Religion
against nature and materialism
Introduction
In this Second Paper we are going to
work with two poems related to religious themes and especially with the
role placed by God (and the Church, as it is the case of the first
poem) in two different periods and societies, Romantics and Victorians, who
wanted to leave the role played by God through nature and scientific knowledge
relatively.
As regards the Romantic Period, we
quote the poem of William Blake, which was part of his collection Songs of Experience “The Garden of
Love”, and from the Victorian Era the poem “God’s grandeur” by the Convert to
Roman Catholicism and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Both Poems are intrinsically related
to the period in which they are included, the Garden of Love by William Blake shows a evident criticism against
the Church, concretely the Roman Catholic Church, which produces, as the poet
argues, an effect of control an repression of all the natural desires
(for instance, the sexuality) which are inherent in the human kind, and at the
same time it is against the nature itself, one of the crucial issues in the
Romantic Period. Nevertheless, the author here doesn’t make explicit reference
to God; he is just making reference to the religious institution, the
Roman Catholic Church, as a means of expressing his disagreement in front of
the methods employed by these to control the feelings and mind of believers.
On the other hand, we have got the
poem “God’s grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Victorian poet who converted
from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in the summer of 1866. Contrary to what
happened with The Garden of Love, in
this case Hopkins defends the role played by God in a society in which, as we
said before, the divinity and specially this Christian figure was something
undervalued and in fact something that some people wanted to avoid trough the
help of scientific knowledge; at the same time paying also attention to the
Darwin’s The Origin of Species, a
worldwide famous work which was very controversial as “It contradicted
religious beliefs which underlay the then current theories of biology”.
As a result of this, we will
formulate the next question: Is there a direct relation between the increase of
technological/scientific discoveries and materialism with the decrease of
religious and God’s faith?
William Blake
To start with, we are going to focus
first on the poem by William Blake (1757-1827) “The Garden of Love”, published
in 1794 and included in his collection of poems under the title of “Songs of
Experience”, which along with “Songs of Innocence” represented two of his most
important works. Both of them belong at
the same time to the “Illuminated Books”, whose philosophy “demanded the
identification of ideas with symbols”, translating that into visual images,
where words and symbols were “each reinforcing the other”.
The
I went to the
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
5
And Thou shalt not, writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the
That so many sweet flowers bore,
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
10
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
With this poem we will make some
comments on the criticism Blake does against the Church as a religious
institution whose aim (as he argues) is to stop and erase the happiness, the
joy, the natural desires which are intrinsically related to human beings.
William Blake, as a believer in God but not in the orthodox Christian Church,
criticizes the attitude of this one by using methods to control and subdue the
mind of men, imposing itself to them; men and women, that’s to say, people
located in a period in which one of the most polemic but at the same time
important topics was the “abolition of God”, specially the role played by
religion since nature was the only necessary for Romantics.
From an external point of view, we
will describe the structure of the poem, which is arranged in four quatrains
(though in the picture or illustration corresponding to the poem there’s a word
“rounds” that is put between lines thirteen and fourteen) with the following
rhyme a-b-c-b: First Stanza (love-seen-midst-green); second
stanza (shut-door-love-bore); and eventually third stanza
(graves-be-rounds-desires).
Apart from this, the
poem starts with the first person singular pronoun “I”, which is the
predominant form used along the poem. The personal involvement of the author in
the text is clear, since this poem is part of his collection of illustrated
series of lyrical poems “Songs of Experience”, which were “created as a
consequence of his increasing awareness of the social injustices of his time”.
Besides, and as it is reflected on the poem, “public events and private
emotions” along with the religious topic which is mentioned and criticised in
The Garden of Love, “converted Innocence into
Experience, producing Blake’s preoccupation with the problem of Good and
Evil”; both terms which could be related in respect of this poem to God and
Church respectively.
Next, we will focus on
the meaning and symbolisms we can find inside the poem, at a deeper
level. The first stanza of the poem introduces the reader into one of the most
important topics of the poem: “I went to the Garden of Love, and saw what I
never had seen, a chapel was built in the midst, where I used to play on the
green”, through these four verses, the poet tells us that the garden he had
known thus far, has been changed, there is a “Chapel”, sign of the presence of
man and specially of the presence of the orthodox Christina church, “in the
midst”. This way, the poet claims that there is an oppressive element in the
garden where he used to play “in a state of innocence”, where he found his
happiness, his joys, where his desires came true; there is a religious
construction, a “Chapel of negation”, that doesn’t allow him to be as free as
he would like to, a construction that puts limits to his liberty.
