(NOTE: The quotes below are from the Sacred Texts version of Charles Fort's New Lands. A rights-free copy of this text can be found at the link below:
Charles Fort's New Lands)
Before I begin this post, I'd like to tell the regular readers of this blog that, starting with today's post, I am going to work with a newer, more blog-like strategy.
From here on out, I'm going to do my best to do one post a day. This means that the blog posts will likely be smaller. But they will also come out with greater regularity. I know that the few readers I have are kind enough to check in every day. So I'd like you to have something to find when you do check in.
Also -- I find that, with writers I really love, such as Abraham Cowley (the subject of my last post) and Charles Fort (the subject of this post), I suffer from a syndrome a little bit similar to what the great photographer Diane Arbus has mentioned.
Arbus said that everywhere she went, everything she did, she felt like she had to memorize every image she saw. It finally got to a point where she was holding so many images in her head that she just had a nervous breakdown.
After Arbus had her nervous breakdown, she snapped out of that obsessive-compulsive mindset and let herself relax with her mental recording of imagery.
In my note-taking habits, I personally think of myself as a scribe rather than a reader. But -- you should see my notebook! -- for the Cowley essay, I seriously took 65 pages of notes! The darn poem cycle, including Cowley's notes, is only 110 pages long! But I wanted to write down every single image from Cowley that I thought was good.
So, while I still intend to be philosophical -- or, rather parasophical -- in my writings, and while I will definitely give you guys all copious quotes from the texts, when I read from rights-free texts, I also intend to give smaller, more frequent entries, and to be a little more relaxed with myself in my actual style of studying for these posts.
HOWEVER -- I would also like to say -- that if you guys would rather I kept doing things the way I'm doing them now, instead of changing, just drop me a line and let me know. I'd like this blog to be as enjoyable for you as possible.
That being said, let's get started with Charles Fort.
*****
Like I said in my previous text on Abraham Cowley, being an adult baby, I always keep an eye out in the things I read and the art I experience, for things relating to babyhood, infancy, or adult babyhood, to kind of stock up my imagination. And Charles Fort didn't disappoint!
In fact, the first part of New Lands ends with Fort's proposition that what we think of as the solar system -- or, actually, what we think of as the entire universe -- is really just a shell in which we are currently developing, as an embryo would develop inside of a womb.
We'll eventually spring forth from the womb. But before we do, we, and our scientific ideas, will continue to grow and change. And, as our ideas change, perhaps even the universe around us will change, as the body of an embryo develops into the body of a baby. Fort calls this idea "super-embryology," and he describes our existence at one point as a "super-uterine entombment." Fort says:
"That, if shelled away from external light and life, [our so-called solar system] is so surrounded and protected in the same cause and functioning as that of similarly encompassed forms subsidiary to it -- that our existence is super-embryonic."
And:
"That all organizations of thought must be baseless in themselves, and of course be not final, or they could not change, and must bear within themselves those elements that will, in time, destroy them -- that seeming solidities that pass away, in phantom-successions, are functionaries relatively to their periods, and express the passage from phase to phase of all things embryonic."
This idea struck me -- the sense that we're all little babies, even us adults, regardless of whether we think of ourselves as adult babies or just as regular, old adults. But what also struck me about what Fort said was its similarity to what I'd just finished reading in Cowley: the idea of a universe as a womb, in which are held the future years:
"There into the close Nests of Time dost peep,
And there with piercing Eye,
through the firm Shell, and the thick White dost spy,
Years to come a-forming lie,
Close in their sacred Secondine asleep,
'Till hatched by the Sun's vital Heat,
Which o'er them yet does brooding set,
Thy Life and Motion get,
And ripe at last, with vigorous Might,
Break through the Shell, and take their everlasting Flight."
Cowley's poetry is, of course, full of visceral and womb-like imagery. And it seems that one of Cowley's own personal fantasies -- shared with the fantasies of adult babies -- is to be re-born, to be back in the womb and re-born; although in Cowley, this desire for rebirth is also tempered with a desire for a complete bodily death, and a life in spirit only. But this seems to be the same development as Fort makes, though Fort expresses it in a less anthropomorphic, more cosmological way.
What's also interesting to me about this idea is that Fort, carrying the ideas of embryology outward into the cosmos, also claims that our developments are step by step, phase by phase, just like they are in the development of an animal embryo:
"The essential process of embryonic growth, by which the same protoplasmic substance responds differently and in different phases."
Now, I hate to make arguments by analogy with Fort, because his system seems to be so entirely his own that I don't want to intrude on it with stuff that he might personally think of as being too conventionally-based.
But it does seem to me that if, as Fort says, our ideas, just like our physical surroundings, are developing through a process similar to that of embryos, could we apply what we propose about embryology to what we might propose about our ideas and our physical surroundings?
The main idea I'm thinking of right now is the idea people have been saying for a long time now, really even since before the days of Charles Fort, that an embryo's development is a kind of tracing of the evolution of life on earth, all the way up to the point of the evolution of human beings. So, in other words, we begin as cells, develop into more complex beings, take on elements common to fish, then amphibians, etc., until we, as fetuses, develop our more specifically mammalian characteristics.
William S. Beck, whose book Modern Science and the Nature of Life I wrote a post on a few days ago, says that modern embryologists actually believe that the embryo doesn't develop characteristics of full-grown fish, frogs, etc., but that it develops the characteristics of embryological fish, frogs, etc. So that what we're seeing in the development of an embryo isn't the development of the history of life, but the development of the history of embryological life.
If we would be able to apply this same thought to Fort's thought that our universe is just some kind of super-uterus, in which we adults are all a bunch of adult babies, would it be possible to say that if we were to trace the history of our ideas, we would also be able to trace the embryological ideas -- not the full-grown ideas, but the fetal ideas -- of the existence that is external to this super-uterus?
I'll let that idea stew for a while. I don't have an answer to it. And I'm not sure if it's worth having an answer for, anyway.
Earlier on, Fort gives another illustration of his ideas that makes the adult baby in me happy. Fort implies that, in future generations, the idea of the speed of light will be taught to little children as something of a nursery rhyme, in the same way that nowadays children are taught the nursery rhyme of "Little Bo Peep."
Again, this puts the image in my head that right now, even those of us who think of ourselves as the adults of the adults, the scientists, are, in fact, nothing more than adult babies, reading nursery stories to themselves in the gigantic nurseries that peoople call laboratories, offices, and convention halls. Fort says:
"Sometimes I'm in a more sentimental mood. I think that the pretty story of the velocity of light, and its 'determination,' will some day be of legitimate service: be rhymed some day, and told to children, in future kindergartens, replacing the story of litte Bopeep, with the tale of a planet that lost its satellites and sometimes didn't know where to find them, but that good magicians came along and formultated them the indeterminable."
As you can probably tell from the quote above, Fort has a bone to pick with the scientific habit of "determination." Fort's attack on determination, interestingly, gives the first part of this book a strength of focus that Book of the Damned did not have.
If my dear readers are readers, in general, of the literature of psychic research, they'll know that one of the things that psychic researchers are always doing is trying to justify themselves to the scientific world. They do this in two ways -- first, by making incredibly stringent conditions for the experiments they conduct; and, second, by making the argument of the history of science itself.
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was the first organization to make such an effort at scientific restrictions on parapsychological experiments. Later on J.B. Rhine perfected the scientific methods of pyschical research at Duke University, into the card experiments we all know so well, thanks to that opening scene in Ghostbusters. After J.B. Rhine, Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff, and then Dean Radin, brought new technological methods into research, as well as expanding their researches into things like remote viewing.
The argument of all these researchers was that they had to prove their findings by putting the strictes of controls on them, so that nothing could get into the experiment that would convince the scientific world that the experiments weren't really proving the existence of psychic phenomena.
The only problem was -- the scientific community didn't, and, to a large extent, still doesn't, listen or care!
The second approach these scientists use, though, is the more humorous of these approaches. Psychic researchers always try to show that the history of science is filled with great minds who have tried to prove to the world that something about the universe is true, which the conventional thinkers of their time thought was false. But, the psychical researchers claim, through the exactitude of their calculations and the continued belief in their findings, they eventually convince the world.
The argument, in this case, would be that the world of psychic research would do the same thing. So, if scientists would just pay attention to the history of science and be smart, they'd accept the copious findings of psychic research right now.
The only problem is -- the scientific community, to a large extent, doesn't care!
Nevertheless, since the days of the SPR, psychic researchers have been trying to convince scientists of the validity of their findings by using scientific methods as a basis. And they've been ignored.
Fort's argument, after, mind you, much of his own rigorous, personal research, was that science wasn't as exact as it liked to pretend to be, and that most of science's findings were accidental -- the result either of dumb luck, or of having their senses in the right place at the right time. Fort says:
"That there is no such mathematics, in the face of any number of learned treatises, is far more strikingly betrayed by those shining little misfortunes, the satellites of Jupiter. Satellite after satellite was discovered, by accident or by observation, and not once by calcluation."
Fort has a particularly dull axe to grind with the astronomers, who, Fort claims, are the most pompous of all the scientists, a group of people who employ, as far as the laymen know, the laws of the Infinitesimal Calculus, of Kepler's Laws, and the more modern mathematics that have led to the Theory of Relativity, the most abstract of mathematics, to understand the most distant of objects. They seem think of themselves, Fort says, as an intellectual aristocracy.
Fort does, in fact, give an account of one astronomer who thought of his colleagues in this way. Fort says:
"There never has been an astronomic discovery other than the observational or the accidental."
And:
"As to astronomers who calculate positions of planets -- of whom he was one -- Newcomb, in Reminiscences of an Astronomer, says -- 'The men who have done it are therefore, in intellect, the select few of the human race -- an aristocracy above all others in the scale of being.'"
It seems to me that the attempts of psychic researchers to meet on common ground with people who, in physics or astronomy or what have you, will think of themselves as "above all others," are really fruitless efforts.
Fort seems to believe that the goal of someone who is trying to bring a new understanding of the universe can't act with the ideology of the scientist, but must act using the tools which have really furthered science to begin with -- accident and observation.
Except that Fort, having done a lot of looking into the exploits of the scientists, found that they weren't very exact in their measurements, after all. The deductive systems that the scientists formulated, Fort argues, haven't discovered anything, or made any occurrences in the universe very exactly predictable at all.
Fort gives example after example of this: meteor showers that never re-appeare; comets that were calculated to be receding, then approaching, then receding, then approaching. Certain technology judges, Fort shows us, a celestial body as a star, then a nebula, then a star, then a nebula. Stars are found and lost. Fort even argues that both Uranus and Neptune were found by accident, then went down in the history books as having been found by very careful calculations.
However, the most delightful example I found of the incosistency of scientific calculations and technology, was the statement that one scientist made, getting himself in a lot of trouble afterwards, that one of the most revered books of astronomical formulation of his time was crammed full of glaring errors. Fort tells us the story of how one scientist, a Dr. Sadler, advised another scientist, a Dr. Williams:
"not to use the new edition of Smyth's Cycle, because... 'a more disgracefully inaccurate catalog of double stars had never been published.'
"'If,' says one astronomer to the other astronomer, 'you have a copy of this miserable production, sell it for waste paper. It is crammed with the most stupid errors.'"
This is in particular very interesting to me, after having read The Double Helix, by James D. Watson. There is a story in that book where Watson, having made a series of calculations about the structure of DNA, using a textbook of supposedly accepted, supposedly correct, biochemical data, was then told by a biochemist that the work, even though it was accepted everywhere, was full of errors, and that everybody in the know knew it was full of errors. So Waston's little story -- as well as his overall story -- seems to back up what Fort claims.
Fort shows us how Copernicus' theory of orbital and axial motions could only be based on three scientific methods, which weren't around in Copernicus' day: aberrations of light; parallax, and spectroscopy. Copernicus, it appears, based his theories on the idea that the earth must be spherical, because perfect bodies, like a water drop, are spherical. Copernicus then worked his theory forward from there.
But Fort also shows us that aberrations of light, parallax, and spectroscopy are themselves suject to various kinds of error. And, even if the calculations from these methods were always exact, they wouldn't exactly provde that our universe works according to the scientific conception of it:
"Astronomers now admit, or state, that the shift of spectral lines, which they say indicates that the earth moves around the sun, also indicates any other of three other circumstances, or sets of circumstances."
Fort argues that the calculations that have lead people to believe that our very solar system operates the way it does, are "elaborate structures that are pretensions without foundation."
And, in an argument, which I think is even more central to Fort's philosophy of inclusionism, as set apart from what Fort believes is the exclusivity of science, Fort says:
"Right at the heart of our opposition, and right at the heart of our own expressions, is the fatality that there is no reasoining, no logic, no explanation resembling the illusions in the vainglories of common suppositions. There is only the process of correlationg to, or organizing and systematizing around, something that is arbitrarily taken for a base, or a dominant doctrine, or a major premise -- the process of assimilating with something else, making agreement with something else, or interpreting in terms of something else, which supposed base is never itself final, but was originally an assimilation with still something else."
Fort believes that one of the great arguments of science, that the laws of astronomy and physics are in almost perfect agreement, is nothing more than "a tainted agreement between the physicists and the astronomers," and "the reekings of two consistent stenches." Fort further says, regarding the developments of astronomy and physics:
"Our expression is that these developments had their origin in conspiracy and prostitution, if one has a fancy for such accusations; or, if everybody else has been so agreeable, we think so more amiably ourselves, that it was all a matter of comfortably adjusing and being obliging all around."
Fort states that this conspiracy of scientific data has, at it's base, the maintenance of scientific profesionals' profits. He gives his definition of what he calls "the squirm":
"To lose all sense of decency and value of data, but to be agreeable; but to be like everybody else, and intend to turn our agreeableness to profit."
And, again, in disproving the findings of spectroscopic astronomy, Fort points out that the insistence on the infallibility of the spectroscope might also be profit-driven:
"The whole subject of spectroscopy in astronomy has been cast into rout and disgrace, of course only to ourselves, and not in the view of manufacturers of spectroscopes, for instance."
Fort insists that, really, the only way to understand the ideas of scientists is to be hypnotized into believing what they say.
"It is supposed that astronomic subjects and principles and methods cannot be understood by the layman. I think this myself. ... Of course they cannot be understood by the unhypnotized."
And, Fort claims, it is actually the scientists' intention not to be understood. This, Fort says, is the reason why the scientists have made such grand claims about the size of our universe, making things billions of miles away from each other, using calculations which, Fort believes, might just as easily be used to argue that things aren't more than thousands of miles away from each other.
"The meaning I read in the whole subject is that, in this Dark Age we're living in, not even such rudimentary matters as the shape of this earth have ever been investigated except now and then to support somebody's theory, because astronomers have instinctively preferred the remote and the not-so-easily understandable and the safe from external inquiry."
So, using these arguments against science, in order to grant himself a bit of independence, Fort gives us the first elements of his "Neo-Astronomy."
"This supposed solar system -- an egg-like organism that is shelled away from external light and life -- this central and stationary earth its nucleus -- around it is a revolving shell, in which the stars are pores, or functioning channels, through some of which spray irradiating formations said to be 'meteoritic,' but perhaps electric -- in which the nebulae are translucent patches, and in which the many dark parts are areas of opaque, structural substance -- and that the stars are not trillions nor even millions of miles away -- with proportional reductions of all internal distances, so that the planets are not millions, nor even hundreds of thousands of miles away."
Fort then gives us the description of the "super-embryonic" solar system which I gave at the beginning of this post. And having given that explanation, Fort now prepares us readers for the second part of this book, which are the actual phenomena observed by people throughout time, which Fort takes as evidence for our existence in this "super-uterine entombment."
"We have reached our catalogue of the sights and sounds to which all that we have so far considered is merely introductory. For them there are either no conventional explanations or poor insufficiencies half-heartedly offered. Our data are glimpses of an epoch that is approaching with far-away explosions. It is vibrating on its edges with the tread of distant space-armies. Already it has pictured in the sky visions that signify new excitements, even now lapping over into the affairs of a self-disgusted, played-out hermitage."
Showing posts with label Abraham Cowley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abraham Cowley. Show all posts
Friday, December 16, 2011
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Flood of Blood -- Cowley's Odes
(NOTE: The quotes in the text below are from the Harvard University Child Memorial Library Version of Abraham Cowley's collected poetry. A rights-free copy of this book is available for free download on Google Books.
However, I've also done a little text-changing in the quotes. I haven't changed any words or word order. However, I have taken out most of the archaic elision -- removed apostrophes that don't make sense anymore -- and modernized some of the spelling.
I did this mainly to make the job of translation easier. But if you guys would rather see the text unadulterated in the future, just drop me a line and let me know. Thank you for reading.)
Since I'm a part-time adult baby, and since I love adult baby stuff, I'm always trying to keep an eye out for stuff having to do with adult babies or babies, just to add to my imagination, my stock of fantasies.
And I'd forgotten, until I read Abraham Cowley's Pindaric Odes, that Hercules' infancy was incredible! Zeus, the greatest of Greek gods, fell in love with a mortal woman, Alcides, and made her pregnant with Hercules. Zeus' wife Hera was so jealous of Alcides that she tried to stop Hercules from even being born. She closed Alcides' womb! Thankfully one of Alcides servants, Galanthis, tricked Hera so that Hercules could be born.
For that assistance, Hera turned Galanthis into a ferret, I believe.
So now Hercules was born. Cowley, in the second poem of the Pindar cycle, already portrays Hercules as a powerful person. He's a baby, alright. But he's so strong, you'd think he was an adult, too! He's the perfect adult baby -- except that he's not wearing a pink, frilly dress:
"The big-limbed Babe in his huge Cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by Nurses' Hands,
Wrap't in Purple Swaddling-Bands."
But Hera still wanted to destroy Hercules, because he was a symbol of Zeus having had sex with another woman. So when Hercules was an infant, Hera sent two huge serpents into Hercules room to kill him.
In Cowley's version of the story, Hercules' nurses are frightened, some to death, others just into screaming like crazy. Because of the commotion, Hercules' mother awakens.
"All naked from her Bed the passionate Mother leapt
To save or perish with her Child,
She trembled, and she cry'd, the mighty infant smil'd.
This mighty Infant seem'd well pleas'd
At his gay gilded Foes."
And Hercules, even as an infant, is strong enough to strangle the two serpents, instead of the serpents strangling him!
In Cowley's story, after Hercules has strangled the infants, Hercules' father, Amphitryon, along with a company of his men, run into Hercules' nursery. The men see the snakes dead. Amphitryon is glad to see Hercules alive. But he also feels a little uneasy, having a boy of such great strength.
"With their drawn Swords
In ran Amphitryon and the Theban Lords.
With doubting Wonder, and with troubled Joy
They saw the Conquering Boy
Laugh and point downwards to his Prey,
Where in Death's Pangs, and their own Gore they folding lay."
Tiresias, however, sees the sight, and, as he would later foretell Oedipus' fall, foretells Hercules' greatness.
"He told with ease the things t'ensue,
From what Monsters he should free
The Earth, the Air, and the Sea.
What mighty Tyrants he should slay,
Greater Monsters far than they.
How much at Phlaegra's Field the distressed Gods should owe,
In their great Offspring here below,
And how his Club would there outdo
Apollo's Silver Bow, and his own Father's Thunder, too."
So Hercules, from the very beginning of his life, did things adults did, and better than many adults could have done them. He was a baby, but he was an adult. So he was like an adult baby.
But the story of Hercules is the story, really, of a boy who didn't really have a childhood. Hercules had to fight to be born. And once he was born he had to fight -- for himself -- to stay alive.
But Hercules was a half-god, so his fight was mystical. The Hercules passage takes place at the end of the second poem of the Pindar cycle. The story of the human who experienced pains from the moment of his birth, Oedipus, is lightly alluded to in the first poem of the cycle. All that's mentioned, however, is that:
"Vicissitudes which thy great Race pursue
E'er since the fatal Son his Father slew,
And did old Oracles fulfill
Of Gods that cannot lie, for they foretell but their own Will."
The story is picked back up with Iocaste, I believe, under the name of Erynnis, knowing that she'd had two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, by her own son, Oedipus.
"Erynnis saw it, and made in her own Seed
The innocent Parricide to bleed,
She slew his wrathful Sons with mutual Blows;"
Which I suppose means that she drew them into the conflict against each other that led to the first Theban War, in which both Polyneices and Eteocles killed each other. (In this version of the story, obviously, Iocaste didn't kill herself after discovering that she'd slept with her own son. Iocaste lives in a few versions of the Oedipus story, only killing herself after her sons have killed themselves.)
However, Cowley points out, the lineage of Oedipus improved from here. For Thersander, one of Polyneices' sons, was one of the fifty men who hid inside of the giant wooden horse that invaded the town of Troy.
So Hercules' childhood is mentioned as the troubled beginning to a toilsome life. And Oedipus is mentioned as a father-slayer whose sons murdered each other.
What's odd about this -- and Cowley even mentions it -- is that both of these stories are set into poems praising young men.
Cowley's cycle of Pindaric Odes is written in the style of the Ancient Greek poet Pindar, who flourished in the beginning of the 5th Century, B.C. Pindar's poems, even in his days, were known as free, loose, poems, with a power and whimsy of imagination almost akin to madness.
In the preface to the Pindar cycle, Cowley says that:
"If a Man should undertake to translate Pindar Word for Word, it would be thought that one Mad-Man had translated another."
Cowley's Pindar cycle is full of notes he wrote on the odes. And in one of his notes, following the poem "In Praise of Pindar":
"I term [Pindar's] Song Unnavigable, for it is able to drown any Head that is not strong built and well-ballasted. Horace in another Place calls it a "Fountain;" from the unexhausted Abundance of his Invention."
