Marvell's Garden

Abstract

On a first reading, seems to be a simple description of a delightful experience. Aware of the futility of human passion and ambition, the poet forsakes human society for the repose, innocence, and beauty which he finds in nature But if we look at the poem more carefully, we find that this innocent, green garden is delicious, and that there are, especially in the fifth stanza, obvious and vivid sexual images. Since The Garden is the Garden of Eden, there is no difficulty in understanding why it is beautiful, restful, and innocent. But why is it also sexual? What kind of garden is this where all the pleasures of passion can be enjoyed among trees and flowers, where plants are sexual and man is not? Despite the efforts of the critics, this central contradiction remains. William Empson, in what is at times a brilliant explication of the poem, finds that the poet desires only respose, that women are no longer interesting to him because nature is more beautiful. But if this is true, why should the garden possess, as Empson has pointed out, the same sexuality that is associated with women? William Klonsky in A Guide through the Garden sees the garden as a neo-Platonic Garden of Ideas. But again, despite many interesting analogies between Marvell and Plotinus (to which this study is indebted) no explanation is given as to why a poet who retreats from sexuality should create a garden filled with sexual symbols. Another critic of Marvell, Miss Wallerstein, comes close to finding the key to this contradiction by noting in an old Rabbinic legend . . that in Paradise before the Fall, Adam was an Androgyne. But Professor Wallerstein does not use this legend to interpret the poem. Therefore, the first part of this paper will show how this legend of the androgynous Adam solves the chief difficulty of the poem; and the second part of the paper will show that,