The sensual human nature: a cognitive approach to religious poetry

ES 25 (2004-2005):23-42 THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY M. Teresa Calderón Quindós University of Valladolid ... Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine 1 Sensual experience has traditionally been admitted into religion as a means to convey mystic encounters with divinities. Even the strict Christian dogma gives its consent to the expression of sensual encounters, provided that they can be justified from a religious moral perspective. But the fact is that the use of sensual imagery with a communicative intention seems to have an experientialist base: Any kind of knowledge we have originates from our phenomenological apprehension of the world; and appealing to the motor-sensory domains seems to be the easiest and quickest way to guarantee understanding. Following a cognitive orientation, this paper explores into two samples of religious poetry (San Juan de la Cruz’s “Noche Oscura” and G. Herbert’s “Love”) and shows evidence that meaning conveyance is possible thanks to the use of motor-sensory imagery, which at the same time allows for other more universal readings of the poems. Suppose you are asked to imagine God. If you are from a Western country, you will probably figure it out in human terms, as a father or an oldish man with some more or less precise anthropomorphic features. Your human image may be much more precise if you are a Roman Catholic and think of the Divinity as Jesus Christ: you will see it as a dark-haired strong white man dressed in a tunic, or a half-naked dark-haired white man hanging on a wooden cross whose body has been damaged by nails and thorns. And even the Holy Ghost will display for you a bodily image, this corresponding to a dove’s. Religious symbols are frequently based on human 1 “The Divine Image”, ll. 13-15 from Songs of Innocence by William Blake (1970:17-18). 24 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS and animal motives which offer not just a symbolic allusion to a concept but also a great amount of information transmitted through sensory stimuli. Religious painting is constantly playing with human bodies representing souls; notice for instance Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel, in which it is easy to appreciate the tight mutual dependency that religious and sensory (or sensuous) information maintain. The blending of a Christian disposition of mind and a sensuous appreciation of natural existence is not an exclusive characteristic of painting 2 , but it is also frequent in other artistic expressions such as poetry. The 17 th century English Metaphysical poets and the Spanish Renaissance Mystic poets provide illustrating literary examples of this interesting integration. In this paper we shall discuss two poems playing with the religious and natural conceptions of the Man - “Love” (Abrams 1993:1388) by George Herbert and “Noche Oscura” 3 (Asún 1996:3-4) by San Juan de la Cruz. From the first reading it seems clear that they share at least the following characteristics: 1. They both account for the relation between a lyrical subject and a higher-level entity. 2. There is an explicit allusion to the “love” concept. 3. There is a final carnal encounter between the first and second entities. The aim of this paper is to discover the way spiritual experiences are conveyed through the invocation of physical experiences in ordinary life situations. In our view, this interrelation between spiritual and natural world happens only because our human embodied minds tend to organise and convey meaning by means of orientational image-schemas and sensory experience so as to make it comprehensible. In order to fulfil this target, a sound theoretical basis which considers sensory experience as one of its essentials will be needed. Thus, we will adopt a cognitive-aesthetic approach that will include the Cognitive Linguistics assumptions on the embodied mind and the mental space dynamics. 1. C OGNITIVE LINGUISTICS FUNDAMENTALS ASSUMED Cognitive Linguistics bases on the mentalist idea that language is neither a container of meaning nor a representation of things. Actually they follow psychology in their assumption that anything we interpret from written or oral discourse is just the result of our cognitive processing, activating the necessary 2 See Calderón Quindós (2004) for a study of Anglo-Irish poetry in this light. 3 Henceforth L and NO when the poems are mentioned within brackets. THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 25 concepts that we store in our individual minds and establishing the right connections between them. The linguistic form of discourse is just but formal guidelines that will be understood only by those who possess enough information about the code used. Thus to understand a text in English we need to have some semiotic system corresponding to the English language stored in our minds; but also some other information about life taken from our own human experiences as physical and as social beings. 