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Reading Poetry in Faith: “Ash Wednesday”

The age of science, although giving us many good things, has left us with a legacy that I would call the curse of completion. Bank accounts must balance. All data must be explained. Equations must be kept balanced. And every word in a text must be explained. While such careful accounting might lead to better mathematics and precise electronics, it does violence to the world of poetry. I mention this since many people will wade through the six sections of T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” and find it inexplicable, not on account of what they understand but due to those lines and images they do not understand.

The cadences of this poem stand as inimitable Eliot, evoking not only the rhythms but the imagery of The Waste Land and other, earlier works.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert.

These lines recollect The Waste Land with garden images (although surprisingly there is only one mention of a tree in the 1922 work), echoes of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones, and the use of first person plural.

Those who try to assemble a coherent whole from the disparate parts of The Waste Land engage in a fool’s errand. “Ash Wednesday” is similarly difficult. Certain passages seem utterly clear, drawing very clearly on the liturgy or the scripture. Others defy explanation. Why are those bones singing under a juniper tree? Why a tree at all? Why are they singing? I can’t be sure, and those lines are among the more understandable in the work.

To understand Eliot’s intention in this piece, one needs to start with an understanding of the title. Ash Wednesday stands at the beginning of the season of Lent, a time for introspection, self-denial, and renewed repentance. Given the importance of penitence in the title, is it unexpected for Eliot to lead off with an image of turning.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn

Traditional Christianity teaches the powerlessness of man to turn on his own initiative, an idea perhaps most clearly stated in John 6:44. The very human poet has no hope to turn of his own volition. He cannot hope to turn from the “gift” and “scope” of others. Instead, he must simply surrender himself.

For an educated man, like Eliot, surrender does not come naturally. By the same token, incomplete knowledge cannot be suffered easily, yet this is exactly what Eliot embraces in these lines.

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power

How can the Harvard alumnus, who had studied at philosophy at Marburg and now bestrode the world of letters like a colossus, confess to not only not knowing but not hoping to know? How can he manage to pen the line, “Because I do not think”? This knowledge of not knowing, of insufficiency and human inadequacy is, I would argue, the key to understanding what Eliot says in this poem.

As a patient reader will notice, “Ash Wednesday” contains echoes of John’s gospel, Ezekiel, and other biblical texts. Some of his references–like those to Mary–are straightforward, while others leave us perplexed. The general drift of the poem is toward a spirit of confession and a realization that God is God and Eliot is not. That an image here or there cannot be neatly explained and tucked into its human-constructed compartment, should neither surprise nor trouble us any more than the occasional perplexing image in Isaiah or Matthew should trouble the reader.

For any reader who marks Ash Wednesday with a reading of “Ash Wednesday,” the focus should go not to the brilliance of Eliot the poem or the excellence of this work but to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ that the day emphasizes.

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By Dr. Mark – February 22, 2012

The Duke Fails to Understand Solomon–”My Last Duchess”

Probably the
best known poem of Robert Browning –no relation–is his short dramatic monologue, “My Last Duchess.” In this brilliant span of 56 lines, Browning creates a singularly cold-hearted character in the Duke of Ferrara.

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

The Duke, showing off the painting of his “last” duchess is speaking with the representative of the the count whose daughter the Duke intends to make his next duchess, discloses his own view on love and marriage in this brief span. Does the Duke intend to send warning messages to the Count, ensuring that this new wife will be not err in the way that the old wife did. Did the last duchess stray in some grievous way? If so, there’s no mention of it. We don’t hear the Duke imply that his former wife was unfaithful. Instead, her offense was quite simple:

                                                          She had
A heart–how shall I say?–too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

The Duke intends that his wife–she cannot be called his beloved–be a possession, a walking inhabitant of the art gallery in which he tours with the Count’s representative. The painting before which the two men stand through most of the poem captures the woman almost as perfectly as the living version, and, covered by a curtain that no one else moves aside, the painting will not look on anyone the Duke does not approve.

Long before the term “trophy wife” entered the English language, Browning understood the idea. He also understood the tendency of powerful and wealthy people to allow a desire for control and a love of possessions to overwhelm more humane relationships. As I read this poem, I find myself carried to another expression of marital relations in the Song of Songs.

