Modernist, Neo-Modernist, Postmodernist Modes of Approaching the Religious

Question : Eliots versatility Murder in the Cathedral and Journey of the

Magi; Dylan Thomass surrealist In the Beginning, Stevie Smith Was He
Married?, Seamus Heaneys Lightenings viii and Ted Hughess Crows First
Lesson

The first presentation is that of T.S.Eliots ironical or versatile approach to the

religious question characteristic for the modernist game with masks. Eliot
converted to strict Anglicanism in 1927, writing, in 1927, an ironic dramatic
monologue Journey of the Magi, a ritual poem Ash Wednesday (1930) and
a ritual play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935). The texts enumerated here will
serve as a standard for assessing the relationship with religion in the course
of the twentieth century and for contrasting the modernist with the neomodernist and the postmodernist paradigms.
Journey of the Magi is ironical because, in a typical dramatic monologue
manner, it entrusts a serious theme to an oblique, inadequate speaker. The
speaking Magus is a typically modern dissatisfied man, rather unable to
understand and receive the Christian message; but although he remains
estranged from it (having the excuse of thinking as a man from the old
dispensation, to which he returns disconcerted at the end of the poems third
part) he manages to point to the essentials of the Christian doctrine: the
uncomfortable, troubling relationship with Calvary as accessible to anyone
who approaches Christ at Christmas time in order to witness his birth but is
confronted with Christs death, as in the last existential question that the
Magus asks: were Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death Were we led all this way for
Birth or Death?[. . . ]I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were
different; this Birth was/Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death .
Judged in a myth criticism perspective, the poems ingenious performance is
of collapsing the narrative poles of the mythical story of Christs life, ranging
from birth till death into an intense, archetypal emblem of the initiatory
message: unless one understands Christs birth and death so as to rejoice at
the birth and mourn the death as necessary parts of the story, and responds
in an adequate way to both, there is no way of reaching or receiving the gift
of salvation.1
1

There is another ingenious element in the composition of the poem, but it comes
from the intertextual relationship with Bishop Lancelot Andrews sermon of the
seventeenth century, whose opening words are presented between inverted
commas; the originality of that sermon was to cast in a temperate continental
climate, rather than a Mediterranean one, and in a harsh winter setting, the story of
the Magis journey to Bethlehem. This rhetorical artifice translates the Magis
triumphant, kingly journey towards the encounter with Christ into a tormenting,
difficult initiatory journey, as seen in the first part of Eliots poem, too.

It is interesting to see that the same strategy of casting, or translating, in

historical terms numinous mythical experiences is observed by Eliot also in
Murder in the Cathedral. But whereas the translation in Journey of the Magi
was achieved by identification with tired modern humanity, the
translation/identification in Murder in the Cathedral is with the Elizabethan
mentality, in the plays first part, as expressed in Shakespeares chronicle
plays, for example Henry II, or The Tempest and with the modern Realpolitik
cynicism ready to excuse the dirtiest political deeds nowadays. Because
modernism is nourished by such transpositions which presuppose an
encyclopaedic knowledge (familiarity) with the peaks of the national tradition,
the nobility of Thomas Becket, the martyr comes to the fore because it is
contrasted with the politicianism of the Herald, tempters and knights who
embody faithfully the worldly interests which moved the world in the Middle
Ages in similar ways with the ways the world was moved by modern
pragmatism (as embodied in the attitudes of the murderers who justify
themselves in the second part of the play). Being used a way to circumscribe
the relationship of the twentieth century secular world with God, the
approach to Eliots religious texts has to confine itself to the construction of
the religious discourse. Murder in the Cathedral advances into the
understanding of the Christian message by a counterpoint movement of
three threads which are brought together by two basic objective correlatives.
The first thread describes the Saints own growth until he is ready for
martyrdom (the Archbishop is tempted by three political and one moral
voices which he defeats in the plays First Part); the second thread explains
the dynamic of history (it covers the speeches of the Herald and the Tempters
in the First Part and of the Knights, in the Second Part); the third thread
explains the religious doctrine (and it is presented in Thomass speeches and
in the Interlude, which comprises the short sermon delivered by the
Archbishop on Christmas Morning in 1170). One understands the principle of
dramatic composition through the alternation of voices with particular
functions in the development of the play; more importantly, the classical
function of the Chorus, which accompanies the actions of the protagonists,
explaining the psychological and contextual circumstances of the individual
characters, like a commentator; in ritual drama, such as Tragedy, the Chorus
has also a prophetic function, and in Eliots play the Chorus of the Women of
Canterbury express the point of view of ordinary humanity which is only
closer than the nobility to the Saint because of the greater sensitivity
educated by sufferance; otherwise, it is as obtuse as ordinary politicians to
other than the daily preoccupations of life. Following the hierarchy of
characters and functions typical for classical drama (and the ritual show of
tragedy), Eliot entrusts not only to the Chorus the prophetic function, but also
to the Third Priest. He speaks about The Wheel, which is the first objective
correlative of Murder in the Cathedral and speaks his lines right before
Thomas, in Act I. The objective correlative of the wheel is the first element

