Monday, January 10, 2011

Important Lecture #5: The Song of Solomon (aka Song of Songs, Canticle of Canticles_: Erotic Love andDevotional Poetry

Unit 5:  The Song of Solomon: Erotic Love and Devotional Poetry

Weekly Reading Assignment:

           Bible, King James Version:  Read the Song of Solomon
            King James Bible Commentary:  Song of Solomon:  Introduction, Outline, and Commentary
            The Bible as Literature: 

Introduction:

Here we examine how the Song of Solomon uses metaphor to describe erotic love between a man and a woman. In remarkable poetry this book depicts love as mutual, physical, and all-consuming. The Song of Solomon understandably came to furnish an ideal model for love poetry. More surprisingly, it also provided a model for devotional poetry, as it was interpreted as the marriage song between God and Israel, the Church, or the individual human soul.

I. Erotic love in the Song of Solomon is mutual, all-consuming, and described through the Bride and Bridegroom's praise of each other's beauty. These encomia (a formal expression of praise; a tribute) provide a model for erotic poetry.

            A. The Song of Solomon furnishes elements of the spring topos (a traditional theme or motif) a set description of the coming of spring that marks spring as a time for love.

                        1. Spring is a time for renewal, as we see in the Song of Solomon:

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. (Song of Solomon 2:11-13, KJV)

            B. It also provides various examples of the blazon (florid and elaborate praise) a set description of the beloved wherein each part of her body is described in through a different metaphor.

                        1. Most of the blazons in the Song of Solomon are floral, comparing the Bride to a garden:
                                   
                                    A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
                                    Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard,
Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees off rank incense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices:
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
Awake, 0 north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. (Song of Solomon 4:12-16, KJV)

                        2. Look at how Edmund Spenser (English poet 1552 – 1599) adapts the floral blazon in his Amoretti #64—a love sonnet:

Coming to kiss her lips, (such grace I found)
Me seemed I smelled a garden of sweet flowers,
That dainty odors from them threw around
For damsels fit to deck their lovers' bowers.
Her lips did smell like unto Gillyflowers,
Her ruddy cheeks like unto Roses red:
Her snowy brows like budded Bellamores,
Her lovely eyes like Pinks but newly spread.
Her goodly bosom like a strawberry bed,
Her neck like to a bunch of Columbines:
Her breast like Lillies, ere their leaves be shed,
Her nipples like young blossomed Jasmines.
Such fragrant flowers do give most odorous smell,
But her sweet odor did them all excel. .

                        3. The Song of Solomon contains a more unusual architectural blazon, wherein the Bride's features are compared to parts of a building;                         Compare the Song's architectural blazon to that in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella, #9.

                        From the Song of Solomon:

Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. (Song of Solomon 7:4, KJV)

                        These lines find some echo in Elizabethan poetry. From Sir Philip Sidney's (English poet 1554 – 1586) Astrophil and Stella, #9:

The door by which sometimes comes forth her Grace
Red porphir is, which lock of pearl makes sure,
Whose porches rich (which name of cheeks endure)
Marble mix'd red and white do interlace.

II. The inclusion of the Song of Solomon in the biblical canon raised the question of whether it contained religious doctrine or sentiments. Most religious interpretations of the Song of Solomon read the sexual love described in the text allegorically, as a figure for God's love for humankind.



            A. Jewish tradition views the Song of Solomon as the love song celebrating the marriage covenant between God and Israel.

Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine. (Exodus 19:5, KJV)

            Many portions of the Bible, even in the Old Testament, refer to God's relationship with his people as a mar­riage. In Isaiah 62:4-5:

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married.
For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee. (Isaiah 62:4-5, KJV)

            The prophets often refer to the Israelites as adulterous wives when they break their covenant with God.

            B. Christians read the Song as an allegory of Jesus' love for the Church, as seen in Paul's letter to the Ephesians:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;  (Ephesians 5:22-25, KJV)

            C. Christians additionally read the Song as as allegory celebrating the human soul's marriage to God.

                        1. We see this spiritual allegory coloring the spirituality of Margery Kempe in her Booke. Margery Kempe took quite literally the idea of                        marrying Jesus, even wearing a wedding ring. She practiced marital mysticism despite having 14 children.

2. The spiritual mysticism of St. Teresa of Avila is regarded as genuine. She wrote an autobiography describing her spiritual ecstacy. The eroticism of her text suggests many questions about the relationship between love, spiritual and physical. In Richard Crashaw's poem about St. Teresa of Avila, “The Flaming Heart,” we see additionally the difficulties of a man writing as a woman describing religious mysticism. Many of his verses ultimately allude to the Song of Songs, including an allusion to two verses in chapter eight, which many regard as the climax of the book:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. (Song of Solomon 8:6, KJV)

3. Crashaw longs to feel these emotions but realizes he must "become" a woman to do so. Crashaw ends the poem with a prayer to Teresa to destroy his male identity so he can take on her womanliness. He says, "Leave nothing of myself in me. Let me so read thy life that I unto all life of mine might die..."

4.  Shakespeare uses the Song of Solomon in The Taming of the Shrew, which is considered one of the greatest plays about the battle of the sexes and the role of men and women in marriage.  At the end of the play, the erstwhile shrewish Katharina has been transformed by the love of her husband, Petruccio, and by her own efforts to attain self happiness.  Her speech follows:

To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,



III. Although traditionally the erotic love of the Song of Solomon has been interpreted as a metaphor for spiritual love, many writers have viewed the corporeal love celebrated by the Song as utterly different from divine love. They raise the question, "Can erotic love function as a metaphor for divine love?"

