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T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton II.c

16 Thursday Sep 2021

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The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

Erhebung without motion, concentration

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

We now move from a description of this place where opposites are present – and not, the still place. Rather than examining this place, Eliot turns to consider the effect of this place upon the human being. This portion of the poem considers: what does this still point do to the one who enters it.

Working backwards, we can see a parallel here with the line in the first section “human kind/cannot bear very much reality.” Here, something has been interposed which 

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

There may be an allusion here to Paul’s statement in the great 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians on the resurrection of the body that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God.” The idea of Paul is that the human body must undergo a renovation to participate in the life to come. 

Here, Eliot speaks of something which protects human flesh from experiencing a too real world. In making this world too real (I am borrowing from the language of the first stanza), it seems we are in a Platonic realm with this world of ideas and forms is more real than the physical world. Lewis plays on this idea in The Great Divorce. 

Continuing to work backward from this protection

Yet the enchainment of past and future

Woven in the weakness of the changing body,

Protects mankind from heaven and damnation

Which flesh cannot endure.

The present, which is neither the past nor the future is “enchained” (a fascinating word here) and “woven” in the human body. Notice how he describes the human body, it is “changing.” I believe this must be a reference to the fact that the present is constantly new as this still point between the past and future changes. 

It is a quite literal statement that our human body can be nowhere but in the present. I must admit that I am not certain as to what is the reference to “heaven and damnation.” I suspect this is a merism for the entirety of Platonic reality. We cannot move outside the present and thus the powerful currents around us cannot touch us here. 

The movement in the first section to the phantoms would be a movement into this Platonic realm.

And this leads to a question: is this still place something which is there, something which is there and we do not notice it, or is it a place to which we must enter? Is it a psychological relationship to this place?

The beginning of this line of thought reads

The inner freedom from the practical desire,

The release from action and suffering, release from the inner

And the outer compulsion,

This reads very much like a Buddhist idea of enlightenment and being freed from an illusory relationship to “reality” – which is really an illusion. As such we are discussing a psychological/spiritual relationship which is the result of a different understanding of such things. 

But the poem complicates this conception with a contrast, “yet”

                        yet surrounded

By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,

Erhebung without motion, concentration

Without elimination, both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

It is not just the state of detachment, he adds here “a grace of sense.” This is quite different than the dissolution of the “I”. He is moving into something perhaps more similar to a Christian Platonism where eternity is an eternal now. (And at this point, perhaps he has Boethius in mind). Quoting the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy:

In Boethius, the contrast is between timeless eternity, which only God enjoys, and everlastingness, which (following Plato) the world itself possesses.

It is the common judgement, then, of all creatures that live by reason that God is eternal. So let us consider the nature of eternity, for this will make clear to us both the nature of God and his manner of knowing. Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time.

…for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. (Boethius Consolation, V.VI., transl. V. E. Watts 1969)

Boethius uses his view of eternity to address the problem of divine foreknowledge (see section 6.2). If God knows beforehand what we will do then how can we act freely? His answer is that this problem dissolves in the face of the fact that God does not know anything beforehand but has an immediate, atemporal knowledge of all things. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/

I think this conception answers more nearly to Eliot’s thought at this point. It is as if one has moved into a realization where everything is frozen in an eternal now. Scenes in a movie where there is an explosion and than a freeze frame where the character looks around and see the matter in motion perfectly still might be a good idea here.

If so, then this is a realization of what is already there. It has just been lost. Our enchainment to the present protects us in a movement from seeing the eternity about it – and eternity as a place of heaven and hell.

Erhebung without motion

The precise meaing of the German here is beyond me because the word refers to a movement up so it could be an uprising or a physical rising or a metaphorical use of the conception.  There is a rising without a motion. 

both a new world

And the old made explicit, understood

In the completion of its partial ecstasy,

The resolution of its partial horror.

The old and new worlds could be past and future, or perhaps mundane and Platonic. Our relationship to them is “understood.” And that understanding is both an ecstasy and a horror, which would return us to the idea that reality is simply something which we cannot bear. Hence we are protected from the full experience of this place. 

