INCLOSER by SUSAN HOWE Temple University Copyright (c) 1991 by Susan Howe, all rights reserved _Postmodern Culture_ v.1 n.2 (January, 1991) Some of this essay has been published in _The Politics of Poetic Form; Poetry and Public Policy_, edited by Charles Bernstein, Roof Books. [What follows is an excerpt from a book to be published in 1991 by Weaselsleeves Press. --Eds.] Turned back from turning back as if a loved country faced away from the traveler No pledged premeditated daughter no cold cold sorrow no barrier *EN-CLOSE.* See INCLOSE. *IN-CLOSE*, %v.t.% [fr. %enclos*; Sp. It. %incluso%; L. %inclusus%, %includo%; %in% and %claudo% or %cludo%.] 1. To surround; to shut in; to confine on all sides; as to %inclose% a field with a fence; to %inclose% a fort or an army with troops; to %inclose% a town with walls. 2. To separate from common grounds by a fence; as, to %inclose% lands. 3. To include; to shut or confine; as to %inclose% trinkets in a box. 4. To environ; to encompass. 5. To cover with a wrapper or envelope; to cover under seal; as to %inclose% a letter or a bank note. *IN-CLOS ER*, %n%. He or that which encloses; one who separates land from common grounds by a fence. Noah Webster, %An American Dictionary of the English Language% *%Incloser%* THOMAS SHEPARD Anagram: O, a map's thresh'd (WIII 513) The first and least of these Books [by Shepard] is called, %The Sincere Convert%: Which the Author would commonly call, %His Ragged Child% : And once, even after its %Fourth Edition%, wrote unto Mr. Giles Firmin, thus concerning it: %That which is call'd%, The Sincere Convert: %I have not the Book% : I %once saw it. It was a Collection of such Notes in a dark Town in% England, %which one procuring of me, published them without my Will, or my Privity. I scarce know what it contains, nor do I like to see it; considering the many Typographia, most absurd; and the Confession of him that published it, that it comes out much altered from what was first written%. Cotton Mather, %Magnalia Christi Americana% * * * My writing has been haunted and inspired by a series of texts, woven in shrouds and cordage of classic American 19th century works, they are the buried ones, they body them forth. The selection of particular examples from a large group is always a social act. By choosing to install certain narratives somewhere between history, mystic speech, and poetry, I have enclosed them in an organization although I know there are places no classificatory procedure can reach where connections between words and things we thought existed break off. For me, paradoxes and ironies of fragmentation are particularly compelling. Every statement is a product of collective desires and divisibilities. Knowledge, no matter how I get it, involves exclusion and repression. National histories hold ruptures and hierarchies. On the scales of global power what gets crossed over? Foreign accents mark dialogues that delete them. Ambulant vagrant bastardy comes looming through assurance and sanctification. _Thomas Shepard:_ A long story of conversion, and a hundred to one if some lie or other slip not out with it. Why, the secret meaning is, I pray admire me. (WII 284) When we move through the positivism of literary canons and master narratives, we consign ourselves to the legitimation of power, chains of inertia, an apparatus of capture. _Brother Crackbone's Wife:_ So I gave up and I was afraid to sing because to sing a lie, Lord teach me and I'll follow thee and heard Lord will break the will of His last work. (C 140) * * * A printed book enters social and economic networks of distribution. Does the printing modify an author's intention, or does a text develop itself? Why do certain works go on saying something else? Pierre Macherey says in %A Theory of Literary Production%: "the work has its beginnings in a break from the usual ways of speaking and writing--a break which sets it apart from all other forms of ideological expression" (52). Roman Jakobson says in "Dialogue On Time In Language and Literature": "One of the essential differences between spoken and written language can be seen clearly. The former has a purely temporal character, while the latter connects time and space. While the sounds we hear disappear, when we read we usually have immobile letters before us and the time of the written flow of words is reversible" (20). Gertrude Stein says in "Patriarchal Poetry": "They said they said./ They said they said when they said men./ Many men many how many many many many men men men said many here" (123). Emily Dickinson writes to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson: "Moving on in the Dark like Loaded Boats at Night, though there is no Course, there is Boundlessness--" (L 871). Strange translucencies: letters, phonemes, syllables, rhymes, shorthand segments, alliteration, assonance, meter, form a ladder to an outside state outside of States. Rungs between escape and enclosure are confusing and compelling. _Brother Crackbone's Wife:_ And seeing house burned down, I thought it was just and mercy to save life of the child and that I saw not after again my children there. And as my spirit was fiery so to burn all I had, and hence prayed Lord would send fire of word, baptize me with fire. And since the Lord hath set my heart at liberty. (C 140) * * * %There was the last refuge from search and death; so here.% (WII 195) I am a poet writing near the close of the 20th century. Little by little sound grew to be meaning. I cross an invisible line spoken in the first word "Then." Every prescriptive grasp assertion was once a hero reading Samson. There and here I encounter one vagabond formula another pure Idea. To such a land. Yet has haunts. The heart of its falls must be crossed and re-crossed. October strips off cover and quiet conscience. New England is the place I am. Listening to the clock and the sun whirl dry leaves along. Distinguishing first age from set hour. The eternal and spirit in them. A poem can prevent onrushing light going out. Narrow path in the teeth of proof. Fire of words will try us. Grace given to few. Coming home though bent and bias for the sake of why so. Awkward as I am. Here and there invincible things as they are. I write quietly to her. She is a figure of other as thin as paper. Sorrow for uproar and wrongs of this world. You convenant to love. * * * _Emily Dickinson:_ Master. If you saw a bullet hit a Bird - and he told you he was'nt shot - you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly doubt his word. (L 233) If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters other voices. Dickinson, Melville, Thoreau, and Hawthorne guided me back to what I once thought was the %distant% 17th century. Now I know that the arena in which scripture battles raged among New Englanders with originary fury is part of our current American system and events, history and structure. _Goodwife Willows:_ Then I had a mind for New England and I thought I should know more of my own heart. So I came and thought I saw more than ever I could have believed that I wondered earth swallowed me not up. And 25 Matthew 5--foolish virgins saw themselves void of all grace. I thought I was so and was gone no farther. And questioned all that ever the Lord had wrought, I'll never leave thee. I could now apprehend that yet desired the Lord not to leave me nor forsake me and afterward I thought I was now discovered. Yet hearing He would not hide His face forever, was encouraged to seek. But I felt my heart rebellious and loathe to submit unto Him. (C 151) An English relation of conversion spoken at a territorial edge of America is deterritorialized and deterred by anxiety crucial to iconoclastic Puritan piety. Inexplicable acoustic apprehension looms over assurance and sanctification, over soil subsoil sea sky. Each singular call. As the sound is the sense is. Severed on this side. Who would know there is a covenant. In a new world morphologies are triggered off. * * * %Under the hammer of God's word.