Litanic Verse II: Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia (Literary and Cultural Theory) 9783631663493, 9783653057492, 9783631694459, 9783631694466

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Britannia
“That order of apostles is widely honoured by the nations”: Pre-Chaucerian English Poetry
“Thy name I sall ay nevyne”: Fifteenth-Century England and Scotland
“O Lord, deliver us from trusting in those prayers”: Early Modern England
“Hail! the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!”: The Eighteenth Century and Romanticism in England
Our Lady of Controversy: Defamiliarization of Litanic Verse in England between 1837 and 1937
Germania et Scandinavia
From Merseburger Charms to Minnesang: The German Middle Ages
Pietist Litanies in German Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Poetry. The Case of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
“You are the harp on which the player breaks in pieces:” German and Austrian Poetry between 1797 and 1914
Litany Undercover: Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century
Litany in Retreat: Denmark from Romanticism to the 1930s
“Norway, Norway…” From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century
Litany in Swedish Literature and Culture: Preliminary Remarks
Transformations of Litany in Swedish Poetry: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Breakthrough (1100–1879)
“Why would you have to say a litany of your soul”: Swedish and Swedish-Language Poetry in the Period 1879–1940
Subject Index
Index of Names

Citation preview

Literar y and Cultural Theor y

Witold Sadowski / Magdalena Kowalska / Magdalena Maria Kubas (eds.)

Litanic Verse II Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia

The book contains comparative analyses of the development of litanic verse in European poetry, from medieval to modern times. Litanic verse is based on different syntactic devices, such as enumeration, parallelism, anaphora and epiphora. However, it is not to be seen merely as a convention of versification as the popularity of different variants of the verse in Europe reflects the religious, intellectual, social and political history of various European regions. The essays in the second volume focus on litanic verse in the Germanic languages. They discuss predominantly the literatures of Protestant countries (Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, Norway), but also Austrian poetry.

Witold Sadowski heads the Section for the Poetics of Verse at the University of Warsaw. He specialises in the theory of verse and the history of literary genres. Magdalena Kowalska obtained her Ph.D. from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun´. She specialises in the history of the romantic period and Polish-French literary relations. Magdalena Maria Kubas obtained her Ph.D. from the University for Foreigners of Siena. She specialises in the twentieth-century Italian literature and the relations between poetry and music.

Litanic Verse II

LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY General Editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga

VOLUME 46

LITERARY AND CULTURAL Witold Sadowski / THEORY

Magdalena Kowalska / General Editor: Wojciech H. Kalaga Magdalena Maria Kubas (eds.)  

 

 

Litanic Verse II VOLUME 46 Britannia, Germania et Scandinavia        

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data isavailable in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

This publication is financially supported by the grant from The National Science Centre of Poland (decision No. DEC-2012/07/E/HS2/00665).

Reviewed by: Małgorzata Grzegorzewska and Władysław Witalisz Edited by: Ann Cardwell (Pedagogical University of Cracow) and David Schauffler (University of Silesia) Assistant editor: Katarzyna Jaworska ISSN 1434-0313 ISBN 978-3-631-66349-3 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-05749-2 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-69445-9 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-69446-6 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05749-2 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2016 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Contents Britannia Anna Czarnowus “That order of apostles is widely honoured by the nations”: Pre-Chaucerian English Poetry...................................................................................9 Dominika Ruszkiewicz “Thy name I sall ay nevyne”: Fifteenth-Century England and Scotland..............31 Dominika Ruszkiewicz “O Lord, deliver us from trusting in those prayers”: Early Modern England...............................................................................................51 Anna Czarnowus “Hail! the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!”: The Eighteenth Century and Romanticism in England............................................................................................87 Katarzyna Dudek Our Lady of Controversy: Defamiliarization of Litanic Verse in England between 1837 and 1937....................................................................... 107 Germania et Scandinavia Michał Fijałkowski From Merseburger Charms to Minnesang: The German Middle Ages....................................................................................... 135 Ewa Wantuch Pietist Litanies in German Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Poetry. The Case of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock............................................................. 147 Ewa Wantuch “You are the harp on which the player breaks in pieces”: German and Austrian Poetry between 1797 and 1914........................................ 161

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Contents

Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aleksandra Wilkus, and Aldona Zańko Litany Undercover: Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century......................................................... 181 Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aldona Zańko Litany in Retreat: Denmark from Romanticism to the 1930s............................ 197 Aleksandra Wilkus “Norway, Norway…” From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century........................................................................................ 213 Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska Litany in Swedish Literature and Culture: Preliminary Remarks...................... 229 Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska Transformations of Litany in Swedish Poetry: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Breakthrough (1100–1879)................... 231 Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska “Why would you have to say a litany of your soul”: Swedish and Swedish-Language Poetry in the Period 1879–1940..................... 243 Subject Index............................................................................................................. 257 Index of Names......................................................................................................... 261

Britannia

Anna Czarnowus University of Silesia

“That order of apostles is widely honoured by the nations”: Pre-Chaucerian English Poetry The Tradition of Litany in England1 In Priestly Women, Virginal Men: Litanies and Their Discontents Felice Lifschitz emphasizes the idea that “liturgists define ‘litanies’ rather broadly, both as repetitive supplications for divine aid and as the processions in which those supplications may be enacted.”2 In this paper the first part of the definition will be adopted, as it is particularly relevant in the context of Old English literature, in which litanic verse is more clearly observed than litany per se. Indeed, Old English literature includes various examples of litanic verse, which have in all probability been influenced by two traditions: the ancient Assyrian tradition of lists of monarchs, which was litanic, and the tradition of Christian litanies, first in Greek and then in Latin. Furthermore, it appears that the shape of Old English litanic verse was reinforced by the textual tradition of Old Icelandic thula, a mnemonic list, by the oral-formulaic diction that influenced the shape of Old English poetry even though it was not necessarily its only formative element, and, last but not least, by litanies themselves, which are called “Anglo-Saxon” rather than “Old English” by Michael Lapidge since they were circulated in Latin not Old English, as the extant manuscripts prove.3 In fact, Old English litanic verse is viewed as being more interesting than litanies themselves, which are according to Joseph P. McGowan “fairly simple texts […] interesting for the saints mentioned and their possible insular origins for the Western church.”4 Indeed, Old English and early Middle 1 I would like to express my gratitude to Greg Waite from the University of Otago (Dunedin) and to Andrzej Łęcki from the Pedagogical University (Cracow) for their invaluable help at various stages of development of this article. 2 Felice Lifschitz, “Priestly Women, Virginal Men: Litanies and Their Discontents,” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, eds. Lisa M. Bitel and Felice Lifschitz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 87. 3 Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints (London: Boydell and Brewer, 1991). 4 Joseph P. McGowan, “Anglo-Latin Prose,” in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, eds. Philip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 296–324.

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English litanic verse does not simply list names and Middle English literature before the time of Chaucer is more similar to the French model in terms of the topics and forms of its litanic verse. The tradition of litany in Western Europe expanded into other countries from the British Isles, as is seen in the research conducted by Lapidge. In Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints he demonstrated that Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, brought the litany of the saints with him to England from the East in 668 C.E. and that this is when litany started as a liturgical form in the Western church.5 Lapidge identified “a tenth-century copy of what is arguably the earliest surviving litany of the saints known to the Western Church, and from which all later litanies derive their origin,”6 — it is found in the so-called “Athelstan Psalter”7. The original booklet of prayers that Theodore owned and that contained Greek litanies is referred to by Mechthild Gretsch as “the germ from which the litany of the saints of the western church developed.”8

Old English Versification and Secondary Orality of Litanic Verse Old English literature was able to be influenced by litany due to the inherent qualities of versification that stemmed from its association with Old Germanic and Old Norse poetry. Anglo-Saxon verse was not accentual-syllabic, as the length of the lines differed, but it represented accentual verse. Indeed, Maria Dłuska believes that the best example of accentual verse is provided by litanies.9 Having said that, Anglo-Saxon verse was an example of the so-called “beat verse,” thus accentual verse, from its initiation, as Margaret Schlauch points out, since the number of syllables was never regular.10 This Old Germanic characteristic in Old English

5 Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, 24. 6 Ibid., 71. 7 Ibid., 13 (London, British Library, MS Cotton Galba AXVIII). 8 Mechthild Gretsch, Aelfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26. 9 Maria Dłuska, Odmiany i dzieje wiersza polskiego [Types and History of Polish Verse]. Prace wybrane, vol. 1 (Kraków: Universitas, 2001), 369. 10 Margaret Schlauch, Zarys wersyfikacji angielskiej [An Outline of English Versification] (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Imienia Ossolińskich, 1958), 7.

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verse may have permitted the adoption of litany as a literary form. Furthermore, Old English literature may even demonstrate that the literary phenomena that led to the creation of litanic verse were older than the awareness of the existence of litany itself, at least in the Anglo-Saxon context. Equally important was the influence of oral-formulaic diction, although when discussing versification, we cannot limit ourselves to the view that this literature was only oral.11 Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz writes about medieval English literature as a combination of both oral and literary elements,12 thus developing the argument of Francis P. Jr. Magoun, who elaborated upon the oral-formulaic nature of this poetry.13 Błaszkiewicz indicates the more literary character of medieval Latin poetry and its “secondary orality,” while Old English poetry is described as being mainly, but not exclusively, oral.14 However, it is in litanic verse that this “secondary orality” is visible: it was inspired by texts that were written, because this is how litany arrived in England, but which acquired their oral character once again when litanic verse entered Old English literature, as it was largely oral. Hence, the oral-formulaic influence should neither be over- nor underestimated in the case of Old English litanic verse.

Catalogue Poems In Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century, Witold Sadowski writes that the catalogue poem developed from litany.15 Nevertheless, in English literature not only does litanic verse symbolically end the tradition of litany as it does in other literatures, but it also commences the literary tradition in Old English. After all, one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems is Widsith, which goes back at least to the seventh, if not the sixth, century despite being preserved in the tenth-century Codex Exoniensis. It is a catalogue poem with no obvious allusions to Christianity, and appears to be 11 Donka Minkova, Alliteration and Sound Change in Early English (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 33. 12 Bartłomiej Błaszkiewicz, Oral-Formulaic Diction in the Middle English Verse Romance (Warszawa: Warsaw University Press, 2009), 13. 13 Francis P. Jr Magoun, “Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry,” Speculum 28 (1953): 446–467. 14 Błaszkiewicz, Oral-Formulaic Diction, 37. 15 Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 350.

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grounded in the tradition of listing monarchs that began within the Babylonian culture.16 It is the account of a traveller who calls himself Widsith and includes lists of various pagan rulers and conquerors. The stage has not yet been reached at which the two traditions, that is, the “mythological heroic themes” and “the scriptural, devout, and monastic themes,” as Minkova notes,17 converge with each other, so the scop limits himself to the following enumeration: Ætla weold Hunum, Becca Baningum, Casere weold Creacum Hagena Holmrygum Witta weold Swæfum, Meaca Myrgingum, þeodoric weold Froncum, Breoca Brondingum, Oswine weold Eowum Fin Folcwalding Sigehere longest Hnæf Hocingum,

Eormanric Gotum, Burgendum Gifica; ond Celic Finnum, ond Heoden Glommum; Wada Hælsingum, Mearchealf Hundingum; þyle Rondingum, Billing Wernum; ond Ytum Gefwulf, Fresna cynne. Sædenum weold, Helm Wulfingum […].18

[Attila ruled the Huns, Eormanric the Goths, / Becca the Banings, Gifica the Burgundians; / Caesar ruled the Greeks, Caelic the Finns, / Hegena the Holnrygir, Heoden the Glomman; / Witta ruled the Swabians, Wada the Hælings, / Maeca the Myrgings, Mearchealf the Hundings; / Theodoric ruled the Franks, Thyle the Rondings, / Breca the Brondings, Billing the Wernas; / Oswine ruled the Eowas, Gefwulf the Jutes, / Finn, son of Folcwalda, the Frisian folk. / Sighere longest governed the Sea Danes / Hnæf ruled the Hocings, Helm the Wulfings […].19]

The list of names, even though the verb “weold” (ruled) is not repeated in consecutive phrases, demonstrates that what stands behind this lengthy passage is not necessarily oral-formulaic verse. It could just as well be the above-mentioned tradition of lists of rulers that influenced the idea behind the poem. Michael Swanton calls both Widsith and Deor “cleverly constructed catalogues, as it were, of the scop’s materials of trade.”20 Deor from The Exeter Book is not such an elaborate 16 William Hallo, ed., Contexts of Scripture, vol. 1, The Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (Leiden, New York, and Köln: Brill, 1997), 68–70. 17 Minkova, Alliteration and Sound Change, 4. 18 Bernard J. Muir, ed., The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, vol. I, Texts (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), 239. 19 An Anthology of Old English Poetry, trans. Charles W. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 59. 20 Michael Swanton, English Literature before Chaucer (London: Longman, 1987), 32.

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catalogue of names, since it is five short narratives based on the names that begin each section: Weland, Beadohild, Maethhild, Theodoric, and Eormanric.21 The sixth narrative reveals the identity of the poet himself: Deor. It could be said that the poem is also litanic in the sense of being similar to Assyrian lists of rulers, but only in this sense. As for Widsith, yet another tradition is identified, this time more ancient than the litanic tradition, as the source of catalogue poems: There follows a long list of such early heroic rulers. At first sight this seems a jumble of apparently heterogeneous material, a geographical sweep from Burgundian in the west to the Huns in the east, embracing in one bewildering moment the whole ethnic melting-pot of Migration Age Europe […]. We can recognize a coherent syntactic and thematic structure, a generically balanced sequence of two-line formulae of the kind: ‘X ruled Y, PQ, ST, and VV,’ accelerated and intensified by omission of the verb after the first hemistich. Repeated over and over again, with variation, this formula patently represents an ancient form of mnemonic name-list, or thula […]. Any attempt to unravel a precise geographical or historical programme is unprofitable and irrelevant, the list serves merely to whet the appetite by its very variety, displaying the rich wares of the minstrel’s repertoire — a mnemonic interspersed with brief but tantalizing narrative expansions, a n y  o f  w h i c h  m i g h t  b e  e n l a r g e d  u p o n  t h e  r e q u e s t  o f  a  p a t r o n [emphasis mine — A.C.]. The bulk of references are to heroes who flourished between the opening of the fourth century and the third quarter of the sixth […].22

The tendency to catalogue that was obvious in mnemonic lists called thula may have influenced both the formation of litanies and that of Old English catalogue poems. Whatever its source, the ability to extend the list of names almost endlessly is shared both by Widsith and the Anglo-Saxon litanies.23 Lapidge comments on the latter as follows: “since they were chanted during processions […], they might need to be extended indefinitely, and the extension was accomplished by inserting more names;”24 in the case of Widsith, the relatively brief list was developed by the 21 Muir, ed., The Exeter Anthology, 281–283. 22 Swanton, English Literature before Chaucer, 33. 23 Another Old English poem that includes cataloguing without the ektenial, i.e. liturgical, function of litanic verse is The Battle of Brunaburh from the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which predators feasting on a battlefield are enumerated; for ektenial function see Sadowski, Litania i poezja, 27, while The Battle of Brunaburh can be found in, for instance, Elaine Treharne, ed., Old and Middle English. An Anthology (Oxford and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2000), 32. 24 Michael Lapidge, “The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, eds. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 243–263.

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inclusion of longer references to Ælfwine, Eormanric, Ealhild, and Eadwine. The ancient lists of monarchs also frequently provided an exercise in writing, but in these examples the function of the text is more than writing practice.25

Old English Litanic Verse: Fates of the Apostles and Charms The Vercelli Book,26 from the tenth century, includes twenty-three prose texts whose content is either homiletic or hagiographic. An example of the latter is The Fates of the Apostles, an early eighth-century liturgical text that lists the twelve apostles and their feast days. Treharne indicates that “church litanies […] also contain the apostles in their lists […] [and litanies] may have influenced the composition and the intended use of the poem” in tandem with the genre of martyrology.27 The entire poem, with its repetition of Hwæt, which appears to be an idiosyncratically Old English litanic marker in this instance despite occurring elsewhere without such a function, consists of a list of apostles: Peter and Paul, Andrew, John, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Simon, and Matthew. All are given a storyline, which makes the poem a martyrology, quite apart from its similarity to litanies. It finishes with a laudation, including epithets: Nu a his lof standeð, mycel ond mære, ond his miht seomaþ, ece ond edgiong, ofer ealle gesceaft.28 [Now and forever his glory remains, / great and splendid, and his strength will continue, / eternal and invigorating, throughout all creation.]

The phrase “Is se apostolhad / wide geweorðod ofer werþeoda” (15–16, “That order of apostles is widely honoured by the nations”)29 demonstrates that the author composed the poem with an awareness of the litanic tradition that already existed both in Britain and on mainland Europe. The poem closely resembles the lists of saints that can be found in the Latin litanies created in Anglo-Saxon times, as exemplified by the list from Cambridge which addresses: “Iohanis, Petre, Paule, 25 Lists of monarchs in Assyrian culture coexisted with lists of cities, which gave rise to the genre of lament over a fallen city; it appears that the genre permeated into Old English literature and is found, for example, in The Ruin, which is undoubtedly inspired by laments over cities; other Old English lists of rulers can be found in, for instance, Beowulf. 26 Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII. 27 Treharne, ed., Old and Middle English, 90. 28 Ibid., 96–97. 29 Ibid., 92–93.

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Andrea, Iohanes, Iacobe, Thoma, Phillippe, Bartholomee, Mathee, Symon, Iudda, Luca, Barnaba, Marcialis” as “omnes sancti apostolic et evangeliste.”30 However, if litanies themselves are interpreted as “acts of scholarly compilation,”31 The Fates of the Apostles can be considered to be more than that, as it represents litanic verse rather than a litany per se. Furthermore, the text appears to be an illustration of a vision that later materialized in the visual arts. Thus, gothic cathedrals, such as that at Reims, have vault mosaics with God in the centre, surrounded by the twelve apostles, which was a visual representation of the description in The Fates of the Apostles, namely a hierarchal enumeration of saints with God as the beginning and the end of everything.32 The text develops in a manner similar to the construction of a rose window: it describes the apostles before hailing God as the centre of the religious image. The Fates of the Apostles demonstrates what Sadowski observed, namely the openness of medieval litanic verse to narrative, which was a quality later discontinued when litanic verse started to appear in more pure forms.33 A corpus of texts that can clearly be categorized as litanic verse which was inspired by Christian litanies includes charms, and these are found in Cotton Caligula, Harley MS 585, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and Royal MS 4 a. XIV, British Museum.34 They represent a genre, which used to be considered pagan, albeit with Christian elements inserted within it, but today it is thought that the genre was largely “adapted for use in a Christian era.”35 The text — which without any doubt can be interpreted as being inspired by the Anglo-Saxon litanies of the saints — is Æcerbot, known in translation as Charm for Unfruitful Land. It is included in MS Cotton Caligula AVII, in which the goddess “Erce” is invoked: Erce, Erce, Erce, geunne þe se alwalda, æcera wexendra

eorþan modor, ece drihten, and wridendra,

30 Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, 93–97 (Cambridge University Library, Ff. 1.23). 31 Ibid., 74. 32 For the question of centre and its representation in vault mosaics in Notre-Dame cathedral, Reims see Witold Sadowski, “Generic Worldview: The Case of the Chronotope of the Litany” (forthcoming). 33 Sadowski, Litania i poezja, 80. 34 Elliot van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1942), 116–128. 35 Edward Pettit, ed., Lacnunga. Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library Ms Harley 585, vol. 1, Introduction, Text, Translation, and Appendices (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), i.

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Anna Czarnowus eacniendra sceafta hehra, and þæra bradan and þæra hwitan and ealra Geunne him and his halige, þæt hys yrþ si gefriþod and heo si geborgen þara lyblaca

and elniendra, scirra wæstma, berewæstma, hwætewæstma, eorþan wæstma. ece drihten þe on heofonum synt, wið ealra feonda gehwæne, wið ealra bealwa gehwylc, geond land sawen.36

[Erce, Erce, Erce, Mother of earth, / May the All-Wielder, Lord Eternal, / Give flourishing acres of sprouting shoots, / Acres bountiful bringing to harvest / Tall stalks and shining growth, / Acres of broad harvest of barley, / Acres of white harvest of wheat, / And all the harvests of earth. / May Eternal God and His saints in heaven / Defend earth’s growth from every foe / That it may be shielded from every evil, / And every sorcery sowed through the land.37]

Elements of supplication are obvious in this text, but it was Richard North in Heathen Gods in Old English Literature who identified Erce. North considers the charm to be an early eleventh-century text,38 and it includes the phrases “eorþan modor, geunn” and “scirra wæstma,” which suggest a common ancestry with Terra Mater in Tacitus’s Germania, the Norse goddess Iðunnin in Haustlông and Lokasenna and Freyr’s mediator Skírnir in Skírnismál.39 Terra Mater was “the earth-goddess whom the continental Angli appear to have worshipped in the first century AD,” but for North the verb gunnan has its equivalents in the Norse sagas about gods, which include the subject of how to make difficult land fertile.40Additionally, “scirra wœstma” and “on godes fœme” allude to Skírnismál, and the three uses of geunnan in the invocation to the Lord is a development of the pagan agrarian theme of hieros gamos.41 North even views this as “one of the most vital elements of the natural religions on which Anglo-Saxon paganism was based,”42 but, importantly for this discussion, he also notes that certain ecclesiastical sources must 36 Louis J. Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends (Concord, MA: Paul & Co Pub Consortium), 132. 37 An Anthology of Old English Poetry, trans. Kennedy, 71. 38 Richard North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 250. 39 Ibid., 250. 40 Ibid., 251. 41 Ibid., 255. 42 Ibid.

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have influenced Æcerbot.43 Since the charm reads like a litany of the saints, with the invocation of a pagan goddess followed by that of the Christian God and his saints, the litanic tradition, together with the idea of supplication, can clearly be identified. However, the impression of a Christian provenance in the text is enhanced by the instructions preceding the invocation of Erce and the other deities: four sods of earth from the four corners of the land are to be collected, mixed with edible ingredients and holy water, before being “sanctified” with a verse from Genesis, an invocation of the Trinity, and the Pater Noster. Then a priest in the church is to sing four masses over them. Interestingly, crosses need to be inscribed on their crossbar with the names of the four evangelists and must then be buried in pits. Following this the priest should bow down to the earth nine times and invoke “the truly holy Mary.” What is the most fascinating with respect to this discussion is his recital of the litany, which is followed by other prayers.44 It is important not to overestimate the pagan Germanic influence on the composition, since the text was written mainly in the tenth- and eleventh-century. Edward Pettit claims that the text “might be intended for the use of a wealthy tenth- or eleventh-century secular […] lord or, more likely, his physician.”45 Thus, the pagan genre was realized in a largely Christian culture. Rodrigues emphasizes the “inauthenticity” of this charm, as it is grounded in Christian rather than pagan convictions and: it “invoke[s] the help of either a deified being or of God and His saints, whereas authentic charms evince the personal power of the protagonist and generally assume the form of commands rather than of supplications.”46 The syncretism of Anglo-Saxon culture is visible in the litanic form that is found in a pagan textual form. The charm Wið foerstice, and indeed the entire collection of remedies or (medical) charms, Lacnunga (from MS Harley 585) to which Wið foerstice belongs, provides a similar perspective on the syncretism of the culture to which they belong. The most famous charm included in the collection, Charm for a Sudden Stitch, appears to be similar to the litanic content of Æcerbot in that it ends with the supplication “helpe ðin drihten” (“So help thee Lord”),47 but it also includes parallelism in the supplication “Ut, lytel spere” (“Out, little spear”), which is repeated three times

43 Ibid., 251. 44 Rodrigues describes the ritual in more detail; Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends, 31–32. 45 Pettit, ed., Lacnunga, xxix. 46 Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends, 30. 47 Pettit, ed., Lacnunga, 88–89.

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with no alteration and finally as “ut, spere” (“Out spear”).48 The simultaneous anaphora and apostrophe suggest that litanies may have inspired the poetic part of this metrical charm.49 This demonstrates that the primary objective of litanies, namely supplication (as Lapidge reminds us, the Greek word itself means “supplication” or “petition”),50 was also present in what were originally pagan forms such as charms, and when these include references to Christian holy persons, they demonstrate their authors’ awareness of the existence of litanic forms. Even though it has been suggested that a narrative relating an attack by witches and the apostrophes to the spear may be two charms instead of one, Elliott van Kirk Dobbie views them as a single poem.51 The charm is not “predominantly Christian in spirit,” like Æcerbot, but it may have been subject to similar litanic inspiration.52 However, it is not entirely Christian due to the conviction that help from deities is not necessary. It is enough to say the text and perform the gestures indicated in order for the charm to work, and thus the ultimate agency is attributed to the speaker. Other charms from Lacnunga demonstrate even more clearly both the syncretism and the openly litanic provenance of many of these texts. In text XXIX a salve is discussed firstly as “se halga drænc wið ælfsidene 7 wið eallum foendes costungum” (“the holy drink for (?)elfish magic and for all the temptations of the Devil”) before being viewed as something that should be taken to church, to the accompaniment of “gebedsealmas” (precatory psalms) such as “letanias.”53 Another allusion to sung litanies being necessary to increase the effectiveness of the charms is found in text XXXI, where “þ(æt) gebed, Matheus, Marcus, Lucas, Iohannes” (the prayer “Matthew, Mark Luke, John”) is to be sung together with other prayers.54 This shows how much litanies were a part of rituals that at first sight seemed pagan. Text LXIII contains a supplicatory fragment in Latin that contains the litanic:

48 Ibid., 86–87; L.M.C. Weston stressed the “refrain-like” quality of the anaphora, but this quality may simply be a result of the charm’s litanic nature; L.M.C. Weston, “The Language of Magic in Two Old English Metrical Charms,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86/2 (1985): 179. 49 Apart from the litanic part, the charm includes what M.L. Cameron calls “a quite rational salve for treating muscular cramps and similar pains” (M.L. Cameron, “AngloSaxon Medicine and Magic,” Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988): 211). 50 Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, 4. 51 Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, cxxxv. 52 Ibid., cxxxii. 53 Pettit, ed., Lacnunga, 16–17. 54 Ibid., 20–21.

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“D(omi)ne mi, rigo[sic! — A.C.] te, Pater te deprecor, Filii obsecro te, D(omi)ne et Sp(iritu)s S(an)c(tu)s, ex totis uirib(us), s(an)c(t)a trinitas, ut delas omnia opera diaboli ab isto homine” (My Lord, I ask you, Father I entreat you, Son I implore you, Lord and Holy Spirit, that by all your powers, Holy Trinity, you obliterate all the works of the Devil from this man).55 The speaker is also instructed that he or she should say: “inuoco s(an)c(t)am trinitatem in adminilu(m) meum” (“I invoke the Holy Trinity to my aid”) and then “Libera D(omi)ne animam famuli tui N. et redde sanitatem corpori famuli tui N. p(er) nomen s(an)c(tu)m tuum” (“Free, o Lord, the soul of your servant, Name, and restore health to the body of your servant, Name, by your holy name”).56 Text LXV also involves supplications, which coexist in two linguistic versions, Old English and Latin: “gefultmige seo þrinis seo annis / Suffragare trinitas unitas” (“Help (me), O Trinity, O Unity”) and “ðære annisse gemildsa me seoþinnis / unitatis miserere trinitas” (“Have pity, O Trinity of Unity”).57 Apart from the apostrophe, the particle “o” contributes to the impression of the litanic provenance of this excerpt. Similar observations may be made about the supplicatory text CL: Contra oculor(um) dolor(um): D(omi)n(e), s(an)c(te) Pater, om(ni)p(oten)s aeterne D(eu)s, sana oculos hominis istius N. sicut sanasti oculos filii Tobi et multorum cecorum q(uo)s […]; D(omi)ne, tu es oculos caecor(um), manus aridorum, pes claudor(um), sanitas egrorum, resurrectio mortuorum, felicitas martyr(um)/ et omnium s(an)c(t)orum; oro, D(omi)ne, uteregas et inlumnas oculos famuli tui N.; in quacumque ualitudine constitum medelis celestibus sanare digneris, tribuere famulo tuo N., ut armis iustitiae munitus diabolo resistat et regnum consequatur aeternum […].58 [Lord, holy Father, omnipotent (and) eternal God, heal the eyes of this man, Name, just as you healed the eyes of the son of Tobit and many other blinded men who […]; Lord, you are the eye of the blind, the hand of the poor, the foot of the lame, the health of the sick, the resurrection of the dead, the joy of the martyrs and of the saints; I pray, Lord, that you raise up and illumine the eyes of your servant Name; you may deign to heal him with celestial remedies in whatever state of health he may be, to grant it to your servant, Name, that, fortified with the arms of justice, he may resist the devil and reach the eternal kingdom […].]

55 Ibid., 34–35. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 40–41. 58 Pettit, ed., Lacnunga, 100–101.

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The Latin supplication uses a number of antonomasia, i.e. stand-alone phrases in which both a noun and an epithet appear; it also involves apostrophes and multiple requests. The antonomasias are phrases that can function on their own and enrich the meaning of a line but are not an integral part of it. The creation of the text was clearly influenced by litanies and the impression is strengthened by the language of this part of Lacnunga. Another text within the collection, CLXXIII, contains similar instances of antonomasia. “Deo celi” (“To the God in heaven”) is followed by the antonomasia “regi regum” (“the king of kings”) and the epithets “pium dignu(m) ueru(m) su(m)mu(m) adque optimu(m)” (“holy, worthy, highest and best” — said three times)59. Indeed, the ending of this excerpt is the most litanic in form: S(an)c(t)e Rehhoc & S(an)c(t)e Rehwalde & S(an)c(t)e Cassiane& S(an)c(t)e Germane & S(an)c(t)e Sigismundi regis gescyldað mw wið ða laþan poccas 7 wiðealle yfelu. Am(en)60 [Saint Rehhoc and Saint Rehwald and Saint Cassian and Saint Germanus and Saint Sigismund the king, shield me against loathsome pocks and against all evils. Amen]

The supplication, along with the litanic enumeration, begins in Latin, but finishes in Old English, as if the Latin names of the saints were directly taken from a litany. It is, therefore, not surprising that Willy L. Braekman stated that “in the Lacnunga charms a certain amount of Christian influence was at work.”61 The litanic list in this last excerpt confirms Talbot’s intuition that the charms were derived from many sources, “Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Celtic, and Teutonic.”62 Thus, even though the charms were “originally conceived and finally preserved in writing as  medical  documents,”63 they were much influenced by Christian liturgy, with litany an indispensable part. A Journey Charm, which was preserved in the margins of an eleventh-century copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, was written “by a hand other than the two of the Bede text” and can be read as containing reverberations of litanic verse.64 It contains the following litanic list: Abrame and Isace and swilce men, Moyses and Iacob,

59 60 61 62 63 64

Ibid., 124. Ibid., 126–127. Willy L. Braekman, “Notes on Old English Charms,” Neophilologus 64 (1980): 462. C.H. Talbot, Medicine in Medieval England (London, Oldbourne, 1967), 23. Cameron, “Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic,” 191. Katrin Rupp, “The Anxiety of Writing: A Reading of the Old English Journey Charm,” Oral Tradition 23/2 (2008): 262.

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and Dauit and Iosep and Evan and Annan and Elizabet, Saharie and ec Marie, modur Cristes, and eac þæ gebroþru, Petrus and Paulus, and eac þusend þinra engla clipnge ic me to are wið eallum feondum.65 [Abraham and Isaac / and such men, Moses and Jacob, / and David and Joseph / and Eve and Anna and Elizabeth, / Zacharias and also Mary, Christ’s mother, / and also the brothers, Peter and Paul, / and also thousands of thy angels, / I call on to fend me against all fiends.]

The litanic list is extended by what Rupp calls “a specifically oral formula, the hymn,” which is a development of a litanic fragment.66 This part of the poem is intended to act like a lorica, “a leather breastplate, [which] comes to refer to the spiritual armour provided by sanctity or, more specifically, to a hymn begging saintly protection.”67 In this charm the lorica that is based on litany is seen in the following verse: Biddu ealle bliðu mode þæt me beo Matheus helm, Marcus byrne, leoht, lifes rof, Lucos min swurd, scearp and scirecg, scyld Iohannes, wuldre gewlitegod wælgar Serafhin.68 [In blithe mood I bid them all / that Matthew be my helm, Mark my coat of mail, / strong light of my life, Luke my sword, / sharp and bright-edged, John my shield, / gloriously adorned, Seraph of the roads.]

Marion Amies derives the idea of lorica from Isaiah 59:17, in which a coat of mail appears figuratively.69 As litanies shield believers against spiritual evils, so does A Journey Charm, although particularly in the parts which are of litanic provenance. Charms were primarily oral and had to be recited, which could be achieved successfully and forcefully owing to the accentual quality of the Old English beat verse; the stress proved to be important for enumeration. Old English accentual verse was exploited particularly in charms, even though primarily it added an interesting dimension to Old English catalogue poems. The genre of litany itself did not develop linearly, and so in Old English literature it overlapped with other 65 Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends, 156–157. 66 Rupp, “The Anxiety of Writing: A Reading of the Old English Journey Charm,” 259. 67 Leslie K. Arnowick, Written Reliquaries: The Resonance of Orality in Medieval English Texts (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006), 117. 68 Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends, 156–157. 69 Marion Amies, “The Journey Charm: A Lorica for Life’s Journey,” Neophilologus 67 (1983): 448–462.

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genres in order to form a complicated amalgam. This is one of the reasons why the charms are a “curious mixture of pagan traditional magic and Christian ritual”: the primarily pagan genre was heavily influenced by Christian liturgy and the incorporation of litanic verse was one of the consequences of this influence.70

Christ I, or Advent Lyrics, and Antonomasias of God The tenth-century Exeter Book (i.e. MS 3501 in the Library of the Dean and Chapter, Exeter Cathedral) includes the Advent Lyrics, or Christ I, that are numbered from one to ten. Each begins with the litanic marker “eala”, which is translated as “o” and developed into the following apostrophes: to “[…] kynige. Du eart se weallstan þe ða wyrthan iu / wiðwurpon to weorce” (“King of the people and their hearts’ desire”), “þu reccend ond þu riht cyning se þe locan healdeð” (“Key of David and Sceptre of the House of Israel”), “sibbegesihð, sancta Hierusalem” (“city of God most High, Jerusalem”), “earendel” (“Morning Star”), “gæsta god, hu þu gleawlice / mid noman ryhte nemned wære / Emmanuhel” (“King and Lawgiver, Emmanuel”), “Joseph min” (“my Joseph”), “þu soða ond þu sibsuma / ealra cyninga cyning” (“King of Peace, you who were born before the ages”), “þu mæra middangeardes” (“Lady of the Universe”), “þu halga, heofna dryhten” (“Lord of the Heavens”).71 The lyrics are polyonymic, so they catalogue names using epithets and antonomasia. Lyric Eleven, however, expresses joy at the existence of the “seo wlitige, weorðmynda full” (“Holy, full of glory”). Lyric Twelve, with its “Eala hwæt, þæt is wrætlic wrixl in wera life” (“Oh, listen, the Creator of the human race”), has an identical function.72 The litanic provenance of the poems is indubitable. Interestingly, Lyric Three contains an apostrophe to Jerusalem, thus combining the ancient Babylonian litanic tradition of addressing fallen cities with a later tradition that stemmed directly from Christian litanies. To quote S.A.J. Bradley, most of the lyrics are based on the Latin antiphons of the liturgy for Advent.73 Sarah Larratt Keefer identifies in the poem Ah, Beloved Lord what she calls epithets, which can be considered examples of antonomasia, as being litanic. She renames the poem, which was previously called Prayer,74 and dates it to the first

Rodrigues, ed., Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends, 30. Muir, ed., The Exeter Anthology, 43–59. Ibid., 59–62. S.A.J. Bradley, trans. and ed., Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London and Vermont: J.M. Dent and Charles E.M Tuttle, 1982), 204. 74 Sarah Larratt Keefer, Old English Liturgical Verse. A Student Edition (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2010), 157. 70 71 72 73

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half of the eleventh century.75 The first fifteen lines are in Lambeth Palace MS 427, folio 183v, whereas the full poem is included in London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius A II, folio 136r. The poem includes instances of antonomasia such as: “drihten leof ” (“beloved Lord”) (1), “heofena drihten” (“Lord of Heaven”) (4), “lifes ealdor” (“Lord of life”) (5), “folks scippend” (“creator of humans”) (8), “tireadig kynning” (“glorious king”), “mihtig drihten” (“mighty Lord”), and “drihten hælend” (“Lord the Saviour”).76 Keefer claims that the “epithets for God […] resonate [in] the litanies,”77 writing that in this respect the poem is a text which resembles Caedmon’s Hymn as recorded in Beda Venerabilis’ Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum: Like Caedmon’s Hymn, the earliest Old English verse composition to list names of God for humanity to praise, this list presents a complex list of divine epithets that recall litanies invoking the individual persons of the Trinity before listing those saints whose favour the supplicant was asking for.78

Caedmon’s Hymn from the manuscript St. Petersburg, Saltykov-Schedrin Library, Q. v. I. 18 is not an obvious example of litanic verse, but the phrases that occur in it are and additionally are also examples of antonomasia. Such phrases include “hefenricæs Uard” (“Guardian of the heavenly kingdom”) (1), “Uuldurfadur” (“glorious Father”) (3), “eci Dryctin” (“eternal Lord”), “halif Sceppend” (“holy Creator”) (6), “moncynnæs Uard” (“the Guardian of mankind”) (7), as well as “Frea allmehtig” (“Lord almighty”) (8) and these appear to have inspired the litanic parts of poems such as Ah, Beloved Lord.79

Pre-Chaucerian Litanic Verse In Middle English literature before the time of Chaucer, the Akathist influenced lyrics in order to produce a variety of Marian litanic verse. Indeed, according to Sister Mary Arthur Knowlton, four hundred poems about the Virgin Mary written in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries existed and some undoubtedly included litanic elements.80 Thus, it was in the English-language tradition, a tradition that originated in the French Joies de Notre Dame, in which poems called The Five Joys of Mary started to be composed. As Carleton Brown 75 Keefer, Old English Liturgical Verse, 38. 76 Ibid., 165–173. 77 Ibid., 157. 78 Ibid., 161. 79 Treharne, Old and Middle English, 2–3. 80 Sister Mary Arthur Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics (The Hague–Paris: Mouton, 1973), 143.

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comments, “on the continent the Joys […] were regularly either seven or fifteen; in England, on the other hand, the traditional number was five.”81 The Akathist Hymn, a prayer to the Holy Mother that describes her role in the life of Jesus, was not exactly a litany, but it was litanic in the sense of being inspired by litanies that ended with an apostrophe to Christ’s Mother. The poem The Five Joys of Mary from MS Harley 2253, dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century,82 develops the five joys listed by Brown: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption, but with a difference: Epiphany is inserted and there is no Ascension.83 In addition to this poem, in Trinity College Cambridge MS. B.14.39 there is a Marian lyric Thanks and a Plea to Mary. The Virgin is addressed with the apostrophes “Levedy,” “god and swete and bright,” “maide milde,” “moder,” and “my levedy.”84 The thirteenth-century In Praise of Mary from Corpus Christi College Oxford MS 59 contains the hail phrase “edi be thu” (“blessings upon you”) and the apostrophes “Hevene Quene, / Folkes froure and engles blis, / Moder unwemmed and maiden clene” (“Queen of Heaven, / the comfort of men and bliss of the angels, / Mother without spot and pure virgin”). Mary is also called “my swete Levedy” and “Moder, full of thewes hende, / Maide, dreigh and well itaught” (“Mother, full of gracious virtues, / maiden, patient and well-taught”).85 Lyrics such as those from The Penitent Hopes of Mary (again from MS. Harley 2253) develop the theme of Marian devotion by stating: On o Ledy mine hope is, Moder and virgine: We shulen into Hevene blis Thurh hire medicine. Betere is hire medicine Then eny mede or eny wine, Hire erbes smulleth swete.86 [My hope is on a lady, / mother and virgin: / through her medicine / we shall enter into the bliss of Heaven. / Her medicine is better / than any mead or wine, / her herbs smell sweet.]

81 Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 179. 82 R.T. Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics. A Critical Anthology (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 79–80. 83 Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, 196. 84 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 64. 85 Ibid., 64–67; the translations are mine. 86 Ibid., 70.

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The poem also includes allusions to the five joys in the phrases: “Now is free that er wes thrall,/ All thourh that Levedy, gent and small — / Heried be hir joys five”87 (“Now he is free who was before a slave, all through that Lady, noble and slender — Hail be to her five joys”).The early fourteenth-century An Orison of the Five Joys (from St. John’s College, Cambridge MS. 256) develops the same topic and ends each stanza with the litanic “Aue maria gracia plena dominus tecum” [italics in the original].88 A Song of the Five Joys (from Göttingen University MS theology 107) is clearly a hail lyric with its “haile be þu, mari maiden bright” (“hail be to you, Mary, maiden bright”).89 The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries appear to mark the beginning of the mature religious poetry that included litanic elements, even if it could not exactly be called litanic verse. Until that time, the existence of Latin litanies was all that was required by the faithful but religious lyrics in the vernacular flourished in the period that directly preceded Chaucer’s work. It was at this point that the tradition of devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus,90 which inspired texts such as the prose lyric On Ureisun of Oure Louerde (from Lambeth MS 487 and dating from the early thirteenth century), was initiated: [I]hesu soð god. godes sone. ihesu soð god. soð mon. Mon Maidene bern. Ihesu mon hali loue min sikere swetnesse. Ihesu min heorte. Mi sel, mi saule hele. Ihesu swete. ihesu mi leof. mi lif. mi leome. Min hawli. Min huniter, þu al þet ic hopie. Ihesu mi weole mi wunne. Min bliþe breostes blisse. Ihesu teke þat tu art softe and se swote. Ʒette to swa leoflic. swo leoflic and swa lufsum þat te engles.a. biholde þe. Ne beoþ heo neuer fulle. forto loken on þe. ihesu al feir aõein hwam. Þe sunne nis boten a schadwe. ase þeo þet loseþ here liht. and scome aƷein þi brihte leor. of hire þesturenesse. þu þet Ʒeuest hire liht and al þet leome hauset aliht mi þester heorte.91 [Jesus, true man, and true virgin’s child. Jesus, my holy love, my sure sweetness. Jesus, my heart. My joy, my soul’s healing. Sweet Jesus. Jesus my love, my life, my light, my healing oil, my honey-drop, you are everything I hope for/trust in. Jesus my delight, my winsomeness, blithe bliss of my breast. Jesus, teach (me) that you are so soft and sweet.]

þe Wohunge of Ure Lauerd also contains a series of anaphoras that are instances of antonomasia:

87 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 70. 88 Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, 29. 89 Ibid., 44. 90 Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich, 87. 91 Ibid.; the translation is mine.

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Similar apostrophes that use Holy Names can be found in A Prisoner’s Prayer: “Iesu crist, sod god sod man, louerd” (“Jesus Christ, both god and man, lord”), “sire deus” (“God the Lord”), “al-micty” (“almighty”), and “heuene king” (“king of heavens”) are addressed to Jesus and God the Father, with “virgne mere our seuerein” (“virgin and mother our sovereign”) and “maide that bare the heuen king” (“maiden that bore the king of heaven”) directed towards Mary93. Mater Salutaris contains a combination of Middle English instances of antonomasia: “Sainte Mari moder milde” (“saint Mary mild mother”) as well as Latin antonomasia: “oure consolatrix” (“our consoling one”).94 Swete Ihesu King of Blise uses apostrophes such as “min hert liƷt” (“the light of my heart”) and “min soule bote” (“my ship of souls”), i.e. the church,95 with similar, albeit even rarer, invocations of God’s names appearing in The Mind of the Passion from MS Ashmole 360, World’s Bliss Have Good Day from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge MS 8, A Spring Song of Love to Jesus from MS Royal 2.F. VIII, and A Song of Sorrow for the Passion from MS Digby 2.96 In A Song to Mary from the early fourteenth century the Franciscan, William of Shoreham, included apostrophes such as: “Marye, maide, milde and fre, / Chambre of the Trinite” (“Mary, maiden, gracious and noble, chamber of Trinity”), “Quene of Paradis” (“Queen of Paradise”), “the colvere of Noe” (“Noe’s dove”), “the boshe of Sinai” (“the burning bush of Sinai”), “the righte Sarray” (“legitimate wife, Sarah”), “Christes owene drury” (“Christ’s own treasure”), and “the temple Salomon” (“Salomon’s temple”).97 Mary is besought to “have […] this litel songe” (“have […] this little song”) and “gif […] thy wissinge” (“give […] her guidance”) to the speaker.98 Also in the early fourteenth century William Herebert, another Franciscan, in A Palm-Sunday Hymn (which in Brown’s Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century is entitled Gloria Laus et Honor)99 included ektenial tones such as: “Wele, herying 92 Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich, 87; the translation is mine. 93 Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the Thirteenth Century, 10–13. 94 Ibid., 22–24. 95 Ibid., 91–92. 96 Ibid., 113, 114, 120–121, 150–151. 97 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 103–104. 98 Ibid., 105. 99 Brown, ed., English Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, 16–17.

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and worshipe be to Christ” (“Glory, praise and honour for Christ”), who is called “King of Israel and of Davides kunne” (“King of Israel and the kin of David”).100 Herebert’s Aue Maris Stella begins with the litanic “heyl” complemented with the antonomasia “se-stoerre bryht.”101 However, the remainder of the poem is a narrative and does not contain any other litanic elements, although the initial impression of litanic quality still dominates. Herebert’s Alma redemptoris mater includes litanic instances of antonomasia: “holy moder” and “sterre of se,”102 and his Conditor alme siderum, Christe, Redemptor omnium, and Tu Rex glorie Christie contain the litanic “holy wrouhte of sterres bryhht” (“holy creator of bright stars”), “Cryst, buggere of alle ycoren” (“Christ, everyone’s redeemer”), “þou lyht, þou uaderes bryhtnesse, þou trust and hope of alle” (“you light, you father’s brightness, you trust and hope of all”), and “þou kyng of woele and blisse” (“you king of wellness and bliss”).103 In Iesu Nostra Redempcio Herebert calls Jesus “our raunsoun” (“our ransom”), thus developing the idea that Jesus ransomed himself in order to redeem humanity.104 The motif of Stella Maris also appears in Ave Maris Stella from Merton College, Oxford MS. 248, in which Mary is again evoked in “Ayl be þou, ster of se” (“Hail to you, sea star”).105 In the mid-fourteenth century yet another Franciscan, Richard Rolle, addressed Jesus in a litanic manner in A Song of Love for Jesus. He used the following instances of antonomasias: “my joy,” “my savioure, / my comfortoure, / of all my fairness flowre, / my helpe in my socoure” (“My saviour, my comfort, my flower of fairness, my help in succor”), “my dere and my dewry” (“my beloved and my treasure”), “my luve, my sweting” (“my love, my sweet one”).106 As Knowlton writes, Rolle ultimately popularized the tradition of the Holy Names in Middle English literature,107 and his “enthusiastic treatment” of the subject probably sprang from the inspiration that he gained from litanies themselves or from litanic verse.108 As Christiania Whitehead noted, “the majority of the religious lyrics draw closely upon a much more learned background, improvising upon phrases derived from the liturgy or from the spiritual lessons associated with the major church festivals 100 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 98. 101 Brown, ed., English Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century, 20. 102 Ibid., 22. 103 Ibid., 22–24. 104 Ibid., 27. 105 Ibid., 55. 106 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 108–110. 107 Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich, 90. 108 Ibid.

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[emphasis mine — A.C.].”109 In turn, other poets may have been inspired by the combination of devout topics and the allusion to the experience of love that is found in his poetry.110 In Rolle’s poetry the subject of the Holy Names was inextricably linked with that of divine love and the love that humans in turn have for God.111 Rolle wrote little about the Virgin Mary, which distinguishes his work from the numerous poems of Marian devotion that were composed at that time, although he did compose single passages related to Mary in his prose works, both in Latin and English, which, as Knowlton observes, celebrated “her prerogatives of Mother of God, spotless virgin and queen of heaven.”112 The one longer text on the Virgin was the Latin Canticum Amoris, which is a typical hail lyric including the phrase “salue” (“hail”) and such instances of antonomasia as “virgo speciosa” (“virgin wrapped in splendor”), “salus miseri mei et medea” (“protector and healer of my wretched being”), “mira margarita” (“a peerless pearl”), “tam decoram feminam nunquam fecit deus” (“most beautiful and loveliest of women God has made”),“claret carnis castitas; feruens flos fundaris” (“purity’s resplendent bloom, Mary, spotless flower”).113 The religious tradition coexisted with a secular tradition that nonetheless included topics related to religion. A good example of the influence of litanic anaphoras and parallelisms on a poem that is secular in form but broaches religious topics in its content ars moriendi is How Death Comes. This text underlines Whitehead’s view that “some lyrics appropriate the meters and idioms of popular songs, adapting their romantic or convivial subject matters to more spiritual imperatives.”114 How Death Comes, a lyric from Trinity College, Cambridge MS, is a rhythmic catalogue of events that occur upon human death: Wanne mine eyhnen misten, And mine heren sissen, And my nose coldet, And my tunge foldet, And my rude slaket, And mine lippes blaken,

109 Christiania Whitehead, “Middle English Religious Lyrics,” in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, edited by Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005), 97. 110 Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich, 59–67. 111 Ibid., 50. 112 Ibid., 154. 113 The translation of the phrases has also been taken from Knowlton; Knowlton, The Influence of Richard Rolle and of Julian of Norwich, 185–189. 114 Whitehead, “Middle English Religious Lyrics,” 97.

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And my muth grennet, And my spotel rennet, And mine her riset, And mine herte griset, And mine honden bivien, And mine fet stivien […]115 [When my eyes get misty, / and my ears are full of hissing, / and my nose gets cold, / and my tongue folds, / and my face goes slack, / and my lips blacken, / and my mouth grins, / and my spittle runs, / and my hair raises, / and my heart trembles, / and my hands shake, / and my feet stiffen […]]

The religious content of this thirteenth-century lyric implies that the intention of the author may have been to imitate the type of enunciation characteristic of litanies, with its cataloguing, parallelisms, and anaphoras. Nevertheless, with its secular content the lyric is closer to the poetry inspired by folk song, in which the repetitiveness and oral-formulaic nature of folk literature is found, so it is more representative of groups of texts which were influenced both by litanic tradition and by oral-formulaic diction, with the latter not discussed for lack of space. The range of genres that include elements of litanic verse in Old English and Middle English literature till the middle of the fourteenth century is impressive. The texts include catalogue poems, charms, catalogue lists developed into martyrologies, religious lyrics and hymns, and additionally in the Middle English period there were also new genres: lyrics of Marian devotion, evocations of Christ, and even catalogue poems on the topic of ars moriendi. The tradition of litanies and hymns that involve antonomasia, a poetic device of litanic provenance, and the tradition of secular verse appear to be interlinked within Old English and Middle English culture, and it is often difficult to distinguish one inspiration from another. Nevertheless, the rhetoric mnemonic techniques seem only to have strengthened the effect produced by the influence of litanies, which themselves are seen both as texts of very ancient origin and as Christian prayers in Latin that functioned as oral and written texts. The most intriguing aspect is perhaps the coexistence of pagan and Christian elements in the Old English tradition and the wealth of lyrics in the Middle English tradition. Thus, the later “hail lyrics” were preceded by less obviously litanic texts, although the earlier texts were of vital importance in the establishment of the tradition of litanic verse in England before the advent of Protestantism, after which it underwent many changes.

115 Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 74–75.

Dominika Ruszkiewicz Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow

“Thy name I sall ay nevyne”: Fifteenth-Century England and Scotland Every poem can be considered in two ways — as what the poet has to say, and as a  t h i n g  which he  m a k e s. From the one point of view it is an expression of opinions and emotions; from the other, it is an organization of words which exists to produce a particular kind of patterned experience in the readers.1

In A Preface to “Paradise Lost” C. S. Lewis talks about genre as being expressive of a certain worldview, but also as an artefact created by the poet to frame it, producing in the readers what he calls “a particular kind of patterned experience.” The poems analysed in this article are all patterned upon the litany: they use a spectrum of stylistic devices characteristic of litanies, without being primarily aimed at prayer themselves. They operate in the vocative mode in which “the poet addresses an individual or group in the second person, by a name, title, or other designation that establishes a relationship between the poet/narrator and the ostensible audience of the poem.”2 Poems written in this mode constitute a “call” or an “address”: they establish a relationship between subject and sovereign, petitioner and benefactor, or sinner and “Saviour.” The most common manners within this mode are celebration, praise, and praise-petition. It is celebratory poems in praise of the Virgin Mary that I will focus upon — poems which are often a combination of petition and address, and sometimes also of personal intention. They were written in England at the turn of the fourteenth 1 C. S. Lewis, A Preface to“Paradise Lost” (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2005), 2–3. 2 I am referring here to the classification into  m o d e s,  m a n n e r s, and s t y l e s,  used by Jonathan A. Glenn, with reference to William Dunbar’s poetic corpus. Glenn distinguishes three basic modes: the vocative, the narrative, and the expository and fifteen manners, ranging from admonition through complaint to petition. Cf. Jonathan A. Glenn, “Classifying Dunbar: Modes, Manners, and Styles,” in William Dunbar, ‘The Nobill Poyet.’ Essays in Honour of Priscilla Bawcutt, ed. Sally Mapstone (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001), 170.

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and in Scotland at the turn of the fifteenth centuries, i.e. at a time when Middle English and Middle Scots lyric was at the height of its development both in terms of quality and volume. English and Scottish poetry from this age can no longer be called “a poor relation of the splendid Continental art-form,” to use a label applied to earlier poetry, which was composed for a functional rather than an aesthetic purpose.3 The aesthetic worth of late medieval English poetry, however, is not negligible4 and its body is much greater than that of the preceding century.5 Even though the Scottish poetry is a later development with a smaller corpus than that of its southern neighbour, in certain respects it is superior to the English: in its stylistic sophistication it “transcends what is normally considered most characteristic of the medieval English lyric.”6 As Michael Alexander paradoxically claims: “In the late 15th century the best poetry in English came from Scotland.”7 Both in England and Scotland late medieval poetry is known for its intellectual complexity, which puzzles the readers and “aggravates [the] sense of mystifying incomprehension.”8 It draws upon the Latin liturgical tradition and the French tradition of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs. English and Scottish poets combine Latin phrases (Regina caeli laetare; Ave Maria, gracia plena) with vernacular images, use aureate language and baroque ornamentation and so produce a highly repetitive style popular in rhetorical writing. Thriving in the period preceding the Reformation, a period in which Marian devotion was well-entrenched in human minds and in which the secular and religious spheres coexisted in life as well as in manuscripts, poems were produced which situate themselves between liturgy and poetry. The lyrics have litany-like repetitions and refrains or are litanies in a poetic form — poems in the form of a prayer, or prayers in the form of a poem. 3 M. J. C. Hodgart, “Medieval Lyrics and the Ballads,” in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 1: The Age of Chaucer, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 157. 4 Barbara Kowalik, “The Beauty of Belief: The Aesthetic Function in Two Middle English Mercy Lyrics,” in Texts of Literature, Texts of Culture, eds. Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim and Artur Blaim (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2005), 17–26. 5 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1939), xviii. 6 Alasdair A. MacDonald, “Lyrics in Middle Scots,” in A Companion to Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer 2005), 242. 7 Michael Alexander, A History of English Literature (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 70. 8 Christiania Whitehead, “Middle English Religious Lyrics,” in A Companion to Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Boydell & Brewer, 2005), 118.

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And yet the term “litanic verse” is never applied to them, even though their litany-like form has not gone unnoticed. Stephen Manning, for instance, acknowledges that a number of medieval lyrics borrow from the Litany of the Saints the “address plus petition” form, which gives them a note of urgency and solemnity.9 Similarly, Reginald Thorne Davies notices an affinity with the “collocations of titles” applied to Mary in religious poetry and litanies.10 In the same vein, F. J. Amours suggests that anaphoric salutations built on the “Hail Mary”11 can be seen as “poetical litanies of the Virgin.”12 Yet none of the critics known to me discusses poems patterned upon litanies as a group and shows their development, which is my primary focus. When considering the best-known fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century English and Scottish poetry, I will try to show a chain of influence which begins with Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), moves through John Lydgate (c. 1370–c. 1451) and William Dunbar (c. 1460–1513), before ending with Walter Kennedy (c. 1455–1508/18). I will also mention Richard Holland (died c. 1482) and Gavin Douglas (c. 1475–1522) to show the impact of Reformation censorship on Scottish poetry. The poetry under consideration — even though litanic in form — was composed by predominantly courtly rather than religious poets. Geoffrey Chaucer, for instance, was referred to by his contemporaries as a poet of love as well as moral and philosophical instruction — “the noble philosophical poete.”13 John Lydgate led the life of a monk at Bury St. Edmunds, which gave him access to one of the best-stocked libraries in England and a chance to come into contact with noblemen, with his longest compositions being commissioned by Prince Hal, the future Henry V (Troy Book), the Earl of Salisbury (The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man), and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (Fall of Princes). Thus, he was both a monastic and

9 Stephen Manning, Wisdom and Number: Toward a Critical Appraisal of the Middle English Religious Lyric (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 64. 10 Reginald Thorne Davies, “Introduction,” in Medieval English Lyrics. A Critical Anthology, ed. R. T. Davies (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 21. 11 The fact that medieval religious lyrics are often built around Marian salutation has earned them the name of “Hail lyrics,” which is used, for instance, by George C. Taylor in the context of medieval drama. Cf. his “The Relation of the English Corpus Christi Play to the Middle English Religious Lyric,” Modern Philology 5 (1907): 5. 12 Scottish Alliterative Poems in Riming Stanzas, ed. with introduction, appendix, notes, and glossary by F. J. Amours (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1897), 308. 13 Patricia M. Kean, Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry, vol. 2: The Art of Narrative (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 210–239.

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court poet.14 William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy came from powerful families and both were acclaimed courtly poets in their lifetimes. The fact that these poets wrote mainly for an aristocratic audience may explain two things. First of all, the fact that litanic verse forms a relatively small proportion of their poetic corpora. Chaucer, for instance, authored about 32 000 lines, of which approximately 254 are written in the form of praise and petition to Mary. This constitutes about one percent of his total poetic output, or about twenty percent of his shorter lyrical works. More litanic verses were composed by Chaucer’s near contemporary, John Lydgate, who wrote more than 1720 lines in the praise-petition mode, but taking into account his total poetic output, the amount of litanic verse is still marginal and is about 1.2 percent of his 145 000 lines. Secondly, the poets’ proximity to the royal court explains why even in their most devotional works they employ a repertoire of courtly images and linguistic structures and vice versa — their most courtly poems borrow devotional forms of address. Chaucer often uses stylistic devices characteristic of the litany and his poetry abounds in anaphora, anaphora-like passages or apostrophes,15 but they are rarely placed in a Marian context. However, the poet does make occasional allusions to the Virgin Mary, even in his most courtly poems. For instance, in The Book of the Duchess Blanche is described in Marian terms, as “a round tour of yvoyre” or “[t]he soleyn fenix of Arabye.”16 His single completely religious lyric, however, is An ABC, which is also Chaucer’s “only completely devotional work.”17 Dated between 1359 and 1369, it is one of Chaucer’s earliest poems and “a very early specimen of English decasyllabic line.”18 The poem is a translation of an abecedarian or alphabetically acrostic prayer from Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine by Guillaume de Deguilleville, with each of the 23 stanzas beginning with a different

14 Walter F. Schirmer, John Lydgate. A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century, trans. Ann E. Keep (London: Methuen and Company Ltd, 1961), 190. 15 Cf. for instance, the description of Saturn in “The Knights Tale” (ll. 2454–59), the description of Griselda’s patience in “The Clerk’s Tale” (ll. 922–24), anaphora on love in Troilus and Criseyde (Book III, ll. 1744–48) or the closing stanzas of Troilus and Criseyde (ll. 1828–32, 1849–55). For examples of apostrophes cf. the address to Fate and the Cross in “The Man of Law’s Tale” (ll. 295–315; ll. 451–462). 16 The Book of the Duchess, ll. 946, 982. References to Chaucer come from Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 17 Benson, “Explanatory notes,” in The Riverside Chaucer, 1076. 18 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 855.

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letter of the alphabet. Various alterations have been noted in Chaucer’s rendition of the French text, such as the different tone of the poem,19 the greater number of epithets to the Virgin Mary, or the greater emphasis on legal language and additionally various other analogies have been suggested, such as the psalms and other abecedarian poems in the Bible or the Greek Orthodox Akathist Hymn.20 What lends a litanic quality to the poem is first of all its vocative and petitionary character. In the poem Chaucer uses conventional terms both to praise and to petition Mary. He underlines her exalted role as a “glorious virgine, of alle floures flour,” “lady bright,” “blisful hevene queene,” “Crystes blisful mooder deere,” “glorious mayde and mooder,” “noble princesse, that nevere haddest peere,”and a “temple devout, ther God hath his woninge.”21 He also praises the mercy of the “queen of misericorde,” “queen of comfort,” “of pitee welle,” or “socour of al mankynde,” and petitions her to “for us praye” and defend us from fire “[w]hich that in helle eternalli shal dure.”22 In the poem Chaucer expresses a belief, commonly held in the Middle Ages, that Mary was the ruler of the universe — the “vicaire and maistresse / Of al this world” — and a co-redemptress.23 Thus, nearly every stanza includes a petitionary prayer, introduced by expressions, such as “Biseeching you,” or “I yow preye,” which ask Mary to help, have mercy, “releeve,” “receyve,” “redresse” and chastise, “wisse” (guide, direct) and “counsaile.” In his praise of Mary’s unparalleled qualities and in his petition for help, the English poet is demonstrating his originality by addressing the Virgin Mary as “almighty and al merciable queene,” as the term “almighty” was reserved for God,24 and presenting her not only as 19 Critics have observed a more petitionary bent to Chaucer’s poem and a greater intensity of feeling. Cf. Sherry Reames, “Mary, Sanctity and Prayers to Saints: Chaucer and Late-Medieval Piety,” in Chaucer and Religion, ed. Helen Phillips (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010), 81–96; Benson, Riverside Chaucer, 1076. 20 Georgia Ronan Crampton, “Chaucer’s Singular Prayer,” Medium Aevum 59 (1990): 193, quoted in William Quinn, “Chaucer’s Problematic Prière: An ABC as Artifact and Critical Issue,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23 (2001): 139. 21 An ABC, ll. 4, 16, 24 and 149, 28, 49, 97, 145. 22 Ibid. ll. 25, 77, 126, 168, 62, 96. 23 Ibid. ll. 140–141. 24 Ibid. l.1. As some critics argue, Chaucer’s use of “almighty” may be seen as a theological mistake, reflecting “the gap between popular understanding of Mary’s power and theological definitions of her power as limited and dependent.” Cf. Helen Phillips, “‘Almighty and al merciable queene’: Marian Titles and Marian Lyrics,” in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (Turnhout: Brepols 2000), 98.

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an intercessor, but also as his “advocat” and “mene” (intermediary), asking her to defend his case “at the grete assyse” (at the Last Judgement) as if in a court of law.25 Mary’s intercession, according to Chaucer, does not cost a lot — “an Ave-Marie or tweye.”26 Another litanic aspect of Chaucer’s ABC is its lack of thematic development.27 By substituting a formal device for any thematic development, Chaucer employs a method of discursive imagery that was typical of fourteenth-century literature.28 The common thread running through the poem is the appeal to the Virgin Mary, which culminates in a thrice-repeated anaphora in the “M” stanza: O verrey light of eyen that ben blynde, O verrey lust of labour and distresse, O tresoreere of bountee to mankynde, Thee whom God ches to mooder for humblesse! From his ancille he made the maistresse Of hevene and erthe, oure bille up for to beede. This world awaiteth evere on thi goodnesse For thou ne failest nevere wight at neede.29

“These three circlets,” as Quinn notes, “introduce a chordal litany” of praise to Mary.30 What formally holds the poem together is the rhyme which structures the poem in a symmetrical manner. The ababbcbc pattern allows for a division into two alternatively rhyming quatrains (abab) and (bcbc) or terza rima joined by a couplet (aba bb cbc).31 Either way, the b-rhyme is the strongest and its repetition in lines four and five of each stanza presents the medial couplet as a refrain, another marker of litanic poetry. In this respect Chaucer’s poem anticipates later litanic poems, such as those by Dunbar, who often makes use of the refrain. The symmetry in the poem is also produced by a similar beginning and ending,

25 An ABC, ll. 102, 125, 36. 26 Ibid. l. 104. 27 Witold Sadowski defines litanic verse by, among other things, its lack of thematic development and complete timelessness. Cf. his Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 2011), 72. 28 Kean, Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry, vol. 2, 197. 29 An ABC, ll. 105–112.“O verrey lust of labour and distresse” [joy to (those in)]; “ancille” [maidservant]; “oure bille up for to beede” [petition; offer (pray)]. 30 Quinn, “Chaucer’s Problematic Prière,” 120. 31 Ibid., 125.

