English Religious Poetry

Beschreibung

This work on Herbert, Blake and Hopkins is intended to give an exposition of each poet's theology and conception of poetry, which are exemplified in the poems reproduced and translated here. In connection with the experience (in this, typically English), Herbert, Blake and Hopkins, though different from one another, are the poets whose familiarity with religion and the ability to connect it constantly with experience helped me to understand what religious poetry might be: George Herbert, as an eminent example among the "metaphysical poets" of the 17th century, was an Anglican pastor; William Blake, as a "Gnostic" religious poet of the late 18th century, was an artist whose voice in the wilderness cried out that "all religions are one and (that) there is no natural religion"; Gerard Manley Hopkins, as a 19th-century poet, converted in his youth to "the religion of the Real Presence", recapitulated the features of the preceding religious poets and heralded modern poetry. When a poet (or three poets in this case) writes for someone, he does not only write to the reader but also writes on the reader’s behalf. In a way, as Hölderlin happened to think of himself as a poet, according to the poets studied here, being a poet certainly meant more than writing poetry, and being a religious poet, more than writing religious poetry, and thus, building up a spiritual tent or temple, as God used to call poets for in olden times. My feeling is that the three of them entrench a camp, a bastion of freedom, the last stronghold for God's liberty and God's liberality.

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Marc Penchenat

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