Victorian Poetry

8

CYNTHIA SCHEINBERG

Victorian poetry and religious diversity

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Among the Romans a poet was called votes, which is as much a diviner,

foreseer or prophet ... so heavenly a title did that excellent people bestow

upon this heart-ravishing knowledge... And may not I presume a little

further, to show the reasonableness of this word votes, and say that the holy

David's Psalms are a divine poem?... Neither let it be deemed too saucy a

comparison to balance the highest point of man's wit with the efficacy of

nature; but rather give right honour to the heavenly Maker of that maker.

• Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poetry (1595) 1
  Vates means both Prophet and Poet; and indeed at all times, Prophet and
  Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed
  they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, that they
  have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe, what
  Goethe calls "the open secret!"... But now I say, whoever may forget this
  divine mystery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetrated into it; is a
  man sent hither to make it more impressively known to us.


• Thomas Carlyle, "The Hero as Poet" (1841) 2

By placing Sir Philip Sidney's remarks on the poet as vates or prophet next
to Thomas Carlyle's similar invocation of the Poet as Prophet, it becomes
clear that by the Victorian age the concept of poetry has been linked to
religious utterance for at least two hundred and fifty years. Both writers
claim that the poet and the prophet have access to the divine. Yet if for
both Sidney and Carlyle the poet is represented as a prophet and the
prophet a kind of poet, the distinct differences that each writer offers in
their understanding of the vates are important to note as well. On the one
hand, Sidney's references to ancient Jewish and classical cultures give
specific historical and religious contexts for this notion of the vates, while
on the other, Carlyle suggests the connection between poetry and prophecy
is fundamental, and therefore transcends cultural or historical boundaries.
Situating the poet-prophet within the literary and religious realm of