“SEE LOVE, AND SO REFUSE HIM”: THE POETICS, PHILOSOPHY, AND PSYCHOLOGY OF LOVE IN ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE’S POEMS AND BALLADS [1866] by Jason Wilfred Jacques Boulet A thesis submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (April, 2014) Copyright © Jason Wilfred Jacques Boulet, 2014 Abstract This dissertation studies the concept of “love” in Algernon Charles Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads [1866]. As I argue in Chapter One, there has been surprisingly little critical discussion of the concept of love in Poems and Ballads, and what there has been is flawed in that it inadvertently reinforces the longstanding charge of Swinburne’s “meaninglessness,” obscures the ways in which the love of Poems and Ballads is an informed critical response to the culture of the time, and tends to render the poems and their dramatic speakers interchangeable. In Chapter Two, I attempt to redress the ahistoricism that has dominated these discussions by explaining how the love of Poems and Ballads arose in response to the “cult of love” of Swinburne’s contemporaries, which he, informed by ideas that he inherited from his Romantic forbearers, viewed as an impoverishment of sensual experience, and consequently of humankind’s creative capacities—as dramatized through his speakers’ “refusals” of love and its imaginative possibilities. In Chapter Three, I explore two such “refusals,” expressed through the voices of the very different speakers of the “Hymn to Proserpine” and “The Triumph of Time.” After clarifying some sources of confusion, I trace how both of these characters, by means of different philosophical and psychological pathways, come to turn away from love and (in doing so) their own poetic potential. In Chapter Four, I turn to “Dolores,” in which the speaker’s rejection of love drives him to the “perverse spiritualism” that Swinburne identifies with the Marquis de Sade. Although the speaker succumbs to creative impotence, I argue that he is capable of recognizing his own inadequacies, and to welcome a poet who can “kiss” and “sing” like Catullus once did (340-42). Finally, in Chapter Five, I argue that, in the Sappho of “Anactoria,” Swinburne provides a dramatic ii model of (the development of) the kind of poet who could “see love,” in all of its volatility and violence, and still “choose him.” In concluding the chapter, I also claim that Swinburne suggests, in Sappho’s relation to her future readers, how such a poet might inspire others to “choose” love. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University for their support and resources. Special thanks to my supervisor, Robert Morrison, who has seen this project through several forms, and whose invaluable critical input and insight has often come at decisive moments in its development. In addition to thanking him for his contribution to shaping this project, I would like to express my gratitude for his patience, his editorial acumen, his professional advice, and his consistent belief in my abilities. Special thanks as well to my second reader, Catherine Harland, for helping me work through difficult ideas, for her willingness to share her knowledge of Victorian literature and culture, for her unflagging support and encouragement, and for her personal friendship throughout my many years at Queen’s. Thanks for always being there for me, and for inviting me to Christmas dinner! Thanks to Mark Jones and Tracy Ware for their willingness to discuss poetry, their professional advice, and their encouragement of my work. I would also like to extend thanks to Shelley King, Janice Helland, and David Bentley for volunteering their valuable time to act as my dissertation examiners, and to Annette Hayward for volunteering to act as chair for my oral examination. Thanks to Bernard J. Kavanagh and R. Drew Griffith for their discussions about classical literature and culture, which were especially helpful when dealing with so erudite a classicist as Swinburne. Of course, it goes without saying that all errors in this area are my own. Special thanks also to Dr. Griffith for his translation of the corrupt Sappho epigraph to “Anactoria,” which I quote in full in Chapter Five. I would like to extend special thanks to two special friends: Sheetal Lodhia and iv Rashed Al-Haque. Thanks for being there when I needed you. I would also like to thank those fellow graduate students who made life interesting, and shared my grad-student woes, in my first