[Rose Kelleher]

I have a deep, dark confession to make: sometimes, when the moon is full and my medication wears off, I like Swinburne. There are a couple of Swinburne threads in Mastery, but they were about specific poems and didn't go very far.

I'd never heard of him before I started poking around in online workshops and saw "Swinburnian" used as a derogatory term for overly poetical, flowery, archaic, long-winded poetry. It seemed as if everyone -- from the hip, opaque poets to the Garrison Keillor types -- was in agreement on this one thing: that Swinburne was the exact opposite of what contemporary poetry should be. Naturally, this aroused my curiosity.

His Poems & Ballads, which I've been (slowly) working my way through, so outraged Victorian critics that his publisher was forced to withdraw it from circulation. That alone is reason enough to like him. Afterwards, in defense of his publisher, Swinburne wrote a pamphlet in which he denied his poems were about homosexuality or sadomasochism or anything else considered "indecent or blasphemous" and accused his critics of having dirty minds. Of course this was baloney, but he expressed himself with so much wit and defiance that you have to smile. Here's an excerpt:

"The first, it appears, of these especially horrible poems is Anactoria. I am informed, and have not cared to verify the assertion, that this poem has excited, among the chaste and candid critics of the day or hour or minute, a more vehement reprobation, a more virtuous horror, a more passionate appeal, than any other of my writing. Proud and glad as I must be of this distinction, I must yet, however reluctantly, inquire what merit or demerit has incurred such unexpected honour."

Evasive, but still, considering the times, brave. Remember what happened to Oscar Wilde. But enough about his character. I meant to say a few words in defense of his poetry, or at least in defense of some of it.

First of all, what an ear! Pick any stanza of any poem of his at random, and read it aloud. Lilting, sweeping, rhythmic, fluid music. Recently I tried to write something in his style, and let me tell you, he's not easy to imitate. I don't mean snide parody, but respectful imitation. He was an uncompromising metrist (and by that I do not mean rigidly regular) with great respect for the line (by which I do not mean he never enjambed), and amazingly deft with alliteration and anaphora. Poe defined poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty in words," but Swinburne was better at it.

Here's a stanza I just opened to at random, from To Victor Hugo :

Yea, he is strong, thou say'st,
A mystery many-faced,
The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
The blind night sees him, death
Shrinks beaten at his breath,
And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
We know he hath made us, and is king;
We know not if he care for anything.

And, just to see if it works again, here's another stanza, picked totally at random, from Ilicet :

There is not one thing with another,
But Evil saith to Good: My brother,
My brother, I am one with thee:
They shall not strive nor cry for ever:
No man shall choose between them: never
Shall this thing end and that thing be.

But that's the easy part: everyone knows Swinburne sounded good. The problem, according to his modern critics, is that he was extremely (as Maz would say) "poetickal." And he was. But after reading a lot of relentlessly un-poetical contemporary poetry, a little Swinburnian flamboyance can hit the spot. He didn't go into the mundane details of, say, packing a suitcase, and try to extrapolate meaning or beauty from that. He talked a lot about God, goddesses, red flowers, good and evil, blood, sex and death. You know, fun stuff. And he questioned a lot of assumptions. In the stanzas above, he's questioning whether God cares about His creations, and questioning the binary nature of good and evil. Today that may seem unremarkable, the stuff of adolescent poetry. But in his day, in his culture, that was a big deal.

Okay, you say, but he padded his verse with a lot of fluff in service to the form. And he may have done that to an extent, but I suspect he's not quite as guilty of it as people say. I noticed when I was reading Dolores that the notes were pretty extensive. He made a lot of allusions, which is why, as I mentioned earlier, it's taking me so long to read his stuff. Take this stanza:

O garment not golden but gilded,
O garden where all men may dwell,
O tower not of ivory, but builded
By hands that reach heaven from hell;
O mystical rose of the mire,
O house not of gold but of gain,
O house of unquenchable fire,
Our Lady of Pain!

Now, call me dumb, but if it weren't for the notes, I'd never have known that this alludes to the Loreto Litany of the Blessed Virgin. I'd have thought these were just fanciful images he came up with on his own. But they're not fluff; every one of those images is meaningful. In his pamphlet, he's able to pull off his disingenuous defense of his poems because they're so allusive and layered. "Dolores" can be seen as an ode to an abstract anti-madonna or to an employee of a London flagellation brothel. Either way it's a fun read.

