Incloser
| September 26, 2013 | Posted by Webmaster under Volume 01, Number 2, January 1991 |
|
Susan Howe
Temple University
Some of this essay has been published in The Politics of Poetic Form; Poetry and Public Policy, edited by Charles Bernstein, Roof Books. [What follows is an excerpt from a book to be published in 1991 by Weaselsleeves Press. –Eds.]
Turned back from turning back
as if a loved country
faced away from the traveler
No pledged premeditated daughter
no cold cold sorrow no barrier
EN-CLOSE. See INCLOSE.
IN-CLOSE, v.t. [fr. %enclos*; Sp. It. incluso; L.
inclusus, includo; in and claudo or cludo.]
1. To surround; to shut in; to confine on all sides;
as to inclose a field with a fence; to inclose a
fort or an army with troops; to inclose a town with
walls.
2. To separate from common grounds by a fence; as, to
inclose lands.
3. To include; to shut or confine; as to inclose
trinkets in a box.
4. To environ; to encompass.
5. To cover with a wrapper or envelope; to cover under
seal; as to inclose a letter or a bank note.
IN-CLOS ER, n. He or that which encloses; one who
separates land from common grounds by a fence.
Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language
Incloser
THOMAS SHEPARD
Anagram: O, a map's thresh'd
(WIII 513)
The first and least of these Books [by Shepard] is
called, The Sincere Convert: Which the Author would
commonly call, His Ragged Child : And once, even after its
Fourth Edition, wrote unto Mr. Giles Firmin, thus
concerning it: once saw it. It was a Collection of such Notes
in a dark Town in, The Sincere Convert:I have not the Book :
I once saw it. It was a Collection of such Notes in a dark
Town in England, which one procuring of me, published them
without my Will, or my Privity. I scarce know what it
contains, nor do I like to see it; considering the many
Typographia, most absurd; and the Confession of him that
published it, that it comes out much altered from what was
first written.
Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana
* * *
My writing has been haunted and inspired by a series of
texts, woven in shrouds and cordage of classic American 19th
century works, they are the buried ones, they body them
forth.
The selection of particular examples from a large group
is always a social act. By choosing to install certain
narratives somewhere between history, mystic speech, and
poetry, I have enclosed them in an organization although I
know there are places no classificatory procedure can reach
where connections between words and things we thought
existed break off. For me, paradoxes and ironies of
fragmentation are particularly compelling.
Every statement is a product of collective desires and
divisibilities. Knowledge, no matter how I get it, involves
exclusion and repression. National histories hold ruptures
and hierarchies. On the scales of global power what gets
crossed over? Foreign accents mark dialogues that delete
them. Ambulant vagrant bastardy comes looming through
assurance and sanctification.
_Thomas Shepard:_
A long story of conversion, and a hundred to one if
some lie or other slip not out with it. Why, the
secret meaning is, I pray admire me.
(WII 284)
When we move through the positivism of literary canons
and master narratives, we consign ourselves to the
legitimation of power, chains of inertia, an apparatus of
capture.
_Brother Crackbone's Wife:_
So I gave up and I was afraid to sing because to sing a
lie, Lord teach me and I'll follow thee and heard Lord
will break the will of His last work.
(C 140)
* * *
A printed book enters social and economic networks of
distribution. Does the printing modify an author's
intention, or does a text develop itself? Why do certain
works go on saying something else? Pierre Macherey says in
A Theory of Literary Production: "the work has its
beginnings in a break from the usual ways of speaking and
writing--a break which sets it apart from all other forms of
ideological expression" (52). Roman Jakobson says in
"Dialogue On Time In Language and Literature": "One of the
essential differences between spoken and written language
can be seen clearly. The former has a purely temporal
character, while the latter connects time and space. While
the sounds we hear disappear, when we read we usually have
immobile letters before us and the time of the written flow
of words is reversible" (20). Gertrude Stein says in
"Patriarchal Poetry": "They said they said./ They said they
said when they said men./ Many men many how many many many
many men men men said many here" (123). Emily Dickinson
writes to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson: "Moving
on in the Dark like Loaded Boats at Night, though there is
no Course, there is Boundlessness--" (L 871).
Strange translucencies: letters, phonemes, syllables,
rhymes, shorthand segments, alliteration, assonance, meter,
form a ladder to an outside state outside of States. Rungs
between escape and enclosure are confusing and compelling.
_Brother Crackbone's Wife:_
And seeing house burned down, I thought it was just and
mercy to save life of the child and that I saw not
after again my children there. And as my spirit was
fiery so to burn all I had, and hence prayed Lord would
send fire of word, baptize me with fire. And since the
Lord hath set my heart at liberty. (C 140)
* * *
There was the last refuge from search and death; so here.
(WII 195)
I am a poet writing near the close of the 20th century.
Little by little sound grew to be meaning. I cross an
invisible line spoken in the first word "Then." Every
prescriptive grasp assertion was once a hero reading Samson.
There and here I encounter one vagabond formula another pure
Idea. To such a land. Yet has haunts. The heart of its
falls must be crossed and re-crossed. October strips off
cover and quiet conscience.
New England is the place I am. Listening to the clock
and the sun whirl dry leaves along. Distinguishing first
age from set hour. The eternal and spirit in them.
A poem can prevent onrushing light going out. Narrow
path in the teeth of proof. Fire of words will try us.
Grace given to few. Coming home though bent and bias for
the sake of why so. Awkward as I am. Here and there
invincible things as they are.
I write quietly to her. She is a figure of other as thin
as paper.
Sorrow for uproar and wrongs of this world. You
convenant to love.
* * *
_Emily Dickinson:_
Master.
If you saw a bullet
hit a Bird - and he told you
he was'nt shot - you might weep
at his courtesy, but you would
certainly doubt his word. (L 233)
If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters
other voices.
Dickinson, Melville, Thoreau, and Hawthorne guided me
back to what I once thought was the distant 17th century.
Now I know that the arena in which scripture battles raged
among New Englanders with originary fury is part of our
current American system and events, history and structure.