% (WI 92) During the 1630's and 40's a mother tongue (English) had to find ways to accommodate new representations of reality. Helplessness and suffering caused by agrarian revolution in England, and changing economic structures all across Europe, pushed members of various classes and backgrounds into new collectivities. For a time English Protestant sects were united in a struggle against Parliament, the Jacobean and Stuart Courts, the Anglican Church, and Archbishop Laud. Collective resistance to political and religious persecution pushed particular groups to a radical separatism. Some sects broke loose from the European continent. Their hope was to ride out the cry and accusation of kingdoms of Satan until God would be all in all. _Thomas Shepard:_ And so, seeing I had been tossed from the south to the north of England and now could go no farther, I then began to listen to a call to New England. (GP 55) Schismatic children of Adam thought they were leaving the "wilderness of the world" to find a haven free of institutional structures they had united %against%. They were unprepared for the variability of directional change the wilderness they reached represented. Even John Winthrop complained of "unexpected troubles and difficulties" in "this strange land where we met with many adversities" (Heimert 361). A Bible, recently translated into the vernacular, was owned by nearly every member of the Bay Colony. It spoke to readers and non-readers and signified the repossession of the Word by English. The Old and New Testaments, in English, were indispensible fictive realities connecting the emigrants to a familiar State-form, and home. Though they crossed a wide and northern ocean Scripture encompassed them. From the first, Divinity was knotted in Place. If the Place was found wanting, and it was by many, a rhetoric had to be double-knotted to hold perishing absolutism safe. First-generation leaders of this hegira to new England tied themselves and their followers to a dialectical construction of the American land as a virgin garden pre-established for them by the Author and Finisher of creation. "Come to me and you shall find rest unto your souls." To be released from bonds. . . absorbed into catastrophe of pure change. "Flee, save your lives, and be like the heath in the wild." %Here% is unappropriated autonomy. Uncounted occupied space. No covenant of King and people. No centralized State. Heavy pressure of finding no content. Openness of the breach. "The gospel is a glass to show men the face of God in Christ. The law is that glass that showeth a man his own face, and what he himself is. Now if this glass be taken away. . ." (WI 74). _Widow Arrington:_ Hearing Dr. Jenison, Lamentations 3--let us search and turn to the Lord--which struck my heart as an arrow. And it came as a light into me and the more the text was opened more I saw my heart. And hearing that something was lost when God came for searching. And when I came I durst not tell my husband fearing he would loath me if he knew me. And I resolved none should know nor I would tell. . . . (C 184-5) * * * On October 3, 1635, Thomas Shepard and his family arrived in Boston Harbor on the ship %Defense.% "Oh, the depths of God's grace here," he later wrote, "that when he [man] deserves nothing else but separation from God, and to be driven up and down the world as a vagabond or as dried leaves fallen from our God--" (GP 14). There is a direct relation between sound and meaning. Early spiritual autobiographies in America often mean to say that a soul has found love in what the Lord has done. "Oh, that when so many come near to mercy, and fall short of it, yet me to be let in! Caleb and Joshua to be let into Canaan, when they rest so near, and all perish" (WII 229). Words sound other ways. I hear short-circuited conviction. Truth is stones not bread. The reins are still in the hands of God. He has set an order but he is not tied to that order. Sounds touch every coast and corner. He will pick out the vilest worthy never to be beloved. There is no love. I am not in the world where I am. In his journal Mr. Shepard wrote: "To heal this wound, which was but skinned over before, of secret atheism and unbelief" (GP 135). * * * %Finding is the First Act% (MBED 1043) After the beaver population in New England had been decimated by human greed, when roads were cut through unopened countryside, the roadbuilders often crossed streams on abandoned beaver dams, instead of taking time to construct wooden bridges. When other beaver dams collapsed from neglect, they left in their wake many years' accumulation of dead bark, leaves, twigs, and silt. Ponds they formed disappeared with the dams, leaving rich soil newly opened to the sun. These old pond bottoms, often many acres wide, provided fertile agricultural land. Here grass grew as high as a person's shoulder. Without these natural meadows many settlements could not have been established as soon as they were. Early narratives of conversion, and first captivity narratives in New England, are often narrated by women. A woman, afraid of not speaking well, tells her story to a man who writes it down. The participant reporters follow and fly out of Scripture and each other. All testimonies are bereft, brief, hungry, pious, %authorized.% Shock of God's voice speaking English. Sound moves over the chaos of place in people. In this hungry world anyone may be eaten. What a nest and litter. A wolf lies coiled in the lamb. Silence becomes a Self. Open your mouth. In such silence women were talking. Undifferentiated powerlessness swallowed them. When did the break at this degree of distance happen? Silence calls me himself. Open your mouth. Whosoever. Not found written in the book of life. During a later Age of Reason 18th century Protestant gentlemen signed the Constitution in the city of Philadelphia. These first narratives from wide open places re-place later genial totalities. * * * _Thomas Shepard:_ %Object.% But Christ is in heaven; how can I receive him and his love? %Ans.