The other problem, people say, is that Swinburne was long-winded. Ahem. The accepted wisdom today is that a poem should say what it has to say in as few words as possible, and say it only once. Swinburne rhapsodized, chanted, explored a single theme in a dozen different ways. There's something to be said for chanting. The rhythm itself adds meaning and emotion, building on itself, like a chant at a protest rally, or a drum solo, or saying a rosary as opposed to a single Hail Mary.

Another factor may be that Swinburne often used anapestic meter and compound rhymes like "Dolores / adore is," and those are often associated with light verse. But that's rather arbitrary, isn't it?

I googled, and according to at least one Internet source, Frost was an admirer of Swinburne. A. E. Housman harshly criticized him, but praised his rhyming ability and imitated his "rhythms." Strangely, Pound supposedly liked him, at least for a while. Other admirers reportedly included Hardy, Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Faulkner. Okay, so that's not a very long list. I'm grasping at straws.

It would be easy for everyone to respond by posting examples of Swinburne's worst poetry as proof that the consensus is right and his life's work was indeed worthless. I humbly suggest that that would not be the best use of our time, and propose instead that people post and discuss poems or sections of poems of his that they find genuinely interesting. But do what you have to do.



[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited June 19, 2006).]

[Marilyn Taylor]

Rose, I'm glad you're introducing Swinburne to this forum, because I've always enjoyed his stuff (in smalllish doses)-- mostly due to the incredibly musical effects of his rhythms and his sounds. In fact, I have to admit that these elements have a considerably greater effect on me than the actual content of his poems, most of the time-- with the notable exception of "Hymn to Proserpine", which I honestly think is one of the most heartbreaking poems in the language.

Swinburne's work often comes up in discussions of prosody; he really was masterful with internal rhyme, dipodic rhythms, etc., which is another reason I turn to him occasionally. A third reason is that he was actually capable of laughing at himself a little. Here was a guy-- unllike many contemporary poets-- who was cheerfully aware of his own quirks and idiosyncricies, and you probably know that he wrote a very funny self-parody-- a poem called "Nephelidia" that starts like this:

"FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float. . . " --etc.!

Can you see the poets of our own generation doing something like that-- Sam Gwynn notwithstanding?? Well, maybe there are a couple more, but I'm still impressed with what I can only call Swinburne's comparative humility. Thanks again for bringing him back.

Marilyn

[David Anthony]

Thanks for posting this, Rose.
I'm a fan of Swinburne, for all the reasons mentioned by you and Marilyn.

Here's an extract from Hymn to Proserpine which I think is spectacular in its virtuosity:

Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean ? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things ?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years ?
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.

Like a lot of Victorians he was over-prolific and his worst stuff isn't good; but then again, whose is?

And he invented the roundel.

And I believe he significantly influenced Ernest Dowson, another wonderful lyric poet.

Best wishes,
David

[Mark Allinson]

Rose!

Thank you for starting this topic.

Rose, I don't even need the full moon (and my meds never work right) to love Algy.

To me, he is one of the great Gods of meter - at his best, that is. As you and David have suggested, he not all of a piece in terms of quality.

I have learned - and I am still learning - so much about rhythm from this poet. To me, he is the future as well as the past. My future, at least. I want to learn to write - if I can - with something like the metrical music and energy he achieves in his best work.

I will certainly be back with more to say, but for now, here is one of my favourites, from Poems and Ballads of 1866.


A LEAVE-TAKING.

LET us go hence, my songs; she will not hear.
Let us go hence together without fear;
Keep silence now, for singing-time is over,
And over all old things and all things dear.
She loves not you nor me as all we love her.
Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear,
She would not hear.

Let us rise up and part; she will not know.
Let us go seaward as the great winds go,
Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here?
There is no help, for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear.
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
She would not know.

Let us go home and hence; she will not weep.
We gave love many dreams and days to keep,
Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow,
Saying `If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.'
All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow;
And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep,
She would not weep.

Let us go hence and rest; she will not love.
She shall not hear us if we sing hereof,
Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep.
Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough.
Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep;
And though she saw all heaven in flower above,
She would not love.

