Volume 15

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

There was a time when John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress was the second most popular book in the English language.  The most popular was then, as now, the Bible, of which Pilgrim's Progress serves as a kind of gloss. The book's first part tells the story of a pilgrim named Christian who sets out from the City of Destruction towards heaven. He passes through the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair; he is helped along by friends like Faithful and Hope and he is hindered by the likes of Envy and Superstition. The book's second part recounts a similar journey made by Christian's wife, Christiana.  What interests me most about Pilgrim's Progress as a religious allegory is how utterly unconvincing it is.

I don't mean this entirely as an insult.

Here are the opening lines of Pilgrim's Progress:

As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man cloathed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great Burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying What shall I do?

Now here are the opening lines of Don Quixote, written sixty years earlier:

There lived not long since, in a certain village of the Mancha, the name whereof I purposely omit, a gentleman of their calling that use to pile up in their halls old lances, halberds, morions, and such other armours and weapons. He was, besides, master of an ancient target, a lean stallion, and a swift greyhound. His pot consisted daily of somewhat more beef than mutton: a gallimaufry each night, collops and eggs on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and now and then a lean pigeon on Sundays, did consume three parts of his rents; the rest and remnant thereof was spent on a jerkin of fine puce, a pair of velvet hose, with pantofles of the same for the holy-days, and one suit of the finest vesture; for therewithal he honoured and set out his person on the workdays.

The difference between the two books is the difference between a certain village of the Mancha and a certain place.

From the very first sentence, Cervantes fixes his story in place and time. Having done so, he creates certain expectations of versimilitude, to which he attends by describing the possessions in his character's house. A gesture towards the habitual -- His pot consisted daily... -- establishes that this man, like any real man, carries with him a history largely unknown to us (just as his village has a name, even though we don't know it).

Bunyan's man has a house, but it isn't filled with old lances or anything else, because it's only a word, like the Book in his hand and the Burden on his back. The Man has no history; his life begins in the moment we find him with his book and his burden, wondering what to do. In truth, he is less a man than a dilemma.

A few lines on, Cervantes gives us his character's name: Some affirm that his surname was Quixada, or Quesada (for in this there is some variance among the authors that write his life), although it may be gathered, by very probable conjectures, that he was called Quixana.

Such ambiguity would be impossible for Bunyan.  When he names his character Christian, when he names Christian's city the City of Destruction, we know that they can have no other names. But they are so called because the book that the Man has opened has made him a Christian, has condemned his city to be destroyed; they could not have had these names before the book started. Similarly, Christian's wife is simply his wife throughout the book's first part, but the moment she goes on her own pilgrimage, she becomes Christiana.  Nothing has a name until it is given one, but once given each name is indisputable.

In the end, it might be simpler to say that the difference between Don Quixote and Pilgrim's Progress is the difference between There lived and I dreamed. By suggesting that his story really happened, Cervantes creates a standard of plausibilty for himself. In empirical terms, his book becomes falsifiable and thus, potentially, true. Not that we can go to the local records to find out if Quixote existed (Cervantes plays, in part, with this impulse when he withholds the village's name), but that we can compare his story to what we know of the world. His intended audience could even compare his story to what they knew of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century La Mancha. But no such standards apply to Pilgrim's Progress.  How does one falsify a dream?  In the end, the book doesn't fail to convince; it simply doesn't try.

Which is not to say that Bunyan's allegory has nothing to say, especially to those who are already convinced of its underlying truth. If you have ever found the secular world shallow or materialistic -- who hasn't? -- then you may be struck by his description of Vanity Fair:

At this Fair are all such Merchandize sold, as Houses, Lands, Trades, Places, Honours, Preferments, Titles, Countries, Kingdoms, Lusts, Pleasures, and Delights of all sorts, as Whores, Bawds, Wives, Husbands, Children, Masters, Servants, Lives, Blood, Bodies, Souls, Silver, Gold, Pearls, Precious Stones, and what not?

But if this aspect of the world had not already occurred to you, I can't see how this parade of abstractions would change that fact. Like most allegory, Pilgrim's Progress tends necessarily towards the universal, away from the specific. It can tell us about those things in ourselves that make us like everyone else. But it can tell us little about those things in others that are unlike us. It can't take us out of ourselves. It's like a kind of mnemonic to keep one in mind of Bunyan's evangelical brand of the Christian creed. But I can't see it actually converting anyone.

The Lives of Donne and Herbert by Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton describes George Herbert's life as:

A life so full of charity, humility, and all Christian virtues, that it deserves the eloquence of St. Chrysostom to commend and declare it: a life, that if it were related by a pen like his, there would then be no need for this age to look back into times past for the examples of primitive piety; for they might be all found in the life of George Herbert.

This reference to times past struck me especially because Walton's Lives bear an obvious debt to Plutarch's, especially the later Lives of Plutarch's contemporaries like Augustus and Cicero. Walton -- who is known mostly for The Compleat Angler -- knew both Donne and Herbert. He admired them, and he told their lives so that they might be emulated. As it happens, Donne had already considered what monument he might leave behind, which led to the strangest passage in the Lives. On his death-bed, he sent for an urn and a wooden board of about his own height.

These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth. Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin, or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus.

Donne spent his remaining days contemplating this picture.  After his death, it was given to his executor, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble. The monument was placed at St. Paul's. Thirty years later, it survived the Great Fire of London, and it stands in St. Paul's still.

Of course, this is not the only monument John Donne left behind, and he is remembered today not mostly for the qualities Walton hoped to preserve. Walton does at least take some time to note of the great Dean that, "The recreations of his youth were poetry."

--CRB, April 25, 2007