Dave’s Anatomy: My History As a Writer,#122: Pagan Girl, Christian Guy, Clergyman from 1640: “How Great Our Joy.”

Robert Herrick

There is a hymn tune found in many American collections called “How Great Our Joy.” The name of the tune given in the upper right-hand corner of the psalter is “Herrick’s Carol.” I know quite a bit about the poet Robert Herrick because I did my Ph.D. dissertation on his religious poetry. Herrick was a poet but also (like George Herbert) an Anglican priest. Many people will not recognize his name, but two references bring him into popular culture: 1) he wrote the poem with the famous opening lines “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”; 2) in the scene in Dead Poet’s Society where the character played by Robin Williams takes the boys he is teaching to the trophy room to show them photographs of graduates who have died long ago, Williams mentions Herrick and the concept of carpe deim, “seize the day,” which one finds quite a lot in Herrick’s poetry.

My story, “How Great Our Joy,” centers around the experience of two young people, Maxwell and Astraea. They work together at a school for special needs students. Both are musicians; in fact, Astraea does musical therapy. On occasion they play concerts together at the school are mutually respectful of each other’s mastery and competence. Maxwell is a Christian; Astraea is a pagan. One of Astraea’s pagan friends, Callie, finds out she does music with a Christian and unloads, telling her that Christianity has caused the deaths of more people than any other cause in history and that Christians burned nine million women at the stake in medieval Europe. She should not be associating with him in any way. “He wants to kill you,” she says. 

Astraea finds this absurd but asks Maxwell about it. He says these are common myths circulated by people who dislike Christianity and they are fabrications. When Astraea researches the claims, she finds he is correct. One night she and Callie go to a coffee bar. Maxwell, and a very beautiful young women, come on stage as the musical act for the night. Callie wants to leave, but Astraea wants to hear the concert. As they listen, she pines that the woman with Maxwell is so much more beautiful than she; these feelings make her realize she is attracted to him despite their religious difference. At intermission, she finds out the woman is Maxwell’s sister. Callie leaves. Maxwell and his sister talk with Astraea. He ends up asking her out. Despite opposition from her friends and parents, she begins dating him. 

Winter Solstice Celebration

He attends a Solstice Celebration with Astraea and her family; she goes to a Church service with him (it is near Christmas and she knows some of the carols they sing just from hearing them so much at this time of the year). Astraea feels love for Maxwell, but also realizes how much opposition and they are facing and the numerous complications that could derail their relationship. She wonders what she might do to show her love and hits upon a plan.  She goes to two people who are yoga adepts and unfolds it to them. They agree to help her. Since all points of time exist at the same time, they tell her, they can bring about what she has asked.

Robert Herrick's Church in Devonshire

Through the practitioners’ intervention, Astraea is able to transport her and Maxwell back in time, to the days of King Charles I, the 1630s, and the church of Maxwell’s favorite poet Robert Herrick. They attend a service at his church and, afterwards, get to meet him. When the service is over they help distribute food to poor parishioners. Herrick himself is charming, earthy, and sincere in his devotion—despite what she has read about him being an indifferent Christian or one whose loyalties to the old deities of Greece and Rome were greater than his allegiance to the Christian faith. She is certain her relationship with Maxwell can be fruitful—perhaps even end in their being married. They respect each other’s faith and can love each other and experience mutuality despite their differences.

The story appeared in  the journal Eternal Haunted Summer and was reprinted in the anthology Passion Beyond Words. Eternal Haunted Summer has archived the story and you can read it here. If you want a print copy, Passion Beyond Words is available here.

For additional books, check out my Amazon Page.

Also, for a good short story and a nice summer read, see my story "Azalea." One of the best I've written.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy summer reading.

Dave's Anatomy #6: My History As a Writer--Exploring Academic Themes

I have a Ph.D. in Literature from Purdue University. My area of study was English Renaissance—the period of time in which such authors as Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and many of the great poets and playwrights lived. I did my Ph.D. dissertation on the poetry of Robert Herrick, best known for his poem that begins "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." This is a classic carpe diem poem more famous in recent times due to the fact that the late Robin Williams mentions it in the popular film, Dead Poet's Society.

Robert Herrick

You would think people would recognize such achievement, but those in my writer's group were always telling me, "Dave, you're sounding academic!" By which they mean boring and elaborate. To an extent they are right. For years I wrote academic studies of literature. The by-word in fiction writing is "Show, don't tell." In scholarly writing, however, you tell and don't show! So I've had some bad habits to break. You also tend to write more passive sentences in scholarly writing, so that's another thing I've had to overcome. The admonitions of my writer's group were good in many ways. But not in every way.

