Some poets are available for Mormon appropriation and some are only to be envied and enjoyed. John Donne is only to be envied and enjoyed. Of course, envy and appropriation should not exhaust our responses, but it seems to me that if you are thinking as a Mormon about the poets, rather than simply being a Mormon who happens to be thinking about them, envy or appropriation are not bad places to start.
I don’t read very much poetry, but Milton and Blake have always struck me as particularly amenable to Mormon appropriation. Paradise Lost is a temple text of sorts, and following a familiar pattern Satan gets all of the best lines. As for Blake, he has a gnostic — or at any rate an esoteric — streak that makes me want to reach for the King Follet Discourse and perhaps some of Brigham’s Adam-God sermons. It is easy to baptize these writers, although not necessarily to render their work “safe” or placidly “Mormon.” Rather, they touch on themes and stories with close enough partners in Mormonism that it is easy to bounce off of them and traverse Mormon space at new angles.
Donne, however, is another matter. The heady combination of sex and metaphysics that he serves up seems just a trifle too foreign to the sexual puritanism and anti-ontological theology of Mormonism to use him as a launching pad for Mormon discussions. The spirit that wrote The Flea is perhaps too playful and frank in his seduction for Mormon appropriation. One is left simply to enjoy the play of the originality of the images and words. As for his theology, while Donne’s marriage of the imagery of libertinism and salvation is wonderful and vaguely scandalous, his metaphysics is too Nicene and too embedded in his poetry to make him a truly useful starting point for Mormon adventures. Consider his Annunciation:
Salvation to all that will is nigh,
That All, which always is All every where,
Which cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die,
Loe, faithfull Virgin, yeelds himselfe to lye
In prison, in thy wombe; and though he there
Can take no sinne, nor thou give, yet he’will weare
Taken from thence, flesh, which deaths force may trie.
Ere by spheares time was created, thou
Wast in his minde, who is thy Sonne, and Borther,
Whom thou conceiv’st, conceiv’d; yea thou art now
Thy Makers maker, and they Fathers mother,
Thou’hast light in darke; and shutst in little roome,
Immensity cloysterd in thy deare wombe.
Donne’s delight in the paradox of the condescension and incarnation of the tri-une God of the creeds is too palpable and his commitment to the his ontological deity too profound to use this piece as a launching pad for a John Taylor-esque attack on the “fried froth” of philosophy or some other Mormon trope. It is too fully itself and different than us to be appropriated cleanly or perhaps even productively. Donne’s God holds souls in his timeless mind and fills immensities. He dwells far from any world nie unto Kolob, and ought not to be kidnapped and carried there. It is best, I think, to simply let him enjoy his atemporal perfection and simplicity and delight in the words of his servant John.
George Herbert could also be added to the list of poets that lend themselves to Mormon appropriation. That a collection of his poems is called “The Temple” seems unusually fitting. From what I know of him, his life and art were examples of consecration.
Nice post, Nate. I think I mostly agree. “Batter my heart, three-person’d God” works within the context of the trinity — three separate personages with physical forms is a little to concrete.
However, the imagery of A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning takes on a greater resonance in an LDS context (which I won’t go into because it deals with the temple).
I also think that you downplay the possibilities for sex and metaphysics in Mormonism (and I’m not sure that puritanism is the right word). After all, we’re talking about a theology that posits post-mortality procreation (and a Heavenly Mother).
As for Blake…
I think that he’d be totally into Joseph Smith, but would say that the modern version of Mormonism lacks energies and Utopian strivings. Of course, Blake is a lot like Kafka, imo. His metaphysics is so uniquely his, that attempts at interpretations that use other frameworks and reference points than the his own work, seems like nothing more than dabbling.
And as long as were plugging religious poets. Gerard Manley Hopkins is my favorite alongside Donne.
On appropriation:
Of course, Donne’s Death, be not proud is oft-quoted among Mormon speakers. I agree that pecularities of Mormon theology make it particualarly difficult for us to appropriate works from other traditions. However, that doesn’t seem to stop us — or stop some very interesting mis-readings.
I would like to see, however, some more vigorous mis-readings (wrestings) of literature by Mormon critics — works that exhibit the energy and “out-there-ness” of D.H. Lawrence’s literary criticism would be fascinating, I think. Much more interesting than what often takes place in feminist, post-colonial and Marxists readings because of the unique aspects and physical metaphysics of Mormon theology.
William: Can you think of any examples of Mormon criticism of the kind that you are talking about? I can’t claim to have read much of anything in the genre of Mormon literary criticism. I vaguely remember reading something by Eugene England arguing for Shakespeare’s deep Christianity that I did not find entirely persuasive.
