Scintilla 25: The Journal of The Vaughan Association

Preface

Scintilla 25 comes at an important moment for The Vaughan Association. It is our 25th anniversary and, more importantly, it follows the 400th birthday of the Vaughan twins, Henry and Thomas. Significantly, we were all affected by the series of lockdowns that resulted from COVID19, and our annual Colloquium was no exception. Despite these difficulties, we have been able to bring together 5 important essays that continue our exploration of metaphysical poetry, 17th century thought and the Vaughans’ lives--as well as the consideration of their legacy in the work of poets in our own day. Henry and Thomas lived through the bewildering experience of political and military defeat during the Civil War; the closing of their parish at Llansantffraed where Thomas was priest; the banning of the Book of Common Prayer; and the transformation of political and religious institutions. These troubles forced both men to reinvent themselves, Henry as ‘Silurist’ and Thomas as ‘Eugenius Philalethes’. Their poetry and prose reflect their creative responses to these challenges; the questions of identity and adversity that they faced; their probing of the relationship between past and present, and their existential questioning of inner life and its relation to outer environment, especially the beauty of the Usk Valley where they grew up.

This issue begins with Helen Wilcox exploring the musical perceptions of three 17th C metaphysical poets, John Donne, George Herbert, and Henry Vaughan and tracing the arc of how these perceptions are developed in their poetry. We then turn to Jeremy Hooker, who gives a critical consideration to John Powell Ward and Hilary Davies, two living poets who have internalized the legacies of Henry Vaughan in their own art. Robert Wilcher gives us a focused examination of the many attempts scholars have made to piece together the fragments of biography about these ‘eccentric’ brothers, Henry and Thomas Vaughan, that they have gleaned over the past 3 centuries. Donald Dickson gives further attention to Henry by exploring his annotations in his copy of Simon Pauli’s medical book, Quadripartitum botanicum, demonstrating his continuing commitment to the study of medical knowledge and his commitment to engaging fully the scientific thinking of the 17th century. Thomas Willard’s essay, focusing on Thomas Vaughan, gives us a wider understanding of scientific thinking during this period.

In its poetry, Scintilla 25 continues to provide a space for new poetry that explores–and challenges–in myriad ways the metaphysical legacies of the Vaughan brothers and their contemporaries. Some linked, recurring themes are to be found in the poems selected for this issue: uncertainty and encounter, for example–neither of which is surprising as we continue a protracted journey into the changed world left us by the pandemic.

In both its prose and poetry, Scintilla 25 asks readers to hold two competing ideas in their minds at once: that of the importance of the broad Welsh artistic tradition and the variety of ways that artists have engaged that tradition. Over the arc of the development of this journal, it has assessed and adjusted its response to both of those ideas and continually added new contributions to those it had already made. In its future, Scintilla will find new ways to explore how works such as metaphysical poetry, seventeenth-century thought, and the contributions of complex figures, such as the Vaughan brothers, work independently and in concert to teach their audiences to read the world anew.