Denise Levertov wrote many poems with unworldly themes throughout her career. For example, respect for nature and life, nothingness and absence, and despair with the world. There were also positive ideas and images about peace in death, the wandering quest, gratitude in giving, wonder in the face of mystery, and the dance of delight.
It is as if she has been moved to ask spiritual questions out of a growing awareness of the tensions in the world and her relationship to it.
denise levertov
In 1997, the year of her death at age 74, she assembled a collection of 38 of these poems previously published in The Stream & The Sapphire, published by New Directions Publishing Corporation, New York.
Life of Denise Levertov
Denise Levertov was born in 1923 and grew up in Ilford Essex. Her mother came from a small mining town in North Wales. Her father, a Russian Hasidic Jew, immigrated to the UK and became an Anglican priest after converting to Christianity. During World War II, she became a civilian nurse serving in London during the Blitz. In 1947 she married Mitchell Goodman, an American writer, and a year later they moved to the United States.
Inner development of Denise Levertov
It seems that she valued her spiritual religious doubts and uncertainties as a way to find a way in the labyrinth of life. However, for example in Saint Thomas Didymus, in line with her inner development, her writing began to show the idea that nothingness and darkness were no longer things to doubt and agonize over. What was a nagging worry turns into something positive.
Religious Consciousness by Denise Levertov
During the course of his life, his poems tend to go from constantly questioning religion to simply accepting it. And so, later, the content became more overtly religious as his own beliefs slowly developed from agnosticism, through constant questioning of religion, to acceptance of the Christian faith. She wrote that this was a movement that incorporated a lot of doubt and questioning, as well as affirmation.
As a developing religious consciousness began to be reflected in the poetry of Denise Levertov, I am reminded of what the philosopher James Pratt wrote. He wrote about an intuitive sense of the presence of a life greater than one’s own. This presence is said to be like a very happy feeling of being with another person, even though you cannot actually see, hear or feel that person.
She wrote of this mysterious presence in terms of its absence:
From On a Subject by Thomas Merton
“the spinning rides dazzle, the lights blind him. Fragmented, he is not present to himself. God suffers the emptiness that is his absence.”
Aren’t we also dazzled by the fast paced and exciting world full of technology that demands our attention lest we notice the absence of God’s spirit within our soul? No wonder we are prone to despair at the meaninglessness of it all.
He said that when he started writing explicitly Christian poems, he thought he would lose some of his readers. But that he hadn’t really done it. His sense of spiritual hunger was something of a counterforce or unconscious reaction to the technological euphoria.
Denise Levertov’s Christian Faith
He also said that when you’re really busy writing a poem, it can be a form of prayer. She wasn’t very good at praying, but what she said she experienced when she was writing a poem was close to praying. She felt it to different degrees and not with every poem.
She compares religious faith to the ebb and flow of the tide.
of the tide
“Faith is a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows that respond to action and inaction.”
As she reflects on the need to make the effort to focus her attention on God and what she calls the embrace of God, she also seems to be able to tolerate not knowing all the answers and accepting the paradoxes of faith.
In her writing, I believe Denise Levertov illustrates what the spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg held to be true religious enlightenment. This is a gift of insight from God received by those who:
– humble search for spiritual meaning
– love what is true for truth’s sake
– want to be truly useful in life
– give priority to spiritual values over the natural desires of life
Copyright 2014 Stephen Russell-Lacy
