Thomas Traherne and the Felicities of the Mind By James Balakier

state of the knower, the process of knowing, and the known. Robert Ellrodt in “Scientific Curiosity and Metaphysical Poetry in the Seventeenth Century” opens a new door on Traherne‘s poetry by ascertaining that through Felicity, Traherne “sought to bring to light a natural harmony between the more general scientific laws, such as the law of circulation, and religious and moral truths all the more precious for being universally evident” (197). M. V. Seetaraman in “The Way of Felicity in Thomas Traherne’s ‘Centuries’ and ‘The Poems’ ” defines Felicity from the perspective of a balanced state of love of one’s self, others, and God (85). Stanley Stewart in The Expanded Voice: The Art of Thomas Traherne construes it to be a state of “perfect order” made possible by the free operation of the will in managing man’s affections (58). Malcolm Day, who avouches that Traherne “has something more to offer than fantastic speculations about time and eternity or the infinite powers of the soul” (Thomas Traherne i), deems that “Traherne’s Felicities” (150) move us in his poems “more directly and immediately into the mystery of Being itself” (154) and offer “the direct sensation of eternity” (154). More recently, Jacob Blevins in “Finding Felicity through the ‘Pythagorean Eye’: Pythagoreanism in the Work of Thomas Traherne” sees “a striking resemblance” in the Traherne corpus to Pythagoras’s belief in the all-importance of instructing the soul “as a way to gain felicity,” as discussed in Theophilus Gale’s The Court of the Gentiles, a text heavily represented in Traherne’s Commonplace Book(49). I have also contributed to this critical aspect of Traherne studies in proposing in phenomenological terms that Felicity is the “organizing form” in Traherne’s thought and art.⁷ What is strongly evident from these and other perspectives on Traherne is that Felicity is his abiding concern. Indeed, in “The Author to the Critical Peruser”—which serves as a prologue to the “Poems of Felicity” preserved in the Burney manuscript⁸ —Traherne articulates his poetic theory by spotlighting Felicity: