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Denise Levertov: Testimonies of the lived life
Renascence, Summer 2001 by Lacey, Paul A
As noted earlier, in "The Sense of Pilgrimage" Levertov had distinguished between mystic and poet by asserting that a poet's "language is not more dependent on his vision than his vision is upon his language" (Poet in the World 73). As she understands it, the mystic does not discover her experience by means of words. She takes the mystic's language-- imagery, analogy, metaphor-to be generated solely by the vision, not by any craftly delight in mediating experience through language. For herself, Levertov knows craft as "work that enfaiths," and specific poems as works that enfaith by bringing imagination to the aid of intellect. Zlotkowski argues that in this poem ". . . the kind of care and attention Levertov has traditionally reserved for the art of writing she here applies directly to the art of being" (142). This apparent disjunction is important. The motto of Christian monasticism, Laborare et Orare-to work and to pray-has always invited such variations as Orare est Laborare-to pray is to work-or Laborare est Orare-to work is to pray. As she projects herself into Brother Lawrence's life, his daily work did not transform him; instead, "work, even drudgery, / was transformed." Here Levertov chooses to depart from his own testimony:
The time of business... does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament. (Lawrence 26)
In such an interplay of means and ends, where the two activities, prayer and work, become one and conjunction becomes identity, Brother Lawrence seems like the artist; but Levertov argues "Your secret was not the craftsman's delight in process, / which doesn't distinguish work from pleasure-." Since his daily work itself (which was largely scut-work in the kitchen) was not the way into the presence of God, but was merely what he did while in the presence, "the Adamic legacy" of labor as a curse was irrelevant. Where the Presence shone, life was, "it touched / your dullest task, and the task was easy."
This conclusion invites further reflection in relation to several of her other explicitly Christian poems. For Levertov, relinquishment must always be both freely willed and based on full knowledge. Brother Lawrence says "We must know before we can love" (Lawrence 63). It is an emptying which makes a new filling possible. In "Annunciation" she says of Mary, "Bravest of all humans, / consent illumined her," and "Consent, / courage unparalleled, / opened her utterly" (Door in the Hive 88). Her Julian of Norwich perceives that Christ's relinquishment, His oneing with the Godhead, makes possible the opening to all human pain and the awakening of His spiritual imagination. In "Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis" (Evening Train 114), Christ's relinquishment is not a single act but one which must happen again and again, in the Incarnation itself, in the Harrowing of Hell, even in the Ascension. The Incarnation, the supreme act of relinquishment, because it enacts God's promise, is also the supreme act of artistic creation.
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