Cowley, as one can tell by his Mistress cycle, which I wrote a some posts about a couple months ago, himself has an abundance of invention. So it would only be natural that he'd admire another poet with such an abundance of invention as he had. Pindar would seem to be a natural model for Cowley.
Cowley, excited by Pindar's poetry, and assuming, correctly, that "his Way and Manner of Speaking has not been yet (that I know of) introduced into English," decided that he would take the chance to bring a volume of Pindaric Odes in English. Cowley says, "This Essay is just to try how it will look in an English Habit."
However, just to give his audience a taste of what Pindar's own poetry was like, Cowley decided to beging his Pindar cycle with translations of two of Pindar's Odes: his second "Olympique Ode," and his fifth "Nemean Ode."
Both of these Odes are to athletes, young noblemen engaged in two of the most prestigious sporting events of Ancient Greek times: the Olympic Games and the Nemean Games. These are poems to youth, nobility, and achievement. They are dedicated to strong, young men.
I got the feeling while reading the beginning of this cycle, that Cowley was seeking for an ideal of male strength and achievement. This didn't surprise me. Cowley's Mistress cycle was some kind of transsexual communion of souls, engaged in a process of integrating Cowley's feminine side into himself. But it ended with Cowley encountering his masculine side, in the forms of a Bright Shadow and a Dark Shadow.
The Mistress cycle seemed to have ended with Cowley having come to a castle to encounter his Dark Shadow -- what one might think of as his evil side. I had a feeling, as I finished the Mistress cycle, that Cowley's next work -- the Pindaric Odes cycle, would focus on Cowley's encounters with his Shadow figure, in particular his Dark Shadow.
To see Cowley having begun the cycle with two poems that Pindar dedicated to two young, strong, beautiful men, didn't surprise me -- although I'd assume that all the Olympic and Nemean Odes would be dedicated to young, strong, beautiful men.
It seems to me, though, that part of Cowley's attraction to Pindar, anyway, is due to the fact that Pindar wrote to men, and that Cowley was looking for poetry that would give him a sense of manliness, put him in touch with whatever he was looking for -- the Dark Shadow or Bright Shadow, or what have you.
Cowley, after all, was born after his father had died. He was taken care of by his mother, who cared very much for him, and saw to it that he had a good education. Even though Cowley's mother was, apparently, not well off, she made that Cowley got into Trinity College, Cambridge. From Trinity College, Cowley displayed his intellectual talents so well that he became a friend and indispensable help to many of the highest people at Court in England.
Cowley started serving, during the troubled times of England, as a letter-carrier and a spy, along with another English poet, Charles Denham. When the Civil Wars began, Charles I's wife, Queen Henrietta-Marie, was exiled to France. Cowley, as assistant to Henry, Lord Jermyn, went to France with Queen Henrietta-Marie, and acted as her official letter writer. During this time, Cowley wrote the Mistress and Pindar cycles, both within a couple years of each other.
The Mistress cycle seems almost like a communion between Cowley and the Queen. The Pindar cycle, however, seems like a quest that Cowley is taking on his own. Again, like in the Mistress cycle, Cowley seems unsure of what he's actually looking for. And I believe that in the two poems he starts from a very similar argument.
In the Mistress cycle, Cowley begins almost by taunting the God of Love, Cupid, to make Cowley fall in love. This taunting, it turns out, brings down a spiritual force on Cowley that Cowley had never been looking for.
However, Cowley, by working through that spiritual crisis, found himself having integrated the feminine side of himself -- which had been overwhelming him from his youth, since he'd had, possibly, an overly goal-oriented mother -- and which was especially overwhelming him, now that he was directly serving as the Queen's personal letter-writer.
But the real crux of that issue, it seemed to me, was that Cowley had been taunting Cupid, as a male figure, in order, hopefully, to get a male figure into his life. But what Cowley really wanted in his life was his father. I believe that, during the poem cycle, Cowley actually found his father. But that his father, being in the land of the dead, couldn't help Cowley. Cowley had to face the fact that he'd have to find his masculine side by looking within himself.
So Cowley dedicated an entire cycle of his poetry to Pindar, a male poet, as he had previously dedicated the previous cycle to a Mistress.
The first poems of the cycle, being rough translations of Pindar's poetry, are in praise of two young men who won athletic events. So now the search begins -- Cowley is in search of his masculine side.
But the two poems of Pindar, which, one might say, serve as a preface to the actual cycle, end with the story of Hercules having to defeat two snakes while he is still only a little baby! Hercules' mother can't defend Hercules, even though she runs to Hercules' crib while naked. And Amphitryon, Hercules' earthly father (Hercules' actual father was Zeus), doesn't even arrive until Hercules has defeated the snakes. And even then, Amphitryon seems a little jealous of Hercules' strength!
Cowley, in other words, sets out to find the youthful, strong male that Pindar's poems seem to praise. But as soon as Cowley is ready to start his own poems, he begins with the double-image of a father: one heavenly and invisible; and one earthly and ineffectual (even though Amphitryon was, otherwise, a man of great achievements himself).
But even before Cowley mentions Hercules and Oedipus, he mentions three other mythical figures: Ino, Semele, and Achilles. Ino fled from her husband after her husband has murdered his brother, having been deluded into thinking his brother was a beast. Ino drowned both herself and her son in a river.
But the goddess Thetis, taking pity on Ino, asked her father, Neptune, to give Ino and her son life again. Neptune did this, turning Ino into the water-goddess Lucothea, and her son into the god Palamon. Ino and Palamon lived with the water-Nymphs, the Nereides. Cowley says of them:
"So in the Crystal Palaces
Of the blue-eyed Nereides,
Ino her endless Youth does please,
And thanks her Fall into the Seas."
So Ino is now thankful that she has drowned herself and her son. Another birth from death is the story of Semele. Semele is another mortal whom Zeus has made pregnant. While Semele is pregnant, the jealous Hera convinces Semele to tell Zeus she wants to see him as he really is, as a god. Zeus reluctantly agrees. But when he shows himself in a flash of lightning, he burns Semele to death.
Semele was pregnant with the god Dionysos. And when Zeus saw Semele burnt and dead, he split open Semele's womb, pulled the unborn Dionysos out, placed the fetus into his own thigh, and carried Dionysos there until he was ready to be born.
In the notes following Cowley's own ode in praise of Pindar, Cowley mentions Semele and Dionysos again, this time in conjunction with the origin of dithyrambic poetry, another kind of poetry Pindar practised.
"There are none of Pindar's Dithyrambiques extant. Dithyrambiques [coming from the phrase "two doors"] were hymns made in Honor of Bacchus, who did come into the world through two Doors, his Mother Semele's Womb, and his Father Jupiter's Thigh. ... [The dithyramb] was a bold, free, enthusiastical kind of Poetry, as of Men inspired by Bacchus, that is half-Drunk, from whence came the Greek Proverb, 'You are as mad as a Dithyrambique Poet.'"
Which would lead one to believe -- if Cowley keeps emphasizing the madness of Pindar -- why he would be trying to use this poetry to search for some conventional image of balanced masculinity. But he is doing just that.
However, Cowley, while mentioning the topic of male-born Dionysos (which may have been something of a sexual fantasy for Cowley), focuses rather on the happiness that Semele experiences now that she is dead:
"Beauteous Semele does no less
Her cruel Midwife Thunder bless,
While sporting with the Gods on high,
She enjoys secure their Company,
Plays with the Lightnings as they fly,
Nor trembles at the bright Embraces of the Deity."
Looking back on these two stories, Cowley even reflects that: "Death did them future Dangers free."
Both of these stories, it's obvious, deal with a violent father, a mother who is so overwhelmed by this violence that she dies. The mother's son dies with the mother. And both the mother and the son are changed into gods.
This dynamic is altered a bit, as Cowley speaks again of Thetis. But this time, Cowley talks of Thetis in relation to her own son, the great warrior Achilles. Thetis, in order to make Achilles invulnerable to death, dipped the body of the infant Achilles into the waters of the Styx, the River of Death, three times. His whole body was made hard, except for his heel, by which Thetis was holding him.
Achilles was known for his quick anger as much as he was for his great fighting ability. And Cowley wonders how Achilles could have gotten into Heaven, with such a violent spirit. But, he reasons, if the Styx had hardened his body against physical faults, it must also be able to harden his soul against spiritual infirmities:
"Here great Achilles wrathful now no more
Since his blessed Mother (who before
Had tried it on his Body in vain)
Dipped now his Soul in the Stygian Lake,
Which did from thence a divine Hardness take,
That does from Passion and from Vice Invulnerable make."
So now we see that the dynamic has moved from a mother and son dying, then being revived and made into gods, to a mother, already immortal herself, making her dead son into an immortal being.
Interestingly, not long after this passage, Cowley mentions one of the most erotic stories in all of Greek mythology, Zeus' rape of Ganymede. But Cowley mentions this, not in the context of death, but in the context of Art versus Nature. All throughout the Pindar cycle, it seems to me, Art is masculine, a building on Nature, while Nature is feminine. But Art is always fighting a losing battle against Nature. In this sense, Art is compared to a grubbing Crow,
"Whilst Nature, like the sacred Bird of Jove,
Now bears loud Thunder, and anon with silent Joy
The beauteous Phrygian boy."
The beauteous Phrygian boy would, of course, be Ganymede. And Cowley, in his copious notes, gives a further explanation, which I love:
"The Poets feigned that the Eagle carried Jove's Thunder. ... They likewise feigned, that Jupiter falling in love with Ganymedes, the Son of Tros, a most beautiful Boy, carried him up to Heaven upon the Back of an Eagle, there to fill Nectar to him when he Feasted, and for a more ungodly use."
That "ungodly use" should, I really feel, be made into the subject of a hot poem.
However, the dynamic again changes. And this time, we see a Hercules, a young boy, like Dionysos and Achilles, born of a god (Dionysos of Zeus and Achilles of Thetis). But this time, the boy, in his cradle, being able to defend himself.
But what's come of this ability to defend himself? Nothing but a life of struggle -- a life of struggle that will end in death, at the end: Hercules, defending his wife from being raped by a Centaur, will be given a poisoned shirt, which, when he puts it on, will kill him. He will only then become a god.
What does it benefit Hercules to have had a father, not to have died with his mother, in other words? Dionysos and Palamon were directly made gods. And Achilles was really just a big diva who didn't get killed until an even bigger diva shot him in the foot. But Hercules had to fight his way all the way through his life.
And this, it turns out, ends up being the real question of Cowley's poem cycle: what, really, is the point of finding this male image to identify with? What's the point of struggling through life like all of these apparently great men have done?
Through Cowley's poem cycle, there are poems to Pindar, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the doctor Scarborough (a good friend of Cowley's), and the Roman warrior and statesman Brutus. As Cowley praises all of these men, one really gets the feeling that Cowley is attempting to connect with something in them.
But Cowley finds that he doesn't really sympathize with any of these men. His soul has been different from the very beginning of his life. For much of the poem cycle Cowley is searching in for some man to identify himself with, a man who matches the conventional ideal of masculinity, but with whom Cowley can also sympathize. But while he's going from man to man, he keeps on falling down into worlds of apocalyptic imagery.
Even while Cowley is praising the men, he's often likely to fall into these fits of apocalyptic or death-like imagery. Even as he praises the men, he often wonders what the good is of doing what these men have done, when we all die anyway, and when death is, often, preferable to life.
Thus Cowley, in praising Pindar (probably the most unsteady of all the men Cowley praises), speaks of the poems Pindar has written for men who have died young:
"In Words worth dying for he celebrates,
Such mournful, and such pleasing Words,
As Joy and his Mother's and his Mistress' Grief affords:
He bids him Live and Grow in Fame,
Among the Stars he sticks his Name:
The Grave can but the Dross of his devour,
So small is Death's, so great the Poet's Power."
A few poems later, Cowley, attempting again, in the vein of Pindar, to praise a man of his times, praises Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher who wrote the treatise Leviathan. Cowley praises Hobbes for the proportion, balance, and stability of his writing -- as if to counteract the imbalance of Pindar's poetry.
But even in this poem Cowley resorts to imagery of death, though he has to do it by mentioning the decay of another philosopher of well-proportioned, stable mind: Aristotle. Aristotle's philosophy has been decayed by the school-men, Cowley says. And now, without a new philosophy, we are like scavengers in a land of death:
"We break up Tombs with sacreligious Hands,
Old Rubbish we remove;
To walk in ruins, like vain Ghosts, we love,
And with fond Divining Wands,
We search among the Dead,
For Treasures buried,
Whilst still the Liberal Earth does hold
So many Virgin Mines of undiscovered Gold."
The next man that Cowley praises is Brutus. Brutus, Cowley feels, is a man at the zenith of what Cowley seems to have seen as the age of Reason. Brutus, one of the Assassins of Julius Caesar, died only a few years before Jesus Christ was born. The age that Christ ushered in, in Cowley's opinion, was the age of Grace. So in Cowley's philosophy, Brutus fits in thus:
"Excellent Brutus, of all human Race
The best, 'till Nature was improved by Grace,
'Till Men above themselves Faith raised more
Than Reason above Beasts before."
This verse, interestingly, is a movement away, in my opinion, from what had previously been a poem cycle steeped very heavily in Greek and Roman mythology. From this point forward, the images of the poems become more and more Hebraic, Biblical. And, at their even better points, the images become purely Paganistic -- purely Cowley!
But Brutus, though he is a man at the height of Reason, the full development, it would seem, of his successor, Thomas Hobbes, is also a man whose life is steeped in the blood of Assassination and War. True, the war and assassination are just, in Cowley's opinion. But Brutus is almost drowning in blood.
Brutus, it turns out, is so brave that Fate even has to launch a surprise attack on him in order to kill him. Fate is too afraid to face Brutus face-to-face!
But Fate did kill Brutus, and Cowley asks what the use was of life, of joy, even of Virtue:
"What Joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus by odd Events,
Ill Men, and wretched Accidents,
The best Cause and best Man that ever drew a Sword?"
And:
"What can we say but thine own Tragick Word,
That Virtue, which had worshipt been by thee,
As the most solid Good, and greatest Deity,
By this fatal Proof became
An Idol only, and a Name?"
But the poem ends with a full transition from the age of Reason to the age of Grace:
"The Time's set forth already which shall quell
Stiff REason, when it offers to rebel;
Which these great Secrets shall unseal,
And new Philosophies reveal.
A few years more, so soon hadst thou not dy'd,
Would have confounded Human Virtue's Pride,
And show'd thee a God crucified."
The final man Cowley praises in his Pindar is a contemporary of Cowley's, and a man who, when Cowley was falsely imprisoned during the Civil Wars, got Cowley out of prison. His name was Scarborough, and he was a medical doctor.
Cowley's poem praises Scarborough's skill in curing people of various diseases. These diseases develop from liquid diseases (gout and dropsy), to fevers, to, of all things, kidney stones, to venereal diseases. But the overall mood of the poem is far from the stability and reason of the praise of Hobbes, and even more obviously bloody than the poem to Brutus.
Scarborough lives in Britain during the Civil Wars. Britain is wracked by war, and Scarborough, Cowley says, is doing his best to keep the bloodiness of war from breeding epidemics and plaguing diseases. In the meantime, war is an epidemic of its own, and Britain is so soaked in blood that its spirit, Albion, or "the white," is stained red!
Scarborough is so good at his work. His fever patients are returned to health with bodies like purified gold. His kidney-stone patients feel like Moses has tapped their "rock" and allowed the water to flow again. And his venereal disease patients are nearly returned to virginity! But it is still obvious that Scarborough can only delay death, not stop it:
"Ah, learned Friend, it grieves me when I think
That thou with all thy Art must die
As well as I.
And all thy noble Reparations sink
Into the sure-wrought Mines of treacherous Mortality."
And:
"Let Nature, and let Art do what they please,
When all's done, Life is an incurable Disease."
But although it seems as if Cowley "grieves" to "think" of this death, it really isn't something that he's grieving for, but something he's actually looking forward to. The poems of the Pindar cycle imply this pretty well. But Cowley himself says it right out, in the collected edition of his works from 1656, which he, incidentally, was writing from his prison cell.
"The Reader shall know in what respects he may look at me as a Dead, or at least a dying Person, and upon my Muse in this Action, as appearing, like the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and assisting at her own Funeral."
And:
"For to make myself absolutely dead in a Poetical Capacity, my Resolution at present is never to exercise any more that Faculty."
And, in a hilariously bold passage:
"And this therefore is a kind of Death to the Muses, and a real literal quieting of this World: So, methinks, I may make a just Claim to the undoubted Privilege of Deceased Poets, which is to be read with more Favor, than the Living."
So death has become a fantasy for Cowley. And the real actions of the Pindar cycle aren't the discussions of the great men that Cowley tries so hard to praise. Really, the poem's interest is in Cowley's description of death, and of the glimpes that death gives Cowley into the spiritual world.
Yet this world of death is permeated with images of birth as well. Thus, in Cowley's first non-person themed poem, "The Resurrection," Cowley opens with a stanza to Virtue. The stanza speaks of
"Heaven's vital Seed cast on the Womb of Earth
To give the fruitful Year a Birth."
But also speaks of the ability of poetry to serve:
"The Midwife's Office, and the Nurse's, too."
But the next themed poem, to Cowley's "Muse," oddly enough, begins:
"Go, the rich Chariot instantly prepare;
The Queen, my Muse, will take the Air."
So that it certainly sounds like Cowley is saying the Queen (i.e. Queen Henrietta-Marie) is his Muse.
But it then gives a very interesting view into the womb of the "fruitful Year":
"There into the close Nests of Time dost peep,
And there with piercing Eye,
Through the firm Shell, and the thick White dost spy,
Years to come a-forming lie,
Close in their sacred Secondine [or placenta] asleep,
'Till hatched by the Sun's vital Heat,
Which o'er them yet does brooding set,
The Life and Motion get,
And ripe at last, with vigorous Might,
Break through the Shell, and take their everlasting Flight."
So, the womb of Time is visceral enough even to include a placenta! It's a strange mix, too, between egg and mammal's womb. And, then, the years burst right out of it! It sounds kind of gross.
But in the poem to "Destiny," Cowley again mentions midwives and birth. This time he mentions his own birth. And this time he speaks about how his umbilical cord is cut!
"Me from the Womb the Midwife Muse did take:
She cut my Navel, washed me, and mine Head
With her own Hands she fashioned."
In the ode to "Life," Cowley's final poem before the two magnificent apocalyptic poems which conclude his Pindar cycle, Cowley connects the womb and the tomb.
"From the Maternal Tomb
To the Grave's fruitful Womb,
We call here Life; but Life's a Name
That nothing here can truly claim."
So the tomb is maternal and the grave is fruitful. Cowley continues on this idea:
"When we by a foolish figure say,
Behold an old Man dead, then they [the Angels]
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a Man-child born."
By the way, "man-child" is basically the same thing as "adult baby."
Again, death is looked at as a birth, a kind of hatching from an egg, the shell of which has been a prison for the soul:
"The ripen'd Soul longs from his Prison to come,
But we would seal, and sew up, if we could, the Womb.
We seek to close and plaster up by Art
The Cracks and Breaches of the extended Shell,
And in that narrow Cell
Would rudely force to dwell,
The noble vigorous Bird already winged to part."
With this outlook on life and death, Cowley attempts, on a number of occasions through his poem, to part from his body and see the world from the viewpoint of the dead. His first attempt at this is in the ode to "Resurrection."
Cowley begins this poem with a praise of virtue. But this is incredibly orderly for a Pindaric ode, and Cowley feels that he must get at the truly wild spirit of Pindaric odes by setting the rhythmic music of virtue on its head. But he ends up finding himself right in the midst of Judgment Day!
"'Till all gentle Notes be drown'd
In the last Trumpet's dreadful Sound.
That to the Spheres themselves, shall Silence bring,
Untune the Universal String."
So, in the final trumpet call of Judgment, the music of the universe is "untuned."
Suddenly, Cowley sees the dead arise before him.
"This mightier Sound shall make
When Dead to arise,
And open Tombs, and open Eyes."
But the dead who arise before Cowley are already doomed to be judged for their sins by God:
"Unhappy most, like tortured Men,
Their Joints new set, to be new racked again.
To Mountains they for Shelter pray,
The Mountains shake, and run about no less confused than they."
It's Cowley's first attempt to move into the spirit world. But already he's plunged into a cataclysm! The world is so frightened that even the mountains are running away.
Cowley attributes this to his Muse, whom he believes he's given too much power, by giving her the freedom of Pindaric verse. The Muse is, interestingly, riding a horse, or, rather, a Pegasus, a winged horse.
So in the next poem, aptly titled, "The Muse," Cowley sets the Muse into a chariot. The chariot has a number of horses, all of which have different qualities of poetry and intellect, which should balance the Muse' power much better than one wild, winged horse. In this chariot, the Muse flies through a number of different spiritual scenes, including the scene described above, of the womb of Time.
With her power, Cowley's Muse can go to the bottom of the Sea, or the unconscious, a place where the sun, or conscious mind, cannot go:
"Where never yet did pry
The busy Morning's curious Eye,
The Wheels of thy bold Coach pass quick and free."
But Cowley's Muse can also bring treasures up from the Sea:
"Thou fathomest the deep Gulf of Ages past,
And canst pluck up with Ease
The Years which thou dost please,
Like shipwrecked Treasures by rude Tempests cast
Long since into the Sea,
Brought up again to Light and publick Use by thee."
