Major Poems and Selected Prose by Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

Major Poems and Selected Prose by Algernon Charles Swinburne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One would think, given the title Major Poems and Selected Prose that the main focus of any good, thorough review would be on the poetry.

This is neither a good nor a thorough review. There's just not enough time, and I don't have the energy to do a meaningful analysis. Swinburne is just too BIG! But there are notable highlights which I must . . . highlight . . . notably . . . nevermind.

We begin with poetry, of course. Swinburne's epic tragic poem "Atalanta in Calydon" is representative of much of his work as it seems to have little to do with Atalanta or Calydon, only as Atalanta is a prompt, of sorts, to Meleager's ultimately fatal actions. Normally, I'm not big on introductions that effectively spoil the entire story before it happens, but in this case, it helped a great deal to be able to understand what was actually happening throughout.

As one might expect, the intertwined themes of Eros and Thanatos predominate throughout. For an example of the admixture of both, I quote, in full, "Anima Anceps":

Till death have broken
Sweet life's love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said.
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
With song and saying,
Things flown and fled?
For this we know not -
That fresh springs flow not
And fresh griefs grow not
When men are dead;
When strange years cover
Lover and lover,
And joys are over
And tears are shed.

If one day's sorrow
Mar the day's morrow -
If man's life borrow
And man's death pay -
If souls once taken,
If lives once shaken,
Arise, awaken,
By night, by day -
Why with strong crying
And years of sighing,
Living and dying,
Fast ye and pray?
For all your weeping,
Waking and sleeping,
Death comes to reaping
And takes away.

Though time rend after
Roof-tree from rafter,
A little laughter
Is much more worth
Than thus to measure
The hour, the treasure,
The pain, the pleasure,
The death, the birth
Grief, when days alter,
Like joy shall falter;
Song-book and psalter,
Mourning and mirth.
Live like the swallow;
Seek not to follow
Where earth is hollow
Under the earth.

Among this and other gems, "Dolores" is one of the more amazing long-ish poems I've read. Again, it's easy to see why Swinburne is so renowned among poets. I don't know that I could write such a beautiful, despairing, mocking, and yearning poem if I took the rest of my life to do it. Brilliant.

And though Swinburne's archaic language and structure can sometimes be off-putting, at other times, he is melodious. "On the Cliffs," for example, is as much a song as a poem. Its sibilance is astounding and fluid. It feels natural, like poetry often doesn't.

Though death and love are frequent foci of attention, the strain of atheism is strong throughout Swinburne's work, an odd thing for a poem written in 1880. Odd as in rare, not as in "bizarre". Swinburne was openly antagonistic to religion in a way that wouldn't be expressed with any regularity until after the Great War.

The masterpiece in this volume is the long epic poem "Tristram of Lyonesse," which requires an attention and stamina like that of reading Ulysses or anything by Beckett. It exacts a toll on the brain! And yet, it is a rewarding, bittersweet opus on love, betrayal, and tragedy.

Confession: I have "wronged" a couple of people in my life. Two, specifically, that I can remember. Many, many years ago. But my actions still sting. When I read Iseult's lament herein, that sting returned, after, what, 35 years now? Such is the power of good poetry. Good poetry digs deep, and sometimes it hurts like hell.

Swinburne might be considered a straight-up Romantic poet, but "A Nympholept," a sort of hymn to the god Pan and, hence, to the winsomeness of Nature, is as thoroughly a Symbolist piece as I've ever read. This would pair well with a good long stare at a Gustave Moreau painting, for sure.

After the poetry is a mixture of criticism, essays, and what must be short pieces of fiction (unless I misread and they are sensationalized early journalism, but I think not). Swinburne's first critical essay here is absolutely scathing and brutal. He tries to pass it off as an unemotional exercise meant to help the poet in question, but the shots he takes are lethal, if on the mark.

Swinburne's review of Les Fleurs du Mal is pretty good.

Mine's better.

While reading his essays, I had a bit of serendipity: last month my wife and I visited the Chicago Institute of Art, which hosts Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix". And herein is an essay, heretofore unknown to me, by Swinburne about, among other things, that very painting. It's got me thinking about how the internet has made such art widely available, but how tawdry jpegs are in comparison to seeing the artwork in person. Is such ready access to art a good thing if the secondhand reproduction is so poor and if it is impossible to adequately represent the piece on a screen, given the subtleties of the original? Discuss . . .

Finally, one last quote from the book that I found amusing and true, from a piece that is an exceprt from Swinburne's erotic novel Lesbia Brandon:

It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.

Indeed they do.

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