_Goodwife Willows:_
Then I had a mind for New England and I thought I
should know more of my own heart. So I came and
thought I saw more than ever I could have believed that
I wondered earth swallowed me not up. And 25 Matthew
5--foolish virgins saw themselves void of all grace. I
thought I was so and was gone no farther. And
questioned all that ever the Lord had wrought, I'll
never leave thee. I could now apprehend that yet
desired the Lord not to leave me nor forsake me and
afterward I thought I was now discovered. Yet hearing
He would not hide His face forever, was encouraged to
seek. But I felt my heart rebellious and loathe to
submit unto Him. (C 151)
An English relation of conversion spoken at a territorial
edge of America is deterritorialized and deterred by anxiety
crucial to iconoclastic Puritan piety. Inexplicable
acoustic apprehension looms over assurance and
sanctification, over soil subsoil sea sky.
Each singular call. As the sound is the sense is.
Severed on this side. Who would know there is a covenant.
In a new world morphologies are triggered off.
* * *
Under the hammer of God's word. (WI 92)
During the 1630's and 40's a mother tongue (English) had
to find ways to accommodate new representations of reality.
Helplessness and suffering caused by agrarian revolution in
England, and changing economic structures all across Europe,
pushed members of various classes and backgrounds into new
collectivities. For a time English Protestant sects were
united in a struggle against Parliament, the Jacobean and
Stuart Courts, the Anglican Church, and Archbishop Laud.
Collective resistance to political and religious persecution
pushed particular groups to a radical separatism. Some
sects broke loose from the European continent. Their hope
was to ride out the cry and accusation of kingdoms of Satan
until God would be all in all.
_Thomas Shepard:_
And so, seeing I had been tossed from the south to the
north of England and now could go no farther, I then
began to listen to a call to New England. (GP 55)
Schismatic children of Adam thought they were leaving the
"wilderness of the world" to find a haven free of
institutional structures they had united against. They
were unprepared for the variability of directional change
the wilderness they reached represented. Even John Winthrop
complained of "unexpected troubles and difficulties" in
"this strange land where we met with many adversities"
(Heimert 361).
A Bible, recently translated into the vernacular, was
owned by nearly every member of the Bay Colony. It spoke to
readers and non-readers and signified the repossession of
the Word by English. The Old and New Testaments, in
English, were indispensible fictive realities connecting the
emigrants to a familiar State-form, and home. Though they
crossed a wide and northern ocean Scripture encompassed
them.
From the first, Divinity was knotted in Place. If the
Place was found wanting, and it was by many, a rhetoric had
to be double-knotted to hold perishing absolutism safe.
First-generation leaders of this hegira to new England tied
themselves and their followers to a dialectical construction
of the American land as a virgin garden pre-established for
them by the Author and Finisher of creation.
"Come to me and you shall find rest unto your souls."
To be released from bonds. . . absorbed into catastrophe
of pure change.
"Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the
wild."
Here is unappropriated autonomy. Uncounted occupied
space. No covenant of King and people. No centralized
State. Heavy pressure of finding no content. Openness of
the breach.
"The gospel is a glass to show men the face of God in
Christ. The law is that glass that showeth a man his own
face, and what he himself is. Now if this glass be taken
away. . ." (WI 74).
_Widow Arrington:_
Hearing Dr. Jenison, Lamentations 3--let us search and
turn to the Lord--which struck my heart as an arrow.
And it came as a light into me and the more the text
was opened more I saw my heart. And hearing that
something was lost when God came for searching. And
when I came I durst not tell my husband fearing he
would loath me if he knew me. And I resolved none
should know nor I would tell. . . . (C 184-5)
* * *
On October 3, 1635, Thomas Shepard and his family arrived
in Boston Harbor on the ship Defense. "Oh, the depths of
God's grace here," he later wrote, "that when he [man]
deserves nothing else but separation from God, and to be
driven up and down the world as a vagabond or as dried
leaves fallen from our God--" (GP 14).
There is a direct relation between sound and meaning.
Early spiritual autobiographies in America often mean to
say that a soul has found love in what the Lord has done.
"Oh, that when so many come near to mercy, and fall short of
it, yet me to be let in! Caleb and Joshua to be let into
Canaan, when they rest so near, and all perish" (WII 229).
Words sound other ways. I hear short-circuited conviction.
Truth is stones not bread. The reins are still in the hands
of God. He has set an order but he is not tied to that
order. Sounds touch every coast and corner. He will pick
out the vilest worthy never to be beloved. There is no
love. I am not in the world where I am.
In his journal Mr. Shepard wrote: "To heal this wound,
which was but skinned over before, of secret atheism and
unbelief" (GP 135).
* * *
Finding is the First Act (MBED 1043)
After the beaver population in New England had been
decimated by human greed, when roads were cut through
unopened countryside, the roadbuilders often crossed streams
on abandoned beaver dams, instead of taking time to
construct wooden bridges. When other beaver dams collapsed
from neglect, they left in their wake many years'
accumulation of dead bark, leaves, twigs, and silt. Ponds
they formed disappeared with the dams, leaving rich soil
newly opened to the sun. These old pond bottoms, often many
acres wide, provided fertile agricultural land. Here grass
grew as high as a person's shoulder. Without these natural
meadows many settlements could not have been established as
soon as they were.
Early narratives of conversion, and first captivity
narratives in New England, are often narrated by women. A
woman, afraid of not speaking well, tells her story to a man
who writes it down. The participant reporters follow and
fly out of Scripture and each other. All testimonies are
bereft, brief, hungry, pious, authorized.
Shock of God's voice speaking English.
Sound moves over the chaos of place in people. In this
hungry world anyone may be eaten. What a nest and litter.
A wolf lies coiled in the lamb.
Silence becomes a Self. Open your mouth.
In such silence women were talking. Undifferentiated
powerlessness swallowed them. When did the break at this
degree of distance happen?
Silence calls me himself. Open your mouth.
Whosoever. Not found written in the book of life.
During a later Age of Reason 18th century Protestant
gentlemen signed the Constitution in the city of
Philadelphia. These first narratives from wide open places
re-place later genial totalities.
* * *
_Thomas Shepard:_
Object. But Christ is in heaven; how can I receive
him and his love?