1.1. I DEALISED COGNITIVE MODELS The whole corpus of information that any person stores in their mind is arranged in categories with different degrees of specificity (see Lakoff 1987). Each of these categories are called Cognitive Models by Lakoff and Idealised Cognitive Models (ICM) by most of the contemporary cognitive linguists. An ICM is a relatively permanent -but not fixedmultidimensional conceptual structure consisting of encyclopaedic information about a concept; this information is in a great deal subjective since it originates from our individual experience in the world and in society. Nevertheless, there seem to exist “universal” ICMs, mainly those which essentially have to do with orientational information. And we can also speak of ICMs which are widely spread in a particular culture (these are called Cultural Models), these ICMs working in our individual minds will more or less respond to a prototype 4 . As an example we shall consider the love ICM, which can be found at work all through the poetic discourse studied in this paper. 1.2. I MAGE - SCHEMAS One of the most interesting Cognitive Linguistics assumptions about the human mind is that thought is of an embodied nature (see especially Johnson 1987). In short, this means that our motor-sensory experience as physical beings results in an understanding of the world in orientational and sensory terms; and through schematisation, our individual minds create generic structure on a motor-sensory base. Thus, as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) explain with the help of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, each abstract concept in our minds will be provided motorsensory generic structure in order to make it comprehensible. These generic structures, called by Johnson (1987) image-schemas, originate at its base through 4 For more on prototypes you can see Ungerer & Schmid (1996) and R.W. Gibbs, Jr “Prototypes in dynamic meaning construal” in Gavins & Steen (2003:27-40). 26 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS our motor-sensory interaction with the physical world around. Some of their roles in the cognitive processing are: 1) making it possible for two concepts to map onto each other, and 2) providing generic frames to mental spaces. One of these image-schemas is the VERTICALITY image-schema, which -as it will be provedwill play a relevant role in the discourse analysed; the VERTICALITY image-schema also works as a frame for the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphor (Lakoff and Turner 1989:170-192), according to which our cognition organises beings in a hierarchy of categories. Another frequent imageschema also at work in these poems is the JOURNEY image-schema consisting of a trajector moving along a path from a source to a target. As we shall see, the JOURNEY image-schema is functioning as a frame for the mental-space nets suggested by the poems. The cognitive metonymy theory also accounts for the understanding of abstract concepts (such as emotions) in terms of motor-sensory impressions; for instance, PASSION can be seen in terms of HEAT 5 , this notion (becoming a conceptual metaphor itself: PASSION IS HEAT) will be also useful to understand one of the poems. 1.3. M ENTAL SPACES Against the relatively permanent nature of the concepts (or Idealised Cognitive Models) in our individual minds, the human thought is also able to create new cognitive structures called mental spaces 6 (Fauconnier 1997). Mental spaces are temporary cognitive structures created ad hoc with an operative intention: as tools for the interpretation of human expressions, such as poetic discourse. Even when we read a single poem its discourse suggests manifold mental spaces connected in a net fashion that we construe with the help of our cognition skills. By means of its linguistic form the discourse provides the clues that help the reader to mentally activate old information and arrange it in multiple connections according to frames, and so, to create mental spaces. As we have said, these frames can consist of basic image-schemas such as the VERTICALITY or the JOURNEY image-schemas. But the frames must necessarily be enriched with specific information, and this is often suggested through the sensory images evoked by the discourse. 5 For more on the emotion expression through metonymy and metaphor see Lakoff (1987: 382ff) and Ungerer & Schmid (1996:131-143). 