A dolphin for the Dutch; or, is there any verse culture without occasional poems?
This dolphin-torn, this gong-tormented sea.
Last week I listened to a podcast which contained a very scathing, almost vituperous attack upon a piece of occasional verse, written for specific (named) addressees and not published until after the author’s death (in other words, never published by the author).1 I was very struck by the absolute disdain that was expressed for the competent occasional poem, since it seems to me that without occasional poems — without a culture of writing poems, sometimes off-the-cuff, for the pleasure of their addressee, or the satisfaction of the moment; without the concept of the functional poem with a place in our daily lives — we barely have a poetic culture at all. Great literature just doesn’t appear without an everyday counterpart in ordinary life.2
Over the last week or two I’ve been banging my head against a pretty obscure poem written (probably) in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1618. The poem is in Latin, but it was written by an Englishman and for a Dutchman (in Russia, don’t forget). Our protagonist, one Richard James, was writing on the very eve of what would be the Thirty Years War, and around the time of a siege of Moscow in which the Polish-Lithuanian forces failed to take the city, partly due to the heroic intervention of some French soldiers.3 To cap this historical complexity, which already gives the intrepid scholar some feeling of overwhelm, the poem appears to be about being saved by a dolphin. (Bear with me here.) This is the very acme of an occasional poem, and it’s a great example of how the most occasional kind of verse often presents the biggest challenge for the literary historian.4
First of all, here’s a transcription for the Latinists among you (feel free to skip below to my attempt at a translation):
Adversae quamvis lacerum fecere procellae
Et maris imperio concutiente feror
Demersae ex plebis numero Delphinus in auras
Me levat et freta per fervida scindit iter.
Non ventosa adeo est gens nostra ut imagine macrâ
Delphini et picta se efferat effigie
Dicit amatores hominum nos piscis, in isto
Omine nec Syrtes nec fera saxa queror
Qua te, purus amor, venerer pietate, tot inter
Aestus qui fractam non sinis esse ratem
Misceat atque novos moveat vesana tumultus
Relligio; caelum non ruit, huic fidei.5
This means something like:
Though hostile storms have injured me,
and I am carried along at the sea’s terrifying whim
out of the host of sea creatures a Dolphin lifts
me into the air and cuts a path through the raging straits.
”Our race is not so arrogant that it would pride itself
on the mere image and painted likeness of a dolphin,”
and he says “We are the fish that loves mankind”, and,
because of this assurance, I do not complain of the Syrtes or of the wild rocks.
With what devotion may I worship you, O pure love, you who
time and again forbid the broken ship to be lost in the storm-surge.
Let frenzied Religion stir up and combine whatever new tumults she may;
with this faith to rely on, the sky does not fall.
This is a great example of a poem where a translation in its basic, dictionary sense doesn’t get us very far.6 What on earth is he on about? Assuming it’s not an actual dolphin that has saved his bacon, what is the connection between the dolphin and the purus amor (‘pure love’) to which the poet pledges his devotion at the end?
The alert literary historian immediately considers a few possibilities here. I wondered initially whether it might be a reference to the French dauphin (the title of the heir to the throne, like the Prince of Wales); but Louis XIII had succeeded to the throne very young, in 1610, and, still only 17 in 1618, had no children of his own yet. In any case, it’s not obvious why James might cast the French monarchy as his salvation. In terms of literary precedents, we might think of the story of Arion and the dolphin — though James here doesn’t seem to be making any major claims for his own poetry, as a parallel with Arion might suggest. Finally, I wondered whether the reference was to a ship called The Dolphin: poems giving thanks for a safe voyage are a common type of occasional verse from antiquity onwards, and James’ own journey all the way to Russia must surely have had its moments of peril. (Indeed, he got stuck in Russia for so long that he was given up for dead back at home.)