Ans. A mighty prince is absent from a traitor; he
sends his herald with a letter of love, he gives it
him to read; how can he receive the love of the prince
when absent? Ans. He sees his love in his letter,
he knows it came from him, and so at a distance closeth
with him by this means; so here, he that was dead, but
now is alive, writes, sends to thee; O, receive his
love here in his word; this is receiving "him by
faith." (WII 599-600)
In Europe, Protestant tradition since Luther had
maintained that no one could fully express her sins. In New
England, for some reason hard to determine, Protestant
strictures were reversed. Bare promises were insufficient.
Leaders and followers had to voice the essential mutability
they suddenly faced. Now the minister's scribal hand copied
down an applicant for church membership's narrative of
mortification and illumination.
In The Puritan Conversion Narrative; The Beginnings of
American Expression, Patricia Caldwell points out that
during the 1630's, in the Bay Colony, a disclaimer about
worthlessness and verbal inadequacy had to be followed by a
verbal performance strong enough to convince the audience-
congregation of the speaker's sincerity.
New England's first isolated and independent clerics
must have wrestled with many conflicting impulses and
influences. Rage against authority and rage for order;
desire for union with the Father and the guilty knowledge
they had abandoned their own mothers and fathers. In the
1630's a new society was being shaped or shaping itself.
Oppositional wreckers and builders considered themselves
divine instruments committed to the creation of a holy
commonwealth. In 1636 the Antinomian controversy erupted
among this group of "Believers, gathered and ordained by
Christ's rule alone. . . all seeking the same End, viz. the
Honor and Glory of God in his worship" (VS 73).
The Antinomian Controversy circled around a woman, Anne
Hutchinson, and what was seen to be "the Flewentess of her
Tonge and her Willingness to open herselfe and to divulge
her Opinions and to sowe her seed in us that are but highway
side and Strayngers to her" (AH 353). Thomas Shepard made
this accusation. Paradoxically he was one of the few
ministers who required women to recite their confessions of
faith publicly, before the gathered congregation. Mr.
Peters lectured Anne Hutchinson in court: "You have stept
out of your place, You have rather bine a Husband than a Wife
and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject.
and soe you have thought to carry all Thinges in
Church and Commonwealth, as you would and have not bine
humbled for this" (AC 383).
Peters, Cotton, Winthrop, Eliot, Wilson, Dudley, Shepard,
and other men, had stepped out of their places when they
left England. She was humbled by them for their
Transgression. Anne Hutchinson was the community scapegoat.
"The Mother Opinion of all the rest. . . . From the womb of
this fruitful Opinion and from the Countenance here by
given to immediate and unwarrented revelations 'tis not
easie to relate, how many Monsters worse than African,
arose in the Regions of America : But a Synod assembled
at Cambridge, whereof Mr. Shepard was no small part,
most happily crushed them all" (M III87).
_Noah Webster:_
SCAPE-GOAT, n. [escape and goat.] In the Jewish ritual,
a goat which was brought to the door of the
tabernacle, where the high priest laid his hands upon
him, confessing the sins of the people, and putting
them on the head of the goat; after which the goat was
sent into the wilderness, bearing the iniquities of the
people." Lev. xvi. (WD 986)
Kenneth Burke says in A Grammar of Motives, "Dialectic
of the Scapegoat": "When the attacker chooses for himself
the object of attack, it is usually his blood brother; the
debunker is much closer to the debunked than others are.
Ahab was pursued by the white whale he was pursuing" (GM
407).
Rene Girard says in The Scapegoat, "What is a Myth?"
"Terrified as they [the persecutors] are by their own
victim, they see themselves as completely passive, purely
reactive, totally controlled by this scapegoat at the very
moment when they rush to his attack. They think that all
initiative comes from him. There is only room for a single
cause in their field of vision, and its triumph is absolute,
it absorbs all other causality: it is the scapegoat" (43).
I say that the Scapegoat Dialectic and mechanism is
peculiarly open to violence if the attacker is male, his
bloodbrother, female. Kenneth Burke and Rene Girard dissect
grammars and mythologies in a realm of discourse structured,
articulated, and repeated by men.
_Thomas Shepard:_
We are all in Adam, as a whole country in a
parliament man; the whole country doth what he doth.
And although we made no particular choice of Adam to
stand for us, yet the Lord made it for us; who, being
goodness itself, bears more good will to man than he
can or could bear to himself; and being wisdom itself,
made the wisest choice, and took the wisest course for
the good of man. (WI 24)
* * *
A Short Story
_Governor Winthrop:_
She thinkes that the Soule is annihilated by the
Judgement that was sentenced upon Adam. Her Error
springs from her Mistaking of the Curse of God upon
Adam, for that Curse doth not implye Annihilation of
the soule and body, but only a dissolution of the Soule
and Body.
_Mr. Eliot:_
She thinks the Soule to be Nothinge but a Breath, and
so vanisheth. I pray put that to her.
_Mrs. Hutchinson:_
I thinke the soule to be nothing but Light. (AH 356)
* * *
The Erroneous Gentlewoman
_Governor Winthrop:_
We have thought it good to send for you to understand
how things are, that if you be in an erroneous way we
may reduce you that you may become a profitable member
here among us. (AC 312 )
_Thomas Shepard:_
I confes I am wholy unsatisfied in her Expressions to
some of the Errors. Any Hereticke may bring a slye
interpretation upon any of thease Errors and yet hould
them to thear Death: therfor I am unsatisfied. (AC
377)
_Anne Hutchinson:_
My Judgment is not altered though my Expression alters.
_Brother Willson:_
Your Expressions, whan your Expressions are soe
contrary to the Truth. (AC 378)
_Noah Webster:_
EX-PRES SION, (eks presh un.) n. 1. The act of
expressing; the act of forcing out by pressure, as
juices and oils from plants.
2. The act of uttering, declaring, or
representing; utterance; declaration; representation;
as, an expression of the public will. (WD 426)
_Mrs. Hutchinson:_
I doe not acknowledge it to be an Error but a Mistake.
I doe acknowledge my Expressions to be Ironious but my
Judgment was not Ironious, for I held befor as you did
but could not express it soe. (AC 361)
_Noah Webster:_
ERRO NE OUS, a. [L. erroneus, from erro, to
err.]
