The Other Garden: Influence and Motif on The Book of Habakkuk and other poems

Chapter I: Rationale and Background of the study

Introduction

In her 2011 New York Times article, Marilyn Robinson discusses the influence of

the Bible on Western literature, whether the allusions from the biblical stories are

merely ‘ornamental or rhetorical’ is but a consequence of a powerful literary tradition.

Christopher Kleinhenz (1986), remarks on the importance of the Bible in shaping

medieval thought and its culture, eventually taking hold of Dante’s imagination,

considered as the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, its influence evident on one of the

greatest books produced by the West, Divina Commedia. Moreover, Kleinhez (1986)

mentions Charles Singleton’s remark on how Dante followed the Bible closely that the

latter chose to “imitate God’s way of writing.” In addition, the literary, intellectual, and

theological bases of Divina Commedia are formed in the pattern of traditional Biblical

hermeneutics (Kleinhez, 1986). The Western thought, the limning of its narrative in

making sense of experiences not captured by traditional history, for it is the ordinary,

the insignificant that veils our direct view of the cosmic irony, is but a byproduct of the

influence of the Bible.

 It is scarcity of material, literal and figurative, which led to the conception of this

paper. But to remark that the Bible is not enough of a material as a reference for literary

aspirations is bordering on ignorance. C. S. Lewis (1950) argues that the Bible does not

only serve as a sacred text and source, but a force which imposes on Western culture,

conditioning its thought and language and eventually influencing English literature.

The creation of The Book of Habakkuk and Other Poems can be traced to the personal

history of the proponent in a time when there was barely a book to read but the Bible.

The material poverty became the source of hunger for knowledge, the itch for the search

for that irresistible allusion which is found on the Good Book. On the other hand, the

narratives found on the scripture inform the proponent of the poverty of his

imaginative reach, thus, cementing the foundation of the proponent’s subsequent quest

for the grand tropes. Both the literal and figurative scarcity the proponent had to go

through compensated for the narrative force that would keep the imagination on check,

repeating and reimagining images out of the events which unfold in the Garden of

Eden; arranging and rearranging the sequence of actions of the tryst between Man,

Woman and Satan, which is an implicatory agent on the proponent’s repetitive reach

for a singular motif. The continued echoing of the fall of Adam and Eve on the

proponent’s own poetic expression is a sign of an unparalleled influence, an influence

which provides in the moment of utter lack.

 Inspiration is a commodity that is easy to get misconstrued these days. With all

the easy access to everything that there is to know, stimulus that can be had in a click

seem too good to be true; that all information that bombard our senses can be

misjudged for the light which might spark work. The creative writing process does not

only rely on sheer will and effort; most of the time for the process to see through its

completion, the intuitive aspect of work, the one which poets all through the ages call

Muse is evoked, almost like a supplication. Here is the dimension of the creative

process that belongs to the magical, the other face of the coin that is equal in importance

to hard work, the dimension that cannot be measured and assessed in numbers. Sheer

will and effort are the energies that sustain inspiration, and these are factors that thus

far push the process to its trajectory. But inspiration is the seed that is planted in the

initial stage of work, and it is the invisible hands that cradle ideas into the first scream

of a child, shaping and conveying these ideas into a form palpable—a thing that can be

experienced.

Inspiration is one thing; the force that takes the spotlight, the very thing that

artists swear upon. It is the word, which is mentioned with reverence, as if the creator of

craft does not understand the pain that accompanies work. Inspiration is like the honey

that comes out of the artist’s mouth—it is as if the only thing that matter for work to

slowly move forward, or the vision to leap toward a considered aim from its initial

acceleration. Influence is another thing; it is the undercurrent that is rarely mentioned. It

does not have the same idealized status of that of inspiration. When artists are asked of

the origin of their idea the question revolves around the keyword, inspiration. Influence

as a subject related to the creative process is oftentimes relegated in the backseat, the

one that is rarely mentioned because, the proponent suspects, it does not trigger the

romantic dimension of the writing process.

Influence as an aspect in the creative writing process is greatly different than that

of inspiration. The paper would not be sifting through the fine granules of semantics

here. The proponent considers influence a more interesting factor because of its inherent

dimension which can be measured through the specific study of the precursor poems

use of language, psychological and emotional urgency, poetic nuance, metaphysical

inquiry to the very core of existence, and its determination to surrender to the absurd.

