“In Strange Christian Hope”: Memory and Faith in Geoffrey Hill'sThe Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy

Geoffrey Hill's Christianity has underlain many discussions of Hill's poetry. Hill's own Christianity, however, is less relevant to his readers than how Christianity's symbols, doctrines, and liturgical language occur in Hill's texts. This essay considers the Christian substance of Hill's poetry in relation to Hill's avowed concern with the memory of the dead, especially in The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy. Hill's engagement with Christianity in the poem (and elsewhere) is unlike T. S. Eliot's or W. H. Auden's, for Hill does not work in conclusions. In Hill's poetics the work of faith, like the work of memory, is ongoing, interminable, and indeterminable.