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.
Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.

Readers of the Song disagree on whether the male figure in the poem is King Solomon or simply a male lover. In the end, this doesn’t matter. In the relationship explored throughout the Song, the lovers’ greatest wealth is achieved not in paintings or bronzes but in each other.

In this poem, Robert Browning seems to be offering a commentary on the paths down which the humanism of Renaissance Italy might travel, a vision that contrasts significantly with the more Medieval outlook presented in “Count Gismond,” which appeared the same year, paired in Dramatic Lyrics (1842) as “Italy” and “France” respectively. To take this poem as an utter indictment of the Renaissance, Italy, or humanism, however, would be incorrect, since the Brownings spent their married years, 1849 until Elizabeth’s death in 1861, in Florence, the epicenter of the Duke’s attitudes.

Rather than an utter indictment of humanism, “My Last Duchess” should be viewed as a testimony to the corrosive effects of wealth and power upon human relationship.

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By Dr. Mark – February 21, 2012

A Measure of Mormon Memoir

Who would have thought that a book of short stories (or rather memoir, but who’s being that precise?) regarding “growing up Mormon” would find its way into print? Paul Harvey offers a review of just such a book at the Religion in American History Blog. The book, written by an English professor (which might stand as a strike against) is
The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks. Harvey describes the book like this:

The Book of Mormon Girl is a book of stories, taking us through childhood scenes (where she was a “root beer among Cokes” in Southern California), adolescent struggles, and then on to college, where, rather than (as she expected) meeting her long-awaited husband, she ended up tearing up her diploma in protest. She then tells about her “years in exile” from the Church, and her more recent (partial) reconciliation with her past and her faith. I’m not going to try to describe the stories; you just have to read them in her original and very powerful voice.

A single clip from the pages should suggest this as a book with a unique voice and point of view as Brooks compares her religious upbringing with Evangelicals.

Did they go to church at six a.m. every morning before school like Mormon kids did? . . . Had they drilled the stories and teachings of four – that’s right, four—books of scripture into their heads. No, just one, just the Bible.
Had they carefully sealed up tins of rice and textured vegetable protein against the great and final days? Were they ready to live through the end times? No, while they dreamed of being transported up into the clouds like Star Trek, we were ready to live out the nuclear winter that would follow the second coming of Christ, to rebuild a kingdom from the charred timbers of leveled forests.
Those born agains could never do what we did. Cross the plains. Track down and baptize our dead ancestors by the millions. Fan out all over the globe two by two, knocking doors. Precision coordinate 15,000 teen-aged dancers. What it all came down to was this: those born-agains were soft.

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By Dr. Mark – February 20, 2012

Brave Sir Robin meets Percivale–Tennyson’s “The Holy Grail”

People my age and younger can scarcely see a reference to the Holy Grail without imagining cocoanut-laden swallows and Knights Who Say ‘Nee.’ Perhaps the Monty Python crew has ruined the grail legend for the foreseeable future. We need to recall, however, that when Tennyson wrote his take on the legend, John Cleese was not even a gleam in his grandfather’s eye yet.

The Idylls of the King, have been rightly identified as Tennyson’s attempt to co-opt the Arthurian legends for the use of age of Victoria, in much the same way that Shakespeare made the Wars of the Roses serve the purposes of the Tudors or Virgil shaped the story of Aeneas to meet the needs of Augustus Caesar. However, these poems cannot be dismissed as solely propaganda pieces. While varying from the tradition, as all who had written in the tradition before had also varied, Tennyson embraces the great bulk of the Arthurian story.

When in graduate school, I read this poem and recalled my professor attempting to dismiss the appeal of the grail quest as Tennyson related it. I recall him invoking the key lines as Percivale watches Galahad disappear into the distance as he single-mindedly pursues the elusive grail. He tells of a forbidding stretch of water

Not to be crost, save that some ancient king
Had built a way, where, link’d with many a bridge,
A thousand piers ran into the great Sea.
And Galahad fled along them bridge by bridge,
And every bridge as quickly as he crost
Sprang into fire and vanish’d, tho’ I yearn’d
To follow. (lines 501-07)

The image is striking and quite final. Galahad needn’t burn his bridges behind him, as they burn themselves. The image of the grail moves ahead of him, eventually disappearing in a distance, unreachable city. Does Galahad ever catch up with the grail? Neither Tennyson nor his proxy, Percivale, seems to know. How could they?

