Richard Varron's Thesis Paper
Eras of Reexamination: Post-Elizabethan and Post-Victorian
by Richard Varron
The post-Elizabethan and post-Victorian periods, coming at the
end of two of the longest reigning British monarchs, gives rise to
several similar trends in British literature. Coinciding with this
change in sovereigns, the poets of these periods begin to reexamine
the changing place of man in the cosmos and endeavored to discover
a new path for man to follow. This is particularly noticeable in
the works of Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest, and
in Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash
Wednesday, and Little Gidding as well as in Donne's Divine
Meditations and Yeats' "Lapis Lazuli." In the post-Elizabethan era,
Shakespeare and Donne explores the world in light of the growing
age of secular and religious uncertainty while in the Modernist
era, Yeats and Eliot do so in the shadows of a materialistic,
alienated world. The common theme which links these poets is that
a world, which on one level appears to man as alienated and
pessimistic, can, upon reflection, be seen in a renewed optimistic
light in which he begins to understand the need to be reconciled
with others in a world of interdependent relationships. The purpose
of this paper is to examine the transformation from pessimism and
alienation to optimism and reconciliation that occur in the several
of the works of Shakespeare and in Eliot and, to a lesser extent,
Donne and Yeats.
In Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest, Shakespeare presents
characters who initially have a detached and pessimistic view of
man, but who, after some insightful moment in which their spirit is
reborn, are able to come to terms with their place in the world. As
a result of this transformation, they come to replace despair with
hope, alienation with relation, and vengeance with forgiveness. In
a similar fashion, but on a more explicitly religious level, Donne
accomplishes the same sense of transformation from pessimistic fear
to optimistic love in such works as his Divine Meditations. In like
manner, Eliot initially views man in Prufrock, and in most of The
Wasteland as moving through an alienated, fearful world; however,
towards the end of The Waste Land and especially in Ash Wednesday,
he begins to view man as gradually growing to understand his place
in the community of man. In Eliot's last poem, Little Gidding, he
presents man as having achieved a final, religious reconciliation
with himself and with the collective consciousness of his fellow
man. Finally, in contrast to Eliot's religious answers, Yeats seeks
to find secular answers to man's despair by drawing strength from
past civilizations in such works as "Sailing to Byzantium," "Two
Songs From a Play," and "Lapis Lazuli." Unlike Eliot, though, Yeats
draws his optimism from the individual's relation to a small
community of like-minded Romantic artists who have found man's
imaginative vision of reality their answer.
In order to understand the forces that motivated these
writers, it is necessary to examine the factors that were at play
during the end of the Elizabethan and Victorian eras. While
Shakespeare is considered to be an Elizabethan playwright, most of
his mature tragedies and romances were produced after the death of
Elizabeth (r. 1558-1603) and the succession of James I (r. 1603-1625). The
Shakespearian plays that will be examined were written
during the waning days of the Elizabethan reign (Hamlet 1601), the
early Jacobean period (King Lear 1605), and the middle Jacobean
period (The Tempest 1611).
During the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, England was at
peace with its neighbors. Her rule was characterized by adept
diplomacy in which she kept foreign powers at bay while not adding
to the domestic strife between Catholics and Protestants (Bevington
10). This atmosphere of calm allowed the growth of a middle class
and led to an increase in travel, commerce, and education (6-7). At
the end of the virgin queen's reign, there was no clear successor.
King James IV of Scotland, a distant cousin, was invited to
succeed Elizabeth. Unlike Elizabeth, he did not have her flair for
compromise. As a result, tensions grew among the various Protestant
factions and the Catholics as each side became less tolerant of the
other. There was unrest in the realm as evidenced by the Gun Powder
Plot of 1605 in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholics attempted to
blow up Parliament (15). This failed attempt led to harsh
enforcement of anti-papist laws and increased the influence of the
Protestants. With the rise in Puritanism and the closing of the
popular theatre, the court theatre emerged (15). It was to this
audience that the last plays of Shakespeare were directed (59).
John Donne, whose family came from a long line of Catholics,
was embroiled in the midst of this struggle on a personal as well
as a political level. Toward the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1601,
he was a Catholic member of Parliament. With the succession to the
throne of James I, his only chance for advancement was in the
Church of England. In 1615, after years of persuasion, he became a
deacon in the Anglican Church. It is during this period of intense
personal soul searching in which he attempted to reconcile his
Catholic traditions with the Protestant view of salvation through
grace that he wrote his Divine Meditations during the period 1609-1611
(Kermode 117-9).
As with the reign of Elizabeth, Victoria reigned (r. 1832-1901) over a
realm which was at peace and had a growing economy
that produced an increased standard of living for an emerging
middle class. It was a time when England felt sure of herself
(Chambers 854). After her reign, England became embroiled in World
War I (1914-1918). While England itself was not invaded, the lose
of so many of its young men coupled with the economic upheaval in
the post war era, left the English with a sense of insecurity. In
addition, the disorder in England permitted the Irish nationalist
to set up an independent state in 1921. It is against this backdrop
that Eliot wrote Prufrock (1917), The Waste Land (1922), and Ash
Wednesday (1931). Eliot's Little Gidding was written in 1942,
against the horrors of the physical destruction of England in World
War II.
In the aftermath of the First World War, the Irish Free State
was established in 1921 (Chambers 975). One of its leading poetic
voices was W. B. Yeats who drew upon ancient mythological images
from the past in such poems as "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927), "Two
Songs From a Play" (1927), and "Lapis Lazuli" (1938) to show
optimism in the relationship of the individual to a small community
of like-minded artists amidst the pessimism of the world.
The key theme that links the Post-Elizabethan and Post-Victorian
periods is that at the end of an era of political
stability in which living standards rise, commerce increases, and
the arts flourish, there comes a period of reassessment in which
the poets and playwrights call into question the fundamental
meaning of man's relation to his fellow man (Lewis 50-51). It is
this questioning that Shakespeare, Donne, Eliot, and Yeats pose
which leads each to find that in order to escape the alienation and
pessimism that affects man's world, it is necessary for man to
understand the need he has in order to be reconciled with his
fellow man in a shared humanity.
The reason that I chose these three Shakespearian plays is
that in each there is a pattern of pessimistic alienation,
discovery, and optimistic reconciliation. However, the plays differ
in the type of alienation, the manner of the transformation, and
how the final optimism is presented. In Hamlet, Shakespeare shows
Hamlet's initially pessimistic view of the people around him, his
world, and ultimately himself. Shakespeare does not dwell on the
process of discovery as he does in King Lear, and it is only in the
brief scenes at the graveyard that a change is discernible in
Hamlet. The final explanation of his reconciliation comes not so
much from Hamlet as from Horatio and Fortinbras as well as the
mortally wounded Laertes. In contrast, in King Lear, Shakespeare
presents an old man who initially chooses to alienate himself from
the world and finds that when stripped of the trappings of
civilization, man is no more than an animal. He recognizes that the
cause of man's suffering is due to his very birth in a state of
ignorance, and he realizes the need to regain his self-knowledge
through the formulation of relations with others before he can be
fully reconciled with those he should love ("King Lear: Action and
World" Mack 243). In The Tempest, Shakespeare shows that men of
different classes need to be "tried" in different ways before being
reconciled. He shows how each man must confront his own pessimistic
view of the world before he can be reconciled. The significant
difference in The Tempest, Shakespeare's last work, is that
reconciliation with others does not end in death, but rather
provides a means for going on in harmony in the world.
In a similar manner, Donne accomplishes the same
transformation, but on an explicitly religious level. In his Divine
Meditations, Donne moves from a feeling of pessimistic despair at
towards his impending judgement and death to optimistic love.
Unlike Shakespeare, his struggle with pessimism and optimism takes
place in the inner spiritual thoughts of the self. His initial
despair and fear of judgement gives way once he accepts that man
must love God and his neighbor. The conclusion that both Donne in
the Divine Meditations and Shakespeare in The Tempest reach is that
no man is an island, and that in order reach his highest potential,
man must learn to live in harmony with his fellow man.
Eliot too presents a pattern of pessimism, discovery and the
potential for optimism in Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday,
and Little Gidding. What links Eliot so closely with Shakespeare is
his use of many of the symbols, such as water, wind, and fire, that
would be more familiar to the Elizabethan audience than the modern
reader. In each work, there is a slowly growing understanding of
what is needed to go from pessimism to optimism.
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, for example, Eliot
presents an early 20th century man who views the manifestations of
World War I society around him as sterile and tentative, who
regards his relation to others as being estranged, and who depicts
himself as lacking even the ability to question his own meaning in
life. The only hint of optimism occurs when he ponders the
redemptive nature of death by water. In the end, he is unable to
achieve even this. In The Waste Land, the pessimistic alienation of
man parallels that of the primitive elements of fire, air, water,
and earth. It is only when these elements come together that there
is the hint of optimistic redemption. In Ash Wednesday, Eliot
depicts optimism and pessimism in an alternating series of cantos
in which a despairing man's optimistic view of the spiritual world
of the Garden of Eden leads him to a better appreciation of his
temporal world. It is only in Little Gidding that Eliot's character
is able to realize fully the optimistic nature of being reunited
with the symbols of man's collective past and is thus able to live
fully in the present in union with man through love. While Eliot's
narrators make use of the symbols of the past to gain
understanding, it is in the present that they must overcome
pessimism. Like Eliot, Yeats uses symbols from the past to unite
present man, but he does so by joining man to a select group of
spirits guided by visionary romanticism.
II
In order to understand the Shakespearian view of optimism and
pessimism, it is necessary to examine what the Elizabethans
understood man's place in the universe to be. For the Elizabethans,
man was not something by himself; he was a part in the cosmic order
of things. Therefore, they felt that man must not only understand
this order but he must also obey the laws of Nature. If the laws
were broken, uncertainty and chaos would ensue which would threaten
the stability of his world. More than anything else, the
Elizabethans cherished order (Spencer 5-20).
On the cosmic level, the world was thought to consist of the
elements of air, water, fire, and earth. The Elizabethans believed
that these elements were in a constant state of flux and that each
humour had its counterpart in these elements (Tillyard 69). It was
only when the elements were in balance that the order in the
universe was right (62). For Shakespeare, this mixture of the
elements occurs most dramaticly in Lear's heath scene in which he
beckons the four elements. According to E. M. W. Tillyard:
Lear's first words in the storm invoke explicitly
all four elements in their uproars; and though these are
presented not in their abstraction but as manifested in
the concrete natural happenings, basic elemental conflict
is as much a part of his thought as is the actual
violence of the weather. (64)
Such symbolism is also extensively used in Eliot's works,
especially The Waste Land and Little Gidding.
In addition to the cosmic order, the Elizabethans believed in
a natural order consisting of a "chain of being." In this chain,
God occupied the apex of pure actuality. Below Him were the angels
possessing pure intellect. At the bottom were the rocks which
possessed only being and the plants which experienced only growth.
Above them were the animals which were capable of sense. Man was
viewed as being the highest animal since he processed intellect.
Hence, he was viewed as being between animal and angel. His power
was derived from his ability to reason. Moreover, his understanding
and will gave him the potential to elevate himself higher along the
chain. For the Elizabethans, optimism stemmed from the fact that
man was the center of an ordered world (Spencer 12-20).
