The body is a clog, and yet we are rarely out of the body: it is that thing
in which we seem "to live and move and have our being," contra our being in
Paul's Lord in Acts 17:28 -- the God who nonetheless "giveth to all life,
and breath, and all things" (vs. 25). Therefore the text I'd be
resurrecting, whether in relation to Spenser or Milton or contra Plato, is
probably this:
All flesh is not the same flesh ... So also is the resurrection of the dead.
It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in
dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness: it is raised in
power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is
a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The
first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the
earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy,
such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they
also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we
shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that
flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption
inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this
corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put
on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written,
Death is swallowed up in victory. -- 1 Cor. 39, 42-54
-- Jim N.
On Thu, 17 May 2007 10:33:03 -0400
David Wilson-Okamura <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Our reading today comes from Wisdom 9:15:
>
> "The corruptible body presses down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle
>weighs down the mind that muses on many things."
>
> May God add his blessing to this, his semi-canonical word.
>
> A few weeks ago I spent a couple of hours resurrecting old files from an
>obsolete word processor format. Somehow, I think scholarship would have
>survived the loss of my college essays on Conrad, but you never can tell!
>(While working, I had Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" playing in the
>background on infinite repeat. Some people think that's a song about Warren
>Beatty, but really she wrote it about me.) Among the papers that I
>condemned to remembrance was one on Milton's poem "On Time," in which I
>compared the young Milton's desire to leave the body behind (because it
>weighs down the spirit) with the monism of Paradise Lost (in which even
>angels eat and go to the bathroom). The last line of the essay was a
>quotation from one of Milton's early biographers, to the effect that Milton
>was "a spare man."
>
> I am not as spare as the college freshman who wrote that essay, but I was
>thinking about its substance last week at Kalamazoo, when I missed our
>first Spenser session because of a King Kong headache. Instead of hearing
>what, by all accounts, was an excellent paper on Spenser's Latinity, I lay
>in my dorm bed cursing my earthly tabernacle. As a religious person, I
>don't like to think of my body as "me." The real me is spirit, and when the
>body dies the spirit will rise up and go on living. But when the body is in
>pain, the spirit can't go on with its normal business. At least mine can't.
>To someone who believes in spirit, this is distressing, because it makes
>one question whether the spirit is really separable.
>
> Of course, as a Christian I am also obliged to believe that the body is
>good: was created good on the sixth day, and was further ennobled c. 4 BC
>by the Incarnation. I know all that, and in an equable mood I can believe
>it. But pain brings other verses -- counter-truths -- to recollection: "The
>spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (Mt. 26:41, Mk. 14:38). "Who will
>deliver me from this body of death" (Rom. 7:24)?
>
> Where do we think Spenser fits into all of this? In FQ, he seems to enjoin
>temperance and purity, but not asceticism. Sometimes, though, he hints that
>the body is a source of sin. In the Garden of Adonis, he speaks of our
>"sinfull mire" (3.6.32). In "Daphnaida" (which, we were told last Thursday,
>is not really such a terrible poem as we think it is), death is said to
>have "assoyld" the soul of Douglas Howard “from sinfull fleshlinesse”
>(259). "Flesh" is said to be "sinfull" again in HHL 97.
>
> Is this contradiction, or just complexity? Cf. that other Irish poet, who
>in one poem celebrates Love that "has pitched its mansion / In the place of
>excrement," and in another poem feels sorry for the old soul "fastened to a
>dying animal."
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
> English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
> East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
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