Ungathering "Gather ye Rosebuds": Herrick`s Misreading of Carpe

Transcription

Ungathering "Gather ye Rosebuds": Herrick's Misreading of Carpe Diem
Author(s): SARAH GILEAD
Source: Criticism, Vol. 27, No. 2 (spring, 1985), pp. 133-153
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23110526
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GILEAD
SARAH
IIngathering "Gather ye Rosebuds'
Misreading of Carpe Diem
If ever
a
itself
addressed
poem
would
be
to
the
common
competent
reader,
Herrick's
that poem
carpe
simple, quintessential
surely
diem lyric, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time."1 The pre-emi
nent interpretability of the poem is best confirmed by Laurence Per
rine's use of it in his still standard textbook on poetry, Sound and
Sense:
an
signed
to Poetry.2
Introduction
to
the
teach
student
Perrine
how
to
frames
read
the
several
de
questions
poem's
("How
symbols
the title help us interpret the meaning of the [rosebud] sym
that the poem is, and thus
bol?"), with the underlying assumption
does
to
ought
be
read
for encoding
the
as,
an
organic
poem's
a text
unity,
which
meanings
as
functioning
in
can
turn
be
a
context
de
correctly
by the reader. Herrick's poem offers a particularly easy in
in the
terpretive task, its central motif having been established
coded
centuries-long
of
persistence
the
idea
diem
carpe
in
Wis
Proverbs,
Hellenistic and Roman lyric poetry, in medieval
of Solomon,
motifs such as ubi sunt, ars moriendi, timor mortis, memento mori, me
mento temporis, in Montaigne, Petrarchists, the Pleiade, Tasso, Spen
dom
ser,
and
Burton,
Shakespeare,
Ben
And
Jonson.
in
contrast,
to
say,
Marvell's complex, ironic "To His Coy Mistress," Herrick's poem
hardly invites strenuous interpretive efforts. In a sense which this es
say
will
ble
conventionality
The
poem
sebuds,
the
explore,
presents
flower,
sun)
highly conventional,
cursive
tral
oppositions
may
be
said
in
the
whose
first
two
tenors
such
by
a series
quatrains
are
itself,
second
of tropes
readable
transparently
and
third
establish
the
Some
quatrains.
poem's
its inviola
interpretation.
to each other, and explicated
parallel
that
to defend
from
obviousness,
of the
language
binary
poem
and
conceptual
(ro
because
by the dis
of the
cen
structure
are
passive/active,
innocence/experience,
spend/use,
virginity/
The "deep structure" that both
sexuality, loss/gain, stillness/motion.
gives rise to these opposing pairs and that privileges the second term
of each is the carpe diem formula itself. As concept, decision, and act,
"seizing
the
transforms
day"
a state
characterized
as
inactive,
empty, meaningless
Sarah
at the University of Haifa.
Department
No. 2, pp. 133-153.
48202.
State University Press, Detroit, Michigan
Gilead
teaches
Criticism, Winter,
Copyright © 1985
wasted,
as active, fulfilling, pur
into a state characterized
in the English
Vol. XXVII,
1985,
Wayne
133
134
and self-actualizing.
posive,
ence
between
each
term
text
of the
innocence,
ond
set
each
of
terms
binary
poem
loss,
stillness)
the
This
nevertheless
poem's
and
concepts,
of
form
each
both
textus,
spend,
of the
sec
sexuality,
gain,
opposition
may
the terms of
structure,
fabric,
content.
however,
only by excluding
semantic
within
of which
texts
and
congruence
and
term
between
(L.
between
(passive,
experience,
incongruous
present
cultural
pairs
together
this wholeness,
or
binary
use,
by congru
structures,
between
is the opposition
weaving
achieves
and
and
system
the
covertly
literary
of the
(active,
pairs
important
antithetical,
disruptive,
the
of terms
surface
and
deep
set
couple.
as
of signs
The
of
is thus consolidated
Meaning
intertext,
first
Equally
viewed
text)
and
virginity,
motion).
be
Diem
Carpe
the
this
material
text
and
is part.
poem
which
is
of it, in
outside
The
poem's
structural integration of elements is violated at several key points and
in several ways. The carpe diem poem generally presents itself as
both analog and cause of the deeply experienced life, the poem's ar
as
gument
Herrick's
intense
and
irresistible,
urgent,
recommends.
graceful,
easily
as
elegant
the
life
the
argument
the
contravenes
poem
fearful urgency of its message. It is a call to action saturated with the
it seeks to dispel. In incongruous
parallel to the
virginal "coyness"
sexual
virgins'
energy,
the
laziness,
figurative
boldness,
refuses
poem
to
or
originality,
be
goaded
metrical
into
verbal
or
power.
variety
In the first quatrain, the initial "Gather ye rosebuds" is dactyllic, im
perative, abrupt, and a distillation of the carpe diem message. The
line as a whole rings with the inevitability, the confident assertive
status in
ness of a proverb (and has indeed attained semi-proverbial
en
But
the
to
its
initial
quatrain proceeds
dissipate
English speech.)
ergy.
The
feminine
of
endings
lines
two
and
four
produce
falling
rhythm and meaning; in line four, falling into "dying." The quatrain
expends itself, recapitulating the course of every life in its loss of vi
tality. Each following quatrain exhibits a similar decline. In quatrain
II,
"glorious
lamp
of heaven"
radiant
images
cosmic
and
energy
viril
of "higher," "sooner,"
ity, then proceeds through the declensions
"nearer," to the final dying fall, "setting." In quatrain III, "That age is
and by the
best" (positive assertion accentuated
by monosyllables
declension
to
another
"worse,"
("first,"
proceeds
superlative)
"worst")
until the extinction of "best"
mer."
the
In
osyllabic
diem
and
the
quatrain,
urgings ("be
euphemistic
Carpe
last
even
postulates
and "first" is achieved
"Then"
conclusive
the
and
not coy . . . use your time")
ambiguous
warning,
a
from
direction
"ye
inaction
dwindle
may
to
by "for
direct
forever
action;
mon
into the
each
tarry."
qua
Sarah
train
of this
tential
here
poem
verbal
exhibits
energy
motionlessness
Gilead
a contrary
to
reducing
("tary").
Further, the inefficacy of language
warks
that
the
against
make
the
up
ruins
of
time
The
poem.
135
is
state
of
po
enervation
or
and of the imagination
suggested
poem
movement,
"entropic"
a
the
by
without
spends
as bul
cliches
multiple
the
renewing
ver
bal resources of its own genre. Thus, precisely those qualities that
from the ideology of textual coherence appear to fix the meanings of
the poem in a literary tradition, may be seen as weakening
the
as
force,
poem's
its
rendering
diem
message
merely
The
perfunctory.
carpe
poem implicitly accepts the humanist celebration of reason,
will, and art as the ordering, shaping, orienting faculties. A carpe
diem poem exists within an established literary subcategory, inhabits
an enclosed ontological and significatory space. The golden fruits of
the enclosed garden of the Hesperides, which names the collection in
which Herrick's poem is situated, are guarded from within by the
nymphs and from without by a dragon, just as the meanings of the
motifs,
poem are secured by both external traditions (conventional
arguments, moods
And
the
yet
realms
sory
experience
cluding
diem
to,
viewed
(browses)
as
through
it.3
The
by
sen
pure
form
it de
it. The
apprehend
access
to,
substitutes
reader
enters
flowers
garden's
are
a
is a
Hesperides
experience.
The
carpe
a mysteriously
simultaneously
such
a garden.
its
does not offer;
language
the
cultural
forms (in
by
we
but
experience
rule-bound
rather
which
provide
construct—itself—for
of poems
strolls
of
even
the
but
that
which
through
point
realm
artificial
not
contextualization,
art)
to
internal patterning.
celebrates
it recommends
is,
and
seems
poem
collection
itself
is precisely what
experience
is always processed, mediated
life-enhancing
and
That
language
highly
theme
conventionality,
experience.