Before the Fall, man occupied a place just below the angels
in the chain of being. Again, according to Tillyard,
By the Fall man was alienated from his true self. If
he is to regain true self-knowledge he must do it through
contemplating the works of Nature of which he is part.
(20)
The Elizabethans believed that they could indeed learn since,
despite the Fall, they still retained the vestige of their original
virtue (21). Therefore, they felt that man carried in him the
optimism of the Garden of Eden along with the pessimism of the Fall
(22).
In the three Shakespearian plays to be examined, the pessimism
stems from a challenge to the chain of being or to the natural
relationships among man. In Elizabethan eyes, chaos existed before
creation and is what would happen if Providence were to be removed
from the world. As Tillyard puts it:
To us chaos means hardly more than confusion on a
large scale; to an Elizabethan it meant the cosmic
anarchy before creation and the wholesale dissolution
that would result if the pressure of Providence relaxed
and allowed the law of nature to cease functioning. (16)
For the Elizabethans, who equated order in the chain of being and
order in relationships of family and state as the fundamentals of
optimism, the disintegration of order constituted a threat and was
view pessimistically. In their view optimism could be restored only
when the natural order was restored (Tillyard 16).
In Hamlet, Shakespeare makes use of bestial metaphors to
depict the evil in Hamlet's world in which man is viewed as
descending to the level of the animal. Moreover, there are images
of decaying weeds which suggest that man has even lost the plants'
potential for growth. In the end, though, Hamlet is viewed by
Horatio as dying with a flock of angels imagined above him, and he
thus has been elevated along the chain to a point he could not
reach while he was alive. Likewise in King Lear, there are
innumerable images of the bestial, a prime example being in the way
his daughters are compared to pelicans that suck on their dead
parents' flesh. In the final act, Lear discovers the true meaning
of family ties as he is reconciled with his disowned daughter
Cordelia. In the Tempest, men are shown trying to move beyond their
position in the chain of being. Prospero tries to enter the world
of angelic intellect, and Caliban tries to move beyond his role of
beast. In the end, harmony is restored only when each returns to
his rightful place in the chain (Tillyard 34-35).
In addition to order in the chain of being, it was necessary
that man obey the natural order of relationships. This natural
order was governed by a number of laws such as the duty of children
to obey their parents, subjects to obey their rules, and rulers to
govern (Whitaker 212). While man was optimistically view as being
the center of an ordered world, when that order broke down, it was
seen as leading to chaos and pessimism. It was only when harmony
was restored that the natural order was reaffirmed. In each of
these plays there is a breakdown in family relationships that is
mirrored in the breakdown of relationships of state.
In Hamlet, there is a fundamental evil introduced into the
world by Hamlet's mother who incestuously married her murdered
husband's brother. More than the murder itself, this act could be
seen as the threat it posed to the order of the family. It is only
when the King and Queen are killed and the natural order restored
that Hamlet can die in peace. In King Lear, the disowning of his
daughter coupled with the wicked treatment accorded to him by his
other daughters could be viewed as breakdown of the duty of a
father to his children and children to their fathers. It is only
when he discovers the meaning of relationship that he is able to be
reconciled with Cordelia. In The Tempest, there is also a breakdown
in family relations. Prospero is deposed by his brother and Alanso
is threatened by his brother. As with the King Lear and Hamlet it
is only when the proper relationships are restored that man can go
on in an ordered world.
In addition to the breakdown in family relationships, there is
also a corresponding breakdown in relationships of state. Hamlet's
father is deposed, and Lear and Prospero abdicate their stately
duties and are exiled. These breakdowns of the relationships of
state would be considered as disquieting for the Elizabethans in
light of the uncertainty of succession. In Hamlet and King Lear,
entire families are wiped out and the succession passes to men
outside the blood line. In contrast, Prospero reassumes his
Dukedom. In light of the Elizabethan concern for political order,
the restoration at the end of The Tempest would be more quieting
for them.
III
In Hamlet, Shakespeare presents a character who, through most
of the play, has an initially pessimistic view of the people around
him, the world and ultimately himself. The metaphors that
Shakespeare uses to convey this pessimism are images of the beast
and of a decaying garden. When Hamlet sees real physical decay in
the graveyard, he realizes the pettiness of his pessimism and comes
to see a reason for living in the world. This new optimism allows
him to act in the world, but the dignity of human bonding that
alluded him in life is only achieved in his death.
In his mother, Hamlet perceives the darker side of human
nature as he uses images of a decaying garden and the beast to
punctuate his condemnation of his mother's hasty marriage. He sees
events in light of a world that is stale and unproductive, and
compares them to an unweeded garden which is allowed to grow to
seed and where things which are "rank and gross" are allowed to
prosper. In a soliloquy, he tells how loving his father was to his
mother as he invokes Greek mythological figures to raise the
wickedness of the deed to cosmic proportions. While he compares his
father to the sun god Hyperion, he sarcastically refers to his
mother as a lecherous satyr who, like Niobe, stood by stone-faced,
not even shedding a tear at her husband's passing. He cries out
that even a beast, who lacks the gift of reason that men have,
would have mourned longer before so easily consummating this
incestuous relationship (Bevington 1069). In the bedroom scene,
Hamlet once more confronts his mother with visions of the beast and
of decay. He imagines her in the "rank sweat of an enseamed bed"
above a pig sty, and he compares her sin to a "rank corruption"
which infects her like an ulcer and, like the decaying compost of
garden weeds, must be removed.
Hamlet's view of man in general is no more positive than his
view of his mother. Before meeting the ghost, Hamlet comments on
how a single defect in a man's nature at his birth, a fault for
which he may not even be responsible, can lead to corruption and
general censure. Even the smallest "dram of evil" (1.1.36) can blot
out all the noble works a man might do. In his conversation with
Guildenstern and Rosencrantz about what a piece of work man is,
Hamlet paints an image of the Renaissance humanist view of man:
noble reason, infinite faculties, angelic action and god-like
apprehension (Tillyard 3). But for Hamlet, man is nothing more than
an inconsequential speck of dust. Theodore Spencer points out that:
In Hamlet Shakespeare for the first time used to the
full the conflict between the two views of man's nature
which was so deeply felt in his age. On one side was the
picture of man as he should be -- it was bright, orderly
and optimistic. On the other was the picture of man as he
is -- it was full of darkness and chaos. (94)
Man does not delight him. And neither does women. When he confronts
Ophelia, he chastises her by telling her that she belongs in a
brothel for she is nothing more than a breeder of sinners who will
turn any man she sleeps with into a monster. Before returning
from England, Hamlet again reflects on the nature of man. He asks
what is man if his only reward in life is to eat and sleep only to
answer that this is the definition of a beast:
What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast no more.
(Bevington ed. 4.3.33-35)
He cannot comprehend why a god that endowed man with the powers of
reason would allow that god-like reasoning power to grow moldy and
to decay:
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unus'd. (4.3.36-39)
Hamlet's view of himself is no less pessimistic than his view
of others. After his first encounter with the ghost, he takes it
upon himself to right the wrongs of the world around him since he
feels that he has been born to set things right. Thus, in this
initial act, he assumes the burdens of his whole world. Hamlet's
pessimism stems, not from knowing that the world around him is
evil, but rather that he must act in this world of evil to set
things right ("The World of Hamlet" Mack 253). In Hamlet's "To be,
or not to be" soliloquy, he wonders whether is better to suffer
through the wrongs of this world, however painful they may be, or
to stand up to them and put an end to them. After making
arrangements with the players to reenact his father's murder,
Hamlet is left alone with his thoughts. He compares himself to a
"rogue and a peasant slave" for the "monstrous" (2.2.550-1)
planning of his devious plot to expose the king. He describes
himself as a "muddy-mettled rascal" (2.2.567), yet questions
whether his indirect method of catching the conscience of the king
marks him as a "pigeoned-livered coward" (2.2.557) or as a
treacherous villain. In his confrontation with Ophelia, he says
that he could accuse himself of such wicked deeds that it would be
better that his mother never bore him. He remarks that he is proud
and revengeful with more offenses in his thoughts than time to act
them out. Concluding, he asks what such fellows, who, like him,
crawl like an animal between earth and heaven, should do. His
self-portrayal, like his depiction of others, likens man's actions with
those of animals and man's nature with dirt.
Before his return from England, he remarks to himself of the
need to avenge his father's death and his mother's unnatural acts
by committing his thoughts to these bloody deeds. But the Hamlet of
the final act is one who is aware of the human limit. Before his
trip abroad, he had been encroaching on the roles of providence. He
had taken all the evils of his world and elevated them to the
cosmic plane. Thus, he saw in Ophelia as a "breeder of sinners" and
himself "crawling between earth and heaven." He had become his
mother's conscience and even went to far as to play God with the
king's salvation ("The World of Hamlet" 255). He had viewed man's
place in the world as being just above the beast in a world of
decaying vegetation.
Moreover, during the graveyard scene he comes face to face
with real decay and death. He grows to accept not only death but
learns to understand the limitation of human action. He recognizes
that the plotters of this world, those that would circumvent God,
the "scheming politician," the "hollow courtier," and the "tricky
lawyer," come to the same resting place as his Fool and Ophelia.
It is the limitation of Yorick who rode Hamlet on his back now
being but an empty skull. It is the limitation of an Alexander who
could now be converted into loam to stuff a beer barrel. It is the
limitation of a Caesar now turned to clay and used to plug the wall
against the wind. Hamlet realizes this limitation when he says,
"that earth which kept the world at awe / Should patch a wall t'
expel the winter's flaw" (5.1.215-216). In short it is the
limitation of being human ("The World of Hamlet" 256-7).
He sees the fate of those that would seek to play God and he
now accepts that there is much less that he can do to change the
world than he first supposed. He is not the vigilant young man of
the opening act, born to set things right. Nor is he the
contemplative man who ponders over the question of whether to kill
Claudius in the church or whether to bear the slings and arrows of
fortune. In the end, he has become an instrument of providence
("There is a divinity that shapes our ends." 5.2.11), and he is
able to achieve his revenge without having to commit premeditated
murder (Bevington 1073).
As Hamlet lies mortally wounded, there is a last gasp of
vengeance in him before he can be fully reconciled with the world.
He stabs the king and then forces him the drink from the poisoned
chalice as he bid him join his poisoned, wretched mother. It is
only when he completes these tasks that he is able to accept the
forgiveness that the morally wounded Laertes extends to him. All
who have aggrieved Hamlet are dead, yet Hamlet does not die as an
avenger but as a man that has restored the natural order and
reaffirmed human dignity (Bevington 1073). Justice has been done.
It is at that point that he is at peace with himself. The only
thing that matters to Hamlet now is that Horatio remains alive to
tell his story. The man who in the play wished that his mother
never bore him, when faced with death, seeks not only to cling to
life but also implores that his tale not be forgotten.
As Hamlet dies, Horatio enjoins a flight of angels to sing to
his rest. This optimistic image of angels dancing around Hamlet's
dead body contrasts sharply with the pessimistic image of the beast
that has lingered over Hamlet throughout the play. The dignity of
human bonding that alluded him in life has been achieved in his
death. Hamlet can share his anguish at loosing a father with
Laertes and Fortinbras. At Horatio's request and Fortinbras eager
acquiescence, Hamlet's body is placed high on stage as Fortinbras'
soldiers carry him out as a war hero. As Yeats puts it, "Why should
we honer those who die on the field of battle? A man may show as
reckless a courage in entering the abyss of himself" (qtd. in "The
World of Hamlet" 257).
