The saga of prayer: The poetry of Dylan Thomas [Reprint 2015 ed.] 9783111391625, 9783111029122

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STUDIES

IN ENGLISH Volume LXVII

LITERATURE

THE SAGA OF

PRAYER THE POETRY OF D Y L A N THOMAS by

R O B E R T K. B U R D E T T E

1972

MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1972 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 68-23203

Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague

CONTENTS

I. Introduction Π. Gnosticism and Gnosis

7 10

PART ONE IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

III. IV. V. VI. VII.

Light and Darkness The Celestial Sea House and Garments Sleep and Awakening The Maiden Soul

29 45 52 60 69 PART TWO

FOUR LONG POEMS

VIII. IX. X. XI.

"Poem on his Birthday" "Vision and Prayer" "In Country Sleep" "Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait"

XII. Conclusion Bibliography Index

.

.

.

.

77 98 120 139 148 158 159

I INTRODUCTION

The most persistent obstacle to an assessment of the quality of Dylan Thomas's poetry has been a basic one - the poems are difficult to understand. This difficulty has not consigned the poetry to silence, for it has a charm of sound and sheer verbal energy that are enough for some and tantalizing for others; the reader feels that meaning, though elusive, is there, especially when he hears Thomas's recorded readings of his own poetry. But the understanding that might fulfill the experience of the poems remains confused. It seems clear that Thomas thought meaning to be just as important as sound - though he never (quite rightly) offered to explicate his poetry - as this statement, from a letter to Vernon Watkins, indicates. I don't find your way of criticizing at all irritating; you know that. It's the most helpful there is for me, and I want it to go on. About many suggestions of yours we'll always, of course, disagree, especially when they seem completely to misunderstand my meaning. . . . I think you are liable, in your criticisms of me, to underrate the value - or, rather, the integrity, the wholeness - of what I am saying or trying to make clear that I am saying, and often to suggest alterations or amendments for purely musical motives.1

The 'purely musical motives' were clearly not enough for Thomas, nor would sheer 'music' be enough to make the poetry live. Some of Thomas's statements about poetry provide faint clues to his subject matter and suggest what he thought to be basic to 1

Letters to Vernon Watkins, ed. Vernon Watkins (London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1957), p. 66.

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INTRODUCTION

poetry, and life. For example, in reply to the question, "Do you intend your poetry to be useful to yourself or others?" Thomas replied: To both. Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision that depends in its intensity on the strength of the labour put into the creation of the poetry. My poetry is, or should be, useful to me for one reason: it is the record of my individual struggle from darkness towards some measure of light. . . . My poetry is, or should be, useful to others for its individual recording of that same struggle with which they are necessarily acquainted.8 This statement indicates that his poetry attempts to render an experience of 'vision', but remains silent about the nature of that vision. Again, in the following comments on poetry in general there is little to clarify his own poetry, although these remarks are quite meaningful and significant after some degree of understanding has been reached. Some people react physically to the magic of poetry, to the moments, that is, of authentic revelation, of the communication, the sharing, at its highest level, of personal experience; they say they feel a twanging at their tear ducts, or a prickling of the scalp, or a tickling of the spine, or tremors in what they hope is their heart. Others say that they have a kind or a sort of a vague feeling somewhere that "this is the real stuff." Others claim that their "purely aesthetic emotion" was induced by certain assonances and alliterations. And some are content merely to say, as they said of the first cinematographic picture, "By God, it moves." And so, of course, by God, it does, for that is another name for the magic beyond definition. . . .3 This statement does suggest that Thomas, in good humor, could use the word 'God' with serious intent, as 'the magic beyond definition', something unknown and indescribable, but there is n o indication that his poetry is therefore religious. Neither is there any record of Thomas's non-literary reading. He mentions, in a recorded introductory talk, that he read many 1

Quite Early One Morning (New York, New Directions Paperbook, 1960), p. 188. 3 Quite Early, 192.

INTRODUCTION

9

poets, as many as he could, and he names many, but this list does not help to clarify the meaning of his own poetry. One must turn to the poetry itself. The intent of this study is to demonstrate that Thomas's work does have a consistent meaning which unifies the poems and to indicate the nature of that meaning. This study also suggests that Thomas's religious beliefs are in a long tradition of religious experience that is closely allied to the 'occult tradition', represented here by Gnosticism. A study of that doctrine and its imagery, comparing it with Thomas's thought and imagery, permits a more cohesive understanding of the poems, even though it does not mean that Thomas can be called 'a Gnostic'. His thought and language resemble those of Gnosticism, itself a combination of many religious groups. Further, Dylan Thomas, far from being alone in his belief, is in the middle of a religious attitude that permeates modern literature and includes, in varying ways, poets like Yeats, Rilke, Lawrence, and Eliot. This religious attitude has parallels in modern psychology which suggest that modern poets, including Dylan Thomas, speak to a wider audience than we usually suppose. In what follows I am attempting to contribute to the understanding of Thomas's poetry and to suggest that his is an eloquent voice among many that speak his tongue and share his revelation.

π GNOSTICISM A N D GNOSIS

'Gnosticism' is a broad term used to refer to various religious systems of thought that flourished from about the second century B.C. to the fourth century A.D. in the Mediterranean West and the Near East. These various systems of thought seldom referred to themselves as 'gnostic', though all centered their philosophy and belief in the idea, or experience, of the Gnosis, a knowledge of the one Essence. The 'Gnostics', then, were never one unified sect; they were members of separate religious groups whose beliefs and symbols were similar. Gnosticism includes writings in Greek, Coptic, Aramaic, Persian, Turkish, and Chinese, representing religions like the Hermetic system of Egypt, the Mandaean sect of Iraq, and the Manichaeans of the Near East and central Asia. 1 Accordingly we can speak of the gnostic doctrine only as an abstraction. The leading Gnostics displayed pronounced intellectual individualism, and the mythological imagination of the whole movement was incessantly fertile. Non-conformism was almost a principle of the gnostic mind and was closely connected with the doctrine of the sovereign "spirit" as a source of direct knowledge and illumination. . . . The great system builders like Ptolemaceus, Basilides, Mani erected ingenious and elaborate speculative structures which are original creations of individual minds yet at the same time variations and developments of certain main themes shared by all. . . .2 Gnosticism is a heterodox religion of many branches with many ancient sources. 1

Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (Boston, Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 3941. The first part of this book is an excellent introduction to the history of Gnosticism. « Jonas, 41-42.

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11

Basically, Gnosticism represents the appearance of oriental strains of thought in the Hellenic world, a marriage between East and West. The mysteries of ancient mythologies are conceptualized and dramatized by gnostic writers. Eastern mysticism blends with Greek philosophy to produce conscious myths of mental processes and interpretations of standing myths that turn their vast events inward. Ancient mystery cults, whose initiates only were educated in the mystic meanings of myths and rites, were now open to the speculative examination of Hellenistic philosophy. What had been expressed in symbols and myths was now expressed in the language of rational discourse which attempted to unveil the wisdom hidden by many centuries of inherited metaphor. This philosophical language itself had need of analogy and allegory, but its primary task was interpretation - to discover the spiritual meanings that underlay the external narratives of gods and heroes. Gnosticism internalized what had popularly been outside man - his gods. . . . The gnostic systems compounded everything - oriental mythologies, astrological doctrines, Iranian theology, elements of Jewish tradition, whether Biblical, rabbinical, or occult, Christian salvationeschatology, Platonic terms and concepts.3

In Gnosticism the intellectual energy of Greece combines with oriental inwardness to produce a self-conscious mysticism that speculates philosophically even as it creates symbolic myths. Thus its immediate past, its exact origin, is confused, and it remains a heterodox religious attitude rather than one religion. That attitude has its core in the concept of 'Gnosis', the experience of 'knowing' God, of knowing the unknown. The very idea of 'knowing that which cannot be known' suggests the difficulty of any logical explanation or clear description of this experience. The discussion must proceed with abstractions and analogies, granting that neither can satisfy fully. If the experience itself is rooted in paradox, any attempt to speak of that experience must respect the elusive spin of any serious paradox. ® Jonas, 25.

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A language that usually refers to one thing at a time must be embarrassed when it must cope with two things at once. This very embarrassment requires symbol and myth, something to mediate between abstraction and event. The experience of Gnosis could be described as an acute awareness of the unity of existence and essence, body and spirit, becoming and being, time and eternity, earth and heaven, movement and stasis. By 'existence' I mean the world of phenomena, of sensory data experienced in time and space that can be measured. This is the 'everyday' world of events and objects that are assumed to be separable, to have observable bounds in space and time. This is the world in which observer is distinguished from observed, in which something either is what it is or is not. Here, the rational faculty distinguishes one thing from another; reason proceeds 'logically'. The 'existential' or 'natural' world of empirical data is a collection of sensible ectypes. But an ectype is a 'copy' of something which is its archetype, its original. The original has all the qualities of its myriad copies, and in this sense the concept of archetype is that of 'essence'. Any 'thing' has its essence, its core of all its qualities. By analogy with the sensible world, we speak of a 'world of essences', the 'essential' world. This world is unavailable to the senses, usually, and may be called the 'spiritual' world, a collection of archetypes, essences, spirits. By analogy, again, this essential world is the 'center', the 'core', the 'innermost being', of the existential world. And by extension of the concept of essence, we can posit an Essence-of-essences, an infinitely innermost Being. This Essence may be 'intuited', but may not be perceived by the senses. For this discussion, then, the essential world is 'heaven' and 'spirit'; the existential world is 'earth' and 'body'. And essence is assumed to be the source or generator of existence. 'Heaven' is the innermost source of 'earth'; 'spirit' is the essence of 'body'. By analogy with natural processes, spirit is the 'seed' of the body, heaven the 'seed' of earth. The seed may be imagined to have 'in' it all the qualities of the plant; it is the essence of the plant-to-be, the source of the life of the plant. To see this seed,

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

13

its surrounding husks must be stripped away. The analogy extends to the idea of the 'naked truth', the central archetype itself with nothing to distort it. To see the seed, one must have light. By analogy, again: to know the essence, experience it, is to 'see' by 'light'. Hie 'knowledge' then becomes simply 'light' ; the essence-seed radiates light within its enveloping 'darkness' of existence-husks and permits vision. The vision is knowledge. Gnosis is 'knowledge' of the essential world; but this knowledge is experienced in the existential world. The experience of Gnosis is an awareness of the union of essence and existence. Since the essential world is not sensible, some other faculty permits this awareness which is not 'logical' or 'rational': "Knowledge" is by itself a purely formal term and does not specify what is to be known; neither does it specify the psychological manner and subjective significance of possessing knowledge or the ways in which it is acquired. As for what the knowledge is about, the associations of the term most familiar to the classically trained reader point to rational objects, and accordingly to natural reason as the organ for acquiring and possessing knowledge. In the gnostic context, however, "knowledge" has an emphatically religious or supranatural meaning. . . . On the one hand it is closely bound up with revelationary experience, so that reception of the truth either through sacred and secret lore or through inner illumination replaces rational argument and theory . . . ; on the other hand, . . . "knowledge" is not just theoretical information about certain things but is itself, as a modification of the human condition, charged with performing a function in the bringing about of salvation. 4

Gnosis in itself a spiritual event. It is an experience that affects the state of the knower's being, that 'transforms' him rather than 'informs' him.5 The knowledge of Essence, an experience outside time and space, brings to consciousness a participation in the eternity of the essential world. The Gnosis is not an end in itself; it is but the beginning of the True Knowledge of God. They who receive the Baptism of the Mind are made "perfect men," not Perfect. . . . * Jonas, 34-35. 5 Jonas, 35.

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Those who have received this Baptism know why they have come into being, - the purpose of life. They become consciously immortal; they know they are deathless, they do not only believe it; their immortality is no longer a belief, it is a fact of knowledge.· A claim of this kind sounds strange to the West, for usually 'God' is assumed to be wholly 'above' man. But for the Gnostic, 'God' is the essence in man. This is perhaps the main reason for the expulsion of Christian Gnostics and Gnosticism from the Church; for a man who finds God in himself is unlikely to function well in the political sphere of any church. The central idea of knowledge of God is, then, paradoxical, for Gnosis is 'knowledge' of that which cannot be known. And this element of paradox remains, throughout the ideas of Gnosticism, a difficulty which demands patience or devotion, or both. This 'knowledge' is related to something like 'intuition', a knowing which may not be forced, which must be permitted. The knowing becomes a union with what is known, so that the knower does not feel himself separate from the known but in it. The knower is almost like an eye that is beholding itself; he is in identity with the known and cannot, speaking conventionally, describe himself (the union of knower and known) because he is not 'outside' himself. To know is to 'see', and to see we must have light. A knowledge of God, then, is an attainment of pure, unmixed light; it is a vision of that pure light. God is then described as pure light, as The Light. To see The Light is to 'see', or know, God. But the physical organ of sight, the human eye, cannot bear too much light; it is blinded by it. The seeing, the vision, of The Light is blinding to conventional sight, knowledge, and must be another kind of seeing, knowing. And to look at pure light would be to look at 'nothing'; in fact, a vision of pure light would be 'blinding', would produce utter darkness. And that utter darkness would be indescribable, unknowable: it would be 'nothing at all', since it would permit no seeing, no knowledge. This vision analβ

G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis (3 vols.; London, Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906), II, p. 97.

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

15

ogy, then, renders the idea of the inscrutability of God. The eye that sees The Light is another kind of eye. The paradox of the blinding vision, the knowledge which knows 'nothing', is typical of the problem of discussing the gnostic experience. It is an experience which refuses discursive terms and permits only the figurative. God is infinitely 'above' the creation, the cosmos; God 'encompasses' the cosmos. But God is also always 'within' the cosmos, at the very 'center' of all things. He is the 'highest', but also the 'deepest'; it depends upon the analogy. The basic idea is that God is the ultimate of all things - physical and spiritual - the very Essence of all, and the most 'real' of all. It is this superlative element that is important. God is conceived of as the 'most' of anything, the last and first source, and therefore the most real. Any metaphor which expresses this essence, this source of the essence, will relate to the concept of God. Since it is easy to compare with the familiar, the habit of making analogies with human processes is natural to gnostic language. The human process of action may be traced to the mind as the beginning of the act, as the source of the body's movements. What is most essential, then, is the mind. So God is rendered as The Mind, the source of all thought, and thought as the source of all life. The creation, then, becomes God continually thinking the cosmos - the cosmos which is perceivable by the senses. There are, then, two aspects of creation - the thoughtcosmos (the archetype) and its 'copy', the sense-cosmos - which have a common source, The Mind. God the Father is Mind, who produces Thought, or the Logos, the Son. The Son then 'makes' the sense-cosmos. The analogy, again, is to human life. Similarly, Mind, the Father, is thought of as impregnating Matter, the Mother, to produce the thought-cosmos, the Son. Father, Mother, and Son are aspects of God rather than separate deities. The analogy is an attempt to speak of the inscrutable. When God 'speaks', the Word is created, and the Word is thought of as the Son of God. But the Son, the Word, the Logos, is still God; the Son is God, Mind, in action. Similarly, Matter is the 'female' aspect of God who, as ultimate source, is necessarily

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androgynous. The cosmos is then thought of as the body of God - to continue the human analogy. And since all parts of the human body 'are' the man, all parts of the cosmos 'are' God. But just as the essence of a man may be said to be his mind, his soul, his spirit, so the essence of God is Mind, Soul, Spirit. And here the gnostic paradox becomes vitally important. Is the analogy from man to God - or the reverse? In other words, is the concept of God as essential source actually an analogue for the essence of man? Is 'God' then, the essence of the mind of man - the indefinable 'most-real' of the mind-soul-spirit of man? If so, Gnosis must be knowledge of self, of the essence of the self. Gnosis would then be " . . . a psychological technique of inner transformations by which the self, while still in the body, might attain the Absolute as an immanent, if temporary, condition . . ,".7 God is in man, is man's essence, and to 'know' God is to 'know' the self, to experience the very core of the self, which is God-the-essence. God, then, is transcendent and immanent. To experience the self-essence is to experience the essence of the cosmos. Just as all of the cosmos is the body of God, so are all minds in The Mind. With this awareness of the central paradox of Gnosis in mind, a summary of the symbols associated with it is more meaningful. The macrocosm (and the mind) is usually conceived as ten concentric 'spheres', the outermost of which is the Infinite one of God, who is Light, Mind, Father, Source. The ninth sphere is the sphere of the Logos, the Son of God, the creating force; it is also the Eternal Cosmos, the essence of the sensible cosmos. The eighth sphere is the Ogdoad, the boundary between the essence and the existent, but still of the essential, 'real' nature, not subject to time. In this eighth sphere are the souls of the 'purified', the souls free from the material cosmos. This is the Plain of Truth, at which the 'knowing' soul arrives. These three uppermostoutermost spheres are bathed in light which is pure; they form a unit separate from the other seven, in that they are aspects of God-Mind and are eternal, not subject to time. They are the Godhead, the Essence. 7

Jonas, 165.

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The seven spheres of the cosmos 'above' the earth are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Each of these exerts an 'influence' on the souls living on earth, these influences relating to the necessities of an existence subject to time and change. Below the Moon is the world of the earth, the 'this world' of the body and its functions, the sublunary world of phenomena. When a soul is born, it separates from the tenth sphere and descends through the spheres to earth, where it takes physical form. Below the eighth sphere is the existential cosmos of change and time; this sensible cosmos is imaged as a sea. Below the Plain of Truth of the eight sphere, the sphere of the 'those-that-are' (not subject to change), is the Great Green Sea of the seven spheres and earth. The earth, then, is at the bottom of this celestial sea. As the soul descends, it is 'clothed' by the influences of the seven spheres with characteristics necessary for the existential soul, and is finally, under the moon, 'clothed' with the body, the final step in the soul's descent. The descent is thought of as a material manifesting of that which was of the Essence. The soul may be referred to as a 'seed' or 'grain' of light falling into the darkness of matter. The seed issues from the Father and is born from the Mother-matter into 'this life'. In the birth analogy, the womb is matter, impregnated by the soul-seed of the Father. Since the soul originates in the spheres of Light, those spheres are referred to as its 'home', and, as it falls to the material life, the soul is thought of as 'forgetting', but not quite forgetting, its home. The soul living in 'this world', the sublunary world, is then, a 'stranger', a man away from 'home'. The soul may seem completely to forget its home, but when it remembers, it longs to return home. In 'this world' the soul is a sojourner who is homesick and yearns to return. Also, since the spheres of Light are the essence and source of true Life, the descent of the soul is like a 'death'. The soul 'dies' to the spheres of eternal truth, of that-which-is, and 'falls' into the world, or worlds, of the sea, the 'underworld' or 'this world' of material ectypes. When the soul returns to its home, it "ascends', throwing off

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its material and timely garments, and arrives, 'naked', at the eighth sphere, the Plain of Truth, from whence it further ascends to ultimate union with pure Light, or God. This descendingascending passageway is imaged as the Way, or as a ladder. And the 'ascent' is considered difficult and arduous. To 'ascend home' is also to 'die'; now, however, the 'death' is a dying from the material world, a departure for 'home', the spheres of Light. Further, this ascending 'death' may refer to any experience of 'departure' from the material world, whether or not that departure involves a literal death of the body. In other words, the gnostic vision may be called 'death'. Since the sensible cosmos is portrayed as a great sea, a passage to the Plain of Truth from the earthly life may be called a 'voyage', a 'sailing'. This voyage would then refer to any departure for the spheres of Light. The gnostic experience then becomes a 'sea' voyage. The descent of the soul is birth. The returning ascent of the soul, then, is a rebirth, and the seed-womb analogy is reversed in meaning. Now the seed of Light enters the womb of Wisdom, and the child is 'born' into the 'other' land, the 'home' land of Light. The experience is a 'marriage' between the Light of God and a Virgin soul which produces a pure Son, or enlightened Man. To be reborn is to ascend, to die, to sail, to 'know' God; God has 'known' (entered) the soul, the Virgin. This system of symbols permits or encourages paradox. 'Death' takes on several meanings. 'Birth' can refer to physical birth or spiritual rebirth. 'Sea' may be the cosmic sea, the Great Green. 'Life' may refer to The Life (The Light) or 'this life'. The 'living' may be 'dead', the 'dead' 'living'. To enter the 'womb' may refer to the experience of Gnosis or to the conventional process of gestation. For the Gnostic, the life of 'this world' may be called 'sleep' and 'intoxication'. As the soul descends, it is 'drugged', becomes 'drunk', with matter until it falls 'asleep'. It is almost unconscious of the Real, the Source, the Light it came from, and is thus 'asleep', 'drunk', 'drugged'. To realize its material state, to begin the Way home, the soul must 'awake' from its 'sleep', must be

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'called' by a 'messenger' from home. This messenger is the 'true' self who was left at home, who now comes to bring the 'sleeper' to Light. This is another gnostic analogy and introduces the concept of 'selves'. The gnostic Man has various selves, aspects: Body, Spirit, Soul, Mind. These are his selves, his 'principles'. In the gnostic Corpus Hermeticum the principles are conceived as envelopes: "Mind taketh, then, the soul for, as it were, an envelope. And soul itself being, too, a thing divine, doth use the spirit as its envelope, while spirit doth pervade the living creature."8 This concept of selves reinforces the relationship of Man to the macrocosm. In reaching the tenth sphere, Mind, the gnostic has reached his own highest (deepest) self. . . . An ascending scale of mental states replaces the stations of the mythical itinerary; the dynamics of progressive spiritual self-transformation [replaces] the spatial thrust through the heavenly spheres. Thus could transcendence itself be turned into immanence, the whole process become spiritualized and put within the power and the orbit of the subject.9

It may seem that this gnostic view of reality is one which shudders at 'this world' and turns away in disgust from matter, the body, passion, beauty - everything that is valued in the life we live. This is so only by hyperbole. In expressing the supreme truth, reality, of the gnostic experience, the speaker must push up and down. But 'this world' is necessarily sacred too if it is the Body of God. Nay, rather is He greater than all names, so great is He, the Father of them all. For verily He is the Only One; and this His work, to be a father. So, if thou forcest me somewhat too bold to speak, His being is conceiving of all things and making them. . . . For there is naught in all the world that is not He. He is Himself, both things that are and things that are not. The things that are He hath made manifest, He keepeth things that are not in Himself. 8

Mead, II, 169-70. From the Hermetic treatise, "The Key", as translated by Mead. 8 Jonas, 165-66.

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He is the God beyond all name; He the unmanifest, He the most manifest; He whom the mind [alone] can contemplate, He visible unto the eyes as well; He is the one of no body, the one of many bodies, nay, rather He of every body. Naught is there which He is not. For all are He and He is all. And for this cause hath He all names, in that they are one Father's. And for this cause hath He Himself no name, in that He's Father of [them] all.1«

Again: . . . He doth not have these things; . . . He is them all Himself. He doth not get them from without, but gives them out [from Him], This is God's sense-and-thought, ever to move all things.11 The apparent shrinking f r o m the material world is only apparent. T h e 'hating' of this world is an hyperbole for 'remembering' the world of the Mind as the source of this world. . . . Real Wisdom consists in balance, in the Middle Way; . . . nothing is evil in itself - the Body is as honourable in its own sphere, as absolutely necessary and indispensable, as in the Mind in its. . . . There is a higher mode of existence, when the things of heaven and earth are within each other, and not apart. As the Introduction to The Book of the Great Logos according to the Mystery has it: "Jesus saith: Blessed is the man who knoweth this Word {Logos), and hath brought down the Heaven and borne up the Earth and raised it Heavenwards." Heaven and Earth must kiss each other for this consummation, this truly Sacred Marriage. 12 The idea of 'knowing' God in 'knowing' the self brings Gnosis into an intimate relationship with psychology and psychotherapy. There seems to be at least a parallel between the experience of Essence in Gnosis and awareness of the 'self' in psychology, as in this statement of Jung's: . . . Even in the second century the ego was considered the exponent of an all-embracing totality, the self - a thought that by no means all 10 Mead, II, 104-05. From Hermetic treatise, "Though Unmanifest God Is Most Manifest". 11 Mead, II, 134-35. From "On Thought and Sense". 12 Mead, II, 96.

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psychologists are familiar with even today. These insights, in the Near East as in India, are the product of intense introspective observation that can only be psychological. Gnosis is undoubtedly a psychological knowledge whose contents derive from the unconscious. It reached its insights by concentrating on the "subjective factor," which consists empirically in the demonstrable influence that the collective unconscious exerts on the conscious mind. This would explain the astonishing parallelism between Gnostic symbolism and the findings of the psychology of the unconscious.1' Freud, too, has considered the relationship between mystic vision and psychotherapy: It can easily be imagined, too, that certain practices of mystics may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between the different regions of the mind, so that, for example, the perceptual system becomes able to grasp relations in the deeper layers of the ego and in the id which would otherwise be inaccessible to it. Whether such a procedure can put one in posssession of ultimate truths, from which all good will flow may be safely doubted. All the same, we must admit that the therapeutic efforts of psychoanalysis have chosen much the same method of approach. For their object is to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of vision, and so to extend its organization that it can take over new portions of the id. Where id was, there shall ego be. It is reclamation work, like the draining of the Zuyder Zee.14 Jung suggests a close relationship between mystic religions and psychotherapy, and some of his remarks about 'self' should help to clarify the concept of Gnosis. First, the concepts of conscious and unconscious should be introduced. Theoretically, no limits can be set to the field of consciousness, since it is capable of indefinite extension. Empirically, however, it always finds its limit when it comes up against the unknown. This consists of everything we do not know, which, therefore, is not related to the ego as the centre of the field of consciousness. The unknown falls into two groups of objects: those which are outside and can be experienced by the senses, and those which are inside and are experienced imme1S

A ion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 223. 14 New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, trans. W. 1. H. Sprott (London, Hogarth Press, 1949), p. 106. Notice Freud's use of the sea simile, reminiscent of the gnostic Great Green Sea of the sense-cosmos.

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diately. The first group comprises the unknown in the outer world; the second the unknown in the inner world. We call this latter territory the unconscious.15 The 'unconscious' world is the 'unknown' 'inner world'. And the known, sensible world is the domain of the ego, at least its usual domain. Freud puts it another way: What is meant by "conscious," we need not discuss; it is beyond all doubt. The oldest and best meaning of the word "unconscious" is the descriptive one; we call "unconscious" any mental process the existence of which we are obliged to assume - because, for instance, we infer it in some way from its effects - but of which we are not directly aware. 16 Again, the 'unknown' or 'unaware' quality is characteristic. The 'self', for Jung, is not separate from conscious ego, but includes it. I have suggested calling the total personality which, though present, cannot be fully known, the self. The ego is, by definition, subordinate to the self and is related to it like a part to the whole. Inside the field of consciousness it has, as we say, free will. By this I do not mean anything philosophical, only the well-known psychological fact of "free choice," or rather the subjective feeling of freedom. . . . Just as circumstances or outside events "happen" to us and limit our freedom, so the self acts upon the ego like an objective occurrence which free will can do very little to alter. 17 The 'self' is the 'total personality', conscious and unconscious, and, in a sense, rules the conscious ego. Now, this 'self is Jung's psychological concept of the unity of Essence, or God, which includes opposites, unites known and unknown, when 'seen'. This vision is a knowledge of 'this one centre', . . . which is on the one hand the heart and governing principle of the macrocosm, and on the other hand its reflection in a point, in a microcosm such as man has always thought to be. He is of the same essence as the universe, and his own mid-point is its centre. This inner experience, shared by Gnostics, alchemists, and mystics alike, has to 15

"

17

Aion, 3. New Introductory Lectures, 94. Aion, 5-6.

