Obscure Love: Virtual Masochisms in Philips's “Friendship's Mysterys”

This chapter discusses poetic obscurity in Katherine Philips’s “Friendship’s Mysterys.” Jeremy Taylor, the divine and friend of Philips, writes of how friendship must be useful and must help friends compensate for their shortfalls in being self-sufficient, sovereign over themselves and their affairs. In “Friendship’s Mysterys,” though, love becomes its own religion, sovereign unto itself, taking on a particular kind of “use” that to Taylor would be both heretical and useless: use that—obscurely and yet strikingly—becomes masochistic. “Friendship’s Mysterys” might even be said to combine competing forms of masochism: one, like that described by Michel Foucault, which emphasizes the shifting of control from one party to the other, and a second, like that described by Leo Bersani, which involves giving up control altogether. Such a multifaceted masochism can live only within the “useless” realm of obscure verse: verse filled with vague images, mysterious phrases and maneuverings, and action that seems to take place almost scenelessly. The chapter’s conclusion compares Philips’s vision of love with an antagonist named in Taylor’s discourse and often compared with the poet: Plato. While Plato tries to synthesize tensions of love, Philips maintains them, contenting herself with friendship’s mysteries.