In Hamlet, Shakespeare presents a character who inherited the
evil in the world around him. According to Tillyard, the highest
human faculty by which man is separated from the beast and allied
with the angels is Reason. Reason, to the Elizabethans, consisted
of two parts: understanding and will (71). While Hamlet processes
the reason necessary to understand his evil world, he lacks the
will to follow through. In contrast, in King Lear, Lear has willed
his situation by freely choosing to give up his kingdom and enter
a world of alienation. While Lear has the capacity of human will,
he lacks the understanding which must accompany it (72). These two
plays present the two aspects of reason upon which Elizabethan
ethics were based (71).
In Lear, Shakespeare presents a character who has chosen to
separate himself from the world and in doing so discovers how
little above the animals man's nature really is. In order to
elevate himself, he must come to understand that when he is born,
he enters to the world of suffering in a state of ignorance ("King
Lear: Action and the World" Mack 243). In order for him to gain
knowledge, he must understand his own identity in relation to
others. Once he is able to understand himself, he will be able to
comprehend the proper manner of forming relationships. It is only
when he has learned the meaning of relationship that Lear can be
reconciled with the daughter he disowned.
The pessimism that Lear feels is due to his separation from
the world of relationships. He begins by separating himself from
his kingdom: "We will divest us both of rule, / Interest of
territory, cause of state --" (1.1.49-50). He separates himself
from the family ties of his honest daughter Cordelia and from the
servant ties of Kent ("King Lear: Action and Man" Mack 237-8). In
the process, he is separated from his retainers and the other
trappings of his former office. As he removes the clothes from his
body, he symbolically separates himself from humanity as he becomes
an "unaccommodated man" who is no better off than an animal. It is
this image of man as animal that makes up a great deal of the
pessimistic imagery of the early part of the play as not only does
Lear compare his daughters to the beast, he also compares himself
to an animal. It is only after his confrontation at the heath, when
he is separated from the physical world as well as all humanity,
that he is able to begin to come to grips with the world and thus
starts to live in harmony with it. He is able to see the pessimism
of a world in which man's suffering stems from his very birth
(243). In the course of his mad wanderings, he is able to
reestablish relationships with others which prepares him for his
final reconciliation with Cordelia.
As with Hamlet, in King Lear, Shakespeare presents animal
imagery to symbolize the wickedness in man and uses it to show how
much like the beast man is. The animal imagery begins when Lear
divides his kingly responsibilities among his daughters:
"Conferring them on younger strengths while we / Unburdened crawl
towards death" (1.1.38-39).
As Lear walks with the beggar Tom in the open field, he begins
to reflect on the nature of the responsibility of daughters to
their fathers. Rhetorically, Lear asks Edgar if Edgar's daughters
had put him out. If they had, Lear suggests, "all the plagues"
should fall "on thy daughters." He continues that nothing could
reduce nature to such lowness as to have unkind daughters who
disown their fathers. In concluding, Lear refers to his daughters,
"pelicans" since, like pelicans, they would kill their parents and
feed on their blood (Bevington 1195).
The animal symbolism continues when Edgar compares his
attributes to those of animals. Lear considers himself "a hog in
sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in
prey" (3.4.101-102). In response, Lear asks the ultimate question:
"Is man no more than this?" This question harkens back to Hamlet's
assessment of "What a piece of work is man!" in which Hamlet
concludes that he is no more than a "quintessence of dust," not
even an animal. Lear responds that uncivilized, "unaccommodated
man" is no better than a "poor, bare forked animal" (3.4.105). For
him, man stripped of the rules of society is no more than a beast
roaming the woods. This pessimistic view of man contrasts sharply
with the self confident Lear who gives away his kingdom and then
naively puts himself at the mercy of his daughters for his care
(Knight 174). As the Fool puts it to Lear, "He's mad that trust the
tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love or a whore's
oath" (3.6.18-19). It is the uncaring world Gloucester depicts in
which "As flies are to wanton boys, so are we to the gods / They
kill us for their sport" (4.1.36-37). And it is a world in which,
as Albany puts it, "Humanity must perforce prey on itself, / Like
monsters of the deep" (4.2.50-51).
After his encounter at the heath, when the mad Lear meets the
blinded Gloucester who is being led by his beloved Edgar, Lear
talks to him about the cause of suffering in the world. For the
Elizabethans, man's suffering was seen in relation to the Fall of
man. After his original sin, man fell from his place at the right
hand of God to a level just above the beast. It is into this level
that man is born. Lear comes to recognize that the source of
suffering in the world is caused by man's very existence. According
to Mack, "Man's tragic fate, as King Lear presents it, comes into
being with his entry into relatedness, which is his entry into
humanity" ("King Lear: Action and World" 243). Lear understands
this when he remarks to Gloucester:
We come crying hither.
Thou know'st the first time we smell the air
We wawl and cry. (4.6.179-181)
Lear not only comes to understand the cause of suffering in man, he
is prepared to teach it to Gloucester. Lear continues to make his
point when he adds that "When we are born, we cry that we are come
/ To this great stage of fools" (4.6.182-183). Lear recognizes that
this world is made up of fools like himself.
But though he sees the world as inhabited by animals and
fools, it is a more realistic view of the world than he had when he
divided his kingdom. He is aware that evil can exist, even among
his daughters, yet he is also cognizant of the good in men like his
Fool who can show kindness and honesty without asking for anything
in return.
Lear's understanding that we enter the world of sinners at
birth casts his curse of Goneril that she remains barren in a more
devastating light: "Dry up her organs of increase / And from her
derogate body never spring / A babe to honer her!" (1.4.288-290)
(Charney 85). For Lear, the source of his suffering was the birth
of his two evil daughters, a "disease that is my flesh" (2.4.233).
Yet, the source of his joy is also tied to birth, the birth of
Cordelia whose sinless birth can redeem him from his "general
curse" and thus lead him to his final redemption.
On the symbolic level, there are three rebirths of Lear. His
first birth occurs when he chooses to cast himself out of the
trappings of power and into the hands of his daughters. In doing
so, he enters a world of reality where the cruelty of the beast
dominates and the only identity left to him is that of fool. He
remarks how "old fools are babes again" (1.3.20). His second
rebirth occurs at the heath when he enters the world of madness.
This world for Lear, while not directly chosen is, nevertheless,
the result of his original action. His daughters have put him out,
but he chose to give them that power. He enters this world as a
"poor naked wretch" (3.4.28). The third rebirth occurs when he is
rejoined with Cordelia and is able, for the moment, to hold her in
his arms. He enters this world, not in tattered clothes, but as a
babe dressed in white clothes.
Before Lear can be reconciled with her, he must not only
accept that suffering is a necessary condition for being human, but
he must also learn how to live in a world of interdependent
relationships. He does so by learning to live in the small
community which he, Edgar, the Fool, Gloucester and Kent makeup.
For the Elizabethans, man's Fall caused him to be placed just
above the beast. While he may eventually rival the angels in
knowledge, man begins life in ignorance. As Tillyard points out,
to the Elizabethans, "not to know yourself was to resemble the
beasts" (72). By the fall, he is alienated from his true self (22).
If he is to regain self-knowledge, he must do so by understanding
his identity in relation to others in the world.
Lear's quest for his identity begins during the opening
moments of the play when he asks each of his daughters to express
their love for him. He expects the exalted replies of Goneril and
Regan for that is the image of himself that he had created in his
mind. When Cordelia confronts him with the fact that he is her
father and that her love for him is no more nor no less as befits
this relationship, Lear is taken aback and severs the relationship.
At Goneril's palace, while engaging in an exchange with his
fool after he has divided his kingdom and renounced his title, Lear
asks his fool if he means to imply that Lear is a fool. The fool
replies that the title of Fool is the only one Lear has not given
away. Lear continues to question who he is when he asks "Does any
here know me? . . . Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (1.4.224-227), to
which the fool replies "Lear's Shadow". It is only after
his confrontation with the storm that he begins to understand his
true identity.
As Lear, Edgar and the Fool wander in tattered clothes in the
open fields, Lear again asks whether man stripped from the trapping
of civilization is no more than a "forked animal" (3.4.105-106).
In each of these situations, Lear is not only trying to seek his
own identity but also trying to discover what is the correct
relationships for man ("King Lear: Action and World" 237).
But before he is able to complete his transformation, Lear
must learn the meaning of "shared humanity." After having been
thrown out of his daughter's house on a stormy night, Lear
discovers in the disguised Kent, the mad beggar Tom, and the Fool,
men who will share with him his misery and lack of status. Lear
comes to understand that while institutions are necessary for a
society to exist, they are not enough. What is needed is a
compassion of a "mutual humanity." He learns his lesson well, for
when the blinded Gloucester meets him near Dover Cliffs, he is able
to preach to him about the nature of good and evil ("King Lear:
Action and World" 240-2).
Lear's choice, in the end, is to join the world of the fool,
Cordelia and the other outcasts of society. He has finally
identified himself in the world and defined his relationship to it
as he recognizes the true bonds of service as exhibited by Kent and
the fool, and the true bonds of family as shown by Cordelia. Thus,
he is able to endure the world he has chosen. His ultimate joy,
perhaps the only joy still left to him, it that he is able to be
reconciled with Cordelia. He is able to embrace her in his arms and
beg her for forgiveness: "You must bear with me. / Pray you now,
forget and forgive. / I am old and foolish" (4.7.88-90).
He understands that his choice, to be connected with this
world, can lead to some joy as he found in his reunification with
his daughter, but also it can lead to an increase in suffering as
with Cordelia's death ("King Lear: Action and World" Mack 245-6).
As Lear holds his dying daughter in his arms he wonders why "should
a dog, a horse, a rat have life, / And thou no breath at all?"
(5.3.312-3).
In Hamlet, reconciliation is accompanied by the deaths of all
the main characters save Horatio. In King Lear, the cost of
reconciliation is his death and that of his daughter in his arms.
Furthermore, at the end of the play, his evil daughters are also
dead and Gloucester remains blinded. While the cost of the union is
high in these two works, Shakespeare shows in The Tempest a view of
reconciliation that does not lead to the carnage but to
reconciliation and a reaffirmation of life.
In The Tempest, the pessimism stems from the alienation the
characters feel when they arrive on the island and from the general
chaos in the schemes of relationships. For Prospero, it is the
alienation of the intellectual spirit divorced from human
relationships that began twelve years before in Milan. For his
daughter Miranda, it is the isolation in a world without human
contact save for her father. In the case of Alonso and his son
Ferdinand, it is the wrongful presumption of each other's drowning
in the shipwreck. For Antonio and Sebastian, it is the unnatural
envy that they have for their brothers' domains. As for Stephano
and Trinculo, it is the loss of the bonds of service that ties them
to their masters. In each, the alienation he feels on the island
parallels that which he felt before the wreck. It is only that it
has been brought into sharper focus (Shakespeare: The Last Phase
Traversi 224).