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

23

do with the nature of the unconscious - one could even say that it is the experience of the unconscious; for the unconscious, though its objective existence and its influence on consciousness cannot be doubted, is in itself undifferentiable and therefore u n k n o w a b l e . . . . The unconscious gives the impression of multiplicity and unity at once. . . . On t h e other hand the intellect always tries t o discern differences, because it cannot discriminate without them. 18

To understand or experience the 'self is to unite consciousness and unconsciousness, to experience some 'totality' of the personality; and this experience (a "human wholeness as the goal to which the psycho-therapeutic process ultimately leads"19 a "reclamation work, like the draining of the Zuyder Zee"20) is not one of the intellect. The experience, according to Jung's studies, has many precedents. Psychologically the self is a union of conscious (masculine) and unconscious (feminine). It stands for the psychic totality. So formulated, it is a psychological concept. Empirically, however, the self appears spontaneously in the shape of specific symbols. . . . Historically, these symbols are authenticated as God-images. By f a r the most fruitful attempts, however, to find suitable symbolic expressions f o r the self were made by the Gnostics. Most of them - Valentinus and Basilides, for instance - were in reality theologians who, unlike the more orthodox ones, allowed themselves to be influenced in large measure by natural inner experience. . . . Their ideas compensate the asymmetry of G o d postulated by the doctrine of the privatio boni, exactly like those well-known modern tendencies of the unconscious t o produce symbols of totality for bridging the gap between the conscious and the unconscious, which has widened dangerously to the point of universal disorientation. 21

Jung, then, understands the discovery of 'self to be the discovery of 'God', and further equates this process of discovery with Gnosis and with the 'ultimate' goal of psychotherapy; both Gnosis and psychotherapy, he seems to say, may spark "the gap 18 Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 288. 14 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York, Pantheon Books, 1953), p. 27. » Freud, 106. 21 Aion, 268-69.

24

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

between conscious and unconscious, which has widened to the point of universal disorientation". The fundamental sickness of man is the rift between ego and self, between body and spirit; the 'experience' that can heal that wound would not separate but unite. The balm is neither material nor spiritual, but an experience of their union. Jung clearly believes that the Gnostics and modern psychologists have much in common. From various hints dropped by Hippolytus, it is clear beyond a doubt that many of the Gnostics were nothing other than psychologists. Thus he reports them as saying that "the soul is very hard to find and to comprehend," and that knowledge of the whole man is just as difficult. . . . Clement of Alexandria says in the Paedagogus (III, 1): "Therefore, as it seems, it is the greatest of all disciplines to know oneself; for when a man knows himself, he knows God." And Monoimos, in his letters to Theophrastus, writes: "Seek him from out thyself, and learn who it is that taketh possession of everything in thee, saying: my god, my spirit, my understanding, my soul, my body; and learn whence is sorrow and joy, and love and hate. . . . Thou wilt find Him in thyself, the One and the Many, . . . for in thyself thou wilt find the starting-point of thy transition and of thy deliverance." 22 This discovery of the Most High within is typical of gnostic paradox. The union of opposites, the visionary experience, requires this verbal paradox, though the experience itself may be profoundly simple. The apparent absurdity of the language may result from the limitations of language and the intellect. Paradox is a characteristic of the Gnostic writings. It does more justice to the unknowable than clarity can do, for uniformity of meaning robs the mystery of its darkness and sets it up as something that is known. That is a usurpation, and it leads the human intellect into hybris by pretending that it, the intellect, has got hold of the transcendent mystery by a cognitive act and has "grasped" it. The paradox therefore reflects a higher level of intellect and, by not forcibly representing the unknowable as known, gives a more faithful picture of the real state of affairs. 23 The habitual paradoxes in gnostic imagery will appear in more detail later. At this point, the identity of 'self and 'God' can be seen as the root of gnostic paradox: the 'highest' is the 'inner22

Aion, 222.

"

Jung, Psychology and Religion, 275.

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

25

most', and 'heaven' is in 'earth'. He who flies 'up' to heaven emerges in the 'center' of earth. Gnostic symbol and myth are 'all in your head'. The earlier description of Gnosis as an acute awareness of the unity of existence and essence, body and spirit, becoming and being, time and eternity, earth and heaven, movement and stasis, may not have been clarified once and for all by the observations of Jung. 'Conscious' and 'unconscious' may seem only to add more abstractions to a long list. And perhaps the only way to define Gnosis would be the way Mozart defined 'music': he played some. But Jung's remarks do demonstrate that the experience known as 'Gnosis', a 'knowledge' of the unknowable, is not merely a relic of the dead past but an important concern here and now. The intellectual's embarrassment in suggesting that psychotherapy (almost a science) serves 'spiritual' needs, that the 'psyche' is the 'soul', may be one symptom of the 'disorientation' Jung mentions. But it may also be necessary and good-humored, a symptom of modesty, veneration, and integrity. There is some humor in comparing a protest of Jung's, made in the middle of the twentieth century, with an outburst from the Coptic Pistis Sophia, a gnostic document of the fourth or fifth century A.D. I have been accused of "deifying the soul." Not I but God himself has deified it! I did not attribute a religious function to the soul, I merely produced the facts which prove that the soul is naturaliter religiosa, i.e., possesses a religious function. I did not invent or interpret this function, it produces itself of its own accord without being prompted thereto by any opinions or suggestions of mine. With a truly tragic delusion these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. 24 How long shall I bear with you, how long shall I suffer you? Do ye still not know and are ye ignorant? Know ye not and do ye not understand that ye are Angels, all Archangels, Gods and Lords, all Rulers, all the great Invisibles, all those of the Midst, . . . all the Great Ones of the emanations of the Light with all their glory? . . .2S 24

Psychology and Alchemy, 13. G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (New Hyde Park, N.Y., University Books, 1960), pp. 487-88. 28

26

GNOSTICISM AND GNOSIS

It should be remembered that there is no evidence that Dylan Thomas read any of the gnostic sources or any works treating those writings. The comparisons are parallels only, not source studies, but they do suggest a common insight and conviction. When reading the last sentence of the prefatory "Note" to the Collected Poems, it is hard to keep the capitalized nouns in place. These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.28

u

The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (augmented ed.; New York, New Directions, 1957), p. xiii. All quotations from Thomas's poems are from this edition. All titles of poems are as they appear in "Contents" of this edition.

PART

ONE

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

in LIGHT AND DARKNESS

In Thomas's poetry the abstractions of light and darkness are expressed in many ways. Light and darkness become day and night, dawn and dusk, summer and winter, morning and evening, sun and moon. Anything that suggests or produces light or darkness may render the basic ideas associated with light or its absence. It might be more accurate to think of light in darkness, or darkness in light, for what interests Thomas is the mutuality of the two, the sense in which one suggests the other, the idea of light emanating from darkness or darkness emerging from light. It is the unity of light and darkness that he praises: Light and dark are no enemies But one companion. ("Find meat on bones") Light and darkness occur together, though they may seem to be at war, striving for dominance: Light breaks where no sun shines; And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads, The things of light File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones. A candle in the thighs Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age; Where no seed stirs, The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars, Bright as a fig; Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs. Dawn breaks behind the eyes;

30

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

Light breaks on secret lots, On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain; When logics die, The secret of the soil grows through the eye, And blood jumps in the sun; Above the waste allotments the dawn halts. ("Light breaks where no sun shines")

Somehow, out of darkness, in places 'where no sun shines', comes light, breaking like the dawn through the darkness. There is no apparent source for the light, for there is no sun on the horizon; in the midst of darkness, from the darkness, light appears. The 'things of light' are in the dark solidity of the flesh and are present in the bones themselves where no flesh covers them. The 'things of light' are 'broken ghosts' or shattered shades, beings that walk in the night like men who have been ruined or 'broken', yet they have faint lights, 'glow-worms in their heads'. The glow-worms, with light in their bodies, are in the broken ghosts' heads for the same reason that 'dawn breaks behind the eyes' later in the poem. The light appears behind the eyes, in the mind. Light breaks in the mind, on "tips of thought", and "when logics die, the secret of the soil grows through the eye, and blood jumps in the sun". The light that breaks in the mind is knowledge, for it is associated with thought and logic. But the light that spreads through the mind, making the eye glow, comes 'when logics die'. And the light that spreads is the 'secret of the soil', a secret beyond the reach of any logic, a secret light in the darkness of the soil that makes things grow from the soil. Just as something in the soil generates things that grow into the light, something in darkness produces light. When the light appears, the eye 'sees' or knows a secret. It is like lightning, which appears to come from the sky, but actually springs from the soil as well, for the soil is one of the poles the lightning arcs between. The knowledge that comes from seeing by light comes from within the mind. The mind, then, has its own light within it. And that light is the same light that lies in the soil. This light needs no other source of light to produce a flame. The candle of the mind burns, shows its rays or 'hairs', where

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

31

there is no wax to feed it. The light that comes from nothing is one without fuel, a light beyond logical causality. Something secret, not available to logical thought, is 'seen' or 'known' without recourse to customary reason. And that secret knowledge is also the secret of the soil ; it is present in the mind and in the soil, in the highest and lowest aspects of life. The nature of this secret light is not explained, except that it has something to do with the power that empowers the soil to produce. The depth and scope of the secret are apparent in these lines from "In the beginning": In the beginning was the three-pointed star, One smile of light across the empty face; One bough of bone across the rooting air, The substance forked that marrowed the first sun; And, burning ciphers on the round of space, Heaven and hell mixed as they spun. In the beginning was the mounting fire That set alight the weathers from a spark. . . . In the beginning was the word, the word That from the solid bases of the light Abstracted all the letters of the void; And from the cloudy bases of the breath The word flowed up, translating to the heart First characters of birth and death. In the beginning was the secret brain. The brain was celled and soldered in the thought Before the pitch was forking to a sun. . . .

Again, light and darkness are mixed, and the source of the light is double. The light does not fall from heaven only but springs up from below. The fire is a 'mounting fire', and the light has 'solid bases' or 'cloudy bases' from which 'the word flowed up'. The 'smile of light' is the same as the 'bough of bone'; both are aspects of the 'substance' that 'forked'. What occurs here as an apparent account of the cosmic creation is strangely similar to the light that broke 'where no sun shines', and to the awareness of the 'secret of the soil'. What occurs here at the cosmic level seems to be

32

IMAGE MOTIFS'. THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

what happened 'behind the eyes'. In both poems there is a secret; here it is the 'secret brain' that creates, and there the 'secret of the soil' that was known. The idea seems to be that creation and thought are one, or rather that the source of creation is thought, an act of the mind, combining with substance to produce form or life. But mind and matter are actually one; light and darkness are actually one. The 'three-pointed star' is one star with three qualities: light, darkness, and vision; mind, matter, form; thought, mouth, word. The apparent combining of light and darkness, formerly separate, is not quite the idea. The process is more like the forking of lightning, which requires two poles to arc between but is one visible lightning bolt. So, here, the "substance forked that marrowed the first sun". What produced the sensible form of light was one 'substance', one source, that had been insensible, mental only. When it 'split' or divided into aspects, it became available to the senses. The substance that had been indescribable, a perfect balance of light and darkness, gave off a creation in which the balance is imperfect, in which light and darkness seem separate. The substance that 'marrowed' the first star, the first sensible creation, accomplished that creation by fission. Since this source is one, a light-in-darkness stasis, all parts of the dynamic creation are constantly shifting from one imbalance to another. Thus what seems dark or solid is not wholly so but remains intimate with light and spirit. Matter is mind made sensible, and mind is matter intelligible. It is in this sense that the 'secret of the soil' is the light that 'breaks behind the eyes', that the light within darkness is the darkness in light. The knowledge of 'logics' which distinguish one aspect from another must 'die' before the 'secret' knowledge breaks and sees that one aspect is the other. 'Logics' see the branches; the 'secret' sees the trunk. With this paradox of light-in-dark established, it is safe to suppose that light relates to knowledge of some kind, some realization that 'dawns' in the mind and lights up the mind so that it 'sees' something. Darkness would then stand for ignorance or the apparent absence of knowledge. A state of knowing would be a

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

33

state of light and a state of ignorance one of darkness. One way to express these states is to compare them to the weather, the state of the air. This is an apt analogy since 'air' and 'spirit' are both assumed to be relatively impalpable. The 'weather' of Thomas's poems is almost always the condition of the spirit or the mind. Since the light and heat of the sun dry up water, the state of ignorance is rendered as 'dampness' and 'darkness', and the state of knowledge becomes 'dryness' and 'light'. A process in the weather of the heart Turns damp to dry; the golden shot Storms in the freezing tomb A weather in the quarter of the veins Turns night to day; blood in their suns Lights up the living worm. ("A process in the weather of the heart")

The shifting from 'damp to dry' is a change from darkness to light, the dawning of the secret beyond logics. Also, the light is rendered as a 'golden shot' that 'storms in the freezing tomb'. The 'shot' may be a missile of some kind, anything cast into the freezing tomb, or an injection of some substance into that tomb, or even a 'guess' or conjecture about some secret.1 The shot is 'golden', the color of the sun, our apparent source of light, and is violently within, 'storms' in, the 'freezing tomb'. The tomb is a dark place for the dead, and it is freezing because it has no 'light' to heat it. The 'freezing tomb' would then be the darkness of the material body which houses the golden shot of knowledge. The 'living worm' appears in the veins, much as the 'broken ghosts' (of 'Light breaks') had 'glowworms in their heads'. The worm, which lives in the darkness of the underground, may light up and be a glow-worm, a thing of darkness with light in it. So man, living in the darkness of the material body, has light in him that dawns in his mind. The light and darkness images, then, produce a cluster of images by extension, by analogies with natural phenomena. The sun, our 1

Throughout this study, the source for meanings of words is Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed. unabridged; Springfield, Mass., G. & G. Merriam, 1960).

34

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

natural source of light, becomes a symbol for the light of knowledge. And the effects of the sun's shining then relate to that light. Light is golden, dry, glowing, dawning, summer, spring, day and morning. So, in "I see the boys of summer", the 'boys of summer' are also 'boys of light'; and since they typify man, they are also 'jacks of frost' and 'dark deniers' who 'feed their nerves' 'the frigid threads of doubt and dark'. And, at the end of that poem, the boys declare themselves to be 'the sons of flint and pitch', (products of the spark from flint) of light and the black darkness of pitch. Thomas ends the poem with: "O see the poles are kissing as they cross." The poles of light and darkness 'kiss', are united, in man; the light of his 'secret brain' is always present in his 'freezing tomb'. And some process, 'in the weather of the heart', 'turns night to day' and 'lights up the living worm'. Something in man breaks through the 'ignorance' of his logics and sees the light, the 'secret of the soil'. Man is enclosed in a 'freezing tomb' of darkness; he is clothed in 'frigid threads of doubt and dark'; but he has a glow-worm in his head, and 'the golden shot storms' until 'dawn breaks behind the eyes'. This breaking of light occurs again and again in Thomas's poetry. Once the basic ideas of light within darkness, of spirit in body, knowledge in ignorance, life in the 'death' of mortal life, are understood, the light-darkness imagery is effective and meaningful. The confusion-ignorance of created life in the cosmos is relative darkness and supposes things to be separate because they seem so; the certain knowledge of the creator is pure light and knows things to be one. Man, while living in the darkness of distinctions, may know the original unity or pure light, though that knowledge will not be 'logical'. The original unity of light and darkness, mind and matter, is the subject of "From love's first fever to her plague": All world was one, one windy nothing, And earth and sky were as one airy hill, The sun and moon shed one white light.

35

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

. . . The four winds, that had long blown as one, Shone in my ears the light of sound, Called in my eyes the sound of light. And from the first declension of the flesh I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts Into the stony idiom of the brain. . . . I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret; The code of night tapped on my tongue; What had been one was many sounding minded. From the original 'one white light' man is born into a world of many lights and sounds, a vast complexity and confusion of particulars, all seemingly separate and distinct from one another. In this world there is earth and sky, four winds, many words. The original unity has scattered into a multiplicity of distinctions which suggests some systematizing of those distinctions - logics. But the sense of original unity remains - "I . . . bad my secret" and can return to conscious knowledge. When this original knowledge does return, the experience is usually associated with light: And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last I may without fail Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars. ("Love in the Asylum") . . . And the true Joy of the long dead child sang burning In the sun.

("Poem in October")

Sing and strike his heavy haul Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light! ("Ballad of the Long-legged Bait") . . . a man unrolled The scrolls of fire that burned in his heart and head. . .. ("A Winter's Tale")

36

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

I turn the corner of prayer and burn In a blessing of the sudden Sun. ("Vision and Prayer")

I Am found. O let him Scald me and drown Me in his world's wound. His lightning answers my Cry. My voice burns in his hand. Now I am lost in the blinding One. The sun roars at the prayer's end. ("Vision and Prayer")

The last excerpt brings out another aspect of this light imagery. The unity or origin, the One Light that is also dark, is personified as the Mind, the Father - God. The one substance that 'forked' into creation, the original one light which is within all darkness, the three-pointed star, is God, 'the blinding One'. A vision of pure light, of the one light that has all colors and produces all colors, is 'blinding' because it sees so much. And to see this unity is, logically and rationally speaking, to see nothing. For what is 'seen' or 'known' cannot be described except by paradox or absurdity. Thus, all conventional expression, all distinguishing language, breaks down, and the 'pure light' becomes 'utter darkness'. To be 'found', to have seen the original unity, is to be 'lost in the blinding One'. The sun, a symbol of the one God of origin, does not shine', it 'roars' as though it could speak. The light that emanates from God is the Word of God, the intelligible Mind made sensible. The analogies are visual and aural. The Word is seen, and the Light is heard. God, and his 'abode', are portrayed by light imagery. He is the 'dazzler of heaven', who 'burns me his name and his flame' 'in the shrine of his blazing breast', whose home is a 'dumbfounding haven', a 'world winding home'. (All from "Vision and Prayer".) In other poems that One is rendered similarly: My arising prodigal Sun the father his quiver full of the infants

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

37

of pure fire. . . . ("Holy Spring") . . . the unknown, famous light of great And fabulous, dear God. ("Poem on his birthday") . . . the golden ghost who ringed with his streams her mercury bone, Who under the lids of her windows hoisted his golden luggage. . . . ("On the Marriage of a Virgin") One who is most unknown, Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street. . . . ("Deaths and Entrances")

God, the One Light, is not separate, except by metaphor, from man or from nature. Especially important is the idea of the identity of Mind and mind, God and Man, the Father sun and the light that 'breaks where no sun shines' 'behind the eyes'. Man reaches, sees, knows God by seeing within himself; to look in is to look up; to see the unity of the self is to see the original unity. God is in the mind. God is in the soil. Light is within darkness. Is God being compared to man, or man to God? Do we assume that God creates 'by thought' because we think and then create, or do we suppose that our thinking is a model of God's? Is man created in the image of God, or is it the reverse? These questions would be mistaken in assuming that one concept was separate from the other, that there was one real thing or another real thing, that the problem admitted of logical analysis. Thomas's answer would have to be illogical or 'absurd': "God creates himself in man's image." It is really the same paradox as the light in the darkness, the mind that knows itself. This is true only 'when logics die'. If the source of all is the one Light that is Father, Mother, and Son - Mind, Matter, and Form - and if Mind is rendered as Light-Spirit and Matter as Darkness-Solid, then all sons of the original one are light and dark fused into life; all men are "sons of flint and pitch". And all men have their ultimate origin in that one Light; that Light is their 'home'. The Home of God is the Home of Man. To live in the cosmos of differences, of shades of

38

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

light, would then be to wander in a strange land. The analogy would extend to expressions like these: . . . the believer lost and the hurled outcast of light. ("A Winter's Tale") . . . the lost who glory in The swinish plains of carrion. . . . ("Vision and Prayer") O my lost love bounced from a good home. . . . ('"If my head hurt a hair's foot'") He, on the earth of the night, alone With all the living, prays . . . Faithlessly unto Him Who is the light of old And air-shaped Heaven. . . . ("Poem on his birthday")

An 'outcast of light' would be in the dark, ignorant, to the extent that he could not remember his home or return to his home. The outcast is then a dark man, a dark soul, or a soul in the dark, in the land of darkness. This dark land is the underworld, the land of the dead, the souls who have been cast from the source of life, the original light, and so are 'dead' to that light. And if the soul is rendered as a bird or a woman, the bird will be a 'nightbird' and the woman a 'woman in shades'. The mind possessed by the distinctions of natural experience is one in the dark. The 'real' world of phenomena and time is a veiling of the true unity. This world is the underworld, and men in this world are souls in ignorance of the true unity. The inner light of the spirit is cloaked in darkness. . . . the woman in shades Saint carved and sensual among the scudding Dead and gone. . . . Never shall my self chant About the saint in shades. . . . I see the wanting nun saint carved in a gart» Of shades. . . . ("Unluckily for a Death")

39

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light, Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night. . . . ("Our eunuch dreams") And the daughters of darkness flame like Fawkes fires still. ("In the white giant's thigh") . . . the sparrows and such who swansing, dusk, in wrangling hedges. ("Over Sir John's hill") The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves. . . . . . . And high, there on the hareHeeled winds the rooks Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books Of birds! . . . . . . the nightingale's din and tale! ("In country sleep")

Any black bird or nocturnal bird may serve as a symbol for the soul in the darkness of logics. And a woman in black is a soul in the world of distinctions. Since nuns are often clothed in black, the earth-chained soul is a nun, and the earth is a nunnery in the tangled undergrowth of a dark forest - the sensible cosmos. The basic images of light and darkness are applied to other images. A black cloak and a robe of white are clothing images altered by light imagery. The difficulty of rendering the knowledge of the original light is 'solved' by the very contradiction of any attempt, for any attempt will wander from logic into absurdity, and the apparent absurdity or paradox renders the inscrutability of the original unity. A blindness that is a vision is absurd only in realms of logical clarity. In poetry such blindness, a vision of 'nothing', may express the idea and its awed emotion with the only clarity that intuition permits - a sense of presence. Light and darkness are basic to the expression of Thomas's ideas and to a consistent poetic language that gives familiar images fresh effectiveness and depth. The fundamental concept of the unity that generates and is timeless becomes a light-indarkness or one light that is dark. The created, sensible cosmos of particular, separate things becomes a pattern of light and

40

IMAGE MOTIFS: THOMAS AND GNOSTICS

darkness, a crumbling of the originating unity into originated distinctions. But 'within' those distinctions the unified light remains always the ultimate Essence of the apparent reality. To express that essential reality verbally, Thomas imagines a light covered by things relatively dark, as a seed is covered by the husks and pulp that finally decay, leaving the small seed that has the magic of life 'in' it. The 'world' of light is then an inner world, a cosmos within, a land of dazzling contemplation; the dark world is the external cosmos of empirical facts that touch the senses. This is the dark underworld; 'heaven' is within it, 'behind the eyes', and the light of that heaven can, and does, break. If heaven is 'above' and earth 'below', the directions are metaphorical only. Heaven, the realm of original light, is also 'deeper' and more 'profound'. A 'higher truth' is in the tree-top only by analogy. And if, in Thomas's poetry, a 'saint' is 'about to fall', or the sun is about to set, the thought is clothed in 'the colour of saying', and the eyes must see behind the eyes. In gnostic thought the association of light and 'knowledge' of the hidden God appears again and again. Gnosis itself is often expressed as an 'illumination' within or a vision of the one light. The illumination is an extra-rational experience. As such the 'Gnosis' is the same kind of experience that is the center of any mystery religion, whether Oriental or Western. In this sense the gnostic religion is one type of a universal experience which is common to all men at all times. The followers of Hermes Trismegistus, of Mani, of Buddha, of Osiris, have in common the illumination within - a kind of ecstatic knowledge that transcends description. The enlightenment by a ray of the divine light which transforms the psychic nature of man may be an article of faith, but it may also be an experience. Such superlative experience is sometimes claimed and even described (more often probably aspired to and set as a goal) in the religious literature of the age, inside and outside Gnosticism. It involves an extinction of the natural faculties, filling the vacuum with a surpassingly positive and at the same time in its ineffability negative

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

41

content. Annihilation and deification of the person are fused in the spiritual ecstasis which purports to experience the immediate presence of the acosmic essence. In the gnostic context, this transfiguring face-to-face experience is gnosis in the most exalted at the same time most paradoxical sense of the term, since it is knowledge of the unknowable. 2

For the Gnostic, the light that permits the visionary experience is an inner one, and the ecstatic sight is 'above' and 'within'. The description of this light stresses its unity of diversities, its role as source. If, then, there be an incorporal eye, let it go forth from body unto the Vision of the Beautiful; let it fly u p and soar aloft, seeking to see not form, nor body, nor [even] types [of things], but rather that which is the Maker of [all] these; - the Quiet and Serene, the Stable and the Changeless One, the Self, the AU, the One, the Self of self, the Self in self, the Like to Self [alone], That which is neither like to other, nor [yet] unlike to self, and [yet] again Himself. 3

The 'Vision of the Beautiful' is a knowledge of the 'Self in self', much as the light that 'breaks behind the eyes' is the 'unknown, famous light of great and fabulous, dear God' in Thomas's poetry. Thomas's portrayal of man as "The believer lost and the hurled outcast of light', in "A Winter's Tale", relates closely to the gnostic image of light 'thrown' into darkness, the exiled spark of light alien to the darkness, a stranger lost and homesick. Who has cast me into the affliction of the worlds, who transported me into the evil darkness? Save us out of the darkness of this world into which we are thrown. 4

The spark of original light is 'alien' in the world of relative darkness; it is "the light exiled from L i g h t . . . the life exiled from Life and involved in the world".5 Such an alien spark is a 'hurled outcast of light' who must find his way home. The outcast spirit is lost and entangled in the diverse. 2

Jonas, 284. Mead, III, 253. From Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum. The brackets, throughout this study, are Mead's unless noted. * Jonas, 64. From Mandaean text. 5 Jonas, 50. 3

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I am I, the son of the mild ones [i.e., the beings of Light]. Mingled am I, and lamentation I see. Lead me out of the embracement of death.6 To return home, the outcast must experience the original unity of the home of light. If portions of the Light or the first Life have been separated from it and mixed in with the darkness, then an original unity has been split up and given over to plurality: the splinters are the sparks dispersed throughout the creation. . . . Consequently, salvation involves a process of gathering in, of re-collection of what has been so dispersed, and salvation aims at the restoration of the original unity.7 To restore the original unity is to see the original light, to return home, to find the self 'behind the eyes'. It is by means of Unity that each one shall find himself again. By means of a Gnose, he shall purify himself of diversity with a view to Unity, by engulfing (devouring) the matter within himself like a flame, Obscurity by Light and Death by Life.8 In this experience the diverse is seen to be one: And earth and sky were as one airy hill, The sun and moon shed one white light. ("From love's first fever to her plague") The 'substance' that 'marrowed the first sun' and 'forked' is seen once again as 'one smile of light' ("In the beginning"). This vision of unity, this ecstatic illumination in which man finds himself again, is the source of these lines: For I was lost who have come To dumbfounding haven And the finding one Of

β 7 8

. . . the happening saints to their vision! The world winding home! ("Vision and Prayer")

Jonas, 58. From Manichaean Turfan fragment. Jonas, 59. Jonas, 60. From Valentinian "Gospel of Truth".

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43

It should be remembered that this vision, this light, is in the darkness, that Light and dark are no enemies But one companion. ("Find meat on bones") I t is not so much that the darkness is evil, though the hyperbolic metaphors seem t o suggest that, as that the light in the darkness is precious, for the conviction of unity restores man to an integration with himself that his logic h a d forgotten. - . . Real wisdom consists in balance, in the Middle Way; that nothing is evil in itself — the Body is as honourable in its own sphere, as absolutely necessary and indispensable, as is the Mind in its. . . . To have one's thoughts always in heaven is as erroneous as to have them always on earth; . . . there is a higher mode of existence, when the things of heaven and earth are within each other, and not apart.» The original light, which is the inner light, is, for gnostic ecstasy as f o r Thomas, 'one companion', light and darkness within each other. To lament the obscure, 'evil' darkness of this world is really to lament the apparent duality which is ignorance of the unity that restores. The metaphors expressing this idea function extralogically, or analogically. It is by analogy that this passage makes its point: . . . A certain male-female Living Creature is imaged out by the Foreknowledge of the Divine Spirit that indwells in it, whom Orpheus doth call Manifestar . . . because when he is manifest the universe shines forth from him. . . . Nor is this incredible, for in the case of glow-worms, for example, Nature allows us to see a "moist light" 1 0 A n d it is the same analogy, turned metaphor, that produces this expression of the idea: And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads, The things of light FHe through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones. ("Light breaks where no sun shines") •

10

Mead, II, 96. Mead, I, 391. From the Orphic Clementine Homilies.

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The habitual association of light with the one source of creation, of darkness with the material cosmos or world of diversities, is common to the various systems of religious thought grouped under the heading of 'Gnosticism' and to the poetry of Dylan Thomas. In Gnosticism and in Thomas's poetry the everpresent paradox of light-in-darkness, darkness-in-light, is the spiritual truth that motivates the entire complex of images which express the faith, the conviction, the 'knowledge'.

