Crucifixion and the Imitation of Christ in Herbert's "The Temper" (I)

Crucifixion and the Imitation of Christ in Herbert's "The Temper" (I) by Oliver Steele In 1962 Fredson Bowers published an essay on Herbert's "The Temper" (I) which is so comprehensive and perceptive that scarcely anything has been written about the poem's meaning since which does not rely on his analysis.' The present note intends at most to bring into sharper focus a few of Bowers' insights. What I shall argue is that in "The Temper" (I) Herbert subtly but persistently emphasizes the theme of the Christian's imitation of Christ even to the imitation of Christ's agony on the cross. To take last things first, Bowers rightly sees an allusion to the Crucifixion in the lines: Stretch or contract me, thy poore debter: This is but tuning of my breast, To make the musick better. (II. 22-24)2 He writes: "The stretching of Christ's sinews on the cross in Herbert's 'Easter' compared to the stretching of lute strings being tuned to the proper key, or temper, to celebrate the Resurrection, spells out to us, in anticipation, the tacit use of the same image in The Temper.' "3 1 think, however, that in his assumption that the reference in these lines is to the lute he is unduly influenced by the lute image in stanza 2 of "Easter" and possibly by the fact that Herbert was himself an accomplished lutenist. In fact, the reference is almost certainly to the Old Testament harp, which was widely treated by patristic commentators as a type of the Crucifixion. As Frederick Pickering has recently noted, "the harp was in the end probably the most 71 Oliver Steele influential of all Christian symbols — of the Crucifixion as a 'historical' event."4 To support this statement Pickering cites comments from St. Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Notker of St. Gall, and goes on to write: "It would be tedious if we were now systematically to log the recurrence of the harp and psaltery lesson, down through the centuries. It is a commonplace of even the most modest of exegetes."5 But the comment of Cassiodorus on the Easter Psalm may serve to illustrate the long-standing exegetical tradition: Exsurge (or resurge) cithara. The harp means the glorious Passion which with stretched sinews and counted bones (tensis nervis . . . denumeratisque ossibus) sounded forth his bitter suffering as in a spiritual song (carmen mtellectuale).6 Rosemond Tuve has taught us all how learned Herbert was in the typological exegesis of the fathers, and the allusion to the harp in "The Temper" (I) is another instance of that learning. Bowers is, of course, right about these lines alluding to the Crucifixion, but Herbert makes that allusion all the more powerful by couching it in terms of a traditional type of the Crucifixion. And since the stretching and contracting and the tuning of the breast all have reference to the speaker of these lines, there isclearlyan intended analogybetween the Crucifixion and the sufferings of the speaker. That is, the speaker has accepted the obligation of imitation even to the last agony. We find an even more powerful image of the imitation of Christ in the fourth stanza of "The Temper" (I): Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch A crumme of dust from heav'n to hell? Will great God measure with a wretch? Shall he thy stature spell? (II. 13-16) Bowers has many good things to say about these lines, among 72 A NOTE ON "THE TEMPER" (I) them the following: Herbert also probably had in mind in the matching-of-arms images in "The Temper" the protest of mortal man at being stretched above his capacities so that his measurement of arms with those that span "the east and west" ("Prayer" [II]) is intended, as well, to refer to the impossibility of his enduring the agonies of Christ on the cross or by such agonies to achieve the salvation that only the death of divinity could bring.7 In many respects this is a fine comment, but it misses, I think, one of the most important implications of these lines. We may imagine a speaker asking, with incredulous terror, the questions...