This extract from Warren Chernaikâs seminal study of Marvell focuses on ideas of Christian liberty. For Chernaik, to understand Marvell requires confronting the vexed question of human freedom within the context of a seventeenth-century Protestantism which emphasised the fallen nature of mankind as a result of Adamâs original sin. This sense of loss informs all aspects of Marvellâs consideration of human affairs, whether personal or public. But it does not bring about despair; rather a type of exhilaration: the possibility of educating ourselves so that we can confront and, to an extent, repair the consequences of our original transgression. Marvell is perceived as a passionate advocate of humanityâs liberty, refusing to accept â as many during his era did â that the fate of each individual is predestined within the divine scheme of things. This leads Chernaik to view Marvell as a type of proto-Romantic, believing in the power of the imagination, notably developed in poetry, as means of human empowerment. Crucially, Chernaikâs book sees Marvellâs prose and poetry as addressing the same concerns, linked to philosophical, theological and political issues which are closely integrated.
Though the context in each case is secular, the terms in Marvellâs evocations of the ideal government are openly or implicitly theological. In describing the British limited monarch as âthe onely Intelligent Ruler over a Rational Peopleâ (Growth of Popery, p. 4) and claiming of the British constitution that âthere is nothing that comes nearer in Government to the Divine Perfectionâ (p. 5), Marvell is suggesting that, though manâs state is fallen, it may be possible to ârepair the ruins of our first parentsâ.1 In the perspective of Marvellâs Christian irony, man remains a rational being even in his fallen state, for all the proofs he constantly gives of his irrationality. Like Milton, Marvell reminds us of the âDivine Perfectionâ man threw away at his first fall to warn us of the folly of throwing it away once again. The sad likelihood that man will make a desert out of a peaceful and flourishing landscape, where âthe whole Land at whatsoever season of the year does yield him a plentiful Harvestâ (Growth of Popery, p. 4), that like Eve and Satan he will succumb to the temptation of greater power and dissatisfaction with what he has, does not negate a poetâs responsibility to provide a âwarning voiceâ (Paradise Lost, IV, 1). In his satires and political writings, Marvell is a realist in recognizing the brutal cynicism with which men in power feed their insatiable wills and an idealist in urging alternative standards of conduct, in insisting that it is not yet too late.
Marvellâs characteristic ironic tone reflects an awareness that, however much we may regret it, the world is fallen and that we must therefore chasten our expectations. The morality implicit in much of Marvell is that of the education of Adam and Eve in the last books of Paradise Lost: though we may be tempted to âgive ear to proud and curious Spiritsâ (Rehearsal Transprosâd, II, 231), to fall prey either to âa vast opinion of [our] own sufficiencyâ (I, 15) or to despair, ultimately we must learn âto be content with such bodies, and to inhabit such an Earth as it has pleased God to allot usâ (II, 231). Underlying both the outward-looking, militant irony of Marvellâs satires and the impersonal, detached, freely proliferating ironic wit which is Marvellâs signature in his lyrics is a further form of irony turned inward, Christian wit. Manâs lot, with the body and soul uneasily coexisting as irreconcilable and inseparable enemies, is itself ironic. His âvain Head, and double Heartâ (âA Dialogue between the Soul and Bodyâ, l. 10) assure both that his unresolved paradoxes will cause him pain and that he will be incapable of finding any solution or relief. Man, as Marvell sees him, is doomed to feel the anguish of parallel lines, wracked by a yearning to âjoynâ, yet helplessly extending side by side into infinity (âThe Definition of Loveâ, l. 23).