As these characters encounter the trials put before them,
their capacity for redemption and reconciliation are tested (Frye
178). Like their alienation, their trials mirror the roles they
play in society. What is significant in Shakespeare's treatment of
his characters is that, unlike Lear and Hamlet, trials and
reconciliation do not lead to death, but to a rebirth from which
they can go on and resume their roles in society with a more
optimistic view of man (Spencer 200). The difference is significant
since it implies that a kind of redemption is possible in this
world and it does not have to wait till the next. This is a much
more hopeful message than Shakespeare presented in Hamlet and Lear.
Ariel, though he seems to be a servant of Prospero, is really
a kind of agent of divine Providence who is able to transcend
Prospero's initially waggish plans (Pearson 272). He is the source
for the reconciliation which moves Prospero to use his intellectual
powers to return to the world of humanity and to show human
compassion. As a result of Prospero's action, there is an
optimistic outcome in which, with a few exceptions, each of the
island's temporary inhabitants leaves having discovered something
about living in a world of interdependent relationships.
For the Elizabethans, the reconciliation represented more than
mere return of loved ones. It represented a return of order from
chaos and hence would be viewed in an optimistic light. Yet, they
would be reminded in the character of Caliban as well as Antonio
that while the future may be optimistic, evil too will persist
(Spencer 196).
Prospero's pessimism is suggested at the beginning of the play
in his previous withdrawal from the world. It is the pessimism of
the ruler detached from the world he governs. When he was Duke of
Milan, he did not interact with others, but hid himself away
reading his books. While he had risen above humanity into the
spiritual world of intellect, he lacked the ability to communicate
with man. His isolation from man on the island parallels the
isolation he created for himself in his Milan study.
He describes in detail to Miranda how his brother and Alonso
plotted against him, seized his dukedom, and set him adrift in the
sea. While he sees the evil in man, he is unable to see it in
himself, in his pride and search for knowledge that separated him
from humanity. As a result, he isolates the shipwrecked crew from
their loved ones, puts them through trials for apparently his own
amusement, and continually exploits his servants Ariel and Caliban.
The moment of Prospero's discovery of what is good in human
nature occurs when Ariel confronts him with the image of the tears
of his faithful servant Gonzalo whom, with the three courtly
schemers, he has placed into a trance as punishment. Ariel tells
him that even he could feel some tenderness, if he were human. It
is at this point that Prospero realizes that he has acted in an
unkind manner since if a spirit can have such feelings then
certainly a fellow human should. He calls on his passion to become
kinder toward the schemers even though he has good reason to
unleash his vengeance on them. He concludes, "The rarer actions is
/ In virtue than in vengeance" (5.1.27-28). He then proceeds to
denounce himself for having spent all his years studying his books
and thus neglecting his role as a member of the human society.
Then, by drowning his books, he signals that he is prepared to
reenter the world of man (Time, Tide, and Tempest Peterson 244).
He removes the spell from the courtly schemers. He forgives
his brother on condition that he be returned to his rightful place
as Duke, and he forgives Sebastian even though he is not quite sure
he has learned his lesson. He blesses the bonding of Miranda to
Ferdinand and rejoins him to his father. After all the shipwrecked
inhabitants have been reassembled, he releases their boat and bids
them a fair wind and a calm sea. In his final act on the island, he
sets Ariel free bidding him to return to the elemental state from
which he originated. For Prospero, his condition for entering the
world of humanity is to give up his false spirit world through the
use of his heightened powers of reason and return to the world of
men (Spencer 198).
In the members of the court party, Alonso, Antonio and
Sebastian, Shakespeare presents three schemers who view the world
as being devoid of loyalties. Prospero relates how his brother
Antonio usurped the title of Duke of Milan from him with the help
of the Alonso and Sebastian. Despite their near drowning in the
shipwreck, Sebastian and Antonio continue to plot. Antonio proposes
to Alonso's brother Sebastian that he should murder his bother and
make himself King of Naples. When Sebastian balks and asks if
Antonio has any conscience, Antonio replies that he does not feel
anyone. For Alanso, though, the island is filled only with the
despair of loosing his son Ferdinand. Of the three, he is the only
one who will be able to accept his situation and make amends.
Their confrontation with their past occurs when the harpy
Ariel appears before them as he tells them plainly that they are
three men of sin whom God has brought to the lower world of the
desolate island. He warns them of what will happen if they do not
repent. As they are people who do not use their minds in a positive
manner, Prospero casts a spell that robs them of their faculties
(Spencer 197).
When Prospero relents and removes the spell, their levels of
repentance and reconciliation differ. Alonso wakes up asking
Prospero's forgiveness and he gives up his financial interest in
the Milan dukedom. Of the three, he is the least guilty and has
suffered the most through the presumed loss of his son. In order
for Alonso to have been purged of his sin, he had to sink into the
depths of despair before he could be reconciled with his son.
Prospero is much harsher to Sebastian and Antonio, telling them
that they were forgiven though they are not repentant. Finally,
Antonio is force to return the dukedom he has usurped back to
Prospero. For the Elizabethan, this return of the dukedom to its
rightful owner as well as the rejoining of father and son would be
seen is an optimistic light since order would have been restored
(Flagstad 266).
Ferdinand's pessimistic feeling in the play's beginning is of
another sort. He assumes that he has lost his father in the
shipwreck since Ariel tells him that his bones are now corals and
his eyes pearls. What he neglects to hear is the remainder of
Ariel's song in which he sings of the sea-change by which water has
transformed his father into something rich and strange. His sense
of loss is tempered only when he meets Miranda. Yet, even with
Miranda, he must endure a period of separation he can be married to
her.
Ferdinand is of high noble birth and talks to Prospero of his
titles with a degree of youthful exuberance: "myself am Naples, /
Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld / The King my father
wrack'd" (1.2.337-9). Despite his princely upbringing, Prospero
does not feel that he is ready to marry Miranda. In order for him
to gain her, Prospero puts him to the test of moving logs, a task
that he gladly accepts. Likewise, Miranda's offer to help him shows
that she too understands that living in a world with others
requires her to help others. Like Adam and Eve after the Fall,
Ferdinand and Miranda have left their sheltered lives to enter the
real world in which the first lesson to be learned is the meaning
of toil.
When Prospero finally consents to the marriage, he warns
Ferdinand that if he "break her virgin-knot before / All
sanctimonious ceremonies . . . be ministered" (4.1.15-17), he and
Miranda will be cursed and live in a barren bed. Ferdinand's
reentry into the world of relationships is finalized by the
reconciliation with his father. Ferdinand responses to his trials
with joy and Shakespeare seems to show a man who has the correct
attitude to life. While man may, from time to time, have to endure
some suffering, he also has the potential for a great deal of joy.
The characters of Stephano and Trinculo along with Caliban
represent the servant class alienated from their masters. For the
Elizabethans, their loss of control would be viewed as a threat to
the natural order of things and hence would be viewed
pessimistically (Brown 51-53). These characters are without
guidance and return to their animal state. The savage Caliban
serves as a reminder of what they have become. In Caliban,
Shakespeare represents the bestial nature of man. Unlike Lear and
Hamlet, though, the beast is shown explicitly in a character rather
than implicitly in the characters actions. Yet the bestial nature
of Caliban, unlike Lear's daughters and Hamlet's mother, is under
control, and the potential for doing harm is reduced to jocular
pranks. Like the courtly party, Caliban and his party also try to
scheme, but their lack of intellect leaves them in a seemingly
comical state. While this may on the surface seem comical, it
addresses a deeper fear in mankind. Is man, when he is stripped of
the order of society nothing more than a beast?
Since these servants cannot be redeemed, they are punished by
being set upon by spirits in the shape of dogs and hounds (Spencer
197). In the end, while they are reconciled with their masters,
there is little hint that their inner nature has changed in the way
that most of the others have. Yet for the Elizabethans who desired
order, the resolution that the servants be returned to their
masters would be viewed optimistically like the return of the true
Duke to his rightful throne.
In The Tempest, Prospero has seen the folly of escaping from
the world, first by hiding away with his books and eventually
distancing himself from man on his island. But in a sea of
humanity, no man can be an island. This is the lesson the
Shakespeare presents in this play, and it is also the lesson of
Donne in Divine Meditations as he seeks to deal with man's
isolation in more explicitly religious terms than Shakespeare
presents them.
In Donne's Divine Meditations 1, the initial despair and
damnation the poet feels gives way to reconciliation and redemption
once he begins to contemplate man's need to love God and his
neighbor. As with the Shakespearean plays examined, Donne uses
imagery of decay and draws upon the relationship of man to animal
in the chain of being. In the initial ten sonnets, he fears the
death and judgement which is to come to him. His state of mind is
filled with despair, alienation, and self pity. In the last
meditation of this group, he considers death directly. After he has
done so, he begins, in the last six sonnets, to explore the love
that Christ showed for man through His suffering. As a result of
this reflection, he starts to show concern for someone other than
himself. He then proceeds to explore in more detail man's relation
with God as well as his relation to his fellow man (Gardner xl). He
arrives at the conclusion that the way out of his despair lies in
the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbor.
According to Helen Gardner the sonnets were written between
1609 and 1611, a period before Donne's ordination in 1615 (xxxix-xli). As
such, they represent a period in Donne's life in which his
questioning of the world around him would have been intense. It is
also the same period as The Tempest (1610-1611) and presents a more
explicitly religious impression of the times parallel to
Shakespeare's. The conclusion that both men draw is that no man is
an island and that in order to reach his full potential, man must
learn to live in harmony with his fellow man.
In the first meditation in the Smith ordering, "Thou hast made
me, and should thy work decay?", he wonders whether God will allow
His work, Donne, to decay and die. He speaks of despair and terror
of his wasting, "feebled flesh" which is destined for hell. Donne
then asserts that it is only by the grace of God that he can be
lifted from this predicament. This need for an invocation before
meditation can also be seen in Eliot's Ash Wednesday:
strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair
Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only. (3.21-24)
In "As due by many titles I resign," Donne states that he is
God's son and "a temple of the Holy Spirit" (8). Yet, he the
queries, "Why doth the devil then usurp on me?" (9). In this manner
he questions the power God has over the devil and, by extension,
wonders if God can indeed save him. In a somewhat paradoxical
couplet at the end of the sonnet, he asks whether a god "That thou
lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, / And Satan hates me,
yet is loth to lose me" (13-14). This represents the extreme
uncertainty with which Donne views his spiritual life as well as
his sense of abandonment.
In "O might those sighs and tears return again," he begins to
examine himself. He speaks of his "holy discontent" and "idolatry"
(3-4) and proclaims his desire to repent. However he equates his
sin with the need for punishment by stating, "Yet vehement grief
hath been / The effect and cause, the punishment and sin" (13-14).
This sense of apprehension of adjudication can also be in Eliot's
Ash Wednesday when the narrator prays "to God to have mercy on us"
(25), yet implores that "the judgement not be too heavy upon us"
(32).
In "Oh my black soul thou art summoned," Donne talks of death
preceded by sickness and compares himself to a condemned thief,
about to die, who is hoping for freedom (4-6). He concludes that
while grace cannot be lacking if one repents, "Who will give me
grace to begin?" (10). He then proposes that it is the blood of
Christ that will supply salvation.