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which leads to what Phillips calls “a typically ‘Ricardian’ circularity.”32 The initial “[a]lmighty and al merciable queene” with their “a” and “m” alliteration is evoked in the final lines of the poem: Now, ladi bryghte, sith thou canst and wilt Ben to the seed of Adam merciable, Bring us to that palais that is bilt To penitentes that ben to merci able. Amen.33

The initial and final “a” and “m” alliteration may, as Phillips suggests, “celebrate Ave Maria, the reversal of letters perhaps reflecting the motif of Mary herself reversing Eve’s sin, in the words ‘Ave Maria.’”34 The variation on “merciable” in the last line of the poem determines the circular shape of Chaucer’s ABC, bringing to mind a rosary with its 23 ideally symmetrical beads (stanzas), so that the M-bead is at the centre of the poem with exactly eleven beads before and after. The final litanic feature of the poem is the use of aureate diction, defined as “self-consciously stylized and highly artificial language designed to enrich vernacular poetic vocabulary by introducing Latin words, mostly from religious sources, into English.”35 It was characteristic of Marian poetry and most probably dictated by a sense of decorum: the golden ornaments of the aureate style were fit for a king or queen — in this case the Queen of Heaven. Seen as a forerunner of this mode of writing, in his ABC Chaucer uses Latin-based words, such as ancille, humblesse, distresse, maistresse, merciable, and palais. He also uses aureation is his other prayers — Invocatio ad Mariam in “The Second Nun’s Prologue” or the Prologue to “The Prioress’s Tale”: O mooder Mayde, O mayde Mooder free! O bussh unbrent, brennynge in Moyses sighte, That ravyshedest doun fro the Deitee, Thurgh thyn humblesse, the Ghoost that in th’alighte, Of whos vertu, whan he thyn herte lighte,

32 Phillips, “Almighty and al merciable queene,” 94. 33 An ABC, ll. 181–184. 34 Phillips, “Almighty and al merciable queene,” 95. 35 Simon Horobin, Chaucer’s Language (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 92. Zettersten suggests using the term “aureate” in a wider sense, thus also including simple words, such as “fresh, lusty, bright, or green,” which “when used for the purpose of gilding the verse, could be called aureate words just as well as the long Latinate words or phrases.” Cf. Arne Zettersten, “On the aureate diction of William Dunbar,” in Essays Presented to Knud Schibsbye on his 75th birthday 29 November 1979, ed. Michael Chesnutt et al. (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979), 52.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz Conceyved was the Fadres sapience, Help me to telle it in thy reverence!36

The mixing of Latin liturgical phrases with Anglo-Norman words results in macaronic writing, which was common in late medieval England. A fifteenth-century Franciscan James Ryman, for instance, addresses the Virgin Mary in the following mixture of English and Latin: O emperesse, the emperoure Quem meruisti portare Of heven and erthe hath made the floure: Regina celi, letare! O quene of grace, the king of blisse Quem meruisti portare Hath made thy sete next unto his: Regina celi, letare!37

A similar macaronic effect is achieved by an English poet and monk, John Lydgate, in his poems such as Ave Regina Celorum: Hayle, luminary & benigne lanterne: Of Ierusalem the holy ordres nyne As quene of quenes laudacion eterne They yeue to thee, O excellente virgyne! Eclypsyd I am, for to determyne Thy superexcellence of Cantica canticorum; The aureat beames do nat in me shyne: Ave regina celorum!38

36 “The Prioress’s Prologue,” ll. 467–473. “O bussh unbrent, brennynge in Moyses sighte” [unburned; Moses’]; “That ravyshedest doun fro the Deitee” [drew down]; “the Ghoost” [Holy Spirit]. I italicize the words of Romance origin here and elsewhere to emphasize the poets’ partiality to aureate diction. 37 Quoted from Whitehead, “Middle English Religious Lyrics,” 97–98. Quhem me ruisti portare [whom you were worthy to bear]; “made the floure” [made thee flower]; Regina celi, letare! [Queen of heaven, rejoice!]; “sete” [seat / throne]. 38 Ave Regina Celorum, ll. 1–8. Quoted from The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, edited from all available mss., in an attempt to establish the Lydgate canon, by Henry Noble MacCracken (London: Oxford University Press, 1911–1934). “ordres nyne” [nine orders]; “laudacion” [eager praise]; “yeue” [give]; “Cantica canticorum” [Song of songs]; “The aureat beames do nat in me shyne” [golden; not]; Ave regina celorum! [Hail queen of heaven].

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John Lydgate, who in many respects continues the tradition of Chaucer’s poetry, creates what Ebin calls “a more ‘deluxe’ version of his master’s work” and — we may add — a more “deluxe” version of the litanic verse.39 He expands on Chaucer’s use of anaphora and apostrophe, addressing various saints, Christ and Mary more often than Chaucer.40 The Mother of Christ is the central addressee of poems such as The Fyfftene Ioyes of Oure Lady; The Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary; Ave Maria!; To Mary, The Star of Jacob; To Mary, The Queen of Heaven; Gaude Virgo Mater Christi; Ave Regina Celorum; Regina Celi Letare; Stella Celi Extirpauit and A Prayer to Mary in Whom is Affiaunce.41 However, the poem which best displays litanic elements is Lydgate’s Ballad in Commendation of Our Lady, which is at once “a definition of his ideal of the religious lyric and a stunning example of its fulfilment.”42 When compared with Chaucer’s ABC, Lydgate’s poem shows a different approach to the litanic form, giving precedence to invocation at the expense of petition. While Chaucer was concerned with the theme of Mary’s intercessory potential, Lydgate subordinates theme to form in an attempt to create “a new mode of religious praise in English.”43 In this new form there is even less thematic development than in Chaucer’s ABC and “the plot of the poem is the poetic effort of describing,” which brings out its litanic character.44 The poet is less insistent in his request for Mary’s mercy: he does not pray or beseech her for her mediation with God on his behalf (“To Him commende us” appears only once in the poem), but merely asks her to remember her servant and “have us in mynde.”45 The anaphoric expressions, in turn, become piled one on top of another. This can be seen in stanza four:

39 Lois A. Ebin, Illuminator, Makar, Vates: Visions of Poetry in Fifteenth Century (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 13. 40 Derek Pearsall, “Chaucer and Lydgate,” in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, ed. Ruth Morse, Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 45. 41 Cf. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, 254–296. 42 Lois A. Ebin, “Poetics and Style in Late Medieval Literature,” in Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University, 1984), 270. 43 Ebin, “Poetics and Style in Late Medieval Literature,” 271. 44 John Norton-Smith, John Lydgate. Poems. With an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by John Norton-Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 144. 45 Ballad in Commendation of Our Lady, l. 46. Quoted after John Norton-Smith, John Lydgate. Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz O sterne of sternys with thi stremys clere, Sterne of the see, to shipman lyght and gyde, O lusty leem[yng], most plesaunt to appere, Whos bright bemys the clowdis may not hide, O way of lyfe to hem that goo or ride, Haven aftyr tempest surrest [up] to ryve, On me haue mercy for thi ioyes fyve.46

As Schirmer notes, “Lydgate does not, like Chaucer, make use of his faculty of persuasion; under the influence of Latin hymnody he seeks to bring about a reinvigoration of the invocatory style.”47 The typical litanic pattern, consisting of invocatio (O Maria), subject (Thou), verb (aidest), and object (sinners) is distorted here: the invocation takes up the greatest part of the stanza, with only one line left for the actual sentence.48 What is characteristically Lydgatian about the style of the poem is the poet’s copious use of anaphora and alliteration, which does not serve a purely decorative function, but adds weight to the meaning.49 The central image evoked in this stanza is that of light: Mary is depicted as the most beautiful star — the sun which dispels the clouds and whose illuminating glow inspires the poet.50 The same sentiment is expressed in Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady: “So late the golde dewe of thy grace fall / Into my breste, like skales, fayre and white / Me to enspyre of that I wolde endyte / With thylke bame.”51 Similarly to the poet who “sheds beams of poetic light on man’s world,” Mary inspires the substance of the poem.52 Lydgate’s Mary is no longer Chaucer’s “lady bright,” but becomes a supreme illuminator, with the metaphors becoming more and more

46 Ibid. ll. 22–28. “sterne of sternys” [star of stars]; “O lusty leem[yng], most plesaunt to appere” [beautiful; gleaming]. 47 Schirmer, John Lydgate, 197. 48 Ibid., 196. The critic notes that eight stanzas (numbers 5, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 20) are made up of invocations only. In the remaining stanzas the sentence proper is limited to half a line in one stanza (number 6), a single line in five stanzas (4, 11, 13, 17, 18), and two lines in two stanzas (7 and 8), with a fully-fledged narration occurring in three stanzas (1–3) and partly in stanza 14. 49 Ibid., 75. 50 Ballad in Commendation of Our Lady, l. 55. 51 Life of Our Lady, I. ll. 52–55. Quoted after Duquesne Studies. Philological Series: 2: A Critical Edition of John Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady, ed. Joseph A. Lauritis (Pittsburgh Louvain: Duquesne University E. Nauwelaerts, 1961), at University of Virginia Library, accessed March 30, 2015, http://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=chadwyck_ep/uva GenText/tei/chep_1.1702.xml;chunk.id=d3;toc.depth=100;brand=default. 52 Ebin, “Poetics and Style in Late Medieval Literature,” 270.

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complex. This can be seen in stanza seventeen, where Mary is compared to a vial or small glass bottle: O glorious viole, O vitre inviolate, O[f] f[i]ry Tytan percyd with the lemys, Whos virtuous bryghtnesse was in thi brest That all this world enbelisshed with his [b]emys, Conseruatrix of kyngdamys and remys, O Isaye[s] seed, O swete Sunamyte, Mesure my mo[u]rnynge, myn owne margarite.53

The fragment shows that Lydgate’s favourite rhetorical devices are those that are characteristic of the psalmist, such as anaphora, repetition, periphrasis — the sun is referred to as Titan, the pearl as “margarite”— and metaphors. One of the most interesting metaphors used by the poet is that of a sunbeam passing through glass, which refers to the Annunciation. Similarly to the sun passing through the glass, the Holy Ghost filled the womb of Mary, who remained chaste just like the glass which was not affected by the light.54 Metaphors of this kind require a certain intellectual effort to decipher and they constitute another of Lydgate’s peculiarities, even though similarly striking images of Mary can also be found in other late medieval poems. In one Mary is referred to as “Oleum effusum” (“oil poured out”) and “to languentes medsyne” (“medicine to the faint”).55 As Christiania Whitehead points out, such abstract and intellectually complicated metaphors not only have little in common with everyday experience, but may also have an alienating effect: “Mary, heaven’s queen, is held away from us, fractured into a series of unlike objects that impede unity, and maintained at a level of textual erudition that renders her safely incomprehensible to the women she might have been expected to empower.”56 This alienating effect is also strengthened by the poet’s desire to embellish, gild or illuminate his poetry not only through frequent references to light, but also through his propensity for aureate terms. Drawing on classical writers who used the term aureus to convey the idea of “splendidness,” “brightness” or “excellence,” 53 Ballad in Commendation of Our Lady, ll. 113–119. “viole” [vial]; “vitre” [glass]; “O[f] f[i]ry Tytan percyd with the lemys” [sun; piercing with rays of light]; “Conseruatrix of kyngdamys and remys” [conservatrice of kings and realms]; “Mesure my mo[u]rnynge, myn owne margarite” [moderate, assuage; pearl]. 54 Schirmer, John Lydgate, 75. 55 “Mary, Queen of Heaven,” in Medieval English Lyrics. A Critical Anthology, ed. R. T. Davies (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 199, l. 17. 56 Whitehead, “Middle English Religious Lyrics,” 119.

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Lydgate introduces the notion of the “aureate style,” whose closest modern-day equivalent is “eloquent” or “golden”. His purpose was to construct “an ornate, Latinate liturgical style in English” through numerous borrowings from Latin.57 However, the average of two borrowings per line will be surpassed by Dunbar in “Hale, Sterne Superne,” also known as Ane Ballat of Our Lady, which contains as many as three aureate terms per line. Writing at the turn of the sixteenth century, the Scottish poet is said to begin where Lydgate leaves off, introducing changes which result in “a much more intricate combination of words and sound.”58 How does Dunbar improve on the Lydgatian stanza? First of all, the seven-line Lydgatian stanza is replaced by a stanza of twelve lines, with alternating long and short lines, and a complex system of internal rhyme is also introduced, based on alliteration and verbal echoing. In each stanza the rhyme that completes five lines is on three occasions based on one sound (-ern), with a further six lines based on another (-yne), excluding the Latin refrain, as exemplified by the first stanza: Hale, sterne superne, hale, in eterne In Godis sicht to schyne; Lucerne in derne, for to discerne Be glory and grace devyne. Hodiern, modern, sempitern, Angelicall regyne, Our tern inferne for to dispern, Helpe, rialest rosyne. Ave Maria, gracia plena. Haile, fresche flour femynyne, Yerne us guberne, virgin matern, Of reuth baith rute and ryne.59

57 Norton-Smith (John Lydgate. Poems, 192–194) distinguishes four metaphoric configurations in which Lydgate employs the term “aureate”: i. “rhetorical skills,” “colours rhetorical”; ii. “the spoken sound of eloquent language,” associated with botanical fragrance or “baum”; iii. “rhetorical inspiration giving rise to eloquence,” associated with inspiration (“licour” or “dew”); iv. sense 3 + sense 1 + physical association with “ink.” 58 Ebin, “Poetics and Style in Late Medieval Literature,” 276. 59 “Hale, Sterne Superne,” ll. 1–12. The poems by Dunbar and Henryson are quoted from The Makars. The Poems of Henryson, Dunbar and Douglas, ed. J. A. Tasioulas (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1999). “sicht to schyne” [sight; shine]; “Lucerne in derne, for to discerne” [lamp; darkness; see]; “Hodiern, modern, sempitern” [today; the present

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The stanza shows Dunbar’s energetic and dynamic progression of images, creating a mantra-like effect.60 It also shows the poet’s complete control — over images, rhyme, and stanza structure. Dunbar is more consistent than Lydgate or Chaucer in the use of anaphora, opening five out of seven stanzas with an anaphora on “Hail” and centring each stanza around the angelic salutation Ave Maria, gracia plena, which can be seen as “the ‘kernel’ or nucleus of the stanza, and indeed of the whole poem.”61 This brings to mind the devotion to the rosary, very popular in late medieval Scotland,62 and allows us to see the poem as an “exercise, by which the soul of the meditator may be brought into better condition.”63 The intricacy of the poetic structure is combined with the poet’s use of the aureate style, which in his “Hale, Sterne Superne” reaches its apogee.64 In the first­stanza as many as fifteen terms can be called aureate. There are certain words which appeared earlier in English (eterne, sempitern), but a number were first recorded in Scottish, either in this poem (matern, dispern) or in earlier poetry (discerne, modern), especially in Henryson’s works (superne, lucerne, guberne). There is also a group of words which are recorded in this poem alone (inferne, regyne, rosyne). This shows that in his choice of vocabulary Dunbar is undoubtedly influenced by Latin Marian hymns,65 adopting Latinate vocabulary either directly or via French and English. The meaning of the whole composition, however, is generated not so much by the poet’s use of aureation as by his giving precedence to native diction in stanzas such as the third, where little aureation is used: instead, “the cascade of -icht rhymes” sounds very Anglo-Saxon.66

60 61 62 63 64 65 66

age; all eternity]; “Our tern inferne for to dispern” [infernal gloom; drive away]; “rialest rosyne” [most royal; rose]; “Yerne us guberne” [diligently; govern]; “Of reuth baith rute and ryne” [pity; root; bark]. Gerard Carruthers, Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 40. Douglas Gray, “‘Hale, Sterne Superne’ and its Literary Background,” in William Dunbar, ‘The Nobill Poyet.’ Essays in Honour of Priscilla Bawcutt, ed. Sally Mapstone (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001), 207. For the imagery of the rosary as reflected in Scottish literature cf. Audrey-Beth Fitch, The Search for Salvation. Lay Faith in Scotland 1480–1560 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2009), 128–129. A. A. MacDonald, “Religious Poetry in Middle Scots,” in The History of Scottish Literature: Origins to 1660, ed. R. D. S. Jack (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), 97. C. I. Macafee, “Older Scots Lexis,” in The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language, ed. Charles Jones (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 197. Cf. Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 354–357. Ibid., 357.

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Dunbar’s native Scottish contribution can also be seen in the ideological content of the poem if we agree that the poem is more than just one tautology, as some critics have argued.67 The poem’s structure, however, can be defended. It can be called “a devotional and emotional structure” or even a litanic structure in that it provides an exhaustive list of Mary’s attributes.68 The Blessed Virgin is called an “angelicall regyne” (“angelic queen”), “moder and maide” (“virgin mother”), and “glorius virgin” (“glorious virgin”), but also “sterne superne” (“heavenly star”), “ros of paradys” (“the rose of paradise”), “spyce” (“spice”), “place palestrall / Of peirles pulcritud” (“magnificent palace of unequalled beauty”) or “bricht ball cristall” (“bright crystal ball”).69 She is seen in her traditional roles of “oratrice, mediatrice, salvatrice / To God gret suffragane” (“intercessor, mediator, saviour / To God great helper”),70 but also in her role of a “warrior queen”— “wicht [courageous] in ficht [battle],” “puttar to flicht [flight] / Of fendis [fiends] in battale.”71 It shows the Anglo-Saxon spirit of the poem and the poet’s unique contribution to medieval lyric and medieval litanic verse. This can also be seen in the poet’s statement of personal intention. Exchanging the collective “us” or “we” for “I,” he promises Mary a long-lasting litanic recitation of her name, stating “Thy name I sall ay nevyne” (“I shall always recite your name”)72. In his address to the Queen of Heaven, the poet also expands on the traditional “Hail Mary,” adding “hale fro the splene.” 73 In this way, he expresses a sentiment that love originated in the spleen, which is another of his uniquely Scottish contributions to Marian poetry.74 A similar feeling is also conveyed by another Scottish poet, Robert Henryson, in his Annunciation, which can be evoked here to show the contrast:

67 Tom Scott, William Dunbar. A Critical Exposition of The Poems (Edinburgh, London: Oliver and Boyd, 1966), 304. Similarly, Priscilla Bawcutt argues that in the poem “there is no logical progression of ideas.” Cf. Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar, 357. 68 Gray, “‘Hale, Sterne Superne’ and its Literary Background,” 208. 69 “Hale, Sterne Superne,” ll. 6, 22, 32, 1, 40, 71, 73–74, 79. 70 Ibid. ll. 67–68. 71 Ibid., ll. 28–29. 72 Ibid., l. 60. Cf. Gray, “‘Hale, Sterne Superne’ and its Literary Background,” 209. 73 Ibid. l. 43. 74 The spleen was believed to be the seat of passionate emotions, such as love; thus, “fro the splene” is an equivalent of “from the heart.” As Priscilla Bawcutt observes, references to the spleen were very common in Scottish poetry and were used to express “heartfelt sincerity.” Cf. Priscilla Bawcutt, ed., William Dunbar. Selected Poems (London and New York: Longman 1996), 384, note 2 to poem 30.

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O lady lele and lusumest, Thy face moist fair and schene is; O blosum blith and bowsumest, Fra carnale cryme that clene is; This prayer fra my splene is: That all my werkis wikkitest Thow put away and make me chaist Fra Termigant that teyn is, And fra his cluke that kene is, And syn till hevin my saule thou haist, Quhair thi makar, of michtis mast, Is kyng, and thow thair quene is.75

Based on a Latin prayer (Fortis ut mors dilectio), The Annunciation resembles Dunbar’s poem in its heartfelt expression of devotion: “This prayer fra my splene is,” the poet admits. However, it is much simpler in its use of rhyme and alliteration, which is used for emphasis, but does not lead to excessive ornamentation and Latinization. A more elaborate and more Dunbarian rhythmical structure can be seen in Henryson’s Ane Prayer for the Pest, in which stanza nine brings to mind Dunbar’s “Hale, Sterne Superne”: Superne lucerne, guberne this pestilens; Preserve and serve that we not sterve thairin; Declyne that pyne be thy devyne prudens; O trewth, haif rewth, lat not our slewth us twin. Our syt full tyt, wer we contryt, wald blin; Dissiver did never quha evir the besocht; Send grace with space and us arrace fra syn; Latt nocht be tynt that thow so deir hes bocht.76

The pattern of internal rhyme brings the poem closer to Dunbar’s poetry, even though Henryson is not addressing Mary, but God, asking for protection at the time of the bubonic plague. However, Henryson was not a courtly poet like Dunbar and his expressions of individual devotion are limited to his moral and religious 75 The Annunciation, ll. 61–72. “lele and lusumest” [true; loveliest]; “bowsumest” [brightest]; “carnale cryme that clene is” [fleshly sin]; “splene” [heart]; “werkis wikkitest” [most wicked deeds]; “cluke that kene is” [claws; are sharp]; “makar, of michtis mast” [maker; greatest in power]. 76 Ane Prayer for the Pest, ll. 65–72. “O trewth, haif rewth, lat not our slewth us twin” [spiritual sloth; separate]; “Our syt full tyt, wer we contryt, wald blin” [torment; quickly; sorry; cease]; “Dissiver quha evir the besocht” [turned away; sought]; “us arrace fra syn” [snatch us away].

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poetry. Dunbar, in turn, was connected with the court of James IV of Scotland and devoted a number of his poems to formal state occasions, such as the marriage of the King to his English bride — Margaret Tudor (The Thrissill and the Rois). Even though critics admit that it is in his religious poetry that he reaches the heights of his creativity,77 both kinds of poems — the courtly and the devotional — use a similar repertoire of images and linguistic structures. In The Thrissill and the Rois, for instance, Queen Margaret is described as “[o]ur perle, our plesans and our paramour, / Our peax, our play, our plane felicite” (“Our pearl, our delight and our beloved, / Our peace, our delight, our full joy”),78 which brings to mind descriptions of the Virgin Mary. Moreover, she is greeted in the very same way that the mother of Christ was addressed in his religious poems: “Haill Rois of most delyt, / Haill of all flouris quene and soverane!” (“Hail Rose of most delight, / Hail of all flowers queen and sovereign”).79 A similar anaphoric evocation to the Queen can be seen in “Gladethe, thoue queyne of Scottis regioun” — a poem written to welcome the new Queen of Scotland to Scotland: Gladethe, thoue queyne of Scottis regioun; Ying tendir plaunt of plesand pulcritude, Fresche flour of youthe, new germyng to burgeoun, Our perle of price, our princes fair and gud, Our charbunkle chosin of hye imperiale blud, Our rois raile, most reverent under croune, Joy be and grace onto thi selcitud, Gladethe, thoue queyne of Scottis regioun.80

Here again Dunbar refers to Margaret Tudor as “our pearl,” playing on the name Margaret, but also as “our royal rose,” which brings to mind the heraldic badge of the Tudors. Having arrived in Scotland, the Tudor Rose became integrated into the Scottish royal family. Dunbar calls her “our Scottish Queen” and emphasises the issue of national identity in the refrain “Gladethe, thoue queyne of  S c o t t i s r e g i o u n”  (emphasis mine). In this way she becomes the Scottish embodiment of the Queen of Heaven and like Mary, she is supposed to produce an heir and to be similarly merciful. She is, for instance, to express gratitude to the citizens of Aberdeen for their hospitality during her visit as Queen. In a poem addressed to a city the poet turns the convention upside down and makes the Queen, the 77 78 79 80

Bawcutt, ed., William Dunbar. Selected Poems, 9. The Thrissill and the Rois, ll. 180–181. Ibid. ll. 169–170. “Gladethe, thoue queyne of Scottis regioun”, ll. 1–8. “new germyng to burgeoun” [newly beginning to bud]; “hye imperiale blud” [noble; blood]; “selcitud” [majesty].

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usual recipient of praise and gratitude, become their utterer. “Thairfoir sa lang as quein thow beiris [bear] croun, / Be thankfull to this burcht of Aberdein,” the poet writes. 81 The conversion of religious motifs to suit secular purposes and vice versa was characteristic of medieval literature in general, but in Dunbar’s poetry it gains a new dimension as it is connected with politics and touches upon English-Scottish relations. In his praise-petition poems Dunbar expands on earlier poems by Chaucer or Lydgate in terms of both theme and form. His is litanic verse at its best: elaborate, occasional, with an intricate pattern of rhyme and inner echoes. Verse that in form and matter praises and petitions Mary using forms of address patterned upon the litany, verse which resembles a litany in both “what the poet has to say, and as a  t h i n g  which he  m a k e s,”82 and last but not least, verse which offers an expression of individual rather than only collective feeling. Seen as such, Dunbar’s poetry marks the culmination of the rich tradition of Marian poetry both in England and in Scotland, although the poet is not alone in his expression of personal piety in pre-Reformation Scotland. One of his contemporaries, Walter Kennedy, reveals similar feelings for the Virgin Mary in his Ane Ballat of Our Lady — a poem which belongs to the tradition of Marian poetry and which can be examined alongside Dunbar’s “Hale, Sterne Superne.” In Dunbar’s poem the balance of praise and petition was upset in favour of the former. In Kennedy’s prayer both praise and petition play a significant role. The poet mentions Mary’s numerous attributes, calling her a “[c]loster [vessel] of Crist,” “[r]ecent [fresh] flour delyß [lily],” “herbar [flower garden] of amouris,” “[p]rinces of hevyn, hell, erd, and paradyß,” “[n]uryß [nourisher, nurse] to god,” “[t]o leper leche [physician],” “[p]rotectrix [protectress] till all pepill penitent,” “[r]evar [river] of grace,” as well as “[r]uby of reuth [pity], riche laß, and hevinnis gem.”83 All the nine stanzas end with macaronic lines in Latin, some of which are borrowed from the Office of the Blessed Virgin and some of which evoke the inexpressibility topos: Quibus te laudibus referam nescio (“I do not know what praise I shall give to you”).84 In stanza seven Mary is praised from head to toe:

81 Ibid. ll. 65–72. 82 Lewis, A Preface to “Paradise Lost,” 2. 83 Ane Ballat of Our Lady, ll. 1–3, 5–6, 9, 17, 41. Quoted from The Poems of Walter Kennedy, ed. Nicole Meier (Woodbridge: The Scottish Text Society, 2008). 84 Ibid. l. 24.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz Blist be þi haire, hed, eyne, face, & neise. Blist be þi halß, breist, bane, bak, & rib. Blist be þi palpis þat couth þi sone appleiß Blist be þi handis þat wande him in þe crib. Blist be þi sydis and wame þat maid ws sib To Crist; blist be þi body all for þi. Blist be þi blude þat come of Iosues trybe; Et benedictus fructus ventris tui.85

Such catalogues of compliments to Mary were not uncommon in medieval literature and could be mistaken for descriptions of the poet’s ideal lady were it not for the anaphora on “blessed be” and the fact that most of Mary’s attributes are considered in relation to Christ. Kennedy’s eulogy is combined with a humble petition to Mary who can intercede on man’s behalf as a physician, protectress and co-redemptress. She conquered the devil and can help man reach heaven. Similarly to Dunbar’s Mary, Kennedy’s heroine is also put on a pedestal, but does not remain there taking no action. She is asked to “bring ws to þe Ioye þat neuer Is Cest [ceases],” to save our souls from hell and intercede with her Son on our behalf.86 She is open to man’s requests and through her, the poet is asking Christ “[t]o purge me of my gret trespaß & wyce, / And clenge [cleanse] my saull fra lipper [leprous] syne Inwert [inward], / And grant þat of þe hevin I may haf part.”87 Similarly to “Hale, Sterne Superne” but to a greater extent even than Dunbar’s poem, Kennedy’s work can be seen as a devotional exercise, even though the end of the fifteenth century is said to be marked by “the decline of medieval devotion.”88 As Rosemary Woolf argues, the poet “was no longer expected to have a feeling of tender love for the Virgin, but to show his reverence for her by reciting a poem that glorified her, in which case of course the more ornate the glorification the better.”89 Seen as such, late medieval poems become “applied art,” aimed at practical use in divine services.90 Dunbar’s and Kennedy’s poems, however, give some vent to private rather than collective feeling in their replacement of the communal “we,” used repeatedly during a church service, with the personal “I.” “ Thy name

85 86 87 88

Ibid. ll. 49–56.“þi sydis and wame þat maid ws sib” [womb; related by blood or descent]. Ibid. l. 47. Ibid. ll. 67–69. Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 281. 89 Ibid. 90 Schirmer, John Lydgate, 173.

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I sall ay nevyne,” was how Dunbar addressed Mary; “O mater dei, memento mei, þi man!” is how Kennedy finishes his prayer.91 Even though Kennedy’s poem is less aureate and elaborate than Dunbar’s,92 it can be seen as a continuation of the Marian tradition. Among the later Scottish poets two deserve to be mentioned: Richard Holland and Gavin Douglas. The former is known for his The Buke of the Howlat, an alliterative poem which tells the story of an owl complaining about its appearance, which — when improved by the feathers of other birds — becomes the reason for the bird’s pride and subsequent fall. In the poem, written in thirteen-line stanzas with a wheel, the poet dedicates two stanzas (56 & 57) to Mary, addressing her with an anaphoric “Hail”: Hale, temple of the Trinite, crounit in hevin! Haile, moder of our maker and medicyn of mys! Haile, succour and salf for the synnis sevyne! Haile, bute of our baret and beld of our blis! Haile, grane full of grace that growis so evyn, Ferme our seid to the set quhar thi son is! Haile, lady of all ladyis, lichtest of leme! Haile, chalmer of chastite! Haile, charbunkle of cherite! Haile, blissit mot thow be For thi barneteme!93

Holland’s poem is preserved in two different manuscripts: the Asloan MS (1515) and the Bannatyne MS (1568). The latter compiler, George Bannatyne, is known for his “self-imposed censorship,” which led him to remove the signs of Mariolatry from the copied matter.94 This can be seen, for instance, in his handling of the moralitas to Henryson’s “Trial of the Fox,” where an invocation to “mary myld” 91 Ane Ballat of Our Lady, l. 72. 92 The poet is capable of greater metrical virtuosity in his longest poem, Þe Passioun of Crist, in which he more frequently employs the internal rhymes so characteristic of Dunbar’s poetry. 93 Stanza 56. Quoted from Longer Scottish Poems. Volume One 1375–1650, eds. Priscilla Bawcutt and Felicity Riddy (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987). “mys” [sin]; “salf ” [salve]; “bute of our baret and beld of our blis!” [remedy; distress; comforter]; “grane full of grace that growis so evyn” [seed; straight]; “Ferme our seid to the set quharthi son is!” [make firm; fix; abode]; “lichtest of leme!” [radiance]; “barneteme” [offspring]. 94 A. A. MacDonald, “Poetry, Politics, and Reformation Censorship in Sixteenth-Century Scotland,” English Studies 64 (1983): 420.

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was replaced with one to “lord eternall.”95 Surprisingly enough, no changes were introduced to Holland’s hymn to Mary, which appeared in virtually the same form in both manuscripts — the Asloan MS and the Bannatyne MS. What permitted the preservation of the fragment in an unaltered form may have been the parodic context in which it is placed. “Is it possible that the scribe hoped that these lines, sung by a chorus of birds in an allegorical dream-vision, might be regarded as not altogether serious, and so pardonable?” MacDonald asks.96 The poetry of Gavin Douglas, however, which is more serious in tone, did not enjoy a similar fate and was subject to the workings of Reformation censorship. This can be seen in his Prologues to Eneados, which contain invocations to Mary. In Book III the poet calls Mary his guiding star: “Be my laid star [lodestar], virgyne moder but maik,” which in a later edition of 1553 becomes “Be my lede stere, Christ goddis sone but maik.”97 Similar examples are to be found in other prologues to Douglas’s Eneados, which were likewise modified. Writing at the turn of a new age, at a time when signs of Marian devotion were becoming less and less welcome, Douglas’s poetic endeavours can be compared to “gathering a last bouquet before the flowers ended.”98 And, one is tempted to add, before the altars were stripped.99

95 Ibid., 416–417. 96 Ibid., 420. 97 Eneados, III Prol. l. 42. Quoted after Priscilla Bawcutt, “Religious Verse in Medieval Scotland,” in A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry, eds. Priscilla Bawcutt and Janet Hadley Williams (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), 129. 98 Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry. The Routledge History of English Poetry, vol. I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 222. 99 I am referring here to Eamon Duffy’s seminal account of the English Reformation — The Stripping of the Altars. Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992).

Dominika Ruszkiewicz Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow

“O Lord, deliver us from trusting in those prayers”: Early Modern England Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know imports no other than supplication, but all Churches have one form of supplication by that name […]. Mine is for lesser chapels, which are my friends […].1

In a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer John Donne presents his own definition of a litany: he sees it not so much as a communal prayer, addressing wider issues, but as a private meditation in verse, aimed at his own friends (is meant “for lesser chapels”) and their individual needs. This shows that in the seventeenth century, poetry was imagined as something akin to prayer, even though it was not agreed whether prayer of a private or communal nature is best. Donne also claims that every Church has its own litany. This could not have been truer in the sixteenth century, when the English Litany came into being. Dating back to 1544, it is the earliest piece of liturgy in English sanctioned by King Henry VIII after his break with Rome. Although three years later processional liturgy was banned by the Royal Injunctions, the Litany was originally conceived of by its chief architect — Archbishop Cranmer — as “an English service to be used in processions throughout the province of Canterbury, with plenty prayers for the royal person and dire warnings against dissent and rebellion.”2 It was the first building block of The Book of Common Prayer and “the longest and most comprehensive single form of pure prayer in the Book,”3 in which it was re-printed with some modifications in 1549, and then in 1559 and 1662.

1 “From a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer (Winter 1608–9),” in John Donne. The Major Works including Songs and Sonnets and sermons, ed. John Carey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 169. 2 Brian Cummings, “Introduction,” in The Book of Common Prayer. The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xxiii. 3 Timothy Rosendale, Liturgy and Literature in the Making of Protestant England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 210.

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The English Litany Put together from a number of sources, but following the traditional structure,4 the Litany is made up of five parts: the Invocations, the Deprecations, the Obsecrations, the Suffrages, and a Supplication. The Invocations call upon the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity individually (“God the father of heaven,” “God the sonne,” “God the holy ghoste”) and collectively (“holy, blessed, and glorious Trinitie”);5 each is followed by a prayer, “have mercy upon us miserable sinners.” The next part is made up of the Deprecations — “petitions against evil, that it may be averted, if it has not yet fallen upon us, or removed (if God so will) if it has already come.”6 Some of the evils Cranmer mentions are: sin, mischief, pride, vainglory, lightning and tempest, fornication, sedition, and — as befits a characteristically Anglican prayer — “the tyrannye of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities.”7 Then come the Obsecrations — prayers for divine mercy by Christ’s redemptive work, starting with his “holy incarnation” and “holy Nativity,” moving through the agony of “the crosse and passion” to end with his “glorious resurreccion and ascencion.”8 The response which follows both the Deprecations and the Obsecrations is “Good lorde deliver us.” The next part is called the Suffrages and is made of “intercessory prayers for all sorts and conditions of men.”9 Giving an unusual precedence to the temporal ruler over church authorities, the intercessions begin with a prayer for Edward VI, then move to “Bishops, pastours and ministers of the churche,” “the Lordes of the counsaile,” “the magistrates” and finally various categories of people, before ending with a response: “We beseche thee to heare us good lorde.” Cranmer rounds off his Litany with a series of prayers recapitulating the concerns of earlier supplications. Even though The Book of Common Prayer was intended as “a physical embodiment of a revolution in religious practice,”10 its prayers do not represent a complete 4 For an account of Cranmer’s sources, cf. James E. Wellington, “The Litany in Cranmer and Donne,” Studies in Philology 68 (1971): 179. 5 The Book of Common Prayer. The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, ed. Brian Cummings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 41. All quotations from the Anglican litany are from this edition. 6 Qtd. from Hannibal Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie,’” in The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Mary A. Papazian (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 191. 7 The Book of Common Prayer, 41. 8 Ibid., 42. 9 Wellington, “The Litany in Cranmer and Donne,” 180. 10 Cummings, “Introduction,” 13.

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break with the past, and they are — to a large extent — direct translations from the Latin liturgy. The changes Cranmer introduces to the Sarum litany are aimed at condensing the matter. First, the opening Kyrie eleison is omitted; second, a modifying adjective (“good”) is applied to God (“Good Lord deliuer us”); third, the saints are not addressed by their names; and fourth, the individual deprecations and obsecrations are not separated by the response, which is deferred until the end of the group of prayers in the following manner: Sarum: Ab omni malo. Libera nos domine. Ab omni peccato. Libera nos domine. Ab insidijs dyaboli. Libera nos domine. (Ab ira tua De extr. unct. Libera nos domine.) A damnatione perpetua. Libera nos domine.11 Cranmer: From all evill and mischiefe, from synne, from the craftes and assaultes of the devyll, from thy wrathe, and from everlasting damnacion: Good lorde deliver us.12

The grouping of the clauses produces the effect of a crescendo culminating in a climax,13 which will also be seen in early modern poetry. The changes introduced by Cranmer may have been aimed at “restor[ing] to the litany something of its original character as a prayer made primarily to God the Son.”14 Even though the original version of 1544 retained the mention of the Virgin Mary and the saints, they were removed in later editions. The devotion to the Virgin Mary, however, did not die out with Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries, even if in the Catholic idiom it changed from ‘worship’ to ‘veneration,’ the former being reserved only for God.15 Catholics continued to pray the Litany of Loreto, the rosary and many other prayers addressed to Mary, as shown in Richard Verstegan’s English Primer (1599) — a collection which includes prayers such as Obsecro te, or the famous Salve, regina hymn, beginning with the words “Hail holy queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope, to thee do we

11 12 13 14 15

Qtd. from Wellington, “The Litany in Cranmer and Donne,” 182. Qtd. from The Book of Common Prayer, 41. Wellington, “The Litany in Cranmer and Donne,” 182. Ibid., 185. Robert S. Miola, “Catholic Writings,” in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 450. For a distinction between hyperdulia (veneration) and latria (adoration) in the PreReformation Catholic Church cf. Ruben Espinosa, Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare’s England (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2013), 20.

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cry poor banished children of Eve.”16 The wide appeal the primer enjoyed — with its forty-two editions in the seventeenth century — shows that Catholicism was “the ministry of the word,” even if the word, especially the poetic word, did not often appear in print, or when it did — it was outside the Protestant country or in Latin.17 English recusant writings circulated in the form of manuscripts, some of which were later published by either foreign presses or secret presses operating in England.18

“Hail” Lyrics Traces of the Marian “Hail” lyrics can be seen in The Sequence of Poems on the Virgin Mary and Christ, written by Robert Southwell (1561–1595) — one of the bestknown recusant poets and martyrs. The poems aim at offering “the persecuted English Catholics a version of the experience which Continental Catholics would have had of meditation upon the lives of Jesus and Mary.”19 Their early editions, published months after his execution, omit two of his most controversial Marian poems — The death of our Ladie and The Assumption of our Lady, which did not appear in print until 1856, when the whole Marian sequence was first published as a unit.20 The former hails Mary as “the Quene of Earth” and “the Empresse of the skyes”; the latter as “Our Princely Eagle mount[ing] unto the sky,” “Prince to her throne,” and “Queene to her heavenly kinge.” In other poems, Mary is described as “our second Eve,” “our orient starr,” “load starr off all engolfd in worldly waves,” “the royall throne,” “proclaimed Queene and mother of a god,” “the light of earth,” “the Soveraigne of Saints,” “virgin pure,” “a prince,” “glorious temple wrought with secret art,” or “the card and Compasse that from Shipwracke saves.” Continuing the tradition of medieval praise and petition poems, Southwell borrows tropes from medieval prayers and litanies, but he uses fewer direct apostrophes to Mary and fewer supplicatory elements. The greeting “Hayle” appears only once in his Our Ladies Salutation: “Hayle fairest heaven that heaven and earth

16 Miola, “Catholic Writings,” in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, 450. 17 Ibid., 449. 18 Ibid., 452. 19 Robert Southwell.Collected Poems, ed. Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney (Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 2007), 152. 20 F. W. Brownlow, Robert Southwell (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), 104–105.

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dost blisse.”21 However, his verse is very repetitive and symmetrical, which brings out its litanic character. In The Nativity of Christe Southwell writes: O dyinge soules behould your living springe O dazeled eyes behould your sunne of grace Dull eares attend what word this word doth bringe Up heavy hartes with joye your joye embrace […] From death from darke from deaphnesse from despayres This life this light this word this joy repaires.22

The poem can be divided into three couplets that engage our senses so that we can participate in Christ’s nativity. The first couplet begins with apostrophes to “dying soules,” “dazeled eyes,” and “dull eares,” encouraging them to take in the scene. The poet uses here various figures of repetition, which create symmetry on multiple levels, such as ploche (“what word this word,” “with joye your joye”) and parison (“dying soules,” “dazeled eyes,” “dull eares”). The last two lines are particularly interesting for their corresponding pattern of “death” and “life,” “darke” and “light,” as well as “despayres” and “joy,” but also for the “from […] from” repetition, which brings to mind the litanic deprecations condensed by Cranmer. If Southwell’s poetry shows the influence of the English Litany it is in fragments like these as well as in the poet’s frequent use of antonomasia in his praise of Mary — praise which by Protestant standards might have seemed excessive. As Louis L. Martz claims, Southwell’s Marian verse would probably be seen as too Catholic and “go[ing] beyond anything allowed by even the most conservative Anglican orthodoxy.”23 Thus, he died what patriotic Protestants might call a proper death for a Catholic priest: he was captured, tortured and executed. The search for freer and more abundant expressions of the Marian cult brings us to the Continent, where Catholic verse was thriving. It is on the Continent that Dame Gertrude More (1601?–1633), a great-great-granddaughter of Sir Thomas More, composes her Spiritual Exercises (1658), which contain a 17-line piece entitled “To Our Blessed Lady, the Advocate of Sinners.” It begins with “All hail, O Virgin, crowned with stars, and moon under thy feet, / Obtain us pardon of our sins of Christ our Saviour sweet.”24 It is a praise and petition poem, which follows 21 Our Ladies Salutation, l. 11; qtd. from Robert Southwell.Collected Poems, 5. 22 The Nativity of Christe, ll. 7–12; qtd. from Robert Southwell. Collected Poems, 6. 23 Louis L. Martz, The Poetry of Meditation. A Study in English Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1962), 104–105. 24 “To Our Blessed Lady, the Advocate of Sinners,” ll. 1–2; qtd. from Female and Male Voices in Early Modern England: An Anthology of Renaissance Writing, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Anne Lake Prescott (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 156.

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the convention of depicting Mary as a patroness of sinners and intermediary between them and God. Yet, the poem is more personal in tone: More talks about “my God,” “my soul,” “my sins,” pointing to her own individual experience lived among others with whom she shares “this our banishment.” Does she mean the banishment of sinners from Paradise or the banishment of Roman Catholics from a Protestant country? Perhaps both, as she left England in 1623 to settle in Cambrai in a Benedictine convent. It was also on the Continent that the Virgin Mary’s namesake, Mary Stuart, was eulogized as the martyred Queen of Scots. Executed in 1587 by order of the English Jezebel, Elizabeth I, Mary became the focus of De Jezabelis poems, in which she is praised alongside the Blessed Virgin and, like her, is elevated to the position of a Queen in Heaven and a saint.25 Mary Stuart herself authored a number of prayers. Does the Queen refer to her heavenly namesake in her own prayers, as might be expected of a devout Catholic? Surprisingly, she does not; the direct addressee of her prayers is God, which may speak for her desire “to avoid flaunting too openly the image of feminine power so demonised by those who inveighed against female rule.”26 Mary’s reluctance to hail the Blessed Virgin may also have been dictated by an association of the term with her Protestant cousin, Elizabeth I, who figured prominently in the popular imagination as the Virgin Queen — a title once applied to the Virgin Mary.27 In 1570 Elizabeth I’s Accession Day began to be celebrated and the Queen’s cult began to flourish, constituting “one of the most fascinating aspects of the English Renaissance.”28 In popular poetry the English Queen takes over the role once ascribed to the heavenly Queen: she becomes God’s servant and an intermediary between him and his people. In one of the ballads she is hailed as a “pearless pearl,” “Diamond deer,” “Queene of Queenes,” “Phoenix of the world,” “soveraigne Queene,” “most

25 James Emerson Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature (London: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 165. 26 Lisa Hopkins, “Writing to Control: The Verse of Mary, Queen of Scots,” in Reading Monarch’s Writing: The Poetry of Henry VIII, Mary Stuart, Elizabeth I, and James VI/I, ed. Peter C. Herman (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002), 44. 27 Queen Elizabeth’s virginity was originally treated as a disadvantage because — unlike in the case of the Virgin Mary — it precluded the possibility of a successor. It soon, however, became a sign of her independence and self-sufficiency. Cf. Teresa Bela, The Image of the Queen in Elizabethan Poetry (Kraków: Uniwersytet Jagielloński, 1994), 135. 28 Bela, The Image of the Queen, 10.

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noble vertuous prince,” and “Minervas mate.”29 In pastoral poetry she appears as “the flower of virgins” and is “without spot” (immaculate).30 She is presented as the goddess of the moon — Diana or Cynthia — and her attributes elevate her to the status of an angel.31 In Spenser’s The Shepherds’ Calendar she becomes the supreme shepherdess; in The Faerie Queene she is praised as the “Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky, / That all the earth doest lighten with thy rayes. / Great Gloriana, greatest Majesty.”32 In George Puttenham’s Partheniades she is praised from head to toe: Her head ys shone like cristall cleere; […] Her browes two bows of Henebye; Her tresses troust were to beholde, […] Her eyes, God wott what stuffe they arre, […] Her cheeke, her chinne, her neck, her nose; […] Her hande so white as whales bone, Her finger tipt with Cassidone; Her bosome, sleeke as Paris plaster, […].33

Such lyrics bring to mind medieval poems in which it was the Virgin Mary who was depicted in a similar manner.34 Thus, their provenance in early modern England invites the question whether the cult of Queen Elizabeth grew out of a need to “fill the void after the Protestant dethronement of Mary”?35According to Teresa

29 Lodowick Lloyd, “An Epitaph upon the death of the honorable, syr Edward Saunders Knight, Lorde cheefe Baron of the Exchequer, who dyed the 19. of November. 1576,” English Broadside Ballad Archive. University of California at Santa Barbara, Department of English, accessed October 11, 2015, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/32400/xml. 30 The Shepherds’ Calendar, the April Eclogue, ll. 48–50; qtd. from Edmund Spenser, Shorter Poems. A Selection, ed. John Lee (London: J. M. Dent, 1988), 33. 31 Colin Clout’s Come Home Again, ll. 596–615; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 118. 32 The Faerie Queene, Book VI, stanza 28, ll. 1–3; qtd. from The Complete Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908), 645. 33 A Ryddle of the Princesse Paragon, ll. 4–25; qtd. from George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London: Triphook, 1811), xxiv. Cf. Walter Raleigh’s The Shepherd’s Praise of his Sacred Diana, ll. 1–4, in The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1829), 716. 34 Cf. in this volume: Dominika Ruszkiewicz, “Thy name I sall ay nevyne,” 47–48. 35 Bela, The Image of the Queen, 135.

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Bela, it did not; it was rather an expression of a concern for the well-being of the country. The Queen, envisaged as the defender of the Protestant Faith and of the Kingdom, seemed a guarantee of peace: “It was to her person that the hopes of national unity and religious concord were entrusted,” Bela says.36 In a similar vein, Ruben Espinosa comments on the descending and ascending fortunes of the Virgin Mother and the Virgin Queen respectively: “The issue […] is not so much that Elizabeth I replaced the Virgin Mary in England, but rather that she functioned as an icon of Protestant reform and England’s newly imagined identity.”37 As such, the Reformed Virgin figures prominently not only in Elizabethan poetry, but also in drama.38 Traces of “Hail” lyrics are also to be found in seventeenth-century poetry. In Joseph Beaumont’s (1616–1699) poem “Virginitie,” the Virgin Mary is praised as the “Jewell of Jewells,” “this spotlesse Flowre,” “A Virgin Spotlesse Thing,” and “this sacred Maid.” She is twice addressed by Gabriel with “Haile, full of Grace” and “All hail Great Queen of Chastity.”39 Similar litanic invocations are used by Richard Crashaw (1613–1649) in his “Hymn for the Assumption,” which is interesting for its use of different voices. The first voice we hear is that of Christ who, like a courtly lover, repetitively invokes Mary — his love, his dove, “his spottlesse one,” asking her to “rise up” and “come away” for she is missed in Heaven. “When heavn bidds come, who can say no?” and so Mary leaves the mortals who pray for her with “Hail, holy Queen of humble hearts!” The angelic “hail,” however, is replaced with “live,” for even while in Heaven, Mary seems alive on earth and ready to help those who sing their prayers: Maria, men & Angels sing Maria, mother of our King. Live, rosy princesse, live. And may the bright Crown of a most incomparable light Embrace thy radiant browes. O may the best Of everlasting joyes bath thy white brest. Live, our chast love, the holy mirth Of heavn; the humble pride of earth.

36 Ibid. 37 For a discussion on Elizabeth I’s appropriation of Mary cf. Espinosa, Masculinity and Marian Efficacy, 27–28. 38 For a discussion of Shakespeare’s use of the “Hail” greeting in his Marian descriptions of female characters cf. Espinosa, Masculinity and Marian Efficacy, 91–148. 39 Qtd. from The Minor Poems of Joseph Beaumont, D.D., ed. Eloise Robinson (London: Constable and Co. Ltd, 1914), 40–42.

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Live, c[r]own of woemen; Queen of men. Live mistresse of our song.40

Initially presented as an earthly creature — “A peice of heav’nly earth,” after her Assumption Mary remains close to man. “Crashaw’s Blessed Mary is more human than divine, and it is as the Mother of the Saviour rather than as the Saint of the Church that Crashaw evokes her,” as Itrat Husain notes.41 In order to be allowed safe conduct to poetry, she has to be presented as above the world, but below her Son.42 As Lucy Munro observes, in Milton’s time the angelic greeting “hail” became a marker of the poet’s archaic diction and as such it appears ten times in his Paradise Lost.43 It is first used in Book I by Satan in his farewell speech before the fall: […] Farewell happy fields Where joy for ever dwells: hail horrors, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell Receive thy new possessor […]44

The speech in which Satan anticipates his miserable fall provides an interesting example of a phonic echo, linking “hail” with “hell.” Satan’s words draw upon Aeneid, unlike other “hail” fragments which place the salutation in a more religious context.45 In Book III greeted with “hail” is “holy light, offspring of heaven firstborn,”46 which may refer to the Son of God,47 all the more that the same greeting to the “Son of God, saviour of men” is used later.48 Book IV hails “wedded love”49 and Book V “universal Lord.”50 The same book describes Raphael descending to Paradise to remind Adam and Eve of their duty to God. Seeing Eve, “the angel Hail

40 Qtd. from Richard Crashaw, Steps to the Temple: Delights of the Muses, and Other Poems, ed. A. R. Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), 256. 41 Itrat Husain, The Mystical Element in the Metaphysical Poets of the Seventeenth Century (New York: Biblo & Tannen Publishers, 1948), 175. 42 Crashaw, Steps to the Temple, 254. 43 Lucy Munro, Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590–1674 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 232. 44 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler (London and New York: Longman, 1998), Book I, ll. 249–252. 45 Munro, Archaic Style, 232. 46 Paradise Lost, Book III, l. 1. 47 For various identities ascribed to the light cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, 165, n. 1–55. 48 Paradise Lost, Book III, l. 412. 49 Ibid. Book IV, l. 750. 50 Ibid. Book V, l. 205.

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/ Bestowed, the holy salutation used / Long after to blest Mary, second Eve.”51 The angel’s words evoke a belief that Mary repaid what Eve lost, Eve being an inverted form of Ave. “Spell Eva backe and Ave shall yowe finde / The first beganne the last reversd our harmes,” as Robert Southwell writes.52 While Mary was praised as the “mother of God,” Eve is greeted as the “mother of mankind.”53 In Book XI and Book XII the same angelic greeting is again applied respectively to both Eve — the cause of mankind’s fall, and to Mary — its redeemer.54 In this way the archaic “hail” becomes associated with both damnation and salvation.

Catalogue Verse The least sophisticated form of litanic verse, the catalogue poem, which came to be a conspicuous presence in medieval poetry, still thrives in the early modern period and looks back to its medieval precedent. Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, in his “Description of spring, wherein each thing renews save only the lover” (1557), takes up a medieval theme and frames it in a Renaissance form — the form of the sonnet. The poet devotes a dozen lines to a Chaucerian catalogue of nature’s renewals, eight of which refer to animals’ springtime activities: The nightingale with feathers new she sings, The turtle to her make hath told her tale. […] The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, The buck in brake his winter coat he flings, The fishes float with new repairëd scale, The adder all her slough away she slings, The swift swallow pursueth the flyës smale, The busy bee her honey now she mings […]55

George Gascoigne in his blank-verse social satire — The Steel Glass (1576), includes a number of cataloguing lists, such as those connected with the ills of “this weak and wretched world,” caused by what the poet calls “[t]hat peevish pride [which] doth all the world possess.” Pride becomes people’s mirror and “This is

51 52 53 54 55

Paradise Lost, Book V, ll. 385–387. Our Ladies Salutation, ll. 1–2; qtd. from Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 5. Paradise Lost, Book V, ll. 388–391. Ibid. Book XI, ll. 158–161; Book XII, ll. 379–382. “Description of spring, wherein each thing renews save only the lover,” ll. 3–11; qtd. from Tudor Poetry and Prose, ed. J. William Hebel et al. (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, Inc., 1953), 27.

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the cause,” Gascoigne begins his enumeration, “That realms do rue from high prosperity, / That kings decline from princely government, / That lords do lack their ancestors’ good will,” etc.56 When asked by the priest when their prayers for the well-being of the country shall end, the poet replies: When tinkers make no more holes than they found, When thatchers think their wages worth their work, When colliers put no dust into their sacks, When maltmen make us drink no firmentie, When Davie Diker digs, and dallies not, When smiths shoe horses as they would be shod, When millers toll not with a golden thumb, When bakers make not barm bear price of wheat […]57

Anaphoras beginning with “when” and “and” were very popular,58 as were negative repetitions beginning with “ne” or “nor.”59 Among the most popular catalogues were those listing famous heroes, such as Milton’s enumeration of the fallen angels in his Paradise Lost,60 as well as those connected with love, the beloved’s features being among the most frequently catalogued items. “Love was no longer a serious and holy thing,” as Blanche M. Kelly observes, “but a kind of game at which men and women played. Men sang of women’s virtues, even while they doubted the existence of those virtues, but in a general way they refrained from all reference to spiritual qualities and strove to make catalogues of physical charms.”61 Such catalogues were based on a blazon (French blason, ‘coat-of-arms’), which praised the various parts of the sweetheart’s body by comparing them with flowers or gems as Spenser does in his Amoretti. In Sonnet 64 he writes: Her lips did smell like unto gillyflowers; Her ruddy cheeks like unto roses red; Her snowy brows like budded bellamours; Her lovely eyes like pinks but newly spread; Her goodly bosom like a strawberry bed;

56 The Steel Glass, ll. 32–35; qtd. from Tudor Poetry and Prose, 90. 57 The Steel Glass, ll. 346–352; qtd. from Tudor Poetry and Prose, 98. 58 Cf. Shakespeare’s catalogue of eleven evils the poet is fed up with in Sonnet 66 or, in later poetry, Christina Rossetti’s Later Life, sonnet 17. 59 Cf. stanza 13 of Spenser’s Ruines of Rome in which the poets enumerates the reasons for the fall of Rome, or stanza 19 of his Epithalamion. 60 Cf. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book I, ll. 376–520. 61 Blanche Mary Kelly, The Well of English. On the Influence of the Catholic Religion on English Literature (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 88.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz Her neck like to a bunch of colombines; Her breast like lilies ere their leaves be shed; Her nipples like young-blossomed jessamines […].62

In Sonnet 15 the poet addresses “tradeful merchants,” bragging that his love contains all the world’s riches that they are seeking in vain: If sapphires, lo, her eyes be sapphires plain; If rubies, lo, her lips be rubies sound; If pearls, her teeth be pearls both pure and round; If ivory, her forehead ivory ween; If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground; If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen.63

The catalogue of similarities provides an answer to the question the poet asks the merchants: “What needeth you to seek so far in vain?” The parallel “if ” clauses introduce an air of male boastfulness, reinforced by the verb “be” through which the poet makes a claim that the parts of the beloved’s body are not simply  l i k e precious materials — they  a r e  precious materials.64 Such hyperbolic praise of women evoked a strong reaction from poets such as William Shakespeare, who in his Sonnet 130 mocks false comparisons, and John Donne who in his Elegy VIII (“The Comparison”) displays a similar attitude, writing: “She and comparisons are odious.”65 The reaction against objectifying women in courtly poetry came also from women themselves. Katherine Philips, for instance, in her poem “The Virgin” enumerates the different body parts conventionally praised by men, but with a different purpose: her aim is to underline the positives of a virgin life.66 62 Amoretti, Sonnet 64, ll. 5–12; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 162. Cf. also Robert Herrick’s flower-poem, entitled A Meditation for His Mistress, where each stanza compares the lady to a different flower. 63 Amoretti, Sonnet 15, ll. 7–12; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 137. 64 Cf. also Abraham Cowley’s The Inconstant — a poem which in a similarly conditional way begins a catalogue of ladies whose appeal the inconstant lover finds irresistible. In The Collected Works of Abraham Cowley, ed. Thomas O. Calhoun (University of Delaware Press, 1993), Part I: The mistress, 101–102. 65 Cf. also John Donne’s “Woman’s Constancy,” which catalogues a number of excuses a woman will serve her lover after a whole day and night spent together, or “The Indifferent,” based on Ovid’s Amores. In John Donne. The Major Works, 91, 93. 66 “The Virgin,” in Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda (1667), ed. Jack Lynch, Rutgers University. Electronic Texts scanned and edited by Jack Lynch, accessed October 11, 2015, https://andromeda.rutgers. edu/~jlynch/Texts/virgin.html.

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Litanic Verse Fuelled by the growing national feelings and religious passions, litanic verse thrives in early modern England, entering the domains of different modes and genres: it belongs to the Petrarchan and pastoral poetry as much as to the devotional; it is used to affirm and to celebrate as much as to mourn and lament. It is written by Catholics (Southwell) and Protestants (Gascoigne, Herbert, Lok, Raleigh, Sidney, Spenser, Wyatt), but also by Catholic converts (Alabaster, Crashaw) and Protestant converts (Donne); by those whose conversion was a matter of a single choice, but also by those who moved between the Churches throughout their lives — the “confessional chameleons.”67 The religious change was often connected with a generic one. William Alabaster, for instance, in his Protestant years began an epic poem in praise of Queen Elizabeth — the Elisaeis; in his Catholic years his favoured means of expression was the sonnet — a genre which was better suited for the task of describing his conversion, but also for “stirr[ing] up others.”68

Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) Chronologically, the poet who opens the list of litanic-verse writers in the early modern period is Sir Thomas Wyatt for, as David Daiches points out, his song lyrics grow naturally out of medieval songs.69 It is the poems which appropriate the medieval stanza form that are regarded as Wyatt’s best works and as much better than his pioneering sonnets, which — according to some critics — should be passed over in silence.70 The litany-like form of Wyatt’s poems is best seen in the following stanzas, rounded off by a refrain:

67 Molly Murray, “Conversion and Poetry in Early Modern England,” in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, ed. Michael Hattaway (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2010), 413. 68 Murray, “Conversion and Poetry in Early Modern England,” 414. 69 David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature. Vol. 1: From the beginnings to the sixteenth century (London: Secker & Warburg, 1969), 154. 70 As E. M. W. Tillyard argues: “It may be remarked that for the sake of his reputation, Wyatt had better not have imported the sonnet into England, for by so doing he purchased a text-book glory at the price of advertising the class of poems that does his poetical powers least credit.” Cf. his The Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt: A Selection and a Study (London: Chatto & Windus, 1949), vi.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz Forget not yet the tried entent Of such a truth as I have meant, My great travail so gladly spent, Forget not yet. Forget not yet when first began The weary life ye know, since whan The suit, the service none tell can, Forget not yet.71

Usually the same refrain runs through the whole lyric, emphasizing its meaning,72 but occasionally the refrain changes (“Yet rue upon my pain” into “Rejoice not at my pain,” “Is it possible?” into “All is possible”), or — even less frequently — each stanza contains a different key word, as in the following example: Disdain me not without desert, Nor leave me not so suddenly; Since well ye wot that in my heart I mean ye not but honestly. Disdain me not. Refuse me not without cause why, Nor think me not to be unjust; Since that by lot of fantasy This careful knot needs knit I must. Refuse me not. Mistrust me not, though some there be That fain would spot my steadfastness; Believe them not, since that we see The proof is not as they express. Mistrust me not. Forsake me not till I deserve, Nor hate me not till I offend; Destroy me not till that I swerve; But since ye know what I intend, Forsake me not.

71 Tillyard, The Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, 72. Cf. also poem number 27 with the refrain: “Yet rue upon my pain” in Tillyard, 91. 72 For Wyatt’s characteristic handling of the refrain cf. D. W. Harding, “The Poetry of Wyatt,” in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol. 1: The Age of Chaucer, ed. Boris Ford (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), 199–200.

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Disdain me not that am your own: Refuse me not that am so true: Mistrust me not till all be known: Forsake me not ne for no new. Disdain me not.73

Beginning each stanza with a different verb (“disdain,” “refuse,” “mistrust”), the poet is asking the lady not to leave (“forsake”) him. It seems clear why “forsake” comes last in the sequence of events, but the same cannot be said about the order of the previous stanzas. C. S. Lewis observes that Wyatt does not develop an argument or a story, which was characteristic of litanic verse: “His danger is that of being unprogressive, writing poems that stop rather than end, poems that do not carry in themselves the reason for their length or for the order in which the stanzas come.”74 Wyatt’s last stanza, which recapitulates all the preceding ones is, according to Lewis, “a capital for the column [Wyatt] is building.”75 It sums up Wyatt’s prayer in the same way that the medieval “bob and wheel” structure summarized the preceding events in alliterative verse. We can say, then, that the litanic form of Wyatt’s poetry grows out of the medieval alliterative line, with a caesura dividing the two-half lines and with “the bob and wheel” structure attached to each stanza. Harding also points to Wyatt’s affinity with plainsong, i.e. liturgical chants.76

George Gascoigne (c. 1535–1577) Another of the transitional poets, George Gascoigne, is the author of De Profundis, whose litanic character has been examined by Witold Sadowski,77 and of poems on courtly intrigues, some of which also possess litanic qualities. His collection A Hundreth Sundrie Floures Bound Up in One Small Posie (1573) includes a sonnet on the constancy of a lover: That self same tongue which first did thee entreat To link thy liking with my lucky love: That trusty tongue must now these words repeat, I  l o v e  t h e e  s t i l l,  my fancy cannot move.

73 Tillyard, The Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt, 70. 74 C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 228. 75 Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, 228. 76 Harding, “The Poetry of Wyatt,” 201. 77 Cf. Witold Sadowski, “Generic Worldview: The Case of the Chronotope of the Litany”, ms. prepared for publication.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz That dreadless heart which durst attempt the thought To win thy will with mine for to consent, Maintains that vow which love in me first wrought, I  l o v e  t h e e  s t i l l,  and never shall repent. That happy hand which hardely did touch, Thy tender body to my deep delight: Shall serve with sword to prove my passion such A s  l o v e s  t h e e  s t i l l,  much more than it can write. Thus love I still with tongue, hand, heart and all, And when I change, let vengeance on me fall.78

The alliteration of the ‘l’ sound used in the second line brings out the process of falling in love, starting with liking through luck to love. With each stanza the initially spontaneous connection gains weight and the lover’s service becomes more burdensome: the lady is served by the lover’s “trusty tongue,” “dreadless heart,” and finally his “happy hand” which “shall serve [her] with sword.” The repeated declaration “I love thee still” reinforces the idea of the lover’s steadfastness in a twofold way: through the predictability of its appearance every fourth line and through the play on the word “still,” referring to the lover’s constancy, but also to its restricting effect. The bondage which that love creates confines his movements, leading to a virtual imprisonment, which was characteristic of a courtly lover, medieval and early modern alike.