1. Wandering; roving; unsettled.
They roam
Erroneous and disconsolate. Philips.
2. Deviating; devious; irregular; wandering
from the right course. (WD 408)
Erroneous circulation of blood
Arbuthnot.
_Anne Hutchinson:_
So thear was my Mistake. I took Soule for Life. (AH
360)
_Noah Webster:_
Noah is here called Man. (WD xxiii)
* * *
A Woman's Delusion
A seashore where everything.
A tumult of mind.
Sackcloth and run up and down.
Every durable thread. Mediator. There is rebellion. A
man cannot look. The sacrifice of Noah is a type. We dress
our garden. There are properties. Proof must be guiding
and leading.
Stooped so far.
Bruising lash of the law. Tender affections bear with
the weak. An answerable wedge. But where is the work? Why
is the church compared to a garden? We are dark ages and
young beginners. Apprehending ourselves we want anything.
These are words set down. Surfaces. Who has felt most
mercy? Preaching to stone. A thin cold dangerous realm.
Tidings. He appears. Anoint. Echoes and reverberations of
love. Anoint. Washed and witnessing. Peter denies him.
Anoint. Whole treasures of looks to the heart. It is one
thing to trust to be saved. Selfpossession. She heard his
question. Never thought of it. No thought today.
Unapproachable December seems to be. The sun is a spare
trope.
Shadow cast. Moment of recognition.
The conclusion of years can any force of intellect. That
such ferocities are drowned by double act or immediate
stroke. So much error. Old things done away. Name and
that other in itself opposite.
Expression. I was born to make use of it. Schism.
What is the reason of it? Zeal. An instance of our crime
is blunder. Object. It may be a question. Narration.
Can there be a better pattern? Weary. What do we
imagine? Swearing. If I had time and was not mortal.
But he. Scraps of predominance. Answer. So there is
some grievance driven out of the way. Objection.
Relation to the speaker. Speech to the wind. Particulars.
How shall I put on my coat?
Distance beyond comparison. Sleep between two.
* * *
His name and office sweetly did agree,
SHEPARD by name, and in his ministry.
(WI clxxix)
_Thomas Shepard:_
And I considered how unfit I was to go to such a good
land with such an unmortified, hard, dark, formal,
hypocritical heart. (GP 61)
Thomas Shepard was an evangelical preacher who comforted
and converted many people. "As great a Converter of
Souls as has ordinarily been known in our Days" (MIII 84).
Before he came to America, "although [he] were but a young
Man, yet there was that Majesty and Energy in his
preaching and that Holiness in his Life, which was not
ordinary": said Cotton Mather (MIII 86). Edward Johnson
called him "that gracious sweet Heavenly minded Minister
. . . in whose soul the Lord hath shed abroad his love so
abundantly, that thousands of Souls have cause to bless God
for him" (77). Thomas Prince said he "scarce ever preached
a sermon but someone or other of his congregation was struck
in great distress and cried out in agony, What shall I do to
be saved?" (GP 8). Jonathan Mitchell remembered Shepard's
Cambridge ministry: "Unless it had been four years living in
heaven, I know not how I could have more cause to bless God
with wonder" (C 13). Mitchell also recalled a day
when, "Mr. Shepard preached most profitably. That night I
was followed with serious thoughts of my inexpressible
misery, wherein I go on, from Sabbath to Sabbath, without
God and without redemption" (WI cxxxi). Thomas Shepard
called his longest spoken literary production, a series of
sermons unpublished in his lifetime, The Parable of the Ten
Virgins, Opened and Applied. He married three times. Two
wives died as a result of childbirth. His three sons,
Thomas, Samuel, and Jeremiah, became ministers. The earnest
persecutor of Anne Hutchinson and repudiator of "erroneous
Antinomian doctrines," confided to his Journal: "I have
seen a God by reason and never been amazed at God. I have
seen God himself and have been ravished to behold him"
(GP 136). The author of The Sound Believer also told his
diary: "On lecture morning this came into my thoughts, that
the greatest part of a Christian's grace lies in mourning
for the want of it" (GP 198).
Edward Johnson pictured the minister of the Cambridge
First Church as a "poor, weak, pale-complexioned man" (GP
8), whose physical powers were feeble, but spent to the
full. He wept while composing his sermons, and went up to
the pulpit "as if he expected there to give up his account
of his stewardship" (WL clxxix).
When Thomas Shepard died after a short illness, 25 August
1649, he was forty-three. "Returning home from a Council at
Rowly, he fell into a Quinsie, with a Symptomatical
Fever, which suddenly stop'd a Silver Trumpet, from whence
the People of God had often heard the joyful Sound" (M
88). Some of his last words were: "Lord, I am vile, but
thou art righteous" (GP 237).
Cotton Mather described the character of his
conversation as "A Trembling Walk with God" (MIII 90).
* * *
} S :
_Thomas Shepard:_
thou wert in the dangers of the sea in thy mothers
woombe then & see how god hath miraculously preserued
thee, that thou art still aliue, & thy mother's woombe
& the terrible seas haue not been thy graue;
(S side of MB)
Probably sometime in 1646 Thomas Shepard wrote a brief
autobiography entitled "T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:" into
one half of a small leatherbound pocket notebook.
Theatrical pen strokes by the protagonist shelter and
embellish the straightforward title that sunders his
initials. Conversion is an open subject. Or is it a
question of splitting the author's name from its frame of
compositional expression.
The narrative begins with an energetic account of the
author's birth "upon the 5 day of Nouember, called the
Powder Treason Day, & that very houre of the day wher in the
Parlament should haue bin blown vp by Popish preists. . .
which occasioned my father to giue me this name Thomas.
Because he sayd I would hardly beleeue that euer any such
wickednes could be attempted by men agaynst so religious &
good Parlament" (MB 10). 74 pages later the autobiography
breaks off abruptly, as it began, with calamity. This time
the death in childbed of the author's second wife, here
referred to by her husband, as "the eldest daughter of Mr
Hooker a blessed stock" (CS 391). Shepard married this
eldest daughter of one of the most powerful theocrats in New
England in 1637, the same year Mrs. Hutchinson was first
silenced. Unlike Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Shepard was a woman
of "incomparable meeknes of spirit, toward my selfe
especially . . . being neither too lauish nor sordid in any
things so that I knew not what was under her hands" (CS
392). When she died nine years and four male children
later, "after 3 weekes lying in," two of her sons had
predeceased her. On her deathbed this paragon of feminine
piety and humility "continued praying vntil the last houre.