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton II.b

12 Sunday Sep 2021

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The previous post on this poem may be found here.

Parmenides.jpg
Parmenides

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

This strikes as quite similar to Parmenides’ denial of motion. In his poem, at fragment 8, beginning at line 26 we read:

But motionless within the limits of great bonds,
it is without a beginning and without an end, since the birth and death
were rejected very far, a real certainty expelled them.

It would be possible to translate the language a bit differently. For instance, it could be “birth and destruction.” The language of “real certainty” is a combination of “truth” and “trust” (or faith or belief). A fundamental difference between Parmenides is that the philosopher seems to hold that all things are without motion. Eliot, on the other hand, seems to be describing a particular place:

At the still point of the turning world.

The world turns, but in the midst of that moving world is a place without motion. This space seems to answer a question which arises with the consideration of the world of the forest floor somehow being replicated in the sky, Where is the place of connection. How does one world touch the other?

                        Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.

And 

                        Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

This center point is a place where opposites have come together:  it not movement from or towards. It is not a place of past or future. There is no “way up” or “way down” (to use the language of motto for the poem). 

It is a place without place: 

I cannot say where.

It is a place without time 

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

Notice the opposites which do not exist here:

There is no being:

Neither flesh nor fleshless;

There is physical distance:

Neither from nor towards; 

….

Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.

There is no movement or stillness:

But neither arrest nor movement. 

There is no time:

And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. 

…

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, Part II.a

23 Monday Aug 2021

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We come to the second division of the poem. The first 15 lines which comprise a stanza and certainly must be understood together read:

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud

Clot the bedded axle-tree.

The mud thrown-up by the wagon as it plunges along spray up, unto the axle and would “clot” it. That makes plain sense. Yet is not the mud which is send to clot the wagon but the “garlic and sapphires.” This is a striking and strange phrase. Why would there be garlic or sapphires in the mud. Certainly one wouldn’t leave them there – certainly not sapphires. And then to have them merely muck thrown-up to the underside of a wagon. The world is certainly mixed up. But to what end is not apparent in these lines.

The trilling wire in the blood

Sings below inveterate scars

Appeasing long forgotten wars.

The precise nature of the “trilling wire” is not exactly clear. I certainly don’t think he intends any precise physiology on this point. Then what do we have: I take this as something similar to Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” or perhaps Thomas’ “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” It is some sort of live force that runs through all things. I think he means some sort of force in all living things (even all moving things) and more than just human life. 

The “scars” above the blood here will become stars above all the rest. The combination of scars and wars works well: The war brought about the scar. The scar will never be removed, it is “inveterate”. And this life at work even beneath the scars of war appease the wars. But how so appease? To appease is to bring to rest some anger. There is a life which runs through and under even wars

Eliot writing after WWI and written during at least the first part of WW2 would not have a dim idea of war. But here the wars are “long-forgotten.” In saying this, he seems to be moving in a dim history. He is not speaking of his own life, but something of life. There is a history written in the life and in the scars. This present is not sharply marked-off from the past. The present bears the scars of the long forgotten wars and the same life sings beneath.

The dance along the artery

The circulation of the lymph

Are figured in the drift of stars

Ascend to summer in the tree

The distinctions between the life of his body and the life of nature also become lost. The life in his body is the life of the movement of the stars. The parts are mysteriously linked together. My pulse is tied up with the movement of stars (and visa-versa). 

The effect is quite pagan, where gods become animals or have human lovers and humans have half-god children and humans may find themselves transformed into something quite different. (For a less poetic and more philosophical consideration, see Peter Jones, The Other Worldview)

What is important here for the overall theme of the poem is that it is not just time as an abstraction, but the all things which are bound up together in this moment which is present. 

Next, it is the movement above and below which are reconciled and coordinated. The sky above and the mud below:

We move above the moving tree

In light upon the figured leaf

And hear upon the sodden floor

Below, the boarhound and the boar

Pursue their pattern as before

But reconciled among the stars.