6 For more on mental space dynamics from an integrational perspective see further work by Fauconnier and Turner (2001,2002). THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 27 1.4. S ENSORY DOMAINS It seems that not only the information that can be transmitted through sensory images is astonishingly manifold, but also the sensory domain activated seems to make a vital difference in the way our minds conceptualise the input information. Eve Sweetser (1990:37-44) explains the reason why we tend to classify the sensory domains in two categories: i.e. in higher domains and lower domains. She assumes an experientialist orientation and tells about the differentiation degrees of the perceiver towards the stimuli depending on the sensory organ which is used to sense it. Thus, the lower domains (smell, touch and taste) require of a closer physical relation with the object than the higher domains (sight and ear), through which the perceiver can appreciate objects from a distance. Sweetser explains that the different degrees of contact established between subject and object are commonly understood as a difference in the degree of objectivity in the perception. Therefore, the higher domains are understood as more objective than the lower domains, and so, more intellectual. On the contrary, the lower domains are commonly perceived as more subjective and emotional. Assuming this implies that the sensory domains that a particular discourse activates in the reader’s mind will influence the way information is being perceived (as more intellectual or more emotional). 2. C OGNITIVE - STYLISTIC ANALYSIS 2.1. A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO THE LOVE EXPERIENCE One of the most frequent emotions that literature -and in general any artistic expressionhas dealt with to our days is the one called “love”. This is not surprising, since it seems to be a basic human instinct which guarantees the spreading of the species over the world. Talking about love and not about mating gives the human copulation activity a higher and more humane status. The love concept integrates manifold dimensions which can vary from one culture to another. But at least it is possible to identify a basic schema articulating the several Cultural Models of love. Gerard Steen in ‘Love Stories’ (Gavins and Steen 2003:67-82) offers the structure of a prototypical ‘love scenario’ in the western society (Table 1), the ‘causation’ relations in ‘love stories’ and a list of the metaphorical aspects of love, which we reproduce here (Table 2). 28 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS Table 1 ‘love scenario’ Table 2 DOES Y WANT X? YES NO Causation in love stories: motivation and positive and negative results. Metaphorical aspects of love DOES X GET Y? NO WANT / GET / KEEP BECAUSE OF YES DOES Y GET X? NO DESIRE = HUNGER PASSION = NATURAL FORCE NEED = ADDICTION YES WANT / GET / KEEP RESULTS IN DOES X KEEP Y? YES NO HAPPINESS = UP AFFAIR = UNION RELATIONSHIP = PSSESSION NOT WANT / GET / KEEP BECAUSE OF DOES Y KEEP X? YES NO INTERNAL LACK OF DESIRE, PASSION, NEED (see above) EXTERNAL IMPEDIMENT COMPETITOR, SOCIETY = ENEMY NOT WANT / GET / KEEP RESULTS IN LACK OF HAPPINESS ANGER > HATE > JEALOUSY (other metaphors) LACK OF AFFAIR DISAPPOINTMENT LACK OF RELATIONSHIP Western society tends to believe that love is a “universal emotion”, though actually it does not seem to be a “universal notion”. Nevertheless, it is a basic concept in the English and Spanish societies, to which the poems under discussion belong. In fact, ‘Love’ and ‘Noche Oscura’ suggest a straightforward evocation of the love concept from the very beginning. George Herbert’s ‘Love’ does immediately from the title, and San Juan de la Cruz’s ‘Noche Oscura’ invokes it all through the poem by means of the vocabulary (“amores”, l.2; “Amado”, ll.24, 25, 37 and “amada”, ll.24, 25). But of course, these poems having been written by THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 29 Herbert and San Juan de la Cruz, it might seem fairly obvious to the reader that the love notion is applied here in an enriched or modified way. We shall see later whether the poems give the reader any clue towards this belief or whether the basic ‘love scenario’ is rich enough for the reader to work out meaning from the poem. 2.2. I MAGE - SCHEMAS AND ROLES The cognitive frames that support mental spaces are usually based on ordinary thought image-schemas. This is what happens in the two poems for discussion, both of them suggesting mental spaces based on the ENCOUNTER image-schema - which as we can see corresponds to one of the results of the wanting/getting/ keeping sequence in Steen’s table (AFFAIR = UNION). In both cases an encounter between a speaker and a second entity takes places; but there is a radical contrast in the positions the speakers take towards the encounter itself. This contrast seems to make the essential difference between these samples of merely Religious Poetry and Mystic Poetry. “Love bade me welcome” (L, l.1) straightforwardly