‘The Present Moment’ and ‘Times Whiter Series’: Rochester and Dryden

Summary

Dryden and Rochester are the most considerable poets of their day and knowingly represent their times. Both poets are fascinated, too, by their occupancy of time but they understand and represent this in entirely different ways. This divergence is most easily marked in their reading of Charles II and his court but it controls, too, their attitude to sexuality and, finally, distinguishes the specific nature of their religious conversions.

The opposition is not difficult to see for it cuts to the centre of their interests and literary procedures. Rochester insists upon the impossibly ‘present moment’ and, as corollary and consequence, reveals himself in impersonation. Dryden is concerned with a ‘now’ in which ‘Times whiter Series is begun’ and, as corollary and consequence, is enfolded in visions of history. These are poles apart but, as such, are complementary. Rochester's ‘present moment’ is ‘all my Lott’ and disappears ‘as fast as it is got’ (‘Love and Life’, 11.8–10). He does not possess as ‘mine’ any past or future. The ‘present moment’, however, at the very point of its appropriation is liable to be hapless. It is always an amalgam of the ‘lucky’ or ‘happy minute’ and ‘The Imperfect Enjoyment’. The character of such moments is most obviously revealed in sexual interchange but that, in turn, discloses an inescapably general state of affairs. We find ourselves with the wrong companions, in the wrong house, wearing the wrong shape, thinking with the wrong consciousness. Enjoyment does not wait on our desire nor does our will control our members. As this is the case even the ‘livelong minute’ eludes consciousness but tests and reveals our discomfort.