In fact, Cowley, in one of his moments of bombastic brashness, even calls his Muse greater than God, since she has the power to create all kinds of previously unknown worlds:
"Whatever God did say,
Is all thy plain and smooth, uninterrupted Way.
Nay, even beyond his Works thy Voyages are known,
Thou hast thousand Worlds too of thine own.
Thou speakest, great Queen, in the same Style as he,
And a new world leapest forth, when thou sayest, Let it be."
Cowley seems in real balance with his Muse in ths poem. However, as is usual with Cowley, he doesn't seem to want to accept a relationship with his Muse.
And so he flies from the Muse and tries to form some kind of relationship with a stable, conventionally masculine man. He, therefore, moves through his poems in praises of Hobbes, Brutus, and Scarborough, before falling back on his non-human-themed odes.
But now he's back in a state of depression, and in his ode to "Life and Fame," he calls Life the younger brother of Nothingness, and the sense of Life nothing more than the reflected second rainbow made by a rainbow -- in other words, the illusion of illusion.
It is interesting to see, however, that Cowley has managed to move away from his Muse, or his Anima, as I would think of it. Rather, I think, than moving away from the Muse, Cowley has probably been able to integrate his Muse correctly. Now that she is integrated, she no longer needs to be the main character of these poems. Cowley can conduct the journey for himself. And, thus, that may be why he has gone searching for the men.
But, after the poem to "Life and Fame," in which, by the way, Cowley speaks disparagingly of the posterity of historical greats such as Pompey and Caesar, that is of conventional men like Brutus was.
This poem moves, however, into an ode to "Ecstasy." In this poem, it would seem, Cowley finally understands what kind of man he should be taking for his model: the prophet -- not the conventional man. Cowley is not conventional. But he can find men to identify with, unconventional men: the prophets.
Where, previously, Cowley had conducted these out-of-body, or spiritual, journeys through the power of the Muse, Cowley now flies of his own power (keeping in mind that the anima, or Muse, is integrated with Cowley). And this is how "Ecstasy" begins.
"I leave Mortality, and things below;
I have no time in Compliments to waste,
Farewell to ye all in haste,
For I am called to go.
A whirlwind bears up my dull Feet,
The officious Clouds beneath them meet,
And Lo! I mount, and Lo!
How small the biggest Parts of Earth's proud Little Show!"
This sounds very much like the Edgar Allan Poe story of the man who travelled to outer space.
Cowley sees Britain as no more as a speck of sand, and wonders whetheer the Civil Wars are worth such a small speck.
Cowley then passes through the clouds:
"I pass by the arched Magazines which hold
The eternal Stores of Frost, and Rain, and Snow;
Dry and secure I go,
Nor shake with Fear, or Cold."
I like the use of "dry and secure," which sounds like a diaper -- again, turning on the adult baby inside of me.
Cowley then passes upward through a sea of flame, which sound very much like something Charles Fort would assume in his theories:
"Now into a gentle Sea of rolling Flame
I'm plunged, and still mount higher there.
As Flames mount up through Air,
So perfect, yet so tame,
So great, so pure, so bright a Fire
Was that Unfortunate Desire,
My faithful Breast did cover,
Then, when I was of late a wretched Mortal Lover."
Cowley flies upward through orbs of planets, which seem to him like spheres of glass. He then finds himself in a land of delight, where he makes another very Fortean statement, mentioning Columbus as a physical explorer and St. Paul as a spiritual explorer:
"Where am I now? Angels and God is here;
An unexhausted Ocean of Delight
Swallows my senses quite,
And drowns all What, or How, or Where.
Not Paul, who first did thither pass,
And this great World's Columbus was,
The tyrannous Pleasure could express.
Oh, 'tis too much for Man! but let it ne'er be less."
Cowley now identifies himself with the prophet Elijah. And this is a positive identification. It works for Cowley. He finds energy and action in it. Cowley alludes to Cowley's rise up into Heaven on a chariot. He then describes what Elijah saw when he reached Heaven: a gleaming land of gold and jewels:
"'Twas gaudy all, and rich in every Part,
Of essences of Gems and Spirit of Gold,
Was its substantial Mould;
Drawn forth by Chymique Angels' Art.
Here with Moon-beams 'twas silvered bright,
There double-gilt with the Sun's Light,
And mystique Shapes cut round in it,
Figures that did Transcend a Vulgar Angel's Wit."
Interesting, Elijah, on his chariot, is very much like the Muse on hers. This seems to imply that Cowley has found a masculine figure that he can identify with. Now, with this figure, Cowley is able to continue along a spiritual journey. But, because Cowley has not yet integrated this figure, he is still external to Cowley. And so he has taken over from Cowley as the main character of this poem.
Cowley tries, however, to get away from Elijah, the prophet, and to try to find a masculine identification with another holy, though, perhaps, more conventional figure: Janus, the god of the New Year.
However, this poem is all pleading by Cowley for Janus to take him away to the land of the dead. It doesn't even seem to occur to Cowley that he just came from the land of the dead -- with Elijah. He doesn't need Janus to take him back there. He can go with Elijah. But he doesn't want to go with Elijah. I think that there's still something that he doesn't like about being connected to an unconventional prophet, rather than to a conventional man, or, at least, a conventional god. Cowley asks of Janus:
"Oh let my Life, if thou so many Deaths a-coming find,
With thine old Year its Voyage take
Borne down that Stream of Time, which no return can make."
Cowley says if he must live for a full year more, he would at least like to do so without sin or sickness. But, most of all, he'd like to live the year without love, which only causes him pain. But he doubts that he could actually survive in the absence of love.
But Cowley then, almost as if rejecting the role of a prophet again, pleads against knowing the future.
"Into the Future Times why do we pry,
And seek to Antedate our Misery?"
And:
"In whatsoever Character
The Book of Fate is writ,
'Tis well we understand not it."
But this poem is based, as is common with some of the poems of the Mistress cycle, on Cowley's refusal to accept the character he should be integrating -- in this case, the prophet. As long as he is rejecting his identification with the prophet, he will face nothing but anxiety.
This poem works into the ode to "Life," which, as I mentioned above, refers to the body as a prison. Cowley wishes to escape the prison of his body.
From here, Cowley embarks upon the final two poems of this cycle. And in these two poems, Cowley does seem, at last, to identify himself with the prophet character. These poems are both free in their meter and vivid in their imagery. But the imagery is extremely bloody.
And perhaps this was what Cowley was fearing, after all, with facing an identification with the prophets. The prophets, like Elijah, spoke the words of god. But these words were often warnings full of blood, disease, and death. They were also connected to a part of the unconscious which, perhaps, Cowley thought he could escape by identifying with conventionally masculine men.
But Cowley had become too familiar with the lives of conventional men during the Civil Wars of England. And it was plain to see that life was bloody, regardless of how you looked at it. To avoid the visions of blood, Cowley thought, he would avoid his calling as a prophetic poet -- a poet like William Blake -- actually, the true predecessor to William Blake.
But now Cowley is able to face this aspect of his personality. And he does so in these final two poems: "The Thirty-Fourth Chapter of the Prophet Isaiah," and "The Plagues of Egypt."
"Isaiah 34" is a Pindaric ode based on the Biblical chapter of the Bible, in which God, through Isaiah, warns Judea of the punishments it faces if it does not repent.
Almost immediately the poetry is filled with blood. God threatens to pull out his sword, throw away the scabbard, and not stop until his sword reeks with blood:
"I see the Sword of God brandished above,
And from it streams a dismal Ray;
I see the Scabbbard cast away.
How red anon with Slaughter will it prove!
How will it sweat and reek in Blood!"
Isaiah seems to prophesy even to switch the roles of men with beasts in the sacrifice. Beasts have been innocent sacrifices too long, Cowley has Isaiah say. And now sinful man must be the sacrifice.
"The Altar all the Land, and all the Men in it the Victims are.
Since wicked Men's more guilty Blood to spare,
The Beasts so long have Sacrificed been,
Since Men their Birth-right forfeit still by Sin,
'Tis fit at last Beasts their Revenge should have,
And sacrificed Man their better Brethren save."
Isaiah says that the heaven itself will decay, crackling and crumpling up like a piece of paper in a fire.
Isaiah says that the world will be a flood of blood:
"Thy Rivers and Lakes with Blood shall so
With human Blood overflow,
That they shall fetch the slaughtered Corps away,
Which in the Fields around unburied lay,
And rob the Beasts and Birds to give the Fish their Prey."
This is the first of three floods of blood that Cowley has take place in these poems. The other two take place in the "Plagues." But, unlike the Muse, who takes objects up from the Sea and puts them to "publick Use," these floods of blood take dead men off the earth, to feed the fish.
The dead themselves, decaying on the earth, cause diseases:
"The rotting Corps shall so infect the Air,
Beget such Plagues, and putrid Venoms there,
That by thine own Dead shall be slain
All thy few Living that remain."
Cowley has Isaiah say that the Destroying Angel has measured out his line of death. He then says that the beasts will take over all the locations of civilization: the market, the pleading-place, the streets, lower-rooms, and chambers -- all filled with wild animals.
Something similar happens in the "Plagues" -- the frogs get so brave that they actually end up filling up people's houses, where they would never go.
Cowley says that the lion will convince the leopard to go with him into the town to prey on the people there. Eventually there will be so much desolation, Cowley says, that the vultures themselves will have no more food to feed on.
Eventually, Cowley says, other than some few men still living in caves, the only things left in the world will be ghosts, which will make a practice of scaring the moon and stars:
"The unburied Ghosts shall sadly moan,
The Satyrs laugh to hear them groan.
The Evil Spirits that delight
To dance and revel in the Mask of Night,
The Moon and Stars, their sole Spectators, shall affright."
Cowley, who had at least partially identified himself with Isaiah in the previous poem, now, in "The Plagues of Egypt," seems to identify himself as a poet-prophet in his own right, while still looking to the hero of this poem -- Moses -- as a figure he can integrate into his conscious personality.
Actually, I believe that this poem is a resolution of Cowley's unique father complex. As I showed at the beginning of this post, there were a number of mother-son myths, eventually ending in a couple of father-son myths. Cowley, still yearning for his father, not quite willing to identify with a different animus figure, must die as a son, so that he can let his father die as well.
In "The Plagues of Egypt," Cowley does this. The poem ends with Pharaoh's first-born son dying, and then Pharaoh himself being drowned under the final flood of blood in the poem -- the crashing back down of the Red Sea. This dynamic of father and son resolves the conflicted dynamics that were presented at the beginning of the Pindar cycle. But Cowley is still left with a male figure to identify with: Moses, the great Prophet, and the leader of his race.
The "Plagues" begins with Cowley chastising his fellow men for being rebels to God. This has made them, Cowley claims, slaves to all else -- including animals. Again, animals have power over humans, as they did in the previous poem, when humans became the sacrifice, and when the animals took over the towns.
Cowley says that we have rejected even the food of God: milk, honey, and manna. Instead we choose to eat the decaying flesh and rotting vegetation that this earth produces.
Cowley compares the rebellious nature of man to the hard-hearted nature of the Pharaoh, who would not believe that Moses' miracles proved that Moses' God was stronger than the gods of the Egyptians. Pharaoh would not free the Egyptians, and so God sent down his plagues. And this is how the proper story opens.
Moses' miracle to the Pharaoh was to throw down his staff to the ground, and have it change into a serpent. The serpent was so real and vicious, it frightened even Pharaoh (and, some say, even Moses!) away. Pharaoh had his own magicians produce snakes with their rods. But Moses' snake ate the two magicians' snakes. Pharoah, however, was not convinced by Moses' miracle.
Moses's first plague was to touch his rod to the Nile, and have it become blood. This, then would be the second flood of blood in the last two poems of the Pindar cycle.
"Flood now no more, but a long Vein of putrid Blood.
The helpless Fish were found
In that strange current drowned,
The Herbs and Trees washed by the mortal Tide
About it blushed and died.
The amazed Crocodiles made haste to Ground;
From their vast Trunks the dripping Gore they spied,
Thought it their own, and dreadfully they cried."
The next plague came from this bloody river. It was the plague of frogs, which were so numerous that they invaded towns, houses, temples, and palaces. Frogs, says Cowley, are normally too afraid of humans to do something like this. But these frogs had no fear. And they overran all the places of civilization.
In the next plague, Moses struck the ground with his rod. A whirlwind of dust flew up into the air. In the whirlwind were, Cowley says, an unknown type of bug, which caused great annoyance and pain to the men and beasts in its path.
The next plague was a plague of flies, of all different kinds, which Cowley compares to great armies. The flies would attack plants and beasts.
The next plague was a plague of sickness upon beasts, which Cowley says came from poisonous stars:
"From the poisonous Stars a mortal Influence came,
(The mingled Malice of their Flame)
A skillful Angel did the ingredients take,
And with just Hands the sad Composure make,
And over all the Land did the full Viol shake.
Thirst, Giddiness, Faintness, and Putrid Heats,
And pining Pains, and shivering Sweats,
On all the Cattle, all the Beasts did fall;
With deformed Death the Country's covered all."
The next plague was a plague of sores and boils on humans. But, interestingly, Cowley makes the infectious agents of this plague have a voice. And the voice speaks to the boils and sores as if they are plants. It calls them buds -- not just buds, but "passionate" buds. It's almost as if these sores and boils are supposed to imply venereal disease, as well as vegetation!
"To the unborn Buds with vital Whispers say,
Ye living Buds, why do ye stay?
The passionate Buds break through the Bark their way;
So wheresoever this tainted Wind but blew,
Swelling Pains and Ulcers grew;
It from the Body called all Sleeping Poisons out,
And to them added new;
A noisome Spring of Sores, as thick as Leaves did sprout."
The next plague was a plague of hail. But the hail is accompanied, in Cowley's story, by lightning. The aspects of the lightning is more interesting than the hail. The lightning acts in all kinds of unnatural ways, producing a lot of startling imagery.
"The dismal Lightnings all around,
Some flying through the Air, some running on the Ground,
Some swimming over ther Water's Face,
Fill'd with bright Horror every Place;
One would have thought, their dreadful Day to have seen,
The very Hail, and Rain itself had kindled been."
The next plague was a plague of locusts, which Cowley has acting very much more army-like than the flies had previously acted. The flies came in troops. But the locusts come in well-ordered troops. However, after the locusts sufficently harrass the Egyptians, Cowley's Moses prays and sends them away, where they feed the fish:
"Moses breathed a Prayer
Breathed forth a violent Western Wind,
Which all these living Clouds did headlong bear
(No stragglers left behind)
Into the purple Sea, and there bestow
On the luxurious Fish a Feast they never did know.
With untaught Joy Pharaoh the News does hear,
And little thinks their Fate attends on him, and his so near."
The next plague was the plague of a solar eclipse, which Cowley augments with total darkness, as if all the light had simply been sucked out of the world. Along with the darkness come night-terrors, not unlike the ghosts in the "Isaiah 34" poem.
The next plague was the plague of the murder of all Egypt's firstborn sons. This section has some moments of poetry which, I'm sure, must have inspired Milton's Paradise Lost. The poetry is very grand.
Cowley says that God has sent the Archangel Michael to kill all the firstborn sons. But before the Archangel Michael completes his task, he stands atop a pyramid at midnight and calls out to the Egyptians to repent. (The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that Michael does this at midnight, when everybody, Cowley has already said, is fast asleep.) Michael's flight to Earth is particularly beautiful.
"Michael, the warlike Prince, does downward fly,
Swift as the Journeys of the Sight,
Swift as the Race of Light,
And with his winged Will cuts through the yielding Sky;
He passed through many a Star, and as he passed,
Shone (like a Star in them) more brightly there,
Than they did in their Sphere."
After Michael gives his warning, he clothes himself in a fleece of night, which is also beautifully described:
"He spoke, and downwards flew,
And over his shining Form a well-cut Cloud he threw
Made of the blackest Fleece of Night,
And close-wrought to keep in the powerful Light,
Yet wrought so fine it hindered not his Flight."
Michael pours poison on his sword, then flies into the houses of the Egyptians (a spirit invading civilized places, rather than animals invading!). He strikes the firstborn in every house. The next day, families wake to find the firstborn sons dead.
Pharaoh momentarily, in his sorrow, for he'd also lost his firstborn son, allowed the Hebrews to leave Egypt. But as soon as they left, he followed after them with an Army. The Pharaoh followed the Hebrews and cornered them at the Red Sea.
But Moses touched his rod to the waters again. And the waters of the Red Sea parted so that the Hebrews could walk across.
Interestingly, Cowley at this point mentions that the Sun was astonished to see the floor of the Red Sea, as it had never seen the floor of a sea before. This is very like the "Muse" poem, where Cowley says that the Muse can go down to the bottom of the Sea, while the sun can't. In other words, the power of the unconscious has been integrated so well for Cowley, that he is able to cooperate with it, and allow it to work for his benefit.
Pharaoh crosses the Red Sea. But the Red Sea, the third flood of blood, comes crashing down on Pharaoh as soon as Moses and the Hebrews are safely across.
I have to apologize again. There were a lot of other things that I wanted to discuss. But I wasn't able to. I didn't take this poem cycle in a straight line, either, like I did with the Mistress cycle. But I just felt like the themes of this poem worked in a different way. And I wanted to explore the themes in that way.
Also, I got a bit too distracted by some of the themes, especially at the beginning. So maybe I wasted a bit of time on some stuff that wasn't as interesting as the later stuff. But I hope that, overall, I gave you an idea of how fun and vivid and engaging Cowley's poetry is.
However, I've also done a little text-changing in the quotes. I haven't changed any words or word order. However, I have taken out most of the archaic elision -- removed apostrophes that don't make sense anymore -- and modernized some of the spelling.
I did this mainly to make the job of translation easier. But if you guys would rather see the text unadulterated in the future, just drop me a line and let me know. Thank you for reading.)
Since I'm a part-time adult baby, and since I love adult baby stuff, I'm always trying to keep an eye out for stuff having to do with adult babies or babies, just to add to my imagination, my stock of fantasies.
And I'd forgotten, until I read Abraham Cowley's Pindaric Odes, that Hercules' infancy was incredible! Zeus, the greatest of Greek gods, fell in love with a mortal woman, Alcides, and made her pregnant with Hercules. Zeus' wife Hera was so jealous of Alcides that she tried to stop Hercules from even being born. She closed Alcides' womb! Thankfully one of Alcides servants, Galanthis, tricked Hera so that Hercules could be born.
For that assistance, Hera turned Galanthis into a ferret, I believe.
So now Hercules was born. Cowley, in the second poem of the Pindar cycle, already portrays Hercules as a powerful person. He's a baby, alright. But he's so strong, you'd think he was an adult, too! He's the perfect adult baby -- except that he's not wearing a pink, frilly dress:
"The big-limbed Babe in his huge Cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by Nurses' Hands,
Wrap't in Purple Swaddling-Bands."
But Hera still wanted to destroy Hercules, because he was a symbol of Zeus having had sex with another woman. So when Hercules was an infant, Hera sent two huge serpents into Hercules room to kill him.
In Cowley's version of the story, Hercules' nurses are frightened, some to death, others just into screaming like crazy. Because of the commotion, Hercules' mother awakens.
"All naked from her Bed the passionate Mother leapt
To save or perish with her Child,
She trembled, and she cry'd, the mighty infant smil'd.
This mighty Infant seem'd well pleas'd
At his gay gilded Foes."
And Hercules, even as an infant, is strong enough to strangle the two serpents, instead of the serpents strangling him!
In Cowley's story, after Hercules has strangled the infants, Hercules' father, Amphitryon, along with a company of his men, run into Hercules' nursery. The men see the snakes dead. Amphitryon is glad to see Hercules alive. But he also feels a little uneasy, having a boy of such great strength.
"With their drawn Swords
In ran Amphitryon and the Theban Lords.
With doubting Wonder, and with troubled Joy
They saw the Conquering Boy
Laugh and point downwards to his Prey,
Where in Death's Pangs, and their own Gore they folding lay."
Tiresias, however, sees the sight, and, as he would later foretell Oedipus' fall, foretells Hercules' greatness.
"He told with ease the things t'ensue,
From what Monsters he should free
The Earth, the Air, and the Sea.
What mighty Tyrants he should slay,
Greater Monsters far than they.
How much at Phlaegra's Field the distressed Gods should owe,
In their great Offspring here below,
And how his Club would there outdo
Apollo's Silver Bow, and his own Father's Thunder, too."
So Hercules, from the very beginning of his life, did things adults did, and better than many adults could have done them. He was a baby, but he was an adult. So he was like an adult baby.
But the story of Hercules is the story, really, of a boy who didn't really have a childhood. Hercules had to fight to be born. And once he was born he had to fight -- for himself -- to stay alive.
But Hercules was a half-god, so his fight was mystical. The Hercules passage takes place at the end of the second poem of the Pindar cycle. The story of the human who experienced pains from the moment of his birth, Oedipus, is lightly alluded to in the first poem of the cycle. All that's mentioned, however, is that:
"Vicissitudes which thy great Race pursue
E'er since the fatal Son his Father slew,
And did old Oracles fulfill
Of Gods that cannot lie, for they foretell but their own Will."
The story is picked back up with Iocaste, I believe, under the name of Erynnis, knowing that she'd had two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, by her own son, Oedipus.
"Erynnis saw it, and made in her own Seed
The innocent Parricide to bleed,
She slew his wrathful Sons with mutual Blows;"
Which I suppose means that she drew them into the conflict against each other that led to the first Theban War, in which both Polyneices and Eteocles killed each other. (In this version of the story, obviously, Iocaste didn't kill herself after discovering that she'd slept with her own son. Iocaste lives in a few versions of the Oedipus story, only killing herself after her sons have killed themselves.)