In Sigmund Freud’s family romance, a child fantasizes an ideal set of parents.

According to the eminent critic Harold Bloom, we commit misreading of a text or of

authors to give birth to our literary father. This act of misinterpretation, misreading is

an important stage in the creative process of a writer who is too late to name things

which are already named. Those who must do the act of writing starts the work with

reading.

No strong writer gives birth to a child – for the father devours the children at

their inception. Strong precursors are like Oedipus’ father, abandoning the posterity to
the whims of fate. They would not allow a foundling to challenge them of their position

they hold dear in the imaginative space within the realm of literature. Thus, it is

incumbent upon the proponent to fantasize for that father so big to emulate. Thus, the

work begins for the quest of a father through reading the writer of Genesis. It is the

writer of Genesis’ imaginative energies the proponent heeds as the voice that echoes

loudly in the wilderness: a seeming prophecy which could be deciphered through

prayers.

The proponent considers the misreading of the Book of Genesis a symptom of a

neurosis which is a salient feature in the giving birth to a father. The initial stage of

influence is in the reading or misreading of the chosen father. Then, the proponent

would limn the language, even the cadence, which it seems possessed of the artistic

father’s creative genius. It is in the writing process that everything must come full circle

in the imaginative adventure that is undertaken. In this stage, the desire for that father

who we can mold the self to his image is the strongest. This is the part of the family

romance where the fantasized precursor (godlike stature, of noble lineage, etc.) appears

phosphorescent, where the influence glows the most. It is also on this stage where there

is a strong sense of the mortal error, the knowledge that there will never be an absolute

grasp of the precursor’s fullness; yet the knowledge for work to continue is as

significant as ever. The way the proponent misinterprets his strong precursor through

the creative writing process is a manifestation of anxiety of misreading. In the

proponent’s anticipation of the fullness and descent into the fantasized father’s

imaginative soul, the impact of the landing is quite emotionally and psychologically

disturbing. The precursor’s greatness arrests the proponent’s creative renderings,

injecting anxiety as the proponent tries to understand the master-disciple dynamics. As

what is stated prior, that the work of giving birth to a father starts with reading, the

proponent’s approach to constructing a dialogue – a shamanistic invocation – with the

metaphorical father, the writer of the Genesis, is a revisionary one. The proponent

imagines angles and possibilities, the temporal and tonal direction of the poems The

Book of Habakkuk and Other Poems.

Moreover, the proponent will discuss on this paper how motif holds together The

Book of Habakkuk and Other Poems. The proponent intends to write about the recurring

idea found on the collection of poems mentioned above. From these poems, this motif

will be analyzed and discussed. According to Suzana Berger (2013), an assistant director

for the play Endgame, Harold Pinter, a contemporary of Samuel Beckett, admired the

latter’s style so much that something of Beckett’s texture appear in his own work. The

idea the proponent emphasizes is his poetry draws from his early reading of the Bible.

Just like Samuel Beckett’s treatment of the Scripture through his use of allusions and

direct references, which according to Spyridoula Athanasopoulou-Kypriou (2006) is

inconsistent, ambiguous, and irresponsible, and his concept of the ideas of God and the

way he emphasized on nothingness and God’s mystical silence is quite ludicrous, the
proponent has an ambiguous relationship with one of the most fascinating narratives

found on the book of Genesis. The story of Adam and Eve and their eventual

banishment from the Garden continues to interest the proponent through the years.

Adam, the one chosen as the head of the overseers of all creation on earth, whose

privilege is endowed the moment God’s breath entered his pre-human form, had to be

taken aback and experienced, for the first time in humanity, the unnerving clarity of

doubt. What made Eve share the forbidden fruit of knowledge to Adam? What

motivated Adam to partake on such cursed and doomed endeavor in the first place?

Jessica Martin, in a 2012 article for The Guardian, observes that in Milton’s Paradise

Lost, it is the sharing of the same significance, Eve had to share to Adam, her mortal co-

partner, the stewardship of the limited knowledge of mankind. More than the shared

experience of doom, which Eve in her solution to their confounding state proposed to

seek Death head-on, she dreaded the idea of loneliness in the face of mortality—Adam

staying immortal and then choosing for himself a new partner to manage the paradise

which she lost.

