in
The Language
Robert
Herrick's
of Gaze
Hesperides
Mukesh
Williams
Robert Herrick's visual metaphors are the most powerful and yet the weakest. He
attempts to capture the perspective of the subject but forever misses that position,
as it is impossible to occupy the position of the subject and yet represent the
subject through a gaze. In Hesperides, the lover's visual perception of the female
form and his gaze of the beloved contradict each other creating not only an
emotional tension but a psychological lure that escapes linguistic assimilation. The
poet creates a persona who instead of expressing his satisfaction in his union with
the beloved reveals his yearning for an unattainable ideal. In Hesperides the poet's
gaze acts as an objet a, showing what the persona will always lack not what he can
acquire in the foreseeabel future. The beloved is always moving along the
emotional and visual meridian symbolizing a lack of all those attributes in the
persona that she possesses. The persona's gaze functions as an unconscious
invocation to the beloved to satisfy his desire with the full knowledge that between
his gaze and what we actually sees is an illusion
a lure that only dazzles the
senses. This lure cannot be contained within the institution of marriage. And
obviously both the perception
connected
to Herrick's
and the gaze in Hesperides
own understanding
are intrinsically
of the Anglican
values,
the
representation of women, the reinterpretation of the mannerist tradition in poetry
and his allegiance to the pollitical ideology of the times.
— 53 —
Implicity
Hesperides
argues that the persona
procure
the golden
African
sister nymphs
the Greek legend
apples of marriage,
perhaps,
Aegle, Arethusa,
a dreadful
"hopes to have it after all;" hopes to
by marrying
Erythia
hundred-headed
any one of the four
and Hesperia.
dragon,
Ladon,
But acording
to
guards the beautiful
garden where the nymphs frolic. No one has ever succeeded at getting the apples
except
Heracles
and a trick.
presents
who tricked
It also implies
the dread
one reason
Atlas
a hope
and confusion
why the argument
to get some
for him. The legend
that tantalizes
in its proximity
of a hundred
perspectives.
of the book
suggests
a lure
but like the dragon
Perhaps
ends with the following
this could
be
lines:
I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)
Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.'
The perspective gets more complicated as the persona sings of a time, which is
"trans -shifting" or moving beyond comprehension
both intellictually
and
emotionally. And trans-shifting gets limked to the problem of perception, othering,
gaze and linguistic anxiety. To find both the muse, and mistress amongst the "Mad
maiden(s)"
who "roeme" but do not "stay at home" would be rather difficult.2
Hesperides attempts to unravel if not resolve this difficulty.
Herrick's
taverns
reputation
fantasizing
1970s. During
reassess
literary
as a royalist
about women
and a randy bachelor
in his poems
the last three decades
literary
his works. This reassessment
climate
Foucauldian
that debunked
dialectics,
the understanding
like the Hesperides,
scholarship
unchanged
the methodology
of New Criticism
feminist
begun
motivated
and introduced
and new historicist
—54
—
and representative
to
with the changed
practices
Today more and more critics see Herrick's
as ideologically
London
till the late
has gradually
has to do in large measure
deconstructionist,
of literature.
remained
who frequented
in
works,
of the political
turmoil of the 1640s. Claude J. Summers argues that Herrick's epigrams, verses
and poems all express his "extreme royalist attitude."'
Critics such as Leah H.
Marcus see Herrick's poems about rural festivity as expressive of a Laudian
Anglican "cultural revival." Marcus contends that the communal holidays within
Herrick's poems function more as "extensions of sacramental worship" reinforcing
the authority of the church and the King and less as innocent moments of
communal relaxation.4
Many critics such as Ann Baynes Coiro see Herrick
moving beyond the royalist ideology to question the "Stuart ideals" of patrimony,
social hierarchy and matrimony.'
Herrick's poems are no longer seen as just
cloyingly erotic or politically conservative but as artifacts negotiating issues of
ideology, hegemony and marginal subjects.6 However the restoration of Herrick's
poetic reputation has not provided a balanced understanding of his treatment or
representation of women.
Recent evaluation of Herrick's works either employ a post-Freudian paradigm or
use a feminist critique, forgetting to locate him in the historical context of
seventeenth century Stuart England of which he was very much a part. Gordon
Baker on the one hard, believes that the presence of an "obstructed desire" and
"prepubescent sexuality" are the twin psychological factors responsible for a
profligate eroticism in Herrick's presentation of women.' On the other hand most
feminist analyses of Herrick's poetry seem rather critical of his patriarchal values.
Feminist critics like Moira P. Baker and Bronwen Price have explored "the .cultural
repression of women" in the erotic presentation
employs a Foucauldian
of the female body.8 Price
argument to suggest that Herrick's fetishistic
and
voyeuristic treatment of women was closely tied up with "a sexual politics bound
up within an emerging bourgeois economy and discourse of subjectivity."'
Evidently most feminist critics ignore the religious, political, personal and totemic
dimensions of Stuart England within which these poems were composed.
—55
—
Heather
Dubrow's
highlights
brilliant
study of the tumultuous
the significant
During this period,
of an orderly
role marriage
the institution
and harmonious
the epithalamium
genre
social instability.10
of marriage
society"
Interestingly,
which
of the marriage
reinforced
By destabilizing
male dominance,
Herrick
Stuart culture. In "Upon some women"
Thou
who wilt not love,
Learne
made
of thred
Pieces,
patches,
ropes
In-laid
Garbage
ev'ry where.12
O Jupiter,
women
sho'd
It was widely
contributed
reinforced
patriarchy.
thus destabilizing
the institution
the gender
the
of marriage,
politics
within
he despises those women who cannot love:
the best of God's
creature
and worthy
of praise:
ill
first die I will;
'mong
woman
believed
in large
reluctant
of haire;
I speake
that I know,
Of creatures,
introduces
of all and some.
