The central focus of my
dissertation's final chapter was on how two of George Herbert's poems ('Death'
and 'Heaven') could have succeeded in dispelling mortal fear in his aged
Christian reader by presenting death as a transcendent event to be welcomed, rather
than something to be feared. Of course, this transfiguration in attitude is aligned with
the progression in the presentation of death seen across the Old and New
Testaments. Here, death is transformed from a finite event in which the body is
simply recommitted to the dust from which it was created (Genesis 3:19, and see
also 'The Order for the Burial of the Dead' in John Booty's edition of the 1599 Book of Common Prayer), to its position in the New Testament as a transcendent event for the Christian soul that, according
to Scripture, was provided by Christ's self-sacrifice and the resulting
doctrine of soteriology.
One of the most interesting
things that I observed when looking at Herbert's 'Death' (which I have
reproduced below from Helen Wilcox's edition), is how the poem follows this
Biblical chronology of transforming death into a positive event. In relation to
this, it also constructs a powerful pictorial representation of death's transfiguration
by drawing upon its personified form as a skeletal figure that was seen in the meditatio mortis tradition of the
Renaissance. In Herbert’s poem, the figure of death is gradually transformed
from being the fear-inducing figure of this artistic tradition, where it is
'nothing but bones', to a figure that, 'since our Saviors death', is 'clad'
with 'beauty' and can be 'much sought for as a good'.
When researching other primary
sources which support or echo this transfiguration that Herbert enacts, I came
across a fascinating source entitled Death's
Universall Summons (EEBO) published in 1650. Whilst obviously published
some time after Herbert's death in 1633, this anonymous work presents a
discourse between 'the great Messenger of Mortality' and 'a presumptious
Sinner', and it concludes with this man's 'chearful Entertainment of Death' (p.
1). Apart from a similar transfiguration of a Christian individual's attitude to
death, what also struck me was this illustration included on the pamphlet's
title page:
I would suggest that this
skeletal figure (who is certainly an allusion to the meditatio mortis tradition seen in Renaissance art such as Hans
Holbein's The Ambassadors) is very
similar to the terrifying figure that Herbert alludes to in the first half of
his poem. Furthermore, like the conclusion of Herbert's poem where his speaker
welcomes death 'as a good', this dialogue also concludes with the Sinner confidently stating that 'my Friend [Death] I do Embrace' (p. 8). Because of Christ's own transfiguration of death, the Sinner has realised that the Christian can, in the
spiritual and physical sense respectively, 'go Live for-ever, yet for-ever Die!' (p. 7) by greeting this personified figure of death.
I was so excited when I came
across this obscure pamphlet in my research around Herbert's poem, and I'd love
to hear if anyone else has found any other similar transfigurations of death in
some of the more obscure religious literature of the seventeenth-century (whether
poetic or otherwise!).
‘Death’
Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,
Nothing
but bones,
The sad effect of
sadder groans:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.
For we considered thee as at some six
Or
ten years hence,
After the loss of
life and sense,
Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.
We looked on this side of thee, shooting short;
Where we did find
The shells of fledge
souls left behind,
Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may extort.
But since our Savior’s death did put some blood
Into
thy face,
Thou art grown fair
and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for as a good.
For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
As
at Doomsday;
When souls shall wear
their new array,
And all thy bones with beauty shall be clad.
Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half
that we have
Unto an honest
faithful grave;
Making our pillows either down, or dust.
- George Herbert, ‘Death’, in The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. by Wilcox, p. 648.
- Death's Universall
Summons: or, A General Call; to all Mankind, to the Grave: in a Dialogue
Betwixt a Presumptious Sinner, and the Great Messenger of Mortality (London: [n. pub.], 1650), in EEBO.
- The Book of
Common Prayer: 1559 The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. by John E. Booty.
© Jenna Townend 2013
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