IV THE CELESTIAL SEA

The celestial sea covers the earth, which is the 'bottom' of the sea. The sun - the source of light - sails upon that sea, projecting some of its light down through the depths to earth. When the sea is dried up by the sun's light, the full brilliance of the sun may shine on earth and illumine its creatures. The analogy to earth, sea, and air is another rendering of the nature of the mind, the nature of the soul. The celestial sea is the source of the material body that clothes the spirit-soul as it falls from the original light. Each seed of light falls into the sea, accumulating material life, and lands upon earth, the sea bottom, enveloped in the matter necessary to life in the darkness. This geographical representation of the nature of human life assumes all of creation to be under the sea, a vast world covered by an immense ocean. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily. . . . ("And death shall have no dominion")

Though men lie long on the sea bottom, the air-wind-spirit in them is deathless, and they will rise through the sea to the sun: Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again. . . . ("And death shall have no dominion")

The breaking of light is now rendered as a voyage up through the sea into the presence of the sun, to the shores of light. Just as the actual sea is governed by the moon that causes its tides, so this celestial sea is governed by the moon which reflects

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the light produced by the sun. And all the life in this world is sea life; all of its creatures are sea creatures. Down, down, down, under the ground, Under the floating villages, Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes. . . . ("Ballad of the Long-legged Bait") Under the 'ground' of the land of light, the bright villages above the sea, is this sea of darkness; this world is the 'metropolis of fishes', and men are creatures of the sea — mermen. When the mermen emerge from the deep sea, they see the light. Love and labour and kill In quick, sweet, cruel light till the locked ground sprout out, The black, burst sea rejoice. . . . Fishermen of mermen Creep and harp on the tide, sinking their charmed, bent pin With bridebait of gold bread. . . . ("How shall my animal") . . . The sermon Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen To seraphim Leaping! ("In country sleep") Where once the mermen through your ice Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers. . . . ("Where once the waters of your face") And sleep rolls mute above the beds Where fishes' food is fed the shades Who periscope through flowers to the sky. ("When once the twilight locks no longer") In this system of images the 'mermen', the 'shades' who live on 'fishes' food', may be fished for by some agent of the light, may pray for delivery from the sea, and may see through the sea to the sky above as flowers lift their blossoms to the sun. Instead of a lost child of light wandering in a dark forest, the spirit-soul in this life is adrift or drowning in the sea.

THE CELESTIAL SEA

47

My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn, The secret child, I shift about the sea. . . . ("My world is pyramid") And time cast forth my mortal creature To drift or drown upon the seas Acquainted with the salt adventure Of tides that never touch the shores. ("Before I knocked") As they drown, the chime travels, Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift Rings out the Dead Sea scale; And, clapped in water till the triton dangles, Strung by the flaxen whale-weed, from the hangman's raft, Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial. ("I, in my intricate image")

Just as this world is the underworld, the land of the 'dead', so is it the place of the drowned, the place of sea 'burial'. Men are 'clapped in water', trapped in the dark-green sea, the deep 'steeple of spindrift', until the light 'triton dangles' down into the waters to fish them out and up to the sun, the original light. The agent of the light, a saving fisherman of mermen, he who will 'kill' the sea creatures by bringing them out of the sea, floats in his 'hangman's raft' on the sea like the sun. To be 'killed', fished up, stabbed, hung, by the hangman-fisherman-agent of light is to be pierced by a ray of his light - in short, to be illumined. And at this illumination, though it last for a moment, the passing bell rings in the deep ('the diver's bell . . . rings out') and the merman dies to the sea-life and emerges into the sun. Before this he has heard only the noisy, deafening 'salt glass breakers', the salty voices of the sea that are loud enough to break glass, waves or breakers that speak of burial in the sea. The mermen are always, however, in touch with the hangman, 'strung by the flaxen whaleweed', a light string that will pull them out of the sea, much as the 'broken ghosts' had 'glow-worms in their heads' in "Light breaks". Even in the flame-quenching sea the glow remains to return to its source. Just as the world of darkness is the world of divisions and distinctions, so the undersea world is a place of division, enslaved

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by the dictates of time and flesh, seemingly forgotten by the original light. Beyond this island bound By a thin sea of flesh And a bone coast, The land lies out of sound And the hills out of mind. ("Ears in the turrets hear") The dens of shape Shape all her whelps with the long voice of water. . . . ("A grief ago") Who gave these seas their colour in a shape, Shaped my clayfellow, and the heaven's ark In time at flood filled with his coloured doublers. . . . ("Foster the light") 'Rebel against the binding moon And the parliament of sky, The kingcrafts of the wicked sea. . . . ' ("Find meat on bones") The moon-drawn grave, with the seafaring years, The sea-halved faith that blew time to his knees. . . . ("Grief thief of time") And the child . . . Shall drown in a grief as deep as his made grave, And mark the dark eyed wave. . . . ("The Conversation of Prayer") But the drowned children will emerge from the sea, either at the death of the body or at the dawning of light which is a 'death' to the sea and a rebirth into the light. The vision of the original light is a 'death' that is a model of the final bodily death that frees the mermen from the sea: . . . all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and kill. ("Once it was the colour of saying") Down the stacked sea and water-pillared shade, Weighed in rock shroud, is my proud pyramid; Where, wound in emerald linen and sharp wind, The hero's head lies scraped of every legend, Comes love's anatomist with sun-gloved hand Who picks the live heart on a diamond. ("I make this in a warring absence")

THE CELESTIAL SEA

49

Last night in a raping wave Whales unreined from the green grave In fountains of origin gave up their love. . . . ("Into her Lying Down Head") I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen Twice in the feeding sea, grown Stale of Adam's brine until, vision Of new man strength, I seek the sun. ("I dreamed my genesis") There shall be corals in your beds, There shall be serpents in your tides, Till all our sea-faiths die. ("Where once the waters of your face") . . . let us summon From the fair dead who flush the sea The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp. . . . ("I see the boys of summer") Into the bread in a wheatfield of flames, Into the wine burning like brandy, The masses of the sea The masses of the sea under The masses of the infant-bearing sea Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter ror ever Glory glory glory The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder. ("Ceremony After a Fire Raid")

In gnostic imagery the sea is usually associated with the dark world. There is the same idea of the soul cast into the dark water to sink into the gross ignorance of matter. The fall of man is a fall from his original home into the great sea of multiplicity. Sea or waters is a standing gnostic symbol for the world of matter or of darkness into which the divine has sunk. Thus the Naasenes interpreted Ps. 29:3 and 10, about God's inhabiting the abyss and His voice ringing out over the waters, as follows: The many waters is the multifarious world of mortal generation into which the god Man has sunk and out of whose depth he cries up to the supreme God, the Primal Man, his Unfällen original. . . . The Peratae interpreted the Red Sea (Suf-Sea), which has to be passed on the way to or from Egypt, as the "water of corruption," and identified it with Kronos, i.e., "time," and with "becoming". . . Λ 1

Jonas, 117.

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The world under the sea is, for the gnostic system, the world subject to time and becoming in contrast to the eternal being of the original light of the divine Man. The mind has an element that is changeless and stable, the 'Self of the self seen in the vision of the illumination. I am a great Mana [divine spirit] . . . who dwelt in the sea . . . until wings were formed for me and I raised my wings to the place of light.2

The stability or stasis of unity is contrasted with the agitation and confusion of dispersal, the tides and storming of the sea. Gnostic imagery thus makes a distinction between living water, "flowing water, which is of sublime origin and flows in streams, all of which the Mandaeans oalled 'Jordans' . . . " , and turbid water, "troubled water . . . original matter of the world of darkness with which the living water mingled".3 Living and turbid water preserve the vision analogy of 'knowledge' or 'gnosis', since the living water is clear and permits vision and the turbid water of the sea is opaque, due to its confused movement, and blocks vision. Baptism is accomplished by washing with clear water: He filled a mighty Cup with it [Mind], and sent it down, joining a Herald [to it], to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the hearts of men: Baptize thyself with this Cup's baptism, what heart can do so. . . . As many then as understood the Herald's tidings and doused themselves in Mind, became partakers in the Gnosis; and when they had "received the Mind" they were made "perfect men." But they who do not understand the tidings, these, since they possess the aid of Reason [only] and not Mind, are ignorant. . . Λ

The immersion in living water is illumination, the reverse of immersion in the turbid water of the sea. This distinction also points up the idea that 'Reason' is actually ignorant and that 'Mind' only can see the one light. Thomas's 'secret brain', that sees 'when logics die', seems to present the same distinction. Also, Thomas's 'burning font' in "A Winter's Tale" probably refers to 2 3 4

Jonas, 117. From a Mandaean text. Jonas, 119. Mead, II, 86-87. From Hermetic treatise, "The Cup or Monad".

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51

a baptismal font similar to that mentioned above - a font filled with Mind. A 'font' also refers to any 'source', such as the bowl of oil that feeds a lamp, or a fountain, or spring. To be immersed in a 'burning font', then, would be to plunge the self into the original source and 'know' it. All water images do not refer to the dark sea. Gnostic allegorizing gave to many Biblical events an inner meaning. This interpretation of the Exodus illustrates the sea image: Egypt is the body; all those who identify themselves with the body are the ignorant, the Egyptians. T o "come forth" out of Egypt is to leave the body; and to pass through the Red Sea is to cross over the ocean of generation, the animal and sensual nature, which is hidden within the blood. 5

Mead accumulates evidence to demonstrate that Horus, of the Isis-Osiris religion, was a representative of the soul cast into the sea of matter, that this ancient religion was symbolizing the same spiritual processes that the Gnostics discussed more openly. . . . In the mystery-myth Horus was regarded as the human soul, and . . . there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the "rising f r o m the dead" in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. T h e soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation. . . . From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and raises him f r o m the "dead." This birth of the "true m a n " within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries. 6

The birth of the 'true man' within is illumination from the sun, Irom Mind. It is a ray of light piercing a merman. In Thomas's poetry and in gnostic imagery the sea is the darkness of physical generation and the desires necessary to it. The sea hides the central Essence - the one mysterious source, the Self. 5 Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, 186. « Mead, III, 163-64.

ν HOUSE AND GARMENTS

The essential soul may be compared to land covered by water; man lives in a dark sea. Another portrayal of this condition, in Thomas's poetry and gnostic imagery, is the naked body hidden by clothing or a man hidden in a house which blocks out the light. A naked man, then, is a 'true' man, a man stripped of the garments of apparent reality that cloak the 'real' man inside. The clothed 'self is the material, natural man devoted to the sphere of existent phenomena, the ectypal man; and the naked 'Self is the spiritual, mental man who has entered the sphere of essences, the archetypal man. The light and darkness source-image is present here too; when a man has taken off his garments and is naked, he may then put on a white robe of light as a symbol of his illumination. Similarly, 'house' may refer to the world of darkness and, occasionally, to the home of light. Some houses are crystal, diamond houses, and some garments are pure white. The garment image pervades the following lines from "Once below a time", a poem which also uses the sea imagery. Here it seems clear that Thomas is referring to the 'death' of illumination rather than the death of the body. Once below a time, When my pinned-around-the-spirit Cut-tomeasure flesh bit, Suit for a serial sum On the first of each hardship, My paid-for slaved-for own too late In love torn breeches and blistered jacket On the snapping rims of the ashpit,

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53

Then swift from a bursting sea with bottlecork boats And out-of-perspective sailors, In common clay clothes disguised as scales, As a he-god's paddling water skirts, I astounded the sitting tailors, Up through the lubber crust of Wales I rocketed to astonish The flashing needle rock of squatters, The criers of Shabby and Shorten, The famous stitch droppers. My silly suit, hardly yet suffered for, Around some coffin carrying Birdman or told ghost I hung. And the owl hood, the heel hider, Claw fold and hole for the rotten Head, deceived, I believed, my maker, The cloud perched tailors' master with nerves for cotton.

The 'silly suit', the ignorant body, the 'flesh bit' 'pinned-aroundthe-spirit' and 'cut-to-measure' is made by the 'famous stitch droppers'. These are probably the powers of the spheres of the celestial sea - 'archons', which will be mentioned later. The idea is that the material 'suit' is made by the powers of generation that rule the enfleshing sea and are ruled by Mind or God. They cry 'Shabby' and 'Shorten' because the body is mortal and decaying, a shabby suit that does not last, a suit whose materials are 'shortened', decayed, constantly. These 'tailors' are 'stitch droppers' because each soul is like a stitch dropped into the sea. The 'maker' is perched on clouds, above the sea and the 'flashing needle rock of squatters', and uses 'nerves for cotton'; the 'maker' creates men with nerve-material rather than cotton. He builds the mind, the intuiting instrument, that the squatters cover with shabby suits. This encounter with the 'maker' includes a humor in its description, but the ending of the poem cannot escape an awe that combines grief, regret, and exhaustion. Now shown and mostly bare I would lie down, Lie down, lie down and live As quiet as a bone.

To be 'shown' this original lightmaker is to become 'bare' of

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the phenomena-logic clothing. But the seer is still alive, still breathing the atmosphere of darkness, and so is 'mostly bare'. Having thrown off most of his garments, he would 'Me down' and 'live', that is truly live the life of light, 'as quiet as a bone', or as stable and static as the skeletal frame upon which the short-lived flesh is hung. The image of clothing - covering, armoring the spirit - appears in various forms throughout the poetry, often in combination with the light-darkness and sea images. . . . All night afloat On the silent sea we have heard the sound That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet. ("Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed") There in the sun the frigid threads Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves. . . . ("I see the boys of summer") I, that time's jacket or the coat of ice. . .. ("When, like a running grave") Remember me and pity Him Who took my flesh and bone for armour. . . . ("Before I knocked") Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin The winter's robes. . . . ("Light breaks where no sun shines") AM-hollowed man wept for his white apparel. Man was Cadaver's masker, the harnessing mantle, My ghost in his metal neptune Forged in man's mineral. ("I, in my intrioate image") Fear not the working world, my mortal, Fear not the flat, synthetic blood, Nor the heart in the ribbing metal. ("All all and all the dry worlds lever") How shall my animal Whose wizard shape 1 trace in the cavernous skull, Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell, Endure burial under the spelling wall, The invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face. . . . ("How shall my animal") The garment image leads to that of nakedness, the state of

HOUSE AND GARMENTS

55

purity or full illumination. I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather, Reaching a second ground far from the stars. . . . ("I fellowed sleep") And power was contagious in my birth, second Rise of the skeleton and Rerobing of the naked ghost. . . . ("I dreamed my genesis") There Crouched bare In the shrine Of his blazing Breast. . . . ("Vision and Prayer") There he might wander bare With the spirits of the horseshoe bay With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost. . . . ("Poem on his birthday") The house image appears in various forms - cage, asylum, hospital, barn, shell, box - and sometimes combines with the garment image. Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift. . . . ("When, like a running grave") Ruin, the room of errors. . . . Weighed in rock shroud, is my proud pyramid; Where, wound in emerald linen. . . . ("I make this in a warring absence") . . . the structure Of skin and vein around the well Where words and water make a mixture. . . . ("Before I knocked") Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven, Know now the flesh's lock and vice, And the cage for the scythe-eyed raven. ("All all and all the dry worlds lever") Shall I still be love's house on the widdershin earth, Woe to the windy masons at my shelter? ("Do you not father me")

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. . . the fishes' house and hell . . . ("Then was my neophyte") A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head. . . . ("Love in the Asylum") And out of every domed and soil-based shell One voice in chains declaims. . . . ("Into her Lying Down Head")

The idea of encumbering clothing is the same as the image of chains or shackles that constrict or hold captive the spark of life in the darkness. And if the body is a madhouse, an asylum, a number of bodies would be a crazy town, a dark city. Always the central idea of light-in-darkness (dramatized to light held down by darkness), the ultimate paradox of light and darkness within each other, remains the motive power behind the poetry. This garment and house imagery is basic in gnostic literature, which stresses the captivity of light-spirit in darkness-matter. The garments are put upon the soul-spirit as it descends from its lighthome into the material life. The fall to earth involves passing through the (usually) seven spheres of the celestial sea; each sphere, or the 'ruler' archon of each, gives the once-pure soul a 'garment', a characteristic or quality necessary to life in the world of darkness. The 'fall of man', then, is birth into this world. In order to return to the light-home, the soul must strip itself of these garments or qualities natural to earthly existence before it can be reunited with the original light. Gnosis itself is the stripping of the garments, though Gnosis may also be the preparation of the soul to return home after bodily death. . . . Equipped with this gnosis, the soul after death travels upwards, leaving behind at each sphere the physical "vestment" contributed .by it: the spirit stripped of all foreign accretions reaches the God beyond the world and becomes reunited with the divine substance. 1

The 'death', however, may also be the experience of illumination itself; the stripping process is necessary to any reunion with the one light. 1

Jonas, 45.

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In the following quotations from extra-canonical Gospel materials the relationship between knowing the unity and stripping off the earthly garment is clear. .. . When Salome asked when these things about which she questioned should be made known, the Lord said: When ye trample upon the Garment of Shame; when the Two become One, and Male and Female neither male nor female. .. . His disciples say unto Him: When wilt thou be manifest to us, and when shall we see Thee? He saith: When ye shall be stripped and not be ashamed.2 To be 'stripped' is to experience unity, for in unity there is some sense of integrated 'innocence' and identity with the source of all action. This must be what is intended by the union of male and female, of light and darkness; just as the climax of sexual intercourse may be a fusion and identity of male and female, a fusion analogous to a burst of light, so the experience of 'knowing' the essence is rendered as a free nakedness. An account of the ascent to light occurs in the Hermetic treatise, Poimandres: And thereafter, man thrusts upward through the Harmony, and to the first zone he surrenders the power to grow and to decrease, and to the second the machinations of evil cunning, now rendered powerless, and to the third the deceit of concupiscence, now rendered powerless, and to the fourth the arrogance of dominion, drained of . . . its ambition, and to the fifth the impious audacity and the rashness of impulsive deed, and the sixth the evil appetites of wealth . . . and to the seventh zone the lying that ensnares. And then denuded of the effects of the Harmony, he enters the nature of the Ogdoad [i.e., the eighth sphere, that of the fixed stars], now in possession of his own power, and with those already there exalts the Father; and those present rejoice with him at his presence. . . . And then in processions they rise up towards the Father and give themselves up to the Powers, and having become Powers themselves, enter the Godhead. This is the good end of those who have attained gnosis: to become God.3 The removal of the garments is a process of eliminating multiplicities to arrive at the One, the light and darkness within each 1 s

Mead, I, 153, n. 1. Jonas, 153. His brackets.

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other. The 'internal' or spiritual nature of this 'ascent' metaphor is important to remember. . . . The external topology of the ascent through the spheres, with the successive divesting of the soul of its worldly envelopments and the regaining of its original acosmic nature, could be "internalized" and find its analogue in a psyichological technique of inner transformations by which the self, while still in the body, might attain the Absolute as an immanent, if temporary, condition: an ascending scale of mental states replaces the stations of the mythical itinerary: the dynamics of progressive spiritual self-transformation [replace] the spatial thrust through the heavenly spheres.4 This symbolic stripping in the ascent was not peculiar to or original with gnostic thought as is clearly suggested by this comment on the ancient mystery cults of Mithras and of Isis: . . . The mysteries of Mithras had for their initiates the ceremonial of passing through seven gates arranged on ascending steps representing the seven planets . . . ; in those of Isis we find a successive putting on and off of seven (or twelve) garments or animals disguises. The result achieved by the whole protracted and sometimes harrowing ritual was called rebirth (palingenesia): the initiate was supposed to have been reborn as the god.5 The necessity of the material characteristics for the dark world is reflected in this passage from the Hermetic "Perfect Sermon" in which the image is that of a house. And so, when He perceived that the "essential" [man] could not be lover of all things, unless He clothed him in a cosmic carapace, He shut him in within a house of body, - and ordered it that all [men] should be so, - from either nature making him a single blend and fair-proportioned mixture.® The temporary nature of this house-body is stressed, sometimes to the point of contempt for its weakness. The body-house becomes the 'body-stump', the 'worthless body', an 'enclosed cell', a 'base dwelling',7 as in Thomas's poetry it may be called 'the fishes' house and hell' ("Then was my neophyte"), 'my house in 4

Jonas, 165. My brackets. Jonas, 166. * Mead, II, 321. From Hermetic treatise, "The Perfect Sermon". 7 Jonas, 55. 6

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the mud' ("A saint about to fall"), and 'this box of nerves' ("My hero bares his nerves"). These epithets can apply to the dark world (cosmos) or to the body. The sojourn "in the world" is called "dwelling," the world itself a "dwelling" or "house," and in contrast to the bright dwellings, the "dark" or the "base" dwelling, "the mortal house." . . . When life settles in the world, the temporary belonging thus established may lead to its becoming "a son of the house" and make necessary the reminder, "Thou wert not from here, and thy root was not of the world." . . . If the emphasis is on the temporary and transient nature of the worldly sojourn and on the condition of being a stranger, the world is called also the "inn," in which one "lodges"; and "to keep the inn" is a formula for "to be in the world" or "in the body." . . . The same expressions can refer also to the body, which is eminently the "house" of life and the instrument of the world's power over the Life that is enclosed in it.8 The 'inn' metaphor is rendered in Thomas's poetry as an 'asylum' for madmen, a 'house not right in the head' in which he has a room, a 'nightmarish room'. This asylum (in "Love in the Asylum") is, by hyperbole, a 'heaven-proof house', and the 'stranger' girl, 'mad as birds', who clearly comes to give him light ('and taken by light in her arms'), comes 'possessed' and 'deludes' as she shares his 'room in the house'. The light-knowledge she brings is madness in this mad world, 'the dark asylum' ("A saint about to fall"). The gnostic 'inn' is like Thomas's 'asylum', and the rulers of the seven spheres perform the functions of 'the criers of Shabby and Shorten, the famous stitch droppers'.

Jonas, 55-56.

VI SLEEP AND AWAKENING

In Thomas's poetry this life is spent in night, the darkness under the sea. Man is wrapped in material garments and spends his life in a house that shuts out the light. At night men sleep. This world, then, can be imagined as a world asleep, dead to the light within. The sleepers see only evanescent images, appearances, in their dreams. To break through those appearances, to see the light, is to awaken to the dawn. Otherwise, man is a creature deep asleep, tortured by nightmares, tossing in a bed that brings him pain. The rack of dreams my lily bones Did twist into a living cipher.... ("Before I knocked") . . . among the rabble Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep, And stake the sleepers in the savage grave. . . . ("My world is pyramid") The bones of men, the broken in their beds. . . . ("Our eunuch dreams")

The material life is some bizarre dream of a man who has been drugged into sleep and must be awakened. I sent my own ambassador to light; By trick or chance he fell asleep And conjured up a carcass shape Awake, my sleeper, to the sun, A worker in the morning town, And leave the poppied pickthank where he lies. . . . ("When once the twilight locks no longer")

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The 'ambassador' self of this poem has been sent originally 'to light', to see the land of light, essence made visible. But he fell asleep, 'by trick or chance', and dreamed up a fleshly form, 'a carcass shape'. Now he lies asleep in that body, a 'poppied pickthank', a flattering opium addict who beguiles the ambassador with passing pleasures so that he forgets his mission. The 'poppied pickthank', the ambassador, and he who sent him are one; they are three aspects of one Self. 'Body', 'soul', and 'spirit' could be substituted for 'pickthank', 'ambassador', and 'king'. The sleeping ambassador, derelict in his mission, is then called by the king and told to awake 'to the sun' and return to be 'a worker in the morning town', the place of light. If he awakens, he will 'see' and 'remember' his origin; the soul will 'know' the spirit within, the king who dwells in the 'morning town'. In this sleep analogy all men are asleep in their beds, and the world's time is night-time. In "In my Craft or Sullen Art" men are 'lovers' in bed, spirits clothed in the passions necessary to this life; the poet writes, in the 'still night' of this world, for the 'most secret heart' that is shared by all men. In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the street and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart

The same night-morning, sleep-waking analogy is present in these passages: I heard, this morning, waking, Crossly out of the town noises A voice in the erected air. . . . ("When I Woke") When the morning was waking over the war He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,

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The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide. . . . ("Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred") Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat On the silent sea we have heard the sound. . . . ("Lie still, sleep becalmed") I blew the dreaming fellows to their bed Where still they sleep unknowing of their ghost. How light the sleeping on this soily star, How deep the waking in the worldless clouds. ("I fellowed sleep") O wake in me in my house in the mud . . . in a bed of sores The lofty roots of the clouds. ("A saint about to fall")

Although men sleep 'unknown of their ghost' - blind to their spirit, their 'most secret heart' - they do get 'killed' in a 'dawn raid' and awake to their light. To 'die', in the world of the sleeping dead, is to wake up and see; to dream, in a world of dreams, is to awaken. Often it is difficult to know which 'death' or 'dream' Thomas intends, but the confusion itself has meaning when unity is the root truth. The verbal and mental spinning become a representation, an image, of the knowledge itself. The head-spinning experience of the poem becomes the head-spinning experience of 'knowing'. The sleep metaphor is especially important in gnostic language because it leads to the metaphor of awakening which expresses the illumination of Gnosis, and that illumination is at the heart of all gnostic thought. Thomas's 'ambassador', who 'fell asleep' as if drugged, relates closely to the gnostic metaphors of sleep and drunkenness. . . . Another series of metaphors referring to the human condition in the world is more uniquely gnostic and recurs with great regularity throughout the whole range of gnostic utterance, regardless of linguistic boundaries. While earthly existence is on the one hand . . .

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characterized by the feelings of forlornness, dread, nostalgia, it is on the other hand described also as "numbness," "sleep," "drunkenness," and "oblivion": that is to say, it has assumed (if we except drunkenness) all the characteristics which a former time ascribed to the state of the dead in the underworld. Indeed, we shall find that in gnostic thought the world takes the place of the traditional underworld and is itself already the realm of the dead, that is, of those who have to be raised to life again. 1

The appeal of the material world, its very beauty, is rendered by analogies to seducing, feasting, hospitality. The cosmos is personified as a man or group of men with a will to distract the soul from any memory of its origin. The dark world becomes a flatterer, a 'pickthank', who cunningly ministers to the material appetites to keep the soul in its power. When the soul has accepted the distractions, it falls asleep and forgets its home. This is another portrayal of the basic idea that the original unity is enveloped in apparent realities; the soul may fall into the sea, or be clothed with garments, or fall asleep - the underlying meaning is the same. Part of the mind distracts the mind from a full awareness of itself. That distinguishing, logical part becomes the darkness, the ignorance, the 'flesh'. Since the man and the cosmos are microcosm and macrocosm of one reality, the 'ignorant' logics of the mind are the powers of darkness, the powers of this world. The "world" on its makes elaborate efforts to create and maintain this [unconscious] state in its victims and to counteract the operation of awakening: its power, even its existence, is at stake. They mixed me drink with their cunning and gave me to taste of their meat. I forgot that I was a king's son, and served their king. I forgot the Pearl for which my parents had sent me. Through the heaviness of their nourishment I sank into deep slumber. 2

Men are not quite forced into this slumber, for they enjoy it; men are 'lovers', lovers of the world. . . . The main weapon of the world in its great seduction is "love." Here we encounter a widespread motif of gnostic thought: the mistrust 1

Jonas, 68. Jonas, 69. His quotation is from the "Hymn of the Pearl" in the Acta Thomae. My brackets.

8

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of sexual love and sensual pleasure in general. It is seen as the eminent form of man's ensnarement by the world: "The spiritual man shall recognize himself as immortal, and love as the cause of death"; "He who has cherished the body issued from the error of love, he remains in the darkness erring, suffering in his senses the dispensations of death." More than sexual love is involved in this role of eros as the principle of mortality. . . . The lust for the things of this world in general may take on many forms, and by all of them the soul is turned away from its true goal and kept under the spell of its alien abode.3 This 'love' prevents the illumination of man's soul. If this love commands man, he will not see the Love of his Father - the one Self. The 'love' of the world sometimes becomes the world itself in Thomas's poetry, as in "When all my five and country senses see": My one and noble heart has witnesses In all love's countries, that will grope awake. . . . This material love has its spiritual counterpart, as this passage from the Hermetic Poimandres and the following comment by Mead make clear: . . . And man that hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself is deathless, and that the cause of death is love, though Love is all.4 The motive power of all is Love. If this Love manifests itself as Desire for things of Matter, the Lover stays in Darkness wandering; if it becomes the Will to know Light, the Lover becomes the Knower of Himself, and so eventually at-one with Good.5 To sleep in the world is to be in love, and to know the self is to Love. The latter sense leads to marriage and seduction metaphors. If the soul is portrayed as a woman or girl - and this is fitting since the soul 'receives' the seed of light - the illumination experience is a marriage between the girl-soul and her prince of light. When the prince comes to her, he kisses her and awakens her from her slumber, as in various fairy tales. If the soul is 'seduced' or 'raped' by the light figure, much as Leda was raped 3 4 5

Jonas, 72-73. Mead, II, 39. Mead, II, 39.