Pure
diem
carpe
of art,
nies.
and tropes) and by the poem's
the
garden
the
poems
themselves. Their decor is dominated by floral imagery, and in H-336
(lines 97 and 99) Herrick calls two earlier poems (H-193 and H-580)
flowers.
"Gather
ye
rosebuds"
becomes,
then,
a metaphor
for
the
act
of reading and interpreting ("gathering" a message). In this sense, the
persuasion to pleasure of Herrick's carpe diem may be read as a per
suasion to seek signification: textuality replaces sexuality.
The carpe diem poem implies both the accessibility and inaccessi
realm, and thus points to the
bility of an unprocessed
phenomenal
deceptive capacity of language to contain experience. The limits of
cognition itself are both denied and confirmed; the carpe diem poem
suggests
that
cognizance
of
mortality
must
precede,
and
lead
to,
the
136
Diem
Carpe
enhanced
life.
sciousness
cannot
achieved
But
the
of
of
is
consciousness
human
encompass;
means
by
end
substitution:
an
what
precisely
awareness
of death
of
image
can
death
con
be
only
be
con
can
itself. Carpe diem appears to offer the reader
recognition (of death) and an improved, intensified, reality-bound
mode of life based on such recognition; carpe diem simultaneously
withholds, by substituting itself for, that recognition and that mode of
but not death
ceived,
the
life,
poem's
and
images
and as barriers against
tial).4
In
the
first
two
But
the
sententiousness
both
mediating
as
flower
idea,
of the
and
sun
are
parallel
mortality, mutability,
both
tropes
to
pointers
and experien
(both cognitive
rosebuds,
quatrains,
of a single general
embodiments
process.
arguments
real presences
reinforces
time as
the
clar
ity of their meaning and masks incongruities. The sun is a magnified
image of the flower, exhibiting in the "glory" of its rays the same
"radiant"
beauty ("smil
qualities seen in the flower's blossoming
wisdom, healing, en
ing"). The sun as lamp also implies Apollonian
lightenment; as such it is an image of the carpe diem motif itself in its
function. Elucidating the truth of the human con
wisdom-imparting
dition
to
a
conscious,
Like nature,
whereas
esses,
human
rhetoric
and
But
the
of its
tal
of
as
to
poem's
the
a
as
sun
the
sun
as
moves
carpe
diem
the
a
source
of
are
center,
the
life,
to "dying"
hint
at
statements
return
life.
to the
The
vi
move
to
and
growth,
the
sources,
origins,
literal
lived
entropic,
the
apoca
I) and "higher"
(quatrain
of the
consequences
will,
creativity.
urges
energy,
in
the
II)
to
countered
proc
judgment,
human
clear,
fully
to
(quatrain
of
argument
of
response.
in temporal
movement
towards
lyptic image of fading light.
The movements of "smiling"
"setting"
reasoned
reason,
source
is
itself
experience)
argumentative
in
manifest
self-generated
setting
poem
(pleasure,
a
permits
itself is here implicated
cognition
as
the
the
and
themes,
sources
ments
serves
image
just
power,
mind
receptive
the cosmos
sex
achieved
act: floral images symbolize both female and male genitalia, here pri
marily female in complement to the male sun as virility. The popular
Renaissance
double
entendre
the carpe diem message,
the
same
same
word,
phenomenon.
and
turn
on
as
dying
since solution
out,
Refraining
further,
from
orgasm
here
and problem
to
sexual
be
different
pleasure
works
against
are contained
of
apsects
means,
in
the
eventu
ally, dying without having fully lived, dying unfulfilled; but engaging
in sexual activity exhausts vitality and potency. Either alternative pro
duces a similar emptying-out of energy. The sun getting higher as
Sarah
Gilead
serves as a warning against wast
phallic image (erection and "heat")
but
time,
ing
also,
demonstrates
simultaneously,
of sexual
quences
use
of time:
the
third
the
quatrain,
first
the
that
"setting,"
fulfillment but emptying, post-coital
In
137
is,
limpness,
best
but
gain
not
loss,
impotence.
is of course
age
conse
inevitable
not
the
youth,
tran
sient golden age of the greatest capacity to enjoy, the age of endow
ment with potential energy (blood, warmth). But the "first age" of
potential which is not yet kinetic energy is also virginity or inno
cence:
that
precisely
addressed
to
carpe diem advice,
and
tiality,
which
phase
The
relinquish.
will "spend"
"succeed"
to
the
the
diem
carpe
who
addressee
the
articulated
the first age, with its unused
"worse"
and
"worst"
the
urges
message
follows
poten
the
ages:
of
ages
experience. "Being spent," in a traditional reading of Herrick's poem,
signifies the wasting, through unsatisfied desire, of the first age. But
in
"spent,"
its
in
position
the
refers
also
quatrain,
to
the
loss
of
the
chief attribute of youth, energy, desire, warm blood. The obvious
sexual pun on "spent," like that on "dying" of quatrain I, here im
plies both loss of hymeneal blood and of semen. Again, the addres
see is simultaneously
urged to enjoy sexuality, and warned of the
of
consequences
doing so. In the crucial distinction between "spend"
(as
"use"
and
waste)
lies
the
diem
carpe
the
message:
is
addressee
asked to make that distinction, to evaluate the two modes of living in
time, and to make the only rational choice between them. But the
underlying logic of the poem again works against this distinction.
Sexual
use
of one's
time
is
therefore
and
"spending,"
loss
blood,
(of
warmth, energy, life).
In
the
last
quatrain,
"go
translates
marry"
into
literal,
discursive,
expository language the "gather ye" of the first line ("while ye may,
go marry" is a phrasal inversion, a mirror image, of the first line.) But
the
multiple
pleasures
single possibility,
slightly
suggested
the almost
shock
unpleasant
by
the
are
metaphor
brutally flat, laconic,
of that
reduction
can
be
reduced
to
marry."
The
"go
rationalized
a
away:
the poem can be read as an epithalamium
of sorts, the Christian sac
rament of marriage as conflated with life's highest pleasures, the spir
itual and the physical realms harmonized,
and a hierogamy thereby
achieved. But the sense of misreading remains. A bold plunging into
becomes mere acquies
unspecified delights ("gather ye rosebuds")
The
cence to socio-biological
final
necessity.
argumentative thrust of
the
poem
seemingly
takes
the
form
of
a
to
threat:
fail
prime is to "tarry," to be left behind
in the race toward
But
pictures
the
second
quatrain
of
the
poem
the
"race"
to
use
one's
fulfillment.
as
cognate
138
with
in
Diem
Carpe
the
the
race
toward
second
coyness,
that
processes
Like
us
hence
to
the
the
race
is fatal,
defense
as
would
collaborate
literature
comprehension
of
determines
the
logical
with
it clearly
be,
is
precisely,
those
temporary
to destruction.
discourses,
or
the
refusing
hurry
other
formance
text,
then
quatrain,
"tarrying,"
If running
death.
context
dependent,
adequate
of
knowledge
rules
unspoken
literary
is context
requiring
at
is the
The
play.
the
rule
unspoken
of normal
suspension
per
con
given
that
illocution
ary force (that is, functionality of speech, e.g., promising, warning,
greeting, informing, commanding,
asserting).5 Numerous
signs indi
the
cating
status
literary
"game-space."
