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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Marvell’ s ‘A Dialogue between the Soul and Body’ is one of those idiosyncratic poems which when read nowadays without a proper awareness of the tradition, both in prose and verse, upon which it plays tempts to an over-biographical interpretation and to an assorted variety of philosophical explanations. Indeed, quite contrary conclusions have been drawn from the inconclusiveness of the debate between soul and body—that Marvell is, at least for the space of the poem, dangerous cynic; Pyrrhonist in his suspension of a verdict; Cartesian in his dualism; Puritan idealist coming to terms with historical exigency;
1 Birrell, T. A., ‘Marvell's “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body,” ‘ Downside Review, no. 232 (1955), pp. 174–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Pierre, Legouis, Andrew Marvell: Poet, Puritan, Patriot(Oxford, 1965), pp. 39–40.Google Scholar
3 Robert Ellrodt, L'Inspiration Personnelle et VEsprit du Temps chez Les Poètes Métaphysiques Anglais, Première, Partie, Tome 11: Poètes de Transition; Poètes Mystiques(Paris, 1960), pp. 136–147).Google Scholar
4 Christopher, Hill, Puritanism and Revolution(London, 1958),Google Scholar ‘Society and Andrew Marvell,’ pp. 337-366.
5 Bradbrook, M. C. and Lloyd Thomas, M. G., Andrew Marvell(Cambridge, 1940), pp. 68–70.Google Scholar The classic Augustinian passage is De Ciuitate Dei,XIV, i-x.
6 Ruth, Wallerstein, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Poetic(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1950), p. 162;Google Scholar Hill, p. 345.
7 Pia Desideria(2nd edition, Antwerp, 1628), in. xxxx (sig.Bb2). Between 1624 and 1757 there were no less than forty-two Latin editions, while in the first ten years alone there were translations in French, Flemish, German, and Spanish, as well as numerous Latin editions.
The ultimate origin of the conception of cancellisin line 6 is patristic commentary on Canticlesn: 9: En ipse stat post parietem nostrum respiciens per fenestras, perspiciens per cancellos. Origen established the interpretation of the windows and lattice-work as the bodily senses and was followed by St. Bernard.
8 Samuel, Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrim. Microcosmus, or The Historie of Man(London, 1619),Google Scholar sig. H2, describes at length ‘the Tympanum’of the ear ‘so like a Drumme.'
9 The Poems&Letters of Andrew Marvell(Oxford, 1952), ed. H. M. Margoliouth, I, 20-21.
10 Sig. Q4.
11 The toposof the deceptiveness of the senses is found to different effect in Sir John Davies’ Nosce Teipsum(expository and Platonic), and in Donne's The Second Anniversary. (He reminds the soul of the direct knowledge in heaven, where ‘Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes, /Nor hear through labyrinths of ears.’) In the prose offuvenilia: or Certaine Paradoxes, and Problemes(London, 1633), XI, ‘That the gifts of the Body are better than those of the Minde,’ Donne argued to another end:
'My Bodylicenseth my souleto seethe Worlds beautiesthrough mine eyes; to heare pleasant things thorough mine eares;and affords it apt Organsfor the conveiance of all perceivable delight.But alas! my soulecannot make any part,that is not of it selfe disposed, to seeor heare . ..’ (sig. E3v).
12 ‘The Preface,’ sig. A6V: ‘And if I have injur'd him in other additions, I have done him a kindness in that in the tenth Poem of the third Book, where he seems to apologize for Self-murther;for what I have there added takes away all possibility of mistaking him … . ‘
13 Quarles, Emblemes,III. xiv, described, with Vaughan's and earlier Latin debates by Leishman, J. B., The Art of Marvell's Poetry(London, 1966), pp. 210–214.Google Scholar
14 See Henry Vaughan, ‘Death. A Dialogue,’ ‘Resurrection and Immortality,’ and “The Evening Watch.’ Of the same kind are Humphrey Mill, Poems Occasioned by a Melancholy Vision(1639), sig. 14v,’A divine Speech of the Soule to the bodie,’ and James Howell, The Vision: or A Dialog between the Soul and the Bodie(1651) in prose, with devout poems interspersed.