In "I am a little world made cunningly", Donne begins to take
a more metaphysical view of the world by claiming that the world is
made up of "elements" and "angelic spirits" which are betrayed by
sin (A. Smith 627). This meditation, which was first published in
1635, two years after the others seems to be more reflective in
nature. The belief that the world would be destroyed in a new flood
or by fire was a widely held belief at the time (A. Smith 628). In
this sonnet, the poet makes extensive use of the elements water
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it if it must be drowned no more: (7-9)
and fire
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made if fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
(10-14)
to show the paradoxes of salvation and destruction by water and
fire. Water takes on the symbol of redemption while at the same
time being a force for destruction. Similarly, fire takes on a
symbolism of both lust and salvation. Donne's paradoxical use of
fire as a symbol of lust and redemption is similar to Eliot's use
of fire in Little Gidding:
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre --
To be redeemed by fire or fire. (205-207)
With "This is my play's last scene, here heavens appoint,"
Donne uses an extended metaphor of a race. He speaks of "last mile"
(2), "last pace", "last inch" and "last point" (4). He then relates
how the body and soul are to be separated at death with the soul
going to heaven and the body returning to the earth (9-14). This
fear of the decay of the body is reminiscent of the "Thou hast made
me, and shall thy work decay," but is coupled with a realization
that the soul will live on. In "At the round earth's imagined
corners," he continues to reflect about how the soul will be
separated from the body at death, but laments that at this point,
with all its sins, it is too late for grace (10-11). It is when man
is here on earth, "on this lowly ground" (12), that man should ask
to be taught how to repent. He continues this plea for man to seek
grace on this earth in "If faithful souls be alike glorified." He
implores man to turn "to God, for he knows best / Thy true grief,
for he puts it in my breast" (13-14). In this meditation, Donne
puts man's salvation squarely in this world. He cannot be saved in
the next world unless he is reconciled in this world.
With the beginning of "If poisonous minerals, and if that
tree," he questions God's justice. He asks, "If lecherous goats, if
serpents envious / Cannot be damned; alas, why should I?" (3-4).
Moreover, he questions why man, born with reason, should be more
harshly judged than an animal. His tone of questioning man's
relationship to the animals is reminiscent of Hamlet's comparison
of his nature with that of "paragon of animals" while at the same
time trying to claim a higher station for man through noble reason.
Unlike Hamlet, Donne then comes to the realization of the
limitations in the world much sooner: "But who am I, that dare
dispute with thee / O God" (11-12).
In "Death be not proud, though some have called thee," he
mocks death: "Death be not proud" (1) and goes on to point out that
death is "One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death
shall be no more, Death thou shalt die" (13-14). With this
conclusion, he reasserts God's dominion over death by underscoring
that God will defeat all enemies, "the last enemy to be defeated
will be death" (1 Corr. 15:25-26).
At the end of the first half of his meditations, Donne has
come to realize that it is through the grace of God that man can
overcome despair, fear, death, and judgement. As will be seen more
extensively later, the type of soul searching that Donne does in
his Divine Meditations is very similar to the type of questioning
that Eliot does in Ash Wednesday and Little Gidding. But this is
only the first step. Donne goes on to explore in the next six
sonnets the role that man must play in his own salvation.
In "Spit in my face ye Jews," he invokes the image of Christ
being put to death for his sins. He begins to understand that while
Christ was once buffeted, scoffed, scourged, and crucified, by his
sins, it is he, Donne, who crucifies Christ every day. He praises
God for coming into the world as a man in order to "be weak enough
to suffer woe" (13-14). In this and the next two meditations, Donne
expresses a sorrow motivated not by fear as allowed by the Catholic
doctrine of imperfect contrition, but by love as demanded by
Anglican doctrine (Peterson 318). This dichotomy of the view of
salvation can also be seen in the contrast between Prospero's
forgiveness of the truly repentant Alonso with that of frightened
but not necessarily repentant Antonio and Sebastian.
In "Why are we by all creatures waited on?", Donne considers
the mixture or the prodigal elements in man. He seeks to understand
the complexity of man in which the elements must be kept in
balance. As with "I am a little world made cunningly," his
metaphysical examination of the makeup of man's nature bares a
resemblance to the coming together of air, water, fire, and earth
that Eliot makes use of in The Waste Land and Little Gidding.
Donne questions
Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I
Simple, and further from corruption? (2-4)
Tillyard provides an Elizabethan answer to Donne's questions:
Man's physical life begins with food, and food is of
the four elements. Food passes through the stomach to the
liver, which is the lowest of the three parts of the
body. The liver converts the food it receives into four
liquid substances, the homours, which are to the human
body what the elements are to the common matter of the
earth . . ..
In normal operation all the humours together are
carried by the veins from the liver to the heart, a
proper mixture of humours being necessary to bodily
growth and functioning as that of the elements to the
creation of permanent substances. (68-9)
This meditation serves as a reminder of the Elizabethan's view
that man was composed of a mixture of elements in a delicate
balance and thus more subject to corruption than the simple
elements (A. Smith 631). After reflecting on the Elizabethan view
of man, he returns to the central theme of the later sonnets,
Christ's sacrifice for man:
Created nature doth these things subdue
But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied,
For us, his creatures, and his foes, hath died.
(12-14)
He continues his reflection on the death of Christ in "What if
this present were the world's last night?". He conjures up images
of the crucified Christ with His crown of thorns forgiving those
that put Him to death. Donne returns to the theme that Christ
sacrificed himself for man. He seeks to understand the Creator's
love for his creatures. But more importantly, he indicates care for
someone other than himself. The fear and despair of the prior
sonnets has been replaced with love for what God has done for man.
This marks a shift in tone from his earlier sonnets in which his
emphasis was on his death and his judgement and what God could do
for him. He now is concerned with what he should be doing for God.
Love, as he now realizes, is a reciprocal relationship in which
God's love for man must be returned (Gardner xl-xli).
In "Batter my heart, three-personed God" he implores God to
divorce him from God's enemy and to have God "imprison,"
"enthrall," and "ravish" the freed man (12-14). At this point,
Donne is actively imploring God to set him free from the bonds of
despair that he initially felt. This is another one of Donne's
paradoxes since he desires to be free of one bondage (to sin) only
to replace it with another bondage (to God).
"Wilt thou love God, as he thee?" brings into view the need
for man to join in community with God. He concludes in this
meditation that the faithful must "digest this wholesome
meditation" (2). The poet asserts that in order for man to be
saved, man must choose to be adopted by God as "Cohier to his
glory" (8) and become children of God (A. Smith 268).
In "Father, part of this double interest," Donne finally
considers the role that love of neighbor plays in salvation. He
talks about
"Thy law's abridgement and try last command
Is all but love" (15-16)
in which he refers to Christ's summary of the ten commandments into
two: love of God and love of neighbor (A. Smith 634). What is
significant about this last meditation is that Donne realizes that
his relationship with God, while good and necessary, is only part
of his way out of his despair. It is only through the love of his
fellow man, his "Cohiers to glory," who are prepared to suffer
with Him in order that they may also be glorified with Him (Rom.
8.17) that he can be completely reconciled with God (A. Smith 628).
In these meditations, Donne begins by acknowledging the decay
that he sees in the world, and questions why God has abandoned him.
He wonders why God seems to have less interest in him than Satan
does as he seeks to find a source of grace. Slowly, he comes to
realize that he cannot be saved at death, but that he must begin to
reconcile himself with the world while he is still alive and can
interact in the world. He must acknowledge God's love for man, that
Christ died for man, and that man is worthy of God's love only
through the grace of God. By becoming aware of Christ's suffering,
he realizes that God's love for man needs to be returned. Fear of
death and judgement is replaced by love of God. Yet, while love of
God is one condition for the removal of despair and alienation, it
is only with the love of neighbor that man can fully be redeemed
and become a "cohier to glory."
IV
In his transformation from pessimistic despair to optimistic
reconciliation with the world, Donne's Divine Meditations share
with Shakespeare's Hamlet, Lear, and The Tempest an understanding
that reconciliation must occur in this world in relationship to his
fellow man. As will be seen shortly in the works of Eliot,
particularly in Ash Wednesday and Little Gidding, man may need to
glimpse his higher nature such as with a vision of himself back in
the Garden of Eden or, like Prospero of an enchanted island, before
he can gain the wisdom he needs in order to reenter the shared
humanity of man. Eliot shares with Donne the need to find an answer
to man's alienation and despair in this world which does not
wholely lie in man's escape from this world into the next. If man's
only commandment to obey is to love God, then escape out of this
world would be a proper solution; however, both Donne and Eliot
struggle to reconcile this first commandment with the second, love
of neighbor, for if man were to neglect his neighbor, he would not
be able to be joined with God. Shakespeare understands this point
too as the reconciliation in Hamlet, Lear, and The Tempest all
occur in this world.
Having examined the nature of optimism and pessimism in
Hamlet, Lear, and The Tempest as well as in Donne's Divine
Meditations, a certain general theme seems to stand out in the
writings of these men at the close of the Elizabethan era: Whatever
the pessimism man may feel, if he becomes aware of the world or
relationships, he will gain the strength to overcome his pessimism.
Like the protagonists in these works, the characters in the
works of the Post-Victorian Modernists such as Eliot and Yeats
illustrates a similar sense of pessimism, discovery, and the
potential for optimistic reconciliation. Eliot's characters in
Prufrock, The Waste Land, and Ash Wednesday are people who are
alienated from society and are despairing of their condition in
relation to the world. In contrast to Shakespeare's use of
aristocratic characters, Eliot's characters are ordinary people
going about their everyday lives. The pessimism in Eliot's work
stems from the feeling of isolation and loss of consciousness that
man in the first part of the twentieth century felt. As in the age
of Shakespeare and Donne, Eliot's man found the loss of a sense of
order which occurred in the aftermath of the First World War and
subsequent depression to be unsettling.
The major difference between the alienation felt by Eliot's
characters and that felt by the Shakespearian characters examined
is that Eliot's characters in his earlier works lack any
fellowship. While Hamlet has Horatio, Lear his Fool, and Prospero
his Ariel, none of the protagonists in earlier Eliot's works had
even the vestige of a relationship with others. The only contact is
at a distance. Thus the pessimism and alienation in Eliot's earlier
works is much more pronounced.
The difference among Eliot, Shakespeare, and Donne is in how
Eliot perceives optimism. For Shakespeare, optimism lay in
reconciliation and return to order while with Donne, it lay in the
proper relationship of love of God and love of neighbor. In Eliot,
optimism stems from the gaining of self knowledge and the potential
for redemption. For Eliot, reconciliation is not only with man but
with the collective consciousness of man which Eliot accomplishes
through the deliberate use of archetypes. In his search for
relationships in an alienated world, Eliot seems to suggest that
man must first find his relationship in union with the primitive
forces that are deeply rooted in each man before he can learn to
relate with the people around him in the present.
In Prufrock the archetype is the potential of death by water
and subsequent rebirth. In The Waste Land, it is the union of the
elements of air, water, fire, and earth foreshadowing the possible
unification in man. In Ash Wednesday, the archetype is the Garden
of Eden to which man strives. In each case, this union with man's
collective consciousness has the potential to show man how to
remove his sense of alienation in this world and thus lead him to
an optimistic resolution. The use of archetypes is clear in Little
Gidding where Eliot addresses man's need to be united with the
past:
A people without a history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. (233-235)
But this union of man through the use of archetypes can be realized
only in the present where man must take an active part in his world
through the love of his fellow man ("History is now.").