Readers
bal
to explore
jeopardy,"
and
threatening
of
of
ordinary
noted,
safe,
that
instead
to
dreads
a threat."7
ambiguous
do
we
this
just
covert
promise).
seems
characteristic
of
didactic
tained
within
the
safe
force.
locutionary
our
very
tive
areas:
they
are
the
enclosed
time
to
even
fulness
and
world
the realist novel
assert,
suade,
the
inform,
command;
formal
describe;
yet
they
wants
promise
that
may
be
the
the
Autobiography,
are
not
and
because
il
they
communica
within
or
non-illocution,
the
textual
safety
but
bounds.
to retain some
and
area,
at
the
Auto
illocutionary
to
literature,
verbal
con
easily
referentiality
partly
retain
also
transgress
threatening
didactic
is
poem
of meaning
which
beyond
but
become
of Herrick's
example,
seem
both
and
safely-bounded
least
mean
apparently
of suspended
are
has
which
"An utter
texts.
for
violation
Culler
in
threat
modes
construct
at
or
contextualization
non-referentiality
toward
gesture
and
biography
to
a
it
as play, game,
or defined.
context
literary
modes
contained
of
the
literary
area
literary
be
overt
as
literature,
ability
realm
to
in
of
These
interrogate
cease
"tarry"
categorization
and
listener
the
problematic
Jonathan
frameworks
the
seen,
certain
novel,
force:
have
ambiguity
realist
same
thus
way,
Such
"safe-making"
the
As
safe
communication
neutralization
rules.
a
of "ver
game
most
of
collapse
the
and
what
might
(As
the
of the
can never be fully bounded
promised
in
the
contexts,
speech-act
unconsciously
one
it to
consign
risk,
by virtue of its classification
functions
ings are specified,
ance
play,
all,
to
without
non-threatening,
language
however,
us
permit
is surely
of
experiences
makes
text
thus
"what
self."6 Literary discourse,
or fiction,
a
can
assert,
generic
per
play
automony.
Similarly, the carpe diem poem eludes easy categorization, combin
of subjective
states with didactic persuasion:
ing lyric exploration
"carpe
diem"
names
both
that
persuasion
and
a
type
of
lyric
love
Sarah
poem.
The
power
of
or
and
like
poem,
poem
The
language.
argument
speech
diem
carpe
to
139
celebrates
typically
reduction
of
the
asserts
images
time
love
eternizing
or
the classificatory
death
to
(temporary)
over biological
imagination
countless
Gilead
of
provides
an
human
The
carpe
diem
a safe
verbal
area
necessity.
lyrics,
in
figures
power
in which the forces of life can triumph over the forces of death.
the
simultaneously,
diem
carpe
violates
poem
its
own
But,
safety-area
by
its didacticism
outside
and referentiality, its pointing to the realm of being
of its protected bounds. It points to the area in which time
and death always defeat the desire to enjoy, the area in which lan
guage itself is impotent.
The
title
of Herrick's
or
addresses
poem
and
the
"the
Lesbia,
Julia,
"you,"
which can be read as "they"
read
as
a
Corinna,
direct
address
to
the
poem
on
to
not
a single
address
reader
(The
is,
or
"ye"
(the virgins) but which
reader.
in that she does
and
virgins"
goes
of
is also
al
course,
not with sufficient zeal
the
ways "virgin"
pursue
pleasures of life or comprehend the true brevity of life.) Herrick's ge
neric carpe diem poem thus complicates by its very simplicity its own
classification as speech act. Though still didactic, the symbolic drama
of
the
seduction
suades
a
male
usually
mistress)
is less
(where
lyric
to pleasure
a reluctant
older
and
wiser
per
because
threatening
an
indirect mode
of addressing
the reader. The reader can, after all,
adopt the perspective of the poem's speaker (who has mastered at
least the concept of mortality and of the good life) rather than that of
the
unaware
The
to
verbal
the
absence
of
time
or
to the
speaker,
(verbal
and
mastery
The desire
to arrest
our
of
the
speaker's
for
over
(and
preda
of
thus,
the
over
ritualistic
its
our
the
even
over
meaning
assertion
de
painful
end.
impending
paradoxically,
and
mortality,
a con
asserts
embodies
cognitive)
to arrest (gather, seize)
time;
but
fears
then,
awareness
compensates
actual
desire
The
consciousness,
mastery
of)
voices
poem
fears.
of mastery
human
cept of death.
gous
those
a form
of
But
either
of a seduction
response
to exert
condition
victim
intentions.
speaker
trolled
sire
female
sexual
tory
signals
the
con
is analo
of established
("carpe diem") is a form of arresting time by asserting the
stability of meaning itself, and the verbal formulae in which meaning
is contained. But this mastery over the meaning-producing
potentiali
meanings
ties
of
own
of a text
our
is never
authority
defensiveness,
over
absolute,
the
text
its suppression
as
is
we
only
have
seen
further
of incongruous
above.
evidenced
The
by
weakness
the
meanings.
text's
140
Diem
Carpe
The traditionalism of Herrick's poem asserts the validity of forms
and meanings established, almost sanctified, by the past and present
communities
which
of
be
may
and
readers
and
authorizes
conceived
bound
influence,
the
and
texts,
and
of Ben
Ovid
and
Anacreon,
the
of such
but
whose
or
by
collection
The
texts.
texts,
read
being
time
itself.
Herrick
of immortal
his
as
powers,
loss
subsequent
of his
exerting
of course
verses
'crown'
A
read
Catullus,
thority on their heir Herrick. In Herrick's "The Vision"
acreon's failure to keep his mistress happy symbolizes
poetic
by
of poets,
was
as
poets
creates
community.
unity
precursors
authorship
and
the
in which
classical
of
community
generations
created
communities
readers,
"gathering"
successive
defeats
meanings
a son
a
their
certain
is thus
system
only
as
by
through
economic
ers,
of
texts,
and
poets
together
preserve
closed
diem
carpe
not
Horace,
confers
au
(H-107), "An
the loss of his
makes
An
clear.
gered at his inability to perform the part of a proper lover, his mis
tress
snatches
his
away
'crown,'
the
apparently
crown
of laurel
worn
by poets, and gives it instead to Herrick."8 "To the Virgins" is a col
lage of allusions and borrowings. Martin, in his edition of Hesperides,
lists Burton, Jonson, Tasso, Catullus, Horace, Philostratus, Ovid, Ti
bulus,
Propertius,
enacts
its own
origin-bound:
of
together
ent
and
The
the
himself
from
the
of
ing"
and
and
poems
precursor
absorbs
to
poetic
stance,
that
continuity,
doth
nature
an
the
from
is
yet
a victory
entend."
his
re
thus
poem
coher
apparently
naivete
is equivocal.
them
is
also
an
created
Oddly,
to
attitude
implied
a
adult
victory
aggressive
"Putrefaction
Herrick's
persona
precursor
own
of
recognition
tran
cognizance
the
Herrick's
an
and,
addressees'
to
achieved
by
fathers,
poetic
the
urging
from
maturity,
But
of
authority
personae
drawn
personae,
the
fragments of the earlier works. H-432:
all
into
poems
a parental
adopts
elements
munity
of
situation.
their
and
The
whole.10
immaturity
human
poems
shards
thus
speaker
sition
others.9
Virgil—among
multiple origins and history, and identifies itself as
defines Herrick's gathering
"gathering the rosebuds"
seamless
further,
of
Seneca,
"gather
com
literary
over
earlier
into
breaking
is the end / Of
mirrors
tem
of created (textual)
poral processes in that it too seeks decomposition
entities. Herrick's "To the Virgins" is compensatorily
self-effacing,
quiet,
small,
innocent,
easy,
almost
anonymous-seeming.
desty, its virginal unaggressiveness
tual ruthlessness.
Herrick's "The
Herrick's
tied
out
But
its
mo
a kind of tex
conceals, perhaps,
Vision"
pictures the creation of
self
as
a
of
poetic
taking-in
poetic virility which has emp
of
his
precursor,
Anacreon.