However, Cowley points out, the lineage of Oedipus improved from here. For Thersander, one of Polyneices' sons, was one of the fifty men who hid inside of the giant wooden horse that invaded the town of Troy.
So Hercules' childhood is mentioned as the troubled beginning to a toilsome life. And Oedipus is mentioned as a father-slayer whose sons murdered each other.
What's odd about this -- and Cowley even mentions it -- is that both of these stories are set into poems praising young men.
Cowley's cycle of Pindaric Odes is written in the style of the Ancient Greek poet Pindar, who flourished in the beginning of the 5th Century, B.C. Pindar's poems, even in his days, were known as free, loose, poems, with a power and whimsy of imagination almost akin to madness.
In the preface to the Pindar cycle, Cowley says that:
"If a Man should undertake to translate Pindar Word for Word, it would be thought that one Mad-Man had translated another."
Cowley's Pindar cycle is full of notes he wrote on the odes. And in one of his notes, following the poem "In Praise of Pindar":
"I term [Pindar's] Song Unnavigable, for it is able to drown any Head that is not strong built and well-ballasted. Horace in another Place calls it a "Fountain;" from the unexhausted Abundance of his Invention."
Cowley, as one can tell by his Mistress cycle, which I wrote a some posts about a couple months ago, himself has an abundance of invention. So it would only be natural that he'd admire another poet with such an abundance of invention as he had. Pindar would seem to be a natural model for Cowley.
Cowley, excited by Pindar's poetry, and assuming, correctly, that "his Way and Manner of Speaking has not been yet (that I know of) introduced into English," decided that he would take the chance to bring a volume of Pindaric Odes in English. Cowley says, "This Essay is just to try how it will look in an English Habit."
However, just to give his audience a taste of what Pindar's own poetry was like, Cowley decided to beging his Pindar cycle with translations of two of Pindar's Odes: his second "Olympique Ode," and his fifth "Nemean Ode."
Both of these Odes are to athletes, young noblemen engaged in two of the most prestigious sporting events of Ancient Greek times: the Olympic Games and the Nemean Games. These are poems to youth, nobility, and achievement. They are dedicated to strong, young men.
I got the feeling while reading the beginning of this cycle, that Cowley was seeking for an ideal of male strength and achievement. This didn't surprise me. Cowley's Mistress cycle was some kind of transsexual communion of souls, engaged in a process of integrating Cowley's feminine side into himself. But it ended with Cowley encountering his masculine side, in the forms of a Bright Shadow and a Dark Shadow.
The Mistress cycle seemed to have ended with Cowley having come to a castle to encounter his Dark Shadow -- what one might think of as his evil side. I had a feeling, as I finished the Mistress cycle, that Cowley's next work -- the Pindaric Odes cycle, would focus on Cowley's encounters with his Shadow figure, in particular his Dark Shadow.
To see Cowley having begun the cycle with two poems that Pindar dedicated to two young, strong, beautiful men, didn't surprise me -- although I'd assume that all the Olympic and Nemean Odes would be dedicated to young, strong, beautiful men.
It seems to me, though, that part of Cowley's attraction to Pindar, anyway, is due to the fact that Pindar wrote to men, and that Cowley was looking for poetry that would give him a sense of manliness, put him in touch with whatever he was looking for -- the Dark Shadow or Bright Shadow, or what have you.
Cowley, after all, was born after his father had died. He was taken care of by his mother, who cared very much for him, and saw to it that he had a good education. Even though Cowley's mother was, apparently, not well off, she made that Cowley got into Trinity College, Cambridge. From Trinity College, Cowley displayed his intellectual talents so well that he became a friend and indispensable help to many of the highest people at Court in England.
Cowley started serving, during the troubled times of England, as a letter-carrier and a spy, along with another English poet, Charles Denham. When the Civil Wars began, Charles I's wife, Queen Henrietta-Marie, was exiled to France. Cowley, as assistant to Henry, Lord Jermyn, went to France with Queen Henrietta-Marie, and acted as her official letter writer. During this time, Cowley wrote the Mistress and Pindar cycles, both within a couple years of each other.
The Mistress cycle seems almost like a communion between Cowley and the Queen. The Pindar cycle, however, seems like a quest that Cowley is taking on his own. Again, like in the Mistress cycle, Cowley seems unsure of what he's actually looking for. And I believe that in the two poems he starts from a very similar argument.
In the Mistress cycle, Cowley begins almost by taunting the God of Love, Cupid, to make Cowley fall in love. This taunting, it turns out, brings down a spiritual force on Cowley that Cowley had never been looking for.
However, Cowley, by working through that spiritual crisis, found himself having integrated the feminine side of himself -- which had been overwhelming him from his youth, since he'd had, possibly, an overly goal-oriented mother -- and which was especially overwhelming him, now that he was directly serving as the Queen's personal letter-writer.
But the real crux of that issue, it seemed to me, was that Cowley had been taunting Cupid, as a male figure, in order, hopefully, to get a male figure into his life. But what Cowley really wanted in his life was his father. I believe that, during the poem cycle, Cowley actually found his father. But that his father, being in the land of the dead, couldn't help Cowley. Cowley had to face the fact that he'd have to find his masculine side by looking within himself.
So Cowley dedicated an entire cycle of his poetry to Pindar, a male poet, as he had previously dedicated the previous cycle to a Mistress.
The first poems of the cycle, being rough translations of Pindar's poetry, are in praise of two young men who won athletic events. So now the search begins -- Cowley is in search of his masculine side.
But the two poems of Pindar, which, one might say, serve as a preface to the actual cycle, end with the story of Hercules having to defeat two snakes while he is still only a little baby! Hercules' mother can't defend Hercules, even though she runs to Hercules' crib while naked. And Amphitryon, Hercules' earthly father (Hercules' actual father was Zeus), doesn't even arrive until Hercules has defeated the snakes. And even then, Amphitryon seems a little jealous of Hercules' strength!
Cowley, in other words, sets out to find the youthful, strong male that Pindar's poems seem to praise. But as soon as Cowley is ready to start his own poems, he begins with the double-image of a father: one heavenly and invisible; and one earthly and ineffectual (even though Amphitryon was, otherwise, a man of great achievements himself).
But even before Cowley mentions Hercules and Oedipus, he mentions three other mythical figures: Ino, Semele, and Achilles. Ino fled from her husband after her husband has murdered his brother, having been deluded into thinking his brother was a beast. Ino drowned both herself and her son in a river.
But the goddess Thetis, taking pity on Ino, asked her father, Neptune, to give Ino and her son life again. Neptune did this, turning Ino into the water-goddess Lucothea, and her son into the god Palamon. Ino and Palamon lived with the water-Nymphs, the Nereides. Cowley says of them:
"So in the Crystal Palaces
Of the blue-eyed Nereides,
Ino her endless Youth does please,
And thanks her Fall into the Seas."
So Ino is now thankful that she has drowned herself and her son. Another birth from death is the story of Semele. Semele is another mortal whom Zeus has made pregnant. While Semele is pregnant, the jealous Hera convinces Semele to tell Zeus she wants to see him as he really is, as a god. Zeus reluctantly agrees. But when he shows himself in a flash of lightning, he burns Semele to death.
Semele was pregnant with the god Dionysos. And when Zeus saw Semele burnt and dead, he split open Semele's womb, pulled the unborn Dionysos out, placed the fetus into his own thigh, and carried Dionysos there until he was ready to be born.
In the notes following Cowley's own ode in praise of Pindar, Cowley mentions Semele and Dionysos again, this time in conjunction with the origin of dithyrambic poetry, another kind of poetry Pindar practised.
"There are none of Pindar's Dithyrambiques extant. Dithyrambiques [coming from the phrase "two doors"] were hymns made in Honor of Bacchus, who did come into the world through two Doors, his Mother Semele's Womb, and his Father Jupiter's Thigh. ... [The dithyramb] was a bold, free, enthusiastical kind of Poetry, as of Men inspired by Bacchus, that is half-Drunk, from whence came the Greek Proverb, 'You are as mad as a Dithyrambique Poet.'"
Which would lead one to believe -- if Cowley keeps emphasizing the madness of Pindar -- why he would be trying to use this poetry to search for some conventional image of balanced masculinity. But he is doing just that.
However, Cowley, while mentioning the topic of male-born Dionysos (which may have been something of a sexual fantasy for Cowley), focuses rather on the happiness that Semele experiences now that she is dead:
"Beauteous Semele does no less
Her cruel Midwife Thunder bless,
While sporting with the Gods on high,
She enjoys secure their Company,
Plays with the Lightnings as they fly,
Nor trembles at the bright Embraces of the Deity."
Looking back on these two stories, Cowley even reflects that: "Death did them future Dangers free."
Both of these stories, it's obvious, deal with a violent father, a mother who is so overwhelmed by this violence that she dies. The mother's son dies with the mother. And both the mother and the son are changed into gods.
This dynamic is altered a bit, as Cowley speaks again of Thetis. But this time, Cowley talks of Thetis in relation to her own son, the great warrior Achilles. Thetis, in order to make Achilles invulnerable to death, dipped the body of the infant Achilles into the waters of the Styx, the River of Death, three times. His whole body was made hard, except for his heel, by which Thetis was holding him.
Achilles was known for his quick anger as much as he was for his great fighting ability. And Cowley wonders how Achilles could have gotten into Heaven, with such a violent spirit. But, he reasons, if the Styx had hardened his body against physical faults, it must also be able to harden his soul against spiritual infirmities:
"Here great Achilles wrathful now no more
Since his blessed Mother (who before
Had tried it on his Body in vain)
Dipped now his Soul in the Stygian Lake,
Which did from thence a divine Hardness take,
That does from Passion and from Vice Invulnerable make."
So now we see that the dynamic has moved from a mother and son dying, then being revived and made into gods, to a mother, already immortal herself, making her dead son into an immortal being.
Interestingly, not long after this passage, Cowley mentions one of the most erotic stories in all of Greek mythology, Zeus' rape of Ganymede. But Cowley mentions this, not in the context of death, but in the context of Art versus Nature. All throughout the Pindar cycle, it seems to me, Art is masculine, a building on Nature, while Nature is feminine. But Art is always fighting a losing battle against Nature. In this sense, Art is compared to a grubbing Crow,
"Whilst Nature, like the sacred Bird of Jove,
Now bears loud Thunder, and anon with silent Joy
The beauteous Phrygian boy."
The beauteous Phrygian boy would, of course, be Ganymede. And Cowley, in his copious notes, gives a further explanation, which I love:
"The Poets feigned that the Eagle carried Jove's Thunder. ... They likewise feigned, that Jupiter falling in love with Ganymedes, the Son of Tros, a most beautiful Boy, carried him up to Heaven upon the Back of an Eagle, there to fill Nectar to him when he Feasted, and for a more ungodly use."
That "ungodly use" should, I really feel, be made into the subject of a hot poem.
However, the dynamic again changes. And this time, we see a Hercules, a young boy, like Dionysos and Achilles, born of a god (Dionysos of Zeus and Achilles of Thetis). But this time, the boy, in his cradle, being able to defend himself.
But what's come of this ability to defend himself? Nothing but a life of struggle -- a life of struggle that will end in death, at the end: Hercules, defending his wife from being raped by a Centaur, will be given a poisoned shirt, which, when he puts it on, will kill him. He will only then become a god.
What does it benefit Hercules to have had a father, not to have died with his mother, in other words? Dionysos and Palamon were directly made gods. And Achilles was really just a big diva who didn't get killed until an even bigger diva shot him in the foot. But Hercules had to fight his way all the way through his life.
And this, it turns out, ends up being the real question of Cowley's poem cycle: what, really, is the point of finding this male image to identify with? What's the point of struggling through life like all of these apparently great men have done?
Through Cowley's poem cycle, there are poems to Pindar, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the doctor Scarborough (a good friend of Cowley's), and the Roman warrior and statesman Brutus. As Cowley praises all of these men, one really gets the feeling that Cowley is attempting to connect with something in them.
But Cowley finds that he doesn't really sympathize with any of these men. His soul has been different from the very beginning of his life. For much of the poem cycle Cowley is searching in for some man to identify himself with, a man who matches the conventional ideal of masculinity, but with whom Cowley can also sympathize. But while he's going from man to man, he keeps on falling down into worlds of apocalyptic imagery.
Even while Cowley is praising the men, he's often likely to fall into these fits of apocalyptic or death-like imagery. Even as he praises the men, he often wonders what the good is of doing what these men have done, when we all die anyway, and when death is, often, preferable to life.
Thus Cowley, in praising Pindar (probably the most unsteady of all the men Cowley praises), speaks of the poems Pindar has written for men who have died young:
"In Words worth dying for he celebrates,
Such mournful, and such pleasing Words,
As Joy and his Mother's and his Mistress' Grief affords:
He bids him Live and Grow in Fame,
Among the Stars he sticks his Name:
The Grave can but the Dross of his devour,
So small is Death's, so great the Poet's Power."
A few poems later, Cowley, attempting again, in the vein of Pindar, to praise a man of his times, praises Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher who wrote the treatise Leviathan. Cowley praises Hobbes for the proportion, balance, and stability of his writing -- as if to counteract the imbalance of Pindar's poetry.
But even in this poem Cowley resorts to imagery of death, though he has to do it by mentioning the decay of another philosopher of well-proportioned, stable mind: Aristotle. Aristotle's philosophy has been decayed by the school-men, Cowley says. And now, without a new philosophy, we are like scavengers in a land of death:
"We break up Tombs with sacreligious Hands,
Old Rubbish we remove;
To walk in ruins, like vain Ghosts, we love,
And with fond Divining Wands,
We search among the Dead,
For Treasures buried,
Whilst still the Liberal Earth does hold
So many Virgin Mines of undiscovered Gold."
The next man that Cowley praises is Brutus. Brutus, Cowley feels, is a man at the zenith of what Cowley seems to have seen as the age of Reason. Brutus, one of the Assassins of Julius Caesar, died only a few years before Jesus Christ was born. The age that Christ ushered in, in Cowley's opinion, was the age of Grace. So in Cowley's philosophy, Brutus fits in thus:
"Excellent Brutus, of all human Race
The best, 'till Nature was improved by Grace,
'Till Men above themselves Faith raised more
Than Reason above Beasts before."
This verse, interestingly, is a movement away, in my opinion, from what had previously been a poem cycle steeped very heavily in Greek and Roman mythology. From this point forward, the images of the poems become more and more Hebraic, Biblical. And, at their even better points, the images become purely Paganistic -- purely Cowley!
But Brutus, though he is a man at the height of Reason, the full development, it would seem, of his successor, Thomas Hobbes, is also a man whose life is steeped in the blood of Assassination and War. True, the war and assassination are just, in Cowley's opinion. But Brutus is almost drowning in blood.
Brutus, it turns out, is so brave that Fate even has to launch a surprise attack on him in order to kill him. Fate is too afraid to face Brutus face-to-face!
But Fate did kill Brutus, and Cowley asks what the use was of life, of joy, even of Virtue:
"What Joy can human things to us afford,
When we see perish thus by odd Events,
Ill Men, and wretched Accidents,
The best Cause and best Man that ever drew a Sword?"
And:
"What can we say but thine own Tragick Word,
That Virtue, which had worshipt been by thee,
As the most solid Good, and greatest Deity,
By this fatal Proof became
An Idol only, and a Name?"
But the poem ends with a full transition from the age of Reason to the age of Grace:
"The Time's set forth already which shall quell
Stiff REason, when it offers to rebel;
Which these great Secrets shall unseal,
And new Philosophies reveal.
A few years more, so soon hadst thou not dy'd,
Would have confounded Human Virtue's Pride,
And show'd thee a God crucified."
The final man Cowley praises in his Pindar is a contemporary of Cowley's, and a man who, when Cowley was falsely imprisoned during the Civil Wars, got Cowley out of prison. His name was Scarborough, and he was a medical doctor.
Cowley's poem praises Scarborough's skill in curing people of various diseases. These diseases develop from liquid diseases (gout and dropsy), to fevers, to, of all things, kidney stones, to venereal diseases. But the overall mood of the poem is far from the stability and reason of the praise of Hobbes, and even more obviously bloody than the poem to Brutus.
Scarborough lives in Britain during the Civil Wars. Britain is wracked by war, and Scarborough, Cowley says, is doing his best to keep the bloodiness of war from breeding epidemics and plaguing diseases. In the meantime, war is an epidemic of its own, and Britain is so soaked in blood that its spirit, Albion, or "the white," is stained red!
Scarborough is so good at his work. His fever patients are returned to health with bodies like purified gold. His kidney-stone patients feel like Moses has tapped their "rock" and allowed the water to flow again. And his venereal disease patients are nearly returned to virginity! But it is still obvious that Scarborough can only delay death, not stop it:
"Ah, learned Friend, it grieves me when I think
That thou with all thy Art must die
As well as I.
And all thy noble Reparations sink
Into the sure-wrought Mines of treacherous Mortality."
And:
"Let Nature, and let Art do what they please,
When all's done, Life is an incurable Disease."
But although it seems as if Cowley "grieves" to "think" of this death, it really isn't something that he's grieving for, but something he's actually looking forward to. The poems of the Pindar cycle imply this pretty well. But Cowley himself says it right out, in the collected edition of his works from 1656, which he, incidentally, was writing from his prison cell.
"The Reader shall know in what respects he may look at me as a Dead, or at least a dying Person, and upon my Muse in this Action, as appearing, like the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and assisting at her own Funeral."
And:
"For to make myself absolutely dead in a Poetical Capacity, my Resolution at present is never to exercise any more that Faculty."
And, in a hilariously bold passage:
"And this therefore is a kind of Death to the Muses, and a real literal quieting of this World: So, methinks, I may make a just Claim to the undoubted Privilege of Deceased Poets, which is to be read with more Favor, than the Living."
So death has become a fantasy for Cowley. And the real actions of the Pindar cycle aren't the discussions of the great men that Cowley tries so hard to praise. Really, the poem's interest is in Cowley's description of death, and of the glimpes that death gives Cowley into the spiritual world.
Yet this world of death is permeated with images of birth as well. Thus, in Cowley's first non-person themed poem, "The Resurrection," Cowley opens with a stanza to Virtue. The stanza speaks of
"Heaven's vital Seed cast on the Womb of Earth
To give the fruitful Year a Birth."
But also speaks of the ability of poetry to serve:
"The Midwife's Office, and the Nurse's, too."
But the next themed poem, to Cowley's "Muse," oddly enough, begins:
"Go, the rich Chariot instantly prepare;
The Queen, my Muse, will take the Air."
So that it certainly sounds like Cowley is saying the Queen (i.e. Queen Henrietta-Marie) is his Muse.
But it then gives a very interesting view into the womb of the "fruitful Year":
"There into the close Nests of Time dost peep,
And there with piercing Eye,
Through the firm Shell, and the thick White dost spy,
Years to come a-forming lie,
Close in their sacred Secondine [or placenta] asleep,
'Till hatched by the Sun's vital Heat,
Which o'er them yet does brooding set,
The Life and Motion get,
And ripe at last, with vigorous Might,
Break through the Shell, and take their everlasting Flight."
So, the womb of Time is visceral enough even to include a placenta! It's a strange mix, too, between egg and mammal's womb. And, then, the years burst right out of it! It sounds kind of gross.
But in the poem to "Destiny," Cowley again mentions midwives and birth. This time he mentions his own birth. And this time he speaks about how his umbilical cord is cut!
"Me from the Womb the Midwife Muse did take:
She cut my Navel, washed me, and mine Head
With her own Hands she fashioned."
In the ode to "Life," Cowley's final poem before the two magnificent apocalyptic poems which conclude his Pindar cycle, Cowley connects the womb and the tomb.
"From the Maternal Tomb
To the Grave's fruitful Womb,
We call here Life; but Life's a Name
That nothing here can truly claim."
So the tomb is maternal and the grave is fruitful. Cowley continues on this idea:
"When we by a foolish figure say,
Behold an old Man dead, then they [the Angels]
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a Man-child born."
By the way, "man-child" is basically the same thing as "adult baby."
Again, death is looked at as a birth, a kind of hatching from an egg, the shell of which has been a prison for the soul:
"The ripen'd Soul longs from his Prison to come,
But we would seal, and sew up, if we could, the Womb.
We seek to close and plaster up by Art
The Cracks and Breaches of the extended Shell,
And in that narrow Cell
Would rudely force to dwell,
The noble vigorous Bird already winged to part."
With this outlook on life and death, Cowley attempts, on a number of occasions through his poem, to part from his body and see the world from the viewpoint of the dead. His first attempt at this is in the ode to "Resurrection."
Cowley begins this poem with a praise of virtue. But this is incredibly orderly for a Pindaric ode, and Cowley feels that he must get at the truly wild spirit of Pindaric odes by setting the rhythmic music of virtue on its head. But he ends up finding himself right in the midst of Judgment Day!
"'Till all gentle Notes be drown'd
In the last Trumpet's dreadful Sound.
That to the Spheres themselves, shall Silence bring,
Untune the Universal String."
So, in the final trumpet call of Judgment, the music of the universe is "untuned."
Suddenly, Cowley sees the dead arise before him.
"This mightier Sound shall make
When Dead to arise,
And open Tombs, and open Eyes."
But the dead who arise before Cowley are already doomed to be judged for their sins by God:
"Unhappy most, like tortured Men,
Their Joints new set, to be new racked again.
To Mountains they for Shelter pray,
The Mountains shake, and run about no less confused than they."
