Mysticism in English Literature

d Beaut

more especially of the poets, one is at once struck

of science which makes the ambition of the philosopher; and that love and those prayers by which some devout and ardent soul tends in its moral purity towards perfection. These are the great h

h be called love-mystics; that is, they look upon love as the solution of the mystery of life, as the link between God and man. To Shelley this was a glorious intuition, which reached him through his imagination, whereas the life of man as he saw it roused in him little but mad indignation, wild revolt, and passionate protest. To Browning this was knowle

er, of their life-work. In others, as in Shelley, Keats, and Rossetti, although it is the inspiring force of their poetry, it is not a flame, burning steadily and evenly, but rather a light flashing out intermittently into brilliant and daz

tinge of sensuousness, of "earthiness" in his nature; Browning, the keenly intellectual man of the world, and Patmore a cur

ship and adoration. To Shelley, death itself was but the rending of a veil which would admit us to the full vision of the ideal, which alone is true life. The sense of unity in all things is most strongly felt in Adonais, where Shelley's maturest thought and philosophy are to be found; and indeed the mystical fervour in this poem, especially towards the end, is greater than anywhere else in his writings. The Hym

ea, the Spirit of Beauty and of Love, from which a new universe is born. It is this union, which consummates the aspirations of humanity, that Shelley celebrates in the marvellous love-song of Prom

s ou

hains us to p

otherwise-we

happy, high,

ove, beauty, a

n our

and M

ight into the poet's view of the good power in the world. It is not an almighty creator standing outside mankind, but a power which suf

Spirit of Good

f mankind, an

hemed him as he

ood fr

essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness or insensibility, or mistake"; and Shelley himself says, "the great secr

e is but the lowest step on the ladder which leads to the other, yet in actual practice he confounded the two. He knew that he did so; and only a month befor

ll you something thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error-and I co

especially interesting as in the case of Plato and St Paul, to encounter this latter quality as a dominating characteristic of the mind of so keen and logical a dialectician. We see at once that the main position of Browni

n this agai

is

one, in the flesh, in

th upwards. Indeed, it is only upon this

a t

confess to,

re: animate

he whole, there'

somehow meets

henstiel-

capable of feeling for and with everything that lives. At the same time the higher is not degraded by having worked in and through t

last of lodg

the place tha

ot a collection of individuals, separat

you" 'tis th

ve I mean: t

ife in parts to

according to G

ures in

distinction or gulf set up between science and religion. This sharp cleavage, to the mystic, is impossible. He knows, however irreconcilable the two may appe

or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the inspiration of love, just a

ught to KNOW

as thou refused

never

over, know; and

il both

continually insisted on in such poems as Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, and The Ring and the Book. He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that th

hat he

ally must

ist

all it yields

e and f

ce o' the prize

in the

fe is to Browning supreme, because he holds it to be the meeting-point between God and man. Love is the su

compare the two writers in detail would be an interesting task; it is only possible here to suggest points of resemblan

to him who rightly understands, the one work which God works in the soul is better and nobler and higher than all the world. Through that light comes grace. Grace never comes in the intelligence or in the will. If it could come in the intelligence or in the will, the intelligence and the

essed more than once by Browning in Eckhar

dishonoured

from his fi

g, intuition, over knowledge. Browning never wearies of dwelling on the relativity of physical knowledge, and its inadequacy to satisfy man. This is perhaps bes

thy knowledge,

ove allied

hy truth and

ider

e all thy fac

: love gains hi

r at Se

expresses himself on the point with entire conviction. His view is that good and evil are purely relative terms (see The Bean-stripe), and that one cannot exist without the other. It is evil which alone makes possible some of the divinest qualities in man-compassion, pity, forgiveness patience. We have seen that Shelley shares this view, "for none knew good from evil"; and Blake expresses himself very strongly about it, and complains that Plato "knew nothing but the virtues and vices, the good and evil

would defeat its own end and paralyse all moral effort

eeds a

ay, as shine nee

how were pit

s by

ch of his mind and art on the analysis and dissection of every kind of evil, laying bare for us the w

