The University of Notre Dame

The Phoenix
Author(s): John Spencer Hill
Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 61-66
Published by: The University of Notre Dame
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 THE PHOENIX

John Spencer Hill

The mythical phoenix (Gk. phoinix), a gorgeously-plumed

bird fabled to be unique in its kind, was said to travel at lon
to Heliopolis where it died and was reborn. This bird f
nucleus of a complex legend of immense popularity in
world.
The phoenix may be a literary descendent of the benu or bnw of
Egyptian solar myths, a sacred bird which, through association with
the self-renewing deities Re and Osiris, became a symbol of renewal
or rebirth (R.T. Rundle Clark). The bird makes its first appearance
in the West under its Greek name in a cryptic fragment of Hesiod
(Fragmenta Hesiodea [Oxford, 1967], frag. 304). The earliest account
both of its appearance and its behavior occurs in Herodotus {Persian
Wars 2.73), where it is said to be an Arabian bird, eagle-like in ap-
pearance but with bright red and gold plumage. It is preeminently
remarkable, reports the author (citing Egyptian priests), for the way
in which it encases its dead parent in a ball of myrrh and then carries
it for burial to the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis.
Later classical authorities, attracted by the mystery of the bird's
reputed ability to regenerate itself (a subject omitted by Herodotus),
substantially embellished the story, adding many details and making
the theme of rebirth the central aspect of the myth (e.g., Ovid, Meta-
morphoses 15.391-407; Pliny, Naturalis historia 10.2). Although many
Professor Hill's article on the phoenix is an entry from the Dictionary of Biblical Tradition
in English Literature, edited by Professor David L. Jeffrey of the University of Ottawa, to
be published by W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan. A more detailed description of the
Dictionary is available in the Spring 1984 issue of Christianity and Literature.

R&L 16.2 (Summer 1984)

61

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 62 Religion & Literature

pagan writers (notably Pliny) remained d

bird's supposed powers of rejuvenation,
came, in pre-Christian writings, an impo
chosis and the rebirth of the soul.
There are no certain references to the phoenix in the Bible itself.
Three texts, however, have sometimes been cited as possible refer-
ences. The first is Psalms 92:12: "The righteous shall flourish like the
palm tree" (LXX: Ai/cmo? co? <polplI; avdrjaei), where the confusing
homonymy of the Greek noun phoinix- meaning both palm tree and
phoenix - led some early exegetes (notably Tertullian, De resurrectione
mortuorum 13.3) to translate the phrase as "The righteous shall flourish
like the phoenix." The second text is Job 29: 18: "I shall die in my nest,
and I shall multiply my days as the sand (hoi)" where the word hoi is
sometimes translated "palm tree" (LXX: oreXexos <poiviKO<;\ Vg. palma)
and, in rabbinical tradition, is frequently glossed as "phoenix" (e.g.,
Midr. Gen. 19:5; and L. Ginzberg [5.51, n. 151]). The third reference
is John 12:13, where J.S. Hill has argued that the awkward Johan-
nine tautology ra j3ma to)v <poiviK<s>v ("the branches of the palm trees")
functions as a proleptic allusion to the Resurrection by invoking the
image of Christ as the true Phoenix (133-35).
While Biblical references to the phoenix, if they exist at all, are few
and lexically ambiguous, precisely the reverse is true in subsequent
Biblical tradition, both Jewish and Christian. The phoenix appears,
for example, in Jewish apocalyptic literature, most notably in chaps.
6-8 of the Greek Apocalypse o/Baruch, where a cosmic phoenix, symbol-
izing God's mercy, spreads its protective wings to shield the earth
from the sun's consuming fire, symbolizing God's- just wrath. (See
Sister M.F. McDonald.)
Among early Christian writers, beginning with Clement of Rome
in chaps. 25-6 of Epistola I ad Corinthios (PG, 1.261-66), the pagan
myth of the death and rebirth of the phoenix was employed both as
a symbol of human resurrection and as a proof of its possibility. Many
patristic writers enthusiastically endorsed this analogy (e.g., Epiphanius,
Ancoratus, 84; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 18.8; Ambrose, De excessu
fratris sui Satyri 2.59). Tertullian may be said to speak for them all
when, in De resur. mort. (13.4), he asserts: "God has declared that we
are worth more than many sparrows: unless we are also worth more
than many a phoenix, this is no great thing. And indeed, can it be
that men will die once and for all, while Arabian birds are assured of
a resurrection?"

