A Sacramental Poem, Presented by Nike.
About this time last week, Rod posted to his blog a comment of mine to spur a discussion about sacramentalism. I'd like to take a moment to thank Rod for doing so, even though his contribution to that discussion was much smaller than I had hoped -- one brief comment out of literally a hundred. When he does address critics like Kathleen and me, it is almost always to point again and again to his book, which obviously isn't nearly as interactive as an online discussion. The give-and-take that comes with fielding tough questions has been sorely lacking.
In addition to pointing to his book, he also pointed out a poem, "God's Grandeur", which Rod says speaks about this sensibility of sacramentalism. I didn't comment on the poem, and neither (I think) did anyone else. The comments thread seems to be on its last legs, and I think that my thoughts on the poem belong here, so I hope you will indulge a bit of poetry.
To be completely honest, I'm generally not a huge fan of poetry. There are only a handful of poems that I can say have genuinely moved me: a few of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Friar Laurence's speech that opens Act II Scene III of Romeo and Juliet; a handful of poems by C.S. Lewis; "Ulysses", by Tennyson; this poem from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; maybe a couple others. Not counting school assignments, I myself have written only two poems in my life, both about women. I'm no poetry fiend, by any stretch of the imagination.
It is thus not surprising that I'm not moved by this particular poem; so few move me. But I think it may well express Rod's version of sacramentalism -- as I understand it -- and even highlight my fundamental problems with the sensibility.
(And it provides substance for those who want to examine Mr. Dreher's psyche. "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" Does Ray Dreher, who publishes under the pseudonym of "Rod", wonder to himself, "Why doesn't anyone listen to me?")
The poem asks, why does man now no longer consider God and His sovereign rule?
What is Gerard Manley Hopkins' answer?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
Too much commerce, too much humanity, and shoes.
Perhaps, in preparing to star in the classic "Air Jordan" ads, Spike Lee was inspired by Hopkins. Was Michael Jordan's prowess on the court due to his athletic abilities, his intelligence, and his unstoppable determination? Heavens, no. It's gotta be the shoes.
Is modern man's refusal to acknowledge God and His rule due to human free will and a natural tendency to sin that we share with pre-modern man and that can be traced back to the Fall that occurred while man was yet in the garden? Nope; it's gotta be the shoes.
It's gotta be modernity.
I choke on the disconnect between this poem's nostalgia for a virtuous pre-modern past that never existed and what the Bible teaches about the source of sin. And yet, Rod apparently finds it to be an inspiring piece that communicates his sensibility.
That is the problem.
(Well, that and the irony of it all: Hopkins writing about damnable footwear, and Dreher giving the NRO piece that started this three-ring circus the title of "Birkenstocked Burkeans". As a society we're too materialistic, he preaches, but doesn't Rod have such very nice things?)
In addition to pointing to his book, he also pointed out a poem, "God's Grandeur", which Rod says speaks about this sensibility of sacramentalism. I didn't comment on the poem, and neither (I think) did anyone else. The comments thread seems to be on its last legs, and I think that my thoughts on the poem belong here, so I hope you will indulge a bit of poetry.
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;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares 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;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
To be completely honest, I'm generally not a huge fan of poetry. There are only a handful of poems that I can say have genuinely moved me: a few of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Friar Laurence's speech that opens Act II Scene III of Romeo and Juliet; a handful of poems by C.S. Lewis; "Ulysses", by Tennyson; this poem from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; maybe a couple others. Not counting school assignments, I myself have written only two poems in my life, both about women. I'm no poetry fiend, by any stretch of the imagination.
It is thus not surprising that I'm not moved by this particular poem; so few move me. But I think it may well express Rod's version of sacramentalism -- as I understand it -- and even highlight my fundamental problems with the sensibility.
(And it provides substance for those who want to examine Mr. Dreher's psyche. "Why do men then now not reck his rod?" Does Ray Dreher, who publishes under the pseudonym of "Rod", wonder to himself, "Why doesn't anyone listen to me?")
The poem asks, why does man now no longer consider God and His sovereign rule?
What is Gerard Manley Hopkins' answer?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
Too much commerce, too much humanity, and shoes.
Perhaps, in preparing to star in the classic "Air Jordan" ads, Spike Lee was inspired by Hopkins. Was Michael Jordan's prowess on the court due to his athletic abilities, his intelligence, and his unstoppable determination? Heavens, no. It's gotta be the shoes.
