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.

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.