Bios in Clare’s Animal and Love Poetry
In “The Mouse’s Nest,” the English poet John Clare finds a mouse nursing, a scene of visceral and bodily recognition and understanding of creaturely cohabitation and coexistence. The mouse is described as being “With all her young ones hanging at her teats / She looked so odd and so grotesque to me” (lines 6–7). This account most immediately highlights the necessity that the young mouselings have on their mother’s body. The literal attachment to their mother and the close grouping of the baby mice together allows for the importance of the pack to come to the fore. This is further elucidated by considering that the speaker searched for a solitary “bird” (4) before encountering the nest of mice. In their search for the singular bird, the speaker “proged” [poked] (2) the habitation of the mice and, after their surprise, “pushed” (9) away the bushes that the speaker made their vantage point for discovery. In this, skepticism emerges about the means an individual takes in order to complete the ends of their desires. Whereas the mice, in their collective crew, are said to have “found [their] nest again” (12) after the speaker’s intervention, the speaker is left without having found any sort of home, with only observations about the incessant and constant forward motion of nature closing the poem. The position of the observation of the murine clan rediscovering their home at the volta of this sonnet reveals the unexpectedness of this collective in locating their home at the expense of the speaker. The persistence of a community of non-human animals is a surprise in the face of the human individual’s hope for a reflection of independence elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
The image of the mouse mother feeding her kin is as undoubtedly loving as it is embodied. The mother is giving sustaining material through the sacrifice of her body and movement, a selfless sacrifice for her young. The speaker’s usage of the words “odd” and “grotesque” to describe the scene forefronts surprise and alterity, both in relation to the speaker’s state and the search for the solo bird within the vast wood. The isolated aims of the speaker are positioned as normative, whereas a mass of interconnected bodies with symbiotic characteristics and common aims are positioned as the other. Though, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, both adjectives have archaic meanings that contradict the first, “grotesque” being irregular in beauty (2b) and “odd” being singular in valor and regard (7a). The mouse mother’s superpower of finding home via the beautiful grotesqueness and hardy common body allows for the virtue of common existence and love spanning across multiple individuals to be placed above that of the single human animal’s aims.
In terms of regard, John Clare’s animal poetry is only matched by his poems on love. Like the aims of the speaker in “The Mouse’s Nest,” poetry on love seemingly presupposes a solitary subject searching for another singular subject. Clare’s love poetry, however, problematizes the notions of the individual. Using similar means to his description of the rat mother, the body alone of the single subject becomes a contested ground for Clare. Across his work, Clare identifies a collective bios of all living creatures, which allows for a broader understanding of love for one’s self, others within a species, and other species outside of the subject.
In Giorgio Agamben’s critique of the subject under the imposed habitus of the modern sovereign state, the Italian philosopher identifies two separate linguistic forms of life in the early Western conceptions of the state. There is zoē or the simple physiological functions that compose what is thought of as a living being, and bios, or the social state of being within a community of humans. Agamben’s work looks at the ways in which the modern state wields the power to strip a citizen-subject’s participation and stake in the bios, highlighting the precarity of the life of a single human being in the face of the power of the state. This precarity, to Agamben, is indicative of the limits of individual humanity in the face of the nation and thus constitutes a locus for critique and overcoming.
While Agamben’s formulation of human precarity and exclusion from bios leads to a politically tenuous and impotent life, the status life of those on the margins of participating in resistance against a tyrannical state has been contested by other thinkers. In a discussion with Gayatri Spivak on the state of individuals in Palestine, queer theorist Judith Butler contests, “any effort to establish such an exclusionary logic depends upon the depoliticization of life and, once again, writes out the matters of gender, menial labor, and reproduction from the field of the political” (2007, 38). In slight opposition to Agamben, Butler argues that life constituted as mere life, or zoē is not the reproduction of life at all. The ability to merely reproduce life is constituted by common and social conceptions of the systems and resources that sustain life. The necessary sociality of the distribution of goods creates an embedded common ontology in living as such. Life-sustaining resources being moderated and modulated by this sociality, to Butler, makes our recognition of our interdependence on the environment and the non-human animals that provide us with the materials for those resources. The margins are seen by Butler as being space for collaboration and common recognition, both between human animals and non-human creatures. This leads to an even more provocative claim by Butler about the position that human exceptionalism has occupied in academic study until the point of their writing. They state:
it does not ultimately make sense to claim, for instance, that we have to focus on what is distinctive about human life, since if it is the “life” of human life that concerns us, that is precisely where there is no firm way to distinguish in absolute terms the bios of the animal from the bios of the human animal. Any such distinction would be tenuous and would, once again, fail to see that, by definition, the human animal is itself an animal. (Butler, 2009: 19)
Clare’s animal poetry went through a similar process of priming the distinction between the human animal bios and the social formation of non-human creatures and an embrace of a common social sphere.
