Reassessing Robert Lowell's Catholic Poetry

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Reassessing Robert Lowell's Catholic Poetry

• By Ross Labrie

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Thesis Statment

• Lowell's retrospective assessment invites one to
  take a second look at his Catholic poetry, which
  is largely contained in the two early volumes,
  The Land of Unlikeness (1944) and Lord Weary's
  Castle (1946), in order to examine the kind and
  strength of the poet's religious feeling there.
  What one finds is a vigorous and passionate faith
  that contrasts markedly with the subdued and
  often sardonic approach to religion manifested in
  the later verse.

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Speaking of Lowells Catholicism

• Mazzaro and O'Malleys overemphasis on the
  influence of Catholicism and they overlook the
  presence of Calvinist or Puritan elements.
• The truth is that Lowell was a hybrid
  theologically, as can readily be seen in the
  greatest of the early poems, "The Quaker
  Graveyard in Nantucket.
• unlike his Catholic friend and mentor, Allen
  Tate, Lowell was unvarying in perceiving the
  world as a dark and probably unredeemable place.
  Yet, Lowell was persuaded by Tate to adopt
  formalism in LWC.

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Early Poetic Technique

• In the early poems, rather like Tate, Lowell also
  attempted to interweave Catholic and classical
  allusions, thereby reflecting the most salient
  influences on his own intellectual formation.
  ("The Holy Innocents" is a good example.)

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Hybrid

• The mingling of Catholic and Puritan elements can
  be seen in a number of the poems of the 1940s,
  most notably in "The Quaker Graveyard in
  Nantucket.
• Turn Puritan ? Catholicism
• Stew his formalism, his preoccupation with
  American historyespecially Puritanism--his
  opposition to the second world war, and his
  Catholicism.

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket(1)

• The Epigraph human history is depicted as a
  scorning of the gift of life itself.
• Epic Dimension
• the creation ? WW2 ? 19th America
• (violent language ? Gods mercy)
• (Puritan ?? Catholicism)
• Irony Quakers cradle humankind

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket(2)

• Of the poem's seven sections only one is given a
  title, Section 6, "Our Lady of Walsingham."
• the language in this section is comparatively
  bland and the tone neutral
• from the unity of medieval secular and religious
  life to the fragmentation of contemporary secular
  culture

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket(3)

• The fact that Lowell changes the setting from
  America to England is also part of the surprise
  felt by the reader, who is thereby given another
  world, as well as another time, by which to judge
  American culture
• The mysticism of the passage is prepared for by
  the detail of the statue of Mary being too small
  for its canopy, a symbol of her humility and a
  sign that her abode is elsewhere.

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket(4)

• In the final section of "The Quaker Graveyard in
  Nantucket" Lowell synoptically recalls his
  principal motifs, the violence of the
  Puritan/world war axis and the silence of the
  otherworldly.
• dualistic and ambiguous outcome sixteen are dark
  and violent, the last, is piously hopeful

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The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket(5)

• In the final section, it might be argued that God
  as creator is involved in the unfolding violence
  of evolving life. In any case, whether as a
  result of creation or humanity's fall from grace,
  the world and God are as widely separated as they
  can be in these final lines, a sign of the
  ascendancy of Puritan rather than Catholic
  consciousness.

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Conclusion

• Lowell's Puritan division of the world into light
  and darkness, good and evil combined with the
  Catholic spirituality of the appeal to Mary in
  the Walsingham section, the poem can be seen as
  something of a theological hybrid, although
  Lowell's conscious allegiance is clearly to Roman
  Catholicism. At the end, the solace of Lowell's
  final line, so logically inconsistent with the
  despairing lines that precede it, is indicative
  of the trusting, rather simple faith he possessed
  at this time.