Of woman-kind,
Since
mode to ally fears of
and thrumme;
Botch
he finds
on
is.
A mere
Elsewhere
questions
depended
doe this;
of me what Woman
Something
in his epithalamia
of sexual consummation
poems.11
and a symbol
poets increasingly
as a proper
England
social cohesion.
was seen as a "source
marriage
Herrick
century
in strengthening
as English
celebrating
brides who balk at the suggestion
ideology
played
seventeenth
all the rest
is the best.13
in the Stuart
measure
period
to social
Since women
order.
that the institution
Divinely
were represented
—56
—
of marriage
ordained,
as sexually
marriage
insatiable
and
gullible
value
they
had to be restrained
of women
and guided
was determined
It was argued
that without
the legitimacy
of heirs.14
by fathers
by pre-marital
female
chastity
and husbands.
virginity
it would
The
and post-marital
be rather
social
difficult
fidelity.
to establish
Matrimony for women was seen as role fulfilling and natural. Both promiscuous
and unmarried women were perceived as threats to society as they attempted to
destabilize
bachelorhood
bachelor
the social
system.15
On the contrary
without
threatening
the system.14
by choice throughout
men were allowed
Herrick himself
their
remained
his life. In "No Spouse but a Sister,"
a
Herrick
confesses that he has remained a bachelor to enjoy freedom and escape marital
problems:
A bachelour I will
Live as I have liv'd still,
And never take a wife
To crucife my life (1s.1-4):17
Strangely
he chooses
incestuous
relations:
a sister,
instead
of a wife,
with
whom
he would
not have
Which I will keep embrac'd,
And kisse, but yet be chaste (1s.9-10).
The
tantalizing
permissible
revolutionary
his female
thought
behavior
in those
personae
of incest
without
times.
indulged
transgressing
Though
are not granted
in a denial
the forbidden.
Herrick's
—
This
male personae
this freedom.
—57
stretches
the limits
of
sentiment
was quite
can escape
marriage,
In Hesperides
Herrick
exhorts
women
.to look
leading
a promiscuous
Herrick's
forward
to getting
married
and not to think
bearing
Anthea,
Electra,
Though
his mistresses
on his writing.
are exotic, they are almost always imagined.
complains
marriage
or
life.18
own life has an important
Herrick
of delaying
In "Upon the losse of his Mistresses"
how he has lost most of his "dainty"
Myrha,
Corinna
and Perilla.
mistresses
— Julia, Sapho,
He leads a lonely life after "All are
gone;" and he concludes:
For to number
Their
Interestingly
departures
Herrick
hierarchy.20
was named Prudence
of the working
a lot and occasionally
life. In his poems
Love
and die. "19
approves
He socialized
"Love what it is
by
hence,
his housekeeper
his poems.
dissolute
sorrow
he reflects
whom he prudently
class culture
avoids in
but reaffirms
social
drank to excess but did not lead a
a belief in the abiding
quality
of love. In
." he states:
is a circle
In the same
that doth restlesse
sweet
eternity
move
of love.21
A hedonist by temper but a parson by profession, he could quite easily combine a
classical paganism with Christian folk tradition in his writing. In his Julia poems
he is able to synthesize elements of classical yearning and formality with Anglican
rituals of gratification and control.
Herrick
saw
the evanescence
Arnold.
He always
sought
of life but
ways
to defeat
—58
did
not become
the transience
-
elegiac
like
of life through
Mathew
his carpe
diem
poems.
The idea of carpe
going
a Maying,"
suited
a man who frequented
diem
"To the Virgins"
or seize
the day in such poems
and "To Make
taverns
where
Much
he forget
of Time,"
his worries
as "Corinna's
temperamentally
in drink
and the
company of men.22 When Herrick articulates his yearning or desire for a woman
or her loss he is dealing with an imaginary-psychological
construct where
yearning, desiring or losing the "Other" becomes a pleasure in its own right.23 He
wishes to die before his beloved to escape the pain of bereavement. In "To Julia"
he conveys this felling succinctly:
Julia,
when
thy Herrick
dies,
Close
thou
up thy Poets
eyes:
And his last breath,
Taken
And again
let it be
in by none but Thee.24
in "His Last request
My Fates
Claspe
are ended;
thou his Book,
to Julia"
when
Herrick
thy Herrick
writes:
dyes,
then close thou up his Eyes.25
From a Lacanian perspective Herrick's poems enjoy the opposition between
"articulated content" and "position of articulation
." Though he rejects promiscuity
and social deviance in his articulated content, he might just endorse them as a
position of articulation. This line of thought may be somewhat plausible if we see
the interconnection between the representation of the female body in poetry and
painting.
The representations
sixteenth
and early
of the female
seventeenth
body
century
in English
derived
—59
—
poetry
and painting
their cue from
a common
in the late
aesthetic
that Herrick understood quite well. Many critics have seen a correlation
Herrick's method of presenting
between
the manner of bodies in motion and the limning
style of Elizabethan miniature painters. It is now believed that Herrick's ability to
beautify
and objectify
the female form followed
the aesthetic
practice
of the
English limners and the mannerist aesthetic of Nicholas Hillard, Edward Norgate,
Henry Peacham, and the former goldsmith William Herrick.26 Herrick's penchant
for detail, the presence of fine filigree work in his poems, could be derived from
his experience as an apprentice to his goldsmith uncle Sir William Herrick, while
his understanding
of larger social movements like the Civil War would perhaps be
a consequence of his study of law at St. John's College, Cambridge.
