The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day/Chapter 5
V.
"The House of Life," &c., Re-examined.
I had written thus far of Mr. Rossetti's poems, just after reading them for the first time when cruising among the Western Isles of Scotland in the summer of 1871, and I had published my criticism in the Contemporary Review for October (under circumstances explained in my preface), when Mr. Rossetti, goaded into a sense of grievance by the ill-advised sympathy of his friend the editor of the Athenæum, "replied" to the audacious critic who, not being honoured by his personal acquaintance, dared to accuse him of poetic incompetence and literary immorality. Mr. Rossetti's letter, forming a whole page and a quarter of his favourite weekly print, now lies before me; and I am bound in honour to consider it in some detail.
After a preamble somewhat personal to myself,[1] Mr. Rossetti arrives at his first point, which amounts to this—that he is going to write a long article of self-defence to show he is indifferent. He then formally opens his case, and (that he may not hereafter accuse me of "garbling" his letter) I will quote his very words, only italicising them in certain places:—
"The primary accusation, on which this writer grounds all the rest, seems to be that others and myself 'extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic and pictorial art; aver that poetic expression is greater than poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body is greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense.' As my own writings are alone formally dealt with in the article, I shall confine my answer to myself; and this must first take unavoidably the form of a challenge to prove so broad a statement. It is true, some fragmentary pretence at proof is put in here and there throughout the attack, and thus far an opportunity is given of contesting the assertion.
"A Sonnet, entitled 'Nuptial Sleep,' is quoted and abused at page 338 of the Review, and is there dwelt upon as a 'whole poem,' describing 'merely animal sensations.' It is no more a whole poem in reality, than is any single stanza of any poem throughout the book. The poem, written chiefly in sonnets, and of which this is one sonnet-stanza, is entitled 'The House of Life;' and even in my first published instalment of the whole work (as contained in the volume under notice) ample evidence is included that no such passing phase of description as the one headed 'Nuptial Sleep' could possibly be put forward by the author of 'The House of Life' as his own representative view of the subject of love. In proof of this, I will direct attention (among the love-sonnets of this poem) to Nos. 2, 8, 11, 17, 28, and more especially 13, which, indeed, I had better print here.
LOVE-SWEETNESS.
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;
Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet!
"Any reader may bring any artistic charge he pleases against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be impossible to maintain against the writer of the series in which it occurs, and that is, the wish on his part to assert that the body is greater than the soul. For here all the passionate and just delights of the body are declared—somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakably—to be as naught if not ennobled by the concurrence of the soul at all times. (!)[2] Moreover, nearly one half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do with love, but treats of quite other life-influences.I would defy any one to couple with fair quotation of Sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, 43, or others, the slander that their author was not impressed, like all other thinking men, with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life; while Sonnets 35, 36, and 37, entitled 'The Choice,' sum up the general view taken in a manner only to be evaded by conscious insincerity. Thus much for 'The House of Life,' of which the Sonnet 'Nuptial Sleep' is one stanza, embodying, for its small constituent share, a beauty of natural universal function, only to be reprobated in art if dwelt on (as I have shown that it is not here) to the exclusion of those other highest things of which it is the harmonious concomitant."[3]
Thus far Mr. Rossetti; and although it is rather hard to have to refer again to poems so unsavoury, I have no option but to accept the challenge, and judge Mr. Rossetti by "The House of Life" as an uncompleted whole. A reference to this poem, so far from changing my opinion, makes me wonder at the writer's misconception of its true character. It is flooded with sensualism from the first line to the last; it is a very hotbed of nasty phrases; but its nastiness—or its unwholesomeness—goes far deeper than any phraseology. It opens with a sonnet entitled "Bridal Love," wherein we are told that "Love,"
"Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
And exquisite hunger,"
is preparing "with his warm hands our couch;" and so intense grows the poet's enthusiasm at this information that he exclaims, wildly addressing his lady in Sonnet II.,—
"O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
Unto my lips dost evermore present
The body and blood of Love in Sacrament!"
