How Shall We Read Herbert?: A Look at "Prayer" (I)

Abstract

How Shall We Read Herbert? A Look at "Prayer" (I) by Sidney Gottlieb The "Donne revival" came about at a time when the active, even shocking side of Donne's poems was emphasized. Herbert rode part way into popularity as a result of this revival, but his role has typically been that of Donne's foil: he is the calm after the storm, respected most for his piety, humility, and the quaint adventurousness of some of his verses. If there is to be a true "Herbert revival," however, we shall have to put aside for a morpent this notion of the quiet cleric at Bemerton and look instead to Herbert's complexity and restlessness. We would do well to describe Herbert's works as he describes God's: "Storms are the triumph of his art" ("The Bag"). The main thing we must do is simply read his poetry the way he meant it to be read. The source for much of Herbert's literary technique is the Bible, and by looking at his particular way of reading the Bible we see a model of the way he structures The Temple. In his prose work A Priest to the Temple he stresses the importance of a "diligent Collation of Scripture with Scripture": For all Truth being consonant to it self, and all being penn'd by one and the self-same Spirit, it cannot be, but that an industrious, and judicious comparing of place with place must be a singular help for the right understanding of the Scriptures. To this may be added the consideration of any text with the coherence thereof, touching what goes before, and what follows after, as also the scope of the Holy Ghost.1 As with his most unlikely bedfellow, William Blake, energy is the price of wisdom for Herbert. The Bible is a complex whole made up of many connected parts, and if it is to be rightly understood these connections must be vigorously traced out. This Is one of the basic meanings of Herbert's poem "The H. Scriptures" (II): 26 HOW SHALL WE READ HERBERT? Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, And the configurations of their glorie! Seeing not onely how each verse doth shine, But all the constellations of the storie. This verse marks that, and both do make a motion Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie: Then as dispersed herbs do watch a potion, These three make up some Christians destinie. This way of reading is very demanding but it is the way that The Temple is written. I think ¡t is unlikely that any reader could completely ignore the many repetitions, verbal echoes, and other connections between poems in The Temple, but it is easy and traditional to minimize their significance. George Herbert Palmer, for example, one of the first modern editors of Herbert, sees these connections as inconsequential and thus feels justified in arranging the poems in the order that he feels is most revealing: In justification of the traditional order no grounds are known. Ferrar found it in the Bodleian Manuscript, and followed it in his own printing. The Williams Manuscript does not preserve it. The poems do not require it. Probably it was originally accidental. ... In the traditional order there is, therefore, nothing sacred, probably nothing expressive of Herbert's mind or wish, nothing to forbid whatever new arrangement is more luminous. The most instructive order for all poetry, it is agreed, is the chronological.' And yet in a crucial way, to change the order is to change the poem, as Herbert realized when he purposefully, not arbitrarily , reordered some of the poems from the early Williams Manuscript (W) when they were later incorporated in The Temple. A slight shift in the location of a poem can have a tremendous effect on our impressions of that poem. Perhaps a modern example will help illustrate the role of "context" in our perceptions: In one of his books on the art of montage, [Pudovkin] describes an experiment by his teacher, Kuleshov. You 27 Sidney Gottlieb see a close-up of the Russian actor Ivan Mosjoukine. This is immediately followed by a shot of...