How To Be An Agnostic
Kenny considers Clough’s poem humnos haumnos (a hymn,
yet not a hymn) in a collection of his essays entitled The
Unknown God. The poem begins by addressing the divine who
dwells in human shrines, though immediately notes that this
image of God ‘Doth vanish, part, and leave behind / mere blank
and void of empty mind’. The second stanza articulates the mys-
tic’s conundrum, of speaking about the unknown, and confesses
that, ‘The imperfect utterance fell unmade’. In the third stanza
the more radical turn is taken, of negating even the negations.
‘I will not frame one thought of what / Thou mayest either be
or not.’ The poet cannot only not say ‘thus and so’, but neither
‘no’ too.
Then, in the fourth stanza, Clough distances himself from the
believer who, although similarly mystic, might have faith to
receive a revelation beyond human words: ‘I will not ask some
upper air,’ this agnostic asserts. So what is left? If the agnostic
must admit that they cannot turn to faith, what shape can their
agnosticism take? Oddly, a prayer:
Do only thou in that dim shrine,
Unknown or known, remain, divine;
There, or if not, at least in eyes
That scan the fact that round them lies.
The hand to sway, the judgement guide,
In sight and sense, thyself divide:
Be though but there – in soul and heart,
I will not ask to feel thou art.The poet has reached a point of being reconciled with the fact
that they cannot make the minimal, Dionysian affi rmation of
the ‘it’. The question of God is held suspended, ‘unknown or
known’. Perhaps this God is only in the minds of those who
‘scan’ the world around them. However, even so, the fi nal
stanza concludes on this surprisingly prayerful note. The poet
ends by seeking divine guidance and discernment ‘in sight and
sense’ nonetheless. How can this be? Does this not require some