A Study Of Traherne free essay sample

# 8217 ; s Metaphysical Poetry Essay, Research Paper It is more than mere happenstance that the two poets who have produced the greatest visions of Paradise in the history of English literature both composed their plants in the same 25 twelvemonth period. The first # 8211 ; John Milton, needs really small debut, while the 2nd is the lesser known 17th century spiritual poet Thomas Traherne. Traherne # 8217 ; s poesy, merely uncovered at the terminal of the 19th century, has been rapidly disregarded by many critics who consider Traherne an unprocessed blend of Herbert and Vaughan. This headlong dismissal of Thomas Traherne as a poet in his ain right seems a small unjust. Rather than judging Traherne # 8217 ; s poesy by the preconceived criterions we use to judge the likes of Herbert and Vaughan, his poesy should be analysed independently. Graham Parry, composing in his book, Seventeenth Century Poetry, states that Traherne # 8217 ; s works record `the necessities of a life of congratulations and delectation within a cured Eden # 821 7 ; 1 This implicit in subject of Paradise was one that was to rule the mid-seventeenth century. It is non opportunity that Traherne and Milton emerged from the same period. Amidst the fervent ambiance of the English Civil War there was much outlook that Christ would return to reconstruct an Earthly Paradise. At a clip when establishment was fall ining many of the originative heads in England sought God outside the construction of established faith. This new hunt for God through truth and good, a pursuit to happen an interior religious Paradise, is an of import characteristic of Traherne # 8217 ; s poesy. One of the methods by which Traherne conveys the impression of an interior Eden is through the artlessness of babyhood. In `Wonder # 8217 ; 2 Traherne returns to the naif province of childhood in which he perceives wholly he sees about him as beautiful: `How like an angel I came down! / How bright are all things here! # 8217 ; . Traherne recalls the vision of an baby, returning to a province which `precedes the cognition of good and evil # 8217 ; .3 There is a sense of the kid sing the universe from a pure unmarred position, that differentiates `Wonder # 8217 ; from other verse forms in which Traherne sees Eden through the eyes of grownup speculation. The lines are characterized by an ambiance of sparkling exhilaration. The objects he sees around him are less of import than the vision with which he sees them. These visions do non hold a simply inactive function, they communicate with the kid: `And everything that I did see / Did with me talk # 8217 ; . There is a strong sense that the kid is unable to detach himself from the universe around him. All that he sees is bound up with himself and God # 8217 ; s creative activities are portion of him. This construct of nil being distinct or easy definable is furthered in the 2nd stanza. It is infinite characteristics, those with no distinguishable boundaries that Traherne finds most fantastic: The skies in their impressiveness The lovely, lively air ; O how Godhead, how soft, how sweet, how just! It is t hrough the ignorant eyes of a kid that Traherne is able to see the universe as an Earthly Eden # 8211 ; `I nil in the universe did cognize / But # 8217 ; twas divine. # 8217 ; It is of import to retrieve that a verse form such as `Wonder # 8217 ; is brooding. What we read are non the uncultivated words of the kid but an reading of an guiltless vision made by the grownup Traherne. It is merely as a adult adult male that Traherne is able to depict his vision as beatific. As a kid who possessed this beatific vision he would hold no ability to step outside his experience and recognize it as such. Now as an grownup, Traherne sees this as an ideal manner of sing the universe # 8211 ; with an guiltless head uncluttered by immorality. As kids we automatically see the universe in these footings, our vision is free from `Oppressions, cryings and calls / Sins, heartache, ailments, discords, crying eyes. # 8217 ; It is through these eyes, non rose but innocence-tinted eyeglassess, that Tr aherne wants to see the universe. Traherne # 8217 ; s ain prose confirms his belief that to rediscover Eden we must see like a kid we must see through Adam # 8217 ; s eyes: All our ideas must be infant-like and clear ; the powers of our psyche free from the leaven of this universe, and disentangled from work forces # 8217 ; s amour propres and customs.4 One of the cardinal deductions of `Wonder # 8217 ; is that to accomplish felicity one needs to be incognizant of certain facets of human experience. Traherne # 8217 ; s contemplations on his construct of the universe as a kid has the negative thoughts # 8211 ; `envy, greed # 8217 ; , added on afterwards by the grownup Traherne. When he was an infant these `Harsh, ragged objects were concealed. # 8217 ; Despite Traherne # 8217 ; s jubilation of the Godhead position achieved in childhood and his credence as an grownup that there exists `those monsters that spoil even Paradise # 8217 ; , the tone of `Wonder # 8217 ; is non on e of loss. Childhood vision is for Traherne something that can be rediscovered. As grownups we must exceed the `hedges, ditches, bounds, bounds # 8217 ; and look one time more with the eyes of Adam at the infinite plants of God. It is the sense of the space in Traherne # 8217 ; s work that Dick Davis draws attending to in his Selected Hagiographas on