15 Hugo's three complaint-poems, m. xxxviii-xxxx, compare God to a number of human tyrants, but the sufferings of Prometheus are particularly suggested here, as in xxxix:
Clamavi, ô truculentum&inexorabile pondus! Quin etiam dicta est saepe catena nocens. Sentiat hanc Scytica damnatus rupe Prometheus, (sig. Aa6)
The word ‘precipice’ is associated with death in contemporary French poetry, such as Saint-Amant's ‘La Solitude,’ translated by Marvell's patron, Lord Fairfax, in which ‘Ces monts pendant en precipices’ are ‘aux malheureux si propices,’ enabling them to commit suicide.
16 The Poetry of Meditation(New Haven, 1962), pp. 130-132.
17 The contrast with George Herbert is noteworthy here. In his'Affliction’ group and other poems Herbert expresses a sense of inner struggle, only the complaint is not of body to soul but, as in Hugo, of the devotee to his Lord: ‘O rack me not to such a vast extent'; 'Stretch or contract me thy poor debtor.’ He is ‘A Wonder tortur'd in the space Betwixt this world and that of grace’ (ed. F. E. Hutchinson, pp. 90, 165). Marvell's Soul too is 'Tortur'd by its constrictions, and the Body complains that ‘this tyrannic Soul … stretcht upright, impales me so, That mine own Precipice I go.'
18 Both Costello, W. T., S.J., The Scholastic Curriculum at Early Seventeenth-Century Cambridge(Cambridge, Mass., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fletcher, H. F., The Intellectual Development of John Milton(Urbana, 1956)Google Scholar have shown how Aristotle's De Animawas an important textbook for metaphysics at Cambridge and the basis of disputation. James Duport, the classics don at Trinity College, Cambridge, while Marvell was there, has two poems on this sort of theme in his collection of Latin verse, Musae Subsecivae(Cambridge, 1676), ‘In Cor et Cerebrum’ (on Aristotle versus Galen), and ‘Anima separata appetit reuniri corpori.'
19 Charron's, La Sagesse(Bordeaux, 1601),Google Scholar translated as Of Wisedomeby Samson Lennard, had seven editions between 1606 and 1658. Lennard followed the revised second edition of Charron, which shifted the primary emphasis somewhat from human vanity to order.
20 Contemporary moralists were taxed by the problem of how the soul could feel bodily pain, though they usually explained it in terms of the soul's own sensitive level, shared with plants and animals. Thomas, Wright, The Passions of the Minde(London, 1601),Google Scholar ‘The Sixt Booke of the Passions of the Minde; Entreating of the defects or imperfections of Mens Soules,’ gives as the fifth of one hundred and twenty problems concerning the soul debated by philosophers (and presumably undergraduates) ‘How, by punishing the flesh, or hurting the body, the soule feeleth paine and is afflicted.'
21 John, Woolton, A Treatise of the Immortalitie oftheSoule(London, 1576),Google Scholar sig. E3. Here Woolton is translating, without acknowledgement, St. Augustine, De Quantitate Animae, 70, on the seven powers of the soul.
22 Lawrence, Babb, The Elizabethan Malady(Michigan, 1951),Google Scholar in general, and Paul H., Kocher, Science and Religion in Elizabethan England(San Marino, 1953),Google Scholar chap, xiv, ‘Body and Soul,’ both offer valuable material. Donne, Paradoxes, and ProblemesXI, turns the medical argument to his own account: ‘Are Chastity, Temperance,and Fortitudegifts of the mind?.I appeale to Physitianswhether the causeof these be not in the body; healthis the gift of the body, and patiencein sicknesse the gift of the mind:then who will say that patienceis as good a happinesse, as health,when we must be extremely miserableto purchase this happinesse’(sig. E4).
