How The Complete Poems drew on Genesis
A documented line of influence: Andrew Marvell demonstrably engaged Moses’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
Relevance
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On The Complete Poems’s page
- Marvell's 'The Garden' is a wry rewriting of Eden — keep Adam, lose Eve, and paradise doubles
- 'Two paradises 'twere in one / To live in paradise alone' only lands if you hear the Genesis account of Adam as solitary gardener behind it
- Read the first garden first, then watch Marvell turn it into a retreat for the contemplative mind
On Genesis’s page
- Eden, but with a twist — Marvell prizes the garden and quietly wishes Eve had never arrived
- 'The Garden' invokes the 'happy garden-state' of Adam alone — 'Two paradises 'twere in one / To live in paradise alone' — making Genesis the frame for a poem about solitude and pleasure
- The Edenic imagery spills into 'Bermudas' and 'Upon Appleton House' too; the first garden is Marvell's recurring ideal