"Herrick"
then
becomes
Ana
Sarah
but
creon,
or
his
as
they
in
The
impotence?
ment
are
his
becoming
but
father
poetic
does
forebear,
poetic
the
self
as
of his
and
he
of the
overtones
Oedipal
ambiguous,
of the
141
Gilead
inherit
scene
sexual/textual
power
as
striking
to and
rival
aggressive
his
are
replace
potency
is unmis
(again,
textuality
takably present in the poem's figuring of "Herrick." Does the wine
caused sexual failure enable the poetic virility? Does "Herrick" seek
sexual
in order
impotence
textual
to purchase
power
replacing sexuality)?11
The
the
vision
and
of
Anacreon's
of textual
acts
poetic/sexual
of precursor
pieces
that
castration
texts.
new
Every
is
impotence
"To
create
the
literary
with
cognate
from
Virgins"
product
the
bits
its
acquires
validity, in part, by presenting itself as a repetition of a modal para
digm, by establishing itself within a recognizable generic category. In
Herrick's "To the Virgins," "that age is best which is the first" is also
the
classical
the
"worse
that sense,
Herrick
his
age
which
produces
and
worst
times,"
into
The
precursors.
and
come
not
is
only
diem—must
his
be
follows;
poetic
the
corpus
these
an
is
both
has
that
with
synonymous
victory
of
(texts)
af
triumphant
Catullus'
agonistic
In
era.
in which
thus
Herrick's
or
virtually
as
bodies
precursors
Ausonius'
but
understood
belated
annihilated.
not
of
Herrick
genera
own
literary
of
and
poem,
exemplary
also
own
force
celebrated
denied,
achievement—it
his
creative
literary
is a ritual of repetition
ye rosebuds"
"Gather
incorporates
firmed
the
Herrick's
be
carpe
effacement
by
Herrick's poetic self is created and defended both by
itself
within and thus preserving a community of poets and
enclosing
their works, and by dissociating itself from, and fragmenting, that
of his sources.
The
community.
in
strategies
these
A
poem,
takes
of this
part
of
defense
are
strategies
carpe
last
the
diem
the
mirrored
poem,
shape
essay
the
in
poetic
the
whether
of a rite
will
examine
carpe
seduction
of passage,
these
the
and
self,
diem
paradoxical
ways
in
which
motif.
lyric
or
a transition
Herrick's
from
generic
a prior
to
a later state. "Virginity" names the prior state, and can symbolize any
prior state which the community,
through the poem's
speaking
or obsolete. The poem explains and
"voice," has judged inadequate
justifies the need for transition from one state to a higher and simul
taneously
analog
and
serves as a means
cause,
metaphor
for bringing it about.
The poem
is both
and
transition.
On
metonym,
of
the
the
axis, the carpe diem poem articulates a para
metaphoric/synchronic
a
timeless
truth
of
the human situation; on the metonymic/
digm,
diacrhonic axis, it serves—however
fictionally—as catalyst for indue
142
Diem
Carpe
a
ing
temporal
a
process,
of
change
state
tance of the validity of the paradigm)
and
cause
translating
into effect (altered
(accep
perceptions
behaviors).
This
transition
sensual
pulses,
once
is at
a return
as
enjoyment
of nature
transformation
of
origin
into
celebration
to and
pleasure
and
worth,
from
a movement
culture,
im
of natural
and
a
innocence
to
The diction of the poem mirrors this transition in
sophistication.
images and tropes to a "belat
moving from traditional ("younger")
ed" modern discursive style, and in revealing the manifold possibili
ties
of
nature
Yet
to
In this movement
becomes
image
poetic
rosebuds"
"gathering
"marry."
and
seasonal)
the
verbal
transforming
in
meanings
unstable
institutional
becomes
of
and
area;
conceptual
the
the
reality-bound
a pagan
a floral
ritual
(both
one.
subverts
poem
its
poem
textual
its
despite
its
establishing
inhabits
enclosure,
to
form,
of
presumption
than
rather
rule-bound
unable,
than
of socialization,
and
referent,
The
potentiality.
context
more
a Christian
structure
a
no
be
in the direction
be
an
un
pagan;
able, despite its historical context, to be Christian; each conceptual
framework disrupting, even negating, the other. The directional im
of
pulse
adult
ages
desire
to
addresses
"virgin"
fact
the
ambiguous:
of mortality,
acceptance
the
in
repress
also
can
for
such
be
an
the
The
understood
as
of
as
transition,
Turner
Victor
points
of passive
The passenger
be
"must
out,
a
duction
back;
to
empty,
implication,
to complete
inscribed
variant
poem
by
be
the
of
by
carpe
the
the
onslaught
to accede
transition,
the
diem,
coy
of the
both
(In
meanings.
speaker's
mistress
never
rhetoric
poem's
to the
desire
the
resis
in a rit
tabula
and wisdom
the knowledge
. . . on which is inscribed
are
The
of
the
.
.
.
,"12
poem
similarly blank,
virgins
group
mous,
im
of
passivity
a form
ac
insistence
structure
logical
poem's
awareness.
tance to the ritual they are urged to undergo.
ual
to
reluctance
coy
by the speaker's
mortality is not fully countered
knowledge
on
is
transition
rasa
of the
anony
se
the
answers
forces
of the
her
speaker
and to the literary traditions behind him.) But Herrick's poem, its la
tent meanings justifying the virgins' reluctance, resists not only its
own
overt
rhetoric
but
the
collective
rituals
that
authorize
meaning
itself.
Underlying that resistance is a complex of paradoxes: loss of virgin
ity is presented in a carpe diem poem as gain in experience, as sup
plementing a lack (in experience) by a loss (of virginity). But only in
retrospect
perspective
does
the
prior
of the speaker.
virgin
state
seem
From the virgin's
incomplete—from
viewpoint,
the
that state
Sarah
seems
and
complete
of transitional
namics
of
process
growth
states,
delineates
change
converts
the
fetus
"so
protection
becomes
burst
into
forth
its
outgrows
a
kind
of
gression, competition,
androcentrist
But
ethos
of
over
mastery-seeking
coy
the
protection
crisis of transi
the
benign
whereat
it must
of locomotion,
world
ag
itself here virtually equated
connote
can
"virginity"
against a notion of selfhood—even,
aggression, acquisition,
mastery:
of
that
protection
dy
. . . where
points
circle
confinement,
of world—a
the
summarizing
previous
of
circle
hunt"13—life
values.
a
circle
malign
a different
Burke,
"critical
In birth, the archetypcal
into a circle of confinement."
tion,
143
Kenneth
protective.
or
Gilead
silent
with
rebellion
of society and of life—defined by
against the carpe diem speaker's
over
(mastery
over
experience,
rhetoric,
virgins).14
From
the
context
familiarity
may
of
seem
the
prior
more
state,
virgin
attractive
than
safety,
loss
risk,
and
wholeness,
of autonomy,
and
change. The birth-myth as model for subsequent myths and ritualiza
tions of transition contains within it the same ambiguity. Expulsion
from
a
protecting
realm
paradisiac
into
a
realm
of
is
generation
ac
complished with fear and anxiety as well as with a sense of enhanced
Herrick's poem claims the latter
potentiality for self-actualization.
but
sense,
tion
and
only
by
the
suppressing
fulfillment
entails
former.
a covert
The
movement
of fear
encoding
to comple
of rupture,
open
ing, risk.
Claude Levi-Strauss noted, in The Raw and the Cooked, that in a set
of myths dealing with a loss of immortality, the possibility of averting
"The
or preventing
solution
...
hear,
do
hero
of
death
trees:
not
a
but
feel,
do
Caduveo
he
death
untimely
is always
himself
not
do
not
myth
"sets
out
to
dies
sooner
of the
generations."15
than
self-containment.
upon
in
touch,
ing a father, he has allowed
cycle
depends
formulated
see,
not
ought,
taste
. . . old
rejuvenate
he
terms:
negative
do
because,
do
. . .
men
by
not
The
and
becom
himself to be caught up in the periodic
The
myth
box
of Pandora's
similarly
pos
its the opening up to, seeking, or ingesting ("gathering")
of experi
ence as inevitably breeding suffering, work, evil, mortality. The
Christian myth of the fall, of course, identifies the desire for and in
taking of experience as that which disrupts and endangers the en
closed garden of the self. Superstitions surviving until modern times
view individual life as a non-renewable
energy-system, each expendi
ture of energy diminishing the life-force of that organism, e.g., the
belief that an individual only has a certain allotment of words or
breath.