It is possible to see the goldsmith's craft and the sculptor's vision in Herrick's
finely crafted poems. Critics believe that his poetic style involves grace (grazia),
invention (invenzione), technical precision (praecisio), resolution of artistic
difficulty-simplicity formula (difficulta/facilita formula) and high manner (high
maniera) which were seemingly techniques employed in sculpting the human
form27 Benvenuto Cellini's advice about sculpting is a good example of the
mannerist tradition. Cellini observes that the human form can best be represented
in sculpture if the artist follows life closely in parts and whole.28 It is possible to
distill from Cellini's words the following mannerist tenet: demonstrate your artistic
judgment by following the best of life closely and perfect nature in the whole and
in parts by artificio. When nature is imitated precisely art triumphs.
Though Herrick's
applies Cellini's
advice to his poetic construction
there are
inherent problems
in the medium Herrick uses. He tries to freeze the moment
through the medium of language, which refuses to be frozen. In his poem, "To
Perenna" Herrick observes the harmony and perfection of his mistress's body and
finds variety in her "faire, and unfamiliar
—60
excellence"
—
(1s.3-4).
He attempts to
capture
this harmony
and perfection
darkness
and shadows,
however
does not fail altogether.
The
clarity
attempts
freshness
to catch
eternal
The
and
within
illusion
of motion
passion
or evokes
effect
nigh
of clothes
of portraits
himself
passion
impossible
body
over the human
but Herrick
form through
poems
trying
creating
Their
to arrest
aesthetic,
art invariably
enough
intriguingly
the
a miniature
such motion
is hard
is tarnished
dazzle
of miniaturist
and the way
This
world
and wickedness.
of life,
limners.
in the observer.
in words;
aspect
principle
of English
in the human
falsehood
as a painter
the stylistic
the tradition
The miniature
in Herrick's
and rarified
imagining
of grazia,
Herrick
and well
also symbolize
the delicate
movements,
presence
which
in words.
reveals
to capture
by
Herrick
eye.
He
life in its
painting.
places
gave
the
internal
in stone
tries to represent
the
words.
The relevance of elegant drapery over the human form, the conception of an artist's
gaze on this form and the problem of representing this gaze, fascinated both
Raphael and Herrick. In poems such as "To his Mistresse," "Julia's Petticoat,"
"Delight in Disorder
," "Art Above Nature," "To Julia," and "Upon Julia's Clothes"
he suggests his mistress to dress in silk and become a "jewel set on fire."29 "Julia's
Petticoat" gives such ecstatic delight to the poet that he nearly swoons to death
with pleasure -- "Down'd in Delights; but co'd not die."30 In "Art above Nature, to
Julia" Herrick is once more allured by Julia's "airie silks" (lines 15-16) and
confesses that "mine eye and heart/Dotes less on Nature, than on Art."31However
he fears that if Julia banishes him from her sight he would destroy all art:
"
... I will live alone
There,
where
no language
ever yet was known.32
—61 --
Alan
Rudrum
to dress
in "Royalist
as they
please,
lyric"
Herrick
suggests
that by imagining
is not indulging
in male
women
fantasy
who are free
but empowering
women.33 Gail S. Weinberg points out that Julia's loose-fitting garments were the
new style at the English court imported from the Continent. And the poet's
response
to their effect on him is partly "a response
to a specific
new
phenomenon."34 Herrick is not just topical or up-to-date but seriously goes about
overcoming the problem of an artist's gaze and the representation of drapery over
human form.
The preoccupation
sensuousness
with the female
in words stimulated
form and problem
Herrick's
of representing
its
poetic talents. The softness of the
female form and drapery hiding and yet revealing
this form seemed
to have
preoccupied his thoughts. Dalliance can be fraught with danger but if the intention
is matrimony it may not cause any harm. "The silken Snake" is one such example.
Herrick, startled by Julia's sudden flinging of her silken lace upon his face, calms
himself by reasoning that the silken lace was not a snake as it did not bite him. By
fusing the swift and threatening movement of the snake with the soft and harmless
motion of silk the poet takes away the danger of the bite ("But though it scar'd, it
did not bite.") diluting the potency of the metaphor.35 The sudden action of the
snake enveloped
in the softness of silk gives both immediacy
and grace to the
poem. Julia's bodily movements are silk-like and harmless and therefore graceful.
The physical motion of the clothes animated by physical movement and a gentle
breeze give a distinctive quality to the personal manner of Herrick's style. In the
midst of this dalliance holy matrimony is envisaged:
Holy
waters
For the sacred
Baptize
hither
bring
sparkling:
me and thee, and so
62
—
Let us to the Alter go.
And (ere we our rites commence)
Wash our hands in innocence.
Then I'le be the Rex Sacrorum,
Thou the Queen of Peace and Quorum.36
In the context
Whitehead
Breast"
of marriage
suggests
to her breasts
Tudor rose, which combined
of the house of Lancaster
plausible.
erotic
the woman
far-fetched
the poems
as "strawberries"
J. G. O.
the Nipples of Julia's
and "creame"
allude
to the
and ushered in a time of peace.37 The political undertones
but suggestions
The coming
behind
may be permitted.
the red rose of the house of York and the white rose
together
about
it. But
Julia
to matrimony
and social
of the red rose and white
period of social turmoil in England
Obviously
delights
that in some Julia poems such as "Upon
the reference
may seem
even
and established
are about
Herrick
wants
different
stability
rose ended
are
the long
the Tudor dynasty.
parts
us to believe
of her body
that
their
love
that
will
hides
last
forever:
An endless prove;
And pure as Gold for ever.38
And after his death
she will be reflected
in his eyes forever.
