Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Brontë family
There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou--THOU art Being and Breath,
And what THOU art may never be destroyed.
It is not a perfect work. I do not think it is by any means the finest
poem that Emily Brontë ever wrote. It has least of her matchless,
incommunicable quality. There is one verse, the fifth, that recalls
almost painfully the frigid poets of Deism of the eighteenth century.
But even that association cannot destroy or contaminate its superb
sincerity and dignity. If it recalls the poets of Deism, it recalls no
less one of the most ancient of all metaphysical poems, the poem of
Parmenides on Being:
[Greek: pos d' an epeit apoloito pelon, pos d' an ke genoito;
ei ge genoit, ouk est', oud ei pote mellei esesthai.
* * * * *
tos, genesis men apesbestai kai apiotos olethros.
oude diaireton estin, epei pan estin homoion
oude ti pae keneon....
....eon gar eonti pelazei.]
Parmenides had not, I imagine, "penetrated" to Haworth; yet the last
verse of Emily Brontë's poem might have come straight out of his [Greek:
ta pros halaetheiaen]. Truly, an astonishing poem to have come from a
girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties.
But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more
consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are
restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Brontë does not follow St.
Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight:
Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!
For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Brontë.
Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have
been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not
accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too
well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal
quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of
the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering
cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee."
It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who
comes
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars,
her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly
consummation.
There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism
either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Brontë.
The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only
in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte
discovered them.
* * * * *
Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte
had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished
poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had
happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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