A.C. Swuinburne and the noble pleasure of the eulogy
The present study dwells upon the reactions bestirred by Algernon Charles Swinburne’s portentous poetry amid his fellow writers. A complete picture catches sight on the cross fusillades of irony and disbelief which equally festered and kept alive his work. It is argued that parody is the best gauge for the endurance of a literary fame. If Tennyson came to be the most mimicked writer of the period, than little Algie was certainly the most laughed at, parodied and, eventually, ignored “litterateur”. Albeit his ridiculous rags and tails, the hard core of his work was first stricken neither by the professional critics nor by fellow writers, but by those whifflers who stood in the theatre pit and booed at times when the show became too conceited.
Keywords: modern English literature, A.C Swinburne, parody, self parody, sense of dimness, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Victorianism, Arthurian legend
1.[1] Biografii consemnează influenţa covârşitoare a liricii swinburniene asupra tinerilor din universităţi care se prindeau de mâini şi intonau celebrele versuri ale poemului Dolores (v. consemnările lui George Saintsbury şi Harold Nicolson despre pasiunea studeţilor de la Oxford şi Cambridge pentru poezia erotică, în Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 115).
2.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, Swinburne’s Literary Career and Fame, New York, Russel &Russel, 1963 (reedit. 1933), p. 86.
3.[1] Samuel C. Chew, Swinburne, Hamden, Conneticut, Archon Books, 1929, p. 262.
4.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit, p. 87.
5.[1] James Richardson, Vanishing Lives. Style and Self in Tennyson, D. G. Rossetti, Swinburne and Yeats, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1988, p. 4.
6.[1] Walter Pater, Renaşterea, traducere de Iolanda Mecu, Bucureşti, Univers, 1982, p. 202.
7.[1] James Richardson, op. cit., p. 9.
8.[1] Kerry McSweeney, Tennyson and Swinburne as Romantic Naturalists, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1981, p. XIII.
9.[1] Kerry McSweeney, op. cit., p. 3.
10.[1] Samuel C. Chew, op. cit., p. 220.
11.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 87.
12.[1] ibidem.
13.[1] Robert Browning, apud Rikky Rooksby, A.C. Swinburne: A Poet’s Life, Aldershot, Scolar Press, 1997, p. 84.
14.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, George Chapman: A Critical Essay, London, Chatto&Windus, 1875, p. 16, www.archive.org: „If there is any great quality more perceptible than another in Mr. Browning’s intellect it is his decisive and incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. To charge him with obscurity is about as accurate as to call Lynceus purblind or complain of the sluggish action of the telegraph wire. He is something too much the reverse of obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle for the ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty the track of an intelligence which moves with such incessant rapidity, or even to realise with what spider-like swiftness and sagacity his building spirit leaps and lightens to and fro and backward and forward as it lives along the animated line of its labour, springs from thread to thread and darts from centre to circumference of the glittering and quivering web of living thought woven from the inexhaustible stores of his perception and kindled from the inexhaustible fire of his imagination”.
15.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 89.
16.[1] Letters of John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 91.
17.[1] E. T. Cook, Life of John Ruskin, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 91: „He is infinitely above me in all knowledge and power, and should no more thing of advising or criticising him (…) As for Swinburne not being my superior, he is simply one of the mightiest scholars of his age in Europe – knows Greek, Latin, and French as well as he knows English – can write splendid verse with equal ease in any of the four languages – knows nearly all the best literature of the four languages, as well as I know – well – better than I know anything. And in power of imagination and understanding simply sweeps me away before him as a torrent does a pebble. I’m righter than he is – so are the lambs and the swallows, but they’re not his match”.
18.[1] Swinburne Letters, ed.Cecil Y. Lang, vol. I, New Heaven, Yale University Press, 1959, p. 141 v. infra: „I went to see Swinburne yesterday and heard some of the wickedest and splendidest verses ever written by a human creature. He drank three bottles of porter while I was there. And don’t know what to do with or for him, but he mustn’t publich these things. He speaks with immense gratitude of you – please tell him he musn’t”.