Herrick employs language to eroticize different parts of Julia's body and make them
into a fetish. In the poem "Julia's Churching, or Purification"
the poet makes Julia
go through a ritual of purification after giving birth; her hymen becomes a fetish.39
This strange fictional purification is called "churching,"
—63
—
a play upon the Anglican
ritual of thanksgiving for "safe deliverance" of a woman during "childebirth."40
The Book of Common Prayer reaffirms that the Lord will protect a woman from
evil if she "both faithfully live, and walke in her vocation."41 If a woman fulfills
her wifely duties she will be protected from adultery and will continue to bear
more children in future. This promise firmly enforces patriarchal authority of the
state, church and husband.42 Herrick's churching ceremony reinforces
the
patriarchal paradigm by allowing the man to dominate the woman in marriage.
After undergoing the churching ceremony of purification Julia can return home as
a virgin bride to her husband — "to the breaking of a Bride-Cake) home / Where
ceremonious Hymen shall for thee / Provide a second Epithalamie"(lines 10-12).
Urging Julia to be faithful to her husband the poet plays God by restoring her
broken hymen through the power of language so that she can return to her husband
as a virgin bride once again:
She who keeps chastly to her husbands side
Is not for one, but every night his Bride:
And stealing still with love, and feare to Bed,
Brings him not one, but many a Maiden-head.
So it seems
that
Julia
she has
been
function
of an eternal
Language
will
bestowed
not only
need
with
must
"many
domination
tries to control
suffer
the pain
(lines 13-16)
of ritual
a Maiden-head."
and control
the other
of female
This
defloration
is undoubtedly
sexuality
but also turn back
as now
time,
and pleasure.
restoring
loss of virginity.
In a poem
even
such as "Delight
in the absence
A Sweet
in Disorder"
of a the female
disorder
Herrick
body:
in the dresse
-- 64
--
imagines
a wanton
a
sensuousness
the
Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse:
A Lawne about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring Lace, which here and there
Enthralls the Crimson Stomacher:
A Cuffe neglectfull, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave (deserving Note)
In the tempestuous petticote:
A carelesse shooe-string, in whose tye
I see a wilde civility:
Doe more bewitch me, then when Art
Is too precise in every part.43
The poet
has overcome
his
of the draped
gaze
theoretical
celebration
dress
the female
gives
precisely
and seductive
form
winning,
creates
a calculated
enhances
Lace,"
movement
erring,
careless
and
seduction,
both restrain
the beauty
many
even
erotic
an appropriate
in the
quality
a "Cuffe
petticote"
and seduce
of the clothes
to construe.
itself
quality.
is prolonged
form.
the details
and a mirror
The
eternally
of the amorous
Herrick's
possibilities.
– 65
language
a wanton,
carelessness
as it is frozen
the observer.
provokes
quite
the graceful
the clothes
apparent
in
petticote"
becomes
gives
It is a
carelessness
the gaze of the male poet eternally.
and bewitches
to express
the "tempestuous
representation
bewitching
of that
An apparent
neglectfull,"
of poetic
method
but the poet records
The "tempestuous
which
absence
philosophy.
of the girl, the drapery
This kind
to the imagination
free along
form
its erotic
shooe-string."
gaze of the observer.
The clothes
female
of finding
of an aesthetic
— an "erring
and a "carelesse
much
the difficulty
in time.
The grace
The poem
the mind
leaves
to run
In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis Jacques Lacan pointed out
that Wiederholen (repeating) though related to Erinnerung (remembering) is not
Reproduzieren
(reproduction).45
Remembering
obliges events to `yield'
themselves creating a sort of center. It is at such moments that the subject resists
the remembered center and in resisting repeats the action.46 Norman Bryson makes
a subtle distinction between the gaze and the glance in Western art. The gaze
masterfully repeats an act and perseveres to "confine what is always on the point
of escaping or slipping out of bounds"; and in so doing does "a certain violence
(penetrating, piercing fixing)."47 Freud argues that the gaze is a phallic activity
linked to the desire to control the object.4$ The object of desire is invariably cast
as passive, feminine victim.° It is possible to see Herrick's representation of the
female body as an attempt to manipulate female sexuality through language and
text, a self-fashioning strategy of Renaissance poets to delight the male reader by
fetishizing and repressing the female form.5°
II
Herrick's
poem
figurative
use of language
time
it stretches
"Upon
itself
Julia's
Clothes"
to create
beyond
provides
a mood,
feeling
its linguistic
confines
Upon Julia's
Clothes
an excellent
and an emotion.
and organizes
the unconscious.
Whenas
Then,
then,
in silks my Julia
methinks,
That liquefaction
—66
goes,
how sweetly
of her clothes.
—
example
flows
of the
At the same
itself
as part of
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration, each way free,
0, how that glittering taketh me 151
In the first stanza,
metaphor
the visual
through
the use
melting
into liquid
process
of liquefaction
become
liquid
suggestive
clinging
taking
and
eroticism
to her
are
image
of Julia
of the words
the form
in silks quickly
"flows"
of her body
takes
place
at high
then
fused
with
of her silks melting
and revealing
what
they
and
gets transformed
"liquefaction."
has the appeal
temperatures
other
into
liquid
cover
has
Her
silks
of a metaphor.
The
when
metals
to form
taking
, into a
solid
substance
an alloy.
the form
the combined
The
of her body,
sensuality
of
dress/undress.
The erotic metaphor
of the first stanza expands to include a kinetic image of
vibration. The mesmeric
suggested
almost sexually conscious quality of her movement
by the word "brave."