It's Cowley's first attempt to move into the spirit world. But already he's plunged into a cataclysm! The world is so frightened that even the mountains are running away.
Cowley attributes this to his Muse, whom he believes he's given too much power, by giving her the freedom of Pindaric verse. The Muse is, interestingly, riding a horse, or, rather, a Pegasus, a winged horse.
So in the next poem, aptly titled, "The Muse," Cowley sets the Muse into a chariot. The chariot has a number of horses, all of which have different qualities of poetry and intellect, which should balance the Muse' power much better than one wild, winged horse. In this chariot, the Muse flies through a number of different spiritual scenes, including the scene described above, of the womb of Time.
With her power, Cowley's Muse can go to the bottom of the Sea, or the unconscious, a place where the sun, or conscious mind, cannot go:
"Where never yet did pry
The busy Morning's curious Eye,
The Wheels of thy bold Coach pass quick and free."
But Cowley's Muse can also bring treasures up from the Sea:
"Thou fathomest the deep Gulf of Ages past,
And canst pluck up with Ease
The Years which thou dost please,
Like shipwrecked Treasures by rude Tempests cast
Long since into the Sea,
Brought up again to Light and publick Use by thee."
In fact, Cowley, in one of his moments of bombastic brashness, even calls his Muse greater than God, since she has the power to create all kinds of previously unknown worlds:
"Whatever God did say,
Is all thy plain and smooth, uninterrupted Way.
Nay, even beyond his Works thy Voyages are known,
Thou hast thousand Worlds too of thine own.
Thou speakest, great Queen, in the same Style as he,
And a new world leapest forth, when thou sayest, Let it be."
Cowley seems in real balance with his Muse in ths poem. However, as is usual with Cowley, he doesn't seem to want to accept a relationship with his Muse.
And so he flies from the Muse and tries to form some kind of relationship with a stable, conventionally masculine man. He, therefore, moves through his poems in praises of Hobbes, Brutus, and Scarborough, before falling back on his non-human-themed odes.
But now he's back in a state of depression, and in his ode to "Life and Fame," he calls Life the younger brother of Nothingness, and the sense of Life nothing more than the reflected second rainbow made by a rainbow -- in other words, the illusion of illusion.
It is interesting to see, however, that Cowley has managed to move away from his Muse, or his Anima, as I would think of it. Rather, I think, than moving away from the Muse, Cowley has probably been able to integrate his Muse correctly. Now that she is integrated, she no longer needs to be the main character of these poems. Cowley can conduct the journey for himself. And, thus, that may be why he has gone searching for the men.
But, after the poem to "Life and Fame," in which, by the way, Cowley speaks disparagingly of the posterity of historical greats such as Pompey and Caesar, that is of conventional men like Brutus was.
This poem moves, however, into an ode to "Ecstasy." In this poem, it would seem, Cowley finally understands what kind of man he should be taking for his model: the prophet -- not the conventional man. Cowley is not conventional. But he can find men to identify with, unconventional men: the prophets.
Where, previously, Cowley had conducted these out-of-body, or spiritual, journeys through the power of the Muse, Cowley now flies of his own power (keeping in mind that the anima, or Muse, is integrated with Cowley). And this is how "Ecstasy" begins.
"I leave Mortality, and things below;
I have no time in Compliments to waste,
Farewell to ye all in haste,
For I am called to go.
A whirlwind bears up my dull Feet,
The officious Clouds beneath them meet,
And Lo! I mount, and Lo!
How small the biggest Parts of Earth's proud Little Show!"
This sounds very much like the Edgar Allan Poe story of the man who travelled to outer space.
Cowley sees Britain as no more as a speck of sand, and wonders whetheer the Civil Wars are worth such a small speck.
Cowley then passes through the clouds:
"I pass by the arched Magazines which hold
The eternal Stores of Frost, and Rain, and Snow;
Dry and secure I go,
Nor shake with Fear, or Cold."
I like the use of "dry and secure," which sounds like a diaper -- again, turning on the adult baby inside of me.
Cowley then passes upward through a sea of flame, which sound very much like something Charles Fort would assume in his theories:
"Now into a gentle Sea of rolling Flame
I'm plunged, and still mount higher there.
As Flames mount up through Air,
So perfect, yet so tame,
So great, so pure, so bright a Fire
Was that Unfortunate Desire,
My faithful Breast did cover,
Then, when I was of late a wretched Mortal Lover."
Cowley flies upward through orbs of planets, which seem to him like spheres of glass. He then finds himself in a land of delight, where he makes another very Fortean statement, mentioning Columbus as a physical explorer and St. Paul as a spiritual explorer:
"Where am I now? Angels and God is here;
An unexhausted Ocean of Delight
Swallows my senses quite,
And drowns all What, or How, or Where.
Not Paul, who first did thither pass,
And this great World's Columbus was,
The tyrannous Pleasure could express.
Oh, 'tis too much for Man! but let it ne'er be less."
Cowley now identifies himself with the prophet Elijah. And this is a positive identification. It works for Cowley. He finds energy and action in it. Cowley alludes to Cowley's rise up into Heaven on a chariot. He then describes what Elijah saw when he reached Heaven: a gleaming land of gold and jewels:
"'Twas gaudy all, and rich in every Part,
Of essences of Gems and Spirit of Gold,
Was its substantial Mould;
Drawn forth by Chymique Angels' Art.
Here with Moon-beams 'twas silvered bright,
There double-gilt with the Sun's Light,
And mystique Shapes cut round in it,
Figures that did Transcend a Vulgar Angel's Wit."
Interesting, Elijah, on his chariot, is very much like the Muse on hers. This seems to imply that Cowley has found a masculine figure that he can identify with. Now, with this figure, Cowley is able to continue along a spiritual journey. But, because Cowley has not yet integrated this figure, he is still external to Cowley. And so he has taken over from Cowley as the main character of this poem.
Cowley tries, however, to get away from Elijah, the prophet, and to try to find a masculine identification with another holy, though, perhaps, more conventional figure: Janus, the god of the New Year.
However, this poem is all pleading by Cowley for Janus to take him away to the land of the dead. It doesn't even seem to occur to Cowley that he just came from the land of the dead -- with Elijah. He doesn't need Janus to take him back there. He can go with Elijah. But he doesn't want to go with Elijah. I think that there's still something that he doesn't like about being connected to an unconventional prophet, rather than to a conventional man, or, at least, a conventional god. Cowley asks of Janus:
"Oh let my Life, if thou so many Deaths a-coming find,
With thine old Year its Voyage take
Borne down that Stream of Time, which no return can make."
Cowley says if he must live for a full year more, he would at least like to do so without sin or sickness. But, most of all, he'd like to live the year without love, which only causes him pain. But he doubts that he could actually survive in the absence of love.
But Cowley then, almost as if rejecting the role of a prophet again, pleads against knowing the future.
"Into the Future Times why do we pry,
And seek to Antedate our Misery?"
And:
"In whatsoever Character
The Book of Fate is writ,
'Tis well we understand not it."
But this poem is based, as is common with some of the poems of the Mistress cycle, on Cowley's refusal to accept the character he should be integrating -- in this case, the prophet. As long as he is rejecting his identification with the prophet, he will face nothing but anxiety.
This poem works into the ode to "Life," which, as I mentioned above, refers to the body as a prison. Cowley wishes to escape the prison of his body.
From here, Cowley embarks upon the final two poems of this cycle. And in these two poems, Cowley does seem, at last, to identify himself with the prophet character. These poems are both free in their meter and vivid in their imagery. But the imagery is extremely bloody.
And perhaps this was what Cowley was fearing, after all, with facing an identification with the prophets. The prophets, like Elijah, spoke the words of god. But these words were often warnings full of blood, disease, and death. They were also connected to a part of the unconscious which, perhaps, Cowley thought he could escape by identifying with conventionally masculine men.
But Cowley had become too familiar with the lives of conventional men during the Civil Wars of England. And it was plain to see that life was bloody, regardless of how you looked at it. To avoid the visions of blood, Cowley thought, he would avoid his calling as a prophetic poet -- a poet like William Blake -- actually, the true predecessor to William Blake.
But now Cowley is able to face this aspect of his personality. And he does so in these final two poems: "The Thirty-Fourth Chapter of the Prophet Isaiah," and "The Plagues of Egypt."
"Isaiah 34" is a Pindaric ode based on the Biblical chapter of the Bible, in which God, through Isaiah, warns Judea of the punishments it faces if it does not repent.
Almost immediately the poetry is filled with blood. God threatens to pull out his sword, throw away the scabbard, and not stop until his sword reeks with blood:
"I see the Sword of God brandished above,
And from it streams a dismal Ray;
I see the Scabbbard cast away.
How red anon with Slaughter will it prove!
How will it sweat and reek in Blood!"
Isaiah seems to prophesy even to switch the roles of men with beasts in the sacrifice. Beasts have been innocent sacrifices too long, Cowley has Isaiah say. And now sinful man must be the sacrifice.
"The Altar all the Land, and all the Men in it the Victims are.
Since wicked Men's more guilty Blood to spare,
The Beasts so long have Sacrificed been,
Since Men their Birth-right forfeit still by Sin,
'Tis fit at last Beasts their Revenge should have,
And sacrificed Man their better Brethren save."
Isaiah says that the heaven itself will decay, crackling and crumpling up like a piece of paper in a fire.
Isaiah says that the world will be a flood of blood:
"Thy Rivers and Lakes with Blood shall so
With human Blood overflow,
That they shall fetch the slaughtered Corps away,
Which in the Fields around unburied lay,
And rob the Beasts and Birds to give the Fish their Prey."
This is the first of three floods of blood that Cowley has take place in these poems. The other two take place in the "Plagues." But, unlike the Muse, who takes objects up from the Sea and puts them to "publick Use," these floods of blood take dead men off the earth, to feed the fish.
The dead themselves, decaying on the earth, cause diseases:
"The rotting Corps shall so infect the Air,
Beget such Plagues, and putrid Venoms there,
That by thine own Dead shall be slain
All thy few Living that remain."
Cowley has Isaiah say that the Destroying Angel has measured out his line of death. He then says that the beasts will take over all the locations of civilization: the market, the pleading-place, the streets, lower-rooms, and chambers -- all filled with wild animals.
Something similar happens in the "Plagues" -- the frogs get so brave that they actually end up filling up people's houses, where they would never go.
Cowley says that the lion will convince the leopard to go with him into the town to prey on the people there. Eventually there will be so much desolation, Cowley says, that the vultures themselves will have no more food to feed on.
Eventually, Cowley says, other than some few men still living in caves, the only things left in the world will be ghosts, which will make a practice of scaring the moon and stars:
"The unburied Ghosts shall sadly moan,
The Satyrs laugh to hear them groan.
The Evil Spirits that delight
To dance and revel in the Mask of Night,
The Moon and Stars, their sole Spectators, shall affright."
Cowley, who had at least partially identified himself with Isaiah in the previous poem, now, in "The Plagues of Egypt," seems to identify himself as a poet-prophet in his own right, while still looking to the hero of this poem -- Moses -- as a figure he can integrate into his conscious personality.
Actually, I believe that this poem is a resolution of Cowley's unique father complex. As I showed at the beginning of this post, there were a number of mother-son myths, eventually ending in a couple of father-son myths. Cowley, still yearning for his father, not quite willing to identify with a different animus figure, must die as a son, so that he can let his father die as well.
In "The Plagues of Egypt," Cowley does this. The poem ends with Pharaoh's first-born son dying, and then Pharaoh himself being drowned under the final flood of blood in the poem -- the crashing back down of the Red Sea. This dynamic of father and son resolves the conflicted dynamics that were presented at the beginning of the Pindar cycle. But Cowley is still left with a male figure to identify with: Moses, the great Prophet, and the leader of his race.
The "Plagues" begins with Cowley chastising his fellow men for being rebels to God. This has made them, Cowley claims, slaves to all else -- including animals. Again, animals have power over humans, as they did in the previous poem, when humans became the sacrifice, and when the animals took over the towns.
Cowley says that we have rejected even the food of God: milk, honey, and manna. Instead we choose to eat the decaying flesh and rotting vegetation that this earth produces.
Cowley compares the rebellious nature of man to the hard-hearted nature of the Pharaoh, who would not believe that Moses' miracles proved that Moses' God was stronger than the gods of the Egyptians. Pharaoh would not free the Egyptians, and so God sent down his plagues. And this is how the proper story opens.
Moses' miracle to the Pharaoh was to throw down his staff to the ground, and have it change into a serpent. The serpent was so real and vicious, it frightened even Pharaoh (and, some say, even Moses!) away. Pharaoh had his own magicians produce snakes with their rods. But Moses' snake ate the two magicians' snakes. Pharoah, however, was not convinced by Moses' miracle.
Moses's first plague was to touch his rod to the Nile, and have it become blood. This, then would be the second flood of blood in the last two poems of the Pindar cycle.
"Flood now no more, but a long Vein of putrid Blood.
The helpless Fish were found
In that strange current drowned,
The Herbs and Trees washed by the mortal Tide
About it blushed and died.
The amazed Crocodiles made haste to Ground;
From their vast Trunks the dripping Gore they spied,
Thought it their own, and dreadfully they cried."
The next plague came from this bloody river. It was the plague of frogs, which were so numerous that they invaded towns, houses, temples, and palaces. Frogs, says Cowley, are normally too afraid of humans to do something like this. But these frogs had no fear. And they overran all the places of civilization.
In the next plague, Moses struck the ground with his rod. A whirlwind of dust flew up into the air. In the whirlwind were, Cowley says, an unknown type of bug, which caused great annoyance and pain to the men and beasts in its path.
The next plague was a plague of flies, of all different kinds, which Cowley compares to great armies. The flies would attack plants and beasts.
The next plague was a plague of sickness upon beasts, which Cowley says came from poisonous stars:
"From the poisonous Stars a mortal Influence came,
(The mingled Malice of their Flame)
A skillful Angel did the ingredients take,
And with just Hands the sad Composure make,
And over all the Land did the full Viol shake.
Thirst, Giddiness, Faintness, and Putrid Heats,
And pining Pains, and shivering Sweats,
On all the Cattle, all the Beasts did fall;
With deformed Death the Country's covered all."
The next plague was a plague of sores and boils on humans. But, interestingly, Cowley makes the infectious agents of this plague have a voice. And the voice speaks to the boils and sores as if they are plants. It calls them buds -- not just buds, but "passionate" buds. It's almost as if these sores and boils are supposed to imply venereal disease, as well as vegetation!
"To the unborn Buds with vital Whispers say,
Ye living Buds, why do ye stay?
The passionate Buds break through the Bark their way;
So wheresoever this tainted Wind but blew,
Swelling Pains and Ulcers grew;
It from the Body called all Sleeping Poisons out,
And to them added new;
A noisome Spring of Sores, as thick as Leaves did sprout."
The next plague was a plague of hail. But the hail is accompanied, in Cowley's story, by lightning. The aspects of the lightning is more interesting than the hail. The lightning acts in all kinds of unnatural ways, producing a lot of startling imagery.
"The dismal Lightnings all around,
Some flying through the Air, some running on the Ground,
Some swimming over ther Water's Face,
Fill'd with bright Horror every Place;
One would have thought, their dreadful Day to have seen,
The very Hail, and Rain itself had kindled been."
The next plague was a plague of locusts, which Cowley has acting very much more army-like than the flies had previously acted. The flies came in troops. But the locusts come in well-ordered troops. However, after the locusts sufficently harrass the Egyptians, Cowley's Moses prays and sends them away, where they feed the fish:
"Moses breathed a Prayer
Breathed forth a violent Western Wind,
Which all these living Clouds did headlong bear
(No stragglers left behind)
Into the purple Sea, and there bestow
On the luxurious Fish a Feast they never did know.
With untaught Joy Pharaoh the News does hear,
And little thinks their Fate attends on him, and his so near."
The next plague was the plague of a solar eclipse, which Cowley augments with total darkness, as if all the light had simply been sucked out of the world. Along with the darkness come night-terrors, not unlike the ghosts in the "Isaiah 34" poem.
The next plague was the plague of the murder of all Egypt's firstborn sons. This section has some moments of poetry which, I'm sure, must have inspired Milton's Paradise Lost. The poetry is very grand.
Cowley says that God has sent the Archangel Michael to kill all the firstborn sons. But before the Archangel Michael completes his task, he stands atop a pyramid at midnight and calls out to the Egyptians to repent. (The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that Michael does this at midnight, when everybody, Cowley has already said, is fast asleep.) Michael's flight to Earth is particularly beautiful.
"Michael, the warlike Prince, does downward fly,
Swift as the Journeys of the Sight,
Swift as the Race of Light,
And with his winged Will cuts through the yielding Sky;
He passed through many a Star, and as he passed,
Shone (like a Star in them) more brightly there,
Than they did in their Sphere."
After Michael gives his warning, he clothes himself in a fleece of night, which is also beautifully described:
"He spoke, and downwards flew,
And over his shining Form a well-cut Cloud he threw
Made of the blackest Fleece of Night,
And close-wrought to keep in the powerful Light,
Yet wrought so fine it hindered not his Flight."
Michael pours poison on his sword, then flies into the houses of the Egyptians (a spirit invading civilized places, rather than animals invading!). He strikes the firstborn in every house. The next day, families wake to find the firstborn sons dead.
Pharaoh momentarily, in his sorrow, for he'd also lost his firstborn son, allowed the Hebrews to leave Egypt. But as soon as they left, he followed after them with an Army. The Pharaoh followed the Hebrews and cornered them at the Red Sea.
But Moses touched his rod to the waters again. And the waters of the Red Sea parted so that the Hebrews could walk across.
Interestingly, Cowley at this point mentions that the Sun was astonished to see the floor of the Red Sea, as it had never seen the floor of a sea before. This is very like the "Muse" poem, where Cowley says that the Muse can go down to the bottom of the Sea, while the sun can't. In other words, the power of the unconscious has been integrated so well for Cowley, that he is able to cooperate with it, and allow it to work for his benefit.
Pharaoh crosses the Red Sea. But the Red Sea, the third flood of blood, comes crashing down on Pharaoh as soon as Moses and the Hebrews are safely across.
I have to apologize again. There were a lot of other things that I wanted to discuss. But I wasn't able to. I didn't take this poem cycle in a straight line, either, like I did with the Mistress cycle. But I just felt like the themes of this poem worked in a different way. And I wanted to explore the themes in that way.
Also, I got a bit too distracted by some of the themes, especially at the beginning. So maybe I wasted a bit of time on some stuff that wasn't as interesting as the later stuff. But I hope that, overall, I gave you an idea of how fun and vivid and engaging Cowley's poetry is.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The Blackmailer and His Wife -- Sir Walter Scott's Rob Roy
There are a few times in the novel Rob Roy were Sir Walter Scott makes reference to Joseph Addison. In all the instances, Scott kind of makes fun of Addison. In his Lives of the Poets, Samuel Johnson idolizes Joseph Addison, along with Sir Richard Steele, as the creators of the "Tatler" and "Spectator," two daily papers that helped to broaden the average English person's knowledge and conversation base, as well as his manners and the regularity of his language.
The way Johnson puts it, he makes Addison sound like a master of style, a kind of first proponent of "cool." Sir Walter Scott makes Addison's work sound like a bit of a bore.
In the introduction to Rob Roy, Scott actually seems to pit Rob Roy, as an ideal, against Joseph Addison and the poet Alexander Pope. Scott says:
"[Rob Roy] owed his fame in a great measure to residing on the very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning of the 18th century, as are usually ascribed to Robin Hood in the middle ages -- and that within forty miles of Glasgow, a great commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus a character like his, blending the wild virtues, with subtle policy, and unrestrained license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George I. Addison, it is probable, or Pope, would have been considerably surprised if they had known that there existed on the same island with them a personage of Rob Roy's peculiar habits and profession."
I'm not really sure whether Addison would have been too surprised. But Samuel Johnson would certainly have been surprised. Johnson can barely believe when a grocer's son becomes an official letter-writer for a queen, or when a joiner's son becomes the man negotiating peace between England and France. And I think Sir Walter Scott might think of Addison as being like Johnson.
Anyhow, Scott himself, in his introduction to Rob Roy, paints a less than favorable picture of Rob Roy. I'm not sure if there's an additional story to Scott's Introduction. It was written in 1829, it appears, while Rob Roy was first published, I believe in 1818. So there might have been a kind of change of attitude in Scott regarding Rob Roy between the time he wrote his novel and the time he wrote the introduction.
The introduction to the book is really good. But I think I'm going to leave it to the side for a bit. The truth is, there's a lot of history in Rob Roy. And I feel like part of Scott's whole point to writing the introduction is that he wasn't able to put all this copious history into the novel.
But it's a good thing he didn't. One of the really nice things about the book is that it is an historical novel, but that it lets history play the role of backstory, rather than smashing up, sometimes awkwardly, against the action of the story.
The main character of the book, Francis Osbaldistone, finds himself up in the north of England, and eventually in Scotland. He finds himself in all these places because of the action of the story. And as he finds himself in each new place, he learns more about the history of the place.
Like Sir Walter Scott's quote above says, Rob Roy, or "Red Rob" MacGregor, was thought of as a Robin Hood of the 18th century. He was, in general, a cattle rustler -- although, at that time in Scotland, cattle rustling wasn't thought of as such a bad thing.
He was also a "blackmailer." Blackmailing was something a bit different than what we think of it nowadays. Actually -- I was at the Paley Center for Media in New York City today. The Paley Center is what used to be known as the Museum of TV and Radio.