(A
of life.)
Renaissance
variant
viewed
each
sex
act
as
costing
a
day
144
Diem
Carpe
In
a
diem
carpe
and autonomy
plicity,
poem,
is asked
("virginity")
mutability,
disunity,
undifferentiated
androgynous,
the
despite
wholeness
to yield to fragmentation,
fact
in Western
that
multi
and
myth
turns
immediately
superstition,
devouring/absorbing
experience
the self only dis
against the self: a gesture seeking to aggrandize
In
members and weakens
the self.
Mircea Eliade's
distinction be
tween
Time
Great
Profane
and
ritual
Time,
"the
accomplishes
abolition of time through the imitation of archetypes and the repeti
tion of paradigmatic gestures . . . [and] through the paradox of rite,
time
profane
and
duration
are
And
suspended."16
thus
the
communi
ty's life is momentarily conflated with cosmic eternity. The carpe
diem message, in a Christian context, subverts a similar Christian sa
cramental
for abolishing
strategy
the
of time.
ravages
"Go
is a
marry"
reminder of Christian consecration of generational life, but here de
prived of eternizing symbolism.
In both Platonic and Christian frameworks the historical process of
of pure Being at
becoming in time is inferior to the motionlessness
the
center
of
hence
things,
tempt for sensory
soul's
the
of
consequences
fall
from
The
prime,
best,
preceding
the
"worse
return."
adisiac
realm
endless
each
successivity,
itself
spending
"first"
in
order
which
age,
is
first
like
era,
to
pure
womb
both precede
A
belated
diem
carpe
diem
like
the complex
of
valorization
of Herrick's
worst"
next.
Symbolic
or
origins: the
is a par
characterized
The
ideal
by
and
realm
actualization,
is
states,
the succeeding
occupies
an
experience.
As
the
hence,
virginity is a golden
pre-conscious
intertext
of myths and superstitions
sensual
im
act, completing
(in value)
Herrick's
own
and
poem
times
without
pre-existential
poem
cosmic
age
potentiality
on one's
original
a sexual
(in time) and supersede
carpe
inevitably contains
the
or
life,
eter
with one's
the
generate
without risk of loss of potentiality.
enclosed
as a
for attaining
wholeness
and
con
corollary
of "chastity
vital force, thus obviating
the
mortality. The reward is reunification
"eternal
and
view
is a strategy
perimeters"17
nal life by refusing to expend
flesh
mundi
contemptus
Christianity's
experience.
of the
containment
the
age,
which
stages.
which
counter to
Richmond
re
marks, "a Renaissance
poet writing a 'carpe diem' admonition has to
he
no
has
of the teaching of Christianity . . . ."
pretend
knowledge
Such a poem can "recognize the power of ethical or metaphysical ar
guments for chastity, but . . . vindicate a materialistic or sensual view
of life by refuting them."18 Or, like Herrick's, it can adopt a defensive
strategy of concealment, repression, and self-deception.
Herrick's
poem
seems
to
follow
a
simple
two-part
structure,
the
Sarah
Gilead
145
and tropes of the first two quatrains illustrating visually and
through examples the more abstract ideas ("that age is best") and the
images
conclusions
specific
The
quatrains.
in language
multaneous,
and
directives
two-part
structure
experience
into
be
("then
of the
coy")
basic
binary
last
two
opposition
synchronic (vertical, selective, paradigmatic, si
and diachronic
combinative,
(horizontal,
metaphoric)
syntagmatic, sequential, metonymic). This opposition can also be un
derstood as descriptive of the human situation in time, the present
ness of subjective experience traversing the flux of time which always
dissolves
between
not
the
parallels
that
past.
Recent
in
developments
psychol
ogy, anthropology, and neuro-physiology
point to two modes of cog
nition which are roughly analogous
to the two linguistic axes: the
holistic
and
learn,
serialistic
order
'high
of mental
categories
and
remember,
as
recapitulate
relations.'"
"Serialists
a
"Holists
competence.19
whole:
learn,
in
formally,
and
remember,
. . .
terms
of
recapitulate
a body of information in terms of string-like cognitive structures
where items are related by simple data links: formally, by 'low order
relations.' "20 Holistic thinking is associated with right cerebral hemi
sphere functions, hence with Gestalt or global perception, sponta
neous "flashes," and visualization.
Serialistic thinking is associated
with left hemispheriality, and thus with verbal reasoning and formal
analysis.21
In
the
first
the stores
(both
but
tropes,
two
he
quatrains
of
classical
and
them
foregoes
Herrick's
of analogical
Christian)
almost
Herrick
poem,
in
entirely
the
reaches
into
images
and
second
two
qua
trains. The poem shifts from "holist" image-making to "serialist" dis
cursive analysis of mortality; from the timelessly traditional tropes of
rose
and
flower
mode
logical
against
that
and
of
the
temporality,
have
survived
sun
to
first
spare,
quatrain
even
provides
first, in the choice
the
vicissitudes
blunt,
plain
a
kind
speech.
of
of traditional
of literary
verbal
The
ana
barrier
images—those
fashion—and
secondly,
in its presentation of static images as (paradoxically)
tropes of tem
Time
Old
is
"still
because al
and,
poral processes.
flying
("always"
in
motionless
its
The
ways, oddly
permanency).
dying flower and
sun
are
illustrations
of
"Old
Time"
rather than a
setting
analogical
causal
series. The third quatrain not only introduces the metonymic
and "warmer," it illustrates metonymy itself, the multiple at
tributes of the horizontal linguistic, experiential, and cognitive axes:
"blood"
diachrony, contiguity, causality, sequentiality. The verbal mode, that
is, becomes cognate with temporality itself conceived not as Time (a
constant
quasi-divine
causal
force
at
the
center
of
things)
but
as
146
Diem
Carpe
"times":
as
mere
first
. . . worse
way
processes
linear
. . .")
of time
the
acterize
secular,
. . . worst
and
The
of
thought
The
the
one
irrevocable
causal
third
. . .
("best
Seriality
succeeds."
"succeed."
always
language
successiveness.
"still
chains
that
char
the
quatrain
negate
and
interpretation
between temporal and divine that was
possibility of rapprochement
at least implied in the analogical language of the first two quatrains.
The poem may be marking the shift from analogical/metaphoric
pic
of
turing
to
phenomena
temporal
causal
analysis
of them, and thus mirroring the historical shift in the individual's
shift well under
his relation to the cosmos—a
mode of apprehending
turmoil
of seventeenth
way in the intellectual, political, and religious
century
access
ualist/mythic
discursive
the
secular
England—toward
in
change
to
In
ity.
one
of
sense,
the
course,
to
poem's
the
succession
of
of the
the
seize
undermines
or
it pass
the
the
carpe
at all.
dom and the folly of heeding
Not
on
despite
the
the
but
absolute
carpe
means
by
diem
of
choice
But
not
the
final
poem's
if the
seizing
the
to defer
the
both
or
day
gather
the
gathering,
illustrates
linear
to human
impervious
between
death,
the
for
assertion,
to tarry,
rush
unstoppable
manifest.
diem
Not
its
the
end
wis
its message.
of its
offers
poem
made
simultaneously
of
inevitability
the
illustrating
to defer
poem
(the
aging-effects
the shearing away of visual
like Old Time flying) rein
is absolutely
the
then
choice
is not
Thus
day
strengthen
argumentativeness
is
the
"worst"
decision,
rosebuds,
race.
to
"best"
is no
By
argument.
to
from
action,
letting
ing
need
also
"aging"
will,
diem
carpe
the
time,
direct,
marry")—
thus
"entropic"
and its literal dis/illusionment,
imagery and of playful personifications
of
go
rit
to the power of temporal
"voice,"
force
into
...
and
clarify
masterfulness,
seriousness,
increasing
seemed
implies submission
its argument—actually
time
your
from
away
"fall"
poem's
. . . use
coy
which
language
The
eternity.
not
("be
speech
and
itself,
historicity
memento
mori
temporal
the
reader
theme,
access
the
leading
processes
to
a
insistence
to
strategy
death,
against
time and death by control of the immediate future (through will and
decision to act according to the carpe diem dictum), of the past
memory), and of the present (through height
(through accumulated
of
But underlying
ening
experience, especially, sexual experience).
and subverting
in human
this self-actualizing
sexuality
as
a concept.
aspect of biological
determinism,
vidual
only
is important
as
strategy is an essential
As
a factor
a drive
or
instinct,
ambiguity
sexuality
is an
from which point of view the indi
in
a process.
