Swinburne’s poetics: Theory and practice 9783111344423, 9783110992175

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DE PROPRIETATIBUS LITTERARUM edenda curat C. H. V A N SCHOONEVELD Indiana

University

Series Practica,

17

SWINBURNE'S POETICS Theory and Practice

by

MEREDITH B. RAYMOND

1971

MOUTON THE HAGUE

• PARIS

© Copyright 1971 in The Netherlands Mouton & Co. N. V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission the publishers

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To the Memory of My Husband

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study, now somewhat modified, was originally prepared as a doctoral dissertation at Boston University, and I want first to express my indebtedness to Professors Kingsbury M. Badger and Robert H. Sproat who directed the preparation with helpful critical advice and many personal kindnesses. Thanks is due to the Harvard College Library in numerous ways, not the least of which was permission to examine the unique edition of Swinburne's Undergraduate Papers in the Widener Collection. Professor Cecil Y. Lang, although he has not read the entire MS, has offered encouragement as well as general and specific suggestions with his customary generosity toward scholarly efforts. Chapter I I , in an altered and abbreviated form, appeared in the Summer, 1968, issue of Victorian Poetry under the title, "Swinburne Among the Nightingales". Others to whom I owe deep debts of gratitude are my sister, Mrs. Wilhelmina B. Thomas, who read the MS in its early stages; Mrs. Barbara LeBlanc, Chief Clerk for the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, who applied her superb clerical diligence and friendly assistance to the project; and, Professor Mary Rose Sullivan of the University of Colorado Denver Center who, from the first, offered valuable criticism, moral support, and, at the last, her practiced eye as proofreader. Professor Morton Berman, Chairman of the Department of English at Boston University and Professors Howard Brogan and Russell Alspach, formerly Chairmen of the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, have all given the kind of help for which the only appropriate term is "multitudinous". Finally, I must acknowledge thanks to Professor C. H. Van Schoonveld of Indiana University, the editor of this series, for his role as judge and guide. MEREDITH B . RAYMOND

University of Massachusetts, July, 1970

Amherst

INTRODUCTION

The darkness that has obscured Swinburne from the eyes of all except specialists shows signs of lifting, lifting to the degree that a shadow may be outlined. But there is a danger that the substance casting the shadow may be revealed only as a grotesque shape. Alluring and fascinating as the psychological perversions may be — those manifesting themselves as alcoholism, homosexuality, and algolagnia1 - and significant as they are for studies of the abnormal and for the make-up of genius, the main focus for the student of literature must remain on his poetry and criticism, although glances at and even close examination of his biography are sometimes justified and illuminating. It is to Swinburne's autobiography, rather than his biography, we turn our attention - the spiritual and poetic autobiography delineated in the somewhat later poems, "Thalassius", and "On the Cliffs". Our concern is to raise and answer questions which primarily affect his status as a critic, although any principles discovered should also be helpful in reading his poetry. Is there an aesthetic basis which applies to both his poetry and his criticism? What is the basis of his position as a Romantic? Does he really, as Meredith stated, lack an 'internal centre' ? As one reads the entire corpus of Swinburne's writings, his work in numerous genres - poetry, criticism, the novel, drama, parody, and satire - presents a striking accomplishment. As one surveys the commentary, both journalistic and scholarly, on Swinburne's attainment, one is most struck by his cosmopolitan attraction. In addition to the interest more naturally expected from the 1

For example, Humphrey Hare, Swinburne: A Biographical Approach (London, 1949). Hereafter cited as Hare. Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, trans. Angus Davidson (London, 1951); and, most recently, .Tean Overton Fuller, Swinburne: A Critical Biography (London, 1968).

10

INTRODUCTION

French, studies in German, Italian, and Scandinavian circles may also be found. 2 His prolific talent, his diversity, and his attraction for foreign readers provide serious motivation for a renewed study of this great English writer who has so often been maligned or damned with faint praise. 3 I n addition, the completion of the editing of The Swinburne Letters by Cecil Y. Lang 4 has suggested new sources for a revaluation. The revaluation which follows is directed primarily at Swinburne's status as a critic, b u t its method is to extract from two poems the standards employed in the criticism. Our first chapter analyzes Swinburne's critical style, an elementary step for understanding the purpose of multiple negatives, balance, antithesis, and apparent hyperbole: stylistic characteristics which have been occasion for ridicule and sometimes even despair. The second chapter attempts to extract his theory of poetry from the two poems mentioned, "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". The remainder of the work is devoted to an application of his poetic theory to his prose criticism and to finding a place for him in the somewhat wavering line of Romanticism.

2

The most lengthy and valuable studies have been in French. Georges Lafourcade, La Jeunesse de Swinburne (1837-1867), 2 vols. (Strasbourg, 1928). Lafourcade does, of course, in his first volume La Vie, discuss some psychological aberrations of his subject. Hereafter cited as La Jeunesse with appropriate volume. Paul de Reul, L'Oeuvre de Swinburne (Bruxelles, 1922). Hereafter cited as de Reul. Some other Europeans who have written on Swinburne are: Alice Galimberti, L'Aedo d'Italia: Algernon Charles Swinburne (Palermo, 1925); Alfred Löhrer, Swinburne als Kritiker der Literatur: Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner unveröffentlichten Schriften (Weida i Thür, 1925). Hereafter cited as Löhrer. Also Gunnar Serner, On the Language of Swinburne's Lyrics and Epics (Lund, 1910). Hereafter cited as Serner. 3 E. K. Brown in "Swinburne: A Centenary Estimate", UTQ, VI (Jan. 1937), is a rather typical example of this kind of assessment. 4 The Swinburne Letters, ed. Cecil Y. Lang, 6 vols. (New Haven, 1959-62). Hereafter cited as Lang with appropriate volume.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

7

Introduction

9

I. Swinburne's Critical Style: Additive and Elements II. Swinburne's Poetics I I I . Swinburne's Critical Principles IV. Swinburne's Critical Principles (Continued) V. Conclusion

Repetitive 13 40 87 114 160

Appendix: Swinburne's "The Nightingale"

181

Bibliography

183

I S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE: ADDITIVE AND R E P E T I T I V E ELEMENTS

Critical estimates of Swinburne's prose style vary from rounds of applause to boos with the boos considerably more audible. This seems to be true of nineteenth and twentieth-century criticism and of English, American, and continental opinions. Frequently, a critic will guardedly divide his own opinion according to the particular work being considered. Thus we may read the Spectator of July 3, 1875, which, in a review of Essays and Studies, praises Swinburne's 'gorgeous eloquence', b u t deplores his extravagances 1 or the recently published introductory remarks in Cecil Y. Lang's edition of The Swinburne Letters where he incorporates the nowfamous comment of Edward Thomas (1912) on the less attractive qualities of Swinburnian style. This is Lang's statement: The absurd prose style of his later period requires no comment beyond Edward Thomas' observation that if De Quincey and Dr. Johnson had 'collaborated in imitating Lyly they must have produced Swinburne's prose'. Yet his early prose was an instrument of beauty. 1

John Drinkwater (1912) more specifically mentions that assonance and antithesis were too often his masters, but credits Swinburne with force, beauty, and balance of phrase, perfect ease of transition and a flexible vocabulary. 3 Similarly, T. Earle Welby (1926) quotes George Moore who said Swinburne wrote the worst prose of any 1 Clyde Kenneth Hyder, Swinburne's Literary Career and Fame (Durham, N. C., 1933), p. 181. Hyder's study is indispensable as a bibliographical source of critical opinion of Swinburne. It is especially valuable as a guide to nineteenth-century reviews and journals. 2 Lang, I, xvii. 8 John Drinkwater, Swinburne: An Estimate (N. Y., 1913), pp. 175-176. Hereafter cited as Drinkwater.

14

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

poet. Welby also condemns the voluble, alliterative and antithetical outbursts although he admits t h a t Swinburne wrote some of the best as well as the worst prose of any poet. 4 Samuel Chew (1929) emphasizes what he refers to as Swinburne's 'methodless method', using "A Note on Charlotte Brontë" as an illustration. 5 Continental criticism of Swinburne's prose style during this later period may be represented by Paul de Reul (1922): "Les défauts de sa prose sont d'un orateur ou plutôt d'un improvisateur violent et surexcité." And the next paragraph, "Sans doute, le style varie." 6 He goes on in his somewhat thorough analysis to mention Swinburne's use of the double negative, inversion, redundancy, and symmetrical balance and says t h a t Swinburne prolongs the 'finale* by twenty expedients, listing among these 'parentheses, interrogation, restrictions adverbiales'. 7 Alfred Löhrer, after quoting Sir Edmund Gosse on Swinburne's later work as " 'scarcely readable' " places Swinburne's best literary criticism in the author's early period: Swinburnes beste literarkritische Schaffensperiode hat, wie ja übrigens auch die ruhmvolle Zeit seines grossen dichterischen Gestaltens, mit seinem vierzigsten Lebensjahre ihren Höhepunkt überschritten und geht von da ab langsam zur Neige. 8

A few lines further he adds, "Seine Prosa ist reich an Antithesen, chiastischen Wendungen, Alliterationen . . . an Parallelismen, Proportionen und Vergleichen." 9 My main purpose in this analysis is not, however, to endorse or refute the charges which may be conveniently summarized under the term 'inflation', b u t rather in judging Swinburne's criticism to attempt an approach which will emphasize the value of what 4

T. Earle Welby, A Study of Swinburne (N. Y., 1926), pp. 204-205. Hereafter cited as Welby, A Study of Swinburne. 5 Samuel C. Chew, Swinburne (Boston, 1929), p. 231. Hereafter cited as Chew. 6 de Reul, p. 4 6 8 . 1 am using de Reul as more representative than Georges Lafourcade's La Jeunesse as the latter study is confined, as the title suggests, to the first twenty years or so of Swinburne's life and Lafourcade's A Literary Biography is a much less satisfactory study. Lafourcade, however, is THE authority on Swinburne for the early years. 7 de Reul, pp. 474-476. 8 Löhrer, p. 15. * Löhrer, pp. 15-16.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

15

I refer to as repetitive and additive elements in his style, and with which it is essential to cope if one is going to penetrate to the roots and reveal the ramifications of his judgments. This is not to deny t h a t the corollary of the approach is one of sympathy toward Swinburne, nor is it to deny his obvious stylistic absurdities. I n this chapter on style I shall apply my suggested approach, somewhat in detail, to a passage from the study of "William Blake" and then supplement this analysis in less detailed fashion with references to other selections spanning Swinburne's critical career. A logical objection to the validity of this method may arise because of the use of 'selections'. Two considerations justify this procedure. First, my main purpose is to suggest a WAY of looking at Swinburne's critical style. The purport here is, admittedly, partly negative or defensive in t h a t certain techniques of Swinburne's style are so commonly ridiculed. The second consideration lies in the rationale employed in the choice of selections, the most obvious purpose being t h a t of chronology - a selection from each decade from the 1860's to the early twentieth century. Other purposes would be to illustrate different types of criticism, as, for example, something from the Elizabethan work, an estimate of a lyric poet, and a personal estimate. I have also selected an excerpt from an essay generally admitted to be among his best (the Chapman) and one from among his worst (the later ones on Hugo), as well as extracts from pieces of varying length and from his correspondence. Further, I quote from the more central parts of each work rather than from the introductions and conclusions, because the latter are less apt to be directed to the business of criticism and more apt to be derivative. I have also tried to avoid selections in which Swinburne tends to be dominated by the particular vocabulary of the author under surveillance as when he is summarizing or explaining a given passage. I was, however, unable to follow this criterion in the Hugo study. Analysis of Swinburne's prose style shows t h a t it was the result of the intensity of his scholarly and frequently pedantic, as well as of his Romantic, temperament. The Romantic exuberance is plain enough, especially when he indulges his extremes of eulogy or vituperation. That aspect of his scholarly nature manifested in his desire for precision of meaning and accuracy of detail, however, was perhaps the dominating influence - something which even a casual reader will vaguely sense, b u t which few consciously recog-

16

SWINBURNE S CRITICAL STYLE

nize or examine. This quality, one associated with the scrupulousness of a textual critic, and which Swinburne in the first sentence of his "Notes on the Text of Shelley" (1869) relates to 'the work of a scholiast', is admirably illustrated in the latter study which is actually a commentary on William Michael Rossetti's edition of Shelley. 10 Another example may be observed in a letter to Rossetti himself, dated, in the Lang edition, December 5, 1869: I n the Ode to Naples I a m strongly against a n y change of ' F a t e ' into ' F r a u d ' or a n y other word. The Ode is not throughout as regular in analogies and 'antinomies' of r h y t h m as a Greek lyric, and this is no graver variation from its counterpart verse t h a n others in the poem. The metrical m a r k s of strophe etc. are as they stand chaotic to a degree. They are as far as I can see hopelessly muddled - beginning with an ejoode (after-song J ! Then str. 1, 2: a n t . 1, 2, str. 3, 4. (i.e. t h e last two strophes are left without an antistrophe to cover their nakedness). Two more such stanzas would have set t h e balance equal, a, /? (str.) answered by a, /? (ant.), y, 6 (str.) answered by nothing: in other words a double echo or answer to a single sound or cadence; whereas the numbers ought to be even. This would be indicated by your friend's suggestion - b u t it would expose the fact t h a t S. forgot there cannot be an a n t : without a str: before it. This would be the only way I see t o m a r k it. Parode 1, or (a) Parode 2, or ( § ) Str. 1 Str. 2 Ant. 1 Ant. 2 Str. 3 (answering to str. 1) Str. 4 (to str. 2) Epode 1 Epode 2 Of course t h a t is not a proper arrangement - b u t t h a t is w h a t S. has made of it. For there can't be two ants: to one str. If you retain S.'s tremendous bull of calling his prelude an epode ( = his prologue an epilogue) you can keep his

10

The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bonchurch Edition, ed. Sir E d m u n d Gosse, C. B., and Thomas J a m e s Wise, 20 vols. (London and N. Y., 1925-27), XV, 348. Hereafter cited in t e x t by means of appropriate volume and page in parentheses.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

17

1. a = 1. p

2. a = 2. p but pray don't leave the antistrophes so absurdly mismarked as they are (a. y. indeed !) n

The extremes of Swinburne's pedantic zeal as a commahunter tire illustrated in his innumerable references in the correspondence with his publisher, Andrew Chatto, to Chatto and Windus, with frequent castigations (rightly or wrongly) of the printers.12 I have dwelt on this meticulousness in Swinburne's character because it seems related to the same impulses behind his disconcertingly frequent use of the multiple negative and his constructions involving contrast, balance, and parallelism - by now almost automatically associated with so much of his critical prose style. A cursory thumbing of the volumes of criticism reveals the presence of the semicolon and colon on almost every page of his critical prose and the frequent use of dash sets and parentheses. The reader interested in Swinburne's MEANING makes a grave error, however, when he ignores these forms of repetition and addition or even when he neglects one syllable of one word, ESPECIALLY in restatements, for this is Swinburne's method of qualifying and restricting, of toning down and of recording the second thought. 13 I do not attempt to equate scholarship with editorial zeal or the latter with scholarly writing, but such zeal does point up a desire for accuracy. That Swinburne possesses those qualities of scholarship connected with wide reading, knowledge of classical, French, and Italian languages and literature and that, more narrowly, he possesses complete knowledge of the King James version of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer are all facts too generally acknowledged to require comment. Also recognized is his facility as a translator, although this is rarely practiced. II

Lang, II, 63-64. I have selected the following letters from a lengthy list of those to his publisher, Andrew Chatto, as evidence of this trait in the extreme. Lang, II, 318-321 (Letter 540); III, 4 - 5 (Letter 596), 235 (Letter 781); IV, 38-39 (Letter 902), 243 (Letter 1112), 291 (Letter 1167). The letters to Chatto also show Swinburne's strong desire to keep abreast of current literature and reviews by his numerous and constant demands for books and periodicals which he always insisted be sent immediately upon publication. ls Sober or otherwise. In either case, it represent an attempt at aocurate expression. 12

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S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

F R O M " W I L L I A M B L A K E " (1867)

Let us turn, then, to an analysis of the passages representing each decade. The first is from Chapter III of "William Blake" designated "The Prophetic Books". Swinburne is defending Blake as a writer with a purpose and is trying to present some principles which will guide the reader through Blake's complex style: (1) Alternating between lyrical invention and gigantic allegory, it is hard to catch and hold him down t o a n y form or plan. (2) A t one time we have mere music, chains of ringing names, scattered jewels of sound without a thread, tortuous network of harmonies without a clue; and again we have passages, not alway8 u n w o r t h y of an Aeschylean chorus, full of fate and fear; words t h a t are strained wellnigh in sunder by strong significance and earnest passion; words t h a t deal greatly with great things, t h a t strike deep and hold fast; each inclusive of some fierce apocalypse or suggestive of some obscure evangel. (3) Now t h e m a t t e r in hand is touched with something of a n epic style; t h e narrative and characters lose half their hidden sense, and t h e reciter passes from the prophetic tripod to the seat of a common singer; mere names, perhaps not even musical to other ears t h a n his, allure and divert him; he plays with stately cadences, and lets t h e wind of swift or slow declamation steer him whither it will. (4) Now again he falls with renewed might of will to his purpose; and his grand lyrical gift becomes a n instrument not sonorous merely but vocal and articulate. (5) To readers who can b u t once t a k e their stand for a minute on the writer's footing, look for a little with his eyes and listen with his ears, even the more incoherent cadences will become not undelightful; something of his pleasure, with something of his perception, will pass into t h e m ; and understanding once t h e m a i n gist of the whole fitful and high-strung tune, they will tolerate, where they cannot enjoy, the strange diversities and discords which intervene. (XVI, 237-238)"

14 The parentheticul Arabic numerals number t h e sentences for convenient reference. Although t h e accepted date for t h e publishing of William Blake is 1868, I find an advertisement for t h e book December 14, 1867, in t h e Athenaeum as William H . Ziegler has pointed out in Chapter I I , "William Blake", of his unpubl. doctoral diss. "The Literary Criticism of Algernon Charles Swinburne" (Princeton, 1963). Hereafter cited as Ziegler. Wise, in his Bibliography (XX, 90), speaks of the d a t a of publication of t h e William Blake s t u d y as August, 1868. Swinburne was, of course, working on this study during much of the 1860's. I n a letter to William Michael Rossetti bearing the date October 11, 1863 [the year is Lang's conjecturc], Swinburne says, "T have made great way with Blake thanks to your help." Lang, I, 89.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

Grammar and

1»

Syntax

The structure of the second sentence is typical of the cumulative and compounding elements in Swinburne's prose. Up to the first semicolon, we observe a simple independent clause with a single unmodified subject and a one-verb predicate complemented by four objects. The verb 'have' is modified by a simple prepositional phrase, the first object 'music' by one adjective, the second object 'chains' by a phrase, and the third and fourth objects 'jewels' and 'network' each modified by adjective elements within which is another phrase. This clause is grammatically and syntactically simply constructed, the compound elements being of an uncomplicated structure, and in this way it is illustrative of the simple 'lyrical intention' which Swinburne is explaining. On the other hand, the second part of the sentence, beginning with 'and again' contains one independent clause (subject and verb repeated) but with complements more elaborately modified by complex and compound elements as well as parenthetical expressions. That is to say, 'passages', the first object, is conditioned by the parenthetical phrase 'not always unworthy of an Aeschylean chorus', and by the adjective 'full' in turn modified by the prepositional phrase with a compound object. The second object 'words' is modified by an adjective clause in itself containing a phrase with a compound object. Th e third object 'words' is modified by TWO adjective clauses and the fourth and last object 'each' (the punctuation indicates 'each' a separate object - i.e., another of the 'passages') by the more simple concluding construction of two adjectives, each with its accompanying prepositional phrase. Thus the second part of the sentence is a much more complex structure grammatically and syntactically and in this way is illustrative of the 'gigantic allegory'. The simplicity of 'lyrical invention' and the complexity of 'gigantic allegory' exist side by side in the formation of the sentence. The third sentence, dealing with epic style, may be seen to be lacking in grammatical complexity. Technically (excluding the 'whither it will' the force of which is that of a mere appendage), it is a compound sentence and, hence, in its structure, somewhere between the simple and the so-called compound-complex. I t depends for its syntax on a series of independent clauses with modifiers ascending no higher than phrases (again excluding the 'whither it

20

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL

STYLE

will' clause). Swinburne, through the medium of grammatical ordonnance, is repeating the sense of the sentence, namely, that the 'epic style' of Blake falls somewhere between lyrical simplicity and allegorical complexity. Rhetorical Devices A study of the language of Swinburne's lyrics and epics made by a Swedish scholar, Gunnar Serner, in 1910 concludes that "all his work bears the stamp of the utmost aristocratic aloofness". 15 Although Serner was speaking of the poetry, it is also true that the prose contains an aloof, a formal and, at times, an oratorical note. This is related to Swinburne's fondness for the additive and repetitive elements, the balance of antithesis and antiphony, for parallel and parenthetical constructions, and for coupling and compounding. The entire passage from Blake quoted above is, of course, a working out of the 'alternating' theme of 'mere music' versus 'Aeschylean chorus'. The suggested grammatical division of Sentence 2 into two sections of simplicity and complexity, the contrast between 'strong significance' and 'earnest passion', the introductory phrases of Sentences 3 and 4, 'Now the matter in hand' and 'Now again', and also the idea of opposing the cryptic prophet to the 'common singer' in Sentence 3 suggest antithesis and antiphony. The substantive phrases which elaborate on 'music' in Sentence 2 and the descriptive clauses following 'words' as well as the whole series of objects previously described in Sentence 1 form parallelisms as does the general relationship between Sentences 3 and 4. Phrases with the negative 'not always worthy' etc. and 'perhaps not oven musical' are clearly parenthetical. In Sentence 3 we observe the parenthetical remark 'perhaps not even musical to other ears than his'. The phrase has additive value as it embraces the whole notion of the A P P A R E N T L Y purposeless and reveals the individuality, so important to Romanticism, of Blake's inspiration. Coupling is used for contrast and emphasis. We note 'fate' and 'fear', 'significance' and 'passion', 'deep' and 'fast', 'inclusive' and 'suggestive', 'apocalypse and evangel', 'allure and divert', 'swift' and 'slow', 'vocal' and 'articulate', 'with his eyes' and 'with his 15

Serner, p. 137.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

21

ears', 'fitful' and'high-strung', 'diversities' and 'discords'. Swinburne is discussing variety and contrast in Blake and his rhetorical strategy embodying principles of contrast and opposition, continuation, extension, and amplification communicate these principles in addition to and as a kind of repetition of these principles as expressed in t h e meaning of the words themselves. Climax and

Postponement

Although closely connected with the rhetorical aspects just discussed, climax and postponement may have a special refinement of meaning when taking the form of periphrasis, the multiple negative, and inversion. Swinburne's practice of deferring the nub of the m a t t e r b y embedding the essential in the qualifying phrase allows for finer ramifications and, equally importantly, creation of mood, the purpose of which is to approach articulation of the inexpressible. The technique is, of course, highly dangerous in t h a t its excesses result in redundancy and verbosity, not to mention obscurity, thus defeating its purpose. At its worst, the effect on the reader is to leave him bewildered as to the meaning. I n this situation, the reader's bewilderment is often accompanied b y an awareness of Swinburnian enthusiasm or hostility at its height. Now a state of bewilderment may sometimes be resolved through patience and study and where Swinburne is merely causing bewilderment, the reader, although irritated, m a y well be rewarded by rereading and analysis. When, however, Swinburne's emotion is excessive, it is best to discount the commentary. Unfortunately for the critical reputation of Swinburne, such passages have received a publicity far in excess of their numerical relationship to the whole body of his work. Many of these will be found in the correspondence relating to the Buchanan and Furnivall controversies and to Carlyle and Napoleon I I I . To return to the Blake selection and Sentence 3 once more. "Now the m a t t e r in hand is touched with something of an epic style." The question here, of course, is whether both 'touched' and 'something' are required. Is 'something' sheer postponement? The meaning is not the same if one says 'touched with an epic style' or 'has something of an epic style'. There is a finer distinction which Swinburne is drawing; there is less of the epic, a smaller amount of some element of the epic indicated by Swinburne's

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SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

sentence. The point is t h a t Swinburne does n o t w a n t us t o a p p l y the term 'epic* to "The Prophetic Books". The postponing 'something' is paying its o w n fare. The negative — single, double, triple, and fourfold - is so common to Swinburne's expression as to be almost s y n o n y m o u s with his critical style. I t occurs as a separable element in the varieties of 'note' and as a combining form as in 'unworthy', and where it is more of an integral force in such a word as 'discord'. A n n o y e d as ho m a y be, the student of Swinburne criticism should n o t flinch before the task of disentangling the negatives. This m e t h o d is an important part of Swinburne's evahiating process and reflects his zeal for accuracy. D a v i d Prall in his general discussion, "Critical Standards", touches upon t w o favorite techniques of Swinburne the negative and the comparison: But critics have another set of standards, not of the structural sort we have been discussing throughout, which are often explicitly applied for descriptive purposes as well as for the purposes of evaluation. These appear usually as the names of qualities and degrees of qualities. 16 And then a f e w pages later: An adequate and consistent critical standard of this qualitative sort is then - as in informal ordinary critical usage - simply an indifference point on a scale above which it is positively applicable and below which it is negatively applicable. The ordinary critical vocabulary lacks many of the negatives required for such a scheme; but it at least affords tho term lack itself. And lack of prefixed to the positive term will indicate degrees in the negative direction by further modification. We may say how lacking a work is in brilliance or swiftness or steadiness or clarity or intelligibility, by saying that it lacks all brilliance, or is somewhat lacking in steadiness, and so on. Obviously, none of this has definitely applicable meaning unless we have, marked for us somewhere, the indifference point of the critic's own scale. Critical vocabulary is so extremely inadequate in indicating degrees, in fact, that a perfectly honest review of a very ordinary novel in the critio's own opinion, may make use of adjectives that are equally applicable to novels that the critic himself would rank enormously higher in the very aspects indicated. Constant overt comparison is required to other works of the same author or of other authors to indicate any precise meaning for the terms applied. 17 18

D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Analysis (N. Y., 1936), p. 198. Hereafter cited us Prall, Aesthetic Analysis. 17 Prall, Aesthetic Analysis, p. 201.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL

STYLE

23

Swinburne, with important and obvious exceptions, was not indulging in mere bombast and 'filler' when manipulating his negatives and comparisons, but was trying to compensate for a vocabulary and language system which is inadequate as a means of doing what concerned him so highly, that is, of expressing accurately the degrees of quality. Sentence 2 in the sample from Blake contains the phrase 'not always unworthy of an Aeschylean chorus'. Here the double negative has the force of commendation, a fact apparent even to one unaware that Swinburne placed Aeschylus highest in his admiration of the Greeks. He is achieving a more positive effect by the 'not always unworthy' than he would by other possibilities that might be mentioned, as 'occasionally' which is, because of its derivation almost pejorative, and as 'sometimes' which seems to indicate a condition less often than 'not always'. The 'un' attached to a strong commendatory word as 'worthy' gives the similar measure of detraction from Aeschylus as does the 'not' accompanying 'always'. The use of another double negative here, the 'not undelightful' and the closing of the paragraph with such words as 'tolerate', 'cannot enjoy', 'diversities', and 'discords' serve not only as restraining elements for Swinburne, and as aids in expressing exactness of meaning, but at the same time reflect the less pleasing, eccentric manner of Blake's which is being delineated. Swinburne's propensity for fine measurement is often reflected by his reversing the normal position of the attributive adjective or of the adverb so that it follows the word it modifies. B y this abnormal position, the emphasis is made to fall on the qualifying element as, for example, in Sentence 1, 'not sonorous merely'. Evidently Swinburne wanted a heightening of this distinction which required more than the negative elements themselves in their usual positions. Diction

In Sentence 1, "Alternating between lyrical invention and gigantic allegory, it is hard to catch and hold him down to any form or plan", it may be noted that out of seven words in the introductory participial phrase, five may be classified as Latinate and learned. Six are polysyllabic. In the main clause, out of fourteen words, all are of the vernacular and only one, 'any', contains more than one syllable. Is Swinburne consciously utilizing the theme of

24

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

complexity and simplicity in this manner, too? The sentence is a summarizing introduction, one setting the tone for the passage t h a t follows. The first p a r t of Sentence 2 contains a description of sheer music in disparate sounds or sounds lacking apparent direction the simplicity theme; b u t it is a relative simplicity with a suggestion, at least, of some sophistication and complexity. This may be illustrated by the fact t h a t Swinburne speaks of 'mere music', yet a chain. B u t the chain is one of ringing names only, a chain without meaning; it is scattered jewels of sound 'without a thread', beauty without coherence, and finally, a tortuous network of 'harmonies' - harmonies, b u t twisted, purposeless, 'without a clue'. Blake's simple music varies from sheer music to a kind of primitive harmony. This is something of what Swinburne is saying, b u t his catalog of metaphors is far more effective as a description of Blake's vacillating prophetic lyricism. I n the second part of Sentence 2, the diction suggests another side of Blake, the allegorical. The words 'Aeschylean chorus' . . . 'of fate and fear' and the words 'apocalypse' and 'evangel' connote and combine ideas of the harmony and disastrous portent inherent in a Greek chorus with those inherent in New Testament revelation and hope. The words are laden with an historical and literary cargo of meaning as well as being figuratively descriptive of the enigmatic and prophetic in Blake. I n Sentence 3, Blake's clarity is suggested by the figure of the 'common singer' when, says Swinburne, it is substituted for the 'reciter' of the 'prophetic tripod'. But now, by the introduction of the Delphic tripod, this prophetic element has additional Hellenic as well as Biblical overtones. Less compelling is the guidance of 'a common singer' under the influence of a 'wandering wind' which phrase, incidentally, recalls the sense of 'tortuous network of harmonies'. The return of human purposiveness and meaning in Sentence 4 becomes associated with 'vocal and articulate', powers of human beings in contrast to those of an impersonal 'instrument' with mere resonance. I have preferred to refer only to the more objective and public concepts of these words as opposed to other possible subjective and personal ones. Supplementary layers of meaning could be easily extracted if, to cite one instance, one were to delve into the poetic Swinburnian significance of certain words as, for example, 'wind'.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

25

'Collocability' is a term used by J . A. Firth to describe a certain additive quality of the poetic language which has been called Swinburnese, 18 and it is tempting to try to find this quality in his prose as something of it seems to be present. Since Mr. Firth gives a specialized, linguistic (and, as he emphasizes, non-critical) definition of the word 'collocation', it would be well to elaborate on this. By collocation he refers to the meaning of a word (or phrase) as it is extended and dominated by the word (or words) habitually accompanying it. One of his examples is 'silly ass'. That is, one meaning of 'ass' is its collocability with 'silly'. He cautions t h a t meaning by collocation is not to be confused with contextual meaning which, he says, is 'the functional relation of the sentence to the processes of a context of situation in the context of culture'. 19 He also notes t h a t collocations may be personal and technical as well as general and public, b u t t h a t they carry their meaning by MUTUALITY [my emphasis]. "One of the meanings of night is its collocability with dark, and of dark, of course, collocation with night. This kind of mutuality may be paralleled in most languages and has resulted in similarities of poetic diction in literatures sharing common classical sources", states Firth. 2 0 Now the question which arises as far as Swinburne's prose is concerned is whether or not he is operating at a personal 'collocative' level, especially when he is indulging his penchant for coupling as, for example, in the Blake selection, 'strong significance', and 'earnest passion'. The impression one gets after having read through his criticism is t h a t he is, but in checking the relevant volumes of the Bonchurch Edition and numerous letters, we observe t h a t he repeats certain nouns and adjectives in VARYING combinations, as 'moral imagination', and 'moral insight' or 'noble panegyric' and 'generous panegyrist' (XIV, 28; XIV, 25; X I I , 49; XII, 137). The indispensable requirement in the term 'collocation' as Mr. Firth uses it seems to be habitual occurrence. Therefore, the testing point is the question of HOW frequent is habitual. We cannot, of course, be sure of whether there may or may not have been a collocative force in many of Swinburne's personal or private combinations as 18 J. A. Firth, "Modes of Meaning", Essays and Studies, ed. Geoffrey Tillotson, IV (London, 1961), 127. Hereafter cited as Firth. 19 Firth, 124. !0 Firth, 125.

26

SWINBUKNB'S CRITICAL STYLE

we cannot know whether he habitually when talking or thinking formed these phrases, but the evidence seems to be t h a t the prose has less of this technique than might at first be supposed and t h a t he is using a more simple repetitive pattern. He does employ the more easily recognizable general collocations which are found in our present-day language as 'flawless work', 'instinctive sense', 'cold-blooded murder' (XII, 26, 27; XIV, 208). The point is t h a t although private collocation may be operating in producing idiosyncracies and allusive qualities 21 resulting in the Swinburnese in his poetry, there is certainly much less of this influence in the prose where the emphasis is on COMMUNICATING his total meaning. He does seem to be trying to communicate through several approaches, but he is not, I think, esoteric. The collocability of the prose is less frequent and more public than is that of the poetry. Sound and

Meaning

The absence of general agreement as to definition and theory of prose rhythm makes anything beyond a few observations impossible. A few points in the selection under examination may be mentioned in passing. George Saintsbury, perhaps still the most important name in this field, admits in his Conclusion to A History of English Prose Rhythm t h a t he has doubts as to whether he has climbed the mountain and only hopes he has provided a shop for maps, rope, axes, etc. at the foot. 22 Two pieces of this equipment have already been seen to apply to Swinburne's prose - t h a t is, variety and application of balance and antith^ sis.23 Swinburne does, of course, frequently become metrical in his prose, or at least lapses into short patterns of consistency and uniformity. For example, in /

v

/

the passage currently under observation, we have 'chains of ring21

Firth, p. 125, mentions two branches of stylistic approaches arising through public and private collocation. They are: "(a) the stylistics of what persists in and through change, and (b) the stylistics of personal idiosyncracies". 22 George Saintsbury, A History of English Prose Rhythm (London, 1912), p. 443. Hereafter cited as Saintsbury, History of Prose Rhythm. 23 Saintsbury, History of Prose Rhythm, p. 450. Saintsbury places the following sentence in italics. " A s the essence of verse-metre is its identity (at least in equivalence) and recurrence, so the essence of prose-rhythm lies in variety and divergence." See also p. 446.

27

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE \j

y

^

V

/

u

/

sj

K*

/

w

w

/

ing names', 'full of fate and fear', 'that strike deep and hold fast', where accompanying a regular metrical pattern are glidings and repetition of similar consonants and vowel sounds initially, internally, and as final elements. Hence we are led into a topic with which any analysis of prose style should deal, but one which seems especially appropriate when dealing with Swinburne. This includes the question of sound as a mode of meaning. While it is far less significant than it would be in a discussion of the poetry, it is of more than average interest here. Certain techniques which are commonly recognized as pertaining to Swinburne's poetry may also be studied as they apply to the prose. Evaluating the effect and suggesting interpretations are risky because of certain fundamental difficulties involved. One is that the act of translating or trying to translate the language of sound, that is, the purely sensual sound effect, into language which requires some degree of intellectualization precludes any satisfying commentary, satisfying, that is to say, in the sense of freedom from subjectivity. J. R. Firth who is concerned with these effects in Swinburne's poetry states the problem in this way: "At the phonetic level no case has yet been made out for systematic sound symbolism or onomatopoeia in general human terms."24 Another fundamental difficulty is that in many cases it is im possibleto tell whether certain sound effects are present because of conscious artistry or because of syntactical requirements of language. If the latter, mere chance in the form of unrelated accompaniment rather than conscious or subconscious creative power appears to be operating and makes, it would seem, even recognition of their presence valueless. Yet we do not need to be reminded of Pope's line on sound and sense, nor need we refer to the testament of poetry itself as proof of the existence of this relationship. Confining our inspection to the recognition of the most elementary prosodic repetitive devices applicable to prose, namely, alliteration, assonance, and consonance, will help in insuring agreement that they are identifiably present. It is in the effects of the existence of these 'prosodic modes', to use Firth's term,25 where subjectivity and uncertainty play their disconcerting roles. In a set artistic mode or M

Firth, 121.

26

F i r t h , 123.

28

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

where the reader is familiar with the author's style, these aspects of the prosodic mode will appear as 'model expectancies'. 28 Now Swinburne is the example par excellence of a writer utilizing the prosodic mode to the n-th degree in both poetry and prose. I t is an important part of the repetitive and additive elements dominating his writing, so common, in fact, as scarcely to require notation or explication. This is especially true as it occurs in the several forms of alliteration of which it is probably superfluous to speak. Further, excessively used, these repetitive devices lose any accretional, additive, or even emphatic value. I n spite of all these considerations, however, a closer look at these techniques may show Swinburne successfully intensifying his efforts to communicate his total meaning. I should like to mention one or two instances in the passage quoted from "William Blake" and to venture interpretations which I regard as valid and enriching. Consider, for example, 'chains of ringing names', the phrase which follows 'mere music'. Readily discernible are the gliding nasals which echo the sense as onomatopoeia and also echo the idea of extension with which chain and ring are associated. The three important words have sound per se associated with their meaning - the rattle or clank of a chain, the natural onomatopoeia of 'ring', and 'name' in the sense of t h a t by which one is called. In addition, the assonance of the 'a' vowel in 'chains' and 'names' as well as the final 's' retards the pronunciation and lengthens the sound, all of which gives us another approach to the quality of extension, which, we recall, was being promoted as the first element added to the sheer simplicity of 'mere music'. Similarly, the sound seems to be echoing the sense in Sentence 4 when the presence of the liquid consonants themselves in 'an instrument not sonorous merely b u t vocal and articulate' suggests the freer-flowing movement when Blake's lyrical gift is grand. I t is probably very unfair to accuse Swinburne of using phrases for SHEER euphony, or as a means of unbridling emotion unrelated to the general presentation of what is thought as well as felt. His is, rather, to be regarded as an additional method of conveying, more accurately, his total meaning - its roots and ramifications, the conceptual and emotional aspects, and the expressible and the inexpressible. 26

Firth, 123. As Lear's limericks, for example.

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

29

Our progression through the Chapman, Hugo, and Herrick selections, and from the "Dedicatory Epistle of 1904" will be more rapid and will simply attend to some features not mentioned in the Blake analysis and refer occasionally and briefly to certain techniques already explored. FROM "GEORGE CHAPMAN" (1875) His comic or gnomic poetry may be better or at least faulty in its kind, but in that kind there is less room for the growth and display of those greater qualities which not infrequently struggle through the hot and turbid atmosphere of hiB tragic writing, and show by a stormy and cloudy illumination the higher reaches of his real genius. Nor is there in these rugged outlying highlands of tragedy, and in the somewhat thick and troubled air of the brooding skies above them, no beauty perceptible but the beauty of cloud and flame, of flood and fell: they have intervals of pure sunshine and soft greensward, interludes of grave and tender harmony, aspects of deep and serene attraction. (XII, 189)

I n this section of the essay on "George Chapman", Swinburne is trying to depict Chapman's tragic vision in general, b u t more particularly t h a t of the drama Bussy d'Ambois. He introduces Chapman's talent for the comic or gnomic for the sake of comparison and contrast and is thus enabled by means of negation, measurement, and balance to create a mood of litotes against which he may erect the more commanding nature of Chapman's tragic art. The incidental and subordinate comic and gnomic poetry is not only restricted by the qualities just referred to, b u t by the simple grammatical structure of t h a t section of the sentence as opposed to the more complex structure of the 'greater qualities' or of the second half of the sentence with its cumulative intensification and climax. I t is, however, in the diction t h a t it is most interesting to watch Swinburne at work in these two sentences. The natural images of 'fire', 'storm', 'cloud', and 'sunshine' are trite enough to be ignored, although, it must be admitted, they are highly appropriate when one recalls the stormy, turbulent, and incendiary motifs in Bussy d'Ambois.21 More pertinent evidence of Swinburne's precision in this field may be gathered by inspection of the words conveying 27

'Cloudy illumination' seems satisfying as an oxymoron to refer to this tragedy. What follows is an expansion by statement and restatement the result of which is accretion rather than mere reiteration.

30

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

the comparisons in the second sentence of the quoted material. H e is not only carrying through the idea of the 'turbid atmosphere' of the preceding sentence, b u t also a definition of poetry established in the second paragraph of the essay some f i f t y pages earlier when he referred to 'the pastures or the gardens of poetry* (XII, 137). Chapman's tragedy, we see, is represented as being a kind of 'rugged outlying highlands' with elemental beauty only, t h a t is, lacking the nurture of art. B u t not entirely so. The qualifying clause t h a t follows the ' b u t ' carries the pith of the message. P o e t r y is present, if only here and there. Swinburne's word is 'inter vais'. Literally and etymologically, this is the mot juste - spaces, cultivable places between the walls, the stony rugged r a m p a r t s of the highlands. B y extension, it is also the mot juste - 'intervals' in the sense of now and again. Swinburne is being economical as well as precise. The 'pure sunshine' of natural inspiration and the 'soft greensward' of h u m a n effort is embodied in the poetry, Swinburne is saying. Let us continue to 'interludes of grave and tender harmony'. Swinburne's use of the word 'interludes' has caused the editors of the OED to include a definition of 'interludes' as 'interruptive space'. 28 H e is using 'interludes' here in a double sense: (1) the continuing idea of 'space between'; and (2) the notions of d r a m a and music interludes of music between the acts, as it were, in Chapman's drama. The word is followed, inevitably it would seem, b y 'harmony', a term explored in other parts of this study. And, finally, the literal meaning of the first and last words of the phrase 'aspects of deep and serene attraction' lets us glimpse the drawing power of poetry in Chapman. Swinburne b y means of metaphor and precise use of his words simultaneously evaluates and describes Chapman's tragic poetry. I t is his way of showing the reader the effect and cause of Chapman's tragic vision and, at the same time, of communicating his own discriminating judgment. VICTOR HUGO FROM "LA LÉGENDE DES SIÈCLES" (1883) Among the many good things which seem, for the lovers of poetry, to have come out of one and so great an evil as the long exile of Hugo from his country, there is none better or greater than the spiritual inhalation of breeze and brine into the very heart of his genius, the miraculous im28 The line they quote is from Swinburne's poetry: "Salt marshes with interludes of sterile meadow".

