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headlesssamurai · 6 years ago

Note

Has everyone asked you about Jupiter Ascending?

@godzillaapproved

Yo, I ought to apologize to you for taking hella long to properly respond to this. It’s holiday season over thisaway, sure, but I ain’t nearly vain enough to assume just anybody gets why that can suck up a dude’s time. Reckon I’m sure there’s tons of national celebrations all over the world I’d never know about otherwise. Bah, I say! Going out and socializing is one of the few things more overrated than all those shitty Apple products. But yeh, in my case it was less the celebratory spirit of holiday festivities and more a sudden spike in workload, so my mental energy was roughed up by that, plus I was doing a new workout at the same time. Thus, whatever free time I had left was spent obsessively hammering away at the Steam sale items I’d recently bought. It’s like a coping mechanism. Well, that and cheap wine anyhow.

Regardless, regardless—holy shit what an obnoxious fucking way for me to open this up—this Ask of yours came at an unusually coincidental time. A friend and I have been meeting up every weekend to watch like semi-recent crappy movies just as a way to enjoy a bad drink and a good laugh. She likes to laugh, and I like to drink, so it works out. After working our way through every Transformers film by Michael Bay, then Cameron’s Avatar, Terminator: Genisys, The Amazing Spider-mans, Spielberg’s Crystal Skull, Ready Player One, and some of the more abysmal DC films, our last escapade into nonsense was the estimably hilarious Gods of Egypt, which reminded me of one of those excremental quicktime-event video games. You know, like Detroit Becomes Human or some shit like that (Oh wait, is it Detroit Coming of the Humans? Meh).

As luck would have it, like, the day before you asked me about it, the next film at which I suggested we take a crack was the Wachowskis’ own Jupiter Ascending, which my friend had not seen at that time. Nor had I, since first viewing it in theaters.

>>SPOILER WARNING: IF YOU CARE ENOUGH TO, UH… YOU KNOW, CARE

I was intrigued to give this movie another go. It’s struck me that I’ve got an odd streak of pleasantly enjoying movies a lot of people can’t seem to stand, or which some people even hate with utter vileness on the verge of hunting down the producers with a roll of duct tape, power tools, jugs of petrol, and a matchbook. I’ve enjoyed, for instance, Hardcore Henry, Elysium, and Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, all of which not one person I know in real life could offer a single word of kindness. After my first viewing of Jupiter Ascending, I was left to consider whether or not it was the sort of movie I should enjoy and allow others to hate and disparage, or if it just wasn’t that good. I recalled leaving the theater with a sort of “Hm” sound, and not much else. But given my history with rooting for an underdog, was I wrong? Is this movie actually good, or cool in some way? I couldn’t defy the sensation that I’d missed something.

The answer, it seems, is more complex than a simple yes or no. Then again, as Mason and Goat Han Solo often remind us, “there’s no nuance on the internet”, so even my assertion there about complexity may be in gross error.

For the unfamiliar, Jupiter Ascending is a science fiction tale with vibes of less-cliché aesthetic choices for its visuals, some cool references to UFO conspiracy theories, and aims at a more expansive universe that would no doubt have been further explored in sequels had this film been better received by audiences and critics. I’ll say outright, it’s a disappointment to me that we weren’t given the chance to see more films in this mythology, because there’s some really cool stuff going on in this weird, imaginative universe. The story centers upon the character of Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), an average working-class young woman in Chicago who is shocked to discover not only that aliens exist but that she happens to be the reincarnation of a galaxy owning empress, which entitles Jupiter to ownership of a large portion of the cosmos, the least part of which is Earth itself. But as the Aussies say, something’s a bit suss about the whole affair, and the wondrous glamour of this technologically advanced universe is concurrently party to a dark truth.

An immediately intriguing element of Jupiter Ascending is its attempt to set-up something which, while perhaps greatly inspired by a few other fictional works, is an original property, not a sequel, reboot, adaptation of an existing work, nor a spiritual successor to something else. Rather than merely being intrigued by this fact, I also respect it, because high-concept science fiction films aren’t something a studio likes to go for unless they have a preexisting audience, like adaptations of a book series or something. So it’s always bold when someone can cobble together the resources to really take a chance on something like this, even if it isn’t well received. After all that’s how films like The Matrix, The Terminator, Ridley Scott’s Alien, George Lucas’ Star Wars, and John McTiernan’s Predator come to be in the first place. Another example, I didn’t quite enjoy The Last Witch Hunter, but I recall respecting that film’s risk in its attempt at a new property for similar reasons.

Irrespective of your own personal tastes as a moviegoer and consumer of science fiction, it can’t be denied that the Wachowski’s are measurably talented filmmakers. Their doubtless skill at framing shots, blending effects with reality to present an integrated experience, and choreographing action sequences with such lethal precision it’s always incredible to watch; all of these things can’t be argued, and this attentiveness for the craft is all very present in Jupiter Ascending. Toward the beginning of the movie, there’s an aerial chase sequence that promptly accelerates into one of the most engaging, gripping action sequences in memory, heavily fantastical sci-fi elements intermixed with almost Fast and the Furious levels of insanity. The sense of gripping speed alone as two characters cling to the outer hull of a spacecraft was helplessly intense and left me quite keen to see what else the movie had to offer further down the line.

Additionally we have some awesome art design and stylistic choices regarding the look of this sci-fi universe, both the appearance of aliens and the design of their technology was familiar and unique at the same time. There are beings referred to as “Splices” which are intermixes of humans and various animals, giving some people bestial characteristics which are just weird enough to be cool to me without verging over the edge into absurd territory. There are cybernetic enhancements, gravity boots, phalanx style energy shields, neural synthetic wings, motherfucking jet-bikes of course and, though I never would have dreamed, motherfucking lizardmen! That blew me away, dude. Others may think it’s stupid, but lizardmen are one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy creatures of all time, and they look so badass in this movie it was unbelievably awesome to realize I was actually seeing a proper lizardfolk on screen. With lizardmen and jet-bikes, Jupiter Ascending quickly marks two-out-of-five on my Generally Awesome Things I Like To See In Science Fiction list. It’s a real list, in my head, I swear.

