How Doctor Who brings to light one of Andrew Marvell’s most touching moments...
There is little more pleasing than the perfect image. There is also real gratification in constructing an image. Over recent months, however, I have come to understand the terrible beauty and power that comes with an image that is broken.
I have long been interested in writing and the visual. Even before late undergraduate days and memorable ekphrasis courses, colours, shapes and fractals were all important in how I framed my writing. It was a real treat to consider this connection on radio not so long ago when a number of consecutive poems that were being discussed happened to centre on and around this topic.
Imaging Cromwell
Despite offering us ‘The Gallery’ and various Advice to a Painter poems, ekphrasis becomes more of a consistent theme for Andrew Marvell in the 1650s when a surprisingly large proportion of his occasional verse of that period finds itself based on art and images. Two poems, for example, that have gone relatively unnoticed (not unlike a lot of his Latin verse, it must be said), are those that accompany an unusual portrait of Cromwell to Queen Christina of Sweden in 1654.
In a nutshell, this matters because the portrait shows a different Cromwell to the standard depiction of the dominant military hero, while the poems, in turn, show an adjustment from Marvell’s precariously double-edged presentation of Cromwell in the Horatian Ode of 1650. With Marvell having spent the majority of time between these poetic statements in the quiet confines of Nun Appleton, he seems particularly concerned now about how otium (leisure) and negotium (action) are employed by both a leader and his subjects.
This is not the coup de grâce, however. Marvell’s elegy to Cromwell was withdrawn from publication at a very late stage. The reason(s) why is not obvious, but the degree of private intimacy shown in the poem must surely play a large part. In the elegy, Marvell uses the power of the fractured image in a most striking and devastating way.
Reaching Out
It came to our screens last week in a similar and memorable fashion. The third episode of Doctor Who, ‘The Curse of the Black Spot’, saw reflection being used as a gateway. The crew of a pirate ship believe themselves to be cursed by the emergence of a ‘siren’ that preys upon the wounded. Once the Doctor discovers that she emerges from reflective surfaces, he leads the effort to rid or destroy everything that could admit her. Not only glass, but also polished metal. The character of greatest concern becomes the stricken young boy, Toby. Upon that moment of discovery about reflection, the Doctor rushes to seize Toby’s pendant and mists it up to break the connection.
This has such a fabulous precursor in Marvell’s elegy, although with a much sadder outcome. Marvell focuses initially not on Oliver Cromwell’s death, but that of his daughter, Elizabeth Claypole. Cromwell is shown to imbue all the greatest qualities of a ruler, not through his public duty this time but by his assiduous care to his family at the time of need.
At his stricken daughter’s side, he smothers her close in his arms as her final breath leaves a stain on his armour; it both breaks the reflection, and ends her life.
It’s an old adage that no parent should ever have to bury their child. Cromwell never recovered from her passing. One might say that he willed himself to his death thereafter, or that he died of a broken heart. The stain on the armour becomes like the throe of infection, spreading from daughter to father. Hence, the breaking of that reflection not only shatters the bond between father and daughter, but also drains away the life of the once indefatigable Cromwell, foreseeing the end of the ruling dynasty to which Marvell had finally, after considerable difficulty, ingratiated himself.
Iconoclasm is a remarkably powerful device. It draws us to envisage the grand: the smashing of great mirrors, or the hauling down of iconic statues. Certainly, it is used to vivid and striking effect across early modern literature [as spoken about at the colloquium], and especially in drama where an audience has an agency with the desecrated icon. But Marvell employs it with such remarkable delicacy and subtlety in the most private of surroundings that the eventual impact is made so unmistakably and unforgettably poignant as a result.
The perfect image, perhaps: someone at peace.
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