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

31

pregnation of his solitary Muse by the sea-wind. This influence could not naturally but combine with the lifelong influence of all noble sympathies to attract his admiration and his pity towards the poor folk of the shore, and to produce from that sense of compassion for obscurer sorrows and brotherhood with humbler heroism than his own such work as the poem which describes the charity of a fisherman's wife towards the children of her dead neighbor. It has all the beautiful precision and accurate propriety of detail which distinguish the finest idyls of Theocritus or Tennyson, with a fervour of pathetic and imaginative emotion which Theocritus never attained, and which Tennyson has attained but once. All the horror of death, all the trouble and mystery of darkness, seem as we read to pass into our fancy with the breath of pervading night, and to vanish with the husband's entrance at sunrise before the smile with which the wife draws back the curtains of the cradle. (XIII, 131)

Such characteristic repetitive and additive elements as compounding, balance and antithesis, and restatement are present, butwithout the restrictions of precise identification, fineness of measurement, or even the familiar negative. The tone is entirely superlative and the thought meager. A close reading serves only to collaborate the first impression of an inflated style. Unfortunately, much of Swinburne's criticism on Hugo is in this vein. I t is the sort of prose for which Swinburne is justifiably scorned, b u t it is not the prose of the majority of his essays. The fact is t h a t the paragraph here quoted is reducible to the statement t h a t Hugo was as successful a writer of idyls of fisherfolk as he was of other topics. There is no toning down of hyperbole. The Muse prosopopoeia is strained. 29 There are too many 'alls' and the vocabulary supposed to connote Hugo's democratic inclinations is hackneyed - 'Pity', 'the poor folk' (public collocation?), 'brotherhood', 'humble heroism'. Any compensating variety or significance arising from its position or frdm its relationship to other words is lacking, and this contributes to a paucity of meaning which results in a tone of insincerity and hence sentimentality. To be sure, Theocritus and Tennyson are introduced as figures of comparison, b u t the effect is only t h a t of increasing the Hugo hyperbole and they seem to be unwanted intrusions. I t will be remembered t h a t when Swinburne followed this device 29

Part of the strained effect may be due to the combining of the Christian notion of 'miraculous impregnation' which is a rephrasing of the normal collocation 'immaculate conception' with the notion of the classical Muse. The sea-wind is a normal source of inspiration for Swinburne. See, for example, "The Forsaken Garden" or "To a Seamew" (III, 18 and 195).

32

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

of comparison in the Chapman essay, t h a t is, in presenting or introducing the comic or gnomic, it seemed less of an intrusion for two reasons: (1) he was referring to separate talents within one personality and (2) hyperbole was absent. I t is, however, worthwhile here to note Swinburne's standard for an idyl. There are two requirements, 'the beautiful precision and accurate propriety of detail' and 'fervour of pathetic and imaginative emotion'. 30 This seems to say t h a t the meticulousness of a scholar and Romantic inspiration are the necessary elements of an idyl with the Romantic inspiration the more difficult, apparently, to attain.

FROM "ROBERT H E R R I C K " (1891) Herrick, of course, lives simply by virtue of his songs; his more ambitious or pretentious lyrics are merely magnified and prolonged and elaborated songs. Elegy or litany, epieede or epithalamium, his work is always a songwriter's; nothing more, but nothing less, than the work of the greatest song-writer - as surely as Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist - ever born of English race. The apparent or external variety of his versification is, I should suppose, incomparable; but by some happy tact or instinct he was too naturally unambitious to attempt, like Jonson, a flight in the wake of Pindar. He knew what he could not do: a rare and invaluable gift. Born a blackbird or a thrush, he did not take himself (or try) to be a nightingale. (XV, 261)

Written during Swinburne's later years, the concentrated piece on Robert Herrick ranking him as the greatest English song writer is restrained, first, by preliminary remarks on the qualities of a perfect song, and, second, by a recognition of Herrick's excesses and monotony. The section I have quoted is the laudatory portion, the main point of which is strengthened by the comparison with Jonson and by the frequently quoted comparison of the thrush and nightingale (a good example of British collocation). Gradation of meaning in this passage is accomplished by the balanced couplings which define Herrick's range:'ambitious or pretentious', 'elegy or litany', 'epieede or epithalamium', 'nothing more, b u t nothing 30

Robert L. Peters, The Crowns of Apollo (Detroit, 1965). See Chap. IV, "On Fixities and Definites: the Use of Detail in Art", esp. pp. 90-94. Hereafter cited as Peters.

BWINBTJRNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

33

less', 'apparent or external', 'tact or instinct', 'rare and invaluable', 'blackbird or thrush'. Swinburne is making the specification of Herrick's range central to his critical appraisal. The methods are those of balance and comparison combined with postponement of the metaphor as a culmination of praise. The understanding and appreciation of any critic is, of course, increased by familiarity with his prejudices and with his reading. This statement is especially applicable to students of Swinburne because of his propensity toward hero-worship and because of his erudition. Although it is easy enough to become aware of his prejudices, it is quite another matter to cover a fraction of his reading in English, not to mention t h a t in the classics and foreign languages. The latter statement is an important factor in dealing with Swinburne's criticism. I refer to his habit of ASSUMPTION. H e TAKES FOB GRANTED t h a t the reader shares his knowledge; therefore, the reader needs to know the subject he is discussing as well as to be aware of his enthusiasm. 31 This is, of course, true of all critics, although some serve as guides who map out a field more than others. But, on the whole, one does better to read Swinburne's comments AFTER a study of the work under discussion rather than BEFORE. This may also be part of the explanation for his seeming lack of thoroughness and for his summary type of treatment. 3 2 A few words from the Herrick selection may serve, in a limited way, to illustrate my meaning. These are: " b u t by some happy tact or instinct he was too naturally unambitious to attempt, like Jonson, a flight in the wake of Pindar". Within this lies the perfectly fair assumption that the reader will naturally associate

31

T. E. Welby, A Study of Swinburne, pp. 218-219, has objected that Swinburne's work on the Elizabethan dramatists is addressed to specialists and is too summary. On the other hand, Welby also objects to Swinburne's vagueness in his conception of the public he was addressing and finally concludes that his dramatic criticism is most successful when read by a younger reader. Yet Welby thinks this criticism will remain a treasury for the specialist also. Apparently the enthusiasm appeals to the younger reader and the authoritative judgments to the specialist, but the flaw of 'too summary' remains. 32 Swinburne is, indeed, very unsatisfying as he flits from title to title. This is especially true of the minor Elizabethans treated in Contemporaries of Shakespeare (XII), of Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton in "Short Notes on English Poets" (XIV, 97-119)); and also of "Congreve" (XIV, 144-148).

34

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

Herrick with the tribe of Ben, will be aware of Jonson's emulation of the meteor-like Pindar and of the nature of the emulation - that is, of the insertion of didactic and moral commentary. Less well known, perhaps, and possibly less fair to today's reader lacking knowledge of classical Greek, may be what Swinburne elsewhere refers to as Pindar's 'inexhaustible imagery'. Although Swinburne always speaks of Pindar with esteem, just how high this esteem ran may be shown by a reference in a letter to Edmund Gosse, dated January 2, 1876: Why, Isaiah and Ezekiel were timid, reserved, costive, hide-bound, in the way of 'imagery', compared to Pindar and Aeschylus - the two Greeks whom, if I must not say I have tried to follow, I must say I always read with the most passionate sympathy and magnetic attraction to the thought and utterance alike that any poet ever puts into me. Take any great ode of Pindar's and in the way of wealth and profusion and oppression of inexhaustible imagery, I greatly fear my battle Chorus will read as flat and tame after it as Longfellow after Shelley. 33

Quite a bit more than the summarizing statement "He knew what he could not do" is being said of Herrick. Swinburne is saved from obscurity in that his references are, if not common knowledge, knowledge that is available rather than subjective. Neither is Swinburne obscure if we judge him by his own definition of which he speaks in the so-called digression on Browning in the Chapman essay. "Only random thinking and random writing produce obscurity" (XII, 147). FROM "DEDICATORY EPISTLE" (1904)

The omission of the "Dedicatory Epistle" from the Bonchurch Edition is a grave one since this judgment of his own works written late in his life is a valuable source for observing some of Swinburne's tenets on poetry in general and certain of his own poems in particular. The selection shows Swinburne employing a reasonable and dignified tone even though his attitude throughout the essay is one of defending himself against the familiar accusations of error and inconsistencies, and even though the essay was written late, in his 'degenerative' years. The element of apologia and the fact of its being dedicated to his mentor, Watts-Dunton, situations evoca33

Lang, III, 100.

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

35

tive of the personal and local, have not detracted from observations of more general critical significance. Rather, they have served to quicken our realization of Swinburne in his dual performance of creator and commentator. This is what he has to say on the role of the personal note or the subjective in formal descriptive poetry: Mere descriptive poetry of the prepense and formal kind is exceptionally if not proverbially liable to incur and to deserve t h e charge of dullness: it is unnecessary to emphasise or obtrude the personal note, t h e presence or t h e emotion of a spectator, b u t it is necessary to m a k e it felt and keep it perceptible if the poem is to have life in it or even a right to live: felt as in Wordsworth's work it is always, perceptible as it is always in Shelley's. This note is more plain and positive t h a n usual in the poem which a t t e m p t s - a t once a simple and ambitious a t t e m p t - to render the contrast and t h e concord of night and d a y on Loch Torridon: it is, I think, duly sensible though implicitly subdued in four poems of t h e West Undercliff, born or begotten of sunset in t h e bay and moonlight on t h e cliffs, noon or morning in a living and shining garden, afternoon or twilight on one left flowerless and forsaken. 3 4

The additive and repetitive elements of balance, restatement, and contrast are plainly reflective of Swinburne's desire for explicitness and clarity. This may be seen more specifically, for example, in the narrowing of the genre of descriptive poetry by the 'mere' and the qualifying phrase, and more generally by his whole method of suggesting the essential but subdued role of the personal or subjective as he works out the theme of duality. It is extremely difficult, he is saying, to compose a successful poem if it is entirely objective. The opposite element of subjectivity is not only desirable but essential if the poem is to continue to live. The inclusion of opposites, then, is a problem to be worked out. By his examples Swinburne illustrates his point. This inclusion of opposites may be done overtly, by contrast, as 'night and day' or, more subtly, by blending and fusing, as 'sunset . . . and moonlight', 'noon or morn¿ng', 'afternoon or twilight'. Through the coupling and balance and 34 "Dedicatory Epistle", Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works, 2 vols. (London, n. d.), I, xx. Although this collected edition was first published in 1904 with t h e result t h a t this essay is always referred to as Swinburne's "Dedicatory Epistle of 1904", Swinburne says on vi t h a t it has been thirtysix years since his first volume of miscellaneous verse appeared, which indicates 1902 as t h e date of writing of the "Epistle". "On the Cliffs" is one of t h e four poems mentioned. Hereafter cited as "Dedicatory Epistle".

36

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

through the implication of the diurnal metaphors, we perceive the idea of this duality and of the two ways, perceptible and imperceptible, of presenting it. Other manifestations of the theme are the two poets who are called upon as illustrators, the two types of Swinburne's own poetry, and the numerous word pairs. Swinburne desires to be understood, to express his concepts a n d his percepts accurately, and he does so b y being a creative commentator or by blending his meaning with his method. S W I N B U R N I A N INVECTIVE

When Swinburne indulges in the several techniques of rhetoric already discussed and does so without the motive of qualification or t h a t of responsibility for exactness, his tone is often satirical. His correspondence pertaining to the controversy with Furnivall is an example of these indulgences and is illustrative of this satire, or, as he becomes more personal and less detached, of invective. Elements of invective, burlesque, and irony are of course interwoven. I n the quotation from the letter to the Athenaeum, Swinburne is seen in the process of reducing his object to worthlessness, b u t it is a reduction through addition. Although such legitimate techniques as appeal for audience s y m p a t h y and the inversion of standards are employed, the letter is an example, primarily, of Swinburne's abuse of his ordinary techniques. As we read, it is easy to see why Swinburne is often remembered for this style of writing. The letter first appeared in the Athenaeum on April 14, 1877: I have as little wish as ability to contend with the erudite and warlike founder of the Neo-Shakespearean dynasty - be it a dynasty of dunces mainly, or chiefly rather of churls - on the especial eminence from which he now crows and claps his wings with more tan all the clamorous confidence of the most bellicose bantam - cock that ever defied creation to a match for mortal combat on the towering crest of his own dunghill. I may, however, be permitted to inquire into his unapparent reason for the double irrelevance and triple impertinence of this equally childish and churlish aberration into the miry byways of innocuous if irrepressible malevolence; for this tipsy and clumsy flourish of a belated clown's incapable quarterstaff, swung at random unawares about my defenceless head - a head, on this occasion at least, like the University of Cambridge as described by Gray on a more festive occasion, 'not obvious, not obtrusive.' For I have never pretended to more technical knowledge of the text of Chaucer than enables me to affirm, with a confidence for once not wholly unworthy of m y assailant,

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

37

that my ignorance on this ground is only not comparable to his nescience to his monumental, his pyramidal, his Cyclopean, his Titanic, his superhuman and supernatural nescience of everything and of anything that could give him the faintest shadow of a momont's right to put forth the humblest whisper of a neophyte's suggestion to the simplest and most insignificant subject connected with the text of Shakespeare. 35

All the devices of parenthesis and antithesis, the manipulation of the negative, repetition and restatement, climax and postponement carry the spastic emotions of rage and anger embodied in the alliteration of Swinburne's diction of denunciation. The additive elements heighten rather than restrain as they do in his more normal prose. Yet these embellishments, while not supplying good taste to his contentions, do display his eagerness for exactness of expression even in the violence of the emotion. But it is in the management of the negative rather than in the pure name-calling that Swinburne delivers his most scathing vituperation. The result is more than derogation - it is nullification. His primary weapon is language that cancels. For example, he juxtaposes 'innocuous' and 'irrepressible' with 'malevolence', and 'incapable' with 'quarters t a f f . Frustration is then combined with lack of purpose and with ignorance by the phrase 'at random unawares',. Climactically, Furnivall's 'monumental' . . . 'nescience' on Shakespeare is not to be equated with Swinburne's ignorance on Chaucer, and yet, in effect, a comparison is being drawn. The comparison attempts to exalt Swinburne by some sort of humility and to abase Furnivall by inflation of the superlative, a trick of inversion. Swinburne is here using a method of parody, but with a twist. He is retaining the exaggeration and burlesque for his own style and at the same time directing the ridicule to his opponent by an inflation which is really a reduction. In these two ways he denies value to the situation and places himself in the paradoxical position of detached involvement. The violent effect of his vituperation varies with the strength of his vocabulary, but in this kind of commentary for which he has become well known, his main technique is that of reduction through inflation. 38 S5

Lang, I I I , 310. There is no suggestion t h a t t h e tyjje of writing which this letter represents be regarded as literary criticism. I t has been included because this extreme style has so often been associated with Swinburne and is so typical of his ranting and raving. I t is of course, for these reasons, barred f r o m the genre satire in any serious sense of t h e term. 36

38

S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL STYLE

In concluding and summarizing, we must point out, first of all, that this chapter on style is to be regarded merely as preliminary to the main thesis which is the explication of certain of Swinburne's principles of poetics. I t serves chiefly as background, although its relevant points will be considered and applied more generally in the chapters t h a t follow. Its inclusion is justified on the grounds t h a t Swinburne's style is often considered an insuperable barrier to his status as a critic. Further, we must admit the fluctuating quality of Swinburne's critical prose style. The diatribes, as for example those against Furnivall, are in extremely bad taste, although not always without humor. 37 The hyperboles of his enthusiasm as they appear in many of the writings on Victor Hugo, for instance, are meaningless and sentimental. The fluctuation seems to have depended upon the motivating powers of a given topic or personality upon Swinburne rather than on such factors as his own physical, moral, or mental deterioration. I t is not impossible or even difficult to find examples of his better prose in the later years. Each decade, whether the younthful sixties, the alcoholic seventies, or the 'cloistered' ones which followed, produced success in prose and in poetry. However, what is being advocated may be summarized as a poetic reading of Swinburne's prose, one which, in particular, recognizes the additive and repetitive elements as meaningful techniques. To do so, it will be helpful to see Swinburne combining his zeal for accuracy with these techniques in their various forms of coupling and compounding, paralleling and postponement, extension and refinement, and of antithesis and cumulation; an awareness of these forms through the several approaches of grammar and syntax, rhetorical devices, diction, and relationship of sound to meaning is suggested as a means of better apprehension of what Swinburne is saying. I t will also be helpful to approach Swinburne's evaluations after, rather than before, one has acquaintance with the subject and to be aware of his habit of assuming t h a t his reader has such knowledge. And, let it be repeated, one must recognize 37

Bad taste was not confined to Swinburne. Osear Maurer diaeusses Furnivall's attack on Halliwell-Philipa when Swinburne dedicated A Study of Shakespeare (1879) to him. Many prominent members of the New Shakespeare Society resigned in protest at this violent attack. See Oscar Maurer, "Swinburne vs. Furnivall: A Case Study in 'Aesthetic' vs. 'Scientific* Criticism", SE (Univ. of Texas), X X X I (1952), 94.

SWINBURNE'S CRITICAL STYLE

39

that the additive and repetitive elements do sometimes lead to an offensive hyperbole and serve as a means of invective associated with the more satirical type of writing. 38 In short, the suggestion is that even though we cannot always quench our thirst, we should quaff, and not sip, the overflowing cup of Swinburne's critical prose.

38 The number of Swinburne's essays (excluding the Furnivall controversy) set in a formal satirical framework is less than half a dozen, although he frequently includes satirical passages in his criticism as, e.g., the section addressing his critics in Notes on Poems and Reviews (1866) or the section on George Eliot in A Note on Charlotte Bronte (1877). He himself minimized the satiric impact of Under the Microscope in a letter to Watts (dated by Lang as December, 12, 1872) where he says of the pamphlet "the outer satirical husk of that little essay is not the kernel of it; the serious part, to which the rest is but mere fringe and drapery, is in the body of the work and consists in the examination of certain critical question of the day regarding Byron, Tennyson, and Whitman"; Lang, II, 208. This seems to leave "M. Prudhomme on Art and Science at the International Exhibition" (1862), "Note of an English Republican on the Muscovite Crusade" (1876), and "Tennyson or Darwin?" (1888) as the more formal satires.

II S W I N B U R N E ' S POETICS

- What forma are these coming So white through the gloom ?

"The songs of Callicles clove to my ear and memory", says Swinburne writing in "Matthew Arnold's New Poems" in 1867 (XV, 64). B u t he was less happy about the conception of Empedocles which he regarded as t h a t of a dissatisfied ghost finding "no fullness of comfort or communion in the eternal elements made of like matter with us, b u t better made, nor in any beauty nor in any life of the laborious and sleepless soul of things" (XV, 82). Unfortunately, this essay, possibly the most balanced piece of criticism t h a t Swinburne ever wrote, fails to reveal the 'why' and 'how' involved in this approval of lyric and disapproval of dramatic conceptions. There are, to be sure, an abundance of expressions referring to the pathos, the quality of inevitability, to harmony and technical perfection, but no analytical statement of the type t h a t so many critics, and especially T. S. Eliot, are seeking. " H e might", says Eliot referring to Swinburne, "by dissection and analysis, have helped us to some insight into the feeling and thought which we seem to have left so far away." 1 And although Eliot was limiting his criticism on Swinburne to that dealing with Elizabethan drama, it appears also applicable, if less so, to the whole body of Swinburne's critical writing. " B u t Swinburne stops thinking just at the moment when we are most zealous to go on." 2 Again, this is the objection just raised to one of Swinburne's most durable pieces. Such a statement, even when circumscribed by the remarks acknowledging Swinburne's accuracy of judgment, interest, and 1

T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood: Essays 1920), p. 18. Hereafter cited as Eliot. 8 Eliot, p. 18.

on Poetry and Criticism

(London,

SWINBURNE'S POETICS

41

knowledge of subject 3 cannot but help debilitate his work even if it 'does not vitiate' it as Mr. Eliot declares.4 As to Mr. Eliot's objections to Swinburne's prose style, it is to be hoped that an adequate answer has already been suggested. Here are his objections: The faults of style are, of course, personal; the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined sentences, are the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a disorderly mind. s

Such an assessment makes one wonder why Eliot has devoted any time to Swinburne at all. Widening his focus, Eliot sees that The author of Swinburne's critical essays is also the author of Swinburne's verse: if you hold the opinion that Swinburne was a very great poet, you can hardly deny him the title of a great critic."

The implications of this logic compel the student of Swinburne to hasten to another essay of Eliot's, "Swinburne as Poet", the substance of which seems to be that Swinburne as a poet is diffuse, is not specific, and dwells consistently in his own world, which turns out to be the world of words only, a special singular world. When this idea is added to a sentence (one that may be regarded as a typical and perennial judgment of Swinburne) which I quote, "Now, in Swinburne the meaning and the sound are one thing", 7 the shroud seems all but complete. A critic whose thought is arrested and a poet whose language is singular do not leave us a critic, poet, or poet-critic who has much to say even if he could communicate. Only one more reference to Eliot is needed to clarify his position on Swinburne and that is to note that the only poems which Mr. Eliot would insist on were he to edit a volume of selections are the entire "Atalanta", "The Leper", "Laus Veneris", and "The Triumph of Time". " I t ought to contain many more, but there is perhaps no other single poem which it would be an error to omit", he says, Eliot, Eliot, 5 Eliot, « Eliot, 7 Eliot, 3

4

p. p. p. p. p.

21. 18. 15. 21. 134.

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POETICS

adding t h a t a student of Swinburne would w a n t to read one of the S t u a r t plays and dip into Tristram of Lyonesse.8 I n all conscience, since Mr. Eliot is being so restrictive, he ought a t least to have warned t h e student which one of the Stuart plays NOT to read. I have chosen Mr. Eliot as a point of departure here, in spite of the date of these statements (1917 —1920)9 and in spite of the restriction of interest to Swinburne's commentary on t h e Elizab e t h a n d r a m a and to the early poetry of the 1860's (the one exception stated being t h a t of Tristram, published in 1883), not merely because of Eliot's prominence and influence as a critic in our times, b u t because, as has already been indicated, w h a t he says appears to be true. I t appears to be true, however, only if we stop early in our labors as Mr. Eliot accuses Swinburne of doing and as Mr. Eliot himself seems to have done. I have also used these quotations because they voice a common opinion of Swinburne. A third reason for m y choice of Eliot will be apparent as the chapter progresses. I n returning to the question of the basic flaw of Swinburne's criticism, t h a t he has stopped thinking a t the point where we would most wish him to penetrate, or, more euphemistically, t h a t " h e is an appreciator and not a critic", 1 0 we return to the pivot around which the evidence in this study is to revolve. I n short, we must discuss Swinburne's standards and 'depth'. If these forms can be more clearly outlined in the gloom, then it m a y be possible t h a t Swinburne's poetry and poetics, already cleaving to our ear and memory, m a y appear in greater distinctness to our eye and intellect.

S W I N B U R N E AMONG T H E NIGHTINGALES

Traditionally, one first looks for a critic's theory of a r t in overt statements located in individual essays and reviews, or in prefaces to his own and possibly other editions the choice of which selections he may be presumed to have influenced. If such statements appear to be lacking, as they do in Swinburne, t h e next point 8

Eliot, p. 131. Eliot, although not the earliest critic of Swinburne, was writing at the very beginning of the extensive Swinburne scholarship which has since appeared. 10 Eliot, p. 17. 9

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of search may be directed to letters, published and unpublished (or, as has been considered so often in this case, " 'unpublishable' " ) . n If the critic is also a practicing and publishing poet, dramatist, or novelist, then, of course, an examination of his artistic accomplishments will be undertaken. Natural as such a procedure is, this latter method may result in a web of speculation spun of threads which are all too gossamer. 12 And yet this source cannot, particularly if there are supporting comments elsewhere in the artist-critic's output, be ignored. Recognition of evidence which rehes on 'interpretation' of a poem for an author's poetics deserves at least as much attention as those historical, biographical and psychological studies 13 which in studies of Swinburne have resulted, for example, in encouraging readers to focus on his early poetry, and more especially on Poems and Ballads (1866) to the neglect of such works of greater magnitude as Tristram of Lyonesse and of his criticism. The documentation to this statement will be found in any anthology containing Swinburne. That Swinburne needs editing there is no doubt. That the editor should stop after reading Songs Before Sunrise is what seems, too often, to have happened. A good antidote to this approach is to study Swinburne's so-called thirty years of decline at The Pines as recorded in Cecil Y. Lang's edition of the Swinburne letters. Another antidote would be to study some poetry other than t h a t contained in the early Poems and Ballads and in Songs Before Sunrise (1872). I refer, particularly, to the two leading poems in the volume entitled Songs of the Springtides (1880) - that is, the 'quasi-autobiographical' poems, "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs." 14 An autobiographical poem is not too unlikely a place to look for a poet's theories of life and art, and, in the instance of "Thalassius", this ground has not been entirely ignored. But "On the Cliffs" seems to have attracted little attention except of a negative variety,

11

Lang, I, xxxvii. For example, E. M. W. Tillyard, Five Poems 1470-1870 (London, 1948), p. 97, writing on "Hertha" sees Swinburne as 'the unsuspecting mouthpiece of the ideas out of which Fascist doctrine was made'. 18 Studies by Tillyard, Lafourcade, Hare already alluded to, for example. 14 The poems in Songs of the Springtides were composed either prior to the domestic set-up with Watts-Dunton, or at the very beginning of this period. 12

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a point to be considered somewhat later. Moreover the two poems, appearing simultaneously as they did, with their connecting themes of autobiography and art, need to be studied in relation to each other as well as singly. The validity of the theories observed and presented from such a study needs also to be synchronized with the terminology and principles occurring in the prose - that is, in the letters and more formal criticism.

"THALASSIUS"

In a letter to Edmund Gosse from The Pines dated October 10, 1879, Swinburne says, referring (according to Lang's note) to "Thalassius": I once thought of a symbolical quasi-autobiographical poem after the fashion of Shelley or of Hugo, concerning the generation, birth and rearing of a by-blow of Amphitrite's - not even in dreams and symbols would I dare claim fellow-sonship to Thetis with Pelides - reared like Ion in the temple-service of Apollo. It would be a pretty subject, but when should I hear the last of m y implied arrogance and self-conceit i 1 5

Very plainly, Swinburne's projected poem here is to be concerned primarily with the origin and development of his poetic genius, of himself as creative artist, to be represented 'in dreams and symbols", the way, of course, a poet would be expected to write of this phenomenon. Conjectures that seek to decide from this poem such questions as whether the foster-father of the third stanza is Landor or a combination of Landor, Hugo, and possibly Mazzini,16 or whether the correspondence of the Bassarides passage is closer to Keats's Endymion or to the classical Bacchae choruses,17 or whether we should see "Thalassius" as evidence of the decline and melancholy dissatisfaction with his way of life'18 (this being a poem composed after the move in the early fall of 1879 to The Pines) are all legitimate and interesting questions, but it would 15

Lang, IV, 106 and note 6. W. Brooks Drayton Henderson, Swinburne and Landor (London, 1918), pp. 56-57. See also Harold Nicolson, Swinburne (N. Y., 1926), p. 168. Hereafter cited as Nicolson. " William R. Rutland, Swinburne, A Nineteenth Century Hellene (Oxford, 1931), p. 326. Hereafter cited as Rutland. 18 Hare, p. 171. 16

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45

seem more appropriate, in view of Swinburne's remarks to Gosse, and, indeed, of the allegorical nature of the entire poem to discuss other ideas. 19 Samuel Chew simplifies the message of the poem in this way: All that the poet would have us know is this: that he was bred by the sun and the waters; that he learned to love Love and Liberty and to hate Tyranny; that love first and then lust led him astray into disillusionment, satiety and scepticism; and that escaping thence he returned to his first ideal. 20

While Swinburne may have been saying this, it is certainly the grossest of simplifications to say it was 'all' he was saying. Nicolson also sees the poem as a statement of renunciation. 21 I t is much easier, however, to agree with him in a later chapter when he regards "Thalassius" "as constituting a very illuminating and intensive disclosure of the central core of Swinburne's temperament." 2 2 Paul de Reul makes a similar observation: "Les allusions personelles des poems 'Thalassius' et 'On the Cliffs' ne concernent que l'histoire de son spirit." 23 But what needs to be emphasized is t h a t here is the story of a POETIC spirit. Although it serves as a finale, perhaps the message delivered by Apollo in "Thalassius" may be regarded as a proper introduction to a reading of the poem which is designed to elucidate the principles the poet learns through the apprenticeship in the god's temple. On a day when the waves 'Were full of godhead and the light that saves', the poet having attained a state of humility, the result of the foregoing experiences, is at last receptive to 'Apollo's strange breath and light'. 'Child of my sunlight and the sea, from birth A fosterling and fugitive on earth; Sleepless of soul as wind or wave or fire, A manchild with an ungrown God's desire;

19 Louise Collier Willcox, "The Fortifying Principle in Swinburne", The North American Review, CXC (July, 1909), 93-100, emphasizes the spirituality of Swinburne's poetry. 20 Chew, p. 6. " Nicolson, p. 124. 22 Nicolson, p. 170. 23 de Reul, pp. 118-119.

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poetics

Because thou hast loved nought mortal more than me, Thy father, and thy mother-hearted sea; Because thou hast set thine heart to sing, and sold Life and life's love for song, God's living gold; Because thou hast given thy flower and fire of youth To feed men's hearts with visions, truer than truth; Because thou hast kept in those world-wandering eyes The light that makes me music of the skies; Because thou hast heard with world-unwearied ears The music that puts light into the spheres; Have therefore in thine heart and in thy mouth The sound of song that mingles north and south, The song of all the winds that sing of me, And in thy soul the sense of all the sea.'24

These are the conditions of art and life, the accompanying restrictions in the incarnation of creative genius. The poet is a sleepless fugitive, on earth only as a fosterling, yet he is a human being, a manchild. To be a transmitter of divine song, it is first necessary to have undergone a period of apprenticeship. Apollo recites the requirements in the 'because' passages. The tone could hardly be more moral - sacrifice and devotion to art combined with dedication to mankind. Further, the decision to perform these duties must be a v o l u n t a r y ("Because thou hast set thine heart") act operating in a spirit that has learned humility through sorrow and mirth. Let us now examine "Thalassius" itself, Swinburne's portrait of the artist as a child and young man.25 First, the question of origin. The artist must be a natural son to Apollo, but he is never to be completely removed from earthly obligations. He is found on a 'reach of shingle' which is 'nearer sea than land', but 'the shoreward blossom-fringe was near'. He is born 'out of the world of sunless things'. One way Swinburne describes the growth of poetic genius is through the interplay of diction denoting light and darkness until 24 The quotations from "Thalassius" are from III, where the poem occurs between 288-303. Since Swinburne's poetry is edited with no system of enumeration of lines or stanzas, I have regarded the stanzas of both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" (also III, 304-317) as numbered by small Roman numerals which I shall refer to in the text and thus facilitate the location of comparisons as well as quoted lines. The stanza above is the last one, xxiii. 25 See also Richard D. McGhee, "Thalassius': Swinburne's Poetic Myth" in VP, V (Summer, 1967), 127-136, for his detailed study of the poetic spirit in that poem and emphasis on influence of Blake and images of sea, sun, wind and 'dread lady'.

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47

the culminating scene when light prevails. In this connection, the principle of fusion should be observed.26 For example, in v, the 'as' divisions of the simile state and restate this principle by describing the mingling light and darkness And the song softened, even as heaven by night Softens, from sunnier down to starrier light, And with its moonbright breath Blessed life for death's sake, and for life's sake death. Till as the moon's own beam and breath confuse In one clear hueless haze of glimmering hues The sea's line and the land's line and the sky's, And light for love of darkness almost dies, As darkness only lives for light's dear love, Whose hands the web of night is woven of,

before going into the 'so' division which describes the fusion of reconciliation from strife: So in that heaven of wondrous words were life And death brought out of strife; Yea, by that strong spell of serene increase Brought out of strife to peace.

In the preceding stanza iv, the fusion is pantheistic. Man's earth is 'all of all that is'. In vii, it takes the form of pantheistic continuity and extension, with love as an agent promoting the qualities of preservation and renewal. Closely associated with this principle of fusion which seems to be a significant, if not primary, element in the poetic genius are the terms Swinburne uses to describe the soul of the artist which becomes the 'secret soul', the 'soul behind the soul' in "On the Cliffs". In "Thalassius", it at times appears more closely allied with the orthodox soul as in iv, 'this poor flash of sense in life', although in vi [the emphasis throughout this and the following quotation is mine] his s e n s e [1] became Fire, as the s e n s e [1] that fires the singing bird Whose song calls night by name,

we see it to be more nearly the creative soul of the poet identified with that of the nightingale, the traditional symbol which was the 86

Herbert Dingle in his chapter on "Swinburne" in Science and Literary Criticism (London, 1949) presents a theory of fusion or a 'kind of passion for the infinite' as Swinburne's "internal centre", pp. 136-137.

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basis for the myth Swinburne developed in "On the Cliffs".27 But within this generalized conception of fire as imagination or creative intuition, Swinburne in the next four lines probeB inwardly to the more individualized presentation of this power. And in t h e SOUL W I T H I N THE S E N S E [2] began The manlike passion of a godlike m a n , And in t h e S E N S E W I T H I N T H E SOUL [:T] again T h o u g h t s t h a t m a k e m e n of gods and gods of m e n .

Thus the three-fold concept: (1) SENSE, the generalfire shared with the nightingale, a fire arising from the 'poor flash of sense in life' (iv) but transferred to the 'spark' of creativity, (2) the SOUL WITHIN THE SENSE, the poet's individual creative talent, and (3) the SENSE WITHIN THE SOUL, apparently the divine creative fire operating in the individual creative talent.28 The point is, however, 27 H . W . Garrod, The Profession of Poetry and Other Lectures (Oxford, 1929), in a chapter entitled " T h e Nightingale in P o e t r y " traces t h e history of t h e nightingale f r o m H o m e r ' s aedon and says he recalls t h a t only in t h e Sapphic f r a g m e n t [which Swinburne uses as his m o t t o in " O n t h e Cliffs"] does the nightingale have a place in Greek literature outside Attic t r a g e d y . The English tradition h a s tended t o base its nightingale poetry on t h e Philomela-Procne legend. Garrod speaks of Swinburne's " l t y l u s " , b u t does n o t m e n t i o n " O n t h e Cliffs". 28 I t is interesting t o see the u n o r t h o d o x Swinburne employing scholastic terminology. I have been unable t o find a n y references suggesting interest or reading in this philosophy on t h e p a r t of Swinburne. I n " W o r d s w o r t h and B y r o n " (XIV, 242) in a passage I quote in t h e Conclusion, p p . 160-167, Swinburne identifies t h e phrase 'spirit of sense' which occurs frequently in both his poetry and prose and which m i g h t well repay careful t a b u l a t i o n and s t u d y , as being f r o m Shakespeare. I t will be found in Troilus and, Gressida, I . i. 58 where it refers to a highly refined sensitivity, and also in I I I . 3. 106 where Achilles calls t h e eye, in its projecting and reflecting powers, t h e 'most puro spirit of sense'. I n both instances, t h e context is b e a u t y . Shelley's Epipsychidion (the R o b e r t Alfred P o t t s edition published by t h e Shelley Soc. in 1887 includes a brief introductory note by Swinburne) h a s two references a m o n g m a n y on t h e spirit and soul which Swinburne could be echoing: " A n d in t h e soul a wild odor is felt /Beyond the sense (11. 110-111)", and also, "And every motion, odor, beam, and tone, / W i t h t h a t deep music is in unison,/ Which is a soul within t h e soul" (11. 453-465). Leone Vivante, English Poetry and Its Contribution to the Knowledge of a Creative Principle (London, 1957), p. 280, discusses the phrase in its variations noting t h a t in Swinburne's p o e t r y soul and spirit are n o t placed in opposition t o sense, b u t serve t o p o i n t o u t its full significance. H e r e a f t e r cited as Vivante.

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that it is the fusing power, the simultaneous working of all three with which Swinburne is coping. The first half of this section (vi) uses the advent of dawn, with its power to pierce night and darkness, as a comparison with the heat that stirred the child's heart. Stanza x, located almost centrally in the poem, is perhaps the central effort to describe the working of the creative imagination. I refer to the 'Fear' passage, but it should be noted immediately that this is a positive fear. The poet is taught to be afraid NOT to wear his laurel. The fear amounts to a compulsion to move into a state of inspiration, a state within which power and inevitability are inextricably associated: With the bright breath and strength of their large life, With all strong wrath of all sheer winds that blew, All glories of all storms of the air t h a t fell Prone, ineluctable.

And in the simile making up the last half of the stanza is another description of the nature of inspiration: For when the red blast of their breath had made All heaven aflush with light more dire than shade, He felt it in his blood and eyes and hair Burn as if all the fires of the earth and air Had laid strong hold upon his flesh, and stung The soul behind it as with seipent's tongue, Forked like the loveliest lightnings: nor could bear But hardly, half distraught with strong delight, The joy t h a t like a garment wrapped him round And lapped him over and under With raiment of great light And rapture of great sound A t every loud leap earthward of the thunder From heaven's most furthest bound: So seemed all heaven in hearing and in sight, Alive and made with glory and angry joy, That something of its marvellous mirth and might Moved even to madness, fledged as even for flight, The blood and spirit of one b u t mortal boy.

It is the second soul, the soul within the sense here, apparently, that is being stung. Intensity, delight that is almost unbearable and that carries a powerful enveloping quality, and the madness so familiar to poets, are part of this portrayal of poetic genius.

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Stanzas xi-xix are usually interpreted as a description of Swinburne's early period of abandonment to alcohol and can certainly be read quite strictly as autobiography.29 The poet is confronting evil in its various guises; for example, Lust appears disguised as Love, but is also Sorrow and Death. The theme of these sections is disguise, falsity, contradiction between appearance and reality. Xvi and xvii have some parallels with x, as, for instance, the wind which is intolerable and inevitable. However, this latter inspiration is false, "a shapeless storm of earthly shapes began", the songs are both shrill and sweet; there is also a madness, and we note the presence of the mimes, actors of make-believe who bellow with the voice of bulls. Stanza xviii, the dipsomania passage, has some of the characteristics of inspiration also, as the exaltation and sleepless wandering. But here is complete alienation from both heaven and earth, and the motion is like the witless wandering of the moon - without direction, an inspiration that is false. But in xix comes the change, and although the mother Cymothoe has long been waiting and prepared for Thalassius with a braid of bay-leaf, his release from deception must be accomplished by a VOLUNTARY a c t :

H e let the vine-bit on the panther's lip Slide, and the green rem slip, And set his eyes to seaward, [my emphasis]

In xx, his soul returns to the sleep of pre-birth in 'the dun green light' (the light imagery in the passage, for example 'deep, divine dark dayshine of the sea', is not dictated by mere alliteration, but by Swinburne's desire to symbolize a state of the creative spirit, a kind of pre conscious state, and he does so by means of imagery which is suggestive of diffused light). This state is followed by some sort of purging from which arises the rebirth and rejuvenation of xxi. The preparation is now complete for a dual activity: And turned again from all hearts else on quest, H e communed with his own heart, and had rest. 3 0 » See also the "Prelude" to "Songs Before Sunrise" (II, 72-73) for a Bimilar passage. 30 Cf. Sydney's more famous " 'Fool!' said m y muse to me, 'look in t h y heart, and write' ", and Longfellow's, "Look then, into thine heart and write".

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A kind of grace and innocence comes upon the poet at this stage and song comes forth. In the Thessalay passage in the same section, the growth of the poet's spirit of song is compared with the growth of a child within the wild mares ravished by winds; hie 'soul of all his senses' (second soul of individual creative talent) is in rhyme with the tidal throb of the sea and he becomes separated from himself: "And charm him from his own soul's separate sense", . . . "Being now no more a singer, but a song". Individuality is lost in the divinity of art. Swinburne is talking about the 'becoming' process in art. A separation from the self is followed by a pantheistic fusion with the infinite, a state which we may presume to last for some period of time before the final two sections and appearance of Apollo. Xxi is, incidentally, confirming the Romantic principles of self-communication, innocence, and growth as well as that of pantheism. Thus we have the preparation and setting for the approach of the divine spirit of art, a time when the individual soul may be infused with that of the universal souL Such a reading is, of course, an oversimplification and distorts, as all paraphrasing of poetry distorts, but what is being proposed here is that Swinburne was recording primarily the operation of the creative imagination in himself rather than his own reformation from alcoholism and other abnormalities of personality. He is bringing out 'in dreams and symbols' a description of principles concomitant with the creative process or, perhaps more exactly, principles that precede and induce the state of poetic creation. Before proceeding to the explication of the more complex, and for our purposes, more important poem, "On the Cliffs", written in the summer of 1879s1 and hence before "Thalasems", a brief summary of the foregoing may be helpful. This story of 'the growth of the poet's mind' is narrated within the paradoxical structure of the triple-divided spirit of the artist-man. Swinburne iB dealing with the mysteries of being and becoming, with the Coleridgean union of the universal and particular or of the ideal and actual; he is dealing with unity in multiplicity or (and the unorthodox Swinburne would probably not object to the use of the phrase in this sense) of the Word made Flesh. In short, Swinburne is 31 Georges Lafourcade, Swinburne: A Literary Biography (London, 1932), p . 227. Hereafter cited as Lafourcade, A Literary Biography.