. Ld tho I vnwoorthy Ld on woord one woord &c. & so gaue vp
the ghost. thus______
god hath visited me & scourged me for my sins & sought to
weane me from this woorld, but I have ever found it a
difficult thing to profit even but a little by sorest and
sharpest afflictions;"
"T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:" is littered with the
deaths of mothers. The loss of his own mother when Shepard
was a small child could never be settled.
Creation implies separation. The last word of "T. { _My
Birth & Life_: } S:" is "afflictions."
89 blank manuscript pages emphasize this rupture in the
pious vocabulary of order. The reader reads empty paper.
The absence of a definitive conclusion to Shepard's story
of his life and struggles is a deviation from the familiar
Augustinian pattern of self-revelation used by other English
nonconformist Reformers.
Allegoria and historia should be united in "T {_My
Birth & Life_:} S": Doubting Thomas should transcend the
empirical events of his times to become the figura of the
Good Shepard but the repetitive irruption of death into life
is mightier than this notion of enclosure.
"Woe to those that keep silent about God," warns St.
Augustine, in the De Magistro, for where he is concerned,
even the talkative are as though speechless" (RR 53).
"Silence reveals speech--unless it is speech that reveals
silence" (TP 86), Pierre Macherey has written in A Theory
of Literary Production.
State of the manuscript. Leaves that stood. Labor of
elaboration. he is the god. A word is the beginning of
every Conversion.
The purpose of editing is to reach the truth.
Mr. Shepard's manuscript is a draft. Shortcomings and
error. The minister made no revisions in this unsettled
account of his individual existence. Rational corrections
by editors lie in wait. Leaf of the story. Distortion
will begin in the place of flight.
_Thomas Shepard:_
He is the god who tooke me vp when my own mother dyed
who loued me, & wn my stepmother cared not for me, & wn
lastly my father also dyed & foorsooke me wn I was yong
& little & could take no care for my selfe. (T side
of MB)
* * *
T . {
Is it not hence@
(T side of MB p19)
There is no title on the binding of the notebook that
contains the manuscript. The paper is unlined. There are
no margins. There is no front or back. You can open and
shut it either way. Over time it has been used in multiple
ways by Shepard and by others. Thomas Shepard, its first
owner, used both ends of the book to begin writing.
Each side holds a personal history in reverse. On the
side I have here called S is the uninterrupted interrupted
Autobiography.
Then there is the empty center.
But I can turn the book over, so side S is inverted,
and begin to read another narrative by the same author. Now
the protagonist's more improvisational commentary decenters
the premeditated literary production of "T. { _My Birth &
Life_: } S:". Subjects are chosen then dropped. Messages
are transmitted and hidden. Whole pages have been left
open. Another revelation or problem begins with a different
meaning or purpose. Although dates occur on either side, it
is unclear which side was written first.
We might call the creation on this side an understudy. I
will call this T side An Inside Narrative.
Then there is the empty center.
* * *
with honey within, with oil in public : /
God's Plot : The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety Being the
Autobiography & Journal of Thomas Shepard (1972) edited
with an introduction by Michael McGiffert is the fourth
published edition of Shepard's Autobiography and the
standard reference for reading this text. McGiffert, who
tells us he restored some of the blunt vocabulary that had
been expunged by two genteel nineteenth century editors,
overlooked the structural paradox of the material object
whose handwritten pages he laboriously and faithfully
transcribed. McGiffert's is the fourth edition of Shepard's
Autobiography. An earlier verbatim text was edited by
Allyn Bailey Forbes for The Colonial Society of
Massachusetts, Publications, XXVII (Transactions,
1927-1930). Both editors included sections from the T
side of the manuscript book in their editions. Forbes
called the sections "random notes" and placed them last,
under the title "Appendix." McGiffert also put them last,
under the heading: "[The following material consists of
notes written by Shepard in the manuscript of the
Autobiography ]." Neither editor saw fit to point out the
fact that Shepard left two manuscripts in one book separated
by many pages then positioned them so that to read one you
must turn the other upside down.
Both editors deleted something from each history.
McGiffert decided the financial transactions on side S
were of no autobiographical importance. Forbes included
them, but buried Shepard's hostile reference to John Cotton
on side T in a footnote to side S. Shepard placed this
cryptic list of accusations against his fellow Saint alone
on the recto side of leaf three. Far from being a "random,"
or a footnote, the list provides a vivid half-smothered
articulation of New England's savage intersectine Genesis.
Possibly the Colonial Society of Massachusetts balked at
displaying this ambiguous sample of colonial ideology.
Mr. Cotton: repents not: but is hid only.
1. Wn Mrs. Hutchinso- was conuented he
commeded her for all that shee did before her
confinement & so gaue her a light to escape
thorow the crowd wt honour,
3. He doth stiffly hold the reuelatio- of
our good estate still, without any sign of
woord or work: / (MB 3)
Here is the correct order of the sections written by
Shepard in side T, or An Inside Narrative.
1. A Roman being asked .
2. Mr. Cotton: repents not: but is hid only.
3. Law. that the magistrate kisse the
Churchs feet:
4. My Life: Lord Jesu pdo-: / euery day.
5. April: 4 1639: prep: for a fast.
6. Is it not hence@
7. An: 1639/ The good things I have
received of the Lord:
(MB&GP&CS)
Shepard's list of "The good things I haue receiued of the
Lord" has fourteen sections and continues for eight pages.
The nonconformist minister meant to give praise and
thanksgiving to God, but images of panic, haste, and
abandonment disunite the Visible and Spiritual.
The Lord is the Word. He scatters short fragments.
Jonah cried out to the Word when floods encompassed him.
A Sound Believer hears old Chaos as in a deep sea. A
narrative refuses to conform to its project.
Side S ends abruptly with afflictions sent by God to
"scourge" the author. Side T also breaks off suddenly.
