I heard the hymn "Love Divine All Love's Excelling" the other day and, once again, the genius of the line in the final verse struck me: "Changed from glory into glory. . . ."
The meaning of this repetition is neither readily apparent nor easily understood, yet it makes immediate impact. Why?
I have thought about this on and off for a number of years and the best reasons I can come up with are:
1. It's unexpected
2. It presents us with a mystery
And that's the point. The line is alluding to something we cannot begin to comprehend. The glories we can imagine in our human forms do not come close to those we will experience on admission to Heaven. It will be a transfiguration that is total, and unknowable to us as mortals.
This interpretation fits with the concept of a Divine love that excels all others.
I suspect the individual words themselves had more power in the days before hyperbole was literally overused. [That's an example of irony, for those who missed it.]
A similar repetition to "changed from glory into glory" is in Christina Rossetti's moving - if slightly sentimental - "In the Deep Midwinter."
Rossetti writes: "Snow was falling snow on snow" which even to a child is stating the bleeding obvious, but it is not obvious in our articulation of snowfall (externally or internally). We do not think when we watch the snow falling that it is falling on snow. To us, it's falling on something else: rocks, trees, the road, the ground. So while stating the obvious, she is stating it in a way that is actually not obvious.
She then goes on by repeating the line: "Snow is falling, snow on snow, snow on snow" which is genius.
The layering of snow is, again, not a concept that comes readily to mind. It is not in our language or logic of looking at things, but an original and perceptive way of looking at a commonplace physical reality.
The final example of repetition that comes to mind is the last line in Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
The legend is that Frost got to the penultimate line and couldn't think what to do next and put the poem in a drawer with other unfinished poems or works in progress. Years later, he came across the poem, read it, and knew what the final lines should be:
"And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
This conclusion is satisfying in every way, and quite possibly makes the whole poem more memorable and noteworthy than it might have otherwise been.
Frost's problem arose from breaking his rhyme scheme, which up until the final verse was AABA, BBCB, CCDC. In the final verse, he wrote DDD and got stuck, perhaps not realising why. Fortunately for us an literary history, he was able to resolve the problem.
Everyone knows that repetition makes things memorable (like multiplication tables), but in the hands of a master, it can demonstrate new ways of thinking about this world and the next.
The meaning of this repetition is neither readily apparent nor easily understood, yet it makes immediate impact. Why?
I have thought about this on and off for a number of years and the best reasons I can come up with are:
1. It's unexpected
2. It presents us with a mystery
And that's the point. The line is alluding to something we cannot begin to comprehend. The glories we can imagine in our human forms do not come close to those we will experience on admission to Heaven. It will be a transfiguration that is total, and unknowable to us as mortals.
This interpretation fits with the concept of a Divine love that excels all others.
I suspect the individual words themselves had more power in the days before hyperbole was literally overused. [That's an example of irony, for those who missed it.]
A similar repetition to "changed from glory into glory" is in Christina Rossetti's moving - if slightly sentimental - "In the Deep Midwinter."
Rossetti writes: "Snow was falling snow on snow" which even to a child is stating the bleeding obvious, but it is not obvious in our articulation of snowfall (externally or internally). We do not think when we watch the snow falling that it is falling on snow. To us, it's falling on something else: rocks, trees, the road, the ground. So while stating the obvious, she is stating it in a way that is actually not obvious.
She then goes on by repeating the line: "Snow is falling, snow on snow, snow on snow" which is genius.
The layering of snow is, again, not a concept that comes readily to mind. It is not in our language or logic of looking at things, but an original and perceptive way of looking at a commonplace physical reality.
The final example of repetition that comes to mind is the last line in Robert Frost's poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
The legend is that Frost got to the penultimate line and couldn't think what to do next and put the poem in a drawer with other unfinished poems or works in progress. Years later, he came across the poem, read it, and knew what the final lines should be:
"And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
This conclusion is satisfying in every way, and quite possibly makes the whole poem more memorable and noteworthy than it might have otherwise been.
Frost's problem arose from breaking his rhyme scheme, which up until the final verse was AABA, BBCB, CCDC. In the final verse, he wrote DDD and got stuck, perhaps not realising why. Fortunately for us an literary history, he was able to resolve the problem.
Everyone knows that repetition makes things memorable (like multiplication tables), but in the hands of a master, it can demonstrate new ways of thinking about this world and the next.
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