But more than this, Barfield shows us writing as discovery and a mode of healing because, if honest, it reveals to us the truth about our fragmented selves and illuminates possible paths of action.
Shirley Sugerman, in Sin and Madness, comments that “our ‘strategies for survival’ seem paradoxically to be leading us deeper into division and closer to self-destruction” (11). Accordingly, she asks, “Why have our apparently ‘good intentions’ generated the opposite results?” (11). Barfield claims that one “way of dealing with irreconcilable opposition consists in placing the two opposites side by side, treating them as contradictories and contemplating the result with ironic detachment” (“Either: Or” 35). This is the Modernist way, and by it neither the fanciful idealist nor the empirical materialist will find true wholeness.
Returning to “La Dame a Licorne,” we see that the image of the Virgin and the Unicorn, though not necessarily religious, does have religious connotations. When Barfield was “asked if it were an annunciation poem, he responded that no poem about spiritualized love can be separated from annunciation” (Hunter 177). It is this recognition of the spiritual component that allows Barfield’s poem, and this novel, to portray the dynamic power of imagination to change reality. The Virgin’s willing obedience in love allows for the unimaginable to happen: God takes on human form and arrives to affect the redemption of his people. For the poet also, “imagination’s Earth” is prepared for fruition through loving, selfless obedience.
Barfield says that “in order to grasp the nature of polarity we are called on not to think about imagination but to use it” (“Either: Or” 29). It isn’t enough to be able to identify polarity, nor is it particularly useful to compare polarities. Barfield reminds us that “polarity is dynamic, not abstract where logical opposites are merely contradictory, polar opposites are generative of each other-and together generative of new product” (“Either: Or” 28). Burgeon tells us that he brought Burden into existence, and we’ve seen the mental havoc Burden has created in Burgeon. The Pair isn’t made up of Burgeon, the true Barfield, and Burden, the false or alien Barfield. They are-and remain-the ever-diverse pair. Barfield seems to have achieved his goal of reestablishing equilibrium; Burgeon returns to the solicitor’s office obediently, while Burden, no longer living up to his name, must be rehabilitated by being made “to hew the wood of simplicity and draw the water of imagination” (144). And, in fact, by the end of the novel, Burden has disappeared, and Burgeon is wholly free to live his life guided by a holy imagination.
Barfield speaks of “truth revealing itself either from without or from within or in both ways,” and he notes that “the source of that revelation may be, indeed must be, noumenal, that is, spiritual, whether or not it comes through a phenomenal medium” (“Concept” 123). In This Ever Diverse Pair, the truth is revealed through a dream in which Justice presides and takes root in the heart, for both Burden and Burgeon respond in willing obedience. Sugerman says that Barfield is concerned “to eliminate our subconscious foundation of materialism, and in order “to break the habit we must think with deliberation. The imagination required to break down the prison walls requires an act of will”; if we do this “we may experience self discovery” (“Barspecs” 80). And we may participate in the birthing of our selves in a new incarnation of imagination burgeoning forth in wholeness. We see an image of such a willing response in Barfield’s poem, “The Milkmaid and the Unicorn.” A milkmaid is tending to her cows when a unicorn gallops up and whinnies, “What about Philosophy?” The girl’s response is immediate: “She’s kilted her skirts for the flounder through bewilderment-She’s off to the place where unicorns grow!” (Hunter 49). Barfield, in his poems and fiction, calls us toward a way of life that values myth and imagination. This is not a negation of Reason, but the call for a holistic approach that honestly accesses, humbly hears, and whole-heartedly acts when imagination calls-in any facet of our lives. It’s up to us to give chase.
Works Cited
Barfield, Owen. “The Concept of Revelation.” Seven 1 (1980): 117-125.
__________. “Dope.” The Criterion 1 (July 1923): 322-8. Reprinted in A Barfield
Sampler. Ed. Jeanne Clayton Hunter and Thomas Kranidas. Albany: State U of
New York P, 1993.
__________. Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan U P,
1973.
__________. This Ever Diverse Pair. London: Gollancz, 1950 (appearing under the
pseudonym, G.A.L. Burgeon). The novel was republished in Edinburgh,
Scotland, by Floris Classics in 1985 under Owen Barfield’s real name.
__________. What Coleridge Thought. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan U P, 1971.
Hunter, Jeanne Clayton, and Thomas Kranidas. A Barfield Sampler: Poetry and
Fiction by Owen Barfield. Albany: State U of New York P, 1993.
Kranidas, Thomas. “The Defiant Lyricism of Owen Barfield.” Seven 6 (1985): 23-33.
Sugerman, Shirley. “‘BARSPECS’: Owen Barfield’s Vision.” Seven 11 (1994): 73-85.
____________. Sin and Madness: Studies in Narcissism. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.
Ulreich, John C., Jr. Orpheus: A Poetic Drama by Owen Barfield. West Stockbridge,
MA: Lindisfarne, 1983.
Works Consulted
Lavery, David. The Owen Barfield World Wide Website. 2003. 7/17/2005
<http://www.owenbarfield.com>
A wonderful repository of Barfield information.