The Name - What Does It Mean?
In looking at some of the Victorian poets, I saw John Clare - an unknown name to me, and I decided to find out something about him. I began by reading his poem entitled "First Love" (p824 Norton Anthology), and I liked this poem. We have spent a lot of time this year reading and discussing poems, but lately my thoughts have been moving into another place. Some of this is connected with what has been posted by Prof. Kuin on the Victorians and his advisement that we remember the circumstances of the time period and what was occurring, for example, the industrial revolution. I have also been asking myself if the separation of the poem from the poet does some kind of injustice? Does it matter if we pay very much attention to the circumstances surrounding a poet's creativity? I want to know more about the people who wrote these poems of the past. What were they about? What were their lives like?
John Clare's life (1793-1864) was interesting to read about. I used the new York on-line resource, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as a resource, as well as a book entitled, John Clare: His Life and Poetry, published in 1932. Clare was born in Helpston, Northamptonshire. Helpston is located on a ridge that divides the fens from the limestone wolds to the north of Helpston, where "wooded uplands dissolve into immense, falt open spaces". Clare's countryside was to be found within a 20 mile radius of Helpston, and this area includes a variety of landscapes, flora and fauna and farming systems. Clare was not only a poet, but also a farm labourer and a naturalist, and he represented this area with particularity in his poetry.
As a boy, he lived in a rented cottage with his parents and sister. His mother was illiterate. His father could read a little in the Bible. His parents wanted him to be educated so he was sent to school when agriculture was in a down time; otherwise, he performed the usual work of the village boys - sheep and cattle tending, crow-scaring and running errands. He also enjoyed time for playing, and he spent a lot of time with his friends out in the forest and fields. There were Gypsies who used to camp near Helpston, and he became interested and familiar with one tribe especially, that of King Boswell. He learned their customs, their songs, their dances, observed their fortune-telling and admired their girls. To Clare, they represented freedom from law and convention, and he associated them in his imagination with other outsiders, such as vagrants, Robin Hood and his men, robbers, highwaymen, pickpockets, village idiots, wise women, wizards, and girls of easy virtue. As well as these, he would meet people at local fairs - recruiting sergeants, ballad-singers, beggars, forgers, wounded veterans, and players of games of chance. He was no stranger to the alehouse or to the Stamford bull running, to the fox-hunt or badger baiting. He knew rural society well.
Not only did Clare read, but he was also educated in the fields, and became one of the earliest and best naturalists of Northamptonshire. From his parents' singing he learned hundreds of local folk-songs and became one of the earliest collectors of folk-songs and dances in his area. He played the popular jigs and reels of the day on his fiddle. He also wrote many religious poems, including biblical paraphrases. He eventually owned over 400 books and read many more than this.
While he was at school, he fell in love with a girl named Mary, who became the emotional centre of Clare's life. After some time, she broke off their affair and he was devastated, but quickly entered into a new love affair with a girl named Martha. Martha became pregnant, and Clare and she were married in 1820. Mary and Martha were the two muses of his life, and "like their scriptural namesakes, represented the idealistic and the practical natures of woman". Later in Clare's life, he went mad and during this time, he thought of himself as married to both women and having children with both of them, and thought he was being kept in a madhouse as a punishment for bigamy. Clare loved women, and he had affairs outside of his marriage. His poems about love and marriage cover the range from the sentimental to the mystical and from the romantic to the satirical. Women and nature were the twin themes of much of his poetry.
Clare's first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1820 and a second book, The Village Minstrel was published in 1820 as well. In 1827, The Shepherd's Calendar was published but sold badly. In 1835, The Rural Muse was the last volume of Clare's work that was published in his lifetime. A vast amount of poetry and a considerable quantity of prose remained unpublished until the latter part of the 20th-century, among which were political and social satire, "The parish", an autobiography, essays on natural history, short stories, proverbs, and comments on religion, politics, and poetry.