—which is a pretty good beginning, quite apart from the blasphemy, for a writer in whose eyes a "beauty of natural universal function" is merely a "harmonious concomitant" of higher things. Sonnet III., entitled "Love's Light," describes harmlessly enough how,
"—in the dark hours (we two alone)
Close kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies;"
but in Sonnet IV, another and higher stage is reached, for the lady gives her lover a "consonant interlude" (which is the Fleshly for "kiss"), and—"somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmistakably"—proceeds, as a mother suckles a baby, to afford him full fruition:—
"I was a child beneath her touch (!),—a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
A spirit when her spirit lookt thro' me,—
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity."
O malignant critic, who has dared to attaint the author of these sweet lines of "fleshliness!" Let the reader examine this passage phrase by phrase and word by word, dwelling particularly on the descriptive animalism of the last three lines. Why, much the same charge might be brought against that delicious effort of Thomas Carew, entitled "The Rapture,"
wherein (quite after the modern fleshly style) the whole business of love is chronicled in sublime and daring metaphor:—
"Then will I visit with a wandering kiss
The bower of roses and the grove of bliss,
Thence, passing o'er thy snowy Appenine,
Retire into thy grove of eglantine."[4]
Sonnet V. is our favourite already quoted, "Nuptial Sleep," and Sonnet VI., or "Supreme Surrender," tells us how—
"To all the spirits of love that wander by,
Along the love-sown fallow field of sleep
My lady lies apparent; and the deep
Calls to the deep; and no one sees but I."
There is also this dainty touch about her hand:—
"First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
Taught memory long to mock desire."
Sonnet VII., "Love's Lovers," is meaningless, but in the best manner of Carew and Dr. Donne; and the same may be said of Sonnet VIII., "Passion and Worship." Sonnet IX., "The Portrait," is a good sonnet and good poetry, despite the epithets of "mouth's mould" and "long lithe throat." Sonnet X., the "Love Letter," is fleshly and affected, but stops short of nastiness. Sonnet XI. is also innocuous. Sonnets XII, to XX. are one profuse sweat of animalism, containing, amongst other gems, this euphuistic description of a kissing match:—
"Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks, and neck, and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all;"
and scores of the author's pet phrases, the veriest pimples on the surface of style, like "wanton flowers," "murmuring sighs memorial," "sweet confederate music favourable," "hours eventual," "Love's philtred euphrasy," "culminant changes"—all familiar enough to us from the Della Cruscans; but culminating, in Sonnet XX., with an image in which the Euphuist would have rejoiced:—
"Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late, (!)
And as she kissed, her Mouth became her Soul!"
In Sonnet XXI., called "Parted Love," the lady has retired to get breath and arrange her clothes, and the lover is despairingly waiting from "the stark noon-height" to the "sunset's desolate disarray." Sonnets XXII. and XXIII. are too vague for description, but Landor would have stared to see his famous sea-shell image (which he accused Wordsworth of stealing) turned by the euphuistic-fleshly person into
"The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain."
The next four sonnets, called by the affected title of "Willow-wood," contain, besides the gem about "bubbling of brimming kisses," some fresh variations of a kiss:—
"Fast together, alive from the abyss, Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss."
An "implacable" kiss! Also:—
"So when the song died did the kiss unclose,
And her face fell back drown'd."
The supreme silliness and worthlessness of "Willow-wood," however, could only be shown by quoting the four sonnets entire. Sonnet XXVIII., or "Still-born Love," will doubtless suggest to Mr. Rossetti's admirers other similar themes, and we shall speedily have poetry on "Love's Cross-birth" and "Love's Anæsthetics." Sonnets XXIX., XXX., and XXXI., Mr. Rossetti particularly challenges me to impeach; and I may at once admit that they are not nasty, though very, very silly.In Sonnet XXXII., however, we get back to the old imagery:—
"Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
Glean'd by a girl in autumns of her youth,
Which one new year makes soft her marriage bed."
Mr. Rossetti is never so great as on "kisses" and "beds." In spite of euphuisms without end, we get nothing very spicy till we come to Sonnet XXXIX., one of those which Mr. Rossetti calls immaculate. Here, not content with picturing "Vain Virtues" as Virgins writhing in Hell, he describes the Fire as the Bridegroom, and pursues the metaphor to the very pit of beastliness:—
"Virgins . . . . whom the fiends compel
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
Of anguish, while the scorching Bridegroom leaves
Their refuse maidenhood (!) abominable!"
