A poetics of piety

I just came across an old lecture I gave on Christina Rossetti and found, besides this lovely sketch of her in coloured chalks by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, this quote from Virginia Woolf, penned in 1918:

“…if I were bringing a case against God she is one of the first witnesses I should call…First she starved herself of love, which meant also life; then of poetry in deference to what she thought her religion demanded…Poetry was castrated too.  She would set herself to do the psalms into verse; & to make all her poetry subservient to the Christian doctrines.  Consequently, as I think, she starved into emaciation a very fine original gift, which only wanted licence to take to itself a far finer form than, shall we say, Mrs [Elizabeth Barrett] Browning’s …She has the natural singing power.  She thinks, too. She has fancy. She could, one is profane enough to guess, have been ribald & witty. And, as a reward for all her sacrifices, she died in terror, uncertain of salvation.”

I agree that often religious asceticism is at odds with creativity, but I don't think anyone could look at the canon of religious poetry in English, least of all at Rossetti's contribution, and conclude that religion had stifled the poetic imagination. Making poetry subservient to Christian doctrines may in some cases have produced some God awful poems, but I think in far more cases it has been a fusion or collision out of which has erupted great beauty. Some of the best English poetry has been hurled from the sheer cliff faces of religious faith, or whispered from the darkest corners of self-sacrifice. The tension in Rossetti, as in many others, between discipline and effusion, between revelation and imagination, is the magnetic force that draws us, century by century, back to the poets that forsake licence for the sake of piety.

Enshaded in forgetfulness divine

Of course this week's Friday poem has to be Keats, and though I like his early poem “Sleep and Poetry,” I prefer this late sonnet “To Sleep.” His ode to the nightingale famously ends with a question that shades all his work: “Do I wake or sleep?” I love that twilit dream-state he evokes so beautifully, especially with unreal words like ‘embowered’ and ‘enshaded.’ (I remember with what ecstasy I first found ‘emparadised’ in Donne). I like his inversion of dark and light: light is harsh and relentless, soothed by the gentle dark. 

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the 'Amen,' ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes, -
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

Fireworks and falling stars

 “Knowing within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public. What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished...[It] may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English literature.” So wrote Keats in the preface to Endymion, published in 1818.  So might Jane Campion have prefaced her film.

Physically, it is beautiful, particularly the photography of fabric, paper, flowers, butterflies, and luminous interiors.  But as an accomplished deed, as a contribution to the honour of English literature, it leaves much to be desired.  I wasn't surprised to find myself out of sympathy with the tone, as I think most period films fail to recreate the sensibility of their period, content to stick gen-y celebs in ye olde garb and assume that folks in the nineteenth century thought, felt and spoke much as we do. Beyond this elementary shortfall, I was struggling to find out what the film is about.  It's not about Keats, as the only biographical cues we get are a puffy shirt and a slight cough.  It's not about Fanny, in the sense that we see her inner world and understand her passion for the poet or the poems. It's not about the affair, which is anaemic and ambiguous, and has no clear genesis or consummation. And it's certainly not about poetry, though the central characters lurch into verse at key moments, much as leads launch into song in stage musicals.  I have to conclude that it's in fact about the visual beauty of fabric, paper, flowers, butterflies and luminous interiors; that Keats was not a text but a pretext; and that Campion is in company with many a director who mistakes the medium for the subject. Maybe it's impossible to translate into film the synchronous evolution of a romantic poet and a poetic romance. Or maybe our generation is incapable of a rich and nuanced visualisation of great literature, preferring a shimmering spectacle to an enduring work of art.

In the beginning...

Listen to the first sentence of Cormac McCarthy's Pullitzer prize-winning The Road:

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.”

Wow. This is like beat poetry. I haven't got very far with this one yet, but I can tell it's going to require concentration. This is a good thing. I think too few modern writers pay attention to prosody - the music and rhythm of their writing, the way it sounds in your head and feels in your mouth when you read it.

This also got me thinking about great first lines. Moby Dick's “Call me Ishmael” comes to mind, and of course Dickens' Tale of Two Cities opener. I know I harp on Henry James, but how exquisite is this from Portrait of a Lady:

“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

I also like the one-word openers. Bleak House begins with “London.” Unbeatably, Beowulf begins with “So.”

And how can you go past Genesis? When you think about it, it's a spine-tingling way to begin a book:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Manning Clark('s) House

I had only the vaguest idea of who Manning Clark was (something about several volumes of Australian history?) before I visited Manning Clark House last Friday for informal drinks with the Friends of Manning Clark House - a fairly nerdy but genial bunch. The house is preserved as Manning and Dymphna (a translator of some note) left it, replete with their 10,000 volume library, which inhabits every spare inch of space at eye level and above.  Tellingly, there is a bench in the kitchen where Dymphna apparently did her translating while cooking dinner for the many guests Manning brought unexpectedly home.  His study, by contrast, is accessible only by a ladder, and commands several square feet and the best views in the house.  This room contains probably half of the 10,000 books, as well as a large wooden desk that bears an inky mark in the shape of Clark's hand (he wrote with a quill and always blotted in the same place).  The division of space made me reflect on Virginia Woolf's thoughts on room, and how women rarely got one of their own.  When I probed my own ideas further, I realised that I, like most of western civilisation, tend to idealise the cloistered scholarly space, which has also traditionally been a male space; but perhaps there is something to be said for literary work undertaken in the thick of life as it is lived, in the full current of food, wine, conversation, family, community. Maybe the watermark in her work is more authentic than the inky one in his. Not being a mother of six children nor the wife of an eccentric academic, I should probably speculate no further.