The renascence of Marian poetry in the nineteenth century rose to so formidable a height that its flowering was matched only by that of the Middle Ages. These two periods therefore mark the two golden ages of Marian poetry in England.
An examination of some prominent contrasts and similarities observed in the genre as it presents itself in the time spans concerned will seek to establish the fact that there are as many ways of praising the Blessed Virgin in verse form as there are poets. However, whereas each generation calls Mary blessed in its own way, the basic Christian thinking of the period concerned tends to affect the nature of its poetic outflow.
The cult of the Virgin was at its peak in England during the mediæval period. The populace of the time appear to have seen love for Mary as indistinguishable from that cherished in respect of her Divine Son.
The people felt that the more Mary was praised, the more Christ was being honoured, since Mary's prominence derived only from her relationship with God.
The special privileges showered by God upon her on this account appear to have indicated to them that God approved of humanity's devotion in her regard. To them she was:
. . . the model of womanhood- and, indeed, of the condition of
being human-and the mediatrix through whom the Deity might
be approached, since it was felt that the Son could hardly deny
the requests of His beloved mother. In York wills before the
Reformation, she is almost always included in invocations
directed to God, as in the almost standard formula: 'I give my
soul to God Almighty and His mother Mary and all the saints.'
[Davidson 1984:163]
The fact that mediæval people shared one Christian belief is evident in the warm simplicity of the Marian lyrics of their day.
The nineteenth-century poets who wrote Marian poetry wished to pay homage to the mother of Jesus in a manner which would honour her without doing dishonour to her Son.
Hence the poets of the nineteenth century varied in their approach, from Hopkins' mixture of the brilliant childlike lyric-type offering with its underlying erudition, the quest for truth of Christina Rossetti and Wilde's reaching out for the distinction between true values and that which is merely valuable, to the Baroque splendour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's work and the Greek panegyric-type of praise poetry, such as Thompson's Assumpta Maria.
With the rapid advance of English literature during the centuries which followed the mediæval heyday of Marian poetry, the craft of poetry-writing had been developed to a fine art by the time the nineteenth century was reached.
Hence a number of the Marian poems of the latter period show a sophistication and a background of learning often lacking in the mediæval poems, much of which was undated, incomplete or both, and sometimes, due to negligent treatment, lacked palæographical evidence.
During the years separating the Middle Ages from the nineteenth century, poetry writing had become a highly sophisticated pursuit; much more of a cerebral exercise than before.
Even though some of the mediæval poetry, notably the macaronic variety, betrayed a measure of learning on the part of the poets, there was more warmth and naïveté to be found in such works than we find in similar ones written in the nineteenth century, which are often far more thoughtful.
This can be clearly seen when we juxtapose an excerpt of the spontaneous mediæval Of on that is so fair and bright such as:
Wel he wot he is thy sone
Ventre quem portasti
He will nought werne thee thy bone
Parvum quem lactasti
[28-31]
with one from its stately nineteenth-century counterpart Assumpta Maria by Francis Thompsom:
Lo he standeth Spouse and Brother
I to Him and He to me,
Who upraised me where my mother
fell beneath the apple-tree
Risen 'twixt Anteros and Eros,
Blood and Water, Moon and Sun
He upbears me, He Ischyros,
I bear Him, the Athanaton.
[57-64]
A lofty solemnity and an air of learning pervade the latter poem in which the poet endeavours [Connolly 1979:477] "to adapt a Parmorean conception of Eros to the Roman Catholic liturgy of the Assumption". All this is absent from its more intimate mediæval counterpart.
The warm informality of mediæval lyrics, naïve as many of them are in form, is likewise found in a few of the nineteenth-century poets who wrote poems in praise of the Blessed Virgin.
Though in a different idiom, Gerard Manley Hopkins writes in as spontaneous and informal a way as does the mediæval poet who penned the following quatrain, contained in the thirteenth-century poem Thanks and a plea to Mary:
Moder, loke one me, Mother look upon me
Wid thine swete eyen With thy sweet eyes
Reste and blisse gev thus me Rest and bliss give thou to me
My levedy, then ic deyen My lady, when I am dying.
[13-16]
This may be seen inter alias in Hopking's poem The May Magnificat, which in one particularly colloquial-sounding part reads:
Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
and flowers finds soonest.
[9-12]
Whereas the various forms of English used from the twelfth to the sixteenth century clearly show their Saxon roots, the language had evolved to resemble modern English by the nineteench century.
Words which in mediæval times would read: Levedy ic thonke thee [1] [Lady, I thank thee], were by the nineteenth century being written exactly as they would be today.
While furthering the immediate comprehensibility of the poetry, the more contemporary poetry in a measure robs the Marian poetry of its mystique.
Dr Luky Whittle
Song; Hail Queen of Heaven, Hymn to the Blessed Virgin, Robert Kochis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phkQP8TJ9MU
With thanks to Youtube
No comments:
Post a Comment