suggests the encounter relation, Love and the speaker being the entities involved; but a satisfactory encounter is soon rejected by the speaker, whose “soul drew back /guilty of dust and sin” (L, ll.1-2). On the contrary, the speaker in “Noche Oscura” leaves home in search of her male loved oneEn una noche oscura, con ansias en amores inflamada, ¡Oh dichosa ventura!, salí sin ser notada, estando ya mi casa sosegada. It is worth notice that the second entity in both cases is a male one: “Love” is an a priori a-sexuated entity, but then the speakers addresses it as “Lord” (L., l.13); similarly “Noche Oscura” conceals the second entity’s sex to the middle of the poem, where its manliness is suggested through the word “Amado” (NO, ll.24-25). But it is even more interesting to consider the speaker’s behaviours towards their own sexuality. There is a brief but prominent allusion to the male nature of the lyrical subject in “Love” (L, l.8) when Love’s own sex is still undetermined in the poem: Love said, “You shall be he” In a first reading this may seem uninteresting, since we tend to think that lyric poetry displays a great deal of autobiographic information, and here the artist is a man (George Herbert). More interesting may seem the clearly sexuated female 30 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS speaker in “Noche Oscura”, since it will not map with San Juan de la Cruz’s male identity: there is an outstanding constant repetition of the Spanish feminine morpheme “-a” connected with the lyrical subject all through the composition, which will make it easy for the reader to settle the identity of the counterparts in the last two lines (ll.23-25), the “amada” being the lyrical subject and the “Amado” the second entity in the encounter - ¡Oh noche que juntaste Amado con amada, amada en el Amado transformada! As we have already said, “Love” and “Noche Oscura” are both poems dealing with the love motif and displaying an ENCOUNTER relation between a lyrical subject and a second entity. We have identified the sexuated nature of each of these elements, but it is also important to notice that in both cases the second is perceived as a higher-level entity. There is a purely formal reason for this, which both poems share: the second entity is always directly evoked by means of an initial capital letter. Capital letters are ordinarily perceived as more important than small letters and as a mark of individuality, as we can see from proper names. The capitalisation of the word “love” happens because it is being used as a proper name; but it is also interesting: 1) that the name “Love” evokes an abstract multidimensional concept, and 2) that such a name is being used in order to designate a male entity (“Lord” , l.15), when it should prototypically be assigned to a woman. On the contrary the word “Amado” maintains its common noun state (as the determiner “el” suggests, l.25) but is introduced by a capital letter in contrast with the small first letter of its counterpart “amada”, which clearly implies the male subject occupies a higher position in the relation. Therefore, the VERTICALITY image-schema is also suggested by the poems -though not in a purely physical way, but through the cognitive arrangement of concepts and beings in a hierarchic scale according to the GREAT CHAIN METAPHOR OF BEING (Lakoff and Turner 1989:170-192). In “Noche Oscura” this verticality notion is firstly suggested by the word “escala” - prototypically suggesting a descending movement in a flight-from-home scenarioand is later reinforced by expressions such as “almena” (l.31) and “suspendía” (l.35) in the stanza, now offering a rising movement as we will see below El aire de la almena, ... en mi cuello hería y todos mis sentidos suspendía. (ll.31,34-35) Conversely, “Love” makes use of the VERTICALITY image-schema with the invocation of a downward movement in the final stanza- THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 31 “You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat” So I did sit and eat. (ll.17-18) a movement which diverges from the upraised sensual movement conveyed in “Noche Oscura”. The CONTAINER and the PATH image-schemas are also at work in both poems. Each of them starts with the suggestion of a domestic environment. “Love” bids the speaker welcome to its place -where the speaker intends to enter; it conveys a movement into a containerLove bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, (ll.1-4, my italics) and “la amada” starts a night journey out of her home to a love encounterEn una noche oscura, con ansias en amores inflamada, ¡Oh dichosa ventura!, salí sin ser notada, estando ya mi casa sosegada. (ll.1-5, my italics) The domestic environment is relevant in both poems at a metonymy level, since connections can be established between a person’s house and their