% A mighty prince is absent from a traitor; he sends his herald with a letter of love, he gives it him to read; how can he receive the love of the prince when absent? %Ans.% He sees his love in his letter, he knows it came from him, and so at a distance closeth with him by this means; so here, he that was dead, but now is alive, writes, sends to thee; O, receive his love here in his word; this is receiving "him by faith." (WII 599-600) In Europe, Protestant tradition since Luther had maintained that no one could fully express her sins. In New England, for some reason hard to determine, Protestant strictures were reversed. Bare promises were insufficient. Leaders and followers had to voice the essential mutability they suddenly faced. Now the minister's scribal hand copied down an applicant for church membership's narrative of mortification and illumination. In %The Puritan Conversion Narrative; The Beginnings of American Expression%, Patricia Caldwell points out that during the 1630's, in the Bay Colony, a disclaimer about worthlessness and verbal inadequacy had to be followed by a verbal performance strong enough to convince the audience- congregation of the speaker's sincerity. New England's first isolated and independent clerics must have wrestled with many conflicting impulses and influences. Rage against authority and rage for order; desire for union with the Father and the guilty knowledge they had abandoned their own mothers and fathers. In the 1630's a new society was being shaped or shaping itself. Oppositional wreckers and builders considered themselves divine instruments committed to the creation of a holy commonwealth. In 1636 the Antinomian controversy erupted among this group of "Believers, gathered and ordained by Christ's rule alone. . . all seeking the same End, viz. the Honor and Glory of God in his worship" (VS 73). The Antinomian Controversy circled around a woman, Anne Hutchinson, and what was seen to be "the Flewentess of her Tonge and her Willingness to open herselfe and to divulge her Opinions and to sowe her seed in us that are but highway side and Strayngers to her" (AH 353). Thomas Shepard made this accusation. Paradoxically he was one of the few ministers who required women to recite their confessions of faith publicly, before the gathered congregation. Mr. Peters lectured Anne Hutchinson in court: "You have stept out of your place, %You have rather bine a Husband than a Wife and a preacher than a Hearer; and a Magistrate than a Subject.% and soe you have thought to carry all Thinges in Church and Commonwealth, as you would and have not bine humbled for this" (AC 383). Peters, Cotton, Winthrop, Eliot, Wilson, Dudley, Shepard, and other men, had stepped out of their places when they left England. She was humbled by them for their Transgression. Anne Hutchinson was the community scapegoat. "The Mother Opinion of all the rest. . . . From the womb of this %fruitful Opinion% and from the Countenance here by given to immediate and unwarrented revelations 'tis not easie to relate, how many %Monsters% worse than %African,% arose in the Regions of %America% : But a %Synod% assembled at %Cambridge,% whereof Mr. %Shepard% was no small part, most happily crushed them all" (M III87). _Noah Webster:_ SCAPE-GOAT, %n.% [%escape% and %goat.%] In %the Jewish ritual%, a goat which was brought to the door of the tabernacle, where the high priest laid his hands upon him, confessing the sins of the people, and putting them on the head of the goat; after which the goat was sent into the wilderness, bearing the iniquities of the people." %Lev.% xvi. (WD 986) Kenneth Burke says in %A Grammar of Motives%, "Dialectic of the Scapegoat": "When the attacker chooses for himself the object of attack, it is usually his blood brother; the debunker is much closer to the debunked than others are. Ahab was pursued by the white whale he was pursuing" (GM 407). Rene Girard says in %The Scapegoat%, "What is a Myth?" "Terrified as they [the persecutors] are by their own victim, they see themselves as completely passive, purely reactive, totally controlled by this scapegoat at the very moment when they rush to his attack. They think that all initiative comes from him. There is only room for a single cause in their field of vision, and its triumph is absolute, it absorbs all other causality: it is the scapegoat" (43). I say that the Scapegoat Dialectic and mechanism is peculiarly open to violence if the attacker is male, his bloodbrother, female. Kenneth Burke and Rene Girard dissect grammars and mythologies in a realm of discourse structured, articulated, and repeated by men. _Thomas Shepard:_ We are all in Adam, as a whole country in a parliament man; the whole country doth what he doth. And although we made no particular choice of Adam to stand for us, yet the Lord made it for us; who, being goodness itself, bears more good will to man than he can or could bear to himself; and being wisdom itself, made the wisest choice, and took the wisest course for the good of man. (WI 24) * * * %A Short Story% _Governor Winthrop:_ She thinkes that the Soule is annihilated by the Judgement that was sentenced upon Adam. Her Error springs from her Mistaking of the Curse of God upon Adam, for that Curse doth not implye Annihilation of the soule and body, but only a dissolution of the Soule and Body. _Mr. Eliot:_ She thinks the Soule to be Nothinge but a Breath, and so vanisheth. I pray put that to her. _Mrs. Hutchinson:_ %I thinke the soule to be nothing but Light.% (AH 356) * * * %The Erroneous Gentlewoman% _Governor Winthrop:_ We have thought it good to send for you to understand how things are, that if you be in an erroneous way we may reduce you that you may become a profitable member here among us. (AC 312 ) _Thomas Shepard:_ I confes I am wholy unsatisfied in her Expressions to some of the Errors. Any Hereticke may bring a slye interpretation upon any of thease Errors and yet hould them to thear Death: therfor I am unsatisfied. (AC 377) _Anne Hutchinson:_ My Judgment is not altered though my Expression alters. _Brother Willson:_ Your Expressions, whan your Expressions are soe contrary to the Truth. (AC 378) _Noah Webster:_ EX-PRES SION, (eks presh un.) %n.% 1. The act of expressing; the act of forcing out by pressure, as juices and oils from plants. 2. The act of uttering, declaring, or representing; utterance; declaration; representation; as, an %expression% of the public will. (WD 426) _Mrs. Hutchinson:_ I doe not acknowledge it to be an Error but a Mistake. I doe acknowledge my Expressions to be Ironious but my Judgment was not Ironious, for I held befor as you did but could not express it soe. (AC 361) _Noah Webster:_ ERRO NE OUS, %a.% [L. %erroneus,% from %erro,% to err.] 1. Wandering; roving; unsettled. %They roam% %Erroneous% and disconsolate. %Philips%. 2. Deviating; devious; irregular; wandering from the right course. (WD 408) %Erroneous% circulation of blood %Arbuthnot%. _Anne Hutchinson:_ %So thear was my Mistake. I took Soule for Life.