652
PARTISAN REVIEW
were thought to provoke the special, even the "human," character of our
world, have come to seem fragile, merely subjective projections.
Who will feel this loss more poignantly than the modernist who has
been brought up in a knowledge of the old and venerated patterns but now is
thoroughly aware of the threat to them? Hill's poetry is very much con–
cerned with the conflict because he sees with particular intensity what the
loss entails, for poetry, far more even than theology and philosophy, is con–
crete. It deals with images and metaphors, and in its attempts to get beyond
the world of sense it must use the medium oflanguage, itself drawn from the
world of
things.
Hill
faces the problem directly.
In
one of the sonnets in
King Log
(1986) he writes:
Let mind be more precious than soul; it will not
Endure. Soul grasps its price, begs its own peace,
Settles with tears and sweat, is possibly
indestructible. That I can believe.
Though I would scorn the mere instinct of faith . ..
One notes that even here in this context the soul, however immaterial,
can shed "tears" and "sweat," liquids that are warm, salty, and have "quite
human" odors.
In
"The Bidden Guest," physical detail has nearly everything to do
with bringing home a powerful sense of emptiness - of the guest bidden to
the sacramental feast but who cannot respond to that which is beyond the
world of sense. At the end of the service we find:
But now I hear,
Like shifted blows at my numb back,
A grinding heel; a scraped chair.
The heart's tough shell is still to crack
When, spent of all its wine and bread,
Unwinkingly the altar lies
Wreathed in its sour breath, cold and dead.
A server has put out its eyes.
When the server has extinguished the two candles the altar seems as help–
less as a blinded man.
Hill's poetry has much to say to the believer about his faith, including
the difficulties in maintaining it in our present world, but it also has a great
deal to say to the unbeliever as well. For truth about the human condition is
always valuable and harder to come by than one might first suppose. Before
going any
fur~her,
I ought to say that I have thus far stressed one mode of
