Two quotes tied with a thin string here…
I’ve been having a great time reading poetry lately, specifically 17th century poetry, wading (very slowly) through William Empson’s lovingly, comically difficult Seven Types of Ambiguity and Harold Bloom’s 2004 poetry anthology from the end of whose introduction I wanted to quote this nice passage:
“Ultimately, we seek out the best poems because something in many, if not most, of us quests for the transcendental and extraordinary, however secular, however well within the realm of the natural. We long, as Wordsworth wrote, for “something evermore about to be.” The marvelous comes to us, when it comes, in very different forms: ideally in another person, but sometimes by an otherness in the self.”
It’s a big enough anthology as it is, I guess, at around a thousand pages, but no matter how big, any attempt to digest the whole of English poetry is going to seem skimpy. I cringe whenever I see the italicized from such and such, if only because I feel the instant temptation then to add more books to an ever-growing Amazon queue so I’ll be able to read whatever it is in its unabbreviated form - I’m that kind of anal, completist type. A scant three or four poems for Donne, for Marvell? An introduction and not more than a few lines of Pope’s Rape of the Lock? What good is that, just to whet the appetite? Not all of us, Harold, like yourself I suppose, have already memorized the poem.
(This picture of the New York Public Library I took from the immensely popular, adult-oriented blog, Bookshelf Porn)
One 17th c. writer not in the anthology (because not precisely a poet), Thomas Browne, I read in university but hadn’t thought of much more until being reminded of him - both explicitly and, in general outlook, implicitly - reading W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn a few weeks ago. Borges also had a big thing for him. He said his own books were not worthy of sharing space on his own bookshelves with Browne’s. I like this passage of his Religio Medici, which finds him in unusually uplifted spirits, waxing almost Whitmanesque, (which doesn’t get in the way of him calling the world a “hospitall”), summing up, in a way, one of the dominant themes of the whole period, the parallel expansions of the inner and outer worlds:
“Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty yeares, which to relate, were not a History, but a peece of Poetry, and would sound to common eares like a fable; for the world, I count it not an Inne, but an Hospitall, and a place, not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not onely in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestiall part within us: that masse of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind: that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot perswade me I have any; I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty, though the number of the Arke do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my minde: whilst I study to finde how I am a Microcosme or little world, I finde my selfe something more than the great.”
Hard to know where to cut this off…
“There is surely a peece of Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun. Nature tels me I am the Image of God as well as Scripture; he that understands not thus much, hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any, Ruat coelum Fiat voluntas tua, salveth all; so that whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In briefe, I am content, and what should providence adde more? Surely this is it wee call Happinesse, and this doe I enjoy, with this I am happy in a dreame, and as content to enjoy a happinesse in a fancie as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a neerer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreames, than in our waked senses; without this I were unhappy, for my awaked judgement discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreames in the night requite me, and make me thinke I am within his armes. I thanke God for my happy dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than our selves in our sleepes, and the slumber of the body seemes to bee but the waking of the soule. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our awaking conceptions doe not match the fancies of our sleepes. At my Nativity, my ascendant was the watery signe of Scorpius, I was borne in the Planetary houre of Saturne, and I think I have a peece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dreame I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithfull as my reason is then fruitfull, I would never study but in my dreames, and this time also would I chuse for my devotions, but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked soules, a confused & broken tale of that that hath passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleepe, hath not me thinkes throughly defined it, nor yet Galen, though hee seeme to have corrected it; for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their sleepe, doe yet enjoy the action of their senses: wee must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstaticke soules doe walke about in their owne corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seeme to heare, see, and feele, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should informe them. Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the houre of their departure, doe speake and reason above themselves. For then the soule begins to bee freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like her selfe, and to discourse in a straine above mortality.”
Two quotes tied with a thin string here…
I’ve been having a great time reading poetry lately, specifically 17th century poetry, wading (very slowly) through William Empson’s lovingly, comically difficult Seven Types of Ambiguity and Harold Bloom’s 2004 poetry anthology from the end of whose introduction I wanted to quote this nice passage:
“Ultimately, we seek out the best poems because something in many, if not most, of us quests for the transcendental and extraordinary, however secular, however well within the realm of the natural. We long, as Wordsworth wrote, for “something evermore about to be.” The marvelous comes to us, when it comes, in very different forms: ideally in another person, but sometimes by an otherness in the self.”
It’s a big enough anthology as it is, I guess, at around a thousand pages, but no matter how big, any attempt to digest the whole of English poetry is going to seem skimpy. I cringe whenever I see the italicized from such and such, if only because I feel the instant temptation then to add more books to an ever-growing Amazon queue so I’ll be able to read whatever it is in its unabbreviated form - I’m that kind of anal, completist type. A scant three or four poems for Donne, for Marvell? An introduction and not more than a few lines of Pope’s Rape of the Lock? What good is that, just to whet the appetite? Not all of us, Harold, like yourself I suppose, have already memorized the poem.
(This picture of the New York Public Library I took from the immensely popular, adult-oriented blog, Bookshelf Porn)
One 17th c. writer not in the anthology (because not precisely a poet), Thomas Browne, I read in university but hadn’t thought of much more until being reminded of him - both explicitly and, in general outlook, implicitly - reading W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn a few weeks ago. Borges also had a big thing for him. He said his own books were not worthy of sharing space on his own bookshelves with Browne’s. I like this passage of his Religio Medici, which finds him in unusually uplifted spirits, waxing almost Whitmanesque, (which doesn’t get in the way of him calling the world a “hospitall”), summing up, in a way, one of the dominant themes of the whole period, the parallel expansions of the inner and outer worlds:
“Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty yeares, which to relate, were not a History, but a peece of Poetry, and would sound to common eares like a fable; for the world, I count it not an Inne, but an Hospitall, and a place, not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not onely in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestiall part within us: that masse of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind: that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot perswade me I have any; I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty, though the number of the Arke do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my minde: whilst I study to finde how I am a Microcosme or little world, I finde my selfe something more than the great.”
Hard to know where to cut this off…
“There is surely a peece of Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun. Nature tels me I am the Image of God as well as Scripture; he that understands not thus much, hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any, Ruat coelum Fiat voluntas tua, salveth all; so that whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In briefe, I am content, and what should providence adde more? Surely this is it wee call Happinesse, and this doe I enjoy, with this I am happy in a dreame, and as content to enjoy a happinesse in a fancie as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a neerer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreames, than in our waked senses; without this I were unhappy, for my awaked judgement discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreames in the night requite me, and make me thinke I am within his armes. I thanke God for my happy dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than our selves in our sleepes, and the slumber of the body seemes to bee but the waking of the soule. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason, and our awaking conceptions doe not match the fancies of our sleepes. At my Nativity, my ascendant was the watery signe of Scorpius, I was borne in the Planetary houre of Saturne, and I think I have a peece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dreame I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithfull as my reason is then fruitfull, I would never study but in my dreames, and this time also would I chuse for my devotions, but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked soules, a confused & broken tale of that that hath passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleepe, hath not me thinkes throughly defined it, nor yet Galen, though hee seeme to have corrected it; for those Noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their sleepe, doe yet enjoy the action of their senses: wee must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstaticke soules doe walke about in their owne corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seeme to heare, see, and feele, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should informe them. Thus it is observed that men sometimes upon the houre of their departure, doe speake and reason above themselves. For then the soule begins to bee freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like her selfe, and to discourse in a straine above mortality.”