She defies the speaker's
is
gaze, almost taking
pleasure in arousing his desire.52 The vibration of her body or her clothes is left
deliberately
ambiguous
so both the speaker and reader can revel in the luscious
and delectable moment. The gaze locked at the movement is both uninhibited and
mutual.
The blurring
of focus between
gaze and movement
apart from its
ambiguity is also an attempt to reach a nonverbal experience through the verbal.
Both the sexual intention of gaze and physical space of movement collapses in the
kinetic image of vibration.
translucence
momentum,
She is "free" of restrictive
of this suggestive
revelation
vibrating
as is the tendency of all vibrations,
underclothing
and the
through the gaze gather
into the "glittering"
moment of
ecstasy. The vibrating blur of Julia in her silks glitters in the proximity of the gaze,
touched and touchable. The overload of sensation spills into the tactile image of
the phrase "taketh me" or takes possession of me by force or skill. The trap of the
-~67
—
gaze,
the ensnarement
releases
the poem from the confines
complex
metaphors
seventeenth
language
Even
century
before
human
deduction
a totemic
relations
sustaining
activates
themes
seventeenth
develop,
modesty
into the
the unconscious
deeper
layers
of the
The
allure
sexual
Europe
function
or "social
of force
that
that
Julia
prior
Lacan
to "experience,"
When
child-bearing,
viewed
churching
help in continuing
exercises
issues
its own
of language.
over
and procreation.
these
with
needs."53
marriage,
bonding
harnessed
them
like a language"
of virginity,
own lines
of matrimony,
organizes
experience,"
issues
their
nature
life and
the persona
It is also true that
to create
hegemony
and
women.
It is possible
to argue like the new historicists
Anglican
priest
observing
the social
sensuous
form stretches
The persona's
who
witnesses
ritual
gaze captured
outside
marriage
"Corinna's
going
a Maying"
priest, encourages
that the personae
the movement
of a woman
walking
in the poem reasserts
and the imperative
the persona
lover here too doubles up as a priest to encourage
to her.
of beauty
that
- 68 —
being
up as an
in Julia.
the traditional
revealing
her
role of women as
but transgressive
gesture.
both as a lover
in the May Day celebrations.
Corianna
Herrick
In
and yet does not transgress.
This social ritual will after all provide
The gaze
doubles
in a silk dress
, who functions
women to pray and participate
after some dalliance.
of a divine
the limits of social conformity
desirable
marriage
century
for a moment,
But we should not forget that the
calls the totemic
is structured
cohesion.
century
disempower
within
," "collective
within
social
of the seventeenth
Levi-Strauss
perspective
inscribed
of the body
the poem.
that "the unconscious
"individual
vibration
sexual fantasy.
is structured
what Claude
believes
become
of magical
that organizes
structures,
from
of the suggestive
In
and a
The
to choose her own man
a husband
presents
and a happy
is "profoundly
unsatisfying"
realized
in a Lacanian
sense.
It never
fulfils
but excites
desire,
which
can be
only in marriage.
Introducing the dialectic of the eye and the gaze Lacan points out that both do not
compliment but contradict each other. The gaze, instead of creating love generates
a lure, which does not satisfy. Lacan suggests that a lover is forever dissatisfied
because he is missing the same position and perspective enjoyed by his beloved —
"You never look at me from the place from which I see you ."54 Julia's image is
forever "glittering" or dazzling the senses; she is "a mere dialectic of appearance,"
an objet a, from whom the persona had separated physically to reconstitute
himself. Apart from other things Julia presents herself as a symbol of a lack. Here
we see no demand but a desire of the other, an invocation of the unconscious.
Between the gaze and what we finally see is a lure. The poet presents the persona
as someone other than who he is. The poet shows the persona an aspect of Julia,
which is not what he wants to see. The persona perhaps wants to get married to her
not show his desire or yearn for her. But the eye of the poet functions as an objet a,
showing what the persona lacks not what he can get.55 In "The Transformation"
after the poet's death Julia sits on a "refulgent thronelet." The "immortal" poet now
looks at her radiant beauty that shines more brightly in "thy counterfeit?" 56 In
Herrick the visual image is most powerful, as the poet believes that amongst the
sense the eyes are vanquished first. The visual image is most powerful in love and
war:
`Tis a known
principle
in War
The eies be first, that conquer'd
In most
anthologies
centuries
Herrick
of cavalier
is summarily
poets
.
are.57
of the late sixteenth
dismissed
—69 —
as a minor
poet.
and early
In fact
seventeenth
many
of his
poems, which were written before the Civil War, did not find honorable mention
until after the Restoration. Though he is seen as one of the least political of the
Cavalier poets, Herrick suffered immensely from the conflict losing his living as a
clergyman. A thorough reading of Hesperides and "Noble Numbers: Or, His Pious
Pieces" reveal a remarkably talented poet who could dexterously handle diverse
themes ranging from religious sacraments and marriage to the Civil War and
kingship.58 His treatment of women might offend some of our modern-day
feminist but it must be noted that Herrick, though tainted by the prejudices and
values of his age, saw men and women functioning within the hierarchical social
structure of Stuarts, fulfilling their roles within marriage as both procreators and
preservers of the social order. Perhaps because he never married, Herrick's attitude
towards women was more of a potential marriage partner and therefore courtship
and dalliance become the dominant modes in his poems. The constant yearning,
never to be realized in blissful matrimony, creates a constant tension in his poems
between the subjective eye, which attempts to capture the objective "other" and the
object that escapes capture. Read within the Lacanian and historical context
Herrick's poems seem both palpable and multifaceted.
