Robert Burns -Humanism, God and Social Conscience

Robert Burns was an ‘Everyman’ in the way that he was able to appeal to believers in God and those firmly against Organised Religion. His approach in taking an equivocal position on the human spiritual condition earned him admiration from the Humanist Movement, who considered him their own, but he also gained admirers in the radical and reforming Religious Movements.  An ‘Everyman’ is defined as an ordinary person representative of the human race.

In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual ^[1][2], with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances. The name derives from a 15th century English morality play called Everyman.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/everyman#ixzz2AmyM16Gf

The New York Times reported a speech by Robert Ingersoll in 1878, one of the founders of modern humanism, on Robert Burns. This is what Ingersoll had to say.

‘The man was a radical a real genuine man. This man believed in the dignity of labour in the nobility of the useful. This man believed in human love, in making heaven here, in judging men by their deeds instead of creeds and titles. This man believed in the liberty of the soul of thought and speech. This man believed in the sacred rights of the individual, he sympathised with the suffering and the oppressed. This man had the genius to change suffering and toil into song to enrich poverty, to make a peasant feel like a prince of the blood, to fill the lives of the lowly with love and light.’

 

The Chair of the Irish Humanist Association, Iain Decoys in an article in the Irish Humanism Magazine of 2009 ,called Robert Burns: A Scottish Sceptic. He makes the case that Robert Burns was a possible follower of Humanism before there was a movement for it. He eruditely defines Robert’s type of Religious perception as one of a sceptic in religious matters, who argued publically for 'tolerance and social justice.’ He robustly argues against the idea the Robert Burns was a supporter of the sectarian Religious Right wing, despite their supporters arguing that he was an advocate of their position.

 

Deboy’s explains how Burns is often mis –represented in his historical place in the scheme of things.  He says that ‘Burns has been called ‘The Ploughman Poet’, but this is somewhat misleading. It implies he was anti –intellectual, that he rejected a cosmopolitan lifestyle in favour of a more primitive, perhaps naïve way of life. But is completely at odds with his position in Enlightenment Edinburgh.’  He goes on to say Burns independence of mind leads him into deep scepticism about Religion when he attacks the Calvinistic hypocrisy of the Church in Holy Willies prayer. He even suggests that Burns may have questioned the Divinity of Christ though this is not substantiated in Burns writings. He correctly, however points out that Burns recognised an’ unbending moral code of seeming righteous religions could be at odds with social justice ‘.

He goes on to say Burns had to be careful about declaring his scepticism openly as this could ruin his reputation. Even his friends found it difficult to guess whether he had faith or whether he was mocking it. But whatever the case, there is a declaration of faith in this statement to Mrs Dunlop.

‘Jesus Christ, thou amiablest of characters, I trust thou art no imposter, and that thy revelation of blissful scenes of existence beyond death and the grave is not one of the many impositions which time after time have been palmed off on a credulous mankind’

But this is of course, a letter to one of the ‘whited sepulchres’, Mrs Dunlop, to whom he would be obsequious because she was an advocate of the Calvinistic views of the Church and a person who had the power to make his life difficult.

Preview of Robert Burns and Women

On the blog the return button is not working so there is no chance of making paragraphs so one must, as it were, read it in one breath. For the Romantics among us this is  my view on Robert Burns and Women (Pre - View of Academic Course Notes)

Robert Burns was a lover of women from the outset, and it almost seems his poetry was just catching up with his passion for them.

In his life he had 6 children out of wedlock and 9 children with Jean. Only 3 of the children survived family life, meaning that 6 of them died before adulthood. It is estimated that he must have had over 10 sexual affairs and countless other unconsummated dalliances with women, who then also became the focus of his poetry. His sexual encounters are legendary because he wrote about them and they are real life affairs making the power of his poetry all the more Romantic because each poem refers to real women in his life at that time. It was as if he was embarking on a theatrical seduction in some cases in that he knew they would become the subject of his poetry but it seems, he also cared for these women at the same time, it was not just mere poetic license.

 

However there is a downside. He seems to have taken most of the women for granted and once they are pregnant he has all but abandoned them. The worse example of this is the pregnancy of Jenny Clow who was the servant girl of Clarinda, known as Agnes McLehose. It is as if he in, not taking Clarinda to bed, takes his sexual frustrations out on the maid. By all accounts when Clarinda points out how ill Jenny is from the baby, Burns just is not interested in helping out with the child or contributing financially. Therefore there is something amiss in his attitude to women. In the case of Clarinda she suffers from immense social pressures because she is related as a cousin to Lord Craig and her upbringing in the social elite in Glasgow where her father was a surgeon, meant that she could not easily shake off the controversy raging in Ayrshire over his latest pregnant love Jean Armour. However Clarinda may have thought that he would choose her over Jean and she expresses bitter disappointment that he bows to social pressure to marry the maid. It is as if Robert Burns is continually living out some higher idea he has of sexual love that he just can’t quite seem to capture in real life, which he seems to easily master in Poetry. He seems to deliberately portray himself as a man seeking love through his muses, but who fails either to find a Women to return his love, or he for her. His poems are always seeking the moment, and when love is found, it slips away. The best example of this is in the poem Ae Fond Kiss, about Clarinda with whom he parts or similarly with Highland Mary who dies in child birth before he can bring her to his heart. Such tragedy is the stuff of poetry and myth but what makes his poetry work is that the verses are about real women, his real loves. Somehow therefore Burns in his literary personality is the epitome of the Romantic Lover, which in Literature has its equivalents in Bronte’s Heathcliff, or in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But what make Burn’s Romance work more effectively even than these Literary Romances, is that none of the poems are divorced from his real life. These women he writes about are his girlfriends, lovers, and friends to the point that his descriptions of them gave him an ethereal quality creating the international image as a man always in love, always passionate and always rejected – a perfect companion for the Muses, for whom he lusted. Living up to this image was however not easy and it maybe in fact where the fantasy failed to create the reality particularly in his marriage where the sheer struggle to feed the children was taking its toll on both partners. The fact he stood by Jean although she was not his idea of his literary Romantic Love is the measure of the man, in that he stayed with her despite it all, protecting her and making sure she was provided for in life and even after he was gone.