Anne Lok (c. 1530–after 1590) The mother of Henry Lok (a prolific Elizabethan sonneteer) and the author of the first sonnet sequence composed by a woman — A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner: Written in Maner of a Paraphrase upon the 51.Psalme of Dauid (1560), Anne Lok can be called the “mother of English religious sonneteering” in a literal and metaphorical sense.79 Her verse has been characterised as “metaphorically simple, and much given to lexical redoubling.”80 In her sequence of twenty-one sonnets, Lok displays a fondness for the stylistic devices of expansion and repetition, such as anaphora:

78 Qtd. from Stephen Burt, David Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2010), 34; my emphasis. 79 William L. Stull, “‘Why Are Not Sonnets Made of Thee?’ A New Context for the ‘Holy Sonnets’ of Donne, Herbert, and Milton,” Modern Philology 80 (1982): 132. 80 Michael R. G. Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1992), 93.

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So shall the profe of myne example preache The bitter frute of lust and foule delight: So shall my pardon by thy mercy teache The way to finde swete mercy in thy sight. 81

Among other litanic devices Lok also uses apostrophes to God and supplications. What is also characteristic of her poetry is the medial caesura which signals a syntactic break: So foule is sinne and loathsome in thy sighte, So foule with sinne I see my selfe to be, That till from sinne I may be washed white, So foule I dare not, Lord, approche to thee.82

The first three lines can be divided into two major elements with a clear break falling on “sinne.” The first part of the line, through its iterations of “foul” and “sinne,” brings out the defiling nature of sin; the second seems to underline a progression from God’s vision (“in thy sighte”) to human vision (“I see my selfe”), and then to action. The sinner is asking God for his cleansing grace, the verb “wash me” reverberating throughout the sonnet in different variations: “washe me againe,” “washe me more,” “washe me euery where.”

Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) Sir Philip Sidney frequently uses the figures of repetition, anaphora being a staple device of his poetry. Out of his thirty-two poems known under the title Certain Sonnets, more than half contain various repetitive schemes; one is a litany-poem which will be analysed in the next subchapter and four are pure accentual-syllabic sonnets; among them one written in aristophanic verse: Thus do I fall, to rise thus; Thus do I die, to live thus; Changed to a change, I change not. Thus may I not be from you; Thus be my senses on you;

81 A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, Sonnet 20, ll. 9–12; qtd. from Before the Door of God. An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, ed. Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 94. 82 A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, Sonnet 8, ll. 1–4; qtd. from Before the Door of God, 89.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz Thus what I think is of you; Thus what I seek is in you; All what I am, it is you.83

Songs between eclogues in The Old Arcadia are equally repetitive, as exemplified by one written in Sapphic stanza: If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand, Or mine eyes’ language she do hap to judge of, So that eyes’ message be of her received, Hope, we do live yet. But if eyes fail then, when I most do need them, Or if eyes’ language be not unto her known, So that eyes’ message do return rejected, Hope, we do both die.84

The litany-like nature of the song manifests itself in the parallelism of its structure: weight is given to the onset of the line and the refrain provides a relief from the “If mine eyes—Or mine eyes—So that eyes” / “But if eyes—Or if eyes’—So that eyes’” parison. Among other litanic poems by Sidney are his metrical psalms with apostrophes to God85 and his sonnets which have been called “apostrophic sonnets” by Michael R. G. Spiller, who observes that they contain a higher proportion of direct addresses than in any other British sonneteer.86 Objects addressed by Sidney are — apart from his beloved Stella — Reason, Love, Cupid, Heart, Hope, the Muses, the sleep, the eyes, the soul’s joy, the sweet kiss and the sweet swelling lip. Sidney’s sonnets, which found numerous imitators,87 are also interesting for their symmetrical patterning, which imparts a litanic quality to them. In his famous Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella (1591), the rhetorical pattern reflects 83 Certain Sonnets, Sonnet 25, ll. 27–34; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, including Astrophil and Stella, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 32. 84 The Old Arcadia, The First Eclogues, Cleophila’s Song, ll. 1–8; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, 63. 85 For the formative influence of psalms on English literature cf. Hannibal Hamlin, Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4–6. For an analysis of Sidney’s psalms cf. Robert Kilgore, “Poets, Critics, and the Redemption of Poesy: Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy and Metrical Psalms,” in The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Mary Arshagouni Papazian (Associated University Press Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 108–131. 86 Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet, 109. 87 For a list of Sidney’s imitators, cf. Stull, “‘Why Are Not Sonnets Made of Thee?’”, 133.

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the poetic process by which the poet hopes to win the lady’s love: “Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know; / Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.”88 Sonnet 100 contains more than a repetition of the verb and the keywords from the preceding phrases; here the keywords are placed at the head of the quatrains to be evoked collectively before the concluding couplet: O  t e a r s,  no tears, but rain from beauty’s skies, Making those lilies and those roses grow Which aye most fair, now more than most fair show, While graceful pity beauty beautifies: O  h o n e y e d  s i g h s,  which from that breast do rise Whose pants do make unspilling cream to flow, Winged with whose breath so pleasing zephyrs blow, As can refresh the hell where my soul fries: O  p l a i n t s,  conserved in such a sugared phrase That eloquence itself envies your praise, While sobbed-out words a perfect music give: Such  t e a r s,  s i g h s,  p l a i n t s,  no sorrow is, but joy; Or if such heavenly signs must prove annoy, All mirth farewell, let me in sorrow lie.89

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) The practice of dividing the sonnets at the quatrains becomes a habit in Edmund Spenser’s poetry and is most conspicuous in the first sonnet from Amoretti (1595), in which the three parallel quatrains commence with “Happy, ye leaves!,” “And happy lines,” “And happy rhymes” and finish with “Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone, / Whom if ye please, I care for other none,” making a point about its most important addressee.90 The structure of Sonnet 56 is even more unusual: F a i r  y e  b e  s u r e,  b u t  cruel and unkind A s  i s  a tiger that with greediness Hunts after blood: when he by chance doth find A feeble beast, doth felly him oppress. F a i r  b e  y e  s u r e,  b u t  proud and pitiless

88 Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 1, ll. 3–4; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, 153. 89 Astrophil and Stella, Sonnet 100; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, 206–207; my emphasis. 90 Amoretti, Sonnet 1; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 130.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz A s  i s  a storm that all things doth prostrate: Finding a tree alone all comfortless, Beats on it strongly, it to ruinate. F a i r  b e  y e  s u r e,  b u t  hard and obstinate, A s  i s  a rock amidst the raging floods: Gainst which a ship of succour desolate Doth suffer wreck both of herself and goods. That  s h i p,  that  t r e e,  and that same  b e a s t  am I, Whom ye do wreck, do ruin, and destroy.91

There is an obvious symmetry displayed in the poem’s repetitions: each quatrain begins with “Fair ye be sure” or “Fair be ye sure”; then a contrast is introduced between the fairness of the object and its negative features (“fair […], but cruel and unkind,” “fair […], but proud and pitiless,” “fair […], but hard and obstinate”); the next line starts with “As is,” introducing a comparison between the lady and a tiger (quatrain 1), a storm (quatrain 2), and a rock (quatrain 3). In the final couplet the poet identifies himself with the three previously described objects — “a feeble beast,” “a tree alone all comfortless,” and “a rock amidst the raging floods,” which are affected by the lady’s destructive powers, emphasised by the poet’s use of verbs, such as “wreck,” “ruin,” and “destroy.” Spenser’s other sonnets, included in the collection Ruines of Rome, also achieve interesting effects through the use of litanic devices.92 The sonnets are based on the poetry of a Continental Catholic, Joachim du Bellay, whom Spenser translates, adding — as Burt and Mikics argue — a Protestant point of view.93 Among other examples of Spenser’s litanic verse is, for instance, the Dido elegy in the November eclogue of The Shepherds’ Calendar (1579): Shepherds that by your flocks on Kentish downs abide, Wail ye this woeful waste of nature’s wark; Wail we the wight whose presence was our pride; Wail we the wight whose absence is our cark. The sun of all the world is dim and dark; The earth now lacks her wonted light, And all we dwell in deadly night. O heavy hearse;

91 Amoretti, Sonnet 56; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 158; my emphasis. 92 Cf. Sonnet 3 from Spenser’s Ruines of Rome, interesting for its “Rome […] of Rome” repetition. For an analysis of the sonnet cf. Burt, Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet, 43–47. 93 Burt, Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet, 43–47.

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Break we our pipes that shrilled as loud as lark; O careful verse.94

Inspired by French poetry,95 the lament is framed by an originally Spenserian form: it takes fifteen nine-line stanzas, each repeating the “O heavy hearse,” “O careful verse” refrain which adds dignity and pathos to the situation. In Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (1595), the poet celebrates the beauty of Cynthia — “his liege, his lady, and his life’s regent.”96 His periphrastic eulogy, which evokes Marian attributes (“the beam of beauty sparkled from above,” “the flower of virtue and pure chastity,” “the pearl of peerless grace and modesty”), culminates in a kind of prayer: To her my thoughts I daily dedicate, To her my heart I nightly martyrize, To her my love I lowly do prostrate, To her my life I wholly sacrifice […].97

Sir Walter Raleigh (c.1552–1618) Sir Walter Raleigh’s poetry also shows a delight in repetitive schemes, which are a mark of what Daiches calls Raleigh’s “studied simplicity.”98 In “The Lie” the poet asks his soul to be freed from the confines of the body and to expose the falsehoods and hypocrisy of courtly life, ending each stanza with the refrain “give the world the lie” in different variations: Tell zeall it wanttes devotion tell love it is but lust tell tyme it meedes but motion tell fleshe it is but Dust and wyshe them not replye for thou must gyve the lye Tell age it dayly wastethe tell honor how it allters tell bewtye that she boastethe

94 The Shepherds’ Calendar, the November eclogue, ll. 63–72; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 79–80. 95 For a comparison between Clément Marot’s and Spenser’s poetry cf. H. S. V. Jones, A Spenser Handbook (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1930), 62–65. 96 Colin Clout’s Come Home Again, l. 235; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 115. 97 Colin Clout’s Come Home Again, ll. 472–475; qtd. from Spenser, Shorter Poems, 115. 98 Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature. Vol. 1, 201.

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Dominika Ruszkiewicz tell favour that she flatters and if they shall replye gyve every one the lye.99

In “Farwell falce Love thow oracle of lies” the poet uses antonomasias to describe false love, which is referred to as “a mortall foe,” “enemy to rest,” “a way of eror,” “a temple full of treason,” “a poysned serpent,” “mother of sighes,” “murderer of repose,” “a Sea of sorrowe,” “a schoole of gyle,” “a nest of deep deceit,” “a gylded hook,” “a fortress foild,” “a Cyrens songe,” “a feaver of the mynde,” and “a goale of griefe.”100 Another interesting poem by Raleigh is “The Lover’s Maze,” based on threeelement lists in each line. To quote the first two stanzas: Her Face, her Tonge, her Wytte So fayre, so sweete, so sharpe, First bent, then drew, then hytte, Myne Eye, mine Eare, my Hartt. Myne eye, mine eare, mine Harte, To Lyke, to Learne, to Love, Your face, your Tongue, your Wytt Doth Leade, doth teache, doth move.101

The poem can be read vertically as well as horizontally, allowing the meaning to meander like in a maze or labyrinth. It may thus be seen as an example of wordplay or a poetic exercise — such poetic exercises were not the domain of Raleigh alone; transplanted into a religious ground in the poetry of Robert Southwell, they seem to have a greater significance.

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) Southwell uses a similar structural patterning, based on horizontal and vertical arrangement of meaning. His poetry is known for its lyrical or balladic quality, achieved by the poet’s frequent use of word-lists, preferably three or four words in a row which make one reinforced clause (“By death by wronge by shame”) and “The Lie,” ll. 31–42; qtd. from The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition, ed. Michael Rudick (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999), 31–32. 100 “Farwell falce Love thow oracle of lies”; qtd. from The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition, 12. Cf. Thomas Heneage’s response to Raleigh’s poem, beginning with “Most welcome love, thow mortall foe to lies.” 101 “The Lover’s Maze,” ll. 1–8; qtd. from The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition, 14. 99

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his pairings of contraries or mirrorings (“in prince or poore in yonge or old”; “I gave my vow my vow gave me”).102 This shows the poet’s affinity with liturgical texts, which has not escaped critical attention: Elbridge Colby notes that “[h]is repetitions have all the power of solemnly chanted litanies.”103Another marker of the Southwellian verse is the lack of punctuation, which “allows meaning to flow and backflow like choppy water in a harbour,” as Anne Sweeney observes.104 One unpunctuated litany-like fragment has already been quoted105; among Southwell’s other poems there is one in particular — Loves Garden grief, in which anaphoric repetitions, syntactic parallelism and alteration in the length of the lines produce a very strong litany-like effect: Vayne loves avaunt infamous is your pleasure Your joye deceite Your Jewells jestes and wortheles trash your treasure Fooles Common baite Your pallace is a prison that allureth To sweete mishapp and rest that payne procureth Your garden greife hedg’d in with thornes of Envy And stakes of strife Your allies errour gravelled with Jelosye And cares of life Your brancks are seates enwrapt with shades of sadnes Your arbours breed rough fittes of raging madnes.106

Because of its upsetting subject matter, the poem can be seen as a persuasion against love and a parody of love poems.107 Critics have observed that in Southwell’s poetry the “graceful lament of a jilted lover” is turned into “a sinner’s complaint.”108 They speak about the poet’s “campaign to convert contemporary love poetry to religious ends.”109 His characters are not Astrophil, Cynthia or Colin

Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 127. Elbridge Colby, English Catholic Poets (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1936), 141. Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 128. Cf. p. 55 of the present chapter. Loves Garden grief, ll. 1–12; qtd. from Robert Southwell. Collected Poems, 55. Cf. Crashaw’s The Weeper, stanzas 18–19. 107 For a discussion on Southwell’s use of parody cf. Brownlow, Robert Southwell, 100–102. 108 Brownlow, Robert Southwell, 100. For Christ as the Petrarchan beloved see Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 138. 109 Brownlow, Robert Southwell, 100. 102 103 104 105 106

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Clout, but St. Peter and Mary Magdalene, whose sorrows inform the poet’s account of a man who turns away from God and is admitted back to his favour after a long process of contrition and reconciliation. His is the poetry of tears (in Saint Peters Complaynt twenty stanzas begin with apostrophes to the eyes of Christ) and of conversion. Southwell himself refers to his “endless alphabet” of lamentation110— a lamentation which takes the form of parallel and antithetical questions: How can I live, that thus my life deni’d? How can I hope, that lost my hope in feare? What trust to one, that truth it selfe defi’de? What good in him, that did his God forsweare?111

and which finds its resolution in the repetitive supplication for Christ’s mercy: With mildenesse, Jesu, measure my offence: Let true remorse thy due revenge abate: Let teares appease when trespasse doth incense: Let pittie temper thy deserved hate. Let grace forgive, let love forget my fall: With feare I crave, with hope I humbly call.112

As William L. Stull observes, by the year 1597 more and more poets turned verse into prayer in reaction to the growing popularity of Petrarchism.113 Among those who rejected Cupid for a Christian muse were Henry Constable (1562–1613), Fulke Greville and William Alabaster, as well as John Donne, George Herbert, and Richard Crashaw, all of whom composed divine sonnets, among other works.

William Alabaster (1567–1640) William Alabaster is known for moving back and forth between the Catholic and Protestant churches, which has given him the name of a “double or treble turncoat”114 as well as for being probably the earliest English metaphysical poet, anticipating Donne and Crashaw.115 His sequence of sonnets called Divine Meditations was composed after his first turn away from the Anglican Church, i.e.

Saint Peters Complaynt, ll. 37–39; qtd. from Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 65. Saint Peters Complaynt, ll. 55–58; qtd. from Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 65. Saint Peters Complaynt, ll. 781–786; qtd. from Robert Southwell, Collected Poems, 85. Stull, “‘Why Are Not Sonnets Made of Thee?’”, 133. The Sonnets of William Alabaster, ed. G. M. Story and Helen Gardner (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), xxxi. 115 Ibid. 110 111 112 113 114

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between 1597 and 1598.116 Based upon the Scriptures, the sonnets are litanic in their content as well as their form, which displays a “firm discipline of controlled rhetoric.”117 His poems are not as heavily repetitive as Southwell’s, but are characterised by structural parallelism, best seen in Sonnet 10: Though all forsake thee, lord, yet I will die, For I have chained so my will to thine That I have no will left my will to untwine, But will abide with thee most willingly. Though all forsake thee, lord, yet cannot I For love hath wrought in me thy form divine That thou art more my heart than heart is mine: How can I then from myself, thyself, fly?118

or Sonnet 7: What should there be in Christ to give offence? His corded hands, why they for thee were bound, His mangled brows, why they for thee were crowned, His pierced breast, thy life did flow from thence.119

Other litanic devices used by Alabaster include apostrophes (“Holy, holy, holy, lord unnamed”120) and supplications (“O shine upon me with thy blessed face / O rain upon me with a shower of grace”121).

John Donne (1572–1631) and Richard Crashaw (1613–1649) John Donne is known for his passionate, learned, deeply personal and genuinely religious poetry. Among Donne’s poems that are to the largest degree inspired by liturgical prayer are the seven sonnets which make up the La Corona sequence, A Litany, and his hymns. The poet frequently turns to figures of symmetry and balance, such as anaphora, parison, epanalepsis, ploche, epizeuxis and others, as analysed by Brian Vickers.122 He also uses invocations and supplications in a very 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

Ibid., xxxvi. Ibid., xxxii. Sonnet 10, ll. 1–8; qtd. from The Sonnets of William Alabaster, 5. Sonnet 7, ll. 1–4; qtd. from The Sonnets of William Alabaster, 4. Sonnet 45; qtd. from The Sonnets of William Alabaster, 25. Sonnet 4, ll. 9–10; qtd. from The Sonnets of William Alabaster, 2. Brian Vickers, “Rhetoric,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 113–118.

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characteristic way, best seen in one of his holy sonnets, in which he makes a dramatic appeal to God for the regeneration of his soul: the Maker is asked to use all his force to destroy him and make him new: “bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new”123. The violence of the process is emphasised by the sequence of monosyllabic, alliterating verbs, which will also be characteristic of Herbert’s style.124 In another of his sonnets, Donne asks God for the gift of repentance: “Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good / As if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon, with Thy blood;”125 in Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness, he asks for salvation through Christ: “So, in his purple wrapped receive me Lord / By these his thorns give me his other crown.”126 In Donne’s poetry, the supplication often turns to expostulation: “if the sonnet is a cage, the speaker is beating at the bars,” as Spiller notes.127 Donne’s anxiously apostrophic “Batter my heart, three-personed God” seems to anticipate Milton’s “Avenge O Lord, thy slaughter’s saints” — an expostulation which “drastically questions God’s justice.”128 Litanic devices are also used in Donne’s love poetry. In The Canonization, the poet declares that he and his mistress should be canonized and, as symbols of religious inspiration, should be invoked in the following way: “You to whom reverend love / Made one another’s hermitage; / You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage.”129 The fact that the repetition suggests a litany has been noticed by Helen Gardner who comments on Donne’s papistical style in the passage.130 In Elegy 11: On his Mistress, the poet draws upon the Obsecrations, which is implied by the parallel “by”: By our first strange and fatal interview, By all desires which thereof did ensue, By our long starving hopes, by that remorse Which my words’ masculine persuasive force

123 “Batter my heart,” ll. 1–4; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 177. 124 Donne’s cascades of verbs bring to mind Southwell’s word-lists, and his plea for destruction recalls Alabaster’s appeal to God: “o strike my heart with lightning from above” from Sonnet 48 in The Sonnets of William Alabaster, 27. 125 “At the round earth’s imagined corners,” ll. 13–14; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 175. 126 Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness, ll. 26–27; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 332. 127 Spiller, The Development of the Sonnet, 180. 128 Burt, Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet, 94. 129 The Canonization, ll. 37–39; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 96. 130 John Donne: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Helen Gardner (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 46.

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Begot in thee, and by the memory Of hurts which spies and rivals threatened me, I calmly beg; but by thy parents’ wrath, By all pains which want and divorcement hath, I conjure thee; and all those oaths which I And thou have sworn, to seal joint constancy, Here I unswear, and overswear them thus: Thou shalt not love by means so dangerous […].131

While the liturgical Obsecrations refer to the various stages of Christ’s redemptive work for man, Donne’s obsecrations enumerate various stages of love which are marked by the trials and tribulations the lovers experience. By all the painful difficulties, the lover “calmly begs” and “conjures” the lady not to risk too much in loving him and to stay in England while he travels to the Continent. Donne was not alone in his appropriation of this part of the liturgy in poetry: the obsecrations are also part of Richard Crashaw’s The Flaming Heart upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphicall Saint Teresa, in which the poet addresses the Saint, asking her for aid: By all thy dowr of Lights & Fires; By all the eagle in thee, all the doue; By all thy liues & deaths of loue; By thy larg draughts of intellectuall day, And by thy thirsts of loue more large then they; By all thy brim-fill’d Bowles of feirce desire, By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire; By the full kingdome of that finall kisse That seiz’d, thy parting Soul, & seal’d thee his; By all the heau’ns thou hast in him. (Fair sister of the Seraphim!) By all of Him we haue in Thee; Leaue nothing of my Self in me. Let me so read thy life, that I Vnto all life of mine may dy.132

This excerpt is more symbolic than that quoted of Donne and its piling of images, one unto another, exemplifies what critics call Crashaw’s “baroque sensibility.” It contains — they claim — Crashaw’s best, most mature and typically Crashavian lines modelled on the liturgy: “It is enthusiastic, it soars exultingly, it is climactic, 131 Elegy 11: On his Mistress, ll. 1–12; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 57. 132 Qtd. from Joan Bennett, Four Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 108.

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it seems to be all wing; but underneath are the everlasting forms of the Litany,” as George Walton Williams observes.133

George Herbert (1593–1633) Hailed as “the saint of the metaphysical school,” George Herbert is the author of religious poems — published as a collection in 1633 under the title The Temple — in which he often resorts to litanic figures of symmetry and balance.134 Most of his poems are addressed to God, but traces of the Marian devotion are visible in poems such as “To All Angels and Saints,” in which “Blessed Maid” is addressed. Thou art the holy mine, whence came the gold, The great restorative for all decay In young and old; Thou art the cabinet where the jewel lay: Chiefly to thee would I my soul unfold.135

Herbert’s poems contain repetitive apostrophes to God, as exemplified in “Sighs and Groans,” in which the poet asks God: “O do not use me / After my sinnes,” “O do not bruise me!,” “O do not urge me!,” “O do not scourge me!,” “O do not blinde me!,” “O do not grinde me!,” “O do not fill me / With the turn’d viall of thy bitter wrath,” “O do not kill me,” “But O reprieve me!,” “My God, relieve me!”136 In “Justice I” the poet — through the use of anaphora and anadiplosis — creates a parallel effect which covers nearly the whole of the stanza: I Cannot skill of these thy wayes. Lord, thou didst make me, yet thou woundest me; Lord, thou dost wound me, yet thou dost relieve me: Lord, thou relievest, yet I die by thee: Lord, thou dost kill me, yet thou dost reprieve me.137

The repetitive movement of verbs (“wound,” “relieve”) from one line to the next underlines the progression from the Fall to Redemption and reinforces “the coherence of God’s underlying plan.”138

133 George Walton Williams, Image and Symbol in the Sacred Poetry of Richard Crashaw (University of South Carolina Press: Columbia, SC. 1963), 4. 134 Cf. Vickers, “Rhetoric,” 108–113. 135 “To All Angels and Saints,” ll. 11–15; qtd. from Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, 97. 136 Qtd. from The Works of George Herbert, 83. 137 “Justice I,” ll. 1–5; qtd. from The Works of George Herbert, 95. 138 Vickers, “Rhetoric,” 110.

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In “Sacrifice” the poet presents a moving account of the events of the Passion Week, as seen through the eyes of Christ, whose “was ever grief like mine?” refrain concludes each stanza: Yet my Disciples sleep: I cannot gain One houre of watching; but their drowsie brain Comforts not me, and doth my doctrine stain: Was ever grief like mine? Arise, arise, they come. Look how they runne! Alas! What haste they make to be undone! How with their lanterns do they seek the sunne! Was ever grief like mine?139

Martz notes that the poem can be compared to fifteenth-century lyrics by Ryman, whose combination of monorhyme and refrain may have influenced Herbert’s stanza-form and his “method.”140 Another device characteristic of Herbert is the roll of nouns and verbs, seen — for instance — in his “Trinitie Sunday”: “Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me, / With faith, with hope, with charitie; / That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.”141 The repetition of noun-phrases finds its most extreme expression in a sonnet which does not contain a single verb: Prayer the Churches banquet, Angels age Gods breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage, The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth; Engine against th’ Almightie, sinners towre, Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear, The six-daies world transposing in an houre, A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear; Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse, Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best, Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest, The milkie way, the bird of Paradise, Church-bels beyond the starres heard, the soul’s bloud, The land of spices; something understood.142

139 “The Sacrifice,” ll. 29–36; qtd. from The Works of George Herbert, 27. For other uses of anadiplosis in Herbert, cf., for instance, his “Wreath,” in The Works of George Herbert, 185. 140 Martz, The Poetry of Meditation, 94–96. 141 “Trinitie Sunday,” ll. 7–9; qtd. from The Works of George Herbert, 68. 142 “Prayer I,” qtd. from The Works of George Herbert, 51.

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The sonnet consists of twenty-seven nouns or noun phrases, whose enumeration may be patterned upon litanic antonomasias. Here the noun phrases are used with reference to prayer, which is described as — among and above other things — “something understood.” Even though the poem was not meant as a collective prayer, it does demonstrate “how it feels for this Protestant Christian to believe that when he prays, his God takes note.”143

The Litany-Poem In the early modern period a number of English poems were cast in the form of a litany. They are mentioned as a group by Hannibal Hamlin who notes: “Litanypoems amount to a small but nevertheless significant subgenre of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century verse.”144 Even though they were not meant for liturgical use, their affinity with the liturgical prayer is testified in their form, often in the title, sometimes more conspicuously in the title than the form. Most of the poems selected for analysis are sombre in tone and serious in subject matter, but Hamlin also points to a group of poets who — like Sidney — applied the litanic form to less serious and even scandalous ends.145

Sir Philip Sidney, “Ring out your bells” Sidney’s poem, included in the Certain Sonnets collection, is made up of four 10-line stanzas, each concluding with the Deprecations section adopted from the liturgical litany: Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread, For love is dead: All love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain, Worth as naught worth rejected, And faith fair scorn doth gain. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female franzy, From them that use men thus: Good lord, deliver us.146

143 144 145 146

Burt, Mikics, The Art of the Sonnet, 90. Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie’,” 188. Ibid., 189–190. Sonnet 30, ll. 1–10 in Certain Sonnets; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, 36.

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In the last four lines the poet enumerates evils connected with unrequited love, having before declared that “love is dead.” Because of its mournful tone, the poem is often classified as a dirge — “a song of lament, usually of a lyrical mood”; The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, from which the definition comes, quotes Sidney’s poem as an example of a dirge.147 Sidney’s dirge-like litany does not lament the death of a person, but of love; or does it, really? The poet’s initial declaration about love’s death is revoked in the last stanza, which claims: “Love is not dead, but sleepeth / In her unmatched mind.”148 If the litany was written after the marriage of Lady Penelope Devereux to Lord Rich to express the poet’s feelings for the lady, as most critics assume, the last stanza may point to the poet’s realization that they were in fact reciprocated. Thus the occasion for the poem is personal, even though the poet is asking for a public mourning.149

Thomas Nashe, A Litany in Time of Plague Known mostly for his prose writings, Thomas Nashe (1567–c.1601) is also the author of a play which was performed during a private occasion in 1592 and published in 1600 — Summer’s Last Will and Testament. His litany, incorporated into the play, is pervaded with a painful awareness of the time passing: Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss; This world uncertain is; Fond are life’s lustful joys; Death proves them all but toys; None from his darts can fly; I am sick, I must die. Lord, have mercy on us!150

The poet uses the theme of death the leveller, beginning the six 6-line stanzas with the mention of people (“rich men”) and qualities (“beauty,” “strength,” “with”), whom or which death will not spare. The poet repeats not only the prayer “Love, have mercy on us!” but also the moving “I am sick, I must die” clauses, which are

147 The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, ed. J. A. Cuddon (London: Penguin Books, 1999), 227–228. 148 Sonnet 30, ll. 33–34 in Certain Sonnets; qtd. from Sir Philip Sidney. The Major Works, 37. 149 Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie’,” 188–189. 150 A Litany in Time of Plague, in Summer’s Last Will and Testament; qtd. from Thomas Nashe (Routledge Revivals): Selected Works, ed. Stanley Wells (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015), 129–131.

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all the more poignant in that the poem was written at a time when plague was raging in London. In the words of Stanley Wells: There is complexity in the final prayer ‘Love, have mercy on us’: the words of the Litany, familiar to all Elizabethans from their compulsory church-going but familiar, too, in an immediate and frightening context as the words inscribed in letters of red on the doors of plague-stricken houses.151

Thus, the poem can be seen as “a dirge for humanity” and an always valid but little welcome reminder that the bell tolls for all of us.152

Fulke Greville, Caelica (XCVIII) Sidney’s schoolmate and friend, Fulke Greville is known for his sequence of poems called Caelica (1633): it begins with amorous poems, addressed to the titular lady, which were written before the poet was “converted” to religious subjects. The speaker of his later poems is a reflective sinner who — aware of his corruption — asks for God’s aid: Wrapped up, O Lord, in man’s degeneration, The glories of Thy truth, Thy joys eternal, Reflect upon my soul dark desolation And ugly prospects e’er the sprites infernal; Lord, I have sinned and mine iniquity Deserves this hell; yet, Lord, deliver me.153

The poem is composed of three 6-line stanzas, each ending with the appeal for God’s deliverance from the depth of sin. It refers to the situation of those who “are at first committed to the world, then enter a state of spiritual destitution when they become aware of the ugliness of sin and the futility of their purely human gifts, and who are rescued from this state when they suffer the death of the old life and are reborn in Christ.”154 Although the Protestant speaker may not merit God’s grace, his litanic prayer for redemption is in itself a kind of transformation; his story can thus be read as a “conversion narrative.”155 The next poem in the collection (XCIX) is written in a similar vein; it does not borrow directly from the 151 Thomas Nashe (Routledge Revivals): Selected Works, 11. 152 Ibid., 10. 153 Caelica, XCVIII, ll. 1–6; qtd. from Murray, “Conversion and Poetry in Early Modern England,” 409. 154 Joan Rees, Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 1554–1628: A Critical Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 114. 155 Murray, “Conversion and Poetry in Early Modern England,” 409.

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liturgical prayer, but each stanza ends with a refrain: “Depriu’d of human graces, and diuine, / Euen there appears this  s a u i n g  G o d  of mine.”156

Phineas Fletcher, “Drop, drop, slow tears” Called “the Spenser of his Age,” Phineas Fletcher (1580–1650) was a clergyman and a poet. His early seventeenth-century poem “Drop, drop, slow tears” has been referred to as hymn, lamentation, or litany, which is the title it is assigned in The Oxford Book of English Verse. The poem begins with a litanic invocation to tears, asking them to drop ceaselessly and drown the speaker’s “faults and fears”: Drop, drop, slow tears, And bathe those beauteous feet Which brought from Heaven The news and Prince of Peace: Cease not, wet eyes, His mercy to entreat; To cry for vengeance Sin doth never cease. In your deep floods Drown all my faults and fears; Nor let His eye See sin, but through my tears.157

Probably spoken by a witness to Christ crucified and risen, Mary Magdalene, the words depict tears as agents of vengeance for the violence of the Crucifixion. They are an expression of the penitent’s sorrow, which comes with a realization that only when we begin to see our sins though God’s eyes, will he begin to see our sins through our eyes, brimming with tears.158

Robert Herrick, His Litany to the Holy Spirit Known mainly for celebrating love and country rituals in his poetry, Robert Herrick (1591–1674) also penned religious lyrics; a common thread running through his poetry is the pressure that time creates. In His Litany to the Holy Spirit the poet is concerned with last things and describes the feelings that accompany him in the 156 Caelica, XCIX, qtd. from Before the Door of God, 127. 157 A Litany; qtd. from The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1918, ed. Arthur QuillerCouch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 249. 158 David A. de Silva, Sacramental Life: Spiritual Formation Through the Book of Common Prayer (InterVarsity Press, 2008), 105.

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face of death. He writes about the confession of sins, his sickness and the uselessness of treatment, the bell tolling for his parting soul, the tapers burning blue, and the priest’s prayers, and concludes with the pains of hell and the Final Judgement: When the flames and hellish cries Fright mine ears, and fright mine eyes, And all terrors me surprise, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the Judgment is reveal’d, And that open’d which was seal’d; When to Thee I have appeal’d, Sweet Spirit, comfort me!159

The poet talks about his distress and despair, but the evocation of the “Sweet Spirit,” which is petitioned for comfort by the departing sinner, introduces a note of hope and a prospect of relief. As David Daiches observes, the speaker in Herrick’s religious poems shows a more complacent attitude than do those in Donne’s or Herbert’s works.160

John Donne, A Litany Probably composed in 1608, Donne’s litany is no more a liturgical text than his hymns are congregational anthems: both are rather occasional meditations in verse, as Barbara Lewalski notes.161 This is how the poet himself refers to the poem in a letter to his friend.162 He also expresses the hope that “neither the Roman Church need call it defective, because it abhors not the particular mention of the blessed triumphers in heaven, nor the Reformed can discreetly accuse it of attributing more than a rectified devotion ought to do.”163 Donne’s litany-poem uses the typical structure of the liturgical prayer, starting with invocations to the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the Angels, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Virgins, and the Doctors. The first four prayers are direct addresses 159 Herrick, His Litany to the Holy Spirit, ll. 41–48; qtd. from Chrysomela: A Selection from the Lyrical Poems of Robert Herrick, ed. Francis Turner Palgrave (London: Macmillan & Co., 1892), 184. 160 Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature. Vol. 2, 380. 161 Barbara Lewalski, Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 281. 162 See the beginning of this paper. 163 “From a letter to Sir Henry Goodyer (Winter 1608–9),” 169–170.

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to the three persons of the Trinity (“Father of heaven,” “O Son of God,” “O Holy Ghost,” “O Blessed glorious Trinity”); the remaining are more cautious. The Virgin Mary, for instance, is not directly asked for intercession, but still her role in salvation is not forgotten: “As her deeds were / Our helps, so are her prayers,” the poet writes.164 The thirteen stanzas of the invocations are followed by three stanzas of the deprecations with a transitional stanza in between. The stanzas in this part are linked by the anaphoric “from,” which appears more and more often as the prayer unfolds to find a most intense expression in stanza XVII: F r o m  tempting Satan to tempt us, By our connivance,  o r  slack company, F r o m  measuring ill by vicious, Neglecting to choke sin’s spawn, vanity, F r o m  indiscreet humility, Which might be scandalous, And cast reproach on Christianity, F r o m  being spies,  o r  to spies pervious, F r o m  thirst,  o r  scorn of fame, deliver us.165

As Hamlin observes, the anaphoric “from” is also tacitly implied in the conjunction “or,” intensifying the effect of acceleration.166 The responses in this section include “O Lord deliver us,” “Good Lord deliver us,” “Lord deliver us,” and “deliver us.” Stanzas XVIII–XXII correspond very loosely to the liturgical Obsecrations in their enumeration of some events from Christ’s life (the Incarnation, the Nativity, “that bitter agony”167) and omitting others (the Baptism, the fasting, the Temptation). The responses vary and the conventional plea for God to “deliver” man is joined by those to “make” and “teach” him, which — as Hamlin notes — anticipates the more positive petitions of the next section, in which the response changes to “Hear us, Lord.”168 Donne is asking God to listen to his prayers, to hear them and to respond to them; this will be possible when God manages to hear himself in our prayers: “Hear thyself now, for thou in us dost pray,” the poet writes.169 In this

164 165 166 167 168 169

A Litany, ll. 43–44; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 162. A Litany, ll. 145–153; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 165–166; my emphasis. Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie,’” 193. A Litany, l. 163; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 166. Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie,’” 195. A Litany, l. 207; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 167.

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way, God becomes “an ear,” but also “a cry”: “That our affections kill us not, nor die, / Hear us, weak echoes, O thou ear, and cry.”170 Much more complex than Cranmer’s Litany, Donne’s poem is not only interesting for the use it makes of the liturgy, but for the issues it raises. By casting the poem in the form of a litany, the poet himself wants to be cast into a new shape: “re-create me, now grow ruinous […] that new fashioned / I may rise up from death,”171 he asks God. What kind of recreation does he mean — religious or maybe poetic? As Hamlin argues, it may be both, for Donne’s text is both a litany and a poem; and God is both a sender and a receiver, the source and the addressee of both the litany and the poem — the Creator in the fullest sense of the word.172 Thus, our excessive self-expression, albeit in prayer, may be dangerous. Frances Cruickshank speaks about Donne’s warning against misplaced confidence or excessive complacency in prayer: “Not only is it impossible to worship without the accompanying petition for acceptance, it is apparently impossible to pray for acceptance without the familiar danger of pride.”173 This may explain Donne’s surprising plea: “O Lord deliver us / From trusting in those prayers, though poured out thus,”174 which can be applied to both prayer and poetry, for unless God speaks through both, “we know not what to say.”175

A Litany, ll. 242–243; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 168. A Litany, ll. 1–9; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 161. Hamlin, “Poetic Re-creation in John Donne’s ‘A Litanie,’” 199. Frances Cruickshank, Verse and Poetics in George Herbert and John Donne (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013), 30. 174 A Litany, ll. 125–126; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 165. 175 A Litany, l. 204; qtd. from John Donne. The Major Works, 167. 170 171 172 173

Anna Czarnowus University of Silesia

“Hail! the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!”: The Eighteenth Century and Romanticism in England It had long been thought that the eighteenth century was a time of decline in religious belief and of secularization. At present such an approach is deemed to be Franco-centric in that it is very much influenced by the political tendencies in late eighteenth-century France and not by the actual situation in England at the time.1 Quite the reverse, since eighteenth-century England saw the emergence of new Protestant denominations and metamorphoses within Anglicanism. As Jeremy Tambling writes, eighteenth-century hymns were written mainly within Methodism and Evangelicalism, except for Kit Smart’s poems representing the genre, which are Biblical.2 Litanic verse could appear in literature created during the period despite discrimination against Catholics, as they seem not to have been the only ones familiar with the literary form. It is important to note that the form did not disappear from the Church of England with the Reformation, since the Book of Common Prayer included it. Images of and prayers to Roman Catholic saints continued in the seventeenth century, only to disappear in the eighteenth for good. Then reform within Protestantism became visible in the Anglican church, while Pietism meant changes in Lutheranism, since it entailed “emphasis on ‘rebirth’ (the divine creation of a new person in the old sinner)” and “the idea of setting up local societies of the reborn within the wider Church.”3 The “rebirth” could be demonstrated by poetic meditations on religious issues.4 Another aspect which was important in the case of litanic verse was the beginning of Wesleyanism 1 Joachim Whaley, “Religion” in A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Europe, edited by Peter H. Wilson (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 176–191. 2 Jeremy Tambling, “‘Living on’: On Smart, Cowper, and Blake,” in Reciprocities: Essays in Honour of Professor Tadeusz Rachwał, eds. Agnieszka Pantuchowicz and Sławomir Masłoń (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2014), 106–128. 3 John Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 21. 4 The Scandinavian Pietist context for litanic verse is discussed in this volume by Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aleksandra Wilkus, and Aldona Zańko; cf. Joanna Cymbrykiewicz,

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or Methodism, where stress was laid on the religiosity of lower social classes and which included more of the Catholic type of piety than did eighteenth-century Anglicanism.5 Afterwards, Romanticism very often meant departure from conventional religion, but litanic elements were already so well grounded in English poetic discourse that they lasted in poetry. What eighteenth-century religious poetry shared with the later Romantic discourse was the emphasis on feeling, which may have contributed to the continuation of litanic verse in those two epochs. The “feeling” of the eighteenth-century Protestant denominations that was projected on the religious verse composed by, for example, Methodists such as Charles Wesley, was obviously of a different nature than the “feeling” of the Romantics. The religious feeling of Protestant communities, especially the one that Wesleyans postulated, required communal experience, whereas Romantic spirituality in England entailed a feeling that was individual, detached from communal activities of religious nature, and even that contested conventional religion. Litanic verse may have been used in order to express some higher spiritual feeling. As Colin Haydon notes, what the diverse Protestant denominations in late seventeenth-century England shared was anti-Catholicism.6 He calls the religions of the time “a shapeless system of beliefs,”7 but claims that the “No Popery” feeling observable in Georgian times only extended the mood that had characterized the seventeenth century.8 Eighteenth-century anti-Catholicism was based on three phenomena: political distrust, theological disagreement, and popular fear, hence at first sight one would not expect to find any litanic elements in the literature of the time.9 Yet this assumption proves to be wrong. Donald Davie quotes John Keble, who in Occasional Papers and Reviews writes that religious poetry flourished in the eighteenth century, as its nature consisted in “unaffected strains of poetical devotion.”10 The devotion reflected in literature clearly used the rich litanic tradition to give vent to writers’ religious feelings.

Aleksandra Wilkus, and Aldona Zańko, Litany Undercover: Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century. 5 Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans: Religion in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 21. 6 Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80: A Political and Social Study (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993), 2. 7 Ibid., 2. 8 Ibid., 1. 9 Ibid., 3. 10 John Keble, Occasional Papers and Reviews (London: James Parker, 1877), quoted in: Donald Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 6.

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John Kent claims that even though images of saints disappeared from England in the eighteenth century, the psychological need for intercession lasted in Protestantism, as the idea of supernatural intervention did not vanish along with the cults of Catholic origin.11 He claims that calling for supernatural intervention and evoking the Trinity, the crucified Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were common to Protestant denominations in England.12 Anglicanism, Wesleyanism, and Evangelical Anglicanism all allowed poets writing in their spirit to include intercessions to God in texts. Also Dissenting poets, such as Philip Doddridge, wrote verse that demonstrated affinities to litany. From another point of view, the eighteenth century was the time when the genre of litany got secularized, as Witold Sadowski argues in the context of Polish literature, and this secularization was visible also in English poetry.13 Sadowski notes that already in seventeenth century poetry litanic patterns could be similar to those characterizing Latin classical poetry, so it is not surprising that in the eighteenth century litanic elements recurred in, for example, odes.14 However, in England the social background was propitious for religious poetry and litanic fragments of poems were written despite the difficult position of Catholics and regardless of the author’s denomination. What needs to be observed, however, is that two traditions, the Hebrew and the Christian, exerted influence on litanic verse, as they could also be detected in all religious poetry, to mention only Donald Davie and Tambling’s interpretation of the eighteenth-century hymns.15 Reverberations of litanic verse in eighteenth-century poetry will be discussed here at first in the form of numerous passages starting with the litanic marker “hail” and then in the form of litanic inspirations detectable in mainly Methodist hymns. In the Romantic period, elements of litany become detached from the religious background, and they serve rather as examples of the reworking of the previous tradition. The most conspicuous element taken from the earlier litanic verse was the use of the word “hail,” which directly related to the tradition of calling medieval 11 Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans, 10. 12 Ibid. 13 Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 220. 14 Ibid., 198. 15 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 117; Tambling, “‘Living on’: On Smart, Cowper, and Blake,” 106–128.

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Marian litanic verse “hail poems.”16 Yet, the poems analyzed below do not include as many apostrophes with “hail” as had been usual in the Middle Ages, which demonstrates how litanic verse metamorphosed from that period up till the eighteenth century. In Hark! the Herald Angels Sing Charles Wesley, whose religious poetry will be cited later in the context of his Methodism, used the litanic marker “hail” before the following apostrophes: Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings.17

“The Sun of Righteousness” is another antonomasia, apart from “the Prince of Peace,” and Davie ridicules the former by saying “since when did the sun have wings?”, but the excerpt appears to combine the traditional litany with the neoclassical literary tendencies. Neoclassicism was something more contemporary for Wesley, which allowed him to visualize Jesus as an ancient deity who would rise on his wings. Other hymns by Wesley, such as Hymn for Easter Day, also include the litanic marker “hail.” In this poem there appear the phrases “Hail the Lord of Earth and Heav’n” and “Hail the Resurrection Thou.”18 The latter epithet is a reworking of the “Resurrected Thee,” which shows the ambiguity of addressing Jesus in the second person, since “Thou” could even be a vocative from the grammatical point of view.19 Christopher Smart’s Hymn IX from his Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1765) contains a passage that also uses an epithet for Jesus alongside the litanic “hail” at the beginning: Hail mystery! thou source Of nature’s plainest course, How much this work transcends Thine usual means and ends […].20

In contrast to Smart’s hymns, Samuel Jones’ In Imitation of Milton is not religious poetry at all, yet it begins with:

16 For instance, George C. Taylor uses the expression “hail poems”; cf. George C. Taylor, “The Relation of the English Corpus Christi Play to the Middle English Religious Lyric,” Modern Philology 5/1 (1907): 1–38. 17 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 87. 18 Ibid., 68. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 109.

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Hail, happy lot of the laborious man, Securest state of life, great Poverty, To thee thrice hail! ---21

It ends likewise: “Most venerable Poverty! to thee all hail!”22 This shows the strong influence exerted by the litanic marker on secular culture, since this “imitation of Milton” does not include allusions to religion. James Thomson’s Hymn on Solitude also begins with “Hail, ever-pleasing Solitude!”23 The marker “oh” which introduces emotional load into any piece of poetry from antiquity onwards can also be found here: “Oh! how I love with thee to walk!”24 The litanic marker “hail” crossed the border that separated religious from secular poetry and proved to be a transreligious and transcultural element in the literary period in question. At the same time, however, the poems above do not employ “hail” consistently in parallelisms, but the marker appears only a few times. This poetry undoubtedly differs from the medieval kind, in which “hail” was consistently used in the “hail poems.” Though it should be remembered that in the eighteenth century Anglicanism remained the official religion of England, there was no question of the country being a confessional state at the time.25 The tensions between the state and religion had ended, hence it was expected that all believers would find their place in the society without causing political unrest. The context for the litanic elements that appear in Charles Wesley’s hymns is provided by Methodism, a denomination that is part and parcel of the history of Evangelical revival. John Wesley and his followers, the Wesleyans or Methodists, wanted to remain part of the Church of England rather than become a separate group of revivalists.26 They objected to the radicalism of the eighteenth-century deism.27 John Wesley “responded to the actual religious demands and hopes of his hearers, many of whom thought that religion ought to function as a way of influencing and changing the present, quite apart from what might happen at the future moment when the Second Coming revealed the wrath of God.”28 Yet, apart from supporting the idea of reform in the society, Wesleyanism was also an answer to the primary religious needs of its 21 Roger Lonsdale, ed., The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 108. 22 Ibid., 109. 23 Ibid., 191. 24 Ibid. 25 Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans, 3. 26 Ibid., 1. 27 Ibid., 49. 28 Ibid., 2.

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believers. John Kent claims that Methodism used “a passionate hunger for access to invisible powers” in order to become a prominent Protestant denomination.29 The religious poetry that was written by Charles Wesley, John’s brother, responded to those needs and the litanic elements of those hymns probably allowed the poet to express this “primary” religious feeling more fully. His hymns were inspired by doctrine and by Biblical sources30 and adequately responded to John Wesley’s emphasis on “feeling” in religious experience.31 Methodism made itself distinguishable by emphasizing the need to insist on a believer’s free will,32 by stressing that both men and women are filled with the Holy Spirit,33 and by claiming that they should all be allowed to prophesize and preach.34 What characterized the religious movement was responsiveness, which was realized in the preaching and sharing of religious visions with co-believers, but also in the need to praise God in religious poetry as a reaction to the visions that God endowed his believers with.35 In 1780 John Wesley published The Collection of Hymns for the People called Methodists, for which most of the poems were written by Charles during the first wave of the movement. Significantly for our discussion of the litanic quality of this poetry, H.D. Rack once argued that John Wesley’s ideas and language always seemed closer to Roman Catholic than to Protestant spirituality.36 Haydon also claims that John Wesley’s writing proves to be “surprisingly conciliatory” towards Catholicism.37 This could mean that the earlier religious poetry with its litanic background might be unexpectedly close to Charles Wesley’s poetry. Kent writes that both Nonconformism and Catholicism did not belong to the mainstream during the Hanoverians’ reigns, but they both “shaped part of the English consciousness.”38 What is litanic in Charles Wesley’s hymns is the series of epithets and antonomasias that refer to God. In Glory be to God on High they are “God on High,”

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Ibid., 8. Ibid., 55. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 22. H.D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism (London: Epworth, 1989), quoted in: Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans, 58–59. 37 Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80: A Political and Social Study, 63. 38 Kent, Wesley and the Wesleyans, 148.

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“God th’Invisible,” “God the Blest,” “[the Angels’] Maker and Their King,” and “their Humbled LORD.”39 The list of epithets, some of which exist on their own as antonomasias, resemble the litanic listing of divine names. Even more instances of antonomasia appear in the hymn Go see the King of Glory: Go see the King of Glory, Discern the Heavenly Stranger, So poor and mean, His Court an Inn, His Cradle is a Manger: Who from his Father’s Bosom But now for Us Descended, Who built the Skies, On Earth he lies, With only Beasts attended. Whom all the Angels worship, Lies hid in Human Nature; Incarnate see. See the Stupendous Blessing Which God to us hath given! A Child of Man In Length a Span, Who fills both Earth and Heaven. Gaze on that Hapless Object Of endless Adoration! Those Infant-Hands Shall burst our Bands, And work out our Salvation […].40

There are epithets used to describe Jesus: “the King of Glory,” “the Heavenly Stranger,” “the Deity,” “the Infinite Creator,” “the Stupendous Blessing,” and “a Hapless Object / Of endless Adoration.” There is also the antonomasia “a Child of Man” and the synecdoche “those Infant-Hands” which make the list of epithets more diversified. The hymn O Filial Deity begins with “o,” which can also be a litanic marker, and develops the list of litanic antonomastic phrases and epithets: “Filial Deity,” “Life thou art the Tree,” “my Immortality,” “thou the true, the heav’nly Vine,” “of

39 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 57. 40 Ibid., 60.

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Life the Fountain Thou,” “thou the Good Shepherd art,” “thou my Keeper and my Guide,” “thou art my Daily Bread,” “thou art my Head: Motion, Virtue, Strength to Me,” “Human Prophet like Divine,” “On Thee my Priest I call,” and “Saviour.”41 As Donald Davie writes, the distinctions between the devotee and his Saviour are broken down in this poem and the list of divine names stresses the various roles that Jesus plays in the life of a believer.42 The “distinction between one devotee and the next” is also disrupted, as Davie notes, so the list of antonomasias and epithets is produced not by one devotee only, but on behalf of the members of the entire religious community.43 Davie argues that the function of such epithets as “Thou art my Daily Bread” is to demonstrate the relation of the speaking voice to the religious doctrine professed by his community of believers: Charles Wesley is true to his churchmanship, always stricter and more vehement than his brother’s […] recalling what is said when the wafer is offered in the Anglican Eucharist: “The body of Christ” […]. God’s incarnation means that he is present in our carnality, in all our members, including the most carnal.44

The epithets that refer to Christ are both phrases taken from a doctrine which was close to Anglicanism and notions taken from a religious vision which would ultimately allow one to treat all Methodists as parts of Christ’s body. Epithets for Christ also appear in Wesley’s Morning Hymn, where Jesus is called “the true, the only light,” “sun of righteousness,”45 and “radiancy divine.”46 Temptation, in turn, does not include lists of epithets and antonomasia, but it begins with the litanic “Jesu, lover of my soul.”47 Thomas Ken’s The Evening Hymn contains the epithets “King of kings,”48 “my Guardian,”49 and “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,”50 with the last list being a shortened litanic one with the laudatory word “praise” repeated before it. A poem by Philip Doddridge, a Dissident who died too early to experience Methodism, Oh God of Bethel, also contains an antonomasia in

41 Ibid., 66. 42 Ibid., 67. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Lonsdale, ed., The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, 335. 46 Ibid., 336. 47 Ibid. 48 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 2. 49 Ibid., 3. 50 Ibid., 4.

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the incipit.51 Davie claims that both of these hymns were unusually popular in the British colonies at the end of the nineteenth century, as the quoting of Ken’s hymn in Rudyard Kipling’s story “At the End of the Passage” from Life’s Handicap (1891) makes clear.52 Lines from such hymns became an integral part of English literature, as Kipling’s narrative shows. Even people who lived much later were familiar with this eighteenth-century religious poetry. Isaac Watts’ Man Frail, and God Eternal is even more litanic, since two entire stanzas include the epithets: Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. […] Our God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Be thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home.53

The poem begins with the first stanza quoted above and ends with the second. What is interesting is that the first contains only divine epithets, while the last paraphrases this list into a supplication, which is also very much litanic if one considers the etymology of the Greek word itself (which means “supplication”). Watts, by creatively reworking the list into a supplication, emphasizes the supplicatory dimension of the whole poem. The text is only an example of Watts’ religious poetry, the full impact of which can be appreciated by reading all of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707). Christopher Smart, the author of several hymns, including A Song to David, and Jubilate Agno, wrote religious poetry that did not necessarily reflect the author’s anti-Catholicism, but expressed rather his Biblical inspirations.54 As for his religious denomination, while domiciled in the madhouse at St. Albans from 1763 to 1765 he converted to Evangelical Anglicanism, which was close to Methodism

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 1. 53 Lonsdale, ed., The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, 76–77. 54 Clement Hawes argues, however, that “Smart Christianizes the Hebraic sublime” in his poetry; Clement Hawes, “The Utopian Public Sphere: Intersubjectivity in Jubilate Agno,” in Christopher Smart and the Enlightenment, edited by Clement Hawes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 195–212.

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in its doctrine, but not identical.55 What can be observed in his poetry are Hebrew inspirations. When there appear litanic reverberations in his poetry, they are directly of Biblical provenance and have nothing ostensible to do with Catholic litanies, so they are not “Christian” in this sense, but rather of Hebrew origin.56 This is how Davie relates Christopher Devlin’s theory about Smart’s religious attitude: Devlin […] makes sense of Smart’s later life by supposing, on not inconsiderable evidence, that the woman he married (who later committed him to a madhouse) was covertly a Roman Catholic, who persuaded him to let the daughters of the marriage be educated by and as Papists. Smart’s guilt and rage on this account brought about […] a fiercely anti-Papist Anglicanism.57

Jubilate Agno is a poem based on the structure of an antiphon, and thus is a song responsory to a psalm.58 A Song to David was rumoured to have been composed in the lunatic asylum, where it “was written when the author was denied the use of pen, ink, and paper, and was obliged to intent his lines, with the end of a key, upon a wainscot,” as the Monthly Review reported it in April 1763.59 Jubilate Agno was certainly composed in the asylum and was thought to be the work of an insane person; its manuscript was only found and published in the twentieth century. Nowadays Smart’s insanity is questioned, and it has been held that, to quote William B. Ober, he was “never insane by the criteria of today.”60 Davie claims that “even the fragmentary Rejoice in the Lamb [Jubilate Agno] [is a work] of a man in control of himself.”61 Demonstrating Smart’s control over his subject matter, this work evinces inspiration that is not Catholic, going back to the tradition of litanies of the saints, but is litanic in the sense of being inspired by the lists of divine names, which was an ancient tradition. I would postulate that the tradition 55 Tambling, “‘Living on’: On Smart, Cowper, and Blake,” 106–128. 56 I would like to thank Professor Tadeusz Rachwał for this valuable commentary and for sharing with me his enthusiasm for Smart’s poetry. 57 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 113. 58 Allan C. Christensen writes about the “Let” and “For” sections as something that forms “an antiphonal pattern,” but the sections are also “increasingly […] treat[ed] as an entirely separated poems”; Allan C. Christensen, “Liturgical Order in Smart’s Jubilate Agno: A Study of Fragment C,” Papers on Language and Literature 6/4 (1970): 366–373. 59 Tadeusz Rachwał and Tadeusz Sławek, Sfera szarości. Studia nad literaturą i myślą osiemnastego wieku [The Sphere of Greyness: Studies on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Thought] (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 1993), 31. 60 William B. Ober, Madness and Poetry: a Note on Collins, Cowper, and Smart (New York: NY Academy of Medicine, 1970), quoted in: Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 114. 61 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 114.

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of cataloguing names, including divine ones, along with their characterization was the only tradition consciously continued by Smart and that he would have loathed any association with litanies of the saints, even though Jubilate Agno may make this impression on us. His hymns derive from Hebrew tradition, since he was “deeply familiar with the Biblical sources on creation’s praise of God,”62 even though his religious poetry is generally Anglican in the same way as George Herbert’s.63 When we analyze Jubilate Agno as litanic, we must openly question Patricia Meyer Spacks’ idea that the poem “has largely defied critical analysis” since it is the work of a madman.64 Spacks argues that Jubilate Agno represented a new form in English literature.65 The legend has it that Smart’s madness manifested itself in a propensity to pray incessantly.66 The antiphon-like Jubilate Agno with its clearly litanic cataloguing demonstrates the poet’s need to put down hectic prayer as an orderly text. Fragment A begins with “Rejoice in God” and lists “man and beast,” Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Nimrod, Ishmael, Anah, Daniel, and other Old Testament characters as those who should contribute to the praising of the Lord.67 Fragment B, Part 1, has a similar structure, but Smart starts to include imaginary creatures among those who should also rejoice in God, as in this short excerpt: Let Manoah rejoice with Cerastes, who is a Dragon with horns. Let Talmai rejoice with Alcedo, who makes a cradle for it’s young, which is rock’d by the winds. Let Bukki rejoice with the Buzzard, who is clever, with the reputation of a silly fellow. Let Michal rejoice with Leucocruta who is a mixture of beauty and magnanimity. Let Abiah rejoice with Morphnus who is a bird of passage to the Heavens.68

62 Richard Bauckham, “Joining Creation’s Praise of God,” Ecotheology 7/1 (2002): 45–59. 63 Robert P. Fitzgerald notes the “influence of Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews” on Smart; Robert P. Fitzgerald, “The Form of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 8/3 (1968): 487–499. 64 Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Poetry of Vision: Five Eighteenth Century Poets (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 140. 65 Ibid., 141. 66 His praying has to be seen in the light of his perspective that he is, to quote Alan Jacobs, “God’s fully empowered poet, whom no force or condition can tame”; Alan Jacobs, “Diagnosing Christopher’s Case: Smart’s Readers and the Authority of Pentecost,” Renascence 50/3–4 (1998): 183–204. 67 Davis, ed., Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno, accessed January 2, 2015, http://www. pseudopodium.org/repress/jubilate/agno-a.html. 68 Ibid.

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As Tadeusz Rachwał writes, “man and beast are linked by Smart in most of his Let verses in which he usually puts together a proper name (usually a Biblical one, but there are also people he knew, and names taken from death reports) and the name of an animal or a plant, and makes the two ‘rejoice’.”69 Smart’s list is litanic in the sense of cataloguing Biblical and contemporary English people, but it does not attribute any divinity to the real-life people or creatures evoked.70 They are only the speaker’s “fellow-worshippers,” to quote Bauckham.71 The litanic cataloguing becomes a practice which is “accumulative, additive,” Geoffrey Hartman observes in his essay Christopher Smart’s “Magnificat”: Toward a Theory of Representation.72 Fragment B, 2 enhances this impression since it lists the apostles in the way they were listed in, for example, the Old English Fates of the Apostles. The poem gives the catalogue of the following names: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Jude, and Simon.73 Then the list is extended to include other saints and Biblical characters and it finally includes names that sound Biblical, such as Alpheus and Onesimus, but are obscure to us. Fragment C is entirely enigmatic, and does not pretend to refer to some more widely known reality, as can be deduced from its beginning: Let Ramah rejoice with Cochineal. Let Gaba rejoice with the Prickly Pear, which the Cochineal feeds on. Let Nebo rejoice with the Myrtle-Leaved-Sumach as with the Skirret Jub. 2d. Let Magbish rejoice with the Sage-Tree Phlomis as with the Goatsbeard Jub: 2d.74

Entities and creatures are multiplied without any frame of reference. The scope of creation is endless, Smart seems to be implying. Fragment D begins with similar enigmatic names: Let Dew, house of Dew rejoice with Xanthenes a precious stone of an amber colour. Let Round, house of Round rejoice with Myrmecites a gern having an Emmet in it. Let New, house of New rejoice with Nasamonites a gem of a sanguine colour with black veins.

69 Rachwał, Word and Confinement, 136. 70 The lists led Eric Miller to write that Smart “invents a hybrid genre, at once versified journal and liturgy. […] Smart understands the conventions of bestiary and of modern natural history alike”; Eric Miller, “Taxonomy and Confession in Christopher Smart and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in Christopher Smart and the Enlightenment, 99–118. 71 Bauckham, “Joining Creation’s Praise of God,” 45–59. 72 Geoffrey Hartman, “Christopher Smart’s ‘Magnificat’: Toward a Theory of Representation,” ELH 41/3 (1974): 429–454. 73 Ray Davis, ed., Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno. 74 Ibid.

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Let Hook, house of Hook rejoice with Sarda a Cornelian — blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus by hook.75

Smart takes the possibilities of cataloguing to the extreme, since the poem does not ever appear to be complete, but a work that can always be enlarged. In the same way that litanic lists functioned in Anglo-Saxon England, Smart seems to be able to extend the list endlessly upon request.76 The ending of the poem is not conclusive at all, and the final lines are: Let Crane, house of Crane rejoice with Libanotis an herb that smells like Frankincense. Let Arden, house of Arden rejoice with Mew an herb with the stalk and leaves like Anise. Let Joram, house of Joram rejoice with Meliphylla Balm. Gentle God be gracious to John Sherrat. Let Odwell, house of Odwell rejoice with Lappago Maiden Lips. Blessed be the name of Jesus in singularities and singular mercies. Let Odney, house of Odney rejoice with Canaria a simple called Hound’s-grass.77

Smart shows the limitless possibilities of cataloguing, but also plays with the idea of meaning in the process of producing such lists. Rachwał and Sławek claim that Smart’s pre-Romantic perspective allowed him to avoid the neoclassicist detachment of words themselves from their actual meaning. This detachment resulted from what Edmund Burke claimed: that language was unimportant in the creation of meaning, since meaning resulted from categories that were independent from language.78 Smart’s cataloguing is original in that each of its lines means something, even though the temporal distance that separates us from his epoch makes it impossible to make sense of all the references that he makes in his list, or, perhaps, it has never been possible for anyone but Smart to make sense of them. Smart is often paired with William Blake, though the latter may not have read the work of the former, as Tambling claims.79 Both of them were authors of hymns, which Tambling calls a form that “question[s] orthodoxy and polite culture,” since its significance “cannot be framed in rational terms.”80 Blake’s hymns are obviously not religious in the same way Smart’s were, but Blake was impressed with 75 Ibid. 76 Michael Lapidge, “The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England,” in Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, eds. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 243–263. 77 Davis, ed., Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno. 78 Rachwał and Sławek, Sfera szarości, 33. 79 Tambling, “‘Living on’: On Smart, Cowper, and Blake,” 106. 80 Ibid., 111.