NOTES
'
L . C. Martin ed., The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, rpt., 1968, (Oxford; The Clarendon Press, 1956),
p. 5. All future references are from this edition.
2 The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick , ibid., p. 5.
3 Claude J . Summers, "Herrick's Political Poetry: The Strategies of His Art," in Roger B. Rollin and J.
Max Patrick, eds., "Trust to Good Verses": Herrick Tercentenary Essays, (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1978), p.172. For further readings on Herrick's royalism, also see Roger B. Rollin,
Robert Herrick, rev. ed. (New York: Twayne, 1992), pp.154-58; and Summers, "Herrick's Political
Counterplots," SEL 25 (1985), pp.165-82.
4 Leah S . Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday
Pastimes, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pages 145 and 17. The Anglican Church under
—70
Archbishop William Laud's program of religious reformation rejected the doctrine of predestination and
emphasized the use of sacraments, church ceremony and holiday pastimes advocated in the Book of
Sports. This Laudian agenda of the Anglican Church was aimed at providing greater political,
intellectual, spiritual and economic power to the clergy. For an analysis of Laudianism in the Anglican
Church see Andrew Foster, "Church Policies of the 1630s," in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds.,
Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics 1603-1642, (New York: Longman,
1989), pp. 193-223; and Nicholas Tyacke, "Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,"
in
Conrad Russell, ed., The Origins of the English Civil War, (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp.119-43.
Studies of the Laudian elements in Hesperides include Leah S. Marcus, "Herrick's Hesperides and the
`Proclamation made for May
,"' SP 76 (1979), pp. 49-74; Achsah Guibbory, "The Temple of Hesperides
and Anglican-Puritan Controversy," in Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds., The Muses
Common-Weale: Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century, (Missouri: University of Missouri
Press, 1988), pp.135-62; Guibbory, "Enlarging the Limits of the `Religious Lyric': The Case of Herrick's
Hesperides," in John R. Roberts, ed., New Perspectives on the Seventeenth-Century English Religious
Lyric, (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1994), pp. 28-45; and Peter Stallybrass, "`Wee feaste in
our Defense': Patrician Carnival in Early Modern England and Robert Herrick's Hesperides," English
Literary Renaissance 16 (1986), pp. 234-52.
5 Ann Baynes Coiro
, Robert Herrick's "Hesperides" and the Epigram Book Tradition, (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins L. Press, 1988), p.9. Assessments of Herrick's political ambivalence include Coiro, "Herrick's
Hesperides: The Name and the Frame," ELH 52 (1985) pp. 311-36; Janie Caves McCauley, "On the
`Childhood of the Yeare': Herrick's Hesperides New Year's Poems
," George Herbert Journal 14
(1990-91), pp.72-96; Jonathan F. S. Post, "Robert Herrick: A Minority Report," George Herbert Journal
14 (1990-91), pages, 1-20, esp. 11-18; and Katharine Wallingford, "'Corinna,' Carlomaria, the Book of
Sports, and the Death of Epithalamium on the Field of Genre," George Herbert Journal 14 (1990-91)
pp. 97-112.
6 Don Allen Cameron
, Image and Meaning: Metaphoric Traditions in Renaissance Poetry, rev. ed.
(Baltimoer: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968). Cameron saw the poem as a "bale of butterflies."
(p.138).
GordonBraden, The Classics and English Renaissance Poetry: Three Case Studies (New Haven: Yale U.
Press, 1978), 223; William Kerrigan, "Kiss Fancies in Robert Herrick," George Herbert Journal 14
(1990-91): 155; Roger B. Rollin, "Robert Herrick and the Erotics of Criticism," in Claude J. Summers
and Ted-Larry Pebworth, eds., Renaissance Discourses of Desire (Missouri; University of Missouri
Press, 1993), p.134. See also Lillian Schanfield, "`Tickled with Desire': A View of Eroticism in Herrick's
Poetry," Literature and Psychology 39 (1993), pp. 63-83.
8 Moira P. Baker "`The Uncanny Stranger on Display': The Female Body in Sixteenth- and SeventeenthCentury Love Poetry," South Atlantic Review, 56 (1991), p.22;
Bronwen Price, "The Fractured Body — Censorship and Desire in Herrick's Poetry," Literature and
History, 3rd ser., 2 (1993), p.24. See also Sarah Gilead's painstaking analysis of "To the Virgins, to Make
Much of Time," in which she argues that Herrick uses the carpe diem tradition to replace sexuality with
-71
--
textuality ("Ungathering
`Gather ye Rosebuds': Herrick's Misreading of Carpe Diem," Criticism
27(1985), pp.133-53. Also see Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism; Four Essays, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957), pp. 299-301.
10 Heather Dubrow, A Happier Eden: The Politics of Marriage in the Stuart Epithalamium, (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1990), p.49.
11 Dubrow
, Eden, pages, 85-86 and 248.
12 The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick
, ibid., p. 76.
13 Poetical Works
, ibid., "In praise of women," p.250.
14 On issues relating to sex and gender see S . D. Amussen, "Gender, Family and the Social Order,
1560-1725," in Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, eds., Order and Disorder in Early Modern
England, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.196-217; Peter Stallybrass, "Patriarchal
Territories: The Body Enclosed," in Margaret W. Ferguson et al., eds., Rewriting the Renaissance: The
Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986),
pp.123-42; and D. E. Underdown, "The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority
in Early Modern England," in Fletcher and Stevenson, eds., Order and Disorder, pp.116-36.
15 Bridget Hill , "A Refuge from Men: The Idea of a Protestant Nunnery," Past and Present, 117 (1987), p.
119. The historian Bridget Hill gives a possible reason why spinsterhood was perceived as a threat to
society in seventeenth century England; she writes, "Spinsterhood, because it escaped male authority
within marriage, was seen as a latent threat against the whole structure of domestic authority" (p.119).