The chase of animals on the ground is the chase of animals in the stars. The music of the spheres is transported to what we “hear upon the sodden floor.”

But there is something else here than bare correlation of opposites or even all things are one: The verb “reconciled” is interesting. What is reconciled? Most directly the chase of the boar and the boarhound. Their conflict and fight is “reconciled” above. 

This moves us in a somewhat different mood than bare pagan all is one and inter-vesting each the other. The conflict upon the earth is not merely reflected in the heaven, it is reconciled. This introduces a Christian tone which moves beyond Greek or Norse mythology. Everything is telling one story, but there is a way to understand this story, if you will, in a higher key.

Johann Christof Merck, 1705

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.6 (Phantoms Dancing)

18 Wednesday Aug 2021

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Having come through the door we meet the “them” promised by the thrush. Here is what was lurking in the poet’s “first world”

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

The inhabitants are described as follows:

Dignified. That is a curious word to begin. We could just dismiss this as Eliot being proper. But something more seems here. Something which is unreal could easily be ridiculous: but there is an honor here of sorts.

Invisible: How then are known? Imagination. They cannot be remembered, because this is the world which has never been. And so we enter into the imaginary world somehow shared (whether Eliot with someone else, or perhaps with us the reader is unclear). 

Moving: The idea of moving is coupled with the “unheard music” compels me to think of a dance. These phantoms (I don’t think “ghost” or “spirit” is right) are dancing over “dead leaves” but they break nothing. They “mov[e] without pressure.” 

I’m not sure what to do with the “autumn heat” beyond notice that the whole has the feel of being stifling. There are phantoms, but nothing is stirring. It is hot, but there is no breeze. When this is coupled with the language from earlier about unstirred dust on rose leaves, there is a feeling of an utterly closed-up world. 

This was a choice Eliot has made: while this old, closed up world is one way to imagine the never-has-been past, it is also the case that he could have produced a chaotic and vibrant never-have-been. This was a choice. 

Notice the environment: the air is “vibrant” but like the dancers without pressure, the vibration is of a music which is not heard. Everything is it seems potential: this is what could have been: dancing, music. But not there.

The bird is here: it is the guide into this imaginary space. The bird calls to the unheard music: it is in the shrubbery, it is off-camera, coming from some place ou cannot see. 

The eyebeam crossed: This is an idea as far back as Plato in Timeaus who explained that the fire made within us can cross through the eye and shine upon things to give sight:

“And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according to which they were inserted was as follows: So much of fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element. When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul, causing that perception which we call sight.”

The idea had various uses in science and art thereafter. Eliot certainly was not proposing this as a real effect (no one believed such in the 20th century). So why then this reference here?

Eliot was influenced by the metaphysical poet John Donne (if you are interested, here is a paper on the topic, https://www.academia.edu/38522764/The_Poetry_of_John_Donne_T_S_Eliot_as_Critic_and_Poet) and perhaps these lines from Donne’s poem the Extasie were alluded to by Eliot

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thred

Our eyes, upon one double string;

If there is allusion to regret and love in the poem, then the reference to Donne would be appropriate and ironic.

Next comes a line which has always delighted me:

                                                for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at

This speculative space of what has never been is inhabited and it effects and affects. The eyebeams of the phantoms (?) have seen the roses – which calls back to rose leaves above. The roses disclose the presence of the lovers seeing one-another. The roses evidence the crossed gazed. The reality of this love played out in the unseen world.

And finally:

There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.

This raises a question: Is this imaginary space the poet’s own life? Are these true third parties. Or is this some alternative to himself: this is me if the world had been different?

And how then are they here as guests? They are not recriminating: accepted and accepting. 

He never quite defines these phantoms. I think they must be poet and someone else (again a lover, the reader, is this written to a particular person and we are overhearing?) are the ones at issue. The “they” is not someone else but rather a who Eliot could have been.

The reference to the “eyebeams crossed” makes this intimacy a moment of lovers. And the prove of their presence is shown in the roses. 

And for a moment, there is peace. We are permitted in; and we are at peace with this other self.