own privacy or private internal world. Thus, “love” makes no explicit mention of a home, yet the reader needs to locate the entities and the meal in a particular geographical place; therefore the Love entity and his place can be perceived as separate or as a blended unity. On the contrary, there is a direct mention of the amada’s home. Taking her home literally would make enough sense; but also a metonymic mapping might be perceived between her home and her inner self, especially if we are reading the poem from a religious perspective. The way the reader understands the amada’s home will influence the understanding of the outof-home journey she will accomplish in the following lines. The JOURNEY-PATH image-schema will be considered in more detail in section 2.4. 38 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS and notice how the “Love” term in line 17 precedes the clause “and taste my meat”. The line makes it clear that “my meat” is in fact “Love’s meat”, and this rephrasing will call for the carnal dimension of Love, i.e. the sexual encounter. • The religious domain has much to do with the final interpretation of the poem. For a reader who knows about the Christian Cultural Model, it is easy to identify Love’s words with Jesus Christ’s words in the Last Dinner referring to the bread and the wine as his own flesh and blood. Through this traditionally controversial equivalence Christ invited Man to join Him in a material and spiritual union which, on the other hand, displays similarities with a prototypical Love encounter - where bodies and minds will ideally join. In the hosting domain the act of sitting down implies making oneself comfortable, and waiting to be attended by the host. This taken to the religious domain, the implications are much higher. Notice once again the conversation between guest and host in lines 16-18 “My dear, then I will serve.” “You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat” So I did sit and eat. There is a first commitment from the guest to the host (Love), to which Love responds with a “you must ...” (my italics) The serving attitude in line 16. implies a lower position of the guest with respect to the host, this is emphasised through the imperative expression “you must”. But this is immediately followed by a “sit down”, thus the lower mental position (serving) turns into a lower physical position (sitting down) implying higher comfort. Meanwhile, any reader who is familiar with the Christian Cultural Model will see this as a re-creation of Jesus Christ’s attitude towards his followers: Him coming to the world so as to serve. The poem seems to make us play with the VERTICALITY image-schema by doing and undoing the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphor with the help of the DIVIDED PERSON METAPHOR (Table 4). image-schema SELF BODY SELF Christian ICM SELF UP Love (‘You must’) Love (standing) I (being served) Love (serving) DOWN I (‘I will serve.’) I (sitting down) Love (serving) I Table 4 THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 39 A love encounter is openly suggested by the last stanzas in “Noche Oscura”, lines 23-25 acting as a transition from the JOURNEY space to the ENCOUNTER space: ¡Oh noche que juntaste Amado con amada, amada en el Amado transformada! From this point on, the discourse displays a great deal of motor-sensory stimuli which the reader uses to make up the ENCOUNTER mental space: a woman and a man (both possessing bodies) maintaining physical contact ll.26,28-29: “En mi pecho florido /... / allí quedó dormido, / y yo le regalaba” l.32: “... yo sus cabellos esparcía,” l.37: “el rostro recliné sobre el Amado;” This is perceived as a gesture of internal/mental commitment mainly from the “amada” to the Amado (... mi pecho florido, / que entero para él solo se guardaba”, ll.26-27), and self-abandonment, as suggested in the last stanza Quedéme y olvidéme, el rostro recliné sobre el Amado; cesó todo y dejéme, dejando mi cuidado entre las azucenas olvidado. (ll. 36-40, my italics) The LOVE ENCOUNTER space is also completed with the help of orientational information based on the VERTICALITY image-schema. This time it is possible to perceive a stable correspondence between the upper position of God in the GREAT CHAIN OF BEING metaphor (and thus, the reader’s perception of the “Amado” as the higher entity in the love relation) on the one hand, and on the other, the height images in the last stanzas. This height information perceived through sight (i.e., through differentiated sensations) is deeply related with undifferentiated sensory information perceived through tactile stimuli in an interesting play. • Through visual information, words such as “cedros” (l.30), “almena” (l.31) and “suspendía” (l.35) invoke the upper pole of a VERTICALITY image-schema. According to Sweetser, the higher