16 The Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English Revolution , N. H. Keeble, ed., (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001). Alan Rudrum in an essay entitled, "Royalist lyric," points out that
the publication of Hesperides in 1648 was a political act not just a literary one. "Herrick present the
`halcyon days' of Charles I's `personal rule' in the 1630's as a time of innocent mirth and merrymaking
,
which must have seemed appealing to those already wearied of the Rule of the Saints. The late 1640s in
fact saw a number of rebellions against the Puritan prescription of just such festivities as Herrick
celebrated" (p.182).
17 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.13.
18 Poetical Works
, ibid., pp.14-15. "How the Wallflower came first, and why so called."
19 Poetical Works, ibid, pp.15-16.
20 Raymond Williams , The Country And The City, (London: Chatto & Windus 1973), pp. 33-34, Quoted in
Anthony Low, "New Science and the Georgic Revolution in Seventeenth-Century English Literature,"
Renaissance Historicism: Selections from English Literary Renaissance, Arthur F. Kinney and Dan S.
Collins ed., (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), p.323 Williams points out that
though Herrick admires the sweaty English laborers in "The Hock-cart" he quickly puts them back in
their proper places.
21 Poetical Works, ibid., p.13.
22 Garry Hogg
, The Second Book of Inns and Villages of England, (New York: Arco Publishing Company
Inc., 1967); Fran C. Chalfant, Ben Jonson's London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary, (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 1978); Alexandra M. Birnbaum ed., Great Britain, (New York: Harper-
-72
-
Perennial, 1995).
23 Slavoj Zizek
, The Plague of Fantasies, rpt., 1999, (London: Verso, 1997). In the chapter, "Love Thy
Neighbour? No, Thanks!" Zizek states that, "Poetry, the specific poetic jouissance, emerges when the
very symbolic articulation of this Loss gives rise to a pleasure of its own" (p.4-7).
24 Poetical Works, ibid., p.186.
25 Poetical Works, ibid., p.329.
26 Definitions of continental Mannerism
, maniera, and high Maniera can be found in John Shearman,
"Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal
," in The Renaissance and Mannerism, Studies in Western Art 2, ed.
Millard Meiss (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), pp.200-21; Shearman, Mannerism, Style and
Civilization, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967); S. J. Freedberg, "Observations on the Painting of
the Maniera," Art Bulletin 47 (June 1965), pp.18'7-97; and S. J. Freedberg, Painting in Italy, 15D0-1600,
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971). On Hilliard's Mannerism, see John Pope-Hennessy, "Nicholas
Hilliard and Mannerist Art Theory," JWC I6 (1943), pp. 89-100; and idem, A Lecture on Nicholas
Hilliard (London: Home and Van Thal, 1949). Refer to the following texts: Nicholas Hilliard's Art of
Limning, ed. Arthur E Kinney and Linda Bradley Salamon (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1983);
Edward Norgate, Miniatura or The Art of Limning, ed. Martin Hardie, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919);
and Henry Peacham, The Art of Drawing with the Pen (1606; facs. The English EXperience 230
[Amsterdam and New York: Da Capo Press, 1970]). Refer to continental manuals: The Treatises of
Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmithing and Sculpture, trans. C. R. Ashbee (1568; New York: Dover, 1967);
and Lodovico Dolce's Dialogo della pittura intitolato l'Aretino, in Dolce's "Aretino" and Venetian Art
Theory of the Cinquecento, trans. Mark W. Roskill (1557; New York: New York University Press, 1968).
27 For a discussion of high Maniera and Herrick's religious verse
, see L. E. Semler, "Robert Herrick's God:
Visual Aesthetics in Noble Numbers," Parergon n.s. 12, 1 (June 1994). Quoted by John Peacock, "Inigo
Jones as a Figurative Artist," in Renaissance
Bodies: The Human. Figure in English Culture c.
1540-1660, ed. Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn (London: Reaktion, 1990), pgs. 154-79, 157.
26 The treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on goldsmithing and sculpture
, translated from the Italian by C. R.
Ashbee, (New York : Dover Publications, 1967). In his Treatise on Sculpture, Cellini offers the following
advice on the disegno of the human form which is generally applicable to all his art, whether minuteria
or grosseria:
[A]ll the really great masters have followed life, but the point is that you must have a fine judgment to
know how the best of life is to be put into your work, you must always be on the look out for beautiful
human beings, and from among them choose the most beautiful, and not only so, you must from among
even these choose the most beautiful parts, and so shall your whole composition become an abstraction
of what is beautiful. So alone may work be created, that shall be evident at once as the labour of men
both exquisite in judgment and humble in study. (Treatises, p.14-0)
29 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.20.
3° Poetical Works, ibid., p.67.
31 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.202.
32 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.60.
-73
-
33 The Cambridge Companion to Writing of The English Revolution
, ibid., Alan Rudrum, "Royalist lyric."
Rudrum writes, "In imagining women with the freedom to dress as they pleased, Herrick is not merely
indulging make fantasy, but, as Shakespeare did, demonstrating the possibility of a world in which
women need not be entirely at the mercy of a male-dominated social and religious establishment. The
'dishevelled woman' of Cavalier verse is consciously set
, against Puritan values" (p.184).
34 Gail S . Weinberg, "Herrick's `Upon Julia's Clothes," Explicator, 27 (October, Item 12).
35 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.116.
36 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.303.