% (AH 360) _Noah Webster:_ Noah is here called %Man%. (WD xxiii) * * * %A Woman's Delusion% A seashore where everything. A tumult of mind. Sackcloth and run up and down. Every durable thread. Mediator. There is rebellion. A man cannot look. The sacrifice of Noah is a type. We dress our garden. There are properties. Proof must be guiding and leading. Stooped so far. Bruising lash of the law. Tender affections bear with the weak. An answerable wedge. But where is the work? Why is the church compared to a garden? We are dark ages and young beginners. Apprehending ourselves we want anything. These are words set down. Surfaces. Who has felt most mercy? Preaching to stone. A thin cold dangerous realm. Tidings. He appears. Anoint. Echoes and reverberations of love. Anoint. Washed and witnessing. Peter denies him. Anoint. Whole treasures of looks to the heart. It is one thing to trust to be saved. Selfpossession. She heard his question. Never thought of it. No thought today. Unapproachable December seems to be. The sun is a spare trope. Shadow cast. Moment of recognition. The conclusion of years can any force of intellect. That such ferocities are drowned by double act or immediate stroke. So much error. Old things done away. Name and that other in itself opposite. %Expression.% I was born to make use of it. %Schism.% What is the reason of it? %Zeal.% An instance of our crime is blunder. %Object.% It may be a question. %Narration.% Can there be a better pattern? %Weary.% What do we imagine? %Swearing.% If I had time and was not mortal. But he. Scraps of predominance. %Answer.% So there is some grievance driven out of the way. %Objection.% Relation to the speaker. Speech to the wind. Particulars. How shall I put on my coat? Distance beyond comparison. Sleep between two. * * * His name and office sweetly did agree, SHEPARD by name, and in his ministry. (WI clxxix) _Thomas Shepard:_ And I considered how unfit I was to go to such a good land with such an unmortified, hard, dark, formal, hypocritical heart. (GP 61) Thomas Shepard was an evangelical preacher who comforted and converted many people. "As great a %Converter% of %Souls% as has ordinarily been known in our Days" (MIII 84). Before he came to America, "although [he] were but a young Man, yet there was that %Majesty% and %Energy% in his preaching and that %Holiness% in his Life, which was not ordinary": said Cotton Mather (MIII 86). Edward Johnson called him "that gracious sweet Heavenly minded Minister . . . in whose soul the Lord hath shed abroad his love so abundantly, that thousands of Souls have cause to bless God for him" (77). Thomas Prince said he "scarce ever preached a sermon but someone or other of his congregation was struck in great distress and cried out in agony, What shall I do to be saved?" (GP 8). Jonathan Mitchell remembered Shepard's Cambridge ministry: "%Unless it had been four years living in heaven, I know not how I could have more cause to bless God with wonder%" (C 13). Mitchell also recalled a day when, "Mr. Shepard preached most profitably. That night I was followed with serious thoughts of my inexpressible misery, wherein I go on, from Sabbath to Sabbath, without God and without redemption" (WI cxxxi). Thomas Shepard called his longest spoken literary production, a series of sermons unpublished in his lifetime, %The Parable of the Ten Virgins, Opened and Applied%. He married three times. Two wives died as a result of childbirth. His three sons, Thomas, Samuel, and Jeremiah, became ministers. The earnest persecutor of Anne Hutchinson and repudiator of "erroneous Antinomian doctrines," confided to his %Journal%: "I have seen a God by reason and never been amazed at God. I have seen God himself and have been ravished to behold him" (GP 136). The author of %The Sound Believer% also told his diary: "On lecture morning this came into my thoughts, that the greatest part of a Christian's grace lies in mourning for the want of it" (GP 198). Edward Johnson pictured the minister of the Cambridge First Church as a "poor, weak, pale-complexioned man" (GP 8), whose physical powers were feeble, but spent to the full. He wept while composing his sermons, and went up to the pulpit "as if he expected there to give up his account of his stewardship" (WL clxxix). When Thomas Shepard died after a short illness, 25 August 1649, he was forty-three. "Returning home from a Council at %Rowly%, he fell into a %Quinsie%, with a Symptomatical Fever, which suddenly stop'd a %Silver Trumpet%, from whence the People of God had often heard %the joyful Sound%" (M 88). Some of his last words were: "Lord, I am vile, but thou art righteous" (GP 237). Cotton Mather described the character of his conversation as "%A Trembling Walk with God%" (MIII 90). * * * } %S% : _Thomas Shepard:_ thou wert in the dangers of the sea in thy mothers woombe then & see how god hath miraculously preserued thee, that thou art still aliue, & thy mother's woombe & the terrible seas haue not been thy graue; (%S% side of MB) Probably sometime in 1646 Thomas Shepard wrote a brief autobiography entitled "T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:" into one half of a small leatherbound pocket notebook. Theatrical pen strokes by the protagonist shelter and embellish the straightforward title that sunders his initials. Conversion is an open subject. Or is it a question of splitting the author's name from its frame of compositional expression. The narrative begins with an energetic account of the author's birth "upon the 5 day of Nouember, called the Powder Treason Day, & that very houre of the day wher in the Parlament should haue bin blown vp by Popish preists. . . which occasioned my father to giue me this name Thomas. Because he sayd I would hardly beleeue that euer any such wickednes could be attempted by men agaynst so religious & good Parlament" (MB 10). 74 pages later the autobiography breaks off abruptly, as it began, with calamity. This time the death in childbed of the author's second wife, here referred to by her husband, as "the eldest daughter of Mr Hooker a blessed stock" (CS 391). Shepard married this eldest daughter of one of the most powerful theocrats in New England in 1637, the same year Mrs. Hutchinson was first silenced. Unlike Mrs. Hutchinson, Mrs. Shepard was a woman of "incomparable meeknes of spirit, toward my selfe especially . . . being neither too lauish nor sordid in any things so that I knew not what was under her hands" (CS 392). When she died nine years and four male children later, "after 3 weekes lying in," two of her sons had predeceased her. On her deathbed this paragon of feminine piety and humility "continued praying vntil the last houre. . Ld tho I vnwoorthy Ld on woord one woord &c. & so gaue vp the ghost. thus______ god hath visited me & scourged me for my sins & sought to weane me from this woorld, but I have ever found it a difficult thing to profit even but a little by sorest and sharpest afflictions;" "T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:" is littered with the deaths of mothers. The loss of his own mother when Shepard was a small child could never be settled. Creation implies separation. The last word of "T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:" is "afflictions." 