Yeats, in such poems as "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Lapis
Lazuli" also finds that remembrance of past ages provides a means
from which to cope with the despair of the present moment. Unlike
Eliot, Yeats' poems focus in on the individual and his relation to
a small group of like-minded visionaries such as the old sages in
"Sailing to Byzantium" and the Chinamen in "Lapis Lazuli." His
optimism stems from his observation that while there is an absence
of progress in history, artistic activity has meaning (Snukal 125).
V
In The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which first appeared
in 1917, Eliot present an early twentieth century man who views the
manifestations of World War I society around him as being sterile
and tentative, who regards his relation to others as being
estranged, and who depicts himself as lacking even the ability to
question his own meaning in life. The pessimistic alienation in
Prufrock is much more intense than in the Shakespearean plays
examined for, while Hamlet has his Horatio, Lear his Fool and
Prospero his Ariel, Prufrock has no one to turn to for comfort. And
unlike Hamlet, Lear, and Prospero, his alienation from the world is
so all pervasive, his detachment so all-consuming that he cannot
even formulate the question of "What is man?"
In Prufrock, Eliot represents the alienation and pessimism of
a society in which the bonds of human interaction have been lost
and where man has become a mere spectator. He views himself as a
Polonius, watching but never really doing or as a Lear, growing old
in worn out clothes and acting like a fool. He tries to ask himself
about the meaning of life only to be distracted from even this
attempt by an empty and uncaring world. This inability to even
formulate the question leads him into a deeper despair. In the very
close of the poem, there is only a glimmer of hope for him as he
sees the waters of life approaching his gloomy world. Yet, in the
end, he becomes an observer even to this and is overwhelmed by the
water and drowned.
The images of the world which Prufrock moves through are that
of a sterile and detached world. He travels through his "etherized"
world at twilight, on the outskirts of humanity, never risking to
make contact. His world is the world of the "half deserted streets"
where he can perhaps walk undetected, the cheap one night hotels
where he can sleep without anyone taking undue notice of his
existence, and the dingy restaurants where he can eat without fear
of catching the glances of others. Prufrock is the forerunner of
Satre's existentialist Roquentin, "alone in the midst of these
happy, reasonable voices" (Nausea 8).
While he imagines himself moving through stealthily through
the city, his unconsciousness, represented by the yellow fog,
crawls through those self same streets. It is a world in which man
can remain detached, making no commitment to the world and
expecting the world to make none in return. It is a world in which
man transverses the city like a yellow fog that moves past
windowpanes, around corners and lingers in the drains only to have
the soot of the chimneys fall on him. In the end, the walk and the
fog come to nothing as he returns home, crawls up and sleeps.
As he concludes his imagined walk through the "half-deserted"
streets of the city, he begins to think the meaning of life.
Throughout his walk, he has told himself that "there will be time."
His relationship to the world, he surmises, must wait for time. He
tries to convince himself that there will be time to prepare a face
to meet the faces that will meet him.
But as the time to ask the question approaches, he
pessimistically finds himself standing on a stairway asking if he
can dare to ask the question. He concludes that he cannot and turns
to go down the stairs and back into the world in which he is a mere
detached part. He is unable to climb even the first stair. It will
be only later, in Ash Wednesday, that Eliot allows his narrator the
ability to begin to ascend the staircase out of his world of
despair. Prufrock's world is a world in which this balding man puts
on the manifestations of the image that he wishes to project for
others: the morning coat and the necktie. He is afraid to confront
the universe or even disturb it with such a profound question. Like
his walk through the city streets, his thoughts about asking the
question are tentative and, in the end, without resolution.
When he realizes that he cannot even dare to question the
meaning in his life, his pessimism deepens. He sees images of eyes
prying at him and the arms of women in the lamp light. He views
people as a series of detached parts just as his world is a world
of detachment. He compares himself to a ragged set of claws
scuttling across "the silent sea," cut off from the rest of
humanity, escaping so deep in the water that not even the sea life
can view him, with the silence of the sea reenforcing the silence
of the world. Just as he views the world as parts of a whole, he
views himself, not as a whole lobster, but only as a ragged claw of
one. Moreover, in placing himself below the sea, he is symbolically
placing himself below mankind (G. Smith 18).
After this image of himself, he wonders if he has the
strength to go on, to face life and ask for its meaning. He finds,
though he has wept, fasted, and prayed, he is no prophet, and
perhaps the question of the meaning of life is "no great matter."
He concludes that he had come to the point of asking, only to see
the moment of his greatness flicker and death calling on him only
to laugh at him. In the end, he concludes that the reason was that
he was afraid. He wonders if it "would have been worth it after
all" to ask the question and thus to be like Lazarus returning from
the dead to his brothers to answer the ultimate question. As
Cleanth Brooks points out, "The people of Prufrock's society are no
more capable than the rich man's brothers of being roused from the
living death of their meaningless lives" (2101).
Prufrock is continually describing himself in relation to
people he is not. He tells us that he is no prophet nor is he a
Lear. He is not a Hamlet, though he thinks that he might be a Lear
or a Polonius. He can only identify himself with inanimate things
like the yellow fog, the lobster claws, a morning suit or a
necktie.
Prufrock tells himself that he is no Hamlet who would turn the
world upside down to right a wrong or ask a question, but perhaps
an "attendant lord," like Polonius, content to advise others, yet
never really taking any chances. Or he may be a fool like Lear, an
old man with his clothes wrinkled up and his hair unparted.
Prufrock senses that there is a world beyond his which is more
optimistic. But he lacks the courage to make this commitment to
this world for in order to do so, he must join in the "community of
souls" (Kirk 58). For Eliot's characters, this courage must wait
until Ash Wednesday and Little Gidding.
Prufrock can envision himself in white trousers, walking
along the beaches with mermaids singing to him. This vision of a
despairing old man seeing redemption overlooking a beach is
reminiscent of Edgar's description of the scene overlooking Dover
cliffs to the blinded, suicidal Gloucester, as a place where
fishermen walk the beach. Yet for Prufrock, this hint of salvation
by water is as fleeting as are the other images of his life. In the
end, the mermaids do not sing to him. They ride the crest of the
waves out to sea. He is unable to transcend his despair of the
present world to reach out to the symbolic water of life and to the
mermaids. In rejecting these archetypes, he is rejecting any chance
of reconciliation with the collective consciousness of man. It is
at this point that he realizes that he has spent too long waiting
at the edge of the sea, at the edge of redemption. Unlike
Gloucester, who awakens after his "leap" from the mound to find
himself miraculously saved, Prufrock wakens from his redemptive
dream only to be drowned: "We have lingered in the chambers of the
sea / . . . / till human voices wake us and we drown."
In contrast to Prufrock, The Waste Land, published in 1922,
offers a somewhat increased possibility for hope and redemption. In
The Waste Land the four primordial elements, earth, air, fire and
water, play an important part in the symbolism of the work. A
reading of these elements in terms of their traditional Elizabethan
values affords a view of the poem in a more optimistic light.
According to Tillyard's The Elizabethan World Picture, the four
elements were viewed by the Elizabethans as being in competition
with each other. When one dominated over the others, chaos would
result. Perfection was viewed as occurring, both in nature and in
man, when all of the elements were in the right proportion (61-69). In the
beginning of the poem, the four elements are seen as
being separated from each other. In the first canto, water and
earth are seen in opposition while in the second, the wind and fire
interact. The third canto is filled with water images and ends with
fire and in the forth canto, the wind dominates the sea. While each
of the elements is separated, disharmony exists and this adds to
the isolation felt in the waste land. It is only in the last canto,
when all the primordial elements are seen together at one time in
the waste land, that the mood of the poem becomes more optimistic.
For it is when the elements are in harmony that all will be right
with the world.
The opening canto, "The Burial of The Dead," is filled with
the images of memories of water having interacted with the earth in
the past contrasting with the waterless present of the waste land.
There are images of "Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with
the spring rain," (3-4) of "Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A
little life with dried tubers" (6-7). There is the recollection of
a sleigh ride on snow in the narrator's youth. In the second
section, the focus switches from the past to the present. Now there
are images of "the dry stone no sound of water" (24) and with "fear
in a handful of dust" (30). The next section, which reflects back
to the previous year, recalls the hyacinth girl with her "hair
wet." In a transition, Eliot ends the second section with a
comparison of the sea with the waste land: "Oed' und leer das Meer"
(43). Now all of his images of water will be associated with death.
The narrator talks about the "drowned Phoenician Sailor" (47) and
calls for us to "Fear death by drowning." There are images of fog
in which a flowing crowd seeks death. In the last section of this
canto, there are allusions to those in ships, and those planting
corpses which completes the transformation of the water into the
earth, the life force into death.
In the second canto, "A Game of Chess," there are images of
the other two Elizabethan elements: fire and wind. The canto begins
with numerous mocking images of fire with a Cleopatra-like lady
sitting on a "burnished throne" (1) and observe the flames of the
candelabra. The first hint of wind is given by a reference to "the
air that freshened" (89-90). The elements of fire and air are
combined for a brief moment in the image smoke rising from the
candle flames. The first glimpse of the wind seems to indicate some
motion in the waste land, a breaking up of the fire by the wind.
Then there is a return to the images of burning but this time in
combination with the water image: "sea-wood fed with copper /
Burned green and orange" (94-95). In the end of the first section
we again meet the girl in "The Burial of the Dead." This time she
does not have "hair wet" but "Under the firelight, under the brush,
her hair / Spread out in fiery points / Glowed into the words, then
would be savagely still" (108-10). This is perhaps the most
striking change from the water images observed in the first canto
to those of fire in the second. In the next section, there is the
sound of the "wind under the door" (118), but when the narrator
asks what is going on, he is told "nothing again nothing." The
canto ends with images of "hot water" (134) and "hot gammon."
Throughout this section, images of heat and fire give way only
briefly to those of wind and air. Thus in the first two cantos,
Eliot has introduced all four elements and has shown then isolated
from one another.
In the third canto, "The Fire Sermon," again there is a
presentation of a world dominated by water images -- or the lack of
water. In the first line, "The river's tent is broken." If "tent"
is interpreted as being the plug which bottles up the river, then
there is an image of the river as being let loose. Amidst the
images of water, the wind again flows unheard, and the river has
been deserted by the nymphs. The present river with its discarded
garbage is compared to the pristine days of Elizabeth. The water
images of this section are all muted: there is a rat "Dragging its
slimy belly on the bank" (189) and images of fishing in a "dull
canal" (190). There are naked bodies on the "damp ground" (192)
and images of brown fog as Mr. Eugenides enters the scene. But as
the canto ends, water is in motion. There is an image of "Red sails
/ Wide / To leeward, swing on the heavy spar" and "drifting logs"
(270-2). There are cries of the Rhinemaidens returning and men
"bearing oars" (280), the "brisk swell rippling both shores" (285)
and the "Southwest wind"(237). This is the first instance where the
wind takes dominion over the water. In "A Game of Chess" the wind
is hinted; now it is presented as a force to be contended with
along with the earth, water and fire. However, just like the first
two cantos, only two of the four elements come into interaction.
While there is a hint of optimism, the primordial forces are still
not in harmony.
The forth canto, "Death by Water" continues the cautionary
note about trusting salvation by the wind. It tells of the dead
"Phoenician Sailor," Phlebas, who the sea has taken up in "deep sea
swell" and of a "current under sea" (331-2) picking his bones and
of his body entering the whirlpool. Then there is a stark warning
about the wind: "O you who turn the wheel and look to the windward
/ Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you" (320-1).