Yet, as a final twist of irony, in manâs weakness and frustration lies his strength. It is his consciousness, his capacity for feeling guilt, pain, and loss, his unique though sometimes unwelcome gift of retrospective awareness, the weight of conscience which he cannot, even if he wished to do so, âatturn and indentureâ over to others (Short Historical Essay, p. 21), that enables man to find a path to freedom. It is by the âOpposition of the Starsâ (âThe Definition of Loveâ, l. 32) that love is defined: âMagnanimous Despairâ (l. 5) enables the lovers of âThe Definition of Loveâ to attain a perfection denied ordinary lovers, whose âTinselâ (l. 8) joys soon fade. The couple of âThe Definition of Loveâ have been initiated into experience, unlike the happy innocents âwith whom the Infant Love yet playesâ, described in stanza 1 of âThe Unfortunate Loverâ, who imagine themselves secure in a vegetative pastoral contentment, unaware of their inability âto make impression upon Timeâ (l. 8). Gifted with consciousness, the post-lapsarian lovers of âThe Definition of Loveâ are able to defy the Tyrannick powârâ (l. 16) of fate, which in separating them can only intensify their love. In âThe Unfortunate Loverâ, the pains and frustrations of love in the fallen realm are emphasized, rather than any possible transcendance, yet here too the lover gains a form of apotheosis in resisting the forces of envious fate, âcuffing the Thunderâ (l. 50) and dying in music. Here perhaps it is the confrontation of pain which gives man his identity.
Neither earthly tyrant nor outer necessity, Marvell argues, has the absolute power their partisans claim. A belief in an essential human freedom which no outward force can touch is central to Marvellâs thought, as to Miltonâs. In his verse and prose satires, as in such poems as An Horatian Ode, âThe Definition of Loveâ, âTo his Coy Mistressâ, and Upon Appleton House, Marvell consistently emphasizes the role of free choice in a providentially ordered universe. The conception of an iron necessity which rendered all human action futile and made all talk of moral choice superfluous, a necessity âthat was pre-eternal to all things, and exercised dominion not only over all humane things, but over Jupiter himself and the rest of the Deities and drove the great Iron nail thorough the Axel-tree of Natureâ, was antipathetic to him. The doctrine of a âUniversal Dictatorship of Necessity over God and Manâ, so attractive to predestinarians and apologists for earthly rulers (âI have some suspicionâ, he writes of Parker in The Rehearsal Transprosâd, âthat you would have men understand it of your self, and that you are that Necessityâ), in Marvellâs view robs the universe of any meaning and simply deifies power (II, p. 230). Marvell rejected Hobbist reason of state as he rejected Calvinist predestination: to him, man is a reasonable creature and therefore free. No form of outward necessity can negate manâs responsibility to choose between right and wrong, to determine, with the aid of his conscience, âHumane Reason guided by the Scriptureâ (II, p. 243), how to behave in his daily life. The soul is given an âimmortal Shieldâ, and must âlearnâ to bear its weight (âResolved Soulâ, ll. 1â2). Neither truth nor morality, as Milton says in Areopagitica, can flourish in a climate of prescription, âunexercisâd and unbreathâdâ (CPW, II, 515); through exercise, through exposure to experience, the resolved soul learns to discriminate.