That long-ago professor felt that Tennyson described something far too costly for both the frustrated quester, Percivale, and the apparently successful one, Galahad. Yet, if the quest proved too costly, why does Percivale say that he “yearn’d to follow”?

The price of following Christ is steep. The New Testament continually emphasizes this uneasy truth. Luke 14:26 tells the would-be follower that he must be prepared to hate his family for Christ’s sake. In Luke 9:23-26, we read

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

Arthur correctly identifies the grail quest as a costly one, even before the knights depart. Yet he does not forbid his knights to engage on it, even as he realizes that some of them will not return to him.

Should we see Galahad as a tragic figure? Despite what my professor suggested, we should not. Tennyson does not present Percivale, his primary narrator, as a disillusioned man, broken by the quest. Percivale does not regret taking the quest. His regret lies in failing at it, in having watched Galahad race across bridges that burned behind him. Whether Galahad ever reached the grail or not is immaterial to Percivale. What matters is that he drew closer to it than any of the other knights. And Percivale, having pursued the quest with all his powers, should not be viewed as a tragic figure either.

As much fun as it is to watch Monty Python’s version of the grail quest, I’m left believing that that group missed something that Tennyson understood.

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By Dr. Mark – February 19, 2012

Another List of the 100 Greatest Novels

The Guardian newspaper from England produced a list of 100 greatest novels that seems interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, the fact that Pilgrim’s Progress comes in at number two is intriguing. Since many literary scholars identify Defoe as the first English novelist, it’s fairly amazing that a book produced fifty years earlier not only makes the list but almost tops it.

Granted, the list has a bias for earlier works. The top eight predate 1800, but to recognize Bunyan’s masterpiece as a novel at all is rather unusual these days.

On the other hand, a number of works surprise me with their inclusion. The Catcher in the Rye isn’t even the best work by Salinger. For all my love of Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood scarcely feels like a novel as opposed to some loosely connected short stories. Lolita, yes, but On the Road? Both Martin and Kingsley Amis? Philip Pullman?

Such lists are interesting for discussion, but far more interesting, I hope, is to read the works listed and, rather than ranking, experience them.

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By Dr. Mark – February 18, 2012

Vivien Meets Delilah–Idylls of the King, “Merlin and Vivien”

A poem such as “Merlin and Vivien,” one of Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King, represents for the restless postmodern all that is wrong with Victorian poetry. The poem’s roughly 1,000 lines feature a huge amount of lengthy discourse, plenty of apparently pointless description, and precious little action. To some degree, the “boringness quotient” for this poem represents its origin in a day of longer attention spans, when reading poetry aloud in the parlor marked a good evening’s entertainment. However, even in an age of on-demand video, one can see the value in Tennyson’s slow-moving narrative.

The story related in this poem is fairly simple. Vivien has left King Mark with the intention of causing some measure of problem for Arthur and his court. Having attempted to sow discontent through palace gossip, she eventually sets her attentions on Merlin, assuming that if she can neutralize his power within Arthur’s circle, she will do significant damage to his rule. Vivien seduces Merlin and extracts from him the knowledge of a particular charm, known only to him. Through this spell, she manages to permanently confine Merlin in a hollow oak tree, where he appears dead to all but her. This final action comprises the last eight lines of the poem:

Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm
Of woven paces and of waving hands,
And in the hollow oak he lay as dead,
And lost to life and use and name and fame.

Then crying “I have made his glory mine,”
And shrieking out “O fool!” the harlot leapt
Adown the forest, and the thicket closed
Behind her, and the forest echoed “fool.”

Nothing in the poem has moved quickly until this climax, and then it ends almost before it begins. Imagine, if you will, a contemporary motion picture dealing with this episode. What might we expect in that final scene. Certainly it last more than a few seconds, yet such is all that Tennyson dedicates to the action.

