`A Theology of Language'

The book of the year arrived in the mail on Saturday – Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Critical Writings. At 816 pages, 236 of them notes and indexes, the volume tips the scale at almost five pounds. Published by Oxford University Press, it brings together The Lords of Limit (1984), The Enemy’s Country (1991), Style and Faith (2003), and 13 previously uncollected essays and lectures. The editor, Kenneth Haynes, notes that the latter pieces were originally intended as discrete volumes titled Inventions of Value and Alienated Majesty. Those familiar with the earlier published volumes know Hill’s prose is learned, fierce, allusive and crabbed, not unlike much of his poetry. Hill takes language seriously and expects readers to follow his example. This is from a 1998 lecture, “Language, Suffering, and Silence”:

“Language under the kind of extreme pressure which the making of poetry requires, can, on occasion, push the maker beyond the barrier of his or her own limited intelligence. If I were to consider undertaking a theology of language, this would be one of a number of possible points of departure for such an exploration: the abrupt, unlooked-for semantic recognition understood as corresponding to an act of mercy or grace.”

In Hill, style and faith, as the title of his previous prose collection suggests, are mingled and interdependent, which makes his work deeply unpopular in some quarters. For most contemporary poets and their readers, he might as well be writing in a foreign language. Hill returns to the notion of a “theology of language,” and proposes how it might be established:

“This would comprise a critical examination of the grounds for claiming (a) that the shock of semantic recognition must be also a shock of ethical recognition; and that this is action of grace in one of its minor, but far from trivial, types; (b) that the art and literature of the late twentieth century require a memorializing, a memorizing, of the dead as much as, or even more than, expressions of `solidarity with the poor and the oppressed.’ Suffering is real, but `suffering’ is a sing-song, that is to say, cant. If a poet or painter were to inquire of such a theology how, in this case, `solidarity’ could still be shown, the answer which I should hope to hear would be `give alms.’”

Hill illustrates what he means by “giving alms” by quoting from an 1879 letter Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote his friend Robert Bridges, after he had already suggested prayer:

“I have another counsel open to no objection and yet I think it will be unexpected. I lay great stress on it. It is to give alms…this is, for instance, you might know of someone needing and deserving an alms to give which would require you in prudence to buy no books till next quarter day or to make some equivalent sacrifice of time.”

Hill reiterates:

“One sees how Hopkins brings the point home to the place where this particular recipient, a book-lover, will be galled: give till it hurts, and in your special case this may involve the sacrifice of your treasured monthly book-allowance.”

Hill, you’ll notice, is a serious man with a serious sense of humor. In the same essay, he points out that Yeats accepts a premise of Matthew Arnold’s “while he struts and preens around it like a D’Annunzio in Irish tweeds.” Serious book-lovers (that is, lovers of serious books) will be pleased to learn that he devotes essays to, among others, Hopkins, Isaac Rosenberg, Emerson (the phrase “alienated majesty” is his), Whitman and Eliot. A book to read and live with for life.