Not surprisingly, early Christian writers construed the phoenix as

a symbol not only of resurrection in general but also of Christ himself

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 JOHN SPENCER HILL 63

and his resurrection in particular. Thus, in t

reborn phoenix arises from its predecessor
days have elapsed - a detail inserted in order
logical symbolism. Still another early Chri
from the insistence of classical authorities
singularis and unicus, reproduced itself witho
phoenix a symbol of the Virgin Mary and th
nus, Expositio Symboli, 9).
In both classical and Christian sources, where the death and re-
birth of the phoenix become the focal point of its myth, there exist two
separate versions of the bird's self- regeneration. In one version, repre-
sented by Pliny and Clement of Rome, the phoenix, having built
itself a nest of aromatic twigs, simply dies; its decaying flesh produces
a worm which grows into the new phoenix. In the second (and more
popular) version, followed by most patristic writers and also by the
pagan poet Claudian in his late 4th century Phoenix, the phoenix nest
is ignited by the sun's rays, and the bird, fanning the flames with its
wings, is quickly consumed, the new phoenix arising miraculously
from its ashes. Although a transitional worm-like larva is often re-
tained, virtually all accounts after the 1st century adopt the immola-
tion motif.
The earliest full-scale treatment of the myth in imaginative litera-
ture occurs in a 4th-century Latin poem, Carmen de ave phoenice, attrib-
uted to Lactantius. In 170 elegiac verses, the Carmen expands earlier
versions of the myth in a profusion of descriptive detail, laying par-
ticular stress on the unique beauty of the phoenix, its exotic, almost
"edenic" homeland, its elaborate preparations for death, and its won-
derful rebirth after a fiery demise. Although not overtly Christian in
tone or imagery, the Lactantian poem provided later Christian poets
with an irresistible literary elaboration of the story. The fruits of this
influence are evident in the OE Phoenix. Freely expanding and revis-
ing materials from Lactantius in the first half of his poem, the anony-
mous OE author imparts to his work a thoroughly Christian tone ab-
sent in his source; then, departing entirely from his Latin model in
the second half of the Phoenix, he explicitly allegorizes the myth as a
symbol of Christian resurrection (387-92), and the phoenix itself as
a type of Christ (637b-54).
Apart from the bestiaries and a 12th-century English sermon known*
as the Phoenix Homily (Rubie D.N. Warner, ed., 146-48), references
to the phoenix in Middle English literature are scarce. Among major
English poets, its appearance is confined to two brief allusions - both
treating it as a symbol of virginal purity (Chaucer, Boke of the Duchesse,

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 64 Religion & Literature

981-84; Pearl, 429-32). In the Inferno, Dante describ

of Vanni Fucci as perpetual phoenix-like immol
tion-a grotesque parody of the "everlasting life" en
(24.97-108).
In Renaissance and 17th-century literature, the p
in a flourish of allusions ranging all the way from D
lic resurrections in "The Canonization" (23-27) to
tionally typological image of Christ as a phoenix
hymn {Poetical Works, 2nd ed. [Oxford, 1957], p. 24
Sir Thomas Browne devotes a portion of his Pseu
(1646) to whimsical speculation about the possibility
actual existence, English writers generally are co
phoenix as purely mythical. Broadly speaking,
nixes come in four varieties. First, they appear as r
of resurrection and immortality, as in meditativ
Vaughan's "Resurrection and Immortality" or funer
Jonson's " 'Tis a Record in Heaven." The most pow
use of traditional associations is Milton's extended p
(Samson-phoenix-Christ) in Samson Agonistes (16
the phoenix appears as a metaphor of the secular
gained through one's progeny: "My ashes, as the ph
forth / A bird that will revenge upon you all" (
1.4.35-6; see also 1H6, 4.7.92-3; H8 5.4.19-22; and, further, Cra-
shaw's panegyric "Upon the Duke of Yorke his Birth" and Herrick's
religio-political "Another New-yeeres Gift, or Song for the Circumci-
sion"). Third, the phoenix appears as a secularized symbol of unpar-
alleled female beauty, virginal purity, and idealized passion, as in
Ben Jonson's "The Phoenix Analysde" and Shakespeare's "The Phoe-
nix and the Turtle" (in Robert Chester's Love's Martyr [1601]). Deriv-
ing from Petrarch's platonized love-phoenix, a favorite symbol of his
beloved Laura in the Rime sparse (cf. lyrics 135, 185, 210, 321, and
323), the image of the phoenix as chaste, often remote, female beauty
found its way into many Renaissance English lyrics (e.g., Sidney,
Astrophil and Stella, sonnet 92; Donne, "Epithalamion on the Lady
Elizabeth"; Herrick, "Love Perfumes All Parts." See also the Eliza-
bethan poetic miscellany The Phoenix Nest [1593]). Last, the phoenix
becomes a poetic synonym for a rarity, since it was itself reputedly
unique. Thus, "she calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
/ Were man as rare as phoenix" (Shakespeare, AYL 4.3.17-18; cf.
AWW1AA70; Tmp. 3.3.21-24).
After the Renaissance, during which time the secularizing pressures
of humanism had largely demoted the rich Christian phoenix symbol-

