The Power of Unpretentious Poetry
There was a time when only Latin would do for poetry. I am reading about such a time. The life and poetry of George Herbert: Music at Midnight by John Drury. It is fascinating.
The English poets had to make the case that their language was suited, and beautifully, to the craft of poetry. They succeeded in this effort with the likes of Shakespeare and all the poets that blossomed in those early years of the 16th and 17th Century. Herbert was very much in the thick of things in this regard, and I found this very aspect of his life quite telling as to his loveliness as a poet.
He was a Latin Scholar of the highest skill. He was a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and was quite the darling of the Dons there. He was well respected and had found the key to the secret door which led to the coveted inner ring. He was very much “arrived” as they say. He had a penchant for beautiful clothes, court gossip, and worked diligently on as an aloof and far off air as he could. In short, he was quite pretentious. His Latin poetry was published and much talked about. He was asked to write several important letters and a few speeches for his mentor, the Orator of the college, one Master Nethersole, who was bringing him along nicely to take over that coveted job later on. He was an up and comer, a subject of conversation in the libraries and parlors. But his Latin poetry, it is said in retrospect, was about as pretentious as the company he kept. I am in no way fit to judge Latin Poetry, mind you. I can read Latin, but not enough to ease into any kind of delight in Latin verse. I trust the author of my book. But I found this an interesting observation, if it indeed be true.
It was not until later, when faced with some crushing disappointments and sadness and sickness thrown into the bargain, that George Herbert began to write his poetry in English. What is more telling is the fact that he published none of it, by his own choice, until at last he handed all of his poetry over to his friend Nicholas Ferrar before he died in 1633. The whole collection was called simply: The Temple. And my question was: why did he wait? He was well known and loved. It would have been relatively easy to get his poems published over the 40 years he lived. His Latin poetry had been a rousing success. Why did he wait?
I have read many of Herbert’s poems. They are prayers actually. Dialogues most of them between a struggling mortal seeking intimacy with the God he loves. They are filled with emotion. The most unpretentious things you will ever read. You feel almost guilty at being privy to the tryst. But you cannot stop reading for you find your very self in them – revealed for who you are before God, your Lover. Certainly Herbert wanted to be heard. A poet could not be a poet if he is not heard. I think he waited until the very end of his life to pass this love story on to us, but he did not want to be present when he did so. These poems are too intimate, too personal, too revealing for that. It was as if he said to us: here is how it was with me and He. May it bring you some comfort on your own journey.
All the poems taken together were of one piece. The first would not be understood until you had finished the last. They were a tale of Romance, of deep and intimate friends circling closer and closer until they touched heart to heart in death. This was a gift of the deepest humility that Herbert gave to us. A soul discovering the glory and suffering of unpretentious conversation with God, and letting us see it.
In these conversations you find yourself. They are full of petulant anger, some of them. They make you blush for knowing that feeling all too well. There are some that bargain, some that shout most emphatically, “I’m Leaving! I warn you, I am Leaving! I am DONE. No more.” There are some that simply rest in the praised beauty of one lover for the other. There are some that weep like a frightened child, “Please do not hide from me. It is so very dark. Please give me your hand. How is this not cruel?” Some there are that fill the heart with the wonder that One so beautiful and so real would suffer for one so insignificant – and HOW, HOW can that be? Some strut with a kind of preening pride or childish rebellion that is crushed suddenly and seeps out in contrition and an almost tangible surrender to the beloved and his insistence that this must be so and please understand. And you read them all and find yourself there. In unpretentious nakedness before God. That is what Herbert gave to us. And he wanted us to know how it began and how it ended with him. He wrote it all, quite literally, in plain English. His native tongue. For us to read and revel in and to find our souls in. It is the genius of the unpretentious soul.
The honesty of poets. How can our lives not be better for that poets were honest? George Herbert was more honest than most. So honest that he thought it best to be gone before we read what he wrote. Far too intimate for us to be sitting at a tea table with him while we read. He wanted our eyes elsewhere – on his Beloved. It was a brave testament. Honest with the struggle and pure exasperation at seeking the friendship of God, yes. But more with the truth that our love for God is a Romance of the rarest degree. A Romance with all the hallmarks of the highest highs, the lowest lows, the absolute certainty, the heart rending doubts. The longing for a lover in darkness or being smitten with the horror of perhaps losing him forever. It is all there as we read.
And we find ourselves therein. Bless you, George Herbert. You who have found the Lover at last.