sensory domains (sight and ear) imply receiving the stimulus from a differentiated perspective -which means that there is no physical contact between stimulus and perceiverand thus the perspective is considered as objective and intellectual. • But the fact is that this sight vocabulary is grammatically connected with other vocabulary suggesting tactile information -which implies an undifferentiated perspective conceptually connected with emotions. From the structure “el 40 Mª TERESA CALDERÓN QUINDÓS ventalle de cedros aire daba” (l.30) the reader will construe a space where the cedars work as a force producing air, suggesting a tactile impression. Similarly, the second and third terms displaying the height dimension are again grammatically linked to tactile images in lines 31,33-34 (my italics) El aire de la almena, ... con su mano serena en mi cuello hería, y todos mis sentidos suspendía. This is particularly interesting, since the air element displays anthropomorphic features (having a hand) and is the one responsible for the sensory upraising during the love relation. Thus, there seems to be a conceptual mapping between the air element and the Amado element, and there are several reasons to believe this conceptual equivalence really exists: a) There is a mapping based on the VERTICALITY image-schema: the Amado is in a higher position with respect to the amada, and the cedars and the battlements are in the higher position in the domains to which they belong. b) The amada maintains some physical contact with both the Amado and the air coming from the battlements, the air having a tactile dimension emphasised through its anthropomorphic feature (its hand). c) The air contact with the amada results in the upraising of her senses, which can be easily mapped onto the climatic sensation in a sexual intercourse -step which is not straightforwardly invoked in the poem, but which the reader activates thanks to their knowledge of human relations. The last stanza (ll.36-40) will actually be perceived as the final relaxing moment after sex, though we have not been directly informed that there has been such Quedéme y olvidéme, el rostro recliné sobre el Amado; cesó todo y dejéme, dejando mi cuidado entre las azucenas olvidado. Having in mind that this poem was written by a very well known Spanish Mystic, and having identified the Amado as the Roman Catholic God, the reader will very likely construe a religious interpretation for the poem and will be able to give reasons for the choices the author made when writing it and the risks that he took. Actually, Herbert’s poem seems more cautious and reverent towards the Christian doctrine and morality. THE SENSUAL HUMAN NATURE: A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS POETRY 41 3. C ONCLUSION A religious reading of these poems is not a compulsory option, though. The word “God” is used in none of them and the higher position of the second entity might be understood just as an expression of idolatry towards the loved one; and even the biblical words themselves could be just understood as a device to say something else. But what it is definitely clear from the poems is that, in order to generate aesthetic meaning, the artists did make use of widespread notions about the human motor-sensory reality. And it is through this human sensuality that the reader will make out meaning from the poems. Much has already been said about Spanish Mystic and English Metaphysical poetry from many different perspectives, particularly including dogmatic interpretations. Frequently -especially in the case of Spanish onedogmatic interpretations have eclipsed the dimension of their poems as artistic creations. Nevertheless, still nowadays San Juan de la Cruz and Herbert are being read and admired for their poetic genius 8 . In the 21 st century fashion of allowing the poems to speak for themselves, we have only clarified the way the reader’s motor-sensory knowledge about the world and about human relations participates in the poem meaning construction at the aesthetic pole. We would not like to go any further in our interpretation of the poems. The task of speculating on the possible meanings of the poems will be left to the readers themselves, for what we believe about poetry is similar to what San Juan de la Cruz says about his choosing poetry to communicate his love experience: porque los dichos de amor es mejor declararlos en su anchura, para que cada uno de ellos se aproveche de según su modo y caudal de espíritu, que abreviarlos a un sentido a que no se acomode todo paladar ... 9 R EFERENCES Abrams, M. H. (ed.) The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol.1. London-New York: Norton and Company Inc., 1993. Asún, Raquel (ed.) San Juan de la Cruz. Poesía completa y comentarios en prosa. 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