Is modern man's refusal to acknowledge God and His rule due to human free will and a natural tendency to sin that we share with pre-modern man and that can be traced back to the Fall that occurred while man was yet in the garden? Nope; it's gotta be the shoes.
It's gotta be modernity.
I choke on the disconnect between this poem's nostalgia for a virtuous pre-modern past that never existed and what the Bible teaches about the source of sin. And yet, Rod apparently finds it to be an inspiring piece that communicates his sensibility.
That is the problem.
(Well, that and the irony of it all: Hopkins writing about damnable footwear, and Dreher giving the NRO piece that started this three-ring circus the title of "Birkenstocked Burkeans". As a society we're too materialistic, he preaches, but doesn't Rod have such very nice things?)
posted by Anonymous at 3:00 PM
15 Comments:
Shoes, of course! Damnable shoes. This reminds me of these primitive, wild-eyed feminist types I read about once who claim that the world really started going downhill when people (men, naturally) began planting crops in rows. I suppose before that disastrous innovation became rampant there existed some type of tribal sensibility which made this type of fascist farming taboo; they must have just tossed some seeds here and there. But the horrible idol of progress led some totem-toting technocrats into forbidden territory merely to increase their food supply and chance of survival. Soon wars ensued, slavery and prostitution became commonplace alongside rampant shoe-wearing... fast-forward 10 or 15 thousand years and we have ATMs, fast-food, Doc Martens, SUVs and alienation from Mother Earth.
So forget co-ops and organic farming -- they are merely feeble attempts to "return to roots". These folks would snort at Crunchy Cons -- "Too little, too late, we're afraid. Don't you get it? It doesn't matter where you shop -- shopping is EVIL. It doesn't matter how you farm -- farming is EVIL. Using a metal tool on the Mother Earth is RAPE of the worst kind!"
We joked here about the hypocrisy of Rod's book being sold at Wal-mart, but it's no joke to these folks. They would probably say a wise man like Rod should be sitting around in a tee-pee teaching the youngsters how to bow-hunt possums and which mushrooms wouldn't kill you instead of making publishers rich or writing in blogs. Progress of any kind is evil.
Following this mentality, use of the world equals abuse. If you have more food that you can eat in 1 day, or if you have more than me, you have too much. No, the crunchies don't go too far into this moonbat territory, but I propose that is merely because their rose colored glasses only see so far into the past.
It is quite revelatory, although not surprising, that Rod's replies to Bubba consist of advising him to watch a foreign film containing a lot of symbolism and to read a poem. Not very direct responses; is he expecting to convince anybody this way or just impress with his knowledge of verse? Unclear. He should take a lesson from the Cubeland Mystic.
[Regarding shoes and poetry, read this it's funny.]
...this poem's nostalgia for a virtuous pre-modern past that never existed....
This is a misreading of the poem.
Hopkins isn't suggesting man in the pre-modern past was virtuous. He is suggesting that man in the modern present has produced an environment in which it is easy to not notice how God's grandeur is present in creation.
I don't see that there's much to that suggestion a Christian could object to.
Oh, and in terms of "damnable footwear," you really can't be shoes as a poetic device to signify what separates man from nature. That's quite literally what shoes are for.
Oh, rats, one other thing:
Your "modern man's refusal to acknowledge God and His rule" sounds like more a Reformed than a Catholic reading, and it's not really what either the poem or sacramentalism in general is going after.
They are immediately concerned, not with God's sovereignty, but with His immanence.
Tom, what about this then: "....For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature —have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened...." (Romans 1:18-32) for the whole thing.
So St. Paul says that this denial of God's sovereignty, his glory, grandeur & the laws of the natural order has been going on "since the creation of the world." The part before what I included talks about men "suppressing the truth" and I think you could say there's more suppression in modern times, but again it's a matter of degrees, not a qualitative difference.
I think the question needs to be asked at some point: if all this is true, then how can an honest crunchy-con justify not living as the Amish do? The stench of man infects the truck which brings the farmer's produce to market is smeared with the stench of man. The website which tells you where that market is, that is the fruit of an awesome and hellish industrial armature. "The human stain" is everywhere.
Under other circumstances I hate arguments of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy in general impugns the messenger but not the message. Yet here, the messenger is the message. It is what is in *your* heart that matters. So I have to ask, where, and how, do we draw the lines between the acceptable use of the features of modern life, and those which would destroy us?
