Retirement, Retreat and Isolation as Poetic Subject

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Mihajlovic Dávid Ruttkay Veronika

Retirement, Retreat and Isolation as Poetic Subject

The consistent and full participation in any affair certainly can be exhausting, especially if one is required to work within the framework of government, law, and other fields such as poetry and literature. The latter in comparison to the former may appear to be less turbulent. The literati of the Renaissance or the early modern period often held positions in government or law, and as such, either as judges, public servants, clerks, or even higher positions of power, such as nobles. Individuals such as John Milton, Mary Pembroke and Alexander Pope were frequently involved in public and political affairs, not limited to merely influencing policy, but even actively participating in the discourse surrounding it. One could begin to understand that after decades of working in such positions that people intend to retire for good. By the use of the word retirement, I refer to resignation from one’s obligations and retreating from public affairs. The reason for such a retreat may vary from author to author; it may be that despite all their efforts they never reached their desired success, it may be that they reached a point in their careers that they saw no reason to continue. The aim of this paper is to explore retirement from public affairs, retreat and isolation as poetic subjects, to provide examples of poems regarding the previously mentioned subjects, in addition to my personal analysis and impression, but wish not to do so ad nauseam for every work and every line.

Many woman poets of the early modern English period and the Restoration era, such as Mary Sidney and Anne Finch, both of them countesses, were financially secure, and as such, had time for other endeavors. They were endowed with sharp wit to write and were surrounded by their literary contemporaries. Mary Sidney was the niece of Sir Philip Sidney, the author of Astrophel and Stella. Anne Finch, however, never had the additional advantage of having relatives in the literary scene. Nevertheless, Anne Finch gained considerable notoriety during her lifetime, for many reasons on which I shall elaborate, but attained popularity only after her death in 1720. Her later poetry is lauded for her easy-to-digest and intimate style, intertwined with the focus and reflection on nature. Her earlier works were considerably more political compared to her later works, focusing more on nature than political events of the time.

With the occurrence of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, with the assumption of the throne by Mary and William of Orange, the Finches lives and circumstances were to change considerably. Anne Finch’s husband lost her position in government when they refused to pledge their fealty to the new monarchs. The Finches refused because they had already aligned themselves with the Catholic Stuart and considered their pledge to them as morally binding. The Finches thus found themselves in a difficult sociopolitical position. Those who did not recognize the new monarchs’ rule would be persecuted for their views. Consequently, the Finches were forced to live for short periods of time with friends in London, Heneage Finch, the husband of Anne Finch, was charged with Jacobitism, was imprisoned, but eventually his case was dismissed. The couple decided to retreat to the countryside in 1690 after all this unrest and turmoil. (Clark & Johnson 137)

The overt political tone of Anne Finch’s earlier poetry is epitomized by “A Nocturnal Reverie”, in which the natural scene and the overarching shade of the trees seem like a regular reference to nature itself, but it can be understood as a Jacobite political response to the Glorious Revolution. Anne Finch was inspired by nature, particularly by the trees of the woods that provide shade and shelter to allow for one to rest and repose from the harshness of life. Even though the poem describes a nightscape of the woods in which the narrator finds themselves, one still cannot ignore the naturally provided shelter of trees, as it is a common recurrence in Finch’s poem. (Hamrick 542) Such lines from “A Nocturnal Reverie” would be the following: “Or from some tree, famed for the owl’s delight / When in some river, overhung with green, The waving moon and the trembling leaves are seen. In these selected lines, it is evident that the Virgilian associations of shade and repose represent peace, leisure and stability. (ibid. 542)

With the Restoration of the crown to the daughter of James II, Queen Anne, Anne Finch returned to a more public life. By the time of publishing “Absolute Retreat” in 1712, however, the Finches attitude toward a more public life had changed. Anne Finch’s husband ran for MP three separate occasions, but was never elected. It was at this time that they ultimately decided to retreat and never return to the calamities of public life.

In “The Petition for an Absolute Retreat”, Anne Finch calls out to Fate, similarly how one invokes a muse in the beginning of an epic. This invocation is comparable to that of the apostrophe, i.e. which turns away, the absentee of the poem to whom the poem might be addressed to. This rhetorical device was often utilized in devotional poetry. Regardless of the seemingly initial secular use, this apostrophe shifts the attention to what is invoked at the beginning of the poem, which functionally performs a quasi-religious speech act. (Edson 27) In Finch’s work, it is fate itself. It becomes immediately evident from the fourth line that not only does the author require the soothing surrounding of nature, but the also the isolation that comes with that setting:

“GIVE me O indulgent Fate! Give me yet, before I Dye, A sweet, but absolute Retreat, 'Mongst Paths so lost, and Trees so high”

Finch continues with the wish to never have her freedom “invaded”, insinuating the besiegement of her retreat, as if a group of forces were trying to bereave her from such peace.

“That the World may ne'er invade, Through such Windings and such Shade, My unshaken Liberty.”

In the following passage, the author expresses her disinterest in the typical topics of discussion regarding the trivialities of everyday life in a village or city, such as who had died or who is to get married. A social spectrum is described regarding the type of citizen one might encounter in a city or village, ascribing vanity and disapproval to those city men who merely care of their appearance with a pejorative, calling them fops:

“News, that charm to listning Ears; That false Alarm to Hopes and Fears; That common Theme for every Fop, From the Statesman to the Shop, In those Coverts ne'er be spread, Of who's Deceas'd, or who's to Wed…”

The next stanza begins by calling out to fate once more, giving the tonal impression of begging to be freed from the difficulties of domestic duties expected of women at the time. Finch’s ornithological motif of the ortolane could be understood as a play on words, given her surname coincidentally being a species of bird, thus referring to the natural God-given right to freedom as well as not indulging in any luxury foods, followed by Biblical references of remaining pious by not coveting the forbidden tree. This is a rather paradoxical yet clever juxtaposition of piety and sin. On the one hand eschewing the only forbidden tree, yet on the other coveting the rest of the trees and fruits for herself, that which was provided by nature to which she yearns to return to:

“In the plain, unstudied Sauce Nor Treufle, nor Morillia was; Nor cou'd the mighty Patriarch's Board One far-fetch'd Ortolane afford

Courteous Fate, then give me there Only plain, and wholesome Fare. Fruits indeed (wou'd Heaven bestow) All, that did in Eden grow, All, but the Forbidden Tree, Wou'd be coveted by me…”

One could argue that Finch’s descriptions in “Absolute Retreat” are merely mythical and pastoral, not necessarily an actual description of a real geographical location or a metaphysical scene, though likely inspired by her estate in Kent. (Bending 58) Finch’s descriptions of such a floral and arborous dreamscape are comparable to that of the Miltonian edenic Paradise.

With the precipice of the 19th century came Wordsworth’s “To Solitude” …

It seems that as time progressed, the topos of retirement and isolation changed considerably. Male authors seem to have shifted their attention from the retirement of public life to isolation and loneliness as dominant subject matter.

Works Cited:

HAMRICK, WES. “Trees in Anne Finch's Jacobite Poems of Retreat.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 53, no. 3, 2013, pp. 541–563.

J. C. D. Clark & Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion, and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism, p. 137.

Finch, Anne. ‘The Petition for an Absolute Retreat’, Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions

(London, 1713)

Edson, Michael. (2011). ‘A Closet or a Secret Field’: Horace, Protestant Devotion and British Retirement Poetry. Journal for Eighteenth‐Century Studies. 35. 17 - 41. 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2010.00347.x.