Richard Crashaw

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:23 pm

Richard
Crashaw

Richard Crashaw
Born	c. 1612 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Died	25 August 1649 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Occupation	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Nationality	[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Alma mater	Peterhouse, Cambridge

Richard Crashaw (c.
1613 – 25 August 1649), [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
styled "the divine," was part of the Seventeenth-century [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Life

Born in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], Richard Crashaw was the
son of a strongly anti-Catholic divine, Dr [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. (1572–1626);
his father was, however, attracted by Catholic devotion, for he translated
several [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] hymns of the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Richard
Crashaw was originally put to school at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], but in July 1631 he was admitted
to Pembroke
College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A. in 1634.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The publication of Herbert's Temple
in 1633 seems to have finally determined the bias of his genius in favour of
religious poetry, and next year he published his first book, Epigrammatum
sacrorum liber, a volume of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
verses.

In March 1636 he removed to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.],
was made a fellow of that college in 1637, and proceeded to take his M.A. in
1638. He served as the priest for the Church
of St Mary the Less, Cambridge from 1638 to 1643. It was about this time
that he made the acquaintance and secured the lasting friendship of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. He was
also on terms of intimacy with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and
frequently visited him at his house at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. In 1641 he is said
to have gone to Oxford, but only for a short
time; for when in 1643 Cowley left Cambridge to
seek a refuge at Oxford,
Crashaw remained behind, and was forcibly ejected from his fellowship in 1644. In the confusion of
the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] he escaped to France, where
he finally embraced the Catholic faith, towards which he had long been tending.

During his exile his
religious and secular poems were collected by an anonymous friend, and
published under the title of Steps to the Temple and The Delights of
the Muses, in one volume, in 1646. The first part includes the hymn to St
Teresa and the version of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s Sospetto d'Herode. This same
year [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] found him in great destitution at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and induced Queen
Henrietta Maria to extend towards him what influence she still possessed.
At her introduction he proceeded to Italy,
where he became attendant to Cardinal Giovanni
Battista Maria Pallotta at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and stayed at the famous [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. In 1648 he
published two Latin hymns at Paris.

He remained until 1649 in the service of the
cardinal, to whom he had a great personal attachment; but his retinue contained
persons whose violent and licentious behaviour was a source of ceaseless
vexation to the sensitive English mystic. At last his denunciation of their
excesses became so public that the animosity of those persons was excited
against him, and in order to shield him from their revenge he was sent by the
cardinal in 1649 to [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], where he was made a canon of the Holy House. In
less than three weeks, however, he sickened of fever and died, not without
grave suspicion of having been poisoned. He was buried in the Lady chapel at
Loreto. A collection of his religious poems, entitled Carmen Deo nostro,
was brought out in Paris
in 1652, dedicated at the dead poet's desire to the faithful friend of his
sufferings, the countess of Denbigh. The book is illustrated by thirteen
engravings after Crashaw's own designs.

Works

Crashaw excelled in all
manner of graceful accomplishments; besides being an excellent Latinist and
Hellenist, he had an intimate knowledge of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]; and his skill in music, painting and
engraving was no less admired in his lifetime than his skill in poetry. Cowley
memorialized him in an elegy that ranks among the very finest in our language,
in which he, a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], well expressed the feeling left on the minds
of contemporaries by the character of the young Catholic poet:

"His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might

Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right:

And I, myself, a Catholic will be,

So far at least, dear saint, to pray to thee"

The poetry of Crashaw will be
best appreciated by those who can with most success free themselves from the
bondage of a traditional sense of the dignity of language. The custom of his
age permitted the use of images and phrases which we now condemn as incongruous
and unseemly, and the fervent fancy of Crashaw carried this licence to excess.
At the same time his verse is studded with fiery beauties and sudden felicities
of language, unsurpassed by any lyricist between his own time and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s.

There is no religious poetry
in English so full at once of gross and awkward images and imaginative touches
of the most ethereal beauty. The temper of his intellect seems to have been
delicate and weak, fiery and uncertain; he has a morbid, almost hysterical,
passion about him, even when his ardour is most exquisitely expressed, and his
adoring addresses to the saints have an effeminate falsetto that makes their
ecstasy almost repulsive. The faults and beauties of his very peculiar style
can be studied nowhere to more advantage than in the Hymn to Saint Teresa.

Among the secular poems of
Crashaw the best are Music's Duel, which deals with that strife between
the musician and the nightingale which has inspired so many poets, and Wishes
to his supposed Mistress. In his latest sacred poems, included in the Carmen
Deo nostro, sudden and eminent beauties are not wanting, but the mysticism
has become more pronounced, and the ecclesiastical mannerism more harsh and
repellent. The themes of Crashaw's verses are as distinct as possible from
those of Shelley's, but it may, on the whole, be said that at his best moments
he reminds the reader more closely of the author of Epipsychidion than
of any earlier or later poet.

Crashaw's works were first
collected, in one volume, in 1858 by William Barclay
Turnbull. In 1872 an edition, in 2 volumes, was printed for private
subscription by the [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. A complete edition was
edited (1904) for the Cambridge University Press as Richard Crashaw: Steps
To The Temple Delights of The Muses And Other Poems by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Crashaw's works
are now available online.

Crashaw's Latin poem Bulla
("Bubble") served as the inspiration for [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s large
orchestral work Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei. His poem "Lo,
the Full, Final Sacrifice" was set to music by the English composer [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].