89 blank manuscript pages emphasize this rupture in the pious vocabulary of order. The reader reads empty paper. The absence of a definitive conclusion to Shepard's story of his life and struggles is a deviation from the familiar Augustinian pattern of self-revelation used by other English nonconformist Reformers. %Allegoria% and %historia% should be united in "T {_My Birth & Life_:} S": Doubting Thomas should transcend the empirical events of his times to become the figura of the Good Shepard but the repetitive irruption of death into life is mightier than this notion of enclosure. "Woe to those that keep silent about God," warns St. Augustine, in the %De Magistro%, for where he is concerned, even the talkative are as though speechless" (RR 53). "Silence reveals speech--unless it is speech that reveals silence" (TP 86), Pierre Macherey has written in %A Theory of Literary Production%. State of the manuscript. %Leaves that stood%. Labor of elaboration. he is the god. A word is the beginning of every Conversion. The purpose of editing is to reach the truth. Mr. Shepard's manuscript is a draft. Shortcomings and error. The minister made no revisions in this unsettled account of his individual existence. Rational corrections by editors lie in wait. %Leaf of the story%. Distortion will begin in the place of flight. _Thomas Shepard:_ He is the god who tooke me vp when my own mother dyed who loued me, & wn my stepmother cared not for me, & wn lastly my father also dyed & foorsooke me wn I was yong & little & could take no care for my selfe. (%T% side of MB) * * * %T% . { Is it not hence@ (%T% side of MB p19) There is no title on the binding of the notebook that contains the manuscript. The paper is unlined. There are no margins. There is no front or back. You can open and shut it either way. Over time it has been used in multiple ways by Shepard and by others. Thomas Shepard, its first owner, used both ends of the book to begin writing. Each side holds a personal history in reverse. On the side I have here called %S% is the uninterrupted interrupted %Autobiography%. Then there is the empty center. But I can turn the book over, so side %S% is inverted, and begin to read another narrative by the same author. Now the protagonist's more improvisational commentary decenters the premeditated literary production of "T. { _My Birth & Life_: } S:". Subjects are chosen then dropped. Messages are transmitted and hidden. Whole pages have been left open. Another revelation or problem begins with a different meaning or purpose. Although dates occur on either side, it is unclear which side was written first. We might call the creation on this side an understudy. I will call this %T% side %An Inside Narrative%. Then there is the empty center. * * * %with honey within, with oil in public% : / %God's Plot : The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety Being the Autobiography & Journal of Thomas Shepard% (1972) edited with an introduction by Michael McGiffert is the fourth published edition of Shepard's %Autobiography% and the standard reference for reading this text. McGiffert, who tells us he restored some of the blunt vocabulary that had been expunged by two genteel nineteenth century editors, overlooked the structural paradox of the material object whose handwritten pages he laboriously and faithfully transcribed. McGiffert's is the fourth edition of Shepard's %Autobiography%. An earlier verbatim text was edited by Allyn Bailey Forbes for The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, %Publications%, XXVII (%Transactions%, 1927-1930). Both editors included sections from the %T% side of the manuscript book in their editions. Forbes called the sections "random notes" and placed them last, under the title "Appendix." McGiffert also put them last, under the heading: "[The following material consists of notes written by Shepard in the manuscript of the %Autobiography% ]." Neither editor saw fit to point out the fact that Shepard left two manuscripts in one book separated by many pages then positioned them so that to read one you must turn the other upside down. Both editors deleted something from each history. McGiffert decided the financial transactions on side %S% were of no autobiographical importance. Forbes included them, but buried Shepard's hostile reference to John Cotton on side %T% in a footnote to side %S%. Shepard placed this cryptic list of accusations against his fellow Saint alone on the recto side of leaf three. Far from being a "random," or a footnote, the list provides a vivid half-smothered articulation of New England's savage intersectine Genesis. Possibly the Colonial Society of Massachusetts balked at displaying this ambiguous sample of colonial ideology. Mr. Cotton: repents not: but is hid only. 1. Wn Mrs. Hutchinso- was conuented he commeded her for all that shee did before her confinement & so gaue her a light to escape thorow the crowd wt honour, 3. He doth stiffly hold the reuelatio- of our good estate still, without any sign of woord or work: / (MB 3) Here is the correct order of the sections written by Shepard in side %T%, or %An Inside Narrative%. 1. A Roman being asked . 2. Mr. Cotton: repents not: but is hid only. 3. Law. that the magistrate kisse the Churchs feet: 4. My Life: Lord Jesu pdo-: / euery day. 5. April: 4 1639: prep: for a fast. 6. Is it not hence@ 7. An: 1639/ The good things I have received of the Lord: (MB&GP&CS) Shepard's list of "The good things I haue receiued of the Lord" has fourteen sections and continues for eight pages. The nonconformist minister meant to give praise and thanksgiving to God, but images of panic, haste, and abandonment disunite the Visible and Spiritual. The Lord is the Word. He scatters short fragments. Jonah cried out to the Word when floods encompassed him. A Sound Believer hears old Chaos as in a deep sea. A narrative refuses to conform to its project. Side %S% ends abruptly with afflictions sent by God to "scourge" the author. Side %T% also breaks off suddenly. The author is remembering his earlier ministry in Earles Colne, "a most prophane" English town. "Here the Lord kept me fro troubles 3 yeares & a halfe vntill the Bishop Laud put me to silence & would not let me liue in the town & this he did wn I looked to be made a shame & confusio to all:" (CS 395). From confusion in old England to affliction in new England. Problematical type and antitype. Everything has its use. "To tell them myself with my own mouth" (CS 352). Some of the eighty-nine blank manuscript pages separating %T% and %S% have been written on since, by various mediaries. All of these men see a higher theme to side %S%. They follow its trajectory as if side %T% were an eccentric inversion. Their additions form a third utterance of authority in the Sincere