            A. The question is raised in John Donne's Holy Sonnet #14, "Batter My Heart":

As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend,
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to another due,
Labour to admit you, bul Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.
(Holy Sonnet #14, John Donne)

                                    We see that all love is not the same. Married love, indeed all human love, is not perfect. None of their vices can mar divine love.

B. Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose (1980) provides an interesting discussion on whether human eros can function as a metaphor for divine love. One of the works it examines is the Song of Songs. Eco's characters invoke both the religious and erotic meaning of the Song.

                        1. Ubertino de Casale views Mary as the model of immaculate grace. "In her even the body's grace is a sign of the beauties of heaven."

2. In another character, Adso of Melk, Eco introduces a man with no words for love but those he borrows from the Song of Songs. Adso addresses his first lover for pages using words from the Bible, saying, "And she kissed me with the kisses of her mouth and her loves were more delicious than wine, and her ointments had a goodly fragrance, and her neck was beautiful among pearls and her cheek among earrings. Behold thou ar't fair my beloved. Behold thou ar't fair." Adso acknowledges that he is using sacred text for an earthly purpose. He is combining earthly passion with spiritual mysticism.

3. Ubertino is adamant that Adso come to distinguish the two. He says "you must learn to distinguish the fire of supernatural love from the raving of the senses." But Adso asks, "Was there truly a difference between the delights of which the saints had spoken and those which my agitated spirit was feeling at that moment? At that moment the watchful sense of difference was annihilated in me." Adso feels, simply, that love is love. Later, in a cooler moment, Adso feels that the two kinds of ecstasies are at once the same and different. He concludes ''This it seems is the teaching left us by Saint Thomas. The more openly it remains a figure of speech, the more it is a dissimilar similitude and not literal, the more a metaphor reveals its truth."


Summary:

Here we've seen how the Song of Solomon has always been revered for its high level of poetic achievement. Furnishing an ideal model of poetry, it understandably was imitated by later poets, who borrowed especially the spring topos and the blazon of the beloved as conventions in love poetry. Because of its inclusion in the Hebrew Bible, the Song was also widely understood to possess religious significance as the love song between God and Israel. Christian readers similarly read the Song as an allegory about the love between God and the corporate Church or the individual human soul, and so this book also furnished a model for religious poetry. But allegorizing the Song of Songs has rarely been uncontroversial, and some poets and other writers have used the Song as a locus for exploring the ambiguous nature of language itself, since the book's words and images can represent highly charged sexual, even sinful, love or its opposite, God's pure charity, or both at the same time. Thus, the Song of Solomon provides an opportunity for readers to contemplate if and how earthly and heavenly love share essential qualities.


JOHN DONNE "Batter My Heart"

John Donne (1572-1631) was born into a staunchly Catholic family but converted to the Church of England. Ordained a priest, he served as dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where he was known for his eloquently devout sermons. He wrote poems throughout his life, but most were not published until after his death. Donne is sometimes called a "Metaphysical poet," a term coined by Samuel Johnson (long after the death of Donne and other metaphysical poets such as Andrew Marvell). According to Johnson, the Metaphysicals were distinguished by the bizarreness of their metaphors: with a "combination of dissimilar images" they linked "heterogeneous ideas" together "by violence." (Lives of the Poets, "Cowley"). The violence of Donne's imagination is on spectacular display in his Holy Sonnet #14, "Batter My Heart." Here the speaker describes his spiritual state--helplessly bound to sin but desiring union with God--with images drawn from the Book of Revelation. Donne is the city of Jerusalem of Revelation 21, although captured by God's enemies, and also the laboring woman of Rev. 12, albeit wed to God's rival. Since Revelation describes God's vanquishing of evil as a military victory, Donne's city must be broken, his female self "ravish[ed)" if he will ever be saved. While the metaphors for God's merciful saving action seem cruel, even barbaric, they testify to the paradoxical nature of God who is both One and Donne's "three person'd God," and who in Revelation builds "a new heaven and a new earth" only after destroying the old. Like creation itself, Donne must be broken to be reborn.



FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING


Suggested Reading

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. William Weaver (trans.) New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Kempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Barry Windeatt (trans.) New York: Penguin Classics, 1988.

St. Teresa of Avila. The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself. New York: Penguin Classics, 1988.

Other Books of Interest

Atwan, Robert, and Laurence Wieder, eds. Chapters into Verse: Poetry Inspired by the Bible. 2 vols. New York: Oxford Unive rsity Press, 1993.

Bloch, Ariel and Chana Bloch. The Song of Songs: A New Verse Translation with an Introduction and Commentary. Afterward by Robert Alter. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Websites of Interest

1. Spenser's “Amoretti #64” on-line.

2. Sidney's Astrophil and Stella #9 on-line.

3. Crashaw's “The Flaming Heart Upon the Book and Picture of St. Teresa.”

4 comments:

  1. Hi Professor,

    Is there an associated chapter in The Bible As Literature for this assignment?

    Thanks,

    Kerry
    kkatz7901@aol.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, please read Chapter 19 of The Bible as Literature: Women in the Bible.

    Thanks.

    Joe Ryan

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Prof!

    Kerry Katz
    kkatz7901@aol.com

    ReplyDelete