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Abstract In Geoffrey Hill’s poetry, music, frequently tied to thoughts of the divine, is understood as preternatural: a gift from beyond (præter) the ordinary sphere of human comprehension. For Hill, there is in music a connection with God that makes it fit to restore the link, broken in Adam’s Fall, between natural and supernatural. This essay examines the origins of the idea of music’s preternaturalness, and asks both how Hill addresses the paradox of being tuned in to what is ‘over my head’; and whether his poetry, which discusses the potential restoration of nature wrought by music, also seeks to enact it.
Tom Docherty (Sat,) studied this question.
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