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Methodism and with Charles Wesley’s collection of hymns. Tambling writes that “Blake shows no distance from Methodism […] and praises Whitefield [a Methodist and precursor of the Evangelical revival — A.C.].”81 The text that shares Wesley’s litanic inspirations is The Lamb, since it is a reworking of one of Wesley’s Hymns for Children, entitled Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild: Lamb of God, I look to thee Thou shall my example be, Thou are gentle, meek, and mild, Thou wast once a little child.82

Blake parodies the class-oriented perspective in the poem, but he uses the same epithets referring to Jesus, “For he calls himself a Lamb. / He is meek, & he is mild; / He became a little child.”83 The epithets are remote echoes of the litanic tradition and they seem to be central to Blake’s poetry. Leopold Damrosch, Jr. called such elements of Blake’s vision “an epiphany of Jesus,”84 showing that the inspiration taken from Wesley was not accidental, even if Blake opposed the Sunday school sententiousness of Evangelical hymns. Obviously, Blake’s other hymns are not examples of litanic verse at all; the poet shied away from conventional religion, and it is doubtful that some of his hymns, such as Jerusalem (part of the longer poem Milton) should be interpreted in a religious context at all. Davie writes about this famous hymn as one which, taken out of its textual context, may “mean all things to virtually all men (and women)” and one which “has no  a r g u m e n t  at all.”85 The beginning of the period of Romanticism marks an important change in terms of attitudes to religion. Nancy Easterlin remarked that this was when the individual and the social diverged and the understanding of religion would not be the same as before. She writes: The category of religion, from the Romantic period forward, encompasses nothing like this formal certainty [of unity], for while it retains connotations of a higher way, it no

81 Ibid., 126. 82 Nelson Hilton, “Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience” in A Companion to Romanticism, edited by Duncan Wu (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 103–112. 83 Geoffrey Keynes, ed., Complete Prose and Poetry of William Blake (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1989), 53. 84 Leopold Damrosch, Jr., Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 46. 85 Davie, The Eighteenth-Century Hymn in England, 158.

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longer necessarily implies an integrated understanding of the personal, social, and supernatural dimensions of the experience.86

Since litany was a genre that emerged from the communal experience of liturgy and even its eighteenth-century reflections could be found, among other places, in hymns, whose singing was also a social phenomenon, it is not surprising that when the individual and the social no longer met in the idea of religion, litanic verse would become rarer rather than more common. Even if Wordsworth related himself to various figures in churches,87 his stance on religion was so individualistic that he probably did not wish to treat litany as one of his influences. This view is supported by Mark Canuel, who writes that “like Coleridge, Wordsworth understood the church less as a body of beliefs than as an accommodation and articulation of vastly dissimilar orientations.”88 It is clear that litanic reverberations in these poets’ works could not have been directly taken from Catholicism, Protestantism, or Biblical sources, but rather were passages loosely inspired by earlier poetry. Fragments of litanic tradition that can be found in Wordsworth’s poetry are scarce and resemble what can be found in eighteenth-century poetry. Remembrance of Collins Composed upon the Thames near Richmond contains apostrophes and antonomasias that are preceded by the litanic “o”: “O Thames!”, “fair river,” “fair stream,” and ultimately “vain thought.”89 The litanic tradition appears briefly also in Composed by the Seaside, near Calais, August, 1802, which begins with something reminiscent of the Marian stella maris trope: “Fair star of evening, Splendour of the west, / Star of my Country!” and develops into another apostrophe, “Bright Star!”90 What is more, the 1805 version of The Prelude includes something that recalls a tradition as old as the Old English period, since it is similar to kennings. In Book 6, line 617, there appears the antonomasia “God, the Giver of all joy, is

86 Nancy Easterlin, Wordsworth and the Question of “Romantic Religion” (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1996), quoted in: Jonathan Roberts, Blake. Wordsworth. Religion (London: Continuum, 2010), 85. 87 Steven Gill, Wordsworth and the Victorians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), quoted in Roberts, Blake. Wordsworth. Religion, 95. 88 Mark Canuel, Religion, Toleration, and British Writing 1790–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 162. 89 William Wordsworth, Selected Poems, ed. John O. Hayden (London: Penguin Books, 1994), 7–8. 90 Ibid., 171.

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thanked.”91 The line disappeared from the final 1850 edition, which was published posthumously. The existence of the line, suggesting affinity with medieval litanic tradition, since it is an antonomasia that strengthens the act of giving thanks to God, confirms J. Robert Barth’s intuition that even though the later versions of The Prelude include more religious orthodoxy, this does not necessarily mean that such pious passages as the antonomasia above cannot be found in the 1805 version.92 Barth writes, after Ernest de Selincourt, that later in his life Wordsworth “fell into orthodoxy […] and cleaned up The Prelude in consequence, radically revising in the interests of piety and edification.”93 Contrary to what could be expected, Wordsworth eliminated the antonomasia from the “more pious” final version. What may have produced this deletion was the Romantic emphasis on individual feeling and spiritual experience, which did not agree with liturgical tradition of the collective voicing of litanies. Even though Wordsworth was a poet whose work expresses his spiritual interest in nature and transcendental experience, his poems do not include many litanic elements. By contrast, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote poetry that could be disconcertingly close to eighteenth-century religious verse in its litanic aspects. He included the marker “Hail” in such poems as Easter Holidays, where there appears “festal Easter,”94 and Sonnet to the Autumnal Moon, where there are also antonomasias: “Mild Splendour of the various-vested Night! Mother of mildlyworking visions! hail!”95 The list of antonomasias becomes more elaborate in To the Evening Star, which seems to echo the medieval invocations of Stella Maris: O meek attendant of Sol’s setting blaze, I hail, sweet star, thy chaste effulgent glow; […] O first and fairest of the starry choir, O loveliest ‘mid the daughters of the night, […] O Star benign!96

91 William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1805, accessed May 6, 2015, http://triggs.djvu.org/ djvu-editions.com/WORDSWORTH/PRELUDE1805/Download.pdf. 92 J. Robert Barth S.J., Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Religious Imagination (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 20. 93 Ernest de Selincourt, ed., The Prelude, or The Growth of a Poet’s Mind, rev. Helen Darbishire, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), quoted in: Barth, Romanticism and Transcendence, 20. 94 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1994), 1. 95 Coleridge, The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 5. 96 Ibid., 16–17.

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Hymn to the Earth starts with an apostrophe and emphatic hailing: “Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, / Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail!”97 Apostrophes that are also instances of antonomasia appear in other poems. In An Invocation the list includes: “Sweet Muse! companion of my every hour! / Voice of my Joy! Sure soother of the night”, and ultimately “sweet Muse!”98 Monody on a Tea-Kettle is addressed to “Muse who sangest late another’s pain”, “O Goddess best belov’d”, “Delightful Tea!”, “Sweet power!”99 Coleridge also composed religious poetry, in which, as in The Destiny of Nations, the litanic quality of epithets is obvious: “the Great Father, only Rightful King, Eternal Father! King Omnipotent! / […] the Will Absolute, the One, the Good! / The I AM, the Word, the Life, the Living God!”100 Though Wordsworth and Coleridge shared an attitude to religion that entailed toleration and attempted to bring Anglicanism and Catholicism together in a version of a belief system that would avoid the delusions of the two respective churches,101 only Coleridge consistently used litanic inspiration in his poetry. One would not expect Percy Bysshe Shelley to have been inspired by litanic tradition; he was ostensibly an atheist who authored the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism, for which he was expelled from the University of Oxford. At the same time, however, his famous Ode to the West Wind includes the apostrophes “O, wild West Wind,” “breath of Autumn’s being,” “Wild Spirit,” and “Destroyer and preserver,” which are antonomasias.102 The poem finishes with “O, Wind,”103 even though the typically litanic marker “hail” does not appear there. The marker does appear in To a Skylark (“Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!”).104 If the two, the west wind and the skylark, are called “spirits,” it looks as if these were epithets that were at least to some extent related to the Christian tradition. Yet another poem, which is litanic due to the first apostrophe and other parallelisms that follow it, is Fragment: To the People of England:

97 Ibid., 372. 98 Ibid., 16. 99 Ibid., 18–19. 100 Ibid., 131. 101 Canuel, Religion, Toleration, and British Writing 1790–1830, 104. 102 Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 577. 103 Ibid., 579. 104 Ibid., 602.

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People of England, ye who toil and groan, Who reap the harvests which are not your own, Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear, And for your own take the inclement air; Who build warm houses […].105

The fragmentary poem resembles litany, even though it seems to be a very nonconcrete inspiration, since it could just as well have been influenced by the repetitions of folk poetry, an important source for Romantic poets. Nonetheless, we may also treat such passages as combinations of the two influences, especially in light of more obviously litanic poems, such as Shelley’s Epipsychidion. What is important for our discussion is the fact that Epipsychidion multiplies antonomasias referring to “the noble and unfortunate lady Emilia,” as the subtitle tells us.106 She is addressed as “Sweet Spirit!” and “Poor captive bird!”, “Seraph of Heaven!”, and then the poet proceeds to include a longer strictly litanic passage: Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror! Thou Harmony of Nature’s art! Thou Mirror In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!107

She is also addressed with the antonomasia “Sweet Lamp!” and the general impression of the poem is that it is suffused with the litanic spirit due to the laudatory and supplicatory quality of the verse. Importantly, the 1887 edition of the poem issued by the Shelley Society was complemented with notes by Charles Algernon Swinburne, which demonstrates that this text, influenced by the earlier litanic tradition, inspired the next generation of poets. It appears that eighteenth-century anti-Catholicism did not impede inclusion of litanic elements in poetry, both religious and secular. Apostrophes, anaphoras, parallelisms, epithets, and antonomasias appear frequently in diverse poetic forms. Religion was reformed in the Enlightenment period in England and then, in the age of Romanticism, its traditional forms could be dropped altogether, but the influence of litany continued in poetry. The marker “Hail” itself appeared in various poems in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the religious 105 Ibid., 573. 106 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion, ed. Robert Alfred Potts (London: The Shelley Society, 1887), accessed May 6, 2015, http://archive.org/stream/epipsychidion00shel rich/epipsychidion00shelrich_djvu.txt. 107 Robert Alfred Potts, ed., Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion.

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influence on texts combined with that of apostrophes from the classical ode, which continued to be a popular genre in Romanticism. In English poetry in the two literary periods in question we witness secularization of litanic verse, but religious poetry continues to be written and it also contains elements started in the cultural and literary history of England by the Litany of the Saints.

Katarzyna Dudek University of Warsaw

Our Lady of Controversy: Defamiliarization of Litanic Verse in England between 1837 and 1937 One of the highlights of the exhibition “For Worship and Glory,” held at Hampton Court Palace in London (2013), was the exquisite collection of twelve embroideries illustrating the Litany of Loreto. In England, where the Marian cult was for ages a source of discord among various Christian denominations, such events are always thought-provoking. The embroideries date from the early twentieth century and bear the clear influence of the Pre-Raphaelite school of artists. This unique piece of ecclesiastical art seems to bear testimony to the coming of “the age of Mary” that Edward Bouverie Pusey, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, was warning against.1 The mid-nineteenth century, to a certain degree, did begin it. The litany, one of the forms of Marian devotion, was clearly on the march. No doubt the poetic reverberations of the Litany of Loreto are not the only examples of litanic verse in the Victorian poetry. This age, commonly known as the age of doubt, brought about an unexpected revival of the litanic tradition which continued well into the twentieth century. Surprisingly, in this period of over a hundred years, the single word ‘litany’ was used no less than seven times in the titles of poems by such various authors as Algernon Charles Swinburne (“A Litany,” “The Litany of Nations”), Arthur Symons (“A Litany of Lethe”), Lionel Johnson (“A Descant upon the Litany of Loreto”), Rudyard Kipling (“The Lover’s Litany”) and Hugh MacDiarmid (“The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary”). This seems to be a remarkable fact if one notes that such titles, or any other direct reference to litany, had not been in use since the seventeenth century. No doubt the reference to litany does not betoken the effective use of the litanic pattern in verse, yet it shows certain tendencies and interests. Nevertheless, one may in vain search for litanic or litany-inspired poems among the works of the major poets of the period in question, such as Alfred Lord

1 Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Church of England a Portion of Christ’s One Holy Catholic Church and a Means of Restoring Visible Unity. An Eirenicon (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1866), 116.

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Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti or William Butler Yeats. Interestingly, all of them were brought up in Protestant, mainly High Church Anglican, families. Even though it could be expected that the Litany, which is the oldest liturgical service in the English vernacular, must have influenced English poetic language, it seems that its inferior status seriously limited its impact. The large number of Victorian and Modernist litanic verses may in fact be traced to two mutually exclusive trends: devotional, with a great majority of authors who leaned towards Catholicism, and irreligious, which continued the process of the secularization of the litanic mode. The turn of the twentieth century in British poetry appears thus to be the time of the problematization of the litanic genre, during which were developing strategies both to confirm and undermine the pattern. The following article will begin by throwing some light on the dynamic religious landscape of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain, which is crucial to discussing the status of litany and determining the recognizability of litanic forms. The article’s second part will look at survivals, i.e. litanic modes which were already well established in English poetry, mainly in hymns, but also at some new approaches of Catholic converts heralding the revival of the pattern. It will be followed by the third part, in which the relationship between the litany revival and the new forms of English verse will be considered. The next part will examine various ways of defamiliarization of the litanic verse, and the last will present the significant expansion of Marian litanic verse. Rather than looking at Victorian and Modernist poetry separately, I will try to trace traditions and themes which run through the whole period under discussion.

Litany against Devotional Landscape The 1830s came to be a breaking point in the religious history of the British Isles: this was the time when Catholicism, a minority religion “kept by force of law in an inferior position”2 since the Reformation, came to the fore again. Such historical events as the passing of the Catholic Relief Act (1829) and the recreating of the Catholic hierarchy in England (1850) resulted in a series of conversions to Roman Catholicism, in particular among the intellectual elite. The growing number of Irish immigrants also swelled the ranks of the Catholic Church. One of the main concerns was thus to impose a uniform Catholic devotion, and another was to find adequate artistic means to convey the specificity of Roman Catholicism. In 2 Richard Griffiths, The Pen and the Cross. Catholicism and English Literature 1850–2000 (New York: Continuum, 2010), 10.

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contrast to France, where the Catholic revival was a reaction against “the tyranny of institutionalized atheism and agnosticism,” British Catholic revival was directed against Anglicanism, i.e. another form of the Christian religion.3 There was thus a question of religious practices rather than of opposing worldviews, with liturgy and the Marian cult as the most pressing issues. There is no doubt that the revival of Catholicism brought about the renewal of strong anti-Catholic sentiment. The restoration of the Roman Church hierarchy was treated in terms of ‘Papal Aggression,’ since it raised the question of power and supremacy. Religious matters were strongly connected to national identity. Importantly, it was the Blessed Virgin Mary who “was at the forefront of controversy whenever Scottish and English Protestants clashed with Irish Catholics, and whenever evangelicals attempted to purge the Church of England of ritualism.”4 Anti-Marian sentiments became thus a symbol of English anti-Catholicism. They were strong enough to bring people into the streets and push them to damage the images of Mary. The fire was fuelled by the pronouncement of the dogma of Immaculate Conception (1854) as well as by placing “the cult of the Virgin at the centre of the campaign to evangelize Britain.”5 It is important, however, that divisions ran not only between but also across the two dominations. On the one hand, the Marian cult was entering the Church of England in the wake of the Oxford Movement. The Anglo-Catholics were adopting some Marian devotional practices, though with the notable omission of all direct requests for the Blessed Virgin’s intercession. On the other hand, the transformation of devotional practices generated a growing tension among the Roman Catholics in England. As a result of the recreation of the Catholic hierarchy, there was an influx of priests from abroad who introduced so called “Italianate” forms of worship, i.e. veneration of the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart as well as various forms of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, including the litany.6 New or reformed religious practices were not welcomed by the so-called old Catholics, who had survived since the time of the Reformation by avoiding certain types of worship, which were believed to be particularly displeasing to Protestants.7 For the sake of safety they turned public praise into private devotion behind closed doors. As Cardinal Vaughan notes, “divine services [were] cut down to their bare

3 Griffiths, The Pen and the Cross, 9–10. 4 Singleton, “The Virgin Mary,” 16. 5 Ibid., 16. 6 Griffiths, The Pen and the Cross, 15, 17. 7 Singleton, “The Virgin Mary,” 19.

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essentials; many of [them] were either forgotten or conducted in private, and, as it were, in silence.”8 The question of litany as the form of worship is placed at the centre of these conflicts. In the Anglican Church, the Litany — the only one in the Book of Common Prayer — was by no means a central part of liturgy; there were not even direct instructions whether it was to be spoken or sung9; various churches thus held various customs. In the nineteenth century litany seems to have lost its appeal to Anglican clergy and as a result a decreasing number of Anglicans were familiar with it. In his Parson’s Handbook (1899), Percy Dearmer wished to champion a more frequent use of the Litany as he noted with worry that “there has been a widespread idea that the Litany, so beautiful a part of the Prayer Book, is wearisome, and in consequence a most regrettable tendency to omit it. It may be wearisome when sung in the usual dragging and monotonous way, but not when its beauty is brought out by proper rendering.”10 He further noted that it is fully brought out when “sung to the old tones and properly divided up between chanters, priest, and people.”11 His ideas clearly show the influence of the Oxford Movement, which expressed the need for the restoration of ceremonial. Anglicans thus felt uneasy about the litanic form. There was much confusion about it: its verbosity on the one hand and its dangerous liaison with the Catholic Church on the other. Marie Corelli, one of the best selling Victorian and earlytwentieth-century novelists, who was mainly anti-Romish, was ready to criticize both Protestants and Catholics for their services in ignoring Christ’s instructions to avoid much speaking (Matthew 6:8). The Litany becomes her target in The Master Christian: “The terrible Litany of the Protestant Church, with its everlasting ‘Good Lord deliver us,’ is another example of vain repetition.”12 If the Litany could stir some negative sentiments, Catholic litanies were, beyond doubt, the symbol of superstitious worship. A minor author, Catherine Sinclair, in the Preface to her novel Beatrice expresses her strong views against the language (antonomasia) typical for Marian litanies: “It is hoped that the strong good sense of English minds may long continue to be their salutary protection against the Church of ‘Our Lady Star of the Sea!’ a name much more fit for the ‘Arabian Nights’ than for Christian

8 Griffiths, The Pen and the Cross, 15. 9 Percy Dearmer, The Parson’s Handbook: Containing Practical Directions for Both Parsons and Others (Milwaukee: The Young Churchman Co., 1902), 251. 10 Ibid., 254. 11 Ibid. 12 Marie Corelli, The Master Christian (New York: Grosset& Dunlap, 1900), 240.

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teachers.”13 Still, many would find such phrasings attractive. Their richness, beauty and mystery seemed to appeal to the believers as the sign of God’s infinite grandeur.14 John Henry Newman captured such an impression of Catholic liturgy on an Anglican in his post-conversion novel, Loss and Gain (1848): […] something went on which he did not understand, and then suddenly began what, by the Miserere and Ora pro nobis, he perceived to be a litany; […] Reding thought he never had been present at worship before, so absorbed was the attention, so intense was the devotion of the congregation. What particularly struck him was, that whereas in the Church of England the clergyman or the organ was everything and the people nothing, […] here it was just reversed. The priest hardly spoke, or at least audibly; but the whole congregation was as though one vast instrument or Panharmonicon, moving all together.15

In Newman’s view the Roman Catholic Church with its liturgy was this “most sacred and august of poets.”16 It is widely believed that elaborate Catholic liturgy continued to have a tremendous influence on the form of poetry at the turn of the century.

Litanic Pattern: Survivals and Revivals In the midst of these religious and other changes, the litanic verse continued to be created in its most established and recognized form, i.e. hymns, as a preservation of the literary heritage of eighteenth-century religious poetry. The nineteenth century proudly produced two of the best-known hymns in the English language: William Whiting’s “Eternal Father Strong to Save” (1860) and John Lingard’s “Hail, Queen of Heaven” (1834). Strikingly, the former author was an Anglican churchman and hymnist and the latter a Catholic priest; it seems thus that many of the litanic markers were used successfully across various denominations. The two hymns, drawing on nautical imagery, serve as a very good example of the confirmation of the litanic pattern. “Eternal Father Strong to Save” not only was adapted for devotional worship in the Anglican Church, but has also been widely used in state and naval ceremonial functions, and thus is generally known as a “Hymn of Her Majesty’s Armed

13 Catherine Sinclair, Beatrice (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1855), x. 14 Maureen Moran,“The heart’s censer: liturgy, poetry and the Catholic devotional revolution,” in Ecstasy and Understanding. Religious Awareness in English Poetry from the Late Victorian to the Modern Period, edited byAdrian Grafe (New York: Continuum, 2008), 28. 15 John Henry Newman, Loss and Gain (London: Burnes and Oats, 1881), 426. 16 John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, Vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907), 422.

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Forces.” Each of the first three stanzas addresses different members of the Godhead, and the fourth petitions the protection of the entire Trinity. In this way, the hymn copies the first four invocations of the English Litany. The litanic marker “o,” so typical of the eighteenth century hymns,17 is twice repeated in the addresses: “O Saviour,” and “O Trinity”18 and also opens petitions which in the three stanzas take the role of a refrain: “O hear us when we cry to Thee / For those in peril on the sea.”19 In this case, “o” seems to be rather an expression of emotional outburst, ektenial rather than chairetismic. The whole hymn consists of regular lines of iambic tetrameter and relies on repetitive structures: there is the reiteration of the subordinate clauses starting with “who,” “whose,” e.g. “Eternal Father […] Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, / Who bid’st the mighty ocean deep.”20 Their role is mainly to extend invocation, but they also display another litanic aspect, namely litanic narration.21 Each of the first three stanzas presents a different scene: God the Father giving the sea its boundary, the Son walking upon the waters and calming the storm, and the Holy Spirit brooding upon the waters. There is no continuity between these events but they all present an emotional image of God as the master of the waves, one that is “strong to save.” A very interesting example of the litanic verse composed just at the threshold of the Victorian period is John Lingard’s Marian Hymn, “Hail, Queen of Heaven.” It is all the more intriguing in that it heralds the tensions that would be mounting over the following years. Lingard himself was critical of certain public devotions coming into vogue at his time. In his view, litanies were “not at all in harmony with the taste of the age, and should be used with caution in England”22 and the Litany of Loreto in particular he found to be a mere “jargon of mysterious, unintelligible, aye even portentous sounds.”23 In his composition, inspired by the texts of Ave Maris Stella and Salve Regina, he turns therefore to the genre of hymn as if in

17 Cf. Anna Czarnowus’ study “‘Hail! the Heaven-born Prince of Peace!’: The Eighteenth Century and Romanticism in England,” in the present volume. 18 William Whiting, “Eternal Father Strong to Save,” in Hymns Ancient and Modern, ed. William Henry Monk (New York: Pott, Young & Co., 1874), 154. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 75. 22 John Lingard, Life and Letters of John Lingard, eds. Martin Haile and Edwin Bonney (London: Herbert and Daniel, 1911), 307. 23 Singleton, “The Virgin Mary,” 19.

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an attempt to differentiate it from the genre of litany, the former being properly English and the latter un-English and provocative. Of course a trained eye will see right away that already the first word of the title materializes the chairetismic gene. “Hail, Queen of Heaven” comes to the reader as a litanic verse in disguise, one that renounces its sources. The text retains a petitionary and vocative character. Each of the four-line stanzas is followed by a two-line supplication, a responsorial refrain, in which the speaker asks the Virgin Mary for her intercession for “the wanderer,” “the sinner,” “the mourner,” “the children” and himself (“Pray for the wanderer, pray for me”).24 There is a catalogue of Marian antonomasias: “Queen of Heaven,” “the Ocean Star,” “Guide of the Wanderer,” “Star of the sea,” “Refuge in grief,” “Mother of Christ,” “Virgin most pure,” “gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid.”25 In this way the hymn, regardless of the author’s intentions, becomes a poetic counterpart of the Litany of Loreto. With the resurgence of Catholicism, the litanic pattern seemed to exercise a growing influence upon poetic lines. One of the persons who, unlike Lingard, directly referred in his verse and devotional writings to the litanic tradition was the leading figure among the Catholic converts, John Henry Newman. Despite his initial reservations about the Italianate forms of worship, he himself composed several litanies modelled on the litanies of Catholic prayer books. A fine example of the influence of the litanic mode on Newman’s verse is “The Dream of Gerontius” (1865). It is a poetic expression of many truths of Catholic dogma, and is described by Egan as a “metrical meditation upon death.”26 The communal ritual is juxtaposed with individual devotion: the soul departing the body can hear the prayers of the assistants, who intercede for their dying brother. Newman puts in their mouths a melodious poetic litany inspired by the Litany for the Dying. It is divided into three parts: i. Kyrie and invocations to Mary, Angels, Saints and Martyrs; ii. deprecations and obsecrations; iii. supplications with a list of Old and New Testament characters who were delivered by God’s grace. The poetic quality of the litany is achieved mainly by rhythmical repetitions, anaphora and rhyme scheme with monorhymes and some lines enjambed, which gives the meditative ebb and flow to the whole text: 24 John Lingard, “Hail, Queen of Heaven,” Hymnary.org, accessed June 30, 2015, http:// www.hymnary.org/text/hail_queen_of_heaven_the_ocean_star. 25 Ibid. 26 Maurice Egan, “Introduction,” in The Dream of Gerontius (Annotated) by John Henry Newman (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), 1.

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Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him. From the sins that are past; From Thy frown and Thine ire; From the perils of dying; From any complying With sin, or denying His God, or relying, On self, at the last27

In fact the scheme of the whole poem is based on repetitions and reduplications. One prayer is echoed by another: the invocation of Gerontius, “Jesu, Maria — I am near to death,” is recalled in the litany which later moves into the priest’s prayer of commendation. The latter also relies on repetitions, parallel structures and the lists of anaphoric lines. Enjambement again plays a crucial role in verse-structuring: Go, in the name Of Angels and Archangels; in the name Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name Of Princedoms and of Powers […] go forth!28

Towards New Forms of English Verse At this point, we might make a brief digression and risk suggesting that it was the characteristic rhythm of the Catholic litanies that to a degree helped to overcome the traditional meter of English verse. Ian Ker leans towards this idea from the other end when he claims that litanic “abrupt, rapid, heavily monosyllabic rhythm […] was the opposite extreme from the leisurely, lengthy, weighty periods of the prose of the Book of Common Prayer, on which converts like Newman and Hopkins had been nurtured.”29 The peculiarity of this form of prayer must have been striking to ears accustomed to the rhythms of the Anglican Litany. Could it have been striking to the poet-priest who confessed, “I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I realized on paper”?30 It is worth recalling that Hopkins, having entered the Society of Jesus, in an act of dedication to God burnt all his poems, and intended not to write any more. 27 John Henry Newman, The Dream of Gerontius (Annotated) (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1903), 28. 28 Ibid., 32. 29 Ian Ker, The Catholic Revival in English Literature 1845–1961: Newman, Hopkins, Belloc, Chesterton, Greene, Waugh (Leominster: Gracewing Publishing, 2004), 38. 30 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon, ed. Claude Colleer Abbott (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 14.

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As is well known, he remained silent as a poet for seven years. But it seems that this period, filled with prayers and meditation, including the recitation of litanies which was mandatory for all Jesuits, became a basic element of his later poetry. According to Ker, it was the litany, with its rhythmical rigour, that had the key influence on the Jesuit poet and his idea of sprung rhythm, whose aim was to bring English verse back into contact with everyday speech.31 What seems to make the Jesuit poet a proto-modernist is his use of the diction and rhythms of the “minority religion that appeared foreign and un-English.”32 Poetry, in Hopkins’s view, should rely on “oftening, over-and-overing, aftering of the inscape,” that is, a “repeating figure,”33 which is one of the most prevalent features of litanic verse. Though one may look in vain for catalogues, list of anaphoric sentences or responsorial structure, the traces of the litanic mode are scattered throughout Hopkins’s poems. The litanic influence seems to stand not only behind specific wording but, most importantly, behind the figure of repetition and the distribution of sounds and rhythms. Let us have a look at the first two stanzas of the grand “The Wreck of the Deutschland”: Thou mastering me God! giver of breath and bread; World’s strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living and dead; Thou hast bound bones & veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee. I did say yes O at lightning and lashed rod; Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess Thy terror, O Christ, O God; Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:34

The character of these two stanzas is vocative rather than petitionary. Nevertheless the chairetismic “o” seems to be tainted with both the awe and the anguish of the speaker. There is an accumulation of titular invocations following the apostrophe 31 Ker, The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 35. 32 Ibid., 46. 33 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Journal and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Humphry House (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 289. 34 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Norman H. MacKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 119.

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to God: “giver of breath and bread,” “world’s strand,” “sway of the sea,” “lord of living and dead.” They immediately bring to mind the litany anonomasias, whereas the series of descriptive clauses beginning with the old second-person singular “thou”35 points to the presence of the polyonymic convention in Hopkins’s verse. The distribution of stresses is controlled by the accumulation of such devices as alliteration, assonance and consonance. The litanic mode seems to have also influenced Hopkins’s non-directly devotional poems, such as “Duns Scotus’s Oxford.” The speaker addresses the city in a series of epithets and antonomasias: “Towery city and branchy between towers; / Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded.”36 As there is no regular number of feet or syllables, these lines beautifully exemplify Hopkins’s sprung rhythm.37 The influence of the litany on the rhythm of poetic language (not necessarily devotional verse) continued well into the twentieth century. Among poets who, similarly to Hopkins, are believed to have been at pains to transpose the music of liturgy into their verse, were T. S. Eliot — influenced inter alia by Catholicism — and David Jones, a Catholic convert. It is enough to look at the closing part of Eliot’s “Hollow Men” whose three stanzas are constructed in an analogous way: Between the idea And reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom38

The poet himself remarked in a letter that this intermediate part “should be spoken slowly although also without too much expression, but more like the recitation of a litany.”39 He made sure to employ specific litanic markers to produce the effect of prayerful incantation: there are syntactically parallel sentences with the anaphoric “Between” and epiphoric “Falls the shadow.” The phrase-breaking enjambements liberate the lines verses and bring them closer to the rhythms of speech. Interestingly, Eliot also resorted to the visual aspect of the litanies, including the 35 Ker, The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 42. 36 Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Poetical Works, 156. 37 Interestingly enough, the reference to towers both brings to mind the Litany of Loreto as well as foreshadows the allusion to Mary in the last line. 38 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), 85. 39 T. S. Eliot, The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Vol. 5: 1930–1931, eds. John Haffenden and Valerie Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 2014), 417.

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distinctively intended line in italics which quotes the Lord’s Prayer and hence triggers the prosodic memory of the reader.40 David Jones, a poet greatly admired by T. S. Eliot, was the author of an epic prose-poem, “In Parenthesis” (1937), which echoes the poet’s experiences in World War I. The structure and wording of the poem allude to the order of Mass during the liturgical seasons of Lent and Advent, but the rhythm of litany seems to correspond best with the rhythm of marching troops. In this way the poet joined worship with the ritual character of a military life. Unusual examples of litanylike verse can be detected in passages presenting soldiers turning one to another repeating the same or a similar phrase, as during a night march through flooded trenches: The repeated passing back of aidful messages assumes a cadency. Mind the hole mind the hole mind the hole to left hole right […] mind the wire mind the wire mind the wire.41

The repeated warning not only becomes an intercessory prayer by one soldier for another but also incarnates the rhythm of the responsorial “Pray for us.” There are also many instances of short lists consisting of mainly anaphorical phrases or clauses: You stumble in a place of tentacle you seek a place made straight you unreasonably blame the artillery you stand waist-deep you stand upright you stretch out hands.42

Since there is no regularity in terms of meter, the poetic quality of the passage relies on the repetitions of words and sounds, and strongly accented syllables. A passage which seems to refer to the litanic tradition in a most direct way is the closing part evoking the Queen of the Woods, who moves among the dead soldiers

40 Cf. W. Sadowski, “Prosodic Memory: Claudel-Eliot-Liebert,” Philological Studies. Literary Research no. 3(6) (2013): 11–29. 41 David Jones, In Parenthesis (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), 36. 42 Ibid., 166.

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and bestows garlands on them. The technique of listing names and rewards unveils the polyonymic legacy. The whole passage turns into a litany of the dead or holy martyrs and is Jones’s prayer commemorating those who served with him. How different it is from the hymns of Whiting and Lingard.

Defamiliarization of the Litanic Pattern During the development of the litanic verse in devotional poetry (or poetry written by poets clearly influenced by the Catholic liturgy), there occurred a tendency to defamiliarize the binding pattern. It slowly diverged from its religious context and was adapted not only to secular but even blasphemous themes. A key figure in this movement was Algernon Charles Swinburne, followed by the English decadent poets James Thomson and Arthur Symons. The appearance of Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (1866), earlier withdrawn from publication on account of lack of propriety, announced a radical break with the tastes of High Victorian poetry. Swinburne, known for his anti-Christian sentiments, drew on religious sources in many of his poems but only to deliver contrasting — often perverse — messages. The poet seemed to double-dare the literary and religious traditions by violating the division between high and low, sacred and profane. A point in question is his treatment of the litanic tradition, which he tried to accommodate into his own bold poetic form and for his own bold purposes.43 According to Jane Dodge, one of the very few critics who have commented on Swinburne in the context of litanies, the poet “seems to have been haunted by the litany forms. One of the chief sources of ironic effect in his poems comes from the introduction of anti-Christian ideas in a form so long connected with Christian worship.”44 Strangely enough, in his search for originality, Swinburne became a part of an overall European trend reevaluating traditional litany formulae.45 There seem to be several ways in which Swinburne defamiliarizes the litanic pattern: he denies its key features either by choosing a deviant addressee (“Dolores”), by using pejorative antonomasias

43 Among Swinburne’s litanic verse there is also an example of a less daring poem, “Christmas Carol”. If we line up chairetismic-ektenial couplets of its refrain, we get a proper Marian litany. 44 Jane Dodge, “The Litany in English,” in The Charles Mills Gayley Anniversary Papers (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1967), 218. 45 Witold Sadowski indicates that at the turn of the twentieth century there were three main trends of defamiliarizing litanic patter: intensification, denial and disintegration. Cf. Litania i poezja, 272.

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(“A Litany”) or by choosing irreligious topics (“A Year’s Carol,” “The Litany of Nations,” “Quia Multum Amavit”).46 “The Litany of Nations” and “Quia Multum Amavit” (Songs Before Sunrise, 1871), were both written in the spirit of national liberation. No doubt, praying for national matters was an important part of the English Litany, however in this case, there is no religious addressee. “The Litany of Nations” is one of the two poems by Swinburne which explicitly refer to the litanic genre in their title. It is presented as sung in one voice by different nations, rising above cultural or religious differences. Even though the poem opens with a conditional sentence, a device rather unpopular in the litanic mode, it right away introduces the addressee — Mother Earth — with a chairetismic salutation and ektenial petition: If with voice of words or prayer thy sons may reach thee, We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth, O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee.47

Importantly, the general structure of the poem retains the typically litanic communal aspect; it is divided into invocations and choruses, which assume the role of the cantor (each nation) and the community (chorus). Despite the fact that this overall division does not follow strictly the altering supplication-responsory pattern, the character of the collective prayer is additionally underlined by frequent use of the plural pronouns “we” and “us.” The poem thus opens and ends with a chorus and its middle part is composed of the addresses of seven European countries. Although not identical, the utterances are analogously constructed. Each address consists of twelve lines with the alternate rhyme ababcdcdefefghgh. The lines verses are heavily enjambed. The shorter length of the even lines, which are mostly iambic dimeters, contributes to their concluding character or — as it might be claimed — the longer and shorter lines intertwined echo the two-phrasestructure of litany petition: GREECE I am she that made thee lovely with my beauty From north to south: Mine, the fairest lips, took first the fire of duty From thine own mouth. Mine, the fairest eyes, sought first thy laws and knew them

46 Ibid. 47 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise (Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1901), 69.

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Truths undefiled; Mine, the fairest hands, took freedom first into them, A weanling child. By my light, now he lies sleeping, seen above him Where none sees other; By my dead that loved and living men that love him; (Cho.) Hear us, O mother.48

At the level of a stanza every address can be divided into three parts: a praise, obsecrations and the response of the chorus. Thanks to this the supplicationresponsory pattern is preserved. Praise, which is, in fact, self-praise (or self-presentation), is also modelled upon litany as it is composed of anaphoric expression. The self-description is followed by an ektenial part. In each stanza it opens with a typical litanic anaphora “by,” which again forces syntactic parallelism. Every nation wishes to be heard and delivered by the power of its bond with Mother Earth (e.g. “By that bond ‘twixt thee and me”), its sufferings (e.g. “By the stains and by the chains on me thy daughter”), or its excellences (e.g. “By the star that Milton’s soul for Shelley’s lighted”).49 The chairetismic-ektenial response is identical in each address (“O mother, hear”), with the exception of the first one (“Hear us, O mother”). Other fine examples of litanic verse are the choruses which open and conclude the whole poem. Both of them adopt the imploring tone by giving precedence to ektenial-polyonymic gene at the cost of chairetismic salutation; in the opening chorus there are twenty three lines beginning with anaphoric “by,” three chairetismic salutations and four invocative “thous”; in the concluding chorus there are fifteen lines beginning with anaphoric “by,” three supplications beginning with the anaphora on “turn away” and three chairetismic “o’s.” Exemplary lines of the opening Chorus: O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee, By the sealed and secret ages of thy life; By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces; By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses; By thine own song hoarse and hollow and shrill with strife; By thy voice distuned and marred of modulation; By the discord of thy measure’s march with theirs; By the beauties of thy bosom, and the cares; […] By the silence and the sound of many sorrows;

48 Ibid., 70–71. 49 Ibid., 71, 73, 74.

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By the joys that leapt up living and fell dead; By the veil that hides thy hands and breasts and head […] Thou that badest man be born, bid man be free.546 Exemplary lines of the concluding Chorus: O Earth, O mother. Turn away their eyes who track, their hearts who follow, The pathless past; […] By the blood-sweat of the people in the garden Inwalled of kings; By his passion interceding for their pardon Who do these things; By the sightless souls and fleshless limbs that labour For not their fruit; By the foodless mouth with foodless heart for neighbour, That, mad, is mute; By the child that famine eats as worms the blossom —Ah God, the child! […] O mother, hear us.547

Mother Earth is implored by the choruses to “bid man be free” through the redemptive efficacy of the drama of earthly existence, with its sufferings and triumphs. The second chorus assumes a much dimmer tone, making the pleadings all the more fervent. It is a litany of failures and sorrows: “the cry of men,” “sightless soul,” “foodless mouth,” “foodless heart.” If we take into consideration the number of obsecrations, together with the concept that litany is — in a sense — an endless form, then it might be claimed that the sufferings of oppressed people are without end. The use of religiously meaningful phrases, like “blood-sweat in the garden,” “passion,” “the pastures,” or “the cross” inevitably bring to mind the Sorrowful Mysteries and the Passion of Christ which is evoked inter alia in the English Litany: “By thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial.” These religious overtones, however, are not a source of comfort in the poem. On the contrary, the images are directed against themselves and thus against the central theme of the litany, i.e. the atoning work of Christ. In the “the pastures” recalling Psalm 23, only the lamb (Christ) is fed, while men seem to “lack meat”; the redemptive role of the cross is denied as the word is harnessed to the compounds: “the cross-blown,” “cross-winds”; in “his passion interceding for their pardon,” it seems to be God’s task to pray to suffering 50 Ibid., 70. 51 Ibid., 75–76.

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people, not the other way round. As a result, somewhere in between the words a cruel picture of the Christian God emerges. The two choruses consist of forty lines, yet the first one is heterometric, while the second is more regular. The opening chorus is composed of distinctly longer lines in comparison to Swinburne’s other litanic verses, and thus seems to display the influence of the more convoluted English Litany. The structure of the concluding chorus is similar to that of the addresses, i.e. longer lines of twelve syllables followed by iambic dimeters constitute pairs that imitate the two-phrase petitions typical of Catholic litanies. It is also worth noticing that the two choruses, and the whole poem, are wonderfully musical. The repetitive use of alliteration, consonance and assonance (e.g. “By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses”52) adds to the incantatory quality of the verse. Yet another example of a Swinburne poem written in the spirit of national liberation, defamiliarizing the litanic pattern, is “Quia Multum Amavit.” This time the situation is reversed. It is not the nations who implore Mother Earth to bid them have freedom, but it is Freedom himself (“I am Freedom, God and man”53) who speaks to the “much loved” (multum amavit) France. The poem presents Swinburne’s disappointment with the political situation in France, which was the bearer of his political (republican) ideals. In the poem Freedom expresses anger at his beloved daughter who has betrayed him. In a large part this is a series of rhetoric questions which form the repertoire of complaints and accusations: “How long now shall I plead? / Was I not with thee in travail, and in need with thee / […] What has thou done with France?”54 The poem consists of lines of alternating length and meter; once again the two-phrase structure of petition seems to be distinctly mirrored. There are some exclamations making use of the “o”: “O France,” “O France, O daughter,” “O bridal nation, O wedded France.”55 But we might also see examples of denunciation rather than laudation: “O foolish virgin,” “O harlot.”56 There is in fact a catalogue of pejorative epithets and antonomasias: France, “first of [Freedom’s] virgin-vested daughters,” has become foolish and “fair among the fallen, A ruin where satyrs dance, / A garden wasted for beasts to crawl and brawl in.”57 The phraseology, though negative, is adopted from biblical sources. It all serves to compose a picture of France on a tightrope between being a virgin and 52 53 54 55 56 57

Ibid., 69. Ibid., 124. Ibid., 125. Ibid., 125–128. Ibid., 125, 129. Ibid., 125.

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a fallen woman. The image closing the poem is that of Mary Magdalene begging for forgiveness, reaching with “a box of flawed and broken alabaster”58 to the feet of her lord, Freedom.59 Earlier in the poem Freedom implores France to repent, to clear “lies and lords” and continue the fight until there are “priestless temples” and “thrones made kingless.” There is a list of eleven obsecrations (twenty-seven lines) beginning with the anaphora on “by,” as Freedom makes the appeal: “By the lightening of the lips of guns whose flashes / Made plain the strayed world’s way; / By the flame that left her dead old sins in ashes, / Swept out of sight of day; By thy children whose bare feet were shod with thunder, / Their bare hands mailed with fire.”60 Importantly, among Swinburne’s most influential verse are “Dolores” and “A Litany” (Poems and Ballads) — the most explicit examples of English litanies noires.61 There is every probability that the poems were inspired by Baudelaire’s “The Litanies of Satan,” which Swinburne believed to be “the noblest lyrics ever written.”62 Surprisingly, “Dolores,” one of Swinburne’s most widely discussed verses, is hardly ever thoroughly analyzed in the context of the litanic pattern, which, apart from the obvious references to the Litany of Loreto, seems to be the whole poem’s driving force. Among rare exceptions are G. K. Chesterton, who called “Dolores” “a learned and sympathetic and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin,”63 Lothar Hönnighausen who labelled it a “negative Marian litany,”64 and Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys, with her concept of “inverted litany.”65 Other critics usually focus on the semantic layer and the blasphemous inversion of the attributes of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The play with the litanic genre and the 58 Ibid., 130. 59 Among other Bible-inspired wordings, building the atmosphere of spirituality, are “the red sea brimmed with blood,” “braidsmaid and braidsman,” “bread of the word,” “snakes and swine.” 60 Algernon Charles Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise, 127. 61 Isabelle Krzywkowski, “La litanie: une écriture sans fin de la fin,” in: Anamorphoses décadentes: l’art de la défiguration, 1880–1914, eds. Isabelle Krzywkowski and Sylvie Thorel-Cailleteau (Paris: Presses Paris Sorbonne, 2002), 72. 62 Patricia Clements, Baudelaire and the English Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 29. 63 G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1913), 69. 64 Lothar Hönnighausen, A Study of Pre-Raphaelitism and Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 220. 65 Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Soft-Shed Kisses: Re-visioning the Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2013), 271.

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religious tradition begins with the very title and subtitle of the poem, i.e. NotreDame des Sept Douleurs. The name Dolores refers to (and derives from) the title of Mater Dolorosa (Mother of Sorrows), and a popular Roman Catholic devotion, The Seven Sorrows of Mary. The poem, however, is an address to an anti-Madonna, adapting religious phraseology to irreligious ends. “Dolores” consists of fifty-five stanzas and four hundred and forty lines. Even the length of the poem seems to suggest the endless movement of a litany fathoming out the mystery. Every stanza is composed of eight lines with the alternate rhyme scheme ababcdcd. There are seven longer lines, mainly anapestic trimesters,66 and a short line of two feet (five syllables), which might serve the role of a responsorial refrain. Every second stanza is concluded with the salutation “Our Lady of Pain”— an explicit reference to Marian titles. The poem seems thus to imitate the versicle-response structure by stretching it over the whole stanza with the speaker being both the priest and the congregation.67 Interestingly, in comparison to other poems by Swinburne, the lines are relatively short: perhaps because “Dolores” is so closely modelled on the Litany of Loreto it seems to share the lightness of Catholic litanies. The poem is an example of the exploitation of semantic resources of polyonymic gene.68 There is a catalogue of compliments of the eponymous Dolores, who appears to be the poet’s ideal lady. She is everything the Blessed Virgin is not: “Seven sorrows the priest give their Virgin; / But thy sins, which are seventy time seven, / Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, / And then they would hunt thee in heaven.” The salutation with the “o” appears already in the first stanza: “O mystic and somber Dolores / Our Lady of Pain.”69 Similar laudatory invocations are scattered throughout the poem. There are altogether seventeen instances of the “o”: “O wise among women and wisest,” “O splendid and sterile Dolores,” “O bitter and tender Dolores,” “O sanguine and subtle Dolores,” “O fierce and luxurious Dolores,” “O our Lady of Torture,” “O mistress and mother of pleasure.”70 The third stanza leaves no doubt as to what pattern underlies Swinburne’s verse: O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded

66 Swinburne uses anapestic verse to create the mood of solemnity and seriousness. 67 Margot K. Louis, Swinburne and His Gods: The Roots and Growth of an Agnostic Poetry (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 41. 68 Sadowski, Litania i poezja, 280. 69 Swinburne, Poems and Ballads (London: Chatto&Windus, 1891), 175. 70 Ibid., 175–192.

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By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain!71

The speaker defamiliarizes the laudatory Marian titles of the Litany of Loreto and inverts their meaning. The honorific becomes horrific. In general the whole poem is based on reversals: we are in a kingdom where sin is a prayer, hell is heaven, pain is pleasure, virtues are vices and death is life. This is a religion à rebours. Even though the poem seems to be an expression of private devotion to the Lady of Pain, the community aspect is retained not only by the imitation of the responsorial pattern but also by the use of plural pronouns. Ektenial addresses implore Dolores to bestow her grace on a community: “one grace we implore,” “Intercede for us thou with thy father.”72 In fact a more intimate relation is marked by one invocation “my Dolores” and one ektenial petition “feed me and fill me with pleasure.”73 The litanic influence on the poem is also visible in the list of obsecrations. The speaker entreaties the Lady to answer his questions: By the hunger of change and emotion, By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion, By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire And blind as the night, By the ravenous teeth that have smitten Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain74

71 72 73 74

Ibid., 176 Ibid., 188. Ibid., 176. Ibid., 178–179.

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These two stanzas seem to draw their pattern not from the Litany of Loreto but from other sources. The latter stanza may be compared to some ancient folk incantations based on enumeration of body parts. The former is closer to Christ-centred litanies, such as the Litany of the Passion, or — which seems even more probable — to the more familiar model of the English Litany in which the invocations and suffrages are followed by the obsecrations: By the mystery of thy Holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord deliver us. By thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the coming of thy Holy Ghost, Good Lord deliver us.

While the Litany evokes the most important of the events of Christ’s life, the poem recalls the most meaningful elements of a lustful relationship. In stanza 14 the speaker catalogues feelings such as hunger, thirst, despair, pleasure, delight, desire, and cruelty which all draw from the semantic field of the word “passion” — its seductive ambiguity and indebtedness to Christianity. The following stanza continues this mode as it resorts to the body pulsating with desire. There is a list of close-ups of bodily parts: teeth, lips, blood (a disturbing phonetic similarity between the word “savour” and “saviour” in the context of blood once again brings to mind Christ and His Passion), pulse, hands. Although the two stanzas lack thematic development, which is typical of the litanic mode, the imagery suggests violent sexual intercourse through the recalling of which the speaker wishes to make the Lady respond. The subjects of death, sorrow, passion and destruction were taken up by James Thomson and Arthur Symons. Like Swinburne, these two poets also attempted to defamiliarize the litanic pattern by choosing deviant or irreligious addresses. In Thompson’s “To Our Ladies of Death,” whose very title alludes to the venerated name of the Virgin, there is a threefold addressee: Death, Annihilation and Oblivion. The litanic character is marked right from the beginning since the poem opens (and also closes) with a set of anaphoric phrases: “Weary of erring in this desert life / Weary of hoping hopes for ever vain / Weary of struggling in all-sterile strife / Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain.”75 The second stanza makes use of two-phrase line structure: “The strong shall strive, — may they be victors crowned; / The wise shall seek, — may they at length find Truth; / The

75 James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems (Portland: T. B. Mosher, 1909), 59.

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young still hope, — may purest love be found.”76 The remaining part of the poem forms an ektenial-chairetismic address to each of the “mighty Sisters”: “Our Lady of Beatitudes,” who is also called “Victress over Time and Destiny and Evil;” “Our Lady of Annihilation” — “Demon of madness and perversity,” and “Our Lady of Oblivion” — “Restful One.”77 Many of the passages start with the descriptive “thou” or “thy” — typical for litanies. Even though the poem overturns the usual subject of the litanic verse, defamiliarization does not affect the traditional English meter: Thompson uses the common iambic pentameter. The invocation to yet another Lady, “Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows,” is the subject of a poem by Arthur Symons. Just as in Swinburne’s poem, the Lady is a femme fatale who leads men into temptation. The litanic influence is visible mainly in the imagery. It is more fully realized in Symons’s later poem “A Litany to Lethe.” The mythical stream of forgetfulness is addressed by the speaker who begs it for the grace of oblivion. The text — ektenial-chairetismic in character — follows the responsorial pattern with a refrain: “O Lethe, let us find thee and forget!”78 After the initial invocation, there follow seven descriptive-vocative stanzas, each opening with the anaphoric “thou” (“Thou that dost flow from Death to Death through sleep,” etc.). Direct petition occurs in the two last stanzas: “Bring, bring, soft sleep, and close all eyes for us // We, all weary and heavy-laden, cry.”79 While the reason for reciting litany is to meditate upon God’s greatness, here the repetitive pattern seems rather to lull those “too tired to live, and yet too weak to die”80, into a state of uninterrupted stillness of mind.

Expansion of Marian Litanic Verse The last group of poems which contributed to the revival of the litanic verse in the Victorian epoch and Modernism consists of countless texts devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. By the 1890s, the times of the fin-de-siècle, the influence of Roman Catholicism upon some men of letters was undeniable. Such attraction to Catholicism can be traced back to the Oxford Movement and the Ritualists. Among the poets who wrote litanic verse in praise of Mary, the line of succession (though not always direct influence) seems to go from John Keble (“The 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid., 60, 62, 63. 78 Arthur Symons, The Collected Works of Arthur Symons. Vol 1 (London: Martic Secker, 1924), 41–42. 79 Ibid., 42. 80 Ibid.

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Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary”), one of the key figures of the Oxford Movement, via Catholic converts such as Gerard Manley Hopkins (“The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe”) and Coventry Patmore (“The Child’s Purchase”), then Decadent poets — Theodore Wratislaw (“A Litany,” “Ave Maris Stella”), Arthur Symons (“Mater liliorum”), a Catholic poet, Francis Thompson (“Assumpta Maria”), and a Catholic convert, Lionel Johnson (“Our Lady of the May,” “A Descant upon the Litany of Loreto,” “Mary, Star of the Sea”), to Modernist poets attracted to Catholicism — Hugh MacDiarmid (“The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary”) and T. S. Eliot (“Ash-Wednesday”). Since it is impossible to account for the great diversity of Marian litanic verse, I will limit myself to highlighting the most crucial aspects in the development of the convention. Such a great number of poems argues not only the continuation of the pattern’s influence, but also the remarkable status of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her position in a country that had not venerated her for a long period of time. Coventry Patmore in fact underlines the relationship between the Virgin and poetry: “Endow’d so I / With golden speech, […] / To her who gave it give I it again.”81 She who carried the Word — “Speaker of all wisdom in a Word” — and who deserves all words of praise is a prime mover behind poetic expression. In fact the first two stanzas of “The Child’s Purchase,” an ode written after Patmore’s first visit to Lourdes, is a long invocation to Mary, asking her to grant him “convincing word.” And grant she did. Ten middle stanzas of Patmore’s poem are of dominantly chairetismic character. Their essence is the succession of honorific titles, illustrating every possible image of Mary’s purity and sanctity. Though some of them may be traced back to the Scriptures or mystical literature, they are mainly the fruits of poetic imagination and excellence. No longer a “Seat of wisdom” but “Silence full of wonders,” not a “Mother most amiable” but “Sweet Girlhood without guile.” The antonomasias go on endlessly painting most memorable images of Mary: “Keynote and stop / Of the thunder-going chorus of sky-Powers; / Essential drop / Distill’d from worlds of sweetest-savour’d flowers,” “Life’s cradle and death’s tomb,” “The extreme of God’s creative energy / Sunshiny Peak of human personality / The world’s sad aspirations’ one Success” or, finally, “Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ.”82 Many of the noun phrases are later developed by descriptive clauses. A great number of images is based on paradoxes and oxymora: silence vs. word, life vs. death. The line and rhyme scheme of the poem are variable. How different it is from the regular meters of Patmore’s most famous (and most Victorian) poem,

81 Coventry Patmore, The Unknown Eros (London: George Bell and Sons, 1878), 201. 82 Ibid., 204, 205, 208.

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“The Angel in the House.” The line length is determined not by merely metrical requirements — and there are various feet: iambic, trochaic, spondaic — but by the desire to emphasize phrasing: some lines are clipped short not to be passed over too quickly but to allow for longer meditation. The rhymes, alliterations and run-on lines produce a “feeling of both freedom and regularity”83, bringing the poem closer to the rhythm of litany. The influence of the prayer is also visible in a short Latin supplication “Ora pro me!” which concludes each stanza. With this response the collective character of litany is turned into a private one. In general, most of the poets gradually departed from the wording and formulae of the Litany of Loreto or other Marian prayers, and employed more poeticized epithets and antonomasias. One may think of Hopkins’s “The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe,” a poem only indistinctly litanic, where Mary is called “Wild air, world-mothering air,” “wild web, wondrous robe” and “live air.”84 In search of adequate phrasing the poets moved slowly towards the outer edge of language. Many of them noted that the marvel of the Mother of God seems to exceed every possible word. Apart from Patmore’s poem, the motif of inexpressibility may be detected in e.g. Lionel Johnson’s “A Descant Upon the Litany of Loreto,” where the speaker calls upon the Virgin: “Ah, Mother! whom with many names we name, / By lore of love, which in our earthly tongue / Is all too poor, though rich love’s heart of flame, / To sing thee as thou art”85 or Hugh MacDiarmid’s “The Litany of the Blessed Virgin,” in which the speaker’s heart contemplating “the Mystic Rose” is filled “with ecstasies no earthly tongue can tell.”86 It seems therefore that the problem of the inexpressibility — this silence at the heart of praise — could be approached either by accumulating and poeticizing Mary’s title and thus triggering the polyonymic gene, whose aim is exactly to fathom the mystery beyond human speech and understanding, or by turning towards music, rhythm and incantation. Importantly, the litanic pattern, serving as a vehicle for adoration and devotion, seemed to come to the poets’ aid at a time of growing crisis of confidence in language.

83 Kevin Edward Gallagher, “Coventry Patmore’s “Psyche’s Discontent” and “The Child’s Purchase”: An Explication,” (1959) Master’s Theses, accessed May 27, 2015, http://ecom mons.luc.edu/luc_theses/1575. 84 Hopkins, The Poetical Works, 173. 85 Lionel Johnson, The Religious Poems of Lionel Johnson (London: Elkin Mathews, 1916), 33. 86 Hugh MacDiarmid, “The Litany of the Blessed Virgin,” The Tablet (December 23rd, 1978): 22.

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An interesting example of an attempt to account for the inexpressibility of Mary’s subtlety is Francis Thompson’s “Assumpta Maria.” This time it is Mary herself who tries to explain who she is as she addresses those who adore her: Mortals, that behold a Woman, Rising ‘twixt the Moon and Sun; Who am I the heavens assume? an All am I, and I am one.87

The “I am” of Mary seems to get alarmingly close to the “I am that I am” of God (Exodus 3:14). Nevertheless, it may be far from being blasphemous, since the “I” of Mary, as has been already shown, appears extraordinarily capacious. This is, after all, the “I” of the woman who participated in the greatest mystery of all — the Incarnation. Mary is given in the poem a countless number of names. The main part of the text talks about her presence in the history of humankind, starting from the beginning of creation: I, the flesh-girt Paradises Gardened by the Adam new, Daintied o’er with sweet devices Which He loveth, for He grew. I, the boundless strict savannah Which God’s leaping feet go through; I, the heaven whence the Manna, Weary Israel, slid on you! He the Anteros and Eros, I the body, He the Cross; He upbeareth me, Ischyros, Agios Athanatos!88

This is in fact a story of the union between God and man which was finally realized in Mary’s womb. Mary’s song, therefore, is not in fact a self-praise but a praise of God incarnated: Christ is both “Anteros and Eros”— human and divine love. Already the motto of the poems indicates Thompson’s indebtedness to liturgy: “Thou needst not sing new songs, but say the old.” As the “poor Thief of the Song,”89 he relied heavily on the Office of the Assumption, the Canticle, the hymn of Nerses the Armenian and, no doubt, the Litany of Loreto (e.g. Ark of Covenant, Gate of

87 Francis Thompson, Complete Poems of Francis Thompson (New York: The Modern Library, 1913), 223. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 226.

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Heaven).90 Mary’s song is clearly patterned upon the litany: it is enough to think about the frequent anaphora on “I,” the catalogue of names and the chairetismic responsorial refrain “Agios Athanatos,” i.e. the closing form of the Trisagion, “Holy God, Holy Strong, Holy Immortal.” In the face of the inexpressibility of Mary’s mystery, the poets seemed also to resort to music as a distinctive feature of liturgical language and litanic pattern. Musicality also entered the imagery of Marian litanic verse. It is visible inter alia in the word choice of Johnson’s poem “A Descant Upon the Litany of Loreto.” The semantic field suggested by “descant” is maintained throughout the poem as the speaker talks about making temple “more musical,” or points out that memories of Mary are “full of ancient melodies, / Raised in the fashion of old Israel.”91 Just as in Patmore’s poem Mary was the giver of word, here she “maketh music” and to her “our music flows.”92 Both polyonymic gene and reliance on incantatory pattern of the litany are brought together in Eliot’s “Ash-Wednesday,” in particular in the song of the bones addressed to the “Lady of Silences,”93 who merges with the Blessed Virgin. As Harvery Gross notes: “in no other poem do we find so much ritual movement and incantatory music.”94 Litanic enumeration has become an important organizing principle of the bones’ song. What lies behind its seeming simplicity and speech-like rhythms is the poetic craftsmanship of Eliot. The passage relies not only on run-on lines and alliterations which heighten its musicality, but also on such rhetorical devices as epanalepsis (“end of the endless / Journey to no end”) and polyptoton (“Conclusion of all that / is inconclusible”). All that to “let us hear the voice of our ancestral muse.”95

Towards Conclusions The range of the litanic verse in the Victorian and Modernist period encompasses such disparate instances as traditional hymns (Whiting, Lingard) and free verse poetry (Eliot, Jones). The revival and defamiliarization of the litanic verse that 90 Everard Meynell, The Life of Francis Thompson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 173. 91 Johnson, The Religious Poems, 33. 92 Ibid. 93 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems, 91–92. 94 Harvey Gross, Robert McDowell, Sound and Form in Modern Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), 186. 95 Nancy Willard, “A Wand Made of Words: The Litany Poem,” in An Exaltation of Forms. Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art, eds. Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 246.

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undeniably took place during the period was conditioned by several factors, such as the increased acceptance of Roman Catholicism and the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Mother of God was a figure of controversy triggering conflicting emotions, but at the same time bringing certain forms of worship to the fore. The poets who composed litanic verse were mainly Catholics or Anglo-Catholics, with the exception of Decadent poets such as Swinburne and Symons who remained partly under the influence of Charles Baudelaire, and partly under the aesthetic and controversial appeal of Catholicism. Strikingly, those responsible for the defamiliarization and the desacralization of the genre appealed mainly to the Litany of Loreto. Moreover, and paradoxically enough, poets tired with traditional forms of poetic expressions and meters seemed to have gladly welcomed (back) the litanic pattern, which on the one hand granted them a greater freedom to bring the poetic line closer to the spoken language, but on the other hand assured that the text remained poetic. While towards the end of the nineteenth century poets resorted mainly to such litanic devices as anaphora or responsorial refrains, in the first half of the twentieth century they leaned towards lists and catalogues, retaining the incantatory effect of the litany.

Germania et Scandinavia

Michał Fijałkowski University of Warsaw

From Merseburger Charms to Minnesang: The German Middle Ages After a brief investigation into the German definitions of litany, one may contend that most of them emphasize — perhaps surprisingly — the versatility of the phenomenon (it is present in the German synonym of litany, Wechselgebet), as well as the significance of the invocation (Anrufung) and the responsory (Responsorium).1 Whereas the usual associations are connected with enumerations typical of litany, which have their origins in the ektenial, chairetismic (the responsory) or polyonymic genes (the invocation), German litanic verse in the Middle Ages, as discussed in this paper, makes greater use of the last one. Theodor Kliefoth, a famous nineteenth century Neo-Lutheran and church reformer, describes the litany (die Litanei) as the “expanded kyrie.”2 However, he does not deny that it has its origins and that it imitates pagan rituals.3 German writers produced new litanies both in Latin and German as a result of the influence of the canonical forms of the genre, but only until the Reformation when the German litany became more political: the subsequent template was the famous work by Martin Luther, Deutsche Litanei (1529). Luther removed from the litany the enumeration of the saints and martyrs, replacing this with a new element: invocations for peace within Christianity and supplications to God to annihilate its most threatening enemy — the Turks. These alterations led to a greater emphasis on the political aspect of litanies, which were later known as “litanies praying for public

1 In the research into the definitions of the litany the following works were used: Das Digitale Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, s.v. “Litanei,” accessed January 20, 2015, http://www.dwds.de/; Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm im Internet, s.v. “Litanei,” accessed January 20, 2015, http://dwb.uni-trier.de/de/; Österreichisches Musiklexikon, s.v. Gerlinde Haid, “Litanei,” accessed January 20, 2015, http://www.musiklexikon.ac.at/; Friedrich Vogt, Grundriss der deutschen Literatur. Geschichte. Geschichte der mittelhochdeutschen Literatur. I. Teil (Berlin: Walter der Gruyter & Co., 1922). 2 Theodor Kliefoth, Zur Geschichte der Litanei (Güstrow: Buchhandlung von Opitz, 1861), 5. 3 Ibid., 2.

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benefits.”4 In his work Zur Geschichte der Litanei (1861), Kliefoth summarizes the changing fortunes of German litanies, before concluding that “Lutheranism was not very fond of the litany.”5 The main focus of the following article is an analysis of the presence of the genes that can frequently be found in litany (as mentioned above, the repeated formulae of an ektenial, chairetismic and polyonymic nature) in the German verse of the Middle Ages. For the sake of clarity, the material is divided according to the time and beliefs to which the texts relate (Christian or pre-Christian), as well as the character of the verse in question (secular or ecclesiastic).

Versification in the Pre-Christian Era The body of texts from the pre-Christian era or those that preserve the pagan beliefs in the German language is very limited. The Merseburger Zaubersprüche dates back to the ninth or tenth century, although the exact date of their origin cannot be determined precisely, and the two texts were discovered in 1841 by Georg Waitz in a theological manuscript from Fulda.6 These texts, written in Old High German, are pagan incantations, the purpose of which seems to be of a magical nature: they were charms or spells, and their ritual recitation was believed to result in prisoners being released or broken bones being healed. A four-line extract from the first of the spells, known as the First Merseburger Charm, is as follows: Eiris sazun idisi, sazun hera duoder; suma hapt heptidun, suma heri lezidun, suma clubodun umbi cuoniouuidi: insprinc haptbandun, inuar uigandun.7

The verse is an interesting example of alliteration (dominated by the frequent use of the consonant “s”), which allows each verse to be divided into two parts; “suma,” which is repeated, refers to “idisi,” the vaguely defined female deities who, according to those who believed in the spell, will release a prisoner or prisoners.