The author is remembering his earlier ministry in Earles
Colne, "a most prophane" English town. "Here the Lord kept
me fro troubles 3 yeares & a halfe vntill the Bishop Laud
put me to silence & would not let me liue in the town & this
he did wn I looked to be made a shame & confusio to all:"
(CS 395).
From confusion in old England to affliction in new
England. Problematical type and antitype. Everything has
its use. "To tell them myself with my own mouth" (CS 352).
Some of the eighty-nine blank manuscript pages separating
T and S have been written on since, by various
mediaries. All of these men see a higher theme to side S.
They follow its trajectory as if side T were an eccentric
inversion. Their additions form a third utterance of
authority in the Sincere Convert's transitory division of T.
from S: { life from birth: }
On the second leaf (r) of side T, or An Inside Narrative,
Mr. Shepard wrote down a single citation of discord.
"A Roman, being asked how he lived
so long-- answered--intus melle, foris
oleo: /
Quid loquacius vanitate, ait Augustinus."
(MB T 1)
Forbes had the discretion to stay away from translating
the nonsensical Latin in his interpretation of the
minister's script. "A Roman being asked how he liud so
long. answered intus melle, foris oleo: quid loquacior,
vanitate, ait augustinus" (CS 397). McGiffert agreed with
Forbes transcription. But in Latin, "quid" and "loquacior"
cannot agree with each other. This didn't stop McGiffert
from offering the following: "On the inside, honey; on the
outside, oil. Which babbled more of Vanity? said Augustine"
(GP 77). The translation is grammatically incorrect.
A more exact and enigmatic reading would be: "A Roman
being asked how he lived so long--answered with honey within
with oil in public:/ What is more garrulous than vanity,
said Augustine."
We will never know if this entry refers to John Cotton,
Thomas Shepard, or the human condition. It could be a
questionable interpretation of any evangelical minister's
profession. It could be a self-accusation or a reference to
John Cotton's preaching. It could be a note for a sermon or
merely a sign that the author knows St. Augustine.
In the seventeenth century the word oil, used as a
verb, often meant "to anoint." The holy oil of religious
rites.
Five foolish virgins took their lamps but forgot the oil
for trimming. They went to meet the bridegroom. The door
was shut against them. "I say unto you I know you not."
To oil one's tongue meant, and still means, to adopt
or use flattering speech. "Error, oiled with
obsequiousness, . . . has often the Advantage of
Truth.--1776" (OUD).
"Their throat is an open sepulcher. One may apply this
verse to greed, which is often the motive behind men's
deceitful flattery. . . for greed is insatiably openmouthed,
unlike sepulchres which are sealed up" (AP 57). St.
Augustine, Enarrationes. "They that observe lying
vanities forsake their own mercy." Jonah, to the Lord.
Alone on the second leaf the citation assumes its own
mystery.
Shepard's epigraph, if it is an epigraph to side T, or
An Inside Narrative, is a dislocation and evocative
contradiction in the structure of this two-sided book that
may or may not be a literary work.
In 1819, James Blake Howe turned the book upside down,
probably to conform with the direction of the
Autobiography, and inscribed his own name, place of
residence, and the date on the same page.
* * *
_Mr. Prince:_
Though [Shepard's] voice was low, yet so searching was his
preaching, so great a power attending, as a hypocrite could
not easily bear it, & it seemed almost irresistable. (S
side of MB)
Study in Logology
_Noah Webster:_
Oil is "an unctious substance expressed or drawn
from various animal and vegetable substances. The
distinctive characteristics of oil are inflammability,
fluidity, and insolubility in water. Oils are fixed
and greasy, fixed and essential, volatile and
essential." (WD 770)
_Kenneth Burke:_
Let us recall, for what it might be worth, that in
his [St. Augustine's] treatise "On The Teacher" (De
Magistro), a discussion with his son on the subject of
what would now popularly be called "semantics," he
holds that the word verbum is derived from a verb
meaning "to strike": (a verberando)--and the notion
fits in well with the lash of God's discipline. See,
for instance, Confessions (xm vi), where he says he
loves God because God had struck (percussisti) him
with his Word. (RR 50)
* * *
THOMAS SHEPARD
Anagram: More hath pass'd
(WIII 515)
Between 1637 and 1640, Thomas Shepard transcribed into
another leatherbound pocket notebook, containing 190 pages,
the testimonies of faith given in his church by 51 men and
women who were applying for church membership. 30 pages of
the little book are filled with sermon notes. He said of
1637 that God in that year alone "delivered the country from
war with the Indians and Familists; who rose and fell
together" (WI cxxvi).
A canditate for membership in the congregation of the
Church of Christ in Cambridge in New England had been
carefully screened by the church elders before he or she
presented a personal "confession and declaration of God's
manner of working on the soul" in public. Canditates had to
settle private accusations against them and present private
testimonies first. Sometimes the preliminary screening
process took months. After a person had been cleared by the
church authorities, he or she delivered the public
confession, usually during the weekday meeting. The
congregation then voted by a show of hands and their
decision was supposed to be unanimous. During Sunday
service an applicant was finally accepted into church
fellowship.
The applicants, during this tumultuous time when it
seemed dangerous to speak at all, especially to express
spiritual enthusiasm, were from a wide social spectrum. A
third of them could read or write. Almost half of them were
women. The speakers included four servants, two Harvard
graduates, traders, weavers, carpenters, coopers, glovers,
and one sailor. Most were concerned with farming and with
acquisition of property. Most applicants were in their
twenties, some in their forties. Most were starting to
raise families. Elizabeth Cutter and Widow Arrington were
in their sixties. Each person believed that reception into
church fellowship was necessary in order to gain economic
and social advantage in the community. Some later became
rich; some are untraceable now through geneological records.
Both male servants who spoke gained financial and political
freedom.
Two women in Shepard's notebook were servants.
Geneological trace of them has vanished with their surnames.
Two applicants were widows who managed their own estates.
The rest generally spent their days cleaning, sewing,
marketing, cooking, farming, and giving birth to, then
caring for, children. Some later died in childbirth. Mrs.