The bulk of this work lies in the lengthy conversation between the two characters as well as considerable description that seems to do little to advance the plot. Such a conclusion, however, is not entirely fair. Throughout the poem, the reader is shown various elements of description that identify Vivien as an unseemly character. In several passages, serpent imagery reveals her true nature:

She paused, she turned away, she hung her head,
The snake of gold slid from her hair, the braid
Slipt and uncoiled itself, she wept afresh,
And the dark wood grew darker toward the storm

Just as Tennyson presents these details to the reader, the reader can assume the clever and perceptive Merlin to be privy to them. Still, he allows himself to be seduced by the woman. Similarly, the lengthy discussion helps to disclose the true character of Vivien, making Merlin’s eventual surrender less explicable.

Any reader, knowledgeable of the Bible, will see in this account a parallel of the story of Samson and Delilah in Judges 16. Just as Samson might be excused for answering the question of his strength the first time, Merlin might be excused for thinking Vivien a sympathetic character early in this exchange. But after Delilah demonstrates three times her intention to betray Samson, Samson appears far more foolish than Delilah appears dishonest. In the same fashion, Merlin listens to the various slanders Vivien speaks against Arthur’s knights. He has plentiful material from which to fashion a proper understanding of her character, yet he eventually falls for her tactics and gives up his secret.

In Mallory’s telling of this story, the Vivien character is chaste, pursued by the lusts of Merlin. Does Tennyson betray a mistrust of women here? Perhaps, but I believe there is more at work that simple misogyny. Throughout the Idylls, Tennyson paints Arthur in much the same way that the Bible paints David. Both are good but flawed kings, kings who come as close as one can hope to redeeming his people. Yet both of them fail, destroyed by typical human flaws. In this episode, Tennyson demonstrates some of those flaws played out in the people around Arthur. Vivien is driven by hatred to discover a new avenue for harm. Merlin, despite his power, allows himself to be overcome by a desire that he must know is illusory.

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By Dr. Mark – February 15, 2012

The Classic Case of the Absent Father–Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

I have a theory about
Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses.” Not being a Victorian scholar, I’m not at all sure how original my theory is, but since you probably don’t know how original it is either, I’ll share it with you. Should you happen to know a great deal about Tennyson criticism, feel free to share your insights.

Not known as a great practitioner of the dramatic monologue like my distant kinsman, Robert Browning, Tennyson nonetheless engaged in that genre in this lyric. This much is utterly noncontroversial, as the poem is clearly written in the voice of Ulysses himself. What is less clear is who hears the Ithacan’s words as Tennyson presents them. To my mind, there are three audiences to be considered over the poem’s course.

The first 32 lines of “Ulysses,” can be imagined as Ulysses speaking confidentially to Telemachus as the two walk from the house toward the waiting ship. Alternately, this could be Ulysses speaking to himself. In either case, the great man is rationalizing his departure apparently three years after returning after an absence of 20 years. Despite his lofty words, Ulysses discloses the basically selfish aspect of his thoughts. Nine times over those 32 lines he uses the word “I.” When we consider all the first person pronouns and possessives, we can add another six cases. Therefore, Ulysses refers to himself roughly once every two lines. Even when his words do not directly reference himself, his desires and intentions are clearly at the fore:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life!

God forbid that the husband, father, and ruler of a place–even a place filled with a “savage race”–should have to endure dullness and mere breathing!

The second section extends from line 33 to 43. In this section, I would suggest that Ulysses speaks to those who will remain behind in Ithaca under Telemachus’ leadership. Suddenly, the hero’s words are not about him any longer but about his son. The “savage race” has become a “rugged people.” Yet even in this brief speech, Ulysses discloses the lesser esteem he shows to the one who would remain at home and perform the “common duties.” Telemachus is credited with “slow prudence,” “tenderness,” and piety. As much as Ulysses attempts to say good words on his son’s behalf, one can discern an emotion verging on contempt for this gentler person.

