A negative way: eschatology in the elegies of John Heath-Stubbs

Eschatology appears at the center of John Heath-Stubbs elegies. In this article, I argue that Heath-Stubbs follows his teacher Charles Williams in taking the negative and affirmative ways as paradigmatic of the Christian path to union with God. In “An Elegy,” “Funeral Music for Charles Wrey Gardner,” and “A Negative Way,” Heath-Stubbs portrays the parallels between the negative ways of the Christian ascetic and the bohemian. Imagining the convergences and divergences between the two negative ways, Heath-Stubbs constructs an eschatology that refuses the consolation of universalism, while affirming a hopeful inclusivism, possible salvation for persons with faith in poetry.