In the next movement, this equipoise will be dissolved.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.5

12 Thursday Aug 2021

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            Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,

Round the corner. Through the first gate,  (20)

Into our first world, shall we follow 

The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

To put these lines into their context, here are the lines already considered. I have also added an underscore to the word “echo”.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable. (5)
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (10)
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.                                   (15)
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate, (20)
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.

Looking back we can a major shift in line 11 with the first “echo”. The first ten lines are philosophical and distant. But at line 11 we enter into some sort of memory and that memory is an “echo”. The echo is of “footfalls” and so of some movement which never happened (down the passage which we did not take). At line 15 there is a bit of a pause, should we follow after this memory?

Then in middle of line 17, someone else intrudes and pulls the “we” toward the door which was never opened. Here there are “other echoes”. We will meet these phantoms in a bit, but here are just sounds. 

So why this word “echo”. It is not a sound but the echo of the sound; it is not the original but the copy. By using the word “echo”, Eliot increases the dream quality. Also, these sounds are “echoes” because the original happened (or did not happen) in the past, but they are being experienced in the present. 

We also learn what is on the otherside of the door which was never opened, “the garden.” 

Raising the image of a “garden” holds all sorts of allusions, particularly in the hands of someone like Eliot. There is archetypal garden of Eden. There are also all of the wall, specially kept places as gardens. 

Here the garden is “an abstraction” and a “perpetual possibility” which exists “only in a world of speculation.” To enter through this door in the memory is to enter into this “world of speculation.” 

The image of the rose-leaves now comes into focus for we know where the roses came from: the garden in this memory. 

But how could there be “other echoes” in this space? If the first echoes were the hurried steps to the door, who is on the other side of this door. But the “reality” (if you will) of the echoes beckon: 

He then turns to the reader (?) “Shall we follow?” We could be overhearing his conversation with someone, or we could be the one spoken to: This would mean that in reading the poem, you are being addressed in the lines, “My words echo/Thus, in your mind.”  And even if the poem is addressed to a particular “you” and “we”, the fact remains that the reader of the poem is the one who is following down the path toward the garden.

There is something quite mythical about a speaking bird leading one toward a garden. I feel there must be a particular allusion here, but I do not know what it is. It might be an allusion to the Norse god of poetry, Bragi. Whatever the allusion, the image is charming. 

This bird calls “us” on quickly, and now we are hurrying down the pathway through the door, through the gate.

In lines 20-22 we have the word “first” used three times: It is the “first gate” and then twice “our first world.” When we couple this with the “garden” we have our first world is the garden: this points toward Eden – at least some pre-Fall world.

Now, Eliot will not actually place in the primeval garden, but there is a deliberate prelapsarian element: The fall may not be the fall of all humanity, but rather a much more personal “fall”. This is “our first world.”

Shall you (the reader, someone in particular to Eliot) and I (Eliot) open this gate in the memory and proceed to the world which didn’t happen and yet is this real to us?

There is one more point to consider, “The deception of the thrush.” What precisely is the thrush’s deception? That there is this “first world”? That we can enter it?  If I am being called into something which is abstraction and possibility, is the call to consider that at all a deception? 

Is it a deception to consider a world which never happened as a reality now?

And as we know from the first lines: this world which did not happen “point[s] to one end, which is always present.” This first world which did not happen brought about this present: a present where I am being deceived to enter a the garden of our first world.

It is fascinating because it allusive and difficult, but not muddled. He is describing something which cannot easily articulated: it is the vision out of the corner of your eye, the thought which startles and then slips away before you can focus. It is real and a deception; present and only a speculation.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.4

10 Tuesday Aug 2021

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The previous post on the poem Burnt Norton may be found here

                        My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

                              But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

It is a path “we did not take”. My words echo in your mind. We are entering into a profoundly private space, a space of shared memory such that as the poet thinks, he sees the memory as a shared space.

Then we come to the word “But.” We are entering into this shared memory. We have come to the door which was never opened at the end of the path which we never took. And as he is standing at the door, he stops short: Why am I doing this?