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by the white swan, the meaning is the same; it is a symbolic rendering of the illumination or at-one-ment with the highest self, the God. In the gnostic systems the awakening from 'sleep' is usually dramatized. An agent of the original light, a messenger from the light-home, comes to the slumbering soul and calls to awaken him, or her, and to show him the 'way' home. This messenger is usually the Prince of Light, the Son of God, and this Prince is named locally; he may be Osiris, Adonis, Horns, or Hermes, the swift messenger with the caduceus in hand. Among the Greeks, Hermes is the Logos. He is the conductor and reconductor (the psychagogue and psychopomp), and originator of souls. They are brought down from the Heavenly Man above into the plasm of clay, the body, and thus made slaves to the demiurge of the world. . . . Therefore Hermes "holds a rod in his hands, beautiful, golden, wherewith he spell-binds the eyes of men whomsoever he would, and wakes them again from sleep." Therefore the saying: "Wake thou that sleepest, and rise, and Christ shall give thee light." This is the Christ, the Son of the Man, in all who are born.. . .e The messenger-Son-Prince of Light comes to give the 'call' that awakens and 'saves' the soul, gives it illumination. One call comes and instructs about all calls. One speech comes and instructs about all speech. One beloved Son comes, who was formed from the womb of splendor.... He comes with the illumination of life, with the command which his Father imparts. He comes in the garment of living fire and betakes himself into thy . . . world. I am Yakabar-Kushta, who have gone forth from my Father's house and come hither. I have come hither with hidden splendor and with light without end.7 The messenger-savior 'shakes' the sleeper to wake him and reminds him of his origin. My soul, O most splendid o n e , . . . whither hast thou gone? Return again. Awake, soul of splendor, from the slumber of drunkenness into which Thou hast fallen. .., follow me to the place of the exalted earth where thou dwelledst from the beginning... .8 « 7

β

Mead, Fragments, 201-202. Jonas, 77. Both quotations are from Mandaean texts. Jonas, 83. From a Manichaean Turfan text.

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Here the call is answered by the newly awakened sleeper: [Messenger:] Shake off the drunkenness in which thou has slumbered, Awake and behold me! Good tidings to thee from the world of joy From which I am sent for thy sake. [Sleeper:] I am I, the son of the mild ones. Mingled am I and lamentation I see. Lead me out of the embracement of death. [Messenger:] Power and prosperity of the Living Unto thee from thy home! Follow me, son of mildness, Set upon thy head the crown of light.· The coming of the messenger-Prince is a drama of the spiritual experience of illumination. Prince and maiden, savior and saved, messenger and sleeper, are one. The self awakens to its Self. An 'internal' event has been turned into a symbolic drama or epic with symbolic characters who give abstract concepts poetic life. Now in the last analysis he who comes is identical with him to whom he comes: Life the Savior with the life to be saved. The Alien from without comes to him who is alien in the world, and the same descriptive terms can in a striking way alternate between the t w o . . . . There is strong suggestion of an active-passive double role of one and the same entity. Ultimately the descending Alien redeems himself, that is, that part of himself (the Soul) once lost to the world, and for its sake he himself must become a stranger in the land of darkness and in the end a "saved savior." "The Life supported the Life, the Life found its own...." 1 0 This internal drama extends in gnostic thought to marriage, intercourse, and conception. These events occur in the man who sees or knows, and the conception produces a re-birth. When the 'light' and 'dark' aspects of man enter each other, meet each other, the savior has found the sleeper, the bridegroom has married the virgin, the man has found himself. 9 10

Jonas, 83. From a Manichaean Turfan text. My brackets. Jonas, 78-79.

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. . . This is the House of God, where the Good God dwells alone . . . ; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone,... and, casting away their garments, all become bridegrooms made virgin by the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the virgin with child, who conceives and brings forth a son... The unity of messenger and sleeper is evident here: From the place of light have I gone forth, from thee, bright habitation. I come to feel the hearts, to measure and try all minds, to see in whose heart I dwell, in whose mind I repose. Who thinks of me, of him I think. Who calls my name, his name I call. Who prays my prayer from down below, his prayer I pray from the place of light... .12 In the same way, when Thomas's 'hero' bares Thomas's side, the hero sees his own heart. My hero bares his nerves along my wrist That rules from wrist to shoulder, Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost, Leans on my mortal ruler, The proud spine spurning turn and twist. My hero bares my side and sees his heart Tread, like a naked Venus, The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait; Stripping my loin of promise, He promises a secret heart. ("My hero bares his nerves") He who breaks bread is he whose bread is broken. This bread I break was once the oat, This wine upon a foreign tree Plunged in its f r u i t . . . . This flesh you break, this blood you let Make desolation in the vein, 11 12

Mead, Fragments, 203. Jonas, 79-80. From a Mandaean text.

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Were oat and grape Born of the sensual root and sap; My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

("This bread I break")

When he calls his 'sleeper', he calls himself. Awake, my sleeper, to the sun, A worker in the morning town, And leave the poppied pickthank where he l i e s . . . . ("When once the twilight locks no longer") And it is in this vein that his 'girl', of "In country sleep", (a girl who is 'spelled asleep' and 'ranging the night', who waits for the 'outcry'-call of the 'sun'-son) is told: Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear Since you were born: And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn, Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun. In the following chapter the figure of the 'maiden soul' will be presented more fully, with emphasis on the dramatic role she may play.

νπ THE MAIDEN SOUL

The 'girl' image for the soul is important in many poems and central for several. She may be a 'woman', a 'girl', a 'virgin', a 'bride', a 'nun', a 'widow', or a 'moll'. She usually waits for her savior-hero, but may contribute to his rescue. The important idea is union, just as the vital point of the call is the meeting of messenger and sleeper. In "Our eunuch dreams" the souls of men are clothed in darkness and separated from their husbands: Our eunuch dreams . . . Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night Fold in their arms. And later in this poem Thomas mentions the 'gunman and his moll', the savior and the soul. The 'gunman' would be an armed man, who 'kills', who is a hero to the 'moll'. A similar reference to the captured soul who waits for the coming of her hero occurs in "Unluckily for a Death": . . . the woman in shades Saint carved and sensual among the scudding Dead and gone, . . . that sighs for the seducer's coming In the sun strokes of summer Here the maiden-soul is the underworld of 'shades', the land of darkness, and is 'sensual' or subject to the 'love' of that world, a world of the 'scudding dead and gone'. The dead are driven by the gale, the wind, the spirit, of the 'saint' that 'carved' them,

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fashioned them, in solid stone. But the maiden 'sighs for the seducer's coming', the arrival of the prince who will woo her away and fill her with the seed of light by 'sun strokes of summer*. The appearance of the light-prince is also like a sun-stroke in that it produces a kind of death - a death to the land of the dead. A seduction or rape of this kind is the subject of "Into Her Lying Down Head" in which 'his enemies' are the seducers and are enemies because they take his maiden away from this world. 'He' would be the man whose soul is seduced or raped, a man whose immersion in the dark world makes him want to remain in the world with his maiden-soul. But as she sleeps in the night, the 'enemies' come to her: Into her lying down head His enemies entered bed, Under the encumbered eyelid, Through the rippled drum of the hair-buried ear; And Noah's rekindled now unkind dove Flew man-bearing there. Last night in a raping wave Whales unreined from the green grave In fountains of origin gave up their love, Along her innocence glided Juan aflame and savagely young King L e a r . . . .

In "The Hunchback in the Park" an old hunchback who frequents a park full of mocking boys, an 'old dog', is fashioning something that will live after the hunchback has gone to his 'kennel in the dark', after the boys have followed him. And the old dog sleeper Alone between nurses and swans Made all day until bell time A woman figure without fault Straight as a young elm Straight and tall from his crooked bones That she might stand in the night....

The apparent ugliness of the old hunchback hides the beauty of the 'woman figure' he makes 'from his crooked bones'.

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Two longer poems make this maiden-soul metaphor central to their meaning. "In country sleep" is addressed to a 'girl' wandering in the night, hoping for and fearing the arrival of the "Thief who will steal her heart. In "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" a 'girl' is thrown into the sea to marry with the creatures of the sea until she is hauled up by the fisherman, bringing with her a paradise which is the fisherman's 'home'. The rendering of the soul as female is widespread in gnostic thought, and one system - that of Valentinus and his followers constructs its entire myth around the figure of the Sophia, the world-soul that mistakes the reflection of the light for the light itself and finds herself wandering and lost in darkness. Probably the source of this soul-female metaphor lies in the analogy between the 'entry' of light into darkness and the male entry into the receptive female. The state of the soul that may be enlightened is receptive, silent. For the knower cannot grasp actively but must be 'silent' and 'receptive', like a willing woman, in order for the light to enter. . . . We have seen in Philo how this concept of the soul's receptivity leads to the image of its female function in a dual relationship. In Philo this image refers only to the soul's intercourse with God. . . . We find the sexual soul-imagery throughout the language of later Hellenistic piety, which is saturated with the spirit of supranatural religiosity. The "sacred marriage" of the mystery-cults is an example; and many Christian descriptions of the action of grace and the diffusion of the Holy Spirit in the soul belong to the same circle of metaphors.1

In "The Perfect Sermon" of the Corpus Hermeticum the unity of the sexual union is regarded as a 'mystery' in itself and as a model of the original unity that is God, who creates always from a 'bisexual' oneness. For He, indeed is One and All; so that it needs must be that all things should be called by the same name as His, or He Himself called by the names of all. He, then, alone, yet all complete in the fertility of either sex, ever 1

Jonas, 283-84.

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with child of His own Will, doth ever bring to birth whatever He hath willed to procreate.2 This then is truer than all truth, and plainer than what the mind ['s eye] perceives; - that from that Universal God of Universal Nature all other things for evermore have found, and had bestowed on them, the mystery of bringing forth; in which there is innate the sweetest Charity, [and] Joy, [and] Merriment, Longing, and Love Divine. We might have had to tell the mighty power and the compulsion of this mystery, if it had not been able to be known by every one from personal experience, by observation of himself. For if thou should'st regard that supreme [point] in time when . . . the one nature doth pour forth the young into the other one, and when the other greedily absorbs [it] from the first, and hides it [ever] deeper [in itself]; then, at that time, out of their common congress, females attain the nature of the males, males weary grow with female listlessness. And so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, 8 is wrought in secret This direct experience of the unity mystery then provides metaphors for the illumination experience. The sexual union is an analogue for the union of self and Self. Normal human "thought," then, is, so to say, sensible, entirely bound up in sense-impressions; it is the mind alone that can soar beyond the senses, for it alone can be "illumined by God's Light." The mind is, as it were, a womb or woman, that can be impregnated either by the "Seeds of God" or by the "Daimonal Energy."4 . . . The Womb is Silence, the silence of contemplation, the image of the Great Silence the Mother of the AEons [Essences] in many a Christianized Gnostic System; the Matter is Wisdom; the AEon's coming to consciousness in man is the Birth of Man the Son of God; and the Seed is the Good or Logos sown by the Will of the Father. This is the Birth of the Christ in man, the Great Mystery that awaits us when we have made ourselves strangers to the world-illusion.5 Ln this silent state of contemplation the soul is a womb open for the seeds of light. After this conceiving, the soul gives birth to the spirit within. The light-spirit breaks forth where no sun 2 3 4 6

Mead, Mead, Mead, Mead,

II, II, II, Π,

344. 345-46. 137. 241.

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shines. All of this constitutes the gnostic Sacred Marriage of the soul and the light-prince which results in the birth (rebirth) of illumination, "the mystic union of the soul, as female, with God, as male . . .".« For such a man is the virgin with child, who conceives and brings forth a son, which is neither psychic, animal, nor fleshly, but a blessed aeon of aeons.7 When Thomas's 'woman in shades' 'sighs for the seducer's coming', she resembles the Sophia who laments: My strength looked up from the midst of the chaos and from the midst of the darkness, and I waited for my spouse, that he might come and fight for me, and he came not.8 And Thomas's "On the Marriage of a Virgin", in the light of the gnostic Sacred Marriage, shares in the 'mystery' of sexual union that becomes a metaphor for the mystery of illumination in which the soiü is a maiden, Her heart all ears and eyes, lips catching the avalanche of the golden ghost....

« 7

8

Mead, I, 216. Mead, Fragments, 203. Jonas, 68. From the Valentinian Pistis Sophia.

PART

TWO

FOUR LONG POEMS

VIH "POEM ON HIS BIRTHDAY"

In this poem Thomas includes many of his habitual images in a celebration of his thirty-fifth birthday. The poem begins by locating the poet by the sea with birds above him and fishes below. In the mustardseed sun, By full tilt river and switchback sea Where the cormorants scud, In his house on stilts high among beaks And palavers of birds This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave He celebrates and spurns His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age; Herons spire and spear. Under and round him go Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails, Doing what they are told, Curlews aloud in the congered waves Work at their ways to death, And the rhymer in the long tongued room, Who tolls his birthday bell, Toils towards the ambush of his wounds; Herons, steeple stemmed, bless. In the thistledown fall, He sings towards anguish; finches fly In the claw tracks of hawks On a seizing sky; small fishes glide Through wynds and shells of drowned Ship towns to pastures of otters.... He is in the 'long tongued room' in his 'house on stilts' by a 'full tilt river' and the 'switchback sea', in the 'thistledown fall' of

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the year. There he 'celebrates' and also 'spurns' his birthday. His house is apparently built on the side of a cliff by the sea, for it has 'stilts' to support the side nearest the sea. His room is 'long tongued' because it is there that he makes the poems that are long-winded and loud, that fill the room with verbal noise. Near this house is a river that rushes into the sea 'full tilt', a sea whose waves move up and down like the tracks of a switchback railroad running through hills. Flying above and around the house are cormorants, gulls, curlews, finches, and hawks. Swimming down in the sea are flounders, congers (eels), and 'small fishes'. Birds and fishes are in the process of dying, all on 'their cold, dying trails', and they are obedient to some basic law, for they are 'doing what they are told'. Similarly, the poet, the 'rhymer', is obedient to that command and is moving toward death even as he celebrates his birth; he 'toils towards the ambush of his wounds', just as the curlews 'work at their ways to death'; he 'sings towards anguish', just as the 'finches fly in the claw tracks of hawks on a seizing sky', always in the presence of death, the hawk that dives to kill the bird. All of the life around him, and in him, moves towards the ambush and anguish of death. Death is an 'ambush of his wounds' because death waits, unseen and unexpected. T o attack and kill the 'wounds' of life, the pains that derive from the five senses which are like wounds in the body. Death ambushes these wounds and ends them. Life is both singing and toiling towards this anguish; the birds, like the rhymer, fly and work. Perhaps the flying, the singing, is work too. And therefore he celebrates his birthday and spurns it, because it refers to life and death. It is the anniversary of his 'cold, dying trail'. His original birthday began life which is a toiling towards death, a singing 'towards anguish'. This birthday is another 'sandgrain day' in the huge hourglass of his lifetime, and the sandgrains continue to fall, like the apparently slow fall of the down of a thistle. His life is a 'down'-fall, and in that 'thistledown fall' he 'sings towards anguish', rejoices in the slow, swift fall of his life. Amidst the birds and fishes, the sky and the sea, stalking slowly

"poem o n his b i r t h d a y "

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on their long legs, are the herons, the tall birds that 'spire and spear'. The herons 'spire' up into the sky and dive down to 'spear' the fishes, much as the hawks descend to seize the finches. Both are large birds that bring death to creatures 'doing what they are told'. The herons, with their long legs, 'steeple stemmed', 'bless' the fishes with death, take them out of their 'trails', and so become emblems of death, agents of that law that commands. They are fisherbirds who take the fishes out of the sea and so 'bless' them, 'cross out' their lives in the sea. If there are herons that bless fishes, hawks that kill finches, there must be something that will bless-kill the 'rhymer in the long tongued room'. The poem continues with the idea of all creatures in the process of dying. He In his slant, racking house And the hewn coils of his trade perceives Herons walk in their shroud, The livelong river's robe Of minnows wreathing around their prayer; And far at sea he knows, Who slaves to his crouched, eternal end Under a serpent cloud, Dolphins dive in their turnturtle dust, The rippled seals streak down To kill and their own tide daubing blood Slides good in the sleek mouth.

Herons, minnows, dolphins, seals, and the poet are moving towards death. The herons who spear the minnows are themselves walking in shrouds, and the seals 'far at sea' who 'streak down to kill' are themselves devoured. The poet is in 'his slant, racking house and the hewn coils of his trade'. It is a 'slant' house because it is built upon the incline or slope of a cliff; and the house is 'racking' because it too is in the process of falling down or wrecking. The 'hewn coils of his trade' must be poems, since his 'trade' is poetry. 'Coils' may mean wreaths, garlands, metal devices of heraldry, dins or noises. The poems, then, are garlands cut from the bushes, or heraldic insignia hammered from metal, or loud noises that result from the

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hammering on his poetic anvil. The poet stands in his 'long tongued room', surrounded by these garlands or noises which are strewn around his workroom, looking out at the herons, the river, and the sea. The 'minnows wreathing around their prayer' are wreathing around the poet, he who prays, whose poem on his birthday is to be a kind of prayer of thanksgiving and praise. This 'prayer' role will be more evident later in the poem. In the first four stanzas Thomas has set the setting in which his birthday poem is written. In that setting what strikes him most is the vast process of death moving throughout things and events. In a sense, his birthday reminds him most of his approaching death. And he sees all creatures moving, as they live, toward death. Death is in the sky, the earth, and the sea. And his 'slant' house is inclined toward that event. Now the poem moves towards its first climax, a rendering of the death that is to come. In a cavernous, swung Wave's silence, wept white angelus knells Thirty-five bells sing struck On skull and scar where his loves lie wrecked, Steered by the falling stars. And to-morrow weeps in a blind cage Terror will rage apart Before chains break to a hammer flame And love unbolts the dark And freely he goes lost In the unknown, famous light of great And fabulous, dear God. Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never was Nor will be ever is always true, And, in that brambled void, Plenty as blackberries in the woods The dead grow for His joy. There he might wander bare With the spirits of the horseshoe bay Or the stars' seashore dead, Marrow of eagles, the roots of whales And wishbones of wild geese, With blessed, unborn God and His Ghost,

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And every soul His priest, Gulled and chanter in young Heaven's fold Be at cloud quaking peace, But dark is a long way. The coming of death is heralded by the knelling of the angelus bell, the bell that calls for the morning, noon, and evening prayer that commemorates the Incarnation, the appearance of the Prince in fleshly form. This bell sounds in the silence that occurs between the pounding of waves on the beach; it sounds in the sea like the knelling of a bell buoy. And each year of his life sounds as a bell in his mind, 'on skull and scar', each year already 'wrecked' upon the reefs, 'scars', of the sea. The years of his life, his 'loves' of that life, are gone, destroyed by the time that is manifested by the revolving, 'falling', stars. As the stars revolve, time steers his years upon reefs and sinks them. For every sinking, every 'wreck', a bell rings to signal the passing of that year. The angelus - to be prayed at sunrise, noon, and sunset parallels the movement of the sun which appears to us in the morning, reaches its zenith at noon, and departs at evening. The sun falls into the sea, or is wrecked in the sea, and 'dies' at the close of day. Thus its course parallels the course of each year in the poet's life, and the course of his entire life. The ringing of the angelus bell, at sunset, would signal the departure of the incarnated savior, the departure of another year in the poet's life, the departure of that mortal life itself. There is sorrow for that departure, a lamenting of the wrecking of the sun, the savior, the life that is a love of living that life. But when that departure comes, the poet emerges from 'a blind cage', his 'chains break to a hammer flame', and he is finally free. He will then wander in 'the unknown, famous light of great and fabulous, dear God'. The death that had been wept for becomes a freedom from captivity. What had seemed to be the departure of light becomes the dawning of light. The dawn, the 'to-morrow', has been in a 'blind cage', in the 'chains' of darkness. When this cage, these chains, are broken by death, another light dawns to the poet. As that light comes to him, he feels a 'terror' that breaks the cage, and at last his chains are shattered

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by a 'hammer flame' of light. Now a new 'love' frees him, 'unbolts the dark', the love that leaps down like lightning from that 'unknown, famous light' of God. The love for the dark cage of life has been transformed into the love for 'fabulous, dear God'. Now he sees that his life was a dark 'way' to the 'place' of light, that the changing life in time was a darkness that leads to the changeless light of heaven. Heaven 'never was', never 'will be', but is 'always true'. The home of God is eternal, 'outside' time, and has no past or future - only an unchanging 'is' forever. 'Heaven', then, is now, just as the angelus knells in the wave and the 'to-morrow' is in the 'blind cage'. The death-dawn which 'unbolts the dark' is always present in the darkness of life. Heaven is in the earth. Heaven, apparently a blank void in which nothing can be seen, is really full of 'the dead' who grow and live 'for His joy'. The void is full, and the darkness has light. Since the light is 'unknown', it shines in a 'void', but the nature of that light is spiritual, and so it fills the mystery of the void with a spiritual light in which the dead live. The 'dead' man has become the man 'illuminated'. In this heaven he is 'bare', stripped of the dark garments, free from the cage and the chains. He wanders with 'spirits', 'marrow of eagles', 'roots of whales', 'wishbones of wild geese', and 'blessed, unborn God and His Ghost'. He is with the essences of all creatures, the 'spirits' of them - marrow, roots, and wishbones. All of these essences are parts of the original Essence which is the 'unborn God and His Ghost'. God is 'unborn' because it is He and 'His Ghost', his Spouse, who give birth, who create, who are the eternal source of the creation. All of these 'spirits' wander 'bare' in another 'bay', another 'seashore', which is the shore of the land of light, the shore of heaven. All of them are 'priests' of God, representatives of God, who sing his praises. They have become 'gulled' (not tricked, but reborn, like young birds) and are at peace, even though their chanting shakes the clouds that border the shore of heaven. This shore is above the clouds, above the celestial sea whose other shore is earth.

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This freedom to wander and sing in the 'famous light', to remain there forever, cannot be now, though, for 'dark is a long way'. The death he is moving toward, then, is not a blank, void darkness, but an arrival at light. Life among the myriads of birds and fishes over, around, and under him is now seen to be like a dark cage in which he has been chained. The death he moves toward is a release into freedom and brilliance, some vision other than the immediate setting of the first four stanzas. This vision, a 'to-morrow', has been weeping in the cage, suffering in the darkness. When that darkness is broken, he goes into the Light. 'Death', the arrival in Light, may be seen now in a vision, but the final release has not yet come. Life continues in the darkness until that freedom comes, and so he goes on to pray, to thank and praise. He, on the earth of the night, alone With all the living, prays, Who knows the rocketing wind will blow The bones out of the hills, And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last Rage shattered waters kick Masts and fishes to the still quick stars, Faithlessly unto Him Who is the light of old And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild As horses in the foam: Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined And druid herons' vows The voyage to ruin I must run, Dawn ships clouted aground, Yet, though I cry with tumbledown tongue, Count my blessings a l o u d . . . .

He prays while he is in the dark cage, 'the earth of the night', and while he is 'alone', a stranger to that dark earth, since his true home is that other shore, the shore of light. He is among the 'living', but alone, as are 'all the living'. All men, 'on the earth of the night', are 'alone' in that they are not with 'blessed, unborn God'. He who prays knows that death will come, that the 'rocketing

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wind', the swift spirit, will pierce the solidity of hills and boulders and deliver the 'fishes' under the sea to the 'still quick stars', the always living sparks of light. Here the unbolting of the dark cage becomes a cataclysmic last day, a final earth-shattering explosion that carries the bones, blood, and masts of men back to the shore of light. If men's lives are 'wrecked' in the sea, they are like ships whose masts (supporting the sails that catch the 'wind') are 'blown' to heaven in the blast of death. Again, the idea of essence is rendered by essential elements of structures - bones, blood, and masts. All that is now sunken beneath the sea will be 'kicked', 'blown', 'bled', 'shattered' to the eternal light of the 'still quick stars'. He who prays, prays 'faithlessly unto Him who is the light of old and air shaped Heaven'. If he 'knows' that the light will come in that explosion, he prays with knowledge rather than faith, a certainty that transcends faith and so is 'faithless'. He prays to the 'light of old and air shaped Heaven', 'old' because it always has been, always will be, always is, and 'air shaped' because it is made of spirit and by spirit. In that Heaven souls become as 'wild', or nakedly pure, as horses washed in the foaming sea at the shore of light. The 'horses' may also be the ships, the seahorses, men ride to the shore of heaven. Now he mourns this life he must live, this 'voyage to ruin I must run', and yet finds that there are 'blessings' he can count. He mourns this voyage in 'midlife', at thirty-five, and the mourning is the product of 'vows' he and the 'shrined and druid' herons have made. The herons are now seen to be priests (druids are priests) who are 'shrined', entombed, in the dark cage of the earthly life. They, and the poet, have apparently taken vows to remain in this darkness and to fish for those in the sea. As priests they are fishers of men, who will become gulls and chanters in 'young Heaven's fold' where 'every soul' is reborn as 'His priest'. Yet there have been, apparently, attempts to sail, for his 'down ships' have been 'clouted aground'. His ships of light have been sent to the bottom of the sea; his attempts to reach the shore of light have ended in a return to darkness.

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Now, though he weeps and laments the necessity of the voyage with a 'tumbledown tongue', the language of the fallen, he counts his blessings aloud. Four elements and five Senses, and man a spirit in love Tangling through this spun slime To his nimbus bell cool kingdom come And the lost, moonshine domes, And the sea that hides his secret selves Deep in its black, base bones, Lulling of spheres in the seashell flesh, And this last blessing most, That the closer I move To death, one man through his sundered hulks, The louder the sun blooms And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults; And every wave of the way And gale I tackle, the whole world then, With more triumphant faith Than ever was since the world was said, Spins its morning of praise, I hear the bouncing hills Grow larked and greener at berry brown Fall and the dew larks sing Taller this thunderclap spring, and how More spanned with angels ride The mansouled fiery islands! Oh, Holier then their eyes, And my shining men no more alone As I sail out to die. His 'blessings' are the basics of life in the dark cage: earth, air, fire, water, and the five senses (the 'wounds' of this life). And man is a 'spirit in love', an essence or god in the passions of life in the darkness. Man is a spark of light sunken in this world, this 'love', this 'spun slime'. He is also a spirit who, while in the darkness, loves it actively; he cannot help it. This love is a given, an axiom, and so a blessing. Man is a captive spirit 'tangling through this spun slime' (spun by God) 'to his nimbus bell cool kingdom come and the lost, moonshine domes'. The 'tangling' is the toiling 'towards the

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ambush of his wounds' and the 'voyage to ruin'; it is this life, a movement towards death. That death is man's 'kingdom come' at which the passing bell sounds and the soul is bathed in the 'light of great and fabulous, dear God', taking on the blaze of a nimbus, a man-sized halo. And, though he blazes with that light, he is 'cool', 'at cloud quaking peace'. In this kingdom of God, this 'Heaven that never was nor will be ever', are the 'lost moonshine domes' of the city of God. The domes are 'lost' because man issued from them originally and became tangled in the darkness of 'this spun slime', losing sight and knowledge of his home city. The domes are 'moonshine domes'. 'Moonshine' has various meanings which relate to the idea at hand: 'pearly everlasting' (a plant with white, pearl-like blossoms); 'illicit whiskey'; 'nonsense, empty imaginings'. The domes of Heaven are 'pearly' (precious) and 'everlasting' or eternal. They are full of intoxicants that make the soul sing, and also make the soul unaware of 'real life', the tangle in the cage. Finally, these are nonsense domes, the empty imaginings of priests, or poets; to the 'spirit in love', the soul in 'real life', there are no such domes; seeing is believing, and these are not visible, sensible domes. Some other eye sees these. Another 'blessing' is the 'sea that hides his secret selves deep in its black, base bones'. This is the sea with spheres that 'lull' the 'seashell flesh' (put it to sleep), the sea that casts a dark mantle over the earth and hides 'his secret selves' (the 'spirits of the horseshoe bay') that wait for the return of the wandering, 'tangling' spirit to its home 'kingdom come'. These are the selves that are not apparent 'on the earth of the night'; these are 'my shining men no more alone as I sail out to die'. The celestial sea is 'black and 'base' because it darkens and holds the spirit down in the 'evil' of darkness, the 'sin' of ignorance, the 'love' of 'this spun slime'. But the 'last blessing', the best blessing, is the forever-growing love of the spun-slime earth as he moves to death, 'one man through his sundered hulks'. The final climax of the poem bursts out into a rough chorale filled with ecstatic praise and blessing for the glory of heaven and earth. The sun blooms louder, the

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sea exults, the dew larks sing, the hills grow larked and greener at berry brown fall this thunderclap spring, and the whole world then, With more triumphant faith Than ever was since the world was said, Spins its morning of praise.... This, of all the blessings of his birthday, is the 'most' of them, the full vision of heaven-in-earth. As he moves to death, he sunders his 'hulks', (which here must mean: 'a prison ship'; 'huts or hovels'; 'hulks or husks of grain'). He breaks out of his prison, his 'blind cage', his 'chains'; breaks out of the house, hut, or hovel that is the world of darkness or his body; breaks through the husks that cover or hide the seed of light within. That seed breaks open its husks, 'and, in that brambled void, plenty as blackberries in the woods the dead grow for His joy'. Stripped of its husks, the soul comes to 'old and air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild' (on 'moonshine'?) and where 'he might wander bare'. The closer he comes to the nakedness of death, 'the louder the sun blooms' (or 'blows', as flowers used to do). The sun, a great light, speaks the World louder as he approaches it. And the sound of the celestial sea, its exultation for his 'voyage to ruin', increases. The sea is 'tusked' because it has fishes in it - 'tusk', or 'torsk' or 'cusk', referring to the fish related to the cod. Also, 'tusk', in hunting terms, means 'to beat (woods)'; the sea breaks or is 'beaten' by the voyage through its darkness. Or the sea may be compared to a boar that roots up the earth with its tusks. In this same sense the sea is 'ramshackling'; to 'ramshackle' is to 'ransackle' or 'ransack', and the tusked sea ransacks or plunders the earth as it breaks upon the shore. (Also, the sea plunders the land of light of its light-sparks, its souls, and sinks them in the darkness. Perhaps this is one reason for its exultation.) The sea also 'shackles' a 'ram', the traditional ram understood as the sun, or light, or soul-spirit, which is chained, caged, or shackled by the sea.

