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The Blessed Damozel Edward Hirsch. How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999) • „The Four Subjects of Poetry" (William Matthews) 1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not what. • I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry. (John Cage) •Victorian Poetry •Continuation of Romantic tradition •Before 19th c. poet=maker, poem=product, if discussed in terms of emotions: readers’ emotion •After Romanticism: poem=expression of poet’s emotion, poem retains umbilical link w creator, •uninspired poet: no longer out of touch w external force, but in no proper touch w his own feelings •Lyrical poetry=„spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth) •Modernism: poem is an artefact whose existence is independent of poet’s emotions •Rhetoric: quarrel w others, arouse emotion in others vs Poetry: quarrel w ourselves, express emotion (Yeats) •Collingwood Principles of Art. Art: expression of emotions Craft: arouse emotions in others(rhetorics) •1st Romantic generation: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge •2nd generation: Byron, Shelley, Keats •3rd generation: Tennyson, Browning •4th generation: Rossetti, Morris, Swinburne Theoretical continuity • Expressive theory of art: poetry =overflow, utterance, or projection of the thought & feeling of the poet • poetry = imaginative process which modifies and synthetizes the images/thoughts/feelings of poet, • Artist = generates both artistic product and criteria by which it is to be judged (Keats. Ode on a Grecian Urn) *Thematic continuity • Romantic plot of infinite yearning „Infinite passion and the pain/ Of finite hearts that yearn” (Browning. Two in the Campagna) *Structural continuity • Opposites: art/ life, immortality/ mortality, ideal/ real • Conflict of faith & doubt, scepticism,agnosticism. • escape from utilitarianism to medievalism --Narrative poetry: Tennyson. Lady of Shallot, Chr. Rossetti: Goblin Market --Dramatic poetry. Dramatic monologue. Tennyson: Ulysses, Browning: My Last Duchess --Aestheticism, image/text, ekphrasis The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) poet laureate, Baron 1830 Poems Chiefly Lyrical 1833 2nd book 1850 In Memoriam A.H.H (The Way of the Soul) requiem, elegy „nature red in tooth and claw” „Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Agnosticism+pantheism+mythological inspiration Conflict of religious faith+scientific knowledge moralizing (ideas)+ self-indulgent melancholy (mysticism) Topics: medieval legends, myths, domestic situations, nature Musicality of lgg: „The moan of doves in immemorial elms / And murmuring of innumerable bees.” Dramatic Monologue (persona poem) ULYSSES (1842) Homer’s Odyssey+ Ulisse in Dante’s Inferno *Hero faces old age: discontent, restlessness upon return to Ithaca, yearn to explore again: final line of determination: „to strive * Heroism resides in knowledge of limits+will to surpass them to seek, *soliloquy/ introduce son to public/ address mariners/ irony, to find, unreliable narrator/ clash bw contemplative vs active lifestyle/ and not to *clash of 2 voices: responsible social being+melancholic poet yield” *blank verse: iambic pentametre, but no rhyme • 4 emotional stages: 1. Reject barren life in Ithaca 2. nostalgy of Observation hill, heroic past, 3 recognize son’s governance, 4. plan another journey Antarctica, • *„I have become a name” U as textual tradition John William Waterhouse. The Lady of Shalott 1888 The Lady of Shalott (1833, 1842) Arthurian legend-based ballad Pastoral setting, mysterious lady, magic curse: weaves magic web without looking at world directly, sees only mirror reflections , „half sick of shadows” – see: Plato! Tragic love story (Lancelot&Guinevre, she wants to see reality and him even at cost of death, he fails to realize her sacrifice, can only see a pretty face) chivalric love questioned Metaphor of artistic creativity: *ivory tower: artist’s dilemma: to create work celebrating the world or live the world *creative power of gaze *the enchanted enchantress representation VS presence •Her magic song echoing down to Camelot, heard by reapers whispering about her VS tirra lirra of Sir Lancelot’s lighthearted lark song •weaving (text/ere, Moiras, Philomena, Penelope, Ariadne) •coming to writing: her name on the boat: illegible, her sacrifice doomed to be misunderstood, her floating on river: women’s writing “She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.” Waterhouse. I am half-sick of shadows, said the lady of Shalott Holman Hunt. The Lady of Shalott. DG Rossetti. Holman Hunt Who is this? and what is here? /And in the lighted palace near/ Died the sound of royal cheer;/ And they cross'd themselves for fear/ All the knights at Camelot:/ But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face;/ God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." Elisabeth (Lizzie)Siddal Robert Browning (1812-1889) • Venice, buried in Poet’s CoGod is the greater poet. • (poet:magician, prophet, philosopher) • Legendary romance w Elizabeth Barrett Browning. • Lasting creative partnership. Travels together in Italy, • buried in Westminster Abbey • Poet as subjective visionary→ objective, moral usefulness, respectable, literature of facts, synthesis + progress intertwined • To Elizabeth: „You speak out, you..I only make men & women speak, give you truth broken into prismatic hues, & fear the pure white light, even if it is in me, but I’m going to try” Dramatic monologue: speech in specific situation at critical moment, ironic interplay bw setting/action/spoken comments * Men and Women (crafstmen, travellers, collectors, enquirers) *The Ring and the Book (1868): murder case from 9 perspectives, no access to truth * Christmas Eve and Easter Day (1850) Life metaphorized as quest, adventure, pilgrimage Relation to world: state of excited, unquiet posession, yearning * Meeting at Night (1845) „two hearts beating each to each!” * Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came: knightly quest, dreamscape, suspense, dilemma of choice and will, tragic quest: find sg else than expected, open ending Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came And just as far as ever from the end! Nought in the distance but the evening, nought To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought. Meeting at Night (1845) For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, 'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place The grey sea and the long black land; All round to mountains - with such name to grace And the yellow half-moon large and low; Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. And the startled little waves that leap How thus they had surprised me, - solve it, you! In fiery ringlets from their sleep, How to get from them was no clearer case. As I gain the cove with pushing prow, And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when-- Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Three fields to cross till a farm appears; Of giving up, one time more, came a click A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den! And blue spurt of a lighted match, And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, Burningly it came on me all at once, Than the two hearts beating each to each! This was the place! I I wonder do you feel to-day Two in the Campagna As I have felt since, hand in hand, (from Men and Women 1855) We sat down on the grass, to stray In spirit better through the land, • Rome countryside, alternative social landscape This morn of Rome and May? • Gentle discord: Nature ↔contemplating mind II • Fleeting transcience of Nature, History, For me, I touched a thought, I know, Thoughts, Love Has tantalized me many times, (Like turns of thread the spiders throw • „Finite heart’s infinite yearning” Mocking across our path) for rhymes • Inability to ever perfectly capture ideas verbally, To catch at and let go. to grasp situation, to transcend crude III. experience of self-consciousness Help me to hold it! First it left The yellow fennel, run to seed • Chase thought through landscape There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft, • Despite helpful erotic suggestions of nature, Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed the total communion of lovers never achieved, Took up the floating weft, • we cannot feel other’s feeling … No. I yearn upward, touch you close, • Poetry like Love are imperfect: that makes Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, them beautiful Catch your soul’s warmth, - I pluck the rose • (see marital, autobiographical aspect) And love it more than tongue can speak- • Tradition of Romantic Weltschmerz, divine Then the good minute goes. Just when I seemed about to learn! discontent, philosophical pondering about Where is the thread now? Off again! human condition The Old trick! Only I discern- • enjambement Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite
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