Sparhawk died only a month after Shepard recorded her
narrative. Some survived their husbands by many years.
Thomas Hooker, who became Shepard's father-in-law in
1637, and was the previous minister of the Cambridge parish,
moved to Connecticut partly because he felt the colony's
admission procedures were too harsh. Hooker insisted that
confessions by women should be read aloud in public by men.
Governor Winthrop in his History of New-England, citing
feminine "feebleness," and "shamefac't modesty and
melanchollick fearfulness," preferred that women's
"relations" remain private; a male elder should read them
before a select committee. Shepard and one or two other
ministers felt differently. The Confessions of diverse
propounded to be received & were entertained as members,
shows that although Shepard thought women should defer to
their husbands in worldly matters, in his theology of
conversion they were relatively independent. These
narratives reflect this autonomy. Some are as long or
longer than those spoken by men.
* * *
THOMAS SHEPARD
Anagram: Arm'd as the shop.
(WIII 515)
Notes written in the minister's hand on the flyleaf of the
manuscript he called "The Confessions of diverse propounded
to be received & were entertayned as members."
1. You say some brethren cannot live comfortably with so
little.
2. We put all the rest upon a temptation. Lots being but
little, and estates will increase or live in beggary. For
to lay land out far off is intolerable to men; nearby, you
kill your cattle.
3. Because if another minister come, he will not have room
for his company--Religion--.
4. Because now, if ever, is the most fit season; for the
gate to be opened, many will come in among us, and fill all
places, and no room in time to come at least, not such good
room as now. And now you may best sell.
5. Because Mr. Vane will be among our skirts. (GP 90)
* * *
MATT.xviii.11. -- "I came to save that which was lost."
(WI 111)
Each confession of faith is an eccentric concentrated
improvisation and arrest. Each narrator's proper name forms
a chapter heading. Wives and servants are property. Their
names are appropriated for masculine consistency.
Goodman Luxford His Wife
Brother Collins His Wife
Brother Moore His Wife
Brother Greene His Wife
Brother Parish's Wife
Brother Crackbone His Wife
The Confession of John Sill His Wife
John Stedman His Wife's Confession
Brother Jackson's Maid
Written representation of the Spirit is sometimes
ineffectual; words only images or symbols of the clear
sunshine of the Gospel. "Go to a painted sun, it gives you
no heat, nor cherishith you not. So it is here, etc."
Often the minister surrounds a name with ink-scrawls and
flourishes.
Flights or freezes. Proof and chaos. Immanent sorrow of
one, incomplete victory of another. Use, oh my unbelief.
Confessions are copied down quickly. Translinguistic
idiosyncracies infer but block consistency. A sound block
will not be led. Mistaken biblical quotations are
transcribed and abandoned. As the sound is the sense is.
Few revisions civilize verbal or visual hazards and webs of
unsettled sanctification. The minister's nearly microscopic
handwriting is difficult to decipher. He uses a form of
shorthand in places.
A wild heart at the word shatters scriptural figuration.
Once again by correcting, deleting, translating, or
interpreting the odd symbols and abbreviated signals, later
well-meaning editors have effaced the disorderly velocity of
Mr. Shepard's evangelical enthusiasm.
For readability.
* * *
Matt
In this setdown the ques
tion of C's desiples
why they asks him
not men ought sometimes to
askes questions pacificaly when
they hear the word upon
sum occasion (written in another hand inT side of MB)
Writing speed of thought moving through dominated
darkness (the privation) toward an irresistible confine
possibly becoming woman.
The Soul's Immediate Closing with the Person (WII 111)
_Barbary Cutter:_
The Lord let me see my condition by nature out of
16 of Ezekiel and by seeing the holiness of the
carriage of others about, her friends, and the more she
looked on them the more she thought ill of herself.
She embraced the motion to New England. Though she
went through with many miseries and stumbling blocks at
last removed and sad passages by sea. And after I came
hither I saw my condition more miserable than ever. (C
89)
A Narrator-Scribe-Listener-Confessor-Interpreter-Judge-
Reporter-Author quickly changes person, character, country,
and gender. Walk darkly here, This is to cross Scripture.
These words are questions. Compel them to come in when
Jonah is cast out of sight.
He singles them out.
His spirit goes home to them quiet as an ark above
waters; rest and provender being desire to lay under Lord.
Praying for him and hearing. Words drift together. Washed
from her heart. Many foolish pray from the mouth. Some are
condemned. Blossoms fly up as dust. He will not leave.
Death can not. "In favor is life." This outline is
extracted. Now you will have him. She calls him so.
Some are asleep. Ten virgins trim their lamps.
My house is a waste. To doctrine to reason cry peace
peace. This is that which fills a man. For this long ago
Corinthians, Philippians, Thessalonians: motives differ. We
are his people we stumble. What a wandering path
confinement is when angels had not fallen. Pale clarity of
day. Why no heart. Iniquities are not all I might
"Five were wise and five were foolish."
These virgins once the doors were shut were surely kept
out. Glimpses. Explication. What is acceptable? Toother.
Miswritten he thoght. He thought. Other redundancies.
Reduced to lower case these words are past. To the supposed
sepulcher. Purest virgin churches and professors, they took
their lamps. What can we do? Prevail again? Against what
do we watch?
Fiery law and tabernacles I beat the air.
Therefore as her and distancing.
* * *
"Went forth to meet the Bridegroom." (WII 111)
_Old Goodwife Cutter:_
I desired to come this way in sickness time
and Lord brought us through many sad troubles by sea
And when I was here the Lord rejoiced my heart.
But when come I had lost all and no comfort
and hearing from foolish virgins
those that sprinkled with Christ's blood were unloved.
(C 145)
_John Sill His Wife:_
Oft troubled since she came hither,
her heart went after the world and vanities
and the Lord absented Himself from her
so that she thought God had brought her hither on purpose
to discover her. (C 51)
_Goodwife Willows:_
And when husband gone, I thought all I had was but a form
and I went to Mr. Morton
and desired he would tell me how it was with me.
He told me if I hated that form
it was a sign I had more than a form. (C 150)
_Brother Winship's Wife:_
Hearing 2 Jeremiah 14 -- two evils broken cisterns --
I was often convinced by Mr. Hooker my condition was
miserable
and took all threatenings to myself. . .