Throughout Clare's working life, he was beset with difficulties. He fathered nine children, two of whom died. The profits from his books were small and often delayed and he only had access to the interest on the funds collected for him. He worked par-time as an agricultural labourer, but in the agricultural depression following the Napoleonic wars, jobs were scarce. Clare drank too much and did not enjoy being a farm labourer. His health was also bad, and he seems to have suffered from epilepsy and may have contracted venereal disease. He was treated with suspicion by his neighbours who thought he had risen above his station. In all of this, however, Clare worked at his writing, striving to maintain himself by his poetry and other compositions.
Clare's mental health had been in decline for some years, and he was afflicted by depression, sleeplessness, and nightmares, and began to lose his sense of identity. He was besieged by his creditors and hemmed in by domesticity. He had become distrustful of his publishers and felt unable to support himself and his family. He became a voluntary patient at an asylum from 1937-1941. He suffered from delusions, imagining himself to be, at different times, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Lord Nelson, and Ben Caunt, the prize-fighter. He began to write letters and poems in code in which all the vowels were omitted. One day he walked away from the asylum headed for home. He wrote about this experience in Clare by Himself - 'Journey out of Essex' Five months after his return to Northborough, Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum by an order of two doctors. For the most part, he was given freedom to roam around Northampton and he continued to write poems, many of which were transcribed and preserved. He lived at the asylum until his death in 1864.
The following are a few of the poems Clare wrote while he was in the asylum, and which remained unpublished until years after his death:
Love's Pains
This love, wrong understood,
Oft turned my joy to pain;
I tried to throw away the bud,
But the blossom would remain.
Untitled:
Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful, young and true.
Untitled:
Love lives with nature, not with lust
Go seek it in the flowers.
Borne upon an Angel's Breast
In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.
'they' are the priests of the doctrine of Original Sin, as well as the disillusioned romantic, the negative, and the despairing.
Secret Love
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light;
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in every place:
Whene'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by.
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town
Till e-en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o'er,
The fly's buzz turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
Clare wrote that a poet's soul lay 'buried in the ink' with which he wrote. Its import is how 'secret' in essence love's very communication may be. Glib, overt, noisy--it is likelier to be tainted with apathy or other falsities. Love is the prime riddle we have been given to solve. And nature, in this poem offers no help at all.
In 1989, Clare was commemorated by a memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, at a ceremony in which the poet laureate, Ted Hughes, and others read Clare's poems. Clare is rightly acknowledged by many to be England's finest nature poet. He wrote extensively about his religious experience, expressed his criticism of the enclosure movement, the poor law, the relationship between the classes, the arrogance of local government, and the importance of the English language as spoken by common man. His early poems, except for those written in dialect, are often deeply influenced by the poetic vocabulary of Thomson and Cowper, although even in his early works, Clare created his own poetic language out of the resources of local speech. As he matured, the identity of his poetic language became increasingly certain. Clare' prose writings await fuller evaluation, but his place as a collector of folk-song, both words and music, and folk ceremonies has been an important part of recent Clare studies. He was a writer of imagination and diversity.
Having spent some time reading about Clare and thinking about this man's life, has been worthwhile for me. It has given me a greater appreciation of how the circumstances of life, which are often times not easy, can produce something positively creative - a mark of beauty on something that otherwise might be without colour.
John Clare's life (1793-1864) was interesting to read about. I used the new York on-line resource, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as a resource, as well as a book entitled, John Clare: His Life and Poetry, published in 1932. Clare was born in Helpston, Northamptonshire. Helpston is located on a ridge that divides the fens from the limestone wolds to the north of Helpston, where "wooded uplands dissolve into immense, falt open spaces". Clare's countryside was to be found within a 20 mile radius of Helpston, and this area includes a variety of landscapes, flora and fauna and farming systems. Clare was not only a poet, but also a farm labourer and a naturalist, and he represented this area with particularity in his poetry.
