Being a Restorationist Writer, and the Quest for the Infinite, Part 8

D&C 93 as a Poem — 3

…I have been discussing D&C 93 as a poem. In the first part of this discussion https://www.associationmormonletters.org/2016/01/being-a-restorationist-writer-and-the-quest-for-the-infinite-par/ I argued that the central theme of this poem is unity with God, and a conception of that unity that places it in the philosophical neighborhood of the nondualism of Coleridge, Schelling, and the Vedantists. In the second part https://www.associationmormonletters.org/2016/02/being-a-restorationist-writer-and-the-quest-for-the-infinite-part-7/ I began arguing that section 93 is a unified poem of which that theme is the main controlling element, and I focused on structure, both dramatic and formal, calling attention particularly to the use of parallelism, including that special type of parallelism called chiasm, and suggested that those structures embodied meaning. And I am presenting section 93 as exhibit A in my argument that at least some sections of the D&C are poems of a high order because almost everything I want to say at this time about Joseph Smith as poet is illustrated in this section, and because I think—and I wish I could put this in large bold italics with arrows point at it—that the metaphysical element in this poem is extremely important, because it suggests a ground for Restorationist philosophy and theology that I do not think has heretofore been recognized, except by one Hindu writer, Candidai Seshachari, whom I have quoted in part 6, and points the way to a metaphysically and theologically grounded philosophy, theory, and practical criticism of poetry (and with necessary adjustments of vocabulary of all art) to which Coleridge has given us clues. Well, heck, I’ll just do it—

→ the metaphysical element in this poem is extremely important←

…Now, picking up the thread: there is perhaps other meaning in the use of these particular formal devices (to which I have called attention in part 7). They are loose, the control they exert on the shape and development of the composition is gentle, allowing for spontaneity and flexibility, mirroring God’s approach to his creation, as he provides a framework in which inferior intelligences may find full development, while respecting their agency and allowing for spontaneity and individual initiative. This is a God who issues commandments, to be sure, but who also says, “It is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves” (D&C 58:26–28). This is a God who desires to place his mantle upon each of his children and say, “You are free to do whatever you want, because I know that what you want will always remain within the circle of my law.” Something approaching free verse seems very suitable to represent the relationship between such a God and such children of God. As a Latter-day Saint hymn puts it, “How gentle God’s commands. . . .”

…It seems possible that the cadence and the parallelism of these works reflect the way in which they were received: “line upon line, precept upon precept,” thought by thought, the next not given until the previous has been acknowledged and recorded, and succeeding thoughts in some way modifying the meaning of previous ones as the receiver works the revelatory experience out in his own mind. The parallelism that is so closely related to this kind of rhythm also reflects the principle of “line upon line, precept upon precept.” It seems to me rather natural that the thoughts would fall into a cadenced, incremental, parallel form. The formal nature of these texts would seem to suggest that this prosody, this combination of a particular kind of rhythm and a particular kind of parallelism, is in effect the language—or at least a language—of the Spirit. (The thinking of the late Clinton F. Larson bears on this latter point. Larson as poet sought “a transmutation of God and the Holy Ghost into poetry” [in Douglas Airmet, p. 45]. He insisted, as I heard him in class lectures, that the transmutation could be achieved only in poetry.)

…Moreover, within those formal patterns, section 93 “means” indirectly through its use of biblical language. As noted by Roger K. Petersen, in “Joseph Smith Prophet-Poet,” vocabulary and phraseology in the Doctrine and Covenants, including section 93, frequently echo the King James Bible. This is not mere imitation or plagiarism, however; rather, it maintains continuity with the prophetic and literary traditions of the Bible and also implies meaning. In most cases, words and phrases that parallel those of the Bible are recombined or given new meaning by being given a new context. That new context frequently includes new language, for Joseph introduces much nonbiblical language, thereby expanding and enriching the language, and thereby the content, of sacred discourse. The new and the old are joined seamlessly, so smoothly that only a very exceptional reader could discern one from the other without constant recourse to a concordance. The old is woven like threads into the fabric of the new, which, in Latter-day Saint belief, is a restoration of the oldest of all to wholeness. To say this in another way: Joseph Smith does not plagiarize biblical language, any more than any speaker of English plagiarizes when he speaks new sentences with familiar words and phrases from, say, Shakespeare; rather, “King James” is to Joseph a language, of which he has an exhaustive knowledge and which he speaks fluently and creatively. He does not use only the more common biblical language, what might be “picked up” by casual hearing, but also seizes upon phrases that are rare in the Bible, thereby calling attention to them and investing them with larger meaning. These poems (and all of the Doctrine and Covenants) should be read with constant reference to a concordance.