As we follow reading,
the artist tells how the gates of the chapel were shut, and with the writ over
the door “Thou Shalt not”,
sentence which is explicit of the language used in the Holy Bible. The term
“writ” and the fact that the gates were shut are both indicators of the
authority which the church rules with, stopping the believers or those who
surround them from knowing the true reality and from being close to God.
As a response to this,
the narrative voice turns to the
The last two lines of
the poem take the reader into the final conclusion of the poet: Blake is now
focusing on the agents of the repression carried out by the Church, the
“Priests”. The priests wearing “black gowns” (black as a colour related to
death) are the agents of repression of the “organized religion”. As we can see
in the illustration of the poem, there is a priest who is “instructing a boy
and a girl in his doctrines”; with the help of this image, Blake suggests to
the reader that the Church is not just producing an effect of repression and
restriction upon the joys, pleasures and love of mankind, but also the priests
and all those who work for the church and “in the name of God”, produce such
effect in the youngest, who from their early days start to believe in a life style and in a religious doctrine which,
according to the author, it is far away from the kind of life God would like
the mankind to follow. To sum up, the author makes explicit reference in the
last verse of the poem to those priests who are “binding with briars, my joys
and desires”.
The Garden of Love,
written by William Blake and published in 1794 along with “Songs of
Experiences”, when he was 37 years old, was one of his most controversial but
at the same time interesting poems concerning the role the church played in a
society where despite the fact that a lot of people or artists wanted, as it
was said before, “avoid the role played by God through nature”, it was
something courageous write against those institutions which had such a social
power, as it could be the case of state as well.
In the same year,
William Blake published other works: “
Among all those works we
can highlight “The Garden of Love” as the poem in which the author most clearly
could expose and criticise one of his “primary themes and motives of all his
art, poetic and pictorial”, this is, religion. Through this poem the poet defends
his theory about the religion’s influence on human behaviour, since it affects
the life of people ant not in a positive way. Paying attention to the period in
which poem and author are included, it is necessary to make reference to
opinion of the author as he thought that “flawed religious thinking was at the
roof of social disorders afflicting
But as we have seen in this poem, the
criticism of Blake has been focused on the church as a religious institution,
and he hasn’t criticised explicitly God or Jesus, who, for Blake, “symbolises
the vital relationship and unity between divinity and humanity”, a
characteristic which shares with Gerard Manley Hopkins as we well see later on.
As a conclusion for this
poem, and in order to advance to the next author, Hopkins, with his poem “God’s
Grandeur”, we will summarize saying that through this poem Blake wanted to show
his disagreement with all the actions the orthodox Christianity do in the world
and specially during the 18th and 19th century, because
for Blake the church represented the abolition of the natural desires, earthly
joy and love, a doctrine which was distant from the religious teaching of God.
http://blake-dev.lib.unc.edu/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=songsie.b.illbk.43&java=yes
http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/about-blake.html
http://www.geocities.com/sir_john_eh/gardenlove.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake#Blake_and_religion
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now, we will analyze and
comment the poem of the Victorian author, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889),
“God’s Grandeur”. This poem, which also deals with religious matters but in a
different way as we will explain next, and dated “23 February and March
GOD’S GRANDEUR
The world is charged
with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook
foil;
It gathers to a greatness,
like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not
reck his rod?
Generations have trod,
have trod, have trod;
5
And all is seared with trade; bleared,
smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and share’s man’s
smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can
foot feel, being shod.
And, for all this,
nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep
down things;
10
And trough the last
lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards,
springs—
Because the Holy Ghost
over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah!
bright wings.
Through this poem of
Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”, we want to make reference to several
differences and similarities between this poet/poem and William Blake’s “The
Garden of Love”. At the beginning of the paper, it was mentioned how both poems
dealt with religious topics which were intrinsically related to the period
where they were included in, but there is a remarkable difference: while Blake
as a believer in God, but not in the Church, neither criticise nor mention God
as the main important figure of his poem, Gerard Manley Hopkins who is not just
a believer but a churchgoer as well (he converted to Catholicism, was Jesuit
Priest) takes God as the main character in his poem. In this poem, written
under the perspective of a religious man, we will appreciate the personal
interpretation of the author for the great labour “the Divinity” is still doing
in a world in which people were witness of the great steps forward in the
fields of technology and science. In comparison to Blake,
First, and in the same
way we did with “the
We can classify the
structure of the poem under the shape of a sonnet (two stanzas of eight and six
verses respectively), with and “standard rhythm, counter pointed”: this is the
pattern a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-c-d-c-d.