19.[1] ibidem., vol. I, p. 159-160: „Dear Ruskin, // I am glad you like my little essay, and gladder to hear that you think of coming to look me up. But I do not (honestly) understand the gist of what you say about myself. What’s the matter with me that I should cause you sorrow or suggest the idea of ruin? I don’t feel at all ruinous as yet. I do feel awfully old, and well may – for in April I believe I shall be twenty-five, which is «a horror to think of». Mais — ! what have I done or said, to be likened to such terrible things?// You speak of not being able to hope enough for me. Don’t you think we had better leave hope or faith to infants, adult or ungrown? (…) I don’t want more praise and succes than I deserve, more suffering and failure than I can avoid. (…) You compare my work with a temple where the lizards have supplanted the gods; I prefer an indubitable and living lizard to a dead and doubtful god. // I recalcitrate vigorously against your opinion of Felise, which is rather a favourite child of mine.”
20.[1] Sorin Alexandrescu, Prefaţă la John Ruskin, Însemnări despre artă, antologie şi prefaţă de Sorin Alexandrescu, traducere de Cristina Micuşan şi Sorin Alexandrescu, Bucureşti, Meridiane, 1968, p. 20.
21.[1] v. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, vol. II, cap. The Nature of Gothic, www.homepage.villanova.edu/seth.koven/gothic.html: „1.Savageness; 2.Changefulness; 3.Naturalism; 4.Grotesquenes; 5.Rigidity; 6.Redundance. These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as belonging to the builder they would be expressed thus: 1.Savageness or Rudeness; 2.Love of Change; 3.Love of Nature; 4. Disturbed Imagination; 5.Obstinacy; 6.Generosity”.
22.[1] Edmund Gosse, Confidential Paper, apud Philip Henderson, Swinburne. Portrait of a Poet, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co, 1974, p. 162.
23.[1] Walter Pater, op.cit., p. 111.
24.[1] Swinburne Letters, ed. cit., vol. II, 1959, p. 58: „I like Pater’s article on Leonardo very much. I confess I did fancy there was a little spice of my style, as you say, but much good stuff of his own and much of interest”.
25.[1] Walter Pater, op. cit., p. 203.
26.[1] ibidem., op. cit., p. 110.
27.[1] Samuel Chew, op. cit., p. 93-94.
28.[1] Oscar Wilde, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 102: „Certainly «for the song’s sake», we should love Mr Swinburne’s work, cannot, indeed, help loving it, so marvelous a music-maker is he. But what of the soul? For the soul we must go elsewhere”.
29.[1] Swinburne notează în A Record of Friendship etapele îndepărtării bunului său prieten care ajunge să fie degradat, în ierarhiile prieteniilor poetului, de Watts-Dunton şi de Lord Houghton (v. Samuel C. Chew, op. cit., p. 136 infra).
30.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, Introduction la Swinburne Replies. Notes on Poems and Reviews. Under the Microscope. Dedicatory Epistle, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1966, p. 5.
31.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, Under the Microscope, Portland Maine, Thomas B. Mosher, 1899, www.robertbuchanan.co.uk/html/micro2.html.
32.[1] Cităm în cele ce urmează un pasaj din răspunsul lui Robert Buchanan, The Monkey and the Microscope, www.robertbuchanan.co.uk/html/micro2.html: „A clever Monkey – he can squeak,/ Scream, bite, munch, mumble, all, but speak;/ Studies not merely monkey-sport/ But vices of a human sort;/ Is petulant to most, but sweet/ To those who pat him, give him meat/ Can imitate to admiration/
Man’s gestures, gait, gesticulation;/ Is amorous, and takes no pain/ To hide his aphrodital vein;/ And altogether trimly drest/ In human breeches, coat and vest,/ Looks human and upon the whole/ Lacks nothing, save perchance a Soul”.
33.[1] Sugerat de Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., cap. New Glory, and Some “Flytings”, termenul e folosit de Walter J. Ong pentru a desemna competiţiile de injurii organizate de barzii scoţieni (v. The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie). Acestea luau forma unui turnir verbal dar continuă o întreagă tradiţie germanică, prezentă şi în unele poeme epice, mai ales în formulele de hărţuială şi jignirile adresate de combatanţi înainte de luptă.
34.[1] Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 180.
35.[1] ibidem., p. 178.