Thomas Traherne.5 Davis contrasts Traherne # 8217 ; s poesy with the work of one of his coevalss, George Herbert. The latter frequently uses allegory and tends to concentrate on objects in the more customary metaphysical tradition, while Traherne # 8217 ; s work is characterized by abstract thoughts and a changeless feeling of restlessness. Davis describes Traherne # 8217 ; s linguistic communication as `intangible vocabulary # 8217 ; ,6 foregrounding his inclination to concentrate on entities that are hard to restrict or incorporate # 8211 ; `eternity, visible radiation, head, psyche, twenty-four hours, and sky. # 8217 ; While Herbert # 8217 ; s poesy achieves a sense of equilibrium and the concluding lines of his verse forms create a feeling of completion, Traherne # 8217 ; s dynamic poetries are frequently open-ended. His poesy demonstrates the restrictions of linguistic communication and the reader portions in his defeat that words can travel no farther. If we contrast Traherne # 8217 ; s poesy with a verse form such as Herbert # 8217 ; s `Vertue # 8217 ; 7 many differences become apparent. As with Traherne, Herbert experiences a sense of admiration # 8211 ; `sweet twenty-four hours, so cool, so unagitated, so bright. # 8217 ; It is this composure that distinguishes the two poets. There is non the manic activity, leaping from image to image. Herbert moves easy towards a decision, instead than naming abstract constructs he employs metaphors such as his description of the psyche: `Like season # 8217 ; 500 lumber, neer gives ; # 8216 ; . Mentions to ordinary objects, a aroma box or a subdivision of lumber, would look inappropriate to Traherne # 8217 ; s versify that operates on a plane far removed from the mundane. Herbert is able to intermix more physical images within a religious verse form whose cardinal subject is the virtuosity of the psyche. The concluding line of `Vertue # 8217 ; reaches a definite decision: though our lives are transeunt and we `all must decease # 8217 ; the last words change by reversal this impression: `But the whole universe bend to char / Then chiefly lives. # 8217 ; Traherne and Herbert take contrasting waies to make a similar finish: a concluding transcendent image of religious Resurrection. A verse form that Davis identifies as being among Traherne # 8217 ; s best is `Shadows in the Water # 8217 ; .8 Again the poet returns to his childhood # 8211 ; that province of `unexperienced Infancy # 8217 ; , and conveys the admiration with which he viewed contemplations in a organic structure of H2O. This impression of the province of limbo in which a immature kid truly believes the images he sees in a pool of H2O to be another universe furthers Traherne # 8217 ; s representation of the guiltless kid as person who as yet is unable to turn up himself outside the universe in which he lives. Traherne is able to work smartly between this image of the playing kid gazing with admiration at his ain contemplation and the thought that the contemplation represents a religious sphere: `Our 2nd Selvs these Shadows be’ . The double value of the cardinal image of the refections in H2O epitomises Traherne’s mentality. On one manus he finds himself in Eden, merely through the pure position he has of the universe as a kid while as an grownup he rediscovers Paradise through a more refined symbolic vision. Throughout the verse form Traherne draws attending to the `Water’s brink’ . This interface between the existent universe and the contemplation or, at another degree, between the existent universe and the symbolic religious universe is something Traherne can see through. As a kid he sees the reflected universe because he is fascinated and as an grownup he transcends the `Film’ and celebrates the chance that he will fall in the shadows in the H2O: Som unknown Joys there be Laid up in shop for me ; To which I shall, when that thin Skin Is broken, be admitted in. Typically, Trah erne is non seeking to offer simple replies. The reader is non allowed to settle on any of the images the poet himself is reflecting. When reading we become sucked in by the poet’s rhetorical inquiries: `Are exalted Heavens hurl’d / ‘Bout your inferior World? ’ . The concluding image of a transcendent province, is infused with a sense of emptiness and outlook. We are left, like Traherne, peering into the H2O for those `unknown Joys’ . Like `Shadows in the Water’ , `Solitude’9 is a verse form that demonstrates the fluidness of Traherne’s ideas. In contrast to `Wonder’ , in which Traherne conveys the possibility of rediscovery, `Solitude’ is a verse form that emanates from the dark in-between land between the childish vision of Paradise and the return to Eden as an grownup. The tone of desperation in the verse form is possibly more brooding of the society in which it was written. Even a airy such as Traherne experien ces minutes of uncertainty and a loss of way during a period when England lay so bitterly divided. Parry describes this epoch as a clip in Traherne’s young person when: a weightiness settled over him, the inventive visible radiation faded, and ordinariness filtered into his being. 