationship with God, figured as domestic relationship with God as female.
- Serve = ambiguity of sense. Will undertake God’s work vs. subservient, domestic, dinner partyesque. Pun conveys a typically metaphysical delight in the capabilities of language. Literal serving at a table represents a life in service to God
- Must = gender ambiguous. Powerful yet depicted as female
- Taste my meat = love enters body as host wafer, transubstantiation. Eucharist is ingestion of God’s literal love. Figure’s God’s love in domestic sense. Present tense implies God is constant, eternal, omnipresent. Love enters the body in communion, which is the more conventional reading of this metaphor, but the erotic charge implies the relationship with God here is both domestic and also sensual.
- I will serve/taste my meat = compare Luke 12:37. “Blessed are those servants, whom the Lord when he commeth, shall find watching: Verily, I say unto you, That he shall gird himself, and make them to sit downe to meat, and will come foorth and serve them.” Compare also to the second stanza of Herbert’s poem “Faith”: “Hungry I was, and had no meat: / I did conceit a most delicious feast; / I had it straight, and did as truly eat, / As ever did a welcome guest.”
- So I did sit and eat = simple, monosyllabic choices. Calm mood. God = benevolent, dispels fear, sense of resolution. Entrance into heaven depicted as feast in Rev 19:9.
themes
Relationship with man and God in domestic terms Anxiety Intense emotion Conflict Love Motif of faith and love Significant moments Poems of dramatic moments Religion Confusion and Doubt
language general
- Conceit
- Pronouns (highlighting moving in and out of unity)
- Paradox (separate yet together)
- Elongated vowels
- Pun ‘serve’
- ‘Zooming lens’ from personal to more universal at the end’
- Ocular imagery
- Dramatic action and stagecraft, pivotal gesture of connection
- Metaphor/symbolism
o Love is changed to Lord in Stanza 3 - Inverted Syntax
- Monosyllables
About three-quarters of the words in each of the first two stanzas are monosyllables, and in the last stanza, only one of forty-seven words has more than one syllable. This heightens the colloquial sound of the poem and makes it read like an overheard conversation.
language imperatives
- Imperatives/Modal verbs ‘You shall be he’, modal verb, power, ability to grow and change as man, ‘go where It doth deserve’, still feels sense of unworthiness even though God is love, consistent and beneficent, Idea of deserving. Devotional life of man as continual ascent. Continual process of man, feels restless, true repose and calm will happen when dead. ‘You must sit down’, Imperatives create sense of authority
language re semantic field
- RE semantic field
o Biblical allusion based on Luke 12:37, son of man Is coming at certain hour, guest showing up to host. ‘Who bore the blame’ Jesus buys back our soul from the devil with his sacrifice on the cross
o Feminine intimacy in relation to God
language sensual undertones
- Sensual undertones at end of poem and Symbolism
o Ocular imagery
o ‘Eat’ = final word
o Symbolism is in entire collection of Temple
o Rendering heaven as a domestic scene
o Ingest body of Christ in communion
o Simple monosyllabic choice = complete submission to will of God
language sense of argument
- Sense of argument dialogue poem but becomes complicated working out who is speaking, parsing lines = difficult and not accidental. Bridges gap between God and self, beneficent God that listens, relationship, connection
o Dialogic structure and ambiguity of voice
o Adjectives convey sense of unworthiness
language gender
o God is figured as Love, which is presented as female and subservient (controversial)
o However, speak is depicted as inferior, despite arguably being depicted as a male
title
Last of Herbert’s collection, ‘The Temple’ and conveys the lasting impression he wishes to create, with an emphasis on the crucifixion and the Love of God. This is in essence a love poem, figured in domestic and even sensual terms, in relation to the divine