The starship designs were inspired by art deco architecture in cities like Chicago, lending Jupiter’s cosmos a feeling more of Herbert’s Dune-iverse than something like Star Trek, which I appreciated since we don’t see that type of style quite as much. Top all that off with a fantastic score from Michael Giacchino and you’ve got some great tools to tell an awesome story.

So the thing is, it’s not just skin deep either, while the film does lean heavily on its visuals and action set-pieces, this is a genuinely interesting universe. Michael Bay’s Transformers, for instance, also has cool visuals, some passable action scenes, and dazzling special effects, but is it interesting? The answer is no. Because Bay’s movies, while briefly entertaining, are ultimately hollow. There aren’t any subdermal layers beneath the facade of spectacle. But in Jupiter Aescending there’s clearly something else going on, the touch of true filmmakers for one, yet also the potential for so much more. The groundwork, the craftsmanship and attentiveness is all here. It’s really what they choose to do, or not do, with that potential which ends up disappointing. Not, as in the case of Bay’s movies, the utter lack of potential for greatness from the start.

Though some fandom-card carrying ideologues may acerbically disagree, an acceptably comparable film whose potential for greatness was also mostly wasted for middle-of-the-road mediocrity is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story, by Disney Interactive– I mean, by Disney behind the appropriated guise of Lucasfilm. Whatever else you think of that film, and while I agree from a mythological standpoint its very existence was in extremely poor taste, the talent, the production value, the mark of the craft was there. None of this was, however, capitalized upon to create anything truly profound. Jupiter Ascending’s unfortunate drawbacks are of a similar form.

I’d like to state emphatically however, I’m not trying to punish the film nor act as its apologist. Reckon I always end up saying this, but I am really just some dude. Sure, I read a lot of books and stuff, but that doesn’t appoint me some grand authority on the subject of fiction. These thoughts I try to convey in my write-ups are meant merely as opinions, framed in the form of investigating the quality of a film or game or whatever. To that end, I’m compelled to side with most folks in that, whatever else its got going for it, there’s some major deficiency holding back Jupiter Ascending from rising to a higher form of entertainment. So if the production values are high, where’s the casus belli all the angry critics are seeing here?

To puzzle that out, we ought first to determine by what criterion a truly good story is shaped. In that regard it’s likely the wisest to begin by reckoning what sort of story we’re dealing with here. Most people are wont to jump straight to the whole Hero’s Journey every dickhead YouTube reviewer read about in some sparknotes book while using the shitter at Barnes & Noble. But Joseph Campbell’s mimetic architecture isn’t the only sort of story that exists, not even in science fiction. Consider, for instance, anything written by H.P. Lovecraft, Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, Philip K. Dick’s various works, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, or Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. These stories, while very sci-fi in their scope and measure, are far more introspective, and very contemplative when contrasted against fiction of the more traditional heroic adventure genre. Hell, even Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers while appearing a mindless war movie on its surface is fundamentally a cautionary allegory. While conquering adversity is certainly a theme of its own within each of these stories, the breadth of that adversity’s effect on the narrative varies wildly, as well as the nature of adversity each character must face. Other heavier components, like displacement, post-humanism, philosophical allegory, are also usually present in such stories.

All of this likely seems a bit excessive to point out, but I promise it’ll get relevant later. But, uh… yeh. The next time some liberal arts asshat tries to tell you there’s only one real way a story can go, you can be safely justified in telling them to get bent. I mean read, yeh, tell them to read more shit, and watch more movies. That’d probably be more productive. But also tell them to get bent, the fuckers.

There can also, however, be stories that blend styles. The 2004 rebrand of Battlestar Galactica incorporates several philosophical elements, self-reflective, and meditative thematic ideas into its narrative of what would otherwise be a fairly standard science fiction conflict in outer space. The Wachowskis’ own The Matrix is a perfect example of a classic hero’s journey which also incorporates introspective themes into its lore, plot, and mythology, wherein the internal conflict of the protagonist is just as important as whatever external adversity he is meant to overcome. Where Battlestar Galactica 2004 uses its thematic material to craft a sci-fi adventure story, The Matrix uses a sci-fi adventure story to explore its thematic material. Seen in that light, I think the Wachowskis wanted Jupiter Ascending to have similar weight to its narrative, but they ended up recycling a sort of “human harvest” idea already seen in The Matrix (and arguably done in a more engaging way).

Jupiter Jones herself is a catalyst for an inter-familial conflict within a wealthy interstellar hierarchy. Though alien races do exist, the most dangerous aliens happen to be humans themselves, extraterrestrial humans of course. In Jupiter’s universe, it turns out that the wealthy and powerful have the ability to live forever (an idea also explored in the Neftlix adaptation Altered Carbon), but only by seeding countless worlds with humans, then harvesting these humans like crops and breaking these millions of people down into a sort of primordial youth serum by which the lives of the affluent may be extended.

Advanced genetics in Jupiter’s universe are the highest form of technology, and it is stated in all the cosmos the most sought-after resource is time. This is the reason these advanced humans out among the stars are able to splice human and animal genes, essentially creating entirely new races, and the reason why Jupiter herself is seen as a reincarnation of a woman who once owned countless stars and planets. Genes, to the wealthy and powerful, have a near spiritual significance. Jupiter is referred to as a Recurrence, a person who is long dead but whose gene-print inconceivably reappears in someone who is born centuries or even millennia later. This is seen as a near miracle, and thus is recognized by interstellar law as a legitimate reincarnation, giving this new person the same rights and privileges, and inheriting all the property previously held by the deceased person whose gene print they share.