Sexual
activity
is re
Sarah
not
garded
as
perpetuates
subjective
of the
of human
iors
and
as
is
Sexuality
an
experience,
awareness
but
experience
itself.
Gilead
the
means
in
also,
element
unique
in
attitudes.
the
The
diem
carpe
his
in
anticipation,
consciousness
but
pleasure
of
the
the
species
and
personality
self
by
enhancing
Some
experience.
aspects
sexuality may be instinctual, but others are learned
whether
places
realm
of personal
quality
which
by
the
actualizing
strategy
life-intensifying, and thus a defense
sure,
147
as
fear
makes
reproduction
and
consciousness,
or
of death.
his
as
plea
a sense
dis
viewed
sexuality
his
individual,
existence,
very
in
memory,
But
the
behav
pleasure
mortality; intense
against
experience,
or
sexual
posits
not
as
experiences,
superfluous,
expendable.
The only perfect defense against fear of death, against the paralyzing
anxiety of the coy virgin, is death itself, the biological "eternal re
the
turn,'
final
"first age"
Freud
considered
stimulus
the
as
the
a
ultimate
notion
secondary
as
temporal
of
of consciousness
the
Herrick's
to
as
return
the
an
"tarry."
of
the
Principle,
and
irritant,
of death,
pleasure
of consciousness,
the Virgins"
inertia,
coyness,
itself
compared
burden
"To
the
process,
life. In Beyond the Pleasure
pleasure
removal
sion, anxiety.
pleasure
of
circumventing
which is pre-organic
of conflict,
covertly defines
can
"Gathering"
ten
a type of
be
read
as
a
and stimulus-seeking
drive which is in
trope for the self-actualizing
conflict with the drive to reduce stimuli and eliminate internal ten
the
sion,
not
drive
a
only
diem
towards
defense
becomes
an
competing for dominance
self against the other.
The
very
against
the
mous
selfhood:
change
of
concept
various
time,
through
overt
but
the
coherent
that
self
dislocate,
conflict,
psychic
that
which
causes
as
cultural
contradictory
which
experience
such
that
drives
it
defending
viewed
fragment,
carpe
two
each
or
the
and
between
be
may
is thus
message
drive,
dialogue
diem poem posits a coherent self based
as
a
against
internal
diem
carpe
within a single psyche,
forces
internal
The
time,
against
thus
poem
death.
as
a defense
weaken
autono
outlined
directives.
above,
The
carpe
on desire as a unifying force,
is in
turn
into
incorporated
the
construct of the self. The self, then, is a "gathering," a plenitude of
filtered through conscious
a unified, stable
awareness,
experiences
"vertical"
self
structure
resisting
unstable,
protean,
those
contingent.
"horizontal"
The
forces
coherent
self
that
render
can
be
the
under
stood as a force that gathers experience to fill the empty store of po
tential selfhood with individuality, intentionality, and memory. Carpe
diem suggests that desire can be mastered, defined, controlled by
conscious
will,
and
thus
used
as
a tool
for
minimizing
the
paralyzing
148
Diem
Carpe
of
anxiety
like
But,
death,
cialized,
and
"coyness,"
for
threatens,
sexuality
turns
to
desire:
force
ungovernable
chosen
by
to
to
of
repression
the
egy, not man's,
exceeding,
very
the
self,
boundaries.
awareness
that,
to
self.
so
sublimated,
diem
Carpe
threatens
weaken
its
its
by
consciously
Finally, carpe diem insists on
desire
ultimately,
of the
repression
a
urges
in fear of its own
that
activity
the
is
nature's
strat
a strategy by which the self finally can achieve
and
obliteration;
that
of
the
of that which,
fragment
or socially-defined
boundaries
self.23
of self-consciousness,
heightening
the
up
self-mastered
self-contained,
mortality,
shoring
awareness
of
the
self's
own
only
silent
strategy against desire as irritant, against need. Carpe diem urges
"satisfaction" of desire, the feeding of it; but to satisfy desire is to get
rid of desire, to destroy desire in the total discharge of need that is
accomplished
by death. The final rosebud to be gathered is death it
the un-gathering of the frag
self, the gathering that is simultaneously
ile
structure
of
the
self:
the
self
as
fabric,
narrative
structure,
text
is
only fully woven, built, written, when "ended" by death. Aggression
against the self thus occurs both in rejecting desire and in seeking it;
the first denies to the self a range of possible experiences, and may
therefore
be
understood
as
an
ated
the
self
for
replacement
a cause
merely
in
the
form
is that impulse
the
the
in
accession
to the death drive; the second
self
in
the
next
through which is cre
generation,
chain—to
generational
of self-repression
the
making
seek
desire
is thus,
paradoxically, a form of indirect suicide.
Both poetic and psychic selves depend for their solidity and worth
on the act of "gathering," the poetic self gathering verbal material
into an aesthetic whole as proof and image of the powers of that self;
the
self
psychic
But
Herrick's
lyrics,
gathering
of persisting
capable
as
a
diem
carpe
of
collage
its
together
time
through
and
conscious
life
a recognizable
like
poem,
allusions
as
so
a
construct
stable
seventeenth
many
borrowings
into
and
is
an
entity.
century
obsessive
seek
ing after an elusive prior authority, the textual aggressiveness
implied
of precursor poems working to entrap it in a
by its dismemberment
past which haunts it. The poetic self implied in "To the Virgins" cre
ates its image through a work which represents
ment
of
texts
precursor
thus,
(and
by
a radical dismember
of
extension,
Herrick's
precursor
poetic
personae).
poem as the quintessential
carpe diem poem in
both
fulfills
exhausts
the
and
English
potential of its genre, just as
Herrick's
poetic
ments
its
them.
The
precursors,
poet's
on
persona
pen
and,
is
the
the
one
hand
on
the
other,
magical
completes,
extends,
vanquishes,
generative
instrument
supple
annuls,
by
slays
which
Sarah
immortality is secured,
its
ink
on
is
act
ing
the
earlier
virgin
and
a
"generators,"
text
is
by
means
whose
own
only
149
and life produced.
pleasure
page,
accomplished
poetic
Gilead
of
an
over
Anxiety
poetic
sexual
is
impotence
in
of drooping,
images
the
the
agonistic
achieved
text-creat
rage
against
threat
immortality
ens that desired by the poetic self.
sessive
The pen spends
But
generated.
in
suggested
the
ob
Hesperides'
of poetic
glorification
"Lust"
over
in "The Vision" of "Herrick" as rival/re
pleasure (H-336),
and in H-285, "Upon
placement of an impotent Anacreon (H-1017)
himself," which celebrates "Herrick's" self as sieve, that is, as empty
("What comes in, runnes quickly out"). "Herrick" is here not a con
tained, bounded,
self, but a type of virgin
experience-gathering
sho'd say, or Virgins sing,/ Herrick keeps, as holds noth
("Maides
ing"). The agonistic urge to master and shape the self by mastering
others (or prior "selves")
but
quished,
a
self
as
the
an
essence
letting
"fear,"
"jealousy,"
is a self
consequence
inviolate
gathering—by
or by acquiring
experience,
run
"hope")
its
preserves
even
the
the
slick
off
of experiential
empty
which
is here relin
experience
most
contents,
selfhood
not
by
extreme
("love,"
outer
impermeable
sur
face of its being. It is a self antithetical
the Virgins" urges the virgin addressees
to the self the speaker of "To
to become. The sieve-self is a
trable
that
self defended
against time by a kind of lack of affectivity, an impene
to
immunity
self-containment,
a
experience;
not
experiential
self
and
expansion
its
preserves
identity
by
acquisiton.
