Today's Birthday: Christopher Smart 4/11/1722

From today's Writer's Almanac....


It's the birthday of the poet Christopher Smart (books by this author), born in Shipbourne, England (1722). His nicknames were Jack, Kit, and Kitty; and coincidentally for a man known as Kitty, one of his most well-known poems is an ode to his beloved cat, Jeoffry. The ode is a surviving fragment from his great poem Jubilate Agno, which he wrote while he was locked up in an insane asylum.

No one knows whether Christopher Smart was actually insane. He definitely underwent some sort of intense religious conversion, and this was enough to convince his friend Samuel Johnson. Johnson said, "My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question."

Smart was sent to the asylum by John Newbery, who was not only his publisher and his landlord but also his father-in-law. Their relationship had deteriorated, and Newbery might have had his own reasons for wanting his son-in-law out of his way. Smart produced his two most famous poems during his confinement — A Song to David (1763) and Jubilate Agno, which wasn't published in its entirety until the 1950s.

Seventy-four lines of Jubilate Agno are devoted to Jeoffry the Cat. T.S. Eliot, the author of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1930), wrote in an essay: "His poem about his cat is to all other poems about cats what the Iliad is to all other poems on war."




From "Jubilate Agno"

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon
**his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.