And that’s where the conflict comes up. Jupiter is sought out by three siblings of the Abrasax family, one of the most elite and powerful families in the universe, of which she is the reincarnation of their mother and thus entitled to re-inherit all of their resources and capital which they currently control. The kids are Kalique (Tuppence Middleton), the well-to-do, but compassionate one, Titus (Douglas Booth), the more two-faced of the three who acts innocent but is clever as a viper, and Balem (Eddie Redmayne), the stereotypical villain of the piece who seems to have nervous ticks and an inability to raise his voice above a certain octave except in times of extreme stress. Of course, since Jupiter’s now meant to control everything they currently own, none of the three Abrasax kids can be fully trusted. Jupiter doesn’t have to face these three one-percenters alone however. She is accompanied by Caine Wise (Channing Tatum) an ex-soldier and wolf-splice, known as a Lycantant, who is hired by Titus to safely retrieve Jupiter from Earth before his siblings can get to her. Caine’s former commanding officer, a bee-splice known as Stinger (Sean Bean) also appears from time to time, as well as officers of the Aegis, an interstellar law enforcement agency.

If you are having a hard time following the characters here, it’s probably because there just isn’t much to any of the characters other than what I’ve already written about them. And therein lies the primary flaw with this film. The characters aren’t interesting, and the greater tragedy is that the characters are written to be uninteresting. Where a ton of care and attention went into crafting the look, feel and depth of the wider universe acting as the story’s setting, the characters within this story are criminally underwritten.

Earlier, I went to great lengths to illustrate the wealth of variety throughout genres of science fiction, just how many different types of stories we might get within this narrative framework. The purpose of explaining all of that to such a degree was meant to show you that not everything has to follow the same narrative flow. Sometimes stories can be more abstract, less character driven, less action heavy. In that regard, a story exemplar like Blade Runner doesn’t really need to have strongly written characters because the interpersonal aspects of its journey are less important than its atmospheric setting and stylistic momentum. The gravitas comes from a different place than in stories which are more character driven.

However, if a story does want to give us something more conventional, then it’s extremely important that the characters are strongly defined, well established and, even if not likable, at the very least interesting. Though a bit out of this wheelhouse, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is notorious for featuring a dramatis personae of terribly vain, horrible sociopaths, but many of these characters are still written in a way that makes them interesting. Jupiter Ascending fashions itself as an epic space opera, a stylized adventure journey which goes from scrubbing toilets in Irving Park to rocketing through a wider spectacular galaxy. Within that story structure, the characters need to be given their proper attention, especially the protagonist. Only, this is not the case with this movie. In fact in Jupiter Ascending, the characters almost appear as afterthoughts, which is most unfortunate.

Despite being the protagonist’s love interest, Caine seems to have been given the most depth, as a literal lone-wolf personality, an orphan of a sort, a former soldier disgraced for an act of savagery, who longs to regain his military status as a Skyjacker, and was sprung from a prison called Deadland to rescue Jupiter from the clutches of filthy rich egomaniacs, a class of people he seems to utterly despise. Yet even Caine’s various portions of characterization are never fully explored, and he mostly serves as a vehicle to come dashing in and pluck Jupiter out of trouble over and over again. Secondary characters, other than Stinger (more on him later), are hardly there other than to function as a taxi service or exposition dump where appropriate, which is a shame since some of them have a great look but nothing else going on in the writing department to make them memorable. The Abrasax siblings are basically three different flavors of the same smug Soylent privilege, though Kalique seems to exist only to explain things for the benefit of the audience, and Balem seems to be accidentally memorable thanks to Eddie Redmayne’s unusual performance. Titus has some cool psychotic vibes with his underhanded motivations, slippery silver tongued bastard that he is, but even his role as the trickster doesn’t get its due in the end.

Stinger, Caine’s former commanding officer who is now an Aegis Marshal, is also written slightly deeper than even the Abrasax siblings. He took the fall for Caine’s misstep in the military, so he also lost his wings and was disgraced for it. Despite this, he is willing to help Caine and Jupiter throughout the story, and though begrudged he seems genuinely good at heart. Stinger’s point of interest however comes from his traits as a Splice between human and bee DNA. Yes, this leads to a funny line of dialogue, but there are some great examples of show-don’t-tell with Stinger, in that having bee instincts he seems superhumanly able to anticipate motion and react to it ridiculously quickly compared to most people. This ability gives him an edge in everything from fistfights to navigating massive fields of hunter-killer mines. This is hardly important to the plot, but I thought it was cool since it’s never stated outright, just displayed through his actions. Another example of a great idea that’s mostly left adrift.

Jupiter herself starts out as a typical protagonist for a Hero’s Journey. She’s a Jewish Russian immigrant who leads an unglamorous life cleaning bathrooms and tidying fancy homes for her family’s housekeeping service, apparently has bad luck with romance, and hardly ever has time to really do anything she enjoys. Typically, once these elements are presented, there will also be a revelation of something more intimate about the protagonist, her dreams and ambitions, something she longs to one day achieve, her hobbies or personality, perhaps a personal drawback or fear she wishes to overcome. But the most we get about Jupiter is that she wants to buy back a telescope which was once stolen from her astronomer father by the same thieves who murdered him (which we see early in the movie in an awkwardly directed scene). It’s not made clear if Jupiter herself has a genuine interest in astronomy, nor even what any of her interests happen to be.

This becomes a recurring problem throughout the film. Since no real internal conflict or personality of any kind is established for Jupiter, she isn’t led through any personal journey or self-exploration, nor anything which allows her to grow or evolve as the narrative opens up and accelerates. She’s basically just along for the ride, one of those wrong place wrong time sort of things. Her journey is entirely surface level, external forces dragging her around the stars without her having any real say in the matter nor agency of her own. She as very little idea of what she wants or who she is, from what we can tell, because we have no idea of those things either. Mila Kunis does a fine job with the material she’s given, but the material just isn’t much to run with, and if there is a drawback to her performance as an actress I promise in this case the fault is not with her.