It is interesting that here the metaphor changes from a door at the end of a pathway to a bowl of rose-leaves so long undisturbed they are covered in dust. To open this memory is to open a door, but it is also to trouble something which has long been a peace.

The movement from a door – which is outside – to a bowl rose-leaves – which is inside makes for a dreamlike movement: it is a shift from one place to another, from one scene to another which have some sort of association which is not clear to one from the outside. 

A pathway and a door have a certain usefulness and sturdiness which is completely absent from a bowl of rose-leaves. Someone has carefully placed the leaves in a bowl. They have grown dry and are so brittle that to touch them is to break them. 

Photo courtesy of Atves

The image of the bowl of rose-leaves strikes me as something we would find in a house which has long been unoccupied, or at least a room so.  If the door opens to a space we never entered, then the rose leaves are in a room to which we never returned.

And so he asks, Why? To what purpose am I disturbing this memory? I do not know.

When come to these memories, seemingly of regret: something undone, some place unvisited, what compels to visit them? The delicacy of the memory and the imagery together with the intimacy of the place seem to indicate a romantic regret so long undisturbed. 

Since Eliot will not answer the question plainly, we are left with the question for ourselves: Why would, why does one disturb the memory, the speculation of what did not happen? Is it, If I had done that differently, I would be happier now?

He is also trying to awaken this memory in the other: My words in your memory are disturbing the dust. 

The next movement in the poem is to advance into this “deception”, a land with “unheard music”, and phantoms that walk upon dead leaves “without pressure.”

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton.3

23 Friday Jul 2021

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Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened 

Into the rose-garden.

I, lines 11-14.

Having raised the question of “what might have been” (from line 6), Eliot takes us into that “might have been”. In these lines he traces out how we get from “the present.” 

Since we are traveling there, his description of this place here takes on a new depth of meaning. In line 7, it is an “abstraction”; thus it has some substance as an idea. In line 8, it is remaining and “a perpetual possibility.” At first read, it is easy to take “remaining a perpetual possibility” to be 

Thus, there is a reality to the “might have been.”

Here, beginning in line 11, there is a movement from the present to this “abstraction” which is remaining perpetually. 

We can confirm this is the event which did not happen in verse 12, “Down the passage which we did not take.” This is the thing which did not happen.

The passage creates a hurried movement: It begins with “footfalls echo”. There is a sense of someone walking, but only as heard. That would intimate the walking is taking place nearby but out of sight. 

That place is then defined as “Down the passage”. Next comes “towards the door”. The use of “towards” rather than near, creates the sense of movement. 

The door opens onto a rose-garden. 

The speed is created by the inability to ever see who is walking. We hear the sound and move to the passage. But when we get to the passage, the sound is now moving toward the door. And as soon as we recognize the door, it has opened onto a rose garden. The effect is mesmerizing. 

The place of all of this is the memory: There was a place we did not go, a door we did not open, a garden we had not visited. 

This then makes for a bit of a paradox: If it is a memory it is something which did not happen. But, this never happened. Memory could be, “I remember seeing a passage I did not take.” But the memory cannot hear footfalls which never echoed. 

This would then, (1) this is a memory of a constructed event. There is a place which he has returned more than once: he thought of what would have happened had he opened the door to the rose garden. He is now remembering his “speculation.” (2) 
“Memory” is a trick: he is experiencing this construction as if it were a memory. By constructing what never happened, he is pretending that it did happen in fact. 

                        My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

The plot becomes stranger: The footfalls which echoed are now the words which echo – not in my memory, but your mind. We have now entered into an extraordinarily intimate space: His memory of this door never opened are words – were these words never spoken? Are these words now being spoken? Was there an event which did not happen and of which they both spoke?

Does this mean, “You remember our conversation, when I told you of how I did not go into the rose garden?” For the poet, the memory is of the walking through the door. For “you” (whoever that might be), it is my words about that.

It is unclear what words are issue: Is the poems the words which now echo in memory, but stirring up memory?

Whatever is happening, the rather abstraction discussion of time in the first lines has moved the most intimate of spaces, a shared memory of what did not happen. 