This recurring motif, in the form of alternative narrative of the Garden, is what

holds the proponent’s poems through the years. John Milton versifies in Paradise Lost

(1667), on how Adam decided on his “heroic choice,” a sacrificial offering of his

privileged lot, anticipating despair and doom. The proponent imagines a narrative

closer to the human condition: tragic, ephemeral, yet mesmerizing at the same time.
 There is a difference between a motif and theme. Themes represent the main

question behind the series of events that hold together a narrative. The recurring

element that leads to the discovery of the theme is hinted through motif. In the several

poems in question, the recurring element is the proponent’s imagined alternative of the

story of the Garden. Perhaps what the proponent is trying to hint on is not the mortal

chain which binds Man and Woman, but the metaphorical journey humanity had to

embark upon and endure. The itch that kept humanity wandering is the core of this

journey motif. It is not the physical banishment from the Paradise that appeals to

imagination but the very idea it suggests, the metaphoric or symbolic arc. Moreover,

this recurring motif is indisputable for in the poems the three most important characters

are featured: Adam, Eve and Satan. The motif hints though to the expansion of Self. The

paper is going to argue that this journey motif is not only about an anticipation of

despair and doom but the struggle for the search of knowledge and the triumph of

reason. The motif is a direct influence from the self-banishment the proponent

endeavored against from the faith the proponent grew up with.

Statement of the Problem

The Book of Habakkuk and Other Poems is a collection of poems that highlights

motif which spans several years of writing. This singular motif which takes place across
the collection, adds to the deeper meaning of the work. It is the story in the Garden of

Eden—the love between Adam and Eve and their eventual fall, and the temptation

provided by Satan that recurs in every poem in the collection.

The paper also discusses influence, particularly the influence of the story of the

Garden, reimagined and presented as an alternative narrative, providing a

metaphorical leap on the poems in the collection. Specifically, the paper aims to answer

the following questions:

1. How does the use of motif add to the deeper meaning of the work?

2. What impact has the Garden of Eden narrative on the motif which recurs

across the collection?

3. How does the Garden of Eden story influence The Book of Habakkuk and Other

Poems?

Scope and delimitation

This study does not aim to analyze the poetic elements of The Book of Habakkuk

and Other Poems. Rather, this study aims to add to the already rich discourse on the use

of motif as an idea as a supplemental element to the work’s larger meaning. This paper

also discusses the influence of the Bible, specifically, the Garden of Eden narrative, as

the primordial drama is repeated across the collection.

 Furthermore, notwithstanding the spiritual and mystical force of the source of

influence and the eventual employment of a motif derived from the Bible, the study

grounds its discussion in the commonplace experience which is the human condition

through poetic expression.

Lastly, the study discusses influence and motif throughout the collection, the text

put under the lens of Formalist literary criticism and theory.

Significance of the study

Reading, as well as writing, are both a very lonely endeavor. These two activities

go hand in hand for a work in the creative sphere to flourish. Just like how John

Berryman depicts his quest for the historical Christ and the Christian origins as a

thematic concern in the Dream Songs (Rogers, 2004), the proponent’s focus is on the

influence of the Old Testament, particularly the narrative of Adam and Eve. The study

will add to the already rich discourse on literary influence and how this influence shape

the creative process.

The influence of the Garden narrative provides metaphorical material and leap

for the proponent. The many iterations and alternative renderings of the temptation of

Satan and the eventual fall of Adam and Eve becomes a motif spread across The Book of

Habakkuk and Other Poems. The alternative narrative of the Garden richly imagined by
the proponent in a form of a motif adds deeper meaning to the collection of poems.

Through this imaginative endeavor, the proponent aspires to add to the vast material of

literary influence through discussing how his creative process is informed.

