‘In Solitude for Company’: Forgiveness, Memory, and Depth in W.H. Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror
This article suggests that in a culture of transition and flux, the ideas of forgiveness and depth both find themselves undergoing critical interrogation. Nonetheless, they remain important terms, serving as critical coordinates that may help us to make sense of the relation between past and present...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2013
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| In: |
Literature and theology
Year: 2013, Volume: 27, Issue: 4, Pages: 414-425 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article suggests that in a culture of transition and flux, the ideas of forgiveness and depth both find themselves undergoing critical interrogation. Nonetheless, they remain important terms, serving as critical coordinates that may help us to make sense of the relation between past and present, and between conditional and unconditional realms. The article begins by briefly exploring the role and understanding of forgiveness in some 20th-century theological and philosophical writing, including that of Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, and Rowan Williams. It identifies some critical differences in these understandings, before asking what such writing might hold in common with this thought and poetry of W.H. Auden. Auden’s prose reflections on Shakespeare’s play The Tempest and his poetic work The Sea and the Mirror are all engaged with the question of what language might appropriately be used to express the true nature and role of forgiveness; Auden gravitates towards a language of depth to indicate this reality. The article goes on to suggest that Auden may well have been influenced or partly directed in this undertaking by a lesser-known work of his contemporary, the theologian and popular writer, Charles Williams, who published The Forgiveness of Sins in 1942. His ideas about blessing, bounty, co-inherence, and forgiveness, at least come close to Auden’s own understanding, and the article briefly explores some of these areas of closeness and continuity. It ends with a reading of some passages from The Sea and the Mirror that suggest that forgiveness, dance, and depth were interlinked in the poet’s mind, expressing a transcendent reality keenly desired, if sometimes inaccessible to the conscious mind. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4623 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Literature and theology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/litthe/frt039 |