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preoccupied in "Thal&ssius" with metaphorical language indicating fusion in ita various aspects of pantheism, of reconciliation, and of mortality and immortality. By varied but simple figures, he employs imagery of light and rl».rtrnp«R to convey many of these concept«. Although, to continue the account, the artist inherits his talent from divinity, he also exhibits a humanity; he is allied with earth and with earth's wisdom. Love, Hate, Hope, and Fear are necessary, but not exclusively so, to the poetic function. The poet must stand ready to reject earth at any time and to recognize and turn from falsity in art and life. To do this requires an act of will from which he emerges into a preconscious s ate, which in turn prepares him to commune with himself and to move in harmony with the universe. Thus he will attain humility and develop a receptivity to the voice of Apollo who commends him for his voluntary act, "Because thou hast set thine heart to sing". Intermingled with the artist-man's earth-wisdom of Love is the knowledge (vii> that art has a continuing and extending, a preserving and renewing power, and that Hope alone can communicate to Apollo when all else fails. Also intermingled with the knowledge of the compulsive quality of s the creative imagination is a sense of power, of the inevitable, of intensity, of an enveloping, almost unendurable delight, and of a heavenly madness — some of which may occasionally be associated with a specious creative state. "Thalaasius" proves that Swinburne, no philosopher and no follower of any organized form of religion, knew, as Carl Grabo states it, that "art, having to do with men's deepest aspirations and beliefs, has its roots in religion and philosophy".® "ON T H E C L I F F S " If a ptgwu oononvee an opinion That my vvrace are stuff that will wash, Or my Muse one plume on her pinion, Thai person's opinion is bosh. My philosophy, politics, free-thought! Are worth not time skips of a flea, And the emptiest of thoughts that can be thought Are mine on the sea. - from "Poerta Loquitur" (1880) m

O a t Grabo, The CreoHm Critic (Chicago, 1948), p. 7.

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53

In spite of Swinburne's warning, and even at the risk of formulating an opinion that is bosh, this chapter is an attempt to indicate that Swinburne's verses, or at least some of them, will wash and even benefit fcy the process. About emptiness of his thoughts on the sea and on other subjects, too much has been said. An explication of "On the Cliffs" may help to reduce this kind of comment on Swinburne.33 Efforts at criticism of this poem have very often ended on a tone that is negative — or worse. One of the earliest, that of Edward Thomas, calls attention to Swinburne's use of the term 'sea-mews' for poets and of the misty and perhaps arbitrary identification of Sappho and the nightingale which, he says, "never ceases to be a slight impediment to the reader, while the interspersed fragments of Sappho are both unintelligible in their places and ineffectual". Thomas summarizes the total impression as one being 'more delicious to the faculties combined in reading than to the pure intelligence', and he notes that "On the Cliffs" would gain by annotation.34 To Harold Nicolson "On the Cliffs" was merely "another instance of... exaggerated hero-worship". He deplores the fact that Swinburne wastes his time on Sappho who, he says, cannot, because of the fragmentary nature of her works which remain, be seriously apprehended; he regrets that some Sapphic fragment read at Eton 'choked the growth of other and more important influences'.3* Samuel Chew says of it, " 'On the Cliffs', which follows ["Thalassius"] contains passages of rhetorical vigor and some wonderful renderings of the fragments of Sappho; but these are overwhelmed in the tide of verbiage upon which the tenuous idea is tossed about."38 Welby, in his 1926 study, after a paragraph discussing Swinburne's speedy prodigality with metaphor and simile by which, he says, the reader is carried along too rapidly to notice them, regards this technique as too intellectually objectionable and cites "On the Cliffs" as a result of such technique. He goes on to say: The involution, the haste, to what destination is not clear, the apparently half-accidental approach to the main theme, the employment of mere ** Ernest Godfrey Hoffsten, "Swinburne's Poetic Theories and Practice", SR, X m (1905), 60. " Edward Thomas, Algernon Charles Swinburne, .¿I Critical Study (N. Y . , 1912), pp. 186-186. » Nicolson, p. 167. » Chew, p. 166.

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analogies in regard to what are eventually to be felt as identities, the frequent slight ambiguity, the haze and flickering light in which the relationship between Sappho, the nightingale, and the poet himself is established - these are trying, but enable some very curious things to be done. 37

It is my plan, in this chapter, to elaborate on these "curious things" about which Welby was silent. Swinburne's mentor, however, apparently appreciated this poem if we may rely on what Swinburne wrote to Gosse, October 17, [1879]: You know how glad I shall be to see you any day you turn u p . . . . and also to read you my last new poem of more than 400 lines - 'On the Cliffs.' I t is in the irregular Italian metre of Lycidas. Watts - as I possibly may have told you - says (what a man generally likes to hear of his latest work) that it is the best poem I ever wrote. Come soon and see what you think of it. M

It seems appropriate to record here what Gosse did think of it: 'On the Cliffs' is a eulogy of the genius of Sappho, expressed in terms of hyperbole; translations of the best-remembered fragments of the Lesbian are introduced in mosaic.39

As to Watts, we should perhaps take his testimony with caution since, according to the report, he, although with a somewhat different emphasis, expressed a somewhat similar opinion on another poem less than a year later. Again, in a letter to Gosse dated July 5, 1880, Swinburne, referring this time to "By the North Sea" says: There is one poem in seven parts, just a little longer than Thalasaius, which Watts likes better than anything I ever d i d . . . so I shall inscribe it to him. [and he did.] 40

William R. Rutland, after quoting Gosse and Nicolson as I have done, speaks of "On the Cliffs" as almost unreadable: Its language, while it contains magnificent passages, is so complicated that a mental effort is needed merely to follow its constructions; and its thought is not presented consecutively in a natural inevitable flow, but comes in isolated surges. " Welby, A Study of Swinburne, pp. 158-159. Lang, IV, 109-110. » See X I X , 232. " L a n g , IV,

38

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L'OETLCS

55

He continues by describing the effect on the reader as comparable to bathing in a choppy sea from a pebbly beach where one glimpses confusion of cliffs, clouds, foam, and seagulls; in short, he objects to a lack of thought and a lack of form, although he does concede the possibilities of greatness of conception: For the conception is in itself a fine one with great possibilities. As it is, the poem is quite incoherent as a work of art. It is not the less interesting from an intellectual point of view. 41

It is Lafourcade, however, who, in his later study, employs high praise for "On the Cliffs": "Full justice has not been done to this piece which constitutes in my opinion the high-water-mark of Swinburne's mature poetry." The statement is provocative if for reasons other than those which excited Lafourcade who adds, after a statement on the contradictory commentary on the form of the poem: But the autobiographical accent, the incisive and almost inhuman subtlety of analysis with which the poet cuts through the gordian knot of his own soul have not been sufficiently recognized.42

and quotes the passage containing the lines: the best of all my days Have been as those fair fruitless summer strays, Those water-waifs that but the sea-wind steers. 43

One further preliminary note for which we are indebted again to Lafourcade will conclude this introductory matter.44 One of the 'other poems' in his edition of Sivinburne's "Hyperion" and Other 45 Poems is "The Nightingale", a fragment taken from one of T. J. Wise's typescripts,48 which Lafourcade dates as sometime in the Oxford period. He calls attention to the fact that Swinburne iden41

Rutland, p. 321. Lafourcade, A Literary Biography, p. 227. 43 Lafourcade, A Literary Biography, p. 228. 44 W. R. Rutland has also summarized and commented on this discovery of Lafourcade's. See Rutland, pp. 321-323. 44 Georges Lafourcade, Swinburne's "Hyperion" and, Other Poems (London, n. d.), pp. 149-150. Hereafter cited as Lafourcade, Swinburne's "Hyperion". 44 There need be no concern about the fragment's being a Swinburne composition, as a glance at the Appendix, particularly the last half of the poem, will show. 41

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tifies the Song of the Nightingale with Sappho's lyrical inspiration and adds, in a note: Swinburne's enthusiasms for Sappho was not, as H . Nicolson too lightly asserts, a matter of pure rhetoric. He found in the Sapphic fragments and tradition a kind of burning, unsatisfied inspiration, which he felt as strongly akin to his own: Sappho is a kindred spirit ('As brother and sister were we').«

Lafourcade continues to say that the association is frequently referred to by Swinburne and that this curious theory - for it cannot otherwise be termed - f i n i a its extreme form in the Dedicatory Epistle to the collected Poems (xx—xxi)"8 and chiefly in the poem On the Cliffs (composed 1879 - published in Songs of the Springtides).*»

Following is a quotation from a then unpublished letter of Swinburne's dated from Holmwood, July 30, 1879, to Watts. I am quoting from Lang, however, as Lafourcade omitted the phrase indicating that the composition of "On the Cliffs" had had a long history. I have a new poem to read you [Lang notes the poem to be "On the Cliffs"], longer (I will not say better, whether I think so or not) than any (except the ever edifying 'Dolores') in either of my collections. 'Anactoria' which is next longest is ninety-four lines short of this new-born one - which however was long since conceived though but now brought forth. You will regret to hear that in subject-matter and treatment it is not akin to either of the above-named. I fear there is not overmuch hope of a fresh scandal and consequent 'succès de scandale' from a mere rhapsody just four lines short of four hundred (oddly enough) on the song of a nightingale by the sea-side. I don't think I ever told you, did IT my anti-Ovidian theory as to the real personality of that much misrepresented bird - the truth con47

Lafourcade, Swinburne's "Hyperion", p. 147. See also the comment on the descent between 'Sappho's verse and mine" (XVI, 369) and (XIV, 321-322). 48 I quote from the pages of the "Dedicatory Epistle" to which Lafourcade refers: "Not to you or any other poet, nor indeed to the very humblest and simplest lover of poetry, will it seem incongruous or strange, suggestive of imperfect sympathy with life or deficient inspiration from nature, that the very words of Sappho should be heard and recognised in the notes of the nightingales, the glory of the presence of dead poets imagined in the presence of the glory of the sky, the lustre of their advent and their passage felt visible as in vision of the live and limpid floorwork of the cloudless and sunset-coloured sea." 45 Lafourcade, Swinburne's "Hyperion", p. 148.

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oerning whom dawned upon me one day in my midsummer school holidays, when it flashed on me listening quite suddenly 1) that this was not Philomela - 2) in the same instant, who this was. It is not theory, but a fact, as I can prove by the science of notation.10

Lafourcade has printed the early fragment, "The Nightingale", which he regards as an almost contemporary record of the youthful experience described in the letter to Watts51 and which I have had reproduced in the Appendix. It may, then, safely be assumed, particularly if one adds evidence of Swinburne's extraordinary (even for him) enthusiasm for Sappho, that this identification of Sappho with the nightingale and consequent use as a metaphor for poetic impulse and performance is a concept with a special meaning and established history for him.82 This early poem, "The Nightingale", is relevant to a study of "On the Cliffs" mainly because of the identification of the bird with Sappho and because it describes, in a simple way, something of what is happening when the creative fire burns. The opening lines depict an atmosphere in which motion is present but restricted, the restriction related to excess and plenitude; it is an atmosphere of throbbing fullness - a half-stifling moment, a suspension of activity prior to the struggle preceding the gushing forth of birth. After the scng emerges, it seems to have 'full conscious beauty'. Appropriately, for Sapphic overtones, it dashes down a precipice to its death. The impetus of song seems to arise from intense emotion which 'stings thee madly', and is accompanied by 'wild delight', ,0

Lang, IV, 77-78. The dating is in square brackets.

41

L a f o u r c a d e , Swinburne's "Hyperion", p . 1 4 9 .

" See Lang's Introduction I, xv. "Four of the others, Sappho, Catullus, Villon, and Gautier, he had studied, absorbed, paid tribute to as well as any man in history"; Lang, I, 10, Swinburne says [1867], "She [referring to Mi's. Browning] is the greatest woman that ever lived, except Sappho and Deborah!"; Lang, HI, 1, Swinburne [1876] calls Catullus "the most spontaneous in his godlike and birdlike melody, of all lyrists known to me except Sappho and Shelley"; and, esp. Lang, IV, 123-124, Swinburne sayB in 1880, "Judging even from the mutilated fragments fallen within our reach from the broken altar of her sacrifice of song, I for one have always agreed with all Grecian tradition in regarding Sappho, beyond all question and comparison, to be [the greatest poet that ever lived]... Sappho is simply nothing less - as she is certainly nothing more - than the greatest poet who ever was at all. - There, at all events, you have the simple and sincere profession of my lifelong faith."

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unique save for the one other rendering when Sappho rang out her burning song of mingled joy and grief as she leapt from the Leucadian cliffs. The last two lines hint of the Itylus legend which Swinburne did attempt to include in his version of the Sapphonightingale myth in "On the Cliffs" and which was the basis for his well-known "Itylus". With the exception of the Itylus theme and the death of Sappho's song which are excluded from "Thalassius", all of these concepts - the nightingale as the vehicle for the mythic presentation of creative imagination, the emergence from nonconsciousness to consciousness, and the role of delightful intense emotion in creative intuition - are present in both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". As he does in "Thalassius", but less dramatically, Swinburne summarizes, in his last stanza of "On the Cliffs", what he has been trying to say. The point made here, unlike the rest of the poem, is rather simply stated. It seems to be merely that he has, ever since the youthful experience alluded to, identified the nightingaleSappho as the receptacle of 'the fire eternal' and has known the immortal and eternal nature of art and the power of love essential to this immortality. The poem is, admittedly, a difficult one. Whether as a work of art it is a failure or not depends, I think, less on such apparent intrusions as the Cassandra and Sapphic interpolations and the poet's inability to make up his mind as to whether the various songs are one and the same or multiple, than on such pedantic questions as the antecedents of the pronouns and even nouns. Of course, the fact that some of these antecedents partake of the mysteries'of a trinity does not contribute to a meaning easily understood. My suspicion is that the poem is not an artistic failure, but my concern is rather with the ideas Swinburne is representing - ideas related to a theory of art or poetry and to the meaning, source, and essential nature of creative intuition. If he is articulating a theory of aesthetics, however partial, to understand it will give us the basis for the definition of many of the terms used in his criticism, terms which have often seemed to be ineffective instruments or explicators of the 'why' and 'how' apparently absent. First of all there are certain sources of difficulty which, if recognized, will aid the reader. The nature of the subject, poetic inspiration or creative intuition, whatever name seems suitable, is a primary difficulty. Swinburne is dealing with the inexpressible and in

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"On the Cliffs" without the aid of the same degree of autobiography, although the autobiographical element is present, that helps to ground "Thalassius". Secondly, he is saying much, implying and assuming more, and moving rapidly. These factors, together with the problem of possible intrusions and of gaping syntax, are the most important barriers, but they are not, at least not all of them, insuperable, nor do they make the poem unintelligible. Two approaches may serve as aids to a general understanding and also help to support a more detailed analysis of this poem. One is to pose certain questions; the other is to look at "On the Cliffs" in four or five broad divisions. The questions, which can perhaps best be answered simultaneously with the analysis of the various divisions to be outlined, are five in number: (1) how many and what cliffs are involved; (2) what word or answer is it that the poet longs so desperately to hear; (3) what is the nature of the 'memory' mentioned in ix; (4) what is the relevance of the italicized passages; and (5) what meanings can be assigned to the various uses of the words 'soul' and 'spirit' ? As to the grouping or divisions, it is convenient to arrange the stanzas as follows: (A) i-vi, containing the setting and invocations to the wind, to Night, and to the Bird-God; (B) vii-ix, containing the more explicit attempts at defining the nature of creative intuition; (C) x-xii, the Cassandra passages and introduction of the Sapphic element; (D) xiii-xxv, the passages more directly related to Sappho and to the question of the poet's kinship with her; (E) xxvi, the conclusion. To begin with the first question, the nature of the cliffe seems to be threefold. Swinburne tells us in xviii that we are by the 'grey north sea's half - sapped cliff-side'. We are, of course, also reminded of Sappho's leap from the cliffs of Leucadia, and the opening lines or prelude, as it may be called, proclaim these cliffs to be a land of 'dim growth', of 'tortive serpent-shapen roots'. The woods are gaunt, the flowers are Bparse, summer is scarcely heard, the fields are 'steep', 'green', and 'sterile', and the hawthorn flowerless. l i f e is in a stunted or abortive state, perhaps a potential state only. The twilight permeating the area is comparable to the diffused light in "Thalassius". I t is 'too dim for green and luminous for grey'. Here it helps to make a kind of limbo, remote, but not cut off, from man. The first simile is suggestive of a meeting place between man and God. And, incidentally, the theme of plenitude or excess denoted by the quivering sea and 'pulse too full' reminds

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us of a similar idea in the opening lines of the earlier, "The Nightingale". The situation of the poet is, more specifically, between two sets of cliffs, the upper which climb inland and lower which 'breast and break the bay'. These cliffs have a location strategic in establishing communications between two worlds.MThe conditions evoked in this prelude have an astonishing correspondence to the translucid spiritual night that Jacques Maritain sees as the primal source of poetry and poetic inspiration.54 These conditions may also be compared to those from which Thalassius awoke TO repose. In describing poetic experience, Maritain, who uses the term 'poetic' to refer to a power not separate from reason but separate from logical or discursive reason,55 says: Poetic experience brings t h e poet back to t h e hidden place, a t t h e single root of t h e powers of t h e soul, where the entire subjectivity is, as it were, gathered in a state of expectation and virtual creativity.*®

Whatever the term for where we are, pre conscious or unconscious state,57 a condition of repose, or Carlyle's " 'quiet mysterious depths' ",58 a place at the root of the soul, or, to anticipate Swinburne in his next stanza, 'inward night', a closeness to plenitude is implied. But motion is suspended; the activating power that impels to fulfillment is absent. Swinburne's cliffs, then, are located " See " O n the Verge" published in A Midsummer Holiday, 1884. (V, 316-318). 44 J a c q u e s Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (N. Y., 1953), p . 106. Hereafter cited as Maritain. Professor Lang has called m y attention to the possibility t h a t Swinburne's lines in xviii m a y be an echo of Arnold's "Dover Beach" and "Stanzas f r o m t h e Grande Chartreuse", 11. 80 and ff. See also Swinburne's "On t h e Verge", Bonehurch V, 316-318. " Maritain, pp. 236-237, says, "Poetic knowledge analogically participates in t h e contemplative character of philosophy, for i t is knowledge of t h e very interiority of things - though experiential knowledge totally different from t h e theoretical knowledge proper to science and philosophy." This idea is expressed also when he says, t h a t poetry comes from a germ, already in intellective form, b u t one which does not tend toward a concept. R a t h e r , it is formative and forming. See p p . 111-113. » Maritain, p. 239. » Maritain, p. 106. 58 Maritain, n. 12, p. 240, quotes f r o m Carlyle's "Characteristics", in E*»ay*, m , 9.

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simultaneously in three regions: a t Leucadia, by the North Sea, and in an unfulfilled subjectivity requiring release. Following the prelude comes the invocation to the wind, a point a t which we may begin to look for the answer to the second question, what word it is that the poet longs to hear. This wind in stanza ii is a wingless, wing-broken, weak and weary wind, not like 'we', says the poet, 'who wait not in our inward night'. 'We' (poet and bizd) wait for a word the sea would send, if it knew how, the wind being now powerless to act as a transmitting medium. B u t in iii, it is another, more potent word t h a n t h a t heretofore associated with the sea or with the poet's 'winged white kinsfolk' t h a t the listener longs to hear. What is this word which Cleaves the dear dark enwinding tree with tree Too close for stars t o separate and to see Enmeshed in multitudinous unity T

The imagery suggesting the piercing quality of the word is profuse and intense. The word 'cleaves the clear dark', 'stormed and stirred/The fortreased rock of silence' and 'rent apart/Even to the core Night's all-maternal heart'. I t is keener of edge than lightning and Keen as that cry from t h y strange children sent Wherewith the Athenian judgment-shrine was rent, Far wrath that all their wrath was vainly spent, Their wrath for wrong made right B y justice in her own divine despite That bade pass forth unfalamed The «ml«« matricide and unashamed? (iii)

H i e reference is to the Chorus of the Furies or Eumenides in Aeschylus (see lines 735 t o end of The Eumenides).x The cry in the lines just quoted is as keen as the cry of conscience or righteous indignation, yet with a brighter note; it is, because of this brightness, a new cry or new word: Tea, what new cry is this, what note more bright Than thair song's wing of words was dark of flight, What word is this thou hast heard, Urine and not thins or theirs, O N i g h t , . . . *> For positive identification of the references to Aeschylus and Sappho in "On the Cliffs", I a m indebted t o Rutland, pp. 324-325.

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(Swinburne's invocation to Night should be compared with that of the Eumenides after Athena's judgment of divine justice.) The third stanza, then, is rich in associations of conscience or sense of righteousness as it ie converted to the 'new cry'. My feeling is that the "new cry' and divine justice within this immediate context may well be the clemency or mercy which included the vision of 'a day of higher glory' that Athena presented in her decree at the end of the Oresteia. Aeschylus was high on Swinburne's list of favorites as his prose and letters frequently show.80 At any rate, Swinburne is employing the long Aeschylean simile as a comparison for the piercing power of this activating element in art and song, and is at the same time introducing the notion that the moral quality referred to accompanies the word. Night, however, is silent: Dumb is the mouth of darkness as of death: Light, sound and life are one. (iv)

The succeeding stanza, v, invokes the Bird-God for the word unlike the one so long sent unchangeable by the sea. In the middle of this stanza is the first reference to the soul: and m y soul, Sickening, swam weakly with bated breath I n a deep sea like death, And felt the wind buffet her face with brine Hard, and harsh thought on thought in long bleak roll Blown by keen gusts of memory sad as thine Heap the weight up of pain.

Here the term 'soul' seems more like the ordinary use of the soul as life-spirit or perhaps the first soul of Thalassius*. Whatever it is, it has not engaged in the creative process but, to judge by the lines quoted above, has been operating as a kind of Coleridgean fancy or eighteenth-century associationism, a situation that is death to the creative spirit. The result is a sadness contrasted with the absence of even a shadow of sadness (vi) in the song of the Bird-God 80 See, for instance, Lang, TTT, 153, n. 7 in which is recorded J. A. Symonde' statement [Oct. 23, 1872] that at a dinner party at Jowett's he talked t o Swinburne wbo stated he was " 'learning Aeschylus by heart' Also, hang, TV, 26, Swinburne in a letter thanking Browning for the copy of his (Browning's) translation of Aeschylus, "If there are two poets I know well they are Shak are and Aeschylus - in the Oresteia particularly."

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who has received the doom of immortality, 'Life everlasting of eternal fire'. In summary, then, stanzas i-vi or the A grouping shows Swinburne explaining the kind of twilight, potential preexistence of poetic experience as a condition of receptivity to the piercing power of the imagination, a power which can reveal multitudinous unity Only the immortal Bird-God receiving her immortality from t source of life and art, The sun whom all our souls and songs a i Bire', can give the answer, the new word or activating and moral elements, which the poet seeks. In stanzas vii-ix, the B grouping, the poet is seeking identification, or at least kinship, with the Bird-God. In vii, the Thalassian note is heard again. His life, like hers, has been hidden and sleepless: Full of the thirst and hunger of winter and spring, That seeks its food not in such love or strife As fill men's hearts with passionate hours and rest. From no loved lips and on no loving breast Have I sought ever for such gifts as bring Comfort, to stay the secret soul with sleep.

The 'secret soul' corresponds to the second soul of "Thalamus" - the individual creative talent. The lines following are the ones already referred to by Lafourcade when he said the poet was cutting 'through the gordian knot of his own soul'. It is possible to see the passage as denoting the poet's dissatisfaction with his previous artistic attempts since he is still waiting for the Bird-God's answer. In viii he refers to having had the fire in his heart (as in vi in "Thalassius" - both poems speak of the fire shared by the nightingale and the poet), but it seems a potential quality only, insatiable and inexhaustible, but still not activated. Stanza ix is a continued attempt by the poet to become identified with the Bird-God who is now addressed as 'sister'. Like Thalassius, he has been somewhat remote from human joy and sorrow. But the lines which are important for examining the nature of the 'memory' are: we retain A memory mastering pleasure and all pain, A spirit within the sense of ear and eye, A soul behind the soul, that seeks and sings And makes our life move only with its wings And feed but from its lips, that in return

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Feed of our hearts wherein the old fires that burn Have strength not to consume Nor glory enough to exalt us past our doom.

Now the syntax of the word 'memory* here suggests it to be in appositional relationship with the 'spirit within the sense', 'the soul behind the soul' or equivalent to the activating element of the imagination. It is not the poet's individual creative talent itself, but more nearly the third soul of "Thalassius" which was called the 'sense within the soul', the divine creative fire within the individual creative talent. It is an altogether different 'memory' from the associations! type referred to in v. Here it is a seeking (inciting) and singing (performing) power, capable of controlling and mastering the emotions and, as such, it seems akin to Wordsworth's 'recollection'. It does more than join shadow and substance, however.61 It is implicated in a symbiosis par excellence. 'We', poet and Bird-God, feed from its, that is the memory's, spirit's, soul's lips which in turn feed from 'our hearts wherein the old fires that burn' lack strength. A translation of this process would seem to indicate the interdependence between the individual creative talent or impulse and the general fire of imagination present in the artist.62 In the lines quoted immediately above, it should also be noted that Swinburne further works the syntax to aid him in affirming the artist's identity with the Bird-God. Memory, spirit, and soul, although common to the 'we', are singular and take singular verbs and govern singular pronouns as 'its'. 'We' share one memory, etc. Then, suddenly, the two lives merge into one in the phrase 'our life', [not, OTTO LIVES]. The union, although a fleeting one, is, in effect, complete, but in the following line the " T h e phrase is from Bennett Weaver, "Wordsworth's Prelude: The Poetic Function of Memory", SP X X X I V (1937), 655. ° Maritain, p. 239, says: "There is no poetio experience without a secret germ, tiny as it may be, of a poem. But there is no genuine poena which is not a fruit growing with inner necessity out of poetio experience." On the same page, Maritain speaks of poetio experience bringing the poet back to the 'single root of the powers of the soul' where he enters, not voluntarily, "but by a recollection, fleeting as it may be, of all the senses, and a kind of unifying repose which is like a natural graoe, a primordial gift, but to which he has to consent, and which he can cultivate, first of all by removing obstacles and silencing concepts". This state he regards as unexpressed, sapid knowing.

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noun is plural again - 'our hearts'. The paradox is not permanently resolved. The B grouping is affirming the need for an activating element, the word or answer t h a t is sought in the poet's life, an element which can reignite and reinvigorate the more latent fire of imagination smoldering in the poet and an element t h a t can a t the same time receive sustenance from this fire. I t is an element whose unity is dependent on the reciprocal and mutual rather than on the individual; it is, nevertheless, authoritative. I n the A grouping, the 'new word' has associations of conscience or superior moral qualities as well as of an activating power; in B, the activating power is authoritative by means of a reciprocity. I n C, stanza x-xii, or in what is referred to as the Cassandra passages, Swinburne returns to the Oresteia, this time to the "Agamemnon": Ah, ah, the doom (thou knowest whence rang that wail) Of the shrill nightingalet (From whose wild lipa, thou knowest, that wail was thrown) For round about her have the great gods cast A wing-borne body, and clothed her close and fast With a sweet life that hath no part in moan. But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear?) Remains a sundering with the two-edged spear, (x) 63

giving a translation of the priestess' chant prior to her entrance to the palace. Swinburne retains the literal afMprjxei dogi (twoedged or forked, spear) rather than giving a more free rendering such as 'sword' (Morshead) or the 'steel's sharp edge' (Verrall) or 'tearing iron' (Lattimore), 64 a point of some significance in t h a t the 'two-edged spear' appears in the last stanza as the 'two-edged spear of time'. By retaining the 'spear', Swinburne calls attention 63 See particularly Lang, V, 196, where, in a letter to the Editor of the Fortnightly Review [July ? 1887] printed Aug., 1887, Swinburne speaks of hia preference for a certain passage in Aeschylus which Lang identifies as the "Agamemnon" (11. 1035-1177), a passage which includes the references to Cassandra and her speech on the nightingale (11. 1146-49). 64 E. D. A. Morshead's translation may be found in The Complete Greek Drama, 2 vols., ed. Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr., I (N. Y., 1938), 205. See also A. W. Verrall, The 'Agamemnon' of Aeschylus (London, 1904) (hereafter cited as Verrall), p. 139 and Richmond Lattimore, trans., Aeschylus I, Oresteia (Chicago, 1953), 1. 1149. Herbert Weir Smyth, Aeschylus II (London, 1926), 99, uses the 'two-edged sword'.

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to the piercing as well as the 'sundering' function of time which, in the conclusion, has the ability to pierce and sunder all songs except those emanating from the Bird-God. The play on the piercing and cutting powers is interesting. The piercing and cutting power of the 'new word' is the only one capable of overcoming the piercing and cutting power of time and mortality. That is, by retaining the spear in this stanza (x), Swinburne is giving special prominence to the general theme of immortality, as he does throughout "On the Cliffs". The notion of mortality versus immortality was presented as the climax of Cassandra's unhappy predicament rather than the notion of an agonizing death versus the 'sweet life that hath no part in moan', that is, a painless death.65 The Cassandra passage may thus be seen as a reenforcement of the immortality theme. A related purpose in introducing the Cassandra legend may be observed in xi: E n m e s h e d intolerably in t h e intolerant n e t , W h o t h o u g h t with c r a f t t o m o c k t h e God m o s t high, A n d win b y wiles his crown of p r o p h e c y F r o m t h e S u n ' s h a n d sublime, A s God were m a n , t o spare or t o forget.

The net is, of course, pride,68 and it is inevitable that Cassandra who tried to become as God (Apollo) by acquiring his power of prophecy (not to mention the immorality of making a false promise to a god) should become enmeshed in it. If one remembers how 66

Verrall in his edition of t h e Agamemnon (see above) h a s a note, p . 137, discussing t e x t u a l problems, in which he says t h a t t h e antithesis involved "is between t h e d e a t h which a w a i t s Cassandra a n d t h e painless transform a t i o n of Philomela (Enger); a n d t h e 'sweet life* is n o t t h e p o i n t " . B u t , Swinburne, in his 'two-edged spear' (of time) D O E S m a k e m o r t a l i t y or imm o r t a l i t y t h e point. 48 P u n i s h m e n t a n d r e t r i b u t i o n in t h e p r i d e f u l T a n t a l u s consisted, it will be recalled, in his cannabalistic a c t i v i t y with his son; his g r a n d d a u g h t e r , Niobe, seemed to h a v e inherited a similar pride which required p u n i s h m e n t f r o m Apollo a n d A r t e m i s . T h e r e w a s also t h e incest between Thyestes a n d his b r o t h e r ' s (Atreus) wife causing A t r e u s to serve u p T h y e s t e s ' children t o t h e i r f a t h e r who a t e t h e m t h u s bringing t h e curse of T h y e s t e s on t h e H o u s e of Atreus, a curse A g a m e m n o n bore a n d a curse which came also t o involve Cassandra. Parallel t h e m e s of incest a n d cannabalistic punishm e n t are inherent in t h e Procne-Philomela legend, t h e basis of S w i n b u r n e ' s "Itylus".

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important it was for Thalassius to acquire humility before he could hear Apollo, the relevance of the Cassandra passage has an added impact. Cassandra's ultimate wages from Apollo is death; that of the artist, immortality. The contrast between the priestess-prophet legend and the Swinburne version of the nightingale-singer or Bird-God metaphor is continued in xii, in which the life-everlasting of the favorite of God is compared to the hound-like 'strange-eyed spirit-wounded strange-tongued slave'. By choosing 'spirit-wounded' (instead of a phrase suggestive of her physical murder) as a term to describe Cassandra, Swinburne is emphasizing Cassandra's alienation and estrangement from Apollo rather than her physical death at the hands of Clytemnestra in a foreign land. That is to say, Swinburne is centering the thought on man's relation to God or to first causes rather than on man's more immediate mortal and domestic problems, although he is also reminding us that the two are interwoven: But thou, - the gods have given thee and forgiven thee More than our master gave That strange-eyed spirit-wounded strange-tongued slave There questing hound like where the roofs red-wet Reeked as a wet red grave.67 Life everlasting has their strange grace given thee.

Cassandra has a relationship to the nightingale which is parallel and contrasting at the same time in that Sappho waB also a priestess, but a priestess to Love.68 Here, almost without our realizing it, Swinburne deftly transforms the Bird-God to the human Sappho who served Aphrodite. The following passage continues from the one immediately above: Even hers whom thou wast wont to sing and serve With eyes, but not with song, too swift to swerve; Y e t might not even thine eyes estranged estrange her,

67 Cf. " I t y l u s " (based on Proene-Philomela legend), and the line in the penultimate stanza " A r e not the roofs and the lintels w e t ? " 68 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet (N. Y . , 1939), I , 131, speaks of Sappho's passion (or Eros as he calls it) with its 'amazing power to grip and transform the whole personality'. The role of the Eros is explained thus: " Y e t this essential fusion which shapes the human soul is impossible without the power of Eros to release the forces of the spirit." Hereafter cited as Jaeger.

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Who seeing theo too, but inly, burn and bleed Like that pale princess-priest of Priam's seed, For stranger service gave thee guerdon stranger.

The entire sense of these and the remaining lines of xii seems to depend upon the identification of the antecedent of the hers, her, and Who which I have emphasized. The best answer seems to be that it is Aphrodite to whom, it will be recalled, the pupils of Sappho's Academy were dedicated. Further, it is Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" from which Swinburne translates in xviii. In this connection, we should probably consider Aphrodite in her dual role of Love and Beauty as it is both these forces which are the integrating and conducting powers to immortality in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". Stanza xii presents a nightingale with a triune nature, a SapphicBird-God whose offices of priestess to Aphrodite are parallel to those of Cassandra to Apollo, but who, unlike Cassandra, has the merciful reward of immortality because of these services to Heavenly Love. Moreover, it appears that she, of all those crowned by Apollo, That thou, being more than all we born, being higher Than all heads crowned of him that only gives The light whereby man lives,

is the

ONLY

one whose song will be changeless:

That thou, being first of all these, thou alone Shouldst have the grace to die not, but to live And lose nor change one pulse of song.

Whether it is immortality or unique immortality which is being questioned as a blessing or curse in the last two lines of the stanza remains ambiguous: If this were grace indeed for Love to give, If this indeed were blessing and no curse.

By including the Cassandra episode and the lines from the "Agamemnon", Swinburne, in the C grouping, is reiterating his themes of humility and immortality as the condition and result of art, and, by the introduction of the Aphrodite references, he is restating the importance of love as a principle in the creative process.

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At the same time, the stanza is being linked with the rest of the poem through Apollo and the metaphor of the nightingale. In the D grouping, xii-xv, stanza xiii opening with a typical Swinburnian interchange Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love,

and closing with Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love, Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song

continues to advance the idea of the reciprocal relationship between song and love, if not their actual fusion, as manifested in the person of Sappho. She, in her perfection and unity, is immortal, exempt from the inexorable sleep of other lights like her But one that wind hath touched and changed not, - one Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun.

In this way, Swinburne proclaims the unity and indivisibility of art. Still addressing Sappho in xiv, the poet again pleads for a special answer, an answer other than air, earth, sea may give him. The following line recalls the letter of the Oxford period: "Because I have known thee always who thou art", and because, says the poet, I never confused you with Philomela: Nor ever have given light ear to storied song That did thy sweet name sweet unwitting wrong, Nor ever have called thee nor would call for shame, Thou knowest, but only by thine only name, Sappho - because I have known thee and loved, hast thou None other answer now?

Then follows the desire for identification: As brother and sister were we, child and bird, Since thy first Lesbian word Flamed on me.

The attempt to establish kinship continues in xv as Swinburne recalls the spring of 1864 and the composition of "Itylus" among

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"Our sisters of Majano"69 who, if my reading of the next few lines is correct, applauded all his songs except "Itylus", 70 an approval possibly based only on love of love or sweetness of heart or the May madness induced by the intoxicating wind of spring, but an approval the poet would prefer to believe to be based on kinship with these nightingales 'In heart and spirit of song'. The poet's efforts at BECOMING Sappho (who, since xv is being addressed in her form of a nightingale in a point of time, 'this nightfall by this northland bay'), are intensified: If this m y great love do t h y grace no wrong, T h y grace t h a t gave me grace to dwell therein; If t h y gods thus be m y gods, and their will 71 Made m y song p a r t of t h y song - even such p a r t As m a n ' s h a t h of God's heart And m y life like as t h y life to fulfill; W h a t have our gods then given us? (xvi)

Then again comes the realization that the gods have given her much more, a singing soul (third sense of soul) beyond all change, the song of which is capable of imparting SUBLIMITY to the soul that hears: The singing soul t h a t makes his soul sublime Who hears t h e far fall of its fire-fledged rhyme,

(xvi)

And now in xvii, Swinburne presents the paradox of the transformation and fusion of Sappho's soul with that of the external soul now moving the nightingale. Although the external singing soul moved Sappho as a woman, it made its escape through the hollow of earth, heaven, and hell while Sappho's soul remained at

89

Swinburne also speaks of these nightingales in t h e area around Florence in "Song of I t a l y " (II, 322-323). 70 I should like t o refer t h e reader to t h e comment of a German critic, J . Hoser in Freimaurerei u. Swinburne's Neuklassizismus, p. 145, which is quoted on p. 277 in Rutland since it is relevant to Swinburne's m y t h - m a k i n g power. The following is R u t l a n d ' s translation of the comment and is found in n. 17, p. 277. " ' I n t h e case of Itylus, one would rather not enter into a n y explanations; it is perhaps t h e best example of Swinburne's living imitation of the antique. The poet bears in mind before all one of t h e F u n d a mentals of t h e ancient feeling towards nature, namely t h a t life in n a t u r e can only be conceived in terms of m y t h . ' " 71 Note t h e p a r t played by t h e W I L L of t h e gods.

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sleep in the sea. B u t Sappho's soul (xviii) is not permanently asleep and seems now to be the 'moving* principle in the hymns of heavenly and earthly beauty being heard. For now THIS song is audible: 0 thou of divers-coloured, mind, O thou Deathless, God's daughter subtle-smiled -72

and the variation, 'Thou of the divers-coloured seat - which is 'Her very song of old!' This is Sappho's song of life, not the one (although it is the same voice) sung as she leapt from the Leucadian heights, not (xix) a swan-song or dirge, b u t a love-song. Moving into xx, 1 loved thee, - hark, one tenderer note than all Atthis, of old time, once - one low long fall,"

we have another song, a song of tender mortal love to her pupil Atthis. And then, in xxi, there is another attempt to translate the first part of the " H y m n to Aphrodite": Child of God, close craftswoman, I beseech thee, Bid not ache nor agony break nor master, Lady, my spirit -

But as Aphrodite failed to hear Sappho (xxii), so the goddess fails to hear the poet who says, addressing Sappho now as O treble-natured mystery, - how should she Hear, or give ear? - who heard and heard not thee.

Yet the song, t h a t is, the " H y m n to Aphrodite" is the only one remaining 'of her lyric days' (the 'her' must refer to Aphrodite, t h a t is, to the days when songs were composed to her). But, if Aphrodite has failed to hear or to pay attention, then, says the poet addressing Sappho (now a trinity): O soul triune, woman and god and bird, Man, man at least has heard. (xxiii)

72

"Hymn to Aphrodite", Lyra Graece, ed. J. M. Edmonds (London, 1922), I, 183, Fr. ]. Hereafter cited as Lyra Graeca. " Rutland, p. 325, identifies the lines as Fr. 48 in Lyra Graeca, I, 221.

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The mightiest and least - Aeschylus and I 74 - have heard, and the implication is t h a t Aeschylus, like the poet in this poem, was aware of the true identity of the nightingale and of her appeal to Aphrodite which hymn, it will be remembered, is a plea to free Sappho from suffering and for Aphrodite to descend to earth and comfort her. Humanity in general, as well as poets, has recognized the appeal of the spirit of the creative imagination to the spirit of love and beauty, "All ages call thee conqueror." The relevance of the lines from the Sapphic fragments to "On the Cliffs" lies in the fact t h a t through these songs of heavenly and earthly love Sappho's poetic spirit is assured of immortality and through them is indeed transformed to the abstract moving soul of the poetic imagination. To repeat Swinburne's mythic metaphor, her spirit has been incarnated in the nightingale. I n stanza xxiv, Swinburne returns to the question of the nature of the earthly Sappho "But when thy name was woman, and t h y word/Human . . . " and decides t h a t in t h a t situation her song was unique and commanding. She was 'One only, one imperious nightingale'. Specific humanity, general humanity, and the godlike were fused 'In one strange manlike maiden's godlike note'. The song was t h a t of a single bird. Only after Sappho's death was the cry of nightingales heard along with here again, only then, When her life's wing of womanhood was furled, Their cry, this cry thine of was heard again,

heard by man. The stanza restates the fact of fusion. I n stanza xxv, 'thy ruling song' enforced the poet as a sea-mew (the tense is past, 'were we sea-mews') and others like him to look 'in heart back landward' for, although happier than any other thing save the nightingale who possessed imperious joy, 'imperious joy/Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy', they were songless because

74

Lang, VI, 295. Swinburne speaks to this point in a letter to Thomas Hake, May 7, 1894: "As to Cassandra, she belongs to Aeschylus as exclusively and eternally as Hamlet belongs to Shakespeare. John Gait, the Scotch novelist, wrote 'Lady Macbeth, a Tragedy', (did you ever see it?) and the late Earl of Lytton a 'Clytemnestra': but I cannot aspire to their Olympian altitude of song."

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73

. . .knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong, No more we knew of song.