Chapter II Review of Related Literature

On Influence Over Inspiration

In 2002, under the record labels Ill Will and Columbia, the American rapper

Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones, or more popularly known as Nas, released his sixth studio

album called The Lost Tapes. In this album Nas, whose previous works were so

entrenched to gangsta rap themes of the day, swerved for the more socially conscious

and philosophical direction. One of the songs in the album, No Idea’s Original, lyrically

expressed what has been thought about of the creative process (by artists and thinkers

alike) regarding the idea of influence over one’s creative endeavor. Thus, Nas’ compact

bars have acknowledged the belated attempt of this thesis in mapping the unavoidable

influence imposed upon by strong precursors toward their unwanted progeny, when in

the song he opens with lines which explicitly reverberate the question of creative

originality: “No idea’s original, there’s nothing new under the sun/ It’s never what you do, but

how it’s done” (Jones, 2002, track 5).

 This endeavor is more of a homage than an academic writing; it is more of a

supplication for the continuous grace of ideas from intuition rather than a pedagogical

attempt of making sense of the creative process. After all, inspiration is the springboard

where ideas make a leap, like an emotional quickening that forces one to have faith in

something that may amount to nothing when finally put in the process of forming. In

10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki, a 4-part documentary courtesy of NHK World-Japan, it

reveals the creative process of the genius behind some of the greatest films produced by

Studio Ghibli, Inc. In its first episode, Ponyo is Here, Hayao Miyazaki dreamed up of

characters that struggled to wriggle out of the long shadow cast by his most powerful

creation, Totoro, in the iconic film My Neighbor Totoro. The documentary shows the

brooding, irritating, stultifying moments as Hayao Miyazaki should be slashing

through the storyboards like any legendary film director is expected of. But he suffered

disjointed attempts to consolidate the forces that would hold together the film, Ponyo on

the Cliff by the Sea, as doubts crept in, for the legendary film director had no idea how

the film would unfold. In the documentary film (Kaku, 2019), Hayao Miyazaki

described his creative process metaphorically when he thought of creating as something

similar to dropping a fishing line in his brain. When everything seemed falling apart

and work in glacial pace, the legendary director, who is one of the most compelling

voices in Japanese cinema, would go for a seemingly meaningless interruption like

installing a camcorder inside his car and driving around the city. When work has
reached a point where it does not go anywhere, just as the documentary points how

Miyazaki has to contend with “a cloud of constant doubt and anxiety,” the filmmaker

would let sleep takeover as a welcome reprieve. As an artist who understands that the

approach to creative process is more metaphorical than systematic (of course there is

always a pattern for every creative), Hayao Miyazaki swears by to his prolific mantra:

“Inspiration is everything.” Understanding that talent gets worn out from constant use

and as one advances with age, inspiration is not enough to achieve a particular vision

that Hayao Miyazaki wants for his current film. The trip to England proved fruitful as it

gave him insights on how his films should look; on the aesthetic level where the visual

is the first emotive conjurer, the very first thing that arrests attention. The painting by

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, transfixed Hayao Miyazaki on how elaborate and rich the

details were and the ‘subtle changes these details achieved as light is rendered in

different amount to the painting.’ This startling revelation at the Tate Britain Art

Museum gave him not only an inspiration for a vision, but more importantly the

experience was a stunning influence on how he catalyzed the revamp on the way Studio

Ghibli did their animation. The influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood on Hayao

Miyazaki led him to acknowledging that he and his team reached a dead end, and that

they have to act upon on the idea provided by the 18th century English artists on their

new approach to their mode of expression.

 There is no denying of the indelible importance of inspiration to creative artists.

Oleynick, Thrash, Lefew and Kieffaber (2014) conclude: “Writers, artists, and other

creators have long argued that inspiration is a key motivator of creativity.” It is

inspiration, according to Oleynick et. al (2014), that “fire the soul and inspire the idea

actualization process.” But when the soul is fired and steps are to be made for the

actualization of idea to occur, it is influence that sets the gears clicking and turning, the

sum of all parts in unison to achieve that specific goal that is before the artist. One can

be inspired by anything: a Pablo Picasso painting, sunflower field, mathematical proof,

a convoluted novel about a house with an infinite hallway, etc. In a world where we

take it upon ourselves the process of creation in a degree comparable to that of deities,

that it becomes so manifest we lose the sense of the rigid dichotomy of being human,

we make ourselves susceptible to inspiration of any kind that quickens our emotion, yet

our resolve for a consolidated action needs a decisive spark for an actualization to take