Like Milton, Marvell consistently sought to reconcile a belief in a divine providence (in Miltonâs definition, âthat by which God the father views and preserves all created things and governs them with supreme wisdom and holiness, according to the conditions of his decreeâ) with a belief that man was a free agent responsible for his own acts.2 In their emphasis on manâs freedom, Marvell, Milton, and the Puritan libertarians directly or by implication challenged the orthodox Calvinist belief in predestination. Because their view of morality stressed the role of free choice and manâs endowment of rationality in this way, rejecting any form of determinism as they rejected earthly authority, the libertarians frequently came under attack by guardians of Calvinist doctrinal purity. The last of Marvellâs prose works, Remarks upon a late Disingenuous Discourse (1678), is a defence of the dissenting clergyman John Howe against attacks by more orthodox Calvinists for upholding the doctrine of free will against rigid predestination. Though the circumstances of the 1670s, when the Puritans had long been out of power and Calvinist theology was no longer dominant in England, differed greatly from the prevailing climate of opinion in the Commonwealth and Protectorate years, nevertheless Marvellâs position in Remarks is closely akin to that of such libertarian radicals of the 1640s as John Goodwin and to Milton in De Doctrina Christiana, as well as in Paradise Lost. Like Milton, Marvell is careful to distinguish between Godâs prescience or omniscience and any form of necessitarianism, arguing that Godâs foreknowledge of events in no way implies a predestination that limits manâs ability to choose freely among alternatives. In Remarks, Marvell repeatedly draws the distinction between âa thing so plainly revealâd in the Word of God as his Prescience is, and so agreeable to all rational apprehension, and a Notion so altogether unrevealed as this universal Predetermination yet appears, and so contrary if not to the whole scope and design of Divine Revelation, yet to all common understanding and genuine sense of right Reasonâ (pp. 76â7).3 To the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, Marvell and the libertarians opposed the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith: though they by no means make manâs redemption depend on man alone, unaided by Godâs grace, they reject the view of man as the purely passive object of Godâs decrees. Sinners, in Miltonâs and Marvellâs view, are responsible for their own sins: âas to Evilâ, Marvell writes, citing biblical proof-texts, âthat also of St. James, is sufficient conviction, cap. I. V. 13, 14. Let no man say, when he is tempted, I was tempted by God; God cannot be tempted with Evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn aside by his own lusts and enticed.â To deny man the freedom to use his God-given reason to choose an appropriate course of action, Marvell argues, is to make God the author of sin:
But how much doth It reflect upon God and that Religious sense which we ought to cherish of him ⊠when it makes God to have determined Innocent Adamâs Will to the choice of eating the fruit that was forbidden him? ⊠To Illustrate (as it pretends) so black a thing, it parallels Godâs moving him to that Act rather than to another, with a Writing-Masterâs directing his Scholars hand. If the Cause be not to be defended upon better terms than so, what Christian but would rather wish he had never known Writing-Master, than to subscribe such an Opinion; and that God should make an innocent Creature in this manner to do a forbidden Act, for which so dreadful a vengeance was to insue upon him and his posterity? (Remarks, pp. 4â5, 125â6)
Such works as The Rehearsal Transprosâd, The Growth of Popery, and Last Instructions, like Remarks, are grounded in a conception of freedom and experience which can be described as libertarian or non-Calvinist Puritan. A similar view is implicit in many of Marvellâs lyrics, which tend either to be aids to the embattled soul (Marvell at his most Miltonic, as in âA Dialogue, between The Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasureâ) or, more often, reflections on, or definitions of, the human condition. Education into experience is his recurrent theme, and experience, as with Vaughan and the romantic poets, is normally defined in terms of loss. The central irony of human existence is manâs fallen, alienated state in which he longs after a recovered wholeness âbeyond a Mortalâs shareâ (âThe Gardenâ, l. 61). The realm of freedom and unchanging truth in Marvellâs poems is often explicitly Christian: the unenlightened and puzzled mower and the weeping nymph, introduced to a reality of unrelieved pain so out of consonance with anything they had previously known, the imperious infant T. C. as yet protected from any such knowledge, the coy mistress who wishes to deny its existence, are distinguished from the converted shepherd in âClorinda and Damonâ or the resolved soul, both of whom recognize that Where the Creatorâs skill is prizâd, / The rest is all but Earth disguisâdâ (âResolved Soulâ, ll. 35â6). Yet if Marvellâs moral universe is Miltonic, there is a fundamental difference in attitude between the two poets. The acute pain of the nymph, her sense that the rules have changed, that a universe hitherto comprehensible has suddenly been deprived of harmony and meaning (âIt cannot dye so. Heavens King / Keeps register of every thingâ, âThe Nymph complainingâ, ll. 13â14) has its Miltonic parallels, but no answer is even implied to the nymphâs agonized questions. It is striking how often Marvellâs poems are left unresolved: âThe Nymph complaining for the death of her Faunâ is like a version of Paradise Lost en...