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R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God: Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry of R. S. Thomas PDF

204 Pages·1986·15.326 MB·English
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R. S. THOMAS: POET OF THE HIDDEN GOD By the same author THE CONCEPT OF PRAYER FAITH AND PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY DEATH AND IMMORTALITY MORAL PRACTICES (with H. 0. Mounce) SENSE AND DELUSION (with llham Dilman) ATHRONYDDU AM GREFYDD RELIGION WITHOUT EXPLANATION DRAMAU GWENLYN PARRY THROUGH A DARKENING GLASS BELIEF, CHANGE AND FORMS OF LIFE R. S. THOMAS: POET OF THE HIDDEN GOD Meaning and Mediation in the Poetry of R. S. Thomas D. Z. Phillips M MACMILLAN © D. Z. Phillips 1986 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or In accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WlP 9HB. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1986 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-08127-1 ISBN 978-1-349-08125-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08125-7 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 To R. S. Thomas and Will Roberts Vere tu es Deus absconditus. (Isaiah 45: 15) God can only be present in creation under the form of absence. 'He will laugh at the trials of the innocent.' Silence of God. The noises here below imitate this silence. They mean nothing. It is when from the innermost depths of our being we need a sound which does mean something - when we cry out for an answer and it is not given us -it is then that we touch the silence of God. As a rule our imagination puts words into the sounds in the same way as we idly play at making out shapes in wreaths of smoke; but when we are too exhausted, when we no longer have the courage to play, then we must have real words. We cry out for them. The cry tears out our very entrails. All we get is silence. After having gone through that, some begin to talk to them selves like madmen. Whatever they may do afterwards, we must have nothing but pity for them. The others, and they arc not numerous, give their whole heart to silence. (Simone Weil) 'You believe then?' The poems arc witness. (R. S. Thomas) Contents Preface IX Acknowledgements XI Introduction xii Gestures and Challenges 2 Earth to Earth ll 3 Testing the Spirits 24 4 An Inadequate Language? 35 5 Waiting for God 52 6 God's Reflections 69 7 Presence and Absence 92 8 God's Dialectic 112 9 Betwixt and Between 132 I 0 A Sacrifice of Language? 153 Notes 172 R. S. Thomas: Selective Biography and Bibliography 180 Bibliography 182 Index 185 Vll Preface This essay is offered as one philosopher's response to the poetry of R. S. Thomas. I am deeply grateful to R. S. Thomas for his generous permission to quote from his poetry in this essay. In the letter he wrote me on this occasion the poet observes, 'The tendency of a philosopher is to extract the ideas for inspection' and, with good reason, he is wary of such responses. In discuss ing the poet's ideas, I hope to have done justice to them in their poetic contexts. As a philosopher, however, I was struck by the similarity between the hard-won celebration of the sense of a hidden God, a Deus absconditus, in the poet's work, and the attempts of-some of us in contemporary philosophy of religion to let the possibilities of religious belief come in at the right place. The initial challenge to the poet's desire to mediate a religious sense comes from his figure of a peasant who suffers a life of unrelenting toil. In exploring his own reactions to the challenge, R. S. Thomas says in his letter that he has been 'trying to operate on as many levels as possible, mostly failing, being self-contradictory, open to refutation on the charge of inconsist ency, but occasionally perhaps setting up overtones'. No doubt he imagines charges of inconsistency and contradiction being made by philosophers. But may it not be the case that the fault lies in the philosopher's desire to tidy things up; his refusal to recognise, with Wittgenstein, 'that what is ragged must be left ragged'? Religious belief can come in at the right place only if its essential precariousness is recognised; only if we see how a shift of aspect makes a world of difference. R. S. Thomas says in his letter, 'All is ambivalence, multivalence even. The same natural background, which, from one standpoint has facilitated my belief in God, has from another raised enormous problems.' There can be no serious poetry or philosophy concerning religion today where the possibility of such a shift of aspect is not recognised. Standing in the way of such recognition is a major obstacle ix Preface X which R. S. Thomas and I recognise. In his letter, writing of his many-sided response in the struggle to mediate a religious sense in verse, R. S. Thomas says, 'A principal feature, of which you are aware, is the revolt against a comfortable, conventional, simplistic view of God, mainly due to my non-academic back ground and the kind of parishes I have ministered in.' Whether the poet's background is non-academic is surely open to dispute, but, again, how ironic it is to find that, to a large extent, in contemporary philosophy of religion, the comfortable simplistic God turns out to be the creation of the 'academic' world. This does not mean that there is no genuine task for philosophy to perform, but it must be prepared to wait on the parishes as the poet has done. The resulting story, poetic or philosophical, will be a mixed one; but at least it will be real. What R. S. Thomas has given me is an opportunity to wait on work which has that quality of real faith and struggle. I have been captivated, for many years now, by the paintings of Will Roberts, who has designed the jacket for this book. In them, the figure of the farmer looms large. In the paintings, as in the poetry of R. S. Thomas, there are internal relations between the labours of the farmer and the Temptation and Passion of Christ. It was my good fortune to find Will Roberts glad to be associated with my essay. I should like to think that this par ticular convergence of interest in a poet, painter and philosopher is indicative of a wider convergence of interest in deep questions which keep recurring in these disciplines. For my part, I am honoured to dedicate this essay to two artists who, in different ways, wrestle with the mediation of religious sense in their respective spheres. In the preparation of the typescript of the essay I benefited, as usual, from the excellent services of Mrs Valerie Gabe, Secretary to the Department of Philosophy. I am also grateful for the excellent editorial services of Mrs Valery Rose, and for the readiness of Dr Donald Evans in helping me with the proofreading. Swansea D. Z. PHILLIPS

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