Neoplatonism in Marvell's "On a Drop of Dew" and "The Garden"

NEOPLATONISM IN MARVELL'S "ON A DROP OF DEW" AND "THE GARDEN" Joan F. Adkins In Plato's Symposium, Diotima asks Socrates: "What then ... do we suppose would happen to him who sees beauty itself, whole, pure, unmixed, not filled up with human flesh and colors and other mortal nonsense; what if he were able to behold divine beauty itself in its unique form?"1 The world., Plotinus writes, "is only an image of the spiritual world, but could there be a more beautiful image?" (Enneads, II.ix.4).2 And Andrew Marvell asks: "If things of Sight such Heavens be, /What Heavens are those we cannot see?"3 Plato, according to a scale of metaphysical reality, separates the realm of the Ideas from the world. Plotinus rejects one interpretation of Plato's Ideas— that which makes them independently existing entities, which the mind contemplates as something other than itself.4 Marvell, like Plotinus, perceives the world of "human flesh and colors" as an image of beauty through which the soul may experience "divine beauty." Andrew Marvell, the Puritan, was heir to an ambivalent Christian view of Nature. In one sense, the visible world was celebrated as the handiwork of God, a means of revealing Scripture, a bountiful creation given to man to oversee and enjoy. In another view, the earth was man's prison, disruptive and deceptive in the soul's progress toward God, a temptation to fallible senses, imperfect judgment, and unstable will. As Renaissance Neoplatonic doctrines gradually merged with orthodox Christianity, this inner contradiction became even more sharply defined. In the diought of Plotinus, the dichotomy assumed moral significance: no longer was the world a mere shadowy imitation of ultimate reality, but inert and evil matter, strictly 'Quoted in Stanley Rosen, Plato't Symposium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 275. 2 AU references to the Enneads are from The Thomas Taylor Translation (several translations of extracts, published at various times from 1787 to 1834); the chief of these has been reprinted, with an introduction by G. R. S. Mead, under the title Select Works of Plotinus (London, 1895). 3 "A Dialogue, between The Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure" (11. 55-56), in Andrew Marvell: Complete Poetry, ed. George de F. Lord (New York: Random House, 1968). All quotations of Marvell's poetry are from this edition. 4 For the interpretation of Plotinus's philosophy, 1 have relied largely on the studies made by William R. Inge: "Neo-Platonism," Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), IX, 307-319; and The Philosophy of Plotinus, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1929). 77 78RMMLA BulletinDecember 1974 opposed to intellectual Good. The Plotinian cosmology, however, provided a theory of redemption. By its relation to the mind, matter was rendered intelligible; and its passivity, serving as a means of contemplation, offered a reflective image to the emanations of Intelligence.5 Marvell shared with most of his contemporaries the belief that the batde between flesh and spirit had to be constantly renewed. According to Donald Friedman, "Marvell devotes as much intellectual energy to the body's painful awakening to consciousness through the agency of the soul as he does to the more conventional picture of the torments of the soul enshrouded in the clay of the flesh."6 Even so conventional an exercise as "A Dialogue, between the Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure" reveals Marvell's awareness of the senses as a means not only to pleasure, but also to a perception essential to a higher vision of the mind and the soul. The opening lines illustrate the duality: Courage my Soul, now learn to wield The weight of thine immortal Shield. Close on thy Head thy Helmet bright. Ballance thy Sword against the Fight. See where an Army, strong as fair, With silken Banners spreads the air. Now, if thou bee'st that thing Divine, In this day's Combat let it shine: And shew that Nature wants an Art To conquer one resolved Heart. The poem is not only Puritan, for the imagery from Ephesians is as much a part of the meditative literature of the age as it...