Visual Metaphor
It is clear that George Herbert, in The Church, is attempting to create and utilize a language wherein he can explore the nature of the soul. It is therefore important to explore exactly how Herbert attempts this. Herbert's poetry draws more heavily from the sensual world than Donne does in order to describe more of the transcendent. Herbert enhances this metaphorical language by adding a new and appealing aspect: sight. Through descriptive imagery and placement of text on the page, Herbert creates a visual metaphorical representation of the transcendent. In order to illustrate the type of visual metaphorical language Herbert employs, I will be dealing with two poems: The Altar and The Church-floor.
In “The Church-floor,” Herbert utilizes a type of metaphorical system similar to Donne's. Herbert is adapting the outer church to describe the inner. His descriptions of the outer, sensible church are vivid, creating an image in the mind of the reader. The reader is able to see the "square and speckled stone" and "th' other black and grave." Herbert’s descriptive poetry conjures up imagery that is familiar to the reader. Because the reader is able to envision the image, he is able to realize the metaphor; the image is comprehensible, so the metaphor is as well. In this sense, the metaphorical or metaphysical language of “The Church-floor” does include the sense of sight.
But it is clear that Donne also uses this type of sight in his poetry, so how is Herbert enhancing the metaphorical language? It seems that in “The Church-floor” he is not. However creatively and powerfully Herbert crafts his poetry in “The Church-floor,” the metaphorical language remains fundamentally unchanged. Herbert, as Donne, is using only words to conjure up an image that becomes the basis for a metaphor. The reader is still forced to imagine the particular image that the author is evoking. The author calls forth the image with words, but the reader must produce the image. Herbert describes the church floor but we must imagine it. So it seems that we must look elsewhere to find Herbert’s enhancement of metaphorical language.
The poem “The Altar” illustrates, literally, Herbert’s addition of sight to the metaphorical language we find in “The Church-floor.” The form of the lines in the poem “The Altar” creates a picture of an altar. So immediately upon viewing the poem, the reader is already confronted with the image of an altar. Before the words of the poem are experienced as words, they are experienced as a visual image. So the poet Herbert has made an external altar for the reader; by approaching the poem, the reader approaches the altar. Now the reader is ready to actually read the words of the poem: “A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears….” Herbert is presenting us with awareness of the artifice of the poem in this opening line. Because the altar is made of letters, words and spaces, it is broken or not entirely contiguous; the altar is not solid. Of course, the altar is also broken in a sense that plays out thematically in the poem, but we are mainly concerned here with the way it relates to the artifice of the metaphorical language. Of course, we are already aware of the artificial nature of the altar that we see before us. But by calling our attention to the artifice of the poem as picture, we become increasingly aware of the artificial nature of the poem as words. We become aware of how Herbert the poet (maker) is creating a piece of art: the altar.
It is simple for us to see that the altar is a metaphor for the heart/soul (“Made of a heart”). The movement of the poem is an exploration of the soul’s relationship to God. Because we are dealing with a larger metaphor created by the visual altar, we see how the poem becomes the altar. The word altar metaphorically represents the soul of the poet and the poem itself becomes a metaphor for the altar: the altar “in this frame” is the soul and the frame itself is an altar on which the soul is placed. The poem comes to the conclusion that the soul must be sacrificed to God: “O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,/And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.” Just as the Eucharist would be placed on the altar in the church, the soul is placed on this altar. And as the Eucharist undergoes the transfiguration whereby it becomes the body of Christ, so this altar undergoes transfiguration whereby it becomes the soul of the poet. Additionally, the poem itself is transfigured becoming The Altar on which the poet’s soul is sacrificed.
In conclusion, it has become apparent that Herbert’s poetic sculpting has enhanced the metaphoric language available to poetry. The combination of visual and literary metaphor enhances the abilities of the metaphorical and metaphysical poetic language, enabling the poet to reveal and explore the transcendent in greater depth. The poet need no longer merely attempt to uncover the transcendent with words, he may use visual imagery as well. The visual world is no longer only metaphorical in the context of poetry. As the poet calls greater attention to the metaphorical nature and hidden transcendence in the visual world, the reader becomes increasingly aware of the transcendence present in the physical world. In short, Herbert’s use of visual metaphor in his poetry helps narrow the gap between sensation of the physical and experience of the transcendent.
Micah Krabill
Composed for the course "Interpreting English Literature: Milton, Herbert & Donne"
November 5, 1998