36.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, citat de Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 178: „A foul mouth is so ill matched with a white beard that I would gladly believe the newspaper scribes alone responsible for the bestial utterances which they declare to have dropped from a teacher whom such disciples as these exhibit, to our disgust and compassion, as performing on their obscene platform the last tricks of tongue now possible to a gap-toothed and hoary-headed ape, carried first into notice on the shoulder of Carlyle, and who now, in his dotage, spits and chatters from a dirtier perch of his own finding and fouling”.
37.[1] Lewis Caroll, Atalanta in Camden Town, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, Swinburne’s Literary Career and Fame, New York, Russel &Russel, 1963 (reedit. 1933), p. 109.
38.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, In the Orchard, în Poems and Ballads. First Series, London, Moxon, 1866, The Swinburne Project, www.letrs.indiana.edu: „O my fair lord, I charge you leave me this:/ It is not sweeter than a foolish kiss?/ Nay take it then, my flower, my first in June,/ My rose, so like a tender mouth it is:/ Ah God, ah God, that day should be so soon” etc.
39.[1] Carolyn Wells, In the Pumpkin, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 110.
40.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Match, în Poems and Ballads. First Series, ed. cit.: „If I were what the words are,/ And love were like the tune,/ With double sound and single/ Delight our lips would mingle,/ With kisses glad as birds are/ That get sweet rain at noon;/ If I were what the words are/ And love were like the tune” etc.
41.[1] Tom Hood the Younger, The Match, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 110.
42.[1] Gérard Genette propune termenul de „mimotext”. Vezi Palimpsestes, Paris, Seuil, 1982, p. 290 sqq.
43.[1] Algernon Charles Swinburne, Faustine, în Poems and Ballads. First Series, ed. cit.: „Lean back, and get some minutes’ peace;/ Let your head lean/ Back to the shoulder with its fleece/ Of locks, Faustine” etc.
44.[1] Citat în Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the English and American Authors, vol. VI, apud Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 111.
45.[1] Pentru un bilanţ riguros al reacţiilor suscitate de faimosul poem v. Clyde Kenneth Hyder, op. cit., p. 111-116 (refrenul „Our Lady of Pain” suferă originale distorsiuni parodice: „Our Lady Champagne”; „Our Lady of Bulk”; „The Toper’s Lament”; „Brandy and Soda” etc.). Majoritatea continuă tradiţia reprezentării unui Swinburne mahmur sau de-a dreptul beat, lansată de Robert Buchanan în The Session of Poets, satiră publicată în 1866, după apariţia volumului Poems and Ballads: „What was said? what was done? was there prosing or rhyming?/ Was nothing noteworthy in deed or in word?—/ Why, just as the hour of the supper was chiming,/ The only event of the evening occurred./ Up jumped, with his neck stretching out like a gander,/ Master Swinburne, and squealed, glaring out thro’ his hair,/ «All Virtue is bosh! Hallelujah for Landor!/ I disbelieve wholly in everything!—There!»// With language so awful he dared them to treat ’em,—/ Miss Ingelow fainted in Tennyson’s arms,/ Poor Arnold rushed out, crying «Sœcl’ inficetum!»/ And great bards and small bards were full of alarms;/ Till Tennyson, flaming and red as a gypsy,/ Struck his fist on the table and uttered a shout:/ «To the door with the boy! Call a cab! He is tipsy!»/ And they carried the naughty young gentleman out” (v. www.robertbuchanan.co.uk).
46.[1] A. C. Hilton, Octopus, apud Donald Thomas, Swinburne. The Poet in His World, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 134.
47.[1] Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes, Paris, Seuil, 1982, p. 290.
48.[1] Marian Popa, cap. Modul parodic, în Comicologia, Bucureşti, Univers, 1975, p. 147-174.
49.[1] În volumul Specimens of Modern Poets. Heptalogia or The Seven Against Sense. A Cap with Seven Bells, publicat anonim în 1880, Swinburne îşi dedică sieşi ultima şarjă parodică în poemul Nephelidia: „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,/Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,/ These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?// Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor’s appalled agitation,/ Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;/ Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,/ Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?” etc.
50.[1] Gérard Genette, op. cit., p. 307.
51.[1] T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 1920 (reedit. London, Methuen&Co, 1972), p. 17, www.archive.org.
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