4 Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 389. 5 Kliefoth, Zur Geschichte der Litanei, 40. 6 The manuscript from Fulda was kept in Merseburg Cathedral, from which it derives its present name. 7 Bill Griffiths, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic (Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003), 173.

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The Second Merseburger Charm enhances our knowledge of the German preChristian beliefs as it includes a whole range of deities, and this is used to construct the body of the text. Phol ende uuodan uuorun zi holza. du uuart demo balderes uolon sin uuoz birenkit. thu biguol en sinthgunt, sunna era suister; thu biguol en friia, uolla era suister; thu biguol en uuodan, so he uuola conda: sose benrenki, sose bluotrenki, sose lidirenki: ben zi bena, bluot si bluoda, lid zi geliden, sose gelimida sin!8

What is striking in this fragment — in comparison to the First Merseburger Charm — is the even clearer enumeration of certain pagan deities, with familiarity with the more important deities (uuodan, that is, Odin / Wodan; balder, that is, Balder) taken for granted. However, the names of the less important deities are explained using an appropriate description (their kindred, their relationship to others: sinthgunt, sunna era suister — Sinthgunt, Sunna’s sister; friia, uolla era suister — Frija, Uolla’s sister). These elements, being of less importance to the recipient of the charm (in both practical and artistic terms) create a repetition that is of an enumerative nature. According to pagan beliefs, if a spell was to succeed, it was not enough just to recite the magical lines of the text (in this case, the last two lines of the verse), but it was also necessary to evoke the supportive spirits of the deities by calling out their names — a method apparently paralleled in the Christian litany. Yet the prevalent alliteration in this verse cannot be seen as a phenomenon of litanic verse, for it is an inherent element of Germanic poetry in general. As the genre of spells is primarily oral, it can be assumed that the verse was influenced by folk traditions, and as it is of a sacred nature (enumerating the names of deities, including those of less importance), it contains elements of a heathen ritual (as in the litany, which also is derived from oral traditions and was in fact sung). In the case of the Second Merseburger Charm, the enumeration of the deities (resulting in a quasi-refrain) create in the recipient an effect that is similar to the litany, but also to the mnemonic lists — verses repeated over many generations, in order to remember the ancestral history.

8 Ibid., 174.

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Ecclesiastical Verse German poetry of the Middle Ages is usually divided into the ecclesiastical and the secular (also called laic). Texts in the native language were influenced significantly by those in Latin; thus, in the translations of such texts into German, in which the original form and language contained phenomena from litanic verse, this fact must be taken into consideration. This approach builds on a translation of the biblical Song of Songs known as Das Hohe Lied, acknowledged both academically and artistically, which is thought to be the work of Brun von Schonebeck, a poet from the thirteenth century. Indeed, even the introduction to the biblical song clearly highlights that the translated lines are enriched with a range of anaphoras. Uns hat gesaget alsus ein buch daz heizit Ecclesiasticus: wer da volgit der ledekeit der kumpt is io in erbeit. ledikeit ist allir schandin ort, ledikeit machit sunde und mort, ledikeit hat unselde genuch, ledikeit irweckit gotis vluch, ledikeit swachit mannes jogunt, ledikeit leschet alle togunt, ledikeit brengit in armut, ledikeit ist zu nichte gut, ledikeit krenkit mannes sinne und tribit in uf valsche minne, di gote und im ist wedirzeme […].9

The effect of the litany is not only seen in the anaphoric repetition of the word “ledikeit,” but is also strengthened by the structure of each line: the subject of the sentence is “ledikeit,” which is always followed by a predicative verb. During the Carolingian Renaissance texts of an ecclesiastic nature began to be written in the native language; and hence, it is from this time that the earliest litanies written in German originate.10 The literature of the time (the 700s/800s) was centred at the court of Charlemagne, and there is no evidence that any litanic centres, that is, places in which litanies might be more prevalent than elsewhere, existed. A text does not have to take its name from its place of origin as some texts are named after the manuscript in which they are present, and these manuscripts 9 Arwed Fischer, ed., Brun von Schonebeck (Tübingen: Literarischer Verein, 1893), 1. 10 Astrid Krüger, Litanei-Handschriften der Karolingerzeit (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2007).

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may be named after the place in which they were kept, rather than the place in which they originated. For example, a famous German medieval litany called Heinrichs Litanei (written around 1170) is available in two different versions: the original has 950 lines, yet there is also an extended version (1468 lines) in the Strassburg-Molsheimer Handschrift (around 1187).11 There is very limited information about the author of this litany: Heinrich was presumably an Austrian monk, as he calls himself Heinrich der Gottesknecht (Heinrich the servant of God).12 His litany is a fine example of the extension of the Litany of the Saints convention, as there is a lot more than just a repeated, monotonic formula after invoking each saint, but a lengthy, elaborate prayer to the Saint, which contains information about his or her life and also a comprehensive plea for the Saint’s intercession. Because of this content, Heinrichs Litanei makes use of more litany genes than its predecessors, for along with the laudatory and supplicatory there are also lines of a deprecatory nature; in this sense this litany is close to the genre of repentance as well13. For instance, the invocation to John the Baptist, which in the original Latin litany has only one line, in Heinrichs Litanei takes up 124 lines. The following extract shows the subtle and masterfully elaborated transition from the deprecatory to the laudatory tone. uon diu so han ich unreiner, ich hazzigir, ich nidiger, ich zornigir, ich girigir, ich ubils schuntaere, ich des tiuuils wuchiraere, ich aller laster herhorn, ich hau dich gotis uaener irchorn mir einigem dich einigen, dich erwelten unde dich heiligen,

11 Wolfgang Achnitz, ed., Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon – Das Mittelalter. Autoren und Werke nach Themenkreisen und Gattungen, s.v. “Heinrich” (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 2011), 403. 12 Gustav Ehrismann, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, Zweiter Teil: Die Mittelhochdeutsche Literatur, I. Frühmittelhochdeutsche Zeit (München: Oskar Beck, 1922), 173. 13 Joachim Heinzle, ed., Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, Band I: Von den Anfängen bis zum hohen Mittelalter, Teil 2: Gisela Vollmann-Profe, Wiederbeginn volkssprachlicher Schriftlichkeit im hohen Mittelalter (1050/60–1160/70) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1994), 117.

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dich guten unde dich gnaedigen, dich süzzen unde dich saeligen, dich semsten unde dich linden.14

Heinrichs Litanei (in the original version, which was later expanded in the same style) was divided into ten parts, of which the eight internal ones were devoted to a different Saint or group of Saints: Holy Mary, Angels, John the Baptist, the Apostles, the Martyrs, the Followers, the Virgins, and All Saints; these parts are signalized by the headings in Latin. The language of the litany is German mixed with Latin, for some liturgical formulae come in both languages. The rhythm of the work is very free: there is no steady pattern to it, short lines are mixed with the long ones.

Secular Verse As with ecclesiastical texts that can qualify as litanic verses, in secular forms of poetry the litanic influences, for example enumerations or anaphoric repetitions, were also considered to be the finest forms of poetry, forms that were challenging for those who wrote them. And in secular poetry too such phenomena are usually found in the openings sections of the longer literary works; indeed, it could even be said that this may be considered to be the standard practice. An excellent and clear example of this can be found in the well-known work of poetry that originates from the second half of the eleventh century, Das Annolied.15 This work is a secular verse that focuses on both history and theology, and describes the history of mankind from the Creation to the time the work was written, with an emphasis on the history of when and how German cities were established. Although it is neither an epic nor a chronicle, the Annolied seems to borrow certain elements from both genres, especially insofar as its opening is concerned. Wir hôrten ie dikke singen von alten dingen: wî snelle helide vâhten, wî si veste burge brâchen, wî sich liebin winiscefte schieden,

14 Heinrich Hoffmann, ed., Fundgruben für Geschichte deutscher Sprache und Literatur, Zweiter Theil (Breslau: Georg Philipp Aderholz 1837), s.v. Heinrichs Litanei, 226. 15 The name of the work, which means The Song of Anno, pays homage to Bishop Anno II of Cologne (d. 1075), later Saint Anno, who was the founder of Siegburg Abbey and was praised in the work.

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wî rîche kunige al zegiengen. nû ist cîht, daz wir denken, wî wir selve sulin enden.16

The work’s conventional introduction shows certain similarities to those found in an epic: a recognition of various events from the past, the fall of cities, the lives of kings, the deeds of knights. The sentence structure in each line begins with a repeated anaphora, “wî,” and ends with a predicative verb, mostly in the past tense, which allows the lines to rhyme. Lines constructed in this way permit an enumeration of various events from the past in a litany-like, albeit rather monotonous, repetition of “how” something happened, in order to create an impression of vulnerability and transience, leading to the conclusion that the future for all mankind is both unknown and uncertain. Thus, what is initially seen as a monotonous enumeration, ends in a more surprising manner. Another secular work, which also owes a debt to ecclesiastical literature, contains similar anaphoric repetition. Vom jüngsten Tage (a poem which focuses on the events of the Last Judgment, and is part of the Dies Irae poems) is found in the Manuscript of Heidelberg (Die Heidelberger Handschift) and even in the introduction such phenomena can be discerned. ‘Ach liep, nu wis unfro, du geschanter lip, du unreines as, du fules fleisch, du unseliger vras, du wurme spise, du horwiger sack, ver vluht si naht und tag […].17

The enumeration of insulting, if not profane words directed towards humanity — words which are preceded by a repetition of the anaphorical “du” — strengthens the effect of the condemnation of a poor soul during the Last Judgment; one sentence of seemingly never-ending accusations against the sinful soul rather surprisingly does not create a boring repetition, but in fact enhances the sense of fear and danger. In the same poem this effect can also be seen in other fragments as below: wo nu reigen, wo nu springen wo nu tantzen, wo nu singen? we dir kussen, we dir treuten, we noch allen uncheuschen leuten!18

16 Max Roediger, ed., Das Annolied (Hannover: Hansch, 1895), 115. 17 Gustav Rosenhagen, ed., Kleinere mittelhochdeutsche Erzählungen, Fabeln und Lehrgedichte. III. Die Heidelberger Handschrift (Berlin: Weidmann, 1909), 2. 18 Ibid.

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The example above is a masterfully structured four-verse fragment, where two questioning pronouns that sound similar, “wo” and “we,” are used as anaphora to strengthen the effect of despair: the forsaken soul does not know where to dance or sing, which thus emphasizes the fecklessness of earthy vanities. The Manuscript of Heidelberg also contains another example of anonymous secular poetry, which, in this case, focuses on love: Das Wesen der Minne (The Essence of Love). In this poem there is a further litany gene, namely the polyonymic gene. As the theme of the poem is love (mynn), this becomes the object of praise and adoration. Even in the opening lines there is an invocation to love, which is personalized by Frau Venus, and demonstrates the late medieval bent towards ancient mythological themes. O mynn, du hochster hort, Venus, fraw, aller selden port.19

The object of the adoration, mynn, becomes an anaphoric repetition in almost every line from line 21 onwards. The structure is very similar to that in Das Hohe Lied as after each repetition of mynn a predicative verb follows in order to express what love is and how it might be expressed. The effect created, however, is similar not only to Das Hohe Lied, but also to the well-known words from 1 Corinthians: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, […].” The laudation and the praise directed towards the subject of the poem is a good example of the presence of the polyonymic gene in the works of a Minnesinger, which are the focus of the next section. Mynn heist ein stete gir, mynn enpfremdt mich selber mir und bildet den mynnenden yn das er mynt; myn gros jamer bringt, mynn dut das bekennen das nieman mit lieb noch mit leid mag erwenden; mynn dut bywilen lieb und leit, mynn ist grym so lieb von lieb scheit, mynn ist ein lustlich wort, mynn schint hie und wonet dort, mynn dut nit heim wesen, mynn lat komerlich genesen, mynn lert stetlich angedencken,

19 Gerhard Thiele, ed., Mittelhochdeutsche Minnereden II. Die Heidelberger Handschriften, die Berliner Handschrift (Berlin: Weidmann, 1938), 115.

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mynn dut ynniclich sich sencken, mynn doert mangen wisen man, mynn dut leit durch lieb han, mynn ingrimt zeherczen icht, mynn czorn entwicht, mynn uebersicht ungedat, mynn thut wesen frw und spat, mynn blendt gsehend augen, mynn lert ein stetlich logen, mynn lert lust und macht frewd; mynn sich gen menglich zu sehen erzeugd (da liebi, da aug, mich selten das ie bedrog); mynn lieblich murdet, von iedem mynnenden man das spüret; mynn machet siennlos, mynn kan nit maß, das sie ist so gros; mynn erczaget gern, doch der stet wolt sin enbern; mynn leert zucht und dugent, die mynnenden alli ding vermugent, mynn schaffet singen und sagen, mynn lert sich lieplich clagen.20

Minnesang The phenomenon of the Minnesang, that is, the praise of love, is closely connected with the poetry of the troubadours (and thus influenced by it). Among the many theories regarding the beginnings of this poetry in twelfth-century Germany one exists which does not exclude the influence of religious poetry.21 Indeed, such an association is highly likely as in the song of the Minnesang the object of adoration and praise is in most cases a woman, as in the Mariendichtung, and the invocations are usually of a laudative nature. Research into similarities between the Minnesang and litanic verse leads to a striking but perhaps not entirely surprising conclusion that the use (or maybe even overuse) of such laudations has its origin in the polyonymic gene.

20 Thiele, Mittelhochdeutsche Minnereden II., 115. 21 Helmut Brackert, ed., Minnesang. Mittelhochdeutsche Texte mit Übertragungen und Anmerkungen (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer 1983), 261.

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The legacy of the Minnesinger is far-reaching, and a comprehensive discussion of the laudations requires further in-depth study. The aim of such studies might be to show the diversity in the usage of the invocations in accordance with different genes of the litanic form. However, in the work of an early Minnesinger, Meinloh von Sevelingen (from the mid-twelfth century), a female character is still usually called by the word “frouwe,” a word which refers to a lady of a higher social status. […] er ist vil wol getiuret, den dû wilt,  f r o u w e,  haben liep. du bist der besten eine, des muoz man dir von schulden jehen. sô wol den dînen ougen!22 weistu,  s c h o e n e  f r o u w e, waz dir ein ritter enbôt?23

This typical feminine form also has its equivalent with regard to males, as can be observed in a very famous poem by Dietmar von Aist (from the twelfth century): Slâfest du,  f r i e d e l  z i e r e? man wecket uns leider schiere. ein vogellîn sô wol getân, daz ist der linden an daz zwî gegân.24

The following prayer-like two-verse poem by Kaiser Heinrich (from the twelfth century) has a more collective, as well as religious, nature: Ich grüeze mit gesange die süezen die ich vermîden niht wil noch enmac.25

The laudation above is expressed by the performative verb grüezen, which means “to greet” or “to salute.” The invocations of the Minnesang gain their character (be it laudative or supplicative) in most cases due to the usage of performative verbs or forms such as saelic sî (“be blessed”) or wol dir (“farewell”), as in the following examples.

22 23 24 25

Meinloh von Sevelingen, I: 7–11. Ibid., 18. Meinloh von Sevelingen, III: 3–4. Ibid., 20. Dietmar von Aist, VI: 1–4. Ibid., 30. Kaiser Heinrich, II: 1–2. Ibid., 34.

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Gehabent iuch,  s t o l z e  h e l d e,  wol.26 Sô wol dir,  f r ö i d e,  und wol im sî, der dîn ein teil gewinnen mac.27 Aller werdekeit ein füegerinne, daz sît ir zewâre,  f r o u w e  M â z e. ein sælic man, der iuwer lêre hât!28 Saelic sî diu süeze reine, saelic sî ir rôter munt, saelic sî die ich dâ meine, saelic sî sô süezer funt; saelic sî diu süeze stunde, saelic sî daz ichs ersach, saelic sî dô sî mich bunde: diu bant ich noch nie zerbrach. Elle und Else tanzent wol, des man in beiden danken sol.29 Saelic sî diu heide! saelic sî diu ouwe! saelic sî der kleinen vogellîne süezer sanc!30

As it has already been emphasized, such invocations are not only laudative but may be supplicative, as in prayers; thus the poetry of the Minnesang is close to the original Mariendichtung. h e i l i g e r  g o t,  wis gnaedic uns beiden!31 g o t  h e r r e,  daz vervâch ze guote!32 V r o w e,  mîne swaere sich, ê ich verliese mînen lîp. ein wort du spraeche wider mich: verkêre daz,  d u  s a e l i c  wîp!33

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

Heinrich von Rugge, Der Leich, XIV: 1. Ibid., 76. Reinmar von Hagenau, VII: 4: 1–2. Ibid., 136. Walther von der Vogelweide, VIII: 1: 1–3. Ibid., 154. Hiltbolt von Schwangau, I: 3. Ibid., 190. Gottfried von Neifen, I: 1–3. Ibid., 196. Albrecht von Johansdorf, II: 1: 8. Ibid., 60. Albrecht von Johansdorf, III: 3: 11. Ibid., 62. Heinrich von Morungen, VI: 1–4. Ibid., 94.

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H ê r r e  g o t,  gesegene mich vor sorgen, daz ich vil wunnwclîche lebe!34 ‘Nemt,  f r o w e,  disen kranz’, also sprach ich zeiner wol getanen maget.35

An interesting example of such repeated invocations can be found in the poetry of a Minnesinger called Markgraf von Hohenburg (from the thirteenth century), whose entire preserved work focuses on love themes. In one of his most famous songs, the repetitions of certain supplications are elevated to a highly artistic form: the formula of “wecke in, frouwe!” in the first strophe is then repeated in lines 3, 5, and 11. Ich wache umb eines ritters lîp und umb dîn êre, schoene wîp w e c k e  i n,  f r o u w e! got gebe daz ez uns wol ergê, daz er erwache und nieman mê: w e c k e  i n,  f r o u w e! est an der zît, niht langer bît. ich bite ouch niht wan dur den willen sîn. wiltun bewarn, sô heiz in varn: verslâfet er, sost gar diu schulde dîn. w e c k e  i n,  f r o u w e!36

The same supplication (“wecke in, frouwe!”) is also used in the third verse, whereas the second verse although using the same form of repetition has a different formula: “slâf geselle!” The contradictory meaning of these supplications (“wake him, madam!” and “sleep, fellow!”) is formed into an asymmetrical verse, with the formula repeated three times in each verse. Thus, secular poetry makes greater use of the polyonymic gene, which is used in both laudations and evocations (mostly towards a female character, although this is not always the case). Such characteristic invocations are later passed into folk poetry in the German language, which, as it is theorized, is no longer of the artistic standard of the earlier Minnesang.37

34 35 36 37

Walther von der Vogelweide, I: 1: 1–2. Ibid., 140. Walther von der Vogelweide, VI: 1: 1–2. Ibid., 148. Der Markgraf von Hohenburg. Ibid., 188. Helmut Brackert, ed., Minnesang. Mittelhochdeutsche Texte mit Übertragungen und Anmerkungen, 262.

Ewa Wantuch The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

Pietist Litanies in German Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Poetry. The Case of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock German society in the seventeenth century was experiencing a material and spiritual crisis, caused by the Thirty Years’ War. It was a period of great reforms, which were aimed at a moral renewal and a deepening of piety by making the faithful familiar with the Bible. The reforms were carried out mainly by theologians: in Württemberg the Bible was taught by a Lutheran pastor named Johann Valentin Andreä; in Strasbourg professors of theology — Johann Schmidt, Johann Georg Dorsche and Johann Konrad Dannhauer — were engaged in the business of catechising youth and clarifying the principles of Christian faith in their sermons. In Mühlheim on the Ruhr River, in turn, Theodor Undereyck was committed to enlivening the community life. It was at this time that the Pietist activity began, initiated by a small group of male and female Protestants from Frankfurt-amMain. Their main aim was to awaken and enliven piety in German society. To this religious group belonged, among others, a qualified theologian named Philipp Jacob Spener, the author of Pia desideria (Pious Desires) — a foundation document of the movement which was published in 1675. The document contained the programme of the movement, which postulated six reforms. The aim of the first reform was to familiarise the faithful with the Bible through both communal reading during services and private reading. The aim of the second was to promote communal activity among the faithful and to restrict the prerogatives of the parson. The third encouraged the faithful not only to fulfil religious practices, but first and foremost to love their neighbours. The last three reforms were aimed at ecclesiastical teaching: smoothing out theological arguments, focusing on practical skills and improving the effectiveness of preaching.1 In time the Pietist movement in Germany grew to become the largest Protestant socio-cultural movement. It was not to be suppressed, even though in many places a ban on the Pietist meetings was issued (what aroused suspicion

1 Martin H. Jung, Pietismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005), 8.

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was the gathering together of people from different social stations).2 The movement exerted a significant influence on the literature and art of the period. It also contributed to the deinstitutionalization and individualization of piety, which — together with the tendencies of Enlightenment rational philosophy — resulted in the secularization of German society, especially of the protestant majority. The Pietist movement and tendencies in art and literature were heavily criticized on the grounds of their subjective and individual focus — a feature which played an important role in the development of the litany as a poetic form, but also as a liturgical genre. It was the Pietists who popularized the litany in their liturgy; in core Protestantism it was almost completely neglected as a liturgical form (with the exception of Martin Luther’s litany and a short dialogue between the minister and the congregation sung during services). The present article attempts to show the transformation the litany underwent at the hands of the Pietists and the influence it had on the development of the litanic form in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German poetry. The most representative author is Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock — a Pietist and sentimental poet, whose Pietism-inspired works best reflect the nature of the changes and the process of coming together of the liturgical litany and the poetic hymn.

The Status of the Litany in the Protestant Church As has already been remarked, the litany is not highly regarded in Protestant liturgy. In his attempt to reform the Church, Martin Luther rejected the cult of the saints and consequently most of the litanies. Nonetheless, predicting Turkish invasions, in 1529 he composed his own Deutsche Litanei, which was incorporated into the liturgy and Protestant prayer books. The faithful were so attached to the traditional form of prayer that Luther could not do without. The structure of Deutsche Litanei is similar to the medieval Latin Litany of the Saints, in which the saints are petitioned to defend the faithful against misfortune. Luther had to give up invocations to the saints in keeping with the reforms he introduced into the liturgy. Luther’s Litany is composed of several parts. It begins with the invocation Kyrie eleison!, followed by apostrophes to the three persons of the Holy Trinity, who are petitioned for mercy with the formula: “erbarm dich über uns” (“have mercy on us”). The next two invocations are appeals to the Lord’s mercy: “Sei uns gnädig! Verschon uns, lieber Herre Gott! / Sei uns gnädig! Hilf uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (“Be forgiving of us! Protect us, dear Lord God! /

2 Ibid., 10.

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Be forgiving of us! Help us, dear Lord God!”). They are followed by ten petitions for protection; each is introduced by the anaphora on “vor” (“from”) and finished with a responsorial formula “behüt uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (“Protect us, dear Lord God!”). The fifth part is made up of calls with the anaphora on “durch” (“by”): they evoke the most significant redemptive events in the life of Christ and finish with the responsory: “hilf uns, lieber Herre Gott!” (“help us, dear Lord God!”). The ensuing part contains longer and more concrete petitions and is followed by the formula “erhör uns, lieber Herre Gott!” through which the faithful ask God to hear them, repeating the prayer twenty-two times. This part lacks a constant anaphora, but the expression which is often repeated is the initial “alle.” The litany closes with the formula Christe, erhöre uns and with the Latin invocation, which opened the prayer. Luther’s litany occupies a unique place in the Protestant church because of its rarity. Protestant prayer books do not contain other litanies of this kind. To this day, in the Protestant (especially the Lutheran) liturgy, the role of the litany is taken by dialogues between the minister and the congregation. It was the Pietist movement which developed the dialogic form of prayer.

Litanies in the Pietist Liturgy Crucial to the development of the Pietist liturgy was the religious community founded by Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), who opened his estate to Moravian exiles. The members of other Protestant denominations followed suit and this is how the settlement called Herrnhut came into being. Formed in 1724, it was a single religious community which united various Protestant confessions. This resulted in a very rich liturgy, which was additionally enhanced by Zinzendorf, for whom praise of the Redeemer meant more than preaching sermons. Zinzendorf ’s preferences account for the sum of two thousand songs authored by him, five of which found their way into the Lutheran songbook.3 One of the songs is the popular Jesu, geh voran with the first stanza as follows: Jesu, geh voran, auf der Lebensbahn, und wir wollen nicht verweilen, dir getreulich nachzueilen; hin zum Vaterland führ uns deine Hand.4

As noted by Michael Meyer-Blanck in his Gottesdienstlehre, the report dating from 1786, prepared by August Gottlieb Spangenberg, who replaced Zinzendorf as the leader of the community, shows that their meetings included the litany, the service 3 Michael Meyer-Blanck, Gottesdienstlehre (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 170. 4 Evangelisch-Lutherisches Gesangbuch (Lübeck: Rohden, 1839), 234.

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with a sermon, the communion, group readings of devotional texts, a weekly service, and communal prayers.5 A special place was occupied by the litany, sung on Sunday mornings before the service. According to the 1757 records, it consisted in the choir, the minister and the congregation singing alternate fragments from the Bible and the Catechism.6 The structure of the litany performed in Herrnhut can be exemplified by Litaney am Ostermorgen, composed by Zinzendorf: Der oben anwesende Erste Theologus, Bischof oder Prediger sagt oder singt: Ich gläube an den einigen Gott, Vater, Sohn und Heiligen Geist. Chor: Ich preise dich Vater und Herr himmels und der erden, das du solches den weisen und klugen verborgen hast, und hast es den unmündigen offenbaret. Ja, Vater! Denn es ist also wohlgefällig gewesen vor dir. Lit.: Vater, verkläre deinen namen! Gem.: Unser Vater in dem himmel! Dein Name werde geheiliget […] Chor: Vater, habe uns lieb, darum dass wir Ihn lieben, und gläuben, dass Er von Dir ausgegangen ist. Lit.: Ich gläube an den namen des Einiggeborenen Sohnes Gottes, durch welchen alle dinge sind, und wir durch Ihn: Ich gläube, dass Er fleisch ward […] Chor: Der Geist und die Braut, die sprechen, Komm! Lit.: Und wer es höret, der spreche, Komm! Gem.: Amen! Ja Herr Jesu, komm, bleib nicht lange! Wir warten deiner, uns wird fast bange. (Schwest.) Komm! (Brüd.): Komm doch! (Alle): Komm […]7

The litany is opened by the leader of the congregation who quotes from Luther’s Confession of Faith. The choir then quotes a line from Matthew 11:25, which begins the praise of God. The subsequent parts, sung by the minister and the congregation, refer to the Credo and Our Father: the choir introduces a different

5 Michael Meyer-Blanck, Gottesdienstlehre, 170. 6 Ibid., 170. 7 Wolfgang Herbst, Evangelischer Gottesdienst. Quellen zu seiner Geschichte (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 149. Quoted from Michael Meyer-Blanck, Gottesdienstlehre, 171.

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biblical verse from the Apocalypse, evoking the symbols of Jesus the Bridegroom and the Congregation as the Bride, often emphasised by the Pietists. The choir addresses Jesus with “Komm!” Then a similar address is directed to Christ by the minister, the congregation, and finally by all gathered. The fact that this kind of litany found its way into the Pietist liturgy is not accidental. The Pietists were in need of a pattern they could use for their prayers — a pattern which would harmonize with their internalized — at times even mystical — meditation and emotional religiousness. The litany, in the form propounded by Zinzendorf, answers this need. Its repetitiveness helps in meditation, and the repeated invocations, praises and petitions harmonize with the Pietist emotional attitude towards Jesus Christ. The Protestant church rejected the Catholic version of the litany for fear of misappropriating the biblical text, but Zinzendorf’s version of the litany is characterized by faithful borrowings from the Bible. Zinzendorf combines the main tenets of Protestantism with emotional piety and even with the Pietist mysticism. Zinzendorf is also the author of a homiletic sequence on Wundenlitanei (the Litany of the Wounds), thanks to which we learn how he defines the litany. In the homily on Wundenlitanei the litany is presented as a kind of prayer, in which the congregation addresses the Holy Trinity, asking for grace on behalf of Jesus Christ or in their own name.8 The Wundenlitanei was not composed by Zinzendorf, but it was discovered by him and attributed to a Silesian author, Valerius Herberger.9 The litany addresses the Wounds, which are described by means of numerous, carefully chosen descriptive adjectives. The responsorial part does not contain petitionary formulae, but sentences describing the healing power of Christ’s wounds: Purpurwunden JESU, Ihr seid so saftig, was euch nur nah kommt, wird wundenhaftig und trieft von Blut. […] Warme Wunden JESU, In keinen Pfühlen kan sich ein Kindlein so sicher fühlen vor kalter Luft. […] Weiche Wunden JESU, Ich lieg gern ruhig, sanfte und stille und warm, was tu ich? Ich kriech zu euch.10

8 Ibid., 194. 9 Dietrich Meyer, Zinzendorf und die Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprrecht, 2009), 54. 10 Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Homilien über die Wundenlitanei (1747), in: Hauptschriften. Hg. von Erich Beyreuther und Gerhard Meyer. Bd. III: Reden während

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Klopstock’s Pietist Litany Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803), one of the most influential and significant German poets, was brought up in a Pietist family in the atmosphere of deinstitutionalized, spontaneous and affective piety, which contributed to his poetic style — a style which was sentimental, emotional, and at the same time elevated. This is the style that permeates his magnum opus — Messias, produced in the years 1748–1773. Composed of twenty songs written in German hexameter, the poem describes Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, appending to the New Testament events apocryphal stories, such as archangel Gabriel’s missions. The fragments below, taken from the first part of the poem (song two), refer to Adam and Eve’s conversation with God, in which they praise the Messiah: Als sie ihn sahn, da sangen zwo Seelen gegen einander, Adam‘s Seele, mit ihr die Seele der göttlichen Eva: »Schönster der Tage, Du sollst vor allen künftigen Tagen Festlich und heilig uns sein, Dich soll vor Deinen Gefährten, Kehrest Du wieder zurück, des Menschen Seele, der Seraph Und der Cherub beim Aufgang und Untergange begrüßen. Steigst Du zur Erd‘ herab, verbreiten Dich Orione Durch die Himmel, und gehst Du am Thron der Herrlichkeit Gottes Strahlend hervor, so wollen wir Dir in feirendem Aufzug, Jauchzend mit Hallelujagesängen entgegensegnen! Dir, unsterblicher Tag, der Du unserm getrösteten Auge Gott den Messias auf Erden in seiner Erniedrigung zeigest. O, von Adam der Schönste, Messias in menschlicher Bildung! Wie enthüllt sich in Deinem erhabenen Antlitz die Gottheit!« »Selig bist Du und heilig, die Du den Messias gebarest, Seliger Du als Eva, der Menschen Mutter. Unzählbar Sind die Söhne von ihr und sind unzählbare Sünder. Aber Du hast einen, nur einen göttlichen Menschen, Einen gerechten, ach, einen unschuldigen, theuren Messias, Einen ewigen Sohn (ihn schuf kein Schöpfer) geboren! Zärtlich seh’ und mit irrendem Blick ich hinab zu der Erde; Dich, Paradies, Dich seh‘ ich nicht mehr. Du bist in den Wassern Niedergestürzt, im Gericht der allgegenwärtigen Sündfluth! Deiner erhabnen umschattenden Cedern, die Gott selbst pflanzte, Deiner friedsamen Laube, der jungen Tugenden Wohnung,

der Sichtungszeit in der Wetterau und in Holland (Hildesheim: Olms, 1963). Quoted from Frank Hiddemann, Site-specific Art im Kirchenraum. Eine Praxistheorie (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2007), 218.

Pietist Litanies in German Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 153 Hat kein Sturm, kein Donner, kein Todesengel geschonet! Bethlehem, wo ihn Maria gebar und ihn brünstig umarmte, Sei Du mir mein Eden; Du Brunnen David’s, die Quelle, Wo ich göttlich erschaffen zuerst mich sahe; Du Hütte, Wo er weinete, sei mir die Laube der ersten Unschuld! Hätt’ ich Dich in Eden geboren, Du Göttlicher, hätt’ ich Gleich nach jener entsetzlichen That, o Sohn, Dich geboren, Siehe, so wär’ ich mit Dir zu meinem Richter gegangen; Da, wo er stand, wo unter ihm Eden zum Grabe sich aufthat, Wo der Erkenntnisse Baum mir fürchterlich rauschte, die Stimme Seiner Donner den Richterspruch des Fluches mir aussprach, Wo ich in bangem Erbeben versank, zu sterben versank, da Wär’ ich zu ihm gegangen; Dich hätt’ ich weinend umarmt, Sohn, An mein Herz Dich gedrückt und gerufen: ›Zürne nicht, Vater! Zürne nicht mehr, ich habe den Mann Jehovah geboren!‹« »Heilig bist Du, anbetenswürdig und ewig, o Erster!11 [When in the sun the patriarchal souls / Beheld him, thus the happy souls of Eve / And Adam sung alternate. First our Sire. / Hail, Blessed Day, most blissful of the days, / That are yet in futurity reserv’d! / Before the train of thy companions, thou / Shalt ever be most sacred, most belov’d! / Seraph and Cherub with the human soul, / Shall ever hail, with loud acclaims of joy / And festal song, thy hallowed return. / Or to the earth descending, or announc’d / By lofty’ Orion through celestial realms; / Or whether coming forth from thy recess, / Advancing radiant by the Throne of God; / When in the sun the patriarchal souls / Beheld him, thus the happy souls of Eve / And Adam sung alternate. First our Sire. / Hail, Blessed Day, most blissful of the days, / That are yet in futurity reserv’d! / Before the train of thy companions, thou / Shalt ever be most sacred, most belov’d! / Seraph and Cherub with the human soul, / Shall ever hail, with loud acclaims of joy / And festal song, thy hallowed return. / Or to the earth descending, or announc’d / By lofty’ Orion through celestial realms; / Or whether coming forth from thy recess, / Advancing radiant by the Throne of God; / A countless race of sinners. Thou hast born / An only son, — he is a righteous man, / Is pure, is holy, is immaculate, / Is the Messiah, an Eternal Son, / Divine and Self-existent. — Down to the earth / With roving eye affectionate I gaze, / But cannot now my paradise discern. / Oh, Blissful Garden, the rentless floods / Have with the dreadful jedgment swept thee hence! / The lofty cedars, planted by the hand / Divine; thy peaceful arbours, the abode / Of juvenile virtues; none of you escap’d — / The desolation dire of thundering tempests, / And the destroying Angel’s awful sword! — / But thou, O Bethlehem, where Mary brought him forth; / Where with maternal ecstacy she first / Embraced him; thou my Eden art beneeforth. / And thou, O Well of David, thou shalt be / To me the lake, where, coming, where, coming from the hands / Of my Creator, I first saw myself. / Thou humble Cot, where first he wept, be thou / To me th’ umbrageous bower of

11 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Werke, Band 1: Der Messias (Berlin: Hempel, 1879), 76–77.

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innocence / Primeval! — Oh, If I had brought Thee forth, / In Eden, Thou Divine Messiah, after / The hideous deed of sin; Behold, I would / Have born Thee in mine arms before my Jude; / E’en where he stood, where Eden under him / Became a yawning grave; there, where the tree / Of knowledge shook terific; where the Judge / Spake out of tempests and pronounced my fate; / Where I was lost in terror and afi’right, / And trembling sunk to faint and die away; / E’en there I would have looked up to my Judge, / And weeping would have claspp’d Thee in my arms, / And pressed Thee closer to my trobbing heart, / And would with ecstacy have cried aloud: / O Father, cease to frown, from anger cease! / Behold, I have brought forth the dear Messiah. / Eternal, holy, adorable First Cause!]12

Adam and Eve’s interlaced utterances resemble in their psalmic style the earlier quoted Litaney am Ostermorgen — the Sunday litany sung by the Pietists from Herrnhut. In the poem Klopstock uses a new form of litany as defined by Zinzendorf — Protestant in nature and different from the Catholic version. What comes to the fore in this new litanic form is its dialogic structure, with two voices taking turns to sing God’s praise and thanksgiving in prayer. The new poetic form contains numerous apostrophes and antonomasias which are also present in the Catholic and Protestant litanies. They are: “Du Brunnen David’s” (“O well of David”), “die Quelle” (“The lake”), “Paradies” (“Blissful Garden”), “Gottmensch” (“Our God in human form”), “Mittler” (“The blessed Mediator”). The chairetismic tone13 can be seen both in the expressive style of the whole dialogue and in individual expressions such as “so wollen wir Dir in feirendem Aufzug, / Jauchzend mit Hallelujagesängen entgegensegnen!” (“We still with festal splendour will receive / And bless thy rising and declining light: / We e’er will celebrate, Immortal Days, Thee jubilant, with shouts and hallelujahs”), “Selig bist Du und heilig,” “Heilig bist Du, anbetenswürdig und ewig, o Erster!” (“Eternal, holy, adorable First Cause!”).

The Blending of Hymn and Litany in Klopstock’s Poetry Klopstock transplanted the Pietist litany onto his favourite poetic genre — the hymn. In consequence, hymns began to be treated as poems with serious content and celebratory tone, manifesting a longing for the unity of different fields of reality.14 Among his religious hymns is, for instance, “Die Frühlingsfeier,” composed in 1759. 12 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Messiah, trans. G. H. C. Egestorff (London: Hartwig & Müller, 1826), 25–26. 13 Chairetismic, ektenial, polyonymic gene or tone, as discussed by Witold Sadowski in Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 25–68. 14 Torsten Hoffmann, Konfigurationen des Erhabenen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006), 199–200.

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What is characteristic of Klopstock is that the marker of the poem’s hymnic nature is not its meter — which is irregular — but merely its tone. The lines display a rhythmic structure, but they are not subjected to any specific form: Nicht in den Ozean der Welten alle Will ich mich stürzen! schweben nicht, Wo die ersten Erschaffnen, die Jubelchöre der Söhne des Lichts, Anbeten, tief anbeten! und in Entzückung vergehn! Nur um den Tropfen am Eimer, Um die Erde nur, will ich schweben, und anbeten! Halleluja! Halleluja! Der Tropfen am Eimer Rann aus der Hand, des Allmächtigen auch! Da der Hand des Allmächtigen Die größeren Erden entquollen! Die Ströme des Lichts rauschten, und Siebengestirne wurden, Da entrannest du, Tropfen, der Hand des Allmächtigen! Da ein Strom des Lichts rauscht’, und unsre Sonne wurde! Ein Wogensturz sich stürzte wie vom Felsen Der Wolk’ herab, und den Orion gürtete, Da entrannest du, Tropfen, der Hand des Allmächtigen! Wer sind die tausendmal tausend, wer die Myriaden alle, Welche den Tropfen bewohnen, und bewohnten? und wer bin ich? Halleluja dem Schaffenden! mehr wie die Erden, die quollen! Mehr, wie die Siebengestirne, die aus Strahlen zusammenströmten! Aber du Frühlingswürmchen, Das grünlichgolden neben mir spielt, Du lebst; und bist vielleicht Ach nicht unsterblich! Ich bin heraus gegangen anzubeten, Und ich weine? Vergieb, vergieb Auch diese Thräne dem Endlichen, O du, der seyn wird! Du wirst die Zweifel alle mir enthüllen, O du, der mich durch das dunkle Thal Des Todes führen wird! Ich lerne dann, Ob eine Seele das goldene Würmchen hatte. Bist du nur gebildeter Staub, Sohn des Mays, so werde denn Wieder verfliegender Staub, Oder was sonst der Ewige will!

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Ergeuß von neuem du, mein Auge, Freudenthränen! Du, meine Harfe, Preise den Herrn! Umwunden wieder, mit Palmen Ist meine Harf ’ umwunden! ich singe dem Herrn! Hier steh ich. Rund um mich Ist Alles Allmacht! und Wunder Alles! Mit tiefer Ehrfurcht schau ich die Schöpfung an, Denn Du! Namenloser, Du! Schufest sie! Lüfte, die um mich wehn, und sanfte Kühlung Auf mein glühendes Angesicht hauchen, Euch, wunderbare Lüfte, Sandte der Herr! der Unendliche! Aber jetzt werden sie still, kaum athmen sie. Die Morgensonne wird schwül! Wolken strömen herauf! Sichtbar ist, der komt, der Ewige! Nun schweben sie, rauschen sie, wirbeln die Winde! Wie beugt sich der Wald! wie hebt sich der Strom! Sichtbar, wie du es Sterblichen seyn kanst, Ja, das bist du, sichtbar, Unendlicher! Der Wald neigt sich, der Strom fliehet, und ich Falle nicht auf mein Angesicht? Herr! Herr! Gott! barmherzig und gnädig! Du Naher! erbarme dich meiner! Zürnest du, Herr, Weil Nacht dein Gewand ist? Diese Nacht ist Segen der Erde. Vater, du zürnest nicht! Sie komt, Erfrischung auszuschütten, Über den stärkenden Halm! Über die herzerfreuende Traube! Vater, du zürnest nicht!

Pietist Litanies in German Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Poetry 157 Alles ist still vor dir, du Naher! Rings umher ist Alles still! Auch das Würmchen mit Golde bedeckt, merkt auf! Ist es vielleicht nicht seelenlos? ist es unsterblich? Ach, vermöcht’ ich dich, Herr, wie ich dürste, zu preisen! Immer herlicher offenbarest du dich! Immer dunkler wird die Nacht um dich, Und voller von Segen! Seht ihr den Zeugen des Nahen den zückenden Strahl? Hört ihr Jehova’s Donner? Hört ihr ihn? hört ihr ihn, Den erschütternden Donner des Herrn? Herr! Herr! Gott! Barmherzig, und gnädig! Angebetet, gepriesen Sey dein herlicher Name! Und die Gewitterwinde? sie tragen den Donner! Wie sie rauschen! wie sie mit lauter Woge den Wald durchströmen! Und nun schweigen sie. Langsam wandelt Die schwarze Wolke. Seht ihr den neuen Zeugen des Nahen, den fliegenden Strahl? Höret ihr hoch in der Wolke den Donner des Herrn? Er ruft: Jehova! Jehova! Und der geschmetterte Wald dampft! Aber nicht unsre Hütte! Unser Vater gebot Seinem Verderber, Vor unsrer Hütte vorüberzugehn! Ach, schon rauscht, schon rauscht Himmel, und Erde vom gnädigen Regen! Nun ist, wie dürstete sie! die Erd’ erquickt, Und der Himmel der Segensfüll’ entlastet! Siehe, nun komt Jehova nicht mehr im Wetter, In stillem, sanftem Säuseln Komt Jehova, Und unter ihm neigt sich der Bogen des Friedens!15

15 Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock, Oden (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1994), 59–67.

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The structure of Klopstock’s hymn is connected with the emotional engagement of the poet, based on the premise that individual emotional or religious feelings require an equally individual poetic frame.16 Accordingly, the stylistic devices used in the poem reflect its emotional nature — numerous repetitions applied to single words, including the calls “Halleluiah!” in stanzas two and five, groups of words such as “komt Jehova” (“Jehovah is coming”) and even groups of sentences in stanzas sixteen and twenty-two: “Herr! Herr Gott! Barmherzig und gnädig!” (“Lord! Lord God! Forgiving and merciful!”). The expressive tone is enhanced by syntactic parallels, e.g. in stanza twenty, as well as inversions. However original the structure of Klopstock’s poem is, its style and contents are embedded in religious conventions. The poem praises God and petitions him for mercy by means of traditional formulae (“Halleluja!,” “Preise den Herrn!,” “erbarme dich meiner! Angebetet, gepriesen / Sey dein herrlicher Name! — “Halleluiah!,” “Praise the Lord!,” “have mercy on me! May your great name be praised!”). The metaphors are borrowed from the Bible; for instance, the metaphor of the drop in the ocean (Tropfen am Eimer), which appears in the second stanza, was taken from the Book of Isaiah. The poem’s emotionality, expressed by means of the stylistic devices characteristic of litanic invocations, as well as its psalmic style, bring “Die Frühlingsfeier” closer to the Pietist forms of litany. The poem does not embrace a dialogic structure, even though in stanza 21 an interaction with a group of people is implied: “Hört ihr Jehova’s Donner?” (“Hear you Jehovah’s thunder?”). The question is addressed to the congregation, but the poet is the only speaker in the poem: he praises God, asks for His mercy, contemplates His nature, and evokes Him. The same tendency can be seen in other poems by Klopstock, such as “Das große Halleluja,” “Dem Erlöser,” and “Psalm.” Two of them are quoted below in passages which are significant for our considerations: “Das große Halleluja”17 Ehre sey dem Hocherhabnen, dem Ersten, dem Vater der Schöpfung! Dem unsre Psalme stammeln, Obgleich der wunderbare Er Unaussprechlich, und undenkbar ist. […] 4. Ehre sey, und Dank, und Preis dem Hocherhabnen, dem Ersten, Der nicht begann, und nicht aufhören wird!

16 Dirk Petersdorff, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik (München: Beck, 2008), 37. 17 The ordinal numbers apply to subsequent stanzas.

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Der sogar des Staubes Bewohnern gab, Nicht aufzuhören.

5.

Ehre dem Wunderbaren, Der unzählbare Welten in den Ozean der Unendlichkeit aussäte! Und sie füllete mit Heerschaaren Unsterblicher, Dass Ihn sie liebten, und selig wären durch Ihn!

6.

Ehre dir! Ehre dir! Ehre dir! Hocherhabner! Erster! Vater der Schöpfung! Unaussprechlicher! Undenkbarer!

“Psalm” 1.

Um Erden wandeln Monde, Erden um Sonnen, Aller Sonnen Heere wandeln Um eine grosse Sonne: »Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel!«

2.

Auf allen diesen Welten, leuchtenden, und erleuchteten, Wohnen Geister an Kräften ungleich, und an Leibern; Aber alle denken Gott, und freuen sich Gottes. »Geheiliget werde dein Name.«



Er, der Hocherhabene, Der allein ganz sich denken, Seiner ganz sich freuen kann, Machte den tiefen Entwurf Zur Seligkeit aller seiner Weltbewohner. »Zu uns komme dein Reich.«

Both poems are prayer- or hymn-like and both draw upon poetic litanies in their own unique ways. “Das große Halleluja” never uses the titular expression, but is nevertheless very joyful in tone thanks to the anaphora on “Ehre” (“Glory”), which opens each stanza. The second poem closes each stanza with the successive elements of the Our Father prayer while the rest of the lines bring to mind the content and style of psalms. The first hymn contains a lot of apostrophes evoking God: “der Hocherhabene,” “der Wunderbare,” “Vater der Schöpfung,” “Unausprechlicher,” “Undenkbarer” (“the Sublime,” “the Wonderful,” “the Father of Creation,” “the Inexpressible,” “the Unimaginable”) or more complex clauses introduced by the der pronoun such as “Der nicht begann, und nicht aufhören wird” (“He who has no beginning and no end”). It is such antonomasias that are the building blocks of the poem. In the case of “Das große Halleluja” the hymnic form blends with

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the litany: it is not incompatible with the Pietist pattern, but is at the same time similar to Catholic litanies. The litanic genre is also realized here in the collective subject of the prayer. The congregation that praises God appears as early as in the second line of the first stanza: “Dem unsre Psalme stammeln” (“To whom our psalms stammer”). While the first poem, despite a degree of metrical freedom, is suited for communal prayer, the second is rather a kind of individual meditation.

Conclusions The mere fact that a Pietist kind of litany made its appearance in Germany, gaining popularity and finding its way into poetry, shows that there was a need to use the litanic repertoire of devices in prayer as well as in poetry. For the Pietists, the litany was a means of expressing emotional religiousness, the richness of internal life, and a mystical devotion to Christ. Due to this, litanic rhythms became very popular among some poets with a Protestant background. It was not only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but even up to the nineteenth century, that the influence of the Pietist litany can be seen in German literature. The Pietist movement was responsible for introducing the litanic tone to poetry without resorting to the Catholic form of the prayer. Klopstock’s sentimental hymns borrow from Zinzendorf ’s litanies with a dialogic, psalm-like organization (Messias): they litanize psalm-like texts (“Die Frühlingsfeier” and “Psalm”), and even come very close to the traditional form of the litany (“Das große Halleluja”). The elevated hymnic style grows out of the litanic means of expression such as parallelisms, antonomasias, apostrophes, the dialogic or dialogic-like structure, joyful or petitionary anaphoras (Klopstock’s works are suffused with a joyful and elevated tone) as well as much repetition of single words or groups of words. Klopstock’s poems show the correspondence between the litany and the hymn and the stylistic compatibility of both forms. Translated from Polish by Dominika Ruszkiewicz

Ewa Wantuch The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

“You are the harp on which the player breaks in pieces”: German and Austrian Poetry between 1797 and 1914 The dynamic changes which took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries found their reflection in various trends as well as intellectual and literary currents in German and Austrian cultures. Enlightenment rationalism coexisted with utter irrationalism and sentimentalism. The Romantic poets, in their attempt at reconciling the real and the ideal, had to confront imitative poetry emulating the old ways of writing. Realism and naturalism, the art produced by Young Germany (Junges Deutschland), which was ideological and at times politically engaged, as well as modernist symbolism and mythologism, are various ways of approaching reality — the reality to which litanic verse belonged. In order to examine the influence of the litanic genre on a richly diversified literature, we should take into account the changes in religious mentality, which took place in the Austrian and German societies. The former, under the rule of the traditional, Catholic Habsburg family, was less subject to the process of secularization than the latter. The German-speaking area of Europe was more susceptible to changes because it was more diversified in terms of confessions (in Germany the Protestant North and the largely Catholic South; in Austria, Catholicism). This division was deepened by another cleavage — that between the German states and free cities. This led to confusion and the sense of a lack of belonging, which German nineteenth-century thinkers attributed to the break in Christian unity, effected by Luther (this opinion was expressed by, among others, Novalis in Die Christenheit oder Europa, published in 1799, and Friedrich Schlegel in Signatur des Zeitalters, which appeared in 1822), as well as to a “shattering” of human consciousness, dating back to prehistory (as explained by Friedrich Schelling and Friedrich Vischer in their aesthetic-philosophical treatises). The process of decentralization, caused by the above-mentioned factors, did not foster liturgical unity. Different congregations published their own songbooks and prayer books. In 1853 an attempt was made at introducing a common German evangelical songbook (Das Deutsche Evangelische Gesangbuch in 150 Kernliedern), with the aim of unifying the liturgy of different areas in terms of

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style. The songbook did not contain any songs influenced by the Pietist movement; nor did it evoke any remnants of Enlightenment rationalism. The fact that it was not adopted shows that the differences within the Protestant liturgy were not only very strong, but also necessary: they occasioned the need for the existence of different styles. Moreover, the members of the Pietist movement favoured spontaneous prayer over strict liturgical forms. The Protestant Theological and Ecclesiastical Encyclopaedia, published in 1857,1 defined the litany as a form situated between prayer and song, which can be both recited and sung. What differentiated the litany from other forms of prayer was its responsorial character. According to the encyclopaedia, all the litanies invariably begin with Kyrie eleison and finish with Agnus Dei. In this, they resemble the mass liturgy, even though neither Catholic nor Protestant main services include the litany. Between the initial and final invocations, the litany contains a number of calls, followed by the refrain “Erhöre uns, lieber Herre Gott.” In the evangelical litany the refrain is repeated every three calls. A number of litanic prayers are to be found in contemporary prayer books and Catholic songbooks (e.g. Litanei-Buch, published in 1851 in Linz; Katolischer Gebet- und Gesangbuch für würdigen Leier des öffentlichen Gottesdienstes im Laufe des Kirchenjahres, which appeared in 1859 in Aschaffenburg2). Among the most popular nineteenth-century litanies were the Litany of the Eucharist, the Litany of the Sacred Heart, the Litany of Loreto, and the Litany of the Saints. Still, the litany did not appear as a separate form in Protestant songbooks (e.g. Gesangbuch für den öffentlichen Gottesdienst der evangelisch-protestantischen Gemeinden der freien Stadt Frankfurt, published in 1824 in Frankfurt am Main3). The only litany used in the Evangelical Church was the one revised by Martin Luther. It became a model for later poets who identified themselves with the Lutheran Church such as Nikolaus von Zinzendorf (Litanei für Ostermorgen — the Easter-Morning Litany), Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who used a very pathetic form of litany, and Johann

1 Christian David Friedrich Palmer, “Litanei,” in Real-Enzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, ed. by Johann Jakob Herzog, 1st ed. (Hamburg: Rudolf Besser, 1854–1866), 8, 427–428. 2 Cf. Litanei-Buch (Linz: Huemer, 1851) and Katolischer Gebet- und Gesangbuch für würdigen Leier des öffentlichen Gottesdienstes im Laufe des Kirchenjahres (Aschaffenburg, 1859). 3 Gesangbuch für den öffentlichen Gottesdienst der evangelisch-protestantischen Gemeinden der freien Stadt Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main: Johann David Sauerländer Verlag, 1824).

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Georg Jacobi. The latter — according to the encyclopaedia — was to call his poem the litany merely because it contains a recurrent refrain and celebrates the dead. In the period under consideration, the term “litany” does not only appear in a religious context. For instance, the entry in the German Dictionary (1885), edited by the Grimm brothers,4 contains a reference to the Drunk Litany (Trunkenlitanei). Twentieth-century literature also produced examples of parodic litanies. The litanic convention is turned upside down in Walter Mehring’s Ketzerbrevier, which appeared in 1921. The litanic verse, however, which is patterned upon the litanic structure and which brings to mind religious connotations, does not make a significant appearance in Austrian and German literatures, at least not during the period under discussion.

Litanic Verse during the German Romantic Period (1797–1830) The poem entitled “Der Jäger Abschied” (1810), written by Joseph von Eichendorff (1788–1857), is close to the litany thanks to its anaphoric formula, repeated in the last lines of each of its four stanzas, as well as to its collective speaker. In each of the six-line stanzas, the first four lines form a kind of meditation on the element of nature — the forest and its impact on the hunters who say their farewells before parting with it. The meditative tone is enhanced by the rhythm of the poem, based on the trochaic tetrameter measure: Wer hat dich, du schöner Wald, Aufgebaut so hoch da droben? Wohl den Meister will ich loben, So lang noch mein Stimm erschallt. Lebe wohl, Lebe wohl, du schöner Wald! Tief die Welt verworren schallt, Oben einsam Rehe grasen, Und wir ziehen fort und blasen, Daß es tausendfach verhallt: Lebe wohl, Lebe wohl, du schöner Wald! Banner, der so kühle wallt! Unter deinen grünen Wogen Hast du treu uns auferzogen,

4 “Litanei,” in Deutsches Wörterbuch, ed. Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, vol. 6 (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1885).

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Frommer Sagen Aufenthalt! Lebe wohl, Lebe wohl, du schöner Wald! Was wir still gelobt im Wald, Wollens draußen ehrlich halten, Ewig bleiben treu die Alten: Deutsch Panier, das rauschend wallt, Lebe wohl, Schirm dich Gott, du schöner Wald!5

Even though the direct addressee of the formula Lebe wohl and the main referent in the poem is the forest, the central presence is that of God, who created the forest. In the third and fourth lines the poet expresses his desire to praise the Creator; in the next two lines and at the end of each stanza he gives a eulogistic farewell to the forest (the last line: “Schirm dich Gott, Du schöner Wald”). The forest depicted in the poem is located on a hill, closer to heaven; therefore, for the hunters it is a kind of symbolic intermediary between them and God, just as the poet’s meditation on the forest is a kind of ascent to the Creator. The refrain is a longing farewell to the mediatory space which makes the encounter with God possible. Similarly to a litany, in which intermediaries are asked to intercede with God on our behalf, here the intermediary is nature and the mediation assumes the air of a romantic celebration. The poem is structured like a German folk song (Volkslied) with two types of cadences — male and female.6 A similar structure appears in Eichendorff ’s poem “Du sollst mich doch nicht fangen,” which belongs to the cycle Der Umkehrende; the invocations at the end of each stanza are in praise of Jesus Christ. Another Romantic poet, Clemens Brentano (1778–1842), authored a poem which is an interesting variation on an anonymous German folk song dating from the seventeenth century,7 in which the litanic addressee is re-evaluated to an even greater degree. The version quoted below is made up of fourteen stanzas; it appeared in 1802 in the second part of the novel entitled Godwi. The addressee is a flower and the style of the poem does not point to its intermediary role. The litanic 5 Joseph von Eichendorff, Werke (München: Winkler, 1970), 152–153. 6 Erwin Arndt, Deutsche Verslehre: ein Abriß (Berlin: Volk und Wissen Volkseigener Verlag, 1959), 76–78. Cf. J. H. Heinzelman, “Eichendorff and the Volkslied,” Modern Philology. Vol. 6, 4(1909): 511–515. 7 For the influence of this song on German literature cf. Berndt Tilp’s article: Berndt Tilp, “Das Volkslied ’Er ist ein Schnitter, der heißt Tod’ bei Clemens Brentano, Georg Büchner, Joseph von Eichendorff und Alfred Döblin,” Literatur in Bayern 49(1997): 12–29.

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quality of the verse can be seen most fully in its structure: the poem achieves its chairetismic tone8 due to the part, a very conspicuous one, which contains a repetitive laudatory formula and due to the presence of numerous anaphoric calls: Es ist ein Schnitter, der heißt Tod, Er mäht das Korn, wenns Gott gebot; Schon wetzt er die Sense, Daß schneidend sie glänze, Bald wird er dich schneiden, Du mußt es nur leiden; Mußt in den Erndtekranz hinein, Hüte dich schöns Blümelein! […] Du himmelfarben Ehrenpreis, Du Träumer, Mohn, roth, gelb und weiß, Aurickeln, Ranunkeln, Und Nelken, die funkeln, Und Malven und Narden Braucht nicht lang zu warten; Müßt in den Erndtekranz hinein, Hüte dich schöns Blümelein! Du farbentrunkner Tulpenflor, Du tausendschöner Floramor, Ihr Blutes-Verwandten, Ihr Glut-Amaranthen, Ihr Veilchen, ihr stillen, Ihr frommen Camillen, Müßt in den Erndtekranz hinein, Hüte dich schöns Blümelein! […] Ihr Bienlein ziehet aus dem Feld, Man bricht euch ab das Honigzelt, Die Bronnen der Wonnen, Die Augen, die Sonnen, Der Erdsterne Wunder, Sie sinken jetzt unter,

8 The definitions of the chairetismic, ektenial and polyonymic genes or tones are based on Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry: On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011).

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All in den Erndtekranz hinein, Hüte dich schöns Blümelein! O Stern und Blume, Geist und Kleid, Lieb, Leid und Zeit und Ewigkeit! Den Kranz helft mir winden, Die Garbe helft binden, Kein Blümlein darf fehlen, Jed Körnlein wird zählen Der Herr auf seiner Tenne rein, Hüte dich schöns Blümelein

A Catholic, whose religious engagement was to increase after a meeting in 1818 with a mystic called Anne Catherine Emmerich, could not be expected to produce a fully secularized version of the litanic verse. In fact, the thematic background is deeply Christian. The theme of Death the harvester, cutting off all the enumerated kinds of flowers, seems to remind the reader about the passing away of earthly life. Apart from the litanic invocations to nature, this period also witnessed the appearance of poems akin to litanies which address mythological gods. An example of such a poem is Heinrich von Kleist’s “Hymne an die Sonne,” published in 1799, which draws upon Friedrich Schiller’s “Hymne an den Unendlichen.” In Schiller’s poem the Christian echoes are very conspicuous, whereas Kleist’s poem is in the vein of lyric nature poetry.9 Observing the sunrise in the mountains, the poet anthropomorphizes and adores the view, just like the ancient Greeks did in their elevated worship of Helios.

Litanic Verse during the Biedermeier Epoch In the Biedermeier period, the traces of the litanic verse can be found — on the Austrian side — in the poetry of Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872). On the German side, we witness a lack of interest in the litanic form among the majority of writers, the exception being a poet with a Protestant background, August Graf von Platen-Hallermünde (1796–1835), whose Oriental ghazals display litanic features. Some litanic verse was also written by a German poet named Annette von Droste Hülshoff (1797–1848). A cycle of her religiously-inspired poems called Das Geistliche Jahr was not published until 1851, i.e. three years after her death, when the Biedermeier Epoch was coming to an end. Following the liturgical calendar, in von Droste Hülshoff ’s cycle each Sunday and holiday is ascribed an appropriate 9 Cf. Hans-Dieter Franz, Verfehlte und erfüllte Natur: Variationen über ein Thema im Werk Heinrich von Kleists (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2000), 70.

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poem, most of which are prayer-like. Among them, there are poems which take the form of the litany: “Fastnacht,” “Am Montage in der Karwoche,” “Am Karsamstage,” and “Am Allerheiligentage.” “Fastnacht” is an individual supplicatory prayer: Ev.: Vom Blinden am Wege. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Ich weiß es, daß der Tag ist aufgegangen; Im klaren Osten stehn fünf blut’ge Sonnen, Und daß das Morgenrot mit stillem Prangen Sich spiegelt in der Herzen hellen Bronnen; Ich sehe nicht, ich fühle seine Nähe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Und wie ich einsam stehe: Sich um mich regt ein mannigfaches Klingen; Ein jeder will ein lichtes Plätzchen finden, Und alle von der Lust der Sonnen singen. Ich nimmer kann die Herrlichkeit ergründen, Und wird mir nur ein unergründlich Wehe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Wie ich die Augen drehe, Verlangend, durch der Lüfte weite Reiche, Und meine doch ein Schimmer müsse fallen In ihrer armen Kreise öde Bleiche, Weil deine Strahlen mächtig doch vor allen: Doch fester schließt die Rinde sich, die zähe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Gleich dem getroffnen Rehe Möcht’ ich um Hülfe rennen durch die Erde; Doch kann ich nimmer deine Wege finden. Ich weiß, daß ich im Moor versinken werde, Wenn nicht der Wolf zuvor verschlang den Blinden; Auch droht des Stolzes Klippe mir, die jähe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! So bleib’ ich auf der Höhe, Wo du zum Schutz gezogen um die Deinen Des frommen Glaubens zarte Ätherhalle, Worin so klar die roten Sonnen scheinen, Und harre, daß dein Tau vom Himmel falle, Worin ich meine kranken Augen bähe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe!

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Wie sich die Nacht auch blähe, Als sei ich ihrer schwarzen Macht verbündet, Weil mir verschlossen deine Strahlenfluten: Hat sich doch ihre Nähe mir verkündet, Empfind’ ich doch, wie lieblich ihre Gluten! So weiß ich, daß ich nicht vergeblich flehe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Und wie mich mancher schmähe, Als soll’ ich nie zu deinem Strahl gelangen, Dieweil ich meine Blindheit selbst verschuldet, Da ich in meiner Kräfte üpp’gem Prangen Ein furchtbar blendend Feuerlicht geduldet, Mir sei schon recht, und wer gesät der mähe: Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Herr, wie du willst, geschehe! Doch nicht von deinem Antlitz will ich gehen; In diesen Tagen wo die Nacht regieret, Will ich allein in deinem Tempel stehen Von ihrem kalten Zepter unberühret, Ob ich den Funken deiner Huld erspähe. Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe! Daß mich dein Glanz umwehe, Das fühl’ ich wohl durch alle meine Glieder, Die sich in schauderndem Verlangen regen. O milder Herr, sieh mit Erbarmen nieder! Kann ein unendlich Flehn dich nicht bewegen? Ob auch der Hahn zum dritten Male krähe, Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe!10

At the very beginning of the poem and at the end of each stanza, a call is repeated which is shorter than the remaining lines: “Herr, gib mir, daß ich sehe!” This address, together with the tone of the poem, determines its ektenial character. An equally supplicatory tone pervades “Am Karsamstage;” its echoes can also be seen in the poem “Am Montage in der Karwoche,” even though the latter is more polyonymic in nature. Each stanza of “Fastnacht” is — despite a thematic continuity — a selfcontained unit: its eleven-syllable lines are in a sense framed by a seven-syllable couplet, split into two halves — one opening and the other closing the stanza. The poet is very consistent in her execution of the versification pattern, even though it 10 Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Sämtliche Werke in zwei Bänden. Band 1 (München: Winkler, 1973), 584–586.