Like fire and water before, wind too can be a force of destruction.
In the fifth canto, "What the Thunder Said," all of the
elements come into contact with each other. There are the images of
"torchlight red" (332) faces in the first section. In the second
section, there is a reminder that there is "no water but only rock"
(331) in the waste land. There is the image of the "dead mountain
mouth" and of the "dry sterile thunder without rain" (341-2). In
the third section, there is the imagine what would happen if there
were water amongst the rocks, perhaps a spring with water flowing
over the rocks. But this dream-like sequence ends on the stark
reality "that there is no water" in the waste land. In the forth
section, the wind again makes its appearance as sounds in the
mountain and "burst in the violet air." The next section continues
the wind motif as it gives the image of towers in the wind "upside
down in the air were towers / Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept
the hours / And the voices singing out of the empty cisterns and
exhausted wells" (383-5). Among the towers there is a single "empty
chapel" where "only the wind's home" (391) and the bones are dry.
There the wind is in contact with both the water and the earth
leading again to no salvation, and, like the sailor on the sea, the
combination of wind and sea, and wind and earth have the same
results: no salvation.
But all of a sudden, there is the sound of a cock crowing.
There is a "flash of lightning," fire, followed by a "damp gust
bringing rain" (394-5). Lightning serves as a catalyst for the air
and water to meet to produce rain on the earth. And as if to
emphasis the important role of the lightning, its voice speaks to
in the form of thunder. It tells man that he must give to others,
to interact ("Datta"). It tells him that he must sympathize
("Dayadhvam") in order to break free of his isolation. It tells him
of control ("Damyata") and result. Now the boat on the water
resounds to the wind and the sails are under control. He is allowed
to put the arid places behind him. What is most important, though,
in this passage is the combination of fire, wind, and earth in the
right proportion to bring about the rain that will mark the end of
the waste land and restore control of life to man. Man will have
not only control, but balance and sharing, a return to the
harmonious state in which all the elements are in their proper
proportion. This point is brought out by the reference to the cry
of the Rhinemaidens in which they hope for things to be restored as
they were. The final salvation is hinted at not by one of the
elements or by a combination of several elements. It is only were
all four elements are present in the right proportion that man
begins to become healthy again.
In The Waste Land, Eliot examines how, when the primitive
elements come together, there is hope that the pessimistic images
of the wasteland might be shattered. In Ash Wednesday, Eliot uses
some of the same images he had created in The Waste Land as well as
in Prufrock, but he gives them a more optimistic interpretation.
Eliot takes his reader up the twisted path of pessimism and
optimism in which each canto alternately examines these elements in
light of man's journey from old age to the spiritual world. Unlike
The Waste Land and Prufrock, the pagan symbols of fire, water, air,
and earth are replaced by Christian symbols.
Ash Wednesday, published in 1931, is Eliot's look at the
despair of the world, the world of physical sensation, and the hope
of the next world, the world of spiritual sensation. It was written
against the back drop of a worldwide depression and the rise of
totalitarianism and, as such, provides an insight into Eliot's
solution to this despair.
As the poem begins, the narrator laments over the loss of his
youth and senses that as man grows older he needs something to hope
for. He contrasts the decaying desert of The Waste Land with the
desert where men go to cast out their sins. While this is the first
glimmer of the hope that is to come, the vision of the higher
spiritual world, the path to get there is twisted like a staircase
in which elements of despair, death, and temptation wait. Yet it is
through that despair that man pushes on to recover the lost
innocence of the Garden of Eden. While he may be aware of the
Garden, it may not be possible for him to enter it. His despair may
be so great, like that of Prufrock, that he may reject the idea of
a higher world altogether. Or, he may lack the will to obtain it.
In the end, man waivers between birth and death, between life in
this world and the next. It is only when man learns to care and to
teach others that he is able to become part of the "spirit of the
river" (216) of life from which he seeks never to be parted.
In the first canto, Eliot presents images of lost youth in
which man realizes the temporal limitations the world places on
man. It is this temporal limitation on man's existence that makes
him seek for something that is beyond time. The canto begins very
pessimistically with an incantation of the narrator's conclusion
that there is no hope. He has even given up the desire to "strive
to strive" (5) as he reflects on his lost youth: "Why should the
aged eagle stretch its wings?" (6). He questions why he should morn
the loss of his powers after his "usual reign" (8). This is the
type of pessimism in which man becomes resigned to the world that
Eliot describes in Prufrock. He speaks of not being able to know
again the insecure glory of a "positive hour" (10). He is not able
to know the power of youth which is "veritable transitory" (13), at
once real and yet fleeting. He fears he cannot stay in a world
where trees flower and springs flow because for him these symbols
of fertility are "nothing again" (15). Yet, while he renounces the
blessed face and voice, he realizes that he must build something
"upon which to rejoice" (25). The rest of the canto is an
invocation for God to show mercy on him as a sinner and for His
judgement to be light. This invocation is reminiscent of Donne's
opening Divine Meditation, "Thou hast made me, shall thy work
decay?" in which Donne calls on God, "By thy leave I can look, I
rise again" (10). The canto concludes with a request he be prayed
for at the hour of his death. This acknowledgement that he has a
limit in this world allows him to speculate about a world of
spirituality outside of time and place. In Ash Wednesday, symbolic
death is the condition for entering a new life.
In the second canto, there is a more optimistic tone than the
first even though the narrator's bones have been picked clean by
the desert leopards. These leopards represent Christ's power to
destroy the temporal body (G. Smith 144). The death is not so much
a physical death, but a death in which man can enter the cleansing
desert not merely released as in Prufrock's drowning. This desert
contrast sharply with the desert of The Waste Land with its images
of heat, dryness, and rock along with its "dry bones that can harm
no one" (391). The trees of this landscape, in contrast to those of
the parched waste land, provide shade on a cool day. The desert is
covered with a "blessing of sand" (91) (Hargrove 98). It is a
desert that men go to to be alone with themselves in order to gain
understanding. It offers a place to cast one's "deeds to oblivion"
to the "posterity of the desert" (53-4). In sharp contrast with
Eliot's women in Prufrock and The Waste Land, there is the picture
of a good and lovely lady, shining in brightness in her white gown.
The canto ends optimistically as the bones state that this land is
their inheritance.
In the third canto, the tone becomes decidedly pessimistic.
Recounting Dante's journey up the staircase of Purgatory, the
narrator comes to the first turn of the second stair with a sense
of fear and despair. He is able to smell the "fetid air" (94) and
see a twisted shape struggling with the devil "who wares / The
deceitful face of hope and despair" (99-100). At the next turn the
struggling vanishes from view as the staircase darkens. There is an
image of an "old man's mouth" and the "tooted gullet of an aged
shark" (104-5). Both symbols harken back to the wasteland in which
Eliot presents the image of "dead mountain mouth of carious teeth
that cannot spit" (399) (T. S. Eliot: The Longer Poems Traversi
71). In this image the narrator intensifies his feeling of despair
by adding the elements of death and destruction. At the first turn
of the second stair, he speaks of sexual temptation. The images of
lilac and brown hair are reminiscent of the women in the dim
lamplight in Prufrock. These temptations of the physical world,
while present, must also be overcome before he can go further up
the staircase. In the end, he concludes that he needs "strength
beyond hope and despair" (115) and realized that he is not worthy
to climb any further unless he gets assistance from God. The stairs
he is now able to climb are the same stairs that Prufrock tried to
climb only to be turned away in despair. In a time of seeming
despair and lack of self-worth, he finds, like Donne in his Divine
Meditations, that he needs to call on forces outside himself.
The fourth canto invokes images of man in the Garden of Eden
before the Fall in which society at peace with itself is recalled.
There is trivial talk of things that recall man's ignorance and
innocence in the Garden. Unlike the hyacinth garden of The Waste
Land, in which joy is experienced only in solitude, this garden is
a communal garden in which man can grow to understand from his past
(Ward 159). There are strong images of coolness of spring water
flowing over rocks. The colors of Mary, white and blue, and the
green of hope dominate the landscape. The Lady who sits among the
rocks contrasts sharply with belladonnic "Lady of the Rocks" in The
Waste Land. The narrator talks of time redeemed, being restored and
of "the unread vision in the higher dream" (173) (Traversi 76).
Most important, though, is that he begins to realize that the
desert where men go to be reborn and the garden have a reciprocal
relationship: "The desert in the garden the garden in the desert"
(181) (G. Smith 153). As man's exile is remembered, the dream ends.
The fifth canto describes the two groups of men that cannot
become part of the spiritual world. Those that totally reject the
vision and those who are week-willed (Hargrove 102). Those that are
likely to reject salvation are people such as Prufrock. As with
Prufrock who journeys among the city unnoticed the narrator in Ash
Wednesday has "no time to rejoice for those who walk among the
noise" (166) and who choose to avoid faces. In those who are weak-willed,
there is hope. These have the potential for salvation but
only through the intervention of the Lady who can transport them
from the desert of spirituality to the garden of new life. The
significant point is that man need not lead his life in isolation,
but can call on others to help him when his spirits begin to desert
him.
The final canto begins with an echo of the loss of hope
expressed in the opening lines. However, there is a shift in the
focus from a renunciation of the world ("Because I do not hope" 1)
to a realization that despite the rejection of the physical world
and the commitment to seek out the spiritual world, the physical
world holds something which is important for him ("Although I do
not hope" 184) (G. Smith 154). The opening of this canto considers
the wavering that occurs in the brief transit between birth and
dying. For those who lack the will, "the spirit quickens to rebel"
(196). The narrator's misgiving about seeking the world beyond this
is reflected in his sense of the things of this world must be
given up. The allure of this world is intensified in all his
senses: "the lost sea smell," "the cry of quail," and the "blind
eye" creating forms (Hargrove 105). He looks to create with his
"blind eye" the "empty forms" between the "ivory gates" through
which the dreams of the underworld flow (200-201). It is because
the physical world holds so much for him that he feels the tension
between dying in this world and being born in the next. It is also
a reminder that while man lives in the world, there is much beauty
in it to behold. This is the athetesis of the feeling Prufrock had
of this world. His death in this world occurs before he could be
reconciled with it and hence his death is as meaningless as his
life.
The narrator in Ash Wednesday, who has been able to glimpse
the beauty of the afterlife is able to see a renewed beauty of this
world. In the end, the narrator invokes the Lady to teach him not
to mock himself with falsehoods and to teach him to care. He must
learn to accept God's will and sit still among the rocks. His final
request is that the cleansing spirits of the river and sea should
not allow him to be separated from God. The narrator in Ash
Wednesday, like Prospero, has seen a glimpse of the spiritual
world. He has seen the enchanted garden where the cool spring
waters flow amidst the evergreens. Like Prospero, he has examined
this world and has chosen to renounce it in hopes of a better world
out of time and place. The similarities between him and Prospero
also extend to what they gain from this experience. Prospero had
risen above man's world to the world of spirituality; however, he
realizes that it is only through the world of human relationships
that he could be fulfilled. The narrator of this poem also
experiences joys - - here the vision of the Garden of Eden and of
meeting Mary. When he senses the physical world, he discovers
beauties in it that he has never considered. Both he and Prospero
have been able to use their higher powers to come to understand
that in the end the world is not as full of despair as they once
thought and that living in this world is not undesirable. They have
been able to reconcile the spiritual world with the human. This is
perhaps best summed up by noting the narrator's remark that "the
desert in the garden the garden in the desert" (181) are in reality
the same.