Convert's transitory division of T. from S: { life from birth: } On the second leaf (r) of side %T%, or %An Inside Narrative%, Mr. Shepard wrote down a single citation of discord. "A Roman, being asked how he lived so long-- answered--intus melle, foris oleo: / Quid loquacius vanitate, ait Augustinus." (MB %T% 1) Forbes had the discretion to stay away from translating the nonsensical Latin in his interpretation of the minister's script. "A Roman being asked how he liud so long. answered intus melle, foris oleo: quid loquacior, vanitate, ait augustinus" (CS 397). McGiffert agreed with Forbes transcription. But in Latin, "quid" and "loquacior" cannot agree with each other. This didn't stop McGiffert from offering the following: "On the inside, honey; on the outside, oil. Which babbled more of Vanity? said Augustine" (GP 77). The translation is grammatically incorrect. A more exact and enigmatic reading would be: "A Roman being asked how he lived so long--answered with honey within with oil in public:/ What is more garrulous than vanity, said Augustine." We will never know if this entry refers to John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, or the human condition. It could be a questionable interpretation of any evangelical minister's profession. It could be a self-accusation or a reference to John Cotton's preaching. It could be a note for a sermon or merely a sign that the author knows St. Augustine. In the seventeenth century the word %oil%, used as a verb, often meant "to anoint." The holy oil of religious rites. Five foolish virgins took their lamps but forgot the oil for trimming. They went to meet the bridegroom. The door was shut against them. "I say unto you I know you not." To %oil% one's tongue meant, and still means, to adopt or use flattering speech. "Error, oiled with obsequiousness, . . . has often the Advantage of Truth.--1776" (OUD). "Their throat is an open sepulcher. One may apply this verse to greed, which is often the motive behind men's deceitful flattery. . . for greed is insatiably openmouthed, unlike sepulchres which are sealed up" (AP 57). St. Augustine, %Enarrationes%. "They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy." Jonah, to the Lord. Alone on the second leaf the citation assumes its own mystery. Shepard's epigraph, if it is an epigraph to side %T%, or %An Inside Narrative%, is a dislocation and evocative contradiction in the structure of this two-sided book that may or may not be a literary work. In 1819, James Blake Howe turned the book upside down, probably to conform with the direction of the %Autobiography%, and inscribed his own name, place of residence, and the date on the same page. * * * _Mr. Prince:_ Though [Shepard's] voice was low, yet so searching was his preaching, so great a power attending, as a hypocrite could not easily bear it, & it seemed almost irresistable. (%S% side of MB) %Study in Logology% _Noah Webster:_ Oil is "an unctious substance expressed or drawn from various animal and vegetable substances. The distinctive characteristics of oil are inflammability, fluidity, and insolubility in water. Oils are fixed and greasy, fixed and essential, volatile and essential." (WD 770) _Kenneth Burke:_ Let us recall, for what it might be worth, that in his [St. Augustine's] treatise "On The Teacher" (%De Magistro%), a discussion with his son on the subject of what would now popularly be called "semantics," he holds that the word %verbum% is derived from a verb meaning "to strike": (%a verberando%)--and the notion fits in well with the lash of God's discipline. See, for instance, %Confessions% (xm vi), where he says he loves God because God had struck (%percussisti%) him with his Word. (RR 50) * * * THOMAS SHEPARD Anagram: More hath pass'd (WIII 515) Between 1637 and 1640, Thomas Shepard transcribed into another leatherbound pocket notebook, containing 190 pages, the testimonies of faith given in his church by 51 men and women who were applying for church membership. 30 pages of the little book are filled with sermon notes. He said of 1637 that God in that year alone "delivered the country from war with the Indians and Familists; who rose and fell together" (WI cxxvi). A canditate for membership in the congregation of the Church of Christ in Cambridge in New England had been carefully screened by the church elders before he or she presented a personal "confession and declaration of God's manner of working on the soul" in public. Canditates had to settle private accusations against them and present private testimonies first. Sometimes the preliminary screening process took months. After a person had been cleared by the church authorities, he or she delivered the public confession, usually during the weekday meeting. The congregation then voted by a show of hands and their decision was supposed to be unanimous. During Sunday service an applicant was finally accepted into church fellowship. The applicants, during this tumultuous time when it seemed dangerous to speak at all, especially to express spiritual enthusiasm, were from a wide social spectrum. A third of them could read or write. Almost half of them were women. The speakers included four servants, two Harvard graduates, traders, weavers, carpenters, coopers, glovers, and one sailor. Most were concerned with farming and with acquisition of property. Most applicants were in their twenties, some in their forties. Most were starting to raise families. Elizabeth Cutter and Widow Arrington were in their sixties. Each person believed that reception into church fellowship was necessary in order to gain economic and social advantage in the community. Some later became rich; some are untraceable now through geneological records. Both male servants who spoke gained financial and political freedom. Two women in Shepard's notebook were servants. Geneological trace of them has vanished with their surnames. Two applicants were widows who managed their own estates. The rest generally spent their days cleaning, sewing, marketing, cooking, farming, and giving birth to, then caring for, children. Some later died in childbirth. Mrs. Sparhawk died only a month after Shepard recorded her narrative. Some survived their husbands by many years. Thomas Hooker, who became Shepard's father-in-law in 1637, and was the previous minister of the Cambridge parish, moved to Connecticut partly because he felt the colony's admission procedures were too harsh. Hooker insisted that confessions by women should be read aloud in public by men. Governor Winthrop in his %History of New-England%, citing feminine "feebleness," and "shamefac't modesty and melanchollick fearfulness," preferred that women's "relations" remain private; a male elder should read them before a select committee. Shepard and one or two other ministers felt differently. %The Confessions of diverse propounded to be received & were entertained as members%, shows that although Shepard thought women should defer to their husbands in worldly matters, in his theology of conversion they were relatively independent. These narratives reflect this autonomy. Some are as long or longer than those spoken by men. * * * THOMAS SHEPARD Anagram: Arm'd as the shop. (WIII 515) Notes written in the minister's hand on the flyleaf of the manuscript he called "%The Confessions of diverse propounded to be received & were entertayned as members%." 