The Harvest of Mysticism in English Renaissance Literature: Ascesis in Spenser and Shakespeare— “silencing the tumult of the flesh”

Summary

AFTER reading much complex, often contradictory commentary on “ascesis,” I am full of uncertainty about this vast, awkward, mostly uncontrollable psychic function that gives so much aid to mystics. We recall young Augustine's struggle as he sat waiting for his mother Monica to die, knowing her great wish, that he would turn from the world's carnal pleasures and commit himself to God's spiritual kingdom, as in this climactic scene near the end of his Confessions:

Suppose that to any man the tumult of the flesh were silenced— silenced the phantasies of earth, water, and air […]—yea, the very soul silenced to herself, and gone beyond herself in utter forgetfulness; silenced [all fancies and deluding visions, all symbols and transient ideas. Why should they not be silenced,] since, if any could hearken, they all say, “We created not ourselves, but were created by Him Who abides forever?” Suppose then that they should now be silenced, having by these words quickened our ears towards Him Who made them; and that thereafter He should speak, not by them but by Himself alone, and we should hear Him (Whom in these we love), not by fleshly tongue nor by angelic voice, nor sound of thunder, nor the obscurity of symbols, but without any of these” (as we two now strained ourselves and with rapid thought touched on that eternal Wisdom which remains over all). “Why then,” we cried, “if all this could be sustained, and all other visions of far lower kinds be withheld, while this one ravished and absorbed and enveloped its beholder amid these inward joys, so that one's whole life might be as that one moment of knowledge for which we sighed—would not this be, ‘Enter thou into the joy of the Lord’? When shall it be?” we cried—“When we all rise again, perchance? […]”

Then spoke my mother:—“Son, for myself I have no further pleasure in this present life. […] One thing, indeed, I asked that I might tarry for—to see you a confirmed Christian before I died. God has granted me this, and far more beside; I see you despising all earthly happiness, —become His bondservant at last. What then do I here?”