Since this memory of not happening is being rehearsed, it seems to anticipate a regret. 

Burnt Norton.2 (“a perpetual possibility”)

18 Sunday Jul 2021

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Burnt Norton.2

The Persistence of Memory, Dali, 1931

The prior post on this poem is found here

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation. 

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present.

Prosody

It appears he is structuring the lines around beat and alliteration. I may be off here, but there is not a regular meter like iambs. The basic line seems to be built off the Old English alliterative four beat line.

TIME PREsent and TIME PAST

Four beats, the T and P repeated

are both PERhaps PREsent in TIME FUTure

The T and F from the first line as well as the P.

This scheme is not cared with perfect fidelity to the alliteration. For instance line 8:

ONly in WORLD of SPECulAtion. 

We can get four accents but no alliteration in the line. It would be possible to read this instead as a third beat line. 

Notes:

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation. 

“What might have been” is the item under consideration. He then defines it by three characteristics:

First, it is an “abstraction”. It is an abstraction in both senses: It is abstracted,that is set apart from all else It has no connection with the tangible world. Second, it is an idea without tangible substance. 

Second, it remains always and only a “possibility.” It had an opportunity to have come into existence, but it did not. It never matures from that place. 

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Third, it remains in “a world of speculation.” Access to this “might have been” is available only through speculative thought. It has a real existence, but only as a speculation. I can gain access to this “might have been” by thinking it; but it never moves from that space.

What might have been and what has been 

Point to one end, which is always present.

This takes some consideration: Why the addition of “might have been” to what has been? Here he says that might have been and what has been point together to this one point: the present. 

The actual past makes sense as pushing a direction to the present. But how does the might of have been participate in this? 

Since there is an abstract, speculative existence for might have been, we can’t say that it has no existence; only, no tangible existence. 

He is going to develop this “might have been” more as the poem develops, but let’s consider here what it could be. The “might have been” while not have a historical effect outside of my thinking has a profound effect upon me.

Might have been can be the source of enormous regret and loss. But it can also be a ground for thankfulness on tragedy avoided. The might have been is “remaining a perpetual possibility”. When we think of how a might have been actually effects us, that line “remaining a perpetual possibility” grows larger. I am constantly being affected by this perpetual possibility. It is always there.

And this potential acting upon me, and all that has actually occurred have conspired and I am here at this one point, in the present. 

Edward Taylor, Meditation 35.5

14 Wednesday Jul 2021

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Stanza Seven

But oh! Thy wisdom, Lord! Thy grace! Thy Praise!

Open mine eyes to see the same aright.

Take off their film, my sins, and let the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

Stanza Eight

Lord, clear my sight: thy glory then out dart:

And let thy rays beam glory in mine eye

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Summary: These last two stanzas should be taken together. They amount to first a praise to God for his wisdom (in providence). Second a prayer for sight. Third, a prayer for communion with Christ. Rather than examine these elements by stanza, it would be clearer to look consider them by them.

Notes:

Praise of God

But oh! Thy wisdom, Lord! Thy grace! Thy Praise!

The praise of God’s wisdom and grace and frequent in the Bible. But perhaps the most pertinent allusion in these lines comes at the end of Romans 11. In chapters 9-11, Paul has been unpacking the doctrine of election and speaking of the manner in which God so orders the history of humanity as to give display of both his mercy and his judgment.

The poet’s meditation has been sparked on the mystery of being chosen by God:

Lord am I thine? Art thou, Lord, mine? So rich!

How doth thy wealthy bliss branch out thy sweets

Through all things present?

Accordingly, Paul’s spontaneous outburst of praise for God’s mercy in salvation seems particularly relevant here: 

Romans 11:32–36 (AV) 

32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 

33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! 34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? 35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. 

Petition, Open my eyes:

Open mine eyes to see the same aright.

Take off their film, my sins, and let the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

Lord, clear my sight: thy glory then out dart:

And let thy rays beam glory in mine eye

We can segregate the petitions as follows:

First, “Open my eyes to see the same aright”. The “same” is the wisdom of God. This is a prayer to be able to see the wisdom of God in its working out of providence. 