We can see also some
examples of rhetorical figures, for instance “alliteration”: “seared, smeared,
smudge, smell, soil; dearest, deep, down”.
Furthermore, one of the
stylistic differences is the use in this poem of the third person, as opposed
to the first used in the
Secondly, we well talk
about all those images and meaning we find inside the poem.
In the first stanza of
the poem, the author describes the “world of man”,
The poem, in the first
line, includes an important term “charged”, this term suggests to the reader in
some sense a “spark of light”, referring to the “Creation, which began with a
spark of light”, (this would be the religious interpretation), but also a kind
of “electricity” with which the world is charged, electricity symbolizing the
power and “grandeur of God”. In the second line the author talks again about
the God’s grandeur that “will flame out, like shining from shook foil”. This
sentence has a scientific interpretation, “it refers to gold leaf of foil used
to measure electrical charges”, this is, a light “flashing out in multiplying
rays”, so the same God does with human beings, his light “leads men”. We would
like to cite the words of
Shaken gold foil gives
off broad glares like sheet lightning and also, and this is true of nothing
else, owing to its zigzag dints and creasings and network of small many
cornered facets, a sort of fork lightning too”.
This image in the second
line, takes us to the third and fourth lines, where it is said how the God’s
grandeur “gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed”, meaning an
increase of the grandeur of God. Trough this metaphor, the author explains us
that “just as the olive is crushed to reveal something costly and useful, so
too did Christ chose to be crushed to bring forth His priceless blood, which
saves men”. These lines three and four, trough which we can appreciate a sort
of “crudeness”, contrast with the “brilliance” of lines one and two as they are
showing metaphors of “flame and shining”. With these first four lines, we can
realize about several important aspects related to the meaning of the poem:
“All things are charged with love”, all things are charged with God and if
people know how “to touch them” and get closed to him, all things will “give
off sparks”, “take fire”, “yield drops and flow, ring and tell of him”.
Then, the author utters
a rhetorical question: “Why do men then now not reck
his rod?
This question is
referring with the terms “then” and “now”, to men at the time and in the past,
men who do not recognize the authority of God. In addition, the “his” of his
line refers grammatically to the “God” of line one; “God’s rod is Christ
Himself” who sacrificed himself in benefit of all men and women.
The lines five through
eight show us probably the “essence of Hopkins’s Poem: here is told to us the
“oppressive night” that men “bring upon themselves” because they are
disregarding the role played by God and “His creation”. “Generations have trod,
have trod, have trod;” men do not recognize the authority of God, they cannot
understand the enormous sacrifice of God, they disregard all things created by
him.
And now, it is when
comes one of the terms and sentences in the poem more intrinsically related to
the industrialized Victorian period and to the argument we want to show to the
reader:
“And all is seared with
trade”, that’s to say, trade in a wide sense: trade, industry, business…
“Nothing has escaped to the materialistic touch of men”; they just worry about
themselves and don’t care about the destruction of the nature and all the
things God has created. Besides, men are “bleared, smeared with toil”, because
they work to obtain all kind of wealth, including if it is “useless”. This way,
the trade “wears man’s smudge and share’s man’s smell”. The next image comes
under the words “the soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod”: at these
two verses, the author argues how men is not just destroying the nature, but
they are also suffering from a “spiritual bareness”, the soil bare is
equivalent to the bareness of “man’s soul”., mankind are “chocked with the
cares and riches and pleasures of this life”.
The last verse, “nor can foot feel, being shod”
refers at the same time to the profanation of a holy ground for those with shod
feet.