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The 'whole world' 'spins its morning of praise' as he 'tackles' 'every wave of the way and gale', as he voyages through the stormy sea: 'Dark is a way and light is a place', 'but dark is a long way'. The 'way' he tackles is like the 'cold, dying trails' of the flounders and gulls. But this is the way 'home' to the 'place' that is light, and he hears its 'dew larks sing taller', sees that 'more spanned with angels ride the mansouled fiery islands', the star-sparks of light, the 'stars' seashore dead', above the sea. As he approaches this new world of light, he will be greeted by his 'shining men', the 'mansouled fiery islands', and he and they will be 'no more alone'; no longer will he be 'on the earth of the night, alone with all the living'. His 'death' may be either the final death of his body or the momentary dying to the darkness, the vision of light within. Since the light is in the matter of this earth, a vision of that secret light would make the matter glow and seem sacred. Also, the very idea of aotual death, a permanent end of the life he knows here on earth, would make this earth more valuable, more rare as his time on earth is diminished. The praise of the earth, the dark land, is also a vision of heaven, the land of light. Heaven is the earth seen in the 'unknown, famous light' in the 'moonshine' light of 'dying'. This poem has many parallels with metaphors common to gnostic thought and expression. Some of these metaphors have already been mentioned; light and darkness, garments, house, and sleep or death. Perhaps the most important metaphor of this "Birthday" poem is 'death', which may have several meanings in this poem and in the language of gnostic religion. 'Death' may mean the actual death of the body, and it does mean that in this poem. But if this world is the world of the 'dead', then physical birth is a 'death', an entry into the underworld. And if the birth into this life is a 'death', then death in this life is a 'birth', an entry into the world of light. In this sense, 'death' may refer to any 'entry' into that world of light; a man may 'die' while living and breathing in this life. 'Death', the spiritual rebirth, becomes a metaphor for

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illumination and vision, the experience of 'knowing' the eternal Essence of the self while still in the existential world. The 'experience' of the infinite in the finite cannot but be a paradox on any terms. By its own testimony throughout mystical literature it unites voidness and fullness. Its light illuminates and blinds. With an apparent, brief suspension of time, it stands within existence for the end of all existence: "end" in the twofold, negative-positive sense of the ceasing of everything worldly and of the goal in which the spiritual nature comes to fulfillment.... We may call it an anticipation of death - as it is indeed often described in the metaphors of dying.1 This 'dying' experience, which 'unites voidness and fullness', relates to Thomas's heaven - 'that brambled void, plenty as blackberries in the woods'. And the light that 'illumines and blinds' seems like the 'unknown, famous light' in which 'freely he goes lost'. The 'death' towards which the poet moves, the 'voyage to ruin' and the 'ambush of his wounds', may be both the final departure and the momentary departure of illumination, the 'brief suspension of time'. In this poem the central metaphor of 'death' is accompanied by a cluster of other metaphors which portray that 'death' in other terms. The herons that 'spire and spear' fishes, the hawks whose claws seize finches, are like messengers of 'death'. The 'hewn coils', the 'blind cage' that will 'rage apart', the 'chains' that 'break to a hammer flame', the 'hulks' that are 'sundered', all relate to the stripping away of, the liberation from, an enclosing darkness. And the cataclysmic explosion that 'will blow the bones out of the hills' and make the 'boulders bleed' is like the Last Day of 'death'. Writing of the Egyptian symbol of the 'Net', in which men are entangled, Mead says: . . . From the mystical standpoint of the doctrine of Rebirth, or the rising from the dead-that is to say, of the spiritual resurrection of those who had died to the darkness of their lower natures and had become alive to the light of the spiritual life, and this too while alive in the body and not after the death of this physical frame - I would venture to suggest that this Net was the symbol of a certain condition 1

Jonas, 285.

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of the inner nature which shut in the man into the limitations of the conventional life of the world, and shut him off from the memory of his true self. The poles, ropes, weights, small cords, and hooks were symbols of the anatomy and physiology, so to say, of the invisible "body" or "carapace" or "egg" or "envelope" of the soul. The normal man was emeshed [sic] in this engine of Fate; the man who received the Mind inverted this Net, so to speak, transmuted and transformed it, so that he could catch food for himself.2 To free oneself from this Net is to 'die', just as hewing the 'coils' or 'sundering' the 'hulks' is to 'die'. The use of the transformed Net to fish for 'food' relates to the fishing herons that take fishes from the sea; a fish who is fished up is a 'dead' fish, just as a man who reaches the 'horseshoe bay' is with 'the stars' seashore dead'. To invert the Net is to 'break apart' the 'blind cage', and to experience the earthquake that 'scythes' the solid 'boulders'. Enter, appear to me, O Lord, for I was before the fire and snow, and shall be after [them]; I am the one who has been born from heaven. Enter, appear to me, O Lord of mighty names, whom all have in their hearts, who dost burst open rocks, and mak'st the names of gods to move!s The 'coils' of darkness resemble several gnostic metaphors for the ignorance natural to this world. They may be the coils of a great serpent, as in this passage from the Hermetic Poimartdres, in which illumination is followed by 'darkness': . . . Suddenly everything was opened before me in a flash, and I behold a boundless view, everything become Light, serene and joyful. . . . And after a while there was a Darkness borne downward . . . , appalling and hateful, tortuously coiled, resembling a serpent.4 To be in the darkness is to be wrapped in the dark coils of this serpent. To be free, one must cut those coils and slay the serpentdragon. 2

Mead, I, 58-59. ® Mead, I. 95. From an invocation of the Hermes cult in the Greek magic papyri. 4 Jonas, 148.

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O Word (Logos) that orderest night and day, who guid'st the ship, and hold'st the helm, thou dragon-slayer... .5 And it is said that as many were changing over to the side of Horus [an Egyptian hawk-god of light], Thuiris, Typhon's concubine, came too [Typhon, a god of the sea and darkness]; and that a certain serpent pursuing after her was cut in pieces by those round Horus. And today on this account they cast down a small rope and cut it in pieces for all to see.0

'Hewn coils' may be slain serpents, especially when the word 'trade' is understood to mean 'mystery', or 'a track, path, way'. The 'hewn coils of his trade' become the illumination of his mystery-way. There is also an aural metaphor in gnostic language that represents the darkness of ignorance as the 'noise' of this world which attempts to drown out the 'call' from the light messenger, the 'alien Man'. The orgiastic feast [of this world], intended to draw man into its drunken whirl, has besides intoxication another aspect: its noise is to drown out the "call of Life" and deafen man to the voice of the alien Man.7

To break through these noises would be to 'hew the coils' of this world, and the 'hewn coils of his trade' would be the heard calls of his savior; the poems themselves would be models, perhaps even instruments, of the mystery of serpent-slaying, noise-cutting, 'dying'. Another version of 'death' is the voyage metaphor. Here the soul seems to be the ship that is captained by the light-spark spirit. This ship voyages through the celestial sea to the shore of light, where the spirit disembarks and finds its home. For the gnostic interpreter the story of Noah's Ark was an account of the mystic 'death'. Noah becomes the Self whose soul voyages upon the flood, the sea, and reaches a mountain-top, at which point the flood recedes and a renewed land appears. The seer who sails finds a fresh world, a renewed paradise cleansed of its former 6 β 7

Mead, I, 94. From an invocation of the Hermes cult. Mead, I, 290. From Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride. My brackets. Jonas, 73. My brackets.

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'evil'; the entire voyage is a mental-spiritual one that might occur in a flash. This passage in the Corpus Hermeticum is full of voyage and sea metaphors, though no mention is made of Noah: . . . The ill of ignorance doth pour o'er all the earth and overwhelm the soul that's battened down within the body, preventing it from fetching port within Salvation's harbours. Be then not carried off by the fierce flood, but using the shorecurrent, ye who can, make for Salvation's port, and, harbouring there, seek ye for one to take you by the hand and lead you unto Gnosis' gates. Where shines clear Light, of every darkness clean; there not a single soul is drunk, but sober they all gaze with their heart's eyes on Him who willeth to be seen. No ear can hear Him, nor can eye see Him, nor tongue speak of Him, but [only] mind and heart.8 Here the 'flood' and the 'harbour' or 'port' are clearly spiritual, of the 'mind and heart'. The voyage of the soul resembles the 'voyage to ruin' of Thomas's poem, and his 'spirits of the horseshoe bay or the stars' seashore dead' are much like those fortunate ('horseshoe') souls who make the harbour and arrive 'unto Gnosis' gates . . . where shines clear Light'. These lucky mensouls, gazing into and bathed in that Light, past the gates of Gnosis and in the city of Light, resemble 'my shining men no more alone as I sail out to die' who have to their 'nimbus bell cool kingdom come' and see 'the lost, moonshine domes'. The metaphor of a path, track, or 'way' to God is widespread in gnostic imagery. The 'Way' is the voyage to light, the climb up the mountain at the top of which the seer can 'know'. It is a mysterious, secret Way, a 'dark' Way, and it is also the Way home, the lost road back to the original source. Hard as it is to leave the "things we have grown used to," the things habitual, it must be done if we are to enter into the Way of the Gnosis. But no new Path is this, no going forth into new lands (though it may have all the appearance of being so). The entrance on the Path of the Gnosis is a Going-Home, it is a Return - a Turning Back » β 9

Mead, II, 120-121. Mead, II, 98.

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This W a y is a path that meets o n e everywhere. T h e secret k n o w l e d g e of the journey, o n c e taken, occurs t o the knower again and again. 'Death' c o m e s to h i m m a n y t i m e s before the fined departure. I n the Hermetic treatise, "Mind unto Hermes",

Mind

says: . . . T o be able to know [Good], a n d will, and hope, is a Straight W a y , the G o o d ' s own [Path], both leading there and easy. If thou but set'st thy foot thereon, 'twill meet thee everywhere, be seen, both where and w h e n t h o u dost expect it not, - waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, and saying naught. F o r there is naught that is not image of the Good. 1 0 G o d is seen everywhere, o r m a y be realized everywhere, because the location of the m i n d makes n o difference. T h e mystery of the W a y lies in the paradox that the path up the mountain is also a path into the mountain. Cease to seek after G o d (as without thee), and the universe, a n d things similar to these; seek H i m f r o m out of thyself, and learn w h o it is, w h o once and for all appropriateth all in thee unto Himself, a n d sayeth: " M y god, my mind, m y reason, my soul, my body." . . . A n d if thou shouldst closely investigate these things, thou wilt find H i m in thyself, one and many, just as the atom; thus finding f r o m thyself a way out of thyself. 1 1 This 'way o u t of thyself is the w a y out o f the darkness to the light of the Self within. Sometimes, finding the W a y b e c o m e s the d r a m a of a savior and a prisoner; the savior finds his w a y to the prisoner and then leads him back to his h o m e . T h e savior-self m a y ask the Father t o send h i m into the darkness t o release the prisoner-self: F o r his sake send me, F a t h e r ! Holding the seals will I descend, through all the Aeons will I take my way, all the Mysteries will I unlock, the f o r m s of the gods will I m a k e manifest, the secrets of the sacred W a y , known as Knowledge, I will transmit. 1 2 10 11 18

Mead, II, 189. Mead, Fragments, 223. From Monoimus, letter to Theophrastus. Jonas, 77. From a Naassene "Psalm of the Soul".

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This is the savior figure, who says of himself, From the place of light have I gone forth, from thee, bright habitation. I come to feel the hearts, to measure and try all minds, to see in whose heart I dwell, in whose mind I repose. Who thinks of me, of him I think: who calls my name, his name I call. Who prays my prayer from down below, his prayer I pray from the place of light... . I 8 In Thomas's poem, in which 'dark is a way and light is a place', he prays 'faithlessly' to God, having set his foot on the path, the 'voyage to ruin'. As suggested earlier, perhaps the 'faith' he lacks has been exchanged for 'knowledge'. . . . The Gnosis is not an end in itself; it is but the beginning of the True Knowledge of God. They who receive the Baptism of the Mind are made "perfect men," not Perfect; not until they have received this touch of the Christ-consciousness have they reached true manhood. Those who have received this Baptism know why they have come into being, — the purpose of life. They become consciously immortal; they know they are deathless, they do not only believe it; their immortality is no longer a belief, it is a fact of knowledge. They have won their freedom from Death and Fate, and know the real constitution of the cosmos up to the Threshhold of the Good, the Plain of Truth - that is to say, presumably in Buddhist terms, as far as the Nirvanic state of consciousness. Not yet, however, have they entered Nirvana - that is to say, become one with the Logos. They have seen the Sight or Vision of Nirvana, but not entered into the Promised Land »* I n the "Birthday" poem, this state of knowledge before oneness m a y be compared to the vision of the 'unknown, famous light' of heaven which is followed by the realization or admission: 'but dark is a long way'. The vision has occurred, but the final union is yet to come. The 'setting' of this poem presents several parallels with geo13 14

Jonas, 79-80. From a Mandaean text. Mead, II, 97-98.

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graphic metaphors of gnostic literature, some of which are now familiar. His 'house on stilts' may refer also to his body, a torso on legs. The 'switchback sea' may also be the celestial sea that covers the earth. And the coils, chains, hulks may refer to the dark garments of this world. But the 'mustardseed sun' and the 'full tilt river' also have parallels in gnostic imagery. The sun as a symbol of vast light has been mentioned before. But why the 'mustardseed' sun? A mustard seed is round and yellow-orange, a kind of miniature model of the sun. But the association also occurred to gnostic writers and to the writers of the Gospels. The tiny seed is often compared to the Logos, the 'food of the soul': Dost thou not see the food of the soul, what it is? It is the Continuing Reason (Logos) of God, like unto dew, encircling the whole of [the soul] on all sides, and suffering no part of it to be without its share.... It is, moreover, as it were, a coriander seed [n. The grain of mustard seed of the Gospels and of the "Gnostics."] For agriculturalists declare that the seed of the coriander can be divided and dissected infinitely, and that every single p a r t . . . comes up just as the whole seed. Such also is the Reason (Logos) of God, profitable in its entirety and in every part, however small it be.15

The sun brings light, and the sun is one part of all Light, a star in the cosmos. This seed metaphor also renders the idea of the light within, the tiny spark that is the Self, the Logos, the sun, within. " . . . The Point which is nothing and is composed of nothing, though partless, will become by means of its own Thought a Greatness beyond our own comprehension." This [Point]... is the Kingdom of the Heavens, the "grain of mustard seed," the partless p o i n t . . . which no one knows save the spiritual... . l e

To be 'in the mustardseed sun' is also to be in the light of the Logos. The prayer of the poem, the 'angelus', might be compared to the Hermetic custom of prayers at sunrise and sunset. Twice a day, at dawn and even, they are accustomed to offer up 15 16

Mead, I, 247. Philo of Alexandria. I have bracketed the note. Mead, I, 184-85. From Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies.

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prayers; as the sun rises praying for the sunshine, the real Sunshine, that their minds may be filled with Heavenly Light, and as it sets praying that their soul, completely lightened of the lust of the senses and sensations, may withdraw to its own Congregation and Councilchamber, there to track out Truth.17 Sunset may be compared to the fall of a seed: "In the thistledown fall, he sings towards anguish." Thomas's birthday occurred in the fall, in October; he is also 'singing as the sun sets', in the downfall of the 'mustardseed sun'. His singing is a prayer to and for the sinking sun, a symbol for God and man, a 'spirit in love', a sun sunken in the sea. The 'full tilt river' is clearly a river flowing with great speed; but 'tilt' also means 'slant', so that a river at 'full tilt' would be one that flows straight up and down, reminiscent of the 'River of Divine Reason': And the Divine Reason (Logos) floweth down like a river, from Wisdom, as from a source... ,18 For indeed the stream of the Divine Reason (Logos) continually flowing on with rapidity and regularity, diffuses all things through all and maketh them glad.19 This river plunges down through the sea of 'turbid water' bringing 'living water' to the dark world, diffusing 'all things through all' and making them glad. Just as the rays of the sun 'fall' upon the earth, so the clear, living water falls; in both metaphors the light and life of the Logos is diffused throughout darkness and decay. This river flows forever, like the 'livelong' river of the poem. Sun, river, sea, and house all relate to concepts other than geographical setting and yet function effectively in that realm too. The physical setting becomes a spiritual complex of metaphors in the same way that heaven is in earth. He who sees the light within sees a new world in the old one, an Eden in Hades, paradise in hell. In a sense, he who sees deeply into the darkness begins to see a world of light. The Way of mystery leads to the core of the darkness and emerges into light. The setting is also internal, mental, psychic - all 'in the head'. 17 18 18

Mead, II, 252. Philo of Alexandria. Mead, I, 244. Philo. Mead, I, 245. Philo.

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The poem can be, as an artistic experience, a 'hewn coil', an embodiment of the ecstasy of the vision and death of a birth-day, in which the rough simplicity of the language resists the emotional flow and generates a secret fire that sears as it exalts the 'last blessing' of the Hermetic Emerald Tablet: Heaven above, heaven below; Stars above, stars below. All that is over, under shall show. Happy who reads the riddle!20

M

Alan W. Watts, Nature, Man and Woman (New York, 1958), p. 139. I have altered the last line.

IX "VISION AND PRAYER"

This poem has two sections; the first consists of six stanzas, each printed in the shape of a diamond, the second of six stanzas, each shaped like a pair of wings or a goblet. The diamond is brilliant; it gathers light to itself and becomes a source of light, suggesting 'seeing', 'knowing', and 'vision'. Also, the diamond shape is symbolic of various Logos figures, givers of light, among them Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus) and Jesus Christ.1 The pair of wings would relate to the 'ascent' of the prayer and the wings of the soul-bird that flies up to a union with God. The goblet, or chalice, is symbolic of a mystic communion with God, the experience compared to drinking, taking into the self, the essence of God. Here is the first section, framed by a prose version in which I have added punctuation only, to indicate my literal reading of the poem. Who are you, who is born in the next room - so loud to my own that I can hear the womb opening, and the dark run over the ghost and the dropped son behind the wall, thin as a wren's bone? In the birth-bloody room, unknown to the bum and turn of time and the heart-print of man, bows no baptism, but dark-alone blessing of the wild child. I must lie still as stone, by the wren-bone wall - hearing the moan of the mother-hidden and the shadowed head of pain, casting tomorrow like a thorn, and the midwives of miracle sing - until the turbulent new-born burns me his name and his flame, and the winged wall is torn by his torrid crown, and the dark thrown from his loin to bright light. 1

Gertrude Jobes, Dictionary of Mythology Folklore and Symbols (3 vols.; New York, Scarecrow Press, 1962), I, p. 441.

"vision and prayer"

Who Are you Who is born In the next room So loud to my own That I can hear the womb Opening and the dark run Over the ghost and the dropped son Behind the wall thin as a wren's bone? In the birth bloody room unknown To the burn and turn of time And the heart print of man Bows no baptism But dark alone Blessing on The wild Child. I Must lie Still as stone By the wren bone Wall hearing the moan Of the mother hidden And the shadowed head of pain Casting to-morrow like a thorn And the midwives of miracle sing Until the turbulent new born Burns me his name and his flame And the winged wall is torn By his torrid crown And the dark thrown From his loin To bright Light.

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When The wren Bone writhes down And the first dawn Furied by his stream Swarms on the kingdom come Of the dazzler of heaven And the splashed mothering maiden Who bore him with a bonfire in His mouth and rocked him like a storm I shall run lost in sudden Terror and shining from The once hooded room Crying in vain In the caldron Of his Kiss In The spin Of the sun In the spuming Cyclone of his wing For I was lost who am Crying at the man drenched throne In the first fury of his stream And the lightnings of adoration Back to black silence melt and mourn For I was lost who have come To dumbfounding haven And the finding one And the high noon Of his wound Blinds my Cry.

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There Crouched bare In the shrine Of his blazing Breast I shall waken To the judge blown bedlam Of the uncaged sea bottom The cloud climb of the exhaling tomb And the bidden dust upsailing With his flame in every grain. O spiral of ascension From the vultured urn Of the morning Of man when The land And The Born sea Praised the sun The finding one And upright Adam Sang upon origin O the wings of the children! The woundward flight of the ancient Young from the canyons of oblivion! The sky stride of the always slain In battle! the happening Of saints to their vision! The world winding home! And the whole pain Flows open And I Die.

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When the wren bone writhes down and the first dawn (furied by his stream) swarms on the kingdom - come of the dazzler of heaven and the splashed, mothering maiden, who bore him with a bonfire in his mouth and rocked him like a storm - I shall run, lost in sudden terror and shining, from the once-hooded room, crying in vain - in the caldron of his kiss, in the spin of the sun, in the spuming cyclone of his wing - for I was lost who am crying at the man-drenched throne in the first fury of his stream; and the lightnings of adoration back to black silence melt and mourn, for I was lost who have come to dumbfounding haven and the finding one; and the high noon of his wound blinds my cry. There, crouched bare in the shrine of his blazing breast, I shall waken to the judge-blown bedlam of the uncaged sea-bottom, the cloud climb of the exhaling tomb, and the bidden dust upsailing with his flame in every grain. O spiral of ascension from the vultured urn of the morning of man, when the land and the born sea praised the sun, the finding one, and upright Adam sang upon origin! O the wings of the children, the woundward flight of the ancient young from the canyons of oblivion, the sky-stride of the always-slain-in-battle, the happening of saints to their vision, the world-winding home! And the whole pain flows open, and I die.

The coming of the 'new-born' in the 'next room' produces a 'sudden terror and shining', a death in which 'the whole pain flows open, and I die'. A son is being born into the darkness who has a 'torrid crown' that breaks the thin wren-bone wall and produces the 'vision'. The poet first asks, "Who are you, who is born in the next room?" This next room is so close to his that he can hear the mother's womb opening and the 'dropped son' coming into the world. The wall that separates the rooms is delicately thin, as thin as the bone of a wren. This birth is 'unknown to the burn and ton of time'; it occurs outside the tortuous revolution of the cosmos and time. And the 'birth-bloody room' is unknown to the 'heart-print of man', the beating of blood in the physical heart. The birth introduces no named child, 'bows no baptism', but 'blesses' the son with the mystery of darkness; the 'dropped son' is dropped into darkness, and the poet can hear 'the dark run over the ghost', the wet darkness engulf the spirit. He hears the 'moan' of the birth as he lies 'still as stone', as if dead, 'by the wren-bone wall'. He hears the head of the son

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emerge from the mother, the 'mother-hidden and the shadowed head of pain, casting to-morrow like a thorn'. The head casts light, dawn, or 'to-morrow', that pierces the 'winged wall' and gives pain: 'the whole pain flows open, and I die'. Also, the light is cast or thrown into darkness 2 and experiences the pain or thorn-in-the-flesh of life in darkness. As this light appears, he hears the 'midwives of miracle sing', for the birth is the 'miracle' of light emerging in darkness. He lies quietly until the wall bursts and the new-born appears directly to him: "the turbulent new-born burns me his name and his flame, and the winged wall is torn by his torrid crown, and the dark thrown from his loin to bright light". At this confrontation, the son throws off the dark loin-cloth and appears in full radiance, 'naked' and 'pure'. In the first two stanzas, then, a brilliant son has been born. This birth has occurred so near to the poet that he can hear the birth, at first, and then see the newborn son in all his brilliance. At this point his appearance terrifies the poet, and the poet speaks as a virgin confronted by a naked man might. The son that has been 'born' is also a powerful, blazing hero figure. The poet's soul is portrayed as the lost maiden whose lover, spouse, or prince has finally come. For now the imagery becomes sexual, and the newborn son seems almost to seduce. The maiden is confronted with her naked hero, at last, and feels terror that becomes ecstasy. She is united with the son-prince, feels the pain of that union and its ecstasy. She is filled with the seeds of light from his loins and is 'lost' 'in the caldron of his kiss, in the spin of the sun, in the spuming cyclone of his wing'. She is like Leda, entered by the great white swan, as in Yeat's poem: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? 2

Cf. 'the hurled outcast of light' in "A Winter's Tale" and 'to-morrow weeps in a blind cage' in the "Birthday" poem.

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And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? .. . s Now the 'wren-bone wall', the 'winged wall', is like the maiden's hymen, 'torn by his torrid crown', the burning phallus of light that enters and gives seeds of light to the receptive womb of contemplation. The 'wren bone writhes down', into her womb, 'and the first dawn (furied by his stream) swarms on the kingdom', the place of light within the maiden. That 'kingdom' is the product of the hero and the girl, the sun-prince and the maiden-soul; it has 'come of the dazzler of heaven and the splashed, mothering maiden'. The maiden is 'splashed' by 'his stream' (perhaps the same kind of 'full tilt river', stream of the Logos-Son-sun, that appeared in the "Birthday" poem). In this union of son and maiden, she becomes the one 'who bore him with a bonfire in his mouth and rocked him like a storm'. Not only has she borne him, given birth to him, but she has borne him in this intercourse, and 'rocked him like a storm'. The union is a violent, shattering one, like the bursting of boulders in the "Birthday" poem. The maiden's state is one of fear and joy together: "I shall run, lost in sudden terror and shining, . . . crying in vain - in the caldron of his kiss, in the spin of the sun, in the spuming cyclone of his wing - for I was lost who am crying at the man-drenched throne in the first fury of his stream; and the lightnings of adoration back to black silence melt and mourn, for I was lost who have come to dumbfounding haven and the finding one; and the high noon of his wounds blinds my cry." Here pain and ecstasy merge into one 'dumbfounding' experience that unites opposites. The 'kingdom', the 'throne', the 'haven', are all one - essence of the maiden-soul, now 'drenched' or 'splashed' by the 'stream' of the hero-sun, the 'finding one' who has come to her or to whom she has come, he whose blazing heart consumes hers and 'blinds' her with light.4 The 'lost' maiden has been found by, and has found, her self, the Prince of Light. 3 The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York, Macmillan, 1949), pp. 247-48. 4 His 'wound' is his heart, that feels and suffers, and also perhaps the wound h e has made in the maiden - his entry into her - a wound that is 'high noon', the zenith of light.