While I agree with the sexuality, perhaps less so the metaphysics (I’m arguing on my blog how Nibley’s a platonist), but certainly not all his poems. Consider “For Whom the Bell Tolls” It’s quite amenable towards Mormonism.
Years ago, at BYU, I took a short Honors course on Milton, and the teacher (John Tanner, I think?) pointed us towards some interesting stuff that had been printed in BYU Studies and elsewhere on what Latter-day Saints can get out of his theology and poetry. I think one of the articles was actually titled “Making a Mormon of Milton.” I’m sure someone with access to an index could look it up.
“I think that he’d be totally into Joseph Smith, but would say that the modern version of Mormonism lacks energies and Utopian strivings.”
Which is exactly what Harold Bloom has said.
Interestingly, the HBLL at BYU has all of John Donne’s sermons available online and in text-searchable format. Check it out here.
Mormon poets cannot appropriate Donne entirely, Nate. But entire appropriation is never appropriate anyway. There always must be some kind of misreading, some act of overcoming the anxiety of influence to employ Bloom’s phrase. Mormon poets should obviously learn all they can from Donne—and Isaiah, Dante, Milton, Herbert, Blake, Hopkins, and every other God-fearing great poet. Of course, craft can be learned from non-believing greats too. But from the believing greats, Mormon poets should draw encouragement and confidence. They are the counterpoint to a vast majority of the creative writing professors and editors at literary journals today who (I suppose) consider faith in God—and writing earnest poetry about such faith—rather quaint.
And I have to mildly disagree that Donne’s trick of using the sexual to illuminate the holy and vice versa could not to be translated to the Mormon idiom. Culturally we may be puritanical, but doctrinally, we confer on sex high holy status. With a soft touch, a Mormon poet could pull it off.
Nate:
Not really. I’m not super-informed in this area — but what I have encountered in Mormon criticism in general hasn’t really done much for me. Especially since much of it involved applying post-modern theories to Mormon narratives. Of course, there may be work done by BYU professors that is covertly Mormon that I wouldn’t be aware of because it appeares outside of the field of Mormon studies. I believe that Bruce Young has done work on Shakespeare and families that fits this description, but I haven’t checked it out yet.
I think the closest to what I describe would be the work of Harlow Clark who combines personal essay, Mormon theology, modern and post-modern criticism and wordplay to tease out issues of Mormon literature within the broader context of literature. Unfortunately, his work is not widely available — found mainly in proceedings of the AML conferences. A partial bilbiography is available here.
In general, though, I don’t believe that there’s been much focus on developing Mormon ways of reading. There is one that I can think of (but can’t remember the specicifs of who and what — I’ll have to track that down and blog about it), but I found it much to structuralist and more informed by general principles of Christianity than Mormonism to be of much use.
I made a stab at using a dispensation view of history as the underpinnings for historical novels. I wonder how such a conception of history would work in terms of literary criticism? Perhaps not very well.
I’ve mentioned this before in various context, but I think that an agressively Mormon reading of Bulgakov’s _The Master and Margarita_ could be fascinating. My (admittedly rather lazy) attempts, however, to do so haven’t risen above the vague and mundane so far, however.
Shawn:
Word.
Dan, don’t leave out the full title of Herbert’s collection, since it seems an apt description for the world of Mormon blogs: The temple. Sacred poems and private ejaculations
Seriously, I nominate George Herbert’s The Pearl as the official Renaissance poem of Times & Seasons. Practically every line is a perfect fit. For the lawyers and academics and those concerned with gender roles: “I know the ways of learning; … What reason hath from nature borrowed, / Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun / In laws and policy….” For the discussions of D&C 89: “I know…How many drams of spirit there must be / To sell my life unto my friends or foes.” For those who enjoy clavicles, “My stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live, / And grumble oft….” And for the economists, there are my favorite lines: “I know all these and have them in my hand; / Therefore not sealed but with open eyes / I fly to thee, and fully understand / Both the main sale and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love….”
You’re probably all familiar with the story of William Tell — how he was forced to demonstrate his crossbow marksmanship by shooting an apple off the head of his son. A lessen-known part of the story is that after successfully shooting the apple, he was instructed to knock a bowling pin off his younger son’s head using a bowling ball. If he failed, his younger son would be killed.
The younger son was puzzled as he was led out to the public square and saw his father with a bowling ball. He wanted to have one of the bailiffs go ask his father what was going on, but the bailiff’s response (as immortalized by John Donne) was: “Never send to know for whom the Tell bowls; he bowls for thee.”
::ducking and running::
I once did a dramatic reading of The Indifferent at a single’s ward poetry night. It went over pretty well.