The last stanza or
sextet corresponds to a positive vision between nature and God. In the first
verse of the stanza “nature is never spent”, here the author is talking about
nature at three different levels: “physical nature” (plants, animals…); “human
nature”, that is to say, mankind; “Divine nature” (God). No one of them has
been spent because of the intervention of God’s will. And we must pay special
attention to that physical nature, because
In fact, the following verse (10) expresses
the idea that even though there is an abuse of man against nature in order to
obtain pleasure and benefits, “he doesn’t have the power to destroy it
altogether”: “lives the dearest freshness deep down things”. The terms “deep
down” refers to that “rejuvenation of nature”, and at the same time the
“rejuvenation of man through the presence of the Holy Spirit”. The poem
concludes making reference to this Holy Spirit who is still protecting the whole
world: “the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah!
bright wings.
As a conclusion, we
could say that what the poet wants to express through his poem, is the fact
that despite all the bad actions of mankind, of the industrial man, of those
people who do not worry about nature…there is a continue presence of God in the
world, who protects us, “the world goes on being a wonderful place thanks to
him”.
This poem of Gerard
Manley Hopkins, God’s grandeur, is a clear example of the devotion he felt to
God. It dates from the year 1877, eleven years after he converted to
Catholicism in the summer of 1866 and 12 years before his death, so it is
included within a period of maturity in the author’s life.
In comparison to Blake,
although as we said before this author doesn’t mention God in his poem “The
Garden of Love”, Gerard Manley Hopkins talks about the importance of the
Divinity, and subsequently the importance (though it is not explicitly said) of
the church, since he was a Jesuit priest. The poem is written during a period
where people wanted to avoid the role of God, and probably the faith was no
longer going to be the same, especially for some kind of works like “the Origin
of Species”, which contradicted many religious beliefs and doctrines”, but also
due to many inventions and technological and scientific discoveries: steam
–powered ships, railways, “chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel industries”,
it was produced the “mechanization of manufacture of food and drink,
clothing
and transport
and even entertainment with the early cinema, radio and gramophone”
which served the needs of the population…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins:
http://blue.utb.edu/gibson/God's%20Grandeur.htm
Personal Opinion
As a conclusion of this
paper, I wanted to give my personal opinion and my answer to the next question:
Is there any connection
between the increase of technological/scientific discoveries and materialism
with the decrease of religious and God’s faith? As far as I am concerned, the
answer to this question is “yes”. As we could see in the two poems, but
especially in
But the Victorian society, in front
of all those changes preferred to believe in other doctrines, in other reasons,
“The Origin of Species” caused a great impact on the Catholic Institutions and
in society as a whole, and all the new scientific and technological discoveries
supplied people with new hopes, opened their mind to a new way of life, new
thoughts, something “new for them”. And many people who had based their life on
the Christian faith, started to change their beliefs.
To sum up, I wanted to say that I
agree with William Blake and his view on Church and religion. As happened with
him, I am a believer but I do not really think that the Catholic Church would
be the best example to follow, especially nowadays. His teachings and doctrines
are an attempt to exclude all those who do not follow the standard rules of
society, all those who do not share their ideas, contrary to what God and
Christ supposedly taught long time ago.
Bibliography
Books
-
“William
Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, Oxford University Press, with an
introduction and commentary by Geoffrey Keynes, first published in 1967 by
Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd. And by the Onion Press.
-
“Gerard
Manley Hopkins, Poems and Prose”, Penguin Classics, Selected and Edited by W.H.
Gardner, first published in 1953.
-
“Gerard
Manley Hopkins, selected poetry”, Oxford World’s Classics, Edited with an
introduction and notes by Catherine Phillips, first published as World’s
Classics paperback 1996.
Web pages
-Victorian Web: http://www.victorianweb.org/
-Representative poetry online: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/index.cfm
-
http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol0521781477_CCOL0521781477A010
-Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Manley_Hopkins
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake#Blake_and_religion
-Norton Anthology of English
Literature:
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/victorian/welcome.htm
-Bartleby.com: http://www.bartleby.com/people/HopkinsG.html
-Online-literature: http://www.online-literature.com/blake/
-Geocities: http://www.geocities.com/sir_john_eh/gardenlove.html.
Posted 11 January
2006.
-God’s Grandeur: http://blue.utb.edu/gibson/God's%20Grandeur.htm
-William Blake Archive:
http://blake-dev.lib.unc.edu/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=songsie.b.illbk.43&java=yes
http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/about-blake.html
-Aula Virtual: http://aulavirtual.uv.es/dotlrn/classes/c006/14217/c08c006a14217gA/wp-slim/display/26461139/
(All the web pages above were
working on date 16 January 2008).