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At the moment of this union, this 'death', the maiden will 'waken to the judge-blown bedlam of the uncaged sea-bottom', the dark world freed from its blind cage and exploding to Heaven in the light of the cataclysm that reveals the light within. All of the sea-bottom earth erupts into a new land, summoned by the savior - 'judge-blown'. This eruption is 'the cloud climb of the exhaling tomb, and the bidden dust upsailing with his flame in every grain', the dying voyage of the sparks in darkness. Now the earth, the land of carrion and death, is raised and ascends to become a paradise - a Heaven-earth. The dead ashes have been plucked from the urn of darkness and live in light, reborn: "O spiral of ascension from the vultured urn of the morning of man, when the land and the born sea praised the sun, the finding one, and upright Adam sang upon origin!" The man whose soul has united with the light is an Adam with Eve in Eden; this 'death' is his 'origin'. Visionary men, reborn 'children', fly to the heart, the 'home', of the soul of the cosmos. This is the 'home' that 'winds' the world: these are the 'slain' that 'stride' the sky, the 'saints' that rise from 'oblivion' to the 'wound' of light: "O the wings of the children, the woundward flight of the ancient young from the canyons of oblivion, the sky-stride of the always-slain-in-battle, the happening of saints to their vision, the world-winding home!" At this moment of exaltation, the sudden cataclysm of illumination and the climax of 'death' is complete: "And the whole pain flows open, and I die." The 'Vision' section combines the motifs of 'death', rebirth, maiden-soul, sacred marriage, and awakening into one dramatic burst that becomes the experience of vision itself, rather than describing it. But the 'Prayer' section is a plea for the continuation of life in darkness; it becomes an affirmation-in-grief of the human dilemma, of the 'damned' who 'glory in the swinish plains of carrion'. After the 'amen' of the prayer, the vision occurs again, as if in answer to the prayer.

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In the name of the lost who glory in The swinish plains of carrion Under the burial song Of the birds of burden Heavy with the drowned And the green dust And bearing The ghost From The ground Like pollen On the black plume And the beak of slime I pray though I belong Not wholly to that lamenting Brethren for joy has moved within The inmost marrow of my heart bone That he who learns now the sun and moon Of his mother's milk may return Before the lips blaze and bloom To the birth bloody room Behind the wall's wren Bone and be dumb And the womb That bore For All men The adored Infant light or The dazzling prison Yawn to his upcoming. In the name of the wanton Lost on the unchristened mountain In the centre of dark I pray him

"VISION AND PRAYER"

That he let the dead lie though they moan For his briared hands to hoist them To the shrine of his world's wound And the blood drop's garden Endure the stone Blind host to sleep In the dark And deep Rock Awake No heart bone But let it break On the mountain crown Unbidden by the sun And the beating dust be blown Down to the river rooting plain Under the night forever falling. Forever falling night is a known Star and country to the legion Of sleepers whose tongue I toll To mourn his deluging Light through sea and soil And we have come To know all Places Ways Mazes Passages Quarters and graves Of the endless fall. Now common lazarus Of the charting sleepers prays Never to awake and arise For the country of death is the heart's size

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And the star of the lost the shape of the eyes. In the name of the fatherless In the name of the unborn And the undesirers Of midwiving morning's Hands or instruments O in the name Of no one Now or No One to Be I pray May the crimson Sun spin a grave grey And the colour of clay Stream upon his martyrdom In the interpreted evening And the known dark of the earth amen. I

turn the corner of prayer and burn In a blessing of the sudden Sun. In the name of the damned I would turn back and run To the hidden land But the loud sun Christens down The sky. I Am found O let him Scald me and drown Me in his world's wound. His lightning answers my Cry. My voice burns in his hand. Now I am lost in the blinding One. The sun roars at the prayer's end.

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In the name of the lost - who glory in the swinish plains of carrion, under the burial song of the birds of burden, heavy with the drowned and the green dust, and bearing the ghost from the ground, like pollen on the black plume and the beak of slime - I pray (though I belong not wholly to that lamenting brethren, for joy has moved within the inmost marrow of my heart bone) that he who learns now the sun and moon of his mother's milk may return, before the lips blaze and bloom, to the birth-bloody room, behind the wall's wren bone, and be dumb, and the womb that bore for all men the adored infant light (or the dazzling prison) yawn to his upcoming. In the name of the wanton, lost on the unchristened mountain in the centre of dark, I pray him that he let the dead lie (though they moan for his briared hands to hoist them to the shrine of his world's wound and the blood-drop's garden), endure the stone-blind host to sleep in the dark and deep rock, awake no heart bone but let it break on the mountain-crown unbidden by the sun, and the beating dust be blown down to the river-rooting plain under the night, forever falling. Forever-falling night is a known star and country to the legion of sleepers whose tongue I toll to mourn his deluging light through sea and soil; and we have come to know all places, ways, mazes, passages, quarters, and graves of the endless fall. Now common Lazarus of the charting sleepers prays never to awake and arise, for the country of death is the heart's size and the star of the lost the shape of the eyes. In the name of the fatherless, in the name of the unborn and the undesirers of midwiving morning's hands or instruments — O, in the name of no-one-now or no-one-to-be, I pray: May the crimson sun spin a grave grey, and the colour of clay stream upon his martyrdom in the interpreted evening and the known dark of the earth; amen. I turn the corner of prayer and burn in a blessing of the sudden sun. In the name of the damned, I would turn back and run to the hidden land, but the loud sun christens down the sky. I am found. O, let him scald me and drown me in his world's wound. His lightning answers my cry. My voice burns in his hand. Now I am lost in the blinding one. The sun roars at the prayer's end. He prays first 'in the name of the lost', the creatures of darkness who 'glory' in the land of death (the 'plains of carrion'), who are buried and drowned.5 He prays that the son return to the womb that bore him, past the Milky Way ('his mother's milk') 5 The 'birds of burden' are probably souls falling from the 'ground' of heaven, taking on the 'green dust' and 'slime' that will burden them in this life.

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and back to Heaven. The son-messenger has 'learned' the 'sun and moon', the shades of light, of the physical cosmos under the fixed stars of the Milky Way, and he could raise up all of the dark world, destroy it. Therefore, even though the seer is not wholly of this world, having seen the light and died ("though I belong not wholly to that lamenting brethren, for joy has moved within the inmost marrow of my heart bone"), he prays that the 'dazzler' return home and 'be dumb' before the cosmic womb's 'lips blaze and bloom', before his presence burns up the cosmos, destroys the world. He prays that the son go back to the light home and withdraw from 'saving' the 'lost' from their beasthood. For to 'save' them would destroy their darkness, would make them wholly light. The only complete 'salvation' of the world would be its destruction; the prayer, then, asks the savior not to 'save'. He asks the son to save the world by refraining from 'saving' it. He prays, also, in the name of his soul, 'the wanton, lost on the unchristened mountain in the centre of dark'. She is 'wanton' since she has been 'extravagant' in her union with the son, has been a 'lover' caught up in desire and ecstasy with the son; and she is then 'lost', consumed, on the heights of vision, even while still living in the darkness.' In the name of this maiden he prays the son to 'let the dead lie', to leave the lovers of darkness in that darkness. He begs the son to 'endure the stone-blind host to sleep in the dark and deep rock', to suffer mankind to abide in their life of desiring and knowing darkness. He asks, again, that the son "awake no heart bone but let it break on the mountain-crown unbidden by the sun". Should the son call, 'bid', the blind sleepers to 'awake', he would kill them, bring the core of their hearts, the 'heart bone', to the light of death. Better that he permit this core in men to 'break' (open to the light of the 'mountain-crown') by luck or chance; let them happen upon the top of the mountain. Again, he asks that "the beating dust be blown to the river-rooting plain under the night, forever falling". The 'plain' of the earth is always β

The 'mountain' is 'unchristened' because it is unnameable, unknown, and prior to creation.

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being 'rooted', dug into, by the 'rooting' river of light that flows down to and throughout the earth.7 All this he asks even though men beg for death, "though they moan for his briared hands to hoist them to the shrine of his world's wound and the blood-drop's garden", though men ask for delivery from the suffering and pain of their lives, to be lifted up to paradise by 'his briared hands'. The son's hands are 'briared': since he has found his way into the dark tangle of the lower world, he might be imagined as scratching his hands in tangles of painful briars.8 The Son has hands to 'hoist them' to the 'blood-drop's garden', apparently the garden in which they lose the blood of this life, the garden of 'death', not of this world. He continues, explaining that the 'night' is 'a known star and country' to men, 'the legion of sleepers'. They know this life and value it. It is their 'tongue' (their words) he 'tolls' - to grieve for and praise the captured light in matter, 'his deluging light through sea and soil'. Even though they know only the darkness, their dark words may render and recognize the light; they are dimly aware of the light imprisoned within them, and perhaps this awareness is what makes them moan in their 'sleep'. Now he, the 'common Lazarus' (returned from vision-death) of the 'charting sleepers' (those who have explored the earth, 'have come to know all places, ways, mazes, passages, quarters, and graves of the endless fall'), prays to stay always in the darkness, 'never to awake and arise'. He asks this because 'the country of death is the heart's size and the star of the lost the shape of the eyes'. This last idea is a difficult one but is central to the prayer, perhaps the motive for the prayer. The key words are 'death' and 'lost', both of which are ambiguous in Thomas's language. 'Death' refers to this life, or to the vision of the divine Life. And 'the lost' may refer to men lost in 'the swinish plains of carrion', or to 7

This river carries star 'dust', sparks of light, that 'beats' upon the earth, the 'plain under the night'. (See Chapter V i n . ) 8 Also, Briareus, a son of Uranus or of Zeus, had a hundred hands; one hundred (the square of ten) is the number of Perfection, the Son, while one thousand (the cube of ten) is the number of Absolute Perfection - the Father. Jobes, I, 247; II, 1209.

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reborn men who are 'lost on the unchristened mountain'. The meaning of the clause should be approached both ways. The earth, this life, is the 'heart's size'. This life is suited, measured, for the heart of man.9 Life is experienced as feeling, and so it is valued though it must wound. The heart of man, a thing of great value to him who prays, knows this life and loves it through its pain. And the 'star of the lost', the beckoning light for men in this world, is in other men, is 'the shape of the eyes'. It is the eyes of men that appeal to men; the love of mankind, in the 'plains of carrion', guides mankind. He who prays loves the earth and loves man. He must. He would stay with them forever and never die. N o t for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art. ("In my Craft or Sullen Art")

But the 'country of death', as the heaven of God, is also the 'heart's size'. This country of light is the size of man's heart, his soul, and forever is within man. And the 'star of the lost', as the reborn man 'in heaven', is after all the 'shape of the eyes'. For man, know it or not, has eyes 'behind' which 'dawn breaks'. And he may 'see' the world of light that is in his soul or 'heart'. He is a 'common Lazarus' who comes back from the death of his vision. Heaven, once again, is within earth; the 'mountain crown' is deep within. The zenith is in the core. And thus he prays never to break this paradox, always to feel the tension of light-in-dark, and so affirms the value of this lower light by praying never 'to awake and arise' into that 'good night'. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, •

A n d , with a pun on 'size', this life is the heart's 'sighs', the heart's griefs.

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Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ("Do not go gentle into that good night")

The apparent ambiguity of the clause is more a mutuality; it is not so much choosing between opposites as it is joining them. He now prays in the name of God, as Mind and Form, the 'fatherless', the 'unborn', the 'undesirers of midwiving morning's hands or instruments'. God, Mind and Form, is the ultimate source, 'unborn' and 'fatherless', and does not need the 'morning' light, being the source of light.10 He prays in the name of 'no-one-now or no-one-to-be'; God is one-who-always-was, one-who-always-is, and one-who-alwayswill-be. The 'unborn light' is eternal. The prayer is for 'grey', the 'colour of clay', the merging of black and white. He asks the setting 'crimson' sun, the son who is returning out of sight, to 'spin a grave grey', combine the threads of black and white (or, 'hurry to' a grey grave). The grey that will 'stream upon his martyrdom in the interpreted evening and the known dark of the earth' is a mourning color and a serious color - the color of this life. The son, the messenger of light, suffers 'martyrdom' as he is hidden once again in darkness, buried by the 'colour of clay'. By returning to a veil of darkness, the son departs and saves the world from the consuming fire of 'salvation'. And so he returns within the womb of matter, suffers 'martyrdom'. But after the 'amen' of the prayer, the vision remains. As if in answer to the prayer for life in this world, the 'sudden sun' 'blesses' with its blinding, burning light: "His lighting answers my cry." The poet's love of this life pulls him back to the 'hidden land', the world blanketed by darkness, in the 'name of the 10

These terms, however, might also be applied to men, 'the sleepers'. They are, in their ignorance, away from the Father. They are 'unborn', not having been reborn. And they do not (usually) desire the rebirth of 'midwiving morning'.

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damned', the creatures cursed to a life in the underworld-earth. But that love and loyalty cannot keep him from being 'lost in the blinding one', and the 'sun roars at the prayer's end', the end of the spoken prayer and the 'death' of him who prays. The vision happens to him as if unbidden. It is like 'lightning' that strikes him and consumes him. He is 'found', and then 'lost in the blinding one', and he must surrender himself, his soul, his maiden, as a woman might: "O, let him scald me and drown me in his world's wound." The maiden-soul and the sun-prince 'find' each other; the self finds its Self; the unknown seeks out him who seeks to know. The experience is beyond conscious willing to know, though that seems to be the first step. But the willing to know is rendered as a passive state: "I must lie still as stone." This 'passivity' lies behind the metaphor of maiden and lover, for the mind cannot be 'entered' by light if it tries to grasp the light, just as the 'unconscious' will be unavailable and hidden if the 'conscious' is busy 'making sense' of it. The vision, the illumination, is analogous to a dream which the sleeper 'permits' to enter his vision, come upon him. To dream, one must sleep; and to sleep, one must surrender 'consciousness', imitate the dead, and 'lie still as stone'. The 'answer' ('his lightning') to the 'cry' of the prayer seems pointless, irrational, no answer at all. But it is an answer, a vast 'Yes', in that it comes to one in the darkness, one who remains there. The 'end' of the 'prayer' occurs in his life and does not remove him forever from that life. True, he now belongs "not wholly to that lamenting brethren, for joy has moved within the inmost marrow of [his] heart bone", but he does still 'belong'. He lives, 'heart-broken', the 'inmost marrow' of his 'heart bone' having come to him, appeared to him, but he lives in new dimensions, in which joy and sorrow, acceptance and terror, merge in a terrible knowledge reminiscent of Yeats's 'tragic joy': A poet creates tragedy from his own soul, that soul which is alike in all men. It has not joy, as we understand that word, but ecstasy, which is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen, perhaps, by all those that still live. . . . Yet is not ecstasy some fulfillment of the soul in itself, some slow or sudden ex-

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pansion of it like an overflowing well? Is not this what is meant by beauty? 11 Between extremities M a n runs his course; A brand, or flaming breath, Comes to destroy All those antinomies Of day and night; The body calls it death, The heart remorse. But if these be right What is joy? 1 2

The experience of the 'lightning' that strikes and makes the soul 'burn in a blessing of the sudden sun' and be 'lost in the blinding one' resembles something that happened to Yeats: My fiftieth year had come and gone, I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless. 18

In the gnostic tradition, and the earlier religious traditions that contributed to Gnosticism, birth and sacred marriage or intercourse are important 'mysteries', metaphors for the illuminated ecstasis that is the central experience of gnosis. In the Hermetic "Secret Sermon on the Mountain", the initiate, Tat, inquires of the 'tradition of Rebirth'. He asks his Master, Hermes, to explain it in the 'secret way', to reveal the meaning of the metaphor, and discovers that 'birth' and 'vision' are one, that the birth metaphor necessarily includes that of intercourse, or sowing seed. Tat. . . . Give me the tradition of Rebirth, setting it forth in speech or in the secret way. 11

The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), p. 319. 12 Yeats, "Vacillation", Collected Poems, 287. " Yeats, "Vacillation", Collected Poems, 288-89.

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I know not, O Thrice-greatest one, from out what matter and what womb Man comes to birth, or of what seed. Hermes. Wisdom that understands in silence [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born], and the True Good the seed. Tat. Who is the sower, father? . . . Hermes. It is the Will of God, my son. Tat. The one that is begot will be another one from God, God's Son? Hermes. All in all, out of all powers composed. Tat. Thou teilest me a riddle, father, and dost not speak as father unto s o n . . . . Hermes. What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whene'er I see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of God's mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. And now I am not what I was before; but I am born in Mind. . . . I am no longer touched, yet have I touch; I have dimension too; and [yet] am I a stranger to them now. Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.14 The nature of this rebirth, this 'simple vision' which is seen 'within myself, is like a 'death' in that the seer passes through himself into another state of being; it is an ecstasy that may be compared to the sexual climax of intercourse or the labor of the pregnant woman - in both, pain is finally experienced as ecstatic joy. This self-knowledge is confusing to Tat ("For I have no share of that essence in me, which doth transcend the senses.") and he decides that the experience is beyond him. Tat. I am incapable of this, O father, then? Hermes. Nay, God forbid, my son! Withdraw into thyself, and it will come; will, and it comes to pass; throw out of work the body's senses, and thy Divinity shall come to birth... .15 Who then doth by His mercy gain this Birth in God, abandoning the body's senses, knows himself [to be of Light and Life] and that he doth consist of these, and [thus] is filled with Bliss.19 The 'abandoning' or 'throwing out of work' the senses makes the experience a clear analogy with death. In this way, "

1S ,e

Mead, II, 220-222. Mead, II, 223. Mead, II, 226.

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the rebirth is 'death', an abandonment of the appearances of the external, existential world for the 'truth' of the inner, essential world. The natural body which our sense perceives is far removed from this essential birth... . Dost thou not know thou hast been born a God, Son of the One, even as I myself?17 The coming of the 'Son', then, takes place within the mind of man; the 'simple vision' of essence reveals a son within who enters and fills the soul with light. The soul gives birth to a son who impregnates the soul that it may continue to give birth; the reflexive metaphors render something of the ecstatic knowledge of the unknowable, as in this graphic statement: . . . Having in Himself the Perfect Fruit, as it were, throbbing and moving in [His] Depth, He tore asunder His Womb, and gave birth to His own Son - the Invisible, Unnameable, and Ineffable [One] of whom we tell.18 The birth of this son is his coming, the quest of the savior-son through the darkness. He comes, calling to awaken the sleeping maiden, and as he comes, he is 'brought forth': In the name of him who came, in the name of him who comes, and in the name of him who is to be brought forth. In the name of that Alien Man who forced his way through the worlds, came, split the firmament and revealed himself.19 To 'split the firmament' and 'force his way' is to be born. The cosmic imagery is internal. . . . He seems to "pass through himself" - to "involve" himself, as it is said somewhere in the Mahabharata of the Rishis — "into a Body that can never die," that is, into a, or rather the, Essential or Cosmic Body, that embraces the cosmos within i t . . . . It is an inner change. The Birth of a Christ is the striking of a new keynote; everything remains apparently as it was before, but all things receive a new interpretation.20 17 18 19 20

Mead, Mead, Jonas, Mead,

II, 228. I, 182-83. From Hippolytus, 77. From a Mandaean text. II, 242-43.

Refutation.

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In gnostic thought the illumination of Gnosis - the mystic experience itself - is the coming of a Christ; the knower becomes a Christ, a Son of God. The experience of the entry of the light seed into the womb-soul of contemplation, the union of the Father and Mother, produces a Son who in turn illuminates. The Sacred Marriage and the Birth metaphors are necessarily related, but each is a rendering of the illumination. In the mystery of the Sacred Marriage, ". . . the mystic union of the soul, as female, with God, as male, . . ." 21 gnostic thought saw the 'Great Consummation' of the Cosmos and the union of self with Self. In this marriage the cosmic Sophia was received back into the Light-world, and united with her heavenly spouse. This was to take place at the Great Consummation; but, mystically, it was ever taking place for those who united themselves with their Higher Selves. As in the consummation of the universe the World-soul was reunited with the World-mind, so in the perfectioning of the individual the soul was made one with the Self within."

The inner identity of maiden and hero, saved and savior, is the central mystery of gnostic thought. For the light that is in all creation is the same light discovered in the seer's soul. The 'Self within' is the God of all creation. I am thou and thou art I, and where thou art I am, and in all things am I dispersed. And from wherever thou willst thou gatherest me; but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself.23

Confronted with this kind of paradox, the poet of illumination must turn to experiences that baffle logic, those that transcend mechanical description. Hence the metaphors of 'bursting' into light: earth-shaking explosion, birth trauma, and sexual climax. The home found, in "Vision and Prayer", is a dumbfounding haven' in which 'the high noon of his wound blinds my cry'. The union of maiden and prince, of existence and essence, renders her (and him) 'lost' 'in the caldron of his kiss, in the spin of the sun, in the spuming cyclone of his wing'. And the substance of the prayer is like a plea against the 'Great Consummation' after or 21 82 25

Mead, I, 216. Mead, Fragments, 421. Jonas, 60. From the gnostic Gospel of Eve.

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during its individual equivalent. The 'Great Consummation', a cosmic conflagration that renders all ablaze, is like the blinding, burning ecstasy of the inner sacred marriage in which 'the whole pain flows open' as the 'turbulent new-born burns me his name and his flame'. To render ecstasy, language must approach the immediacy of music which induces ecstasy. For [only] then wilt thou upon It gaze when thou canst say no word concerning It. For Gnosis . . . is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense. For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body's every sense and every motion he stayeth still. And shining then all round his mind, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence.24 In this stillness, 'still as stone', a man may 'die' into essence, seeing and hearing nothing - until 'the sun roars at the prayer's end'.

*

Mead, II, 144-45. From Hermetic treatise, "The Key".

χ "IN COUNTRY SLEEP"

"In country sleep" is addressed to a 'girl' who is 'asleep' and is 'riding far and near in the land of the hearthstone tales'. The poem may be read as a comforting statement to the poet's dreaming wife or daughter, but I think that 'girl' refers to the maidensoul of the poet, 'asleep' in this world and wandering lost in search of her home. The passivity and helplessness of the entrapped soul in the existential world leads to the idea of a maiden lost in the 'woods' of this world. The girl is asleep and is to be visited by the Thief who comes to 'steal' her from the darkness. The Thief, or Savior, appears here, I think, in the form of Hermes, or Thoth-Hermes, the messenger of the Father and a god of thieves who leads souls to life and to death. The 'country' of this poem would be the earthly existence, the forest or woods of this world in which the maiden is wandering, 'riding far and near'. And the 'wolf' does not come in the conventional sheep's clothing: Never and never, my girl riding far and near In the land of the hearthstone tales, and spelled asleep, Fear or believe that the wolf in a sheepwhite hood Loping and bleating roughly and blithely shall leap, My dear, my dear, Out of a lair in the flocked leaves in the dew dipped year To eat your heart in the house in the rosy wood. The wood is 'rosy'. This idea of a red underworld occurs elsewhere in Thomas's poetry. In "Our eunuch dreams" he writes: Which is the world? Of our two sleepings, which Shall fall awake when cures and their itch Raise up this red-eyed earth?

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The red earth may be red because that is the color of blood, thus the passion of this life. Perhaps the earth is 'red-eyed' because it is the place of suffering from weeping, from drinking the numbing liquor of this world. This notion of a childish, unaware, ignorant world is reflected in the phrase, 'the land of the hearthstone tales'. This world is a fiction, an imitation of the real world of the 'place of Light'. It is the product of words spoken at home, at the hearthstone, but it is not that hearthstone itself. Men in this life are like children who believe literally in fairy tales; they mistake the apparent for the real. And they are, like country bumpkins or mountaineers, ignorant and unsophisticated, unfamiliar with the ways of the city, here The City. This world is a fairy tale, a superstition, a mere likeness of the real one, the essential one. This is the world of little red riding hoods and wolves, the innocent and ignorant sleep under the 'spell' and charm of appearances. The maiden, then, is a kind of Snow White put to sleep by a rosy-red poisoned apple, the apple of desire that spells death until the Prince comes to steal a kiss, wake the maiden, take her home. The 'heart in the house in the rosy wood' would be the soul in the body in the great red earth, or the spirit in the soul in the blood-red body. This is the same 'house' that was, in the "Birthday" poem, 'his slant racking house', 'his house on stilts'. (It is like the house of the Seven Dwarfs, the lowest of whom is the Dopey moon; Grandmother's house in the rosy wood could be the house of the maiden's primal matter, Mater, the original womb of the cosmos.) It is not the earth that holds the Thief; he will not come out of a 'lair in the flocked leaves' in the mortal Time that descends like dew from Eternity. Therefore, she need not fear, or believe, that her real 'death' comes in this world or in Time - the reflections of Heaven and Eternity. This notion of death is relative child's play, and she need have no fear of it. For later in the poem she is told: . . . Fear most For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind

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And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew. . . . Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow, And truly he Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea, And surely he sails like the ship shape c l o u d s . . . .

The Thief, when he comes, and he surely comes, comes 'as meek as the dew', falls in the night, and sails down through the ruling spheres of this world, the celestial sea, as softly as clouds (like ships, like arks) sail the sky. Since the girl need fear the dark powers of this world, she is told: Sleep, good, for ever, slow and deep, spelled rare and wise My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire Of the hobnail tales: no gooseherd or swine will turn Into a homestall king or hamlet of fire And prince of ice To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn, Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep.

The girl may 'sleep' safely, for no earthly power will destroy her spirit, her sweet or 'honeyed' (golden and sweet) heart, before the Light comes, 'before sunrise'. Nor will she regret, lament, 'weep' this world - 'the innocent lie in the rooting dingle'. The girl is told to sleep: Sleep,... My girl ranging the night in the rose and shire Of the hobnail tales . . .

She ranges, wanders, through the night, the darkness of this world, in the rose (the red 'compass' or directions) and the shire (region or area) of the 'hobnail' (rustic or ignorant) 'tales', the fictions of this world. No earthly power, 'gooseherd or swine', will suddenly be transformed to royalty or holy power ('a homestall king or hamlet of fire and prince of ice') and woo or steal her love for her true Spouse, the Thief who will come. The rustic or country imagery

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is kept with the rendering of the mortal powers as gooseherds and swineherds, keepers of silly geese and greedy or passionate swine ('swine' also means 'lout' or 'dolt'). 'Homestall', a farmyard or home place, and 'hamlet', a small village, reinforce the rustic or 'hobnail' imagery.1 The 'prince of ice' would describe the one who brings 'death'. The same double reference occurs in the succeeding lines, in which she is told that the rustic lout will not turn into a prince: To court the honeyed heart from your side before sunrise In a spinney of ringed boys and ganders, spike and burn.. .. The boys are the Men, the 'shining men' of the "Birthday" poem, the Sons of Light, the Souls of Heaven that circle around the Light singing its praises; they are ringed around the Light. The 'ganders' are not only wise old Men but giant birds (souls) grouped and flying around the ultimate Soul, later in this poem called 'the great roc ribboned for the fair'.2 (The roc is a legendary bird of vast size.) These ganders are sons, princes, from the 'gander king', the 'great roc', the ultimate high-flying Bird of Heaven. The sunrise burst of Light becomes a spiking and burning of the maiden, a kind of Divine rape and consummation. The maiden is consumed and carried up by the fire of the sunrise; her nature is tempered by the burning of the Light, only the essence left. Nor the innocent lie in the rooting dingle wooed And staved, and riven among plumes my rider weep. The girl will not lament 'the innocent lie in the rooting dingle'. She is 'wooed' because she is sought after and courted by the mortal world, subject to the passion and love of the growing ('rooting') dingle. She is 'staved' because she is broken, beaten, 1 But these terms also refer to the land of Light. A king of the 'home place', and a hamlet (Prince Hamlet) of fire and light would be fitting names for the Son of God. * In "In the white giant's thigh" Thomas writes of " . . . butter fat goosegirls, bounced in a gambo bed Their breasts full of honey, under their gander king Trounced by his w i n g s . . . . "

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racked, by the tortured wandering in darkness.3 She is broken, or 'riven', from her Prince, and is therefore heart-broken, soulbroken. She is 'riven' (torn apart, split, broken) 'among plumes' (feathers, the 'garments' of birds or souls). Comforting the girl, 'riven among plumes', Thomas continues: From the broomed witch's spume you are shielded by fern and flower of country sleep and the greenwood keep. Lie fast and soothed, Safe be and smooth from the bellows of the rushy brood. Never, my girl, until tolled to sleep by the stern Bell believe or fear that the rustic shade or spell Shall harrow and snow the blood while you ride wide and near, For who unmanningly haunts the mountain ravened eaves Or skulks in the dell moon but moonshine echoing clear From the starred well?