1. You say some brethren cannot live comfortably with so little. 2. We put all the rest upon a temptation. Lots being but little, and estates will increase or live in beggary. For to lay land out far off is intolerable to men; nearby, you kill your cattle. 3. Because if another minister come, he will not have room for his company--Religion--. 4. Because now, if ever, is the most fit season; for the gate to be opened, many will come in among us, and fill all places, and no room in time to come at least, not such good room as now. And now you may best sell. 5. Because Mr. Vane will be among our skirts. (GP 90) * * * MATT.xviii.11. -- "%I came to save that which was lost%." (WI 111) Each confession of faith is an eccentric concentrated improvisation and arrest. Each narrator's proper name forms a chapter heading. Wives and servants are property. Their names are appropriated for masculine consistency. Goodman Luxford His Wife Brother Collins His Wife Brother Moore His Wife Brother Greene His Wife Brother Parish's Wife Brother Crackbone His Wife The Confession of John Sill His Wife John Stedman His Wife's Confession Brother Jackson's Maid Written representation of the Spirit is sometimes ineffectual; words only images or symbols of the clear sunshine of the Gospel. "Go to a painted sun, it gives you no heat, nor cherishith you not. So it is here, etc." Often the minister surrounds a name with ink-scrawls and flourishes. Flights or freezes. Proof and chaos. Immanent sorrow of one, incomplete victory of another. %Use%, oh my unbelief. Confessions are copied down quickly. Translinguistic idiosyncracies infer but block consistency. A sound block will not be led. Mistaken biblical quotations are transcribed and abandoned. As the sound is the sense is. Few revisions civilize verbal or visual hazards and webs of unsettled sanctification. The minister's nearly microscopic handwriting is difficult to decipher. He uses a form of shorthand in places. A wild heart at the word shatters scriptural figuration. Once again by correcting, deleting, translating, or interpreting the odd symbols and abbreviated signals, later well-meaning editors have effaced the disorderly velocity of Mr. Shepard's evangelical enthusiasm. For readability. * * * Matt In this setdown the ques tion of C's desiples why they asks him not men ought sometimes to askes questions pacificaly when they hear the word upon sum occasion (written in another hand in%T% side of MB) Writing speed of thought moving through dominated darkness (the privation) toward an irresistible confine possibly becoming woman. %The Soul's Immediate Closing with the Person% (WII 111) _Barbary Cutter:_ The Lord let me see my condition by nature out of 16 of Ezekiel and by seeing the holiness of the carriage of others about, her friends, and the more she looked on them the more she thought ill of herself. She embraced the motion to New England. Though she went through with many miseries and stumbling blocks at last removed and sad passages by sea. And after I came hither I saw my condition more miserable than ever. (C 89) A Narrator-Scribe-Listener-Confessor-Interpreter-Judge- Reporter-Author quickly changes person, character, country, and gender. Walk darkly here, This is to cross Scripture. These words are questions. Compel them to come in when Jonah is cast out of sight. He singles them out. His spirit goes home to them quiet as an ark above waters; rest and provender being desire to lay under Lord. Praying for him and hearing. Words drift together. Washed from her heart. Many foolish pray from the mouth. Some are condemned. Blossoms fly up as dust. He will not leave. Death can not. "In favor is life." This outline is extracted. Now you will have him. She calls him so. Some are asleep. Ten virgins trim their lamps. My house is a waste. To doctrine to reason cry peace peace. This is that which fills a man. For this long ago Corinthians, Philippians, Thessalonians: motives differ. We are his people we stumble. What a wandering path confinement is when angels had not fallen. Pale clarity of day. Why no heart. Iniquities are not all I might "Five were wise and five were foolish." These virgins once the doors were shut were surely kept out. Glimpses. Explication. What is acceptable? Toother. Miswritten he thoght. He thought. Other redundancies. Reduced to lower case these words are past. To the supposed sepulcher. Purest virgin churches and professors, they took their lamps. What can we do? Prevail again? Against what do we watch? Fiery law and tabernacles I beat the air. Therefore as her and distancing. * * * "%Went forth to meet the Bridegroom%." (WII 111) _Old Goodwife Cutter:_ I desired to come this way in sickness time and Lord brought us through many sad troubles by sea And when I was here the Lord rejoiced my heart. But when come I had lost all and no comfort and hearing from foolish virgins those that sprinkled with Christ's blood were unloved. (C 145) _John Sill His Wife:_ Oft troubled since she came hither, her heart went after the world and vanities and the Lord absented Himself from her so that she thought God had brought her hither on purpose to discover her. (C 51) _Goodwife Willows:_ And when husband gone, I thought all I had was but a form and I went to Mr. Morton and desired he would tell me how it was with me. He told me if I hated that form it was a sign I had more than a form. (C 150) _Brother Winship's Wife:_ Hearing 2 Jeremiah 14 -- two evils broken cisterns -- I was often convinced by Mr. Hooker my condition was miserable and took all threatenings to myself. . . And I heard He that had smitten He could heal Hosea 6. Hearing -- say to them that be fearful in heart, behold He comes - Mr. Wells - pull off thy soles off thy feet for ground is holy. And hearing Exodus 34, forgiving iniquity, I thought Lord could will was He willing. . . Hearing whether ready for Christ at His appearing had fears, city of refuge. . . Hearing - oppressed undertake for me - eased. (C 147-9) _Hannah Brewer:_ And I heard that promise proclaimed - Lord, Lord merciful and gracious etc.