that unites all the layers of humanity in one, as the religious understanding of
life will have it. The second objective correlative is The Cathedral itself
whose power to attract both ordinary people and political interests as
opposed to saintliness and martyrdom finally contains the world. The door of
the Cathedral could have been closed, and the priests wanted to close it
against the threatening violence of the returning knights in the Second Part,
but the saint who was ready for martyrdom ordered them to leave it open
and this turned the altar, where he was killed into a sacrificial sanctuary, as in
ancient religions (the Aztec, the Jewish, for example). The Cathedral is also
like Christs cross and, therefore, the historical correlative of the English
venerable martyrs imitatio Christi.2
The neo-modernist approach to religion is demonstrated by the savage return
along fully low mimetic and secular lines to the Christian lore which the poem
by Stevie Smith Was He Married?. The way the lay spirit threatens to
overcome the Christian message shows how the high-flowing idealism of
modernism, even when it is ironical, is getting reversed. Although religiosity
is not completely overcome at the end of the poem, statistically it is to be
doubted almost, since it is only devoted a few lines, though these being the
final lines, they are more credible.
The postmodernist spirit, whose savage irreligiousness progresses towards a
grotesque, apocalyptic end without reaching for any limit situation is
demonstrated in relationship with the poem by Ted Hughes Crows First
Lesson.
In order to understand, however, that modernism, neo-modernism and
postmodernism are not the last word in twentieth century literature, one midtwentieth century and one late-twentieth century poem are also presented in
what follows.

The ritual interpretation of the play by Eliot also leaves out its function for the
construction of the national English identity revolving around Beckets shrine, which
had inspired Chaucer, too, for example.

Journey Of The Magi

by T S Eliot
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Was He Married?
BY STEVIE SMITH

Was he married, did he try

To support as he grew less fond of them
Wife and family?
No,
He never suffered such a blow.
Did he feel pointless, feeble and distrait,
Unwanted by everyone and in the way?
From his cradle he was purposeful,
His bent strong and his mind full.
Did he love people very much
Yet find them die one day?
He did not love in the human way.
Did he ask how long it would go on,
Wonder if Death could be counted on for an end?
He did not feel like this,
He had a future of bliss.
Did he never feel strong
Pain for being wrong?
He was not wrong, he was right,
He suffered from others, not his own, spite.
But there is no suffering like having made a mistake
Because of being of an inferior make.
He was not inferior,
He was superior.
He knew then that power corrupts but some must govern?
His thoughts were different.
Did he lack friends? Worse,
Think it was for his fault, not theirs?
He did not lack friends,
He had disciples he moulded to his ends.

Did he feel over-handicapped sometimes, yet must draw even?

How could he feel like this? He was the King of Heaven.
...find a sudden brightness one day in everything
Because a mood had been conquered, or a sin?
I tell you, he did not sin.
Do only human beings suffer from the irritation
I have mentioned? learn too that being comical
Does not ameliorate the desperation?
Only human beings feel this,
It is because they are so mixed.
All human beings should have a medal,
A god cannot carry it, he is not able.
A god is Mans doll, you ass,
He makes him up like this on purpose.
He might have made him up worse.
He often has, in the past.
To choose a god of love, as he did and does,
Is a little move then?
Yes, it is.
A larger one will be when men
Love love and hate hate but do not deify them?
It will be a larger one.
Stevie Smith, Was He Married? from New Selected Poems. Copyright 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New
Directions Publishing Corporation.

From Ted Hughes New Selected Poems 1957-1994

Crow's First Lesson

God tried to teach Crow how to talk.
'Love,' said God. 'Say, Love.'
Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea
And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.
'No, no,' said God. 'Say Love. Now try it. LOVE.'
Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito
Zoomed out and down
To their sundry flesh-pots.
'A final try,' said God. 'Now, LOVE.'
Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Man's bodiless prodigious head
Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest-And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept-Crow flew guiltily off.

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 pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.
In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.
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;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.

1934 18 Poems, The Sunday Referee; Parton Bookshop

1936 Twenty-Five Poems,Dent

1939 The Map of Love, Dent

1943 New Poems, New Directions

1946 Deaths and Entrances, Dent

1949 Twenty-Six Poems, Dent

1952 In Country Sleep and other poems, New Directions

1952 Collected Poems, 19341952, Dent

2014 The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition, Weidenfeld
and Nicolson

Seamus Heaney from Squarings one sequence in Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996
Lightenings
viii

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise

Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
'This man can't bear our life here and will drown,'
The abbot said, 'unless we help him.' So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.