‘Simples are by Compounds Farre Exceld’: Southwell’s Longer Latin Poems and ‘St Peters Complaint’

Extract

It is understandable that study of Southwell’s life should have had priority over the study of his poetry. This biographical bias is evident in the gaps and weaknesses of existing accounts of his poetry: shortcomings which, I would argue, are regrettable because his poetry could provide a better commentary on his life than the conventional assumptions of hagiography. His Latin poetry, which forms a substantial portion of his poetic output, has been overlooked both in Leicester Bradner’s history of Anglo-Latin poetry, and the more recent upsurge in Neo-Latin studies. A different kind of ignorance surrounds his English poetry. In his poetic masterpiece, ‘Saint Peters Complaint’, Southwell describes Christ’s glance as ‘In cyphred words, his misteries disclosing’. (The words are cyphered because they are zeroes, circles projected from Christ’s eyes. They are also cyphered in being encoded in an image.) The description may be aptly applied to the poem which also consists of ‘cyphered words’. The poem’s code is not difficult to penetrate, but nevertheless this essay represents the first attempt to give an account of the ‘high mysteries’ that it at once conceals and discloses; that is, to elucidate the cryptic aspect of the poem. This gap in the secondary literature exemplifies a more general charge that can be levelled against writers on Southwell: that they have tended to deprecate the mannerism or artifice of his work as somehow detracting from his sanctity, Typically, they present it as an external trapping or disguise which must be discarded in order to reveal the true, natural Southwell. I would maintain, however, that artifice is central to Southwell’s poetry, his conception of religion, and his life.