- but could apply nothing. (C 141) _Brother Winship's Wife:_ Hearing of Thomas' unbelief, he showed trust in Lord forever for there is everlasting strength and stayed. (C 149) _Goodwife Usher:_ And I heard -- come to me you that be weary -- and Lord turn me and I shall be turned - and so when I desired to come hither and found a discontented heart and mother dead and my heart overwhelmed. And I heard of a promise -- fear not I'll be with thee. And in this town I could not understand anything was said, I was so blind, and heart estranged from people of people. (C 183) _Mrs. Sparhawk:_ And then that place fury is not in me, let Him take hold of my strength. . . . And she there was but two ways either to stand out or to take hold, and saw the promise and her own insufficiency so to do. and mentioning a Scripture, was asked whether she had assurance. She said no but some hope. (C 68-9) _John Stedman His Wife:_ Hearing Mr. Cotton out of Revelation -- Christ with a rainbow on his head, Revelation 10-- I thought there was nothing for me. I thought I was like the poor man at the pool. (C 105) _Goodwife Grizzell:_ Hearing Mr. Davenport on sea -- he that hardened himself against the Lord could not prosper -- and I thought I had done so. But then he showed it was continuing in it and I considered though I had a principle against faith yet a kingdom divided cannot stand. (C 188-9) _Widow Arrington:_ And in latter end that sermon there was obedience of sons and servants then I thought--would I know? And I thought Lord gave me a willing heart, etc. And they that have sons can cry--Abba--Father, and so have some stay and I wished I had a place in wilderness to mourn. (C 185-6) _Brother Jackson's Maid:_ When Christ was to depart nothing broke their heart so much as then. (C 121) * * * %Walking alone in the fields% These first North American Inside Narratives cross the wide current of Scripture. I meet them in the fields. They show me what rigor. I dare not pity. When she went to meet the Bridegroom it was too early. Then there is nothing to believe. Scholars of the world, then there is no authority at all. The iron face of filial systems. The colonies of America break out. Consider the parable of these wise and foolish virgins. They went to work to trim their lamps. What did the foolish say to the wise? That there is no difference? What a crossing. All their thoughts and searching. Is that what love is? Bewildered by history did they see iniquity? Did they spend whole days and nights trimming? When was the filth wiped off? People of His pasture, does this give peace? Sheep of His hand, is this the temptation of the place? Mountains are interrupted by mountains. Planets are not fixed. They run together. Planets are globes of fire. Imagination is a lense. Pastness. We find by experience. A sentence tumbles into thought. A disturbance calls itself free. ------------------------------------------------------------ NOTES for _Incloser_: Patricia Caldwell's study is concerned with how and when English voices begin to speak New-Englandly. _The Puritan Conversion Narrative_ demonstrates how careful examination and interpretation of individual physical artifacts from a time and place can change our basic assumptions about the New England pattern and its influence on American literary expression. This essay is profoundly indebted to her work. I have followed each quoted source in spelling and punctuation. In the books I used as sources, revisions, deletions, and spelling differences, have been modernized, and then again "modernized"; I have tried to preserve those changes as part of the form and content of my essay. Someday I hope there will be facsimile versions of the "Confessions," the "Journal," and the "Autobiography," with facing transcriptions in typeface. I have taken editorial liberties in places. It was my editorial decision to turn some sections of the narratives into poems. ------------------------------------------------------------ Key for _Incloser_ AC = _The Antinomian Controversy_: Patricia Caldwell. AH = Anne Hutchinson. C = Thomas Shepard's _Confessions_. CS = The Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Thomas Shepard's T. {_My Birth and Life_:} S: GP = _God's Plot_: Thomas Shepard. L = _The Letters of Emily Dickinson_. M = _Magnalia Christi Americana_: Cotton Mather. MB = _Manuscript Book_: Thomas Shepard's _Autobiography_. MBED = _Emily Dickinson's Manuscript Books_. ML = _The Master Letters of Emily Dickinson_. OUD = _The Oxford Universal Dictionary_. RR = _The Rhetoric of Religion_: Kenneth Burke. VS = _Visible Saints_: Geoffrey Nuttal. W = _The Works of Thomas Shepard_. WD = _An American Dictionary of the English Language_: Noah Webster. ASCII text cannot reproduce certain marks used in this work. We have used a @ to represent mirror-imaged (backward) question marks. We have used o- to represent an o with a bar over it. --PMC Eds. ------------------------------------------------------------ Works Cited Burke, Kenneth. _A Grammar of Motives_. New York: George Braziller, 1955. ---. _The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology_. Boston: Beacon P, 1961. Caldwell, Patricia. _The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of American Expression_. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Dickinson, Emily. _The Letters of Emily Dickinson_. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958. ---. _The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson_. Ed. Ralph Franklin. Harvard UP, 1981. Girard, Rene. _The Scapegoat_. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. Hall, David D., ed. _The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638; A Documentary History_. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 1968. Heimert, Alan. "Puritanism, the Wilderness and the Frontier." _New England Quarterly_ (Sep. 1953): 361-82. Jakobson, Roman. _Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time_. Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985. Johnson, Edward. _Wonder-Working Providence of Sion Saviour in New England_. Ed. J. Franklin Jameson. (1912) 1969. Macherey, Pierre. _A Theory of Literary Production_. Trans. Geoffrey Wall. London: Routledge, 1978. Mather, Cotton. _Magnalia Christi Americana or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England_. (London, 1702) Hartford, 1820. Melville, Herman. _Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)_. Ed. Harrison Hayford and Merton Sealts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1962. Nuttal, Geoffrey F. _Visible Saints: The Congregational Way, 1640-1669_. Oxford: Blackwell, 1957. _The Oxford Universal Dictionary_. London: Amen House, 1933. Shepard, Thomas. "Autobiography." Ed. Allyn Bailey Forbes. The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXVII. Boston: Transactions, 1927-1930. ---. _God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety, Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard_. Ed. Michael McGiffert. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1972. ---. _Manuscript Book_. Unpublished ms. The Houghton Libray, Harvard U, Cambridge. ---. _The Works of Thomas Shepard_. Ed. John A. Albro. 3 vols. 1853. New York: AMS, 1967. ---. _Thomas Shepard's "Confessions." Ed. George Selement and Bruce C. Woolley. Collections of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 58. Boston: The Society, 1981. Stein, Gertrude. "Patriarchal Poetry." _The Yale Gertrude Stein_. Ed. Richard Kostelanetz. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980. Webster, Noah, ed. _An American Dictionary of the English Language_.