This repeats the assurance that the girl is safe from the powers of darkness, 'the rustic shade or spell', and from death, 'the broomed witch's spume'. The 'broomed witch's spume' may also be the foam on the shore of the Land of Light.4 The girl is safe from 'the bellows of the rushy brood', the brood of straw men and trifling things, the powers of darkness who create the noise, the bellowing, that almost drowns out the call of the savior. And this 'rustic shade or spell' will not shed the vital blood while she wanders. For even in this dark world, this night, there is the faint but true Light of 'moonshine echoing clear from the starred well'. The moonshine reflects the Light from the Source, 'the starred well', of Heaven. This is like a promise of the Great Light of the sun that will come with the dawn. Also, the man in the moon, moonshine, who 'haunts the mountain ravened eaves or skulks in the dell moon', is reminiscent of Thoth-Hermes who was also a moon-god, a Thief sneaking through the darkness with a dim Light. The 'mountain ravened eaves' are, I think, the eyelids seized by the rustic spell, 3

Also, she is broken, spilled (both meanings of 'staved') because she has been dropped down to this world and scattered to bits, no longer the unity she was. 4 Cf. 'Heaven where souls grow wild as horses in the foam' of the "Birthday" poem.

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'mountain' referring to rusticity and 'ravened' to 'seized' and dark as a raven. The poem continues with the arrival of the girl upon a hill, a kind of Calvary upon which is the Cross, the sacrificial emblem of the surrender of the maiden-soul to the powers of Darkness. A hill touches an angel! Out of a saint's cell The nightbird lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves Her robin breasted tree, three Marys in the rays. Sanctum sanctorum the animal eye of the wood In the rain telling its beads, and the gravest ghost The owl at its knelling. Fox and holt kneel before blood. Now the tales praise The star rise at pasture and nightlong the fables graze On the lord's-table of the bowing grass. The girl, the maiden-soul, 'riding far and near' in the land of the 'dead', is an 'angel' and a 'Saint' in a cell, or room, in the house of this world, this body. And as she rides, wanders, she lights upon a hill, one of the rustic mountains, and sings, 'lauds', her sacrifice to the 'nunneries and domes of leaves' of this world. She is the 'animal eye of the wood', the Soul of this world, praying, 'telling its beads', for the tolling of the bell that will signal the liberation of the 'nightbird', the 'owl', the dark-devoured bird-soul, from the woods, the dark mountains, of Darkness. She, the blood-soul of the Son of God, was spilled upon the Tree of this world, 'her robin breasted tree', and she praises, sings, 'lauds' that cross. At the end of this passage the Light that is in Darkness is portrayed by the image of a pasture whose 'bowing grass' is eaten by the ignorant beasts, the 'fables', of this world; but even this grass is like the bread and wine of Communion, and the pasture is an altar, a 'lord's-table of the bowing grass'. For the Light particles, the 'stars', are present throughout the Darkness, within the Darkness, and to eat the grass of this world, this cosmos, is to consume the Body of God. This idea is central to Thomas's "This bread I break": This bread I break was once the oat, This wine upon a foreign tree

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Plunged in its fruit; Man in the day or wind at night Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy. Once in this wine the summer blood Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine, Once in this bread The oat was merry in the wind; Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down. This flesh you break, this blood you let Make desolation in the vein, Were oat and grape Born of the sensual root and sap; My wine you drink, my bread you snap. The same idea is present here: The force that through the green fuze drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. ("The force that through the green fuze drives the flower") The 'pasture' and its 'bowing grass' are, by the scattering of Light, the 'lord's-table' at which all sit and drink His wine, snap His bread. The poem again speaks to the maiden: Fear most For ever of all not the wolf in his baaing hood Nor the tusked prince, in the ruttish farm, at the rind And mire of love, but the Thief as meek as the dew. The country is holy: O bide in that country kind, Know the green good, Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch Cool in your vows. Yet out of the beaked, web dark and the pounding boughs

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Be you sure the Thief will seek a way sly and sure And sly as snow and meek as dew blown to the thorn, This night and each vast night until the stern bell talks In the tower and tolls to sleep over the stalls Of the hearthstone tales my own, lost love; and the soul walks The waters shorn.

Most of this has been touched on before. The maiden-soul, 'my own, lost love', bides in 'that country kind', this natural world, which has its own 'green good' under the 'prayer wheeling moon'. The 'green good' is under the moon, which is imagined to wheel 'prayers' - both the words and the souls who have prayed - to the sun, as a water wheel takes water up to the height of its turning. She lies, he hopes, 'in grace', 'spelled at rest in the lowly house'. She sleeps under a spell - and for a 'spell' only, in a grace period before the payment is made forever. This is again ironic, for the 'grace' period, this life, is the dark, wandering, terror-decked captivity, and she yearns to make the payment. But then, she doesn't. For the 'country is holy' and the green is good. (This is another touch of the 'let the dead lie' and the 'grave grey' of "Vision and Prayer" or the 'blessings' of 'four elements and five senses, and man a spirit in love' of "Birthday".) Man is a spirit, a wind, a ghost, a maiden, in the passion, the lust, the rosiness, the love of the darkness, and the grace period in the 'lord's-table of the bowing grass' is but a day therefore, 'Do not go gentle into that good night', but 'bide in that country kind'. It is a grace period. And it isn't. Her 'lowly house' is in the 'squirrel nimble grove'. The grove, the wood, is as nimble and busy, as 'coiled', as a squirrel racing around the trees and leaves.5 The maiden sleeps 'under linen and thatch and star', under sheets which are under a thatched straw roof which is under the stars, suggesting the rustic girl asleep in the cottage as well as the envelope idea of spirit, soul, and body, the mortal garments metaphor. 8

Also, the squirrel is a Norse emblem of the messenger of Odin, a chattering, quick messenger who reports to God. This would then be a reference to the darkness filled with scattered sparks of Light.

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She is 'held and blessed', though she wanders everywhere, 'from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch'. She is protected from the falling, raining, Darkness and the roaring 'wolf in his baaing hood', the powers of Darkness, who make a din, an uproar, a coil, at her door but cannot get in. Or - she is held, kept prisoner, and blessed, 'damned' and 'cursed', from the 'shade' (or spirit) who would 'douse' her, bathe her, in Light, and break the lock at the latch of her cell. I like this better, especially since she is 'cool' in her 'vows', her marriage promises to the Thief-spouse, that make her like a 'nightbird', a nun, who 'lauds through nunneries and domes of leaves'. The dark is 'beaked', perhaps, because it impales the maiden as a predatory bird does its prey with its beak. And it is 'web', or 'webbed', because it catches the girl as the cobweb of the spider catches its prey. The 'boughs' that 'pounce' are the limbs of the trees in the woods that reach out, seem to reach out, to strangle the maiden who runs through the woods (anyone who has seen the Snow White film remembers the trees that glower down and try to seize the girl as she runs through the forest in the black of the night). The Thief will find a way out of the woods, and he will find a way to the maiden. And his 'way' β will be as still as falling snow and as gentle as dew forming on the hawthorn, the 'thorn' with white blossoms. When the 'stern bell talks', the 'soul walks the waters shorn'. The bell is 'stern'. It is 'unbending, inflexible, cruel, pitiless, strong, mighty, massive'. It is also the 'last bell', since it is at the rearward, the bell near the helm held by God. When this stern bell talks, or calls, it is time to wake up - to 'walk the waters shorn' of the dark garments to the Town with the 'tower' with the calling bell, the passing bell, that knells the passage of the climbing girl. This night and each night since the falling star you were born, Ever and ever he finds a way, as the snow falls, As the rain falls, hail on the fleece, as the vale mist rides Through the haygold stalls, as the dew falls on the windβ

Cf. 'Dark is a way', 'But dark is a long way' of "Birthday".

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Milled dust of the apple tree and the pounded islands Of the morning leaves, as the star falls, as the winged Apple seed glides, And falls, and flowers in the yawning wound at our sides, As the world falls, silent as the cyclone of silence.

This passage presents a series of clauses that describe the manner of the Thief s coming and describe the constant saving action that goes on forever. The 'falling' of all the things mentioned would refer to the descent of the Savior from his home in the Land of Light. The girl, too, is a 'falling star' or a star-particle of Light that has fallen into birth in the dark world. The snow, rain, hail, mist, dew, dust, star, apple seed, and world, all fall from their source in Heaven. And especiallly the 'winged apple seed' (from the Tree of Knowledge) falls down to 'flower' or grow 'in the yawning wound at our sides', the heart that is asleep in Darkness. The 'wind-milled dust of the apple tree' is the spiritground pollen dust fallen from Knowledge.7 The 'cyclone of silence' is closely related to the 'spiral of ascension' (or descent) of "Vision and Prayer", a powerful thrust of spirit, air, that is silent as the snow. The second section of the poem presents a vast scene of prayer, all creation praying in the night of this world to the 'great roc' and His choirs of Men: "The saga from mermen to seraphim leaping!" The continual yearning of the darkened souls, the black birds, the men in the sea, for deliverance from the forest to the 'fair' in Town becomes a 'leaping saga of prayer', a vast praying flying up as the delivering Light flies down. Night and the reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks And the wings of the great rock ribboned for the fair! The leaping saga of prayer! And high, there, on the hareHeeled winds the rooks Cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books Of birds! Among the cocks like fire the red fox Burning! Night and the vein of birds in the winged, sloe wrist Of the wood! Pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves! The stream from the priest black wristed spinney and sleeves Of thistling frost 7

Cf. 'the hidden dust upsailing with his flame in every grain' in "Vision and Prayer".

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Of the nightingale's din and tale! The upgiven ghost Of the dingle torn to singing and the surpliced Hill of cypresses! The din and tale in the skimmed Yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail! The sermon Of blood! The bird loud vein! The saga from mermen To seraphim Leaping! The gospel rooks! All tell, this night, of him Who comes as red as the fox and sly as the heeled wind. Illumination of music! the lulled black-backed Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves, In the winds' wakes. Music of elements, that a miracle makes! Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act, The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly Lying the sky Might cross its planets, the bell weep, might gather her eyes, The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew, Only for the turning of the earth in her holy Heart!... This passage compares the coming of the Thief to the dawn, at whose first dim glimmer the birds in the dark sing. This dawn, this coming, is a 'white act', an illumination of music' (the singing, praying birds), a 'miracle' that 'makes' or causes a harmony or music of all four elements. The Son's coming is like the sun's coming, and the newly arrived sun is a young, newborn ship sailing down through the Green of the celestial sea: "the foal moves through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves, in the winds' wakes". He comes in the dim Light of the moon in the wakes of the spirits, 'winds', that fell through the sea. But he also comes in, or into, the awakenings of the souls singing for his arrival. The 'reindeer on the clouds above the haycocks' are probably emblems of vessels, or sea-steeds, ridden up to Light by the ascending souls,8 the reindeer relating to the horse as a steed or 8 Jobes, II, 1331.

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ship to be ridden by voyaging souls. The 'rooks cawing from their black bethels soaring, the holy books of birds', are the black (Bible-black) bird-souls ascending from their 'black bethels' (dark houses of God) on the 'hare-heeled winds' - 'quick' (full-of-life) spirits. In the rustic wood is a 'vein of birds', a 'pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves', a streak of Life-blood in the bound, 'laced', vegetation. This dark wood is a 'spinney' whose pulse in the wrist is clothed in black ('priest black') sleeves of stinging cold ('of thistling frost'), cold because so far from the warm Light of the sun. From this hidden vein of spirit arises the vast song, the 'saga', of praise and prayer to the 'great roc' on the white mountain of Light, the 'surpliced hill of cypresses', who is raising down the Essence-fat which is thinly scattered in Darkness: "The din and tale in the skimmed yard of the buttermilk rain on the pail!" The song-saga is sent by men who live in the sea: "The saga from mermen to seraphim leaping!" But the girl still sleeps, a bird tricked by the Darkness and asleep in the sea: "the lulled black-backed gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes!" She is so deeply asleep that she seems 'dead' (almost 'dead' enough to be delivered, to ascend through the spheres of the planets reversing the order of her encounters with them during her fall to earth). But she still has the love of this world - 'the turning of the earth in her holy Heart' - and therefore she must live; the stern bell will not yet 'weep', and the Thief will not yet take the sleeping maiden, will not yet 'fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew'.9 But though the Thief will not yet come, though the maiden will not yet escape, or 'die', it is certain and sure that he will. And when he does come, he will take her grief and, her faith, for they are one. Her faith, her knowledge of her home and her spouse, occurs with grief for her separation. Whenever she awakens, each 'dawn', she remembers her lost home, and her faith • T h e dew, the food of the soul, seems to fall aimlessly, whether or not the maiden wills, just as the 'masts and fishes' are kicked 'faithlessly unto Him w h o is the light' in "Birthday", and the fallen dust, in "Vision and Prayer", is the 'bidden dust upsailing'.

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is renewed as she grieves for her exile. Each time she 'dies' into knowledge, she feels the ecstasy-pain of faith-grief, as in "Vision and Prayer" the dawn is 'the happening of saints to their vision! The world winding home! and the whole pain flows open and I die'. The Thief will steal this compound of faith and grief, in her final death, and deliver her to the Simple unity of the One Home, the Single Source. But the coming, forever, of the Thief means that the Maiden he finds is forever scattered and lost in Darkness, that her faith and grief are forever alive. The Light is forever within the Dark, and the faithful Appleseed is forever flowering in the vast yawning wound of the tortured grief in the Heart, whether we will or no. The Maiden Soul of this world is always sharing the Light of her Thief, is always grieving that he will not come, and her faith is always present, always stolen, always born. The Thief, like 'Heaven that . . . is always true', constantly comes, forever flows, never ceases to sail: . . . Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow, Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea, And truly he Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew's ruly sea, And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair, But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer He comes to take Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come. Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear Since you were born: And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn, Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun.

Her faith is as deathless as the eternal coming of the Thief, and though one spark of Light is saved, there are countless more

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always to be saved, always being saved. Though the girl 'wakes' in the dawning of light, the task is never finished, the Thief is always flowing. On the cosmic scale, the world-soul Maiden, scattered throughout Darkness, is forever saved to the end of the world because matter, mixed with Light, is infinitely extended through the cosmos. At the micro-cosmic level of the self, final, faithtaking salvation is the death of the body, but there are many other 'deaths' or dawns before that final one - glimmerings, like moonshine in the night, of the final burst of Light, visions from which the seer returns to the land of the dead and the faithful. The lost girl has faith He will come, a faith part and parcel of her captivity in this world, a faith that exists only because she is lost in the Darkness. With the final liberation, the last arrival of the Thief-PrinceChrist, her faith becomes superfluous, meaningless, is stolen away. But this faith (the yearning, seeking sparks of Light) continues, this world continues, men continue, just as the Thief always comes 'this night . . . and night without end'. This deathless faith is perhaps the same valuing of this life that appeared in the prayer of "Vision and Prayer" in which 'common lazaras of the charting sleepers prays never to awake and arise for the country of death is the heart's size and the star of the lost the shape of the eyes'. The entire tone of "In Country Sleep" is one of profound acceptance and conviction that the suffering of this life is also sacred, beautiful, and precious. The country is holy: O bide in that country kind, Know the green good, Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you Lie in grace. Sleep spelled at rest in the lowly house In the squirrel nimble grove, under linen and thatch And star: held and blessed, though you scour the high four Winds, from the dousing shade and the roarer at the latch, Cool in your vows.

The importance of the maiden-soul in gnostic imagery has been stressed before; at this point some additional aspects of the

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maiden-hero drama should be stated, especially the 'saving' role of the maiden. For she is not simply a passive victim; she is central to the basic paradox of light-in-darkness, essence-in-existence. This unity is often clouded by the symbolic drama that represents the aspects of the unity mystery as separate characters. Also, the inwardness of the gnostic dramas is easily mistaken for a naive account of the creation. What lies at the root of all the metaphors is the attempt to portray the central mystery - that spiritual truth and reality are 'within'. To dramatize this 'given' state, the Manichaean Gnostics created the myth of a war between the 'powers of Darkness' and the 'land of Light', in which several 'sons' of the 'Father of Light' are sent to battle or sent to save a fallen son from imprisonment. The war as a whole is never finished but remains in stasis, suggesting the axiom of spirit 'scattered' in the material, dark world. The following account of this myth is a paraphrase of Jonas's presentation:10 The powers of Darkness, continually warring among themselves, notice, for the first time, the Land of Light, are envious, and unite to invade it. The Father of Greatness and Light sends his son, Primal Man, to conquer the King of Darkness, and Primal Man checks him by feeding him Soul. Having devoured, absorbed, Soul, the powers of Darkness forget their ambition to conquer Light and remain where they are. But Primal Man is stunned and enmeshed in the Dark world by the sacrifice of his Soul, his Maiden. He wakes, however, and prays to his Father for liberation from his captivity. The father hears him and sends the Living Spirit to rescue him. The Living Spirit calls to Primal Man in a loud voice: Peace be unto thee, good one amidst the wicked, luminous one amidst the darkness, God who dwells amidst the beasts of wrath, who do not know his honor. Primal Man answers the call: Come for the peace of him who is dead, come, oh treasure of serenity and peace! How is it with our Fathers, the Sons of Light in their city? Then Primal man is raised up by the Living Spirit, who extends his right hand and raises Primal Man by his right hand. But the Maiden 10

Jonas, 213-25.

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Soul, too scattered and mixed with Darkness, must be left behind. This means that another Messenger must be sent to accomplish the stupendous task of freeing the sparks of the Maiden Soul from the Darkness. This quest goes on forever and forever. Always a Messenger comes to liberate bits of the devoured Maiden from their tortured captivity. The Messenger who comes, like Primal Man and Living Spirit before him, comes from the City of Light, as a Christ, to save, to remind, to give knowledge of Light. The Soul, the Maiden, remains scattered in darkness. Her original spouse, having been saved, now comes again and again to save her. The savior, then, comes to save his own soul; the Self comes to save its self. In this sense, the Logos is in matter or darkness, and to find its light is to experience revelation or illumination; again, the inner experience is dramatized on a cosmic scale. The son-messenger is really both maiden and spouse. Primal Man. . . . He is dispersed in all creation, but his most genuine realm and embodiment seems to be the vegetable world, that is, the most passive and the only innocent form of life. Yet at the same time with the active aspect of his nature he is transmundane Nous who, coming from above, liberates this captive substance and continually until the end of the world collects it, i.e. himself, out of the physical dispersal.11 This state of captivity and dispersal, in which Light is in vegetation, is reminiscent of the 'lord's-table of the bowing grass' and the 'pastoral beat of blood through the laced leaves' in Thomas's poem. And the eternal quest of the Son is like Thomas's 'Thief who comes 'night without end'. The scattered dispersal of the Maiden in darkness relates to the 'girl', the 'rider', who is 'riven among plumes' and 'riding far and near' though 'spelled asleep'. The 'leaping saga of prayer', 'this night and each vast night', is an appeal for delivery from that 'night', much like this plea from the wandering Sophia, of the gnostic Pistis Sophia, who begs her Christ to 'come and fight for me'. O Light of Lights, in which I have faith from the beginning, hearken now to my repentance. Deliver me, O Light, for evil thoughts have entered into m e . . . . Deliver me out of the matter of this darkness, so that I shall not be submerged in it My strength looked up from 11

Jonas, 228-29.

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the midst of the chaos and from the midst of the darknesses, and I waited for my spouse, that he might come and fight for me, and he came not.12 This kind of prayer is a 'saga from mermen to seraphim' because it is a vast prayer, prayed throughout creation by all the sparks of light. The cosmic plight is the individual plight; one man is the cosmos. The Manichaean image for the means of ascension of the light sparks uses the moon's light as its basis; the moon is like Thomas's 'prayer wheeling moon' under which is the 'green good'. . . .. The parts of Light [i.e., the souls of the dead] mount up by the pillar of dawn to the sphere of the moon, and the moon receives them incessantly from the first to the middle of the month, so that it waxes and gets full, and then it guides them to the sun until the end of the month, and thus effects its waning in that it is lightened of its burden. And in this manner the ferry is loaded and unloaded again, and the sun transmits the Light to the Light above it in the world or praise, and it goes on in that world until it arrives at the highest and pure Light.13 The moon's receiving and guiding, waxing and waning, is cyclic, like a wheel. The moon wheels 'prayers', parts of Light, in its ferry to the sun, to the 'world of praise', and finally to the 'highest and pure Light'. The emerging of parts of Light from the 'green good' of the rustic 'rosy wood' to the Great Green Celestial Sea, and from there to the 'world of Praise', is rendered similarly in "Fern Hill" in which ships, or 'horses', emerge: So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. The return 'home' is a genesis. The coming of the Logos Son may be represented by various savior figures. All are 'Christs'. In this poem, the 'Thief seems to refer to Hermes, chief of thieves. The Christ function is ren12

Jonas, 68.

"

Jonas, 223.

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dered by the Hermes figure, though the role remains the same. For in the Hermetic system Hermes serves as the Logos figure; he is enlightened directly by Mind in the Poemandres treatise and becomes the bearer of the Light to men; he is also the cosmos-creating Word or Logos. Among the Greeks, Hermes is the Logos. He is the conductor and reconductor (the psychagogue and psychopomp), and originator of souls.... Hermes "holds a rod in his hands, beautiful, golden, wherewith he spellbinds the eyes of men whomsoever he would, and wakes them again from sleep."14 In waking souls from their sleep, Hermes-Logos 'steals' them from ignorance into knowledge. His thief role probably refers to the mystery of his coming, the mystery of the Gnosis which is, though world-shattering in one sense, the product of silent contemplation, of a receptivity rather than a grasping for certainty. For though the spirit of the soul is buried, it is still potentially wise, just as Sophia, buried and wandering in the world is still 'Wisdom'. The wisdom has only to be wakened, impregnated, to realize its knowledge, and the Awakener, Savior, Logos, Hermes, Christ, can then be rendered as a stealthy thief and lover approaching his bride. The inner experience of contemplation and realization becomes a vivid drama of fear, love, and conquest. And the Thief comes to steal life, to bring 'death' - both visionary and final. The 'death' of the soul is a model or type of the destruction, the conflagration, of the world, for its destruction is its salvation. Moreover, Sophia was the Mediatrix between the upper and lower spaces, and at the same time projected the Types of Ideas of the pleroma into the cosmos. But why should Wisdom, who was originally of a pneumatic or spiritual essence, be in the Middle Space, an exile from her true Dwelling? Seeing again that this "Fall of the Soul" (whether cosmic or individual) from her original purity involved her in suffering and misery, the object which the Gnostic philosophers had ever before them was identical with the problem of "sorrow." . . . They traced the "cause of sorrow" to Ignorance, and for its removal pointed out the Path of Selfknowledge. The Mind was to instruct the 14

Mead, Fragments, 201.

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mind; "self-analysing reflection" was to be the Way. The material mind was to be purified and so become one with the spiritual mind. In the nomenclature of the Gnosis this was dramatized in the redemption of the Sophia by the Christ, who delivered her from her ignorance and sufferings.15 This 'sorrow' remains a condition of this life (even though one may have seen and known the Self) as long as this life continues. And it is only in 'sorrow' that 'faith' exists, for with the final reunion faith disappears. It is probably in this sense that Thomas's Thief comes 'to take her faith' and her sorrow. Her faith is 'as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun'. For the sun continually shines in the darkness; the dispatched Son always cries out to waken the girl 'spelled asleep'. The given mystery is eternal. Wheresoever there be two, they are not without God; and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him. Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood, and there am 1.16 The comforting strain of grief and joy that flows throughout this poem is much like the tone of this Mandaean scene in which 'little Enosh' (man in darkness) yearns for 'Manda d' Hayye' (Gnosis personified as a divine savior) while subject to the dark powers. Day in, day out I seek to escape them, as I stand alone in this world. I lift up mine eyes unto Manda d'Hayye, who said unto me, Soon I come to thee.... Daily I lift mine eyes to the way upon which my brothers walk, to the path upon which Manda d'Hayye shall come.... Manda d'Hayye came, called to me, and said unto me, Little Enosh, why art thou afraid, why didst thou tremble?... Since error overcame thee in this world, I came to enlighten thee.17

15

··

17

Mead, Fragments, 334. Mead, Fragments, 601. From the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus. Jonas, 66. From a Mandaean text.

XI "BALLAD OF THE LONG-LEGGED BAIT'

This is the longest of Thomas's poems; it is a rich work with many relationships to the other poems discussed in some detail. In this chapter there is less attention to detail and more suggestion of general meaning. The events of the 'Ballad' may be summarized as follows: The fisherman departs from land in his boat with its anchor 'high and dry by the top of the mast', and sails 'into the drinking dark'. He throws 'a girl alive with his hooks through her Hps' into the sea. As a storm appears, she is pursued by the creatures of the sea who lust for her flesh, and finally she is caught and 'wedded' to the huge sea beasts. She is apparently dead, or permanently possessed by the creatures of the sea, for the beasts 'sing and howl' 'rejoicing for that drifting death'. The loss of the 'long-legged bait', the girl, seems to be eternal ('always') until the 'boat swims into the six-year weather' and 'freezes fast'. The fisherman now begins to haul up his 'catch' with the 'gold gut' of his line, and the catch comes 'up the boatside in a snow of light'. Clinging to the 'dead hand' of the girl are the fisherman's 'fathers' who 'sing from newborn lips': Time is bearing another son. Kill time! She turns in her pain! The oak is felled in the acom And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

'As the boat skims on with drinking wings', the girl is seen to have a 'garden holding to her land', a new land of hills and fields and fresh water. Here the boat comes to rest, as the sea recedes under

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the land, and the fisherman 'stands alone at the door of his home, with his long-legged heart in his hand'. The narrative can be divided into three parts: the departure and casting of the bait (stanzas 1-8); the apparent defeat of the fisherman in the capture and wedding of the bait (stanzas 9-33); the triumphant catch of light, fathers, and land (stanzas 34-54). This division emphasizes the departure from home, the long sojourn in the sea, and the return home. Though the fisherman is the hero of the "Ballad", his 'long-legged bait', his 'long-legged heart', his immortal soul, is the suffering agent of his experience, and the poem centers around that maiden-soul. The Fisherman, the Maiden, the fathers, the Father, the Ark, the Sea - all suggest figures in an epic myth of the mind seeking the Mind, inner states in the process of knowing and seeing the Simple Vision, the silent cataclysm, the 'sky stride of the always slain in battle' ("Vision and Prayer"); the 'unknown, famous light of great and fabulous, dear God' ("Birthday"); the 'music of elements, that a miracle makes' ("Country Sleep"); the 'silk and rough love that breaks all rocks' ("There was a Saviour"); the 'tom-thumb vision up the iron mile . . . the slash of vision by the fin-green stubble', 'the sea-blown arrival' ("I, in my intricate image"); the 'sweet waking' ("Find meat on bones"); 'the truth of his joy', 'whispered' 'to the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide', 'the mystery' that 'sang alive still in the water and singingbirds', 'the true joy of the long dead child' that 'sang burning in the sun' ("Poem in October"); the 'moment of a miracle' which is 'unending lightning', the marriage of the maiden, 'her heart all ears and eyes, lips catching the avalanche of the golden ghost who ringed with his streams her mercury bone, who under the lids of her windows hoisted his golden luggage' ("On the Marriage of a Virgin"); The sky, the bird, the bride, The cloud, the need, the planted stars, the joy beyond The fields of seed and the time dying flesh astride, The heavens, the heaven, the grave, the burning font. ("A Winter's Tale") It is to this home or 'burning font' that the Fisherman returns.

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But it is also this home that he hauls from the sea, a kind of Eden in which All the horses of his haul of miracles Gallop through the arched, green farms, Trot and gallop with gulls upon them And thunderbolts in their manes.1 Returned to his home-land, the Fisherman, though found, is 'lost', and the sea that stormed about him, that seemed to swallow his long-legged bait forever, is gone. Down, down, down, under the ground, Under the floating villages, Turns the moon-chained and water-wound Metropolis of fishes. There is nothing left of the sea but its sound, Under the earth the loud sea walks, In deathbeds of orchards the boat dies down And the bait is drowned among hayricks. Land, land, land, nothing remains Of the pacing, famous sea but its speech, And into its talkative seven tombs The anchor dives through the floors of a church. Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon, To the fisherman lost on the land. He stands alone at the door of his home, With his long-legged heart in his hand. The poem may be seen as an account of creation, as an image of the cycle of life, as an epic of the salvation of the cosmic soul or the individual soul, or as a rendering of the mystic experience of knowledge. What is common to all is the voyage, through the darkness of the sea, to the new land which is home and which is 'created' by the voyager. As the creating Son, Word, or Logos, the fisherman leaves his home to fish up a new creation which is a renewal of the old home. Thus the new land is created in the image of the old. The cosmos fished up is a likeness of the original Cosmos of thought. 1 Cf. 'the birth of the simple light in the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm out of the whinnying green stable on to the fields of praise' in "Fern Hill".

