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Mimesis in Beachy Head: How Coastal Fragmentation Informs Charlotte Smith’S Poetry

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Mimesis in Beachy Head: How Coastal Fragmentation Informs Charlotte Smith’S Poetry Mimesis in Beachy Head: How Coastal Fragmentation Informs Charlotte Smith’s Poetry Elia Kazan Fordham University Professor Zimmerman Romantics and Ecocriticism Abstract: After re-reading Beachy Head, I noticed that both the location of Beachy Head, and structure of Charlotte Smith’s poem, are fragmented in their own ways. This similarity of fragmentation led me to believe that human imagination (and its expression in art) is strongly influenced by our physical environment. In this essay I examine how Beachy Head can be seen as a place of fragmentation (partitioned, irregularly shaped, and layered), then I examine how fragmentation operates in Smith’s poem (structure, episodic memory, and change). I then connect the two, and propose the theory that perhaps the aesthetics, character, and content of her poem is in some ways mimicking her natural environment. Whether or not this is absolutely true, Smith’s poetry undeniably offers the opportunity to study human identity by way in which human imagination positions itself to the place and space it finds itself in. Three examples of fragmentation in Smith’s poem struck me as most significant: firstly, the structure of the poem being made up of 9 distinct parts; secondly, the fragmented sense of time represented by fossils and Smith’s own childhood memories; and thirdly, the inherent quality of change found in various entities of the poem, both human and non-human. At the end, this analysis supports a larger argument which is that because of this interconnectedness between physical environment and human imagination, there exists an urgent need to protect the environment in order for humans to thrive both physically and imaginatively. Introduction Beachy Head is quite the place to let “Fancy” “go forth.” It is massive, desolate, historical and imposing. It is where sea meets land, or rather collides with, as the two struggle against one another. There are no trees, and with strong winds and extreme vertical cliffs can be a precarious place to stand about. Its white cliffs, and layers of stratum, are a testament to time and change on the Earth. Its residents, such as the shepherd, the peasants, the wanderer (whose “home was in the forest; and wild fruits / And bread sustain’d him” line 560) and the hermit are testaments to the symbiotic relationship between humans and their environment. With all these elements, the place serves as inspiration to Charlotte Smith, to think about the natural environment on a large scale, its inhabitants, and those times where she “once was happy.” Fragmentation is a theme prevalent in Charlotte Smith’s work not only in the description of the natural environment but also in the structure of her poem itself. As Kevis Goodman writes in “Conjectures on Beachy Head,” “Smith’s poetry emphasizes the opposite movement of the dialectic: the critical parsing of abstraction, or the dissolving and separating of unity into number… Charlotte Smith delights in parting the elements” (1000). We can see fragments in a number of ways. One way is the usage of footnotes, the effect of which fragment the flow of the poem. In these footnotes are references to both natural science texts and poetry that inform Beachy Head: “Smith builds her fragment of fragments, fashioning a mosaic of broken tiles. Often these tiles are from Smiths reading- it is important to recognize the extent to which even unacknowledged models and sources 1 inform this poetry, the extent to which this extracanonical work is rooted in literary tradition” (Anderson 551). These “sources” that inform her poetry, such as Robert Percival’s An Account of the Island of Ceylon (note 5, page 164), or Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne (note 2, page 176), or Oliver Goldsmith’s poetry in the line “Unprofitably gay” (221), all add to the fragmentary nature of the poem. The footnotes fragment the narrative structure by adding detail and supplying information that is distinctly separate yet connected to the poem overall. In such footnotes, Smith breaks the reader’s attention away from her romantic poetry and offers either factual explanation supplements her descriptions (such as taxonomical and botanical names). Beachy Head, in this fragmented way consisting of both poetry and prose footnotes, forms an assemblage of distinguishable materials (which also reveal the range and depth of Charlotte Smith’s own education). The fragmentary footnotes make Beachy Head a fragmented piece of poetry, and in many ways this fragmentation mimics Beachy Head, which is a fragment of land jutting out into the sea, consisting of various elements of the sea, the shore, and the cliff, and made up of elephant bones and sea-shells from creatures of the past, and inhabited by various living beings. 