Voices in the Void: The Action of Grief in Proust and Herbert

Alberto Giacometti, The Invisible Object (Hands Holding the Void), 1935. Washington: National Gallery of Art, Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund. Louis L. Martz Voices in the Void: The Action of Grief in Proust and Herbert My theme is dramatically represented in a famous sculpture by Giacometti known by two titles: The Invisible Object or Hands Holding the Void. The variation in title may suggest the ambiguity of the sculpture, which presents a female figure in prayer, kneeling upon a stylized prie-dieux and cupping her hands around an empty space. But is it empty for the kneeling figure? She has at her side an image thought to be some kind of bird, or perhaps a fox. But it is certainly a bird — the sacred ibis of ancient Egypt; thus the image seems to mark the female figure as a priestess. For her, perhaps, the space between her hands is filled with a spiritual presence. Or is she anxiously praying to find a presence, as in Herbert's "Deniall"? O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To crie to thee, And then not heare it crying! all day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. (U. 16-20) Such a state of anguish is indeed suggested by the expression of intense grief conveyed by the sculpture's face, the kind of overwhelming anguish that Herbert expresses in "Longing": With sick and famisht eyes, With doubling knees and weary bones, To thee my cries, To thee my grones, To thee my sighs, my tears ascend: No end? (U. 1-6) 92Louis L. Martz The source of such grief is suggested by Giacometti himself, in a poem that he wrote in 1933, a year before he finished the cast for this sculpture: "I seek gropingly to grasp in the void / the invisible white thread of the marvelous."1 Grief, and especially the strife between grief and love, are set forth emphaticallyas dominant themes of The Temple in the very first poem placed upon the "Altar" of the broken heart: "The Sacrifice," with its insistent cry of Christ upon the Cross: "Was ever grief like mine?"2 "Grief" is a complex word in Herbert's day. The repetition of the word in each of the sixty-three stanzas calls forth every meaning: "a wrong or injury which is the subject of formal complaint or demand for redress"; "a bodily injury or ailment"; "a wound"; "physical pain"; "mental pain, distress, or sorrow" (OED). The refrain has two significant variations, one at the climax of Christ's torment: But, O my God, my God why leav'st thou me, The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be? My God, my God -----Never was grief like mine. (H. 213-16) And again, in the very last line: But now I die; now all is finished. My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head. Onely let others say, when I am dead, Never was grief like mine. (U. 217-220)3 It may be significant that this poem ends with the sixty-third stanza, for 63 (7 times 9: two "mystic numbers") was the number of the "grand climacteric" in human life, the point at which a person "was supposed to be specially liable to change in health or fortune" (OED).4 A complex change occurs in this final line, beyond the change of Christ's death. As Empson pointed out in his remarkable commentary on this poem,5 the line is more than a demand that sinners remember Christ's grief: there is also a threat, a prediction of all the grief that humankind will suffer for the sins set forth in "The Church-porch" and "The Sacrifice." And there is a further implication: Proust and Herbert93 human beings, in their grief, tend to feel singled out for suffering: "Never was grief like mine." Why do / have to suffer this pain, this sorrow, when others seem to escape? As the word "grief," in the succeedingpoems, performs itssixty-odd repetitions, in various forms, along with kindredwords such as "affliction," "tears," "groans," and "sighs," the complainer may well seem to be driven primarily by self-pity. Do we really needfive poems entitled "Affliction...