…Some remarks in a discussion of biblical poetry by Robert Alter on “originality” or its lack in the Bible itself are relevant here. He writes that “stock imagery . . . is the staple of biblical poetry” (The Art of Biblical Poetry, p. 190). He further observes that there is an advantage in working with such conventional figures, that “our attention tends to be guided through the metaphoric vehicle to the tenor for which the vehicle was introduced.” The creative accomplishment of the biblical poet is often in the “intensive development” of the stock imagery. Discussing the Psalms, Alter writes:

“Our own post-Romantic disposition to originality in literature may lead to a certain perplexity about how to think of a collection where in any given genre a dozen or more poems seem to be saying the same thing, often with more or less the same metaphors and sometimes even with some of the same phrasing. What I think we need to be more attuned to as readers is the nuanced individual character—‘originality’ in fact may not be the relevant concept—of different poems reflecting the same genre and even many of the same formulaic devices. There are abundant instances in later poetic tradition, as in Arabic and Hebrew Poetry of medieval Spain, Petrarchan love poetry, much English Augustan verse, where the power of the individual poem is meant to be felt precisely in such a fine recasting of the conventional, and that is what we ought to be able to discern more minutely in the psalms” (pp. 112–13).

Within the biblical tradition, the only literary tradition with which Joseph was very familiar, the question to be asked is, what has Joseph done with the conventions (and not only those of language, as shall be seen)? The answer is that he has done quite a lot. He has surpassed the biblical poets in the boldness with which he reworks old traditions and conventions. He does with the tradition what Ezra Pound said in a book by that title the poet should do: “Make it new.” I could go on with this at tedious length, and in Six Poems I do. Here I will give a very few examples from section 93.                                                                                                                                                  …Consider this passage at the beginning of the poem:

It shall come to pass that every soul

***who forsaketh his sins,

***and cometh unto me,

***and calleth on my name,

***and obeyeth my voice,

***and keepeth my commandments

shall see my face

***and know that I am,

…“Forsaketh” occurs several times in the Bible, but only once in context with “sins,” and then not directly: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

…“and cometh unto me” occurs only once biblically, in John 6:45: “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.” More common is the similar usage exemplified in Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” which typically is read as referring to the challenges and vicissitudes of life, but can be read as referring to the futile labor of sinful man to rid himself of the burden of sin without the help of Christ. Pairing “come unto me” with “forsaketh his sins” thus emphasizes the fact that the process of sanctification—of being cleansed of sinfulness—is not a process of self-reformation but requires an active turning to Christ that is inseparable from the forsaking of sin and enables the forsaking of sin.

…“and calleth on my name” is similar to a biblical one that occurs only once: “they [my people] shall call on my name, and I will hear them” (Zecharaiah13:9), implying that calling on God’s name by modern disciples will have a similarly positive outcome.

…“and obeyeth my voice” is similar to the phrase “obey my voice” that occurs several times in the Bible, as in Exodus 12:5: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.” The use here implies the possibility of a similar relationship between God and his modern servants.

…“and keepeth my commandments” is similar to “keep my commandments, ”which is common in the Old Testament, but occurs only twice in the new—“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15) and “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10)—notably in connection with the sermon and prayer in which the hope is offered that men may become one in Christ as Christ is one in the Father, the very theme of section 93.

…“Shall see my face” occurs relevantly in Exodus 33:20: “And he said, thou canst not see my face: for there shall no m  an see me, and live”; and also John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” The present text neatly qualifies both of those verses, specifying the conditions under which a person in fact can see the face of God and live.

…“and know that I am” recalls Exodus 12:14, “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM,” implying that the faithful can know personally the “I AM” spoken of there.

…The next verses, 2–18, recall John 1:1–19. John 1:19 indicates that the foregoing verses in John 1 represent the record of John, and section 93 confirms that and apparently restores in verses 2–18 (a passage too long to be repeated here; the reader is referred to the poem) a presumably more pure version of John’s record. Then there is this in verse 19:

I give unto you these sayings

that you may understand and know how to worship,

and know what you worship,

that you may come unto the Father in my name,

and in due time receive of his fulness.