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 JOHN SPENCER HILL 65

ism of ancient and medieval Europe into som

dental metaphor, the phoenix virtually disapp
ture for a period of some two hundred ye
who favored phoenixes in his funeral poems
Lord Hastings"; "Threnodia Augustalis"; "
Mrs. Anne Killigrew"), 18th-century English
untouched by phoenix lore. There are no sign
mantic literature, although Keats briefly lik
in his "King Lear" sonnet. And in Victorian p
of the reborn phoenix may occasionally be p
(as in Hopkins), the bird itself is absent in
cept for a handful of casual references in Bro
3.335; 9.349). The fate of the phoenix, its dec
bol to simple metaphor (= a paragon), is pe
trated in Shaw's early novel, Cashel Byron's P
course would be to marry another phoenix; b
cannot appreciate even her own phoenixit
other, she perversely prefers a mere mortal
221).
Early modern writers, however, rediscovered the Arabian bird and
undertook to make it their own, primarily by fusing together the
sacred and secular/erotic strands of traditional phoenix symbolism.
D.H. Lawrence is particularly noteworthy, adopting the phoenix as
his personal icon, and using the self- regenerating bird in his writings
from 1915 onwards to symbolize his philosophy of dying into new life,
especially through a neo-Freudian reconsecration of sexual energies
(see his "Phoenix" in Last Poems [1932], and Tennessee Williams' one-
act dramatic tribute to Lawrence, / Rise in Flames, Cried the Phoenix).
For Yeats, who is more traditional and petrarchan than Lawrence,
Maud Gonne is a phoenix ("The People"); in the mutability-conscious
lyric, "His Phoenix," where he mourns her lost youth and beauty,
he nonetheless declares Maud Gonne an eternal paragon - still and
always unique for him in the long catalogue of beauties from mythical
Leda and Helen of Troy to modern young belles who walk and talk
men wild: "I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day."
Louis Untermeyer, in his witty "Appeal to the Phoenix," beseeches
the bird, which here represents consuming sexual passion, to submit
itself at last to mortality: "Turn to me at last with love, / Not with
agonies . . . Come, and in this glowing nest, / Phoenix, learn to die."
G. K. Chesterton, after experiencing an epiphany at the famous
Dublin Eucharistic Conference of 1932, revived the traditional sym-
bolism of Christ as phoenix in "The Phoenix in Phoenix Park" (Essay

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 66 Religion & Literature

4, Christendom in Dublin [1932]). In Joyce's riddling

and resurrection of mankind, Finnegans Wake, the
every conceivable sort of death and rebirth (spir
and appears in an infinity of guises - from an earl
"O foenix culprit!" (uniting Adam's felix culpa with
sin in Phoenix Park), to the paschal phoenix risin
of the novel's last section as dawn breaks over Dublin on Easter Sun-
day morning: "Array! Surrection! . . . Phlenxty, O rally! To what
lifelike thyne of the bird can be." In Dylan Thomas's troubled and dif-
ficult epithalamion "Unluckily for a Death," an erotic yet spiritual
phoenix becomes the central symbol of love in a connubial "ceremony
of souls" in which the human and divine are inextricably united.

University of Ottawa

WORKS CITED

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