37 J . G. O. Whitehead, "The Tudor Rose, Coat of Arms, London 10 (July) pp.110-15. Whitehead argues that
whether Herrick's mistress was real or imagined the fact remains that her breasts "were the Tudor rose
with its ideals personified; and that rose stood for ...a return to the Golden Age" somehow lost by the
Stuarts. Also see Poetical Works, ibid., p.164.
38 Poetical Works, ibid., p.66.
39 Poetical Works
, ibid., p. 286.
4° The Booke of Common Prayer and the Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites of the Church
of England, (London: Robert Barker, 1640. STC 16421). ,D3v
41 Booke of Common Prayer D3v
42 Stone
, Lawrence, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800, (New York: Harper, 1977). As
Lawrence Stone suggests, the seventeenth century saw a reinforcement of patriarchy in England as the
monarchy began more forcefully to assert its authoritarian prerogatives (Chapter 5). "Authoritarian
monarchy and domestic patriarchy," he argues, "form a congruent and mutually supportive complex of
ideas and social systems" (p. 152). ). In seventeenth century England, patriarchy was reinforced by the
state, Stone contends, "in the ... form of authoritarian dominance by the husband and father over the
woman and children within the nuclear family" (p. 153).
43 Poetical Works, ibid., p.28.
44 "The Uncanny Stranger on Display": The Female Body in Sixteenth - and Seventeenth-Century Love
Poetry, The South-Atlantic Review 56.2 (1991): 7-25.
45 Jacques Lacan
, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis, (London: Vintage Press, 1998),
Trans., Alan Sheridan. Chapter 4, "Of the Network of Signifiers," pp.49-50.
46 Lacan , ibid. Lacan writes, "Lastly — in these first stages of the experience in which remembering is
gradually substituted for itself and approaches ever nearer to a sort of focus, or centre, in which every
event seems to under an obligation to yield itself—precisely at this moment, we see manifest itself what
I will also call— in inverted commas, for one must also change the meaning of the three words that I am
going to say, one must change it completely in order to give it its full scope— the resistance of the
subject, which become at that moment repetition in act" (p.51).
47 Bryson , Norman. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1983), p. 93.
48 Irigaray
, Luce, This Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke, (Ithaca: Cornell
UP, 1985). French feminist theorist Luce Irigaray finds the logic of this gaze which has dominated
- 74
-
Western culture "foreign to female eroticism" (p. 25). Her argument supports Nancy Vicker's contention
that traditional descriptions of the female body are devised by the male imagination for the consumption
of the male imagination ("`This Heraldry' 207). Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. 24 vols., (London: Hogarth,
1955); Freud, "Medusa's Head." SE. Vol.18, pp. 273-74; Freud, "The Uncanny." SE. Vol.17, pp.219-52.
49 Fredric Jameson , The Political Unconscious, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). As Fredric
Jameson suggests, the literary text may be seen as a "rewriting or restructuration of a prior historical or
ideological subtext" (p.81). Paradoxically, according to Jameson, the literary work is at once constituted
and constituting, structured and structuring: "the literary work, ... as though for the first time, brings into
being that very situation to which it is also, at one and the same time, a reaction" (p.82). As Louis
Montrose states it, a text "restructures [its] ideological subtext" (p. 87). In other words, a text restructures
within itself a culture's ideological assumptions about gender, power, class, and so forth. In the
introduction to her superb collection of contemporary essays on the female body in Western culture,
Susan Rubin Suleiman suggests that the cultural significance of the body is not primarily its flesh-andblood solidity, but its function as a "symbolic construct." All that a culture perceives and knows about
the body exists in some form of discourse, which is never unmediated, free of interpretation or politically
"innocent" (p .2). It is possible to see Renaissance poetry as a discursive practice situated within the
larger sexual discourse of the time in order to see how the symbolic construction of the female body is
shaped by, and in turn shapes, specific assumptions about gender and power.
5° Derrida
, Jacques, Positions, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). Derrida argues that the
"classical philosophical opposition" is never a "peaceful coexistence ," but a "violent hierarchy" in which
"one of the two terms governs the other" (Positions 41) . Among these hierarchies, Derrida includes
"male/female" or "masculine/feminine ."
51 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.261.
52 Gene Montague
, "Herrick's `Upon Julia's Clothes," Explicator, 36 (Spring 1978), pp. 21-22. Montague
observes that "the central angling image" in the poems links up Julia and the narrator as "fisherman, bait,
and prey. The question is, Who is angling for whom nd with what?"
s3 Lacan , ibid., p.20.
54 Lacan
, ibid., Lacan writes: "From the outset, we see, in the dialectic of the eye and the gaze, that there is
no coincidence, but, on the contrary, a lure. When, in love, I solicit a look, what is profoundly
unsatisfying and always missing is that — You never look at me from the place from which I see you" (p.
103).
55 Lacan
, ibid., "Generally speaking, " Lacan concludes, "the relation between the gaze and what one
wishes to see involves a lure. The subject is presented as other than he is, and what one shows him is not
what he wishes to see. It is in this way that the eye may function as objet a, that is to say, at the level of
the lack (-0)" (p.104).
56 Poetical Works, ibid ., p.270.
57 Poetical Works
, ibid., p.118.
58 M Whitcomb Hess . "Herrick's Golden Apples: The 'Hesperides': 1648," Catholic World, 167 (May
-75
-
1948), pp.140-45.
eighteenthe
commercialist
Hess believes
and nineteenth
that the picture
century
of merry England
poets — "almost
concomitantly
that Herrick
created
influenced
with the growth of imperialist,
England, her pastoral lyrist gave his nation a dream to be possessed by ... That bright
arcadian landscape
whiere in her medows
sits eternal May made perfect propoganda
empire builders."
-76
-
material for the