So does Swinburne insist on the need of human morality in art and of human experience in the apprenticeship of the artist. In the D grouping, then, Swinburne is emphasizing the reciprocal relation between song and love, is continuing his attempts to identify himself or to establish kinship with the nightingale, attempts which end in a recognition of his inferiority. Through the Sapphic hymns, he accounts for Sappho's transformation to a triune soul and through man's recognition of the true nature of these hymns, he reestablishes the importance of man's receptive function in art. By reopening the question of the nature of the earthly Sappho in xxiv, Swinburne is merely repeating the idea of the unique, commanding, and timeless quality of song or art in its perfection, and by reopening his own past in xxv is repeating the idea of the necessity of human experience in establishing the poet's receptivity to an external power. The last stanza, xxvi, E, states, as noted in the beginning of this explication, simply that he has been making his own myth, expressing what he has long known to be true of art - that it is immortal and that love, a love we have seen defined as a reciprocal relation, even a fusion, of active and passive elements is the resolving agent by which this immortality may be attained. In the Epilogue, the 'two-edged spear of time' pierces 'mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made' and wastes all songs except those of the small, dark Lesbian body which holds the 'fire eternal'.75 An attempt having been made to answer the five basic questions, to identify Swinburne's various allusions and their relationships and to call attention to certain themes in "On the Cliffs", an understanding of the poem as a whole will perhaps be furthered by a rapid chartering of a channel in these varying depths of detail. 76 The survival of the Lesbian songs would seem to indicate that the 'Memory' of this passage is not the same one as the 'memory' of ix since it lacks the immortal power of the Sapphic Bird-God. 'Mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made' must refer to Mnemosyne. Hesoid in his "Theogony" tells of the union of Zeus and Mnemosyne resulting in the Nine 'whose pleasure is all delightfulness/and the sweetness of singing'. See p. 178 in Hesiod, trans, by Richmond Lattimore (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1959). Sappho is perhaps a Muse, but not of the Nine.

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POETICS

Swinburne, in choosing the nightingale and her song as the vehicle for his mythic presentation of the operation of creative imagination or poetic intuition, is working with a loose form of the ode, the vague outlines of which are least hazy at the points of invocation. Although he employs the 'I', the poetic persona has less of an autobiographical cast than the Thalassius in the poem of that name, but, at the same time, it is very possibly more personal as the record of the subjective experience of 'poeta loquens'. The speaker, the 'I', or the poet, is located between two worlds. He is seeking an answer, a word different from the one he has been accustomed to hearing, a word that seems to have divine moving power, and he invokes the -wind and Night for this word. In the midst of his invocation, he hears a cry, recognizes it, and invokes the Bird-God to direct the cry to him. To induce her to do so, almost as if he were proving his worthiness, he points out their similarities, although he always remains aware of her divine and his own mortal nature.76 They are most alike in that they both retain the 'soul behind the soul'. A series of references to the Cassandra legend and a comparison of her with the nightingale point up the proper relationship between a god and his subjects and the reward of immortality which results when the relationship is kept intact. Following these passages, the poet again seeks identification, this time with Sappho herself, only to realize once more the distinction of the sublime. B y listening to the nightingale's song composed of Sapphic fragments from the hymns of heavenly and earthly love, he realizes that their immortal power is related to man's recognition of that power. A t the conclusion, the poet has come to learn that to receive the word he must undergo human experience, wrath and wrong as well as love and change, and that, in one sense, he has always known the song and its secrets of love and immortality.

CONCLUSION

What principles of poetics, what definitions of these principles can be derived from this analysis and explication of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" which will aid in determining the standards and 76 Cf. the statement on "Empedocles" quoted in the first paragraph of this chapter.

SWINBURNE'S

POETICS

75

'depth' of Swinburne's literary criticism? A description of such principles must necessarily be confined to the conditions, concomitants, and observable operations involved. Swinburne has stated these in the framework of myth and metaphor. So far this chapter has attempted only to translate into more general terms the process he is discussing. These general terms must now be examined and expanded so t h a t their supporting value in the structure of Swinburne's prose criticism may be assessed. As a first step, it will be feasible to note what principles are common to both poems and then to point up any contrasting or separate conceptions. The more prominent conditions which are described as fostering the creative process in both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" center around the trinitarian concept of the soul. (I am using the term 'soul' not, of course, in any true theological sense, b u t as a symbol for the indestructible creative power in the artist and I am using the term 'trinitarian' in the sense of union of three in one.) The unity or 'oneness' stems from the person of Thalassius in the poem of that name and from the person of Sappho in "On the Cliffs", both of whom are representative of the artistic soul. The 'oneness' is also portrayed by the presence of Apollo as Father in "Thalassius" and by God (also Apollo, although never so named in either poem) in "On the Cliffs". That is, Swinburne portrays an eternal generating power which is 'out there', and this power is symbolized in the most elementary way by the sun. 77 For "Thalassius", the idea is expressed thus: "And father's fire made mortal in his son"; for "On the Cliffs", the nightingaleSappho is "one/Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun". There is, therefore, an external and eternal basis to this artistic metaphysics which also proclaims unity, but it is a unity with " Lang, III, 141-142. In a letter to Edwin Harrison, Feb. 13, [1876], Swinburne, speaking of "The Last Oracle" says: "The poem, whicli will probably appear in the Fortnightly, is not, you will doubtless be surprised to hear, a hymn in praise of the triumph of Christianity over false Gods, but of Apollo regarded not as the son of Zeus the son of Chronos, but as the spirit or influence informing the thought or the soul of man with inner light (of which the sun's is the physical type) and thence with song or articulate speech which is the creator of all Gods imagined by man to love or fear or honour, who are all born and die as surely as they are born at the bidding of the same spirit. Thus Apollo-Paian, destroyer and healer, and not the Galilean, is established as tho Logos which was not with but before G o d i n t h e b e g i n n i n g . . . " .

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variety as the triple soul suggests. This unity with variety is also seen in "On the Cliffs" where, for example, we recall that the 'other word' cleaved the dark which had prevented the stars seeing the enwinding trees 'enmeshed in multitudinous unity'. Swinburne's concept of unity depends, not on singularity, but on complexity. This unity, however, must serve to reveal both the complex items themselves and the nature of their relationship. I t is the piercing power of the word and also the oneness deriving from the fusion of complexities — that is, it is a process and a state, a revealing and a result. Here, then, is the sort of unity Swinburne is working with and it is the concept he holds up again and again as a primary canon in his critical standards, a thesis which will be illustrated in the following chapter. Other conditions are manifested if we study the milieu within which Swinburne's poetics operated. That he conceived of the artist as a transmitter and mediator has already been seen by the circumstances of Thalassius' birth and rejuvenation and by the position of the nightingale and the poet on the cliffs. The poet, for Swinburne, has a dual vision and a dual responsibility — a duality composed of divinity and humanity. Thalassius even has two fathers. And although Thalassius is found 'nearer sea than land' and is 'a fosterling and fugitive on earth', and although he had to, at a climactic moment of his existence, 'set his eyes to seaward' to retrieve himself from the false and deceptive, once he has been restored, the earth will perform offices of comfort to him. Apollo does not prohibit his manchild from mortal love; he extols him because he has 'loved nought mortal more than me' and because he has fed 'men's hearts with visions, truer than truth'. Similarly, the poet in "On the Cliffs" has rejected 'the joys, the loves, the labours' of men and is trying to identify himself with the Bird-God in her detachment from the pleasures and pains of men, a point the author states again and again. Several lines are also devoted to the earthly Sappho, but, most important of all, man is endowed with the power to hear and to pay attention to her, something even Aphrodite would not, or could not, do. Further, it will be recalled that it was Sappho's earthly song which made the external singing soul fall dumb. Moreover, the sea-mews learned song when they turned landward to adore 'their sister of the shore'. But the humanistic aspect in Swinburne's concept of the artist is heightened by the themes of apprenticeship and preparation.

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This, we recall, was the topic of "Thalassius". Thalassius was reared in the highly moral climate of Liberty, Love of man, hatred of slavery and fear of not fulfilling the responsibility of the laurel. Yet all this does not prevent him from experiencing deception and the chaos attendant on man's mortal excesses. Thus we arrive at a most interesting point in the concept of apprenticeship which is being presented. I refer to that which involves the reason or value in Thalassius' abandonment to the 'shapeless earthly storm'. 78 The purpose of this abandonment is that of a testing and of affording an opportunity for purging rather than that of sharing, identifying, or otherwise having his sympathy with mankind aroused. The fact that his release must be accomplished by an act of his own will has already been seen. The return, after the purging, is to a state of romantic childhood innocence, rather than a sympathetic advance to a state of adult knowledge of human suffering and sin. It is a state somewhat parallel to the negative stage of Carlyle, Mill, and Wordsworth as they record their youthful experiences. The period of apprenticeship in "On the Cliffs", although mentioned only peripherally, is essential to the singing power of the poet, so essential that he MUST experience human emotions before he may sing: But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong, No more we knew of song.

The role of the will is omitted in this poem except in regard to Cassandra who could not win her will (being thwarted by Apollo) and except in one reference to the will of the gods when the poet is hopefully assuming that he and the Bird-God share common gods and that 'their will/Made my song part of thy song'. The implication of this omission in contrast to its crucial position in "Thalassius" may lie in the fact that in the more autobiographical poem the emphasis was being placed on establishing a reversal in order that the receptive state of repose might be reached, whereas in "On the Cliffs", the poet is already in that state.' 9 Thus we are led into the question of the receptivity of the poet. As already stated, the entire narrative of "Thalassius" is a record 78 See Peters, Chap. VII, "Form", pp. 126-149 which affirms Swinburne's concern for form and outline. 79 "On the Cliffs" was composed earlier than "Thalassius", but Swinburne placed it second in Songs of the Springtides.

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of his attainment of repose necessary for the grace of childhood enabling him to BECOME incarnate in song itself. This state of receptivity in "Thalassius" permits him to recognize his father, a recognition that 'bowed him down with rapture'. And his father's first movement, before addressing him was 'hallowing his humbled head'. The receptivity, if not completely synonymous with humility, may be regarded as an integral part of that concept. In a certain sense, "On the Cliffs "does begin where "Thalassius" leaves off in that the receptive or listening state is already firmly established at the opening of the poem. The true note of humility is struck most sharply, however, in this poem, within the Aeschylean references, first, as it is suggested in the new vision and subsequent conversion of the Furies to the Eumenides and, secondly, in the Cassandra-Apollo relationship. In addition, the poet-speaker is, in spite of frequent attempts at identification with the Bird-God, aware of, to use one of Swinburne's favorite quotations, the 'great gulf fixed' between them. In both poems, the generalizations on humility are founded on the relationship between the gods and men, the essence of which is man's recognition of and obedience to godhead and 'the light that saves'. This, then, is the background within which Swinburne uses the word 'humility' in his poetics. The importance of its application as a critical term will be demonstrated. In short, I have been trying to make evident the context of the term 'unity' as its meaning is evolved within the trinitarian structure of the creative spirit and to depict Swinburne's emphasis on the dual aspect of the artist-man's performance as an earthly and morally responsible being and as an agent who is under the direction and who is also an integral part of an eternal and external creative force. Herein lies a vital statement on Swinburne as an art-for-art enthusiast and as a moralist. The authentic poet, the true artist is bound by nature to Apollo. This cannot be otherwise. At the same time, the poet is unable to practice his art without experiencing the conditions of human life, an experience which enables him, in the words of his father Apollo, to sing 'The song of all the winds that sing of me'. It is not only the idea of duality which is present, but that of reciprocal relationship. This reciprocal relationship is, as has been noted, central in the operation of the poetic memory in "On the Cliffs", and the relation between this poetic memory and the creative life of the poet is parallel to the

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relationship between the poet and humanity. It is Swinburne's habit of assumption which has caused so many of his interpreters to line up on opposite sides and to proclaim him primarily a devotee of art for art OR a traditional moralist. Further, Swinburne's position is not merely a matter of emphasis; neither is it merely a matter of development or change in point of view between the two extremes. Rather, he seems to occupy an ambiguous position between the two extremes because he is aware of the reciprocal relationship between art and human morality. When he occasionally appears to ignore Apollo or humanity, he is not just placing his influence with the underdog of the moment (although this may be the inciting force); he is practicing his habit of assumption. The following chapters will bear out this point. Here, then, have been presented the more prominent conditions fostering the creative process, conditions common to both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". Although there is overlapping in the terms 'condition' and 'concomitant', I am trying to distinguish between those principles whose effect is more observable as setting and those whose effect is more observable in the sense of being associative. Let us now turn to a discussion of the more important concomitants of the creative process. The sine qua non of any concomitant of the artist's creative process is power. Swinburne deals with this power in its various forms. We have already seen in "On the Cliffs" the piercing and sundering nature of the word as well as its enduring and unchangeable quality. Lines on the human Sappho refer to her unique and imperious song as well as to the rapture of her imperious joy. The fire that the poet shares, or would like to think he shares, with Sappho is unquenchable - insatiable and inexhaustible - and, consequently, indestructible, and it is, of course, intense, 'A song more fiery than the awakening sun'. "On the Cliffs" places heavy stress on the penetrating, unchanging, unique, and commanding powers of art. In "Thalassius" the concomitants are presented, for the most part, in the framework of the period of abandonment. The approaching storm makes the earth shake 'AS [my emphasis] toward some timeless birth, / Intolerable and inevitable', but it is, as we have seen, a false art, without form, 'A shapeless earthly storm', and without the elements of the divine. Inevitability of progress and dominance of the spirit of man are seen in ix in the 'hope'

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passage where the birth of good and death of evil things on earth are regarded as 'inevitable and infinite'. As we look into Swinburne's criticism, we are very much aware of his use of the sense of inevitability as a criterion of art; it is regrettable that the definition is not expanded other than by means of the quoted simile. Both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" refer to madness in connection with wine. In "Thalassius" it is part of the Bassarides passage which is incorporated in the whole section on false inspiration. The same wind that 'Made mad the moonless and infuriate air' bathes him: Not as it takes a dead leaf drained and thinned, But as the brightest bay-flower blown on bough, Set springing toward it singing.

Its effect bears a close resemblance to that of a bona fide creative operation. In "On the Cliffs", the poet hopes that, in an earlier experience, the nightingales in Majano applauded him for the sake of kinship and not for god-given glorious madness of mid May A.nd heat of heart and hunger and thirst to sing, Full of the new wine of the wind of spring.

The point is that madness, intensity, the sense of the intolerable and inevitable, hungering, thirsting, and intoxication are attributes, although here belonging to false inspiration, also associated with true inspiration, the nature of which was indicated in x of "Thalassius". In addition to the use of conditions and concomitants, a third approach in describing the principles involved in the creative process is to note the nature of the activity. The central activity is a becoming, a becoming that is a fusion rather than a growth, the term so widely acknowledged as the ideal metaphor for Romanticism. Now the difference between the use of the word 'become' in the sense of fuse and in the sense of grow is not merely the difference between a metaphor alluding to the inanimate and one alluding to the biological, but is a question of retaining identity and individuality. In 'growth', identity remains intact despite expansion. I t may even be enhanced by expansion. In fusion, the identity is transformed or converted into a new form by a process of blending, frequently with an opposite, although not

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necessarily so. 80 What is essential about the change is t h a t a loss of selfhood takes place. The 'becoming* passage in "Thalassius" follows the growth passages (xxi). Thalassius' rebirth is a kind of inversion of growth - t h a t is, he grew into childhood again after which followed, as indicated earlier, the self-communion, the sincere self-appraisal and repose which enabled him to sing, keep rhyme with the tidal throb and so be charmed 'From his own soul's separate sense'. H e loses this separate quality, this identity of the self, and so becomes 'no more a singer, but a song —' that desirable state in which he is able to hear his father's voice. I n "On the Cliffs", there are five specific 'becoming' passages: (1) in xvi when the poet becomes a part of the Bird-God If this m y great love do thy grace no wrong, Thy grace that gave me grace to dwell therein;

(2) also in xvi when man's soul is transformed to the sublime The singing soul that makes his soul sublime Who hears the far fall of its fire-fledged rhyme;

(3) in xxiv, when the 'manlike maiden's godlike note' becomes the nightingale's note without issuing from the throat of the nightingale; (4) in xxv, when A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea Were molten in one music made of thee;

and (5) in xxvi, the concluding lines Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song, And in thine heart, where love and song make strife, Fire everlasting of eternal life.

I n (1), the becoming is accomplished by love and grace; in (2) by hearing; in (3) by a manner unspecified; in (4) by a melting process. I n each of these situations, there is a loss of selfhood - the singer became a song, the poet a Bird-God (hopefully), the mortal soul attained a state of sublimity, the three notes as one nightingale's, and earth, heaven, and sea became 'one music'. I n (5), the process is a culminating one - fusing of pain and pleasure in song or art 80

Swinburne had a positive mania, as is well-known, for juxtaposing opposites in both his poetry and prose. Pleasure and pain, joy and grief, sorrow and mirth, life and death - the list is endless.

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and fusing of love and art to everlasting fire. Thus Swinburne sees the fusing process as essential to art. He is telling us that the artist transforms and that art is transformation, a concept that is surely not new. Combined with, or more accurately, preceding the 'becoming' process is the activity of 'seeking'. Swinburne constantly interlaces this theme throughout "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". Thalassius, the earthly fugitive, 'sleepless of soul', is conceived by Apollo and Cymothoe. Cymothoe saw Apollo approaching and seeking her Beheld one brighter than the sunbright sphere Move toward her from its fieriest heart.

In his apprenticeship period, Thalassius is taught to seek the moral virtues already noted before he sets out on his quest along the 'spring-flowered ways'. In the depth of his disillusionment with Love he seeks solace from grief, seeks without knowledge or purpose as 'the moon wandered witless of her way'. His mother Cymothoe was unceasing in her search, 'Sought the sea-bird that was her boy'. And the period of abandonment closes when the boy seeks the seabanks and rest. In the final passages, Apollo successfully seeks his son in order to commend his sleepless soul. Similarly, the poet in "On the Cliffs" is, as the Bird-God, a sleepless hidden thing, Full of the thirst and hunger of winter and spring, That seeks its food not in such love or strife

and continually seeks the 'other word', the 'new cry'. The life on earth is described as a 'secret sleepless burning'. In the final passages, as we have seen, the sea-mews seek the nightingale. It is, of course, natural, that the general idea of motion which may be virtually equated with life,81 as well as motion in its more specific aspects, should impregnate poetry written on the subject of the creative process in art. In "Thalassius", we are introduced to the wandering foster-father in the second line. The tempo of motion increases at the conception and birth of Thalassius, is 81 D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Judgment (N. Y., 1929), p. 77 says "Motion is rather the substance and soul of nature than its appearance. And when motion is manifest to sense, it is in changes of surface appearances that we are aware of motion as within, as the active principle of natural life. . .". "If motion of some spocial sort is life, sound is its mark and sign."

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retarded during the period of abandonment and dipsomania, the release from which is accomplished by letting the 'vine-bit on the panther's lip/Slide, and the green rein slip'. After the sleep and the self-communios the motion is again accelerated (the verba are 'burned', 'shot forth', 'exalt', 'ravishing', 'violate', 'leapt') until he bows in rapture to receive Apollo's message. Thalassius' birth, rebirth and reincarnation (into song) are preceded by increased activity, but the climactic moments are those of less activity - the 'rein slips1, the child has rest, the singer becomes a song with listening powers. The moment of pause as well as the preceding and succeeding motion is essential. In the prelude of "On the Cliffs", motion, as befits life in a preconscious state, is suspended, and the impact is again that of pause. The twilight 'hangs', the vegetation clings to the soil, the ground hardly strikes and shoots, the sea winds fret, and the peace broods. The 'word' is the moving spirit, and at its introduction in iii, the motion depicted is vigorous. But the reader is less conscious of motion generally in "On the Cliffs" than in "Thalassius". One reason for this is that so many of the passages present the poet-speaker as an entreater to the Bird-God and Sappho, and as one who reminisces. The cleaving in the sense of rendering, and piercing forms of motion are its most telling characteristics. Motion, however, is clearly identified with the creative process as is seen by The singing soul that moves thee, and that moved When thou wast woman.

The final activity to be discussed in this connection is that of remembering and, more especially, remembering in the sense of recognizing. Thalassius has three 'recognition scenes'. The first is when false Love reveals himself, after which the spirit or soul passes through weariness and sorrow, a state followed by the period of abandonment. The second is a self-recognition, the selfcommunion or sincere self-appraisal following the rebirth which permits new life and which permits the soul of all his senses to be in rhythm with the universal element of the tides. This, as has been pointed out, enables him to lose himself in song and to recognize Apollo. He feels the strange breath and light, "And he knew/his father's hand". Hence it would seem that Swinburne is saying that poetic intuition operates within the realm of cognition

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which is closely attendant upon, if not identifiable with, art itself.82 A similar message is revealed in "On the Cliffs". The word of the Bird-God is recognized early in the poem for what it is, for its penetrating power and for its power to make Night productive; in contrast, the poet's own past is seen as barren and unproductive. There is recognition of sadness of man's memory as contrasted with hardly a shadow of sadness in the Bird-God's song. But the more powerful recognition passages have to do with the poet's attempt to see himself in the Bird-God as the sleepless, hidden thing, and to see their common destiny as beyond men's pleasures and pains. Further, there is the idea of a kind of double recognition, that is, that she knows that he has always known the truth of her identity (xiv). There is, of course, also a series of recognitions in the sisters of Majano passage, and in the Sapphic fragments that pierce the night air culminating in Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite". The CRY, if not the identical song, of Sappho is recognized on the English cliffs. Perhaps the clearest articulation is in the conclusion where the poet says ' I know them [song and its secrets] since my spirit had first in sight'. This is the artistic recognition - to know what was known before and to know that it has always been that way. It is the authentic kind of knowledge which David Daiches discusses.83 In "Thalassius", the concept is described as a rhythm, a being in time with the throb of the tide, from which state springs a similar feeling of authenticity. Of the two poems, "Thalassius" expresses forthrightly and explicitly some of the more obvious critical canons emphasized in Swinburne's literary criticism. We have already noted the moral and purposive qualities of the 'high song' taught by the earthly father - devotion to freedom, love, hate, hope, and fear of being 83 Maritain, p. 110. " W h a t matters to us is the fact that there exists a common root of all the powers of the soul, which is hidden in the spiritual unconscious, and that there is in this spiritual unconscious a root activity in which the intellect and imagination, as well as the powers of desire, love, and emotion, are engaged in common." 83 David Daiches, A Study of Literature (N. Y . , 1948), p. 32, speaks of the feeling of 'authenticity' in art: "The first stage is where we recognize what we know, the second is where we recognize what we might have known, and there is a third - where, while we recognize what we have known or might have known, we at the same time see, and know to be authentic, what we should never have seen for ourselves."

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worthless, the result of which was the poet's early inspiration. Between the freedom and love passages of iv and vii, the setting changes to the twilight fusion of light and darkness (v), the song lightens (vi) as the nightingale is heard. Under these circumstances arises or begins 'The manlike passion of a godlike man': The manlike passion of a godlike man, And in the sense within the soul again Thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men.

The love, hate, hope, and fear sections follow. The syntax at the beginning of vii, "For love the high song taught him" and that at the beginning of viii, ix, x indicate that these passages are definitions of the 'thoughts that make men of gods and gods of men'. That is, Swinburne is hereby giving due attention to emotional factors in poetic creation.84 There now seems to be but one major quality in Swinburne's poetical theory as constructed in these two poems which has been untouched or touched on only indirectly, and that is the question of sincerity in art. "On the Cliffs" mentions it somewhat obliquely or negatively, in xi, in the Cassandra passage, as she 'thought with craft to mock the God most high'. The line suggests not only the absence of humility, but also the absence of sincerity. Hence her doom of the "two-edged spear'. In "Thalassius", the question of sincerity is tied in with rebirth and repose, the necessary phase in the preparation for Apollo, 'He communed with his own heart'. The idea is the romantic one of turning inward; there is an affirmation, certainly, of following the profound and genuine as revealed by one's own heart, but this, it must be emphasized, is no final step. It merely leads to the final step of loss of selfhood and reception of Apollo, who commended Thalassius for feeding 'Men's hearts with vision, truer than truth'. Sincerity is here closely associated with notions of humility and responsibility. Here, then, is the theory of Swinburne's poetics in myth and metaphor. A study of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" not only reveals the 'growth of a poet's mind' and the description of his concepts of artistic metaphysics and the poetic process, but, in 84 The opening lines in " O n the Cliffs" also make, in the simile of plenitude, the presence of emotion (here designated as fear, love, pleasure, pain) a link between God and man.

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addition, suggests principles and standards operable in the realm of literary criticism. Too often, asT. S. Eliot has noted, Swinburne makes, or, as is being suggested in this study, APPEARS to make statements without analysis, and, we would add, employs terms without adequate definition. The fact that this apparent fault is related to Swinburne's habit of assumption and to his habit of embedding the significant in metaphor and qualifying phrase in his prose has already been suggested. This chapter has tried to indicate some of the definitions and assumptions underlying such terms as 'unity', 'morality', 'humility', 'sublimity', and 'harmony'. It has also tried to indicate the basic humanism in Swinburne's poetic theory and to point up the role of such factors as emotion, recognition, and the reciprocal in his theory of art. The consequences of this theory of human life and art as exemplified in Swinburne's criticism or critical prose will be considered in the following chapters, which will amplify and supplement these definitions and observe them operating as foundations, standards, or as the long-sought 'internal centre' of his writing which so many have found lacking in Swinburne.

Ill S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL P R I N C I P L E S

Whirling around, he passed over the land and over all the sea, and stood on the lofty watchtowers of the mountains, and explored the caverns, while he laid for himself the foundations of his groves. . . Pindar, "Hymn to Apollo" 1 UNITY

Swinburne's poetics as derived from the preceding chapter's study of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" revolves around concepts of unity, harmony, and morality. We have seen the notion of a complex unity and a concept of the creative imagination which has subordination as its basis, but which insists on reciprocity between emotion and cognition, and within cognition, a reciprocity among all its various forms of intuition, memory, and the experiential knowledge of the more practical, ethical aspects of human life. The climax of such activity appears to be a harmonious wholeness, a unity of totality in which a loss of identity through fusion has taken place. Hence, any division between unity and harmony will be merely theoretical and a division for discussion only. By this harmonious wholeness, sublimity and immortality are attained. Let us record some remarks which can be made on these ideas of unity and harmony enmeshed throughout the body of Swinburne's criticism, note in what way these ideas correspond to the theory evolved in the preceding chapter, and thus decide what further illumination may then be directed toward Swinburne's poetics.

1 "Hymn to Apollo", Frag. 51 Schroder (70), The Odes of Pindar including The Principal Fragments, trans. Sir John Sandys (London, 1927), p. 617.

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An examination of all available prose criticism from the earliest articles in the Undergraduate Papers of 1858 (composed in 1857) to the final testament of the "Dedicatory Epistle" published in 1904 yields some dozen or so statements which might reasonably be regarded as significant indices to Swinburne's theory of unity as expressed in these studies. In them, Swinburne may be seen observing certain principles of unity operating within periods, genres, and the entire body of an author's work as well as in individual works of art. These statements seem to reveal two major concepts of unity with which Swinburne is dealing. Within each, there are various ramifications and modes of operation, and Swinburne's propensity for being an appreciative critic as he analyzes and evaluates each aspect is evident. But it should be emphasized that it is also as clearly evident that a preference is being stated, a preference for t h a t unity emerging from balance, reciprocity, and, ultimately, from fusion. This preference does not, however, ignore or underestimate the value of what may be referred to as the unity of singularity or the unity of point of view, comparable to the piercing power of the 'other word' in "On the Cliffs". Let us now inspect these two major concepts of unity. The distinction he seems to be drawing is between (1) a unity of totality deriving from consistency in relationship among the individual parts and from their blending and fusing qualities which result in a wholeness t h a t will not permit the severance, detachment, or change in arrangement of any part, and (2) a unity of direction and dominance (with their concomitants of subjection and restriction), a dominance imposed by subject matter, point of view, singularity of purpose, character, or spirit. The preceding chapter has provided us with a theoretical answer. Does Swinburne in truth, as a practicing critic, affirm the unity of totality and fusion as heard in the song of the triune-spirited nightingale? Which accompanies the highest and most perfect artistic expressions - a tonal unity dependent on balance and reciprocity or a unity of singularity dependent on dominance and direction? Both types, it will be seen, assume variety and diversity, the multitudinous and the multiform. The fundamental question pertains to the control and relationship of the elements of variety and diversity. Very possibly, the earliest statement Swinburne published on the general idea of unity was in his article on Christopher Marlowe and

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John Webster printed in the first issue of Undergraduate Papers in 1858 at Oxford where it appeared under the serial title, "The Early English Dramatists". Here he is speaking of the general unity of the period from Marlowe to Shirley and says: Unity in variety; for there is no servile adherence to one standard, no blind conformity to one stock of rules. Still, all the plays of this era are coloured by the same influences, and modelled by the same tone of national thought and feeling.2

Although the statement may have more interest because of its date than for any other reason, there are, in addition to the 'unity in variety' phrase, two words of the twenty-year-old Oxford student which are of significance to us. They are 'coloured' and 'tone', suggesting a unity achieved when the milieu of a work of art permeates its structure indirectly and naturally rather than when it is being imposed directly and consciously as a dominating point of view. The fact remains, however, that Swinburne is observing and approving of the unifying effect of nationalism on the drama of the period and that this nationalism is a unity of singularity although appearing naturally and spontaneously. The illustration, since it is not dealing with the problem of artistic unity, is important merely because it indicates the direction of the young Swinburne's thought on this general topic. In the biographical-critical study of Blake, there is no strong overt statement on artistic unity. The emphasis is, rather, placed on the roles of form and morality in art.3 But the idea of versatility, complexity, and intricacy persists in such a remark as the following on the personality of Blake himself, a passage in which we may observe Swinburne's style of repetitive cumulation and fine shading of the negative operating as he tries to reconcile the opposing forces of unity and variety:

8 ACS, "The Early English Dramatists", " N o . 1, Christopher Marlowe and John Webster", Undergraduate Papers, ed. John Nichol (Oxford, 1858), 7. The copy referred to will be found in the Widener Collection of Harvard College Library. 3 "Blake's conception of the function of art and the place of the artist in the world. . . anticipated in part the doctrine of L'Art pour I'art." Chew, p. 254.

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I n his correspondence, in his conversation, and in his prophecies, Blake was always a t u n i t y with himself; not, it seems t o us, actually inconsistent or even illogical in his fitful varieties of speech and expression. His faith was large and his creed intricate; in t h e house of his belief there were m a n y mansions. (XVI, 127)

We are, of course, dealing here with a biographical description, but our concern is that the tone is one of approbation toward the general idea of a unity of diversity. An important technique of Swinburne's prose style, it has been suggested, is that of embedding the significant in the figurative. Turning to the considerable criticism on "Matthew Arnold's New Poems" appearing in 1867 in the Fortnightly Review, let us examine Swinburne's concluding estimate of his contemporary. He speaks of Arnold as a 'lover and a giver of light' and of the 'rest, and air', and 'high relief' of his poetry (XV, 117). The 'multitudinous unity' is expressed within the figure of a many-chapeled temple: His poetry is a pure temple, a white flower of marble, unfretted without by intricate and grotesque traceries, unvexed within by fumes of shaken censers or intoning of hoarse choristers; large and clear and cool, with m a n y chapels in it and outer courts, full of quiet and of m u s i c . . . . We feel and accept the quiet sovereignties of h a p p y harmony and loyal form.. . . Nor are all these either of modern structure or of Greek; here is an Asiatic court, a Scandinavian there. And everywhere is the one ruling and royal quality of classic work, an assured and equal excellence of touch. 4 (XV, 117-118)

And a summation in highly typical Swinburnian purple: The stormy northern world of water and air and iron and snow, t h e mystic oppression of eastern light and cruel colour in fiery continents and cities full of sickness and splendour and troubled tyrannies, alike yield up to him their spirit and their secret, to be rendered again in just and full expression. (XV, 118-119)

4

The full impact of the figure in its appropriateness as a symbol of Arnold's style should be noted. The image of the 'flower' in marble suggesting the classic come to life, the antithesis of the 'censers' and 'grotesque traceries' which follows, and the elements of extension and refinement suggested by t h e chapels and courts illustrate Swinburne's precision of description as well as his own ability to fuse form and subject. F u r t h e r refinement by t h e specific allusions to the range and particular examples of Arnold's poetry referred to by 'an Asiatic court', 'a Scandinavian' in t h e quoted passage which follows are admirable examples of Swinburne's adeptness and accuracy in creative reflection.

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Swinburne is describing Arnold's 'internal centre'. The unifying principle is one of classical simplicity, purity, and restraint; it is 'a process and a state, a revealing and a result'. I t is derived both from the 'piercing power of the word' and from 'the fusion of complexities'. The artist whose spiritual center is restraint and constancy may actually be employing the unity of singularity and dominance, but the very nature of these qualities will insure an EFFECT of tonal unity. Thus, Arnold virtually captures both worlds, thereby illustrating the desirable state when there is reciprocity between harmony and unity. His controlling touch permits the various notes in the chord to be heard as one and also permits them to be heard in a variety of keys. Further, Arnold is successful in achieving the effect of tonal unity because of a sense of right resulting in a spontaneous temperance which bears no mark of curb or snaffle, but obeys the hand with imperceptible submission and gracious reserve. . . .He knows by some fine impulse of temperance all rules of distance, of reference, of proportion. (XV, 76-77)

Here, Swinburne seems to be saying, is conscious artistry at high perfection. The control is neither visible nor perceptible. But we are aware of the hand; the very fact that Swinburne inserts the words 'curb' and 'snaffle' is suggestive. And although it may seem to be drawing a very fine line indeed to stress this, there is a restricting element being incorporated in the qualifying clause. The idea is t h a t of 'as if'. We STILL realize the presence of the hand even if it is imperceptible. I am, in short, questioning whether the spontaneity represented here is wholly spontaneous. In addition, there is a related problem of equal or greater importance in this assessment of Arnold's poetry which we should mention, and that is the success with which Swinburne is probing the secret of Arnold's accomplishment. In Swinburne's success lies Arnold's failure, for the secret of the supreme artist or the genius, as will be illustrated more fully under the discussion of the inexpressible or inexplicable, can never be penetrated, can never be completely recognized and identified. There was, as we have seen, an essential mystery to the Bird-God and to her triune nature. In an opening simile to "A Study of Shakespeare" (1880), Swinburne phrases the idea as follows (and here we should keep in mind t h a t when

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Swinburne speaks of Shakespeare, he regards it as equivalent to speaking of perfect art): But the limits of that other ocean [Shakespeare], the laws of its tides, the motive of its forces, the mystery of its unity and the secret of its change, no seafarer of us all may ever think thoroughly to know. (XI, 3)

Are we coming close to a definition of the greatness of a great minor poet, to the distinction between excellence and greatness? Perhaps it has something to do with achieving an effect t h a t can or cannot be accounted for. I n returning, however, to the broader and clearer affirmative lines of the Arnold criticism, we see that both Arnold a n d Morris avoid the 'intrusive and singular and exceptional beauties which break up and distract the simple charm of general and single beauty, the large and musical unity of things" (XV, 77-78). This refers, of course, to their best verse. But we must note t h a t in it, description and thought "have so grown into each other t h a t they seem not welded together,but indivisible and twin-born" (XV, 78).5 The finer line is being drawn in 'seem not welded together'. As above, we are aware, ever BO slightly, of what is being denied; in the earlier example, it, was the 'hand', and, in this, it is the 'welding' present in the fusing process. Nevertheless, the point remains that Swinburne is approving the concept of the unity of fusion and although he is not analytical in any strict sense of the word, a study and application of this concept helps us to understand why and how the songs of Callicles clove to his ear and memory. I t also helps us to understand Swinburne's judgment t h a t the delineation of Empedocles fails because the conception of his dissatisfied soul is a fragmented one (XV, 81). Arnold, in his best poetry at least, demonstrates one important requirement for high artistic achievement in that, in his most successful moments, his control originates within a harmony t h a t has all the power of spontaneity and the natural — or nearly all this power. One cannot help wondering where Swinburne would have placed Arnold in his hierarchy of one hundred authors had he not purposely omitted the names of living writers. 6 5 For further discussion of the 'welding' and 'fusing' relationship, see note 10. 6 Lang, V, 132. The letters to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette containing the list were published Jan. 26 and 27, 1886. In the first one, Swinburne says: "You will see that I have included no living names."

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In view of Swinburne's almost unrestricted enthusiasm for Victor Hugo, the fact that, in the review of L'Homme qui rit (1869), he takes his idol to task for failure to consider the difficulty and, hence, the significance of the multiform nature of the world is, I think, of importance to our discussion. Swinburne does not hesitate to call this a flaw. Of L'Homme qui rit, he says: The Flesh and the Devil, Josiane and Barkilphedro, are perfect; the World is drawn wrong.. . . But the World is multiform. To paint one aright of its many faces, you must have come close enough on that side to breathe the breath of its mouth and see by the light of its eyes. No accumulation of fact upon fact gleaned and laid up never so carefully will avail you instead. Titian himself cannot paint without colours. . . .In other words, here are many curious and accurate details painfully studied and stored up for use, but unhappily it is not seldom for misuse. Here are many social facts rightly retailed and duly laid out side by side, but no likeness of social life. (XIII,

208-209)

What Swinburne seems to be objecting to is a distortion stemming from a lack of a certain point of view, and that lack is a spiritual one. Without colours, there can be neither outline nor blending. A primary requisite Swinburne appears to be advocating in this instance is a spiritual point of view which is directive and illuminating - as the word of the nightingale in "On the Cliffs" - cleaving the dark and making visible the enwinding trees 'enmeshed in multitudinous unity'. In this particular instance, Hugo has failed to achieve either the unity of singularity or tonal unity, an error that is 'ingrained', a basic flaw. For a more complete discussion of a point of view that is restrictive, one of singularity, we may turn to the essay on "John Ford" (1871), one of the most penetrating of the studies on the Elizabethans. I t is penetrating because Swinburne is again faced with the fine problem, of accounting for excellence without greatness. From such an essay, we might expect to discover what he considers to be the cause of the distinction between excellence and greatness. He begins with one of his favorite techniques, that of comparison and classification. Webster and Dekker, he says, 'hold of Shakespeare' ; they are 'as gulfs or estuaries of the sea which is Shakespeare' (XII, 371). But Ford, he says, stands apart, and, in a famous simile, he compares Ford's poetry to a mountain lake, like Lake Gaube:

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But the poetry of Ford is no branch or arm of that illimitable sea; it might rather be likened to a mountain lake shut in by solitary highlands, without visible outlet or inlet, seen fitlier by starlight than by sunlight; much such an one as the Lac de Gaube above Cauterets, steel-blue and sombre, with a strange attraction for the swimmer in its cold smooth reticence and breathless calm. (XII, 372)

As he speaks of Ford's 'quiet eye' and 'quiet hand' and his regular, accurate and composed verse, 'admirable for precision, vigour, and purity', we are reminded of the similar estimate of Matthew Arnold. Ford, however, lacks the 'spontaneous' quality of Arnold's temperance as well as Arnold's diversity and he treats passion with 'passionless reason' and 'equable tone of style' (XII, 372). The strength of our attraction to Ford lies within the appeal of restraint and restriction. In Swinburne's poem, "The Lake of Gaube", published in A Channel Passage and Other Poems (1904), the lake holds a death-like attraction to the swimmer, 'the darkling delight of the soundless lake' (VI, 200-202). For those who tend to overestimate Swinburne's dependence on the sculpturing and carving tenets of 'art for art', on the file and chisel, the following comparison should be revealing. Speaking of the figure of the protagonist Giovanni in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Swinburne says, "There is more ease and life in it than in his other sculptures; though here as always Ford is rather a sculptor of character than a painter" (XII, 373). Conversely, the character of the sister is considered to be less finely drawn 'though her ebbs and flows of passion are given with great force', yet the rapidity of change does not 'impair the unity of character, obscure the clearness of outline' (XII, 373-374). Throughout the essay, Swinburne, constantly aware of what he regards as Ford's high quality as a dramatic poet, strikes at this limited claustrophobic point of view manifested in an atmosphere of painstaking study and care that cannot survive outside the limitations of serious thought. Because of this limitation, Ford 'gains strength with the strength of his subject; he wants deep water to swim well' (XII, 397). Swinburne's assumption of the importance of diversity and complexity may be seen when, speaking of Perkin Warbeck and Webster's Appius and Virginia, he observes: In both plays thero is a perfect unity of action, a perfect straightforwardness of design; all is clear, orderly, direct to the point; there is no outgrowth or overgrowth of fancy, thero are no byways of poetry to divert

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the single progress of the story. B y the side of The Duchess of Malfy or The Broken Heart [which although it has 'a softer tone' and 'more tender colour' contains 'a certain rigid and elaborate precision of work'] they look rigid and bare. (XII, 386-387)

Unlike Matthew Arnold with whom we have compared him on this subject, Ford operates within a unity imposed by the force and dominance of his subject. Ford's dominion was limited to one simple form of power, the knowledge and mastery of passion properly so called, the science of that spiritual state in which the soul suffers force from some dominant thought or feeling. (XII, 399)

In essence, the effect is negation as dominance by force always is, or to quote Swinburne's more appropriate metaphor, 'in him Apollo was incarnate only as the dragon-slayer' (XII, 400). On the other hand, Ford stands high as a conscious craftsman, and his craftsmanship is godlike even though embodied in a giant. "In that gallery of monumental men and mighty memories, among or above the fellows of his godlike craft, the high figure of Ford stands steadily erect" (XII, 406). Swinburne, in this essay on Ford, makes his position clear on the inferiority of the unity of singularity and dominance, but at the same time he recognizes the desirable powers of conscious craftsmanship that accompany this aspect of creativity. In his sonnet series on the Elizabethans, it is interesting to see that Swinburne mentions Ford as one who "carved night, and chiselled shadow". His metaphor for Ford in the sonnet is marble. Such an artistic power affords no opportunity whatever for tonal unity: N o t the day Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord, Touching this marble. (V, 176)

In these quotations from the review of L'Homme qui rit and from the study of Ford, we see what happens to the writer whose point of view is lacking or whose Muse works by too much singularity and restraint or by dominance of purpose. Variety, diversity, and the 'multitudinous' require an ample and more expansive point of view, one which is not limited to the control of light that merely illuminates the various facets involved, but, what is more

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desirable, one which can arrange a focus t h a t will cause the combined rays of the subject to reflect the whiteness of fusion. Yet Swinburne does not deny the virtues of the more singular unity. The difference is the difference between excellence and greatness. Swinburne's approval of a unity originating from a consistency which produces the tonal effect is hinted at briefly and negatively by the remark on Byron's Isles of Greece in Under the Microscope (1872) in which the poem is criticized because of its epigrams, its 'untimely lapse of rhetoric and unseemly change of note' (XVI, 402). The statement is followed by a widely recognized axiom regarding the test of great poetry: but the test of true and great poetry is just this: that it will endure, if need be, such a process of analysis or anatomy; that thus tried as in the fire and decomposed as in a crucible it comes out after all renewed and re-attested in perfection of all its parts, in solid and flawless unity, whole and indissoluble. (XVI, 402-403)

The wholeness denying the detachability of any p a r t is apparent in this remark, an idea echoed in the accent of indivisibility in the D grouping in "On the Cliffs". The use of the 'crucible' here with the accompanying overt imagery of fire and decomposition (and, again, for example, with the suggestion of alchemy itself as well as the actual use of the word 'fused' in the passage on The Alchemist to be discussed later 7 ) argues for Swinburne's assumption of this concept. I t is interesting to compare this prose metaphor of the crucible as illustrative of the idea of fusion with t h a t of the poetic one of the nightingale. I n one of his more lengthy pieces, the study of George Chapman (1875), appearing originally as a preface to the works of t h a t author, we may discern, once again by a negative approach, Swinburne's thought on the principle of unity. I n an earlier chapter, we have already seen him commenting on the variability of Chapman's style. Referring to two of Chapman's poems, Shadow of Night and Andromeda Liberata, Swinburne bemoans the 'broken-winded rhetoric'. "Worse than all this is the want of any perceptible centre towards which these tangled and ravelled lines of thought may

7

See quotation on p. 102, below.

