A study of psychological analogies in the religious thought implicit in the later writings of Baxter and O'Sullivan

Abstract

James K. Baxter and Vincent O'Sullivan both show a religious interest in their later writings. This thesis examines what that religious interest consists in for each writer and then attempts a brief comparison of how those interests differ. With Baxter's Jerusalem poetry I firstly reformulate the accepted idea that he somehow naturally "thought mythically", and go on to identify projection and simplification as two characteristics of his religious thinking. I also locate two different images he has of himself in relation to God One as a human being existing on an everyday basis with other human beings in a universe infused by God, and the other as an insignificant part of a larger universe where God is located somewhere above or away from him. Both these senses of self can be found in Baxter's use of natural imagery and I argue that the image of himself in relation to an immanent God is the belief taken on and acted out very consciously at Jerusalem, whereas the image of himself in relation to a transcendent God appears to function in a less conscious way. Thus these two opposing images of God have a psychological function because they express conflicting elements in Baxter's Psyche. Vincent O'Sullivan's writing contains religious images that are initially hard to make sense of. However, closer examination reveals that they are used to intensify psychological states, and are often involved in epiphanic moments. I argue that these moments, in both his prose and poetry, link his work with the tradition of psychological prose and have a spiritual function because they involve (in a general rather than Christian sense), religious, aesthetic and psychological ideas and feelings. These moments are presented in O'Sullivan's writings both the characters in his prose, and the self present in the poetry, as orientating points in experience. In the later poetry they have affinities with Wallace Stevens's idea of worldly spirituality. Above all, O'Sullivan emphasises the mind and the self as the source of spirituality and ultimate meaning. Psychological experience of the external world dominates the external world itself, and the psychological images of objects and events take precedence over the objects and events themselves. One of the main differences between the two writers is the internalisation of spirituality by O'Sullivan and the externalisation of it by Baxter: Baxter sees time as a continuum which will definitely climax in paradise, whereas for O'Sullivan experience is composed of many points of intensity within time which provide spiritual meaning.