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puts fluency at risk and abbreviations have to be introduced; for instance in line three of the first stanza the words “stehn” and “blut’ge” are shorter versions of “stehen” and “blutige.” Such a slavish subjection to the poetic form characterizes the poet’s whole oeuvre which has been criticized for its lack of musicality.11 However, it also indicates the need to place the prayer within a formal frame. As has already been mentioned, on the Austrian side, poetic works inspired by the litany were created by Franz Grillparzer. Even though his poems lack the litany-fashioned structure (with the exception of Vater Unser, which is divided into stanzas, each closing with a subsequent line from Our Father), the litanic tone can be seen in a poem with a hymnic or psalmic character — Die Musik: Sei mir gegrüßt, o Königin! Mit der strahlenden Herrscherstirn, Mit dem lieblich tönenden Munde Und dem Wahnsinn sprühenden Blick, Schwingend das zarte Plektron, Ein mächtiger Szepter in deiner Hand. Sei mir gegrüßet, Herrlichste Unter den herrlichen Schwestern! Lieblich sind sie, die Huldinnen alle, Die am Throne des Lichts gezeugt, Von unsterblichen Müttern geboren, Gerne nieder zur Erde steigen; Boten einer vergangenen, Verkünder einer künftigen Welt. Lieblich sind sie, die Huldinnen alle, Wenn sie, der Sterblichkeit Nebelkleid Um die leuchtenden Schultern geworfen, Wie Apollon unter den Hirten In dem Kreise der Menschen weilen; Und in der Fremde rauhen Boden Palmenreiser der Heimat pflanzen; Menschen ähnlich und dennoch Götter, Beide Welten liebend verbinden, Hernieder zur Erde den Himmel ziehn Und den Menschen zu Göttern erhöhn.

11 Cf. Bruna Bianchi, “Verhinderte Überschreitung. Phänomenologie der ‘Grenze’ in der Lyrik Annette von Droste-Hülshoff,” in Ein Gitter aus Musik und Sprache. Feministische Analysen zu Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, edited by Ortrun Niethammer and Claudia Belemann (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993), 17–34.

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Lieblich sind sie, die Huldinnen alle, Doch wie die Rose unter den Blumen Strahlst du hervor aus dem Chore der Schwestern. […] Wer vermag deinen Zauber zu schildern, Liebliche, milde, freundlich holde, Fühlende Freundin fühlender Seelen: Herrlichste unter den herrlichen Schwestern! Was der Mime nur schwankend stammelt, Was der Dichter zu laut verrät, Lispelt vernehmlich dein Saitenspiel. Sei die Dichtkunst noch so gepriesen, Sie spricht doch nur der Menschen Sprache, Du sprichst, wie man im Himmel spricht! Darum sei mir dreimal gesegnet, Hohe, strahlende Königin! Ewig soll meine Lippe dich preisen, Und in den Klang meiner Weihgesänge Mische sich jauchzend der Jubel der Welt!12

The hymnic flow of the poem as well as its pathetic tone bring it closer to Klopstock’s hymns13 (e.g. “Die Frühlingsfeier”). The poem contains irregular apostrophes with the chairetismic “Sei mir gegrüßt” and antonomasias, which sometimes appear after a laudatory call with longer or shorter modifying phrases, as seen in stanzas one, two and sixteen. The apostrophic repetitions in stanzas two to five and fifteen contain the motif of the Bride from the Song of Songs (2:2). Stanzas six to twelve enumerate the attributes of music in apostrophes addressed to it (the accumulation of such enumerations is to be found in stanzas nine and eleven). In 1821, August von Platen’s collection of poems entitled Ghaselen appeared. It was strongly inspired by Persian culture, especially the Persian ghazal, as indicated in the title. The form with its specific pattern of rhymes has been in use in German literature since the nineteenth century, its Oriental motifs being in time replaced by German contents. Platen is certainly not the only poet who was inspired by the Orient (poems modelled on the Persian ghazal were also written by Theodor Storm and Detlev von Liliencron, among others), but only his poetry is characterized by a large number of ghazals which resemble the European litany. Apart from the poem 12 Franz Grillparzer, Sämtliche Werke. Band 1 (München: Winkler, 1960–1965), 81–85. 13 Cf. Otto Eduard Lessing, Schillers Einfluss auf Grillparzer: eine literaturhistorische Studie (Diss., Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, 1902), No. 54, vol. 2, 204.

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quoted below, we can also mention works such as “Bist du der Freund, weil du mein Herz gewinnest?” and “Du bist der Wandersmann, der auf der weiten Fahrt.” Did Platen make an attempt to synthesize the ghazal and the litany; was he trying to naturalize the alien form by means of its association with the much more familiar litany? Let us have a look at his “Du bist der wahre Weise mir”: Du bist der wahre Weise mir, Dein Auge lispelt’s leise mir: Du bist ein Gastfreund ohne Hehl Auf dieser langen Reise mir; Dein Leben wird, daß Liebe noch Lebendig, zum Beweise mir; Du bringst der Liebe Moschusduft, Du bringst der Wahrheit Speise mir; Es wird so licht, es wird so warm In deinem lieben Kreise mir; Du bist die Perle, deren Wert Hoch über jedem Preise mir!14

The poet addresses a specific person, described by means of metaphors which underline his/her connection with the poet. Seven out of twelve lines begin with Du together with bist or bringst, which is followed by who/what the person is: “der wahre Weise,” “ein Gastfreund ohne Hehl,” “die Perle,” or by what he/she brings: “der Liebe Monschuft,” “der Wahrheit Speise.” The word mir creates a rhyme pattern which is characteristic of the ghazal. The poet does not assume a collective voice. He uses enjambement, which adds to the smooth flow of the poem and its meditative tone. Even though both the ghazal and the litany are associated with oral performance, the poem seems best suited for individual and meditative reading.

Litanic-Verse Realists and Naturalists Among the German realists and naturalists two poets deserve particular mention here: Friedrich Hebbel with his “An den Äther,” published in 1842, and Arno Holz with his “Herr, mein Herr, Du bist sehr herrlich” from the collection Phantasus (1898–1899). Hebbel’s “An den Äther” is a sonnet. In the first two stanzas the poet praises ether by means of antonomasias; in the second part the poet contemplates his own situation and his attitude towards the recipient of his polyonymic calls:

14 August Graf von Platen, Werke in zwei Bänden. Band 1: Lyrik (München: Winkler, 1982), 212.

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Allewiger und unbegrenzter Äther! Durchs Engste, wie durchs Weiteste Ergoßner! Von keinem Ring des Daseins Ausgeschloßner! Von jedem Hauch des Lebens still Durchwehter! Des Unerforschten einziger Vertreter! Sein erster und sein würdigster Entsproßner! Von ihm allein in tiefster Ruh’ Umfloßner! Dir gegenüber werd auch ich ein Beter!15

Arno Holz’s poem, in turn, is written in free verse. It has a laudatory character, reinforced by joyful invocations to the Christian God. Its chairetismic tone is most conspicuously brought out in the final line which ends with two exclamation marks: Herr, mein Herr, Du bist sehr herrlich! Alle Götter der Welt sind Götzen. Nur Du nicht! Meine Lippen preisen Dich. Du bist gnädig und gerecht, Du bist barmherzig! Ich fürchte mich nicht vor Dir, dass mir die Haut schaudert, und entsetze mich nicht vor Deinen Rechten. Deine Gedanken sind so sehr tief! Du drehst die Kurbel, die mich um diese Säule quetscht, Du hast ihre Scherben, Du hast ihre Rasirmesser gewetzt, Du bist so allgütig. . . Sieh! Auf Flügeln, die wie Silber und Gold schimmern, in weissen Gewändern, Rosen im Haar, schweben um dieses glühende, zuckende Fleisch all Deine Engel. Singend, jubelnd, in Millionen Schaalen, sammeln sie meine Freudentränen! Halleluja!!16

15 Friedrich Hebbel, Sämtliche Werke. 1. Abteilung: Werke (Berlin, 1911), 323. 16 Arno Holz, Phantasus (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978), 73.

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The Blend of Ritual and Litany in Modern German Literature The ritualization of form, characteristic of modern German literature, fostered the development of litanic verse. This can be seen in the poetry of symbolists of German origin, such as Stefan George (1868–1933), and of Austrian origin, such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926). George is the author of a poem with a litanic title and structure: Tief ist die trauer die mich umdüstert · Ein tret ich wieder Herr! in dein haus .. Lang war die reise · matt sind die glieder · Leer sind die schreine · voll nur die qual. Durstende zunge darbt nach dem weine. Hart war gestritten · starr ist mein arm. Gönne die ruhe schwankenden schritten · Hungrigem gaume bröckle dein brot! Schwach ist mein atem rufend dem traume · Hohl sind die hände · fiebernd der mund .. Leih deine kühle · lösche die brände · Tilge das hoffen · sende das licht! Gluten im herzen lodern noch offen · Innerst im grunde wacht noch ein schrei..

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Töte das sehnen · schliesse die wunde! Nimm mir die liebe · gieb mir dein glück!17

The poem Litanei (1901) contains eight stanzas, each made up of a couplet divided by a caesura. The break is signalled in the text in such a way that the second line in each couplet is positioned below and to the right: this creates the impression of a question and answer. The litanic character of the poem is also determined by supplications which take the form of imperatives. The rhythms of the poem are regular and monotonous; it is built on alternating dactyls and trochees.18 The tone is pleading, but with no ektenial formulae used. The speaking voice is individual rather than collective, as emphasised by the word mir used in the final line. This litany is not meant for communal, but rather private prayer. While its form and motifs point to a Catholic background, the poem’s message expressed by those means is deeply anti-Catholic; the light — a Christian symbol of hope — is accessible only when hope is no more (stanza six); happiness is possible only when love is no more (the final stanza). The poem shows how a genre which is deeply rooted in Catholicism becomes a vehicle for anti-Catholic sentiments.19 Wolfgang Braungart calls the poem an “aesthetic litany;”20 as such, it is closer to ritual texts.21 Another of George’s poems is an example of a subjectivized litany, in which the speaking voice is both the one who prays and the one who receives the “prayer”: Ich bin der Eine und bin Beide Ich bin der zeuger bin der schooss Ich bin der degen und die scheide Ich bin das opfer bin der stoss Ich bin die sicht und bin der seher Ich bin der bogen bin der bolz

17 Stefan George, Der siebente Ring. Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke, Band 6/7 (Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1931), 147–149. 18 Cf. Wolfgang Braungart, Ritual und Literatur (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996) and his Ästhetischer Katholizismus: Stefan Georges Rituale der Literatur (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), 214. 19 Cf. Braungart, Ritual und Literatur, 216. 20 Ibid., 214. 21 Ibid.

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Ich bin der altar und der fleher Ich bin das feuer und das holz Ich bin der reiche bin der bare Ich bin das zeichen bin der sinn Ich bin der schatten bin der wahre Ich bin ein end und ein beginn.22

The fragment quoted here is strikingly similar to Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal. In the French poem, however, we hear a grieving voice, whereas the German expresses rather the poet’s awareness of his own destiny.23 The poem has a very strict form and rhythm. It is composed of iambic tetrameters with alternate rhymes. The structure correlates with the meaning. Each line is a sentence which begins with the words “Ich bin” and contains two contradictory and at the same time complementary terms. Neither of these terms is of a higher value; they are equal. What is more, they become one, as announced in the initial line. The final line reverses the biblical definition of God as the beginning and end. The speaking voice, full of self-worship, places itself in opposition to God. This may be a reference to the mysticism of Nicolas of Cusa,24 who stressed the substantial interdependence between the image of God and the one who studies him. George’s poetry became an inspiration for an Austrian symbolist six years his junior, Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929). Among his poems there is a small group of those which are closest to the poetic litany. One of the few poems is Psyche (1892–1893): Psyche, my soul Edgar Poe … und Psyche, meine Seele, sah mich an Von unterdrücktem Weinen blaß und bebend Und sagte leise: »Herr, ich möchte sterben, Ich bin zum Sterben müde und mich friert.« O Psyche, Psyche, meine kleine Seele, Sei still, ich will dir einen Trank bereiten, Der warmes Leben strömt durch alle Glieder. Mit gutem warmem Wein will ich dich tränken,

22 Stefan George, Der Stern des Bundes. Gesamt-Ausgabe der Werke, Band 8 (Berlin: Georg Bondi, 1928), 26–27. 23 Cf. Wolfgang Osthoff, Stefan George und ‘les deux musiques’ (Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag Wiesbaden, 1989), 130. 24 Cf. Wolfgang Braungart, Ästhetischer Katholizismus. Stefan Georges Rituale der Literatur (Tübingen: Niemeyer 1997), 222.

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Mit glühendem sprühendem Saft des lebendigen Funkelnden, dunkelnden, rauschend unbändigen, Quellenden, schwellenden, lachenden Lebens, Mit Farben und Garben des trunkenen Bebens: Mit sehnender Seele von weinenden Liedern, Mit Ballspiel und Grazie von tanzenden Gliedern, Mit jauchzender Schönheit von sonnigem Wehen Hellrollender Stürme auf schwarzgrünen Seen, Mit Gärten, wo Rosen und Efeu verwildern, Mit blassen Frauen und leuchtenden Bildern, Mit fremden Ländern, mit violetten Gelbleuchtenden Wolken und Rosenbetten, Mit heißen Rubinen, grüngoldenen Ringen Und allen prunkenden duftenden Dingen. […] –––––––––––––––––––– Da sah mich Psyche, meine Seele, an Mit bösem Blick und hartem Mund und sprach: »Dann muß ich sterben, wenn du so nichts weißt Von allen Dingen, die das Leben will.25

The poem is based on a dialogue between the poet and his own agonising “psyche” which is being persuaded to acknowledge the meaningfulness of human existence. The poet’s persuasion is focused upon enumeration of life’s pleasures which are introduced by means of the anaphoric preposition “mit.” Even though there is no strict line-element correspondence, the poem’s structure is clearly regular. The semantic-phonetic equivalence, which was peculiar to the ornamental structure of symbolic and avant-garde texts, recalls the repetitiveness of ritual activities. It also serves to express a mythical way of experiencing reality, which can be understood as both striving for transcendence and reaching into the subconscious. The poem’s mythicism, seen on the structural level, is reinforced by the poet’s frequent use of paronomasias which — based on a phonetic affinity — combine to form words. In this way they reflect the similarity in diversity, pointing to the substantial sameness of the word and the image it evokes.26

25 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke in zehn Einzelbänden, Band 1: Gedichte, Dramen (Frankfurt a. M.: S. Fischer, 1979), 130–132. 26 This poetic stance is connected with the philosophy of the symbol, practised in the twentieth century by, for instance, Ernst Cassirer; cf. his Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Volume 1 and 2 (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1923–1925).

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In symbolist literature a major factor promoting the formation of the litanic structure is ornamentalism, understood as a structural principle. In this case, litanic verse is used as the primary form of cult, connected with ritual and preceding the Catholic Church litanies. Rainer Maria Rilke, drawing upon the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours and the Breviary, composed between 1899 and 1903 a cycle of loosely connected poems called Stundenbuch (The Book of Hours). Inspired by Nietzsche and his philosophy of life, the cycle concerns the poet’s search for the primary source of life; he converses with God who is understood in pantheistic terms. The speaking voice — Ich — assigns various names to God and listens to his answers: Denn Armut ist ein großer Glanz aus Innen… Du bist der Arme, du der Mittellose, du bist der Stein, der keine Stätte hat, du bist der fortgeworfene Leprose, der mit der Klapper umgeht vor der Stadt. Denn dein ist nichts, so wenig wie des Windes, und deine Blöße kaum bedeckt der Ruhm; das Alltagskleidchen eines Waisenkindes ist herrlicher und wie ein Eigentum. […] Du aber bist der tiefste Mittellose, der Bettler mit verborgenem Gesicht; du bist der Armut große Rose, die ewige Metamorphose des Goldes in das Sonnenlicht. Du bist der leise Heimatlose, der nichtmehr einging in die Welt: zu groß und schwer zu jeglichem Bedarfe. Du heulst im Sturm. Du bist wie eine Harfe, an welcher jeder Spielende zerschellt.

On the one hand, the type of versification used resembles free verse, which was characteristic of the symbolist tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France. On the other hand, the metrical foot is predominantly iambic, and — together with the frequently used enjambement — it adds a meditative tone to the poem. The flow of the poem is based on four-line stanzas with alternate rhymes; yet, this regularity is interrupted by the doubling of the rhymes, e.g. in lines three and four of the second fragment quoted above (Rose: Metamorphose). Anaphoras, alliteration, numerous adjectives and abundant imagery contribute to the poem’s

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ornamental style. The uniformly linear structure of the poem, which resembles a long litany, sets in motion the ornamental imagery. Rilke’s Book of Hours contributed to his popularity as a religious poet. In fact, however, it is not the pantheistic God who is the centre of attention in his poetry. He is only the main reference point used to determine the nature of the speaking voice. Wolfgang Braungart notes the correlation, observing that attempts to describe God and his attributes are inexhaustible in the same way that the subjectivity of the speaking voice is inexhaustible. The mystical influences become externalized in the exploitation of the correlation between naming God and his existence. Namely, he exists as long as he is named. This idea is deeply rooted in German tradition. It can be found in the works of Angelus Silesius and the alreadymentioned Nicolas of Cusa.27

Conclusions Taking into consideration the variety of different genres in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany and Austria, it is somewhat surprising to find that the litanic genre did not enjoy greater popularity. Its appearance in poetry is rather marginal. What can be observed is that poets with a Catholic background show a greater tendency to compose poetry patterned upon the litany. Examples of such authors include on the German side Joseph von Eichendorff, Clemens Brentano, a Catholic convert, and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff; on the Austrian side Franz Grillparzer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke as well as Stefan George, who showed a genuine interest in the Catholic liturgy. The exceptions to the rule are a few poets who came from Protestant backgrounds: Friedrich Hebbel and Arno Holz as well as August von Platen, whose litany-fashioned poetry draws upon Oriental literature. The tendency to use the litanic structure grows stronger in modern German literature, when poetic creativity comes to be seen as a linguistic ritual of a quasireligious character. The meaning of the litany expands to include literary forms connected with the ritual, but not necessarily with the institutional cult. In the previous epochs the stylistic devices characteristic of the genre, such as anaphora, apostrophes, alliteration and other kinds of euphonic figures, were used to express equivalence on the level of line and stanza, the poem’s melodic quality, and the

27 Wolfgang, Braungart: Das Stunden-Buch. In: Manfred Engel, Dorothea Lauterbach, Rilke-Handbuch: Leben, Werk, Dichtung (Stuttgart: Metzler 2004), 216–227; here 221.

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monotony resulting from the genre’s meditative use. In the modern period such devices become treated as tools in cognitive operations. The litanic form not only exteriorizes man’s religious experience, but also serves a different function — it orders the vast and varied reality, compressing it into a uniform structure, and in this way leads to a greater self-awareness. Translated from Polish by Dominika Ruszkiewicz

Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aleksandra Wilkus, and Aldona Zańko Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Litany Undercover: Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century When the term “Scandinavian litanic verse” is mentioned, one should be prepared for incredulous looks or suspicious comments: “Litanic verse? In Scandinavia? But there is none!” Indeed, there is a widespread though intuitive conviction that Protestant countries, including Denmark and Norway, lack an interest in Christian spirituality, not to mention liturgical genres. The issue of Christianity in Scandinavia, however, will not be discussed in detail in this article, as its primary aim is to identify and reflect on the different forms of litanic verse in Denmark and Norway between the Middle Ages and the end of the eighteenth century. Litany as a prayer or even as a verse may not be immediately obvious during this period, but it does exist, providing evidence that the litanic formula is stronger and more deeply-rooted than it may seem. In the discussion that follows we intend to demonstrate how litanic verse evolved in Denmark and Norway during the time under consideration, how it manifested itself in different poetic forms, and which genres it resorted to in order to disguise its original identity, since Danish-Norwegian litanic verse does not flaunt its litanic provenance, but remains undercover. The current state of Danish research on the subject of litany, both structural and semantic, seems to support our view. Litanic or litany-inspired verse is not found in major publications, nor is it discussed in academic papers.1 The most extensive Danish handbook on versification, i.e. the two-volume Dansk vershistorie (1994, 2000, A History of Danish Verse) by Jørgen Fafner does not mention the litanic form or any related features, such as responsorial structures or enumeration, as stylistic devices. The same can be said of the numerous handbooks on literary works; it is omitted in, for instance, Morten Nøjgaard’s Det litterære værk (1998, The Literary Work) and Erik A. Nielsen’s and Svend Skriver’s popular handbook, Dansk Litterær Analyse (2000, Danish Literary Analysis). Before focusing on the central issue, perhaps it is reasonable to provide a short explanation as to why this article discusses Danish and Norwegian literatures 1 Jens Peter Larsen’s article about litany in the Danish church, which is mentioned later, is an exception. His text, however, cannot be viewed as being linked to literature because it mainly covers the musical and liturgical aspects of the prayer.

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together. The fact is that the literatures in question have common roots, with Norwegian literature, understood in the national context, not emerging until the nineteenth century with the advent of Romanticism. As F. J. Billeskov Jansen notes, “Denmark and Norway, which remained united until 1814, essentially shared destinies, not least in the relation between religion and politics.”2 In other words, it is at times difficult to establish whether a given author should be identified as Norwegian or Danish (this is the case with, for example, Ludvig Holberg, Thomas Kingo, and Hans Adolph Brorson), which is why the literary period in question tends to be viewed as common to both Denmark and Norway.

Danish-Norwegian Litanic Traces in the Middle Ages and the Reformation Danish-Norwegian medieval literature is without doubt modest when compared to the impressive achievements of, for instance, France or Italy. This can be explained by the fact that the Middle Ages started relatively late in Scandinavia, since they were preceded by the Viking Age. According to Dansk litteraturshistorie 1100–1800 (A History of Danish Literature 1100–1800), Danish literature emerges in the European context around 1100.3 Having said that, rather more extensive literary activity takes place somewhat later, i.e. in the so-called vernacular Middle Ages (1300–1530),4 a period during which literature in Denmark and Norway liberates itself from the hegemony of Latin. There is little point in searching for litanic traits without establishing the types of litanies that functioned in the liturgical context in Scandinavia. The fact that the word “litany” occurs in almost every context in the definite form (litaniet) in Danish-Norwegian texts is crucial as it unequivocally suggests the influence of the Litany of the Saints. A thorough reading of the available source texts (in the form of medieval prayer books) proves that the Litany of the Saints was indeed the only litanic prayer in Denmark and Norway in the Catholic period (up to 1536 in Denmark and up to 1537 in Norway), and was found in both Latin and the national languages. Having said that the litany appears in only three of the twenty-five extant medieval prayer books, which limits the likelihood of its 2 Frederik Julius Billeskov Jansen, “From the Reformation to the Baroque,” in ed. Sven H. Rossel, A History of Danish Literature (Lincoln & London: The University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 71. 3 Klaus P. Mortensen, May Schack, Dansk litteraturs historie 1100—1800 [A History of Danish Literature 1100—1800] (København: Gyldendal, 2007), vol. 1, 20. 4 David W. Colbert, “The Middle Ages,” in ed. Rossel, A History of Danish Literature, 20.

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use in private prayer. Thus, it can be inferred from its restricted availability that litany, though present in the consciousness of the people, was definitely not part of the “mainstream prayer corpus.” The Litany of the Saints itself was brought to Scandinavia by English monks who not only introduced the cult of English saints in the eleventh and twelfth centuries but also promoted a cult of the local saints by writing hagiographies such as Passio sancti Kanuti (1095, Saint Knud’s Passion).5 Moreover, the Litany of the Saints was also present in the period following the Protestant reformation, as the Danish version of the litany was based on the German Lutheran translation from 1529. As Jens Peter Larsen observes in his article “Litaniet i den danskekirke,” (“The Litany in the Danish Church”) the Litany of the Saints was the foundation of Luther’s litanic forms,6 and after his considerable changes and revisions7 it became the “binding” litany in the Danish and Norwegian Protestant churches. Apart from the official litany, there is a further litanic form from the Reformation period, namely “Litania paa Danske Rim” (“The Litany in Danish Rhymes”) which can be found in Hans Thomesen’s (Thomissøn’s) authorized hymnal Den Danske Psalmebog (1569, The Danish Hymnal). Semantically, the litany does not diverge from the original version (the order of the invocations and supplications was maintained, as well as the subject of the supplications); the changes are in the structure. In Thomesen’s litanic realization there is a poem consisting of seventeen stanzas of six lines, each with the rhyme pattern aabbcc. Such litanic realizations (i.e. strophic, rhymed) also appear in later literary epochs. However, it is worth mentioning that in the official Danish and Norwegian hymnals, even today there is another type of litany called “the small litany,” which consists of the three Kyrie-appeals. Rather surprisingly, Marian litanies are conspicuously absent from Danish and Norwegian prayer books and hymnals in spite of a quite extensive cult of the Virgin Mary in Scandinavia. Admittedly, there are numerous examples of chairetisms in medieval Marian prayers, but these are mostly derivative in form and content. The presence of chairetisms proves, however, that the spirit of litany remains, permeating the spirituality of a medieval religious community. On occasions an explicit reference to litany as a genre can be found, as in the case of Peder Ræv Lille’s hymn “Litanivise,” (“Litanic ballad”) which is also called “Marielitani,” (“Litany of Mary”) from the end of the fifteenth century. The title “Marielitani” 5 Ibid., 7. 6 Jens Peter Larsen, “Litaniet i den danske kirke,” [“The Litany in the Danish Church”] in Dansk Kirkesangs Aarskrift 1948–49 [Danish Yearbook of Church Song 1948-49] (København: Samfundet Dansk Kirkesang, 1949), 21. 7 Ibid., 25.

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is misleading because it is not the Virgin Mary who is the addressee of the litany, but the Holy Trinity, with Mary barely even an intercessor between God and the faithful. Although litanic inspirations do not feature to a great extent in the ballad (apart from the title), it is nonetheless worth considering in more detail, as it follows the structural pattern of the Litany of the Saints and indicates the direction which Scandinavian litanic verse will follow in the future. It comprises twelve stanzas of fifteen lines each, with the two last lines being a refrain that resembles the supplication-responsory scheme: “Kyrieleys, Christeleys, then hæligandh hjelp os i all wor reys” (“Kyrie eleison, Christeeleison, [o] Holy Spirit help us in all our journeys”).8 The order of the supplications is hierarchic, starting with the most powerful, i.e. the Holy Trinity, and ending with the least significant, i.e. the souls in purgatory. Each stanza can be divided into three parts: i. The ektenial-chairetismic, addressing the hierarchically arranged subjects of worship; ii. The ektenial-chairetismic, addressing the Virgin Mary and asking for her intercession; iii. The responsory (the Kyrie-), with the above mentioned supplication to the Holy Spirit. The fifth stanza is as follows: Appostel och ewangelisth, Discipel medh guts tyæner, Wskilligh børn som æra medh Cristh, Och alle gutz wenner, I bedhe for oss, Then renæ rooss, Maria hun oss beware, At wy ey komme i diefflens snare, Tha siunghe wy alleluia, Alleluia medh hierthens glædhe, At wendhe fra oss wors herræ wredhe, Nar wy kommæ for then strenghe doom. I himmerigs righe ath fonghe room. Kyrieleys, Christeleys, Then hæligandh hielp oss i all wor reys. […]9

8 Ed. Marius Kristensen, En klosterbog fra middelalderens slutning [A Monastery Book from the Late Middle Ages] (København: Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 1933), 153. 9 Ibid., 154. If not stated otherwise, translation into English has been done by the article’s authors.

Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century 185 [Apostles and evangelists, / Disciples with God’s servants, / Innocent children who are with Christ, / And all the chosen friends of God, / Pray for us, / In pure praise, / Mary, she will save us, / From falling into the Devil’s snare, / To you we are singing hallelujah / Hallelujah with joy in our heart, / That you turn our Lord’s wrath away from us, / When we stand before the final judgment, / In the rich and beautiful heavenly room. / Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, / [o] Holy Spirit, help us in all our journeys. […] ].

The subject of the ballad is solemn yet at the same time it is cheerful, even dynamic, in tone. This follows the convention in most folkeviser (folk ballads), which are likely to have had a considerable influence on the litanic poem. It could even be suggested that the two genres are allied. The Danish (or Scandinavian) folk ballad is one of the predominant medieval genres in the region, and was originally set to music. Scandinavian research on the genre is both extensive and exhaustive, with Pil Dahlerup, a Danish medievalist, describing it in detail in her book Dansk litteratur. Middelalder (1998, Danish Literature: The Middle Ages). She mentions the dialogical composition, the existence of a refrain, the strophic structure, and the prevalence of the knittelvers meter, which is characterized by a fixed number of accented syllables in each line, together with a free number of accompanying unaccented syllables,10 as being among the central characteristics of the genre. In the poem quoted above the litanic reference is, admittedly, visible in the title and the semantic structure of the text, but the folk ballad also asserts its presence in the memorable refrain and the rhyming, melodic pattern of the stanzas (unfortunately, most of these effects disappear in the literal English translation), as well as in the knittelvers, which is the meter mainly used in “Marielitani.” It is significant that the first four lines of each stanza of the poem realize the typical Scandinavian knittelvers meter, i.e. there are four accented syllables in the even lines, and three in the odd lines.11 The transplantation of litany onto the structure of a folk ballad seems to have been achieved relatively easily, since both genres are intended to be in two parts, the cantor and the community. They are also both based on repetition (the refrain or the responsory). Therefore, it can be assumed that the intention behind the attempt to incorporate litanic semantics into the folk ballad genre was in fact to communicate a religious message in a well-known and well-understood form. Thus, the first Danish-Norwegian litanic verse is hidden within a folk ballad, although with slight modifications since the majority of folk ballads were two- or four-lined. Litany also quite frequently allies itself with other 10 Pil Dahlerup, Dansk litteratur. Middelalder [Danish Literature: The Middle Ages] (København: Gyldendal, 1998), vol. 2 (Verdslig litteratur), 113–133. 11 Jørgen Fafner, Digt og form. Klassisk og moderne verslære [Poem and Form. Classical and Modern Theories of Versification] (København: C. A. Reitzels Forlag A/S, 1989), 185.

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genres in Danish-Norwegian litanic verse, which will be seen most clearly in the Pietistic-inspired poetry of the eighteenth century. The Renaissance in Denmark and Norway was almost tantamount to the Reformation, during which the Bible was first translated into the national languages and so contributed to the development of Danish-Norwegian literature. The genre of psalms became prominent, which is typical of the Protestant denomination. Although psalms had been present in Scandinavian churches before the arrival of the Lutheran faith, its introduction strengthened the position of the genre and contributed to its evolution. Psalms evolved in Denmark and Norway as a form of collective prayer, a way of expressing the new awareness of the doctrine of universal priesthood, and its renaissance was an important symbol of the connection with pre-Christian unity. The subject of Protestant psalms is usually the collective “we,” which evolves toward an individual “I” in the Baroque and Pietistic eras. Nonetheless, behind the individual voice the community’s presence is still discernible. The evolution of the psalmic genre during the Reformation was not restricted to a revival of the genre from the Old Testament. Certainly the reformers referred to the psalms from the Bible, either by inserting biblical quotations at the beginning of hymnals or by reproducing them in their own poems. However, the psalms of the Reformation aimed at asserting their own identity. Although it is difficult to provide a concise and exhaustive definition of the genre, certain distinctive features can be highlighted. Psalms from the Reformation (and onwards) had a strophic structure and a melody which originated from outside the Church; in fact it was adopted from the folk ballad.12 Another important characteristic was their “et udtryk for menighedsbevidstheden” (“expression of the community’s awareness”)13 which assumed the participation of all the community members in a collective prayer. As the Reformation focused on individual cognition of God by the faithful, the psalms were often meant to be a helpful “tool” for learning about the Gospel and for achieving an appropriate Christian experience in various everyday situations. In other words, an individual who prayed or sang could easily identify themselves with the addresser of the psalm.

12 Eds. Thorkild Borup Jensen, Knud Eyvin Bugge, Salmen som lovsang og litteratur [Psalm as a Laudatory Song and a Poetic Form] (København: Gyldendal, 1972), vol. 1, 11–12. 13 Ibid., 1, 13.

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Bearing in mind that litany was underrepresented in the Middle Ages, a similar situation might also have been expected during the Reformation. Admittedly, the increased usage of the national languages might have been translated into a greater amount of litanic verse, although in fact the genre seemed to be treated circumspectly. The probable reason for this attitude towards litany was the fact that the Protestant church condemned “garrulousness” in prayer and wanted to make a stand against the medieval (i.e. Catholic) “poetics of repetition,” with its meditative prayers. Peder Palladius and his visits to the majority of Danish parishes (published in 1867 as Visitatsbogen, The Book of Visitations) might have been crucial in this respect, as it was he who supervised the appropriate introduction of the Lutheran faith into the Danish kingdom and he who wished to eradicate the Catholic practices. In spite of this Protestant offensive, litany managed to survive, though litanic verse was not amongst the most popular forms. An important example of such verse can be found in the work of Hans Christensen Sthen. Sthen, who was the most significant religious poet in Denmark, wrote mainly psalms, which is why it seems hardly surprising that his litanic verse is representative of the psalmic genre. The psalm “En Klagelig oc dog troestelig Sang og Vise for en Person der suag og til Alders kommen er” (1589, “A song full of complaint yet full of consolation for a feeble or elderly person”) consists of seventeen heterometric stanzas of four lines with alternate rhymes. In each stanza line number two is the responsorial part with an ektenial character, whilst in line number four the justification for the prayer is found. As for the odd lines, they enumerate the countless maladies and trouble (physical sickness, infirmity, isolation, and sins) of the individual who is praying: 11. Mine Øyen de mørckis, mine kinder gjøris bleg, Herre Gud trøste dem som bange ere, Mine Fødder kunde neppelige bære mig, Thi at Sorrigen hun tuinger saa mange.14 [My eyes darken, my cheeks become pale, / Lord, comfort those who are scared, / My feet can barely bear me, / For sorrow burdens so many.]

The poem can be divided into two semantic parts, consisting of thirteen and four stanzas respectively, as the title (“complaint” and “consolation”) makes clear. In the first part, which focuses on the earthly experience and feelings of the 14 Ed. Jens Lyster, Hans Christhensen Sthens Skrifter [Hans Christhensen Sthen’s Works] (København: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1994), vol. 1 (En liden vandrebog), 167.

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lyrical subject, the responsory in the fourth line of all the thirteen stanzas is “Thi Sorrigen hun tuinger saa mange,” (“For sorrow burdens so many”) whilst in the “metaphysical” part, which is a projection of the peace and happiness that awaits the lyrical subject in heaven, the responsory is modified: “oc da faar Sorrigen en god ende” (“and then the sorrow will end”). Throughout the whole verse, line number two in all the stanzas remains unaltered, maintaining its ektenial (or litanic) character. It is evident that the psalm would be equally effective without lines number two and four in each stanza as their presence does not change the poem’s “course.” And yet, through adhering to the “garrulousness” so condemned by the reformers, this may be seen as evidence of a longing for a genre which failed to have the opportunity to flourish in Denmark and Norway, and whose completeness is found in litany. The psalmic genre, in spite of its capacity for expressiveness, seems insufficient to present the entire spectrum of religious attitudes towards the Absolute. The repetitious zealousness of the supplications resembles a meditation, soothes like the rosary (which was extremely popular in medieval Scandinavia) and expresses the persistence of faith. Sthen’s poem can thus serve as an example of another marriage between genres, with on this occasion psalm wedded to litany. This fact is crucial to further research on litanic verse in the Scandinavian region because it demonstrates a general tendency: psalm essentially carries the litanic content in Denmark and Norway. Although not widely represented, litany proved to be indispensable by creating “literary endospores,” which emerge in the form of litanic genes. “En Klagelig oc dog troestelig Sang og Vise…” is the most representative litanic verse from the Reformation. However, there are many further examples that illustrate the presence of litany in Danish and Norwegian poetry from that period (for instance, Jens Nilssøn’s lamentation “Elegedion” from 1581 or another poem by Sthen, “En Morgensang” (1589, “A Morning Song”), to mention only two). Nonetheless, litany does not seem to be the decisive “building block” in the majority of the poems. The Reformation did not favour litanies, which is why the genre had to resort to litany-related poetic devices (repetitions, refrains, epistrophes) in order to survive. In this form, however, it does not seem to have had enough strength to reveal its true nature. Its golden age in Denmark and Norway was yet to come in the Pietistic period.

Baroque and Pietistic Litanic Verse In Denmark and Norway the Baroque period was when the Protestant faith was consolidated. In contrast to Renaissance poetics, the Baroque reintroduces

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repetition as a rhetorical figure and a structural element of both individual poems and poetic collections. Thus, litanic forms emerge in poetry. Bertel Pedersøn’s psalm “Jesus i Hiert’ og Mund er sød” (1608, “Jesus in the Heart and in the Mouth is Sweet”) is a clear example of the tendency in the first half of the seventeenth century. Indeed, it is immediately obvious that the poem has many characteristics of litany, as can be seen in stanzas number 1, 29 and 30: 1 Jesus i Hiert’ og Mund er sød, Jesus en Hielper sand i Nød, Jesus er Siælens Lys i brøst, Jesus en Synders beste Trøst. 29 O Jesu, vær Du Jesu min, O Jesu lad mig være din, O Jesu vær du min Tiillid, Saa har jeg nok til ævig Tid. 30 Jesu med Faderen og Aand Skee Priis og Ær’ i alle Land du hellige Tre-eenighed Skee Lov og Tak i Ævighed.15 [Jesus in the Heart and in the Mouth is sweet, Jesus a true helper in need, / Jesus is the Soul’slight in a flawed life, Jesus the Sinner’s best consolation. / […] O Jesus, be you Jesus mine, O Jesus, let me be yours, / O Jesus, be my Trust, so I have enough till eternal Time. / […] Jesus with the Father and the Spirit, let Praise and Glory be in all Lands / [let] you, Holy Trinity, be thanked in Eternity.]

The psalm is composed of thirty stanzas with an identical structure and syntax. A few groups of anaphoras can be distinguished throughout the whole poem, the most prominent of which are those of Jesus’ antonomasias. The two last stanzas, number 29 and 30, function as apostrophic prayers to the Holy Trinity, which open and close a traditional litany. Similarly to litany, each line addresses one attribute of Jesus and the majority of the lines are constructed in a typically litanic manner, i.e. the name of Jesus and the epithet. In contrast to litany, however, the poem lacks a responsorial part. This may be due to the fact that the lines are governed by a system of accentual-syllabic verse (which is, unfortunately, not apparent in the English translation). The discipline of meter demands syntactic solutions in certain lines that do not comply with litanic conventions. For instance, in the first line of the opening stanza the verb “er” (“is”) is introduced simply because of the rhythmic pattern. From the semantic point of view, an image of Jesus similar to that in litany is found in the poem. Antonomasias of Jesus can basically be divided into two 15 Ed. Hans Brix et al., Thomas Kingo. Samlede Skrifter [Thomas Kingo: The Collected Works] (Købenavn: C. A. Reitzels Forlag, 1975), vol. 4, 132, 134.

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groups, one depicting Jesus as a consolation to the distressed, the other as an embodiment of his virtues. The final supplication, however, makes it clear that the ultimate addressee of the prayer is the Holy Trinity. As to the addresser of the poem, the predominant voice belongs to the community, even though the lyrical “I” asserts its presence in the final part of the psalm. In this way the dimensions of communication in litany are maintained. As has been mentioned above, in the Baroque era the status of repetition as a rhetorical figure was considerably enhanced. This can be seen in many other poems, including those of Thomas Kingo, the most important Danish-Norwegian author of this period. In his best known poem about vanitas, “Keed af Verden, og Kier ad himmelen,” (1681, “Sick of the World and Devoted to Heaven”) repetition plays a crucial role, although litanic features are not so distinct as in the poem by Bertel Pedersøn that was previously mentioned. It is worth noting, however, that Kingo inclines more towards a personal religious confession than the joint prayer of a community. This tendency is further developed in Pietistic-inspired poetry. In this evolution towards an individual contemplation of personal faith, the Danish-Norwegian Baroque poetry signals the approaching Pietistic movement, which was introduced into Denmark by poets inspired by their counterparts in Germany. The heyday of Pietism coincides with the reign of king Christian VI, whose Pietistic views had a significant influence on the cultural life of his country. During his reign (1730–46) as the development of Danish-Norwegian drama was restricted, although Ludvig Holberg was its most significant writer, religious poetry was given a chance to flourish. Pietists seized the opportunity and in 1740 even published their own hymn book edited by Erik Pontoppidan Den Pontoppidanske Psalme-Bog (Pontoppidan’s Hymnal), in which a considerable number of German psalms appeared together with those from Denmark and Norway. It is important to note that the poetics and rhetoric of the Danish-Norwegian psalms are quite similar to their German counterparts. The language is intentionally simplified, which stems from the belief that the deepest experiences can be expressed in everyday language.16 With regard to poetry Pietism is represented, first and foremost, by Hans Adolph Brorson and his two brothers. Their most significant psalmic contributions can be found in the collection Troens Rare Klenodie (1739, The Rare Jewel of Faith), in which Pietistic poetics parallel litanic features. It is evident that litanic

16 Eds. Borup et al., Salmen som lovsang og litteratur [Psalm as a Laudatory Song and a Poetic Form], vol. 1, 101–102.

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elements contributed to the evolution of psalm in Pietism. Pietistic psalms are no longer collective prayers, but individual confessions, whose essence is a meditative contemplation of the divine yet earthly nature of Jesus and his Passion. Contemplation is fundamental to experiencing true faith and unity with Christ, although the preoccupation with an individual expression of faith does not exclude litanic traits; on the contrary, it strengthens their position, as they can be viewed as a consequence of the psalms’ meditative character, expressed in the detailed analysis of Jesus’ nature. From the litanic perspective, this extensive exploration of polyonymy allows a separate Pietistic genre to be distinguished: a hymn to the Holy Name of Jesus.17 Depending on the combination of litanic genes, psalm can emerge in two main categories: polyonymic-ektenial and polyonymic-chairetismic. As far as the form is concerned, both types are based on the pattern of the Litany of the Saints, but transformed according to a single rule, i.e. through “stretching” the twosyntagma litanic line structure over the whole stanza, or even the whole poem. What is more, such “stretching” concerns only the polyonymic part of the stanza, which is then followed by the more compact ektenial or chairetismic part. In order to demonstrate the phenomenon we will look in more detail at the two categories. Although it may seem somewhat unusual that three of the four analyzed pieces are Pietistic German-Dutch psalms (thus not originally Scandinavian), Brorson’s approach to translation was unorthodox, and hence they also bear his hallmark. What is more, their presence in Brorson’s collection of psalms provides evidence of their uneventful adaptation and subsequent adoption into the Scandinavian consciousness and demonstrates the interlinguistic (and international) complexity of litanic phenomena.

The Polyonymic-ektenial Category This Pietistic litanic verse is represented by two psalms: “Helligste Jesu, reenheds kilde,” (1739, “Holiest Jesus, Source of Purity”) originally written by the Dutch poet, Jodocus von Jodenstein, and “Min hiertes Jesu, søde lyst” (1739, “Jesus, Sweet Desire of my Heart”) by the German Pietist, Johann Christian Lange. The table below contains the most representative excerpts from the two poems:

17 Erik A. Nielsen, Hans A. Brorson. Pietisme, meditation, erotik [Hans A. Brorson: Pietism, Meditation, and Eroticism] (København: Gyldendal, 2013), 281.

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Table 1. The polyonymic-ektenial Category

Polyonymic Part

Ektenial Part

Stanza 1 of the psalm “Helligste Jesu, reenheds kilde”

Stanza 3 of the psalm “Min hiertes Jesu, søde lyst”

Helligste Jesu, reenheds kilde, Som ey christal kand nær afbilde, Du hellighedens perle-skat, Da al den glands hos Cherubiner Og hellighed hos Seraphiner Er mod dit lys kun som en nat, Et forskrift er du mig, Ach dan mig efter dig, Du mit alting,

Du est et lys, bestraaler mig Med idel fryd og glæde, Mit hierte derved skynder sig, Paa livets vey at træde,

[Holiest Jesus, source of purity, / Which any crystal can merely depict, / You precious pearl of holiness, / All the glory of cherubs / And holiness of seraphs / Are like night compared to your light / A model you are to me / Ah, create me after you[r example] / You, my everything.]

[You are light, [your] rays shine on me / With sheer delight and joy, / My heart hurries by, / To step on the path of life,]

Jesu! o nu! Bøy sind og hu, At jeg maa vorde reen som du.18

Tag bort mit hierte, sin dog sands, Og fyld dem med dit lys og glands Fra himlens lyse sæde.19

[Jesus! O now! / Bend [your] mind and favor / For me to be pure like you.]

[Take my heart, mind and senses, / And fill them with your light and glory / From heaven’s seat of light.]

The first psalm, “Helligste Jesu, reenhed skilde,” consists of nine heterometric stanzas of twelve lines each. In terms of line length, each stanza is arranged in the following way: it opens with a double sequence of two 9-syllable lines followed by one 8-syllable line, continues with a pair of 6-syllable lines and then three 4-syllable lines, before concluding with one 8-syllable line. In lines one to nine there is a fixed rhyme pattern, while after line nine a semantic and metrical division is visible.

18 Hans Adolph Brorson, Samlede Skrifter [Collected Works], ed. by Laurits J. Koch (København: O. Lohses Forlag, EFTF, 1951), 1: 195. 19 Ibid., 276.

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Thus, the first part of each stanza is polyonymic and the remainder, consisting of a three-lined refrain, is ektenial. The two first lines of the refrain are identical and comprise an apostrophe to Jesus, and the last line contains the actual supplication, which explicitly refers to the polyonymic part. Even though the semantics of each closing line is different for each stanza, its meter remains the same. Moreover, the same is true of the two preceding 8-syllable lines in the stanza. In this way, the supplication is used to maintain a sense of metrical and structural regularity throughout each stanza, as well as the poem as a whole. Each stanza opens with an apostrophe to Jesus, focusing on the chosen virtue which is then described in detail in lines 2–9. For instance, stanza number one opens with the epithet “Helligste Jesu, reenheds kilde” (“Holiest Jesus, source of purity”) and its semantics is further developed through the use of paraphrases: “Du hellighedens perle-skat, / Da al den glands hos Cherubiner” (“Precious pearl of holiness, glory of Cherubs”). Lines 10–12, which are the ektenial part, express the supplication to Jesus. As mentioned above, the first two lines of the refrain remain unchanged and their meaning is associated with the litanic formula “have mercy upon me.” The last line expresses a wish to become similar to Jesus in the area which was specifically discussed in the polyonymic part of the stanza. In this way the Pietistic desire to be united with Jesus is realized, with each stanza focusing on a different positive attribute of Jesus (mildness, calmness, etc.). The consistent dual construction of all the stanzas allows us to treat the supplicatory refrain as a choral responsory, although, following Pietistic ideas, the supplications are expressed by an individual, rather than a community (“At  j e g  maa vorde reen som du” (“For  m e  to be pure like you”).20 It is worth noting that the other poem of this type is similar in both form and structure to “Helligste Jesu, reenheds kilde.” The psalm “Min hiertes Jesu, søde lyst,” which consists of eighteen stanzas of seven lines each, is characterized by a fixed rhyme pattern ababccb. It opens with an expression of the psalm’s laudatory intention: “Jeg knæler for din throne ned,” (1739, “I kneel before your throne”) but, from the third stanza onwards, the laudatory tone is superseded by an imploring tone. As in the previous psalm, the stanzas fall into two parts, with the division between lines four and five. The first part of each stanza follows the pattern of the so-called Bording-strofe (Bording-stanza), developed by the seventeenth-century Danish poet, Anders Bording (1619–1677), which consists of a four-line-long iambic alternation of 8- and 7-syllable lines that

20 The emphasis is ours — J.C., A.W., and A.Z.

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rhyme alternately.21 Whereas the iambic meter of the first section continues in the following lines of Brorson’s psalm, with regards to verse length and rhyme the alternation is halted after line four, marking an internal division within the stanza as a whole. Thus, the polyonymic tone predominates in the first four lines, and the ektenial in the remaining three. The ektenial part in each stanza opens with an anaphora “Du est” (“You are”) plus a predicative that describes a positive characteristic of Jesus which the lyrical subject aspires to and requests (see the right-hand column of the table above). Starting with stanza number four, the possessive pronoun “min / mit” (“my”) precedes the polyonymic descriptions of Jesus. The consistency, if not importunity, in its use evokes associations with the personal Pietisticinspired dimension of prayer. This contributes to an increased subjectivization of Jesus’ image, which is contrary to the universal image of Jesus in the original Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus. It is evident that the addresser of the psalm is an individual, not a community, who in their desire to unite with Christ strives to appropriate Him.

The Polyonymic-chairetismic Category As far as structure is concerned, the other Pietistic category of Danish-Norwegian litanic verse is similar to the first. In that the litanic content is also “stretched” over the whole stanza and the polyonymic tone is predominant. As in the previous analysis, the specificity of the verse will be demonstrated using two psalms: “Min aand er lystig, fuld af fryd” (1739, “My spirit is merry, full of joy”) by Angelus Silesius with a free translation by H. A. Brorson, and “Bort verden af mit sind dog øye” (1739, “Away, the world, from my mind and eye”) by H. A. Brorson. Similarly to the previous psalms, the pattern of the stanzas encompasses an anaphoric enumeration of Jesus’ positive attributes (the first line of almost every stanza), a fixed number of lines in which the paraphrase occurs (four lines) and the two-line refrain that closes the stanza. In contrast to the polyonymic-ektenial category, the refrain expresses chairetismic glorification:

21 Fafner, Digt og form [Poem and Form], 152.

Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century 195 Table 2. The polyonymic-chairetismic type

Polyonymic Part

Chairetismic Part

Stanza 2 of the psalm “Min aand er lystig, fuld af fryd”

Stanza 2 of the psalm “Bort verden af mit sind dog øye”

Hand er den viisdom, som saa net Og rigtig alting føyer, Hans scepter aldrig nogens ret For gunst og gave bøyer,

Hand er min riigdom og min ære, Min daglig lyst og tiids-fordriv. I ham jeg ret til freds kand være, This Jesus hand er selv mit liv.

[He is the wisdom, which so easily / And justly ordains everything, / His scepter never bends anyone’s right / To favor and presents,]

[He is my richness and my honor, / My daily delight and pastime, / In him I can be satisfied, / For Jesus himself is my life.]

O! store Jesu herlighed, En himmel at forlystes ved.22

Hver elske, hvad ham synes til, Jeg kun min Jesum elske vil.23

[O! Great Jesus’ magnificence, / Heaven takes pleasure in you.]

[Everyone loves whom they want, / I only want to love my Jesus.]

Correspondingly, the semantic division within each stanza is enhanced by means of the structure. In both of the examples, the polyonymic part is composed as an alternation of 8/7- and 9/8-syllable lines respectively, whereas the chairetismic part is a sequence of iambic tetrameters. In this way, the author once again succeeds in drawing a line between the two parts of each stanza without any changes to the iambic meter of the poems. What is more, the example authored by Brorson himself reveals just how his Pietistic sympathies influence the poem’s rhetoric. It becomes most evident in the almost ostentatious replacement of the collective addresser of litany with an individual voice. The numerous possessive pronouns in the polyonymic part enhance this. Indeed, the individual voice is contradictory to the collective, which is clearly manifested in the refrain (the antinomy “everyone” — “I”). In both the categories of litanic verse that were written when Pietism was dominant in Denmark and Norway, the pattern of litanic prayer is adjusted to the Pietistic image of the relations between God and man. At the same time, the basic structure of litany is maintained, though the proportions are somewhat distorted. The original two-syntagmic structure of a litanic line is “stretched,” so there are two separate parts, one of which represents the polyonymic gene, while the other

22 Ibid., 273. 23 Hans Adolph Brorson, Samlede Skrifter [Collected Works], ed. Laurits J. Koch (København: O. Lohses Forlag, EFTF, 1953), vol. 2, 85.

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expresses either the ektenial or the chairetismic tone of litany. The development of the polyonymic part is crucial to Pietistic litanic verse, since it allows the individualized addresser to popularize Pietistic ideals through a personal confession and create their own private image of God. The image which arises from such reflection is far from the ecclesiastical description of Jesus’ character; it is rather a subjective projection based on an individual’s personal experience. In this way Pietistic litanic verse does not challenge the structure or form of litany or psalm, but challenges their pragmatic function as collective prayers.

Conclusions Danish-Norwegian litanic verse developed in spite of the unfavourable conditions; it allied itself with other genres and sought asylum in their generic hospitability. The most significant genre which helped litany to survive was psalm, whose onset in Scandinavia is rightly associated with the Reformation. It can be assumed that the Reformation was crucial for the development of Scandinavian litanic verse because it no longer included the rhetoric figure of repetition (which was associated with Catholic religiosity) and moved litany towards the sanctioned and approved genre of psalm, thus contributing to its modification and evolution. As a consequence, the golden age of litanic verse occurred during the first half of the eighteenth century, with Pietism responsible for its success, which could, in turn, be linked with its promotion of the cult of the Holy Name of Jesus. Typically, the structure of a verse does not immediately suggest litany, but when read carefully does disclose its litanic origin. What is more, Danish-Norwegian litanic verse develops and remains within the realm of religious poetry. Admittedly, there are certain tentative attempts to secularize the genre, with Petter Dass’ poem “Nordlands Trompet” (1739, “The Trumpet of Nordland”) as the best example. Nonetheless, this topographical literary work also concentrates on religious aspects and the origins of the beauty of the natural world. Finally, the desacralization of litanic verse in Danish and Norwegian literature is yet to be realized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aldona Zańko Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Litany in Retreat: Denmark from Romanticism to the 1930s Having survived the unfavourable age of the Reformation, Danish litanic verse made its breakthrough in the Pietistic era, spreading its aesthetics over the psalmic production of the period. Judging by this remarkable revival one might expect that the development of the genre should continue throughout the following epochs, from Romanticism until the 1930s. But contrary to this expectation, the period examined in the present article illustrates a gradual decline of litanic verse in Danish literature. Due to the fact that the genre remains underrepresented in all of the literary periods discussed below, it is difficult to approach and describe its development from an overall perspective and draw ultimate conclusions. Therefore, by focusing only on the most valuable or interesting examples, the article discusses first of all the possible reasons for the decreasing popularity of litanic verse in Danish poetry from the onset of Romanticism up to the interwar period.

Danish Litanic Verse throughout the Period of Romanticism The very idea of Romanticism was introduced to Denmark in 1802 with a series of lectures on the natural philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, which were given by the Norwegian-born scientist and philosopher Heinrich Steffens (1773–1845) upon his return from a long research stay at the University of Jena. Throughout the seventy years following this historical breakthrough, the Romantic impulse attracted and inspired some of the greatest and most influential Danish writers. Among them there were Adam Oehlenschläger (1779–1850), the precursor of Danish Universal Romanticism (1802–1807), Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872), leader of the subsequent nationalist turn in the history of the movement (1807–1830), Steen Steensen Blicher (1782-1848), the pioneer of the Danish novella genre, representing the idealistic orientation of the Poetic Realism (1820–1860), and the world-famous Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), whose views and ideas expressed in his fairy tales comply with the final crisis of Danish Romantic thought, as observed in the very last phase of Danish Romanticism, the so-called Romantisme (1850–1870). Hence, the Romantic era remains one of the most prolific and significant periods in the history of Danish literature.

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Nevertheless, it is only occasionally that this highly remarkable literary production manifests itself within the genre of litanic verse.

Litany on Duty: Danish Litanic Verse and National Romanticism The examination of the history of Scandinavian litanic verse in the previous epochs has proved that the genre developed by making a sustained alliance with the psalmic genre, represented by such prominent authors as Hans Christensen Sthen, Thomas Kingo and Hans Adolph Brorson. Following this guideline, one can expect the union between the two genres to continue in the psalmic heritage of the Romantic era, most of it composed by one of the most influential Danish cultural, religious and political reformers, Nikolai Grundtvig. Grundtvig’s vast and comprehensive legacy puts him in a unique position as the most remarkable Danish nation-builder, leading the process of cultural recovery from the tragic outcome of the Napoleonic wars.1 Just as in case of other representatives of the Danish National Romanticism, the overall idea behind Grundtvig’s nation-building project was the restoration of the collective sense of identity by means of Nordic history and culture, dating back to the glories of the Viking Age. Besides promoting the Old Norse ethos, the main focus of Grundtvig’s works lay with the revival of Christianity, redefined as the prevalence of “God’s living word,” which is not the written word found in the Bible, but the creed of the primitive Church fellowship.2 Throughout the 1830s, the activities of Nikolai Grundtvig gave rise to a religious and cultural movement called Grundtvigianism.3 Intended to strengthen the faith of the congregation and the spirit of the Christian fellowship, the psalms written, translated and adapted by Grundtvig constitute a clear alternative to the individual expression of faith favoured by the Pietists or, later, by Grundtvig’s contemporary Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). However, they comply with the formula of the litanic genre neither in terms of form (or function), nor of content. One of the possible reasons for the scarcity of litanic traits in Grundtvig’s psalm writing seems to be his distinctive reluctance towards 1 Ove Korsgaard, “How Grundtvig Became a Nation Builder,” in Building the Nation: N.F.S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity, eds. John A. Hall et al. (Québec: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2015), 192–212. 2 Sven H. Rossel: “From Romanticism to Realism,” in A History of Danish Literature, ed. Sven H. Rossel (Lincoln&London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 196–197. 3 Andrew Buckser: “Grundtvigianism as practice and experience,” in Building the Nation: N.F.S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity, 331–345.

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any forms of authoritarianism, including with regard to the liturgical practice. In order to awaken the communitarian spirit of the congregation, Grundtvig advocated simple and light-hearted church hymns performed in unison, which clearly is opposed to the solemn tone and the highly ritualized role structure of the litanic prayer.4 As a matter of fact, the formative source of inspiration for Grundtvig as a psalm writer appears to have been the Reformation, which was a period in which any forms of joint Old Church prayers were treated circumspectly. The demand for simplicity as one of the most desired psalm characteristics illustrates, moreover, Grundtvig’s view on the general function of the psalm. Unlike litanies, whose appeal remains mostly sacral, shifting between pleading and adoration, the psalms composed by Grundtvig serve primarily the community of faithful by shaping and nurturing their Christian identity as simple, ordinary people.5 One of the few examples of Grundtvig’s verse that combine the didactic contents and the litanic form is the psalm “Takker Herren for Naade stor” (“Thank you, Lord, for Great Grace”). The poem consists of seven accentual-syllabic stanzas of four lines with plain rhymes, each followed by a short refrain. In terms of contents, the stanzas can be divided into two groups, one exploring the concept of God’s grace (stanzas 1, 2, 6, 7) and the other one clarifying the rules which regulate the relation between God and His believers (stanzas 3 to 5). The litanic pattern of the poem manifests itself in the composition of the stanzas, each of them following the principle of syntactic parallelism. The syntagmatic structure employed in the stanzas from the first thematic group covers the length of a single line, dividing it into two semantic parts, a noun + its paraphrase, highlighting the impact of God’s grace on different aspects of human life. This is visible in lines 2–4 of stanza 1: Evig Naaden Livet, Glæden,

er som Guds Ord det er Guds Naades Lyst det er Guds Naades Røst […]6

[Eternal grace is like the words of God / Life, it is the will of God’s grace / Joy, it is the voice of God’s grace […] ].

4 Therese Bering Solten, Troens øjeblik. Et tematisk, hermeneutisk og genreorienteret studie i N.F.S. Grundtvigs salmer [A moment of faith. A thematic, hermeneutic and genre-oriented study of psalms written by NFS Grundtvig] (København: Det teologiske fakultet, 2014), 88–89. 5 Ibid., 90–91. 6 Grundtvigs Sang-Værk [Collected Psalms of Grundtvig] (København: Det Danske Forlag, 1951), vol. 5, 73. If not stated otherwise, translation into English has been done by the article’s authors.

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In the other group, the structure is extended over the length of two lines, dividing each stanza into two equivalent parts consisting of two phrases. The first phrase comprises the anaphora “Hvem der” (“He who”) + a verb stating an activity to be performed towards God, such as praying (“at bede”) or kneeling (“at knæle”), whereas the other one unfolds as a specification of blessings granted by God in reward. Correspondingly, the refrain repeated after each stanza appears as a responsory expressing the gratitude of the faithful: “O, Gud skee Lov!” (“Oh, thank you God!”): stanza 3

stanza 5

Hvem der beder med Tro, han faaer Hvad ham fattes til gode Kaar, Hvem der takker med Kiærlighed Evig nyder hvad Gud kun veed. O, Gud skee Lov!7

Hvem der beder sit Fadervor Altid Naade for Naade faaer, Hvem der knæler for Naadens Stol Giennemskinnes af Naadens Soel. O, Gud skee Lov!8

[The one who prays for faith, he gets / What brings him prosperity, / The one who thanks with Love / Forever enjoys what only God knows. / Oh, thank you God!]

[The one who prays his ‘Our Father’ / Always gets grace for grace, / The one who kneels down before the throne of grace / gets illuminated by the sun of grace. / Oh, thank you God!]

In both kinds of stanza, the litanic persistency employed at the structural level helps to enhance the pedagogical dimension of the psalm, aimed at elucidating the concept of God’s grace, as well as inciting the reader or performer to pursue it. By placing the formation and utilitarian aspects of the psalmic genre above its strictly metaphysical appeal as a prayer, Grundtvig lives up to the general motto of his religious activities: “Menneske først og Christen så” (“First human, then Christian”). Compared to the works of his great predecessors, such as Kingo and Brorson, the psalms written by Grundtvig announce a revolutionary renewal, liberating the genre from its previous function as an instrument of moral edification and making it a common expression of the living faith experienced by the community. As mentioned above, however, it is only on occasion that this renewed aesthetics employs the use of litanic traits. The major exception to this general observation is, interestingly enough, one of the best known psalms written by Grundtvig, “De Levendes Land” (ca. 1824; “The Land of the Living”). The psalm is composed as a polemical reply to Thomas Kingo’s poem “Keed af Verden, og Kier ad Himmelen” (1681, “Sick of the World and Devoted to Heaven”), where the baroque author 7 Ibid., 74. 8 Ibid.

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renders his experience of the gulf between life on earth, full of struggle, deception and misery, and the promise of eternal peace in heaven. In accordance with his renewed, optimistic approach to Christianity, the message of the psalm written by Grundtvig is quite different, viewing the world itself as a place full of God’s presence, joy and happiness: “Keed af Verden, og Kier ad Himmelen”

“De Levendes Land”

stanza 1

stanza 1

Far, Verden, far vel,

Jeg kiender et Land,

Jeg keedis nu længer at være din Træl De Byrder, som du mig har bylted oppaa, Dem hvister jeg fra mig og vil dem forsmaa, Jeg river mig løs, og jeg keedis nu ved

Hvor Haaret ei graaner og Tid har ei Tand Hvor Solen ei brænder og Bølgen ei slaaer Hvor Høsten omfavner den blomstrende Vaar, Hvor Aften og Morgen gaae altid i Dands

Forfængelighed, Forfængelighed.9

Med Middagens Glands!10

[Farewell the world, farewell, / I am tired of being your slave / The burdens you have put on me, / I throw them off and try to reject them, / I set myself free, I am tired of / Vanity, / Vanity.]

[I know a land / Where hair does not turn grey and time does not leave its marks / Where the sun does not burn and the wave does not hit / Where the fall embraces the blossoming spring / Where the evening and the morning always dance together / With the glow of the noon!]

In terms of form, it employs the baroque poetics of repetition, characterized by a frequent use of syntactic symmetry, anaphora and refrains, which often help to disclose the litanic character of a poem. Even though all of these elements are present in both psalms quoted above, the litanic provenance is much more discernible in the one written by Grundtvig. The psalm consists of thirteen stanzas of the same structure and meter as in Kingo’s “Far verden, far vel:” a 5-syllable line followed by four 11-syllable lines with an accentual-syllabic meter, and then again a 5-syllable line graphically imitating the refrain employed by Kingo. Except for the first stanza, each one opens with an apostrophe to the eponymous “land 9 Thomas Kingo, Samlede Skrifter [Thomas Kingo. Collected Works] eds. Hans Brix et al., (København: Reitzels Boghandel A-S, 1975), vol. 3, 214. 10 Grundtvigs Sang-Værk [Collected Psalms of Grundtvig] (København: Det Danske Forlag, 1948), vol. 3, 145–146.