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seem at least to converge" (XII, 144) and then, in a Swinburnian metaphor: Such a poet as Lord Brooke, for example - and I take George Chapman and Fulke Greville to be of all English poets the two most genuinely obscure in style upon whose works I have ever adventured to embark in search of treasure hidden beneath the dark gulfs and crossing currents of their rocky and weedy waters, at some risk of m y understanding being swept away by the groundswell - such a poet, overcharged with overflowing thoughts, is not sufficiently possessed by any one leading idea, or attracted towards any one central point, to see with decision the proper end and use with resolution the proper instruments of his design (XII, 145) . . . Only random thinking and random writing produce obscurity; and these are the radical faults of Chapman's style of poetry. (XII, 147)

These are, indeed, the radical faults, but what of the poet who has a center, who has a leading idea and can use the proper instruments of his design? The answer comes hard upon the heels of the objection, and it comes in the 'digression' on Robert Browning. Browning, rather than being obscure, has such an 'incisive faculty of thought' and 'such rapid and trenchant resolution of aim' that he is the reverse of obscure. "The difference between the two [Chapman and Browning] is the difference between smoke and lightning" (XII, 146). Now all this sounds highly complimentary, but the upshot of Swinburne's argument is that such an intellect is that of the genius of the special pleader, a debater or an 'eminent leading counsel', qualities which neither Swinburne nor any other critic would concede to be essentially poetic (XII, 149). The conclusion is that the monodramas or soliloquies of the spirit are the inevitable form for an analytic intellect such as Browning's (XII, 153).8 Resolution of aim, the dominating unity of the analytic intellect, leads to clarity, but not to poetry. Elsewhere, in the article "Tennyson and Musset", Swinburne compares Browning and Leconte de Lisle at which point he again comments on Browning as thinker, analyst, and student of human science as well as on his tenderness exhibited in the handling of Pompilia. To the analytic intellect Swinburne adds pathos and 'subtlety of knowledge' (XIV, 323). 8

A similar point is made in "A Study of Ben Jonson" (XII, 21), when Swinburne speaks of Jonson's negative faults. "Love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy, are superseded and supplanted by pure scientific curiosity."

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Earlier, October 26 [1869], Swinburne had written to William Michael Rossetti: You know I do not count Browning a lyric poet proper, nor properly a dramatic, as he breaks down in dialogue; but his greatness as an artist I think (now more than ever) established to all time by his monodramas. I say artist, or poet, as well as thinker.®

Chapman, in many of his poems and dramas, lacks even the unity of singularity, and, it might be noted, he is absent from Swinburne's list of one hundred authors. Browning possesses the unity of singularity and has developed it to a high point, but a limited form of poetry is the result. One wonders, had it not been for Swinburne's policy of omitting living poets, whether Matthew Arnold would have been included and Browning excluded from Swinburne's list. But it is in "A Study of Shakespeare" (1875-76) that we have the most straightforward, positive, and definitive expression of the ideal 'multitudinous unity' which is tonal. Having completed the discusssion of the first period of Shakespeare's art in this essay in which the well-known division of the three stages of Shakespeare, (1) comedy or romance (2) the comic and historic and (3) tragedy occurs, Swinburne depicts Shakespeare's artistic transition from the simple emotion within the range of Marlowe to 'those wider diversities of emotion and those further complexities of character which lay outside the range of Marlowe'. The progress is from singleness and intensity, directness of purpose, or from 'a single passion, the incarnations of a single thought... to something more' (XI, 57). The transition is epitomized for us as we look from "Romeo and Juliet" to "Antony and Cleopatra" with all the infinite variety of qualities and powers wrought together and welded into the frame and composition of that love which shook from end to end all nations and kingdoms of the earth. (XI, 58) 10 9

Lang, II, 46-47. In "Notes on the Text of Shelley" (XV, 397), Swinburne makes clear his opinion on the highest forms of poetry: "but it is equally certain that of all forms or kinds of poetry the two highest are the lyric and the dramatic". 10 Swinburne was fond of the word 'welding', but it is not always synonymous with 'fuse' as, for example, in this quotation. In speaking of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he adds the words, 'in fusion'. "All incidents and traditions of the great poet's exile are welded together in fusion of ardent verse" etc. (XV, 14). My inference is that Swinburne feels that the 'welding' of "Antony and Cleopatra" is inferior to a welding that is true fusion.

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Similarly, Biron and Rosaline are simply lovers, but Benedick and Beatrice reflect more than 'this simple quality of love'; Mercutio is merely a good friend, a frank young man, but the Bastard bears such witness to the full-grown perfection of his creator's power and skill as the touch that combines and fuses into absolute unity of concord the high and various elements of faith in England, loyalty to the wretched lord who has made him knight.

Swinburne continues: It is this new element of variety in unity, this study of the complex and diverse shades in a single nature, which requires from any criticism worth attention some inquisition of character as complement to the investigation of style. (XI, 58-59)

Thus, as the question of style becomes complex, so does the question of character, and the indivisibility of matter and spirit becomes part of the question of any debate on Shakespearean authorship (XI, 59-60). This is an aspect of the problem with which Swinburne dealt in "On the Cliffs", the fusion of the earthly Sapphic song into t h a t of the nightingale. In the highest artistic achievement, t h a t is, in Shakespeare's more developed dramas, the dominance of unity of singularity decreases as the complexity increases and the unity of the simple structural outline gives way to a more reciprocal relation between style and character, a relationship in which they ultimately become inseparable and indivisible. Concerning analyses of the early Shakespearean characters, the following comment is significant: There is nothing in them to analyse; they are, as we have seen, like all the characters represented by Marlowe, the embodiments or the exponents of single qualities and simple forces. (XI, 59)

This disapproval of singularity is one of the basic assumptions on which Swinburne builds his dramatic criticism. I t is, of course, more particularly, the basis of his discussions of dramatic character. One cannot help but feel t h a t this is a primary reason for his placing Shakespeare first in his hierarchal list of one hundred authors. This assumption is behind his statement t h a t too many of Shirley's plays have no principle of life, t h a t 'they are not dull, they are null' (XII, 340). Too many of them merely parade the Royal Master, the Duke's Mistresses, the Constant Maids as 'indis-

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tinguishable figures and immemorable events' ( X I I , 339). It is also the assumption behind his admiration for Webster's construction of the characters Flamineo and Bosola.11 (XI, 305-310) The brief judgment on Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (1880) gives a disconcertingly meager explanation for Swinburne's preference for Paradise Regained as a complete work of art, while, as he says, 'reserving for Paradise Lost the claim of priority in episodical excellence - in splendour of separate points and exaltation of separate passages' (XIV, 111). Making a comparison, he continues: I n the central and crowning quality of harmonious and blameless perfection, the Iliad is not more excelled by the Odyssey than is Paradise Lost by Paradise Regained. I n either case the name of the elder poem first of all reminds us of its noblest episodes: the mention of the younger brings back upon us before anything else the serene and supreme impression of the final whole. ( X I V , 111-112)

This pronouncement, even in its brevity, does support the general approval of a blending towards totality of effect, a harmonious wholeness rather than a singularity of view. In a letter to John Nichol dated June 2, 1884, Swinburne refers to an article he is writing for the Nineteenth Century on Charles Reade and, in so doing, gives us a framework which serves as a useful boundary for the enthusiasm of the article as it actually appeared. The letter illustrates the important fact that we must always keep in mind Swinburne's assumptions. This is what he wrote to Nichol: I am writing an article on the late Charles Reade, which ought (in part at least) to please our friend Dicey, if he retains any of his early admiration of that novelist - whom with all his grave faults and follies of style I really think a man of very remarkable genius.12

Swinburne is obviously writing an occasional piece, and we may expect his usual positive-minded approach, but he is not classifying Charles Reade as either a god or a giant in spite of the use of the word 'genius' here. At any rate, it is one book only of Reade's, The Cloister and the Hearth, that receives the superlatives. And I I Webster portrays a great potential in these characters; they 'Bonapartes in the bud', says Swinburne. 12 Lang, V, 69.

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what of its unity? The variety and vigor of life are mentioned: I t is so copious and various that the strength and skill with which the unity of interest is maintained through all diversities of circumstances and byplay of episodes m a y almost be called incomparable. (XIV, 358)

Whatever the exact nature of the unity of interest may be here, it is not, although effective in its own right, the tonal unity of harmony, but probably more of a dominant note running among the episodes. In general, Reade's stories do not have this quality of 'an all but absolute and consummate work of art', a thought which prompts Swinburne to add: H o w long can a work of art be expected to live, which depends for its chance of life rather on the excellence of episodes, o n the charm of a single character or the effect of a particular scene, than on the final harmony and satisfying impression of the whole? (XIV, 366-366)

Such thinking seems to define a line between the good and the excellent, and, perhaps also, a line between excellence and greatness. Another effort to extract an element for the construction of Swinburne's notion of unity may profitably be made by following his argument in "A Study of Ben Jonson" (1888), again in a negative approach, for what he refers to as Ben Jonson's 'magnificent mistakes', Every Man out of his Humour, Cynthia's Revels, and Poetaster, or his Arraignment. Their magnificence arises from the fervour and intensity of verse expressing Jonson's intolerant indignation and from his versatile handling of scorn as he passes from one phase of folly, fraud, or vice to another (XII, 12). But they fall short; they are mistakes because (and here we must force our way through the 'husk' of Swinburne's negative) of failure of unity, the unity of composition: And if it were not an inadmissible theory that the action or the structure of a play might be utterly disjointed and dislocated in order to ensure the complete presentation or development, the alternate exhibition or exposure, of each figure in the revolving gallery of a satirical series, we could hardly fear that our admiration of the component parts which fail to compose a coherent or harmonious work of art could possibly carry us too far into extravagance of applause. (XII, 12)

A unity of point of view is present, but only the unity of a point

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of view - insufficient for the supreme artistic achievement. I n contrast, The Alchemist and Volpone13 present a higher degree of unity of composition or tonal unity: The steadfast and imperturbable skill of hand which has woven so many threads of incident, so many shades of character, so many changes of intrigue, into so perfect and superb a pattern of incomparable art as dazzles and delights the reader of The Alchemist is unquestionably unique - above comparison with any later or earlier example of kindred genius in the whole range of comedy, if not in the whole world of fiction. The manifold harmony of inventive combination and imaginativo contrast - the multitudinous unity of various and concordant effects - the complexity and the simplicity of action and impression, which hardly allow the reader's mind to hesitate between enjoyment and astonishment, laughter and wonder, admiration and diversion - all the distinctive qualities which the alchemic cunning of the poet has fused together in the crucible of dramatic satire 14 for the production of a flawless work of art, have given us the most perfect model of imaginative realism and satirical comedy that the world has ever seen; the most wonderful work of its kind that can ever be run UPON THE SAME O N E S [my emphasis]. (XII, 26) A comment on the style is relevant here. The quotation while illustrative of such aspects of the repetitive and additive Swinburnian prose style as coupling and compounding, parallel, balance, and antithesis, the latter effects of which are achieved rhythmically and alliteratively as well as b y diction, is, perhaps, most important as an illustration of the technique of postponement to a climax. The climax, in this instance, lies within the final qualifying prepopositional phrase which I have emphasized. I t would be wrong to regard this statement as the totally enthusiastic endorsement it appears t o be. That is, there is a falling short of complete tonality, this time, because the fusion has been accomplished 'in the crucible' but upon certain lines only, that is, those of dramatic satire. Thus we have a work of art flawless within its genre, 'an aesthetically blameless masterpiece', but incomplete for the reader who demands more than 'merely intellectual or aesthetic satisfaction '(XII, 27). The nature of this 'more' will be defined under 13

In spite of Swinburne's reluctance to choose between the two (XII, 26), he does express, though cautiously, a preference for The Fox on 38. u The ideas in the images 'crucible' and 'alchemy* as well as in fusion connote conversion.

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another topic, but the point is that true fusion is lacking because of the dominance of the satirical point of view. The satire is too restrictive; it is not an activating principle in the highest sense: Scorn and indignation are but too often the motives or the mainsprings of his comic art; and when dramatic poetry can exist on the sterile and fiery diet of scorn and indignation, we may hope to find life sustained in happiness and health on a diet of aperients and emetics. (XII, 28)

The final declaration for the unity of tonal totality appears in the "Dedicator}^ Epistle" (1904) when Swinburne, comparing both his Greek tragedies, expresses his confidence that "Erechtheus" is a whole greater than any one part, a confidence he cannot share in regard to "Atalanta". He elaborates in this way: Either poem, by the natural necessity of its kind and structure, has its crowning passage or passages which cannot, however much they may lose by detachment from their context, lose as much as the crowning scene or scenes of an English or Shakespearean play, as opposed to an Aeschylean or Sophoclean tragedy, must lose and ought to lose by a similar separation. 15

The essential wholeness, a wholeness excluding any detachability of any part is, as we have seen, one of Swinburne's tests for tonal unity and herein we may see one aspect of Shakespeare's superiority over the Greeks. The organization of these comments has been the simple one of chronology primarily to aid in indicating a consistency in Swinburne's concepts of one of the basic principles in his criticism, the principle of tonal unity, over a period of more than forty years. It may also be noted that these comments, which include the more considerable statements of Swinburne on unity, are found in discussions of various genres, in the medium of review, in that of the more lengthy prefatory remarks, and in the French as well as in the English criticism, factors which strengthen the argument that this principle of tonal unity or harmonious wholeness was one Swinburne held consistently and constantly. Briefly, the foregoing section may be summarized, first by noticing throughout these remarks Swinburne's approval and assumption of variety, diversity, and complexity in art. Secondly,

15

"Dedicatory Epistle", xiii.

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in the passages from the studies on Ford, Reade, and Jonson, Swinburne is seen sympathetically describing the artistic achievement associated with the unity of singularity while at the same time indicating the limitations of this kind of unity. His statements on the flaw in L'Homme qui rit and on Chapman make clear the correlation that exists between the presence of unity, even that of singularity, and successful artistic achievement. His 'digression' on Browning confirms the notion of the limited success of artistic achievement based on a mere unity of singularity. And, finally, in the passages from the criticism of Shakespeare, Milton, and, with reservation, that of Arnold, Swinburne may be seen affirming that genius which has the capacity to create a work of art in which a unity of tonal totality, achieved by reciprocity and fusion among all its parts and tested by the denial of detachability of any of its parts, emanates and endures. Stylistically, we have noted, generally, (1) the negative approach by which one may arrive at the assumptions, implications, and statements underlying Swinburne's affirmation of a unity of tonal harmonious totality and (2) his employment of various additive and repetitive elements. We have tried to support, by calling attention to some examples of coupling and compounding, parallel and postponement, antithesis and cumulation as well as to examples of the poetic use of imagery, diction, and rhythm, the inferences of the first chapter as to the importance of a close reading which takes such techniques into account in order to reach the core of Swinburne's meaning as he works through the qualifying methods of extension and refinement. Thus, in the prose criticism may be seen the desirability of the conditions, concomitants, and activity of the unity suggested by "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", the oneness of the artistic soul operating as a piercing and fusing power among the various but indivisible multitudinous, a sine qua non for immortality in art. The more particular nature of the methods of fusion illustrated by the above passages has been dependent on the notions of indivisibility of parts, the significance of the spontaneous (as opposed to purposive effort), and, most of all, on the absence of dominance of any individual part, or, to state it more positively, the blending of all elements in a 'satisfactory impression of the whole'.

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HARMONY

Admittedly, the terms employed above are associated with harmony as well as with unity, and the distinction has been made only for purposes of emphasis and discussion. Further study, however, of Swinburne's idea of harmony and its connection with artistic unity may be approached by a reference to the terminology used to describe the creative imagination in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs". It will be recalled that the distinction was made as follows: (1) SENSE, general fire shared with the nightingale (2) THE SOUL WITHIN THE SENSE, the poet's individual creative talent (3) THE SENSE WITHIN THE SOUL, the divine creative fire operating in the individual creative talent. The meaning assigned to the terms expressed in "On the Cliffs" as 'spirit within the sense' and 'soul behind the soul' was compared to the third definition in "Thalassius". In section ix of "On the Cliffs", the terms were used to indicate the merging of the life of the poet with that of the BirdGod. Yet the union was only a fleeting one, and the suggestion is that Swinburne is dealing with a paradox not permanently resolved in spite of the reciprocal and even symbiotic relationship between the poet and Bird-God. The poet remains essentially subordinate. His art and HIS humanity distinguish him from Sappho who was able to become the Bird-God. The relationship of these terms and those of similar phrasing and concept, which stand for the creative intuition or the divine creative fire operating in the individual creative talent, to Swinburne's idea of harmony is clearly seen in one of his discussions on painting, "Simeon Solomon, Notes on His 'Vision of Love' and Other Studies" (1871). Comparing the painter's art evident in Keats' verse with the musician's evident in Solomon's designs, he says: As surely as the mystery of beauty. . . was done into colour of verse for ever unsurpassable in the odes 'To a Nightingale' and on 'Melancholy', so is the same secret wrought into perfect music of outline by the painter. The 'unheard melodies', which Keats, with a sense beyond the senses, perceived and enjoyed in the forms of his Grecian urn, vibrate in the forms of this artist's handiwork. (XV, 444) [My italics]

The Platonic overtones should not receive undue emphasis here since Swinburne is speaking of Keats (in spite of the phrase 'perceived and enjoyed') primarily as the creator rather than the appreciator of the '"unheard melodies'". The sense beyond the

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senses is the power being employed by both Keats and Solomon in bringing beauty into verse and 'music of outline'. The sense beyond the senses conceives as well as perceives; it converts and it produces a harmony or 'perfect music of outline' t h a t may be regarded as equal to or closely identifiable with the 'mystery of beauty'. Spiritual harmony of the prose becomes intricately associated with the divine creative fire operating in the individual creative talent in the Bird-God. The idea that the 'spirit of sense' with its power of reconciling and of fusing may create beauty more particularly by refinement may be observed in the same review when, speaking of Solomon's refinement of the brutish and physical appetite in his designs of animal heads, Swinburne says: In several . . .we find heads emblematic of active or visionary passion upon which the seal of this sensitive cruelty is set; made beautiful beyond the beauty of serpent or of tiger by the sensible infusion of a soul which refines to a more delicate delight the mere nervous lust after blood, the mere physical appetite and ravenous relish for fleshly torture; which finds out the very 'spirit of sense' and fine root of utmost feeling alike in the patient and the agent of the pain. (XV, 456-457) [My italics]

Now it would be quite possible to use this quotation as grist for the sadistic mill of Lafourcade, Hare, or Praz, and the fact t h a t Swinburne is referring to the works of the highly abnormal Solomon might perhaps tend to foster such a reading. But to do so is to overlook the importance of the qualifying 'mere' phrases. The point is t h a t Swinburne's syntax and comparative method are holding up the refining process as one t h a t fashions beauty. Art as a refinement upon nature is the not-so-startling principle with which we are being confronted. The connection of the phrase 'spirit of sense' with the infusion idea and the beauty indicates a close relationship between harmony and the refining process. Thus we may see Swinburne's critical prose bearing out the idea of artistic creative power, the third soul of "Thalassius", as a becoming, fusing, converting, and refining activity with all the mysteries of the word being made flesh. Of such is the kingdom of beauty.1® 16

Although I am trying to study harmony from the point of view of its relation to unity and the findings of the previous chapter, one of which defines 'sense' as the general fire of the imagination, I am in essential agreement with Thomas E. Connolly. See Thomas E. Connolly, Swinburne's Theory of Poetry (Albany, 1964), Chap. IV, "The Music of Poetry". Hereafter cited as Connolly.

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In addition to the fusing and refining qualities of harmony, other characteristics should be noted. Referring to the reciprocity between harmony and unity described in the section on unity above where the following quotations have already been used as illustrative of Arnold's fine sense of right, a 'sense of right resulting in spontaneous temperance', an idea also expressed by, "He knows by some fine impulse of temperance all rules of distance, or reference or proportion", we are aware of two elements besides the sense of proportion usually associated with harmony, elements which seem to be important to Swinburne's concept. One of these elements is this 'sense of right' or the 'fine impulse' comparable to the feeling of authenticity of Thalassius and of the poet in "On the Cliffs". This impulse seems to be a cognitive intuition or even the sense of recognition described in the previous chapter. Gabriel Rossetti was another poet who possessed it, and it is also associated with harmony in his writing: In all these points [ardent harmony, instinct and resolution of excellence] the style of Mr. Rossetti excels that of any English poet of our day. It has the fullest fervour and fluency of impulse, and the impulse is always towards harmony and perfection. It has the inimitable note of instinct, and the instinct is always high and right. (XV, 5)

And as Thalassius, by an act of will, 'set his eyes to seaward', a necessary step in preparation for artistic creativity, so does Rossetti employ will: Colour and sound are servants of his thought, and his thought is servant of his will; in him the will and the instinct are not two forces, but one strength. (XV, 44)

In spite of the subordination suggested in the 'servant' metaphor, reciprocity, and, in the last clause, fusion, are suggested. Thought is the servant of will and instinct; harmony is the servant of thought. The pattern of harmony being woven here is made up of threads of instinct and impulse of right, thought, and will. Thus we find a reciprocity between emotion and cognition - components associated with the creative imagination. This instinct of right may also be connected with the cognitive activities of remembering and recognizing described in both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", and it will be recalled that these were delineated as close attendants of art. The entire review of "The Poems of Dante

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Gabriel Rossetti", as Swinburne's well-known definition of poetry toward the conclusion of the essay indicates, might well be taken as a study of these poetic principles (XV, 47).17 In addition to the sense of right or the fine impulse and will may be seen a second element, already alluded to in the section on unity, in the quotation from Arnold repeated above. I refer to the element of spontaneity. This spontaneity is significant as a power opposing that of singularity or that of directed purpose and may also be seen as a manifestation of the grace bestowed in xii in "On the Cliffs". Its source lies within the greatness of the artist, and the absence of it in M. Frère's paintings, for example, helps to account for a poorly conceived, poorly composed, painted picture: "but the workman must first be great; and this workman without force of hand. . . would pass off on u s . . . trickeries (XV 207-208). The idea is stated more attractively in the same essay by a metaphor describing Whistler's studies: They all have the immediate beauty, they all give the direct delight of natural things; they seem to have grown a s a flower grows, not in any forcing-house of ingenious and laborious cunning. ( X V , 211)

And Wordsworth, who has 'that rare, uncertain, intermittent effect of profound and majestic harmony' does command his music "sometimes, as by direct and inexplicable intuition, [does] educe [harmony] from the simplest combinations of evidently spontaneous thought with apparently spontaneous expression" (XIV, 240). Both Keats and Wordsworth are commended for an air of sprezzatura. "Grinders if they were, they had the skill to erase from the surface of their work all traces of the grinder's toil" (XIV, 241). The review of " L a Légende des Siècles" (1883) has a passage which conveniently summarizes the desirability of several of the inferences mentioned above. Swinburne is arguing for spiritual unity in Hugo's work: 17 The statement credits Rossetti with the highest qualities of poetry, " i f the qualities we rate highest in poetry be imagination, passion, thought, harmony, and variety of singing power". Swinburne, the master of prosody, spoke rarely on the subject although he frequently insists on the importance of 'singing power'. See his brief remarks ( X I V , 188) and ( X V , 98-100). Oliver E l t o n in A Survey of English Literature (1780-1880), IV, (N. Y . , 1920), 78, says: " W i t h his impeccable ear, Swinburne seems to have cared little for theories of p r o s o d y " .

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I t m a y be urged in answer t o t h i s i m p e a c h m e n t t h a t t h e u n i t y of t h e book is n o t logical b u t spiritual; its diversity is n o t accidental or chaotic, i t is t h e result a n d expression of a s p o n t a n e o u s a n d perfect h a r m o n y , a s clear a n d as p r o f o u n d as t h a t of t h e o t h e r g r e a t e s t works achieved b y m a n . ( X I I I , 116-116)

That Swinburne conceived of two forms of harmony in poetry has been ably demonstrated by Thomas E. Connolly - (1) a spiritual form with which we, in showing the close relationship between harmony and unity and in showing the connection among imagination, harmony, and beauty, have been concerned and (2) a form of harmony identified with metrical expression, prosody, or the 'laws of song'; Connolly has analyzed the distinction and relationship between Swinburne's ideas of 'inner' and 'outer' music.18 Although distinct, the two forms are connected as Mr. Connolly points out, and as Swinburne makes clear in Under the Microscope (1872) in the discussion of, first, Byron, and then Whitman. Of Byron, Swinburne says he should be praised for his energy and activity, not for his imagination, of which he had little, and harmony, of which he had none: it is t h e inner sense of h a r m o n y which c a n n o t b u t speak in music, t h e i n n a t e a n d spiritual instinct of sweetness a n d fitness a n d e x a l t a t i o n which c a n n o t b u t express itself in height a n d perfection of song. ( X V I , 400)

And of Whitman: W h a t is t r u e of all poets is a m o n g t h e m all m o s t m a r k e d l y t r u e of W h i t m a n , t h a t his m a n n e r a n d his m a t t e r grow t o g e t h e r ; t h a t where y o u catch a note of discord there y o u will find something w r o n g only, t h e n a t u r a l source of t h a t o u t e r wrongdoing; wherever you catch a note of good music y o u will surely find it c a m e whence only it could come, f r o m some t r u e r o o t of music in t h e "thought or t h i n g spoken. T h e r e never was a n d will never be a p o e t who h a d verbal h a r m o n y and n o t h i n g else; if t h e r e was in h i m no inner d e p t h or s t r e n g t h or t r u t h , t h e n t h a t which m e n took for music in his m e r e speech was n o such t h i n g as music. (XVI, 415-416) 18 See Connolly's Chap. IV, " T h e Music of P o e t r y " , in which he speaks of two concepts of h a r m o n y in Swinburne. T h e f i r s t is a blending of 'inner' music, t h e spiritual qualities of t h e p o e m with t h e ' o u t e r ' , more metrical, sound devices, a blending of t h o u g h t and sense which is also seen as p a r t of Swinburne's idea of f o r m , t h e a b s t r a c t high f o r m . T h e second concept of h a r m o n y is a kind of synesthesia, b u t t h i s is n o t t h e ideal h a r m o n y which occurs in lyric h a r m o n y in which t h e passion or imagination blends with perfect t h o u g h t a n d sensory appeal. Connolly also shows t h e role of passion in Swinburne's concept of h a r m o n y . According t o Connolly, t h e fire of sense a n d spirit a n t i c i p a t e s Swinburne's t e r m H A R M O N Y . See esp. p p . 76-78.

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Swinburne's later study of Shelley entitled "Percy Bysshe Shelley" and published in Chamber's Cyclopaedia of English Literature in 1903 praises Shelley for the 'music of spiritual harmony' in the first two choruses of "Hellas", and then reproves him: the astonishing collapse of metre, of style, and of sense, in some of the irregular lyric passages, may be allowed to suggest the inference that not even the greatest poet can with impunity venture to cut himself loose from the natural and eternal laws of song which refuse to verse the licence of anarchy and selfwill under penalty no less heavy than the forfeiture of security from shipwreck. (XV, 345)

The importance of this type of harmony is seen in the poems of Shelley "in which their author has shown himself a great poet by the one indispensable test of poetic triumph, a consummate mastery of his instrument" (XV, 346).19 This 'mastery' or harmony of prosody may be contrasted with the harmony mentioned by Swinburne in connection with actual inspiration: In the autumn of 1819, while engaged on the last act, or rather, the lyric epilogue, of 'Prometheus Unbound', he was moved by the inspiration of external or phenomenal nature at its highest pitch of harmony and passion to conceive and bring forth one of the supreme poems of all time - the 'Ode to the West Wind.' (XV, 339)

These lines virtually equate harmony and passion with the creative act. 20 I should like also to point out the assumption and admission of an external source. Swinburne goes on to call attention to the fact t h a t the Ode also has verse of 'matchless music'. The only poet having a sense of harmony comparable to t h a t of Shelley is Coleridge who is, in fact, more than comparable. Indeed, when it is a matter of "purity and volume of music Shelley is to Coleridge as a lark to a nightingale". The beauty of "Christabel" lies in its lack of dissonance; it has the 'beauty and harmony of the whole imagination' (XV, 146). I t is the loveliest of Coleridge's poems. And here, to digress briefly, these examples from Coleridge afford an opportunity to comment on some aspects of Swinburne's style, aspects which illustrate, for instance, some of Swinburne's methods of tempering his apparently unbounded enthusiasm when 19

Speaking of Collins, Swinburne says, "the first indispensable faculty of a singer is ability to sing" (XIV, 151). See also (XIV, 224). 10 See note 18 above.

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enveloped in the superlative degree. We note t h a t "The Ancient Mariner" is one of the supreme triumphs of poetry, "Kubla K h a n " is perhaps the most wonderful of all the poems and "Christabel" is the loveliest (XV, 145-146). I n addition to the qualifying 'one' and 'perhaps', further restrictions are taking place. Swinburne would preserve "Christabel" and "Kubla K h a n " over "The Ancient Mariner" on the grounds of uniqueness. "Kubla K h a n " is the MOST WONDERFUL, in, as Swinburne says a bit later, its MIRACULOUS quality. The force of Swinburne's admiration for "Kubla K h a n " here is to be seen in the literal sense of the word admiration (and we have seen in the first chapter how Swinburne works the literal meaning of his diction), whereas the source of it in "Christabel" is the sheer beauty of a blended wholeness. Further comparison of Coleridge with Shelley detracts from the tone of the superlative. Shelley "fills his verse with a divine force of meaning, which Coleridge, who had it not in him, could not affect to give" (XV, 147). Additional tempering is accomplished in a footnote which excepts the closing lines of "Prometheus", "Ode to the West Wind", and the close of "Ode to Naples" from the general rule of Coleridge's superior melody and which also suggests setting "The Sensitive P l a n t " against "Christabel" as a fairer example for comparison of harmonies. And, adds Swinburne, "Let us give thanks for each after their kind to nature and the fates" (XV, 147). These additive and repetitive elements point out distinctions and serve to restrict the kind of harmony, for example, being discussed here. Both "Kubla K h a n " and "Christabel" are harmonies of 'outer' music. "Kubla K h a n " accomplishes a fusion so complete that interchange of the senses takes place and we are led to a Swedenborgian paradise where we may "hear the hues and see the harmonies of heaven", a situation accomplished in part by 'rhyme, assonance, and alliteration. . . requisite components of high and ample harmony', a situation defying explanation by such details (XV, 145-146). 21 The harmony of "Christabel", on the other hand, is accomplished by a sweetness or beauty of blended wholeness t h a t imbues even the magical evil. The harmony of "Christabel" is completely accounted for. The harmony of "Kubla K h a n " is not. I t is important to keep constantly in mind, as we

21

See remarks o n s y n e s t h e s i a , note 18 a b o v e .

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shall see in more detail later, the fact t h a t the inexplicable and incommunicable are assumed tenets of Swinburne's poetics. The necessity of the critical point of view which also operates under the guidance of harmony is seen in Swinburne's endorsement, in A Study of Shakespeare (1880), of a criticism which refused to draw a line of demarcation between the aesthetic and scientific (and here Swinburne is identifying the scientific with the method which accounts for harmony by the 'counting up of numbers and casting up of figures', and the aesthetic with 'the music which will not be dissected or defined, the 'spirit of sense' which is one and indivisible from the body or the raiment of speech t h a t clothes it'): Criticism without accurate science of the thing criticised can indeed have no other value than may belong to the genuine record of a spontaneous impression; but it is not less certain that criticism which busies itself only with the outer husk or technical shell of a great artist's work, taking no account of the spirit or the thought which informs it, cannot have even so much value as this. (XI, 8)

A further definition of spiritual harmony follows shortly in a statement to the effect t h a t the adult reader needs the kind of guidance which will investigate the cause and effect of the tones which make up 'the gradual scale of their final harmonies' (XI, 8-9). I n the analysis of King Henry VIII, Swinburne considers the problem of Shakespeare's collaboration with Fletcher, and here equates the 'concord of inner tone' with 'a general unity' in contrast to the utter discord of The Two Noble Kinsmen (XI, 68). And the> identification of general harmony and spiritual similarity is seen again in the same study in the discussion of Arden of Feversham, where it is offered as a reason for admitting the possibility of Shakespeare's authorship (XI, 95). I n concluding these remarks on harmony, we may note t h a t if we regard the Swinburnian version of such terminology as 'sense beyond the sense' and 'spirit of sense' as a pilot steering us in and out of the estuaries of Swinburne's prose expressions of harmony, we arrive at a concept of t h a t word which includes an affirmation of the principles of fusion and spontaneity discussed in the section on unity and which adds the idea of grace from an external source to this idea of spontaneity. There is also a reiteration of the essential paradox contained in the phrase 'the multiform unity of mutual inclusion', as well as the suggestion of a meta-

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physical source or a source external to the poet, seen in the phrase 'in which all things rest and mix'. In addition, this concept of harmony recognizes a converting and refining process involving beauty, a cognitive intuitive 'sense of right' or authenticity associated with the emotional role of the will, and it frankly admits the inexplicable and inexpressible. In these ways, Swinburne established such a close relationship between spiritual harmony and the activating power of the creative imagination that he seems almost to equate the two. Finally, although a harmony of 'outer' music may be observed as a separate entity of sound composition, its 'true root' seems to lie within the creative spirit of the poet. The more sensory manifestations of harmony as rhyme, assonance, alliteration are not always explicable. Especially interesting among the foregoing may be Swinburne's clarity of vision as to the proper function of the critic and his insistence on a critic who, in his manipulation of weights, can make the proper adjustment between the aesthetic and scientific views in the scales of literary criticism.

IV S W I N B U R N E ' S CRITICAL P R I N C I P L E S (CONTINUED)

To continue the study of Swinburne's critical principles under the guidance of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" requires that we compare the concepts of the various relationships of the artist as expressed in the two poems with those appearing in his prose. The reading given to these poems in Chapter I I is the source of this approach to the criticism. The three aspects with which Swinburne seems most concerned are self-realization of the artist, responsibility, and the role of the inexpressible in art; consequently we may regard him as asking three questions: (1) t h a t of the artist's relation to himself or the question of awareness, (2) t h a t of the artist's relation to humanity or the question of responsibility and (3) t h a t of the artist's relation to divinity or the question of the inexpressible. I n addition, we shall point out the element of the reciprocal operating in these relationships, an element which progresses to a result which is conversion or fusion into the immortal and sublime.

THE ARTIST AND HIMSELF: AWARENESS AND SELF-REALIZATION

Although both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" are to be read as records of 'the growth of a poet's mind', it is in the more autobiographical "Thalassius" that we have the most significant statement on the poet's recognition of himself as an artist. We recall Thalassius' preparation in the world of man under the guidance of the earthly father, his moral experiences with Love, Hate, Hope, and Fear, the period of total abandonment to the 'shapeless storm of earthly shapes', and the release from deception by an act of will:

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And set his eyes to seaward, nor gave ear If sound from landward hailed him, dire or dear

in which he determines to be indifferent to all save his art. This is a kind of tasting of the apple of knowledge of good and evil. I n "On the Cliffs", this prerequisite knowledge is expressed by: But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong, No more we knew of song.

These experiences of human life precede, in "Thalassius", a kind of preconscious period of rest and purging culminating in communion with his own heart, " H e communed with his own heart, and had rest." This latter state has been referred to as one of sincere self-appraisal, a looking inward, and it is in this framework t h a t we must seek Swinburne's ideas on the artist's obligation to and realization of himself as artist. I t is not an awareness or realization resulting from deliberate judgment of logic, or realistic expression of belief or creed, or even the recognition of the role of emotion. This self-communion is, rather, the necessary first step for the poet, but only, it should be added, the first step which will permit heavenly grace to return in the form of song. Thus may the soul of all his senses be in rhythm with the universal element in the tides and so permit him ultimately to lose himself in song and know Apollo. Self-awareness, then, is closely associated with the poet's receptivity to both his own more limited powers and to the supreme power of art in Apollo. H e must be true to his own spirit of creativity before he may continue to the even more important state of humility when he bows beneath his father. I n short, indifferent to all else, the artist must know himself as artist and place this knowledge first. This is the meaning of his apprenticeship; this is the state to which experience directing him by the tree of knowledge has led him, an experience t h a t includes the volitional act, the choice, referred to above. By recognizing his primary obligation, awareness of himself as son of Apollo, the poet eliminates the possibility of any usurpation by subject matter with or without the guise of didacticism. The accompanying indifference to all that is not connected with his art assures him of the basic freedom essential to the operation of the creative spirit. The sequence, then, is knowledge followed by choice or the

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decision to follow his art. The result is the recognition of what it means to do so, and this result is freedom.1 This philosophy of artistic freedom and self-awareness is the assumption behind Swinburne's denial of those who would only copy in "The Progress of Art in Modern Times": "The artist indeed must recur always to the same source of inspiration - not to any classical model ready made to order." The idea is also stated in this way: "Imitation, to be worth much, must begin from within and not from without."2 It is, of course, the basis for the argument Swinburne presents in the so-called 'art-for-art' section in "William Blake", to which essay we are now led, and, more particularly, to the second chapter.3 There has been so much discussion on these pages of the Blake study that even at the risk of a repeated exploitation of this source of Swinburne's art-for-art commentary, it seems desirable to point out, and possibly reiterate, certain facts.4 First, the most obvious 1

Louise Rosenblatt in L'Idée de l'art pour l'art dans la littérature anglaise pendant la période victorienne (Paris, 1931) in her section on Swinburne, p. 140, sees the early (ca. 1866) essay, "Of Liberty and Loyalty", as a fusion of the ideas of autonomy of art and love of freedom. Hereafter cited as L. Rosenblatt. 1 See Lafourcade, La Jeunesse, I I , 224-225 where the only printed copy of this article appears. The date is given as "circa 1858". 8 Chap. I I entitled 'Lyrical Poems' in "William Blake", (XVI, 132-227), contains the most important and the most frequently quoted statements on the so-called art-for-art period. 4 Connolly in Chap. I, "Le Beau Serviteur du Vrai", sees Swinburne's art-for-art period as a temporary departure only, from a theory fundamentally political or one based on republicanism and points out that the "William Blake" reflected the struggle between the two schools of thought. He sees the review of "L'Année Terrible" as a reconciliation of these two from which time on he stayed with Hugo. Connolly also points out that he is disagreeing with Lafourcade who felt Mazzini turned Swinburne to a NEW theory whereas Connolly sees it as a return to a fundamental one. My view is certainly nearer to Connolly's, but I am trying to show the two theories as existing simultaneously and that both are part of Swinburne's principle of fusion. L. Rosenblatt thinks that for Swinburne in "William Blake" morality is considered as hurtful only as MOBILE (p. 133) of the creation. Robert Hively, "Algernon Charles Swinburne as a Literary Critic", unpub. doctoral diss. (U. of Florida, 1958) on p. 198 says that even at the height of his art-for-art period, Swinburne was not unaware of moral principles, though he did not insist they were the core and substance of his art.

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need is an attentive reading which clings to context and notes the additive and repetitive qualifying phrases, including Swinburne's footnotes.5 Secondly, one must be alert to whether the point of view reflects Swinburne or Blake, and, thirdly, one should be aware that Swinburne is fighting Philistia.6 Finally, it is important to observe that Swinburne, in these pages, draws a distinction between two topics, one being the relationship between art and morality and the other being the relationship between art and science or, as he also refers to them, the imaginative type of mind versus the analytical. It is only the last point that eeems to require extended attention and discussion.7 To start, then, with the second relationship we find Swinburne congratulating Blake on his ability to see the eternal strife between 'the imagination which apprehends the spirit of a thing and the understanding which dissects the body of a fact' (XVI, 143). As POINTS OF VIEW, they are irreconcilable. Their methods and aims are distinct. I quote the following as very possibly the most extreme statement on this subject: P o e t r y or a r t based on loyalty t o science is exactly as absurd (and no more) as science guided b y a r t or p o e t r y . Neither in effect can coalesce with the other and retain a right t o exist. Neither can or (while in its sober senses) need wish to destroy t h e other; b u t t h e y m u s t go on their separate ways, a n d in this life their ways can b y no possibility cross. Neither can or (unless in some f i t of fugitive insanity) need wish t o become valuable or respectable t o t h e other; each m u s t remain, on its own ground and t o its own followers, a t h i n g of value and deserving respect. To a r t , t h a t is best which is m o s t beautiful; t o science, t h a t is best which is m o s t accurate; t o morality, t h a t is best which is m o s t virtuous. 8 (XVI, 144) 5 The f a c t t h a t Swinburne a d d s these footnotes, which I quote, shows, of course either a n a m b i v a l e n t a t t i t u d e or a desire t o clarify his position which he fears will be misunderstood. 6 J a m e s K . Robinson, " A Neglected P h a s e of t h e Aesthetic Movement: English P a r n a s s i a n i s m " , PMLA, L X V I I I 2 (1963), 734, believes t h a t Swinb u r n e was never a thorough devotee of a r t for a r t ' s sake regardless of t h e obiter dicta in t h e Blake and Baudelaire essays, b u t t h a t his view was less 'aesthetic' t h a n anti-Philistine. 7 I n his s t u d y on Dieu, w r i t t e n in 1891, Swinburne's a r g u m e n t is ba6ed on t h e idea t h a t t h e separation between t h i n k e r and p o e t is greater t h a n t h a t existing between moralist a n d poet ( X I I I , 336-344). • Since this topic will be t h e m a i n t a r g e t of a t t e n t i o n in t h e n e x t section of this chapter, I speak only briefly on it here t o indicate a situation somew h a t parallel t o t h a t existing between a r t and science. A t t e n t i o n should

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But even in these extreme statements, Swinburne denies that art and science N E E D be hostile to each other just as he denies t h a t they need be valuable to each other. They do not need each other to exist, yet they need not destroy one another. I t is a matter of indifference. This does not, I think, exclude the possibility of one using another for its own purpose. "Their ways can by no possibility cross" refers to their methods determined by an attitude of mind or point of view. What Swinburne is saying here is something like this: show one man a butterfly pinned on a wall and he will paint it; show it to another man and he will dissect it. The subject may be the same, but the approach and the purpose are different. They cannot cross. The artist, insofar as he is an artist, and the scientist, insofar as he is a scientist, are totally indifferent to each other and to all else except as it may be grist for his own mill. Swinburne is trying to cope with the essential as he spins out his definitions, and he is drawing fine lines as to just what part of a term is being defined. Concerning the topic of art and morality (and on this we shall speak but briefly merely to indicate a situation somewhat parallel to t h a t existing between art and science, as this topic will be the main target of attention in the next section of this chapter), Swinburne also uses the argument of indifference, but omits the emphasis, although he does not ignore this question, on separation which he made in his discussion of art and science. He meets the problem of a Dante, a Shelley, or a Hugo head-on: Men of immense capacity and energy who do seem to think or assert it possible to serve both masters - a Dante, a Shelley, a Hugo - poets whose work is mixed with and coloured by personal action or suffering for some cause moral or political - these even are no real exceptions. It is not as artists that they do or seem to do this. The work done may be, and in such high cases often must be, of supreme value to art, but not the moral implied. ¡Strip the sentiments and re-clothe them in bad verse, what residue will be left of the slightest importance to art ? Invert them, retaining the manner or form (supposing this feasible, which it might be), and art has lost nothing. Save the shape, and art will take care of the soul for you: unless that is

be called to two points in this quotation (1) the operation of diction and rhetoric to support the idea of separation between poetry and science, and (2) the parallels with Poe's heresy of "The Didactic". It is probable that Swinburne was acquainted with "The Poetic Principle" at this time. He refers to it specifically in 1884. See Lang, V, 72.

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all right, she will refuse to run or start at all; but the shape or style of workmanship each artist is bound to look to, whether or no he may choose to trouble himself about the moral or other bearings of his work.

And in a footnote indicated at the colon, he adds: Of course, there can be no question here of bad art: which indeed is a nonentity or contradiction in terms, as to speak of good art is to run into tautology. It is assumed, to begin with, that the artist has something to say or do worth doing or saying in an artistic form. (XVI, 134)

We must not fail to note two important assumptions here: first, the emphasis on attention to form as a method for the artist's getting started (obligation to his art), and, secondly, the basic supposition t h a t the artist has something worthwhile to say or do as a prerequisite to the attention to form. Unfortunately, Swinburne does not tell us what he regards as worthwhile. We do have, however, both from "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" a definition of what is prerequisite, and in the next section we shall examine more explicitly this idea of what is worthwhile. Unlike the relation between art and science, however, the relation between art and morality will tend to foster a hostility, a hostility on the part of the moralists: This principle, which makes the manner of doing a thing the essence of the thing done, the purpose or result of it the accident, thus reversing the principle of moral or material duty, must inevitably expose art to the condemnation of the other party - the party of those who (as aforesaid) regard what certain of their leaders call an earnest life or a great acted poem (that is, material virtue or the mere doing and saying of good or instructive deeds and words) as infinitely preferable to any possible feat of art. (XVI, 134-135)

But the principle of indifference to all save art as a first commitment of the artist operates under all conditions, and it should be pointed out that this indifferent view, rather than restricting the artist in his choice of subject, enables him in the interests of his art to select any subject. 9 Thus, there is no inconsistency between the ideas just cited from "William Blake" and the following from 9 Swinburne assumes the exclusion of the vulgar from art, a topic to be treated later in the chapter, just as he refuses to discuss 'bad art'.

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"The Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti" (1870): "a poet of the first order raises all subjects to the first rank" (XV, 38). Or, from the review of "L'Année Terrible": [ A r t ] asks only t h a t t h e artist shall 'follow his s t a r ' with t h e faith and t h e fervour of Dante, whether it lead him on a p a t h like or unlike the w a y of D a n t e ' s work. . . . A r t knows nothing of time; for her there is b u t one tense, a n d all ages in her sight are alike present. ( X I I I , 246)

Neither does there seem to be any inconsistency in or any real modification between Swinburne's stand in "William Blake" and that expressed in the review of "L'Année Terrible" when, discussing art and morality, Swinburne says: W e a d m i t t h e n t h a t t h e worth of a poem has PROPERLY [my emphasis ] nothing to do with its moral meaning or design; t h a t the praise of a Caesar as sung by Virgil, of a Stuart as sung by Dryden, is preferable to the most magnanimous invective against t y r a n n y which love of country and of liberty could wring from a Bavius or a Settle; b u t on t h e other hand we refuse t o a d m i t t h a t a r t of t h e highest kind m a y not ally itself with moral or religious passion, with the ethics or the politics of a nation or a n age. I t does not detract from t h e poetic supremacy of jEschylus and of Dante, of Milton and of Shelley, t h a t they should have been pleased to p u t their a r t to such use; nor does it detract from t h e sovereign greatness of other poets t h a t they should have had no note of song for a n y such theme. I n a word, t h e doctrine of a r t for a r t is true in the positive sense, false in t h e negative; sound as a n affirmation, unsound as a prohibition. 1 0 ( X I I I , 243-24.4)

In short, the artistic and the scientific, in point of view and in treatment of subject, are both indifferent to and separate from one another. Similarly, the artistic and the moral, in point of view and in treatment of subject, are also indifferent to and separate from one another, although in the latter case the separation fades when great artists employ moral subjects. We may agree or disagree with Swinburne's stand, but we must, it seems to me, agree on his basic consistency among the selections cited which may fairly be regarded not as typical, but rather as extreme examples of the point being made. The key to an understanding of Swinburne's position so far is to be found in the need for the artist to have acquired a kind of prerequisite knowledge Presumably Swinburne is assuming t h a t Virgil and Dryden are not praising tyrants, b u t elevating and converting t h e subject in the 'crucible of a r t ' .

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of what is worthwhile and in the need for him to exercise choice, factors which result in a freedom which permits the artist to be indifferent to all except art. In short, this indifference is synonymous with the idea that the artist's FIRST obligation is to himself as artist. In the section on Whitman in "Under the Microscope" (1872), a similar argument is presented when Swinburne refutes those who object to Whitman because of his choice of topic, saying that this thinking makes the art dependent on the topic and that an approval of the topic would then mean an approval of any poem that "should start of the same end and run on the same lines" (XVI, 412). Whitman may sing of things fair or foul so long as he SINGS: N o w whenever the pure poet in Whitman speaks, it is settled b y that proof in his favour; whenever the mere theorist in him speaks, it is settled by the same proof against him. 11 (XVI, 413)

We may also observe the application of this theory of the necessity of the poet's awareness and obligation to himself as artist in "A Study of Ben Jonson" (1888) when Swinburne, coupling Dryden and Byron 'with the more illustrious name of Ben Jonson' is enabled to rank the latter above the other two: because they preferred self-interest in the one case and self-indulgence in the other to the noble toil and the noble pleasure of doing their best for their art's sake and their duty's, to the ultimate satisfaction of their conscience. (XII, 5)

Swinburne goes on to make the point that with Jonson "conscience was the first and last consideration", a situation that places him above Dryden and Byron, but a situation which also kills spontaneity and ease, thereby reducing his power as an artist (XII, 5-6). In other words, if Jonson had made art, rather than conscience, his first and last consideration, he would have been even a greater poet than he was. Realization of Swinburne's basic assumption here makes his intense enthusiasm for Jonson's Discoveries a logical one and underlines the validity and consistency of his reasoning in such a statement as "But Jonson himself, it seems to me, was 11

Whitman suffers from a division or conflict between the actual and theoretical.

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far less trustworthy as a critic of poetry than as a judge of ethics or a student of character" ( X I I , 94). Within the comments on Byron, Dryden, and Jonson, we may see Swinburne's implications as to one of the differences between excellence and greatness. The supreme artist realizes his first obligation is to himself as artist. Jonson's realization of himself as an artist was diverted to the ethical, but he was at least sincere to this, and hence more successful than Byron, for example, whose sincerity in anything was irregular and sporadic. Whatever strength Byron had was due, however, to his recognition of the special strength of his artistic powers, insufficient as it generally was: His sincerity indeed is difficult to discover and define; but it does in effect lie at the root of all his good works: deformed by pretension and defaced by assumption, masked by folly and veiled by affectation; but perceptible after all, and priceless. ( X V , 121)

Byron is, for example, successful as a nature poet: N o part of his nature was more profound and sincere than the vigorous love of such inanimate things as were in tune with his own spirit and senses. ( X V , 129)12

Some eighteen years later, Swinburne answers Thackeray's indictment of Byron t h a t ' " t h a t man never wrote from his heart.. . he got up rapture and enthusiasm with an eye to the public' " with "he wrote from his heart when he wrote of politics - using that sometimes ambiguous term in its widest and most accurate significance" ( X I V , 165-166).13 But Swinburne goes on for several pages to castigate Byron as an artist who failed in his craft and attacks him on account of his faulty style ( X I V , 167-184). Such a poet has a very limited success, as it is a success dependent on subject rather than the success of the true artist, who through his art rises above the local and the temporal. Y e t Swinburne, in both the early and later essays, is quite ready to allow Byron his place. This and the preceding quotation are from the 1866 " B y r o n " . From "Wordsworth and B y r o n " (1884). I n these comments on Byron's sincerity, Swinburne is actually affirming a fusion of two typeB of sincerity - artistic and that of sincerity of belief in subject. The idea is repeated in the "Dedicatory Epistle" as will be illustrated at the conclusion of the chapter. 12

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In "Thalassius", Swinburne stated the ideal poetic principle of the artist's devotion to art; in the critical prose, we may see how this principle is tempered by reality. Referring to Wordsworth whom, earlier, Swinburne had accused of having "too much of ^Esculapius in him, something too little of Apollo his father" (XV, 86), he says in a metaphor recognizably Swinburnian: Serene as is the spirit of his teaching, and profound his love of all peaceful things and influences, his note was not always that of the stock-dove brooding over his own sweet voice: though doubtless it never caught the 'tumultuous harmony' of the nightingale's, there were times when it swelled into the strength of a rushing wind, and made the verses ring like stormswept crannies of the crags and scaurs that nursed the spirit which imbues them. (XIV, 237)

Or, we may read the same thought in the epithet on Herrick, "Born a blackbird or a thrush, he did not take himself (or try) to be a nightingale (XV, 261)." To summarize, then, this argument on the requirement of artistic awareness is to note that the ideal artist will recognize his 'internal centre' and will recognize that his primary obligation is to his creative spirit. Although this is only a first step, its recognition helps the critic to distinguish the varying degrees of success in artistic creation; it is an important aid in discerning 'why' and 'how' an artistic achievement comes about. Further, recognition of himself as an artist is basic because, by focusing on his art, the artist will insure himself against the dominance and, hence, restriction by subject or by Aesculapius. Herein lies his freedom. The first step of the artist towards achieving integrity in his art is dependent upon the moral factors, self-obligation and freedom, arising from knowledge and choice.

T H E ARTIST A N D HUMANITY: RESPONSIBILITY

In discussing Swinburne's concept of the artist's relationship to humanity, we are obliged to consider the degree to which he sees it desirable to include the poetry of idea, the ethical and moral, in his poetics. We are trying to ascertain what responsibility, in Swinburne's eyes, the artist should bear beyond the presentation of beauty. Is he involved in the 'predicament of man', or not? In so doing, we must examine his definition of morality. We must

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also note carefully the dating of Swinburne's pronouncements on the subject in order to observe whether there are changes, developments, or reversals in this aspect of his critical opinion. But, first, since we are approaching the entire structure of his theory of poetry and critical principles under the guidance and direction of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", a brief recapitulation of what these poems have to say on the subject might be helpful at this point. Simultaneously, a definition or discussion of the meaning of morality may, at least, be initiated. In the section immediately preceding, we have been emphasizing an amplification of the point that the authentic poet and true artist is bound by nature to Apollo to whom he owes his first responsibility. "Thalassius", however, links the poet with humanity both before and after the self-communion passage. We have already noted the circumstances of Thalassius' discovery by his earthly father who found him on a 'reach of single' which was 'nearer sea than land', but which was also a spot where 'the shoreward blossomfringe was near'. The earthly father feeds him on divine art, however, on immortal wisdom and song: Not with man's wine and bread But food of deep memorial days long sped; For bread with wisdom and with song for wine, (iii)

From the high songs of his earthly father, Thalassius learns of: (1) Freedom - "And gladly should man die to gain, he said,/ Freedom" (iv), (2) Responsibility towards the freedom of all men: For man's earth was not, nor the sweet sea-waves His, nor his own land, nor its very graves, Except they bred not, bore not, hid not slaves: But all of all that is, Were one man free in body and soul, were his. (iv)

(3) Love that preserves individual man through continuation in mankind (vii), (4) Hatred of thralldom (viii), (5) Hope with its Herthian vision of man's divinity (ix), (6) Fear not to fulfill his obligations to art (x). The first five lessons learned through these earthly songs stress the responsibility of the artist to man or the involvement of Thalassius in the 'predicament of man'. The predicament is here limited to the political, to be sure, but the commitment is total and the predicament a fundamental one.

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Further, this artist as a young man will also experience Lust in the false form of Love and the violent madness of revel with the Bassarides. He will run the gamut of man's experiences; he will eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil before the purging and rebirth leading to self-communion and self-appraisal. After the self-communion, he receives comfort from the earth as well as life from the sea (xxi). The duality is expressed as: And grace returned upon him of his birth Where heaven was mixed with heavenlike sea and earth.

Apollo himself commends Thalassius in the conclusion of the poem for giving the "flower and fire of youth/To feed men's hearts with visions, truer than truth", although he has previously made clear his approval of Thalassius' recognition of his primary responsibility, "Because thou has loved nought mortal more than me", and of his voluntary action, "Because thou hast set thine heart to sing." In "On the Cliffs", we have seen how the poet and nightingale are located between two sets of cliffs, a location strategic in establishing communication between two worlds, and a location which is peculiarly adaptable to poetic creativity. Swinburne has also indicated the connection between art and humanity by the Eumenides passage (iii) in which the cry of conscience or sense of righteousness is closely associated with the 'word' of art. However, the closest link between the artist and humanity may very possibly be seen in xxiii where, it will be recalled, men of all ages (when Aphrodite could or would not do so) recognized the might and power of the triune soul along with "Aeschylus as I " . Quite clearly, art is a bond between mankind and the poet as well as a bond among men of all ages. Swinburne is endorsing the theory of art as communication. And, finally, we remember that the sea-mews were forced to look back to the land-based nightingale, their sister of the shore, and that they would have remained songless had they known not love, change, wrath, and wrong. Human experience is not only a prerequisite to the artist's recognition of himself as creator, but is a continuing requirement for song. His nature binds the artist to Apollo, and his experience binds him to humanity. Thus we have the duality of the artist-man who has been shown to be linked to human experience by having learned such lessons as freedom, responsibility, love, hope, change, wrath, and wrong

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as well as compulsive service to his art. He is involved with mankind. Further, while Swinburne is emphasizing in both poems the totality of human experience, he is, especially in "Thalassius" placing value on the high songs, and, in both poems, particularly in the epilogues, is placing the highest value of all on love, a love arising from sympathetic involvement in life. The morality includes freedom, hope, a sense of responsibility and duty so complete as to demand sacrifice of the self. I t is also important to keep in mind the act of will as Thalassius turned from the chaotic 'shapeless earthly storm' to art or the purging preceding artistic creation. This, then, is the notion of morality suggested by "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", a morality contained within and wholly compatible with the Hellenic-Hebraic-Christian cultural tradition. As we deal with the prose, we see that Swinburne uses the actual word 'morality' rather than a suggested concept as in the poetry, and we find t h a t he tends to use this word with a variety of meanings. He does, usually, and frequently by collocation, indicate the more exact meaning as, for example, 'moral or intellectual', 'moral or political', 'moral or spiritual', moral as opposed to aesthetic, or morality associated with a sense of righteousness, or what might be referred to as the local morality of Puritanism, for example (XVI, 135). He is also careful to distinguish between art t h a t is didactic and t h a t which is moral only, and yet the word 'morality' nearly always suggests to him some sort of value or affirmation about human life in the realm of the ethical. I t is usually not a mere loose synonym for human life itself, although this idea is inherent in Swinburne's insistence on the humanistic point of view (the ultimate reason for any discussion on morality at all) in great art. This latter notion is the basis for the idea of reciprocity between art and man suggested earlier. 14 I t may, then, be considered legitimate at this time to show how important the humanistic approach was to Swinburne; accordingly, I have made five selections from the prose, selections which span Swinburne's critical career at approximately each decade between "Notes on Poems and Reviews" of 1866 and the late study of "Othello" which appeared in Harper's Monthly Magazine in 11

Reciprocity occurs when great artists employ moral subjects. The idea also occurs in the statement on poetry and morality which Swinburne quotes from Matthew Arnold in "Wordsworth and Byron".

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October, 1904.15 It goes without saying that any critic so enthusiastic about Shakespeare and the drama and Dickens and the novel would be expected to have such roots; hence, there is no need to do more than call attention to these more overt expressions of Swinburne on the subject. But his defense of the sonnet sequence on the famed Hermaphroditus statue in the "Notes" - and here he is defending a piece essentially lyrical - gives us a beautifully concise and poetic expression of this humanism. The statue proclaims the message in a manner comparable to the force of a lyric among tragedies, says Swinburne: I t is, indeed, among statues as a lyric among tragedies; it stands below the Niobe as Simonides below ^Eschylus, as Correggio beneath Titian. The sad and subtle moral of this myth, which I have desired to indicate in verse, is that perfection once attained on all sides is a thing thenceforward barren of use or fruit; whereas the divided beauty of separate woman and m a n - a thing inferior and imperfect - can serve all turns of life. Ideal beauty, like ideal genius, dwells apart, as though by compulsion; supremacy is solitude. 16 (XVI, 368)

A defense of my phrase 'concise and poetic' will require that we observe the dexterous and precise stylistic handling of the paradox being expressed here. The paradox is, essentially, the familiar one of the impossibility of separating the ideal and actual, or the theoretical from the world of human life. Ideal perfection in its solitude of SUPREMACY stands BELOW fruitful and productive actuality. For instance, the choice of an alliterative word pair in 'sad and subtle' adds to the coupling and welding force desired in this description, the negative 'inferior and imperfect' define more precisely the 'divided beauty' of separation. The idea of contrast is achieved within the grammatical structure of the sentences as indicated by the punctuation of the main clauses, and it reaches a climax in the cogency of the brief final clause. 15

James Suiter, "Swinburne and the Main Stream of Victorian Poetic Theory", unpubl. doctoral diss. (New York University, 1959), a study on Swinburne as humanist, places Swinburne in the British rather than in the French line and shows the influence of the principal British Victorian literary figures leading Swinburne to modern humanism, although he also sees Swinburne as holding to a limited part of his poetic creed which corresponds to I'art pour I'art.. Hereafter cited as Suiter. 16 Nevertheless, the sonnets themselves affirm the immortality achieved by fusion of artistic, perfection, esp. the second (I, 212-214).

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Further nuances of meaning could undoubtedly be derived from a detailed study of the references in the first sentence, especially if one were as versed in the classics as was Swinburne or had toured the Italian art galleries with him.17 The article entitled "Short Notes on English Poets" (1880), a review of William Michael Rossetti's Lives of Famous Poets, besides the passage affirming the humanism of the three medieval poets Villon, Dante, and Chaucer, Says of Chaucer: But in happy perfection of manhood the great and fortunate Englishman almost more exceeds his great and unfortunate fellow-singers than he is exceeded by them in depth of passion and height of rapture, in ardour and intensity of vision or of sense. (XIV, 100-101)

Swinburne, however, has a more direct and concrete argument endorsing the flesh and blood basis of art in his disparaging commentary on Spenser, whom he held responsible for the long continued fashion and dominance of allegorical poetry - dominant until Milton, the only man "who could make head for a moment against that influence" (XIV, 104-105). In a statement which is by now a quotable classic, we read the following, noting the added remark which embodies typical, although infrequent, Swinburnian humor: Give Dante a moral image, he will make of it a living man: show Spenser a living man, he will make of him a moral image. It is not to the existence of allegory in Spenser that all save his fanatical admirers object; it is to the fact that this allegory, like Mrs. Malaprop's 'on the banks of the Nile', is a rapacious and insatiable impostor who attracts and devours all living likenesses of men and women within reach. (XIV, 103)

When Lockhart edited The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 1825^-1832, Swinburne, in reviewing the edition in 1891 closes with this eulogy: While the language in which he wrote endures, while the human nature to which he addressed himself exists, there can be no end of the delight, the thanksgiving, and the honour with which men will salute, aloud or in silence, the utterance or the remembrance of his name. (XV, 242)

And, as would be expected, Shakespeare is a poet excelling all others on record 'in the most proper and literal sense — as a creator of man and woman' - the proof of which Swinburne sees in the

17

See comments on Titian (XV, 182-184).

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creation and interaction of the characters of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona (XI, 248-250). 15 In turning now to the main problem of determining what responsibilities the artist may have beyond that of self-realization as an artist, we shall have to examine six major sources which contain ideas central to this problem. Since I am basing my argument on these selections, the choice should be justified. Besides the more obvious reason of chronology, I have used these particular six essays as an appropriate means of approaching Swinburne's tenets on the artist's responsibility to humanity, not because they are typical, but rather because they represent extreme and contradictory aspects of his stand on the subject. These studies do contain the ideas central to Swinburne's principles of art and morality, although the problem of extraction remains, as has been pointed out earlier, a fundamental one, one which requires subsequent construction on the part of the student of Swinburne's literary criticism. My feeling is that if the contradictions and extreme points of view, illustrated more particularly in the quotations, can be explained and reconciled, we shall be able to discern an underlying consistency. To the objection which might well be made that there is a lack of balance caused by the inclusion of two Hugo selections (and a third somewhat parenthetically), my answer is that I was desirous of using an early comment on the topic and that this resolved itself to a choice between the article on Baudelaire and the review of Les Miserables (1862).19 I chose the latter because that on Baudelaire is brief and is actually only a rather simple statement against didacticism and as such fails to bring out the finer points. Since the Blake study (1867) contains some of the most extreme statements, it seemed important to include this. The article on "L'Année Terrible" (1872) is one of the clearest articulations Swinburne has made on the subject of art and morality and cannot be ignored. The essay entitled "Words18

Swinburne compares Shakespeare's treatment with that of Cinthio. Swinburne's letter to the Spectator dated June 7, 1862, defending Meredith's Modem Love on its nobility of design is another example. For instance, Swinburne says "the business of verse-writing is hardly to express convictions; and if some poetry, not without merit of its kind, has at times dealt in dogmatic morality, it is all the worse and all the weaker for that". Lang, I, 51-53. 19

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worth and Byron" (1884), being written about midway in his critical career and being one of his more extended arguments, in addition to the fact that it seems to be the pivotal document on the question under study, a point which will be illustrated later, would seem to justify its inclusion. "Whistler's Lecture on Art" (1888) deserves attention for the fact that it presents an argument which might be considered the opposite of the ones already presented from the Blake. Finally, the position of the Lear study (1902) at the close of Swinburne's career and the added condition that there is every reason to believe that Swinburne felt this a very high, if not the highest record of man's artistic achievement,20 and that it has definite statements on the relation between art and morality seem to present sufficient reasons for us to examine it. In addition, a close connection will appear between this study of Lear and the earlier one appearing in 1875-76. My choice of these selections, then, is really dependent on the proposition that if an underlying consistency can be observed in apparently contradictory and extreme statements, we may safely assume it is basic. A beginning has been made in the earlier section of this chapter in that three of these sources have already received some analysis. "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" were written in 1879-1880, roughly half way between the beginning and conclusion of Swinburne's active forty-year period as a literary critic. These poems, it has been advanced, ally art and morality; they show a reciprocal relation and a fusion between the two. In this section of the chapter, we are endeavoring to establish Swinburne's fundamental attitude, as it appears in the prose, regarding the nature and presence in a work of art of elements outside the realm of the aesthetic. So far we have established his assumption of human experience as bona fide material for the artist in addition to noting his insistence upon the artist's obligation to himself as artist. We must also compare the definitions of morality as they appear in the prose I t is sometimes difficult to be sure on Swinburne's superlatives, although he usually restricts himself by narrowing the subject. H e seems to consider Shakespeare inferior to the Greeks in lyrical power and to the Hebrews in prophetic power, but implies that Shakespeare's freedom of thought and sublimity of utterance permitted him this inferiority without loss of accomplishment. "If nothing", says Swinburne, "were left of Shakespeare but the single tragedy of King Lear, it would still be as plain as it is now he was the greatest m a n that ever lived" (XI, 232).

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with those as expressed in the two poems studied and show that the same theory of reciprocity and fusion that was being developed in the poems applies and operates in the criticism. A helpful device might be the establishment of some kind of scale by which degrees (as it were) of the artist's involvement with humanity may be measured. The two extremes might be considered to be incompatibility of morality with art and dominance of morality in art. At no point does Swinburne stand at either of these extremes, so that the scale with which we work will start from an attitude of indifference toward morality as has already been shown in the previous section, and proceed to the permissive, then to an attitude of acceptance, approval, requirement, and on to the attitude that morality is indispensable to art. Turning to the earliest of the sources mentioned, "A Study of 'Les Miserables' ", we may see Swinburne's position essentially the same one of indifference between art and morality as in the Blake study referred to in the first section of this chapter.21 The review of Part I of Hugo's novel does not take Hugo to task for emphasizing morality so much as it does for entertaining a wrong opinion on the nature of morality. Swinburne, for example, takes issue with Hugo who would place the blame and remedy for wrongdoing on laws rather than on individuals as Swinburne would. Swinburne also strongly objects to Hugo's calling the latter period of Fantine's career The Descent, a period in which Swinburne regards her aa being of higher moral character as a street pariah than she would !1 Connolly in Chap. I, "Le Beau Serviteur de Vrai", thinks Swinburne's basic admiration for Hugo had an important bearing in effecting a reconciliation between Swinburne's tendencies toward art for art and republicanism or morality. He calls attention to the more critical tone towards Hugo in the first two articles on "Les Miserables" in contrast to the more sympathetic one in the remaining two. My suggestion is that the tone in the first two, or the review of Parts I, II, III of "Les Miserables" was more vigorous and critical of Hugo for the reasons indicated in my text. I do agree, however, that the art-for-art theory in this period of the early sixties is not exclusive. I would also agree with Connolly that the article on "Charles Baudelaire", appearing shortly after those on "Les Miserables" (Sept. 6, 1862, also in the Spectator) shows both the views of art for art and morality. See also Ruth Child, "Swinburne's Mature Standards of Criticism", PMLA, LII (1937), 870-879. She, however, makes Swinburne's mature period begin in 1867 when his poems of patriotism, she feels, drew him away from art for art. See esp. 870.

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have been had she accepted a pension by her seducer as, says Swinburne, Hugo implies (XIII, 157). This is followed by a statement reflecting the traditional Hebraic-Christian concept of the importance of temptation and will-power to morality: W e w a n t t h e morality of men, not t h e faultless movements of puppets, and t h e feeble innocence of t h e boy unacquainted with evil or u n a t t r a c t e d by it is of less value t h a n t h e f i r m will t h a t has learned in m u c h suffering to be its own law. ( X I I I , 158)

The review of Part II and III begins with a statement illustrating the parallels between Swinburne's position here and the one on the Blake referred to earlier: W e m a y let t h e social side of t h e question stand over for t h e present. Any book above a certain pitch of writing m u s t be t a k e n first of all to be a work of pure a r t . For we can bring no m a n ' s work to a higher standard. All t h e excellence of moral purpose in the world will never serve for salt to a thing born rotten. Especially in handling a n y work of t h e greatest master we have alive we must keep to the real test. No philanthropies or philosophies t h a t m a y get between a n artist and his work can be permitted to shove by the m a i n question. ( X I I I , 159)

We must ever be alert to judge a work of art first by artistic standards, not by the morality contained. In the first section of this chapter, in referring to the establishment of the indifference of art and morality toward each other in the Blake study, we also indicated two considerations the student should keep in mind: first, that Swinburne is speaking in order to explicate Blake: Thus much it seemed useful to premise, b y w a y of exposition r a t h e r t h a n excursion, so as once for all to indicate beyond chance of mistake t h e real point of view taken during life by Blake, and necessary t o be t a k e n by those who would appreciate his labours and purposes. (XVI, 140)

a point also made by a footnote, The reader who cares to remember t h a t everything here set down is of immediate importance and necessity for t h e understanding of t h e m a t t e r in hand (namely, t h e life of Blake, and t h e faith and works which m a d e t h a t life w h a t it was)." (XVI, 148) 22

B u t Swinburne says of Blake toward t h e end of his study, " I n Blake, above all other men, t h e moral and t h e imaginative senses were so fused together as to compose the final artistic f o r m " (XVI, 340).

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Secondly, the student should keep in mind that Swinburne is fighting Philistia here. Other footnotes containing important additive and repetitive elements for the understanding of Swinburne's position on the subject must not be ignored. It is equally important, moreover, for us to note that these prefatory remarks preceding Swinburne's actual discussion of the art of Blake are made from a theoretical point of view; that is, he is talking about the duty of the artist as a general principle, or in theory, rather than discussing a particular work. Now at the beginning of Chapter II in "Willam Blake" in which this discussion on art for art may be regarded as reaching an extreme, and incorporated as a footnote in the passage quoted earlier on such great artists as Dante, Shelley, or Hugo, who seem to serve both masters (art and morality), Swinburne says (and we repeat the footnote): Of course, there can be no question here of bad art: which indeed is a nonentity or contradiction in terms, as to speak of good art is to run into tautology. It is assumed, to begin with, that the artist has something to say or do worth doing or saying in an artistic form. (XVI, 134)

The very fact that Swinburne felt the need of an explanatory note shows us that he sensed he might be misunderstood, but more important to this discussion, is his choice of the word 'worth'. It is too bad, to repeat the regret on this point, that Swinburne's zeal for clarity did not extend to a more definite expression of what was worthwhile. Possibly he wanted to leave the question open. Regardless of all this, he is establishing a restriction and he does have an idea of evaluation. Moreover, he is at least admitting the theory of art as communication, and is, to that extent, endorsing the artist's involvement with humanity. That this remark is associated with Dante, Shelley, and Hugo is also significant. The point continues to bother Swinburne, however, as we see by the fact that six pages later he first says that there has never been any art worth having which took active service under Puritanism, or indulged for its part in the deleterious appetite of saving souls or helping humanity in general along the way of labour and progress. (XVI, 139-140)

Then, inserting a footnote at the word 'progress', he tries to make

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Hugo an exception, and then denies he is making him an exception: There are exceptions, we are told from the first, to all rules; and the Bole exception to this one is great enough to do all but establish a rival rule. But, as I have tried already to say, the work - all the work - of Victor Hugo is in its essence artistic, in its accident alone philanthropic or moral. I call this the sole exception, not being aware that the written work of Dante or Shelley did ever tend to alter the material face of things; though they m a y have desired that it should, and though their unwritten work m a y have done so. Accidentally of course a poet's work m a y tend towards some moral or actual result; that is beside the question. (XVI, 140)

Swinburne is struggling with two worlds, the world of the theoretical and the world of the actual. In ESSENCE, what distinguishes Hugo's work from other expressions of morality and philanthrophy, is its art. This is his main intent just as art is the main intent of Dante and Shelley, just as art must always be the main intent of the artist. But the artist does not work in a theoretical world. When Swinburne discusses Hugo in other places (and Hugo is exceptional in that he has altered the 'face of things'), he is nearly always dealing with a specific work, and since Hugo is so moral, Swinburne is forced to take account of this. But Swinburne never analyzes specific works of Dante and Shelley so thoroughly. The division between the theoretical and the actual world is, I think, at the bottom of Swinburne's ambivalence. He makes a statement in "Wordsworth and Byron" when again trying to define the 23 ESSENCE of a work of art which shows he is aware of this problem. The suggestions and implications of these footnotes do not lessen the importance of the tenet that the artist's primary (not exclusive) concern must be for art. This concern for art is Swinburne's first consideration in his poetics, but these implications do indicate a chink in his theoretical wall of indifference, a chink which not only admits the living waters, but establishes a direction of value toward which they may flow. In practice, Thalassius will not forget either his teacher or the high songs which he learned in his period of apprenticeship, and he will be aware that the cliffs are promontories and extensions of land and suitable for land-based life. These suggestions, namely, that we note context of the remarks in the 23

Ziegler in Seotion IV, Chap. I notes that although Swinburne separates the understanding, imagination, and morality in theory, he denies it in practice, and in the greatest dramas finds a fusion of art and morality.

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Blake essay and regard them as a kind of preface to the study of this writer, that we remember that Swinburne is reacting to Philistia, and that we be constantly aware that he is speaking of the artist's first duty in a theoretical exposition, and, finally, that we carefully consider the implications of the ambivalences in the footnotes - are all factors which foreshadow and forecast the more frankly permissive attitude toward morality observable in the review of "L'Année Terrible" already discussed in the earlier section of this chapter. This attitude is epitomized by interpretations of the formula of art for art's sake in the quotations on the artist's following his star or the one referring to the doctrine of art for art as being true in the positive and false in the negative sense quoted on page 120 of this chapter. Although this paper is less concerned with tracing reasons for the changes in Swinburne's attitude than it is with pointing up differences caused by conflict of theory and practice and stressing the fundamental consistency in his attitude by showing the existence of the seed of tolerance for morality, even in the early criticism, and by showing the existence of the view affirming the artist's first obligation to his art, it would be incorrect to ignore or deny the influence of the so-called Mazzini period on Swinburne's thought.24 This influence is conveniently symbolized by the subject matter and tone in Songs Before Sunrise (1871) as contrasted, for example, with the subject matter and tone of Poems and Ballads, First Series. A brief digression here will, it is hoped, be justified. This is the point at which it seems appropriate to quote from his letter to William Michael Rossetti, Oct. 9 [1866]: After all, in spite of jokes and perversities - malgré oe cher Marquis et ces foutus journaux - , it is nice to have something to love and to believe in as I do in Italy. It was only Gabriel and his followers in art (l'art pour l'art) who for a time frightened me from speaking out; for ever since I was 24

The thesis that Swinburne's attention was directed from art for art to the cause of Italian freedom largely because of Mazzini's influence has been advanced most vigorously by Lafourcade. See Lafourcade, A Literary Biography, esp. pp. 155-165 and La Jeunesse I, 11 where he states that 1867, the year Swinburne met Mazzini, marked a veritable evolution in Swinburne's career. See also the unpubl. diss. (Yale, 1937) by Frederick Mulhauser, Jr., "Mazzini: Carlyle, Meredith, and Swinburne, A Study in Literary ^Relationships", which shows Mazzini's influence esp. on Songs Before Sunrise (1871) and on the ending of A Song of Italy (1867).

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fifteen I have been equally and unalterably mad - téte montée, as my Mother says - about this article of faith. . . . I know the result will be a poem more declamatory than imaginative; but I'd rather be an Italian stumporator than an English prophet; and I meant to make it acceptable to you and a few others of our sort. 25 [The article of faith was, of course, Italian freedom.]

Let us pause on this. Important as this quotation may seem for including morality in Swinburne's theory, and tempting as it is to see it in this light, it should not be taken as a serious renunciation of art for art as a principle of priority since, at the most, it merely indicates that he repressed himself on the subject of Italian freedom because of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his followers in art for art. This in itself strikes one as odd in view of the history of the Rossetti family. The tone is not exactly one of levity, but the 'frightened' may certainly be read less than seriously. Furthermore, in the following sentence, Swinburne faces the consequences. He is referring to A Song of Italy when he says, "I know the result will be a poem more declamatory than imaginative", etc. Finally, it just does not seem possible that Swinburne would be seriously retracting on art for art, or, on art for art as a principle of priority, when less than two weeks previously he had just completed his famous Notes on Poems and Reviews?6 Rather, it seems to make more sense to keep the art for art as a basic step, a principle to which the artist owes his first allegiance, and to regard the letter quoted above as written in one of his more expansive moods on the subject of a moral thesis, a mood induced, undoubtedly, by the very practical considerations of writing a poem about Italian freedom. The point being made is, simply, that at the height of the so-called art-for-art period, Swinburne was not always indifferent to the admission of morality in his early criticism. Here it is not only permissive, but progressing toward an attitude of acceptance and approval. The return from this digression to the main argument, we find in Swinburne in the year 1872 a permissive attitude towards morality which may be regarded as established, "Art is one, but 25

Lang, I, 195-196. See Lang, I, 186. The dating, September 28, 1866, is Rossetti's and the 'vindication* is Notes on Poems and Reviews, according to Lang. "My vindication is finished, revised, and in Hotten's hands for immediate issue", writes Swinburne. 36

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the service of art is diverse" (XIII, 245). But we also find occasional additional evidence of a more tolerant view which could be labeled as one of acceptance and approval, as expressed, for instance, in the theory of art's being true in the positive and false in the negative. In the period between the two clarion-like pronouncements of the review of "L'Année Terrible" and the equally famous one in the study of "Wordsworth and Byron" in 1884, there may be found more subdued and less straightforward indications that Swinburne was aware of the mutual value which operates when morality and poetry mingle. Lafourcade, for example, has made available for us in La Jeunesse, II, this statement, not published elsewhere: There are critical writers of high note who would solve the riddle once for all by the simple denial that any such relation exists. The present writer is decidedly of a different opinion. . . any form of art which deals with the moral qualities of men, their passions and emotions, their vision and their work, is bound to accept the condition and face the necessity thereby entailed by it. The first and last requisite is of course to produce a good work in whatever k i n d . . . But between the first and the last which are identical, other duties and other necessities demand in their place and turn the attention of the artist who would aim higher or strike deeper than a mere amateur or a mere artisan in the same line of work. (1874)"

The following statement referring to certain passages in "George Chapman" (1875) from that dramatist's Caesar and Pompey in which Cato is the leading figure wae made immediately after Swinburne had expressed admiration for the success of verses which are within the restricting framework of moral and contemplative poetry: I t is especially in such examples as these that we perceive the great quality of Chapman's genius, the true height and purity of its power: majestic intellect lighted and enkindled by poetic imagination, the high beauty of heroic thought warmed and winged with the spiritual fire of a living sentiment." (XII, 209)

Or, regarding the problem from a slightly different angle (Swinburne is actually discussing problems of dating here), we have: 27

Lafourcade, La Jeunesse, I I , 622. The title is Art and, Morality. This quotation, of course, illustrates the idea of the reciprocal relationship and fusion between art and morality. 28

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as though the language of a poem were divisible from the thought or (to borrow a phrase from the Miltonic theology) the effluence were separable from the essence of a man's genius. (XII, 213)

Here is the symbiotic relationship which was expressed in "On the Cliffs". I have purposely omitted labeling the review of "La Légende des Siècles" (1883) as an important source in studying Swinburne's views on art and morality since it is such an extreme panegyric. But I should like to include one or two comments, parenthetically as it were, because this piece does serve the purpose of illustrating what principles he considered desirable regardless of whether his vision of Hugo's work was blurred. Apparently, Swinburne is here endorsing not only the reciprocal relationship between art and morality, but also the fusion which he sees as having taken place. "History and legend, fact and vision, are fused and harmonised by the mastering charm of moral unity in imaginative truth" (XIII, 114). And this book Swinburne calls 'the greatest work of the century' (XIII, 112). But in the reply to Arnold which is entitled "Wordsworth and Byron" (1884), the essay which may properly be regarded as an important clarification of his repeated axiom that the essential qualities of poetry are imagination and harmony (XIV, 161), Swinburne tries again, this time more successfully, to express the true order of the relationship of the artist to himself and to humanity: All sane men must be willing to concede the truth of an assertion which he [Matthew Arnold] seems to fling down as a challenge from the ethical oritic to the aesthetic - that a school of poetry divorced from any moral idea is a school of poetry divorced from life. . . .What may reasonably be maintained is a thesis very different from such a denial; namely, that a school of poetry subordinated to any school of doctrine, subjugated and shaped and utilised by any moral idea to the exclusion of native impulse and spiritual instinct, will produce work fit to live when the noblest specimens of humanity are produced by artificial incubation.1» (XIV, 160)

And, for fear of being misunderstood, Swinburne elaborates on the following page: 89

Swinburne's faith in nature is evident here. He is not denying the production of human beings by artificial incubation, but rather the production of 'the noblest specimens of humanity' by that method.

