The Shadow of Night by George Chapman
"The Shadow of Night" is the inaugural published work by George Chapman, recognized for its significance in the development of Metaphysical poetry. Comprising two extensive poems, "Hymnus in Noctem" and "Hymnus in Cynthiam," the text employs a complex and allegorical style that challenges readers with its dense allusions and intricate themes. Central to these poems is a celebration of intellectual pursuit and a lamentation over worldly injustices. The work is often viewed as reflecting the ideas of a collective of early modern poets and intellectuals, although the concept of a cohesive "school of night" is likely a modern scholarly construct rather than a contemporaneous reality.
Chapman's poetry is deeply rooted in Platonic philosophy, asserting that true poetry derives from divine inspiration and is often beyond the grasp of the average person. His exploration of darkness and light serves as a metaphor for the contrasts between profound understanding and superficiality, with Night symbolizing deeper truths and the intellectual struggle against societal norms. Through "Hymnus in Noctem," Chapman invokes Night as a source of enlightenment and creative inspiration, while "Hymnus in Cynthiam" addresses the moon as a symbol of purity and change, contrasting eternal values with the transient nature of daylight. Overall, Chapman's work invites readers to engage with its philosophical depth and aesthetic complexity, reflecting a quest for knowledge amidst the challenges of human existence.
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The Shadow of Night by George Chapman
First published: 1594
Type of work: Poetry
Critical Evaluation:
The Shadow of Night, George Chapman’s first extant published work, has come to be thought of as the spiritual father of the Metaphysical school of English poetry. The book includes two separate long poems: “Hymnus in Noctem,” and “Hymnus in Cynthiam.” Both are highly allegorical and difficult by reason of their complex and allusive style. Two main themes of both poems are the celebration of intellect and the lamentation of worldly injustice. Many scholars have assumed that THE SHADOW OF NIGHT was a poetic manifesto of a group of poets and intellectuals (including Chapman, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, and several others) who were characterized by a desire to push reason and science to the point of atheism. Shakespeare is said to have satirized this group in LOVE’S LABOR’S LOST, and to have called it “the school of night.” Despite the fact that these men knew one another and undoubtedly shared many unusual ideas, the school of night as such is probably the invention of modern scholars whose conclusions are based on some striking but inadequate evidence. Chapman’s THE SHADOW OF NIGHT should be read as an expression of his own attitudes and early poetic interests; that is, it should be read on its own terms.
Chapman was a believer in the Platonic doctrine that true poetry is divinely inspired; and he was also convinced that most men of his day were incapable of achieving such inspiration or, for that matter, of understanding it. They were light-minded and also ill-educated, he thought. Chapman believed himself to be one of the inspired elite who through inspiration gained insight into higher truth. He was essentially an intellectual poet, and his major poetic problem was to translate his abstract ideas into directly apprehensible poetic feeling; much of the difficulty we still find in Chapman’s poetry is a product of his trying to re-create his thought as feeling through poetry. His thought is “dark” and to a large extent non-rational (not irrational), and thus his poetry is, in appearance at least, dark and non-rational. Moreover, a certain degree of darkness and mystery, Chapman felt, was necessary to true poetry. Those who are incapable of penetrating its mystery, he claimed, would be incapable of understanding it even if it were explained to them.
Chapman’s poetic, intellectual, and moral position is outlined in his brief dedication to The Shadow of Night, “To my Dear and Most Worthy Friend, Master Mathew Roydon.” Only an exceeding rapture of delight in the pursuit of knowledge, says Chapman, can enable a man to endure the difficulties of true and deep study. Only thus motivated may a man hope to overcome ignorance and achieve judgment. Since this is true, how ridiculous it is to see average, passion-driven men who read books merely for delight and who take as the basis of judgment the fancies of the great and pass critical judgment on the work of true seekers after knowledge. How foolish it is, he continues, for such men who look on literature as a pretty toy to think that they can understand the “skill” (art) of one who learns the secrets of Skill through making his soul the heavenly familiar of Skill. Most men are full of the immoral world and the greed for wealth; thus they cannot hope to understand the truth, which has nothing to do with such worldly things.
The first of the two poems that make up THE SHADOW OF NIGHT is “Hymnus in Noctem,” a 403-line poem addressed to Night, the “Great Goddess” to whose throne the earth is an altar smoking with the “fumes of sighs and the fires of grief.” Night is mistress of “silence, study, ease, and sleep,” and is the day of deep students. Light, on the other hand, is the master of shallow minds, the corrupt rule of organized society, and daily routine. The poet asks Night to inspire him and either to give seas to his eyes so that he may “weep the shipwreck of the world,” or to let soft sleep bind his senses and release his “working soul” so that it can attain its highest pitch and control “the court of skill” to reach “all secrets.” Then will “my words unfold,” says the poet, “to break the labyrinth of every ear.”
Chapman goes on to ask Night why she let order appear in the once formless chaos that existed in the beginning. When chaos was put in order, and when light was brought into being, soul and form were made distinct and were separated; thus wickedness came into the world, for then form could be separated from spirit (as it could not be before, when all things were evenly and interpenetratingly intermixed). Now, in the daylight world where men frantically search for wealth and power, a “stepdame Night of mind,” clings to man instead of the sweet and peaceful Night of primal darkness and chaos: disorder is in the soul instead of the universe. Building on this paradox of the Light to be found for the soul in the blackness of Night, and the Darkness to be found for the soul in the light of Day, Chapman goes on to protest against the wickedness and perversion of the world.
Among the other subjects he treats is the role of the true poet. Such a poet, who can see through the illusions of the present and who can comprehend the true virtue that existed when the universe was young, can create from the glowing “coals” of his “more-than-human” soul, poetry from which other men can learn virtue. “Hymnus in Noctem” reaches its climax in an apostrophe to men who understand the wickedness of the world to fall down before night and join with the poet in weeping their souls into felicity and to fall into sleep and dream of the virtuous things not seen in the world: “If these be dreams, even so are all things else.” “No pen,” says Chapman, “can anything eternal write/That is not steeped in humor of the Night.” He closes with a prayer that Night and Night’s wild entourage rule “till virtue flourish in the light of light.”
The second poem in The Shadow of Night, “Hymnus in Cynthiam,” is longer and in some respects more complicated. It is addressed to Cynthia, or the moon, who is called “the Night’s fair soul” and who is seen as the force that controls all things, including fate. Part of the allegorical aspects of the poem relates to Queen Elizabeth, who was during her reign frequently addressed in poetry as Cynthia or Diana, the virginal goddess of the moon.
The poet begins with an apostrophe begging Cynthia to ascend her chariot and “make earth admire/Thy old swift changes” and let her eternal beauty scorch the wings of time that he may fall and “beat himself to death before he rise.” Here again we see Chapman opposing the idea of Night—his symbol of eternal things (paradoxically objectified in the changing but virginally pure moon)—to the day and light and sun, his symbols of time, and the finite, and imperfection.
Beginning with Line 120, Chapman builds a complex invocation to his muse to infuse his soul with ecstasy that he may rise above himself properly to glorify Cynthia in the argument that is to be the theme of the major part of the poem. At the end of this invocation, Chapman warns off those who cannot understand his meaning. “Judgement shall display, to purest eyes/With ease, the bowels of these mysteries.” The next three hundred lines are taken up with a complicated allegorical fantasy recounting Cynthia’s hunting. The poem ends with a violent prayer that Cynthia, the embodiment of purity, will let her power be manifest in disasters and fierceness in the world so that the wonders of her power will be visible to all and that she will “forever live the Planets Queen.”