The Penitent Magdalene by David Brendan Hopes
"The Penitent Magdalene" is a chapbook of poetry by David Brendan Hopes that delves into various aspects of Christian experience through lyrical exploration. The collection primarily focuses on specific Christian images and events, with a notable emphasis on the title poem, which reflects on themes of repentance and spiritual transformation, particularly through the figure of Mary Magdalene. Hopes engages with works of Christian art, such as paintings by Jan van Eyck and Georges de la Tour, offering contemplative interpretations that bridge historical and spiritual contexts. The poems often depict the tension between modern perspectives and medieval religious traditions, inviting readers to reflect on how these themes resonate with contemporary spiritual experiences.
In addition to examining specific works of art, Hopes extends his exploration to universal spiritual themes, such as grace and resignation, encouraging a dialogue between the past and the present. The collection captures moments of profound significance, where eternity intersects with time, illustrating the paradox of spiritual awakening and the human condition. Hopes' poetic approach creates a space for readers to engage with the complexities of faith and artistry, making "The Penitent Magdalene" a thought-provoking work for those interested in the intersections of literature, religion, and visual art.
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The Penitent Magdalene by David Brendan Hopes
First published: Steubenville, Ohio: Franciscan University Press, 1992, edited by David Craig
Genre(s): Poetry
Subgenre(s): Lyric poetry
Core issue(s): Contemplation; the Eternal Now; grace; resignation
Overview
Thirteen poems exploring various aspects of Christian experience make up this chapbook by David Brendan Hopes; most, like the title poem, focus on specific Christian images or events, though a few, such as “The Soul May Be Compared to a Figure Walking” and “From the Infinite Names of the Center,” explore universal spiritual experiences not limited to the Christian tradition.
The first three poems in The Penitent Magdalene present contemplative responses to specific works of Christian art. The second poem, “The Annunciation/Jan van Eyck,” offers enough descriptive detail for the reader to imagine the painting—an early fifteenth century painting of the Annunciation—though the description is also commentary and interpretation. These interpretations both penetrate van Eyck’s fourteenth century vision and present it to the modern audience. For example, the descent of the Holy Ghost is described as a “circus dancer on a golden wire,” an apt description of van Eyck’s stylized ray from the window to Mary’s head. Yet when the next line notes that the dove is out of proportion to the figures of Mary and the Angel, Hopes affirms a late-medieval principle of religious art, that it presents spiritual essence rather than material reality. In the words of the poem, “the miracle/ survives the carnival of externals,” both echoing the previous reference to the “circus dancer” and the original meaning of “carnival” as “farewell to the flesh,” the feasting that precedes a religious fast.
The third poem, “The Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul/Sassetta,” responds to a painting of the same era as the van Eyck painting and also housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Just as the previous poem contained a playful description of the “golden wire,” this one describes the stylized golden haloes surrounding the heads of the saints as “rings of light.” Again, the fifteenth century perspective of the painter clashes with the vision of the modern reader, and the poem mediates. The description offers two explanations of the weird geometry of the painting’s composition: the tenth line calls the figures of the two saints “crooked,” but then line eleven adds “or aligned with some unsuspected center.” That is the aesthetic geometry of Sassetta’s religious art: The space of the painting is an extension not of the physical space of the viewer but of the spiritual space of the religious subjects.
The title poem, the twelfth and penultimate selection, invokes a baroque canvas painted two centuries after van Eyck’s and Sassetta’s works. “Georges de la Tour: The Penitent Magdalene Circa 1640” does not describe the painting until 60 lines into the poem. Yet the poem does not rest in description, bringing the reader (“you”) actively into the painting and therefore the poem. Because de la Tour positions a mirror in the painting pointing directly toward the viewer, the poem reveals that if Mary Magdalene looked in the mirror, she would see “you,” the viewer, looking at her. The last movement of the 101-line poem (the second longest in the collection) imagines the reader/viewer crying out to Mary Magdalene, causing her to look at her observer, as they join in a flame of passion (suggested by the candle flame and its reflection, the focal point of the painting).
