Numerological Wit in Herbert's "Sepulchre"

Numerological Wit in Herbert's "Sepulchre' by Louis Martin Recent studies suggest that a new look at numerological structures is critical to a more complete understanding of Herbert's poetry, and that Herbert may have based much of his number symbolism on the writings of St. Augustine.1 Although some analyses have uncovered complex interlinkings of numerological wit, many have concentrated on relativelysimple structures, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, especially structures in which a number of stanzas or lines is numerologically significant.2 Although number symbolism frequently mirrors the theme of the poem, numerological structures may also create a subtext of unexpected, and sometimes conflicting, signification. George Herbert's poem "Sepulchre" is just such a work; a dialectic of wit emerges in the poem as concepts suggested by form interpret and are interpreted by the overt meanings embodied in the text. In "Sepulchre" complex number symbols within each four-line stanza of the poem depend on multiple interrelationships of structure and meaning. Although in the first five stanzas numerical structures actually subvert the pessimistic tone and theme of the poem, they reinforce the more hopeful meaning in the final stanza. Additionally, an alternate stanzaic structure that superimposes another numerological expression of the Trinity over the smaller units of the poem reiterates the hopeful message. This employment of numerological wit is similar to and consistent with Herbert's verbal wit in the poem: as Stanley Fish has pointed out, ambiguities of syntax and allusion in "Sepulchre" also produce a dialectic of thesis and antithesis that forces the reader's involvement.3 Like many of Herbert's other poems that generate tension between conflicting meanings, the poem takes as its theme not just sin, but the difficulty involved in understanding and accepting Christ that leads to and is indicative of humanity's fallen nature. Many critics find the first stanzas of the poem dominated by questions that imply a hopelessness concerning the human condition. The poem opens with a lament that moves to condemnation of all mankind: Numerological Wit in "Sepulchre"57 O Blessed bodie! Whither art thou thrown? No lodging for thee, but a cold hard stone? So many hearts on earth, and yet not one Receive thee?4 In the second stanza the poem addresses Christ in the second person and reiterates this condemnation, noting that "our hearts" can "lodge transgressions by the score: I . . . yet out of doore / They leave thee." In the third and fourth stanzas the second-person address continues, and our hearts are "unfit," "hard" and murderous, having "[taken] up stones to brain thee." The penultimate stanza, in which Christ is told there is "no fit heart / To hold thee," seems unequivocally to confirm everything that precedes it. The poem's questions build to echo the "inevitable apprehension of [human] guilt and complicity" in Christ's death.5 Focusing closely on the unresponsive reader, death, judgment, and damnation, "Sepulchre" seems especially discouraging in tone until the final stanza.6 Anthony Low's words sum up the consensus of most critics: " 'Sepulchre' reaches into the depths of desolation and pessimism about man's sinful condition" before it ends with the assurance of Christ's love.7 Stanley Fish, however, proposes a different reading of the poem. He asserts that from the beginning the poem provokes a hopeful answer to its own questions, although "this answer is not given in the poem." He contends that "rather it must be supplied by a reader who is responding to its deliberately (and provocatively) narrow assertions. Fish contends that "Every line of the poem works as the promptings of Herbert's parson work, by driving the reader to articulate for himself a deep and dark point of religion."8 His conclusion: "That deep and dark point is always the same: Christ is everywhere and doing all things."9 Not only is this dark point implicit in the text of the poem, reinforced by ambiguities of allusion and syntax, it also appears in the form of the poem, darkly, through number symbolism. In every stanza number symbols based on the meanings of the numbers three, ten, and thirty-three give the reader additional signs that the narrow assertions of the text are too...