It's basically a library full of computer screens. You sit down at the computer screens and pull up old TV shows. It's not so different from YouTube. Actually, sometimes YouTube is easier to navigate and has better availability of stuff to watch. But Paley actually has some really interesting items, that you can only see at Paley. Plus, it's nice to be in a room with a lot of other people, all watching all different kinds of TV shows.
Anyway, I watched the first episode of Days of Our Lives, from 1965, I guess. In the episode, the patriarch, Dr. Horton, jokingly mentions blackmailing his son with a photo he has of him as a three-month-old baby. Dr. Horton's son is now a lawyer, and Dr. Horton's wife says, therefore, that the son would probably not be too worried about blackmail.
I watched a few minutes of another show, a detective show called Honey West. Honey is a female detective. At the beginning of this show she is trying to obtain negatives of a photo that a man is trying to blackmail a rich woman with. The man is threatening that if he doesn't get fifty thousand dollars from the woman, he'll publicize the pictures.
So, in these examples, you can see what we think of as blackmail: a person threatening to do something to somebody unless the threatened person does soemthing for the threatening person. Usually the threatening person wants money. And usually the person is threatened with something that would ruin his social standing.
But in Rob Roy's day, blackmail was the taking or giving of payment in exchange for protection of lands. In Rob Roy's day, the early eighteenth century, Scotland ran rampant with cattle thieves. Cattle thieves weren't necessarily looked down on. But, still, people didn't want their cattle stolen.
So Scottish chieftains, warrior chiefs, were paid to "protect" certain lands for the owners of those lands. They didn't necessarily protect the lands, according to Sir Walter Scott. They would simply allow only a certain amount of cattle to be stolen. They would then take a cut of the money from the sale of the stolen cattle. They might even give a cut of this cut to the owner of the stolen cattle. But if they were paid to "protect" the lands, according to my understanding of Scott, they only allowed a certain amount of cattle to be stolen.
In America, we've had the tradition with the mafia, of "protection." It's a similar idea. As the mafia movies tell us, some guy opens up a shop, let's say, in New York City. The mafia muscles in on him and tells him, "You pay us, we'll protect you." The guy asks what would happen if he didn't pay them for protection. The mafia implies, at least in the mafia movies, that they'll rob or wreck the guy's shop.
In this sense, "protection" isn't protection. It's easy money. And this is basically the idea that Scott gives us, in his introduction and throughout his novel, about the tactic of blackmail in Scotland.
But Rob Roy is the mysterious hero of Scott's novel. Francis Osbaldistone is the main character and the real hero. But he's kind of an innocent young man, going through a kind of coming of age or initiation ritual in his journey from London into the Highlands of Scotland.
Rob Roy is -- really, a kind of constant deus ex Machina. He's always appearing at just the right moment to save everybody from all kinds of trouble. He kind of reminds me of The Lone Ranger. Everybody always asks, "Who was that masked man?"
But how is this mysterious hero such a morally ambiguous kind of person? Well... that's kind of a silly question for a 21st century American to ask. It's been decades since our comic book superheroes have been anything other than morally ambiguous. And the characters of comic books like Watchmen are living in a world that would, I often think, make Charles II's poets blush.
And that's the point, in a way. Poetically, Rob Roy is a kind of counterpoint to the poets Samuel Johnson held up as exemplary, while being something more like the people whose lives Johnson holds up as disgusting. Scott seems to want to show that there is something admirable in the life of Rob Roy, while Rob Roy is not always the most exemplary a character.
I think that by Sir Walter Scott's time, Abraham Cowley had been smothered out of view by Johnson's criticism, while poets like Joseph Addison had been cultivated into favor. In the meantime, other poets were completely forgotten, most likely because Johnson said their poetry wasn't worth anything at all.
One good representative of this class, from the first half of the second volume of Johnson's Lives, is Sheffield of Buckinghamshire. Sheffield doesn't seem to have written any poetry of merit. But his Life is incredible. He fought in a number of different wars. He didn't just fight bravely on the sea, in the midst of a rain of bullets and cannon balls: he was so cool-headed that he actually made scientific observations regarding the projectiles. Like this one, which Johnson records:
"I have observed two things, which I dare affirm, though not generally believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon-bullet, though flying never so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and, indeed, were it otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was, that a great shot may sometimes be avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so clear a sun-shiny day that we could easily perceive the bullets (that were half-spent) fall into the water, and from thence bound up again among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any side; though, in so swift a motion, 'tis hard to judge so well in what line the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may by removing, cost a man his life instead of saving it."
This was early in Sheffield's life, when he was fighting at sea against the Dutch, during the reign of King Charles II. But Sheffield also fought for King James II. King William, even though he liked Sheffield, was a bit suspicious of Sheffield, because Sheffield was very loyal to King James. So Sheffield didn't get as much of a chance to act (or be compensated for his actions) during the reign of King William.
But Sheffield had actually courted Queen Anne. So when Queen Anne took the throne, Sheffield was given a number of titles and preferments. But Sheffield disagreed with Queen Anne, like he'd disagreed with King William, on a number of things. He virtually retired from business -- although he was by that time wealthy enough to build Buckingham House, an estate large enough to accommodate the tastes, a few decades later, of Queen Charlotte.
What little show in the business world Sheffield made were put to a complete halt once King George took the throne -- Sheffield was a total opponent of King George. And so Sheffield busied himself in writing tragedies until his death in 1721.
After Johnson so captivatingly relates to us Sheffield's life of bravery in war, honesty in politics, and achievement in business, Johnson then goes on to completely ruin Sheffield's reputation by calling saying that Sheffield has a Hobbesian religious outlook (bad in those days), loose morality, terrible views regarding women, a gambler's idea of property, and tendencies toward covetousness, idleness, and neglect.
Johnson seems to believe that the lives of great, active men are often full of great fault. Even scholars, like Milton, Dryden, and Addison, seem to have the great fault -- of being too scholarly. But the vices of men of action are, according to Johnson, often the lives of licentiousness. And, when it comes to the poetry of these men, it often falls flat, in Johnson's opinion. Like Johnson says of Sheffield:
"His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and the fancy of a poet."
Again, another poet too wild for Johnson's tastes -- like Cowley. And -- like Cowley, this poet is "cold" he doesn't have "fire" or "fancy." He's another man of action, like Prior. And -- like Prior, he is more of an historian than a poet. Prior could write tales, according to Johnson, but not poetry. Sheffield can write memoirs, but not poetry.
Johnson is most likely correct about the high quality of Prior's tales and Sheffield's memoirs. But Johnson's overall criticism of Sheffield reduces him in the sight of so many people that his reputation, I'd argue, has just withered away. If people can't put a few of his poems into a book, and say what Johnson said about him, he likely won't go into an anthology. So he won't be remembered. His memoirs won't be used in an anthology -- regardless of what Johnson says about them -- because they aren't poetry.
I don't think Abraham Cowley was much of a factor in English poetry by Scott's time. I don't think Scott would have really conceived of Cowley. And I think that was largely because of Johnson.
But the stance that Johnson seems to have taken against Cowley, against wild speech, and for Joseph Addison, and his promotion of refined, easy, cool-headed speech, seems to be opposed, by Scott, by the use of Rob Roy and his kinsmen -- especially his wife Helen MacGregor, who gives some of the most beautiful speeches in the book.
Here is a passage that Scott puts into the mouth of his main character, Francis Osbaldistone, regarding the speech of Helen MacGregor and the Scots:
"There was a strong provincial accentuation, but otherwise, the language rendered by Helen MacGregor, out of the native and poetical Gaelic, into the English, which she had acquired as we do learned tongues, but had probably never heard applied to the mean purposes of ordinary life, was graceful, flowing, and declamatory. Her husband, who in his time had played many parts, used a much less elevated and emphatic dialect; -- but even his language rose in purity of expression, as you may have remarked, if I had been accurate in recording it, when the affairs which he discussed were of an agitating and important nature; and it appears to me in his case, and in that of some other Highlanders whom I have known, that when familiar and facetious they use the Lowland Scottish dialect -- when serious and impassioned, their thoughts arranged themselves in the idiom of their native language; and in the latter case, as they uttered the corresponding ideas in English, the expressions sounded wild, elevated, and poetical. In fact, the language of passion is almost always pure as well as vehement, and it is no uncommon thing to hear a Scotchman, when overwhelmed by a countryman with a tone of bitter and fluent upbraiding, reply by way of taunt to his adversary, 'You have gotten to your English.'"
One interesting thing about this passage is that Scott uses the word "vehement," which Johnson always uses in terms of the controversy writers. One part of John Milton's career that Johnson absolutely hates is Milton's spreading of controversy. And Johnson always calls these writings of Milton's "vehement." But as well as this language being "vehement," it is also "wild, elevated, and poetical." This language of "passion," having all the characteristics opposite of what Johnson thinks of as poetical, is actually a strongly poetic language, for Scott.
Compare the passage above with Johnson's passage below, which I love, just as much as I love the above passage by Scott:
"It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after the Restoration, to divert the attention of the people from publick discontent. The 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' had the same tendency: they were published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct termination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest, they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the elegances of knowledge."
So we have through Scott's passage, a picture of a Rob Roy who, because he is more experienced with the world outside the Highlands than his wife Helen is, can speak English with a jocular kind of style, known as the Lowlands dialect.
Rob Roy has become experienced enough in the world, through trading (stolen) cattle to the Lowland Scottish and Northern English, that he can speak a freer kind of language. But this is just the kind of language that I'm sure Johnson would think is vulgar, while Scott declares that the less refined, less experienced person of the married couple, Helen, is only capable of speaking in an elegant language.
Nevertheless, for Rob Roy, the freer language isn't the language of his heart. His emotions are similar with his wife's emotions. His business experience only gives him the ability to wear the mask of the freer language. For Rob Roy, the world of an Addison, where people may have the leisure or freedom to fashion their thoughts in such a way as "to unite merriment with decency," is not Rob Roy's world.
Rob Roy is, first of all, an outlaw, by circumstance. Secondly, he comes from a family which has, for over a hundred years, and up until only recently, been banned from using their own name, "MacGregor," due to the criminal acts of some of their ancestors. Third, Scotland, having united with England, now must adhere to England's principles, and to a King which, apparently, not much of Scotland actually likes.
When we first meet Rob Roy, at the beginning of the book, he heaps "preferments" onto everybody at the table of a public house, as Johnson seems to relate to us the preferments often heaped upon some of the more active men among his poets. Rob Roy declares:
"'Gentlemen... I havna much dubitation that King George weel deserves the predilection of his friends; and if he can haud the grip he has gotten, why, doubtless, he may make the gauger, here, a commissioner of the revenue, and confer on our friend, Mr. Quitam, the preferment of solicitor-general; and he may also grant some good deed or reward to this honest gentleman who is sitting upon his portmanteau, which he prefers to a chair: And questionless, King James is also a grateful person, and when he gets his hand in play, he may, if he be so minded, make this reverend gentleman Archprelate of Canterbury, and Dr. Mixit chief physician to his household, and commit his royal beard to my friend Latherum. But as I doubt mickle whether any of the competing sovereigns would give Rob Campbell a tass of aquivitae, if he lacked it, I give my vote and interest to Jonathan Brown, our landlord, to be the King and Prince of Skinkers, conditionally that he fetches us another bottle, as good as the last.'"
In one sense, this could just be a typical game of imagining greatness. Kids crown each other King, Queen, Princess, or Knight, all the time. But this heaping of preferments does seem to be a lot like Johnson's litany of preferments, titles, and positions in many of his Lives.
But what Rob Roy is really stating here is his resentment that he would never be approved of by the King. Rob Roy, we find out later in the book, actually has a price on his head in Scotland, at least. He's an outlaw, like Robin Hood, except a bit shadier.
But Rob Roy's real problem seems to be the situation of Scotland. Scotland's Union with England has put Scotland, it seems, under England's complete subjection. Scotland no longer even has a parliament of its own. There is no real freedom, then, for the Scots. Or -- at least this is what Rob Roy's thoughts seem to be.
In the novel, Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife, is definitely of this sentiment. Rob Roy might take a bit of a different view of the whole situation. But Rob Roy is definitely more driven by Helen than he is, often, by his own emotions.
Rob Roy was, the novel says, driven to his life as an outlaw, not by the Union of England and Scotland, but by a financial crisis, which led him to lose his money. He was driven into bankruptcy and had his lands taken away from him, not by an Englishman, but by another Scotsman.
The shame of losing the family lands seems to have affected Helen's pride worse than it affected Rob Roy's pride. And it appears that Helen has become a sort of chieftain to the chieftain, driving Rob Roy not only to be an outlaw, but to be something of a revolutionary.
At least, I should say, this is how I understand it. A lot of the backstory of the book is written in the Scottish dialect, which I think I did fine with. But I don't think I caught every bit and piece. And, when push comes to shove, I feel a lot like Willfred, the fool of the family, of whom Francis says, during the small Scottish uprising near the end of the book:
"I have heard he was never able exactly to comprehend the cause of the battle, and did not uniformly remember, on which king's side he was engaged."
The two Kings are King George and King James. James was still alive, though he had been dethroned (two monarchs previous to George). There were many in England, mostly the Catholics, who were trying to bring King James back to the throne. But in Scotland there was a large contingent of people working for a revolution against King George and for King James.
The groups of people fighting for King James were -- I think -- called the Jacobites. And a larger Jacobite uprising actually occurred, I believe, toward the middle of the eighteenth century in Scotland and the North of England. But the smaller Jacobite uprising, which is foreshadowed through most of the book, and which forms a few episodes toward the end of the book, is the type of event which Helen MacGregor hopes to drive her husband toward.
In fact, many of the problems in the book seem to arise from Rob Roys attempts, largely inspired by his wife, to get some kind of strategic information which will really make a Jacobite uprising from Scotland down into England possible.
But because of his dealings as both an outlaw and a revolutionary, Rob Roy, though he is always doing business with people, is always on the outskirts of society. And he feels like he is simply doomed to be that way. He was once a law-abiding citizen. But circumstances have made him something else. And now he has to live that way.
But -- because he was born into the clan of the MacGregors -- a clan that for so long wasn't even able to use its own name -- he feels a dark shadow over the destiny, not only of his own life, but over the lives of his family.
This is illustrated toward the end of the book, when one of Rob Roy's cousins, Nicol Jarvie, a Scottish merchant and judge (?) who lives in Glasgow and has done much to help out Francis Osbaldistone, the hero of the story, offers to educate Rob Roy's two sons, Robin and Hamish, at no charge. Rob Roy becomes annoyed -- almost violently annoyed -- at Jarvie's attempts to convince Rob Roy.
Rob Roy seems to believe that he's stuck in this kind of life -- that his whole family is stuck in this kind of life. But I think that his real reason for not sending Robin and Hamish to be educated by Jarvie is that he's afraid of his wife. His wife would hear nothing of a Glasgow man -- a Lowland Scotland man -- raising her two sons! Lowland Scotland is just as bad as England in her eyes. And England is an abomination for her.
Helen even regrets the fact that Rob Roy has to do any kind of business with the Lowland Scots or the English. And, in her opinion, any time he does business with them, he ends up only bringing trouble on himself. Nobody ever remembers or is grateful for what he's done for them. Helen says of Rob Roy that:
"'Wise only when the bonnet is on his head, and the sword is in his hand, he never exchanges the tartan for the broad-cloth, but he runs himself into the miserable intriguies of the Lowlanders, and becomes again, after all he has suffered, their agent -- their tool -- their slave.'"
When Francis wishes for Helen to add "benefactor" to the epithets, Helen replies:
"'Be it so... for it is the most empty title of them all, since he has uniformly sown benefits to reap a harvest of the most foul ingratitude.'"
Helen herself fights in battles, and, in Rob Roy's absence, is herself a leader of the Scotch warriors. She drives the men on with her vehement, impassioned speech. And it seems pretty obvious that she drives on Rob Roy in the same way.
In the introduction to Rob Roy, however -- maybe I didn't read carefully enough -- Scott's "historical" Rob Roy doesn't seem to be driven on as much by Helen as the fictional Rob Roy. I only found three solid references to Helen.
In one of these references, Rob Roy's wife has been extremely insulted by one of the men to whom Rob Roy owes a large debt. In another one of them, just before Rob Roy is set to get into a fight, Helen hides the sword of the opponent (although the opponent manages to find a sword and actually scare Rob Roy away). In the final reference, when Rob Roy was an aged man and dying, Scott says:
"He expressed some contrition for particular parts of his life. His wife laughed at these scruples of conscience, and exhorted him to die like a man, as he had lived. In reply, he rebuked her for her violent passions, and the counsels she had given him. 'You have put strife,' he said, 'betwixt me and the best men of the country, and now you would place enmity between me and my God.'"
But, I would assume, from my understanding of Scott's ideas, that the best men in the country, in Rob Roy's opinion, were Highland Scots, not Lowland Scots. Englishmen weren't even included in the statement.
So, it would seem that the historical Rob Roy was on his own as far as being a revolutionary was concerned. Scott implies in the Introduction that the "historical" Rob Roy was actually carrying out the strategy of war much like the common blackmailer of the Scottish days carried out the strategy of "protection." Scott was actually fighting, if not for King George, then at least in such a way that King George wouldn't lose through any action of Rob Roy's warriors.
In one decisive battle, as Scott relates, Rob Roy even stood, with his men, up at the top of a hill, while other Scottish clans fought the British. When it became clear that the Scots were not going to win the battle, Rob Roy had his men charge down the hill.
Rob Roy, with the men, didn't arrive at the scene of battle in time to do much else than plunder the purses of the dead men lying on the field. This eventually became the notorious subject of a satirical poem which Scott quotes.
Again, regarding the education of Rob Roy's sons, Scott gives us a scene that shows the "historical" Rob Roy as a man who believes that his life is the exemplary life. Instead of having to fend off a relative who wishes to educate his children, Rob Roy has to be -- very delicately -- dissuaded from almost kidnapping one of his relatives' children, so that he can educate him in the life of a blackmailer.
"At length the perplexed Professor pleaded that his son was very young, and in an infirm state of health, and not yet able to endure the hardships of a mountain life; but that in another year or two he hoped his health would be firmly established, and he would be in a fitting condition to attend on his brave kinsman, and follow out the splendid destinies to which he opened the way. This agreement being made, the cousins parted, -- Rob Roy pledging his honour to carry his young relation to the hills with him on his next return to Aberdeenshire, and Dr. Gregory, doubtless, praying in his secret soul that he might never see Rob's Highland face again."
Then why does Scott show his fictional Rob Roy to be the kind of man he is? The Rob Roy of the novel is a hero -- almost like The Lone Ranger, except with a few moral ambiguities. But his moral ambiguities don't stop him from being directed in action, eloquent, brave, and diligent. The "historical" Rob Roy, as Scott shows him, lacks each of these virtues in turn, story by story. And why is Helen such a driving force in the "fictional" Rob Roy's life, when she doesn't seem to have been such in the "historical" Rob Roy's life?
The answer is that Rob Roy is a kind of "medicine" for the hero, Francis Osbaldistone. Like I said earlier, the story of Rob Roy, from Francis' viewpoint, is a kind of coming of age story.
The story begins with Francis coming home from France, where he's been tutored by one of his father's business relations. But Francis hasn't been very strictly tutored, for a number of reasons. Francis has developed a taste for poetry. There are a few examples of his poetry. They seem fine enough. But as Francis himself warns us, these were the early years of the eighteenth century, when poets were thought of as impoverished drunkards and thieves.
Francis' father is educating Francis so he can take over the family business -- one, apparently, of the most famous banking houses in all of London. But Francis doesn't want to have anything to do with his old man's business. He'd rather be a poet.
Francis' father tells Francis that he'll either take over the business or be disowned. Francis, as hard-headed as his father, decides he'd rather be disowned. So, instead of being completely disowned, Francis is sent up to the North of England, to Northumberland, to Osbaldistone Hall, to live with his Uncle Hildebrand Osbaldistone. Hildebrand is to send down one of his own sons to live with Francis' father and be educated so that he may take over the business.
The cousin who is chosen to live with Francis' father is a young man named Rashleigh. I think both Francis and Rashleigh are about the same age -- about twenty years old. Rashleigh is, before he even steps onto the stage, the villain of the piece. He had been studying for the priesthood (Hildebrand's family, despite being English, are Roman Catholics).
But Rashleigh hasn't been studying in order to save men's souls. He admits to Francis later in the book that he's been working to become a priest because he wants the power of the priesthood: he wants Kings kneeling before him.
Rashleigh has involved himself, through Rob Roy, with the minor Jacobite uprising that takes place at the end of the book. And for the ends of the revolt (I think -- I'm not totally sure), Rashleigh, upon arriving in London and gaining the trust of Francis' father, takes advantage of being in almost complete control of the Osbaldistone banking-house in order to cause a few troubles with accounts in Scotland. These accounts also threaten to bankrupt the Osbaldistone banking house. They also threaten, through some machinations I didn't understand, to incite the Jacobite Scots into an uprising.
Rashleigh has, by this point, removed himself from London up to Glasgow. Francis, learning all the details of Rashleigh's deceits, goes up to Glasgow to try to find either Francis, the records of the accounts that Francis has absconded with, or both.
In the meantime, Francis has fallen in love with one of his distant cousins, Diana, or "Die," Vernon. Die has a past that she is reluctant to share with Francis. But she is also an extremely elegant, almost brashly honest person. She lives in a mansion filled with men. But she can do anything the men can do. She's also been trained to be incredibly intelligent.