This prayer to open my eyes likewise comes in connection with Paul’s understanding of the providence as shown in election, In Ephesians 1, Paul, having spoken of the manner in which believers having been “chosen in [Christ] before the foundations of the world” (Eph. 1:4) Paul launches into a prayer which contains the language of eyes being opened to see the providence of God:

Ephesians 1:15–19 (AV)

15 Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, 16 Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; 17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Second, there is a prayer to remove the hinderances to his sight: “Take off their [my eyes] film, their sin.” This is paralleled by “Lord, clear my sight.”

This prayer concerns what in technical parlance is called “noetic effects of sin.” This has to do with the manner in which sin distorts our understanding of the world. A full explication of the doctrine would overwhelm a post. To put it in a summary fashion (based upon Romans 1), sin affects my ability to know/understand; it affects my desires, emotions, and affections; in short it makes me incapable of knowing of what is good and evil, right and wrong. To have a debased mind is to have a mind which cannot probably evaluate anything. 

Taylor’s prayer is based upon a close reading of Romans 12:1-2. He is praying for a mind which is conformed to the right understanding provided by God.

Romans 12:1–2 (AV) 

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The reprobate mind of Romans 1:28 is to be the mind which is “able to prove” in Romans 12:2. It is not as clear in English, but the Greek of Romans 1:28 is a mind which is not capable of making judgment. The Spirit transforms the mind to make it capable of making correct judgment.

Taylor’s prayer is that his mind is becomes capable of rightly evaluating the work of God.

If sin did not occlude his sight, he would see 

                        the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

The beauty of God is always apparent; it is always showing in the world. The trouble is that we do not rightly see God’s glory. Taylor prays that God would strip the sin from his life so that he could rightly see God.

Second petition

The first petition is object: remove the impediments from my sight. The second petition is subjective: make me receptive to that vision:

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Think of it like this: Imagine a blind man in an art museum. At first, he would be unable to see anything. He would first need vision to see anything at all. But if he were to see, he would need to see with judgment. 

An artist does not paint with the hope that none will see or understand. His hope is to affect someone. 

Yet with God the hope is that His artist will transform us: Taylor prays not merely that he will rightly see God’s providence, but that it will “stick upon my heart.” May I see and be transformed: not merely for a moment, but may the transformation be permanent.  (I can’t find my copy of Rilke at this moment, but I remember a line – I believe it is from a poem on seeing a bust of Apollo, ‘you shall be changed’)

The prayer is that his heart be transformed. 

The third petition

There is a third petition which fits as subsection of the second: he prays not merely that he be capable of being affected by the sight of God but that there be a complete union. The language in this concluding petition is language which sounds, frankly, odd in our Modern way of speaking about salvation: Jesus is thought as a ticket to “Heaven” [the Eddie Money song, Two Tickets to Paradise, comes to mind], but that is not at all the way Taylor is conceiving of the matter: the idea is not that I, as I am at present will go to Heaven, but that I will be radically transformed to be fit for heaven.

The language of marriage sounds “stark mad” to our ears, but I truly hits the point. Marriage requires a radical transformation of the individuals: we must become something different an “us” for marriage to be its intended end.  It exposes our selfishness and demands are transformation. How can one raise children and be a loving spouse without dying to self?

But faith requires and demands day-by-day a greater death to self: the good of our Lord supersedes our present hopes and plans. How then can we enact such a death to self? It is only by means of an abiding sight of the beauty for Christ and our desire for Christ’s glory? The language of eros which is the human parlance for loss of selfish ambition for the glory of another which will suffice:

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Edward Taylor, Meditation 35.4

03 Saturday Jul 2021

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Jonathan Edwards, Joy, Sanctification, Sanctifictation

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Stanza Six

Oh, that the sweets of all these windings, spout

Might, and these influences strait and cross

Upon my soul, to make thy shine break out

That Grace might in get and get out my dross!

My soul up locked then in this clod of dust

Would lock up in’t all heavenly joys most just.

