Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Marvell's "The Garden"
For some reason, this particular poem reminds me of the chapter in Ecclesiastes that goes "Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" (Chapter 1; vereses 1-4, ESV). The narrator of the poem does not get why men would waste their time trying to accomplish things in life that do not seem to matter in the end. If these things only cause trouble, the narrator thinks, why even seek them? This poem is about the simplicity and beauty of a garden and how peace can be found in being alone and not worrying too much about what is going on in the outside world. "What wondrous life is this I lead!" (line 33), the narrator reflects after declaring "Society is all but rude/ to this delicious solitude" (lines 15-16). This ties into Marvell's apparent dislikes of institutions and how they mold people, making them loose their innocence and encouraging them to pursue things that are not really worth pursuing like honor and rank.
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"The Garden" was written by Andrew Marvell, the metaphysical poet, not William Blake, who wrote "The Garden of Love.
ReplyDeleteMarvell's point is not so much a restatement of Solomon's words regarding the fruitlessness of study, but that spiritual pursuit dominates worldly pursuit. Think of what the Garden meant in Marvell's time, and to the metaphysical poets in general: an unspoiled place of the spirit that, despite sin's infecting decay, renews man's soul. The image here is quite obvious, viz., the garden represents spiritual and heavenly existence. The lines "Your sacred plants, if here below / only among the plants will grow" reflects that heavenly plants, perfect in nature, would not choose to grow in society, but in the natural world originally designed by God. These and many other lines link nature with spiritual purity. Marvell saw that God had not made society, instead spiritual relationship which the Garden of Eden had embodied, and the precursor to what he saw as man's weak imitation.
Naturally to Marvell, such a conclusion meant that all emotions experienced in a garden, or those which the garden represented, were not unholy but sacred. The red flower of desire was just as important as the white lily of purity, etc. ad infinitum. Here, there is a subtle critique of 17th century society, which held that human passion was less important and sacred than purity, vestment, religious devotion in the church of England. It is important to note that the Church of England at this time was relatively new; Elizabeth I had sought to eliminate challengers to the Church, i.e., separatists and other Protestant sects, from preventing what she saw as one religion uniting the country. This idea continued under James I'st reign. Protestant sects like the Puritans, however, saw religious unity as less important than purity.
Marvell reflects this idea in his garden poem. Note that unholy passions like desire are not wrong in the garden, since he links their origin to God's original intent, i.e., closeness with man. Now that God was gone, removed from the world, Marvell saw that only through nature was man to reconnect in every way with God, since it was nature where God first came to man. Hence, "The Garden" is a poem about reconnection, not frustration with society.