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of the living,” stating one of its characteristics, which the author elaborates on in the anaphoric lines of the stanza. In this way, the psalm unfolds as a sequence of antonomasias, such as e.g. “det dejlige land” (the wonderful land), “den fortryllende drøm” (the enchanting dream), “det himmelske navn” (the heavenly name) or “det letvingede håb” (the light-winged hope), all glorifying the concept of the “land of the living” by means of syntactic parallelism and polyonymy. Judging by the form, the psalm written by Grundtvig reproduces the aesthetics of the litanic verse developed in Danish-Norwegian Pietism, where the same elements were used in poems dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus. By employing the notion of land as a reflection of God in nature, it enriches, however, the thematic range of the genre, now aimed at reconciling the worship of God and the homeland. In a quite similar manner, the litanic formula occurs in selected passages from the verse novel Varners poetiske Vandringer (1813; Varner’s Poetic Wanderings), written by Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789–1862) under the inspiration of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. As the author of a series of historical novels depicting the Golden Age in the history of medieval Denmark, Ingemann is considered to be one of the key representatives of National Romanticism, in whom this is combined with a clear religious tendency.11 Besides, he is also valued as a writer of church hymns, in which Biblical dogma gives way to impressions drawn from nature and everyday situations. Nevertheless, it is not his hymn writing that manifests the author’s occasional use of litany, but selected lyrical parts included in the novel mentioned above. Varners poetiske Vandringer is a book inspired by the ideas of Universal Romanticism, which constitute the other foundation of Ingemann’s literary legacy. In contrast to Goethe and Schelling’s monistic phisolophies, the author appears as a proponent of the dualistic worldview introduced by Friedrich Schlegel, stating that harmony can be found in the spiritual world alone. The fate of Varner, a young poet falling in love during his expedition into idyllic nature, illustrates this general belief. When the girl becomes incurably ill, the protagonist decides to let himself be infected with the disease in order to unite with her in death, and thereby fulfil his own longing for eternity. In the passage quoted below, Varner’s platonic passion for Maria is reflected in an unconditional worship of nature, perceived as an incarnation of his beloved one. Just as in Grundtvig’s psalm “De levendes land,” the litanic overtone of the passage is induced by a series of apostrophes glorifying selected elements of the Danish spring landscape, such as valleys (Dale), groves (Lunde) and meadows

11 Sven H. Rossel, “From Romanticism to Realism,” in A History of Danish literature, 187.

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(Enge), as well as the subsequent anaphoric enumeration of features enhancing its overall idyllic character: I frodige Dale! Du rigdomhenbølgende Slette! I fredsomme Lunde! saa dæmrende, svale, Som Løvværk om Vandreren flette, I Enge, som tone af Høleens Klang! Fornemmer min hyldende Sang!12 [You fertile valleys! / You plain glittering with riches! / You peaceful groves! where the dawn breaks, so fresh, / You who weave a leaf garland around a wanderer’s head, / You meadows, resounding with the sounds of scythes! / Hear my song of glory!] Her true ei Fjelde, Her rulle ei stridige Strømme Her fødes ei Tanker om herskende Vælde Her nærres ei mægtige Lidenskabs Spoer, Som raser — og kalder sig store.13 [Here threaten no mountains, / Here roll no rapid streams / Here no thoughts about the ruling power are born / Here no great passions are nourished / Which rage — and call themselves great.]

The Aesthetics of Beauty: Danish Litanic Verse and the Romantisme Another litanic realization of the Romantic worship of beauty can be found among the poems written by Emil Aarestrup (1800–1856). Focusing on the notion of beauty as a leading motif, the lyrical oeuvre of Aarestrup represents the very last phase of the Danish Romanticism, referred to as Romantisme. Employing the form of litanic verse, the author explains his poetics in the poem called “Oprindelse” (1838; “Origin”), whose first stanza runs as follows: Som sit brune Lyng den øde Flade Som sit lette Ax den grønne Tilie Som sit Løse Skum en ung Najade Som et Løg, i sorten Muld, sin Lilie, Som Polyperne den skjøre Plade, Som den bløde Musling sin Conchilie,

12 B.S. Ingemann, Procne. En Samling af Digte [Procne. A Collection of Poems] (København: Boas Brünnich, 1813), 177. 13 Ibid.

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Har mit Indre formet disse Blade, Af en lønlig Drift, fast uden Villie. [Like its brown heather the wasteland / Like its light blade the green lime / Like its sparkling foam a young Naiad / Like a bulb, in black soil, its lily / Like the polyps the brittle base / Like the soft mussel its conch / Has my inner self formed those sheets, / Out of a hidden urge, without intention.]

The whole poem consists of only two stanzas, each of them composed as a prolonged simile. The first part of the comparison is stretched over a sequence of six anaphoras of identical length, structure and meter. Within each line, a semantic and metrical division can be made after the fifth syllable, breaking the line into two equal segments. What enhances the litanic character of the sequence is thus the parallel line construction, the regular iambic rhythm and the verbless syntax maintained throughout lines 1 to 6. In the last two lines of the stanza, the author completes the simile with a comment on his own work as a poet, perceiving it as no different from any other creation processes driven by nature. The view pronounced in the poem presented above clearly contradicts the notion of the poetic genius, introduced at the outset of the Romantic Movement. As mentioned before, Romantisme denotes a departure from the idealistic worldview of Romanticism, and so does the experience of beauty rendered by its representatives. In the eyes of an aesthete, such as Aarestrup himself, it no longer appears as a manifestation of the divine, incarnating the concepts of love, goodness and virtue, but simply an elusive, earthly phenomenon, enchanting and menacing at the same time. This new image of beauty is conveyed in a number of other poems written by Aarestrup. In some of them, such as the one entitled “Til en veninde” (1838; “To a [female] Friend”), the litanic formula is used in a way which illustrates its transposition into the genre of erotic poetry: Der er en trolddom på din læbe, Der er en afgrund i dit blik, Der er i lyden af din stemme En drøms ætheriske musik Der er en klarhed på din pande, Der er et mørke i dit haar, Der er en strøm af blomster-ånde Omkring dig, hvor du står og går.14 [There is magic on your lips, / There is an abyss in your glance, / There is in the sound of your voice / A dream’s ethereal music / There is brightness on your forehead, / There

14 Ibid., 75.

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is darkness in your hair, / There is a stream of flower-breath / Around you, where you stand and go.]

It already becomes apparent that the poem can be classified as litanic verse due to its form. Composed as iambic tetrameter with an alternation of feminine and masculine endings, it preserves a regular rhythm pattern in all of its four stanzas, which makes the whole poem easy to recite. Following the principle of syntactic parallelism, each of the first three lines in each stanza consists of three equivalent parts: the anaphora “Der er” (“There is”) followed by a noun naming one aspect of the woman’s intriguing beauty, such as “trolddom” (“magic”) and “klarhed” (“brightness”), but also “afgrund” (“abyss”) and “mørke” (“darkness”), and then an adverbial of place, stating the relevant part of the woman’s body and posture, e.g. “på din læbe” (“on your mouth”), “i dit blik” (“in your glance”), “i dit hår” (“in your hair”). In the first two lines of each stanza, the structure described above covers the length of a single line, whereupon it gets extended over lines 3 and 4. Due to its character as an intimate erotic confession, the poem lacks any form of refrain or responsory intended to be performed in community. At the same time, however, it can be argued that the responsorial part is imitated by the last line of each stanza, which clearly stands out from the sequence of anaphoras constituting the preceding section, just as in the example given above. In spite of its regular structure, the poem lacks a clear delimitation, which makes it appear incomplete in comparison with a strictly organized litanic prayer. Intended as a love panegyric, it surely employs polyonymy in order to glorify the beauty of the addressee. Nevertheless, the purpose of the poem is never stated directly, which makes it different from the realizations of the convention, such as those provided by Brorson and Grundtvig. “Til en veninde” does not reflect the litanic ambition of creating a comprehensive image of the subject in question. Instead, it is focused on some random, immediate impressions grasped by the perceiver in medias res. Hence, the poem constitutes an example of verse which adheres to the aesthetics of litany without living up to its traditional tone and purpose. Finally, the litanic influence on Aarestrup’s poetry can be observed in selected poems exploring the notion of space, either metaphorically, as in “Flugt” (1837; “Escape”) or literally, as in “Københavnske Minder” (1837; “Copenhagen Memories”). The first of these unfolds as an antithetic description of “den store verden” (“the big world”), denoting the subject’s experience of the unknown. The main part of the poem consists of three anaphoric stanzas, each of them composed of four 4-syllable lines, where the line structure of a litanic prayer is imitated by

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means of a semantic, metrical and at times also graphic division into two corresponding phrases, as in stanza 3: Intet Aaben Intet opreist Intet villigt Intet helt

— — — men

Alting lukket Alting bukket Alting trukket Alting plukket15

[Nothing open — Everything closed / Nothing upright — Everything bowed / Nothing unconstrained — Everything forced / Nothing healed but everything taken]

Both in terms of form and rhetoric, the second poem stays closer to the earlier forms of Danish litanic verse, such as those developed in Pietism. Taken as a whole, it appears as a polyonymic-chairetismic exploration of Copenhagen, dedicating each stanza to one selected location or object in the city: O I blanke Spirr og Taarne, Hvor, høit over Gadens Støi Alle mine Ungodmsdrømme Med de hvide Duer fløi! (stanza 5)16 [Oh you shiny spires and towers, / Where, high above the street noise / All my youthful dreams / With the white doves flew!]

Just as in the pietistic psalms glorifying the name of Jesus, the syntagmatic line structure is here extended over the length of the whole stanza, each one of which exhibits the same pattern: an apostrophe stating a concrete place in the city + the subordinate conjunction “hvor” (“where”), followed by a specification of the subject’s experience of the place. At the same time, however, the poem adds a new value to the thematic range of the genre. Focusing on the city as a space of personal experience, it appears as an early announcement of how verse unfolds at the dawn of Danish modernism. Following the examples discussed above, one may observe a gradual desacralization of the Danish litanic verse in the period of Romanticism. The process has already begun in the national phase of the movement, where the convention loses its religious appeal and acquires a new, nation-building function. In the following decades, the national sacrum worshipped by Grundtvig and Ingemann gives way to an aesthetic exploration of strictly earthly themes and motives, such as

15 Emil Aarestrup, Samlede Skrifter [Collected Works of Emil Aarestrup] eds. Hans Brix, and Palle Raunkjær (København: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 1976), 4: 74. 16 Emil Aarestrup, Samlede Skrifter [Collected Works of Emil Aarestrup] eds. Hans Brix, and Palle Raunkjær (København: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 1976), 4: 38.

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those introduced by Emil Aarestrup. Alongside this thematic secularization, the Romantic realizations of litanic verse become more and more distanced from the overall pattern of a traditional litanic prayer. Instead of reproducing the whole model, characterized by a clearly outlined beginning and ending, the Romantic authors employ only some of its elements, the most prevalent being the parallel line structure of litanic invocations. Owing to this selective approach, which draws attention to concrete solutions articulated at the level of form, litanic traces developed in Danish Romanticism are much easier to detect than those observed in the previous epochs. Nevertheless, in contrast to other sources of generic inspiration, such as e.g. the folk ballad, explored by all of the main representatives of the movement, the litanic provenance of Danish Romantic poetry remains marginal and far from translating into a separate literary trend.

Songs of the Asphalt: Danish Litanic Verse and the Interwar Period In the years between 1870 and 1890, the course of Danish literature was changed by a remarkable movement of socially engaged naturalism and realism, known as Det Moderne Gennembrud (The Modern Breakthrough). However, due to the realistic orientation of the movement, poetry in it is significantly underrepresented, and, what is more, the poetry that was produced is thoroughly lacking signs of litanic provenance. Thus, the next revival of Danish poetry as a whole can be observed no sooner than the last decade of the nineteenth century, which was marked by the arrival of Symbolism. With regard to the preceding epoch of The Modern Breakthrough, the main ambition of the symbolist writers can be described as a change of focus: from the social realities of everyday life to the metaphysical world of the spirit. In the lyrical oeuvre of Sophus Claussen (1865–1931) and Johannes Jørgensen (1866–1956), both considered to be the main Danish representatives of the movement, the idea of reestablishing the connection with the metaphysical is realized in two different ways. While Claussen, inspired by the French symbolists, engages in a sensual exploration of the erotic and the satanic (1904; Djævlerier, The Devilish), Jørgensen seeks refuge in faith and eventually converts to Catholicism.17 In their attempts to transcend reality, neither of the two poets resorts, however, to litanic verse. When it comes to Claussen, the reason for this might be his general reluctance to directly imitate the aesthetics of the French symbolism, comprising, among other forms, the satanic litanies à 17 Eds. Johannes Fibiger, and Gerd Lütken, Litteraturens veje [The paths of literature] (Århus: Systime, 2010), 237–241.

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rebours. As for the continuous lack of religious realizations of the convention, it can be explained by the accelerating process of secularization and radicalization of Danish intellectual life, both initiated at the decline of Romanticism. At the very beginning of the interwar period, litanic verse reappears in the early works of the pioneer of Danish Expressionism, Emil Bønnelycke (1893– 1953). As a poetic form, it is explored and, at the same time, challenged in the collection of prose poems Asfaltens Sange (1918; Songs of the Asphalt), intended as a futurist tribute to the urban modernity of the interwar era. Interestingly enough, the aesthetics of litanic verse is predominant in the opening poem Aarhundredet (The century), considered as a manifesto of Bønnelycke’s futurist program. The poem consists of eighteen graphically distinguished parts of varying length. Composed as a fusion of poetry and prose, it lacks a clearly defined metrical pattern. Nevertheless, each section of the poem exhibits the same overall structure, consisting of two parts. The first one comprises an anaphoric declaration of commitment: “Jeg elsker” (“I love”), while the second unfolds as a comprehensive specification of different aspects of the new century glorified by the subject. What is more, while exploring the characteristics of the new era, the author employs further anaphoras, such as “rig paa” (“rich in”), at times limited to “paa” (“in”), or simply “der” (“which”), which break the listing into several more or less equal segments: 1. Jeg elsker dig, || du gaadefulde Tid, du Seklernes Sekel, der er  r i g  p a a  aldrig før anede Omskiftelser,  r i g  p a a Kaos, p a a  Forvirringens Skønhed, Hastighedens Pragt, r i g  p a a  halsløse Fremskridt,  r i g  p a a Rædsel, p a a  en svulmende, morderisk Ouverture, Krigen, hvis Basuner, Kanonerne, og Trommer, Mitrailløserne, forkynder Verdensrevolutionen.18 [I love you, || you mysterious time, you century of centuries, which is rich in changes never imagined before, / rich in chaos, in the beauty of confusion, splendid pace, rich in risky progress, rich in horror, in a swelling, murderous overture, war, whose trumpets, cannons, and drums, the gunshots, proclaim the world revolution.]

Towards the end of the poem, the disproportion between the two parts of the stanza gets reduced, ending up with a sequence of sections limited to the size and structure characteristic of a single litanic line:

18 Emil Bønnelycke, Asfaltens Sange [Songs of the Asphalt] (København: Nordiske Forfatters Forlag, 1918), 7. The division sign || and the emphasis are ours: J.C. and A.Z.

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14. Jeg elsker dig, du lykkelige Ulykkestid … 15. Jeg elsker dig, du selvfølgelige Rædselstid … 16. Jeg elsker dig, du fornuftige Vanvidstid …19 [I love you, you happy time of misery … / I love you, you obvious time of horror … / I love you, you reasonable time of madness…]

In terms of genetic composition, each stanza of the poem appears as a combination of two litanic genes, where the first part expresses a chairetismic glorification and the other one realizes a polyonymic exploration. Given the laudatory character of Bønnelycke’s poetry, the pattern described above appears as the most typical form of litanic verse included in the collection. Another example of such verse is the poem Navnenes Sang (A Song of the Names), which is divided into irregular sections devoted to different places in the world celebrated by the author. Correspondingly, each section of the poem begins with a chairetismic anaphora “O” addressing one or more geographical locations, which the author elaborates on in the lines that follow: O, Hawaii, || du hvide Ø i oceanets Midte, Diamanten paa Stillehavets blaa Pude. Din Skaal drak jeg gerne paa en Saloon i Honolulu. Og græd gerne bagefter over min Hjemløshed.20 [Oh, Hawaii, || you white island in the middle of the ocean, a diamond on the blue cushion of the Pacific. I drank your health in a saloon in Honolulu. And cried right after over my homelessness.]

Last but not least, a similar composition can be found in the poem Sang til de dræbte (Song to the Killed). Again, it consists of a number of prose sections of different length, most of which begin with the chairetismic anaphora “Lyksalige er vi” (“Blissful are we”) and expand as a detailed account of war experiences shared by the “blissful”, that is, the ones who survived. Ironically enough, the group being extolled in the poem are thus not “the fallen,” but “the survivors,” pointing out the absurdities of war and grieving the death of its victims all over the world: 5. Lykksagelige er vi, der saa Eders Ungdom, hørte Eders Sange, var Vidne til Eders Udmattelse, Forblødning og Død. Thi vi har set Eder i en Form, der er Ungdom værdig.

19 Ibid., 12. 20 Ibid., 110.

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7. Lykksagelige er vi, der har gjort Front mod de morderiske Fraser, for hvilke I er faldet.21 [Blissful are we, who saw your youth, heard your songs, witnessed your exhaustion, bleeding and death. For we have seen you in a form that is worth youth. Blissful are we, who contradicted the murderous phrases, for which you died.]

Moreover, apart from the litanic verse structure the poem displays a clear delimitation in form of an introduction and conclusion, respectively stating and reinforcing its laudatory purpose: “Til Eder […] vil jeg synge, synge […]” (“To you […] shall I sing, sing […]”); “Saadan vil vi synge, vi, de lyksaligt levende, til Eder […]” (“Like this shall we sing, us, the blissfully living, to you […]”). Judging by the tone, frame and structure of the poems included in Asfaltens Sange, one can conclude that the litanic provenance of the collection is much more obvious here than in any Romantic realizations of the genre. What makes it surprising is the overall absence of litanic verse in Danish interwar poetry, making the author a unique exception. However, it is not for certain that the aesthetics of Bønnelycke’s poetry is directly influenced by litanic verse. In fact, the main source of inspiration for the author’s early collections is the work of the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892). In his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, celebrating his philosophy of life and humanity, Whitman develops a catalogue technique similar to that observed in Asfaltens Sange. Hence, it seems unlikely that the poems written by Bønnelycke should be considered as a deliberate attempt to restore litanic verse, which appears to have vanished from the Danish literary consciousness by the interwar period.

Conclusions The history of Danish litanic verse in the period from Romanticism up to the 1930s illustrates the gradual decline of the convention in Danish literature. The process begins at the onset of Romanticism, when the lyrical form abandons the realm of religious poetry and turns towards the native tradition of the storytelling folk ballad. A short-lived revival of litanic verse can be observed in the lyrical oeuvre of Nikolai Grundtvig. Nevertheless, following Grundtvig’s vision of Christianity, it loses its original sacral appeal and serves the utilitarian purpose of shaping and strengthening the religious identity of the congregation. During the subsequent phases of the Romantic Movement, the convention of litanic verse undergoes continuous secularization, diverging more and

21 Ibid., 14.

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more from the model of a traditional litanic prayer. Rather than imitating the whole litanic pattern, as had been the case in the previous epochs, the writers of so-called Romantisme employ only those selected litanic elements that they find relevant for their own artistic expression. The solutions favoured in most examples discussed above are the use of syntactic parallelism and polyonymy, both of which enhance the laudatory purpose of the poems. However, it is not the nature of the divine that is explored in these poems, but the earthly concepts of love and beauty, which confirms the new, secular character of the genre. After a long period of silence during the era of the socially engaged Modern Breakthrough, litanic convention is restored in the prose poetry of Emil Bønnelycke, the main representative of Danish Expressionism. Lacking a regular meter, the prose poems written by Bønnelycke comply with the litanic pattern in terms of genetic composition, the overall frame and internal structure. However, just like the other examples included in the present review, they constitute an exception to the general observation that there was no consistent litanic tradition in the Danish poetry of the period.

Aleksandra Wilkus Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

“Norway, Norway…” From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Asked about the litany, a Norwegian reader might find it difficult to apply the term to native literature — not only because of its connection with Catholicism, but also because in Norwegian culture litanic remnants were hidden under the cover of the Protestant psalmic tradition. In Norwegian studies on verse and poetics, litanic verse is similarly non-existent: entries on the “litany” or “litanic” are not to be found in books such as Inn i diktet,1 Lyriske strukturer,2 Norsk verslære3 and Versekunsten: rytme og rim.4 The outline presented below will therefore be based on the concept of the “litany undercover,” introduced earlier. The year 1814 brought important changes in Norwegian history, which find their reflection in the field of literature, which had previously been utterly dependent on the influence of Copenhagen. It was in 1814 that the national identity began to be forged due to the separation of Norway and Denmark after a 434-year union. It is worth mentioning, however, that it was in the 1770s that Norwegian national literature began developing. In 1772 Norwegian students in Copenhagen established a club called Det Norske Selskab (The Norwegian Society). During their discussion meetings socio-political issues were raised and questions were asked about the essence of “Norwegianness,” i.e. a common national awareness which was not spoken of before that time.5 A country long dominated by agriculture and local life was now open to western influences — especially those of German and French philosophy and literature.6 Still, the country was far from independent; 1 Willy Dahl, Inn i diktet: fra Edda til Eldrid (Bergen: Eide, 2002). 2 Atle Kittang and Asbjørn Aarseth, Lyriske strukturer: Innføring i diktanalyse (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1998). 3 Hallvard Lie, Norsk verslære (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1967). 4 André Bjerke, Versekunsten: rytme og rim (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1980). 5 Bjarne Hodne, Norsk nasjonalkultur: en kulturpolitisk oversikt (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1994), 14–15. 6 Øystein Sørensen, Kampen om Norges sjel. Norsk idéhistorie bind III (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2001), 9–10.

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reduced to the role of a pawn in the conflict between Denmark and Sweden, in 1814 it was made to accept a personal union with the then-dominant Sweden. The agreement, however, had its advantages, for it permitted an unchecked development of the Norwegian culture and language, and did not encumber the promotion of a national identity, which in time began to adopt a uniquely romantic character.

On Nature — Romantically One of the markers of a nascent national awareness was the overpowering need to return to old, pre-Christian and medieval cultural traditions, regarded more and more widely as national heritage and one of the most significant factors determining the Norwegian identity. One of the themes most frequently taken up by the writers was Nature — life in the country, subjected to the dictates of the omnipresent, uncontrollable elements. The litanic form with its polyonymic and chairetismic character could be an appropriate means of expressing feelings which accompanied the Norwegian awakening from a long sleep caused by the Danish rule and cultural dominance. The first distinct signs of the focus on the uniqueness of Norwegian nature are to be found in a composition which goes back to earlier times — a poem by Petter Dass (1647–1707), entitled Nordlands Trompet (The Trumpet of Nordland), which was written in the years 1675–1695, but was not published until 1739 in Copenhagen. The poem is a rhymed description of the northern part of the country: its detailed characterization of people and nature has a chairetismic tone. According to Ivar Havnevik, five decades later the appearance of the first edition, Dass’s thought found its successor in Claus Frimann (1746–1829).7 In one of the works of this Romantic poet, who was a pastor at Davik, entitled “Under Indseiling igien til Norge” (“On Returning to the Shores of Norway”)8 we can discern litanic elements such as the formula “hail to thee.” This short poem, dating from 1790, is a laudatory apostrophe to the longed-for country. It is made up of three eight-line trochaic stanzas with a regular rhyme pattern: aBBaCdCd. The chairetismic mode of perceiving the country, adopted by Frimann, corresponds with the style of the Norske Selskab, to which the poet belonged. Hilset vær du kjære Land, Vær velkommen til mit Øie; Den som Havet maatte pløie,

7 Ed. Ivar Havnevik, Den store norske diktboken (Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S, 2005), 147. 8 Claus Frimann, Almuens sanger (Kiøbenhavn: Gyldendal, 1790), 114–115.

From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 215 Efter dig hvor længes han! Ved at see dig voxe, stige, Blaane, grønnes, bredes ud, Hvo vil ei med Glæde sige: Hidindtil saa hjalp os Gud. Kom og aabne snart dit Skjød! Lad din milde Sol os qvæge! Lad os høre Lammet bræge, Lad os see hvor blomsterstrød Engen smiler, Kildenspringer, Lad os naae din grønne Skov, Høre der, hvor Fuglen synger Elskovs Sang og Herrens Lov. [We hail thee our beloved country, / I welcome thee with my eyes; / The one who ploughed the sea, / However much it longs for him! / Seeing thee greater and mightier, / Bluer, greener, vaster / Who would not gladly say: / Till now we have been helped by God. // Come and open your womb! / Let thy mild Sun gladden us! / Let us hear the Lamb bleat, / Let us see the blooming meadow / Smiling, the spring spouting, / Let us delight in thy green forest, / Hark there, where the bird is singing / The song of love and the Lord’s law.]9

In the first stanza, the poem’s collective “I” greets the beloved Norway, experiencing her anew after a long and longing absence. Approaching its shores, it sees the growing splendour of the country and the uniqueness of its colours which the travellers admire. It is in the opening lines that the religious element appears. The collective “I” accentuates God’s interference in Nature. The second stanza, of an invocatory and supplicatory nature, opens with a petition to be allowed to delight in the simple essence of this godly place: the joy which comes from the Sun’s rays, the sounds of animals, the meadows and forests: all this in accordance with God’s law. The dominant verb in the stanza is lade (let, allow), which, when combined with the words høre (hear) and se (see) from the third and fourth lines, expresses a plea for a sensual experience. However, the verb naae (reach) in the sixth line implies that apart from sensual experience, the poet longs for the experience of the creator, which is possible through becoming one with nature. It is worth noting the similarities between Frimann’s and Dass’s poems. The introduction (“Indledning”) to the poem Nordlands Trompet opens with chairetismic greetings in the form of apostrophes to the inhabitants of the northern lands as well as to nature:

9 If not stated otherwise, translations by Dominika Ruszkiewicz in cooperation with Aleksandra Wilkus.

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Vær hilset, I, Nordlands bebyggende Mænd Fra Verten I Huset til trælende Svend, Vær hilset, I, Kofte-klæd Bønder! Ja samtlig saa vel ud til Fiære som Field Saa vel den der burger med Fisken paa Gield Som salter Graae-Torsken i Tønder. Vær hilset, I Geistligheds hederlig Lius Prælater, og Orden i Helligdoms Huus Hver i sin Bestilling hin gieve!10 [Hail, ye men who are builders of Nordland / From host to hardened journeyman / Hail, ye yeomen, clad in overcoats / And all of you on the shore and in the field / Those who fish to pay their debts / Those who salt the cod in barrels / Hail to thee, thou honourable, ecclesiastical Light, / Prelates and the order in the Sacred House / Each according to his standing gives!]

The whole “Indledning” has a litanic and laudatory character, due not only to the regular rhythm and pattern of rhymes (aaBccBdde) which become apparent in the first lines of the poem, but also to the ordo naturalis, which makes the poet address first the clergy and nobility, then journeymen, tenants, yeomen, merchants, women and finally maids, starting at the top of the social ladder and moving down. The parallel constructions “vær hilset,” which in the subsequent lines change into “hil være” (“hail be to”), also bring Dass’s poem closer to a litany. Written a few decades later, Frimann’s poem begins with a similar apostrophe, but this time it is addressed to the whole country and not a single region. The Romantic revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century did not lead to a greater popularity of the litanic form, which explains the fact that the next works taken into consideration date from the period 1870–1890. As far as earlier poetry is concerned, we can go as far as to say that it contains litanic elements which are hidden behind the scenes, the central stage being occupied by nature: Bekrandste, høie Ætling af den Gran, som først de Gother gav den djærve Kunstmodel til Kathedral paa Kathedral, til Notredamens Høiportal, til Münstren, til Vestminsterhal, til Pisas Taarn paaheld! — […]

10 Petter Dass, Petter Dass; i utvalg ved Jostein Nyhama (Oslo: Den norske Bokklubben, 1977), 12–16.

From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 217 —Min Gran! Du ødsler hen som Dem din Høihed i dit skjulte Hjem i ussel Veddekamp med lave Kirkespiir i Dal. —Det Himlens Skuur! Du heller skal forgaae, Naturens Kathedral, i herostratisk Damp11 [Great in laurels ancestors from / The branch of the Goths / Lusty art models / For cathedral upon cathedral / For the portal of Notre Dame / For Münster, for Westminster / For the Tower of Pisa adopted! — / […] / My Branch! Thou disappearest like them / Thy nobleness in Thy hidden home / In unworthy clashes / With a short church tower in a valley. / —The Heaven’s hut! Thou / Wilt not pass, Nature’s Temple, / in herostratic mist]

The lines above have been taken from a laudatory poem, “Til en Gran” (“To a spruce,” 1833), composed by one of the greatest Norwegian Romantic poets, Henrik Wergeland (1808–1845). The whole poem is built upon an apostrophe to a magnificent tree, whose beauty and other attributes are depicted by means of polyonymic structures, especially similes which achieve the effect of personification: the spruce is personified and glorified in order to emphasise the work of nature, and as a consequence the work of God. Through the enumeration of cathedrals and other monuments, the tree is initially compared to human constructions, but its status is elevated with each new line until it surpasses all earthly creation. The spruce becomes the most perfect and everlasting temple of Nature itself, i.e. God. The poem lacks parallel expressions, but its structure (including the metrical structure) is litanic in nature. The seven-line stanzas are based on alternating threeand four-foot iambs; the lines are at times connected by enjambement, giving the impression of a long rhythmical sequence.12 The presence of masculine rhymes in patterns such as aabcccb points in an interesting direction — towards Danish-Norwegian baroque poetry and authors such as Thomas Kingo, Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig and the already mentioned Petter Dass. Hallvard Lie notes that the structure of the poem is typical of the psalmic and Pietist traditions13 which retained litanic elements and displayed them in a most conspicuous way; this has been discussed in the chapter on Danish-Norwegian poetry before the nineteenth century. The poem’s indebtedness to the psalmic tradition is emphasized in the last stanza, in which the Romantic poet, who used to place himself in the centre, now humbles himself to say: “Ak min Sjel, syng Psalmen” (“Oh my soul, sing the psalm”). 11 Ed. Ivar Havnevik, Den store norske diktboken (Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S, 2005), 170. 12 Jørgen Sejersted, Eirik Vassenden, Lyrikkhåndboken (Oslo: Spartacus, 2007), 70. 13 Hallvard Lie, Norsk verslære, 394.

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Neo-Romantic Laudatory Poetry The Romantic perception of the national identity, discussed earlier with reference to one of Frimann’s poems, finds its successor in Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1909), one of the leading Norwegian intellectuals of the second half of the nineteenth century. The works composed by this member of the “Great Four”14 were strongly patriotic, as is shown in the poem below: Norge, Norge, blånende op av det grågrønne hav, øer omkring som fugle-unger, fjorde i tunger inover did, som det stilner av. Elve, dale følges fra fjællene, skog-ås og li langelig efter. Straks som det letter, sjøer og sletter, helgedags-freden med tempel i. Norge, Norge, hitter og hus og ingen borge, blidt eller hårdt, du er vort, du er vort, du er fræmtidens land Norge, Norge, skibakke-løbets skinnende land, sjø-ulkens havn og fiske-leje, fløterens veje, gjæterens fjæll-ljom og jøkel-brand. Agre, enge, runer i skog-landet, spredte skår, byer som blomster, elvene skyder ud, hvord et bryder hvidt ifra havet, der sværmen går! Norge, Norge, hytter og hus og ingen borge, blidt eller hårdt, du er vort, du er vort, du er fræmtidens land!15

14 The expression De fire Store (The Great Four) refers to four writers who flourished in the years 1860–1890: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Alexander Kielland, Jonas Lie and Henrik Ibsen. 15 Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Digte og Sange (Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1890), 123.

From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 219 [Norway, Norway / Emerging from the gray-green sea / the islands around like chicks, / fjords like tongues / flowing in, where they quiet down. / Rivers, valleys/ Stretching through the mountains, forest hills and slopes / further on. When it clears up, / lakes and plains, / Sunday rest with a sanctuary in the middle. / Norway, Norway, / huts and houses and no castles, / rest or toil / thou art ours, thou art ours, / thou art the land of the future. // Norway, Norway, / skidding on slopes shining country,/ the sea of sailors and plenty of fish, / the road of raftsmen, / the voice of shepherds and the glacial fire. / Fields, meadows, / runes in the forests, scattered shards, / cities which bloom, rivers which speed / where the sea waves / break, where the shoals burst! / Norway, Norway, / huts and houses and no castles, / rest or toil / thou art ours, thou art ours, / thou art the land of the future!]

The poem “Norge, Norge,” first published in 1870, is one of the most litanic poems of the period and — what is very interesting — apart from a libretto for Edvard Grieg’s opera Olav Trygvason, it is the only poem of this kind by Bjørnson. The poem is divided into two stanzas, followed by a four-line refrain similar to a responsory. The polyonymic and chairetismic elements undeniably take in the direction of a litanic tone. The pattern of both stanzas is identical, the first common element being apostrophes. Each stanza begins with the call “Norge, Norge,” which brings to mind the refrain “Edvard, Edvard” from an Old English ballad published by Thomas Percy in 1765;16 its Danish translation appeared in 1845.17 Thematically, Bjørnson’s poem differs from the original, whose presence in the Scandinavian awareness can be attributed to its translator, Bernhard Severin Ingemann. His desire to promote the Romantic spirit among his countrymen resulted in translations from foreign works, especially those that evoked old epochs and medieval heroes, and in his own composition of historical fiction. Thus Bjørnson’s indebtedness to Percy concerns the structural plane: in the Norwegian version the apostrophe is followed by a metaphoricized description of landscape. Not unlike litanic verse, Bjørnson’s poem contains a number of nouns in the onset; they create elaborate 16 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets, (chiefly of the Lyric Kind.) Together with Some Few of a Later Date (London: J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1765), vol. 1, 57–59. The similarity between apostrophes used in both poem can be attributed to Percy’s interests. Being a linguist, he translated Icelandic sagas and wrote a book about Scandinavian culture, history and literature. Cf. Thomas Percy, Northern Antiquities: Or, An Historical Account of the Manners, Customs, Religion and Laws, Maritime Expeditions and Discoveries, Language and Literature of the Ancient Scandinavians (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847). 17 Cf. Bernhard Ingemann, Samlede romanzer, sange og eventyrdigte (Kjøbenhavn: Reitzel, 1845), vol. 2, 28–30.

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enumerations and at the same time diversify the imagery. Line six, similarly to line one, is made up of two vocative nouns, separated by commas, with a trochaic pattern of accents: élve, dále and ágre, énge. This creates the effect of paronomasia on the level of the line and of antonomasia for the word “Norway” on the level of the stanza. This technique allows us to identify the country with its nature (rivers, valleys, fields, meadows), retaining the glorifying character of the description which is due to the epithets used. The refrain is made up of a five-line eulogic apostrophe, in which the collective “I” expresses an attachment to the fedrelandskjærlighet (an expression which denotes love for the native land, characteristic of the period) for better or worse. What is interesting is the rhyme pattern aabbc, which draws the reader’s attention to the last line, closing with the word land, which breaks out of the pattern. This emphasizes the key sentence in the poem: “Thou art the land of the future.” The whole poem, similarly to the national anthem Ja, vi elsker dette landet, has a regular, even classical structure which, as emphasized by the author himself, echoes his stay in Rome and his contact with its culture.18 We can therefore assume that the poem “Norge, Norge,” which differs significantly in form from other poems by Bjørnson, was inspired by the poetics of a Catholic country. The review of nineteenth-century secular literature would not be complete without a reference to Grieg’s already mentioned opera Olav Trygvason (op. 50), composed in 1873. The cooperation between the two greatest figures of the time, Grieg and Bjørnson, resulted in one of the first works of this kind in Norway. Both were critical of the Wagnerian tradition and their true ambition was to lay the foundations for national opera. Grieg not only wanted to move beyond the style in which the orchestra dominates the voice, but was also in favour of short and intense dialogues. This resulted in a work in which the voice is given precedence over the melodic line whose role is to supplement the narrative. The theme of the work evokes Romantic pictures and the idyllic perception of the roots of national culture. Olav Trygvason tells the story of a Norwegian king from the Viking epoch who in the tenth century Christianized his lands. Although the opera was meant as a eulogy of the ruler and the new religion, in fact it proved to be an apotheosis of pagan beliefs. Bjørnson, whose attitude towards the Church was becoming more and more critical from the 1870s,19 did not complete the task entrusted to him

18 Jørgen Sejersted and Eirik Vassenden, Lyrikkhåndboken (Oslo: Spartacus, 2007), 101. 19 Per Andersen, Norsk Litteraturhistorie (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2012), 232–233.

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and never finished the libretto, which is why Grieg’s initial plan fell through. The result was a one-act opera, made up of three scenes written for soloists, choir and the orchestra. The influence of the litany on Olav Trygvason is discernible on multiple planes. The subject of the analysis is the text — including the operatic structure characteristic of the work, i.e. dialogue and monologue sung to the accompaniment of the choir. The narrative is supplemented by music with a direct influence on the mood and sound of words. Starting with scene one, in which the priest (baritone solo), making a sacrifice, summons up the gods of old, we experience a petitionary prayer which begins with addresses to the highest of the Aesir — Odin. The epithets glorifying him are sung by a soloist in E and are rounded off with a collective call of male voices — “hear us.” The enumeration endows the speech with ektenial features:20 En offergode (Baritono solo): Du, som gik ud af Verdens Ophav, Du, som ser Livet fra Lidskalv: Alle mænd: Hør os! Hør os! [A Sacrificer (Baritone solo): Working before the world’s beginning / Thou who outgazest from Lidskialf: The Men: Hear us! Hear us!]

The utterances in the next bars refer to Frigg, Odin’s wife. The invocations addressed to her, even though patterned analogically to the previous stanza, are introduced by a mezzo-soprano, and concluded by a female choir. The textual parallelisms, such as the repetition of the “du, som” in the onset, are reflected in the melodic line, while musical techniques emphasize very clearly the litanic character of the work. The ektenial “hør os!” was marked on the musical score with the letter f (forte — loudly), with an annotation to slow down the choral parts. The passage was additionally distinguished through the introduction of timpani (kettle drums) and the violin to accompany the male and the female calls respectively; they find their fullest expression during a quarter-note break in the voice. This not only emphasizes the responsorial part and separates it from the soloist’s part, but also adds drama to the scene. The last four stanzas

20 Erlend Hovland. In: Edvard Grieg, Olav Trygvason, Orchestral Songs, Ole Kristian Ruud, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Åkersberga: BIS Records, 2006). Translation after the publication.

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are sung by four voices, and the opera’s dynamic line is best captured in the following fragment: Alle: Viser, viser, viser vore Diser, Viser, viser, viser vore Diser Vej til Guden, Som vi vente, til Guden, som vi vente. Hør os! [All: Show us, show us, show our Fates the pathway, / Show us, show us, Show our Fates the way to him, / The god so long awaited, the god so long awaited. / Hear us!]

The last three bars, falling on the final responsory call “hør os,” are followed by another relief and the melodic line ascends until it drowns the voices of the choir. Thanks to this, the responsorial call acquires a humble, pleading tone. In the second scene, a prophetess (nord. vølven) appears who casts spells and bewitches the gods. The drama of the scene lies in the challenge issued to Olaf by the gods which is supposed to determine if God exists. Olaf is invited to the gods’ seat and if he manages to return, Christ will have proven to be the mightier party. Due to the numerous repetitions and chairetismic apostrophes, the utterances appear to be very expressive: Vølven, kor: Her, her, møder de Høje ham! Her, her, hellige Luer vil Hævne! Kor: Tak! Tak! Tak, at I talte, Trøstig var Tegnet os! Tak! Tak! Tak, at I talte, Nu tør vi tro! Nu kan han komme. Kongen, vi kåred os! Nu kan han komme, Kampen blir kort! […] Tre Nætter bad vi, bad som et Barn sin Far! Tre Nætter bad vi, bønhørt vi blev! […] Kor: Heilige Lege, holdes at hædre ham, heilige Lege, heilige Lyst, heilige Lege, heilige Lyst. [The Völva, Chorus: Here! Here! Hasten the holy ones! / Here, here, hurtled the vengeance of heaven! Chorus: Thanks! Thanks! Thanks for the token! / Solace it sends to us! / Thanks! Thanks for the token, / Faith it confirms! / Choice of the children, come then, oh king to us! /

From the End of the Eighteenth to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 223 Come to thy children, strife will be short! / […] Three nights besought we, suing like son to sire, / Three nights we pleaded, heard is our pray’r! […] Chorus: Gladly we join in games for the gracious god, / Gladly we join in gambols of joy! / Gladly we join in gambols of joy!]

The third scene presents an ecstatic procession in honour of the Norse gods — the Aesir and the Vanir (Ásatrú) to the accompaniment of dance and choral songs. The text is infused with terms paired in parallelism: Kor: Giv alle Guder Gammens og Glædes-Skål, Giv alle Guder Gaver og Fryd! Hornet for Aketor tømmes for Kraft I Krig, Hornet for Aketor, Trøndernes As! [Chorus: Give to all gods a gracecup of gratitude, / Give to the gods your greatest of gifts! / Horns fill for Akethor, Drontheimer’s deity, / Fill them to Akethor’s daring in fight!]

The final partis dominated by female voices and a four-voice choir; the soloists no longer appear (tutti), which points to the collective nature of prayers to the pagan gods. The apostrophic calls take the form of chairetisms, constituting a euphoric glorification of the old faith which is sung by men, followed by women and concluded by the four-voice choir: Mænd: Evige Asatro, alt Livet elsker du! Evige Asatro ånder i Alt! Kvinder: Evige Asatro, Ære og Mod din Æt! Evige Asatro, elskelig dyb! Mænd: Evige Asatro, alt Livet elsker du, Evige Asatro ånder i Alt! I Alt! Ånder i Alt! Kor: Evige Asatro, alt Livet elsker du, Evige Asatro ånder i Alt! Dig vil vi frelse, Fædrenes Fortidsland! Dig vil vi frelse, Fremtid for os! Digvil vi frelse. Sang for vor Fryd, vor Gråd, Dig vil vi frelse, Vugge for Dåd! [Men: Faith of our fatherland, love thou dost light in us, / Faith of our fatherland moving all men!

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Women: Faith of our fatherland, honour thou art to us! / Faith of our fatherland, fond and profound! Men: Faith of our fatherland, love thou dost light in us, / Faith of our fatherland moving all men! Chorus: Faith of our fatherland, love thou dost light in us, / Faith of our fatherland moving all men! / We will defend thee, fight for our fathers’ faith, / We will defend thee, future be ours! / We will defend thee, source of our weal and woe, / We will defend thee, fount of great deeds!]

The dynamics of the utterance as well as of the melodic line is more uniform in this scene as it is played mostly at a forte level; by contrast, the second stanza, sung by a soprano and alto and addressed to Asynia (female deities from the clan of the Aesir, such as Frigg — Odin’s wife), is in the key of E-flat major and it is here that the music quiets down to piano. This adds a “sweet” tone to the music and the prayer to the goddesses becomes feminized on both the textual and musical levels. It stands to reason that the favouring of the female part can be attributed to the Viking culture. These are not the only elements determining the unquestionably litanic character of Olav Trygvason. The final part of the opera resembles a march not only in cadence and meter, but also due to the use of loud instruments — especially timpani, which add a pathetic tone to the work. The attempt to determine Bjørnson’s literary inspiration brings us to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. Hjalmar Boyesen notes the indebtedness of the Norwegian poet to his German predecessor.21 Klopstock’s church songbook, published in 1776, contains the prayer “Allegemeines Gebet und geistliche Gaben. Eine Litanei,”22 in which, similarly to Bjørnson’s libretto, a choir is introduced.

The Psalmic Tradition Continued and the Fin-de-Siècle It was not only secular literature that was developing rapidly in Norway, but also the psalmic tradition, popularized by Thomas Kingo’s Psalter (1699). Two later psalters: Høegh Guldberg’s 1778 edition and Den evangelisk-christelige Psalmebog (1799), represented different fields of spiritual life. The former borrowed from the Pietist tradition; the latter was a rational response to new ideas.

21 Hjalmar Boyesen, Essays on Scandinavian Literature (New York: Public Domain, 1895), 53. 22 Friedrich Klopstock, Sammlung der besten deutschen prosaischen Schriftsteller und Dichter. Neun und zwanziger Teil: Klopstocks Lieder (Carlsruhe: Schmieder, 1776), 90.

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The only distinct traces of the litany are connected with the Norwegian missionary movement which goes back to 1844, and, as Tormod Wasbø notes, are to be found in the fourth edition of the Harpen prayer book (1829/1835). These include Indgangs-Psalme (The Introductory Psalm), modelled upon the German KirchenLitanei (Kirke-Litanie), as well as Litanei am Ostermorgen.23 In 1840, a book entitled Christelige Psalmer appeared, which is also connected with Detnorske Misjonsselskap (The Norwegian Missionary Movement) and which is not free from litanic elements. Prayer 76, for instance, contains invocations to Jesus characteristic of the litany: “Min Sol, min Luft, min Glæde, min Jesu, Hjertens Ben! Hvor længes jeg at træde Og komme til dig hen!” (“My Sun, my Air, my Joy, my Jesus, my Heart’s Bone! How I long to take a step and come to you!”).24 Wilhelm Andreas Wexels, who was partial to Danish culture and the Grundtvigian tradition, did not, however, use a traditional graphic form assigned to poetry, patterning his texts upon prose writings. It is worth mentioning that Wexels’ and also Andreas Hauge’s psalms (Hauges Salmebok, 1873) were most often performed during the meetings of missionary groups or in movements such as Haugianism, hence their litanic markers can be seen in the responsorial character of the congregational reply:25 Menighetens svar følger: “Ja, saa du taled, Herre Gud! Og dine Tjenere gik ud Og gjorde, som du sagte […]”. [The response of the faithful is: “Yes, then you spoke, Lord God! And your servants came out and did as you said […].”]26

In connection with the typically Norwegian festival called Olsok and also with political changes, psalters began to include prayers centred upon the nation, such as the psalm 744, “Norges folk og Norges kirke…” (“The People and Church of Norway…”) from 1914 which is dominated by the polyonymic and chairetismic gene: Gud som skapte fjell og dale, din storhet la til hjerte tale, din godhet tenne bønnes ild!

23 Tormod Wasbø, Misjon og salme. En hymnologisk studie og undersøkelse (Stavanger: Menighetshøgskolen, 1993), 9. 24 Wilhelm Wexels, Christelige Psalmer fra ældre og nyere Tid (Christiania: Chr. Grøndahls Forlag, 1859), 39. 25 Trond Kasbo, Gammelpietistiske minoriteter. Tradisjoner, særtrekk og fellespreg (Oslo: Universiteteti Oslo, 1997), 70–71. 26 Tormod Wasbø, Misjon og salme. En hymnologisk studie og undersøkelse (Stavanger: Menighetshøgskolen, 1993), 14.

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[…] Ære være! I evighet din miskunnhet er sol og skjold og kraft og fred!27 [God, who created mountains and valleys, / thy greatness infused the heart with speech, / thy goodness kindled the fire of prayer / […] / Glory be! / forever / thy mercy / is sun and shield and force and peace!]

Among its litanic markers, we can distinguish the glorifying apostrophes, crowned with a laudatory enumeration including the unnatural repetition of the conjunction og. Other works included in Norsk Salmebok (The Norwegian Psalter) are dominated by pleas for protection against danger, for the soul’s rest and for eternal life: Ånd fra himlen, kom med nåde, kom med liv og lys her ned! Herre Jesu, du vår glede, kom med legedom og fred! Hør vår bønn, all godhets giver, Fader, Sønn og Hellig Ånd!28 [Spirit from heaven, come with your grace, / come to Earth with life and light! / Jesus Christ, our joy, / come with rest and peace! / Hear our prayer, the giver of all good, / Father, Son and Holy Ghost!] Herre, du høre meg, Herre, du føre meg […] Du er den eneste/ helligste, reneste. Gi meg ditt rene og hellige sinn! Frels meg av snarere,/ fri meg fra farene, ta meg til sist i din herlighets inn!29 [Lord, hear me, / Lord, lead me […] / Thou art the only one/ the holiest, the purest. / Give me thy clean and holy mind! / Protect me from traps, / free me from danger, / take me finally to thy kingdom!]

The period between 1880 and 1930 did not result in any literary works resembling litanic verse in form or theme; traces of litanic verse could only be seen in religious works. In response to the fin-de-siècle and to Norway’s independence, which she

27 Lyder Brun, Salme 744 (1914). In Norsk Salmebok (Oslo: Verbum, 1985), 731. 28 Elevine Heede, Salme 591 (1879). In Norsk Salmebok (Oslo: Verbum, 1985), 593. 29 Ole Moe, Salme 423 (1904). In Norsk Salmebok (Oslo: Verbum, 1985), 435.

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gained in 1905, poets centred their works around a new realism, the so-called sentrallyrikk (“central lyric”)30 and psychoanalysis. Thus, the period most fruitful for the development of the litanic verse in Norway was that of Romanticism. The unstable political situation and the fight for a national language combined with European influences to produce a poetry which stayed in the reader’s memory — poetry which was memorable because of its themes, but also because of versification, sometimes of a litanic kind. It is difficult to determine the extent to which the poets’ use of litanic devices was a rhetorical strategy and that to which it was meant as a genuine dialogue with the literary and cultural tradition. What is certain is that litanic elements in Norwegian poetry were an expression of individual and collective emotions — exultation, concern, and love, which found their outlet in numerous apostrophes and parallelisms. Translated from Polish by Dominika Ruszkiewicz

30 In Scandinavian literary studies, the term sentrallyrikk is used with reference to poetry which brings up the so-called “perennial” or “central” questions about life, birth, love and death, as opposed to satiric, didactic (læredikt) and occasional (lelighetsdikt) poetry. It is a general term and is not ascribed to any particular period. Cf. Jakob Lothe, Christian Refsum, Unni Solberg, Litteraturvitenskapelig leksikon (Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget, 2007), 231.

Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Litany in Swedish Literature and Culture: Preliminary Remarks Swedish dictionaries and encyclopaedias define the “litany” as a read or monorecited form of Christian prayer which consists in enumerating the prayer intentions and repeating the formulae such as “Herre förbarma dig” (“Lord have mercy”) or “Herre hör vår bön” (“Lord hear us”). Most definitions refer the readers to the only extant litany in the liturgy of the Swedish Lutheran Church which is intercessory in nature and on some occasions replaces the common prayer.1 The second meaning of the term “litany,” which comes to the fore in contemporary Swedish, denotes a long enumeration of sorrows and grievances, wailing and plaintive in tone.2 To explain the etymology of this neosemantic term, scholars point to the deprecatory character of the Church litany, which was read in times of sorrow and misfortune.3 Thus, for most Swedes the litany has negative connotations and the broad cultural context in which it is inscribed in Catholic countries remains alien. This shows the challenge one faces in looking for the traces of the litany, litanic verse and the worldview they promote in Swedish literature. Categories such as “litanic verse” and “the poetic litany” simply do not exist in Swedish literary studies. Similarly, the litany as a form of prayer has been neglected in scholarship and its development has not been examined. My purpose is to focus upon the presence and trace the evolution of the litany in Swedish literature and culture, taking into consideration also works in Swedish composed in Finland, which from the fourteenth century to 1809 was part of the Swedish Kingdom. The analysis will show that the year 1879, which marks the beginning of the Modern Breakthrough, is also an important date for the

1 Nationalencyklopedin. Band 12 [The National Encyclopaedia. Vol. 12] (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Bra Böcker, 1993). 2 Svensk ordbok. Band 1 A-M [The Swedish Dictionary. Vol. 1 A-M] (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1990). 3 Bra Böckers Lexikon. Band 14. [The Bra Böcker Lexicon. Vol. 14] (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Bra Böcker, 1977).

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development of the litanic genre. Therefore, the periods preceding and following this date will be analysed in separate chapters. The first paper will deal with six literary periods: the Middle Ages (c. 1100–1520), the Reformation (1520–1630), the Great Power Period (1630–1730), the Enlightenment (1730–1809), the Romantic Period (1809–1830), and the Age of Liberalism and Realism (1830–1879).

Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Transformations of Litany in Swedish Poetry: From the Middle Ages to the Modern Breakthrough (1100–1879) The starting point of the analysis is the history of the Swedish litany as a form of prayer; some mention will also be made of the overlapping of genres, based on the litany and the song. The bulk of the chapter will be devoted to the relation between the litany and the Protestant psalm. Examples will be provided of those poetic works which are inscribed in the religious tradition, but are at the same time individual realizations of litanic prayer.

The Magic Formula and the Law Codes We cannot ignore the fact that the rhythmical, alliterative and enumerative runic inscriptions or the Edda’s Icelandic poetry provided inspiration for medieval poets and for the exegetes who wrote commentaries on prayers addressed to Christ and the saints. In an attempt to find litanic traces in Swedish culture, we can also recall the custom of furnishing graves with bronze or iron tablets inscribed with runic charms: they were supposed to protect the living against demons returning to Earth.1 As the Christian faith began to take hold, the magical formulae gave way to apostrophes to Christ, the Virgin Mary and the saints.2 The saints, especially Mary, also appear in folk charms and spells based on incantations: they are connected with ploughing and other field work, health and sickness and giving birth. Such forms, which occupy the middle ground between a charm and prayer,

1 Elisabeth Svärdström, “Högstenableckets rungalder,” [“The Runic Magical Formula on the Högstena Tablet”] Fornvännen, 12–21(1967): 19, accessed June 6th, 2015, http:// kulturarvsdata.se/raa/fornvannen/html/1967_012. 2 Lars Lönnroth, “Medeltidsrunor och folkkultur,” [“The Medieval Runes and Folk Culture”] in Den Svenska litteraturen. 1. Från runor till romantik 800–1830, [The History of Swedish Literature. 1. From Runes to Romanticism 800–1830] eds. Lars Lönnroth, and Sven Delblanc (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1999), 44.

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use stylistic devices characteristic of the litany, such as apostrophes, repetitions, and parallelisms.3 The traces of the quasi-litanic, pre-Christian worldview, expressed in the various ways of ordering reality, are also to be found in regional law codes.4 Written down in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, these grew out of an oral tradition, which had its impact on the rhythm of the language, the use of alliteration, parallelisms, enumeration and refrains. Another element which points to the affinity between law codes and the litany is, for instance, the enumeration of crimes to be found in the former, which was followed by a classification into certain groups and a fixed formula.5

The Litany as a Form of Prayer in the Swedish Tradition It is difficult to determine when exactly the Christian litany reached Sweden, just as it is to provide the date of the country’s Christianization, which can be best described as a process, stretching from the ninth to the thirteenth century. We have to take into account the fact that during the Reformation a large number of Church documents were destroyed. There is no doubt, however, that the litany most frequently recited in Swedish churches was a variant of the Litany of the Saints, which was brought from the Western Church by the Christian missionaries. The versified litany, which appears in some early written records, was less popular.6 Missals printed towards the end of the Middle Ages contain only the Litany of the Saints in its longer form, which was used at the Eastern Vigil liturgy or at baptism, and shorter form, used during the funeral service. Sven Helander, whose research focuses on liturgy and hagiography, notes that the first Scandinavian saints were incorporated into the litany during the regional 3 Kristina Stobaeus, “Maria nyckelpiga. Om jungfru Maria i svensk tidegärd, hymn och visa,” [“Mary: God’s Steward. On the Virgin Mary in the Swedish Liturgy of the Hours, the Hymn and Song”] in Maria i Sverige under tusen år. Föredrag vid symposiet i Vadstena 6–10 oktober 1994, [A Thousand Years of Mary’s Presence in Sweden. Lectures Presented at the Symposium in Vadstena on 6-10 October 1994] eds. Sven-Erik Brodd, and Alf Härdelin (Skellefteå: Artos, 1996), 1025–1032. 4 Richard Steffen, “Medeltiden,” [“The Middle Ages”] in Svenska litteraturens historia. Första delen, [The History of Swedish Literature. Part One] ed. Otto Sylwan (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedts & Söner Förlag, 1923), 124ff. 5 Ibid., 125. 6 Sven Helander, Den medeltida Uppsalaliturgin. Studier i helgonlängd, tidegärd och mässa [The Uppsala Medieval Liturgy. Studies on the Calendar of the Saints, the Liturgy of the Hours and Masses] (Lund: Arcus, 2001), 242.

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formation of the Swedish Church, which took place in the years 1200–1273. In different dioceses, different local saints were favoured. In Uppsala it was Eric, in Strängnäs, Botvid and Eskil.7 Did the litany in medieval Sweden exist merely as part of the liturgy? In an attempt to answer this question, we may turn to the extant prayer books, which are outside of the genre, but their composition points to a litanic tradition — a tradition whose building blocks were fixed formulae, apostrophes, repetitions, and the Pater Noster or Ave Maria, recited to round off longer prayers or to provide relief between parts of prayers. As an example, we can quote “En godh bön till all hälgon” (“A good prayer to all saints”)8 which comes from Märita Thuresdotter’s prayer book, compiled in Vadstena about 1500. The form of the prayer resembles the shortened version of the litany. Most of the addressees are presented in groups: the holy angels, patriarchs and prophets, martyrs, the faithful, virgins; only Mary and the Archangel Michael are addressed by name. As opposed to the traditional litany, this prayer lacks a common beseeching formula. The supplications are complex in form: each is made up of three or four petitions, expressed by means of verbs: help, hear, intercede for us, pray for me, give, save, e.g. “O jomfru sancta Maria gudz modher, syndogha manna hjälp, hör mik […]”9 (“Holy Mary, Mother of God, Refuge of Sinners, hear me”), “O sancte Michael bidh for mik mädh allom hälgom änglom […]”10 (“Saint Michael pray for me with all the holy angels”). Another medieval text, a prayer to the Virgin Mary, is attributed to Bridget of Sweden and preserved in a manuscript from the Skokloster Collection11; it can be perceived as a Swedish attempt to imitate the akathist. Each of the twentythree stanzas begins with a chairetismic call, containing one of the four formulae: “sighnadg vari thu” (“blessed mayest thou be”), “hedir hafui thu” (“honor be to thee”), “loff hafui thu” (“praise be to thee”), “äro hafwi thu” (“glory be to thee”). The name that follows — Mary — is surrounded by epithets and antonomasias: “min iomfru sancta maria gudz modhir” (“My Lady, O Virgin Mary, Mother of God”). The prayer also includes narrative elements: the author evokes events of Mary’s

7 Ibid., 223. 8 Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket (KB), Cod. Holm. A 37. Quoted from Robert Geete, Svenska böner från medeltiden [Swedish Medieval Prayers] (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1907– 1909), 365–366. 9 Ibid., 365. 10 Ibid., 366. 11 Stockholm, Riksarkivet, Cod. Skokl 8. 8:o. Ibid., 218–223.

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life which the faithful were well familiar with and which they could experience anew in prayer. The beginning of the Reformation in Sweden (1527), which was a matter of politics (after the break-up of the Kalmar Union with Denmark and Norway in 1523 the Swedish nationally based kingdom was established) as well as economics (the appropriation of Church revenues by the royal treasury) was to have a significant influence on the development of the litany. Rejecting the cult of the saints and most of the Marian dogmas, the Swedish Lutheran Church limited the circle of addressees evoked in prayer to God, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The litany which came to be preserved in the liturgy was a Swedish equivalent of the Deutsche Litanei, composed in 1529 by Martin Luther and based on the Litany of the Saints, but omitting the enumeration of the saintly intercessors. Initially, the faithful were advised to recite the litany at least once a week, but in time the prayer began to be associated first and foremost with the Penitential Services during Lent.

The Litany and the Ballad Investigating the presence of the litany in Swedish medieval religious life, its literature and culture, we should not pass in silence over the encounter between two genres which were similar in form and verbal content: the religious song in the vernacular and the Scandinavian medieval ballad (Sw. den medeltida balladen). The songs with the refrain “Kyrie eleison” or “Eleison”, referred to as leis (pl. leiser), reached Sweden from Germany. The prototype of leiser were Latin Kyrie tropes. Short calls or stanzas woven into Latin texts expanded into longer songs sung during processions and pilgrimages, and sometimes even used in liturgy.12 Den medeltida balladen, in turn, which was called a dance song or a folk song (Sw. dansvisa, folkvisa) in the Romantic period, is a stanzaic work in the epic-lyric tradition, melic in character, employing enumerations as well as syntactic and compositional parallelisms. What is characteristic of the ballad is the presence of one or two refrains. The ballads were performed by a soloist (stanzas) and choir (refrains) during a processional dance.13 The encounter between the leis song

12 “Kyrie eleison” and “Kyrkovisa (Leis),” in Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medetid från vikingatid till reformationstid Band 9. [Lexicon for the Nordic Middle Ages, from the Time of the Vikings to the Age of the Protestant Reformation Vol. 9] (Malmö: Allhem, 1956–1978). 13 Bengt R. Jonsson, “‘De hjältar de ligga slagna’. Om den nordiska balladen,” [“‘The heroes lie slain’. On the Nordic Ballad”] in Från hymn till skröna. Medeltida litteratur i ny belysning [From Hymns to Tall Stories. A New Perspective on Medieval Literature], ed.

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and the ballad resulted in the transfer of the litanic ektenial formulae to secular works — in some ballads and later songs there appears a refrain which resembles a prayer formula and which is not characteristic of the genre. This kind of influence can be exemplified by “Staffansvisa” (“Staffan’s Song”) — a ballad which evokes the legend about Herod, Staffan the stable-groom and the “Star of Bethlehem,” and which became part of Christmas celebrations.“Staffansvisa” was known all over Sweden and had a number of local variants. One of them, published in 1748, contained the ektenial formula “Hjälpe Gud och sankte Staffan” (“Let God and Saint Staffan help”) as the second refrain of the two-line stanza.14 The refrain with a plea for a blessing also appears in “Dalvisan” (“The Song from Dalarna”) by Andreas Wallenius (1616–1663), which dates from the first half of the seventeenth century. Stylized as a folk song, it is a kind of regional hymn: “Gud glädje och styrke de män som där bo x2/ vid älvom, på berg och i dalom!” (“God give joy and strength to the men who live there x2/ by the rivers, in the mountains and in valleys!”).15 The connections between the litany and the folk song have been noted by the ethnographer Gullan Gerward. Preserved in multiple variants, works such as “Majvisan” (“The May Song”), associated with the spring rites and widespread in Denmark and southern Sweden, typify, according to her, prayers for good harvest and abundance; in that respect they are folk paraphrases of the litany. As an example she quotes a refrain, litanic in origin, which is preserved in a Danish version dating from 1646, explaining that the call “Hør det som wi bede” (“Listen to what we plead,” “Listen to our prayers”) can be perceived as a free translation of the Latin formula Te rogamus audi nos.16

The Litany and the Protestant Psalm The Protestant hymns, known in Scandinavia as psalms, were formed as a genre in Sweden and Finland during the Reformation and the Great Power Period, but they were also often employed by the Romantic poets. In the second half of the Alf Härdelin (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1989), 136–144. Bernt Olsson, Ingemar Algulin, Litteraturens historia i Sverige [The History of Literature in Sweden] (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1995), 32. 14 Nordisk Familjebok. Uggleupplagan. Band 26 [Nordic Family Book. The Owl Edition. Vol. 26] (Stockholm: Nordisk familjeboks förlags aktiebolag, 1917), accessed February 5, 2015, http://runeberg.org/nfcf/0501.html. 15 Johannes Edfelt, Svensk lyrik före Bellman [The Swedish Litany before Bellman] (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 1963), 149–150. 16 Gullan Gerward, “Majvisan — en parafras på litanian?,” [“The May Song — a Litanic Paraphrase?”] RIG — Kulturhistorisk tidskrift 78, 3(1995): 66–76.