Let us give up, go down; she will not care.
Though all the stars made gold of all the air,
And the sea moving saw before it move
One moon-flower making all the foam-flowers fair;
Though all those waves went over us, and drove
Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair,
She would not care.

Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see.
Sing all once more together; surely she,
She too, remembering days and words that were,
Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we,
We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there.
Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me,
She would not see.

[Janet Kenny]

Rose,
Your Swinburne "essay" is one of the best things I've read for ages.
Janet

[nyctom]

Rose:

No work is ever worthless if you get something out of it.

The dogs may bark, but it is YOUR caravan rolling on...

Best--
Tom

[Henry Quince]

Yes, Rose, when someone is out of fashion it becomes the fashion to belittle him, and people with not a hundredth of the target’s talent enthusiastically join in the denigration.

Swinburne was considered degenerate in his time. That — and the fact that he created a fictional character and reviewed works by him — would make him interesting to me even if I hadn’t read any of his verse.

Certainly he made verse-music, and certainly he’s open to the charge that there’s sometimes more sound than sense in his lines. But at least there is sound! And when these accusations are made, where are the critics who defend modern obscurity by telling us that we’re misguided when we look for literal meaning? “A poem should not mean, but be.” Why isn’t that a justification for Swinburne, too, in passages where he seems to be “sound-driven”?

There are few stanzas more memorable than this one from Atalanta . It’s a marvellous expression of winter giving way to spring, dark days to hopeful and so on, but I don’t know that I could explicate every line.

For winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the season of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remember'd is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.


(I stole that stanza pattern and meter, more or less, for my Australian train poem.)

I’ve often wondered, looking at the rhyme scheme of Hymn to Proserpine, if he first wrote it in trimeter and then decided to join up pairs of lines to make the hexameter of the poem as published. I think I prefer the trimeter pattern of The Garden of Proserpine , in which his agnosticism, his skepticism about Christian hope for an afterlife, is clear:

.
.
.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
.
.
.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.


He was a Victorian but one can hardly accuse him of taking a conventional line! He believed that people become less trustworthy as they get older — presumably as spontaneous passions give way to guarded self-interest.

As Wikipedia puts it, “Swinburne may have been one of the first people not to trust anyone over thirty. This of course created problems for him after he himself passed that age.”

Henry




[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited June 22, 2006).]

[Janet Kenny]

Rose,
My husband comes to poetry with a whimper but I made him read your piece which he greatly enjoyed. As he walked away from the computer he remarked: "Perhaps the greatest problem for Swinburne was that his name was Algernon".
Janet

[Mark Allinson]

Certainly he made verse-music, and certainly he’s open to the charge that there’s sometimes more sound than sense in his lines. But at least there is sound! And when these accusations are made, where are the critics who defend modern obscurity by telling us that we’re misguided when we look for literal meaning? “A poem should net mean, but be.” Why isn’t that a justification for Swinburne, too, in passages where he seems to be “sound-driven”?

An excellent point, Henry!

And you make another good point with the idea of the hexameter of his "Hymn to Proserpine" being a product of two tri-lines, and the "Garden of Proserpine" staying with tri, when it might have been hex.

I have heard this point made on a number of times on this board - I recall Tim saying something similar. But I wanted to make a small point here that it doesn't automatically follow that all hex lines can be split into two tri-lines. The "Hymn" certainly feels like most lines can be split, with a definite mid-line caesura. But I prefer to write my hex without this caesura.

If a hex can be split in two, I believe that it should be split in two, and be what it is - two lines of tri posing as something else.



------------------

[Janet Kenny]

Originally posted by Henry Quince:

Certainly he made verse-music, and certainly he’s open to the charge that there’s sometimes more sound than sense in his lines. But at least there is sound! And when these accusations are made, where are the critics who defend modern obscurity by telling us that we’re misguided when we look for literal meaning? “A poem should not mean, but be.” Why isn’t that a justification for Swinburne, too, in passages where he seems to be “sound-driven”?

Henry,
I am one of those who thinks that if a poem doesn't "be" I don't give tuppence what it "means" and I also believe that the "be" is what it means. And not just poetry. All art.
Janet