The terrible lack of characterization hurts everything in the movie from its ethical conceits, plot momentum, all the way up to the romance subplot which only feels forced and lacking chemistry because the two leads aren’t properly written. They could have had chemistry, but its difficult for archetypes to interact without endowing them with personality. It’s a fundamental flaw from which all other flaws of the film stem because the personality, the character of the protagonist in this type of story is a fundamental element from which many other elements of the story stem.

Even towards the end, when Jupiter is forced into dangerous heroics and aggressive bravery it doesn’t feel like much of anything because for all we know she was brave all along, or maybe she wasn’t. We’re never given the chance to find out. Her larger moment of heroism comes not in a violent action of conquering the badguy (though she does beat him with a pipe later... in self-defense of course), but in refusing to compromise to Balem’s ultimatum, either resign her ownership of Earth or allow Balem to murder her family. It’s interesting to note that instead of rocking up and blowing his head off with a blaster, she just tells him to get fucked, which is a cool idea, non-violent protagonists are few and far between. Though the climax would have been far more satisfying had we gotten to know Jupiter much better before she gets to this point. Ultimately, the lack of strong characters make the progression of the movie feel awkward, and the denouement seems to come out of nowhere. It’s really too bad, since many facets of this film’s setup seemed to bear promise, and it’s more tragic than infuriating, leaving an audience with a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Like Jupiter herself, thematic elements are also only half-explored. The idea that genetics have advanced to such a point that life-regeneration has become a reality within this star-spanning civilization (albeit a reality exclusively available to the filthy, insanely wealthy) is an interesting idea, and there’s a lot of potential for the ethical quandaries related to that sort of technology, and what makes it possible. Yet little of this is given attention beyond the horror of Jupiter discovering the Abrasax family regularly kills billions of people for longevity and profit. Is their life-extending operation the only one out there? Or is it an industry? Are there black market dealers who develop and trade their own youth serum off the books? It’s all kind of muddy and little of it is given any explanation or nuance.

As we’ve established, Campbell’s hero’s journey isn’t the only way to go about a sci-fi story, but in Jupiter Ascending it’s like half-started without any of the follow-through, and the characters which should be the heart of the story are greatly lacking any depth. The film’s been compared to a Disney-style princess story, and even references Cinderella at one point, though it does seem to be aiming higher than this. Yet, the lackluster character writing and flat dialogue all make the story somewhat impotent, whatever its aim, leaving the movie looking like a majestically beautiful gild-feathered eagle, which just happens to be blind. Fun to look at, but has absolutely no idea where it’s going. I can’t articulate enough what a shame this all is, since there really are some cool ideas and sci-fi content here. I truly wish, as a sci-fi enthusiast, that Jupiter was truly able to ascend.

I’d recommend it as a fun romp through an intriguing galaxy, but it’s more useful as an example of how to get everything right with a movie, everything other than the thing that really holds it all together: a well-written protagonist. Still, I’m no intersectionalist, but it’s nice to see the girl get the guy at the end of the story, the way guy protagonists get to get the girl at the end of all their stories. That was a pleasant feeling, even if it wasn’t quite earned with everything come before it. Plus, you know; lizardmen, and jet-bikes. The Wachowskis are generally great at what they do though, just maybe have a tough time channeling it. Here’s hoping they can get back to us with something truly badass in future because the level of commitment to the craft seen in this movie is extraordinary, even if the reach exceeds the grasp in this particular case.

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milenapetrofig · 7 years ago

Text

Vaughan’s “Temple”

