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

204 Pages·1986·15.326 MB·English

by  D. Z. Phillips (auth.)

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
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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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