A Retrograde Reading of Spenser’s Fowre Hymnes

Abstract

THE FIRST CRIT IC of any of Spenser's Fowre Hymnes was probably Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, one of the noble and virtuous ladies whom, the epistle of 1 September 1596, the Fowre Hymnes were dedicated. The poet says the lady asked him in his hymns honor of Love and of Beauty, because they endanger the morals of the young, who rather suck out poison their strong passion, than honey their honest delight. But because too many copies of those two hymns have been spread abroad for it be possible call them in-this being one of the commoner excuses of Renaissance epistles-the poet has resolved amend and reform them, way of retractation, or rewriting, and add two further hymns by way of correction, hymns of heavenly love and of celestial beauty.1The erring hymns are addressed Cupid and Venus, respectively, the corrective ones Jesus and Sapience, respectively. According the epistle, we are meant take the second pair as a rejection of the first. But we are then meant understand the second pair as a transumptive analogy of the first: as Cupid Venus, so Jesus Sapience. The analogy is transumptive because the first pair is taken up and completed the second. The analogy is also foolish, at least when it is set forth baldly like this, without protection. The point, after all, is not put the analogy baldly, thus allowing us, as we read through the poems, enjoy the feeling of ascending through everhigher levels of experience and wisdom. Should we happen reflect Cupid has little do with Christ and Venus still less do with Sapience, we can fall back from the implicit relation of progression the explicit relation of rejection (of course they don't!), without worrying these relations are incompatible. The continuity will return and reassert itself because the discontinuity of Cupid with Jesus and of Venus with Sapience is the subordinate role of taking pressure off the relation of progression at moments of crisis. Whatever we make of the dialectical fiction of Spenser's Fowre Hymnes, it is apparent they are cast a series each must appear ascend a higher plane than the last. Like the heavens An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, the four hymns are rise more more faire, till they at last arrive/To the most faire, whereto they all do strive (HHB, lines 76-77).That image of poetry as taking flight, like so much else these poems would be important Milton, is underlined at the outset of An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, when the poet compares himself the soaring falcon, mounting aloft to contemplation of th'immortal sky (line 25). Certainly this final poem, is the most Neoplatonic of the four, and the least Christian of the four, there is a strong retrospective effort by the poet impose a simpler plan on the series than it actually has. As Donne's Of the Progress of the Soul, is, the Second Anniversary, the liberated soul is compared a bullet fired from a gun, we are taken up swiftly through the visible heavens of the created world, then through the invisible heavens the Mercy Seat and throne of God, then the idol of Sapience, lodged God's breast, and at last out of the world altogether. We leave the world because of a subjective motivation within us, our love of God, which loathing brings/Of this vile world, and these gay seeming things (lines 298-99). Loathing?This is the language of the penultimate stanza of the Mutabilitie Cantos, but with an important difference. There, what provokes Spenser this state of life so tickle is not the love of God but rather that speech whyleare/Of Mutability.2 Contemplating the decay of all beauty can indeed make you loathe the world; it shouldn't, though it can. But should contemplating the love of God make you loathe the world? It should not. Loathing the world is unethical on any ethical plan, and certainly on the Christian one, where such loathing would be the destruction of all charity. …