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As a representative of any life, the fisherman is voyaging man who surrenders his soul to the sea of mortal life to experience its passion and pain, to move within the darkness or ignorance of this world, until, at death, the soul is raised from that dark sea to the Eden or Heaven home. As a Savior, a type of the Manichaean Living Spirit figure mentioned in the discussion of "In country sleep", the fisherman uses his maiden-soul as a lure to take back the lost particles of Light, the lost spirits, to their one home and their one Father. As an account of the gnostic experience, the poem compares the voyage and the fishing to the mental process of achieving the vision. In its attempt to reach the Mind, the mind must endure the distractions of the phenomenal world, the sensing and desiring experience of involvement with the physical existence, to create from or within that world the world of essences, the source and center of existence. The fisherman and the girl would be seen as aspects of the knowledge-seeking mind that 'hauls' itself out of the involvement into which it has plunged. The involvement is necessary to the knowledge, for it is from this involvement that the new land is created. The 'new' homeland is identical with the 'old' land, but the home must be recreated with every vision. Every vision is new. This account of the illumination experience stresses the necessity of the plunge into this world for the success of the quest for knowledge. The Light is then in darkness. The essence of existence is not apart from existence but within. The embodiment of the essential is the mystery: Spirit must join with matter to know the Light that is 'in' matter. It is through a gathering of Light that the realm of Light is realized. Therefore, the girl unites with the sea-creatures to create the Heaven home. There are many Creation myths which feature the process of fishing up the world; thirteen of these, ranging from American Indian to Siberian, are given in Charles H. Long's Alpha: the Myths of Creation under the heading of "Earth-Diver Myths". They have in common the descent of some agent of the Creator into the sea for a bit of earth with which the Creator makes the world.

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In the Isis-Osiris tradition Osiris is dismembered by the dark Set, or Typhon, and cast into the sea; it is the task of Isis to gather the pieces of his body, to make him whole. Also, Horas, the son of Isis and Osiris, is an avenger of his father's murder w h o had to be saved from the sea by his mother. In his commentary on an Hermetic treatise, " T h e Virgin of the World", Mead brings out the religious significance of the myth: . . . In the mystery-myth Horus was regarded as the human soul, a n d . . . there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the "rising from the dead" in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. The soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation, or Celestial N i l e . . . . From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and so raises him from the "dead." This birth of the "true man" within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries.2 This same recovery of the 'dead' occurs in the "Ballad", but here the girl is the agent of the fisherman Savior, his bait, and the Fisherman hauls up the 'dead' men, his 'fathers', who emerge from the sea clinging to the hand of the girl. Sing and strike his heavy haul Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light! His decks are drenched with miracles. Oh miracle of fishes! The long dead bite! Out of the urn the size of a man Out of the room the weight of his trouble Out of the house that holds a town In the continent of a fossil One by one in dust and shawl, Dry as echoes and insect-faced, His fathers cling to the hand of the girl And the dead hand leads the past, Leads them as children and as air On to the blindly tossing tops 2 Mead, III, 163-64.

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The idea of a rebirth of the fisherman's 'fathers' is reflected in this prayer to Thoth: Hail, thou "God who lookest behind thee," thou "God who hast gained the mastery over thine heart," I go a-fishing with the cordage . . . of the "Uniter of Earth," and of him that maketh a way through the earth. Hail ye Fishers who have given birth to your own fathers... .3 The birth of the 'fathers' probably refers to the many previous incarnations of the soul which are now saved from the sea by the Fisher-soul. The notion of reincarnation or metempsychosis may be a rendering of the many failures of the mind to find its 'home', its Light, each attempt being a new voyage with new hope. Also, the fathers' birth may be a remembering of the Light-Father's sparks hidden in the darkness of the sea. All of these sparks, having issued from the Father, might be called 'fathers'. The basic point is the salvation, the reappearance, of Light from its long 'death' in the mortal sea. This fishing salvation is much like the Manichaean Messenger salvation mentioned in the discussion of "In country sleep". The Fisherman is another form of the Messenger. And the 'bait', the girl, of the "Ballad" is another rendering of the 'girl riding far and near', the maiden-soul, of "In country sleep". . . . The whole tragedy of the Pistis Sophia, all her wanderings, distress, and repentance in the world of darkness, followed from the one initial fact that she mistook the light she saw below for the "Light of Lights" for which she yearned, and went after it into the depths. We have furthermore, especially in Mani's speculation, the frequent use of a divine likeness as a bait used either by the archons [rulers of the spheres] to lure and entrap divine substance or by the messengers of the deity to extract captured light-substance from the hold of the archons.4 In this poem the Fisherman does not mistake the sea-light for Light, but the girl succumbs to the passion of the lower light. He was blind to the eyes of candles In the praying windows of waves s 4

Mead, I, 59. From the Egyptian Book of the Jonas, 164. My brackets.

Dead.

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145

But heard his bait buck in the wake And tussel in a shoal of loves. Davies, in his Mythology and Rites of the British Druids, assumes the Druid religion to have been a Noah-centered one and mentions a goddess of the Ark, Noah's vessel of salvation from the flood, who is the counterpart of the sun-god of the Ark. She, as the physical Ark, is tossed about in the sea until the final landing on the 'recovered' land. . . . This goddess, who is, at one time, represented as the mother of that deity [the Helio-arkite god], and, at other times, as his consort or his daughter, participates in all his honours and prerogatives; so that, what is now attributed to the one, is again presently ascribed to the other. She comes under a variety of names, as Ked, Ceridivert, Liad, A wen, and many o t h e r s . . . . Ked, or Ceridiven, presides in the same floating sanctuary which was sacred to the Arkite god.. . . But the [Arkite] god was represented by a bull.... It is also probable, that the female deity was sometimes viewed under the emblem of a cow.... . . . And in the poem of the Ogdoad, we find the spotted cow, which at the era of the flood procured a blessing. On the serene day (before the commencement of the storm) she bellowed: on the eve of May she was boiled (tossed about by the deluge), and on the spot where her boiling was completed, the Diluvian patriarch found rest... .5 Davies goes on to identify this goddess with, among others, Venus, Isis, Ceres, and Proserpine, all of whom "are severally and equally the moon, the renovated globe, and the ark of Noah". 6 As mentioned earlier, a gnostic interpreter would have felt free to see in the deluge myth an account of a voyage to the Land of Light, a renovated, new essence-land. A n d the entry into the ark, the female principle, would b e compared to an entry into the womb of rebirth, the state of Wisdom which is Silence, open contemplation which receives the Light seed. The storm outside 5

Edward Davies, The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids (London, J. Booth, 1809), pp. 175-77. My brackets. • Davies, 178. It is interesting that Davies identifies the British Arkite god as, 'Dylan, the son of the sea' (p. 102). It seems fitting that this Welsh poet should have the name Dylan (ark-riding god of the sea) Thomas (True Thomas, Druid Thomas, the Rhymer; Thomas of the gnostic Gospel).

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the ark would be the mortal, dark powers of the celestial sea interfering with the voyage. The arrival on the mountain would refer to the finding of the summit of the Sacred Mount, the height of Truth. And the 'receding' waters would necessarily be 'below' the Upper land, the New land, the Land of Light. Thomas seems to have combined this Noetic myth with the Earth-diver myths, the Fisher-king myth. He makes his LightSon a voyaging Fisherman who saves Light by sacrificing, for a time, his Maiden of Light, his Soul. And this Son of Light, who throws his Soul, 'a girl alive', into the chaos of the dark sea, is also like the Prodigal Son who "wasted his substance in riotous living" until "he came to himself' and returned home to be greeted with joy, "for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found".7 And the streets that the fisherman combed When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire And his loin was a hunting flame Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair And terribly lead him home alive Lead her prodigal home to his terror, The furious ox-killing house of love. The "Ballad" also relates closely to the gnostic "Hymn of the Pearl" in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostle Thomas. In this story a young Son of Light is sent down into 'Egypt', the dark land, to bring back the One Pearl that lies in the middle of the sea, guarded by a huge serpent. In Egypt, he is tricked into enjoyment of drink and lust, and falls into a 'slumber' from which he is awakened by a call from the King of Light. He then remembers his origin, charms the serpent, takes the Pearl and returns home in triumph. The "Ballad" also features the sea, sea-creatures, a period of captivity and apparent defeat, a rescue of something precious from the deep, and a return home. The whales and other sea creatures of the "Ballad" relate to the sea-serpent of the "Pearl", the Leviathan who is "the father of the Seven [spheres]".8 '

8

Luke 15:13-32. Jonas, 117. My brackets.

"BALLAD OF THE LONG-LEGGED BAIT"

147

Sea or waters is a standing gnostic symbol for the world of matter or of darkness into which the divine has s u n k . . . . The fish symbolism of early Christianity must also be noted in this connection.»

Most important, the fishing up of the Pearl from its shell in the sea parallels the fisherman's 'catch' from the howling, stormy sea. Both the Pearl and the Bait are 'lost' in the sea until delivered by an agent from above the sea. And the identity of saved and savior is, as in "Vision and Prayer" and "In country sleep", central to the meaning of both "Hymn of the Pearl" and Thomas's "Ballad". . . . The interchangeability of the subject and object of the mission, of savior and soul, of Prince and Pearl, is the key to the true meaning of the poem, and to gnostic eschatology in general.... For the parts of divinity lost to the darkness can be reached only down there in the depth in which they are swallowed up; and the power which holds them, that of the world, can be overcome only from within. This means that the savior-god must assimilate himself to the forms of cosmic existence and thereby subject himself to its conditions.... . . . If, then, there is this metaphysical, though not numerical, identity between the messenger and the Pearl, every hearer of the tale can legitimately, without confounding personal identities, recognize in the adventures of the messenger the story of his own earthbound soul, see his own fate as part and analogue of the deity's.. . .10

In the "Ballad" the identity is extended to the 'fathers' who are hauled up to the boat clinging to the bait. The fate of the girl has been theirs, and they appear with her at the event of salvation. The fisherman, the girl, the fathers, and the land all merge into one as the catch is made. The catch, then, becomes the achievement of regaining Light. The "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" is a poem that appears to render the gnostic concept of 'salvation' and the necessity of the soul's involvement with the worldly existence. Through that involvement and participation the mind creates a new land of vision to which it brings the seemingly lost thought of its past. The darkness or ignorance of the chaos of existence has within it the law and unchanging order of the Essence or Light. » Jonas, 117-18. 10 Jonas, 127-29.

χπ CONCLUSION

Dylan Thomas's poetry expresses an awareness of a religious view that finds God in Man and that stresses the possibility, the necessity, of knowing that Self. Thomas's thought resembles gnostic thought, though it needs not have resulted from a study of Gnosticism, as such. Gnosticism is, after all, a type among mystic religions and relates closely to other religious systems prior to and contemporary with its appearance as an identifiable attitude. What most separates a gnostic religious attitude from orthodox Christianity is its conscious emphasis upon the inner illumination of knowing the Self that is God. 'Gnosticism', therefore, often becomes only a synonym for 'mysticism'. And in Chapter II some of the parallels between modern psychology and 'mystic' disciplines would indicate that the 'mystic's' experience is not something absurdly weird from the dark past but something that can 'heal' in this world. Thomas's religious attitude, closely related to Gnosticism, can be called 'mystic'. And some acquaintance with Gnosticism improves the understanding of Thomas's poetry. Gnostic imagery, shared by many inward, mystic doctrines, seems clearly to be present and functional in most of Thomas's poems. But there is another conclusion to be drawn. If Thomas was working within this mystic tradition, his work is really in the mainstream of modern poetry and is closely related to that of poets like Yeats, Eliot, Lawrence, the French Symbolists, and Rilke. All of these poets have written with an awareness of the mystic attitude prevalent in European literature from about the

CONCLUSION

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middle of the nineteenth century, though certainly present in literature before that. In his dedication of The Symbolist Movement in Literature to Yeats, Arthur Symons said: Prance is the country of movements, and it is naturally in France that I have studied the development of a principle which is spreading throughout other countries, perhaps not less effectually, if with less definite outlines. Your own Irish literary movement is one of its expressions; your own poetry and A.E.'s poetry belong to it in the most intimate sense. In Germany it seems to be permeating the whole of literature, its spirit is that which is deepest in Ibsen, it has absorbed the one new force in Italy, Gabriele d'Annunzio. . . . I speak often in this book of Mysticism, and that I, of all people, should venture to speak, not quite as an outsider, of such things, will probably be a surprise to many. It will be no surprise to you, for you have seen me gradually finding my way, uncertainly but inevitably, in that direction which has always been to you your natural directon.1 Symons saw the pervading 'principle' of the Symbolist movement to be 'mysticism', a principle that was present in Yeats's work and in much of European literature. In his Conclusion he stresses the limits of mystic knowledge even as he emphasizes its importance in symbolism. Well, the doctrine of Mysticism, with which all this symbolical literature has so much to do, of which it is all so much the expression, presents us, not with a guide for conduct, not with a plan for our happiness, not with an explanation of any mystery, but with a theory of life which makes familiar with mystery, and which seems to harmonize those instincts which make for religion, passion, and art, freeing us at once of a great bondage.2 In the following statement of F. A. C. Wilson's - about Yeats's fundamental attitude - there is much that resembles ideas of Thomas's, and of Gnosticism. Having characterized Yeats as a member of 'the tradition of 'heterodox mysticism', and further indicated Yeats's distinction between "the objective thinker, who will tend towards Christianity, and the subjective, who will tend 1 The Symbolist pp. xix-xx. 2 Symons, 95.

Movement

in Literature

(New York, E. P. Dutton, 1958),

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CONCLUSION

towards heterodoxy and the religions of the East", Wilson contrasts Eliot's visionary experience with Yeats's. One might say that Eliot senses beatitude as something infinitely far removed from humanity, Yeats as something infinitely near at hand: Yeats certainly approximates to what psychology would call the ecstatic condition.... Yeat's response to visionary experience was joyous: it convinced him that the human mind was 'blessed,' that its origin was heaven, and that it still dimly retained the memory of its home; man's soul seemed to him a thing of immense stature, and it seemed to extend its experience over enormous vistas of t i m e . . . . If Yeats is an ecstatic, then Eliot might equally well be called a depressive mystic: the categories of vision are to some extent supplementary, and we may well find room for either kind.3 Yeats's poetry often presents the vision of Self as a state of blessedness while in the 'blind man's ditch': I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind m e n . . . . I am content to follow to its source, Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. ("A Dialogue of Self and Soul")« Yeats belief in the Self as Source is central to this passage from "A Prayer for My Daughter": Considering that, all hatred driven hence, The soul recovers radical innocence And learns at last that it is self-delighting, Self-appeasing, self-affrighting, And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will; She can, though every face should scowl 3

*

W. B. Yeats and Tradition (London, Victor Gollancz, 1958), pp. 21-22. Collected Poems, 272-73.

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151

And every windy quarter howl Or every bellows burst, be happy still.5 In this paragraph, from his "A General Introduction for My Work", Yeats stresses the immediacy of the universal Self and its many embodiments, the mystery of unity in the scattered particulars of material existence. I was born into this faith, have lived in it, and shall die in it: my C h r i s t . . . is that Unity of Being Dante compared to a perfectly proportioned human body, Blake's 'Imagination,' what the Upanishads have named 'Self: nor is this unity distant and therefore intellectually understandable, but imminent, differing from man to man and age to age, taking upon itself pain and ugliness, 'eye of newt, and toe of frog.' 6 Eliot focuses upon the 'Light Invisible' and seems conscious of the under-sea metaphor for this world, 'dappled with shadow'. The mystery of light-in-darkness motivates the praise. O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision. O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee! In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain. Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow. We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our 5

•

Collected Poems, 218. Essays and Introductions (New York, Macmillan, 1961), p. 518.

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fingers and beams of our eyes. And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made. And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light. O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!7

This Light Invisible is much like the light that 'breaks where no sun shines' 'behind the eyes', and the state of 'blessedness' that comes with the casting out of 'remorse'. Although Eliot's poem does seem more formal, more a collective act of praise, Yeats, Eliot, and Thomas have in common an acceptance of the given mystery that can become joyful. For Yeats and Thomas this seems to be an immediate, private experience, while Eliot reserves that experience as the motive power behind his more formalized faith. D. H. Lawrence, too, was intensely aware of this inner unity that is the origin and source of man, that is 'in' man to be known. This totality of being is the original light whose authority is undeniable, and consists in some union between the self as 'knower' and the self as 'known'. Mind, and conservative psyche, and the incalculable soul, these three are a trinity of powers in every human being. But there is something even beyond these. It is the individual in his pure singleness, in his totality of consciousness, in his oneness of being: the Holy Ghost which is with us after our Pentecost, and which we may not deny... . When at last, in all my storms, my whole self speaks, then there is a pause. The soul collects itself into pure silence and isolation - perhaps after much pain. The mind suspends its knowledge, and waits. The psyche becomes strangely still.8

This 'whole self, this 'collection' of the self, is clearly related to the 'gathering up' of the 'scattered' light-sparks in Gnosticism and the 'death' with the 'whole pain' 'flowing open' in Thomas's "Vision and Prayer". The sense of unity is also rendered by the hauling up of the fisherman's 'catch' in Thomas's "Ballad". Again, 7

The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950 (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1958), pp. 112-14. 8 Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious (New York, Viking Press, 1960), p. 165.

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153

the conviction shared by Yeats, Eliot, Thomas, and Lawrence is that the final source of being lies within man, and that to experience that source is to become 'whole'. This wholeness involves a stasis that is 'eternal' and 'essential', a suspension of intellect and cognition. Perhaps the 'pain' (transformed into ecstasy) results from the tearing asunder of consciousness from the ordinary hold on externals, so that a feeling of 'free fall' occurs. Without the safety of that hold, the knower is exposed and in terror. The gnostic habit of seeing the cosmos as man, or man as cosmos, is present in this statement of Lawrence's. There is only one clue to the universe. And that is the individual soul within the individual being. That outer universe of suns and moons and atoms is a secondary a f f a i r . . . . Life is individual, always was individual and always will be. Life consists of living individuals, and always did so consist, in the beginning of everything. There never was any universe, any cosmos, of which the first reality was anything but living, incorporate individuals. I don't say the individuals were exactly like you and me. And they were never wildly different. And therefore it is time for the idealist and the scientist - they are one and the same, really - to stop his monkey-jargon about the atom and the origin of life and the mechanical clue to the universe. There isn't any such thing... ,e Rilke, with the image of a wall, like Thomas's 'wren-bone wall' in "Vision and Prayer", suggests the 'nearness' of the 'neighbour God' who may 'call', or be called, and appear. Again, the 'light' that 'blazes high' is 'within'. You, neighbour God, if sometimes in the night I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so only because I seldom hear you breathe; I know: you are alone. And should you need a drink, no one is there to reach it to you, groping in the dark. Always I hearken. Give but a small sign. I am quite near. Between us there is but a narrow wall, and by sheer chance; for it would take merely a call from your lips or from mine » Lawrence, 181.

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to break it down, and that all noiselessly The wall is builded of your images. They stand before you hiding you like names, And when the light within me blazes high that in my inmost soul I know you by, the radiance is squandered on their frames. And then my senses, which too soon grow lame, exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.10

It could almost be said that the 'wall' of 'images' is the obstacle of the senses and the embodiments of the Self within. When that wall 'breaks', the 'dawn' breaks, and he 'dies'. The 'neighbour God' is not so much beyond that wall as within it. Thomas's poetry, then, does not stand remote and apart from the concerns of modern literature. It is at the very center of those concerns, the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the wholeness of man, the painfully conscious realization and confrontation of the mystery and responsibility of that wholeness. This awareness does not separate body and spirit, but must always remember that they are united. There is, really, no 'escape' from pain when ecstasy is pain. There is no escape when the visionary state unites unconsciousness and consciousness. And in what seems to be merely a shrugging resignation there is actually a faith or a hope that is suffered for and therefore good-humored, like Keats's 'Negative Capability', that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.11

In each of the four poems studied here in some detail there is an intense, ecstatic awareness of the beauty that is sacred in this world. The ecstasy, exaltation, and joy explode into and from the vision. And the vision is here. It is immediate, physical. Therefore, painful. It happens in the dirt, because of the dirt, into and from the dirt. No dirt, no vision. Only as the poles kiss does the 10

Poems from the Book of Hours, trans. Babette Deutsch (New York, New Directions, 1941), p. 13. 11

Complete

Poems

and Selected

Odyssey Press, 1935), p. 528.

Letters,

ed. C. D. Thorpe (New York,

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155

body blaze. And the blazing of heaven is for ever, for a second. But its charge seems to leave, somewhere in Thomas, the power that can generate another kiss. That's what the poems try to be. Ultimately, they mean what they generate. Ultimately, they are visions that arc for a moment and vanish, leaving only some dumb thunder dying. The entire earth in all its vastness becomes a loud diamond as he tangles through its spun slime in the "Birthday" poem. Despite the pointless, meandering deaths of the finches, the minnows, the dolphins, the poet, he hears the absurd song from the bowels of the earth and remembers the tune, begins to blaze. This is heaven, and Eden. Magic. Though the Son has come and burned him his name, lost him wholly, he prays him to return and let the dead lie - in sleep and in falsehood. Not that life could be destroyed; there are billions of stars. But this life might. And in the name of, for the sake of, the sleepers, the man, the Son, the Father, he prays that this life remain. The answer comes as another flash; no light without this life. So "Vision and Prayer" become one act. And so the girl may sleep in that country kind; the country is holy and lies in grace. Know it or not, like it or not, her faith is deathless and terrible in scope - immortal and vast enough to frighten us out of our wits and into our selves. The mounting sense of value and beauty menaces like the coming of the Thief until Thomas is human enough to end the poem. Knowing something of what he's about, the music of the poems is meaning, after all. The huge plunge of the long-legged girl and the fisherman's haul of light - these too become music as it dawns that they are our selves. For no good reason, knowing this makes a difference. The difference between reading and plunging, perhaps. When 'he stands alone at the door of his home, with his long-legged heart in his hand', after the voyage, the wedding, the catch, he is hardly alone, but part of the cadence of a chorus of many voices. The vision, though private, is not for the gifted only but for all who plunge. Though Thomas wrote carefully and alone, in his 'craft or

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sullen art', there was always an outrageous confidence that he wrote from a common source: In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms Of the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art. He wrote for the plungers, deep in the slime of love and under the man in the moon, here on this earth - and their most secret heart that he thought was long-legged and unsinkable: And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. What he prayed for in "Vision and Prayer" he announces here: though lives be lost, life shall not. Though some dead rise, death shall lie. It was with this hopeless, painful, ecstatic faith that he said to his girl:

CONCLUSION

The country is holy: O bide in that country kind, Know the green good, Under the prayer wheeling moon in the rosy wood Be shielded by chant and flower and gay may you Lie in grace....

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davies, Edward, The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids (London, J. Booth, 1809). Henderson, Joseph L., and Oakes, Maud, The Wisdom of the Serpent: The Myths of Deaths, Rebirth, and Resurrection (New York, George Braziller, 1963). Jobes, Gertrude, Dictionary of Mythology Folklore and Symbols, 3 vols. (New York, Scarecrow Press, 1962). Jonas, Hans, The Gnostic Religion (Boston, Beacon Press, 1958). Jung, C. G., Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, translated by R. F. C. Hull (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959). —, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, translated by R. F. C. Hull (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959). —, Psychology and Religion: West and East, translated by R. F. C. Hull (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958). —, Psychology and Alchemy, translated by R. F. C. Hull (New York, Pantheon Books, 1953). Kleimnan, H. H. The Religious Sonnets of Dylan Thomas (Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press, 1963). Long, Charles H., Alpha: The Myths of Creation (New York, George Braziller, 1963). Maud, Ralph, Entrances to Dylan Thomas' Poetry (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburg Press, 1963). Mead, G. R. S., Thrice-greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, 3 vols. (London, The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1906). —, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (New Hyde Park, N.Y., University Books, 1960). Moynihan, William, "The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: A Study of the Meaning and Unity" (Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Brown University 1962). Olson, Elder, The Poetry of Dylan Thomas (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954). Thomas, Dylan, The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas, augmented ed. (New York, New Directions, 1957). —, Letters to Vernon Watkins, edited with an introduction by Vernon Watkins (London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1957). —, Quite Early One Morning (New York, New Directions Paperbook, 1960). Wilson, F.A.C., W.B. Yeats and Tradition (London,VictorGollancz, 1958).

INDEX

Davies, Edward, 145 Eliot, Thomas S., 9, 148, 151, 152 Freud, Sigmund, 21, 22, 23 Jobes, Gertrude, 98, 111, 131 Jonas, Hans, 10, 11, 13, 16, 19, 41, 42, 49, 50, 56, 57, 58, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 73, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 118, 134, 135, 136, 138, 144, 146, 147 Jung, C. G„ 21, 22, 23, 24 Keats, John, 154 Lawrence, D. H., 9, 148, 152, 153 Long, Charles H., 142 Mead, G. R. S„ 14, 19, 20, 25, 41, 43, 50, 51, 57, 58, 64, 65, 67, 72, 73, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 116, 117, 118, 119, 137, 138, 143, 144 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 9, 148, 153, 154 Symons, Arthur, 149 Thomas, Dylan: "All, all and all the dry worlds lever", 54, 55 "Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid was a Man Aged a Hundred", 62 "And death shall have no dominion", 45 "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait", 35, 46, 71, 139-146 "Before I knocked", 47, 54, 55, 60 "Ceremony After a Fire Raid", 49 "The Conversation of Prayer", 48 "Death and Entrances", 37 "Do not gentle into that good night", 113 "Do you not father me", 55 "Ears in the turrets hear", 48 "Fern Hill", 136, 141 "Find meat on bones", 29, 43, 48, 140 "The force that through green fuse drives the flower", 126 "Foster the light", 48 "From love's first fever to her plague", 34, 35, 42 "A grief ago", 48

160

INDEX

"Grief thief of time", 48 "Holy Spring", 37 "How shall my animal", 46, 54 "The Hunchback in the Park", 70 "I dreamed my genesis", 49, 55 "I fellowed sleep", 55, 62 "I, in my intricate image", 47, 54, 140 "I make this in a warring absence", 48, 55 "I see the boys of summer", 49, 54 "If my head hurt a hair's foot", 38 "In country sleep", 39, 46, 68, 120-138, 140, 142, 147 "In my Craft of Sullen Art", 61, 112 "In the beginning", 31 "Into her Laying Down Head", 49, 70 "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed", 54, 62 "Light breaks where no sun shines", 30, 43, 54 "Love in the Asylum", 35, 59 "My hero bares his nerves", 59, 67 "My world is pyramid", 47, 60 "Once below a time", 52, 53 "Once it was the colour if saying", 48 "On the Marriage of a Virgin", 37, 73, 140 "Our eunuch dreams", 39, 60, 69, 120 "Over Sir John's Hill", 39 "Poem on his birthday", 37, 38, 55, 77-97, 103, 104, 124, 127, 128, 140, 155 "Poem in October", 35, 140 "A process in the weather of the heart", 33 Quite Early One Morning, 8 "A Saint about to fall", 59, 62 "Then was my neophyte", 58 "There was a Saviour", 140 "This bread I break", 68, 125, 126 "Unluckily for a Death", 38, 69 "Vision and Prayer", 35, 36, 38, 42, 55, 98-119, 127, 129, 132, 133, 140, 147, 153, 155, 156 "When all my five and country senses see", 64 "When I Woke", 61 "When, like a running grave", 54, 55 "When once the twilight locks no longer", 46, 60, 68 "Where once the waters of your face", 46, 49 "A Winter's Tale", 35, 38, 103, 140 Watkins, Vernon, 7 Watts, Alan W., 97 Wilson, F. A. C., 149, 150 Yeats, 9, 103, 104, 114, 115, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152