“Faith” and “Fable” in the Poetry of Geoffrey Hill

Abstract

and fable, terms set for this roundtable discussion on poetry of Geoffrey Hill, are themselves Hillian, and so are problems of their brute juxtaposition. Tracking appearance of terms in his work offers a way to introduce topic concisely, and it may help to formulate some preliminary questions. Since MLA discussion in 2009, Hill has published a new book of poems, Oraclau/Oracles (Clutag, 2010), and a second is imminent, Clavics (Enitharmon, 2011). A third, Odi Barbare, is scheduled for next year (Clutag, 2011). Two further books, one of them titled Al Tempo de' Tremuoti, will appear in Collected Poems: 1952-2012 (Oxford, planned for 2013), along with an expanded and revised Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres. Hill's poems in this issue are taken from Odi Barbare, written in a form of sapphics, and currently untitled book, which adopts a form of Robert Lowell's poem Rebellion as its stanza model. The poems have not appeared elsewhere, and this is first time a selection from fifth book has been published. The noun appears in all but two of Hill's books of poetry (the exceptions are For Unfallen and Mercian Hymns). Along with its cognates it is used about sixty times in poetry, once each in King Log, The Mystery of Charity of Charles Peguy, Scenes from Comus, and Clavics, and as many as eleven times in Canaan and ten in The Triumph of Love. The statistics in themselves do not have much significance, but even crude fact of changing frequency of term should prompt us to acknowledge variety and variability of Hill's poetic undertaking from book to book. It seems to me that Christian is main concern of five books-Tenebrae, The Mystery of Charity of Charles Peguy (and Hymns), Canaan, The Triumph of Love and Al Tempo de' Tremuoti (published as yet only in part)--but that in other books it does not engage his imagination as centrally. When Hill explores Christian themes, he is attracted to heterodox expression of faith. In his short note accompanying The Mystery of Charity of Charles Peguy, Hill describes Peguy as self-excommunicate but adoring (he also contrasts Peguy's rediscovery of the solitary ardours of faith with consolations of religious practice). In interview with John Haffenden in 1981, he applies Joseph Cary's description of Montale's poem Iride to his own work, a heretic's dream of salvation, expressed in image of orthodoxy from which he is excommunicate A half dozen examples of show its range of meaning in Hill's poetry: Funeral Music: I would scorn mere instinct of faith To William Cobbett: I say it is not faithless / to stand without faith Mysticism and Democracy: Flesh has its own spirit ... deeper than most rooted faiths Triumph of Love CXXI: So what is if it is not / inescapable endurance The Orchards of Syon VI: I say trust / so far as it goes Scenes from Comus 49: Faith stands confirmed in trigonometry Al Tempo de' Tremuoti 55: became / Of true better to blaspheme On basis of such statements (Hill, like Yeats, is a poet of emphatic statement), we might wish to redirect to Hill Eliot's public challenge to Pound: What does Mr. Pound believe? Pound did not reject question; he gave what he thought was a simple, explicit, and straightforward answer (I believe Ta Hio). Yet Hill's combination of passionate utterance and historical distance--in Haffenden interview Hill insists that it is not a shortcoming in a poet to be moved by religious experience as a historical phenomenon--makes relevance of question to his poetry hard to judge. We should both ask What does Professor Hill believe? and wonder whether this is a proper question for his work. …