10 The gap line of `Solitude’ is a call of torment. The boundless entities that served as wonders in `Wonder’ are now greeted with fright. The `field’ , `seas’ and `silent skies’ no longer talk to Traherne, alternatively they exacerbate his isolation. The godly vision of childhood has passed. The ungratified quality, so manifest in Traherne’s poesy is self-consciously referred to by the poet as he describes his desire to retrieve felicitousness: My rolling head Searched every corner of the broad Earth, From sky to flip, if it could happen ( But found non ) any hilarity. The physical universe around Traherne, so bright and colorful in `Wonder’ once mor e reflects the poets mental province in `Solitude’ . Traherne’s milieus are no longer `Rare lusters, Yellow, Blew, Red, White and Green’ . Alternatively his environment is `shady and obscure’ . In `Wonder’ even the soundless objects around Traherne `Did with me talk’ yet now `chirping birds’ and `humming bees’ fail to pass on with the poet. Despite the fact that the poet can no longer happen that elusive form in the physical universe around him the verse form is still filled with an overpowering sense that it does be. Though this vision has become obscured, Traherne leads the reader into the verse form and like him we are despairing to cognize what the secret is, we anticipate a disclosure. The sense of fright and arrant hopelessness is accompanied by an implicit in cognition that the elusive cogent evidence for which Traherne is seeking can be found. The fact that the Earthly Eden is concealed makes this undiscovered Paradise even more particular – the quest to happen it becomes obsessional. This urgency is conveyed by the internal rime in the last two lines of each stanza. This elusive usage of rime gives the terminal of each stanza a greater accent and stresses the poets despair: Nor in the field, nor in a trade I can it see. Felicity! O where Shall I thee happen to ease my head! O where! As is frequently the instance with Traherne’s poetry the concluding lines of this verse form are far from comfy or satisfactory. Where Herbert may hold restored a sense of unagitated Traherne’s concluding despairing `O where’ fills the reader with a hollow sense of malaise. It should be remembered, nevertheless, that `Solitude’ is the merchandise of a transitional period in Traherne’s religious development. It offers a pronounced contrast to much of his poesy, organizing a letup between the vivacious joy evoked by his verse forms of childhood vision and his poesy that stems fr om his recovery of this status as he matures. In `Hosanna’11 Traherne breaks out of the limitations that blind him in `Solitude’ : `No more shall walls, no more shall walls restrict, / That glorious psyche which in my flesh doth shine.’ As the rubric suggests the verse form is one of jubilation and congratulations. Where in `Solitude’ everything turned off from Traherne, now he becomes the focal point of attending: God’s wealth, His holy 1s, The ages excessively, and angels, all conspire: While I, that I the Centre am, admire. The dominant tone is no longer one of isolation, Traherne now basks in the glorifications of God. `Hosanna’ is a verse form far more representative of Traherne’s work. It speeds periodically from image to image, there is small chance to hesitate in a verse form with an intoxicant quality. Traherne conveys his elation with the aroused enthusiasm of a kid and two images in the concluding stanza represent his posit ion of the universe as God’s perfect creative activity with him and his Godhead at its Centre: For me the universe created was by love ; For me the skies, the seas, the Suns do travel ; His Torahs require His animals all to praise His name, and when they do’t be most my joys. The poesy of Thomas Traherne provides an of import penetration into the workings of a originative head in the mid-seventeenth century. Emerging from one of the bleakest periods in English history it is slightly surprising that Traherne’s verse forms are characterized by a strong sense of joy and a jubilation of the universe around him. The traditional literary vision of Paradise comes from the pen of John Milton. His meticulously crafted heroic poem reflects the period in which it was constructed and its dark cynicism conveys the resentment of an angry adult male who had experienced the inhuman treatments of the universe. Traherne offers a fresh position. He lives in an Earthly Paradise and sees the luster of the universe through the eyes of a kid. John miltons Paradise is lost easy, distressingly and with precise computation. Traherne’s Paradise is rediscovered through the spontaneousness and the nervous energy of his child-like head. REFERENCES 1 G Parry Seventeenth Century Poetry – The Social Context ( Tiptree 1985 ) p.117 2 D Davis ( Ed. ) Thomas Traherne – Selected Writings ( Manchester 1980 ) pp. 20-22 3 K W Salter Thomas Traherne – Mystic and Poet ( London 1964 ) p. 25 4 Ibid. , p.25 5 Davis, p.9 6 Ibid. , p9 7 H Gardner ( Ed. ) The Metaphysical Poets ( London 1957 ) pp. 127-128 8 Davis, pp.58-61 9 Davis, pp.50-53 10 Parry, p117 11 Davis, pp.67-69 BIBLIOGRAPHY Davis, Dick Thomas Traherne – Selected Writings ( Manchester 1980 ) Doughty, W L Studies in the Religious Poetry of the Seventeenth Century ( New York 1946 ) Gardner, Helen The Metaphysical Poets ( London 1957 ) Happold, F C Mysticism ( Reading 1963 ) Martz, Louis The Pa radise Within ( Yale 1964 ) Parry, Graham Seventeenth Century Poetry – The Social Context ( Tiptree 1985 ) Salter, K W Thomas Traherne – Mystic and Poet ( London 1964 ) Select any `minor’ poet of the period and compose a short critical survey of his poetry. Poet: Thomas Traherne ( 1637-1674 ) Selected Poems: `Wonder’ , `Shadows in the Water’ , `Solitude’ `Hosanna’ `Vertue’ ( George Herbert ) 359