Eden Defiled (Ch.17)

One cannot help but see that Clare, born in 1793, looked back to the 17th and 18th centuries for his literary heritage, and yet he managed to redeem the predictable image of the sun as the ‘day’s lamp’ and give it life, because the whole content of his verse is vital to his purpose.  

Barn door fowls have gone to bed

Tho’ the sun is two yards high

Ere it reach the top lands head

That takes days lamp from out the sky

We even see the movement of the sun against the horizon created by a field, and if we suspect that Clare could have pointed out the field he had in mind, we are probably not far wrong.  

The movement of the sun by day is more, however, than a natural feature for Clare.  Times of day, stations of the sun, are filled with special associations, constantly strengthened and extended through many poems.  

Evening for example, is the time for courting.  This was the time when the young Clare, his day’s work finished, could slip away to meet his sweetheart, Mary Joyce, the Glinton farmer’s little daughter.  Other women’s names occur in his poems, but Mary is quite explicitly Eve to John Clare’s Adam.  

So the Fall from Eden is for Clare at the same time a personal experience connected with his rejection by Mary and also a fall from grace in mankind as a whole.  Most usually he associates it with the enclosures which took place at Helpston in his youth.  A series of events which he sees as bringing to an end an idyllic agricultural society.

Published in July 2020, Eden Defiled is priced at £3.50 + £1 P&P.  To order by email drop me a message on arborfield@gmail.com OR send me a message via facebook.