One of the best ways to understand and evaluate the work of a poet is to consider the influence and impact of his or her work on contemporaries. The study is on the impact George Herbert made on Henry Vaughan, a seventeenth-century Welsh Protestant poet, and on Richard Crashaw, a Catholic devotional writer of the same period. Introduction The work of George Herbert was beloved by both Renaissance readers and writers. Herbert adulation is documented in the wave of imitations which emerged in the wake of The Temple. Herbert's anthology was the first of its kind to incorporate various religious poems in a single body of poems in a method reminiscent of Philip Sidney's secular sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella (written c. 1580). Inspired by The Temple, subsequent Renaissance religious poets like Henry Vaughan, Richard Crashaw and Christopher Harvey produced anthologies such as Silex Scintillans, Steps to the Temple, and The Synagogue respectively. The poet Christopher Harvey was so moved by Herbert's materially-inspired poems such as 'The Altar', 'The Church Floor' and 'The Windows', that he made them structural blueprints for The Synagogue. Extemporising on a theme derived from Herbert's 'The Church Porch', Harvey's variations included 'The Church Gate', 'The Church Wall' and 'The Church Stile'. Although Harvey did not enjoy the fortune of his predecessor's success, a few of Herbert's imitators did. Henry Vaughan and Richard Crashaw are particularly prominent among those who went on to achieve literary renown. Herbert inspired Vaughan and Crashaw to different degrees and to different ends. Vaughan was fascinated by how Herbert made the poem an object for the eye as much as it was an object for the ear. This was revolutionary for its time. At the time of Herbert's publishing, the technology of movable type printing (developed by Gutenberg in 1450) was still relatively new. Publication and typography were new domains. Writers of the time (poets in particular) were still exploring the yet un-codified typographical possibilities of the page. Unlike manuscripts (which were handwritten and often circulated within a select circle), printed poems were able to reach wider audiences. Printed poems were also able to exploit typographical effects. The full range of these possibilities was of particular interest to Henry Vaughan. Like those of Herbert, Vaughan's poems require the reader to be acutely aware of the poem's physical existence as a page. Under the influence of Herbert's highly visual poems, Vaughan exploited the poem's corporeal and spatial dimensions to forge meaning through shape. Vaughan, does not, however, exalt the physical world in these highly sensate 'shape poems'. Instead, he decries it and calls the world as understood by the senses mortal, tainted, and inherently duplicitous - 'False life! A foil and no more, when / Wilt thou be gone?' ('Quickness'). Whilst Richard Crashaw also wrote under Herbert's influence, his poems were inspired in a demonstrably different way. While Vaughan casts aspersions on the veracity of the physical world, Crashaw, by contrast, celebrates the physical world's materiality. He views nature as something which is God-affirming, and his poems are thus grounded in material motifs more frequently than Vaughan's are. It is thus correspondingly unusual that it is not Vaughan but Crashaw who inherited Herbert's poetic musicality. This might be considered striking as music appears to be at odds with physical matter: sound is incorporeal and abstract, while matter is corporeal and has both form and substance. Like Herbert, Crashaw often conceives of poetry as sound - the rarest and most refined of the physical senses. Poems are not merely words but songs. Crashaw shared Herbert's awareness of music inhered in verse. Poems are songs through which the poet can praise the divine. Crashaw's aesthetic values are thus unusual if not paradoxical, for they result in an apparent disjunction between poetic method and poetic themes. The motifs in Crashaw's poems are often physical. Crashaw's poetic world is a material, if not quasi-natural, physical universe; one in which he constructs 'New similes to nature' ('A Hymn'). Conceptually, however, Crashaw equates his poetry with sound - the most abstract, immaterial and incorporeal of aesthetic forms. Henry Vaughan Henry Vaughan (1621-1695) led an extraordinarily diverse professional life. He received a legal education in Oxford and the Inns of Court, but went on to a career in medicine when his legal studies were interrupted by military service and the Civil War. Although a practising physician, Vaughan also wrote poetry. He was widely recognized for the Welsh cultural influences in his work, and was known as 'The Silurist' (after the ancient Welsh tribe of the Silures), a name he adopts in his first printed poetical anthology Olor Iscanus, or The Swan of Usk. His use of alliteration, assonantal rhymes, and dyfalu or Welsh similes (which involve the multiplication of comparisons held ), are distinct features of his poetry. Some critics, however, claim that whilst Vaughan's poems are Welsh, they are also a 'tissue of echoes' which allude to works ranging from Donne and Jonson to Habington and Carew. Nevertheless, it is the poems of George Herbert which Vaughan personally cites as the single, most significant influence on both his artistic vision and temperament after his conversion to Anglicanism. In the preface to Silex Scintillans, his first anthology of religious poems, Vaughan makes his admiration for Herbert explicit - he calls Herbert a man 'whose holy life and verse gained many pious Converts (of whom I am the least)'. Twenty-six poems in Silex Scintillans are titled after poems from Herbert's The Temple. Others - like 'Unprofitableness' (which clearly alludes to Herbert's 'The Flower') - begin with direct quotations from Herbert. 'The most glorious true Saint' The physician-turned-poet Vaughan often expressed explicit admiration for Herbert whom he called the 'most glorious true Saint' of the British church. Vaughan viewed Herbert as the perfect instantiation of the poet prophet. A common Renaissance conceit, this unity was popularised by Sidney's The Defence of Poesie (written c. 1580), in a passage on the Latin cognate of the Greek word 'poet' - vates - which means 'prophet' or 'diviner'. It is thus particularly significant that Vaughan praised Herbert as 'a seer' whose 'incomparable prophetic Poems' (The Works of Henry Vaughan) predicted present political and religious upheaval. Like Herbert, who believed that secular poetry - once 'wash[ed]... with tears' and 'brought... to church well dressed and clad' ('The Forerunners') - could be sanctified for religious purposes, Vaughan also believed in the reformative power of Christian verse: Harken unto a Verser, who may chance Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure. A verse may find him, who a sermon flies, And turn delight into sacrifice. ('Perirrhanterium', The Church Porch) Both poets wrote in the shadow of the Erasmian tradition, which advocated religious teaching through wholesome and preferably scriptural, but nonetheless pleasurable, influences. Following Herbert's lead, Vaughan, too, was adamant to refute Puritan allegations against the vacuity or vanity of 'idle' verse. 