Stevie Smith And Christianity Essay Research Paper

Stevie Smith And Christianity Essay, Research Paper

Discovering the essence of Christianity is too varied and diverse a topic for anyone to pin to solely one definition. How one approaches the topic of Christianity is often in accordance to their personal foundations of religious belief. Sometimes these beliefs are deeply seeded during childhood so, as children mature into adults, they seldom doubt that which has been taught to them for so many years. English poet, Florence Margaret Smith, was not one of these individuals. Smith, more popularly known by her nickname .Stevie., was raised in and around the Catholic religion and Christian tradition for many years but still grappled with many issues surrounding the Christian church and the heralded deity they called Lord. Stevie Smith wrote theologically inspired poetry because she was an existentialist who was attempting to understand the Christian environment while Christianity had shifted from the existentialist.s point of view.

To be an ontological existentialist, one must .participate in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one.s existence., according to Paul Tillich, German philosopher, theologian, and author of Courage to Be (124). Operating within this definition, Smith would be obligated to interact within the infrastructure of Christianity. She would have to attend church on Sunday mornings, visit with elderly women at socials after the service, and passionately immerse herself in at least one Bible study course offered within the .House of the Lord., for a significant amount of time. However, Tillich does not just state one must become physically involved in any given situation to be marked as an existentialist, but become involved .with the whole of one.s existence. in a .cognitive situation.. Smith is required at this point to completely surround herself, physically and mentally with the Christian tradition and all it represents to her and for others.

Historically, Smith was quite involved both cognitively and physically with the Christian realm of the world from her baptism as an infant straight through to her funeral in the Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity. She did not appear to have scurried away from the Christian world and theologies that surrounded this religion.s persona. Smith was aware of the presence of the Christian tradition and even the existence of a holy omnipotent somewhere beyond where mortal eyes can see. She had knowledge of that presence. Tillich stated, .An existential knowledge is a knowledge in which these elements, and therefore the whole existence of him who knows, participate. (124). Smith had knowledge of her surroundings within a Christian society and was gaining courage to be as herself within that environment.

She was unsure, however, of where she fit into a courageous role of being staunchly independent and openly proud to be who she was. For at the same time she had discovered existential knowledge was a key to understanding if she could only get involved within its structure. Soon she would learn a disheartening truth. .In all existential knowledge, both subject and object are transformed by the very act of knowing. (124). She discovered the one truth she could always rely on. This was that by looking for the truth, one always inadvertently changes it. By searching for answers within the infrastructure, the product only dampened her spirits.

Thus she began grappling within her poetry regarding the idea that we .are able to transcend, in knowledge and life, the finitude, estrangement, and the ambiguities of human existence. (125). She focused many of her poetic topics towards the acceptance of Death toward her position in life. .Come Death. and .Tender Only to One. are both vivid examples of how Smith seemed to dislike life and taunt Death to arrive at her doorstep and take her away from this world and the confusing Christian Lord.

She lyrically proclaims in .Come Death., a poem within the New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith, .Ah me, sweet Death, you are the only god / Who comes as a servant when he is called, you know / Listen then to this sound I make, it is sharp, / Come Death. Do not be slow. (Smith 146). Smith is begging the haste of Death to her bedside in an attempt to overcome the mortal restraints Christians suffer when trying to understand who God is. By inviting Death, she solely took comfort in the one constant everyone on Earth will agree upon, which is the fact dying is the one thing every human has in common. As opposed to putting her faith in a debated theory, Smith turned to the reliability of the Reaper. However, Smith could never completely turn a deaf ear to the subject of God and His affect on her life.

A longtime personal friend of Smith.s, Reverend Gerald Irvine, declared, .One could say she did not like the God of Christian orthodoxy, but she could not disregard Him or ever quite bring herself to disbelieve in Him. (MacGibbon 9). In that manner of thinking, Smith was not on a congruent page as the Lord of Christian orthodoxy, but seemingly she was congruent at some point in her younger life. Thus it is fairly obvious either Smith or the Church altered their paths so as to become non-congruent.

Stevie Smith appears to have attempted to separate but became ensnared in a web of faith, God, and Christianity. In an attempt to disentangle these three titles, she became a confuse