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I would venture to put forward, by no means a counter theory or a rival definition to Mr. Arnold's theory or definition of poetry, but a simple postulate, or at least a simple assumption, on which I would rest my argument. (XIV, 161)

It is important that we note Swinburne's insistence that what he is about to say is NOT in opposition to the statement from Arnold but ANOTHER assumption. He goes on to say that: The two primary and essential qualities of poetry are imagination a,nd harmony: that where these qualities are wanting there can be no poetry, properly so called: and that where these qualities are perceptible in the highest degree, there, even though they should be unaccompanied and unsupported by any other great quality whatever - even though the ethical or critical faculty should be conspicuous by its absence - there, and only there, is the best and highest poetry. (XIV, 161)

Swinburne is not excluding the ethical here; he is pushing his point to the extreme in trying to define the sine qua non of poetry 'poetry PROPERLY SO called'.30 He is elaborating, not contradicting, the definition or stand taken on the previous page. He is exaggerating an opposite situation in order to emphasize, not deny, his basic contention. In the former instance, he is asserting the simple condition that art must discuss morality or moral ideas if it is to discuss life. In this latter instance he is discussing an extreme theoretical situation for purposes of dramatizing the essential qualities of poetry. The value of all this to our argument lies in the fact that Swinburne is articulating and emphasizing an assumption sufficient evidence of which has always been present, and is aiding us in resolving apparent discrepancies by illustrating the proper value of two worlds - the world of the theoretical and the world of the practical. One world aids us in seeing essences, in obligation to first principles; the other reminds us of the coexistence of life and art. In "On the Cliffs", Sappho was a woman moved by the singing soul, the soul imparting sublimity to him who heard its rhyme (xviii).31 This is what Apollo means when at the conclusion of "Thalassius", he commends his child for having kept 'The light 80

Here, as in the review of L'Année Terrible, Swinburne uses 'properly' to restrict his definition to the essence of poetry. See above, p. 120. 81 Sappho is apparently so sublime that she is missing from Swinburne's earthly list of Jan. 22, 1886. See Lang, V, 132-136.

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that makes me music of the skies' in those 'world-wandering eyes'. For the practicing poet, then, morality in the sense of involvement with and responsibility to humanity and human values is an assumed prerequisite. The essay entitled "Whistler's Lecture on Art" (1888) which affirms the principle of the workman's first obligation to his work or art for art recognizes this as a FIRST principle only: Those only who have laid it [art first] to heart may be permitted to point out that it is not all the truth; that it is by no manner of means an exhaustive and complete statement of the capacities and duties, the objects and the properties of creative or imaginative art. (XVI, 22)

Swinburne's entire argument in this essay is a clear illustration of the necessity for recognizing both the theoretical and the actual. Japanese art (which Whistler endorsed in his lecture) is not merely the incomparable achievement of certain harmonies in colour, it is the negation, the immolation, the annihilation of everything else. Swinburne is denying the restriction of art to 'what can be "broidered up on the fan'". This kind of art is an art divorced from life. If Whistler really believed this, Swinburne argues, we would never, for example, have the study of character and intellect in his portrait of Carlyle or the pathos in the portrait of 'his own venerable mother'. The 'aesthete' is, after all, 'one who perceives' with the senses. The opposition of aesthetic is anaesthetic (XVI, 22-27). Further, the impossibility of the artist's divorce from life, his necessity of operating in a less than ideal world is seen by the fact that no mortal ever maintained that there ever was a period in which all men were either good artists or good judges of art. But when we pass from the positive to the comparative degree of historic or retrospective criticism, we must ask whether the lecturer means to say that there have not been times when the general standard of taste and judgment, reason and perception, was so much higher than at other times that such periods may justly and accurately be defined as artistic. If he does mean to say this, he is beyond answer and beneath confutation: in other words, he is where an artist of Mr. Whistler's genius and a writer of Mr. Whistler's talents can by no possibility find himself. (XVI, 25-26)

It is in this acceptance of the marriage of the theoretical and the actual, in the recognition of the power of art as an alchemist in producing beauty through the laws of unity and harmony, as it works with the immediate and the concrete, with that which is

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located in the world of human experience, that we must see the idea of reciprocity as it becomes fusion.32 This fusion will become most noticeable where the imagination and harmony are operating to the highest degree on the human scene.33 In his study of "King Lear" published in 1902, Swinburne says: Setting aside for a m o m e n t t h e reflection t h a t outside t h e work of .¿Eeschylus there is no such poetry in t h e world, we m u s t remember t h a t there is no such realism. And there is no discord between t h e supreme sublimities of impassioned poetry and t h e humblest realities of photographic prose. Incredible and impossible as it seems, the impression of t h e one is enhanced and intensified b y t h e impression of t h e other. (XI, 236)

Shakespeare, of course, was aware of the priority of art for art: N o t political reform, b u t social revolution as benef icent and as bloodless, as absolute and as radical, as enkindled t h e aspiration and t h e faith of Victor Hugo, is t h e key-note of the creed and the watchword of the gospel according to Shakespeare. Not, of course, t h a t it was not his first and last aim to follow the impulse which urged him to do good work for its own sake and for love of his own a r t : b u t this he could not do without delivery of t h e word t h a t was in him - the word of witness against wrong done by oversight as well as by cruelty, by negligence as surely as by crime. (XI, 239)

The two words, the word of art and the word of sympathy and morality, are mingled. Now this is not merely an idea of the decadent Swinburne of the early twentieth century; we may see this same basic notion of sympathy and morality in "A Study of Shakespeare" (1875-76), although in his work on Lear at that time he had also stressed the tragic fatalism emerging in the relationship between humanity and the eternal laws of things. 32

I n "Changes of Aspect", a manuscript now located in the H u n t i n g t o n Library and printed by Clyde Kenneth H y d e r in an article entitled "Swinburne: Changes of Aspect and Short Notes", PMLA, LVIII 2 (1943), 223-244, Swinburne says t h a t only fools and knaves could imagine " t h a t t h e law which bids a n artist or workman look first of all to t h e conditions of his work, think of nothing more seriously t h a n the rules and the requisites of his a r t , bids him abstain from consideration of moral or political, patriotic or polemical subjects". See p. 233. H y d e r dates the article as late nineties or even possibly early twentieth century. 33 Swinburne (XI, 233-234) regards Cordelia as more divinely h u m a n t h a n Antigone, and Goneril and Regan not outside h u m a n i t y in their evil (although he wishes they were).

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In contrast to Aeschylean drama, there is in "King Lear" no relief, no possible requital, redemption or mercy in: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport."

"Here is no need of the Eumenides, children of Night everlasting; for here is very Night herself (XI, 123)".34 But Swinburne in this earlier study had also indicated that another source for the power of "Lear" lay in the morality of sympathy, saying that the play contained evidence "of a sympathy with the mass of social misery more wide and deep and direct and bitter and tender than Shakespeare has shown elsewhere", and even adding that the author of this play is a 'spiritual if not a political democrat and socialist' (XI, 125-126). Now the fact that Swinburne reads "King Lear" as a play on behalf of democracy does less violence to his basic critical principles than it does to other interpretations or readings of this tragedy. I have chosen these passages from the Lear study as pertinent to Swinburne's ideas on the relation of the artist to humanity because: (1) they indicate, with the possible exception of the flights on Hugo whom, as is well-known, Swinburne regarded as a second Shakespeare, Swinburne's most complete endorsement of the necessity of morality, not merely as an indispensable element in great works of art, but as an element having a reciprocal relation to artistic expression which results in a final fusion of the two; (2) there is danger of their being interpreted as contradictory to Swinburne's stand on art for art or even, perhaps, as a sign of the contradiction and incoherence of decadent old age; and (3) the theory of social revolution, unacceptable as it may be as a satisfactory reading of "King Lear", is consistent with the notion of Swinburne that the artist must show his involvement with humanity. The first of these points is, I hope, apparent. The second, if it is not already apparent, will perhaps become so during the course of the conclusion of this section of the chapter. I should like now to elaborate on the third point, the theory of social revolution and involvement. Swinburne's reasoning follows familiar formulas. Lear is a great tragic character because he learns by 34

In "John Webster", as he compares Aeschylus with Shakespeare, Swinburne also indicates the darker implications in Shakespeare's Othello and King Lear. (XI, 292-293)

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suffering. He learns more because he has more to learn, that is, he progresses from a man of little or no sympathy to one having a high degree of sympathy, a sympathy aroused by the fidelity and love of the Fool, and a sympathy which permits Lear to BECOME a fellow-sufferer with his Fool: In the most fearfully pathetic of all poems the most divinely pathetic touch of all is the tender thought of the houseless king for the suffering of such a fellow-sufferer as his fool. (XI, 240)

Thus is Lear's madness 'not his enemy, but his friend' (XI, 238). The morality of sympathetic involvement with man and the resulting loss of the self in suffering makes "Lear" the great document for social revolution that it is. Such an event would not have enduring meaning, however, were it not for high imaginative treatment. "Lear" is great art because "the truth of imagination exceeds and transcends at all points the accident of fact" (XI, ?40-241). Art and morality have become one. The question of sympathetic involvement is, of course, the motive behind Swinburne's devotion to freedom and behind his hero-worship of Mazzini, Landor, and Hugo. Writing for the ninth edition of the Britannica (1882), Swinburne says of Landor: His passionate compassion, his bitter and burning pity for all wrongs endured in all the world, found only their natural and inevitable outlet in this lifelong defence or advocacy of tyrannicide as the last resource of baffled justice, the last discharge of heroic duty. (XIV, 293)

Seen in a more negative approach, lack of compassion accounts for the most important sin of omission among Jonson's deficiencies: It is want of sympathy; a lack of cordial interest, not in his own work or in his own genius - no one will assert that Jonson was deficient on that score - but in the individual persons, the men and women represented on the stage. . . .Love and hatred, sympathy and antipathy, are superseded and supplanted by pure scientific curiosity. (XII, 21)

In one of Swinburne's earliest pieces, "On the Character and Opinions of Dr. Johnson", he praises not the opinions of Dr. Johnson but rather his character, which he illustrates by the anecdotes of the worn-out shoes and restoration of the dying

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woman (XVI, 36).35 Sympathy is the cause for sublimity in "Rizpah", the poem of Tennyson's which Swinburne so extravagantly admired. It creates "a pang of piercing and dreadful compassion which cleaves as it were the very core of 'the spirit of sense' in sunder" (XIV, 304). Self-identity disappears. There is one more approach which may be helpful in bringing out Swinburne's concept of the proper relation of the artist to humanity and which will aid in an understanding of his idea of morality, morality as defined earlier. It is an approach which has been only hinted at in the argument of the affirmative and negative side of the formula of art for art. I refer to the example of the singer who sings of a non-moral subject, as, for instance, of tyranny, or the singer of the Lesbian music which spends itself 'upon the record of fleshly fever and amorous malady' (XIII, 243), or the singer who has 'no note of song for any such theme' (XIII, 244) [such theme being the moral ones of Aeschylus, Dante, Milton, Shelley]. First of all, we should note the context and realize that Swinburne is utilizing extreme examples to illustrate his thesis of judging a work of art on artistic principles or the thesis "that the only absolute duty of art is the duty she owes to herself" (XIII, 244). It is, nevertheless, at this point that we must come to grips with the question of whether art which treats of the non-moral can be great art.36 The answer, for Swinburne, seems to lie in the transforming and transcending power of art which converts human experience into a kind of spiritual morality that is universal and immortal, a point which the previous chapter has discussed under the topic of art as a refining and reconciling process. Now the process is not explicable, but is observable in the myth of the 'becoming' passages of the poet and in the Sapphic fusion into a

36 Wise dates the piece as probably 1858. It was not published until 1918 ( X X , 418-419). " Swinburne does not use the term 'non-moral' here, and it is perhaps an unsatisfactory word to describe what he is talking about, but I cannot think of a better one. I use it to include the purely physical as well as that which is destructive to proven human values as, for instance, to freedom, or that which is indifferent to these values. This seems to be somewhat close to the idea Swinburne was illustrating with these examples. In "Wordsworth and Byron", Swinburne does use the term, in a different connotation, in describing Keats whom he calls 'the most exclusively aesthetic and the most absolutely non-moral of all serious writers on record' (XIV, 158).

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triune soul of woman, god, and bird in "On the Cliffs". "The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness/That held the fire eternal" is seen by the SPIRIT, we recall (xxvi). In the critical prose, we may observe Swinburne approaching the problem of the non-moral subject through two portals - the singular, heavenly one of sublimity and the double, earthly one of vulgarity and realism. First, as to the sublimity. I n "Whitmania" (1887), Swinburne says t h a t any subject may be treated if it is artistically handled: There is no subject which m a y not be treated with success (I do not say there are no subjects which on other than artistic grounds it m a y not be as well to avoid, it m a y not be better to pass by) if the poet, by instinct or by training, knows exactly how to handle it aright, to present it without danger of just or rational offence. 37 (XV, 316)

And any subject (even the first principle of nature - the passion of man for woman or the passion of woman for man) may be ruined by a muck-raker (XV, 315-316). Appropriately enough, for our purposes, Swinburne explores the problem by using Sappho as illustration of one who sublimates emotion: If anything can justify the serious and deliberate display of merely physical emotion in literature or in art, it must be one of two things: intense depth of feeling expressed with inspired perfection of simplicity, with divine sublimity of fascination, as by Sappho; or transcendent supremacy of actual and irresistible beauty in such revelation of naked nature as was possible to Titian. (XV, 316)

(And then he goes on to castigate Whitman's Eve as a drunken apple-woman.) What seems to be operating here is some sort of spiritual elevation expressed by the words 'divine sublimity' and arrived at by intensity of feeling or some transcendental process. To get a closer look at the problem posed by Sappho and her poetry and, at the same time, keeping in mind the idea expressed in the review of "L'Année Terrible", "while there is a value beyond price and beyond thought in the Lesbian music which spends itself upon the record of fleshly fever and amorous malady" (XIII, 243), we must examine Swinburne's remarks of some twenty years earlier when defending the morality of Poems and Ballads, First Series, in Notes on Poems and Reviews, and, more specifically, when 37

Cf. this idea to that expressed on Baudelaire, "His perfect workmanship makes every subject admirable and respectable" (XIII, 419).

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defending the poem "Anactoria". During this defense, he brings out several points relevant to the problem of morality in art: (1) he denies that utterance of belief or unbelief, enjoyment or despair can be assumed as the author's personal feeling; (2) he defines the theme of "Anactoria" as 'that violence of affection between one and another which hardens into rage and deepens to despair'; (3) he admits the impossibility of successful translation of Sappho even by Catullus and says that in so recognizing this impossibility he has merely tried "to cast my spirit into the mould of hers, to express and represent not the poem but the poet"; and (4) he points out that if any poets are going to be impeached before a jury of moralists, those poets should be Ambrose Philips or Nicholas Boileau-Despraux for their very bad translations (XVI, 354-359). Swinburne's own translation is far from the original, he admits. The third point, the importance of the spiritual, is the significant one. In both the earlier remarks of 1866 and the later ones of 1887, Swinburne is making the spiritual and spiritual sincerity, intensity of feeling transformed, the basis for accepting, for example, poetry of despair. The directions are upward and inward, an elevation by means of creative imagination. What wo have here is actually a part of the definition of the creative imagination, this time emphasizing its spirituality, a spirituality we have already seen as an integral part of Swinburne's whole concept of unity and harmony achieved by interaction and fusion of the will, of the cognitive and intuitive powers. It is an interaction whose essential characteristic is spontaneity and whose essential function is conversion. The questions of vulgarity and realism are ones on which Swinburne is highly voluble, and for him the questions are related. Coprology, he says, should be left to the French (XII, 65). And, he adds, intermittently throughout his criticism and letters, to Swift and Carlyle. The worship of Cloacina makes Humphry Clinker all but unreadable to Swinburne.38 The principle of artistic independence has this assumed limitation and Swinburne makes a flat statement in "Whistler's Lecture on Art" to this effect: I t should be unnecessary to add that this principle cannot either fairly or plausibly be so strained and wrested as to cover, for example, the literary offences of French pornographers and coprologists. M. Zola and his merry 38

Lang, IV, 154.

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men are artists only in the sense - if such a sense there be - in which the term is applicable to a dealer in coloured photographs of unmentionable subjects. 35 (XVI, 22)

Swinburne was insistent on a balance of the healthy with the pathological. It is on these grounds that he objects to "Dr. Ibsen" as he refers to that playwright in "Charles Dickens". The 'fire of sympathy' in Dickens, although sometimes feverish, is 'the fever of a fine and healthy nature' which would seem (here Swinburne is referring to Oliver Twist) 'less natural to the literary patients of Dr. Ibsen than the heredity of contagious debasement and degradation by disease' (XIV, 58). In both "Under the Microscope" (1872) and "Tennyson and Musset" (1881), Swinburne castigates Tennyson for his treatment of the Guinevere-Launcelot relationship and of 'lissom Vivien' (XIV, 331), in the "Morte d'Albert" as, says Swinburne, "it [referring to the Idylls] might be more properly called" (XVI, 403). By piecing together Swinburne's comments from the two essays,40 we come to his real objection, however. In the later study, he says: The fallacy which obtrudes itself throughout, the false note whioh incessantly jars on the mind's ear, results from the incongruity of materials which are radically incapable of combination or coherence. 41 (XIV, 332)

It is falsity of conception that Swinburne objects to, a conception arising not so much from the incest theme on which the Idylls rests as one arising from untrue delineation of Arthur as a credible character, particularly in his besotted blindness to the treason of Guinevere: The unclean taunt of the hateful Vivien is simply the expression in vile language of an undeniable truth; such a man as this king is indeed hardly 'man at all'. (XVI, 406)

Similarly, Swinburne objects to John Ford's treatment of the incestuous theme of Fernando and Bianca in Love's Sacrifice in 38

This remark is amusing to the reader of some of the Swinburne correspondence with Charles Augustus Howell, George Powell, and Lord Houghton. Swinburne abhorred the thought of personal remarks being published. See "The New Terror" (XVI, 11-17). " See "Under the Microscope" (XVI, 403-411) and "Tennyson and Musset" (XIV, 329-333). 41 This 'incongruity' which is the origin of the falsity will prevent any artistic fusion.

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contrast to t h a t of Giovanni and Annabella in 'Tis Pity She's A Whore: The conception is essentially foul because it is essentially false; and in the sight of art nothing is so foul as falsehood. The incestuous indulgence of Giovanni and Annabella is not improper for tragic treatment; the obscene abstinence of Fernando and Bianca is wholly improper. (XII, 381-382)

Swinburne continues on the subject saying t h a t the only redeeming feature of Love's Sacrifice is its language; otherwise its baseness is unalloyed. His ultimate objection to both Ford and Tennyson actually lies less in the presence of these incestuous themes than in the falsity of its treatment or the falsity of treatment of the characters entwined in this all-embracing theme. 42 The principle t h a t a r t may elevate any subject, save perhaps extreme 'coprology', holds. Swinburne objects to the Zola brand of realism; he sanctions what may be referred to as the Miltonic realism in "Wordsworth and Byron": Few poets were ever less realistic than Milton: few at least ever depended less on accuracy of transcription from the simple truth and modesty of nature for the accomplishment of their highest and most abiding aims. (XIV, 217-218)

The realism of Zola and his merry men is one of such singular emphasis as to result in distortion. The realism of Milton is the realism of nature subjected to proper artistic creative power. A summary and conclusion as to Swinburne's stand in his critical prose on the question of the artist's responsibility to humanity reemphasizes the findings in the first section of this chapter, t h a t is, of the primary responsibility of the artist to himself as artist. In addition, we also see an approach to art t h a t is basically humanistic, although there seems to be vacillation at different periods of his life, in his attitude on the importance of including a moral subject, moral in the sense of positive values definable under the ethics of the Hellenic-Hebraic-Christian tradition. 43 This vacillation 41

Falsity in artistic conception lies behind Swinburne's opinion that the two unpardonable sins in Shakespeare are the unnatural marriages of Oliver and Celia and of Isabella and the Duke, and that the unpardonable sin of George Eliot's 'most noble work' is the elopement of Stephen Guest and Maggie Tulliver (XIV, 17-18). 43 The more important of these values for Swinburne are freedom, righteousness, and sympathy. He also felt that a special debt was owed to the Hebrews for their prophetic or preaching quality as we noted in the later study of "King Lear".

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causes him to move about on a scale ranging from a point of apparent indifference toward morality, the kind of indifference engendering freedom rather than hostility, to one signifying t h a t morality is indispensable to the artist. Yet there is a general assumption as to its acceptance, an assumption observable even in some of the more extreme art-for-art statements during the sixties. Many of the apparent discrepancies which make Swinburne seem to move freely about on this scale of morality are due to the particular context in which he is working as, for example, the Blake study, where he is formulating background and fighting Philistia at the same time. Here it is important to be aware of the meticulous trait in Swinburne, of his penchant for explaining his assumptions, parenthetically or by other additive and repetitive devices, and to be aware of his technique of hyperbole and isolation of a point as a device for dramatizing his theory or for providing contrast. One of his techniques for arriving at the essence of a particular tenet is to divorce it from reality and the world of the actual for purposes of theoretical discussion, a device altogether legitimate and one in common practice. To understand this is the only way in which one can make sense of the positions taken in "Wordsworth and Byron" where on one page Swinburne affirms the Arnoldian assumption of the moral idea in poetry and on the following page insists on imagination and harmony as the essential qualities of poetry. Through some of Swinburne's remarks in the early review of Les Miserables, we see rather specifically that he approves a morality based on freedom, based on the necessity of human will-power to overcome temptation and t h a t in his commentary on The Descent of Fantine, he affirms a morality which will uphold traditional ethical behavior at the sacrifice of one which would obscure the basic issue by the more commonly accepted façade of social position. We also see a sympathetic approval of Hugo as a champion of the downtrodden, a point which helps us to be prepared for the unusual interpretation of "King Lear". I n 1883, in the review of "La Légende des Siècles", Swinburne articulates the theory of the fusion of art and morality, and in 1888 in the essay entitled "Whistler's Lecture on Art", he reaffirms the fact t h a t the artist must operate in a world less than ideal. Swinburne, in his critical prose, surely sees the artist involved in. the 'predicament of man'.

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The morality he is expounding in his criticism is based on freedom, on the artist's sense of the primary obligation to himself as artist, on responsibility to one's fellow-man, a responsibility which includes not merely a sense of duty, but a sympathetic involvement, even a loss of self-identity. The significance of this idea of the artist's sympathetic involvement with flesh and blood is quite consistent with Thalassius' willingness to die for freedom of his fellow-man. And by his stand on the assumption of boundaries of propriety and good taste which aid him in defining vulgar realism, we see that Swinburne is neither a prude nor a pornographer, but one who believes that the realism of Zola and Ibsen and the synthetic constructions of Ford and Tennyson are false to art because they are false to humanity. Finally, we see, especially in the defense of Sapphic poetry, and also in references to poetry on a non-moral subject, that the crudest physical emotion may be sublimated or transcended and made spiritual by sincerity, by intensity of feeling transformed or by the working of the creative imagination in its fusion of subject with spirit. Once the necessity of morality, in the sense defined, is permitted, that is, once the artist works with established human values, a reciprocity operates and operates in the symbiotic manner suggested in "On the Cliffs". A soul behind the soul, that seeks and sings And makes our life move only with its wings And feed but from its lips, that in return Feed of our hearts, (ix)

It provides nourishment for the creative imagination, which in turn transforms it from the local and temporal to the universal and immortal. That Swinburne recognized this is evident by his poetics as outlined in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", and by his actual practice as a poet. It is also evident in his constant admiration for Aeschylus, Pindar, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, and Hugo. It is established early in his critical prose in 1866, and somewhat negatively, by his remarks on Sappho and is proclaimed more loudly and positively in the review of "L'Année Terrible", redefined and clarified in "Wordsworth and Byron", 44 41

Of Wordsworth, Swinburne says, "But he was wrong in thinking himself a poet because he was a teacher, whereas in fact he was a teacher because he was a poet" (XIV, 213).

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and is expressed in what is perhaps its most extreme form in the 1902 study of "King Lear". The conclusion, then, infers that Swinburne assumes a morality at all times even though we may feel it is more latent (as indicated by the footnotes referred to in the Blake essay) than present, more dormant than active, in some of the criticism of the sixties as well as in occasional later articles.45 Once this assumption of morality is granted along with the parallel assumption of the artist's responsibility to himself as artist, the consequences are a mutual relationship which, in its extension to reciprocity and fusion, will result (in the highest artistic accomplishment) in a completely harmoniously unified work of art that is not divorced from life. I would, therefore, make the essay entitled "Wordsworth and Byron", particularly on the basis of the comments already explicated, the central document of Swinburne's critical principles mainly because here he clarifies his position regarding the dual role of the artist - his responsibility to himself as artist and his responsibility to humanity. It is in this essay, incidentally, that we find Swinburne, in his comparison of the ethics of Wordsworth with those of Pindar and Milton, articulating his own ethical principles. He affirms here an ethics "deeply baaed on righteousness and reality, on principles of truth and manhood invariable and independent of custom or theology, of tradition and of time" (XIV, 218). The artist is, indeed, situated "On the Cliffs", and the highest form of art serves as a bond among men of all ages, a bond which is formed in the artist's sympathetic involvement with humanity as well as by his creative imagination.

THE ARTIST AND DIVINITY: THE INEXPRESSIBLE

The divinity with which we are dealing is an aesthetic concept; it is not Zeus, but Apollo. The third section of this chapter, would, then, be but a circular return to the first section were we not compelled by the poetics of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" to take into account one conspicuous and unavoidable consideration, and this is the 'external and eternal basis' of Swinburne's artistic metaphysics. Now it is quite true that both these poems are 46

The studies on Herrick, Collins, and the later study on Shelley.

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working out the theory of poetry in myth and symbol, the only way Swinburne could apparently work out such a theory; therefore, we may well expect some difficulty in knowing exactly where Apollo is standing — whether his location is external to or within the poet. Further, we have seen t h a t in the highest creative activity, t h a t is, what is expressed in the figure of the Sapphic Bird-God, a fusion of the human and divine powers in the artist is accomplished. But from the point of view of the poet Thalassius, the father Apollo (never so named, but, clearly, Apollo), while his 'fire is made mortal in his son', is, nevertheless, an eternal and external generating force. He is 'the live sun's very God'; he is a force existing prior to and responsible for the conception of Thalassius, and when Thalassius is in the proper sincere and receptive mood of humility, Apollo appears and hallows 'his humbled head' before expounding the conditions of creative intuition in the final lines of the poem. Thalassius, as noted, is a transmitter of the divine song, the music of the skies. Further, Swinburne's use of the terms SENSE, SOUL WITHIN THE SENSE, a n d t h e SENSE WITHIN THE SOUL

indicates an external source of power. 46 Similarly, in "On the Cliffs", the poet is always a separate entity from the nightingale Bird-God, and he is always aware of the separation and of his inferiority much as he desires the impossible, t h a t is to enjoy complete identification with her. She is not the prime source as her 'body and soul are parcel of the sun', yet she is immortal. The poet, addressing her, denies her mortality, denies t h a t human doom might 'take hold on thee'. In the Cassandra stanzas, we have also seen the figure of Apollo, and have learned what happens when even those close to him try to operate outside his laws and usurp his power. I n "On the Cliffs" as well as in "Thalassius", regardless of what he says elsewhere in more theological and less aesthetic terms, Swinburne makes a distinction between God and man. He affirms Casandra's punishment "As [if] God were man, to spare or to forget". Then, too, in "On the Cliffs", the reader is perhaps more aware of the separation between the artist and Apollo since the figure of the Bird-God and the 46 In the two poems studied, these terms were interpreted, it will be recalled, as: S E N S E (the general fire shared with the nightingale), T H E S O U L W I T H I N T H E S E N S E (the poet's individual creative talent), and T H E S E N S E W I T H I N T H E soul, (the divine creative fire operating in the individual creative talent).

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mortal Sappho stands between them. Hence, the position of the poet and his own individual creative power is separate (Thalassius was charmed 'from his own soul's separate sense', and the BirdGod was 'one/Whose body and soul are parcel of the sun'), yet this is a power containing and partaking of the general, divine force. 47 Swinburne in these poems is struggling to define the essence of the creative imagination or the ultimate and principal source of inspiration. This cannot be done in prose, and Swinburne never attempts to do so, b u t constantly insists t h a t in the last analysis the notion of the inexpressible and incommunicable must not only be accepted, but accepted as a criterion of high artistic achievement. We may recognize Apollo's light and music, but we can never look at the very sun itself. The inexplicable, like the Apollo of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", is the prime activating force of the creative imagination. The essence of Apollo's beauty and power is never more closely defined by Swinburne in his prose than by phrases referring to the inexplicable, the inevitable, and the sublime. But the practicing poet as well as the critic is aware of these principles in high artistic achievement and aware t h a t they are the distinguishing characteristics on which the complete success and endurance of the work of art depend. A few references from the criticism will suffice to bear this out. We have already seen, in "Notes on Poems and Reviews", the impossibility of anyone's translating Sappho (and Swinburne was not referring merely to language barriers). Her words are akin to fire and air (XVI, 359). We have also noted in the comment on the Hermaphroditus t h a t ideal beauty dwells apart (XVI, 368). Moreover, even the supreme artist will have to accept the problem of the inexpressible, the presence of Apollo. The selection is from "George Chapman" (1875): Being a p o e t [Marlowe] of t h e f i r s t order, he was c o n t e n t t o k n o w a n d t o accept t h e knowledge t h a t ideal b e a u t y lies beyond t h e m o s t b e a u t i f u l f o r m s a n d ideal perfection beyond t h e m o s t perfect w o r d s t h a t a r t can i m b u e w i t h life or inflame with colour; a n excellence t h a t expression can never realise, t h a t possession can never destroy. T h e nearer such a n a r t i s t ' s work comes t o t h i s a b s t r a c t perfection of absolute b e a u t y , t h e m o r e clearly will he see and t h e m o r e gladly will he 47

Swinburne is obviously using 'parcel' in its archaic sense of ' f r a g m e n t ' so a s t o preserve t n e idea of identity in s e p a r a t i o n .

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admit that it never can come so near as to close with it and find, as in things of meaner life, a conclusion set in the act of fruition to the sense of enjoyment, a goal fixed at a point attainable where the delight of spiritual desire may be consummated, and consumed in the moment of its consummation. (XII, 241)

The human artist will fall short, but can still derive pleasure and complete satisfaction in the exercise of his creative power. And, here, Swinburne quoting from the famous speech of Tamburlaine on the inexpressible goes on to say that even if one single and supreme poem could embody the spirit and sense of "every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admired themes"

there still would remain 'something that will not be expressed or attained' (XII, 241). Whatever they, as poets, may do there will remain "One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest." 48 (XII, 242)

In "Wordsworth and Byron", after declaring that the two primary and essential qualities of poetry are imagination and harmony, Swinburne flatly states, "Now it is obviously impossible to supply any profitable or serviceable definition of these terms" (XIV, 161). Of Ben Jonson's verses on Penshurst, he says that although they are not lacking grace of form, they are wanting "in the indefinable quality of distinction or inspiration" (XII, 71). This indefinable quality is what makes Coleridge the greatest of lyric poets in imaginative quality and the epitome of this idea may be felt when reading "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan": When it has been said that such melodies were never heard, such dreams never dreamed, such speech never spoken, the chief thing remains unsaid, and unspeakable. (XV, 143)

The test of inevitability is naturally more prominent in the drama and novel, and the terrible greatness of "King Lear" is its 48 Swinburne does not bow to the notion that the inexpressible is an apology for the inarticulate poet. Some eight years or so previous, he had said in "Matthew Arnold's New Poems", "There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate" (XV, 89).

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unmitigated fatalism. Webster, to a lesser extent, shared with Shakespeare the power to create this effect: but the crowning gift of imagination, the power to make us realise that thus and not otherwise it was, that thus and not otherwise it must have been, was given - except by exceptional fits and starts - to none of the poets of their time but only to Shakespeare and to Webster. (XI, 281)

In a slightly different tone, but one not less serious in intent, Swinburne explains the difference, the 'great gulf fixed' between pure genius and mere intellect, between the constructive and creative qualities as they exist in George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte: In every work of pure genius we feel while it is yet before us. . . the sense of something inevitable, some quality incorporate and innate, which determined that it shall be thus and not otherwise; and we need not the 'illative sense' of Dr. Newman's invention to teach us 'the grammar of assent' to the matter proposed to us as subject or as objeot for our imaginative belief. Belief, and not assent, it is that we give to the highest. (XIV, 6)

The inevitability "compels us without question to positive acceptance and belief" (XIV, 6). The force, the power of Apollo is compulsive and is accompanied by the atmosphere of the inevitable. Swinburne uses the word 'sublimity' to indicate an elevating or a transcending process as we have already seen in the discussion of Sappho near the end of the previous section of this chapter. He also occasionally uses the word to refer to the expressions of beauty which are not analyzable but where high imaginative power as 'distinguished from invention or from fancy' may be observed (XI, 271). Swinburne's notion of sublimity as a paradoxical situation for the human artist may be seen in the essay on Marlowe, and here it is associated in his mind, again, with the famous speech on the inexpressible by Tamburlaine at the end of Act V, Part One of that play. Swinburne says of Tamburlaine the Great: it contains one of the noblest passages, perhaps indeed the noblest in the literature of the world, ever written by one of the greatest masters of poetry in loving praise of the glorious delights and sublime submission to the everlasting limits of his art. (XI, 271)

It seems fair to regard Swinburne's critical prose as bearing out the idea of the unaccountable element in the active, spontaneous quality of the creative imagination of the artist-man, an element that is so powerful as to have a compelling effect on the artiBt

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and to connote a sense of inevitability to the perceiver of the artistic accomplishment. While it operates in the artist, it is also outside of him, existing in a kind of ideal state, a fact which he accepts and which stimulates him. This power is spiritual and eternal and bears an important, and very possibly, the primary responsibility toward the achievement of the harmonious wholeness t h a t is such a strong critical tenet of Swinburne. What conclusions may we arrive at from the foregoing remarks on the artist and his relationship to himself, to humanity, and to divinity? First of all, we shall see Swinburne's critical prose as bearing out the stand taken in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs", t h a t the artist is between or allied to two worlds - the world of art, the generating, eternal world and the world of man and morality. We see t h a t devotion to the world of art and loyalty to Apollo must be preceded first by knowledge and freedom, including freedom of choice. Such an attitude will result in an indifference of the artist toward his subject, a temporary but true indifference arising from detachment rather than one arising from or associated with hostility. But Swinburne's humanism is always present and nearly always operating, and the artist, being man as well as artist, will admit, particularly when he moves in the world of the actual, the basic ethical and moral values of our western culture. Two articles at either extreme of Swinburne's career illustrate a consistency and similarity in t h a t they affirm a fusion of the artistic and the moral, the obligation of the artist to Apollo and to humanity. First, from "Matthew Arnold's New Poems" in 1867: A man who suffers from the strong desire either to believe or disbelieve something he cannot may be worthy of sympathy, is certainly worthy of pity, until he begins to speak; and if he tries to speak in verse, he misuses the implement of an artist. (XV, 66)

I n the "Dedicatory Epistle" of 1904, Swinburne expressed the idea of the desirability of the poet to keep, but not obtrude the personal note, especially in descriptive poetry, 49 and reminds us t h a t the writer of 'Songs before Sunrise', from the first line to the last, wrote simply in submissive obedience to Sir Philip Sidney's precept - 'Look in thine heart, and write.' 50 19

"Dedicatory Epistle", xx. "Dedicatory Epistle", viii. See also Lang, II, 98. Swinburne says, in a letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Feb. 19 [1870], referring to Songs Before 50

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Moreover, if we view the critical prose as a whole, we see t h a t this indifference of the artist, while it leads to freedom (as well as arising from freedom) is also affected by two latent pressures, by a minor one of realistic vulgarity and by the more intense one of sympathetic involvement in the human predicament. Swinburne worships Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Landor, and Hugo as heroes, and it is quite consistent for him to do so. We have seen that, for Swinburne, the most successful works of art have more than a reciprocal relation between art and morality. Art and morality are fused. Indeed, even the potentially immoral can be used and elevated into a higher morality in the crucible of art, as happens, for instance, in the Sapphic fragments. But, at the final point of analysis, at the point beyond the descriptive conditions and concomitants of art and at the very point where artistic creativity is set in motion or where the activating power of the creative imagination liberates the artist's potentialities, Swinburne leaves us with the inexplicable and the spontaneity of 'inner harmony' whose source is external to the poet and eternal in its nature. . We are now left with one further major point of correlation between the poetics of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" and the critical prose. I refer to the activity and motion, and especially the 'becoming' process described in the poems. In "Thalassius", it is described by a loss of selfhood in rebirth and by the eventual charm 'from his own soul's separate sense' in song; in "On the Cliffs", by a similar loss through love and grace, by receptivity or hearing, by a melting process, one culminating in a fusion of pain and pleasure in song or art and a subsequent conversion of love and art to everlasting fire. Other aspects of activity and motion are also carried out in the poems by the seeking, wandering, and remembering or recognizing themes. From the latter, t h a t is, artistic recognition, arises the feeling of authenticity in art, the response which the sense of inevitability inherent in the work arouses in the reader or perceiver. Now the process most significant in our study of parallels in the critical prose is t h a t of 'becoming' or fusion. For the poets in Sunrise, "I shall be curious to see how it takes when published - but fully and honestly content if I satisfy you from the artistic side as well as myself from the prophetic or preaching side."

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the two poems, this amounts to a loss of selfhood. We have already seen how one aspect of this idea applies to the artist who, as a prior step, dedicates himself to art. We have also seen, in another aspect, how important the idea of sympathetic involvement as a principle of high moral value is to Swinburne. Further, Swinburne, in speaking of the change from a sense of responsibility to a sense of sympathetic involvement (in the case of Lear, for his fellowsufferer, the fool, or of Hugo for the poverty-ridden, or of Tennyson's Rizpah for her son) is, of course, speaking of the loss of the self that occurs when sympathy becomes love. Of the two poems studied, it is "On the Cliffs" which has the more important commentary on love as the activating and fusing element in life and art, and it is in the D grouping and epilogue that this commentary appears. In these sections, it will be recalled, Swinburne advances the idea of the reciprocal relationship between song and love in Sappho (xiii), and stresses the poet's great love for her and his desire for grace which will permit him to dwell therein ('therein' referring to her grace ,xvi). He comments further on the force of love by his use of the Sapphic fragments, the hymns of heavenly and earthly love to Aphrodite and to Atthis which we have read as appeals of the Sapphic spirit of creative imagination to the spirit of love, divine and human, and beauty. There are appeals which Aphrodite fails to hear, either from Sappho or the poet, and which MAN DOES HEAR, men of all ages, great and minor poets - 'even Aeschylus as I'. That is to say, the human creative spirit appeals via its artistic accomplishment, song, to a divine love which is not as receptive to the appeal as is man. The love in the "Hymn to Aphrodite" is expressed through worship and beseeching, while the love in "Hymn to Atthis" is a longing song of life. These fragmentary songs of love, which Swinburne regards as perfect forms of art, approved by poets and other men of all ages, are what transform Sappho's poetic spirit to the moving soul of the poetic imagination and assure it of immortality. These hymns of heavenly and earthly love so readily comprehended by man are the responsible and resolving agents enabling Sappho to 'become' the nightingale. The epilogue restates that love, a reciprocal relation between, and a fusion of active and passive elements, is the means of attaining the transformation which is immortal. Throughout the poem there has been an emphasis on Sappho's loss of identity in the Bird-God and of the poet's longing for fusion

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with the Sapphic Bird-God. Thus Swinburne here is defining love as loss of selfhood, as a beseeching appeal to the divine love to be receptive to the human cry, and as a human longing for the earthly object of love. In the critical prose, we see these aspects of love as they refer to the artist's primary responsibility to himself as artist and to Apollo, and to his responsibility and sympathetic involvement with mankind. The successful artist-man must be 'willing to lose both selves or souls - first, his artistic soul to Apollo, and then his human or earthly self through sympathetic involvement and identification with mankind. This is the love which, with song, makes everlasting fire through strife in the heart of the nightingale. In "On the Cliffs", song and love were in reciprocal relationship until they were completely fused into eternal life. In the critical prose also, Swinburne shows a reciprocal relation resulting in fusion as the artist's imagination performs both for Apollo (thereby enabling Apollo to work through him) and for and in the world of human morality. The poet loses both selves. But, in this double loss, the poetic genius gains the unity of complete artistic accomplishment and, thus, eternal life. In this way, Swinburne's criticism expresses the poetics of fusion. The poet becomes the nightingale whose heart creates the sublime eternal fire by means of song and love, by fusing two worlds, the world of Apollo and the world of man.

V CONCLUSION

The excerpt from "Poeta Loquitur" quoted at the beginning of the discussion of "On the Cliffs" has the truth that coexists with the tongue-in-cheek-attitude common to parody, and although my thesis is, indirectly at least, dedicated to the proposition that Swinburne's thoughts are not worthless, the fact that he employs no systematic, formal construction of his philosophy or poetics makes his ideas, if not worthless, highly elusive.1 This is an unalterable fact, and to the student attempting to construct such a system, it becomes the idiosyncracy of the term 'Swinburnian' which causes so many eyebrows to be raised, sometimes in an attitude of invocation, more often in an attitude of despair. To try to place Swinburne in any particular school of philosophical thought or aesthetics is made difficult, not only by the diffusion of his ideas, but by his insistence on two worlds, a fact which must also be given serious consideration.2 Although this study must necessarily be concerned with a descriptive approach rather than with a technical philosophic or aesthetic classification, it might be stated that from the evidence here accumulated, some school of aesthetics corresponding to immanent theism (with the acknowledgement of a special definition of theism which recognizes an external and eternal generating power in the figure of Apollo) 1

"Poet3 work with imkges rather than concepts; hence an historical literary term, such as Romanticism, really belongs to the history of imagery rather than to the history of ideas in the sense of concepts or theses." See p. viii in Romanticism, Reconsidered: Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. with a Foreword by Northrop Frye (New York, 1963). 2 M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (New York, 1953) discusses the art-for-art school as an objective theory of art, pp. 27-28. Swinburne also manifests many of the characteristics of Abrams* expressive theory. See pp. 21-26. Hereafter cited as Abrams.

