"A Hymn to God the Father"

Back in January, I joined a choir, mostly made up of alumni from a Lutheran college. I've been enjoying it for the most part, though I still cringe through some of our material. We had our final performance last night. Each one of our songs was introduced by a different member of the choir. While one might expect such introductions to give some background to our repertoire, they all tended to focus on aspects of personal salvation. Rather than providing the audience with insight into our selections, each introductory description drew on themes of atonement (as penal substitution), sinful depravity, and God's infallible Word. It all put me in a bad mood.

It was my job to give the introduction to John Ness Beck's "A Hymn to God the Father." I'm not really a fan of the arrangement, but, as it uses John Donne's original text, I couldn't resist the opportunity to expound on the work of one of my favorite poets. To my mind, Donne's hymn actually resists the triumphant narrative of individual salvation that came to define the evening's program.

WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
        When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
                    For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
    Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
        And having done that, Thou hast done ;
                    I fear no more.

Written during a time of serious illness in the winter of 1623, this text is at once a work of praise and confession. According to the early biographer Thomas Watton, Donne "caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune and to be often sung to the organ by the choristers at St. Paul's church in his own hearing, especially at the evening service."

In the hymn, the speaker is driven to confession by his fear of an outstanding sin. You'll notice that at the end of each stanza, Donne puns on his name repeatedly, suggesting that God's work of forgiveness is not yet finished because of his impulse to sin. By punning on his name Donne joins together his identity with the worst kind of spiritual anxiety. Sin initially assumes a kind of infinity (it defines past, present, and future, overflowing God's sacrificial act); in this way, becomes an idol. As the poem continues, such fear is revealed as a mark of pride, for in despairing over his outstanding sins, the speaker forgets the infinite mercy of God and remains focused on himself.

Each stanza ends by suspending God's forgiveness and with it, the poet's identity remains undone and unsettled. In the final stanza, this cycle is subverted. Both tropes--the closure of self marked by pride and the opening of self marked by fear--are subtly transformed by the Son's radiance. When the speaker finally orients himself to the Son's sacrifice, he forgets his own sinfulness and accepts his identity as remembered by God.

Like most church liturgies, Donne's hymn moves from confession to praise. What makes it so compelling, however, is how successfully (and affectively) it demonstrates the danger of confession: a necessary posture for the believer, but one that remains precarious because of the prominence it can give to the individual subject. Rather than receiving easy absolution, Donne's speaker passes through his sinfulness, moving from its logical end in despair and isolation to grace.

An Epithalamion

John Donne has long been among my favourite poets. In the context of seventeenth century English literature, he (along with George Herbert, another Anglican parishoner) provides a nice counterbalance to Milton's tepid relationship to the body.

Indeed, it seemed quite natural that I should turn to Donne's poetry after being asked to select and read something "poetic" at a friend's wedding. But selecting a poem from Donne's corpus turned out to be quite difficult; if it's not about death or sex, it's about frustrated desire--not the kind of thing you want to read at the wedding of one of your best friends. After poring through an anthology of Donne's poetry, this epithalamion, or marriage song, turned out to be my best option. Not only does it locate love in the life/death of St. Valentine; it's also full of understated Christian allegory. Although it was a little bit awkward to read (maybe I should have just gone with something by e.e. cummings), I thought it quite fitting for an outdoor wedding. I guess I'm on a bird kick.

Below, I've posted what I ended up reading. Follow the link for the last several stanzas.

AN EPITHALAMION, OR MARRIAGE SONG ON THE LADY ELIZABETH AND COUNT PALATINE BEING MARRIED ON ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

by John Donne

I.
HAIL Bishop Valentine, whose day this is ;
         All the air is thy diocese,
         And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners ;
         Thou marriest every year
The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher ;
         Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon,
As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon ;
The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine ;
This day, which might enflame thyself, old Valentine.

II.
Till now, thou warmd'st with multiplying loves
         Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves ;
         All that is nothing unto this ;
For thou this day couplest two phoenixes ;
         Thou makst a taper see
What the sun never saw, and what the ark
—Which was of fouls and beasts the cage and park—
Did not contain, one bed contains, through thee ;
         Two phoenixes, whose joined breasts
Are unto one another mutual nests,
Where motion kindles such fires as shall give
Young phoenixes, and yet the old shall live ;
Whose love and courage never shall decline,
But make the whole year through, thy day, O Valentine.

text, translation and the printing process

My job at CMU Press meant I had almost unlimited access to the printing press at CMU. No, the two are not at all connected. CMU Press has never had occasion to use the almost hundred year old press. Such books are printed elsewhere. Most printed materials (usually class projects, as the press is major component of book history courses at CMU) hold the "spyTower Press" imprint. I've used the printing press for projects like the one featured above, which was the last piece I worked on while in Winnipeg. The image (which features St. Jerome, joined by a range of symbols) is cut from a linoleum block, but the red (or rubricated) text (an excerpt from what is perhaps the most famous of John Donne's Devotions) is set in various sizes of Goudy Bold, one of the many font families to which I had access.

Before this, I had mostly been cutting blocks about the quarter of this size (8.5" x 11"). Normally I'll have a specific object in mind and conceptualize the project based on it. Early on, I had my mind set on cutting out a forest but had no text in mind. I was nearly resolved to use an early passage from Dante's Inferno, which begins in a dark wood, but the image would have had to be quite complex. One day at work, I noticed this excerpt from John Donne's Devotions posted on the English department bulletin board, and I instantly fell in love with it, in part because it relies so heavily on book imagery. In this passage, death does not delete or remove us from the world; rather, it translates us "into a better language." Here, Donne presupposes the textuality and translatability (the finitude, and thus the instability) of human life -- I like to imagine that it anticipates Derrida, but it's clearly a bit of a stretch. I chose to feature St. Jerome partly because of his significance (and recognizability) as a figure associated with texts and translation. Perhaps most well-known for translating the Bible (Greek, and, in the case of the Septuagint, Hebrew) into Latin (now referred to as the Vulgate), St. Jerome also appealed to me because of the range of symbols that accompany him in most of his artistic representations (skull, lion (!), hourglass, various texts, etc.).

Before beginning this project, I'd had some experience working with lino-blocks. It started with a series of birds I cut a year and a half ago. I found the cutting process quite addictive, not least because the medium was so different from what I'm used to working with. I love how it brings together the subtractive element of sculpture and the two-dimensionality of drawing. It's a bit strange at first and requires a mental flip: you must remain conscious of the fact that you are only ever creating negative space. However, during the artistic process, I've never felt quite so connected to a medium.