Summary: While the expression become a bit tangled in places, this stanza is a prayer that God would work out all the contrary and difficult means of providence for God’s glory, the poet’s sanctification, and ultimate joy.

This is major theme of Christian theology and was a particular note among the Puritans: Trial, Sanctification, Joy.

aluminum dross processing machine - YouTube

Note

The principal allusion which stands behind this stanza seems to be 1 Peter:

1 Peter 1:3–9 (AV) 

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 

6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. 

The elements of this passage which appear in the stanza are as follows:

That Grace might in get and get out my dross

There are difficult and contrary aspects to life:

all these windings, spout

Might, and these influences strait and cross

Upon my soul, to make thy shine break out

Peter: ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations

The purpose of trials is sanctification:

That Grace might in get and get out my dross!

Peter: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

The particular image of God removing “dross” is found in 

Proverbs 25:4 (AV)

4 Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.

Isaiah 1:25 (AV) 

And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross.

The image of “dross” refers to the process of purifying melt. The “dross” is the impurity mixed with the ore.

This concept is a commonplace in Puritan theology: As Thomas Watson writes, “But how shall we attain to heart-purity?..[By] fire, Acts 2:3. Fire is of a purifying nature; it doth refine and cleanse metals; it separates the dross from the gold; the Spirit of God in the heart doth refine and sanctify it; it burns up the dross of sin.”

Thomas Watson: “The goldsmith loves his gold when it is in the furnace, and so does God love his children when he places them in the crucible of affliction; it is only to separate the dross, not to consume the gold. “Whom he loveth, he loveth to the end.”

The end is joy:

Oh, that the sweets of all

My soul up locked then in this clod of dust

Would lock up in’t all heavenly joys most just.

Jonathan Edwards, the son of Taylor’s fellow pastor, was to write in Religious Affections in a manner quite consistent with Taylor’s sixth stanza: God brings trial to bring about sanctification which ends in joy:

It has been abundantly found to be true in fact, by the experience of the Christian church; that Christ commonly gives, by his Spirit, the greatest, and most joyful evidences to his saints, of their sonship, in those effectual exercises of grace, under trials, which have been spoken of; as is manifest in the full assurance, and unspeakable joys of many of the martyrs. Agreeable to that, 1 Pet. 4:14: “If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory, and of God resteth upon you.” And that in Rom. 5:2–3: “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and glory in tribulations.” And agreeable to what the apostle Paul often declares of what he experienced in his trials. And when the apostle Peter, in my text, speaks of the “joy unspeakable, and full of glory,” which the Christians to whom he wrote, experienced; he has respect to what they found under persecution, as appears by the context. Christ’s thus manifesting himself, as the friend and Saviour of his saints, cleaving to him under trials, seems to have been represented of old, by his coming and manifesting himself, to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, in the furnace

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith and Harry S. Stout, Revised edition., vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 454.

Particular clauses:

Oh, that the sweets of all these windings: The sweet end of all the various trials, the “windings” of life.

Spout/Might, I will admit this phrase is obscure. I take it mean something like a waterspout, or a pouring out of something strong and, here, dangerous. But it is not clear to me.

these influences strait and cross

Upon my soul, Strait: narrow, difficult. Cross, painful, contrary.

to make thy shine break out: Here “shine” is a synonym for “glory” or light. Taylor uses the image of light frequently to refer to God.

That Grace might in get and get out my dross!: The prayer here is that the transformative grace of God would enter his soul expel the sinful dross, the impurity in his heart.

My soul up locked then in this clod of dust

Would lock up in’t all heavenly joys most just. 

He here transforms the Platonic/Neo-platonic idea of the body being a bare trap for the soul. The soul is in a clod of dust, for the body will die, and return to dust. But here something happens: into this body is locked-up heavenly joy.  The concept of heavenly joy being locked up also comes from the passage in 1 Peter quoted above: 4 “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 Who are kept by the power of God” The words “reserved” and “kept” are fairly strong terms in the Greek. In particular, the word “kept” has the idea of an actual military guard. These joys are indeed “lock up” safely.