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nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, the psalms developed also due to the movements for religious renewal (Sw. väckelserörelsen), which operated both in opposition to the official Church of Sweden and within its purview. There is no doubt that the classical litany as well as the litanic tradition of prayer can be treated as an important source of information for the psalmists; moreover, numerous works belonging to the genre can be called litanic or psalmic-litanic. The first Swedish Protestant songbook, compiled by the most important figure of the Swedish Reformation, Olaus Petri (1493–1552), was published as early as in 1526. The only fully extant edition is the fourth, extended one, published in 1536 under the title Swenske songer eller wisor (Swedish Songs or Little Songs). Apart from works composed in the vernacular especially for this purpose, it contains the translations of Martin Luther’s hymns, including works with the refrain “Kyrieelyson,”17 modelled on the leis songs.18 Litanic inspirations are also noticeable in numerous works which make up the psalm book of 1695, such as one of the most popular Swedish psalms — “Den blomstertid nu kommer”19 (“The season of blossom is coming”). Composed by Israel Kolmodin (1643–1709), it still accompanies the celebrations of the end of the school year. The psalm has a regular form: it is made up of six eight-line stanzas with alternate rhymes. The initial three stanzas provide a description of nature in spring, whose beauty directs people’s thoughts to God. The next three stanzas contain a prayer to Jesus Christ, who is addressed with reverence in laudatory apostrophes. The antonomasias for Jesus in Kolmodin’s psalm derive from the world of nature: “war glädie-Sool och skijn” (“the Sun of our joy and our shield”) and are often borrowed from the Bible: “Sarons blomster skiöna” (“the beautiful flower of Sharon”), “Lilja i grön dahl” (“Lily of the green valley”). The supplications which appear in stanzas four and five — “Vänd bort all sorg och smärta” (“Turn away all sorrow and pain”) — refer to a collective recipient of prayer that can be identified with the congregation: “Giv kärlekseld i hjärta” (“Kindle the fire of love in our hearts”). Stanza six is in its entirety a plea for a good harvest, which guarantees prosperity. The recurring supplicatory formula is “Välsigna” (“Bless”), used in expressions such as “Wälsigna åhrets gröda” (“Bless this year’s harvest”).

17 Also written as: “Kyrieeleyson,” “Kyrieleison,” “Kyrioleis,” “Kyrie” or “Ky”. 18 The text of the songbook is available online at “Project Runeberg,” accessed February 11, 2015, http://runeberg.org/swisornw/. 19 Ed. Håkan Möller, Den gamla psalmboken. Ett urval ur 1695, 1819 och 1937 års psalmböcker [The Old Swedish Psalm Book. A Selection from the Psalm Books of 1695, 1819 and 1937] (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2001), 87–89.

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The psalm book of 1819 likewise does not lack psalms which borrow from the litanic tradition. One of them is a work (numbered 384 in Den svenska psalmboken of 1819 and 158 in Den svenska psalmboken of 1937) by the Enlightenment poet Samuel Ödman (1750–1829). The psalm begins with an ektenial apostrophe “Herre, dig i nåd förbarma! / Hör ditt folk, som hjälp begär” (“Lord, by your grace have mercy! / Listen to your people who need help”); each of the nine stanzas is closed with a supplicatory formula. Some of them were borrowed verbatim from the Protestant litany: “Hjälp oss milde Herre Gud” (“Help us, Lord God”), “Hör oss, milde Herre Gud” (“Hear us, Lord God”) and some are based on the litany: “Fräls ditt folk och hör dess bön!” (“Save your people and hear their prayers”),“Giv oss nåd och hör vår bön” (“Give us grace and hear our prayer”). The first part of the psalm contains numerous periphrases and antonomasias of the heavenly addressee; the second part is dominated by supplications. To show that the psalm, composed in 1798, is a poetic paraphrase of the litany approved by the Swedish Lutheran Church, we can compare the fragments taken from both texts: Psalm 158, Stanza 4 Från allt ont, som hjärtat leder Till begärens villostig, Från försåt som fall bereder Hungerns fasa, pest och krig Uppror, tvedräkt, brand och lågor, Hagel, storm, din vredes bud, Och från evighetens plågor Oss bevara, Herre Gud! 20

The Swedish Litany För alla synder, för all villfarelse, för all ont, för djävulens försåt och list, för pest och hungersnöd, för krig och örlig, för uppror och tvedräkt för eld och våda för ond bråd död för den eviga döden Bevara oss, milde Herre Gud.21

[From all evil, which leads the heart / To the paths of desire, / From traps, which prepare the fall / (From) the horror of hunger, plague and war / Rebellion and sedition, fire and flames, / Hail, storm, the messengers of thy wrath, / And from eternal pain / Deliver us, Lord God!]

[From all sins, / from all false doctrine, / from all evil, / from the snares and cunning of the devil, / from plague and famine, / from war and battle, / from rebellion and sedition / from fire and misfortune / from evil sudden death / from the eternal death / Deliver us, good Lord God.]

20 The psalm “Herre, dig i nåd förbarma” (“Lord, by your grace have mercy”) is numbered 158 in the psalm book of 1937. Cf. Den svenska psalmboken 1937 [The Swedish Psalm Book of 1937] (Stockholm: Verbum, 1937), 130. 21 Ibid., 996.

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More than half of the psalms included in the psalm book of 1819 were composed or re-edited by the editor of the collection, Johan Olof Wallin (1779–1839), a poet and clergyman, and a representative of Swedish Romanticism. One of Wallin’s original compositions, embodying the poetics of the litanic verse, is Psalm 131, dated to 1816. Its structure is based on parallelism — a stylistic device often employed by the poet. The addressee of the psalmic prayer is the Holy Spirit, evoked in subsequent stanzas as “sanningens Ande,” “krafternas Ande,” and “glädjens Ande” (“the Spirit of Truth,” “the Spirit of Strength,” “the Spirit of Joy”). The parallel polyonymic apostrophes are of laudatory nature; they are followed by parallel supplications: “Kom att oss ledsaga,” “Kom att oss uppliva,” “Kom att oss hugsvala” (“Come and lead us,” “Come and revive us,” “Come and comfort us”). The stanzas are rounded off with a supplicatory formula, preceded by the object of supplication: “Visshet, o Herre, / Giv oss av höjden” (“Wisdom, O Lord, / Give us from on high”), “Helighet, o Herre, / Giv oss av höjden” (“Holiness”), “Salighet, o Herre, giv oss av höjden” (“Salvation”).22

The Poetic Litany as Composed by Wivallius and Gestrinius The period under consideration produced very little litanic verse which moves beyond the scope of the sacrum. The litanic form seems reserved for texts used in liturgy and prayer. Consideration of the transformations the litany underwent would not be complete without mention of two works which occupy a middle ground between the litanic or psalmic prayer approved by the Church of Sweden and the text of a private prayer which shows the need to emulate existing models and employ them creatively. “Lärkans sång är allsintet lång”23 (“The lark’s song is not long at all”) was composed by Lars Wivallius (1605–1669), a very colourful figure of the Great Power Period and a talented poet who in the history of Swedish literature is known for his meticulous lyrical compositions with personal overtones. The poem is made up of seventeen five-line stanzas with alternate rhymes. Line five, which in most stanzas takes the form of a supplication with litanic associations — “Gud give all sorg kunde snart vändas i glädje!” (“God, make all sorrows soon turn into joy”) — serves the purpose of the refrain. The first part of the poem contains the poet’s observations 22 The psalm “Helige Ande, sanningens Ande” (“Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth”) bears the number 131 in the psalm book of 1937. Ibid. 110. 23 Lars Wivallius, Svenska dikter. Utgivna och med inledning av Erik Gamby [Swedish Poems. Edited and with Introduction by Erik Gamby] (Stockholm: Minerva, 1990), 101–104.

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on nature and the vicissitudes of fate. In the second part they take on a religious character. The last two stanzas comprise a highly individualized prayer addressed to Christ; it begins with an apostrophe which contains polyonymic references to the addressee and ektenial calls. The movement from a universal theme and communal dimension to a more intimate relation between God and man is also reflected in the refrain. O Jesu Christ, min frälsare kär, som lyckan utdelar hos alla fräls mig ifrån mitt hjärtats besvär, så vill jag dig troligt åkalla. Och lät min sorg snarlig sig vända till glädje.24 [O Jesus Christ, my dear Saviour, / you who award happiness to all / save me from the struggles of the heart, / and I will call upon you in faith. / And make my sorrow soon turn into joy.]

Wivallius’s poem can be seen as representing a meeting point between folk song and the litany and as such it belongs to a whole tradition of similar poems in Swedish literature. Another interesting example of the appropriation of the litanic form is a poem by Ernest Gestrinius (1663–1739) entitled “Klagelig röst”25 (“The Lamenting Voice”), which gives expression to the painful experiences of a war exile. Born in Finland, Gestrinius was a Protestant clergyman and teacher forced to leave the country because of war (the Russian invasion of Finland in 1707). The poem is composed of twenty five-line stanzas, identified by Roman numerals. The first stanza begins (line one and two) and finishes (line five) with a supplicatory call made up of a series of formulae which are repeated in the same sequences of words: “Jesu hielp,” “Hielp, Jesu, hielp,” “Herre Jesu, hielp” (“Jesus help,” “Help, Jesus, help,” “Lord Jesus, help”). Lines three and four rhyme. The same pattern is repeated in odd stanzas. Even stanzas are marked by compositional parallelism and enjambement. The first line of each stanza contains a doubled phrase with a syntactic and semantic complementation in the second line. The

24 Wivallius, Svenska dikter, 104. 25 The poem is preserved in the collection of the Royal Library of Sweden in Stockholm. Here quoted from: Ed. Lars Huldén, Långa vimplar, stinna segel eller svenska skalders ärekrans. Dikter från Sveriges stormaktstid [Long Pennants, Puffed Sails or the Wreath of the Swedish Skald’s Fame. Poems from the Great Power Period] (Stockholm: FIB:s Lyrikklubb, 1992), 208–212.

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last line repeats the beginning of the stanza, but with no doubling. The rhyme pattern is aabba. Men Jesu hielp! hielp, Jesu, hielp! Herre Jesu hielp Och Tig öfwer oss förbarma, Tit beträngda folk och arma! Hielp Jesu, hielp! Herre Jesu hielp! Hiälp oss och led! Hjälp oss och led Til en ewig fred. In i Himla-Frögde-salen, När wi dö från jämmer-dalen, Hiälp oss och led till en ewig fred! (stanza 19-20) [But Jesus help! help, Jesus, help! / Lord Jesus, help / And have mercy on us, / Your distressed and poor people! / Help Jesus, help! Lord Jesus, help! // Help us and lead us! Help us and lead us / To eternal peace. / To the rooms of heavenly joy, / When dying we will leave the valley of tears, / Help us and lead us to eternal peace!]

The poem joins epic elements (the story about the flight) with a reflection on the poet’s and his countrymen’s predicament. The work is deprecatory in nature; Gestrinius perceives war as the punishment for sins and suggests the adoption of a precautionary measure — humbling oneself before God’s will, doing penance and praying for mercy. Calling for God’s help, the poet evokes his pain and suffering; the supplications refer to both the poet’s personal intentions and the intention of the whole war-stricken country.

The Litany vs Litanic Verse — Conclusions To sum up, litanic prayer experienced its greatest popularity during the Middle Ages. In the Lutheran atmosphere of post-Reformation Sweden its development can be considered not so much as slower than in the Catholic Church, but as virtually non-existent; it was a remnant from the previous epoch adjusted to serve the purpose of the Protestant liturgy. The negligible importance of the litany is shown in the fact that the text of the only prayer approved by the Church of Sweden remained intact until the 1980s.26 In conservative circles, it was even believed that the litany should be removed from the Swedish liturgy on the grounds that it is

26 The Swedish psalm book of 1695 was thrice updated: in 1819, 1937 and 1986.

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a pagan, Pharisaic prayer which creates a false image of God and does not meet the criteria for a Protestant prayer.27 At the same time, we can see that the litanic tradition did not disappear, but became one of the branches of the psalmic tradition which is characterised by a great variety of compositional patterns and high intertextual potential. The litany was appropriated in a number of ways, its most frequently borrowed elements being: the ektenial supplicatory formulae, parallel structures, anaphoras, the refrains, apostrophes and invocations. Even though the litanic structure was taken over by other genres such as the Protestant psalm and (to a lesser degree) the song, we shall look in vain, at least in Sweden, for the signs of a strong tradition of the litanic verse functioning outside the religious context. Litanic features are also to be found in the ballad, especially in the refrains which contain ektenial elements, but this phenomenon did not have a wide appeal and thus it leaves our conclusions unchanged. Translated from Polish by Dominika Ruszkiewicz

27 Carl Axel Samsioe, Har svenska kyrkans litania berättigande? [Is the Swedish Litany a Proper Form of Prayer?] (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedts & Söner, 1927), 4.

Magdalena Żmuda-Trzebiatowska Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

“Why would you have to say a litany of your soul”: Swedish and Swedish-Language Poetry in the Period 1879–1940 In the Swedish-language literature composed in Sweden and Finland,1 the beginning of the so-called Modern Breakthrough (Sw. det moderna genombrottet) goes back to 1879, which is when August Strindberg’s novel Röda rummet (The Red Room) was published. The 1880s in Sweden were a period of naturalism; the 1890s were marked by neo-romanticism and were characterized by a strong regional and patriotic focus. The fin-de-siècle literature (Sw. sekelskiftelitteratur), in turn, is characterized by decadentism and symbolism. The beginning of the twentieth century is marked by a middle-class and proletarian realism, which develop side by side; modernist tendencies appear in the middle of the second decade, thanks to Pär Lagerkvist in Sweden and Edith Södergran in Finland. As with the previous epoch, an examination of litanic verse in Sweden at the turn of the twentieth century has likewise never been attempted before. Swedish studies on literature and literary history as well as of the works of individual writers do not acknowledge the category of litanic verse or the poetic litany.

The Litany in Honour of Mary and All the Saints Verner von Heidenstam (1859–1940), Oscar Levertin (1862–1906) and Axel Erik Karlfeldt (1864–1931) represent the neo-romanticism of the 1890s. Heidenstam was hailed a national poet in his lifetime. Levertin’s poetic achievements were overshadowed by his career as a literary historian and critic. Karlfeldt, admired for his verbal virtuosity, belongs to the school of regional literature and is known for his eulogic depictions of his home province, Dalarna. The works of all the three poets contain religious traits. The works discussed below represent three different attempts at re-interpreting and perhaps also at rehabilitating the Marian cult rejected by the Protestant theoreticians. 1 In 1809 Finland, which from the fourteenth century had been part of Sweden, came under the rule of Russia. The country became independent on December 6th, 1917, after the October Revolution.

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Published in 1891, Oscar Levertin’s poem “I nöd”2 (“In need”) is made up of five eight-line stanzas with alternate rhymes and a ring composition. The descriptions of the poet’s existential fears and spiritual anxieties are interlaced with the sighs of prayer. The second stanza clearly evokes the litanic titles of the Mother of Christ which were formed in the Middle Ages: “Maria, du drottning för land och vatten, / för glädje och vånda, för väder och vind”3 (“Mary, thou queen of land and water, / of joy and anguish, of weather and wind”). Let us remark that the image created by Levertin has a dual character. Mary appears not only as the giver of light, hope and joy, but also as the minister of sorrow, penance, and pain. The ektenial formula contained in stanza four is accompanied by two contradictory epithets describing their addressee: “Maria, förbarma dig, stränga och milda”4 (“Mary, have mercy on us, strict and mild”). In a moment of despair and anxiety, the poet directs his thoughts towards her, who had been for centuries regarded as a comforter and intercessor, endowing her with features which are in the Protestant tradition — even more than in the Catholic Church — reserved for God the Father. Due to its theme and compositional pattern, Levertin’s poem can be seen as a dialogue with the tradition of the Marian cult. A similar dialogue is taken up by Verner von Heidenstam in his poem entitled “Himladrottningens bild i Heda”5 (“The Queen of Heaven’s Picture in Heda,” 1916). Endowing a wooden sculpture with the power of speech, the poet reverses the traditional litanic pattern of communication. Going against the grain of conventional antonomasias, the Virgin Mary assigns various names to herself. She depicts herself as the witness of the passing years and one whose feet were kissed by the kings, but also as one who was forgotten and whose sculpted figure was covered with dust. The paradoxical treatment of genre culminates in her refusal to listen to prayer which does not express ardent faith: Bed mig ej om vad du har kärt, ej om guld och ej om namn. Gå, förnekare! Blott hos den, som tror, ske under.6

2 Oscar Levertin, Legender och visor [Legends and songs] (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag, 1891), 33–35, accessed April 28, 2015, https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/34095. 3 Ibid., 33. 4 Ibid., 34. 5 Verner von Heidenstam, Samlade dikter [Collected poems] (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1985), 363–364. 6 Ibid., 363.

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[Beg me not for what is dear to you / neither for gold nor for fame. / Go away, infidel! / Only the one who believes will experience a miracle.]

The second part of the poem is a return to the traditional litanic pattern. Moved by Mary’s words, the poet forms a prayer, asking for humility and the ability to see the beauty of the surrounding world. He also addresses the strict judgment expressed by Mary: “Den har tro, för vilken mycket är heligt”7 (“He has faith, for whom much is holy”). “Himladrottningens bild i Heda” is one of Heidenstam’s late works, written in free verse. Each of its three parts constitutes a semantically closed unit: the revelation, the poet’s account, and the prayer. Even though the poet does not employ formal solutions characteristic of the litany, his work alludes to the litanic worldview. The third Marian poem was authored by Erik Axel Karlfeldt who — together with Strindberg — was the most religiously engaged poet of his epoch.8 His “Gammal ramsa”9 (“The Old Chant,” 1927) is a five-stanza poem with a regular structure based on parallelisms. Each stanza opens with the chairetismic call “Ave Maria,” followed by the formula “benedia;”10 the third line enumerates those who shall receive the blessing. The poem presents different events of man’s life which are mentioned in prayer. Line four recalls Mary’s personal experiences, which make her more sympathetic towards the prayers she receives; they also introduce narrative elements: “you yourself had the infant at your breast,” “you yourself journeyed to the Egyptian land,” “you yourself were poor, like we are,” “you yourself were engaged to a journeyman carpenter,” “you yourself wept, standing by the cross.” Each stanza closes with a two-line, ektenial supplication, introduced by a relevant verb: lull to sleep, lead, preserve, dispel the darkness, or comfort, all of which can be seen in stanza one:

7 Ibid., 364. 8 Unlike Strindberg, who found it difficult to comply with the religious regulations, Karlfeldt was always very strongly connected with the Swedish Lutheran Church. Cf. Eds. Lars Lönnroth, Sven Delblanc, Den svenska litteraturen 2. Genombrottstiden 1830–1920 [Swedish Literature. The Time of the Breakthrough 1830–1920] (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1999), 382. 9 Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Samlade dikter [Collected Poems] (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1984), 793–794. 10 In Swedish editorial commentaries the word benedia is translated as välsigna — “bless,” which suits well the ensuing object: “bless those who;” however, the expression can also be regarded as an epithet complementing Mary’s praise (“good,” “gracious”) or supplication: “be good / gracious.”

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Ave Maria, benedia dem som suga och dia. Själv har du haft ett barn vid ditt bröst. Vyssa med din ljuva röst i den stränga host.11 [Ave Maria, / benedia / those who suck and feed. / You yourself had the infant at your breast. / Lull to sleep with your sweet voice / in the bitter autumn.]

The Swedish word “ramsa,” which appears in the poem’s title, refers to a prearranged sequence of words or syllables which has the effect of a rhythmic, rhyming enumeration, chanted as part of a ritual or play.12 The term denotes short, rhyming poems of folk or popular provenance, as well as magical formulae, children’s counting-out rhymes, catchwords and slogans. Subordinated to the oral form of performance such as song, recitation or chant, this kind of composition allows the use of words which are incomprehensible or even non-existent, but which fit the rhythmical sequence. A closer look at Karlfeldt’s poem reveals a rhythmical principle which fully justifies its title. The six-line stanzas use the rhyme pattern of aaa bbb. The sequence Maria–benedia–dia used in stanza one is reproduced in each of the following stanzas with only the last element changed (stanza two: “ri’a,” three: “stia,” four: “fria,” five: “skria”). The vocal dimension of the sequence is also determined by the fact that it is composed of words with the melodic accent of type 2, which represents a fall on the accented syllable:13 Ma-r i-a, be-ne-d i-a, d i-a. This also refers to the Latin formula, which in this way becomes fully integrated with the Swedish text. The poem lacks a clearly defined lyrical subject; Karlfeldt’s form of prayer gives rise to multiple possibilities of interpretation, including the division between the choir and the leader. Unlike in the traditional litany, in Karlfeldt’s poem Mary does not assume the role of a holy intercessor. On the contrary, she appears as one of the addressees of prayers. This seems to support the thesis that Karlfeldt does not turn for inspiration to the Catholic form of prayer, which was rejected and openly condemned by the post-Reformation Swedish Lutheran Church, but offers

11 Karlfeldt, Samlade dikter, 793. 12 Svenska Akademiens Ordbok [The Swedish Academy Dictionary], accessed April 14, 2015, http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/. 13 Type 2 accent appears in most two- and multi-syllable words. Type 1 accent represents a rise in the vocal line on the accented syllable and is characteristic of one-syllable words.

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a poetic rendition of a folk chant — a chant whose prototype may have included a litanic prayer dating back to the Middle Ages. Apart from the relatively small group of lyrics on Marian themes, Swedish poets also produced other religious poems with clearly marked litanic elements. Among the most unusual poems are those in which the figures of saints are presented — a rare peculiarity in the Lutheran culture. The saints are invoked in the poems either by names — e.g. Bridget in Karlfeldt’s14 and Gudula in Levertin’s15 poems — or collectively, e.g. the holy martyrs in Karin Boye’s (1900–1941) poem “Den stora skaran” (“A Large Throng,” 1924). The poem is composed of two eight-line stanzas in which the same syllabic (12-12-8-5-12-7-10) and compositional pattern is repeated. Each stanza contains a number of enumerations: in the first stanza they are used to create a portrait of nameless saints; in the second, to appeal to the potential imitators for perseverance. The narration about earthly life, dying for faith and heavenly rewards is built of short, rhythmical sentences: De ha vunnit. De vila. Hur deras kronor lysa. Deras långa, långa vila har intet slut. De ha smakat mörkret. De ha druckit döden. Deras ord var evigt: “Amen!”16 [They have won. They rest. How their crowns shine. / Their long, long rest has no end. / They have tasted darkness. They have drunk death. / Their word was eternal: “Amen!”]17

A similar motif, albeit in a desacralized form, appears in the poem of the Finnish-Swedish modernist Gunnar Björling (1887–1960), entitled “VI 1918” from the collection Korset och löftet (The Cross and the Promise, 1925).18 The martyrs invoked in the poem are the victims of the Finnish Civil War, which lasted from January to May 1918.

The Strindbergian Litany August Strindberg (1849–1912) was an initiator and key figure of the Modern Breakthrough in Sweden. Even though outside Sweden his name is mainly associated with dramatic works, Strindberg was in fact a very versatile writer who used Karlfeldt, “Plantering” [“Planting”] in Samlade dikter, 786–788. Levertin, “Gudule” in Legender och visor, 10–11. Karin Boye, Dikter [Poems] (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1993), 72. Translated into English by David McDuff in Karin Boye, Complete Poems (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994), accessed May 5, 2015, http://www.karinboye.se/ verk/dikter/dikter-mcduff/the-great-multitude.shtml. 18 Gunnar Björling, Skrifter I [Writings I] (Norrköping: Eriksson, 1995), 164–165. 14 15 16 17

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a whole repertoire of genres and experimented with form. His oeuvre includes poems which point to his interest in the litany and which become a testing ground for the limits of genre. A litanic passage which deserves particular attention is to be found in the fourth part of the sequence Sömngångarnätter på vakna dagar (Sleepwalking Nights on Wide-Awake Days19), which has a strong autobiographical basis. Published in 1884, the sequence is composed of monologues written in stichic verse which resembles the medieval knittelvers. The theme of the poem is a spiritual journey in time and space, during which the protagonist confronts the illusions represented by the Church, art, literature and science. The idea that biological science has become a new religion, with the cell being regarded as the highest being, invites the question: can it also become the addressee of supplicatory prayers? The initial distance of the poet turns into the enthusiasm of a neophyte and the paraenetic device he uses to introduce a number of synonymous expressions for the addressee gives way to a full-fledged litany — a litany to the cell. The poet turns to the tradition of the genre, trying to fill the litanic frame with expressions borrowed from the field of science. He tastes the sound of polyonymic invocations, builds periphrasis, and re-interprets the ektenial calls. The apostrophes “O cell,” “O primarian,” “O protoplasm,” which evoke the chairetismic calls, are a crowning achievement of this sophisticated, parodic variation on the litanic genre: O, cell, (som även urslemmet kallas, Och protoplasma också på de lärdes språk); O, cell som styr mitt öde och allas Kom frigör oss ifrån livets bråk O urslem, urslem, fyll upp vårt hjärta Och släck vår andes brinnande törst, O protoplasma du som kom först Befria oss ifrån tillvarons smärta; […].20 [O cell, (also called the primarian, / as well as protoplasm, in the language of science); / O cell, who guides my destiny and all others / Come and free us from life’s strife / O primarian, primarian, fill our hearts / And quench the burning fire of our spirit, / O protoplasm, who came first / Free us from the existential pain; […].]21

Another poem in which Strindberg tests the limits of the litanic genre is “Laokoon II” (“Laocoön II”). Composed in the early 1890s, it takes up a mythological theme. 19 August Strindberg, Sleepwalking Nights on Wide-Awake Days. In a Free Translation by Arvid Paulson (New York: Law-Arts Publishers, 1978). 20 Strindberg, Samlade Verk. Nationalupplaga. Band 15, 213. 21 Cf. Strindberg, Sleepwalking Nights On Wide-Awake Days, 58.

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A verbal skirmish between the titular Trojan minister and Apollo who punishes him for sacrilege is fitted into the frame of a negative, derisive litany.22 Laocoön throws insults at his antagonist, which take the form of pejorative antonomasias: Apollo, förbannade gud! Du jungfrupilt, den karlhatande Dianas broder! Du skägglöse, vanföre misogyn, Son av mörker och ljus!23 [Apollo, the cursed god! / You playboy, the brother of the man-hating Diana! / You beardless, lame misogynist, / The son of darkness and light!]

The final part of the poem contains a supplication, which appears to belong to the generic tradition — Laocoön pleads for his children’s sake. What is emphasized in this sequence is the reversed communicative pattern used in the poem. It is not the addressee, but the supplicant, who is brought to the fore: he assigns different names to himself and thus equates himself with a god.

The Litany of the Sun The Egyptian Litany of the Sun, a laudatory prayer made up of extended periphrases for the god Re, not only perfectly illustrates the tradition of assigning multiple names to gods — which exists in different cultures and also found its way into the Christian litany24 — but is also a literary model, re-discovered at the turn of the century and appropriated by a number of writers. Among different versions of the poetic Litany of the Sun are the poems of Gustaf Fröding, Karin Boye and Dan Andersson. Gustaf Fröding (1860–1911) is regarded as the last of the trio of great Swedish neo-romantics, which includes Heidenstam and Karlfeldt. His receptiveness to folk inspirations (connected in particular with his home province of Värmland) and his great musical sensitivity resulted in a large number of lyrics — simple in form, usually rhymed, using repetitions such as parallelisms and refrains. The term visa (“song,” “a little song”) also appears in the title of the poem “En februarivisa”25 (“A February Song”), which has the form of a prayer and employs stylistic devices 22 Cf. Witold Sadowski, Litania i poezja. Na materiale literatury polskiej od XI do XXI wieku [Litany and Poetry. On the Body of Material of Polish Literature from the Eleventh to the Twenty-First Century] (Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2011), 278ff. 23 Strindberg, Samlade Verk. Nationalupplaga. Band 15, 265–266. 24 Cf. Sadowski, Litany and Poetry, 38ff. 25 Fröding, Samlade dikter [Collected Poems], 591.

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characteristic of the litany. Both stanzas of the poem open with the same apostrophe addressed to the Sun; it contains the twice-repeated name of the addressee modified by epithets. The apostrophe is extended to include an ektenial formula, “förbarma dig” (“have mercy”). The three next lines contain supplication. The second half of the stanza presents the beneficial influence of the Sun on man and on the dismal climate of the land, where the sky is snowy rather than blue. What most attracts the reader’s attention in the poem, is the use of enjambement. A sentence which could be written as a sequence of words: “Sol, sol du varma milda förbarma dig över norden” (“Sun, sun, warm, mild, have mercy on the North”), is broken into three five-syllable lines, which leads to an interesting rhythmical effect not unlike enumeration. Sol, sol du varma milda förbarma dig över norden frigör den arma frostbundna jorden, landet, där mörkret i världen är störst!26 [Sun, sun, warm / mild have mercy / on the North / free the poor / frost-bound earth / the land, where the world’s darkness is greatest!]

In Fröding’s poem, the speaking voice is not determined; it might denote an individual but also a communal supplicant. In Dan Andersson’s (1888–1920) poem “En landstrykares morgonsång till solen”27 (“The Wanderer’s Morning Song to the Sun”), the speaking voice can be identified with the titular wanderer who had experienced many hardships and is embittered by shattered illusions. The prayer he directs to the Sun is neither supplicatory nor laudatory, but blasphemous. In his litany the chairetismic calls are replaced by a series of grievances and accusations. According to him, the Sun is not only indifferent to the fate of the outcast, but also unwittingly cruel as it adds to his suffering. An important compositional device in the poem is the anaphoric repetition of the word “sol” (“the Sun”), which appears in all six stanzas. These repetitions take the form of apostrophes extended to create questions, grievances, accusations, and even threats. The key to the poem’s meaning is to be found in the last two stanzas. 26 Ibid. 27 The poem was published in 1916 as one of the four poems included in a collection of short stories, Det kallas vidskepelse [It is Called Superstition]. Cf. Dan Andersson, Samlade dikter [Collected Poems] (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1989), 49–50.

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Stanza five begins with a complaint, followed by three invocations. They expand the name of the addressee, creating the image of the Sun which deviates from the traditional image of a light, warm, unambiguously good force: Stackare mig som blott har dig till moder! Sol, du som föder tusen små stinkande liv! Sol, du är blott en måne på hemlösas vägar! Sol, för de syndsvarta är du skarp som en kniv!28 [Wretched me, who have only you as my mother! / Sun, who gives birth to a thousand small stinking lives! / Sun, you are but a moon on homeless roads! / Sun, for those black with sin you are sharp as a knife!]

Stanza six, the last one, is a piling up of antitheses. The imperative calls: “göm dig,” “gå undan,” “glöm” (“hide yourself,” “go away,” “forget”) are in open contradiction to the traditional litanic calls, aimed at invoking the addressee and attracting his attention. Still, the poet does not reject the object of his love-hate. The Sun may be the only remaining value in his wretched life and the only mother who can pity him. That is why the close of the poem is a plea for consolation, for a wiping away of his tears, and finally for a return to the traditional pattern of the litanic communication between god and man: Sol, jag är full av hädelse, skynda dig, göm dig! Skälvande må jag krypa ihop här i skuggan och gråta, sol, om du är min moder, gå undan och glöm mig, sol, vill du inte torka mig – kinderna äro våta!29 [Sun, I am filled with blasphemy, hurry up, hide yourself! / Trembling I will curl up in the shade and cry, / Sun, if you are my mother, go away and forget me, / Sun, do you not want to dry my tears – my cheeks are wet!]

An important argument for considering the poem as an example of litanic verse is the collective dimension of grievances expressed to the Sun. The individual speaker becomes — as is often the case in Andersson’s poetry — a representative of numerous and similarly tragic human lives. This can be observed at the textual level, when the poet reminds the Sun of its significance: it is an existential reference point for a number of living and feeling creatures. This creates the possibility of having the text divided into different voices — a possibility which was used

28 Ibid., 50. 29 Ibid.

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by Staffan Hellstrand in his musical version of “En landstrykares morgonsång till solen.”30 An example of a poet who regularly turns to the form of prayer is Karin Boye. She not only uses litanic elements in her poetry, but also draws upon her knowledge of religious language, symbols and rituals — knowledge she accumulated throughout a life-long spiritual search. In her free-verse poem “Bön till solen” (“Prayer to the Sun,” 1935) the first stanza is stylized into a litanic invocation with two apostrophes and the following supplicatory formula which recurs in the second half of the poem as a kind of refrain. The name of the addressee is replaced by antonomasias; the first is centred around a feature, the second brings out an action: Skoningslöse med ögon som aldrig har sett mörkret! Frigörare som med gyllene hamrar bräcker isar! Rädda mig!31 [Merciless one with eyes that have never seen the dark! / Liberator who with golden hammers breaks blocks of ice! / Save me!]32

The second stanza is an ecstatic hymn, in which the worship of the god appears to form an extension of the act of creation: the Sun-god can be seen in the movement towards the light which gives meaning to human existence. The laudatory sequence closes with an act in which the human, similarly to the flower and the tree, declares his full dedication to god. The supplication which opens the third stanza, however, should not be interpreted as a plea for the physical preservation of life, but for the strength and determination needed to stay firm and remain loyal to our faith and its tenets.33 The enthronement of the Sun as god the light-giver culminates in the plea: “Rädda, rädda, seende gud, / vad du skänkte” (“Save, save, seeing god, / what you gave”).

The Modernist Litany References to the litanic form can be seen in a number of poems by Edith Södergran and in some early works of the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf (1907–1968).

30 In Hellstrand’s poem anaphora gives way to epiphora which closes individual stanzas and which is extended into a refrain with a choir of voices repeating the call “Sol.” Staffan Hellstrand, Hemlös (Papa Records, 1989). 31 Boye, Dikter, 191. 32 Cf. footnote 12. 33 Margit Abenius, Karin Boye (Stockholm: Aldus/Bonnier, 1965), 233.

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They largely concern the use of enumeration and parallelism to define the surrounding reality, but also to catalogue feelings and phenomena. Södergran employs litanic devices in numerous poems from his first collection Dikter (Poems): “Smärtan” (“Pain”) and “Två gudinnor” (“Two goddesses”), “Kristen trosbekännelse” (“The Christian Creed”), “Gud” (“God”), “Helvetet” (“Hell”). In Södergran’s poetry enumeration is a way of self-identification and self-presentation, as exemplified in one of her best-known poems “Vierge moderne,” in which the speaking female voice assigns different names to herself, pointing to different incarnations of the new woman: Jag är ingen kvinna. Jag är ett neutrum. Jag är ett barn, en page och ett djärvt beslut, jag är en skrattande strimma av en scharlakanssol… Jag är ett nät för alla glupska fiskar, jag är en skål för alla kvinnors ära, jag är ett steg mot slumpen och fördärvet, jag är ett språng i friheten och självet…34 [I am no woman. I am a neuter. / I am a child, a page-boy, and a bold decision, / I am a laughing streak of a scarlet sun… / I am a net for all voracious fish, / I am a toast to every women’s honor, / I am a step toward luck and toward ruin, / I am a leap in freedom and the self…]35

In other poems, such as the series Triptik (Triptych) — published in 1934 as part of the collection Dedikation (Dedication) — Ekelöf turns to the descriptions of the unknown, defined by multiple names. In the poems “Skogsrå” (“A Wood Nymph”), “Trollkarl” (“A Wizard”) and “Fe” (“Fairy”) she creates a number of images, whose sequential nature is enhanced by anaphoras and parallelism. “Trollkarl” is a form of self-presentation, whereas in “Skogsrå” and “Fe” the characters are presented through the eyes of an observer: Hennes mun är de ljummaste vindarnas källa och rösten ett valv som ekar av fågelstrupar. Hennes björkögon glittrar, hennes lindöron susar vid sommarens sjöar. Hennes tankar är myror som vandrar fram över de vita molnen på himlen och molnen är hennes lugna, flyktiga känslor.36

34 Edith Södergran, Dikter [Poems] (Borgå: Holger Schildts förlag, 1916): 24, accessed May 12, 2015, http://litteraturbanken.se/#!/forfattare/SodergranE/titlar/Dikter/sida/24/ etext. 35 Translated by Stina Katchadourian in Edith Södergran, Love & Solitude. Selected poems 1916–1923. Bilingual Edition (Seattle: Fjord Press, 1992), 29. 36 Gunnar Ekelöf, Dikter [Poems] (Stockholm: Månpocket, 1984), 58.

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[Her mouth is the source of the mildest winds and her voice is a vault that echoes of birds’ voices. Her birchy eyes are glistening, her linden ears are whistling by the summer lakes. Her thoughts are ants which wander through the white clouds in the sky, and the clouds are her calm, fleeting feelings.]

Another poet who used litanic enumeration to depict or comment on the reality was Hjalmar Gullberg (1898–1961), the author of “Himmels familjebok”37 (“Heavenly Lexicon,” 1933). The poem is composed of seventeen rhyming couplets which present an entire alphabet of gods, forgotten and rejected by humans. Gunnar Björling also often uses enumerations, but in his litanic experiments he goes much further than Gullberg. A thorough analysis of his poetry would undoubtedly yield more insight into the genre’s deconstruction, as may be shown in a miniature poem from the collection Korset och löftet (The Cross and the Promise), published in 1925: Gud är gränserna som dansar, och tankar som marscherar. Gud är boken som ej ändar; mina stunders kraft!38 [God is / borders which dance, and thoughts which / march. God is / a book which does not end; / of my moments’ / strength!]

However, it would be wrong to conclude that Björling was the precursor of the modern approach to the litany in Sweden. Earlier attempts at appropriating the genre for modernist purposes had been made by Gustaf Fröding, a poet who in his treatment of litanic verse was ahead of his time. Particularly conspicuous examples are the poems written towards the close of his life (1886–1905) in a psychiatric hospital, published posthumously (1916) as a sequence entitled Mattoidens sånger (The Mattoid’s Songs) in the collection Efterskörd (Gleanings).

The Swedish Litanic Verse — Conclusions To sum up, before the second half of the nineteenth century a tradition of secular litanic verse in Sweden is almost non-existent and religious litanic verse is

37 Hjalmar Gullberg, Kärlek i tjugonde seklet [Love in the Twentieth Century] (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1952), 189. 38 Björling, Skrifter I, 55.

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drowned in the sea of Protestant psalms.39 This situation can be explained by the decreasing importance of the litany in the post-Reformation period. It is only during the Modern Breakthrough period that litanic verse becomes separated from strictly religious content and that experiments with the litanic form begin. This is not to say, however, that the sacral motifs disappear; on the contrary, they are to be considered a constitutive element of the genre, regardless whether a given poem belongs to the religious tradition or whether it lies outside it. The poems discussed in this paper do not include any works that correspond in their entirety to the rhythmical and compositional pattern of the litanic prayer. Those that are closest to this pattern are Strindberg’s experimental works — which can also be considered as a polemic against the semantic potential of the genre — as well as Karlfeldt’s poem “Gammal ramsa,” which also evokes an association with the ballad tradition. The poets’ most frequent approach towards the litanic tradition is borrowing — the borrowing of litanic formulae, compositional elements and stylistic conventions. Translated from Polish by Dominika Ruszkiewicz

39 Cf. Joanna Cymbrykiewicz, Aleksandra Wilkus, and Aldona Zańko, “Litany Undercover: Denmark and Norway from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century,” in the present volume.

Subject Index A abecedarius 34, 35–7, 39 agnus Dei 162 akathist 23–4, 35, 233 alliteration 11, 12, 37, 40, 42, 66, 76, 116, 122, 129, 131, 136, 177, 178, 232 anaphora 18, 25, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 48, 49, 61, 66, 67, 73, 75, 78, 85, 104, 113–117, 120, 123, 126, 127, 131, 132, 138, 140, 141, 142, 149, 159, 160, 165, 176, 177, 178, 189, 194, 200, 201, 202–5, 208–9, 241, 250, 252, 253 antonomasia 20, 22–3, 25–9, 55, 72, 80, 90, 92–4, 101–4, 110, 113, 116, 118, 122, 128, 129, 154, 159, 160, 170, 171, 189, 202, 220, 233, 236, 237, 244, 249, 252 apostrophe 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 26, 34, 39, 54, 55, 67, 68, 74–5, 76, 78, 90, 101, 103–5, 115, 148, 154, 159, 160, 170, 178, 189, 193, 201–2, 206, 214–7, 219–20, 222, 223, 226, 227 assonance 116, 122 Ave Maria 32, 36–7, 39, 42–3, 233, 245–6 Ave Maris Stella 27, 101, 102, 112, 128 B ballad 32, 39, 40, 41, 56, 57, 118, 123–4, 183–6, 207, 210, 219, 234–5, 241, 255 Bible 35, 87, 92, 95–8, 101, 122–3, 147, 150–1, 158, 186, 198, 236 Genesis 17 Exodus 130 Psalms 121 Song of Songs 38, 138, 170 Isaiah 21, 158

Matthew 110, 150 Mark Luke John 1 Corinthians 142 Apocalypse 151 blason 61 Book of Common Prayer 51–3, 83, 87, 110, 114 C catalogue poem 11–3, 21–2, 28–9, 60–1 chaire, ave, hail, salve, rejoice 5, 24–5, 27–8, 29, 33, 28, 38, 42–4, 46, 49, 53, 54–6, 58–60, 64, 87, 89–91, 96, 97–9, 102–3, 111–3, 153, 215–6, 237 chairetismic gene 113, 154, 165, 172, 196, 214, 225 charm, spell 5, 14–8, 20–2, 29, 61, 135–7, 222, 231 choir 150–1, 221–4, 246, 252 D Deutsche Litanei 135, 148, 234 dialogue 148–9, 154, 158, 160, 176, 185, 220–1, 227, 244 drama 33, 58, 190, 247 E ektenial gene 13, 26, 120, 135, 136, 154, 165, 168, 187, 191, 194, 196 elegy 62, 70, 76, 77, 188 enumeration 12, 15, 20, 21, 61, 80, 85, 126, 131, 135, 137, 140–1, 170, 176, 181, 194, 203, 217, 220, 221, 226, 229, 232, 234, 246, 247, 250, 253, 254

258

Subject Index

epiphora 116, 252 epithet 14, 20, 22, 23, 35, 90, 92–5, 100, 103, 104, 116, 122, 129, 189, 193, 220, 221, 233, 244, 245, 250

Litany of the Saints 9–10, 15, 17, 33, 96–7, 105, 139, 148, 162, 167, 182–4, 191, 232, 234 lorica 21

F formula 9, 11–3, 21, 29, 35, 52, 81–2, 85, 118, 129, 136, 139–40, 146, 148–9, 151, 158, 163–5, 174, 181, 193, 198, 202, 204, 214, 221, 229, 231–3, 235–41, 244–6, 250, 252, 255

N narration 11–3, 15, 18, 27, 31, 33, 40, 60–62, 82, 95, 112, 220, 221, 233, 245, 247

H Holy Name of Jesus 25, 191, 194, 196, 202 I imperative 28, 174, 251 intercession 35–6, 39, 48, 52, 85, 89, 109, 113, 117, 121, 125, 139, 164, 184–5, 229, 233–4 invocation 15–17, 19, 23, 26, 37, 39–40, 49–50, 52, 58, 75–6, 83–5, 102–3, 112–5, 119–20, 124–8, 135, 139, 142–6, 148–9, 151, 158, 162, 164, 166, 172, 183, 207, 215, 221, 225, 241, 247–8, 251–2 J joys of Mary 23–5, 39–40 K Kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy 53, 113, 148, 162, 183–5, 234, 236 L lamentation 14, 63, 71, 73–4, 81, 83, 188, 239 litanie à rebours 123, 125, 207–208 Litany of Loreto 53, 107, 112–3, 116, 123–6, 128–32, 162

O ode 89, 103, 105, 128 ora pro nobis, pray for us 111, 113, 117, 185, 233 P paradox 32, 128, 132, 244 parallelism 17, 28–9, 60–62, 68–9, 73–6, 78, 90–91, 103–4, 114, 116, 120, 158, 160, 199, 202, 204–5, 207, 211, 216, 221, 223, 227, 232, 234, 238–9, 241, 245, 249, 253 parody 50, 73, 100, 123, 163, 248 Pater Noster, Lord’s Prayer 17, 117, 150, 159, 169, 200, 233 patriotic poetry 46, 56–58, 119–123, 198, 201–3, 206, 214–16, 218–220, 225, 240, 243 Pietism 87, 147–60, 162, 186, 188–191, 193–196, 197–8, 202, 206, 217, 224 polyonymic gene 22, 116, 118, 120, 124, 129, 131, 135–6, 142–3, 146, 154, 165, 168, 171, 191–6, 202, 205–6, 209, 211, 214, 217, 219, 225, 238–9, 248 procession 9, 13, 51, 223, 234 psalm 18, 35, 41, 66, 68, 96, 121, 154, 158–60, 169, 183, 186–202, 206, 213, 217, 224–227, 231, 235–8, 240, 241, 255

Subject Index

R refrain 18, 32, 36, 42, 46, 63–4, 68, 71, 79, 83, 112, 113, 118, 124, 127, 131, 132, 137, 162, 163, 164, 184, 185, 188, 193, 194, 195, 199, 200, 201, 205, 219, 220, 232, 234–5, 236, 238, 239, 241, 249, 252 requests 20, 35, 39, 47–48, 85, 112, 149, 151, 158, 233 responsory 52–3, 85, 96, 113, 115, 117, 119, 120, 124, 125, 127, 129, 131, 132, 135, 149, 151, 162, 181, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 193, 200, 205, 219, 221–2, 225 rhyme 36, 42, 43, 45, 47, 49, 69, 113, 119, 124, 128, 129, 141, 170, 171, 175, 177, 183, 187, 192, 193–4, 199, 214, 216, 217, 220, 236, 238, 239, 240, 244, 246 S saints, veneration of the 8, 14–5, 20–1, 23, 35, 39, 53, 74, 77–8, 87, 89, 98, 113, 139–40, 183, 231–5, 243, 247 Salve Regina 53, 112 sonnet 51, 60–3, 65–70, 74–6, 79–81, 102, 171–2 stanza 234 couplet 36, 55, 69–70, 118, 168, 174, 254 3–line stanza, terza rima 36 4–line stanza, quatrain, Sapphic stanza 36, 68–70 5–line stanza 200, 238–40 6–line stanza 77, 82, 163, 183, 246 7–line stanza 42, 193, 217 8–line stanza 36, 124, 214 9–line stanza 71

259

10–line stanza 80 12–line stanza 42, 119, 192 15–line stanza 184 supplication 9, 16–20, 51–2, 54, 67, 74–6, 95, 104, 113, 119–20, 129, 135, 139, 144–6, 167­–8, 174, 183–4, 188, 190, 193, 215, 233, 236–41, 245, 248–50, 252 T trope 54, 234 V verse 10­–1, 114­–8, 181 accentual verse 10, 21 German hexameter 152–4 sprung rhythm 115–6 accentual–syllabic verse 84, 189, 199, 201 anapaestic 124 aristophanic 67–8 dactylic 173–4 trochaic 100, 163, 214 iambic 55, 60–1, 64–7, 69–70, 71, 72, 74–7, 79, 81, 95, 102, 104, 112, 119, 122, 127, 168, 174–5, 177, 193–5, 204–5, 217 alliterative verse 33, 49, 65, 137, 231 free verse 131, 172, 177, 245, 252 freie Rhythmen 155–9 knittelvers 185, 248 syllabic verse 10–syllable 34 11–syllable 68, 201 12–syllable 122 W worldview 15, 31, 77, 109, 201–202, 204, 229, 232, 245

Index of Names A Aarestrup Emil 203–7 Aarseth Asbjørn 213 Abbott Claude Colleer 114 Abenius Margit 252 Achnitz Wolfgang 139 Aist Dietmar von 144 Alabaster William 63, 74–6 Alexander Michael 32 Algulin Ingemar 235 Amies Marion 21 Amours François Joseph 33 Andersen Per 220 Andersson Dan 249–51 Andreä Johann Valentin 147 Anno II, archbishop 140–1 B Barrett-Browning Elizabeth 108 Barth J. Robert 102 Bauckham Richard 97, 98 Baudelaire Charles 123, 132, 175 Bawcutt Priscilla 31, 43, 44, 46, 49, 50 Beaumont Joseph 58 Bede the Venerable 20 Bela Teresa 56–58 Belemann Claudia 169 Bellay Joachim du 70 Bennett Joan 77 Benson Larry D. 34–5 Bering Solten Therese 199 Bianchi Bruna 169 Billeskov Jansen Frederik Julius 182 Bitel Lisa M. 9 Bjerke André 213 Björling Gunnar 247, 254 Bjørnson Bjørnstjerne 218–20, 224

Blaim Artur 32 Blake William 87, 89, 96, 99–101 Blicher Steen Steensen 197 Błaszkiewicz Bartłomiej 11 Bønnelycke Emil 208–11 Bording Anders 193 Borup Jensen Thorkild 186, 190 Boye Karin 247, 249, 252 Boyesen Hjalmar 224 Brackert Helmut 143, 146 Bradley Sidney A.J. 22 Braekman Willy L. 20 Braungart Wolfgang 174–5, 178 Brentano Clemens 164, 178 Brix Hans 189, 201, 206 Brodd Sven-Erik 232 Brorson Hans Adolph 182, 190–2, 194–5, 198, 200, 205 Brown Carleton 23–7, 32 Browning Robert 108 Brownlow Frank Walsh 54, 73 Brun Lyder 138, 226 Büchner Georg 164 Buckser Andrew 198 Burt Stephen 66, 70, 76, 80 C Calhoun Thomas O. 62 Cameron Malcolm Laurence 18, 20 Canuel Mark 101, 103 Carey John 51 Carruthers Gerard 43 Cassirer Ernst 176 Charlemagne, emperor 138 Chaucer Geoffrey 10, 12–3, 23, 25, 32–7, 39–40, 43, 47, 64 Chesnutt Michael 37

262

Index of Names

Chesterton Gilbert Keith 114, 123 Christensen Allan C. 96 Christian VI, king 190 Claussen Sophus 207 Clements Patricia 123 Colbert, David W. 182 Colby Elbridge 73 Coleridge Samuel Taylor 101–3 Constable Henry 74 Corelli Marie 110 Corns Thomas N. 75 Cowley Abraham 62 Crampton Georgia Ronan 35 Cranmer Thomas 51–3, 55, 86 Crashaw Richard 58–9, 63, 73–5, 77, 78 Cruickshank Frances 86 Cuddon John Anthony 81 Cummings Brian 51–2 Cymbrykiewicz Joanna 87, 181, 197, 255 D Dahl Willy 213 Dahlerup Pil 185 Daiches David 63, 71, 84 Damrosch Leopold Jr. 100 Daniel, prophet 97 Dannhauer Johann Konrad 147 Darbishire Helen 102 Dass Petter 196, 214–7 Davie Donald 88–90, 93–6, 100 Davies Reginald Thorne 24–7, 29, 33, 41 Davis Ray 97–9 Dearmer Percy 110 Delblanc Sven 231, 245 Devereux Penelope 81 Devlin Christopher 96 Dłuska Maria 10 Döblin Alfred 164 Doddridge Philip 89, 94 Dodge Jane 118

Donne John 51–3, 62, 63, 66, 74–7, 80–1, 84–6 Dorsche Johann Georg 147 Douglas Gavin 33, 42–3, 49–50 Droste-Hülshoff Annette von 166, 168–9, 178 Duffy Eamon 50 Dunbar William 31, 33–4, 36–7, 42–9 Duncan Thomas G. 28, 32 Duncan-Jones Katherine 68 E Easterlin Nancy 100, 101 Ebin Lois A. 39–40, 42 Edfelt Johannes 235 Edward VI, king 52 Egan Maurice 113 Egestorff Georg Heinrich C. 154 Ehrismann Gustav 139 Eichendorff Joseph von 163–4, 178 Ekelöf Gunnar 252–3 Eliot Thomas Stearns 116–17, 128, 131 Eliot Valerie 116 Elizabeth I, queen 56–8, 63 Emmerich Anne Catherine 166 Engel Manfred 178 Espinosa Ruben 53, 58 F Fafner Jørgen 181, 185, 194 Fibiger Johannes 207 Finch Annie 131 Fischer Arwed 138 Fitch Audrey-Beth 43 Fitzgerald Robert P. 97 Fletcher Phineas 83 Ford Boris 32, 64 Franz Hans-Dieter 166 Frimann Claus 214–6, 218 Fröding Gustaf 249–50, 254

Index of Names

G Gamby Erik 238 Gardner Helen 74, 76 Gascoigne George 60–1, 63, 65 Geete Robert 233 George Stefan 173–5, 178 George Walton Williams 78 Gerward Gullan 235 Gestrinius Ernest 238–40 Gill Steven 101 Glenn Jonathan A. 31 Goethe Johann Volfgang von 202 Goodyer Henry 51, 84 Grafe Adrian 111 Gray Douglas 43–4 Gretsch Mechthild 10 Greville Fulke 74, 82 Grieg Edvard 219–21 Griffiths Richard 108–10 Grillparzer Franz 166, 169–70, 178 Grimm Jacob 135, 163 Gross Harvey 131 Grundtvig Nikolai Frederik Severin 197–202, 205–6, 210, 217, 225 Gruszewska-Blaim Ludmiła 32 Guldberg Høegh 224 Gullberg Hjalmar 254 H Haffenden John 116 Hagenau Reinmar von 145 Hall John A. 198 Hallo William 12 Hamlin Hannibal 52, 68, 80–1, 85–6 Härdelin Alf 232, 235 Hardenberg Friedrich Leopold von see Novalis Harding Dennis William 64–5 Hartman Geoffrey 98 Hattaway Michael 53, 63 Hauge Andreas 225 Havnevik Ivar 214, 217

263

Hawes Clement 95 Haydon Colin 88, 92 Hebbel Friedrich 171–2, 178 Hebel William 60 Heede Elevine 226 Heidenstam Verner von 243–5, 249 Heinrich Kaiser 144 Heinrich, monk 139–40 Heinzelman Jacob Harold 164 Heinzle Joachim 139 Helander Sven 232 Hellstrand Staffan 252 Heneage Thomas 72 Henry V, king 33 Henry VIII, king 51, 56 Henryson Robert 42–5, 49 Herberger Valerius 151 Herbert George 63, 66, 74, 76–9, 84, 86, 97 Herbst Wolfgang 150 Herebert William 26–7 Herman Peter C. 56 Herrick Robert 62, 83–4 Herzog Johann Jakob 162 Hiddemann Frank 152 Hilton Nelson 100 Hodgart Matthew J.C. 32 Hodne Bjarne 213 Hoffmann Heinrich 140 Hoffmann Torsten 154 Hohenburg Markgraf von 146 Holberg Ludvig 182, 190 Holland Richard 33, 49–50 Holz Arno 171–2, 178 Hönnighausen Lothar 123 Hopkins Gerard Manley 114–6, 128–9 Hopkins Lisa 56 Hopler Jay 67 Horobin Simon 37 House Humphry 115 Howard Henry 60 Hovland Erlend 221

264

Index of Names

Huldén Lars 239 Humphrey of Lancaster 33 Husain Itrat 59 Hutchinson Thomas 103 I Ibsen Henrik 218 Ingemann Bernhard Severin 202–3, 206, 219 J Jack Ronald D.S. 43 Jacobs Alan 97 James IV of Scotland 46 Jodenstein Jodocus von 191 Johansdorf Albrecht von 145 Johnson Kimberly 67 Johnson Lionel 107, 128–9, 131 Jones Charles 43 Jones David 116–8, 131 Jones Harry S.V. 71 Jones Samuel 90 Jonsson Bengt R. 234 Jørgensen Johannes 207 Jung Martin 147 K Karlfeldt Axel Erik 243, 245–7, 249, 255 Kasbo Trond 225 Katchadourian Stina 253 Kean Patricia M. 33, 36 Keble John 88, 127 Keefer Sarah Larratt 22–3 Keep Ann E. 34 Kelly Blanche Mary 61 Ken Thomas 94–5 Kennedy Charles W. 12, 16 Kennedy Walter 33–4, 47–9 Kent John 87–9, 91–2 Ker Ian 114–6 Keynes Geoffrey 100 Kielland Alexander 218

Kierkegaard Søren 198 Kilgore Robert 68 Kingo Thomas 182, 189, 190, 198, 200–1, 217, 224 Kipling Rudyard 95, 107 Kirk Dobbie Elliot van 15, 18 Kittang Atle 213 Kleist Heinrich von 166 Kliefoth Theodor 135–6 Klopstock Friedrich Gottlieb 147–8, 152–5, 157–8, 160, 162, 170, 224 Knowlton Sister Mary Arthur 23, 25–8 Koch Lauritz J. 192, 195 Kolmodin Israel 236 Korsgaard Ove 198 Kowalik Barbara 32 Kristensen Marius 184 Krüger Astrid 138 Krzywkowski Isabelle 123 L Lagerkvist Pär 243 Lange Johann Christian 191 Lapidge Michael 9–10, 13, 15, 18, 99 Larsen Jens Peter 181, 183 Lauritis Joseph A. 40 Lauterbach Dorothea 178 Łęcki Andrzej 9 Levertin Oscar 243–4, 247 Lewalski Barbara 84 Lewis Clive Staples 31, 47, 65 Lie Hallvard 213, 217 Lie Jonas 218 Lifschitz Felice 9 Liliencron Detlev von 170 Lille Peder Ræv 183 Lingard John 111–3, 118, 131 Lloyd Lodowick 57 Lok Anne 63, 66–7 Lonsdale Roger 91, 94–5 Lönnroth Lars 231, 245 Louis Margot K. 124

Index of Names

Lothe Jakob 227 Łuczyńska-Hołdys Małgorzata 123 Luther Martin 135, 148–50, 161–2, 183, 234, 236 Lütken Gerd 207 Lydgate John 33–4, 38–43, 47–8 Lyster Jens 187 M Macafee Caroline I. 43 MacCracken Henry Noble 38 MacDiarmid Hugh 107, 128–9 MacDonald Alasdair A. 32, 43, 49–50 MacKenzie Norman H. 115 Magoun Francis P. Jr. 11 Manning Stephen 33 Mapstone Sally 31, 43 Martz Louis L. 55, 78–9 Masłoń Sławomir 87 McDowell Robert 131 McDuff David 247 McGowan Joseph P. 9 Mehring Walter 163 Meyer Dietrich 151 Meyer-Blanck Michael 149–50 Meynell Everard 131 Mikics David 66, 70, 76, 80 Miller Eric 98 Milton John 59, 61, 66, 76, 90, 91, 100, 120 Minkova Donka 11, 12 Miola Robert S. 53, 54 Moe Ole 226 Möller Håkan 236 Monk William Henry 112 Moran Maureen 111 More Gertrude 55, 56 More Thomas 55 Morse Ruth 39 Mortensen Klaus P. 182 Morungen Heinrich von 145 Moses, prophet 21, 38

265

Muir Bernard J. 12–3, 22 Munro Lucy 59 Murray Molly 63, 82 N Nashe Thomas 81–2 Neifen Gottfried von 145 Newman John Henry 111, 113–4 Nielsen Erik A. 181, 191 Niethammer Ortrun 169 Nietzsche Friedrich 177 Nicolas of Cusa 175, 178 Nilssøn Jens 188 Nøjgaard Morten 181 North Richard 16 Norton-Smith John 39, 42 Novalis, poet 161 O Ober William B. 96 Ödman Samuel 237 Oehlenschläger Adam 197 Olsson Bernt 235 Osthoff Wolfgang 175 Ovid 62 P Palladius Peder 187 Palmer Christian David Friedrich 162 Pantuchowicz Agnieszka 87 Papazian Mary Arshagouni 52, 68 Patmore Coventry 128–9, 131 Paulson Arvid 248 Pearsall Derek 39, 50 Pedersøn Bertel 189–90 Percy Thomas 219 Petersdorff Dirk 158 Petri Olaus 236 Pettit Edward 15, 17–9 Philips Katherine 62 Phillips Helen 35, 37 Phillips James Emerson 56

266

Index of Names

Platen-Hallermünde August Graf von 166, 170–1, 178 Poe Edgar 175 Pontoppidan Erik 190 Potts Robert Alfred 104 Prescott Anne Lake 55 Pulsiano Philip 9 Pusey Edward Bouverie 107 Puttenham George 57 Q Quiller-Couch Arthur 83 Quinn William 35–6 R Rachwał Tadeusz 87, 96, 98–9 Rack Henry D. 92 Raleigh Walter 57, 63, 71–2 Raunkjær Palle 206 Reames Sherry 35 Rees Joan 82 Refsum Christian 227 Rich Robert 81 Riddy Felicity 35, 49 Rilke Rainer Maria 173, 177–8 Roberts Jonathan 101 Robinson Andrey Nicholayevich 34 Robinson Eloise 58 Rodrigues Louis J. 16–7 Roediger Max 141 Rolle Richard 23, 25–8 Rosendale Timothy 51 Rosenhagen Gustav 141 Rossel Svend H. 182, 198, 202 Rossetti Christina 61 Rossetti Dante Gabriel 108 Rudick Michael 72 Rugge Heinrich von 145 Rupp Katrin 20–1 Ruszkiewicz Dominika 31, 51, 57, 160, 179, 215, 227, 241, 255 Ryman James 38, 79

S Sadowski Witold 11, 13, 15, 36, 65, 89, 112, 117, 118, 124, 136, 154, 165, 249 Samsioe Carl Axel 241 Schack May 182 Schelling Friedrich 161, 197, 202 Schiller Friedrich 166, 170 Schirmer Walter F. 34, 40–1, 48 Schlauch Margaret 10 Schlegel Friedrich 161, 202 Schmidt Johann 147 Schonebeck Brun von 138 Schwangau Hiltbolt von 145 Scott Tom 44 Selincourt Ernest de 102 Sevelingen Meinloh von 144 Shakespeare William 53, 58, 61–2 Shelley Percy Bysshe 103–4, 120 Shoreham William of 26 Sidney Philip 63, 67–9, 80–2 Silesius Angelus 178, 194 Silva David A. de 83 Sinclair Catherine 110–1 Singleton John 109, 112 Sławek Tadeusz 96, 99 Smart Christopher 90, 95–9 Södergran Edith 243, 252–3 Solberg Unni 227 Sørensen Øystein 213 Southwell Robert 54–5, 60, 63, 72–6 Spacks Patricia Meyer 97 Spangenberg August Gottlieb 149 Spener Philipp Jacob 147 Spenser Edmund 57, 61–3, 69–71, 83 Spiller Michael R. G. 66, 68, 76 Steffen Richard 232 Sthen Hans Christensen 187–8, 198 Stobaeus Kristina 232 Storm Theodor 170 Strindberg August 243, 245, 247–9, 255 Stuart Mary, queen 56 Stull William L. 66, 68, 74

Index of Names

Svärdström Elisabeth 231 Swanton Michael 12, 13 Sweeney Anne 54, 73 Swinburne Algernon Charles 104, 107, 118, 119, 122–4, 126–7, 132 Sylwan Otto 232 Symons Arthur 107, 118, 126–8, 132 T Tacitus 16 Talbot Charles H. 20 Tambling Jeremy 87, 89, 96, 99, 100 Tasioulas Jacquline A. 42 Taylor George C. 33, 90 Tennyson Alfred Lord 108 Theodore, archbishop 10 Thiele Gerhard 142–3 Thomissøn Hans 183 Thompson Francis 126–8, 130–1 Thomson James 91, 118, 126 Thorel-Cailleteau Sylvie 123 Thuresdotter Märita 233 Tillyard Eustace M.W. 63–5 Tilp Berndt 164 Travitsky Betty S. 55 Treharne Elaine 9, 13–4, 23 Tudor Margaret, queen 46 U Undereyck Theodor 147 V Varnes Kathrine 131 Vassenden Eirik 217, 220 Vaughan Herbert 77, 109 Verstegan Richard 53 Vickers Brian 75, 78 Vischer Friedrich 161 Vogelweide Walther von der 145–6 Vogt Friedrich 135

267

Vollmann-Profe Gisela 139 W Waite Greg 9 Waitz Georg 136 Wallenius Andreas 235 Wallin Johan Olof 238 Wasbø Tormod 225 Watts Isaac 95 Wellington James E. 52–3 Wergeland Henrik 217 Wesley Charles 88, 90–2, 94, 100 Wesley John 91–2 Weston Lisa M.C. 18 Wexels Wilhelm Andreas 225 Whaley Joachim 87 Whitefield George 100 Whitehead Christiania 27–8, 32, 38, 41 Whiting William 111–2, 118, 131 Whitman Walt 210 Wilkus Aleksandra 87–8, 181, 213, 215, 255 Willard Nancy 131 Wilson Peter H. 87 Windeatt Barry 39 Wivallius Lars 238–9 Woolf Rosemary 48 Wordsworth William 101–3 Wratislaw Theodore 128 Wu Duncan 100 Wyatt Thomas 63–5 Y Yeats William Butler 108 Z Zańko Aldona 87–8, 181, 197, 255 Zettersten Arne 37 Zinzendorf Nikolaus Ludwig von 149–51, 154, 162