The speaker of "To the Virgins" is the manifestation of the self
mastering defense network against psychic dispersion by time or by
self-harming drives (such as the virgins' anxiety). But the self-mas
tering
The
time,
rather
drive
as
speaker
time's
as
This
which
an
lackey,
a
determinism,
cess
force
also
aggression
as
aggressor
force
which
delivers
individual
self
speaker's
the
(the
in
the
speaker
to nature
into
is
biological
to
of new
advocate
against
speaker
as
generation,
creation
as
ally
the
self,
virgin
self.
"virgin"
virgins'/readers'
subservient
us
the
against
the
against
a verbal
the
expends
second
is
himself
presents
seen
but,
defense
that
pro
generations.
for
nature
and
time) indeed "makes much of time" in that he serves it and gains, for
his betrayal of the virgins to time's desires, a constantly renewed crop
of "virgin" readers. The poem's fragmented persona contains yet an
other component, that of the virgin, the narcissistic preserver of the
self,
the
avoider
the human
ond
persona,
of
risk,
experience,
change.
The
first
serves
persona
desire to use time, and thus defends itself against the sec
who
serves
time
or nature
at the
expense
of the
individ
150
Diem
Carpe
persona defends itself against
(who seek to enhance the self either by seeking
the second
ual;
persona—or
self
by
both
against
is
death,
the
self
each
it—the
avoiding
first
second.
and
of
fragment
time
completed,
the
third);
poetic
served,
and
third
experience—the
first
third
the
in
Only
the
both first and
persona
defends
it
"tarry,"
of
of
region
satisfied:
triumphant,
persona
attained
safety-permanence
at
last.
The
the
longer
reader
for
searches
the
diem
carpe
in
message
Her
rick's obviously carpe diem poem, the greater difficulty she has in
finding it. Herrick's consoling offer of verbal/rhetorical mastery over
as
time is also a textual substitute for riskier experience ("Gathering"
reading/ interpreting replacing sexuality); heightening consciousness
of death and by seeking the satisfaction of desire en
by awareness
tails
from
expulsion
the
death;
we
and
argument,
in
us
enables
trope,
defense
of
the
desire's
think
role
self
to
be
the
is
of
service
un
normally
familiarity of topic,
death
displace
can
in
what
about
by its reassuring
but simultaneously,
thinkable,
strategies
that
demands
poem
of
consciousness
from
to
equated
awareness;
on
strategies,
the
part of time, nature, and the self, for attacking the self. The plenitude
of meaning offered by Herrick's poem disintegrates into a tangle of
conflicting
concepts,
a convincing
resistible
work
in
the
of the
the
promised
the
over
mastery
poem
the
be
who
"virgins"
also
finally
take
wards
reading
the
self,
read
read
as
its ir
inviting,
desire
neutralizes
the
against
into
the
gather
of Herrick's
reading
to interrogate
illu
forbid
coyly
to
at
the
transient,
while
of defense
over
mastery
proves
reader's
or
shape
off or
reader's
Any analytical
to recuperate
seeking
the
seductively
impulse,
harvest of significance.
recuperative
can
argument
the
it. The
subverting
like
interpretive
must
over
victory
silently
text,
whether
poem,
The
tropes.
but the terrified logic of the virgin is always
incomplete,
ding,
idea,
text,
and
images,
successful
message,
meanings
sory,
and
carpe
the
diem
poem.
intentionalist
A
irony
or ambiguity the poem's anti-carpe diem implications; an interroga
tive reading is equally defensive in that it parries with its anti-textual
violence
analytical
the reader's
the
poem's
assertion
of its
innocent
rity, and obvious
own
desire to preserve inviolate
good sense of carpe diem.
innocence,
and
of
the simplicty, integ
Notes
1.
H-208
in
The
Complete
Poetry
of Robert
Herrick,
ed.
J. Max
Patrick
Sarah
York:
(New
will
New
York
Univ.
Press,
151
Gilead
1963).
This
of Herrick's
edition
numbered
be used
throughout.
poems
to Poetry,
5th ed.
and Sense:
An Introduction
Sound
2. Laurence
Perrine,
York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich,
1977),
(New
p. 88.
ut Pictura
Poe
Garden:
K. Farmer,
3. Norman
Jr., "Herrick's
Hesperidean
in Trust
sis,"
B. Rollin
eds. Roger
Verses:
Herrick
Tercentenary
Essays,
of Pittsburgh
Univ.
Press,
1978).
(Pittsburgh:
a book
of poems
the seventeenth-century
reader
of a garden"
(p. 15) and that the engraved
equivalent
to Good
Farmer
Patrick
J. Max
out that "for
points
and
ten the
verbal
to the 1648
piece
which
a garden
edition
in
is
about
"as we walk
quently,
is quite often
our experience
which
rests squarely
standing
33).
4.
William
Oram,
a memorial
depicts
the collection
"Hesperides,"
we
the garden,
(i.e., 'read')
bust
of Hesperides
fact
to be
on
"Herrick's
the
the
Use
verbal
of
can
Horatian
of Sacred
understand
in
Materials,"
frontis
of the poet in
Conse
poems.
to seeing,
ut pictura
equivalent
doctrine,
of
was
under
poesis"
Trust
(p.
to Good
of the
Tercentenary
Essays.
"
"a playful,
'screened'
or mediated,"
in Hesperides
is
given
orderly,
poems
...
in a covering
Death
is "wrapped
form" (p. 215).
and hence
an acceptable
of ordered
language"
(p. 217).
seminal
article on illocutionary
5. See John Searle's
acts, "A Clas
speech
1-23.
in Society, 5 (1976),
of Illocutionary
sification
Acts,"
Language
of
Pratt's
and
6. See
Louise
convincing
application
Mary
imaginative
Verses:
notes
Oram
Herrick
that
death
in
that
an
many
Act Theory
Dis
Toward
a Speech
to literature,
of Literary
Indiana
Univ.
Press,
1977),
pp. 215, 221.
New
Derrida
and Austin,"
"Convention
and Meaning:
7. Jonathan
Culler,
13 (1981),
15-30.
Literary History,
"
Herrick's
Passion
'No
Lust there's
like to Poetry:'
8. Achsah
Guibbory,
in Trust to Good Verses: Herrick Tercentenary
for Poetry,"
Essays,
p. 95.
ed. L.C.
Martin
9. Robert
The Poetical
Works of Robert Herrick,
Herrick,
speech-act
theory
course (Bloomington:
Clarendon,
(Oxford:
1966),
pp. 517-19.
"the most famous
10. Gordon
Braden
observes,
defined
tradition
only the latest term in a clearly
four
. . . 'gather
therefore
the
Liberata
Gerusaleme
line
that
Herrick
ever
wrote
reaches
back
through
is
Rose'
FQ, 2.12.75),
'Cog
(Spenser,
des aujourdhuy
'Cueillez
16.117),
les roses'
(De Rosis
Nascentibus)"
(Ronsard,
2:287),
(p.
'Collige,
uirgo, rosas'
"dismemberment"
of precursor
Braden
of Herrick's
171).
frequently
speaks
diem.
The Classics
and English
reference
to carpe
texts, but without
special
liam
languages
la rosa'
Renaissance
11.