But at this point I revisited my images of the poem, and paid more attention to the ‘paratexts’, the header and footer in which James adds some information about the meaning and occasion of the poem. Here is an image of the manuscript page. The poem in question is the second one:
Above the poem, in the middle of the page, you can see the header, which means:
‘On the remarkable Dolphin of the James’ of the Isle of Wight’7
And at the bottom it says:
‘I wrote these lines quickly in the book of genealogies [or pedigrees] of Isaac Massa, envoy to Moscow on behalf of the Dutch parliament, in the city of Vraslavia [probably = Yaroslavl] in the year of our Lord 1618.’8
This further complicates the poem, but it’s also a big help. The specific link between the Dolphin and the James family, added to the fact that this poem was composed in order to be written into Massa’s liber stemmatum, strongly suggests that the reference is to a family shield, and this does indeed appear to be the case: the shield of the James family of the Isle of Wight features a swimming dolphin, and we know that our Richard was born in Newport, on the Isle of Wight, in 1592.
A liber stemmatum (book of genealogies) is something similar to an album amicorum (literally, ‘album of friends’), a kind of glorified autograph book in which (usually) a man would invite friends and acquaintances — especially those encountered while traveling or studying abroad — to write their name, generally accompanied by an image (often a family shield or crest), quotation or specially composed poem. Although they don’t ever seem to have been as popular in England, you see them commonly in other parts of Europe during the seventeenth century. I think it is a fairly safe assumption that James wrote this poem to accompany an image of his family crest which he copied into Massa’s book. As far as I know, Massa’s liber stemmatum has not survived, but here’s an example of the sort of thing I mean, dating from exactly the same period:
So that solves the question of why James chooses the image of a dolphin to stand for faith or faithfulness amid literal (or political) turbulence. But why does he offer this particular interpretation of the image to Massa? In the final lines the generalised “storm” of the poem becomes more particularly vesana Relligio — religious fervour of an unhealthy kind. In another poem a couple of pages further on he uses exactly the same phrase to refer specifically to events in the Netherlands in this year, 1618, in which a conflict between the Calvinists and the Arminians had come to a violent head. Presumably he and Bassa had discussed the Dutch political situation, though the fear that vesana Relligio might lead to conflict was a much more generally valid one in 1618: the Thirty Years War that began that autumn, one of the most deadly wars ever waged in Europe, was to a large extent a conflict between Catholic and Protestant countries. In Russia, where James and Bassa were, the Polish-Muscovite war was in fact about to end with a treaty signed in December, but it’s clear from several of James’ other poems that at the time of writing he was not at all confident that they would come to terms. James was writing surrounded by war and the threat of war, an ominous context which is shadowed even in the most occasional composition — the whole notebook, as a result, has something of the feel of writing from, say, the summer of 1939.
James’ poem seems to be linking family pride with a stalwart faith, and the salvific Dolphin perhaps with Christ himself, or perhaps a more general kind of pietas in the Roman sense, blending religion and patriotism — the poet’s purus amor (‘pure love’) addressed directly in the final lines.9 The poem makes rather striking use of direct speech — though it is difficult to be sure exactly what the dolphin says, it’s clear that he speaks (dicit) and that, reassured by his words, the poet replies, addressing purus amor (‘pure love’) directly and asserting his confidence that faith will see him through. Last week I wrote about the kind of Latin poetry that George Herbert was writing at just this period. James’ poem, though flawed in various respects and certainly written, quite genuinely, for a specific addressee, is also a great example of the wider Latin style in which Herbert himself was immersed, and on which he drew to such powerful effect in The Temple.
One of the most arresting features of Herbert’s Temple is the way in which so many of the poems include direct speech, of either or both of the poet (to God) and God (to the poet). There are many examples but here’s a particularly succint one from the end of ‘The Collar’:
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.10
If you are reading poetry only in English, and proceeding chronologically, the remarkable naturalness and immediacy of these exchanges seems really fresh (and was very quickly imitated). There are very few examples of devotional poems in English doing anything like this much before Herbert. But the Latin poetry of the early seventeenth century, by contrast, is full of just this kind of thing — it was a highly fashionable rhetorical device, associated particularly with Jesuit Latin verse.11
Here we see James, very well educated and no doubt well read in contemporary Latin literature, but by no means any kind of professional poet, reflecting Latin literary fashion in his little poem, written subitus (‘quickly’; ‘in the moment’) for a friend’s autograph book, about the endurance of faith amid the threatening religious storms of the political moment. His dolphin speaks to the poet, and the poet replies with an expression of his devotion, in a rhetorical scheme that is — in miniature, and albeit quite crudely done — very like many of the English poems in The Temple.