The poem captures the ambiguity of the painting—a temporal ambiguity, not a moral one. The Magdalene of de la Tour is caught not in the moment of repentance but on the verge. On the floor are her cast-off jewels (“orphaned” is the verb Hopes uses), but she is still wearing the red dress of a prostitute. As in his treatment of Sassetta’s painting, Hopes uses the geometry of the composition to illuminate its religious import. Noting that the candle flame, which is the visual center of the group, parallel’s the Magdalene’s breast, Hopes reminds the reader of the dual significance of fire imagery in Christian tradition: both the burning of sensual passion (Magdalene before repentance) and the soul’s yearning for God (the penitent Magdalene).
Other poems in the collection that do not deal with religious paintings nevertheless share the confrontation of the modern mind with older religious traditions. Three “Saint Francis Poems” present the ability of the medieval imagination to personify abstractions: the first convert to the saint’s order, Bernard of Quintavalle embracing Lady Poverty; Brother Leo adoring Lady Chastity; and Clara Scifi giving herself to Lord Obedience. However, even when the poems do not present the intrusion of an earlier religious tradition into the modern world (as in “A Passion Play” in which modern working-class Ohioans continue a medieval tradition by performing an Easter drama), a more profound intrusion—that of the eternal into our temporal world—infuses them all.
Christian Themes
Both the Annunciation poem and the title poem deal with the spiritual theme of resignation but not necessarily in the traditional way. The highest form of human resignation, Mary’s affirmative reply to God that made the Incarnation of Christ possible, is the core of the Annunciation story for Christians and presumably for van Eyck’s painting. Yet Hopes emphasizes the physicality of the spiritual elements in the painting: the angel whose weight bends the floor and the ray of divine light that looks more like a gold wire. In the same way, the religious tradition of Mary Magdalene’s story leads the reader to suspect a rejection of sensuality immediately after the moment depicted in de la Tour’s painting. However, the poem imagines instead a passionate union of the viewer and the Magdalene in the moment after she looks in the mirror.
By capturing Mary Magdalene at a peak moment, both the painting and the poem express the Christian paradox of the Eternal Now, in which eternity penetrates time. The moment Mary conceived Christ, the subject of the Annunciation poem, is of course the premier example for Christians of the eternal moment. Yet the Magdalene poem, as well as the one on Sassetta’s Meeting of St. Anthony and St. Paul, deals with the breaking of eternity into time. Sessetta depicts several events, widely separate in time, in the same space, and Hopes uses the cockeyed geometry of the canvas to describe the disorientation.
Grace, the unexpected gifts from God, shines through each of the poems in this collection. In modern Christian poetry, it tends to take the form of the unexpected. The speaker of “A Passion Play” clearly does not expect to see anything profound at a rural outdoor amateur theater.
Sources for Further Study
Abbot, Anthony S. Review of Upholding Mystery: An Anthology of Contemporary Christian Poetry, edited by David Impastato. Theology Today, July, 1997. A review of an anthology that includes some of Hopes’s poems, categorizing him as a writer of “the natural world.”
Hopes, David Brendan. “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck: Knowing the Mediocre and Teaching the Good.” English Journal 75 (1986): 42-45. Elucidates Hopes’s criteria for what he considers good poetry, helping readers understand his own poetry. Mediocre poetry for Hopes is that which tells readers nothing new.
Hopes, David Brendan. A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio. Akron, Ohio: Akron University Press, 1999. This prose autobiography connects Hopes’s childhood in Akron with his poetry about God and nature.
Maksel, Rebecca. Review of Bird Songs of the Mesozoic: A Day Hiker’s Guide to the Nearby Wild, by David Brendan Hopes. Booklist 101 (2005): 926. A brief review of a book of nature essays by Hopes, citing his ability to “find the magical in the quotidian,” the same ability that makes his religious poetry effective.