For religious poets, I recommend Geoffrey Hill, for my money, the best poet writing today. See especially The Triumph of Love and The Orchards of Syon.
I love how this poem starts modestly, offering only the single, simplest Christian paradox—“Which cannot die, yet cannot chuse but die”—in the first quatrain, then gathers in complexity of form and image and idea until the final quatrain+couplet, which piles up paradox after paradox: all the mystery of the universe contained in four strait little lines plus two extra, exactly like Christ contained in the womb but overflowing his All everywhere.
Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” were remarkable for a number of reasons, and represent a real break with earlier Elizabethan styles, but they only make formally explicit what poets had been working on for some time at that point. “Holy Sonnets” would have been something of a contradiction in terms, since in the continental Renaissance the sonnet was the exclusive form of profane poetry (that is, love poetry, not potty-mouth poetry). But near the end of the 16th century, Protestant poets in England and France began messing around with adapting the continental verse forms of love poetry to reformed ideas (similar in many ways to the “Christian rock” phenomenon, which also attempts to adapt worldly forms to sacred ideas). This was scandalous to many, and such experiments were roundly denounced by some conservative clergy. By the time Donne and Herbert arrive on the scene, they had the benefit of the earlier messing around and a (relatively) greater cultural currency, and they were able to make some really fantastic stuff.
For early modern religious poets, besides Herbert and Milton there’s some really interesting work done in Psalm paraphrase (rewriting the Psalms into all sorts of fancy experimental continental verse forms) by Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (I just happen to have a chapter of my dissertation on her, if anyone’s interested…). There’s Richard Crashaw, far too demonstrative and grotesque for Mormon taste, but interesting nonetheless. There’s Aemilia Lanyer, whose Salve Deus Rex Judeorum has a decided feminist thrust. And there’s Robert Southwell, a Catholic recusant who was martyred for his beliefs, who has some really astonishing stuff.
Okay William: On a distinctively “Mormon criticism” of, say, early modern poetry—I don’t see it at all. I’m just a historicist, and a pretty stodgy one at that, but I simply can’t see how rubbing even the beloved Milton against Mormonism throws any sparks at all. Maybe it can generate one or two new views of Mormonism, though I don’t see how it could really sustain any long-form analysis, but I don’t see how it can do anything at all for Milton. The respective comparatants would have to be utterly decontextualized to get them in the same room with each other, it seems to me, and of course without context I don’t even know where to start. (But that’s because I’m a historicist.)
So argue with me. Show me how this sort of brazenly ahistorical, decontextualized moral criticism works. I’m intrigued.
Shawn, you have not impressed me so powerfully in a decade. I’ve missed it.
Considering the source, that is a particularly nice compliment! Thanks, Shelby. Regarding the decade part, Andrea and I went to my ten-year reunion about a month ago. It was good to see people, but I did wish I could see friends (you included of course) from the year older or younger. There is something tragic about growing up with so many wonderful people, almost taking their friendship for granted (as it was so easy to maintain as public school inmates), and then almost never seeing any of them again. Anyway, I sure hope you and your family are doing well!
Rosalynde calls me out in #15. In doing so, she admits to being a stodgy historicist. I think that really says it all. ;-)
But in the interest of being fair…
First: I don’t really know. I’m not a historicist, but that’s more because of a lack in my education. I soaked up as much context as I could get, and found it a lot more satisfying than the ‘doing-YOUNAMEIT-theory’ that was prevelant among my peers. But my skill set in terms of methodology doesn’t go much beyond ‘close-reading with a bit of post-structuralist theory.’
Second: Okay, so maybe I do have some idea of what I mean. I mention Lawrence above. I’m thinking in particular of his _Studies in Classic American Fiction. It’s the type of criticism that drives historicists mad (or would if they weren’t so stodgy and sure of their methods). Lawrence totally (mis)reads Franklin, Hawthorne, Poe, Cooper. In the end, his essay illuminate his philosophy more than the authors he criticizes, but he does it with such energy and so from his own genius, that I can’t help but like what he does. Not as real criticism, but then again, I’m susceptible to criticism that is more creative than careful and contextualized.
Whether an iconiclastic, unabashedly Mormon take on world literature would be of any use at all is a question that I can’t answer. All I know is that Mormonism gives me a way of understanding the flow of history and the formation of societies and families that may have something to say about literature and society.
As with anything related to Mormonism, I think that our theology is to unprecise, our canon too small to really form much of a foundation for a critical movement like, say, feminism or Marxism. I just can’t escape the idea that surely Mormonism has something to say about literature.
Third: Or to put it another way. I’m at a point where “Maybe it can generate one or two new views of Mormonism” sounds pretty great to me.