place. At this point, our intimate knowledge of our precursors’ creations provides for us

that measured and observable actions which we can use to initiate actualization. That

spark is no longer the thought intuition that is necessary in the early stage of creative

process, but rather the other spark which provides blueprint for the construction of idea

into a thing that is concrete. Here is the moment where influence, an artist’s

acknowledgement, and correspondence to a precursor that most matter to him, is

investigated and assessed, whether it is beneficial in the actualization process of the

idea.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante’s description of Hell as an inverted cone heavily

borrowed on the idea of the spherical shape of Earth, which is based on the calculations

of Eratosthenes of Cyrene or Claudius Ptolemy (Bressan, 2016). The landscape that

Dante imagined for Hell is inspired by the geological features that perhaps he may have

visited when he lived in the nearby city of Verona, which he described using the

German naturalist Albertus Magnus as a reference (Bressan, 2016). These geological

formations caused by earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, creating ruins among the

riverbanks of the Adige due to a landslide, provided concrete features for his imaginary

space that Dante would later fill with characters, themes and aesthetic. According to

Dar (2013) in his study, Influence of Islam on Dante’s Divine Comedy, the story of

Ascension of the Prophet Muhammad in Miraj Nama may have possibly influenced in

the outlining of the Divine Comedy. Dar (2013) continues that by writing the Divine

Comedy, Dante attempted to have a Christian literature that could surpass any Arabic

literature by featuring the Prophet Muhammad condemned in one of the nine circles of

hell. The similarities of Dante’s journey in the underworld and the ascension in heaven

and descent into hell of the Prophet clearly illustrates an influence in the religious

imagination of the poet by emulating the structure of the story coming from the
Arabian Peninsula yet using it against the Islamic faith to try to undermine his source

material.

In Ludwig van Beethoven’s case, he used Mozart’s concertos as models for his

own and studied and copied them to emulate the latter’s musical process, thereby,

becoming the most significant influence in Beethoven’s studies (Krebs, 2018). In the

paper, The Compositional Influence of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on Ludwig van Beethoven’s

Early Period Works, Krebs (2018) argues that influence is unavoidable although

Beethoven tried not to copy the great masters around his time, like how intertextuality

could not be prevented in written texts, Ludwig van Beethoven’s music tends to sound

the same as the earlier Classical composers.

Enumerable examples on how influence provoke certain action/s or change

through specific or directive force which can be enumerated in this section on and on.

But the proponent declines to continue with more examples and close this section with

a brief discussion on how One Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights exerted

heavy influence on Western literature and thought. According to Fahd (2012), the

inception of English fiction came about through the participation of the Arabian Nights.

Moreover, Fahd (2012) illustrates how Gulliver’s Travels or Robinson Crusoe reflects

Sinbad’s adventures which one may safely remark that latter works may not exist as a

work of fiction without the Arabian Nights.

The Bible’s Influence on Western Literature

“I am aware that it may be vain labor, up Sinai all the way, as it were, to seek a

reversal of twenty-five hundred years of institutionalized misreading, a

misreading central to Western culture and society.”

The Book of J, Harold Bloom

In his 2014 article in The Washington Times, Leland Ryken discusses how the Bible

is central in the literature of both England and America, a primary material source and

influence that is a cohesive factor for West’s literary development. Moreover, Ryken

(2014) substantiates his claim through his example of Caedmon’s Hymn, believed to be

the oldest extant English literary piece, modeled on the Book of Psalms, and directly

takes material from Genesis 1-2.

Savage (2008) describes how Allen Ginsberg’s poem, Howl, echoes Old

Testament prophets though its poetic voice, and the various aspects of its structure

illicit several Hebrew prayers. Furthermore, the prophetic voice Allen Ginsberg

employs that haunts the metaphorical landscape of the poem Howl, coupled with

structure that goes against the ‘modernist control and precision,’ proceeds with a

sweeping indictment on the spiraling, out-of-control capitalist American society

(Savage, 2008). Howl is the metaphorical voice that reverberates in the wilderness that is

the American landscape—the voice that rages, wails, howls as it complains and warns
America of the biblical heathen god of fire, Moloch, a god that asks for the blood of

children, compared to technocracy which is the poem’s concentrated fury is all about

and directed at (Kong, 2016).

