The seeming irrelevance of crusty old poets

Submitted by Lionel Faull

Sitting here in my ivory tower, the toiling masses only barely distinguishable several hundred feet below, I open a slightly scuffed copy of The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick. Aaah, this is the life, I murmur contentedly to myself, as I raise both my legs from the plushly carpeted floor and bring my fluffy-blue-slippered feet to rest together on the tabletop.

Reclining slightly in my chair, I settle back to spend another glorious day studying the poems of some crusty, misogynistic, obscure and long-dead white guy. I’m dimly aware that my blissfully irrelevant university studies come at the South African taxpayer’s dutiful expense. I’m not even South African. Ha ha. Thank you for letting me waste your time.

Robert Herrick belongs to the canon of poets who have typically been cited to promote England’s rose-tinted historical perception of itself. It’s a canonical vision of the idyllic countryside, of busty maids frisking about barefoot in fields of compliantly friskable daisies, of freshly-baked scones and tea served with strawberry jam and dollops of fresh cream. So, in the opening lines of the opening poem of Hesperides (Herrick’s life’s work), we encounter this poetic pronouncement:

I Sing of Brooks, of Blossomes, Birds, and Bowers
Of April, May, of June, and July-Flowers.
I sing of May-poles, Hock-carts, Wassails, Wakes,
Of bride-grooms, Brides, and of their Bridall-cakes.

A set of subjects wholly unsuitable as the subject for an African scholar whose continent finds itself enmeshed in political turmoil and social injustice, poverty, war, famine and disease, wouldn’t you think?

True.

Except that seventeenth century England has many parallels to Africa today. This was the century of the English Civil Wars (1640-9), a period of such severe social, political, religious and economic stress that the King, Charles I, ended up losing his head. Literally.

As I tinker with my Masters thesis, I love drawing comparisons between Herrick’s age and my own, between Herrick himself and me myself.

One example is Herrick’s complaint against the decline of what he calls hospitality, what South Africans know of as ubuntu. The seventeenth century saw the growth of a goal-oriented, profit-driven, capitalist middle-class who couldn’t give a fig for the old system of community ties and obligations, which underpinned feudal society. Herrick praises a number of men and women who he believes exemplify the dying art of hospitality, or ubuntu, including a certain Sir Lewis Pemberton who has learned:

With heart and hand to entertain:
And by the Armes-full (with a Brest unhid)
As the old Race of mankind did,
When eithers heart, and eithers hand did strive
To be the nearer Relative:
Thou do’st redeeme those times; and what was lost
Of antient honesty …

These lines speak to the notion of ubuntu, specifically the image of hands and hearts coming together in the act of sharing. Herrick’s description of sharing, and of hands becoming “Relative” to one another, speaks to the notion of community as an extended family. Herrick’s fulsome praise of Pemberton belies an unspoken condemnation of others who take from society more than they give.

The Renaissance poet’s role as vates, or poet-priest, is reminiscent of the modern-day journalist, whose responsibility it is to poke holes in the hypocrisy of the ruling class, to rail against injustice and, on occasion, to delight and entertain. It is a role I have set my heart on once I descend from ye olde ivorie tower to take my place amongst the toiling masses.

In a poem entitled “Leprosie in Cloathes”, Herrick critiques the tendency of the aristocracy to bedeck themselves in the latest bling-bling trimmings as testament to their own acquisitiveness:

When flowing garments I behold
Enspir’d with Purple, Pearle, and Gold
I think no other but I see
In them a glorious leprosie

There is something literally diseased, or sick, about this conspicuous consumption, especially when the majority of the population struggles to feed and clothe themselves with any adequacy. The situation is reminiscent of Africa’s own ruling class, stretching back from the politicians and “black diamonds” of the present-day all the way to the colonial administrators of yore.

Sometimes it’s quite fun to read a Herrick poem in ways that are different from that which he intended. Take the first three stanzas of his most famous poem, “To the Virgins, to make much of Time”:

Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old time is still a flying:
And this same flower which smiles today,
To morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he’s a getting;
The sooner will his Race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That Age is best, which is the first,
When Youth and Blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.

I chuckle when I read this poem in light of the arms deal, or any other similar frauds and looting of the public purse by some politicians up and down the continent. You can just imagine these crooks, reciting Herrick feverishly to themselves under their breaths, while they plan how to make the most financial self-gain out of their terms-in-office as they possibly can. Nor is it confined to politicians of Africa today. Take Cecil John Rhodes as a prime example of someone who also happily made hay while the sun shone.

Still on the subject of political observation, Mbeki and Zuma really ought to have picked up a copy of Herrick’s book in the run-up to Polokwane. They would have both read this advice, in a poem entitled “To his friend to avoid contention of words”, and might perhaps have avoided splitting the ANC down the middle:

Words beget Anger; Anger brings forth blowes:
Blowes make of dearest friends immortal foes.
For which prevention (Sociate) let there be
Betwixt us two no more Logomachie [argument].
Farre better ’twere for either to be mute,
Then for to murder friendship, by dispute.

Herrick’s poetry goes beyond this. The breadth of his subject matter, the ambitiousness of its scale and his inherent ability to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable opposites speaks to the intelligence, creativity and boundless potential of the human mind when confronted with division and crisis.

Herrick’s advice to his brother — to “live round, and close, and wisely true/ To thine own self” — is the first step towards fostering the ability we all have within us to engender reconciliation with one another. If we are to confront the continent’s many problems successfully, we need to start with getting ourselves and our own houses — including our ivory towers — in order.

Lionel Faull is a Masters student in English Literature at Rhodes University. He believes that literature — in all its diverse forms, including poetry and journalism — can play a major role in uplifting and empowering Africa in the 21st century.