Life in the Maze—Johnson's Use of Chiasmus in The Vanity of Human Wishes

Abstract

Life in theMaze—Johnson ’s Use ofChiasmus in The Vanity of Human Wishes ELIZABETH MACANDREW The technical brilliance of The Vanity of Human Wishes may be seen in the original use Johnson makes of a device very common in eigh­ teenth-century poetry—chiasmus. Through the inverted parallelism of chiasmus, so apt as a vehicle for antithesis, he expresses the para­ dox that is the most bitter aspect of the worldly view of life which he presents and condemns before offering the alternative, Christian view. The outlook which Johnson presents and condemns confines the aims of human endeavors to this world, sees the best and most noble human aspirations leading to great downfalls as surely as the most vicious ones, and avers that there is no escape through virtue, honor, or courage from life’s defeats. In this view, life is the “clouded maze of fate,” and by extending the device of chiasmus over whole blocks of lines, Johnson drives us to the bottom of a dead-end in that maze. There, with no way out, we are forced to turn and cry out with the “Inquirer” in the poem, “Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?”1 Chiasmus, then, is an important means of making us experience 517 518 / ELIZABETH MACANDREW the futility of the world-confined view which, concluding that all human endeavors are inevitably defeated, decides that all aspirations are vain. Johnson builds up in us a sense of complete frustration by boxing us into this seemingly inescapable paradox of our existence and, only when we have truly felt the depth of that bitter experience, offering us the Christian means of transcending the maze. He makes a sharp break between the worldly view in the body of the poem and the Christian coda, a much deeper division than the parallel “turn” in Juvenal’s satire. This gap emphasizes the absolute difference between the pagan idea of man as a captive of fate, which, as Howard Weinbrot has demonstrated, is rejected, and the Chris­ tian alternative.2 In straining to bridge it, we feel the difficulty of fully attaining the spiritual state of the coda and knowing the serenity it offers, a serenity which, as we shall see, is also expressed through chiasmus. The last lines of Johnson’s moral-didactic poem, however, have often seemed to offer a weak consolation for all the woes that have preceded them and the pessimistic tone of the poem proper has been equated with Imlac’s statement in Rasselas that “Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be en­ joyed.” Yet Johnson’s answer to the “pagan” worldly view only seems unsatisfactory if what is anticipated is a promise that God will somehow change the conditions of life of which the pagan view com­ plains. Instead, he gives us the Christian view that faith will trans­ form the mind, replacing despair with hope and the “peace which passes all understanding.” The extended use of chiasmus can be seen in four key passages, two at the end and two at the opening of the poem. The passage at the be­ ginning which presents us with the maze (11. 5-10) is balanced by the series of questions from the “Inquirer” which opens the coda and sums up the underlying attitude that has made life seem paradoxical (11. 343-48). The first is followed by an exposition of the pitfalls of military and political prowess, culminating in the passage dealing with civil war and the fate of the “lord” who is on the losing side (11. 31-6). The second is preceded by the passage depicting the fate of the young woman who grows up to be a beauty (11. 326-40). In these four Johnson’s Use of Chiasmus / 519 passages, Johnson formally constructs the “clouded maze” in which he traps us. The last of these passages, the Inquirer’s desperate pleas (marked here by underlining and by the letters A, B, C, and D, to indicate the chiastic correspondences) gives us a picture of despair: A B Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find? C D Must...