Lawrence Ferlinghetti championed the Beat Generation’s cause, even putting it

all on the line when he supported Allen Ginsberg’s Howl at its obscenity trial.

According to Woods (2017), Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s publication goal is the depiction of

expression of dissidence through colloquial English, which he hoped that many people

would find the language, and also courage, to snap out of the trance brought about by

consumer culture. In his poem Christ Climbed Down, Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958) draws

heavily from the Gospel the crucified image of Christ, subsequently limning a poetic

structure where a metaphorical leap is possible—the other crucifixion of Christ who

climbed down from his cross and undid the familiar Christian narrative:

Christ climbed down

from His bare Tree

this year

and softly stole away into

some anonymous Mary’s womb again

where in the darkest night

of everybody’s anonymous soul

He awaits again
 an unimaginable

and impossibly

Immaculate Reconception

the very craziest of

Second Comings

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s reimagination of Christ is at par with literature’s greatest

of the ironists, whether “the very craziest of / Second Comings” is realized or not, it is

enough that its wry humor can be traced to the tone of the Old Testament.

In 1964, the publication of 77 Dream Songs was the turning point of John

Berryman’s career. Trained in formal poetry at Columbia and Cambridge, he ventured

on a poetic adventure through the poetry collection. Eventually, the year after, it won

the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, which according to the New Critics is a series of

improvisations recounted by its main narrator Henry, solely based on John Berryman’s

life—the dilemma with his own identity, the pangs of being a middling poet, and the

poet’s fight for survival (Kedar, 2013). Nevertheless, the influence of the Bible,

especially the New Testament is its main source of material. Thomas Andrew Rogers

(2004) discusses how unpublished material from 77 Dream Songs reveals the paramount

thematic concern of the collection, which is the search for Christian origins. Moreover,

due to the scarce historical record on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ (canonical or

apocryphal), John Berryman concentrated his research interest in the Scriptures (Rogers,
2004). In Dream Song 2, John Berryman illustrates an act of defiance by invoking the

Biblical Garden of Eden, insisting that theology must be denied for human progress to

take place (Butler, 2015). Additionally, Dream Song 1 is John Berryman’s song of

sympathy towards humanity as it describes the loss of innocence and the banishment

from the Garden of Eden—conveyed through Henry—and the prohibition of the

consumption of the fruit in the Tree of Knowledge ‘enforced by the menace of death’

(Stephanik, 1975, as cited in Butler, 2015).

Harold Bloom boldly asserts (1994) that Shakespeare and Dante are literature,

and it is a vain attempt to redefine it because one ‘cannot usurp sufficient cognitive

strength’ to even view the horizons of Shakespeare and Dante (486). Bloom’s sweeping

wrath directed at to what he calls, The School of Resentment, Inc., dissipates into a

nostalgia, a respite from his overzealous inventory of the Western Canon, as his

thoughts retreat to a simpler image, that of marooned to an island unknown:

Everyone has, or should have, a desert island list against that

day when, fleeing one’s enemies, one is cast ashore, or when

one limps away, all warfare done, to pass the rest of one’s time

quietly reading. If I could have one book, it would be a

complete Shakespeare; if two, that and the Bible. If three? There

the complexities begin (490).

 One of the most formidable literary critics the West produced

choosing the Bible as a reserve ever if he ran out of Shakespeare is hardly a

surprise. The Bible, for all its disengaged illustration of “the taking of the

Manhood into God” had to anticipate Dante and his invention Beatrice in

order for the cycle of influence to go on and on, infecting the neo-Christian

poet T. S. Eliot, thus, making him believe that the Comedy is another

Scripture, the one that supplements the Christian Bible (74). Harold Bloom

(1994) finally remarks that Dante’s received images and concepts from the

Bible undergo transformation in him, making it clear that theology is one of

his many resources and not his ruler (74).

In the seminal The Western Canon (1994), Harold Bloom states that

Milton’s place in the Canon is permanent. In his interview with John Dryden,

Milton intimated that his ‘Great Original’ was Edmund Spenser.

Perhaps the influence of the Bible on The Book of Habakkuk and Other Poems can be

attributed to misreading, as what Harold Bloom would aptly conclude it.

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