Light and the Creative Imagination in Anna Barbauld s A Summer Evening s Meditation

Transcription

1 LIGHT AND THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION 1 Light and the Creative Imagination in Anna Barbauld s A Summer Evening s Meditation ADRIANO PASQUALI In A Summer Evening s Meditation, Anna Barbauld describes an imaginary journey across the universe in which the speaker aims to link the creative energy in human beings to the divine act of creation recorded in Genesis. The poem represents the imagination as a spark of fire within the human soul, the light of which the speaker associates with the stars in the night sky. As her journey through space and time unfolds, oppositions in imagery and structural inversions entrap the speaker in a cycle of light and darkness that betrays her ambition to discover the origin of her creative drive and to establish a kinship with her creator. By examining how the interrelation of light and darkness serves both to inspire and limit the speaker s imagination, this paper argues that Barbauld expresses doubt as to whether the human mind may be understood in strictly materialistic terms. The speaker s inability to perceive beyond the binary of light and darkness and her final resolution to await the promised revelation indicates skepticism towards the Enlightenment s confidence in empiricism and the mechanistic model of the mind theorized by philosopher John Locke. Locke s attempt to explain cognitive development using only sensory experience and mental reconfiguration. His Essay on Human Understanding is a representative example of the contemporary belief that science could unravel the mysteries of

2 2 ADRIANO PASQUALI WCCT 1:1 the natural world a worldview that Barbauld, alongside her fellow Romantics, reacts against in her poetry. That the telescopic journey of the speaker in A Summer Evening s Meditation draws to a close without producing any insight into the beginnings of the universe signifies the limitations of this analytical approach as viewed by Barbauld. The speaker s failure to decipher man s place in the universe and her resignation to ignorance undercuts the Lockean mind by suggesting that there are aspects of human nature that elude the physical senses and thus remain incomprehensible within such a limited model. Extending this argument to the eighteenth century s confidence in reason and empiricism, Barbauld s poem challenges the optimistic hope that scientific theory might serve as the foundation for revealing God s presence in nature. The difficulty that the speaker encounters in attempting to reconcile her existence with her creator is captured by the sublimity of the poem s central metaphor of a spark of fire, which emerges as the summer evening causes the speaker to reflect upon herself: At this still hour the self-collected soul Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there Of high descent, and more than mortal rank; An embryo God; a spark of fire divine (53-56). The image offered is of a light beginning to come into existence. Unlike fire, which in the eyes of an external observer ignites from sparks, a spark, by contrast, appears to come from nothing. The unknown origin of the spark suggests that the soul is somehow alien to the physical world from which the Lockean mind gathers its knowledge. By positioning the spark of fire divine (56) as fuelling the speaker s creative drive, Barbauld rejects the Enlightenment philosopher s interpretation of cognitive development as a sheet of blank paper that records and reconfigures the ideas it obtains through sensory experience (Locke 126). Instead Barbauld compares the imagination to an energy source that lies beyond human comprehension, which explains why fancy droops (97) as her speaker approaches the embryo systems and unkindled suns / [that] Sleep in the womb of chaos (96-97). The speaker equates her creative drive with the

3 LIGHT AND THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION 3 beginning of the universe, an event that astronomers mark by the first appearance of starlight and whose creator necessarily precedes this closed system of light. Just as her telescopic journey is defeated by the infinite darkness prior to the moment of Creation, the Lockean mind is constrained by its inability to account for things that it cannot discern. Through this comparison, Barbauld seems to suggest that despite the promise of Enlightenment science, there remains a limit as to how much of the human mind can be explained solely from within the confines of empirical analysis. Like the spark of fire hidden deep within the soul, the speaker describes the imagination as flourishing in darkness and uses this idea to develop a reciprocal relationship between herself and the stars. The poem opens with a sunset that enables contemplation to abandon her solid shade (20) and [m]ove forward (24). No longer obliterated from sight by the sun s rays, the speaker s curious and contemplative mind looks to the sky Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling fires, And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye, Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined O'er all this field of glories (25-30). This passage establishes a correlation between the stars and the creative imagination: the tiny lights in the sky mirror the spark that the speaker observes within her soul. The speaker finds that the perpetual motion of these trembling fires (27) excites her eyes into wandering restless (29) and unconfined (29), suggesting that the energy transferred from the starlight unbinds her mind and inspires her to imagine that her creative origins lie in the heavens above. Yet there is also a paradoxical tension caused by the words dazzled (29) and unsteady (28), which indicate an uncertainty of direction within this newfound freedom of thought. This irresolvable tension in the speaker s quest for a kind of knowledge that eludes the Enlightenment s strict focus on physical analysis becomes more pronounced as her astronomical journey progresses.

4 4 ADRIANO PASQUALI WCCT 1:1 The corresponding light between human beings and the stars proceeds to develop an optimism in the speaker as she wonders if her spark might someday ignite and join the lights in the heavens. On this thought of grandeur, she proclaims Ye citadels of light, and seats of Gods! Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul, Revolving periods past, may oft look back With recollected tenderness on all The various busy scenes she left below (61-65). The speaker uses her connection with the stars as justification to include herself among the divine and to privilege mankind in the natural hierarchy. However, tension emerges around her misconceptions about what she perceives in nature, for the description revolving periods past (63) contradicts her earlier observation that stars slide along their lucid spheres (40) and thus have periods of revolution not unlike the cycles of day and night that she associates with human life. This contradiction is one of many instances in which the poem subverts the speaker s claim of correspondence with the stars by exposing an interdependency of oppositions that causes her to reevaluate her hypotheses. As a result, the speaker finds herself trapped within a binary of light and darkness that motivates her desire for knowledge while simultaneously preventing her from ever attaining it, thereby destabilizing her confidence in observing the material world and keeping her from forming any definite conclusions about her relationship to her creator. A second misconception that complicates the parallel that the speaker draws between the imagination and the lights in the sky is her refusal to acknowledge the sun as a star. Because she associates her creative drive with the stars, which are only visible after the sun has set, it follows that the human mind is unripened (22) by sunlight. Yet the speaker s description of her internal spark seems to conflate human beings with the sun by revealing consistencies between the two: a spark of fire divine, Which must burn on for ages, when the sun,