The reoccurring lines from the Mass seem to indicate that the
world into which the narrator reenters is not the world of
isolation and alienation but the world of the "shared community" of
the Church (Ward 159). His requests to God are all addressed in the
plural: "Pray for us" (40), "Teach us" (210), "Suffer us" (209),
and "Our peace in His will" (213). The critical point, in both Ash
Wednesday and The Tempest as well as in Donne's Divine Meditations,
is that alienation from the world, or even escape from this world
to the isolation of a higher world does not lead to a way out of
pessimism.
Like Eliot, Yeats presents a view of the world in which man
learns from past civilizations in order to transcend the despair
that he finds in his present world. Where Yeats differs from Eliot
is in his view of man's relation to his fellow man. In the later
Eliot, man becomes subsumed in his role as a member of a shared
community. Unlike Eliot, Yeats' communities do not contain the
whole of humanity. For Yeats, the emphasis is on the individual in
relation to a much smaller community to which he seeks to belong.
This sense of belonging of Yeats can be seen in works
contemporaneous with Eliot's such as "Sailing to Byzantium" from
The Tower (1927) in which he attempts to reconcile his despair at
growing old in the world by seeking to become part of the mythical
city of Byzantium where he could walk among the old sages "standing
in God's holy fire" (17) (Yeats: The Man and The Mask Ellmann 257).
He recognizes the importance of being joined with others in a
community of shared interests.
Yeats again uses the theme of the rebirth of mythological
history in "Two Songs From a Play" (1927) in which the death of the
gods of Greek civilization leads to the birth of those of Rome. The
death of Rome's gods, in turn, leads to the birth of Christianity.
Yet, in the final stanza, his emphasis switches from the recycled
civilizations to the individual man in society when he talks about
"The painter's brush" consuming man's dreams, "The herald's cry,"
and "the soldiers's tread" (28-29) The society that Yeats considers
great is one in which heroic individuals accept the responsibility
of their lives (Snukal 142).
In one of his last poems, "Lapis Lazuli," published in 1938,
he chastises those who would despair at a world filled with the
sinews of war. He derides the "hysterical women" (1) who are sick
of the gaiety poets, such as himself, express at a time when planes
and airships threaten to level whole towns like the "bomb-balls"
(7) (with which King William III laid waste to Ireland two
centuries before).
As with Eliot, Yeats seeks to draw on the mythical and
historical in order to gain the serenity to live in the present. In
this poem, Yeats sees the cycle of decay and rebirth in "old
civilizations." While they are "put to the sword" (27) and fall,
they are "built again" (35) by the same gay visionaries that people
so frequently belittle. Like Eliot, Yeats links his hope for man's
rebirth with man's understanding of the rebirth of past
civilizations. Moreover, there is a sense of a community of workers
seeking to rebuild. As Eliot puts it, quoting the artisans in The
Rock:
Where bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone. (85-86)
For both Eliot and Yeats, the ancient civilizations embodied sense
of the renewal of man.
In the final two stanzas, his focus shifts to the East and
China from which the carved lapis lazuli comes. For Yeats, it is a
symbol of longevity as a piece of art, which, like the Chinese
civilization, can transcend time and space to carry its message to
the present. In contrast to Eliot's use of the Garden of Eden in
his latter works such as Ash Wednesday and Little Gidding, Yeats
uses the symbolism of the East to illustrate the higher state of
man. Yet both men share a sense that man must step out of his time
and place, even for a moment, in order to gain the necessary
knowledge with which to reenter the world in a state of rebirth.
Yeats closes "Lapis Lazuli" with the image of two Chinamen
climbing up a lofty cliff and sitting amongst the rocks,
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to image them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky (49-51)
contemplating the view of the world through their ancient, wrinkled
eyes, much like the narrator at the end of Ash Wednesday:
Teach us to sit still
Even among the these rocks
Our peace is His will (211-3)
Like the resolution in "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Two Songs From
a Play," the ending of "Lapis Lazuli" seems to show Yeats at ease
in having this small group share their world with him. As Ellmann
puts it in The Identity of Yeats, "The lapis lazuli is made to
yield the message of affirmation which he must have" (187). Yeats'
sense of reconciliation with the world is to be joined with these
Chinamen in order to share their world of serenity. This is in
contrast to the hysteria of the women in the first stanza (Snukal
158-9). While this is a different type of serenity than Eliot
proposed in his Christian vision of a community in the Church which
he hints at in Ash Wednesday, it is nonetheless a form of
reconciliation with man in the world which allows poets like Yeats
to escape the despair of a world torn asunder by the threat of war.
In Little Gidding, written in 1942 amidst the horror of the
bombing of England during the Second World War, Eliot completes his
vision of how man can be freed from pessimistic alienation by
learning from his past. With this redemption of and by time in
which man's past meets his present and transforms it, there is a
parallel process of transformation in which man begins to accept
the love of God and of his fellow man.
The opening of the work focuses on transformation. The initial
view of the town of Little Gidding which Eliot presents is of a
"sodden" (1) place in the "windless cold" (6) of a midwinter's day
as the suns sets. There is "no wind" (10) at this "dark time of the
year" (11) nor is there the "smell of living thing[s]" (13). The
"soul's sap quivers" (12) Time, too, is suspended in
"sempiternal"(2) This lack of life on a winter's day is symbolic of
the death of the human soul. It is only when the "brief sun flames"
(5) in the early afternoon that the scene is transformed from one
of lifelessness to one of springtime rebirth (Hargrove 187-8). The
hedgerows are basked for a transitory moment in the glow of the sun
and bloom much more brilliantly than they would in summer.
But Little Gidding represents a far more important place. It
was the chapel where Charles I , the "broken king" (26), took
sanctuary and by extension is a place of universal sanctuary. It
is a place out of time where man can go to to reflect on the past
in hope of better understanding the present. As such it is at the
"world's end" (36) where the eternal time meets the present. Inside
the chapel, one kneels and prays and communicates with those long
dead through the fires of the Holy Spirit (Traversi 187-8).
In the second movement, transformation is explored on a more
primordial level while a ghost from the past comes with a warning
of what will happen to man if he does not accept the love of the
Holy Spirit. As in The Waste Land, Eliot makes use of the elements
of fire, water, air, and earth. Each element lives by transforming
into another and all are in a constant state of flux (G. Smith
228). There is the destruction of a house by fire, with dust left
suspended in the air. This represents the decay of man's efforts,
symbolized by the transformation of air into fire, and marks the
"death of hope and despair" (60). In the second death, the earth is
consumed by water. This is not the water of life but "dead water"
bringing "dead sand" (63) (Ward 270). In the third death, that of
water and fire, the image is of water being poured on a burning
building set ablaze by an air raid. Thus water is consumed by the
fire just as the fire consumes the water. This scene of utter
destruction and pessimism is punctuated by the narrator's meeting
a ghost while walking along "disfigured streets" (147).
The ghost is "known, forgotten, half recalled / both one and
many" (93-4). He is both "intimate and unidentifiable" (96) Like
the village and the chapel, he is out of time and thus meets the
narrator at the intersection of time. He represents the conscience
of man's past on man's present. His message is one of forgiveness
in which he asks that the narrator pray for others, both good and
evil to be forgiven.
He then discloses three "gifts" for all the ages: These are
the horror of physical decay, "the cold friction of expiring
senses" (131), a consciousness of human folly and the rending of
pain at the recollection of deeds done. In order to avoid this
fate, the ghost reveals that man must learn to be restored through
the fire of the Holy Spirit (Hargrove 196). The role of the ghost
is to provide a guide for man from the past yet, at the same time,
his shadowy appearance is a reminder that he is detached from this
time. The backdrop of the ghost's visit -- the bombed out burning
buildings -- serves as a reminder of what the world is like without
the care people should have for each other.
In the third movement, Eliot assert the proper role of the
past in the present. The past must remain detached from the
present. In this way, the present is liberated from the past and
the future. It is detached from the past by memory and the future
by desire. Thus, man is not a slave to history is but history is
free. It is transfigured from various "faces and places" (165) into
another pattern. Just as the elements are transferred one into the
other, so history is transformed into the present and in the
process becomes detached from the present. Eliot's point is man
must be able to use history by transforming memories and perfecting
their meaning in the present. Memory should not be used as an
escape from the present nor should it be used to fight long
forgotten wars. Those that died in battle as well as those that
killed them are "folded in a single party" (191). What they have
left for man is a symbol perfected by death and purified by motive
(G. Smith 292).
The role of history is to allow the present to become detached
from the past and thus free man from his history. While man must
learn from the past he must remain detached from it. As with the
elements, the past must change with each present moment.
However, if man is to eliminate the alienation of the present,
he cannot do so by isolating himself in the past, for in that
manner, he is replacing one alienation with another. Instead man
must use the past and become joined to it, yet also remain detached
from it so that he can live out his own life.
In the fourth movement, Eliot outlines the two choices that
man has. He can either be consumed in the fire of hell and lust, or
he can be redeemed by the fire of love in the Holy Spirit as with
the fire in "I am a little world made cunningly" of Donne's Divine
Meditations:
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt heretofore
And made it fouler; let their flames retire
And burn me O Lord, with fiery zeal. (11-13)
The choice now is between hope and despair. This duality is
reenforced by the symbol of the dove breaking through the air and
descending "with a flame of incandescent terror" (200). In one
meaning, it can be looked at as a description of the Holy Spirit
descending onto man, yet in another, it can be viewed as a bomber
streaking through the sky causing death and destruction (G. Smith
284).
It is by rejecting self-love and accepting the love of others
that man can be fulfilled. The narrator is no longer the single
individual who wanders through the streets in Prufrock nor is he
the people who wander through The Waste Land. He is also not the
person who climbed the staircase in Ash Wednesday. For the first
time in Eliot's poetry, the narrator speaks in terms of the plural
"we" instead of the singular "I." This is significant since it
indicates an acceptance of others into his world. He has begun to
understand that the way out of his pessimistic alienation is to
love others and subjugate his own self love. He recognizes that the
world in which he lives in is a shared world with shared memories.
He learns this in his confrontation with the past in the form of
the ghost as well as though the history represented by the chapel
and village.
Having learned that love of others is the key out of
pessimistic alienation, Eliot concludes Little Gidding by having
the narrator remark that the end -- the present -- is a beginning.
Man goes forth from the present yet he needs to be conscious of his
past: "A people without history is not redeemed from time." Yet
each present moment is a history, "for history is a pattern of
timeless moments" (234-5).
In the end, Eliot concludes his last work with the rejoinder
that when the fire of the Holy Spirit and heaven are one, all will
be right with the world:
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-fold
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. (259-254)
Notes
1 Twelve of these sonnets were first published in 1633 with
sonnets "Thou has made me, and shall thy work decay?", "O might
those sighs and tears return again," "I am a little world made
cunningly," and "If faithful souls be alike glorified" appearing
only in the 1635 editions. Most modern editions, with the notable
exception of Gardner's, follow the 1635 edition. The J. H. C.
Grierson ordering published in 1912 also includes three additional
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