As part of her past, Die has been contracted to marry one of her cousins at Osbaldistone Hall. The patriarch of the Hall, Francis' Uncle Hildebrand, will make the decision on the marriage. Rashleigh had hoped he'd be the one who could marry Die. But she rejected him. So he took to the idea of becoming a priest. In the meantime, he still harbored a violently jealous love for her.
Francis and Rashleigh, before Rashleigh leaves for London, get into fights as Rashleigh tries to pit Francis against Die -- it's obvious how much Francis and Die feel for each other, and Rashleigh doesn't want that relationship to work out at all. Rashleigh and Francis part with animosity. This animosity is renewed when Rashleigh and Francis again meet in Glasgow.
But Die's secret is eventually revealed. Her father, a Jacobite was involved in a previous revolution. It is rumored that he's died. But he is only lying low Northumberland until the political climate becomes more favorable for him. Die's father is such a staunch Jacobite that he won't hear of Die marrying a non-Catholic.
There's no question of Die marrying someone like Francis, who, Francis tells us, due to the cosmpolitan education of France, doesn't have a very specific religion at all. So it looks, over and over again, like Die and Francis are going to be split apart forevery. This is the technique, Anne Carson tells us in her book Eros the Bittersweet, of a good romance. I'm not sure what Scott would think about that. But I agree.
Anyhow -- after a number of scenes of Francis working his way up into Glasgow, and then up into the Highlands, in order to receive the documents to save his father's business -- Francis finally decides that he will, after all, compromise with his father and work at the family bank.
Rob Roy, then, is an image that Francis has of himself: the wild poet with the passionate voice. He also sees Helen as Die Vernon.
Francis, through a kind of pampered, undisciplined life, has figured that he can live a life without any focus, without any kind of business purpose. Die Vernon has lived as the daughter of a revolutionary, and has had to harden and focus her mind, close off her emotions, more than a woman would in those days. So Scott sees these two young people, Francis and Die, as people who have, due to their life histories, grown up a bit out of tune with their natures and with the nature of society.
Like Camille Paglia would say about Shakespeare's As You Like It, the aim of the story is to bring the two young lovers into a kind of integration with their society. The same thing is going on for Francis and Die all throughout Rob Roy.
Rob Roy is the wild part of Francis. Francis has to see that the wild part of himself can be effective, can save him and protect him. Once he has allowed himself to recognize that it can act as a functional part of himself, he can integrate it into himself. But he can't integrate that part into himself -- and thereafter integrate himself into society -- until that part of himself has shown that it can protect him. And, thus, Francis must go on his initiation ritual.
Helen, as Francis' anima, is a strong and extremely eloquent character. She's in charge of all the Highlanders -- all of the male elements of Francis' mind. But she has experienced a great deal of shame. When Francis first meets Die, she's partly like a stately, refined English woman, and partly like the brave but rude Helen. Like Helen, Die lives all among men. Like Helen, Die can do anything the men surrounding her do, equally well, if not better.
Die's family history is her own history. And I'm sure that one could easily see this story as Die's unconscious journey just as easily as they could see it as Francis' journey. But Die's family history is also a projection of Francis' own experience with his anima onto Die. So, seeing Die, Francis gets a first glimpse of his anima.
Just as a side note, this double-view is a characteristic that Sir Walter Scott shares with Western novel writer Zane Grey. Many of his books could be seen as initiation rituals for young men. And the women in those stories could be seen as anima projections. But, I believe, especially in the books The Thundering Herd, Wildfire, and Desert Gold -- the conclusion of which, by the way, is, formally, very similar to that of Rob Roy -- the journey could just as easily be seen as the woman's rite of passaage, and the man could just as easily be seen as the woman's animus projection.
But, for purposes of the example, let's look, for now, at Die Vernon as holding, at least to some degree, the projection of Francis' anima.
In the form of Helen, the anima, in her full strength, is driving Francis away from integrating himself into society (his father's business), and into a kind of profession which, at that time, was pretty much synonymous with drunken dissolution (or envelopment in the unconscious, which would mean complete possession by the anima).
Francis is given an image of himself, by turning his back on society, as a rebellion, a rebellion as noble as that of a subjugated country against the ruling country. But his anima only has the power she has to convince him of this because she is imprisoned in the space in which she is imprisoned by society -- a society of men.
Francis has been exiled to France, in a manner of speaking, by his father. It is obvious throughout the book that Francis and his father share a loving relationship. But their relationship is definitely one that the father rules. Maybe the father rules the relationship a bit too much, and a bit too cruelly.
Francis has no space, in his feelings, for the world of men, because, it seems to him, his father controls it so completely. So he exiles his sensitivity, his anima, deep in his unconscious, just like he's been exiled to France.
I think this idea, that Francis' emotions were too overpowered by his father as such a dominant male, so that his anima became not only an exile, but a figure that drove Francis on to hard-headed rebellion, is reinforced by a lot of the speeches that Die gives -- as the kind of first view, or projected-view, that Francis gets of the anima.
In these speeces, Die often laments being born a woman at all. She actually gives three reasons for her discontent, which I will condense, as they take place in the midst of a dialogue on sympathy between Die and Francis (in which Francis keeps pledging sympathy, and then keeps criticizing everything Die says):
"'There are three things for which I am much to be pitied, if any one thought it worth while to waste any compassion upon me.
"'In the first place, I am a girl, and not a young fellow, and would be shut up in a madhouse if I did half the things I had a mind to; -- and that, if I had your happy prerogative of acting as you list, would make all the world mad with imitating and applauding me....
"'The second count of my indictment against fortune... [is that] I belong to an oppressed sect and antiquated religion, and, instead of getting credit for my devotion, as is due to all good girls beside, my kind friend, Justice Inglewood, may send me to the house of correction, merely for worshipping God in the way of my ancestors....
"'My third cause of vexation... [is that] I am by nature, as you may easily observe, of a frank and unreserved disposition -- a plain, true-hearted girl, who would willingly act openly and honestly by the whole world, and yet fate has involved me in such a series of nets and toils, and entanglements, that I dare hardly speak a word for fear of consequences -- not to myself, but to others.'"
In all of these instances, Die mentions either the possibility of being entrapped or the actual state of bieng entrapped. But she has just rescued her cousin from being imprisoned by Justice Inglewood, the judge she says "may send [her] to the house of correction."
Francis is threatened with imprisonment, sent to rescue friends from prison (and getting trapped there himself), captured as a traitor by British soldiers, and captured as a traitor by Scottish soldiers.
It is only in the last case that Francis is subjugated by a female. But by that time, he's far up North (which, I'm coming to learn, after having read William Morris, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and, now, Sir Walter Scott, must be, or must have been, an aspect of the unconscious for the English). He's finally in the realm of the anima. And he is under her control.
Die is, personally, entrapped in her contracted marriage to an Osbaldistone. Her only other option is to become a nun. But, being entrapped, as a woman, in society, she also stands for Francis -- who has been so overwhelmed by male society that he has had to exile his anima deep into his unconscious.
But certain elements of Francis' male side, also in a state of underdevelopment, also exiled to Francis' unconscious, are under the control of Francis' anima. The strongest of these male figures is Rob Roy, who enters the outskirts of the conscious world, scarcely going farther south (or scarcely going farther into the English conscious), than Northumberland.
However, once Francis has come face to face with his anima, once he has been imprisoned by her, like Rob Roy had been imprisoned by her, he learns that Rob Roy has been imprisoned, by male, English soldiers. Francis and Rob Roy have changed places. Now Francis is sent, by the anima, to rescue Rob Roy for her.
Francis meets the English troops and Rob Roy. Rob Roy makes a daring escape -- for which, it seems, Francis needed to be there. Francis, inspired, in turn, by Rob Roy, later makes an escape as well. They both escape by means of a river.
After Francis has escaped from the English troops, outwitting the English troops, by himself, with help neither from Die Vernon, Rob Roy, or Helen MacGregor, Francis is met, mysteriously, on the road by Die Vernon, who, apparently escaping from Britain altogether with a mysterious man, hands all Francis' father's account documents back to Francis. Somehow Die has managed to steal these accounts away from the villain Rashleigh, in order to restore Francis' father's business.
Not long after Die and the man disappear, Francis is again met on the road by Rob Roy. Rob Roy and Francis approach Rob Roy's wife Helen, and Helen takes a much milder tone. Rob Roy and Francis have, to a certain degree, managed some kind of integration of personality in a functional way, and are able to withstand the world of male society, which was previously overwhelming. So Helen, as the anima, is less able to possess the male aspects of the personality.
This, I think, also would explain why Rob Roy is so against his two sons, Hamish and Robin, being instructed by their Uncle Nicol Jarvie. Rob Roy is an element of the unconscious, or, possibly, of the pre-conscious -- like a dream. His sons may be a mix between the unconscious anima and himself. They live in a kind of liminal world. They can't be brought out into Jarvie's world of the conscious. Rob Roy has to resist such an offer. Every part of personality must be integrated as it is.
The remainder of the book follows this development. But I think I'd like to leave some of the final scenes alone. They're probably a lot more fun when you read them freshly, without anybody telling you what happens. I think it's fine to give away a lot of the surprising scenes in a book.
Sometimes, in complicated books, it's actually helpful to talk about some of the scenes -- I mean, just to say right out what happens in them. I've always appreciated books or essays that did that kind of thing, simply because then it helps me know what to look for in the language. It helps me read difficult passages. The scenes don't lose any excitement. The excitement may actually be enhanced.
But I don't feel so comfortable doing that with the final scenes in books, since there's something about the freshness of the scene that makes it exciting. So I'll leave the final exciting scenes for you all to read.
The way Johnson puts it, he makes Addison sound like a master of style, a kind of first proponent of "cool." Sir Walter Scott makes Addison's work sound like a bit of a bore.
In the introduction to Rob Roy, Scott actually seems to pit Rob Roy, as an ideal, against Joseph Addison and the poet Alexander Pope. Scott says:
"[Rob Roy] owed his fame in a great measure to residing on the very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning of the 18th century, as are usually ascribed to Robin Hood in the middle ages -- and that within forty miles of Glasgow, a great commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus a character like his, blending the wild virtues, with subtle policy, and unrestrained license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George I. Addison, it is probable, or Pope, would have been considerably surprised if they had known that there existed on the same island with them a personage of Rob Roy's peculiar habits and profession."
I'm not really sure whether Addison would have been too surprised. But Samuel Johnson would certainly have been surprised. Johnson can barely believe when a grocer's son becomes an official letter-writer for a queen, or when a joiner's son becomes the man negotiating peace between England and France. And I think Sir Walter Scott might think of Addison as being like Johnson.
Anyhow, Scott himself, in his introduction to Rob Roy, paints a less than favorable picture of Rob Roy. I'm not sure if there's an additional story to Scott's Introduction. It was written in 1829, it appears, while Rob Roy was first published, I believe in 1818. So there might have been a kind of change of attitude in Scott regarding Rob Roy between the time he wrote his novel and the time he wrote the introduction.
The introduction to the book is really good. But I think I'm going to leave it to the side for a bit. The truth is, there's a lot of history in Rob Roy. And I feel like part of Scott's whole point to writing the introduction is that he wasn't able to put all this copious history into the novel.
But it's a good thing he didn't. One of the really nice things about the book is that it is an historical novel, but that it lets history play the role of backstory, rather than smashing up, sometimes awkwardly, against the action of the story.
The main character of the book, Francis Osbaldistone, finds himself up in the north of England, and eventually in Scotland. He finds himself in all these places because of the action of the story. And as he finds himself in each new place, he learns more about the history of the place.
Like Sir Walter Scott's quote above says, Rob Roy, or "Red Rob" MacGregor, was thought of as a Robin Hood of the 18th century. He was, in general, a cattle rustler -- although, at that time in Scotland, cattle rustling wasn't thought of as such a bad thing.
He was also a "blackmailer." Blackmailing was something a bit different than what we think of it nowadays. Actually -- I was at the Paley Center for Media in New York City today. The Paley Center is what used to be known as the Museum of TV and Radio.
It's basically a library full of computer screens. You sit down at the computer screens and pull up old TV shows. It's not so different from YouTube. Actually, sometimes YouTube is easier to navigate and has better availability of stuff to watch. But Paley actually has some really interesting items, that you can only see at Paley. Plus, it's nice to be in a room with a lot of other people, all watching all different kinds of TV shows.
Anyway, I watched the first episode of Days of Our Lives, from 1965, I guess. In the episode, the patriarch, Dr. Horton, jokingly mentions blackmailing his son with a photo he has of him as a three-month-old baby. Dr. Horton's son is now a lawyer, and Dr. Horton's wife says, therefore, that the son would probably not be too worried about blackmail.
I watched a few minutes of another show, a detective show called Honey West. Honey is a female detective. At the beginning of this show she is trying to obtain negatives of a photo that a man is trying to blackmail a rich woman with. The man is threatening that if he doesn't get fifty thousand dollars from the woman, he'll publicize the pictures.
So, in these examples, you can see what we think of as blackmail: a person threatening to do something to somebody unless the threatened person does soemthing for the threatening person. Usually the threatening person wants money. And usually the person is threatened with something that would ruin his social standing.
But in Rob Roy's day, blackmail was the taking or giving of payment in exchange for protection of lands. In Rob Roy's day, the early eighteenth century, Scotland ran rampant with cattle thieves. Cattle thieves weren't necessarily looked down on. But, still, people didn't want their cattle stolen.
So Scottish chieftains, warrior chiefs, were paid to "protect" certain lands for the owners of those lands. They didn't necessarily protect the lands, according to Sir Walter Scott. They would simply allow only a certain amount of cattle to be stolen. They would then take a cut of the money from the sale of the stolen cattle. They might even give a cut of this cut to the owner of the stolen cattle. But if they were paid to "protect" the lands, according to my understanding of Scott, they only allowed a certain amount of cattle to be stolen.
In America, we've had the tradition with the mafia, of "protection." It's a similar idea. As the mafia movies tell us, some guy opens up a shop, let's say, in New York City. The mafia muscles in on him and tells him, "You pay us, we'll protect you." The guy asks what would happen if he didn't pay them for protection. The mafia implies, at least in the mafia movies, that they'll rob or wreck the guy's shop.
In this sense, "protection" isn't protection. It's easy money. And this is basically the idea that Scott gives us, in his introduction and throughout his novel, about the tactic of blackmail in Scotland.
But Rob Roy is the mysterious hero of Scott's novel. Francis Osbaldistone is the main character and the real hero. But he's kind of an innocent young man, going through a kind of coming of age or initiation ritual in his journey from London into the Highlands of Scotland.
Rob Roy is -- really, a kind of constant deus ex Machina. He's always appearing at just the right moment to save everybody from all kinds of trouble. He kind of reminds me of The Lone Ranger. Everybody always asks, "Who was that masked man?"
But how is this mysterious hero such a morally ambiguous kind of person? Well... that's kind of a silly question for a 21st century American to ask. It's been decades since our comic book superheroes have been anything other than morally ambiguous. And the characters of comic books like Watchmen are living in a world that would, I often think, make Charles II's poets blush.
And that's the point, in a way. Poetically, Rob Roy is a kind of counterpoint to the poets Samuel Johnson held up as exemplary, while being something more like the people whose lives Johnson holds up as disgusting. Scott seems to want to show that there is something admirable in the life of Rob Roy, while Rob Roy is not always the most exemplary a character.
I think that by Sir Walter Scott's time, Abraham Cowley had been smothered out of view by Johnson's criticism, while poets like Joseph Addison had been cultivated into favor. In the meantime, other poets were completely forgotten, most likely because Johnson said their poetry wasn't worth anything at all.
One good representative of this class, from the first half of the second volume of Johnson's Lives, is Sheffield of Buckinghamshire. Sheffield doesn't seem to have written any poetry of merit. But his Life is incredible. He fought in a number of different wars. He didn't just fight bravely on the sea, in the midst of a rain of bullets and cannon balls: he was so cool-headed that he actually made scientific observations regarding the projectiles. Like this one, which Johnson records:
"I have observed two things, which I dare affirm, though not generally believed. One was, that the wind of a cannon-bullet, though flying never so near, is incapable of doing the least harm; and, indeed, were it otherwise, no man above deck would escape. The other was, that a great shot may sometimes be avoided, even as it flies, by changing one's ground a little; for, when the wind sometimes blew away the smoke, it was so clear a sun-shiny day that we could easily perceive the bullets (that were half-spent) fall into the water, and from thence bound up again among us, which gives sufficient time for making a step or two on any side; though, in so swift a motion, 'tis hard to judge so well in what line the bullet comes, which, if mistaken, may by removing, cost a man his life instead of saving it."
This was early in Sheffield's life, when he was fighting at sea against the Dutch, during the reign of King Charles II. But Sheffield also fought for King James II. King William, even though he liked Sheffield, was a bit suspicious of Sheffield, because Sheffield was very loyal to King James. So Sheffield didn't get as much of a chance to act (or be compensated for his actions) during the reign of King William.
But Sheffield had actually courted Queen Anne. So when Queen Anne took the throne, Sheffield was given a number of titles and preferments. But Sheffield disagreed with Queen Anne, like he'd disagreed with King William, on a number of things. He virtually retired from business -- although he was by that time wealthy enough to build Buckingham House, an estate large enough to accommodate the tastes, a few decades later, of Queen Charlotte.
What little show in the business world Sheffield made were put to a complete halt once King George took the throne -- Sheffield was a total opponent of King George. And so Sheffield busied himself in writing tragedies until his death in 1721.
After Johnson so captivatingly relates to us Sheffield's life of bravery in war, honesty in politics, and achievement in business, Johnson then goes on to completely ruin Sheffield's reputation by calling saying that Sheffield has a Hobbesian religious outlook (bad in those days), loose morality, terrible views regarding women, a gambler's idea of property, and tendencies toward covetousness, idleness, and neglect.
Johnson seems to believe that the lives of great, active men are often full of great fault. Even scholars, like Milton, Dryden, and Addison, seem to have the great fault -- of being too scholarly. But the vices of men of action are, according to Johnson, often the lives of licentiousness. And, when it comes to the poetry of these men, it often falls flat, in Johnson's opinion. Like Johnson says of Sheffield:
"His verses are often insipid; but his memoirs are lively and agreeable; he had the perspicuity and elegance of an historian, but not the fire and the fancy of a poet."
Again, another poet too wild for Johnson's tastes -- like Cowley. And -- like Cowley, this poet is "cold" he doesn't have "fire" or "fancy." He's another man of action, like Prior. And -- like Prior, he is more of an historian than a poet. Prior could write tales, according to Johnson, but not poetry. Sheffield can write memoirs, but not poetry.
Johnson is most likely correct about the high quality of Prior's tales and Sheffield's memoirs. But Johnson's overall criticism of Sheffield reduces him in the sight of so many people that his reputation, I'd argue, has just withered away. If people can't put a few of his poems into a book, and say what Johnson said about him, he likely won't go into an anthology. So he won't be remembered. His memoirs won't be used in an anthology -- regardless of what Johnson says about them -- because they aren't poetry.
I don't think Abraham Cowley was much of a factor in English poetry by Scott's time. I don't think Scott would have really conceived of Cowley. And I think that was largely because of Johnson.
But the stance that Johnson seems to have taken against Cowley, against wild speech, and for Joseph Addison, and his promotion of refined, easy, cool-headed speech, seems to be opposed, by Scott, by the use of Rob Roy and his kinsmen -- especially his wife Helen MacGregor, who gives some of the most beautiful speeches in the book.
Here is a passage that Scott puts into the mouth of his main character, Francis Osbaldistone, regarding the speech of Helen MacGregor and the Scots:
"There was a strong provincial accentuation, but otherwise, the language rendered by Helen MacGregor, out of the native and poetical Gaelic, into the English, which she had acquired as we do learned tongues, but had probably never heard applied to the mean purposes of ordinary life, was graceful, flowing, and declamatory. Her husband, who in his time had played many parts, used a much less elevated and emphatic dialect; -- but even his language rose in purity of expression, as you may have remarked, if I had been accurate in recording it, when the affairs which he discussed were of an agitating and important nature; and it appears to me in his case, and in that of some other Highlanders whom I have known, that when familiar and facetious they use the Lowland Scottish dialect -- when serious and impassioned, their thoughts arranged themselves in the idiom of their native language; and in the latter case, as they uttered the corresponding ideas in English, the expressions sounded wild, elevated, and poetical. In fact, the language of passion is almost always pure as well as vehement, and it is no uncommon thing to hear a Scotchman, when overwhelmed by a countryman with a tone of bitter and fluent upbraiding, reply by way of taunt to his adversary, 'You have gotten to your English.'"
One interesting thing about this passage is that Scott uses the word "vehement," which Johnson always uses in terms of the controversy writers. One part of John Milton's career that Johnson absolutely hates is Milton's spreading of controversy. And Johnson always calls these writings of Milton's "vehement." But as well as this language being "vehement," it is also "wild, elevated, and poetical." This language of "passion," having all the characteristics opposite of what Johnson thinks of as poetical, is actually a strongly poetic language, for Scott.
Compare the passage above with Johnson's passage below, which I love, just as much as I love the above passage by Scott:
"It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after the Restoration, to divert the attention of the people from publick discontent. The 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' had the same tendency: they were published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct termination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest, they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the elegances of knowledge."
So we have through Scott's passage, a picture of a Rob Roy who, because he is more experienced with the world outside the Highlands than his wife Helen is, can speak English with a jocular kind of style, known as the Lowlands dialect.
Rob Roy has become experienced enough in the world, through trading (stolen) cattle to the Lowland Scottish and Northern English, that he can speak a freer kind of language. But this is just the kind of language that I'm sure Johnson would think is vulgar, while Scott declares that the less refined, less experienced person of the married couple, Helen, is only capable of speaking in an elegant language.