So long as you are talking only about how you live your own life, I could care less. My mother refused to allow a microwave in the house for fear it caused cancer. This would be only mildly kooky if you didn't know she also smoked a carton of Marlboros a week. But, she never proposed banning microwaves, or for that matter, cigarettes.
This has always been my first and foremost problem with the CC gang. They raise "concerns" and "misgivings" about things, and mutter darkly about legislation and regulation, but never get specific. They're like Andrew Jackson, cancelling the charter of the bank because it pisses them off. Not sufficient.
I've thought about the Amish before in relation to the whole crunchy conundrum. They definitely fulfill a good part of the ideal summarized in the crunchy manifesto, but fail at other parts of the spirit. They have the community thing down pat and the food is 100% crunchy-kosher of course.
But in some areas they are all about efficiency rather than what a crunchy would call beauty. Their homes and churches are very plain.
I was in one Amish guy's house and he apologized for it in his peculiar Germanized English. I felt bad; I said "Looks fine to me!" It was like a cabin you'd stay in at a campground, very utilitarian – would have made Rod's elitist design friends shudder. There was a simple bedroom upstairs in the rafters with a bed and a table. On the table someone had left a nice ole' Winchester. No child locks on that pappy, ready to load and fire at some dinner.
My experience with those and other Amish is that would also agree with us on the "we leave you alone, you leave us alone" motif. Leave the preachin' to the preacher. I'm not about to attempt to sell them a microwave and they aren't about to make me give up mine. They have a spiritual simplicity lacking in the crunchies, IMO. It's impossible to imagine them putting on airs like the organic farmer in the CC book: "You see, the reason we live like this is we're (ahem) Christians and God would rather us do this than lead a meaningless life selling insurance policies."
... again it's a matter of degrees, not a qualitative difference.
Right, and the poem is a poem, not a pedagogical treatise.
If the point is to simply contradict everything Rod says, that's not an argument. If the point is to figure out what he's trying to say before deciding whether he's correct, that I think requires a more generous reading both of Rod and the sources he mentions than is sometimes given here.
Bubba:
If I return to the point that it's a poem, not a sermon, it's to suggest that language like "grant the premise," "it follows," and "ipso facto" doesn't take quite the right tack for discussing "God's Grandeur" -- though I'll admit that such language comes much more easily to me than does poetic language.
Hopkins is recording his impressions, not his doctrine, and he does so in a very artificial way; the whole sonnet was evidently written in service of the "shining from shook foil" image. Whether someone can be unhappy in the Arizona wilderness is beside his point, since the only necessity contained in his point is the flaming out of God's grandeur.
Which is about as far as my poetic criticism takes me.
Now, as to this -- "the wise thing to do is learn and teach others how to see God wherever one is, rather than trying to find Him somewhere else" -- I agree, special exceptions aside.
But this -- "our obedience is what we ought to care about, not feeling His immanence" -- presents a false dilemma, probably because it misrepresents what God's immanence means for us.
God's immanence is something to be known, just as is His sovereignty, and the proper knowledge of the one is not only not opposed to the proper knowledge of the other, but they reinforce each other. To say we ought not care about God's immanence -- which, I note, is not quite what you wrote -- is to say something contrary to Scripture, which presents it again and again as something to contemplate and celebrate.
To regard God's immanence as merely something to be felt, as you seem to do, is to miss that it is also to be known and indeed lived. It is no fool's errand to practice the presence of God, in Brother Lawrence's famous phrase, but a path of sanctity and a true virtue.
That said, it is as wrong to reduce sacramentalism to emotion in order to celebrate it as to criticize it, and reducing things to emotion is a mistake Rod makes again and again.
1. As soon as you spoke of not liking poetry, you lost me. As much as I like C. S. Lewis, his poetry is lousy. Let's put it this way: I hate football (both kinds). I'll be glad to tell you all the reasons I cant' stand football, in general, with some specific examples. But I would never presume then, on the premise of hating all football, to offer a critique of any single football game.
2. The poem is not condemning shoes. Hopkins' "point" is merely that: a) nature is beautiful and b) man pollutes nature, yet, c) despite the fact that man pollutes it, nature is still beautiful. Therefore, God's in charge.
I'm not saying you have to be a "lover of all poetry." I'm saying that you have to appreciate poetry as such, which you say you don't. I'm not discounting Shakespeare, Tennyson, etc., but the highlighting of Lewis as a favorite poet says something.
