The body and constructive pain: Christ and his compassionate human “witness” in selections from Richard Crashaw’s Steps to the Temple

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores selections from Crashaw’s collection of devotional poems, Steps to the Temple, arguing that the poet attributes significant value to the human body in the relationship between humanity and the Divine. Specifically, I suggest that the speaker’s body is a means of access to commune with the Divine – through the senses at the most basic level and through spiritual ecstasy at the most complex – and to experience constructive emotion by witnessing, and thus sharing, the pain that the Incarnated Christ experienced during the Crucifixion. Critics have accused Crashaw of perversity, of indulging in a horrid fetish, in focusing so graphically on Christ’s bloody wounds. I, however, read this focus as Crashaw’s attempt to witness the Divine’s trauma through the vicarious imagination and to realise His identity as fellow man. “The Weeper” is of primary interest since I suggest that Magdalene is Crashaw’s exemplary witness.