I am
(Tasso,
Haven:
Yale
(New
Poetry: Three Case Studies
indebted
to Braden's
discussion
illuminating
Univ.
Press,
1978).
of this poem
as an
model
for a self-con
for Herrick
of "a
of "Anacreon's"
example
provision
of its
whose
is the casual
tained
principal
activity
permutation
lyric world
for
own decor"
of
Braden's
have
useful
220).
(p.
Many
insights
implications
in Hesperides
is ag
is missing
diem),
carpe diem (and anti-carpe
e.g.,: "What
in other
'adult'
The
retreat
from inter
words,
genital,
sexuality.
gressive,
course
often
actual
rum
is pervasive,
and especially
notable
sexual.
Almost
when
explicitly
always
there
intercourse,
....
The
traordinary
is some
buckling
consummation
major
on the psychology
length
in a poet whose
concerns
are
Herrick
encounters
the matter
effect
poems—the
of delay"
not
explained
by mere
Epithalamia—dwell
(p.
223).
so
of
deco
at ex
152
Diem
Carpe
the repetition
diem
of carpe
Despite
diem
strains
are
evident
in
at
least
carpe
ciate
as
sexuality
death
238,
defloration,
are
(examples
H-297,
H-318,
(with
speech,
Victor
Turner,
The
Aldine, 1969), p. 103.
Kenneth
13.
tion
Burke,
of Critical
14.
Sandra
Woman
Yale
M.
Writer
Univ.
Press,
In their
discussion
associates
it with
of self-enclosed
ress
tells
is not
weakness,
the
boon
ed.
and
of
Susan
as
the
a snow
a gift she
with
textuality
H
H-74,
H-56,
Anti-Structure
(Chicago:
of Poetry,"
Freud: A Collec
Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall,
The
Gubar,
Madwoman
Literary
"the
(New
virginity,
or power,
because
word
moon-white
figure
virginity,
but
groom,
in the Attic:
Imagination
manliness
gives her
wholeness,
androgynous
or
H
H-205,
(Englewood
Century
mythic
maiden,
and
anti
asso
sadism,
H-184,
off sexuality
are H-43,
Analysis
Meisel
1979).
of Emily Dickinson:
the word
vir, meaning
such
ward
Hesperides,
those that
disease,
H-151,
Structure
the
Perry
the Nineteenth
armor,
For
us.
that
Process:
"Freud—and
Gilbert
and
with
impotence
H-118,
H-107,
those
throughout
types of poems:
or poetry—examples
Ritual
Essays,
1981), p. 80.
and
imagery,
336, H-681, H-1017).
12.
H-69,
H-493)
visual
or
birth,
H-36,
motifs
two
its root
a kind
images
of Diana
the hunt
signifying
a boon
she
autonomy,
The
Haven:
of
power
instead
grants
to herself:
self-sufficiency"
(pp.
616-17).
15.
Claude
Jonathan
(London:
16. Mircea
linger
17.
The
Levi-Strauss,
man
The
Eliade,
Series
46,
pantheon,
E. Toliver,
Harold
Raw and the Cooked,
1970),
pp. 162-63.
the
Eternal
Return,
Myth of
1954),
p. 35.
trans.
J. and
trans.
W.
P.
Weight
Cape,
Marvell's
Ironic
Vision
R. Trask
Haven:
(New
Yale
(Bol
Univ.
p. 28.
18.
The School
The Evolution
Richmond,
of Love:
of the Stuart Love
Princeton
Univ.
Press,
1964),
Lyric (Princeton:
p. 18.
19. Richardson,
and Torrance
different
of cere
Nebes,
investigate
aspects
bral laterality:
Allen
A Cognitive
Richardson,
"Verbalizer/Visualizer:
Style
1 (1977),
109-26.
R. D. Nebes,
"Hem
Dimension,"
Journal of Mental
Imagery
Press,
1965),
H. M.
ispheric
Specialization
81 (1974),
1-14.
E.
Technical
Sequential
(hence
Man,"
Cecil
perception
associated
Freedman,
organization
mode
ceptive
manipulates
thinking
and seriality);
right-sidedness
and memory
with
J. Deikman
Consciousness:
A Book
cal
are
logical/verbal
with
holism).
Arthur
H.
and
Psychological
Reynolds,
Preliminary
and Thinking:
Form C
for Your Style of Learning
Univ.
of Georgia,
1973).
Psychology,
and temporal
of data,
processing
analysis
problem-solving,
izing,
seem
Commissurotomized
Torrance
Manual
Educational
ality
in
Paul
right
of spatial,
and
ed.
Robert
and systematic
left hemispheri
analogizing,
other non-verbal
with
(hence
in
Consciousness,"
("Bimodal
with
E.
The
Ornstein
of
(Dept.
humor,
visual,
hemispheriality
of Readings,
serious
associated
Bulletin,
Norms—
synthes
stimuli
left-sidedness
and
Nature
[San
of Human
Francisco:
W.
two modes
of biological/psychologi
1973],
pp. 481-89)
posits
in individuals,
the "action"
and "receptive"
modes.
The re
in
takes
the
the
action
mode
environment;
(gathers)
the
environment
by
means
of
object-based
logic,
heightened
Sarah
boundary
(pp.
ing
dominance
culture,
the
the
poem
persuades
the persuasion
itself,
is characterized
description,
but
man's
as
exaltation,
timelessness,
awareness
has been
to
by
Pask
receptiveness
and B. C.
seventeenth-century
cal or sacramental
seek
"heightened
affect, and
(p.
75).
to the receptive
in Deik
Receptivity,
vividness
...
as
sensory
belong
mode.
a sense
But
that
relaxed
the horizon
satisfaction
of
with
poet's
. . . the
poet
E.
intellectual
thought
cannot
is
Sigmund
of the
Freud,
Beyond
broken
employ
that were
and
tropes
symbols
with the divine
through
'magical'
22.
to
action
of the moment.
to the pleasures
and
Individual
Scott,
Strategies
"Learning
4 (1972),
218.
International
Studies,
Journal of Man-Machine
of the
as
characteristic
has noted
a similar
binary
opposition
recommends
Gordon
Competence,"
21. Toliver
Edition
action
over sensory
characteristics
is gradually
dur
dominated,
mode.
The
that a
pleasures
the virgin's
reluct
day—characterizes
much."
Herrick's
becomes
poem
progres
less receptive,
even
as it
pleasure-oriented,
present
to "use,"
to "go,"
to "make
less present-centered,
less
sively
thought
the
strong
ance
overly
20.
mode
addressee
greatly
expanded"
moment—the
truly seized
the
153
of formal
receptive
by the
maturation,
diem
carpe
mode;
well
and
perception,
In our
68-69).
the individual's
Gilead
dilemma.
by
without
the
"Once
causal
some
the
habit
method
discomfort
used
to associate
traditionally
means"
(p. 34).
the Pleasure
Vol.
18,
Principle,
of analogi
of
the
empirical
standard
the
temporal
in The
Standard
ed.
Works
Freud,
Psychological
of Sigmund
of Psycho-Analysis
(London:
1955).
Hogarth,
and Freud (Berkeley:
of California
Baudelaire
Univ.
Complete
the Institute
and
Strachey
23. Leo Bersani,
James
Press,
"Freud
toward
the position
that the pleasureable
ex
1977).
may be moving
is ex
citement
of sexuality
occurs
when
the body's
normal
range of sensation
to the structured
ceeded
....
would
be that which
is intolerable
Sexuality
Character
and Desire
in Litera
(p. 77). Here and in A Future for Astyanax:
ture (Boston:
Bersani
the literary conse
Little, Brown,
1969),
lucidly
explores
of the notions
of the coherent
and the unstructured
self.
quences
self"

Ungathering "Gather ye Rosebuds": Herrick`s Misreading of Carpe

Transcription

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