I am not "incapable" of understanding the rules of football. I just have no interest in them. My point is that, if I say, "I have no interest in football, but I thought that was a lousy game," I'm stating what is, from my estabilshed premise, a matter of tautology.
To say, "I generally am not a huge fan" still gets to the point. You're not a "poetry person." You know what you like and dislike. That's fine. But you disqualify yourself as a critic.
Someone says, "I really don't care for classical music in general, but I like Beethoven's 9th Symphony." Then the person proceeds to offer his critique of Mozart's Alleluia.
It's not that he has to like *all* classical music, but he must at least have a taste for it. He must at least have a general idea of what classical music is supposed to be, in the objective sense, and not just what he personally likes about some classical music.
And if he's already categorized what he *does* like, singling out one work in a different category and "critiquing" it is an exercise in nonsense.
"I only like Baroque architecture. . . . Notre Dame is a lousy Cathedral because. . . ."
"I'm not a big fan of mysteries, but I like _Monk_. The fourth episode of _Matlock_ is stupid because. . . . "
As for the rest, I take it you think pollution is good?
And the use of obscenity adds what to your argument, other than mortal sin?
You keep making straw men. I am asserting that you cannot critique something without having some grounds for your critique. Mere mockery is insufficient.
Did I say anything about modernity?
I have a genetic disorder. If I were born 100 years ago, I'd be dead now.
Technology is great. Modernity as a philosophical concept is not.
Hating pollution does not make one anti-technology or anti-modern.
And perhaps you need to reread Gen. 3. Earth would not be "smeared" with man's toil if there had never been original sin.
'Obscenity -- not profanity, not taking the Lord's name in vain, not even insults directed to an individual person, but mere obscenity -- is a mortal sin? Riiiight."
Yes. It's an offense against the Fifth Commandment, dishonoring the body, which is made in God's image and likeness. At least according to Fr. Corapi.
In any case, it's an offense against good language.
In any case, poetry is not supposed to have "meaning" that can be expressed in prose. If it can be expressed easily in prose, it's a bad poem.
Hopkins is criticizing what Fallen Man has done to God's creation. A good example is an internet "joke" I saw a few years ago about God looking down and asking St. Francis why we ripped out all His beautiful trees and shrubs to replace them with grass--which we then mow to keep short, but fertilize and water to keep "healthy," wasting natural resources as we go.
What I'm saying is that poem can and should have several meanings.
So, let's see, I give my source for one thing and you then just attack my source. Now you want my source on another.
In any case, T. S. Eliot, whom I'm sure you've already confined to the netherworld with all the excrement you like to talk about. Read "Tradition and the Individual Talent."
In any case, I imagine I can merely go on my own credentials for this one, since, given your disdain for both poetry and language, I'm guessing my credentials as a literary critic (MA, two conference presentations, 1 published review) can stand on their own merits.
It is possible to state a theme or attempt to state the meaning of a poem in prose. However, that definition cannot be exhaustive. Certainly, you cannot base your dismissal of a poem on a personal opinion of its "meaning" and your belief that that interpretation is "correct."
A poem is much more than a moral or a meaning.
But I had never intended this to drag on. My original point made perfect sense, and my reiteration of it did, too. Had you merely offered your opinion of Hopkins, that would have been fine.
However, you prefaced the opinion by stating that you dislike poetry in general, and listed, as examples of what you do like, simplistic narrative poetry like Lewis's and Tennyson's or a Shakespearean soliloquys. Despite your seeming inability to engage in rational dialogue, you are too rationalist to like poetry for its own sake and only like what you can easily transfer into prose.
When you come across something more complex, like Hopkins, you find the most easy "theme" you can pull out of it, then dismiss why you hate the theme. That's called a Straw Man.
I neither know nor care why you have such an axe to grind with Rod Dreher. But just because Dreher happens to cite Hopkins, you attack one of the greatest Catholic poets in the English language. At that, I take humbrage.
But since you have proven yourself incapable of using anything but Straw Men, ad hominems and profanity to defend your position, I bow out.
"I'm guessing my credentials as a literary critic (MA, two conference presentations, 1 published review) can stand on their own merits."
John C. Hathaway, you won't get far as a "literary critic" without a PhD and only 1 published review.
and FYI, it's "umbrage".
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