…That verse recalls John 4:22–23, in the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well: “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship. . . . But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” The implication is that a more correct knowledge of God is being restored in the current dispensation, as Jesus was restoring it to the Samaritan woman and her contemporaries. Our own understanding of the nature of what we worship is enhanced by what is revealed in section 93 of man’s primeval identity with what we worship. There is also a hint in this verse that the sectarian world of Joseph’s time is in a state of apostasy and corruption of doctrine analogous to that of the Samaritans with their own mixture of scripture with the philosophies of men.

…In summary, there is more to section 93 than abstract discourse on a philosophical and doctrinal theme. The poem “means” presentationally through a synthesis of dramatic structure, formal structure, syntactical modulation, and highly allusive language; and an essential aspect of what it “means” is what Clinton F. Larson called “a transmutation of God and the Holy Ghost into poetry.”

…A successful work of art provides surcease from the chaos and fragmentation that so much characterize our daily lives and to some extent, lesser or greater, our very selves. Furthermore, it stands as a metaphor for the unity and the orderliness, the meaningful relationship of the part to the whole—the part that each of us is—that human beings yearn to find in the cosmos. The very fact that section 93 is a poem has theological significance. As a work of art that God himself has approved as being his “word,” it constitutes a divine reassurance that the universe is, after all, a unified and orderly place in which every element, every human being, has its meaningful place; that is (though I can’t get into this without a discussion of section 76), all except those who choose to devote the entirety of their very existence to the destruction of that unity; and even they provide a dark background against which the Light shines and so, ironically, have a place in the whole. Everything in the cosmos is a thread in a magnificent fabric that, grasped as a whole (and in section 93 every human being is offered a final grasp of the whole as God grasps it, through unity with him), is satisfying. For it to work as such a testimony, however, it must be experienced as a work of art. Section 93 is a revelation of the nature of God, not only by “what it says,” but by “how it says,” in its full presentational nature.

…I also suggest that section 93 and poems like it are intended to be transformative, that they are designed to serve as catalysts of revelatory experience. Their intransitive character, as not merely “poetry” but also as unified poems, contributes to that purpose by keeping the attention of the reader focused within them, as peering through a verbal lens—a verbal seer stone—toward the reality that lies beyond them. Section 93, after all, contains that remarkable promise that is already quoted above:

It shall come to pass that every soul

***who forsaketh his sins,

***and cometh unto me,

***and calleth on my name,

***and obeyeth my voice,

***and keepeth my commandments

shall see my face

***and know that I am,

The reader is invited, not only to contemplate the truths spoken of in the poem, but to see and know for himself (and there, it may be is the explanation for the paucity of visual imagery in the poem—the reader is invited to see for himself, without distraction or preconception), and the poem is so constructed as to assist him toward obtaining those experiences. Nevertheless, though the poem has extraliterary intent, in order fully to realize that intent it must be read in a literary way; it is necessary to pay close attention to the “words on the page,” not only in their transitive, referential nature, but also in how they work together intransitively, relate to each other, condition each other, as parts of the aesthetically unified whole. The intransitive quality of the structure, its power to hold the reader with the poem itself, serves to concentrate the mind, as on—through—a seer stone. That seems particularly true of Doctrine and Covenants 76, in which the center of a great chiasm focuses the mind on a capitulation of the degrees of glory. The poems of the Doctrine and Covenants are designed to be transformational in nature, to have the power to change men and their world not only indirectly, by the communication of meaning, but more directly, by their action upon men, as an operation of sanctifying grace—and in the very fact that they are such is a further revelation of the nature of God: “what you worship.”

…Thoughts?

SOURCES CITED

Airmet, Douglas E. “Mormon Poets Talk about their Craft.” The New Era, 5:8 (Aug. 1975): 44 – 49.

Alter, Robert. The Art of Biblical Poetry. Basic Books, 1985.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Brugger, William H. Section 76 as Literature in the Doctrine and Covenants. Master’s                                               thesis, Brigham Young University, 1993.

Ciardi, John. How Does a Poem Mean? Part Three of an Introduction to Literature.The Riverside Press, 1959.

Gorton, H. Clay. Language of the Lord. Horizon Publishers, 1993.

King, Charles Francis. The Doctrine & Covenants Completely Restructured (Including Chiasm). 2d ed. rev. Charles Francis King, 2000.

Petersen, Roger K. Joseph Smith Prophet-Poet: A Literary Analysis of Writings Commonly

Associated with His Name. Doctoral Dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1981.

Pound, Ezra. Make It New: Essays. Faber and Faber Ltd., 1934.

Shipp, Richard C. Conceptual Patterns of Repetition in the Doctrine and Covenants and their Implications. Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1975.

Smith, Barbara Hernstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. The University of Chicago Press, 1968.