In “The Ants,” Clare’s early skepticism of the imposition of human rationality and political organization and coexistence on those of non-human animals can be seen. The speaker begins in a state of awe at the collectivity of a colony of ants that they stumble upon, stating “What wonder strikes the curious while he views / The black ants city by a rotten tree” (1–2). While the state of “wonder” is the first feeling given to the reader by the speaker, the awe is undermined by the quotidian and obvious image of the ants existing in a city together. Further in the poem, the speaker notes that, though this form of organization is outside of the purview of the group, the inclination to impose human systems upon the world of ants, by observing “Such government & order there to be / Some looking on & urging some to toil” (5–6). The speaker concludes by stating
Surely they speak a language wisperingly
Too fine for us to hear & sure their ways
Prove they have kings & laws & them to be
Deformed remnants of the fairy days (11–14)
The seemingly random introduction of fairies into the story of the speaker’s understanding of ant collectivity is grasping at straws at the failure to follow through on the promised “wonder” of the first line. The shoehorning in of the idea of fairies devolving into pests like ants acts as a twofold concession of anthropocentrism. The first is the recognition of ants as being devolved and thus a lower version of life and organization. The second is a recognition that within human political systems, imaginaries are bound to the systems within which we live. The imposition of these systems on non-human creatures allows for a distinct and hierarchized idea of the human bios distinct from that within the animal world.
In stark contrast to the separate and subordinate worlds of human animal and non-human animals in “The Ants,” Clare opens the social world to equal participation by all inhabitants in “Hares at Play.” Clare opens the poem with a description of non-human creatures at rest:
The birds are gone to bed the cows are still
And sheep lie panting on each old mole hill
And underneath the willows grey-green bough
Like toil a resting–lies the fallow plough (1–4)
Immediately the distinction can be seen between the description in this one versus that in “The Ants.” The most provocative image is that of the “fallow plough” lying, finished with toil for the day, in an identical manner to that of the animals. Whereas the human wonder of “The Ants” is in the prime position of the former poem, the man-made tool is described as partaking in the same pleasures of non-human animate lives. Immediately, a world of common ownership between humans and non-humans is established.
This collective ownership is examined once more when the rabbits are described as, after dark, “throw[ing] daylights fears away / On the lanes road to dust and dance and play … / To lick the dew-fall from the barleys beard” (5–8) The hares are shown as participating in the collaboration between those on the margins as was described by Butler. In the daytime, they are described as being made submissive by their fears, both from human imposition and implied predation by other non-human animals. However, outside of that imposed precarity, the hares are able to revel in happiness and art-making together. The hares participate in a marginal bios, though one that is inextricably connected to that of the society from which they are prevented from participating. “Dancing” and “playing” implies existing traditions and socialities in their society through artistic creation. Utilizing the “barley beard” to sustain themselves shows the hares as having a multi-layered relationship with their world. The human description implies a knowledge of humans in their bios. The utilization of the barley and the dew, a mixture in and of itself, implies a necessarily relational bios. Whereas humans have over-extended their bounds and instilled fear in the hares, without them, human tools can exist in harmony with non-human animals, and socialities can utilize the same roads and forms of resistance. The hares’ bios exist in the interstice, and through that, the possibility for a coexistent sociality is found.
We see this resistance by the hares: “Till milking maidens in the early morn / Gingle their yokes and sturt them in the corn … / Sturts quick as fear-and seeks its hidden lair” (11–14) This clockwork-like fear response to the human women returning shines a light on the cognition of the hares. The fear they feel toward humans is a learned response. It was imposed by the distinctions of the human world’s time and constant adherence to the workday clock. Where hares only play, the reminder of the imposed fears of the human world is signified by women returning to work. The embrace of the human bios of work without play, and shooing all things away that do not participate in the working world shows the possibility of a common sociality of all creatures. The marginal resistance of play by the hares and the coexistence of the docile plough with animals proves that the distinction between “bios-logical” life and political separation is arbitrary, imposed, and can be torn down with radical versions of understanding and affect.
The common bios of love within human animals and non-human creatures can be seen in Clare’s “I Hid My Love.” Clare speaks of trepidation to reveal one’s love until it grows so forceful and moving that every molecule, noise, shade, and relation reminds you of the love for your paramour. However, even with this force and with the incessant reminders of his love by the natural world, Clare is unable to express his love in language and forms of communication knowable to another human creature.