As a boy, he lived in a rented cottage with his parents and sister. His mother was illiterate. His father could read a little in the Bible. His parents wanted him to be educated so he was sent to school when agriculture was in a down time; otherwise, he performed the usual work of the village boys - sheep and cattle tending, crow-scaring and running errands. He also enjoyed time for playing, and he spent a lot of time with his friends out in the forest and fields. There were Gypsies who used to camp near Helpston, and he became interested and familiar with one tribe especially, that of King Boswell. He learned their customs, their songs, their dances, observed their fortune-telling and admired their girls. To Clare, they represented freedom from law and convention, and he associated them in his imagination with other outsiders, such as vagrants, Robin Hood and his men, robbers, highwaymen, pickpockets, village idiots, wise women, wizards, and girls of easy virtue. As well as these, he would meet people at local fairs - recruiting sergeants, ballad-singers, beggars, forgers, wounded veterans, and players of games of chance. He was no stranger to the alehouse or to the Stamford bull running, to the fox-hunt or badger baiting. He knew rural society well.
Not only did Clare read, but he was also educated in the fields, and became one of the earliest and best naturalists of Northamptonshire. From his parents' singing he learned hundreds of local folk-songs and became one of the earliest collectors of folk-songs and dances in his area. He played the popular jigs and reels of the day on his fiddle. He also wrote many religious poems, including biblical paraphrases. He eventually owned over 400 books and read many more than this.
While he was at school, he fell in love with a girl named Mary, who became the emotional centre of Clare's life. After some time, she broke off their affair and he was devastated, but quickly entered into a new love affair with a girl named Martha. Martha became pregnant, and Clare and she were married in 1820. Mary and Martha were the two muses of his life, and "like their scriptural namesakes, represented the idealistic and the practical natures of woman". Later in Clare's life, he went mad and during this time, he thought of himself as married to both women and having children with both of them, and thought he was being kept in a madhouse as a punishment for bigamy. Clare loved women, and he had affairs outside of his marriage. His poems about love and marriage cover the range from the sentimental to the mystical and from the romantic to the satirical. Women and nature were the twin themes of much of his poetry.
Clare's first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1820 and a second book, The Village Minstrel was published in 1820 as well. In 1827, The Shepherd's Calendar was published but sold badly. In 1835, The Rural Muse was the last volume of Clare's work that was published in his lifetime. A vast amount of poetry and a considerable quantity of prose remained unpublished until the latter part of the 20th-century, among which were political and social satire, "The parish", an autobiography, essays on natural history, short stories, proverbs, and comments on religion, politics, and poetry.
Throughout Clare's working life, he was beset with difficulties. He fathered nine children, two of whom died. The profits from his books were small and often delayed and he only had access to the interest on the funds collected for him. He worked par-time as an agricultural labourer, but in the agricultural depression following the Napoleonic wars, jobs were scarce. Clare drank too much and did not enjoy being a farm labourer. His health was also bad, and he seems to have suffered from epilepsy and may have contracted venereal disease. He was treated with suspicion by his neighbours who thought he had risen above his station. In all of this, however, Clare worked at his writing, striving to maintain himself by his poetry and other compositions.
Clare's mental health had been in decline for some years, and he was afflicted by depression, sleeplessness, and nightmares, and began to lose his sense of identity. He was besieged by his creditors and hemmed in by domesticity. He had become distrustful of his publishers and felt unable to support himself and his family. He became a voluntary patient at an asylum from 1937-1941. He suffered from delusions, imagining himself to be, at different times, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Lord Nelson, and Ben Caunt, the prize-fighter. He began to write letters and poems in code in which all the vowels were omitted. One day he walked away from the asylum headed for home. He wrote about this experience in Clare by Himself - 'Journey out of Essex' Five months after his return to Northborough, Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum by an order of two doctors. For the most part, he was given freedom to roam around Northampton and he continued to write poems, many of which were transcribed and preserved. He lived at the asylum until his death in 1864.
The following are a few of the poems Clare wrote while he was in the asylum, and which remained unpublished until years after his death:
Love's Pains
This love, wrong understood,
Oft turned my joy to pain;
I tried to throw away the bud,
But the blossom would remain.
Untitled:
Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful, young and true.