Herbert’s Temple is a rare and perhaps unique example of a whole verse collection from the seventeenth century which is still not merely honoured but loved by countless readers. But Herbert could not have found his way to the unforgettable, domestic rhetorical intimacy of The Temple if he hadn’t been immersed in the Latin poetry of his day, if this kind of thing hadn’t already been part of the everyday verse culture of the truly occasional poem — of the polite (if heartfelt) verse bashed out quickly (subitus) for a new friend or an old acquaintance before he continues on his way.
Alert for verse translators! Finally, a quick note to say that I’m hoping to set up some sort of network for people translating poetry and publishing — or hoping to publish — their translations. (Translation here broadly understood — to include scholarly translation, more literary translation and other looser kinds of imitation, response and so on). If you might be interested, do please get in touch directly with the best email address, and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
This was a recent episode of Sleerickets, which you can listen to here. I usually enjoy the podcast, which in general I recommend, and I had a great time as a guest myself a few months ago. I felt this episode was weaker than usual and would suggest starting with another one if you haven’t listened before. It’s part of the ‘point’ of the show to be blunt in its comments and judgements, and this is a very refreshing contrast to a lot of mealy-mouthed and platitudinous comment on contemporary poetry. In general, I find that the very widely-read and well-informed host, Matthew Buckley Smith, does a great job of combining real ‘edge’ with balance and a broad perspective. In this particular episode, it wasn’t Matthew but rather his guest who (to me) seemed to cross the line into real meanness which wasn’t grounded in equivalent critical or contextual acumen.
On that basis, do we in fact have a poetic culture in the Anglophone West at all? It’s certainly pretty borderline these days, and, setting aside musical contexts, perhaps persists largely in writing for children. Happily, of course, the Anglophone West is not the entire world.
In fact, his notebook contains several other Latin poems about the siege, and he may have been stuck in Yaroslavl because of it.
In this sense it is related to the enigma of Herbert’s Aethiopissa, discussed last week, which I suspect is also much more genuinely an ‘occasional’ poem than has been allowed for in scholarly discussion.
Bodleian MS James 13, p. 238.
Though Latinists will note that there are some difficulties in the Latin too, especially around the repeated change of subject in the middle of the poem. Dicit (l. 7) suggests that at least some of the surrounding lines are direct speech, presumably (given the nos) in the person of the dolphin himself. But there are no speech marks in the original text and a proper edition would probably want to consider a few different alternatives.
Vectensium is one form of quite an unusual Latin adjective meaning ‘of or relating to the Isle of Wight’.
The Netherlands was a Republic at this period. You can read more about Massa here. For the identification of the city as probably Yaroslavl I am grateful to Edward Taylor, who made some notes on the historical context of this manuscript when he was a post-doctoral researcher attached to a large project I was running.
This kind of blend, often heavily allegorised, is encountered quite frequently in poetry of this period, often linked to the figure of the king.
You can read the whole of ‘The Collar’ by following the link. Another very well-known example is ‘The Pulley’. In ‘Artillery’, a star speaks to the poet.
See for example the poetry of Bernhard Bauhusius (1576-1619), a Dutch Jesuit whose Epigrammata were published in Antwerp in 1616
This was one of the most entertaining (and thought provoking) pieces of this week. Thank you!
You are quite right about occasional verse, which survived into the last century, but then died out, as also did the audience for it. I am reading Jonson at the moment, and realising that he wrote a lot of it, and I haven't quite developed an appreciation for it.