meditation
The Visionary Voice in Meditation In the book of Corinthians Paul reveals to us, that the prophet sees “through a glass darkly…Truth comes to him in part because he knows he can only prophesy in part. ... Citing a short treatise, from a Sixteenth century Jesuit, which outlines the discipline and process of the art of meditation, Martz goes on to relate the practice of meditation to the practice of writing “the meditative poem”. ... The attainment of that awareness is through meditation, and through meditation one can apprehend the reality and the meaning of the presence of God with every faculty at his command (Martz). Meditation points towards poetry in its use of images and in its technique of arousing the passionate centers of the will and mind. The essence and relationship of meditation and poetry is expressed in Paul’s message to the Ephesians: “Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. ... The point is not that the metaphysical poets were practiced in the art of meditation, so much as their poems do reflect the qualities of the meditative voice, furthermore that this voice has a visionary quality. Nevertheless, in the English poetry of the late Renaissance the art of meditation entered into its “kindred” art of poetry to create the meditative voice in poetry. Donne, familiar with all the devices of current poetry attained his greatest heights when his mastery of meditation deepened and strengthened the popular modes of poetic art (Martz). ... And Crashaw, drawn to the extravagant modes of the Continental Baroque, could nevertheless, at his best, tame and control his extravaganzas by the firm structure of a meditation”(Martz). The above mentioned Jesuit treatise speaks of many ways to use the senses and physicality in meditation, for Martz the most important is known as the “composition of place”. ... The poem, in an informal exegesis becomes a vision upon a vision, a meditation upon the act of meditation. ... This poem embodies the elements of the composition of place, creating an image of prayer that takes the reader metaphorically to that exalted state of prayer and meditation. ... The above examples deal with how the visionary process of meditation reveals itself in metaphysical poetry and not the form of the meditative poetry style. According to Martz the epitome of the “meditative style” converging in the metaphysical poet is Donne’s “Hymn to God my God, in my sicknesse” it is a culmination of a lifetime’s practice in the arts of poetry and meditation. Its opening stanza recalls the careful preparation that precedes meditation, preparation in which the end and aim of the process was fully plotted and foreseen and in which the speaker placed himself securely in the presence of God (Martz): Since I am coming to that Holy roome, Where, with thy squire of Saints for evermore, I shall be made thy musique; As I come I tune the instrument here at the dore, And what I must doe then, thinks here before. ... ” According to Martz this witty play on words shows a “striking ability of Donne to view his situation from a distance, to hold his own body at arm’s length and study his situation in objective detail, as the art of meditation encouraged one to do. ... The poem, then, reveals in miniature the essential components of a full religious meditation: preparation, composition, discourse, and colloquy; or, to use other terms memory, understanding, and will. “These are three powers of the soul that are unified in the process of meditation, forming an interior trinity that represents an image of the greater Trinity.