Untitled:
Love lives with nature, not with lust
Go seek it in the flowers.
Borne upon an Angel's Breast
In crime and enmity they lie
Who sin and tell us love can die,
Who say to us in slander's breath
That love belongs to sin and death.
'they' are the priests of the doctrine of Original Sin, as well as the disillusioned romantic, the negative, and the despairing.
Secret Love
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light;
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in every place:
Whene'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by.
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee's song
She lay there all the summer long.
I hid my love in field and town
Till e-en the breeze would knock me down;
The bees seemed singing ballads o'er,
The fly's buzz turned a lion's roar;
And even silence found a tongue,
To haunt me all the summer long;
The riddle nature could not prove
Was nothing else but secret love.
Clare wrote that a poet's soul lay 'buried in the ink' with which he wrote. Its import is how 'secret' in essence love's very communication may be. Glib, overt, noisy--it is likelier to be tainted with apathy or other falsities. Love is the prime riddle we have been given to solve. And nature, in this poem offers no help at all.
In 1989, Clare was commemorated by a memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, at a ceremony in which the poet laureate, Ted Hughes, and others read Clare's poems. Clare is rightly acknowledged by many to be England's finest nature poet. He wrote extensively about his religious experience, expressed his criticism of the enclosure movement, the poor law, the relationship between the classes, the arrogance of local government, and the importance of the English language as spoken by common man. His early poems, except for those written in dialect, are often deeply influenced by the poetic vocabulary of Thomson and Cowper, although even in his early works, Clare created his own poetic language out of the resources of local speech. As he matured, the identity of his poetic language became increasingly certain. Clare' prose writings await fuller evaluation, but his place as a collector of folk-song, both words and music, and folk ceremonies has been an important part of recent Clare studies. He was a writer of imagination and diversity.
Having spent some time reading about Clare and thinking about this man's life, has been worthwhile for me. It has given me a greater appreciation of how the circumstances of life, which are often times not easy, can produce something positively creative - a mark of beauty on something that otherwise might be without colour.
posted by maggiesong at 9:15 AM
2 Comments:
Maggie:
I totally agree that it is not only the societal influence of the time that affects a poet, but also his/her own personal situations. From Clare's upbringing of being on a farm constantly and living in that atmosphere of working the land, it is not hard to understand why he would have selected the land as one of his muses. How can one write brilliantly about something that he/she has little knowledge or expereince about? Not to say that it can't be done, because it has been done by many! However, it is easier and more honest when one is writing about something that affects them personally.
The research that you did was astronomical! Certainly provided me with alot of information about Clare and has inspired me to desire to read his work in earnest.
I found the mention of his mental state both disheartening but also very familiar. It would seem that a number of brilliant poets and authors seem to lose touch with our reality. Either in terms of becoming insane or inflicting it upon themselves with drink. Not really sure why they subcomb to this inability to remain in contact with our reality. The only idea that I can think of it that they have used their imagination to such a high degree that they are no longer able to distinguish between our reality and the multiple ones that they have created. Regardless of the why, it is sad.
Out of the poems that you posted I really enjoyed the last one, "Secret Love". The constant use of the buzzing bee, was a great image and able to mean so many things or be turned into so many different things. Like the similie with the bee's buzz sounding like a lions roar...brilliant! Thank you for posting that poem! I'm going to eagerly copy it down and put it into my collection of favourites =)
I'm slow making a reply comment to your comments on this blog. Thank you both very much for what you wrote.
I found Clare's life to be an interesting study, and also one that showed a lot of struggle in this man's life. I think it helps me appreciate more, his poetry.
It is rather amazing to me how people can rise up in time of affliction and be able to express in words some of their deep thought.
Like Susan, I liked the last piece that I posted on here too, and the idea that love's essence does contain 'secret'. The secret seems to be something we know but struggle to be able to express adequately in words because it is so much part of us we cannot stand back and see it alone, as something we can study. It seems that love will not be contained or identified in rigid description....it is unique to each one.
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