In Nov, 14, 2005, Dr Hàjj Muhammad Legenhausen delivered a lecture on “The impression of religion on American poetry”. At the beginning of his speech, he pointed toward the fact that “religious themes” used by American poets are “incredibly varied”. These themes are applied by the poets not only to exhibit their “personal piety” and religious fervor, but also “atheism”. He also maintains that “religious themes” are not merely “the vehicles” through which the American poets have expressed their “inner states”, but they are similarly used “to convey social comments, to describe nature, and to elevate the importance of the specific personal relationships.” Moreover, He asserted: “While the religious themes that American poets try are usually Christian, it’s not difficult to find religious themes from Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism, and Islam.” After that, he quoted the following passage from a personally written article on “the religious turn in poetry”:
“From the very first revolutionary ferment in the nineteen century which centered on the twin lights of Emily Dickinson’s introspective Calvinism and Walt Whitman’s prophetic transcendentalism, American poets have taken a sacred ultimately as starting point, sustenance, destination, or forehead, the religious attitude taken by American poets is often scornful of institutional religion and orthodox beliefs, on the other hand, there are enough fine poems and hymns to rouse the congregations of churches in America today. In 1938, “Poets at Prayer”, it’s a book written by a Catholic nun, sister Mary James Power, she divides the poets of her day that she chose to review in three groups, worshipers of earthly beauty, seekers after God, and poets naturally Christian. American poets in the first group include Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robinson Jeffers, in second group she includes Edward Arlington Robinson and natuera whimsy, Sister Mary confirms T. S. Eliot and some lesser known Anglican-Americans. It seems odd that she could not find any American woman Catholic poets to celebrate. The rage of attitude sister Mary James surveys, however, has remained among the American poets. There are still those who find religion an unwelcoming intrusion at interference with the appreciation of nature, others who express religious and even mystical sentiments, but outside the limits of ethic religious orthodoxy, and finally they who remain to believe in christen poets who reflect in verse upon such themes as Christ’s passion. However, when one attempts to panoramic vision of American poetry it is the colors of the second group that dominate the landscape. From Emerson to Bly, it has been unorthodoxy that has dominated American poetry’s sentiments.”
After that, Dr. Legenhausen continued his speech with considering the “American hymnal” and its strong harmony with music which have, through the history, enacted as an inseparable part of American religious life especially in “protestant churches”, according that: “Catholic churches also sing hymn, but they are not immaturely very good at it.” Then he pointed toward the notable contribution of the European immigrants and the Africans who had been brought to America as slaves to the American hymnal. He also gave brief information about the genealogy of the hymnal songs which, having been originated from native shamanistic convections and composed of short phrases repeated frequently, were chanted and practiced by the African-American slaves in their rituals with the aim of reaching an ecstatic state. He also discerned that such rituals, usually practiced among the slaves in secret, later were completely suppressed and withheld by the slave holders who redeemed them as “pagan rituals”. He then recited one of these hymnals from an anonymous authorship as an exemplar:
I got peace like a river, in my soul
I got a river, in my soul
I got joy like a fountain, in my soul
I got a fountain, in my soul
Dr. Legenhausen followed the traces of these particular hymnal songs in the twentieth century in the works of African-American poets “echoing the themes of those negro spirituals.” He picked Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of the Rivers” as a telling example:
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Able Lincoln
Went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its
Muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Nevertheless, he brought this fact into consideration that the themes of Langston Hughes’ poetry portray atheism more than any religious commitment. For such case, he recited Hughes’ “Goodbye Christ” (A poem whose cynical tone with its direct references favoring socialism brought “lots of troubles” to Hughes and caused him being socially outcast, but, later on, became a traditional way of expressing anti-religious remarks in the American poetry.):
Listen, Christ,
You did alright in your day, I reckon—
But that day's gone now.
They ghosted you up a swell story, too,
Called it Bible—
But it's dead now,
The popes and the preachers've
Made too much money from it.
They've sold you to too many
Kings, generals, robbers, and killers—
Even to the Czar and the Cossacks,
Even to Rockefeller's Church,
Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.
You ain't no good no more.
They've pawned you
Till you've done wore out.
Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord Jehova God,
Beat it on away from here now.
Make way for a new guy with no religion at all—
A real guy named
Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME—
I said, ME!
Go ahead now,
You're getting in the way of things, Lord.
And please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go,
And Saint Pope Pius,
And Saint Aimee McPherson,
And big black Saint Becton
Of the Consecrated Dime.
And step on the gas, Christ!
Move!
Don't be so slow about movin’!?
The world is mine from now on—
And nobody's gonna sell Me
To a king, or a general,
Or a millionaire.
In contrast of the preceding poem, and its frequently applied profanation, Dr. Legenhausen spoke about a more traditionally genre in poetry traditionally bounded with the biblical themes and mostly found in the Gospel songs. He recited C. Austin Miles’ “Dwelling in Beulah Land”. According to Dr. Legenhausen, even though Austin Miles was a white American, the theme which he used in his song, Beulah Land, for the African-American slaves who used to live in the Southern America, served as an allusion to the biblical story of the children of Israel who, being lead by Muses, escaped the pharaoh’s army through Jordan River in order to reach their freedom, thus “Beulah Land”, sometimes referred to as “Zion” or “Israel” located in the Northern part of Ohio River, were mostly taken by them as the land of freedom since in that area, slavery had been already ended by the abolitionists:
Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling.
Then I know the sins of earth beset on every hand.
Doubt and fear and things of earth in vain to me are calling.
None of these shall move me from Beulah Land.
I’m living on the mountain, underneath a cloudless sky.
I’m drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry.
O yes! I’m feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply,
For I am dwelling in Beulah Land…
Another hymnal poem with biblical allusion which Dr. Legenhausen recited was “The Blood of the Lamb” by Elisha Albright Hoffman:
Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?...
After that, he recited another poem with religious theme from “Henry David Thoreau” entitled as “Smoke”:
Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight,
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;
By night star-veiling, and by day
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun;
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
After reciting the poem, he explained about the significance of the metaphoric concept of the poem which takes the “smoke” as a messenger departing from the speaker toward the “gods”, and he mentioned that the term “gods” indicates “paganism”, a peculiar approach toward theism brought into American poetry from Europe. Subsequently, he called attention to one of Walt Whitman’s mystic poems named “Persian Lesson” published in “The Leaves of the Grass”:
For his o'erarching and last lesson the greybeard sufi,
In the fresh scent of the morning in the open air,
On the slope of a teeming Persian rose-garden,
Under an ancient chestnut-tree wide spreading its branches,
Spoke to the young priests and students.
"Finally my children, to envelop each word, each part of the rest,
Allah is all, all, all--immanent in every life and object,
May-be at many and many-a-more removes--yet Allah, Allah, Allah is there.
"Has the estray wander'd far? Is the reason-why strangely hidden?
Would you sound below the restless ocean of the entire world?
Would you know the dissatisfaction? the urge and spur of every life;
The something never still'd--never entirely gone? the invisible need
of every seed?
"It is the central urge in every atom,
(Often unconscious, often evil, downfallen,)
To return to its divine source and origin, however distant,
Latent the same in subject and in object, without one exception."
Holding the preceding poem as a clear example, Dr. Legenhausen illustrates the strong influence of Persian mysticism on the American transcendentalist poets of that era which was raised by the Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on the Persian poet Hafiz – the Persian mystic poet - and his translations of some of his “Ghazals”, in addition to Goethe’s colorful admiration of him in his “West-Eastern Divan”. Dr. Legenhausen also reminded that the English translated versions which caused such influence were originally based upon the German translations of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.