ing low, ere

ration of t

s, for instance, his belief in pre-existence, and his theory of knowledge,

k

sts in openi

risoned splend

ecting entr

d to be

lsus,

in all our energies, and the stress he lays on the fact that only by virtue of this limitation can we grow. We should be paralysed else. It is Goet

value of limitation, is that he should welcome for man the experienc

tion and the

ing point

oot, if it wil

in seeming, p

who vaults f

tumbling-block

Book: The Pope,

ich is peculiarly inspiriting in Browning's thought, and it is essentially mystical. Ins

e tria

rp? Thank God

ptation but f

make crouch b

pedestaled

the Book: The

face of woman.[11] But this beauty is not an end in itself; it is not the desire of possession that so stirs him, but rather an absolute thirst for the knowledge of the mystery which he feels is hiding beneath and beyond it. Here lies his mysticism. It is this haunting passion which is the greatest thing in Rossetti, which inspires all that is best in him as artist, the belief that beauty is but the expression or symbol of something far greater and higher, and that it has kinship with immortal things. For beauty, which, as Plato has told us, is of all the divine ideas at once most manifest and most lovable to man, is for Rossetti the act

y of all things, and hence their mutual interpretation and symbolic force. There is only one kind of knowledge which counts with him, and that is direct app

elligence is the obliteration of intelligence. God is then our honey, and we, as St Augustine says, are

lusion of all others. This is that in human love, but above all in wedded love, we have a symbol (that is an expression of a similar force in different material) of the love between God and the soul. What Patmore meant was that in the relationship and attitude of wedded lovers we hold the

with which prayer and love and honour should be offered to Him ... She showed me what

lationship at the base of al

th endless

hing into "h

e arithmet

st unit is

ore points out in words curiously reminiscent of those of Boehme, at the root of all existence. All rea

action. Nothing whatever exists in a single entity but in virtue of its being thesis, antithesis, and synthesis and in humanity and natural life this takes the form of sex, the masculine, the feminine, and the neut

gether with The Precursor, give in full detail an exposition of this bel

male God ma

s the whole

r love we

ch is betwee

minine or receptive force, and the meeting of these two, the "mystic rapture"

alone in nineteenth-century poetry for poignancy of feeling and depth of spiritual passion. They are the highest expression of "erotic mysticism"[17] in English; a marvellous combination of flaming ardour an

for it, was says Mr Gosse, who had read it in manuscript, "a transcendental treatise on Divine desire seen through the veil of human desire." We can guess f

for Patmore a deep symbolic value, and two of his finest odes are written, t

divinity can only be revealed by voluntarily submitting to limitations. It is "the mystic craving of the great to b

himself"; and in like manner "the Trinity becomes the only and self-evident explanation of mysteries which are daily wrought in his own complex nature."[20] In this way is it that to Patmore religion is not a question of blameless life or the hold

, Endymion, and Hyperion represent very well three stages in the poet's thought and art. In Sleep and Poetry Keats depicts the growth even in an individual life, and describes the three stages of thought, or attitudes towards life, through which the poet must pass. They are not quite parall

bling in cle

ool-boy withou

pringy branc

an life, with human grief and joy, which brings a sense of the mystery of the world, a lo

thy with human suffering and sorrow; and in the lost Woodhouse transcript of the Revision, rediscovered in 1904, there are some lines in which this point is still further emphasised. The full realisation of this third stage was not granted to Keats during his short life; he had but gl

hings?-that mom

of oneness,

floating

Taylor in January 1818 he says, "When I wrote it, it wa

ngs. Keats was always very sensitive to the mysterious effects of moonlight, and so for him the moon became a symbol for the great abstract principle of beauty, which, during the whole of his poetic life, he worshipped intellectually and spirit

h, truth Beaut

th, and all ye

, the one essence in all. This is how he writes of it

n years, still

ours: thou wast

mountain-top,

, the voice of

river, thou

rion's blast, th

l of wine, my

charm of women

to the belief that change is not decay, but the law of growth and progress. Oceanus, in his speech to the o

rse of Nature'

er, or o

ls a fresh per

strong in bea

o excel us,

hat old Da

tis the e

eauty should be

with Burke and Carlyle, the passionate belief in