Beauty so ancient and so new
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new,
late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,
I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
—Augustine, Confessions X.27.38 (trans. Maria Boulden)
Comments (14)
Tags: Aesthetics,Augustine
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Augustine
hmm…reminds me of John Donne for some reason…
Isn’t that a delightful piece? Not only is it theologically immaculate, but also poetically enchanting. Does it remind you of some particular Donne poem? It does have some of the same spirit as Donne’s theological love poems, I think.
Kim, you have good taste! It kind of reminded me of Donne, as well. Holy Sonnet #14 is similar, but more sexual in its images of sensuality:
Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand,o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new,
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and provves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed into your enemy,
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor chaste, except you ravish me.
Similar, maybe, in sensual language and the sense that Divine Beauty is outside of the person, and Other for which we long. But Augustine stops with the longing, the loving, and so remains perfectly… peaceful. Donne, on the other hand, pushes his rhetoric to the limit, and so I, at least, can only read him restlessly, restrictedly, never quite sure that the Creator’s perfect indwelling and sanctifying of the creatures life can be described as “battering” or “ravishing.”
Oh, and thanks for posting this quote, Brian; it’s quite magnificent.
You do point out a very real difference between Donne and Augustine, Andrea. If Donne is to be likened to the Augustine of the Confessions, it could only be the Augustine of the garden, agonizing over his own inability to commit himself to the God whom he loves. But although the two poems come from two very different sides of a conversion event, they describe essentially the same conversion. For both Donne and Augustine, Divine Beauty is not only that Other for which we long, but that Other which we are wholly incapable of submitting our wills to. Where Donne prays to be “batter[ed]”, Augustine looks back on the time when God “broke through” the wall of his own sin. Both poets (well, a poet and a rhetor) see conversion as something which requires violent grace to “o’erthrow” the bonds of sin to which the person has previously committed himself. Donne’s pre-conversion poem is more restless than the comparatively peaceful post-conversion Augustine, but the poet anticipates the same kind of conversion that the bishop remembers.
Thanks Spencer. Yes, you’re absolutely right – Augustine’s remembrance of his deafness “broken through” and burned blindness does seem more like Donne’s pleading for God to “batter” his heart than I made it sound, and perhaps the difference is related to their place on different “sides,” as you say, of the conversion event. My goal, with the above comment, was to voice some form of the typical feminist critique of Donne while remaining sympathetic both to the longing for that Other, and the sense that we cannot even know that Other except that God makes it possible. Augustine’s “peace” (my words), or at least his ability to locate that which held him back as “deafness” and “blindness” may very well depend on his “side” of conversion, while Donne claims that his whole self must be “ravished” and his very center (“heart”) broken.
You’ll see, then, my limits: whereas breaking through deafness and burning blindness gives me no pause, battering my heart and ravishing
megives me some pause. The whole concept of “violent grace” is really quite perplexing. Is it not the essence of peace that sin be put to “death”? Does Augustine tell us that, from the perspective of completion, sin is absence – a lack of seeing, lack of hearing? To overthrow a lack mustn’t be “violent” at all. This may seem like a tangent, but it has everything to do with the feminist critique I’d like to hear without attempting to completely sanitize our languge. And I’m not sure that the paradox of needing to be “ravished” by God in order to be “chaste” is the best way to communcate that God must do something which we cannot do in order for there to be any time of communion – any love, beauty, peace – and that this communion, and therefore all that leads to it, is love, beauty, peace, more powerfully than we can even venture to imagine.I think, Andrea, that you’re assuming I’m smarter than I actually am! I am not familiar with the typical feminist critique of Donne to which you allude, so I’m left a little confused by the rest of your post.
At first I thought that this critique was about Donne’s use of rape imagery to describe God. I could completely understand this kind of criticism, and this kind of language makes me somewhat uncomfortable, as well. But I’m unsure if this is part of what’s going on in your post, even though you do single out the “ravished” line at the end. Anyways, if this kind of criticism is going on, I’ll agree, I think.
But given that you say you don’t want to “sanitize” our language and you single out the concept of “violent grace,” I’m guessing what I said about is not the substance of the critique. I have to admit, though, I don’t understand why “violent grace” would raise specifically feminist objections. So I might miss the point in my response. You’ll have to let me know, and I’m sorry if I do.
When Augustine describes his conversion in the garden in the Confessions, he describes it as the divinely granted solution to the insurmountable problem of overcoming the habit of his will for sin. While it is true that for Augustine, evil is nothing, it is a parasitical nothing. After all, it’s not evil that unicorns don’t exist. What is evil, however, is the corruption of good things – by negating certain parts of what they are supposed to be. Augustine’s sin is that sinful choices have built up walls of habit which block his path to God. Augustine is powerless to remove these habits, and must rely on God to bulldoze them out of the way. This action of grace is clearly not violent in the classical sense of the term – an act of violence toward a thing goes against that thing’s nature – because Augustine’s true nature is for his heart to rest in God. However, it is clear that Augustine relies on God’s power and strength to remove his sin, against a part of Augustine’s will. This is the violence of which I am speaking when I talk of violent grace.