'The root' Vaughan's poems are distinctly Herbertian in a number of ways. As I mentioned earlier, several are grounded in actual lines from The Temple. From this collection Vaughan also adopted many of the motifs of Silex Scintillans. For example, 'The poor root... still trod / By ev'ry wandring clod' ('I walked the other day (to spend my hour), ll. 37-42') is immediately evocative of Herbert's own - 'Sweet rose... Thy root is ever in its grave' ('Virtue', The Church). Again, the opening to Vaughan's 'The Morning-watch' directly alludes to Herbert's own opening to 'The Holy Scriptures (I)'. Like Herbert's 'O Book! infinite sweetness! / let my heart / Suck ev'ry letter', Vaughan, too, begins his poem with one of Herbert's favourite adjectives - 'O Joyes! Infinite sweetnes! With what flowers / And shoots of glory, my soul breakes, and buds!' Later in the same poem, Vaughn attempts, also like Herbert, to both articulate and apprehend the spiritual enigma of prayer through periphrasis. Under the influence of Herbert's famous lyric 'Prayer (I)', he speaks of how 'Prayer is / The world in tune, / A spirit-voyce, / And vocall joyes / Whose Eccho is heavn's blisse' (ll. 18-22). Herbert frequently shapes his verse in ways which demonstrated how he considered the poem (as it exists on the printed page) not simply an object for the ear but an object for the eye. In 'Justice (II)', Herbert doubts the power of 'show and shape' even as his verse form visually enacts the imbalance that will one day prove to be God's overwhelming weight on his behalf: O Dreadfull Justice, what a fright and terrour Wast thou of old, When sinne and errour Did show and shape thy looks to me, And through their glasse discolour thee! ('Justice (II)', ll. 1-5) Like Herbert, Vaughan's poems are not simply aural artefacts but visual ones. This was revolutionary for its time. As established earlier, the printing press (developed by Gutenberg in 1450) was a relatively modern invention. Prior to this, poems were either distributed as handwritten manuscripts or they were memorised (a process eased by rhyme) and recited from person to person; written poems, especially in the court context, were also sometimes set to music, and circulated through performances. Hence, most Medieval and Renaissance lyrics treated poems as highly, if not purely, aural objects. Although Herbert frequently equates his verse with sound, often calling it 'my music' ('The Thanksgiving') or 'my song' ('Whitsunday'), he nevertheless viewed the poems as visual objects. Herbert viewed the poem as both page and sound. This is particularly surprising as the idea of poem as a page was relatively modern for his time. Herbert's awareness of the poem's physicality was revolutionary. This resulted in his creation of iconic poems with physically emblematic structures. Herbert manipulated typeface, lineation and typography to create a range of stanzaic innovations and effects, generating subtle arguments via visually expressive forms. Herbert was fond of these highly emblematic shapes which allowed the poet to merge both form and substance. The conjunction of both the ear and the eye in Herbert's poetry (a practice later adopted by Vaughan) is most evident in the pattern poem. A form both popularised and pioneered by Herbert, the pattern or emblem poem is shaped around the object its represents. A type of glyph, the poem becomes an icon which takes on the visual nature of its subject. Herbert's most famous shape poems, 'The Altar' and 'Easter Wings', for instance, are shaped after an altar and a pair of wings, respectively. The pattern poem's iconic shape thus creates at least some of its meaning through sight. Herbert's 'Easter Wings' was a homage to Stephen Hawes' 'A pair of wings', a Medieval lyric from the collection titled The Conversion of Swerers (1523) - the first recorded emblem poem in English. Herbert's popularisation of the form subsequently resulted in the assimilation of various elements of the pattern poem into the poems of Crashaw and Vaughan. As Vaughan wrote in one of his poems, the visual shape of the poem could act to lead the reader to the poem's meaning: When first thy Eies unveil, give thy Soul leave To do the like; our Bodies but forerun The spirits duty. ('Rules and Lessons', Silex Scintillans) Like Herbert, Vaughan's poems require the reader to negotiate between the eye, the ear, and the understanding. This is particularly evident in an emblem poem like 'The Waterfall': With what deep murmurs through times silent stealth Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealth Here flowing fall, And chide, and call, As if his liquid, loose Retinue staid Lingring, and were of this steep place afraid, The common pass Where, clear as glass, All must descend Not to an end: But quickened by this deep and rocky grave, Rise to a longer course more bright and brave. Here, Vaughan makes sound semantically resonant. In the 'stealth' / 'wealth' couplet assonance and alliteration seem both furtive (the 's' and 'a' / 'e' sounds merge in hushed tones) and fertile as the vowels proliferate. Hence, assonance represents and encapsulates 'stealth' and 'wealth' respectively. However, it is not just sound but sight which is simultaneously represented in the poem. There here exists a recognisable incorporation of both aural and visual elements. In addition to the assonance and sibilance ('silent stealth') which aurally evokes the waterfall's 'deep murmurs', Vaughan uses alternating stanza length to visually evoke the 'flowing fall' of the waterfall's cascading 'liquid, loose Retinue'. The stanza beginning with 'Here flowing fall' is abruptly indented and curtailed in a way which pictorially represents the flowing undulations of a waterfall. This kind of facility with the poem's graphic elements is a debt Vaughan owed to Herbert. Even when Herbert's poems are not explicitly emblematic, he adopts, nevertheless, techniques derived from the pattern poem in order to foreground the simultaneously aural and visual nature of his writing. In some fleeting instances, for example, Herbert manipulates line breaks and spacing in order to show, for example, 'my heart broken, as was my verse' ('Denial', The Church), or how spiritual suffering can be manifested bodily, or even textually: Broken in pieces all asunder Lord hunt me not. ('Affliction (4)', The Church) This kind of breaking is evident in a more sustained way in a poem like 'Easter (I)'. Although it is not a pattern poem, it uses shape to forge a thematic argument. Its bipartite structure essentially divides the work into two halves - regular, whole stanzas follow from the jagged, broken stanzas with which it opens. This division creates a visual progression from the broken to the whole which physically evokes its subject - the crucifixion and resurrection, in celebration of Easter. Brokenness (recalling the broken body of Christ) which heightens the wonder of resurrection is forged on a local level through emblematically broken lines such as - Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise Without delays. The syntactic conclusion of the opening - 'thy Lord is risen' - does not correspond with the line's conclusion as it segues into 'Sing his praise'. This phrase is not resolved and its abrupt division is augmented by its indentation into 'Without delays'. The