5 LIGHT AND THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION 5 Fair transitory creature of a day! Has closed his golden eye, and wrapt in shades Forgets his wonted journey through the east (56-60). This claim that her spark will outlive the sun is in tension with her hope of someday joining the stars, since it glosses over the fact that the sun is not physically different from the stars that she perceives in the night sky. The speaker seeks to preserve a certain distance between the sun, the enemy of contemplation, and the stars that serve as her imagination s muse. And yet by calling the sun a transitory creature of a day (58), which could also be said of human beings in the lifespan of stars, the speaker seems to dismiss any differences between the sun, the stars, and her internal spark. This oversight anticipates the speaker s subsequent realization that the ten thousand trembling fires (27) are actually ten thousand suns (83), which foregrounds her mistaken assumption that the stars might in fact be her future home (62), and forces the speaker to locate her creative origins elsewhere. Having discovered that her supposed kinship with the stars is misconceived, the speaker desperately presses onward, only to have her thoughts finally stifled by the darkness preceding Creation. The theory that light travels at a finite speed serves as the backbone for this imaginary voyage, since the deeper that she plunges into space the further back in time she also moves. Upon reaching the deserts of creation (95) at the limit of the observable universe, the speaker s optimism turns to anxiety as she is confronted with the dread confines of eternal night (93), which reverses her relationship with light. Whereas nighttime had previously darkened the sky and allowed the stars to shine brightly, fuelling the speaker s imaginative launch into space, the infinite darkness at the beginning of the universe stonewalls her journey and reduces her to the passive, limited role of a telescope collecting light. She is unable to perceive anything beyond this point in time and space because there is no more light to gather information from. This forces the speaker to admit the interdependence of light and darkness, since she discovers that her mind s capacity to undertake this journey is dependent on starlight and that, without it, the darkness which earlier inspired her contemplation appears dreadful and confining. Thus the speaker finds herself trapped in a cycle of oppositions that

6 6 ADRIANO PASQUALI WCCT 1:1 the poem s form mimics by alternating between images of light and darkness all the way through to her journey s end. Unable to uncover the source of her soul s tiny spark on a microscopic level and stalled by impenetrable darkness on a macroscopic level, the speaker halts her imagination and calls out to her creator: But O thou mighty mind! whose powerful word / Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were, / Where shall I seek thy presence? (99-101). The Word that brought the universe into being and the spark of creation that she feels inside of her are one and the same: Let there be light! The speaker s failure to find the origin of the first light coincides with the failure of empirical analysis to locate the source of the divine spark inside of her. In this way, Barbauld portrays the infinite power of creation as forever lying beyond the reaches of science and material observation. With her imagination stalled at the end of the observable universe, the speaker confronts the possibility that she may never realize a kinship with her creator as long as her mind remains bound by the limitations of her physical human existence. Retracting her lofty aspirations to be seated amongst the gods, she exclaims, Have the broad eyelids of the morn beheld thee? / Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion / Support thy throne? O look with pity down / On erring, guilty man! ( ). This passage reveals yet another reversal that occurs in the speaker s mind: the same stars which she had previously used to privilege herself in nature now appear to uphold the seat of her Maker, shifting her into a position of subordination and reducing her importance in the greater scheme of the cosmos. Her journey closes with a reevaluation of mankind s relationship to God, with the speaker resigned to the fact that the divine spark inside of her is only a glimpse into the infinite power of her creator. Acknowledging her optimism as human arrogance, she appropriately adopts a pose of humility and drops her weary wing / And seeks again the known accustomed spot, / Drest up with sun, and shade ( ). By returning to her earthly place amidst light and darkness that same starry night sky that first inspired her to undertake her journey the speaker concedes that the human mind will remain confined within the boundaries of the finite universe until the day shall come when God unbinds the spark of fire divine (56) and reveals all to mankind.

7 LIGHT AND THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION 7 By the end of A Summer Evening s Meditation, the creative imagination is no less incomprehensible to the speaker than when it was first discovered as a spark of fire deep within her soul. Her attempt to reconcile the spark with the stars in the night sky is defeated by the finite range of light and therefore of her telescopic journey, which effectively diminishes any hope that material observation might bring her closer to her creator. The speaker s failure to discover the origin of her spark and her resulting pose of humility may be interpreted as a reaction against the Enlightenment s hope that science might identify and demonstrate God s presence in nature. The poem challenges Locke and his model of cognitive development as a representative example of the eighteenth century s confidence in material observation by portraying the imagination as a sublime and divine aspect of the human mind that evades empirical analysis. By offering the argument that there will eventually come a point when empiricism will be unable to advance science any further, as her speaker s journey illustrates, Barbauld advises her readers to drop wing (113) and have faith in the covenant with their creator, who is signified by the divine spark flickering deep inside each of them. WORKS CITED Barbauld, Anna Letitia. A Summer Evening s Meditation. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2A. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton, Print. Locke, John. Excerpt from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, vol. 3. Ed. Joseph Black et al. Peterborough ON: Broadview Press, Print.