At line 44 and continuing through the poem’s end at 70, the tone shifts again. Having dispatched this pedestrian but necessary matter of Telemachus, Ulysses sets his mind again outward. In this portion, I would suggest, he speaks to those who will be journeying with him on the ship, attempting to fire their enthusiasm for the adventure at hand. Interestingly, Ulysses speaks to this new crew as if they were his former crew, all of whom died between Troy and Calypso’s island. He refers to them as “My mariners,/ Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,” apparently forgetting that these men did not fight on the plains of Troy and did not face Scylla and Carybdis with him. But in this man’s world, the crew is simply a necessary tool. Old sailors or new sailors do not matter. They are interchangeable. Ultimately, their fates and their pasts are secondary to his. If this were the old crew, they might recall the unnecessary danger Ulysses led them into. They might recall hubris of a man who felt compelled, having fooled Polyphemus with his No-Man name, to taunt the giant with his name as he sailed away, something that did nothing to dispel the anger of Poseidon later in the voyage.

Tennyson’s Ulysses is a seductive character. We read his arguments, especially in the first and third sections, and find ourselves pulled along. Yet this is the reputation of Ulysses, the man of twists and turns, a man as mighty with words as he is with weapons. In the end, though, he is an unsatisfying and unsavory character, an adventurer who shirks his duller but more essential duties. Certainly Tennyson does not cast him with as much scorn as did Dante, but in this poem, Ulysses is, at best, an ambivalent character.

 

 

 

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By Dr. Mark – February 14, 2012

Wanted: The Misfit

Over at the “Composites Blog,” they create police-style composite drawings of literary characters based on descriptions provided in the work. My browsing suggests that most literary characters are uglier than I would have expected. Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit looks far less menacing than I would have thought.

 

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By Dr. Mark – February 11, 2012

Something Borrowed by Byron

It seems that the same ghost story session that led Mary Shelley to create the story of Victor Frankenstein inspired Lord Byron to create his closet drama
“Manfred.” I do hope to be pardoned for finding this piece of verse to be a remarkably unoriginal work. What might seem most surprising is one of the sources that I would suggest for it.

Having just read and written about Walpole’s Castle of Otranto sent me to this piece of Byron, a work I hadn’t read since Professor Shannon’s British Literature II course during my undergrad program. Dr. Shannon so loved the Romantics that she dedicated more than half of our sixteen weeks together to the six principal poets before flying through the Victorians, skipping the PreRaphaelites (if memory serves), and the Moderns. No time was spent on fiction or drama. All of this is not particularly relevant to our consideration of “Manfred,” but I did want to vent this frustration after hanging onto it for nearly 30 years.

What led me from Otranto to “Manfred” was the name Manfred, which, of course, figured significantly in Walpole’s archetypal gothic novel. Certainly Byron’s Manfred is not the same character as Walpole’s Manfred, yet the similarities should be noted. Just as the Count of Otranto finds himself something of a prisoner in his own castle, haunted by his past misdeeds, Byron’s Manfred is simply a bundle of regrets who finds himself increasingly imprisoned in his own tower, meeting a semi-supernatural fate at the work’s close.

At the same time, the Faust myth, specifically Goethe’s version, supplies echoes in Byron’s poem. There is no deal with the devil in “Manfred,” yet the invocation of supernatural forces figures significantly. Interestingly, Manfred neither repents (like Goethe’s Faust) nor finds himself hauled off to perdition by slavering demons (like Marlowe’s Faustus). Instead, he dismisses his demonic escort, proclaiming that they possess no power over him.

What are they to such as thee?
Must crimes be punish’d but by other crimes,
And greater criminals?– Back to thy hell!
Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
What I have done is done; I bear within
A torture which could nothing gain from thine.

Who knew that hellish minions could be discharged with a proclamation of feelings? And to what effect does this pseudo-heroic speech rise? Manfred dies ten lines later, the Abbot shuddering at the idea of his destination.

This brings me around to the other sources that I would suggest for this work, both of which are anachronistic. Did Byron somehow possess knowledge, 200 years ahead of time, of David Caruso’s Horatio character from CSI: Miami? Like Horatio (a name that appears in the epigraph for “Manfred.” Coincidence? Almost certainly.) Manfred spends a revolting portion of his time on earth brooding.

And while on his time-traveling source mission, perhaps Byron also stopped by a bookstore and purchased the Twilight books. Like the angst-ridden teens of Stephanie Myers’ works, Manfred seems intent on telling everyone, earthly or otherwise, just how tortured, misunderstood, and wholly different he is. Like those characters, Manfred makes me want to break into a slapfest. Just what has this guy done that makes him so awful? Apparently it had something to do with his lost love, Astarte, whom he conjures but then resists speaking to. Perhaps the true reason that Manfred dies at the end of Act IV is that he had so terribly annoyed everyone in the spiritual realm.