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would probably be the most satisfactory label, if a label for the ambivalent Swinburne is insisted upon. 3 To discuss a theory of the creative imagination, a theory of poetry, and critical principles requires t h a t certain questions on the nature of being and becoming be posed and answered. At the same time it seems more appropriate, considering both the scope and subject of this study, to circumscribe any philosophical implications and to confine them to a statement of the basic principles necessary to make Swinburne's critical pronouncements more satisfying by establishing directions behind what sometimes appears to be a criticism of taste and impression only. 4 In short, our main province is literary criticism, and our main interest is to decide whether or not there is a consistency in Swinburne's basic tenets of poetics and to define the nature of that consistency if it is present. We have seen from the poetics derived from the explications of "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" t h a t the dominating principle is one of reciprocity, a reciprocity which becomes fusion. The message of "On the Cliffs" on this point seems particularly explicit. I have also tried to indicate, in spite of the difficulties of dealing with statements broadcast over a period of some forty years, t h a t there is a corresponding emphasis on reciprocity and fusion in Swinburne's criticism, and that these must be considered basic tenets. A reconstruction and review of this theory of fusion might be seen as operating in two categories of activity: first, within the process of the creative imagination itself, t h a t is, all the powers brought into play by means of the poet's psyche 5 and the external 3 See Elver August Schroeder, "Swinburne As Thinker", unpubl. doctoral diss. (U. of Mich., 1949). Schroeder's conclusion sees Swinburne placing responsibility and value on man and his world also, but denies the transcendental element and labels Swinburne a materialistic monist. See esp., Chap. VII, pp. 269-277. Suiter labels Swinburne a transcendental humanist. 4 Frederic Taber Cooper, "Mr. Swinburne as Critic", The Forum, X L (1908), 409; Newton Arvin, "Swinburne As A Critic", SR, X X X I I (1924), 408-412; George Woodberry, Swinburne (New York, 1912), p. 114; Drinkwater, p. 178; T. E. Welby, Swinburne: A Critical Study (London, 1914), pp. 182-183 are all in general agreement with this idea. 5 B y 'psyche', I refer to all the powers and qualities such as the cognitive and intuitive, the will and memory, as opposed to the external senses. Vivante, p. 3, mentions the unity and kinship of qualities of the psyche which 'are grounded in the intrinsic nature of an original causal principle'.

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activating power, and, secondly, within the process of actual artistic construction which results in a given art form. Let us begin with the first situation. In the myths of Thalassius and of Sappho and the nightingale, Swinburne is expounding the principle of fusion through various phrases and terminology of spiritual activity. Leone Yivante, in his chapter entitled "Algernon Charles Swinburne" in the study, English Poetry, discusses the variations of this 'spirit' terminology.6 While Vivante culls several forms of the phrase 'spirit of sense' from some half dozen different poems including "On the Cliffs", whereas I have tried to give them a meaning consistently helpful in explicating the two poems under study as descriptions of the operation of the creative imagination, one general observation is made by Yivante which is relevant to my thesis: The expression 'spirit and sense' is also very frequently used, and these words, generally, are not opposed: they are meant to signify one and the same reality and indeed to integrate each other, as if each in itself were not sufficient to convey the full meaning. . . .The word [sense] is less frequently used to mean the sense-limitations, which every specified organ of sense implies. 7

As Signor Vivante points out, the meanings are not always synonymous. The point is that the phrases containing the words 'spirit', 'sense', 'soul', in their various collocations, "point out 'sense' in its deepest nature".8 In the section on "Harmony" in Chapter III of this study, we have used excerpts from Swinburne's criticism which indicate the informing power of the spirit, and have also tried to show that the spiritual harmony to which he so often refers is intricately associated with the divine fire as it operates in the Bird-God. I emphasize the point of spirituality here, in view, for instance, of Schroeder's thesis of materialistic monism. Both "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" and also the section on "Harmony" see the imagination as a kind of reciprocal or joint operation of the powers of cognition, intuition, and the will within the poet's psyche, activated and fused by a grace and spontaneity which 8

Vivante, p. 280 (21), and p. 298. T. S. Eliot in his Preface to this study says on p. ix: "While this is a philosophical work, and not a mere series of studies in poetry, the aptness of the illustrations implies that the theory throws light on the work of the poets who are called into the witness-box for it." 7 Vivante, p. 280. 8 Vivante, p. 280.

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seem, in part at least, to be bestowed from an external source. When, Swinburne seems to be saying, these powers are properly fused, when each factor loses its identity and singularity in the whole, the work of art is successful. The result which is applicable as a critical principle is the desirability of what I have referred to as 'tonal unity'. Now the division of the operation of the imagination into two categories is, of course, theoretical, as the artist cannot operate exclusively in the spiritual world, convenient as t h a t term is to refer to his total creative processes. His imagination must refer to man and his world of experience and value. As the artist constructs and creates, according to our interpretation of Swinburne on this point, there is fusion, not only of the powers which make up the psyche itself, 8 b u t also a fusion of all these powers by their symbiotic relationship with man and his world, with the materials which are being transformed, converted, and refined. Further, if the result is to be the very highest art, both powers and materials themselves lose their identity within the work, but achieve immortal and universal status in the work of art. Important to such an achievement is the artist's sympathetic involvement and love as well as the operation of the inexplicable. Hence, the singer and song, as we have seen in "Thalassius", for example, become part of the eternal and external generating force. For Swinburne, this has occurred only once, in the figure of Sappho and her poetry. Here, in the myth of the Sapphic nightingale or Bird-God, lies his symbol for pure sublimity. In reality, such pure and total sublimity could not occur, although in Shakespeare earthly sublimity, if we may be permitted to use such a paradoxical term, is evident, and has reached its highest possible fulfillment in the greatest number of successful artistic accomplishments. Other candidates mentioned throughout the critical prose are, in the English roster, Milton, Shelley, Coleridge, and Marlowe, but they of course fall short of Shakespeare in degree and amount. Pindar, Aeschylus, Dante, and Hugo would be foreign representatives. 9 See Maritain, p. 108, for his diagram of the eoul which relates all the functions of the intellect, imagination, and external senses (represented by the three superimposed cones) to the soul. Maritain, p. 109, speaks of the 'immense dynamism emanating from the very center of the Soul'. I include these descriptions of the soul merely because of their relevance to what Swinburne was trying to express.

CONCLUSION

Along with the notion of fusion, Swinburne also assumes that values exist in man and his world, values based on freedom, a point made, of the two poems studied, more strongly in "Thalassius", and in the prose, forcefully made in the Blake essay (through the argument on the primary importance of art) and articulated emphatically again in the study of L'Année Terrible. These values, based on freedom, are increased for the artist, moreover, by a sense of involvement, responsibility, and a sympathy for other human beings, a sympathy leading to the love which is a loss of self-identity. The resulting critical principle, seen in its extreme form, is the desirability of poets as redeemers or acknowledged 'legislators of the world', a notion which we have seen to be consistent in Swinburne's theory of poetry, yet one which is also compatible with the so-called emphasis on art-for-art of the 1860's. Of the prose illustrations which I have used on these points in the preceding chapters, I have stated that the central one is the 1884 essay entitled "Wordsworth and Byron". I further regard this essay of nearly one hundred pages in the Bonchurch Edition as the best source, in his prose, of Swinburne's poetic theory in spite of the fact that it is presented in an unorganized and fragmentary manner. Therefore this essay seems to deserve special attention. The occasion of its being written was, of course, the indignation aroused in Swinburne by the two essays, "Wordsworth", and "Byron", written by Matthew Arnold some four or five years earlier.10 More specifically, Swinburne's indignation was aroused by the concluding paragraph of Arnold's "Byron" in which he rated Wordsworth and Byron higher than Keats, and what was particularly irritating to Swinburne, higher than Coleridge and Shelley, as producers of enduring poetry. It was in the interest of vindicating Shelley, whom Arnold had referred to as an 'ineffectual angel' (because of subject matter inadequate to a 'criticism of life'), that caused Swinburne to construct a point-by-point refutation. Swinburne's essay (XIV, 155-244) may be considered to be divided into three parts: (1) the introductory commentary separating the principle that poetry is a criticism of life from the principle that poetry is best definable by the presence of imagination and harmony, a topic already analyzed in this paper; (2) the section 10

Matthew Arnold, Essaya in Criticism, pp. 122-204. Hereafter cited as Arnold.

Second Series (London, 1898),

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on Byron; and (3) the discussion on Wordsworth. The vindication of Shelley is the cohering factor between the second and third parts. Perhaps the most important idea in the section on Byron is Swinburne's recognition that he and Arnold are in agreement on the idea that whatever is superior in Byron is due to his strength and sincerity of personality, a point which, as Arnold graciously acknowledged, had been made by Swinburne in his 1866 essay, "Byron". 11 What seems to be irritating Swinburne in Arnold's remarks is not so much a basic difference in critical and poetic theory as it is the question of the order of precedence to be followed in erecting a hierarchy of poets.12 It is, however, in Swinburne's answer to Arnold in the evaluation of Wordsworth that we may most profitably observe his poetics and critical principles. Here may be found much of the terminology whose definitions and explanations have been concerning us. Let us see how some of them operate in the context of a critical essay. Swinburne discusses the spiritual nature of poetry, transfusion, suffering, pathos and sympathetic involvement, morality, harmony, spontaneity, sublimity, sincerity, inspiration (in the sense of a converting and transforming power), and the inexplicable.13 At the beginning of this section on Wordsworth, Swinburne reminds Arnold that Shelley owed a spiritual debt to the older poet, and then he asks how Arnold could make the error of thinking that Wordsworth's lines on a skylark were equal to or superior to Shelley's ctransfusion from notes into words of the spirit of the skylark's song'. In the passages in which he addresses himself to Sir Henry Taylor, Swinburne points out that Wordsworth fails when he tries to depict the DEPTHS of human suffering (equated as sympathetic understanding of action and passion) as he did in The Borderers. Somewhat later, he indicates Tennyson's greater power of depicting suffering and sympathy with suffering by contrasting The Affliction of Margaret with Rizpah. But, further along in the discussion, Swinburne speaks of Wordsworth's 'sublimity of tenderness' as being a sympathy not connected with great action and passion, but one directed toward daily domestic matters. This topic has already been discussed in the two preceding chapters. Swinburne's argument actually leads him to conclude by speaking very highly of Wordsworth. The real disagreement is on Byron's precedence. 13 Swinburne uses the words 'passion' and 'pathos' most often with the root idea of suffering. 11

12

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Wordsworth possesses the sense of sympathetic involvement, b u t possesses it to a lesser degree; hence the implication t h a t he is less sublime. Swinburne also strikes a t Arnold because he criticized Shelley for his 'uncertain hold on moral fact' by calling attention to Shelley's Prometheus, composed a t the same age as Wordsworth's 'morbid and monstrous work'. He has high praise for the first nine stanzas of t h e Ode on Intimations of Immortality for their law of harmony. Shortly thereafter, he commends Wordsworth for his sincerity a n d simplicity which may be regarded as related to his sense of pathos. The passages on inspiration are interesting because of the importance attached to JOY.14 I n both his essays, Arnold makes the emotion of joy, more particularly t h e joy offered to us in nature, a force, possibly THE source of inspiration for Wordsworth. 1 5 Swinburne, however, makes meditation and s y m p a t h y in small matters (XIV, 226), 16 or a special tenderness as well as his sense of patriotism and freedom (XIV, 237), the source of Wordsworth's transforming power of inspiration, although he also recognized t h a t the joyful insight giving birth to his eloquence was one 'of fancy-fed b u t fervent loyalty to nature', and t h a t Wordsworth possessed a style 'whose a r t itself is nature' (XIV, 223). I n other words, Swinburne regards t h e emotion of joy as one of Wordsworth's distinguishing powers if he does not give it t h e importance t h a t Arnold does. He, as indicated previously, agrees with Arnold t h a t Wordsworth should be admired for his poetry rather t h a n for his philosophy (XIV, 212). Finally, in comparing Wordsworth with Chaucer in breadth of h u m a n interest, Swinburne states t h a t Wordsworth is more sublime b y force of his majestic harmony, achieved by 'inexplicable intuition' as well as b y bis spontaneity, or, as Swinburne modifies it, his 'seeming spontaneity' (XIV, 239-240). The essay concludes by lauding Wordsworth for being a spiritual poet, for his singular intensity, refinement, and inspired perception: to breathe, in Shakespeare's audaciously subtle and successful phrase, the very 'spirit of sense' itself, to transcend at once the sensuous and the 14

It seems appropriate at this point to mention the 'beautymaking power' of joy in Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode". 15 Arnold, pp. 163-164. 16 Swinburne says of Wordsworth, "as the poet of suffering, and of sympathy with suffering, his station is unequalled in its kind" (XIV, 219).

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meditative elements of poetry, and to fuse their highest, their keenest, their most inward and intimate effects, in such verse as utters what none before could utter, and renders into likeness of form and sound such truths of inspired perception, such raptures of divine surprise, as no poet of nature m a y think to render again. (XIV, 242-243)

As his parting shot, Swinburne places Wordsworth only a little lower than the authors of the Ode to the West Wind and Christabel. The entire essay, although focused on art which falls short of the highest, is an important statement of the spiritual principles of reciprocity and fusion as they operate in producing unity and harmony and, more evidently, as they operate between the artist and mankind when the artist projects himself by sympathy and pathos into objects of his art or, in the case of human beings, into the lives of his subjects. In this way the essay is not a denial, but a ringing affirmation of the pragmatic principle which Swinburne had accepted, that is, the principle of poetry as a 'criticism of life' in the beginning of the essay when he so strongly objected to its confusion with the theoretical sine qua non of poetry, the presence of imagination and harmony. Moreo ver, this emphasis on the criteria of sympathetic involvement and the identification of the self in the object which is the process of fusion lies at the center of Romanticism, and may be construed, in Swinburne's case, as the impelling force to his interpretation of Lear as a great sociological drama and to his approval for the reforming powers of Charles Dickens. We have mentioned the agreement between Arnold and Swinburne in these two essays. Specifically, they agree on such points as strength and sincerity of personality, the power of joy in poetic inspiration, the desirability of natural style, and the insistence of absence of conscious didactic effort as aids in the 'criticism of life'.17 We are now, perhaps, ready to conclude by asking two questions. Where does this discussion of Swinburne's poetics and basic critical principles lead us in trying to indicate his position in English criticism, or, more specifically, in English Romantic criticism? Does this discussion, moreover, aid us in trying to evaluate his status as an enduring critic?

17

Arnold and Swinburne also agree on the importance of inevitability. See Arnold, p. 155: "But Wordsworth's poetry, when he is at his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as Nature herself."

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Much attention has been paid to Swinburne's role in critical impressionism. The fact that I am concerned with his basic critical tenets is, of course, an admission or belief on my part that he has standards. Cecil Y. Lang, in his introduction to the recent edition of The Swinburne Letters says: Despite learned discussions pointing out the error, the idea prevails that Swinburne was an "impressionistic" critic of literature (as he was of art) or an "aesthetic" critic, as he seemed to be initially. B u t no poet who praised Hugo, Shelley, and Aeschylus as Swinburne praised them could have been an "aesthetic" critic, and no critic who applied standards as consistently as he applied them could have been an impressionist. 18

Swinburne's influence on Pater and Wilde and his connection with the French aesthetic movement has received extensive treatment during the last thirty years.19 One of the most thorough of these is that of George McEwen who, as it will be seen from such labels as "Swinburne, Liberal Conservative", the title of his fifth chapter of his unpublished dissertation, "The Emergence of Critical Impressionism in England", or from his placement of Swinburne as both judicial and eulogistic, or both an authoritative and subjective appreciator, has also had to face the problem of consistency within Swinburne's ambivalences. Swinburne's influence on this movement cannot be denied; but whether it is to be regarded as more noticeably present in the sense of 'aesthetic', as Lang uses the term, or, whether this influence may be seen more prominently in, for instance, such a sentence as the concluding one of Pater's essay on "Style" which emphasizes the ennobling and fortifying quality of art might be regarded as merely two ways of indicating the complexity of this problem. It seems more profitable, then, in view of the studies already made, and, more relevant, in view of the general argument of this study, for us to concern ourselves with understanding as precisely 18

Lang, I, xvii. Some well-known studies are George Saintsbury, "Charles Baudelaire", The Fortnightly Review, X X I V (Oct. 1875), 600-518; G. Turquet-Milnes, The Influence of Baudelaire in France and England (London, 1913), p. 222; L. Rosenblatt; Albert Farmer, Le Mouvement esthétique et "decadent" en Angleterre (1873-1900) (Paris, 1931); Dorothy Richardson, "Saintsbury and Art for Art's Sake in England" PMLA, L I X (1944), 243-260; James K . Robinson, "A Neglected Phase of the Aesthetic Movement: English Parnassianism", PMLA, L X V I I I (1953), 733-754. 18

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aa possible Swinburne's position as a Romantic. To do so requires some attention, first of all, to Coleridge, and to his comments on poetry and the imagination. It should, however, be noted that there is no evidence in any overt statement by Swinburne that he was influenced by Coleridge's theories. In the essay on "Coleridge" (1869), we have proof that he had at least read, if not understood, Coleridge's philosophy and criticism: What grains of truth or seeds of error were borne this way or that on the perpetual tide of talk concerning 'subject and object', 'reason and understanding', those who can or who care may at their leisure determine with the due precision. If to the man's critical and philosophic faculty there had been added a formative power as perfect as was added to his poetic faculty, the fruit might possibly have been wellnigh as precious after its kind. (XV, 153)

And then, Swinburne goes on to say, we must judge Coleridge by what is suggested rather than by what is accomplished and the value of what is suggested is "so great indeed that we cannot weigh or measure its influence and its work" (XV, 153). Years later in a letter to Gosse, dated Feb. 12, 1894, Swinburne writes: The book [Hazlitt's Conversations with Northcote] reminds one of their [Goethe and Coleridge] Conversations in its amazing seesaw of alternative sense and nonsense, brilliant truth and drivelling error.80

But the fact remains that we are reminded of Coleridge at several points as we have been articulating Swinburne's poetics.21 The concepts at the end of Chapter XIV of Biographia Literaria of the harmonious whole or what is elsewhere referred to as 'unity in multeity'22 or what I have referred to in this study as 'tonal unity', the notion of the poetic function operating by bringing 'the whole soul of man into activity', and the notion of fusion as seen in: so

Lang, VI, 65. Connolly thinks there is a distinct resemblance, although not conscious on the part of Swinburne, between Swinburne's and Coleridge's concepts of the imagination. See pp. 69 and 60. a Wellek says that Coleridge's 'unity in multeity' may have several meanings: " 'tone and spirit of unity' " (this is parallel to what I refer to as 'tonal unity'), " "some one predominant thought or feeling' " (I refer to this as 'unity of singularity'), or " 'unity of interest' ". See Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1760-1960, II (New Haven, 1950), 170. Hereafter cited as Wellek. 81

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He [the poet] diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination. 23

as well as the importance of the will and understanding and the idea of reconciliation of opposites, seem closely related to, and, at times, parallel to these ideas as we have seen them expressed in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" and in the several selections cited from Swinburne's prose. René Wellek's comment on Coleridge's idea of the poet and his poetry also seems parallel with the line in "Thalassius", 'being now no more a singer, but a song', and with the identification of the nightingale with her song in "On the Cliffs", xxiv. This is Wellek's comment on Coleridge: Sometimes he wants to reduce the problem of defining poetry to that of describing the poet. He says that "the most general and distinctive character of a poem originates in the poetio genius itself" and that a just definition of poetry is possible "only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid representations of a poem by the energy without effort of the poet's own mind." 24 We would thus abolish the distinction between psychic processes and capacities and the finished product. 25

In addition to the foregoing resemblances between Swinburne and Coleridge, there must also be considered the role of JOY as an activating power as we have noted it in Coleridge, Arnold, and Swinburne. Certainly, Swinburne seems to be thinking along lines similar to those of Coleridge, but we cannot be sure whether he is doing so consciously or unconsciously. One basic difference between them would be the absence in Swinburne of the Platonic structure of reality, although there are times, in his use of the figure of the sun for example, in the two poems studied, when there are suggestions of Platonism or Neoplatonism. As we continue this examination of Swinburne's Romanticism, we may, perhaps, be aided by Hoxie Fairchild's definition of this term: Romanticism is the endeavor, in the face of growing factual obstaoles, to achieve, to retain, or to justify that illusioned view of the universe and of 23 S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, II, ed. J. Shawcross (London, 1907), 12. u Wellek, 165. 15 But Wellek points out here that Coleridge "does in other places discuss the differentia of poetry without the poet".

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human life wieh is produced by an imaginative fusion of the familiar and the strange, the known and the unknown, the real and the ideal, the finite and the infinite, the material and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural. 28

The 'imaginative fusion' is an accurate description of Swinburne's view of the poet as he stands 'among the nightingales'. Such a definition suggests both the mysterious ideas of transcendence and immanence that we see in the Sapphic Bird-God and in the Thalassius-Apollo relationships, and in the operation of the inexplicable and inexpressible in the prose. Further, Fairchild's 'growing factual obstacles' may anticipate the situation which will be described subsequently as we look at the theories of Romanticism constructed by Morse Peckham and Robert Langbaum. But from the external and eternal generating force, this plenitude and vast potential, Swinburne, in "Thalassius" and "On the Cliffs" assigns no values other than such general powers as love, motion, immortality. Even the 'high songs' which Thalassius learns from his earthly father contain much wisdom from the ancient, classical world of western civilization. Similarly, although the inexplicable and inexpressible associated with divinity in the critical prose accounts for the ultimate greatness of a given work of art, and is therefore to be regarded as a source of value as well as power, Swinburne, through his ideas of the poet's sympathetic involvement with man and his world, is looking far more closely towards the actual world for value. Leone Vivante, although speaking particularly of "Tristram of Lyonesse", says: Swinburne's idea of value as immanent - neither utilitarian, nor conventional, nor transcendental, nor abstractly inferred, but intimately known is expressed all through his poems, but in 'Tristram of Lyonesse' most happily, ex abundantia cordis.2''

The point at which I would differ would be at the word 'transcendental', since, as I have explained, a generating external power would have to be considered as having ultimate value. Yet this is not the source of Swinburne's more immediate values. A brief discussion of the important term JOY may illustrate my point here. Tristram's joy, for instance, as Vivante sees it, is immanent, and Hoxie Neale Fairchild, The Romantic Quest (Philadelphia, 1931), p. 251. Vivante, p. 265. Yet we cannot ignore the utilitarian value of political freedom in Swinburne. Possibly 'utilitarian' needs defining, or maybe there is a translation problem. 27

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there is a full realization of value in the fleeting moment.28 Vivante also sees joy as preeminently a cause, as an activating force in Swinburne's poetics.29 It is thus interesting to compare this renewing and activating joy of Vivante's with the 'faithful and joyful insight.. . . of fancy-fed but fervent loyalty to nature' we have quoted from Swinburne's essay on "Wordsworth and Byron". This quotation refers to a line in The Excursion which "revives in our memory the vibration of its music, the illumination of its truth" (XIV, 222). The last lines in vii of "Thalassius" use the word in this context of renewal: The marriage-song of heather-flower and broom And all the joy thereof.

In xxv of "On the Cliffs", joy is the song of power of the nightingale: In thy strong rapture of imperious joy Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy.

This power and joy far exceeds that of the sea-mews. In short, in JOY we seem to have another name for the activating power in the creative imagination, but Swinburne, in the examples I have quoted, also affirms a transcendental power to joy if we see, as we must in this context at least, the nightingale land-based but a Bird-God, possessing the song lacking to the sea-mews. Her very location on land where, says the poet, we may experience love, change, wrath, and wrong suggests the actualization which the sea-mews may attempt to emulate. At the same time there is no question as to the superiority of her potential any more than there is of her performance. Again, Swinburne is insisting on both worlds, the transcendental and immanent, the potential and the actual, although one cannot help feel that Swinburne would agree with a later poet who, in designating earth as the right place for love, does not hesitate to view our planet as peculiarly adapted to yield up values to man. If we then regard Swinburne as stressing values originating from man and the artist-man, we may also see him approaching the views of Morse Peckham and Robert Langbaum who argue for a 88 19

Vivante, p. 266. Vivante, p. 265 (4).

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concept of Romanticism which affirms a perpetual renewing principle in the poet's power to create value and assert identity. These concepts in which Peckham and Langbaum seem to be in basic agreement have been evolved with the aid of previous studies. I am therefore drawing on the concise presentation of these concepts as they have appeared in Peckham's article in Studies in Romanticism?0 which, in turn, is a reconsideration of an earlier PMLA article on the same topic, 31 as well as on Robert Langbaum's brief but helpful Introduction entitled "Romanticism as a Modern Tradition" in his book, The Poetry of Experience.32 These two discussions seem to offer a convenient synthesis of the development and definition of a Romanticism based on man's experience as a source of value. Starting with the last two or three chapters of A. 0 . Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being, Peckham constructs and reconstructs his theory somewhat as follows. At the end of the eighteenth century, so the theory goes, the order identified with the Christian medieval and Platonic or Neo-Platonic Renaissance 'myths' which had been sustained because of the efficacy of their solutions accounting for the disparity between 'perfect orientation and the world as we experience it' were exchanged for a new orientation. The new orientation, says Peckham, drawing on results described in Marjorie Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: the Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite and Ernest Tuveson's The Imagination as a Means of Grace: Locke and. the Aesthetics of Romanticism,33 rejected the idea of this as a fallen or shadowy Platonic world and substituted the idea of order and value in the perceived world and so regarded man as part of that order. But the difficulties involved in identifying nature with order and value were insur-

80 Morse Peckham, "Toward a Theory of Romanticism: II. Reconsiderations", Studies in Romanticism, I (Autumn 1961), 1-8. Hereafter cited as Peckham. 31 Morse Peckham, "Toward a Theory of Romanticism", PMLA, LXVI (1951), 6-23. The theory is also incorporated in Peckham's book, Beyond the Tragic Vision (New York, 1962). 82 Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience (London, 1957), pp. 9-37. Hereafter cited as Langbaum. 83 Peckham, 3. Both Langbaum and Peckham also refer to Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century by George Mead. See Peckham, 5, and Langbaum, p. 25.

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mountable, and the Negative Romantic stage, 34 which denied the existence of value and order in the world, emerged. In this negative stage, there is both 'social' and 'cosmic' isolation, and as a necessary step at reconstituting value, the invention of the self or what may also be referred to as the sense of identity had to be conceptualized. Peckham sees the role of the self as one projecting order and value on the world. "To be sure", he says, "for a time, and for some, the self was seen as the portal of the divine, a mythological symbolization for the sense of value". This he calls the 'transcendental stage of Romanticism'. 35 Later this stage gave way to the nonmetaphysical realization of the self as the creator of value. Order and value are then seen to arise from the perception of the self instead of externally. Robert Langbaum, in the Introduction referred to, sketches a theory of the development of Romanticism which follows the general argument outlined above. Both Peckham and Langbaum, and, it seems to me, also Vivante with his notion of the original causal principle as spiritual, INTRINSIC, and eternal,36 are concerned with the role of the self in the creation of values. Langbaum, however, stresses the fact that the Romanticist in his projection is AWARE of playing his role, and in this awareness he is distinct from the external world.37 By giving himself in a Faustian way to each object, says Langbaum, the Romanticist through his own experience discovers value; or since he discovers values because he has himself put the values there, we might call this a recognition, a recognition of what, says Langbaum, he has "known potentially all along in himself".38 If I interpret Langbaum correctly, he sees in Romanticism a kind of perpetual and eternal renewing power in the self, a power which enables the romanticist to create his own values in each succeeding age; hence the term poetry of EXPERIENCE. 39

How, then, may we see Swinburne approaching this pyramid of theories which supports an extreme subjectivity as its apex? 34

Langbaum gives the usual examples of Wordsworth, Mill, and Carlyle (Teufelsdrokh) to illustrate the phase of Negative Romanticism. 35 Peckham, 5. 36 Vivante, p. 333. Vivante italicizes eternal. I have emphasized INTRINSIC as it seems the important point of difference in Swinburne's concept. 37 Langbaum, p. 25. 38 Langbaum, p. 26. 39 Langbaum, pp. 28-37.

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If we follow Thalassius through all his experiences to the point in xix where he 'set his eyes to seaward' (Langbaum's awareness), we shall have a kind of parallel with the Negative Romantic stage. As he recovers after the sleep and purging on the grey sea-banks, we may easily read the assertion of identity which I have referred to in Chapter II as self-recognition. In the concluding passage of "On the Cliffs", and especially where the poet speaks of knowing song and its secrets, powers, blessings, and curses, "I know them since my spirit had first in sight", we have the kind of recognition which Langbaum refers to as that which he had 'known potentially all along in himself*. The loss of self, the efforts of Thalassius to become song and the efforts of the poet to become Sappho and the Bird-God,40 and the whole notion of the triune spirit of the Sapphic-Bird-God could be read as attempts to structure value from the self into the object. They could EXCEPT for Swinburne's assumption of Apollo as the external and eternal generating power. Swinburne at times approaches the apex of this pyramid of subjectivity, but he comes no closer than Peckham's 'transcendental stage of Romanticism' where 'the self is seen as the portal of the divine', a position which helps us in accounting for the paradoxical nature of the triune-spirited Sapphic Bird-God, and which also helps us in seeing the root of his apparent ambiguities in the criticism. Value is determined for the artist by his imagination which is activated by an external generating power, and hence the artist 40

Swinburne resolves the paradox, or tries to, by fusion. He insists, however, in the trinity in "On the Cliffs". Sappho is manlike, maiden, godlike; in places she is human poetess, the lyric spirit or nightingale, and at the same time identifiable with Apollo or divine song. Sappho seems to have accomplished a perfect fusion with divinity, yet she is a 'soul triune'. Similarly, Thalassius becomes song and his father's spirit pierces him, yet he also seems to retain his earlier identity. Swinburne may be on the way to finding value and order as projected on the world by the self. (See Peckham, 6). If so, the divinity is such a projection. It seems to me, however, that Swinburne is relying on fusion with an external force and the result is that identity is both destroyed and preserved. I think his concept of divinity is not a self-projection of Thalassius since the ideas of receptivity, separation, and humility are stressed in the epilogue of that poem, and, for the reasons given in the section on the "Artist and Divinity", I would place him within Fairchild's definition stressing fusion rather than in Vivante's structure which, in speaking of the 'original causal principle', makes 'original' mean arising in the psyche. However, he seems to fit even better, as I indicate, into Peckham's 'transcendental stage of Romanticism'.

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recognizes his duty to art first of all; but there are also other values which, for him as man rather than artist, must be determined and must originate in man's needs on earth.41 In his theory of art, at least, Swinburne has not given way completely to the 'nonmetaphysical realization of the self as the creator of value',42 although he may well be on the way of doing so. The nightingale has a vast potential, part of which is inexpressible and inexplicable. Thus, it seems, we may infer an explanation of Swinburne's two worlds. He is a true transitional figure approaching the Romanticism of Vivante's self-activity, Langbaum's poetry of experience, and Peckham's subjective escape into reality, but he never quite replaces Apollo with Psyche. Swinburne's nightingale may build her nest near the ground and may occasionally peer into the waters of a reflecting pool, but she pours forth her imperious song from a sun-warmed elevation 'On the Cliffs'. Or, to employ another, more prosaic favorite of Swinburne's symbols, we might summarize his poetics by observing that the fusion which is beauty must be accomplished in an earthen crucible embedded in the live coals of Apollo's fire. Thus, in his theory of art, we may see Swinburne's more precise position as a Romantic. The remaining question concerns his status as an enduring critic. The first requisite is a recognition of the fact that Swinburne's expansive prose style with its various additive and repetitive elements and its element of assumption deserves a reading which will regard these elements as attempts at refinement of meaning and articulation of the inexpressible rather than as wasteful. Admittedly patience and endurance will be required. Swinburne addressed his critical remarks within four major fields of literature. These consist of the work on Blake, the studies of the French, particularly Hugo, the criticism of the Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatists,43 including Shakespeare, and that on a group of early and later nineteenth41 I am not equating values determined by man's needs on earth or values created by man with the utilitarian, but rather am drawing a line between the actual and potential, the practical and theoretical (which gives ultimate value or at least a description of that value). Utilitarian in its more physical meaning would, of course, be included in the actual and practical. 42 See Peckham, 5, for this phrase. 43 His criticism on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama is negligible-

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century poets and novelists whom we may conveniently designate simply as Romantics. Unfortunately, his comments on the Greek dramatists are so fragmentary and eulogistic (or vituperative, as on Euripides) that their value is greatly diminished. Much of the work on Hugo is also so eulogistic that it probably cannot merit the sustained attention of the serious student of Hugo, although it probably remains a body of criticism which such a student cannot afford to ignore, and it does contain, as we have seen, important principles of Swinburne's poetic and critical theory.44 The work on Blake has for some time been viewed valuable only as that of a pioneering effort,45 and its importance has, in the light of later investigations and interpretations, receded. Even so, the fact that Swinburne was such a pioneer is enough to make one pause. Further, a similar fate has been or is operating in his studies on the Elizabethan-Jacobean dramatists, Swinburne's literary companions from boyhood.46 We have noted that T. S. Eliot's objection to this body of dramatic criticism is based on Swinburne's lack of analysis.47 Another objection often cited is that he failed to discriminate and so wasted his time on the more obscure writers and that he was too disposed to assume his audience was as intimately acquainted as he with some of these obscure writers and their even more obscure and complicated plots.48 Whether or not these objections are true (we are, of course, still confronted with the more considerable studies of Ford, Chapman, Webster, 44 R u t h Z. Temple, The Critic's Alchemy (New York, 1963), regards Swinburne as a leader in the aesthetic movement, notes his critical appreciation of French poets, and commends him, p. 87, for doing full justice to Baudelaire's Les Fleura du mal. 45 Lang, I, xviii says: "He rescued Blake. The work o n Blake is on the whole dated, but its historical importance can scarcely be overestimated." 46 The student of Swinburne cannot help being impressed with the image of the young Etonian reading "Dodsley's Great Old Plays" together with Lamb's and Campbell's Specimens and with his composition of The Unhappy Revenge. See Lafourcade, A Literary Biography, p. 36 and p. 39. 47 Eliot, p. 18. 48 Chew, p. 252, for example, says he "failed because his critiques are comprehensible only to those who have already read the plays which he discusses". Welby, A Study of Swinburne, p. 219, praises him for reinstating Yarrington and Mayne ! Nicolson, p. 187, referring to the Jacobean criticism, says: "Taken by themselves and on the ground that they were composed by a scholar for specialists, these essays and monographs, particularly those which date from the earlier period, are admirably conceived."

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and Ben Jonson), the paucity of criticism, until fairly recently, has compelled the student of this period to turn to Swinburne. In the light of all this and in spite of the support of Eliot who reminds us of the accuracy of Swinburne's judgment of the Jacobeans, it is difficult to see Swinburne continuing to play a leading role in the critical thought on these dramatists. And, in the light of the Shakespearian scholarship of the past fifty years, the same comment is probably applicable, although somewhat less so.49 The Romantics, then, remain. Are we going to assess Swinburne mainly on the basis of what he said about Byron and Wordsworth, Shelley and Coleridge, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, and Dante Rossetti, and, in the novel, on Dickens, the Brontes, Reade, and Collins? It would perhaps not be wrong to do so. We have already seen his position on the first four names on the above list. Time, so far, has been on the side of Swinburne in this quarrel with Arnold.50 And, the general decree of fashion seems, at the moment, at least, to have voted with Swinburne on Tennyson's treatment of the Arthurian legend.51 He was aware, also, of the significance of Arnold's "Empedocles on Etna", the source of its strength and weakness, a poem which has been seen to deserve continuing attention. He early recognized Browning's power as creator of dramatic monologues, and Rossetti's as transmitter of the ballad in its artistic form. In the article on Dickens, we can quickly appreciate Swinburne's insight on such a minor matter as his observation of the importance of the role of the river in 'more than a few of his books' (XIV, 64).52 " For proof that Swinburne is still a Shakespearian critic who is regarded with respect, see Langbaum's discussion of Iago, pp. 163-168. so That is, in placing Shelley, Coleridge, and Wordsworth above Byron. 51 Walter Houghton and G. Robert Stange, Victorian Poetry and Poetics (Boston, 1959), p. 8, say of the Idylls: "They are too mixed a work of art, too adulterated by transient styles and the veneer of false taste to achieve the grandeur of genuine literary epic." See Jerome Hamilton Buckley, Tennyson, The Growth of a Poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), who frequently refers in his notes to Swinburne's remarks on Tennyson. Also Edgar Finly Shannon, Jr., Tennyson and the Reviewers (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 92 and F. L. Lucas, "Writers and Their Work", Tennyson (London, 1957), p. 28. 58 Monroe Engel, The Maturity of Charles Dickens (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), p. 138, speaks of the importance of the river in Dickens' novels, its connection with social anarchy and death, and notes that Swinburne called it the real protagonist of Our Mutual Friend.

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However none of these suggestions, general or specific, would, I submit, justify much more than an historical interest in Swinburne as critic, and such a statement is not to be considered a denial of the importance of historical interest. Rather, my point is that any enduring value of Swinburne as a critic will have to rest not only on the accuracy of his judgments (and we must never forget how high a score he made), but will also have to take into account his theory of art and poetry, of the 'why' found in his affirmation of morality and the 'how' found in the principle of fusion, which is the basis of those judgments. We should continue, especially in his work on the Romantics, to look at Swinburne's specific remarks, positive and negative, but it is far more important to see him upholding principles of an aesthetic resting on the foundations of unity, harmony, and morality as they have been defined in the preceding chapters, to see him as a critic who has that indispensable appreciation of the complexity of life and art and of their reciprocal relationship, an appreciation which denies the separation between the theoretical and practical, between the potential and the actual. It is important to see him as one who insists on dealing "with a poem qua poem"53 It is important to see him as one who insists on viewing it as a means of communication among men of all ages. Swinburne sees the artistman capable of creating values, but he also sees him as a creature recognizing an indestructible power and a value external to his own psyche, or possibly, even as a creature who recognizes his own psyche as similar but subordinate to an eternal creative principle. We should note Swinburne's preference for 'tonal unity' over the unity of singularity, yet we should also appreciate, as he does, the heights to which a work of art resting on the unity of singularity can rise. We should also regard Swinburne's insistence that we judge art by artistic standards first, that we see its source of beauty as well as seeing it as an example of beauty, a beauty which, for him, is a perfect blending, a fusion, of the vision and imagination of the artist with both the material and abstract values of mankind. Swinburne endorses the principles of freedom, political, personal, and artistic - the unlimited province of the artist as a basis for him to express his conception of beauty. Swinburne, the critic, aids and guides us, often with the 'touchstone' method, in observing and recognizing the spontaneity, the 'authenticity', and M

The phrase will be found in Abrams, p. 28.

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perhaps most important of all, the spiritual nature accompanying the highest expressions of poetry. In brief, he tells us in prose and in poetry that Thalassius must 'commune with his own heart' BEFORE he can know 'His father's hand, hallowing his humbled head'. He tells us again and again that the nightingale, through love and song, in her manlike maiden's godlike note creates and also partakes of the 'fire everlasting of eternal life', a fire never entirely explicable.

APPENDIX

"THE NIGHTINGALE"*

Thro' the thick throbbings of her trembling throat, Half stifled with its music, struggling gush'd The torrent-tide of song, then free burst out And in a tempest whirl of melody rush'd Thro' the stirred boughs. The young leaves on the trees Flutter'd, as in a storm, to that harmonious breeze. It floated now serenely, sweet of breath, As with full conscious beauty now content, Now shivered into dim delicious death, Dash'd down a precipice of music, rent By the mad stream of song; whirl'd, shook, rang out, spoke, Stunning the charmed night with long melodies, Then in a thousand gurgling eddies flew Of whirlwind sweetness, lost in its own sound, As eddying winds of autumn when they blew, Caught the sere leaves and hurried round and round, So her rich notes tumultuous panted she, Then into fitful peace dropt down harmoniously. * Lafourcade inserts this quotation: Since t h y first Lesbian word Flamed on me, and I knew not whence I knew This was the song that struck m y whole soul through, Pierced m y keen spirit of sense with edge more keen, E v e n when I knew not, - even ere sooth were seen, When thou wast but the tawny sweet-winged thing Whose cry was but of spring.' ("On the Cliffs" [composed 1879] Songs of the Springtides)

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H a r k ! now they storm again and whirl along Swift passion; strange, passion should be so sweet! What stings thee madly into sudden song, O nightingale ? What joy or grief is meet To father such delight ? Some say for ever Thy wild strain blindly maddens down grief's passion-river: Others, that with fierce joy intoxicate Thou variest in sweet labyrinthine maze A wild delight of thy rich woodland state Alone among green leaves, where softly plays Thy trembling wooer, Zephyr; whatso'er No grief or joy of ours was ever yet so fair. Never but once did mortal fire of passion Such a fierce sweetness thrill, when she who died Whirl'd by a storm of love and indignation From dusk Leucadia's rock, her poet pride Mastering wild love, rung out her burning song To Lemnos' shades and seas, her laurell'd troop among. Never was sorrow half so full of joy, Never was joy so like her sister sorrow; Yet twins they are, and to the nearing eye Alike inseparable, so one doth borrow The other's eyes to look more beautiful, And both with mingled voice thy cup of song make full. Sing on! thou singest as in early times To Thracian forests in the accursed shade; Sing on: thou singest as of early crimes . . .

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