In Pearl, the Pearl Poet, while revering God and his kingdom, creates a dream in which spiritual and religious ideas are expressed in earthly terms. In the introduction to his translation, Casey Finch writes, “the overall poetic in Pearl involves a eucharistic troping in which the spiritual and the earthly are joined by being displaced onto each other” (Finch 32). While in The Consolation of Philsophy Boethius sets a firm boundary between earthly reason and spiritual understanding, the Pearl Poet makes the spiritual realm more accessible, or at least more visible, to his dreamer. (There is, of course, an impassable boundary, represented by the rivers the dreamer cannot cross.) Even the language shows the spiritual being displaced onto the earthly: Christ is called the Lamb, God is, at times, called the “world’s wielder,” and the relationship between Christ and those he saves is described in terms of marriage. The dreamer says to Pearl “heaven seems to form a fief” (472); because heaven is made visible to the dreamer, he understands it in earthly terms. And the value of the spiritual is represented by gems of earthly value. However, because the dreamer can see heavenly figures in forms he can comprehend, he underestimates the difficulty in reaching heaven. He wants to get to his Pearl, so he simply tries to cross the river. He also does not fully comprehend the implications of Christ’s sacrifice; he doesn’t think it is fair, in human concepts of fairness, that Christ distributes forgiveness equally, not more to those who work harder. Therefore, while putting spiritual ideas into earthly form enables the dreamer to learn more about Christ (because previously, he “knew of neither wisdom nor the consolation of Christ” (53-4)), it also muddles his understanding about the attainability of salvation. And because the example of one accepted into Heaven comes in the form of a girl beautiful by human standards and adorned in Pearls, which represent not only purity, but are also a symbol of earthly wealth, the dreamer becomes greedy for “more than was granted me” (1190) and loses the opportunity to understand “more mystery” (1194).
Also, I liked the translation. The beginning actually reminded me a lot of the romantic poets. The nature imagery was pretty hardcore. The lines "no man-made finery of frill/ Was woven with such wonderment" (71-2) particularly struck me as romantic. But it verged away from that. And it seemed somewhat strange that New Jerusalem looked so man-made when the poet clearly started off by saying nature/God-made is cannot be rivaled by man.
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In Pearl, the Pearl Poet, while revering God and his kingdom, creates a dream in which spiritual and religious ideas are expressed in earthly terms. In the introduction to his translation, Casey Finch writes, “the overall poetic in Pearl involves a eucharistic troping in which the spiritual and the earthly are joined by being displaced onto each other” (Finch 32). While in The Consolation of Philsophy Boethius sets a firm boundary between earthly reason and spiritual understanding, the Pearl Poet makes the spiritual realm more accessible, or at least more visible, to his dreamer. (There is, of course, an impassable boundary, represented by the rivers the dreamer cannot cross.) Even the language shows the spiritual being displaced onto the earthly: Christ is called the Lamb, God is, at times, called the “world’s wielder,” and the relationship between Christ and those he saves is described in terms of marriage. The dreamer says to Pearl “heaven seems to form a fief” (472); because heaven is made visible to the dreamer, he understands it in earthly terms. And the value of the spiritual is represented by gems of earthly value.
However, because the dreamer can see heavenly figures in forms he can comprehend, he underestimates the difficulty in reaching heaven. He wants to get to his Pearl, so he simply tries to cross the river. He also does not fully comprehend the implications of Christ’s sacrifice; he doesn’t think it is fair, in human concepts of fairness, that Christ distributes forgiveness equally, not more to those who work harder. Therefore, while putting spiritual ideas into earthly form enables the dreamer to learn more about Christ (because previously, he “knew of neither wisdom nor the consolation of Christ” (53-4)), it also muddles his understanding about the attainability of salvation. And because the example of one accepted into Heaven comes in the form of a girl beautiful by human standards and adorned in Pearls, which represent not only purity, but are also a symbol of earthly wealth, the dreamer becomes greedy for “more than was granted me” (1190) and loses the opportunity to understand “more mystery” (1194).
Also, I liked the translation.
The beginning actually reminded me a lot of the romantic poets. The nature imagery was pretty hardcore. The lines "no man-made finery of frill/ Was woven with such wonderment" (71-2) particularly struck me as romantic. But it verged away from that. And it seemed somewhat strange that New Jerusalem looked so man-made when the poet clearly started off by saying nature/God-made is cannot be rivaled by man.
What is the reading for TODAY?
(4/16)
mds
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