result is a sequence in which sound, sight and syntax combine to achieve a unified effect. The line is broken on two levels - visual and syntactic. This is physically emblematic of the brokenness which both precedes and heightens the resurrection with which Herbert's 'Easter (I)' is concerned. This practice was adopted by Vaughan in similar structures, such as 'Happy those early dayes! when I / Shin'd in my Angell-infancy' ('The Retreat'). Like Herbert, Vaughan uses the division of sight and syntax physically to evoke the displacement with which the poem is concerned. Richard Crashaw, title page from Steps to the Temple (London, 1646). Richard Crashaw The poems of Richard Crashaw (1613-49) are distinctive. Sensuously ekphrastic and sonorously resonant, they are frequently expressions of ecstatic religious rapture. They are also the only English Renaissance poems to represent the Catholic counter-Reformation. Crashaw's conversion to Catholicism may have been incited, in part, by his education. He was first a student at the Charterhouse, then at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Both institutions were noted in the seventeenth century for their Laudian Anglicanism which, like Catholicism, favoured both clerical hierarchy and liturgical ceremony. Crashaw's attraction to the rituals and devotions of the Catholic faith is evident in his poetry. Its vivid metaphors are often grounded in continental, baroque motifs which include the infant Jesus, the wounds of the broken, crucified Christ and the sufferings of the Virgin Mary, the Mater Dolorosa. This was a familiar practice in the medieval spiritual tradition of affective piety or devotion. Affective piety - which appeals to faith through sense and consequently emotion - is often grounded in loving expressions of the humanity of Christ, particularly in highly visual emphases on the Nativity and the Crucifixion. Crashaw's first and second collections of sacred poems - Steps to the Temple (1646, 1648) - acknowledge Herbert's The Temple. However, they are very different in tone and temperament from Herbert's. Unlike Herbert, Crashaw's poems are often unbridled celebrations of nature. In Crashaw's poems, even secular objects such as 'darts' and 'nests' become means to religious expression. Consequently, Crashaw's poetic syntax was often highly as his poems were often premised on incorporation and synthesis. On the other hand, Herbert's poems were elegant and concise. Though Crashaw's poetry may differ markedly, in important respects, from the style and meaning of Herbert's, it bears, nevertheless, the inescapable influences of Herbert's work. The extent and degree of Crashaw's allusions to Herbert - intentional or otherwise - is particularly evident in the opening to 'A Hymn to the Nativity': Welcome all wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span. Summer in winter, Day in night. Heaven in earth, and God in man. Great little one! Whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth. The stanza is essentially predicated on conjunction - 'all wonders in one'. On a lexical level, this principle of incorporation is reflected in its morphology, such as the compound 'all-embracing'. The hyphenated compound welds two elements - 'all' and 'embracing'. This incorporative gesture reflects the unity of opposites - 'summer in winter', 'day in night' - which dominates the poem. These recurrent metaphors of paradoxical union are part of a figurative system which contains the theological argument of how 'God in man... Lifts earth to heaven' and 'stoops heav'n to earth'. The poem is about the apparent disparity between man's persistent unworthiness of God and His salvation of man in spite of this. The couplet 'birth' / 'earth' summarises this argument in précis. The break in the potential couplet that might have been forged between 'sight' and 'night' (in lines 1 and 3) or between 'span' and 'man' (in lines 2 and 4) is also evocative of this mismatch between the unity of 'heaven' and 'earth'. Whilst Crashaw could have made both lines couplet rhymes, he chooses, instead, to arrange them in terms of syntax (i.e. breaking and beginning a new line with the syntactic end) instead of sound. He thus begins each new line when new syntax begins. Although Crashaw's poems are distinct from Herbert's in both religious and aesthetic terms, these lines are, nevertheless, highly reminiscent of Herbert's. 'Heaven in earth', 'God in man' and 'all-embracing birth' which 'lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav'n to earth' conspicuously recall lines from Herbert's 'Prayer (I)' like 'Heaven in ordinary ', 'God's breath in man returning to his birth' and 'the Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth'. The most pervasive mark of Herbert's influence on Crashaw, however, is the latter's usual equation of poetry with song. Crashaw calls the poem a 'hymn', although it is not composed of music but words. Also, Crashaw uses musical forms to structure his poems. He inherits this practice from Herbert whose poems - such as 'Antiphon' and 'A Dialogue-Anthem' are effectively speech-songs. Herbert and Song My music shall find thee, and ev'ry string Shall have his attribute to sing; That all together may accord in thee, And prove one God, one harmony ('The Thanksgiving', The Temple) Herbert's religious lyrics are significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, poetry's essentially musical nature makes them (i.e. the poems) an appropriate vehicle for articulating religious ideas. The conceptual, philosophical and theological implications of music in Herbert's day were rooted in medieval conceptions of music. The writings of the philosopher Boethius often refer to how many people in the Middle Ages believed music to be a litmus test for the condition of one's soul. The purer one's soul, the more beautiful the music. One's soul both reflected and resonated with the music of the spheres. Musica mundana reflected musica humana. This medieval idea survived in Renaissance theatre. In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, for instance, the antagonist Malvolio cannot and does not appreciate song. Neither can The Merchant of Venice's Shylock. Music was moral as much as it was aesthetic. To write a verse or two, is all the praise, That I can raise. ('Praise (I)', The Temple) Music, purity and goodness thus existed reciprocally in the Renaissance. Since poems were often associated with music, Christian verse - particularly in a mode much like the Old Testament Psalms - became an ideal choice for didactic, contemplative and meditative purposes. This connection is one which is particularly marked for the critic Samuel Singer. In Das Nachleben der Psalmen or 'The Afterlife of the Psalms', Singer posits that the basis of the medieval religious lyric tradition was one founded entirely on the tradition of the Old Testament Psalms. Gray, too, asserts that the medieval religious lyric tradition is largely premised on are essentially abstractions and meditations of Biblical verses for ease of the lay-person. Herbert, 'the sweet singer of the Temple', was celebrated as a highly musical poet who 'rightly knew David's harpe'. This is readily attested by how easily his poems were set to hymns, some of which include settings by Isaac Watts. Herbert's poems were often