Yet another really interesting episode. As a birder and "naturalist" I have to say that birds of paradise were misunderstood in Herbert's time as birds that flew continually their whole lives, living on "sky dew and sun rays," not coming down to earth until they died. The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace wrote that spice traders who reached the Moluccas were presented with these birds, which the local's referred to as God's birds. See https://fashioningfeathers.info/birds-of-paradise/ So, for Herbert's contemporaries at least there may be some kind of connection between the line about the land of spices and the bird of paradise. And of course Galileo gave people a new idea about the milky way when he turned his telescope to it and saw the whiteness was actually "innumerable stars," which might relate to "something understood"--but I don't know when this poem was written.
This discussion was very interesting as I had read the poem several times before listening to the podcast and had a much simpler understanding of it. To me the sonnet was the full story of Christianity as I learned in the Catholic Church when I was still a child. God created man, man created Christ and the well-dressed wisemen came from the spice worlds to view the humbly dressed Virgin Mary and Joseph and the baby Christ at the manger!! You and professor Guy-Bray saw much more into it. He pointed out the difference between prayer in Protestantism, which is spoken in an individual free-form sort of way, and prayer in Catholicism, and other religions, which is spoken in a set form in unison or individually. I had not thought of that before. The last words “something understood” is what believers feel. It is a mystery. As a practitioner of Catholicism for a few years, I became an agnostic in later years. Today I am a non-believer. I think “something understood” applies to those who believe in the stories. My understanding of the sonnet is not academic but I wanted to share it anyway.
Yet another really interesting episode. As a birder and "naturalist" I have to say that birds of paradise were misunderstood in Herbert's time as birds that flew continually their whole lives, living on "sky dew and sun rays," not coming down to earth until they died. The naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace wrote that spice traders who reached the Moluccas were presented with these birds, which the local's referred to as God's birds. See https://fashioningfeathers.info/birds-of-paradise/ So, for Herbert's contemporaries at least there may be some kind of connection between the line about the land of spices and the bird of paradise. And of course Galileo gave people a new idea about the milky way when he turned his telescope to it and saw the whiteness was actually "innumerable stars," which might relate to "something understood"--but I don't know when this poem was written.
This discussion was very interesting as I had read the poem several times before listening to the podcast and had a much simpler understanding of it. To me the sonnet was the full story of Christianity as I learned in the Catholic Church when I was still a child. God created man, man created Christ and the well-dressed wisemen came from the spice worlds to view the humbly dressed Virgin Mary and Joseph and the baby Christ at the manger!! You and professor Guy-Bray saw much more into it. He pointed out the difference between prayer in Protestantism, which is spoken in an individual free-form sort of way, and prayer in Catholicism, and other religions, which is spoken in a set form in unison or individually. I had not thought of that before. The last words “something understood” is what believers feel. It is a mystery. As a practitioner of Catholicism for a few years, I became an agnostic in later years. Today I am a non-believer. I think “something understood” applies to those who believe in the stories. My understanding of the sonnet is not academic but I wanted to share it anyway.