The heart of Manfred’s problem, it seems lies in the earliest lines of the work.

The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.
Philosophy and science, and the springs
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world,
I have essay’d, and in my mind there is
A power to make these subject to itself–
But they avail not: I have done men good,
And I have met with good even among men–
But this avail’d not: I have had my foes,
And none have baffled, many fallen before me–
But this avail’d not:

Essentially, Manfred notes that the world is fallen and no work of man can fix it or even mitigate the pain associated with life in a sinful world. Byron is never described as a Christian poet, yet in this theme, he seems to have come to the center of life as described by Genesis 3 and beyond.

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By Dr. Mark – February 11, 2012

Izaak Walton Lands a Whopper

During the aftermath of the English Civil War, as the Puritan forces of Oliver Cromwell held the reins of power in England, a determined royalist and Anglican like Izaak Walton couldn’t exactly parade his true politics or theology–intertwined as they were–in safety. So what’s a thoughtful linen-draper like Walton to do? Walton went fishing.

One editor of Izaak Walton, Jonquil Bevan, insists that the author’s magnum opus,
The Complete Angler, stands as a sort of coded set of instructions to the down-but-not-out advocates of high-church Church of England. According to Bevan, it seems, you have anglers. You have Anglicans. Coincidence? I think not. The only problem with this theory is that if “angler” is really code for “Anglican,” it’s not entirely clear just what Walton’s message would be. The term, “Anglican,” it seems, while dating back perhaps a hundred years before Walton wrote, it did not come into common usage until a couple of hundred years after his peak. But even ignoring this fact, which perhaps makes his code more concealable, I’m not sure what to make of his work. Are the various fish species to be taken as different works for the Anglican to do? Are these fish representative of different sorts of men referred to when Jesus promised to make Peter and Andrew fishers of men? Or are they, as the text would suggest, simply fish?

What makes this understanding of Walton’s work difficult is its divided nature. Portions of The Complete Angler, such as the first chapter, stand as polemics on the excellence of fishing compared with other pastimes. Other parts abound with pastoral sentiments. The bulk of the work, on the other hand, is rather dry and straight-forward reporting on the proper ways to pursue, catch, and cook various sorts of fish.

Like his contemporary John Bunyan, Walton employs the artifice of dialogues to aid in presenting his opinions. At times, Walton’s hero, Piscator, forgets himself even more than do Bunyan’s characters in their most pedantic modes, droning on for pages regarding the Chub or the Dace.

The early three-way conversation between the angler and his hawking and hunting traveling companions, comes closest to sounding like a coded apology for an out-of-favor variety of Christianity. Consider these lines:

I hope you will not judge my earnestness to be impatience; and for my simplicity, if by that you mean a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were (as most Anglers are) quiet men, and followers of peace; men that were so simply-wise, as not to sell their Consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die; If you mean such simple men as lived in those times when there were fewer Lawyers . . . I say sir, if you take us Anglers to be such simple men as I have spoke of, then my self  and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood.

Such a passage sounds impressive and clearly refers to something more significant than the sport of fishing. However, one would question whether if refers properly to the Anglicanism then in disfavor in England. If Piscator’s angling is to be equated with Anglicanism, then what are we to make of Venator the hunter and Auceps the hawker? Do they represent Puritanism and Catholicism respectively? There seems little evidence to support such identification. And what, in the paragraph quoted above, identifies with the pre-Civil-War Church of England. One need only stroll around Canterbury Cathedral for a moment to feel that the movement suggested in Piscator’s words does not completely align with the reality of the Anglican church.

All that said, it seems clear that Walton’s little hybrid book represents fishing in a positive light. Although his advice on catching English fish is not something easy to test for this Midwestern fisherman, his embrace of fishing as a combination of lifestyle, philosophy, and practical action does correspond with the sport practices some 350 years after his time.

By the way, an absolutely marvelous reading of not only Walton but other early fishing writers can be found in your faithful blogger’s
Haunted by Waters.

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By Dr. Mark – February 10, 2012