Nevertheless, for Rob Roy, the freer language isn't the language of his heart. His emotions are similar with his wife's emotions. His business experience only gives him the ability to wear the mask of the freer language. For Rob Roy, the world of an Addison, where people may have the leisure or freedom to fashion their thoughts in such a way as "to unite merriment with decency," is not Rob Roy's world.
Rob Roy is, first of all, an outlaw, by circumstance. Secondly, he comes from a family which has, for over a hundred years, and up until only recently, been banned from using their own name, "MacGregor," due to the criminal acts of some of their ancestors. Third, Scotland, having united with England, now must adhere to England's principles, and to a King which, apparently, not much of Scotland actually likes.
When we first meet Rob Roy, at the beginning of the book, he heaps "preferments" onto everybody at the table of a public house, as Johnson seems to relate to us the preferments often heaped upon some of the more active men among his poets. Rob Roy declares:
"'Gentlemen... I havna much dubitation that King George weel deserves the predilection of his friends; and if he can haud the grip he has gotten, why, doubtless, he may make the gauger, here, a commissioner of the revenue, and confer on our friend, Mr. Quitam, the preferment of solicitor-general; and he may also grant some good deed or reward to this honest gentleman who is sitting upon his portmanteau, which he prefers to a chair: And questionless, King James is also a grateful person, and when he gets his hand in play, he may, if he be so minded, make this reverend gentleman Archprelate of Canterbury, and Dr. Mixit chief physician to his household, and commit his royal beard to my friend Latherum. But as I doubt mickle whether any of the competing sovereigns would give Rob Campbell a tass of aquivitae, if he lacked it, I give my vote and interest to Jonathan Brown, our landlord, to be the King and Prince of Skinkers, conditionally that he fetches us another bottle, as good as the last.'"
In one sense, this could just be a typical game of imagining greatness. Kids crown each other King, Queen, Princess, or Knight, all the time. But this heaping of preferments does seem to be a lot like Johnson's litany of preferments, titles, and positions in many of his Lives.
But what Rob Roy is really stating here is his resentment that he would never be approved of by the King. Rob Roy, we find out later in the book, actually has a price on his head in Scotland, at least. He's an outlaw, like Robin Hood, except a bit shadier.
But Rob Roy's real problem seems to be the situation of Scotland. Scotland's Union with England has put Scotland, it seems, under England's complete subjection. Scotland no longer even has a parliament of its own. There is no real freedom, then, for the Scots. Or -- at least this is what Rob Roy's thoughts seem to be.
In the novel, Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife, is definitely of this sentiment. Rob Roy might take a bit of a different view of the whole situation. But Rob Roy is definitely more driven by Helen than he is, often, by his own emotions.
Rob Roy was, the novel says, driven to his life as an outlaw, not by the Union of England and Scotland, but by a financial crisis, which led him to lose his money. He was driven into bankruptcy and had his lands taken away from him, not by an Englishman, but by another Scotsman.
The shame of losing the family lands seems to have affected Helen's pride worse than it affected Rob Roy's pride. And it appears that Helen has become a sort of chieftain to the chieftain, driving Rob Roy not only to be an outlaw, but to be something of a revolutionary.
At least, I should say, this is how I understand it. A lot of the backstory of the book is written in the Scottish dialect, which I think I did fine with. But I don't think I caught every bit and piece. And, when push comes to shove, I feel a lot like Willfred, the fool of the family, of whom Francis says, during the small Scottish uprising near the end of the book:
"I have heard he was never able exactly to comprehend the cause of the battle, and did not uniformly remember, on which king's side he was engaged."
The two Kings are King George and King James. James was still alive, though he had been dethroned (two monarchs previous to George). There were many in England, mostly the Catholics, who were trying to bring King James back to the throne. But in Scotland there was a large contingent of people working for a revolution against King George and for King James.
The groups of people fighting for King James were -- I think -- called the Jacobites. And a larger Jacobite uprising actually occurred, I believe, toward the middle of the eighteenth century in Scotland and the North of England. But the smaller Jacobite uprising, which is foreshadowed through most of the book, and which forms a few episodes toward the end of the book, is the type of event which Helen MacGregor hopes to drive her husband toward.
In fact, many of the problems in the book seem to arise from Rob Roys attempts, largely inspired by his wife, to get some kind of strategic information which will really make a Jacobite uprising from Scotland down into England possible.
But because of his dealings as both an outlaw and a revolutionary, Rob Roy, though he is always doing business with people, is always on the outskirts of society. And he feels like he is simply doomed to be that way. He was once a law-abiding citizen. But circumstances have made him something else. And now he has to live that way.
But -- because he was born into the clan of the MacGregors -- a clan that for so long wasn't even able to use its own name -- he feels a dark shadow over the destiny, not only of his own life, but over the lives of his family.
This is illustrated toward the end of the book, when one of Rob Roy's cousins, Nicol Jarvie, a Scottish merchant and judge (?) who lives in Glasgow and has done much to help out Francis Osbaldistone, the hero of the story, offers to educate Rob Roy's two sons, Robin and Hamish, at no charge. Rob Roy becomes annoyed -- almost violently annoyed -- at Jarvie's attempts to convince Rob Roy.
Rob Roy seems to believe that he's stuck in this kind of life -- that his whole family is stuck in this kind of life. But I think that his real reason for not sending Robin and Hamish to be educated by Jarvie is that he's afraid of his wife. His wife would hear nothing of a Glasgow man -- a Lowland Scotland man -- raising her two sons! Lowland Scotland is just as bad as England in her eyes. And England is an abomination for her.
Helen even regrets the fact that Rob Roy has to do any kind of business with the Lowland Scots or the English. And, in her opinion, any time he does business with them, he ends up only bringing trouble on himself. Nobody ever remembers or is grateful for what he's done for them. Helen says of Rob Roy that:
"'Wise only when the bonnet is on his head, and the sword is in his hand, he never exchanges the tartan for the broad-cloth, but he runs himself into the miserable intriguies of the Lowlanders, and becomes again, after all he has suffered, their agent -- their tool -- their slave.'"
When Francis wishes for Helen to add "benefactor" to the epithets, Helen replies:
"'Be it so... for it is the most empty title of them all, since he has uniformly sown benefits to reap a harvest of the most foul ingratitude.'"
Helen herself fights in battles, and, in Rob Roy's absence, is herself a leader of the Scotch warriors. She drives the men on with her vehement, impassioned speech. And it seems pretty obvious that she drives on Rob Roy in the same way.
In the introduction to Rob Roy, however -- maybe I didn't read carefully enough -- Scott's "historical" Rob Roy doesn't seem to be driven on as much by Helen as the fictional Rob Roy. I only found three solid references to Helen.
In one of these references, Rob Roy's wife has been extremely insulted by one of the men to whom Rob Roy owes a large debt. In another one of them, just before Rob Roy is set to get into a fight, Helen hides the sword of the opponent (although the opponent manages to find a sword and actually scare Rob Roy away). In the final reference, when Rob Roy was an aged man and dying, Scott says:
"He expressed some contrition for particular parts of his life. His wife laughed at these scruples of conscience, and exhorted him to die like a man, as he had lived. In reply, he rebuked her for her violent passions, and the counsels she had given him. 'You have put strife,' he said, 'betwixt me and the best men of the country, and now you would place enmity between me and my God.'"
But, I would assume, from my understanding of Scott's ideas, that the best men in the country, in Rob Roy's opinion, were Highland Scots, not Lowland Scots. Englishmen weren't even included in the statement.
So, it would seem that the historical Rob Roy was on his own as far as being a revolutionary was concerned. Scott implies in the Introduction that the "historical" Rob Roy was actually carrying out the strategy of war much like the common blackmailer of the Scottish days carried out the strategy of "protection." Scott was actually fighting, if not for King George, then at least in such a way that King George wouldn't lose through any action of Rob Roy's warriors.
In one decisive battle, as Scott relates, Rob Roy even stood, with his men, up at the top of a hill, while other Scottish clans fought the British. When it became clear that the Scots were not going to win the battle, Rob Roy had his men charge down the hill.
Rob Roy, with the men, didn't arrive at the scene of battle in time to do much else than plunder the purses of the dead men lying on the field. This eventually became the notorious subject of a satirical poem which Scott quotes.
Again, regarding the education of Rob Roy's sons, Scott gives us a scene that shows the "historical" Rob Roy as a man who believes that his life is the exemplary life. Instead of having to fend off a relative who wishes to educate his children, Rob Roy has to be -- very delicately -- dissuaded from almost kidnapping one of his relatives' children, so that he can educate him in the life of a blackmailer.
"At length the perplexed Professor pleaded that his son was very young, and in an infirm state of health, and not yet able to endure the hardships of a mountain life; but that in another year or two he hoped his health would be firmly established, and he would be in a fitting condition to attend on his brave kinsman, and follow out the splendid destinies to which he opened the way. This agreement being made, the cousins parted, -- Rob Roy pledging his honour to carry his young relation to the hills with him on his next return to Aberdeenshire, and Dr. Gregory, doubtless, praying in his secret soul that he might never see Rob's Highland face again."
Then why does Scott show his fictional Rob Roy to be the kind of man he is? The Rob Roy of the novel is a hero -- almost like The Lone Ranger, except with a few moral ambiguities. But his moral ambiguities don't stop him from being directed in action, eloquent, brave, and diligent. The "historical" Rob Roy, as Scott shows him, lacks each of these virtues in turn, story by story. And why is Helen such a driving force in the "fictional" Rob Roy's life, when she doesn't seem to have been such in the "historical" Rob Roy's life?
The answer is that Rob Roy is a kind of "medicine" for the hero, Francis Osbaldistone. Like I said earlier, the story of Rob Roy, from Francis' viewpoint, is a kind of coming of age story.
The story begins with Francis coming home from France, where he's been tutored by one of his father's business relations. But Francis hasn't been very strictly tutored, for a number of reasons. Francis has developed a taste for poetry. There are a few examples of his poetry. They seem fine enough. But as Francis himself warns us, these were the early years of the eighteenth century, when poets were thought of as impoverished drunkards and thieves.
Francis' father is educating Francis so he can take over the family business -- one, apparently, of the most famous banking houses in all of London. But Francis doesn't want to have anything to do with his old man's business. He'd rather be a poet.
Francis' father tells Francis that he'll either take over the business or be disowned. Francis, as hard-headed as his father, decides he'd rather be disowned. So, instead of being completely disowned, Francis is sent up to the North of England, to Northumberland, to Osbaldistone Hall, to live with his Uncle Hildebrand Osbaldistone. Hildebrand is to send down one of his own sons to live with Francis' father and be educated so that he may take over the business.
The cousin who is chosen to live with Francis' father is a young man named Rashleigh. I think both Francis and Rashleigh are about the same age -- about twenty years old. Rashleigh is, before he even steps onto the stage, the villain of the piece. He had been studying for the priesthood (Hildebrand's family, despite being English, are Roman Catholics).
But Rashleigh hasn't been studying in order to save men's souls. He admits to Francis later in the book that he's been working to become a priest because he wants the power of the priesthood: he wants Kings kneeling before him.
Rashleigh has involved himself, through Rob Roy, with the minor Jacobite uprising that takes place at the end of the book. And for the ends of the revolt (I think -- I'm not totally sure), Rashleigh, upon arriving in London and gaining the trust of Francis' father, takes advantage of being in almost complete control of the Osbaldistone banking-house in order to cause a few troubles with accounts in Scotland. These accounts also threaten to bankrupt the Osbaldistone banking house. They also threaten, through some machinations I didn't understand, to incite the Jacobite Scots into an uprising.
Rashleigh has, by this point, removed himself from London up to Glasgow. Francis, learning all the details of Rashleigh's deceits, goes up to Glasgow to try to find either Francis, the records of the accounts that Francis has absconded with, or both.
In the meantime, Francis has fallen in love with one of his distant cousins, Diana, or "Die," Vernon. Die has a past that she is reluctant to share with Francis. But she is also an extremely elegant, almost brashly honest person. She lives in a mansion filled with men. But she can do anything the men can do. She's also been trained to be incredibly intelligent.
As part of her past, Die has been contracted to marry one of her cousins at Osbaldistone Hall. The patriarch of the Hall, Francis' Uncle Hildebrand, will make the decision on the marriage. Rashleigh had hoped he'd be the one who could marry Die. But she rejected him. So he took to the idea of becoming a priest. In the meantime, he still harbored a violently jealous love for her.
Francis and Rashleigh, before Rashleigh leaves for London, get into fights as Rashleigh tries to pit Francis against Die -- it's obvious how much Francis and Die feel for each other, and Rashleigh doesn't want that relationship to work out at all. Rashleigh and Francis part with animosity. This animosity is renewed when Rashleigh and Francis again meet in Glasgow.
But Die's secret is eventually revealed. Her father, a Jacobite was involved in a previous revolution. It is rumored that he's died. But he is only lying low Northumberland until the political climate becomes more favorable for him. Die's father is such a staunch Jacobite that he won't hear of Die marrying a non-Catholic.
There's no question of Die marrying someone like Francis, who, Francis tells us, due to the cosmpolitan education of France, doesn't have a very specific religion at all. So it looks, over and over again, like Die and Francis are going to be split apart forevery. This is the technique, Anne Carson tells us in her book Eros the Bittersweet, of a good romance. I'm not sure what Scott would think about that. But I agree.
Anyhow -- after a number of scenes of Francis working his way up into Glasgow, and then up into the Highlands, in order to receive the documents to save his father's business -- Francis finally decides that he will, after all, compromise with his father and work at the family bank.
Rob Roy, then, is an image that Francis has of himself: the wild poet with the passionate voice. He also sees Helen as Die Vernon.
Francis, through a kind of pampered, undisciplined life, has figured that he can live a life without any focus, without any kind of business purpose. Die Vernon has lived as the daughter of a revolutionary, and has had to harden and focus her mind, close off her emotions, more than a woman would in those days. So Scott sees these two young people, Francis and Die, as people who have, due to their life histories, grown up a bit out of tune with their natures and with the nature of society.
Like Camille Paglia would say about Shakespeare's As You Like It, the aim of the story is to bring the two young lovers into a kind of integration with their society. The same thing is going on for Francis and Die all throughout Rob Roy.
Rob Roy is the wild part of Francis. Francis has to see that the wild part of himself can be effective, can save him and protect him. Once he has allowed himself to recognize that it can act as a functional part of himself, he can integrate it into himself. But he can't integrate that part into himself -- and thereafter integrate himself into society -- until that part of himself has shown that it can protect him. And, thus, Francis must go on his initiation ritual.
Helen, as Francis' anima, is a strong and extremely eloquent character. She's in charge of all the Highlanders -- all of the male elements of Francis' mind. But she has experienced a great deal of shame. When Francis first meets Die, she's partly like a stately, refined English woman, and partly like the brave but rude Helen. Like Helen, Die lives all among men. Like Helen, Die can do anything the men surrounding her do, equally well, if not better.
Die's family history is her own history. And I'm sure that one could easily see this story as Die's unconscious journey just as easily as they could see it as Francis' journey. But Die's family history is also a projection of Francis' own experience with his anima onto Die. So, seeing Die, Francis gets a first glimpse of his anima.
Just as a side note, this double-view is a characteristic that Sir Walter Scott shares with Western novel writer Zane Grey. Many of his books could be seen as initiation rituals for young men. And the women in those stories could be seen as anima projections. But, I believe, especially in the books The Thundering Herd, Wildfire, and Desert Gold -- the conclusion of which, by the way, is, formally, very similar to that of Rob Roy -- the journey could just as easily be seen as the woman's rite of passaage, and the man could just as easily be seen as the woman's animus projection.
But, for purposes of the example, let's look, for now, at Die Vernon as holding, at least to some degree, the projection of Francis' anima.
In the form of Helen, the anima, in her full strength, is driving Francis away from integrating himself into society (his father's business), and into a kind of profession which, at that time, was pretty much synonymous with drunken dissolution (or envelopment in the unconscious, which would mean complete possession by the anima).
Francis is given an image of himself, by turning his back on society, as a rebellion, a rebellion as noble as that of a subjugated country against the ruling country. But his anima only has the power she has to convince him of this because she is imprisoned in the space in which she is imprisoned by society -- a society of men.
Francis has been exiled to France, in a manner of speaking, by his father. It is obvious throughout the book that Francis and his father share a loving relationship. But their relationship is definitely one that the father rules. Maybe the father rules the relationship a bit too much, and a bit too cruelly.
Francis has no space, in his feelings, for the world of men, because, it seems to him, his father controls it so completely. So he exiles his sensitivity, his anima, deep in his unconscious, just like he's been exiled to France.
I think this idea, that Francis' emotions were too overpowered by his father as such a dominant male, so that his anima became not only an exile, but a figure that drove Francis on to hard-headed rebellion, is reinforced by a lot of the speeches that Die gives -- as the kind of first view, or projected-view, that Francis gets of the anima.
In these speeces, Die often laments being born a woman at all. She actually gives three reasons for her discontent, which I will condense, as they take place in the midst of a dialogue on sympathy between Die and Francis (in which Francis keeps pledging sympathy, and then keeps criticizing everything Die says):
"'There are three things for which I am much to be pitied, if any one thought it worth while to waste any compassion upon me.
"'In the first place, I am a girl, and not a young fellow, and would be shut up in a madhouse if I did half the things I had a mind to; -- and that, if I had your happy prerogative of acting as you list, would make all the world mad with imitating and applauding me....
"'The second count of my indictment against fortune... [is that] I belong to an oppressed sect and antiquated religion, and, instead of getting credit for my devotion, as is due to all good girls beside, my kind friend, Justice Inglewood, may send me to the house of correction, merely for worshipping God in the way of my ancestors....
"'My third cause of vexation... [is that] I am by nature, as you may easily observe, of a frank and unreserved disposition -- a plain, true-hearted girl, who would willingly act openly and honestly by the whole world, and yet fate has involved me in such a series of nets and toils, and entanglements, that I dare hardly speak a word for fear of consequences -- not to myself, but to others.'"
In all of these instances, Die mentions either the possibility of being entrapped or the actual state of bieng entrapped. But she has just rescued her cousin from being imprisoned by Justice Inglewood, the judge she says "may send [her] to the house of correction."
Francis is threatened with imprisonment, sent to rescue friends from prison (and getting trapped there himself), captured as a traitor by British soldiers, and captured as a traitor by Scottish soldiers.
It is only in the last case that Francis is subjugated by a female. But by that time, he's far up North (which, I'm coming to learn, after having read William Morris, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and, now, Sir Walter Scott, must be, or must have been, an aspect of the unconscious for the English). He's finally in the realm of the anima. And he is under her control.
Die is, personally, entrapped in her contracted marriage to an Osbaldistone. Her only other option is to become a nun. But, being entrapped, as a woman, in society, she also stands for Francis -- who has been so overwhelmed by male society that he has had to exile his anima deep into his unconscious.
But certain elements of Francis' male side, also in a state of underdevelopment, also exiled to Francis' unconscious, are under the control of Francis' anima. The strongest of these male figures is Rob Roy, who enters the outskirts of the conscious world, scarcely going farther south (or scarcely going farther into the English conscious), than Northumberland.
However, once Francis has come face to face with his anima, once he has been imprisoned by her, like Rob Roy had been imprisoned by her, he learns that Rob Roy has been imprisoned, by male, English soldiers. Francis and Rob Roy have changed places. Now Francis is sent, by the anima, to rescue Rob Roy for her.
Francis meets the English troops and Rob Roy. Rob Roy makes a daring escape -- for which, it seems, Francis needed to be there. Francis, inspired, in turn, by Rob Roy, later makes an escape as well. They both escape by means of a river.
After Francis has escaped from the English troops, outwitting the English troops, by himself, with help neither from Die Vernon, Rob Roy, or Helen MacGregor, Francis is met, mysteriously, on the road by Die Vernon, who, apparently escaping from Britain altogether with a mysterious man, hands all Francis' father's account documents back to Francis. Somehow Die has managed to steal these accounts away from the villain Rashleigh, in order to restore Francis' father's business.
Not long after Die and the man disappear, Francis is again met on the road by Rob Roy. Rob Roy and Francis approach Rob Roy's wife Helen, and Helen takes a much milder tone. Rob Roy and Francis have, to a certain degree, managed some kind of integration of personality in a functional way, and are able to withstand the world of male society, which was previously overwhelming. So Helen, as the anima, is less able to possess the male aspects of the personality.
This, I think, also would explain why Rob Roy is so against his two sons, Hamish and Robin, being instructed by their Uncle Nicol Jarvie. Rob Roy is an element of the unconscious, or, possibly, of the pre-conscious -- like a dream. His sons may be a mix between the unconscious anima and himself. They live in a kind of liminal world. They can't be brought out into Jarvie's world of the conscious. Rob Roy has to resist such an offer. Every part of personality must be integrated as it is.
The remainder of the book follows this development. But I think I'd like to leave some of the final scenes alone. They're probably a lot more fun when you read them freshly, without anybody telling you what happens. I think it's fine to give away a lot of the surprising scenes in a book.
Sometimes, in complicated books, it's actually helpful to talk about some of the scenes -- I mean, just to say right out what happens in them. I've always appreciated books or essays that did that kind of thing, simply because then it helps me know what to look for in the language. It helps me read difficult passages. The scenes don't lose any excitement. The excitement may actually be enhanced.
But I don't feel so comfortable doing that with the final scenes in books, since there's something about the freshness of the scene that makes it exciting. So I'll leave the final exciting scenes for you all to read.
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