LITR 5535: American Romanticism
Student Poetry Presentation, fall 2003

"The Jacob’s Ladder" by Denise Levertov

Holly Anderson

Denise Levertov was born in England where she spent her formative years with her mother and father.  He was born Jewish and later converted to Christianity.  She described her mother’s family as Welsh Tailor and mystic Angel Jones of Mold. “Levertov claimed a connection to her forefathers, both mystical and Hasidic […] Hasidim, a sect of Judaism that emphasized the soul’s communion with God […]” (2706). Levertov would eventually become Roman Catholic; thus, giving her a solid religious foundation from which to create her poetry.  Levertov married an American who in time brought her to America and to a new style of writing for her that is strongly influenced by William Carlos Williams.  Norton describes her poems as “[…] the inexplicable nature of our ordinary lives and their capacity for unexpected beauty” (2707). 

The poem “The Jacob’s Ladder” is based on a scripture from the Bible in Genesis 28:12-15. This scripture describes a ladder in Jacob’s dream, which reaches from earth to heaven, and angels are ascending and descending on it.  God then appears declaring to Jacob the future of his descendants. In the final part of the dream, God explains that He is always with him.  It is at this point Jacob awakes and determines to dedicate himself to God.

The poem follows Objective 1a, point 1 the romance narrative--describing a quest or journey toward transcendence.

From the Bedford Glossary I found the qualities that best describes this poem involve two interrelated attributes: mysticism and transcendentalism. 

Bedford describes mysticism as “The belief that some kind of knowledge or special awareness can be acquired only through extrasensory means […] Knowledge is acquired intuitively; it involves insight into something beyond what is discernible through thought or normal sensory perception. […] mysticism frequently has an explicitly spiritual or religious character.

With her visual word usage to describe the ladder, a thing of gleaming strands /a radiant evanescence, it is apparent this is a mystical experience, which is creating a delicate connection between man and heaven.  With a continual interchange of angels touching the lives of man, [W]ings brush past him, imply a continuous interplay between man and heaven.

The second attributes, transcendentalism is described in the Bedford Glossary as […] the conviction that each human being is innately divine, that God’s essence lies within all individuals. […] contending that individuals have the ability to discover higher truths intuitively or mystically, without recourse to the senses or logic.  Indeed, transcendentalists suggested that reliance on sensory experience and rational thought may actually impede the acquisition of transcendent truths.

With this understanding of transcendentalism I am able to see the man as trying to understand his higher truths, “and a man climbing/ must scrape his knees, /and bring the grip of his hands into play.”  Ending with “The poem ascends” could suggest that the poem itself is “understanding;” it ascends to man and like in Jacob’s dream where God proclaims to be with him always, man’s understanding is with him always.

Question:

If what I contend is accurate concerning the mystical and transcendental attributes of the poem, is the third stanza consistent with this thinking? How does A stairway of sharp angles, solidly built relate man to God?

Discussion Notes as taken by Marion F. Carpenter Jr.

Man has to transcend through adversity. Because we must transcend, we must encounter the sharp angles.

It seems tangible where before it seems evanescent.

God’s relation to man is mystical, but so are angels and wings.

Man has to work to get to heaven.

“It is a stone…” Thought it was God’s word. “Rosy” signifies love, sacrifice, and blood.

Rosicrucian-Cult of the rosy cross.

Stone rolls away, Peter is the Rock…

The sky is doubtful…

The stairs are the light while the doubt is the dark.

It’s Jacob’s dream.

Truly significant dream. Jacob takes the dream and follows Christianity.