And I heard He that had smitten He could heal Hosea 6.
Hearing -- say to them that be fearful in heart, behold He
comes -
Mr. Wells - pull off thy soles off thy feet for ground is
holy.
And hearing Exodus 34, forgiving iniquity,
I thought Lord could will was He willing. . .
Hearing whether ready for Christ at His appearing
had fears, city of refuge. . .
Hearing - oppressed undertake for me - eased. (C 147-9)
_Hannah Brewer:_
And I heard that promise proclaimed - Lord, Lord merciful
and gracious etc.-
but could apply nothing. (C 141)
_Brother Winship's Wife:_
Hearing of Thomas' unbelief,
he showed trust in Lord forever
for there is everlasting strength and stayed. (C 149)
_Goodwife Usher:_
And I heard -- come to me you that be weary --
and Lord turn me and I shall be turned -
and so when I desired to come hither
and found a discontented heart
and mother dead and my heart overwhelmed.
And I heard of a promise -- fear not I'll be with thee.
And in this town I could not understand anything was said,
I was so blind, and heart estranged from people of people.
(C 183)
_Mrs. Sparhawk:_
And then that place fury is not in me,
let Him take hold of my strength. . . .
And she
there was but two ways either to stand out
or to take hold,
and saw the promise
and her
own insufficiency so to do.
and mentioning a Scripture,
was asked whether she had assurance.
She said no but some hope. (C 68-9)
_John Stedman His Wife:_
Hearing Mr. Cotton out of Revelation --
Christ with a rainbow on his head, Revelation 10--
I thought there was nothing for me.
I thought I was like the poor man at the pool. (C 105)
_Goodwife Grizzell:_
Hearing Mr. Davenport on sea --
he that hardened himself against the Lord could not
prosper --
and I thought I had done so.
But then he showed it was continuing in it
and I considered though I had a principle against faith
yet a kingdom divided cannot stand. (C 188-9)
_Widow Arrington:_
And in latter end that sermon
there was obedience of sons and servants
then I thought--would I know?
And I thought Lord gave me a willing heart, etc.
And they that have sons can cry--Abba--Father,
and so have some stay
and I wished I had a place in wilderness to mourn.
(C 185-6)
_Brother Jackson's Maid:_
When Christ was to depart nothing broke their heart so much
as then. (C 121)
* * *
Walking alone in the fields
These first North American Inside Narratives cross the
wide current of Scripture. I meet them in the fields. They
show me what rigor. I dare not pity. When she went to meet
the Bridegroom it was too early. Then there is nothing to
believe. Scholars of the world, then there is no authority
at all.
The iron face of filial systems.
The colonies of America break out.
Consider the parable of these wise and foolish virgins.
They went to work to trim their lamps. What did the foolish
say to the wise? That there is no difference? What a
crossing. All their thoughts and searching. Is that what
love is? Bewildered by history did they see iniquity? Did
they spend whole days and nights trimming? When was the
filth wiped off?
People of His pasture, does this give peace?
Sheep of His hand, is this the temptation of
the place?
Mountains are interrupted by mountains. Planets are not
fixed. They run together. Planets are globes of fire.
Imagination is a lense. Pastness. We find by experience.
A sentence tumbles into thought. A disturbance calls itself
free.
Notes
Patricia Caldwell’s study is concerned with how and when English voices begin to speak New-Englandly. The Puritan Conversion Narrative demonstrates how careful examination and interpretation of individual physical artifacts from a time and place can change our basic assumptions about the New England pattern and its influence on American literary expression.
This essay is profoundly indebted to her work.
I have followed each quoted source in spelling and punctuation. In the books I used as sources, revisions, deletions, and spelling differences, have been modernized, and then again “modernized”; I have tried to preserve those changes as part of the form and content of my essay. Someday I hope there will be facsimile versions of the “Confessions,” the “Journal,” and the “Autobiography,” with facing transcriptions in typeface.
I have taken editorial liberties in places. It was my editorial decision to turn some sections of the narratives into poems.
Key
AC = The Antinomian Controversy: Patricia Caldwell.
AH = Anne Hutchinson.
C = Thomas Shepard’s Confessions.
CS = The Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Thomas Shepard’s T. {My Birth and Life:} S:
GP = God’s Plot: Thomas Shepard.
L = The Letters of Emily Dickinson.
M = Magnalia Christi Americana: Cotton Mather.
MB = Manuscript Book: Thomas Shepard’s Autobiography.
MBED = Emily Dickinson’s Manuscript Books.
ML = The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson.
OUD = The Oxford Universal Dictionary.
RR = The Rhetoric of Religion: Kenneth Burke.
VS = Visible Saints: Geoffrey Nuttal.
W = The Works of Thomas Shepard.
WD = An American Dictionary of the English Language: Noah Webster.
ASCII text cannot reproduce certain marks used in this work. We have used a @ to represent mirror-imaged (backward) question marks. We have used o- to represent an o with a bar over it. –PMC Eds.
Works Cited
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- —. The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Ralph Franklin. Harvard UP, 1981.
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- Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England. (London, 1702) Hartford, 1820.
- Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). Ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton Sealts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1962.
- Nuttal, Geoffrey F. Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640-1669. Oxford: Blackwell, 1957.
- The Oxford Universal Dictionary. London: Amen House, 1933.
- Shepard, Thomas. “Autobiography.” Ed. Allyn Bailey Forbes. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXVII. Boston: Transactions, 1927-1930.
- —. God’s Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety, Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard. Ed. Michael McGiffert. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1972.
- —. Manuscript Book. Unpublished ms. The Houghton Libray, Harvard U, Cambridge.
- —. The Works of Thomas Shepard. Ed. John A. Albro. 3 vols. 1853. New York: AMS, 1967.
- —. Thomas Shepard’s “Confessions.” Ed. George Selement and Bruce C. Woolley. Collections of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 58. Boston: The Society, 1981.
- Stein, Gertrude. “Patriarchal Poetry.” The Yale Gertrude Stein. Ed. Richard Kostelanetz. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980.
- Webster, Noah, ed. An American Dictionary of the English Language.