years at Queen’s University: Lindsey Banco, Sara Mueller, Veronica Blackbourn, Heather Emmens, Jeremy Lalonde, Eric Carlson, and Jennifer Esmail. I would like to thank Terry Meyers and Rikky Rooksby for choosing to publish material that would form part of Chapter Four of this project in the special Swinburne edition of Victorian Poetry celebrating the centenary of the poet’s death,1 and West Virginia University Press for giving me permission to reprint that material here. I would like to express thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Canada Graduate Scholarship), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, and Queen’s University for funding this project. Above all, I would like to thank my parents, who have been by my side, giving me support, encouragement, and love from the beginning. I cannot begin to thank you enough for everything you have given me over the last ten years, but I hope this is a start. 1 “‘Will he rise and recover[?]’: Catullus, Castration, and Censorship in Swinburne’s ‘Dolores.’” Victorian Poetry. 47 (2009): 747-58. v Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................iv List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 “For man dies, and love also dies”: Swinburne’s Neo-Romantic Attack on the Mid-Victorian “Cult of Love” in Poems and Ballads............12 Chapter 3 “Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day”: The End of Love and the End of Song in the “Hymn to Proserpine” and “The Triumph of Time” ...........43 Chapter 4 “Loves die, and we know thee immortal”: “Perverse Spiritualism” and Creative Impotence in “Dolores”............................................................90 Chapter 5 “[…] mix their hearts with music […]”: Modeling and Inspiring Swinburnian Love in “Anactoria” .............................................................. 140 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................. 181 Works Cited............................................................................................................................ 185 List of Abbreviations Works by Swinburne: Atalanta AtalantainCalydon “Burdens” “ABalladofBurdens” CW The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne “Dawn” “BeforeDawn” “Death” “A Ballad of Death” “Garden” “TheGardenofProserpine” “Hugo” “To Victor Hugo” “Hymn” “Hymn to Proserpine” “Life” “A Ballad of Life” MP Major Poems and Selected Prose NW New Writings by Swinburne “Order” “ASonginTimeofOrder” P&B Poems and Ballads [the volume itself] PBH Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon PBP Poems and Ballads and Atalanta in Calydon PRC The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Circle (ed. Lang) “Revolution” “A Song in Time of Revolution” “Satia” “SatiaTeSanguine” SC Swinburne as Critic SL The Swinburne Letters SR Swinburne Replies “Triumph” “The Triumph of Time” UL Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne WB William Blake: A Critical Study Biographical Works on Swinburne: ACS A.C.Swinburne:APoet’sLife (Rooksby) LAS TheLifeofAlgernonCharlesSwinburne (Gosse) SPP Swinburne: The Portrait of a Poet (Henderson) vii Biographical Works on Swinburne (cont’d): SPW Swinburne:ThePoetinHisWorld (Thomas) VLF LivesofVictorianLiteraryFigures (Vol. 6.3; ed. Rooksby) Critical Works on Swinburne: SCH Swinburne:TheCriticalHeritage (ed. Hyder) SEC Swinburne:AnExperimentinCriticism (McGann) SHG SwinburneandHisGods (Louis) SLC Swinburne’s Literary Career and Fame (Hyder) SRM Swinburne:AStudyofRomanticMythmaking (Riede) SWI Swinburne (Maxwell) TSR TennysonandSwinburneasRomanticNaturalists (McSweeney) viii Chapter 1 Introduction The predominant theme of Poems and Ballads is love [… but] not the conventional romantic love of Victorian heterosexual courtship and marriage. — Catherine Maxwell, Swinburne [2006]1 Many of the pieces [in Poems and Ballads] are not fit for quotation, on account of the extreme brutality of the view of love taken in them. The conception of that holy passion never seems to rise above the first animal germs of it, and it would seem as if pure devotion unsullied by a taint of low desire were a thing refusing to enter into the mind of the author. — “Criticisms on Contemporaries: No. 1 – Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne,” Tinsley’s Magazine [1868]2 When one considers that the word “love” and its many variants appear over 530 times in Poems and Ballads,3 it is difficult to argue with Maxwell’s recent assertion that love is the