associated with both scripture and ecclesiastical music for a number of reasons. These reasons affected Crashaw to varying degrees and ends. These similarities are significant as the equation of music with spirituality - whilst alluded to - was not often made explicit in the period. Herbert's reverence for music was so deep that it altered his views on prayer. He viewed prayer as song itself - 'a kind of tune, which all things hear and fear' ('Prayer (I)'). Crashaw did likewise. The ancillary text which precedes 'Prayer', for instance, makes that poetic 'ode' part of 'a little Prayer-book'. Music was inalienable from prayer. Herbert also equates music with flight. In 'Whitsunday', song is concomitant with flight - 'Listen sweet Dove unto my song, / And spread thy golden wings in me'. In lines from 'A Hymn', Crashaw speaks likewise - 'Awake and sing / And be all wing'. Herbert viewed music as a way to grasp spiritual enigmas. Herbert uses the musical triad, for instance, as an analogue for the Holy Trinity: Or since all music is but three parts vied And multiplied; O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part, And make up our defects with his sweet art (Herbert, 'Easter (I)') Like Herbert, Crashaw also invokes music to meditate on divine nature - as he appeals to God, 'Help me to meditate mine Immortall Song' ('A Hymn'). Although Crashaw's poems were highly different in tone from Herbert's, both Crashaw and Herbert equated religious poetry with music and song in highly similar ways. This is apparent in lines from Herbert's 'Praise (I)'. In it, poetic 'verse' is essentially synonymous with musical 'praise' and 'To write a verse or two, is all... praise / That I can raise'. This equation is one also which he makes explicit the poem 'Virtue'. 'Virtue' is musical in both thematic and structural ways. Herbert calls his verse a song - 'My music shows ye have your closes, / And all must die'. He equates both this music and death with revelation. Like its musical themes, the poem's structure is corresponding song-like. Each of the stanzas ends with a refrain; like a musical chorus, each of these stanzas concludes with the modal imperative 'must die'. The tonality of the poem shifts at its 'coda' or close. The melancholy refrain modulates to a triumphant 'And chiefly live' like a musical tierce di picardie, the movement from a minor key to a major one often found in the music of Herbert's time. Like Herbert, Henry Vaughan, too, equates poetry - Crashaw's 'songs in the night' - with music. Nevertheless, the connection that Herbert forged between poetry and song is most evidently realised in the poems of Richard Crashaw. Whilst Herbert often asserts that verse and music are essentially synonymous, Crashaw subordinates speech to song. Crashaw speaks of how music is transcendent. This is encapsulated in the opening lines to 'A Hymn'. 'I sing the Name which None can say' reveals how Crashaw believes that song can and does transcend the limitations of human language. Singing is transcendent. 'The Name which None can say' refers, undoubtedly, to the Hebrew YHWH, a reference to God so sacred that it is not traditionally spoken. However, a reading of the line pivots between two possible interpretations. Each of these readings is hinged on different ways of understanding the modal auxiliary verb 'can'. In the context of the line, 'can' modulates between its deontic sense and its dynamic sense. The deontic 'can' refers to what one is socially or morally obligated to do after an action has been authorised by a superior. The dynamic 'can' refers to what one is capable of doing. Hence, in one sense, Crashaw 'can' circumvent speaking by singing because the verb ('sing') refers to an action which is not to speak. To 'sing' is not to speak. Thus, Crashaw plays on definitional lines - the explicit assertion that speech is not song results in an implicit suggestion that song surpasses speech. This modulation pivots on the deliberate ambiguities latent in 'can'. In another sense - one which also affirms this one - Crashaw speaks of singing allows him to circumvent social obligations of what he 'can' or cannot do, in its deontic sense. Thus, he 'can' 'sing' of God's name because he is not socially obliged not to. Singing, hence, is a superior mode of communication to speech. In a manner derived from Herbert's 'Antiphon', Crashaw's poems consistently associate poetry with music in both structural and thematic ways. Like those of Herbert, Crashaw's poems are also structural hybrids which merge poetry with song. Crashaw calls and treats his poems as 'hymns' and 'songs'. The most famous of these include works like 'A Hymn to the Nativity', 'A Hymn to St. Teresa', 'A Song' and 'Prayer, An ode'. These poetic hybrids synthesise music and poetry in more than metaphorical ways. Through them, Crashaw merges song and word. Herbert and the twentieth century The force of Herbert's revolutionary incorporation of vision with sound is clearly attested by the hold it was to have on poets who emerged centuries later. Four hundred years ahead of his time (in what is roughly the poetic equivalent of a Renaissance painter anticipating cubism) Herbert's iconic innovations - typographical, stanzaic and structural - inspired, influenced and catalysed ranging from Thomas Hardy to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ezra Pound to T.S. Eliot, and Emily Dickinson to e.e. cummings. Herbert's iconic 'Colossians 3:33', 'Paradise', 'Anagram' and 'Jesu' demonstrate a revolutionary facility with the poem's graphic interface. This was to be fully realised in twentieth-century Modernism. Herbert's structural poems found their most vocal advocates in a movement pioneered by Pound - Imagism. The Imagists, too, believe in the power of speaking shapes. Hence, they were particularly partial to the pattern or emblem poem. Even non-Imagists - the poet Dylan Thomas, for instance - were so taken by Herbert that they created poems which were patterned after Herbert's. For instance, Thomas's emblem poem, 'Vision and Prayer', alludes directly to Herbert's 'Easter Wings'. Further Thinking This discussion of Herbert and Vaughan relates how significant and imitable many of Herbert's poetical innovations were - and above all, his visual sense. Protestant theologians of the Reformation, though, had stressed the reading and interpretation of Scripture over the older Catholic religious life of saints, icons, and images. Does Vaughan's reception of Herbert's poetry help you to understand this contradiction? These are some of the ways in which Herbert and Vaughan manipulated the visual impact of their pattern poems. Can you see other ways in which the shape of these poems represents or influences their meaning? How would you use shape in a poem today? Crashaw's debt to Herbert runs much deeper than simple echoes of his words and phrases, extending rather into basic assumptions about the musical quality of poetry and its suitability for prayer and religious experience. Do you think that the musicality of some modern verse - whether influenced by Herbert or not - strives after a similarly spiritual (if not religious) end? What examples can you think of, and how do those poets create and exploit musical effects in their words and phrases?

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