I’m really confused about why this would be objectionable to a feminist qua feminist. I don’t see how this kind of understanding of grace would be more violent towards women than it would be towards men. Since I’m assuming that feminism exists only to clear away anti-woman biases – which probably isn’t a good assumption, please let me know – I don’t know how this concept of grace could come under feminist fire.
I’m just kind of confused, and would greatly appreciate clarifications on the matter.
Ha! Look what a conversation I have inspired with my high-school literary connections
I can’t keep up with all this, though I see what I have to look forward to if I go to grad school!
I admit that the Song of Songs/Augustine/Donne-ish sexual imagery used for theological metaphor sort of unnerves me every time, and it may be virtue of my position as a young single female having no reason to compare God to sex.
Well I look forward to more quotes and thoughts from Brian’s fascinating blog ;P
Spencer, I think you’re comments are on point for where I was trying to take the conversation. I’m sorry I assumed you would read my mind and understand what I meant by “typical feminist critique.” There are probably several, but the one I mean to take seriously has to do with violent language that is most often used to describe violence against women. “Batter,” in English, is usually used with reference to domestic violence, i.e. “battered women.” Even as a spiritual metaphor, to ask with Donne for our hearts to be batter seems to take lightly the tragic and horrifying situation in which many women find themselves. Obviously, women who have experienced abuse and those close to them simply cannot resonate with this kind of language, and so it seems maybe none of us should be able to do so. “Ravish” – Again, a generally violent concept of particular import to women.
So, in the case of this poem, the difference between a feminist critique and a pacifist critique is somewhat slight. You’re right: my broader questions about “violent grace” aren’t specifically feminist at all. I can see that, in this phrase, violence is not being used in its typical, or classical, sense. In light of shift in definition, I question whether the term “violent” – and therefore, the type of language we usually associate with an act toward a thing that “goes against that thing’s nature” – is appropriate for talking about grace. Even if the person whose will is in the habit of sin experiences the overcoming of that sin as going against their instincts, from the perspective of salvation this isn’t violence at all. If “violent grace” doesn’t mean “violence” in the classical sense, then I question whether the implementation of the concept is helpful or whether it promotes incoherence. This is a general question, though I think the feminist critique of Donne mentioned above hits it on the head, if only “feminist” because the violence suggested is typically perpetrated against women.
I’m glad that, in the case of rape, we can agree…
(I’ll attempt to articulate some of the other feminist critiques of Donne, though I’m not sure how much of an authority I am on this:
Many women feel that they are told too often that they can do no good in and of themselves, and that they need to look outside themselves for strength, goodness, and completion; these are women looking for empowerment and never finding it. Donne’s poem hits them at the point of total depravity – his heart must be utterly destroyed, his body overtaken – when they really want to hear about being created
imago dei. Most of the time, this argument leads in a pretty humanistic and anthropocentric direction. Without reducing sin beyond theological intelligibility, I can’t take their critique seriously.Also, as Kim mentioned, for some reason sexual imagery sometimes sits a little strangely. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t really understand this, or why the metaphorical distance appears less great to heterosexual women than heterosexual men… Anyway, I didn’t take this argument into account either.)
There’s more to say here, I’m sure, but I hope I’ve at least clarified things a bit. I’m out of town, on vacation, with only sporadic internet access, so this will have to do for now. Perhaps we can get Brian to cook us dinner again if there’s more to discuss.
Thanks, Kim, for starting an interesting conversation.
One more point of clarification: Augustine does not bother me here; I agree with Brian that the quote is “theologically immaculate.” But I also wouldn’t describe grace, here depicted, as “violent.” Donne is really my concern. Though I imagine that he means for his language to be shocking in order to communicate the power behind the shift he longs for but cannot attain, I think he finally reaches for a description of power that fails to describe grace. Not to say that Augustine and Donne don’t describe the same type of conversion, I just think one does a better job than another, as we would expect of the Bishop.
So, I was trying to articulate a response, because I thought that I still disagreed with you on interpreting Augustine. But then I went back to the Confessions, and I think you’re right in interpreting Augustine’s vision of grace as non-violent (well, at least not “violent.”) It’s one in which Beauty overwhelms us by gently leading us away from sin and thereby healing us. Appropriately enough, I got a paper back in my Augustine class in which my professor basically criticized me for interpreting grace too violently! This has been a very instructing conversation for me, thanks, Andrea (and Kim for getting the ball rolling)!
Yes, thanks for a stimulating conversation. Brian, keep those quotes coming.