As I began to look for new ideas to write about and new inspirations for stories, my mind reverted to my education. I had studied a lot of modern literature and a lot of classic fiction such as Dickens, the Brontë sisters, William Makepeace Thackeray, and it was good stuff. I borrowed a plot from Henry James for the first story I ever published, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." But what about my dissertation topic? Would it be possible to construct a contemporary story using something from the English Renaissance? Lots of people draw on Shakespeare for plot material. The sci-fi classic film Forbidden Planet is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest; a lot of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement borrows from Hamlet. But what about Robert Herrick? Could his poetry ever provide ideas for a story?

Teaching some of his writing in a class at the university where I'm employed gave me an idea.

When Herrick was not writing carpe diem poems or poems about the nipples of his girlfriend's breasts, he wrote theological poems (he was an Anglican priest and often crossed the line in his writing).  His theological works are considered inferior to his other poems, but they made good material to write a dissertation on because not many people had written on them. The couplet that gave me the idea of the story was this one:  "Evil no nature hath. The loss of good / Is that which gives to sin its livelihood."

Augustine

Obscure? Sure it is. Herrick is drawing on a theological point that goes back to Saint Augustine of Hippo in 400 A.D. It is the notion that sin has no ontology—that is, it has no real existence and not a part of God's creation; it is a twisting and a perverting of something good. It has no existence in and of itself.

This is an idea Christian theologians have held to since Augustine wrote about it 1600 years ago. C. S. Lewis noted, in his preface to The Screwtape Letters, that the Devil is not the counterpart of God, not a creature of perfect evil that exists in opposition to the perfect goodness of God, because if you took everything that was good away from the Devil—will, mind, emotion, and existence itself—there would be nothing left. Evil is simply a twisting and a perverting of something good.

This is what Robert Herrick meant when he wrote, "Evil no nature hath. The loss of good / Is that which gives to sin its livelihood." "Livelihood" here means existence. A story began to occur to me after I left the class where we talked about Herrick's poem.

My ongoing character, Sossity Chander, is doing a tour with an English musician, Collin. Usually cheerful and funny, he seems depressed. She asked him if anything is wrong, and he confides to her. Years ago, when the craze was on with groups like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, he sold his soul to the Devil. Sossity says such a concept is ridiculous and he needs to forget it, but he tells her the Devil has come for his due and he will have to kill himself soon. And he plans to do it. He then withdraws from her and will not see or speak to her.

Abadonna 

Sossity gets a call from a girl named Abadonna, who identifies herself as her friend's "watcher." She is there to make certain he goes through with the expected suicide and warns Sossity that if she tries to interfere there might be trouble. This angers Sossity but she doesn’t know what to do.  In desperation she calls an old friend, Heather Alabaster, who is an Anglican nun and who, Sossity remembers, once smashed a Satanic altar someone had erected at their apartment because Heather was counseling girls caught up in a demon-worshiping cult. She asks Heather's advice. Heather advises her to try to separate her friend from the "watcher." She later remembers reading the line from Herrick in Heather's house long ago. She gets an idea.

Sossity calls Abadonna and hints that she is willing to give herself in exchange for Collin's safety. She also has the security agency she works for gather as much information as they can on Abadonna, whose real name is Abagail. When they meet, Sossity confronts her with all she has left behind and with how she has been sexually exploited, served time in jail, and been forced into an abortion by her Satanic colleagues. She tells her, “Think of what you’ve lost, Abigail. Think of all the good things you’ve twisted and perverted to make yourself into what you are today . . . A girl like you should be loved by a man—and should not think she is obligated to let herself be gang raped and to facilitate a murder.” This affects Abagail, but not in the way Sossity expects. She runs off and commits suicide.

Collin is freed from her power over him and converts to evangelical Christianity. Sossity reflects on the tragedy of Abigail and the loss of good as Collin, his friends and family, rejoice over her death. Sossity remembers that in Dante's hell the worst part of it is cold, not hot.

The story was printed. My adult daughter, who is a good critic of my writing, thinks it's my best story ever. I feel all the better because at a certain stage in my writing journey, I began to see how even academic and scholarly texts—considered too esoteric and obscure by many—can inspire paranormal stories. I would similarly use such texts in future writings.

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The story, "The Loss of Good" appeared in Amarillo Bay magazine. A great read, check it out.