2 Fragmented Structure of the Beachy Head Smith attempts to understand the fragmentation of Beachy Head by contemplating how it was formed. In an attempt of “Fancy,” Smith tries to understand how Beachy Head was divided. She describes the “convulsion of Nature” that quite literally fragments Beachy Head as a landmass apart from Europe: And represent the strange and awful hour Of vast concussion; when the Omnipotent Stretch’d forth his arm, and rent the solid hills, Bidding the impetuous main flood rush between The rifted shores, and from the continent Eternally divided this green isle. (5-10) In footnote 2 (page 163), Smith explains how she is not assured that the two landmasses (Great Britain and continental Europe) were once connected, or that they were non- fragmented. In this sense, fragmentation seems to be intrinsic to Beachy Head. In other parts of the poem, Beachy Head is represented as a fragmented place, such as the “cavern” where the hermit lives (673), or as an isolated headland away from “England’s Capital” (485). Beachy Head, as a coastal setting, can certainly be defined as fragmented because it is where land breaks to meet the sea, and this creates its rocky surface and an irregular shape. It could be further argued that it has a fractal pattern because of this irregularity. Benoît Mandelbrot, a famous scholar of mathematics, defined fractal as including not only a fragmented nature, but irregularity as well: “I coined fractal from the Latin adjective fractus. The corresponding Latin verb frangere means ‘to break:’ to create irregular 3 fragments. It is therefore sensible ... that, in addition to "fragmented" ... fractus should also mean ‘irregular’” (Mandelbrot 1). The coast of Beachy Head aptly deserves the description of fragmented and irregular; it is where the land breaks off, and meets the sea. It is a place where the force of the sea collides with vertical cliffs, which causes the rocky coast to break apart further. Similarly, Beachy Head is poem that is fragmented and irregular, and this mimesis reveals a working relationship between environment and the human. Fragmented Structure of Beachy Head Kari Lokke writes how “Beachy Head moves quite spectacularly from a sweeping and panoramic cosmological, geographical and historical vision, to a regional portrait of the Sussex downs, to a series of village vignettes, before concluding with the single and isolated figure of ‘the lone Hermit’” (45). What Lokke is capturing here is the overall fragmentation of the poem. The reader is forced to migrate along these distinguishable and separable fragments of the poem, with little or no introduction. In fact, the poem starts off in the essentially fragmentary structure in medias res; “ON thy stupendous summit, rock sublime! / That o’er the channel rear’d, half way at sea / The mariner at early morning hails, / I would recline, while Fancy should go forth” (1-4). In a highly fragmented way, without any preamble, the poem immediately commences with the narrator speaking atop Beachy head and describing the scene around here, where she hears the mariner “at early morning hail[s],” and see the sunrise, the birds “seek[ing] their food” and “the lone shepherd, and his baying dog / Drive to thy turfy crest his bleating flock” (27-28). 4 As Beachy Head is suggested as a non-linear poem, I argue this is because the poem mimics the fragmentation of the actual Beachy Head. It is important not to overlook the non-linearity of the poem, caused by its distinct sections and footnotes. Heather Crickenberger adds to the conversation about the poems non-linearity as a sort of meditation “like one’s mind in a contemplative state, her poem does not stay on track, trudging toward a predetermined purpose, but leaps forward and backward in time, circling back on itself like a meditation.” (Crickenberger 2). The poem starts off describing Beachy Head and the sunrise/sunset in the first two verses, but then quickly transitions, in a highly fragmented way, to the human history of England which was invaded and conquered by the Normans. Smith further adds a tangent about English and French naval forces fighting in the Battle of Beachy Head. Even the human history, analogous to the fragmented nature of Beachy Head itself, is fragmentary in and of itself: the English were not the sole, undisturbed inhabitants of the place; their cultural history was fragmented by the invasion of the Normans. As we move forward in the poem, the non-linearity continues. In lines 167-254, Smith returns to the landscape of Beachy Head and its inhabitants, and writes about the “simple scenes of peace and industry,” and the purity and freedom of the hind (farm assistant) living their life in simplicity and in devotion to their labour. Smith swiftly moves along by contemplating “Happiness” and her own experiences growing up in “these upland solitudes.” Then we arrive to the oft-quoted scene where Smith finds sea-shells.
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