23 Woolton, sigs. E6V-7.
24 Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrim(1619), sig. Q3; Pierre Charron, tr. Lennard, Of Wisedome(1630), sig. 16v.
25 Plutarch's well-known essay (Erasmus did a Latin version, dedicated to Henry VIII, Opuscula Plutarchi,Basel, 1520) first appeared in an English translation by Philemon, Holland, The Philosophic, commonlie called, The Morals(London, 1603).Google Scholar It was also translated by Henry Vaughan, 1651. Plutarch proposes to ‘bring man to a combate with himself about his own calamities; taking the mindasunder from the body…that by a distinct examination of both we may come to know from which of these two his miseries flow,’ The Works of Henry Vaughan,ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1957), pp. I09ff.
26 Donne seems to be following Plutarch ironically, arguing that the man who has little virtue ‘may gildand enatnell,yea and transforme much viceinto vertue:For allow a man to be discreet and flexibleto complaintswhich are great vertuous giftsof the mind,this discretionwill be to him the souleand Elixirof all vertues,so that touched with this, even prideshalbe made Humility;and Cowardice,honorable and wise valour’(sig. E4V).
27 Tottels Miscellany,]Ed. H. E. Rollins (Harvard, 1928), 1, 45.
28 Poems,ed. William Ringler (Oxford, 1962), pp. 46-47.
29 Robert W., Ackerman, ‘The Debate of the Body and the Soul and Parochial Christianity,' Speculum XXXVII (1962),Google Scholar 553, remarks upon this in a medieval context.
30 Ed. H. E. Rollins (Harvard, 1931), 1, 197-198. Quoted by Leishman, p. 212, who suggests, however, that Marvell's poem as we have it is incomplete, p. 216.
31 See especially the chapter ‘Aspects et Limites de la Self-Consciousness.'
32 Ellrodt, p. 129, ‘Et c'est uniquement au sens stoicien—ou au sens chrétien—qu'il semble avoir entendu le Nosce te ipsum:non pas au sens de Montaigne.'
33 Cowley's portrait of Jonathan in Davideis(London, 1656), IV, 31-38, is in direct con trast to Marvell's. His soul showed early virtue—'Like Treesin Par'dicehe with Fruitswas born'—and his body was an image of his soul.
Such is his Soul;and if, as some men tell, Soulsform and build those mansions where they dwell; Whoere but sees his Bodymust confess, The Architectno doubt, could be no less.
In a note Cowley quotes Themistius, the fourth-century commentator on Aristotle's De Anima,as support for the idea ‘that the Soul is the Architectof her own dwelling-place.'
34 Tr. Lennard (1630), sig. E8V.
35 Sir John, Davies, Nosce Teipsum (Poems,Columbia, 1941, p. 165)Google Scholar describes men who 'like plants, their veines do only fill,’ contrasted with those who ‘like beasts, their senses pleasure take,’ and those who ‘like Angels do contemplate still.’ Purchas his Pilgrim(1619), chap, xxxvi, sig. Z2, describes ‘Man degraded to a Vegetative, and resembled to Trees, Shrubs, Leaves, Thistles, Grasse.'
36 Horace, Epistles,i.x, especially 22-25:
Nempe inter varias nutritur silva columnas, Laudatorque domus, longos quae prospicit agros. Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
37 This quotation is from Horace, Arspoetica,410-411, in the context of consideration of the art-or-nature question:
Natura fieret laudibile carmen an arte Quaesitum est: ego nee studium sine divite vena Nee rude quid prosit video ingenium; alterius sic Altera poscit opem res et coniurat amice.
38 Tr. Lennard (1630), sig. B6. Nec tecum possum vivere nee sine te(Martial, Epigrams, XII.47) was cited by Erasmus, Adagia,II, ix, 92, and has other close classical parallels, often referring to the marital condition. Addison translated Martial's epigram in Spectatorno. 68, on humors.