Clare opens with “I hid my love when young till I / Couldn’t bear the buzzing of a fly; / I hid my love to my despite” (1–3). The connection with the world at large and the social world of non-human animals is established immediately. The withholding of his love from his paramour is killing him on multiple fronts. Clare’s “despite” comes from both the act of hiding but also how this hiding alienates him from his environment and surroundings. The buzzing of a fly, which can be implied by the “till I / Couldn’t,” once existed harmoniously with the speaker now acts as a reminder of his lack.
Isolated from the natural world, the speaker takes a radical measure to connect him with his beloved and the natural world at large. The second stanza is such:
I met her in the greenest dells,
Where dewdrops pearl the wood bluebells;
The lost breeze kissed her bright blue eye,
The bee kissed and went singing by,
A sunbeam found a passage there,
A gold chain round her neck so fair;
As secret as the wild bee’s song
She lay there all the summer long (9-16)
The speaker, unable to exist with his love, imbues his love into every facet of the world. The speaker’s love remains as long as the world remains. He sees that everything around him loves in secret. Like the harmonious former buzzing he experienced with the fly, the “bee’s song” exists eternally because it cannot be placed. The body of his beloved has disintegrated into the bluebells as her eyes, and the sun’s beams as her ornaments. The love felt for his suitor is that of the love expressed by and for every material thing in the world. The collective stake in love and the common expression of silent but forceful love creates a global bios of love. If one can displace their love for another human in the expressions of those of all other creatures, human and non-human, then common social understanding can be found and bios-level coexistence can result.
Further, the body of Clare’s beloved is shown as being made up of all natural components found in the world, as well as in all other humans. Clare states, “I hid my love in field and town.” (17) The love of the speaker now has grown to be embodied by all things natural, both human and nonhuman. Moving from exclusively nonhuman conduits to the “town” of people also carrying his love until eternity collapses once more the distinction between human and nonhuman socialities. The common capacity to love through the fact of existing in the same time and space as the speaker is enough to justify their capacity for carrying love and reorganizing the body of the speaker and their beloved.
This love that is completely inclusive of all living things on this earth, even further, can be read in the light of the anti-identitarian manifesto A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In this collection, the two thinkers theorize about “becoming-animal,” or a process in which an individual can shed specific filiations and embrace the common condition of all being in this world. The two thinkers highlight that the best becoming-animals are “pack or affect animals that form a multiplicity” (2004, 265). Further they state, that when one is in the midst of becoming-animal, “What is real is the becoming itself, the block of becoming, not the supposedly fixed terms through which that which becomes passes” (2004, 262). Clare’s problematizing of the body and love in “I Hid My Love” fits this description in spades. Love only ever grows. The infinity of love is what matters, and the impossibility of the classification is what reconstitutes the speaker’s body to a minuscule bit, but their affect is such that it can recreate bee’s songs from whispers to loud ballads and flies’ buzzing to lion’s roars. This common love can be seen as a goal when Deleuze and Guattari say that becoming-animal leads to “a becoming molecular that undermines the great molar powers of family, career, and conjugality” (2004, 257). This undermining of monogamy in favor of boundless polyamory is seen in the multiple figures of the town and the whole of the animal kingdom embodying the love of the speaker. Clare’s love is shown as necessarily being found in a state of becoming. Imbuing it in all creatures and spaces on Earth makes it infinite and ever-changing and expanding.
John Clare’s animal and love poetry shares a problematizing of the individual body and the separation of social bios between non-human animals and human animals. Through the lenses of Agamben, Butler, Deleuze, and Guattari, the potentialities of love of species, between species, and resistance, open to new imaginaries. Clare moved from understanding the sociality of human life only in opposition to that of nonhuman animals, however, by the end of his career he was able to minimize the human body and overreaching social mores and turn it into a total love of all creatures in this world.
Bibliography
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Butler, Judith. Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Verso, 2009.
Butler, Judith, and Gayatri Spivak. Who Sings the Nation-State?: Language, Politics, Belonging. Seagull Books, 2007.
Clare, John. “Mouse’s Nest.” Poetry Archive, https://poetryarchive.org/poem/mouses-nest/.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo- Phrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi, Continuum International, 2004.
Foundation, Poetry. “I Hid My Love by John Clare.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43949/i-hid-my-love. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/.
“Grotesque, n. and Adj.” OED Online, Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/81794.
“Odd, Adj., n.1, and Adv.” OED Online, Oxford University Press. Oxford English Dictionary, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/130399.
Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HARES AT PLAY, by JOHN CLARE. https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10024447. The Early Poems of John Clare :: :: University of Virginia Library. https://xtf.lib.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=chadwyck_ep/uvaGenText/tei/chep_3.2536.xml;chunk.id=d397;toc.depth=1;toc.id=d359;brand=default;query=the%20ants#1.