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By ALEX ZDAN
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Jones Very, who graduated second in his class at Harvard, was a literary polymath: a Shakespeare scholar, a tutor in Greek, a divinity student of intellectual promise. Yet he was also insane.
If the Transcendentalists produced no great poets, they did produce an oddity in Jones Very (1813–1880). To write about him is almost inevitably, and not without reason, to couple his already striking name with such words as “madman.” Very, who graduated second in his undergraduate class at Harvard, was undeniably a literary polymath: a Shakespeare scholar, a lecturer on epic poetry, a tutor in Greek, a divinity student of intellectual promise. Yet he was also insane. His Harvard career ended in his temporary confinement in a mental asylum, for declaring, and apparently believing in all sincerity, that he was the Second Coming of Christ.
Though he was released on the grounds that he posed no threat to anybody, and subsequently took refuge in the Transcendentalist circle in Concord, Massachusetts, Very was never more than an uncomfortable lurker on the fringes of that community. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) had heard Very lecture prior to this breakdown and took an ongoing interest in him. But even Emerson, though he called Very his “brave saint,” found the man’s behavior off-putting. A late-1830s diary entry reads, “J. Very charmed us all by telling us he hated us all.” Nevertheless, Emerson arranged for the publication of a collected “Essays and Poems,” which appeared in 1839.
Those poems, like today’s Poem of the Day, bear the mark of Very’s Shakespeare scholarship. The Shakespearean sonnet was his single form. Though many of Very’s poems concern themselves with relatively conventional religious subjects, “The Clouded Morning” suggests a Veryesque distortion of a Transcendentalist theme. In his famous treatise, “Nature,” Emerson asserted that the delights of the natural world originated not in nature itself, as a wholly objective reality, but in the man beholding it. “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,” he wrote. Unsurprisingly, in Very’s poem, nature wears not delight, but perpetual mourning. The darkness of the day seems to emanate from the speaker’s own mind, obscuring any gleam of natural light.
The Clouded Morning
by Jones Very
By ALEX ZDAN
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By MATTHEW RICE
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By GEORGE WILLIS
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By DANIEL McCARTHY
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By A.R. HOFFMAN
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By JENNIFER DOHERTY
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By THE NEW YORK SUN
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By MATTHEW RICE
|If the Transcendentalists produced no great poets, they did produce an oddity in Jones Very (1813–1880). To write about him is almost inevitably, and not without reason, to couple his already striking name with such words as “madman.” Very, who graduated second in his undergraduate class at Harvard, was undeniably a literary polymath: a Shakespeare scholar, a lecturer on epic poetry, a tutor in Greek, a divinity student of intellectual promise. Yet he was also insane. His Harvard career ended in his temporary confinement in a mental asylum, for declaring, and apparently believing in all sincerity, that he was the Second Coming of Christ.
Though he was released on the grounds that he posed no threat to anybody, and subsequently took refuge in the Transcendentalist circle in Concord, Massachusetts, Very was never more than an uncomfortable lurker on the fringes of that community. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) had heard Very lecture prior to this breakdown and took an ongoing interest in him. But even Emerson, though he called Very his “brave saint,” found the man’s behavior off-putting. A late-1830s diary entry reads, “J. Very charmed us all by telling us he hated us all.” Nevertheless, Emerson arranged for the publication of a collected “Essays and Poems,” which appeared in 1839.
Those poems, like today’s Poem of the Day, bear the mark of Very’s Shakespeare scholarship. The Shakespearean sonnet was his single form. Though many of Very’s poems concern themselves with relatively conventional religious subjects, “The Clouded Morning” suggests a Veryesque distortion of a Transcendentalist theme. In his famous treatise, “Nature,” Emerson asserted that the delights of the natural world originated not in nature itself, as a wholly objective reality, but in the man beholding it. “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit,” he wrote. Unsurprisingly, in Very’s poem, nature wears not delight, but perpetual mourning. The darkness of the day seems to emanate from the speaker’s own mind, obscuring any gleam of natural light.
The Clouded Morning
by Jones Very
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