There are ten sonnets to come, but must I quote from them? Surely I have quoted already ad nauseam. After the sonnets comes "Love-Lily," which I have already given in full; then "First Love Remembered;" then "Plighted Promise," a lyric which I am bound to copy, as it has never been equalled since the famous
"Fluttering fold thy feeble pinions"
of the "Rejected Addresses:"—
"PLIGHTED PROMISE.
Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
Have you seen Aurora fly
At the break of day?
So my maiden, so my plighted may
Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
Lifts to look my way.
"Where the inmost leaf is stirred
With the heart-beat of the grove,
Have you heard a hidden bird
Cast her note above?
So my lady, so my lovely love
Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
Makes a tune thereof.
"Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
In the moon-rack's ebb and tide,
Venus leap forth burning white
Pearl-pale and hide?
So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride
One sweet night when fear takes flight
Shall leap against my side."
A "soft-complexioned sky!" the "heart-beat of the grove!" "Aurora, Cupid, Dian!" I rub my eyes, wondering if this can be the nineteenth century, till the last lines, with their "bright breast-jewel," recall me to my subject. But really quotations of this sort become the merest iteration. "The House of Life" contains eight songs more. Four of them, though sensuous in the extreme, have no direct reference to nasty subjects. The other four are sickly love-poems, swarming with affectations. My extracts, however, must close with this verse from the "Song of the Bower" (Mr. Rossetti is great in "bowers"):—
"What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,[5]
Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn,
Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away."
In this and a thousand other passages one thing is apparent: either Mr. Rossetti is stealing wholesale from Mr. Swinburne, or Mr. Swinburne has been all his life robbing Mr. Rossetti. Having so far complied with Mr. Rossetti's request, and re-examined "The House of Life," I retain unchanged my impression that the sort of house meant should be nameless, but is probably the identical one where the writer found "Jenny." Once more, I should like to quote Mr. Rossetti, in the further passages of his high argument; but he is so very abusive that I am bound to condense his statement. After vindicating "The House of Life," he proceeds to say that the four extracts given in p. 44 are grossly garbled, and printed "without reference to any precise page or poem," and that the poems themselves, if read wisely, would be found perfectly beautiful and artistic. Turn, then, to the four poems in question. The first is "A Last Confession," which describes, in Mr. Browning's favourite manner, how an Italian, maddened by jealousy, murdered his mistress. This Italian, it may be remarked, is very like our author, for, besides being disagreeably affected, he had a morbid habit of brooding over unclean ideas and suspicions; insomuch that, as Mr. Rossetti truly observes, he is driven to frenzy by the real or fancied resemblance between the laugh of the harlot and that of his mistress. "Observe also," continues the bard, "that these are but seven lines in a poem of five hundred, not one other of which could be classed with them." Observe, I say in turn, that the whole poem is morbid and unwholesome, and must be drunk in as a whole to leave its full bad flavour. It positively reeks of murder, madness, and morbid lust, and whatever merit it possesses lies in the intensity of its ugly thoughts, from the first moment when the Italian began his courtship in this extraordinary fashion—
"What I knew I told
Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales!"
—till, blinded with lustful rage, he confesses having murdered her, and tells his dreams:—
"She wrung her hair out in my dream
To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
I heard the blood between her fingers hiss!"
In justice we should observe that a madman is speaking; but this madman has Mr. Rossetti's gift, for here is the sort of conceit with which he delights the priest:—
"She had a mouth
Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
Suck'd in, as if it strove to kiss itself."
With the Della Cruscan, the attempt to seem subtle and striking becomes a positive mania. What would be said of a poet who wrote thus?—
Her nose inclined to heaven,
As if it tried to turn up at itself!
Yet the one metaphor is every whit as sensible and brilliant as the other.
The second of the four poems is the "bubble" poem from "The House of Life." The third is from "Eden Bower," a production which I would gladly quote entire. "Here again," it is observed, "no reference is given, and naturally the reader would suppose that a human embrace is described. The embrace, on the contrary, is that of a fabled snake-woman and a snake." Exactly; but will Mr. Rossetti describe a single passage in his poems where a human embrace is described? The lovers of the Fleshly School are invariably snake-like in their eternal wriggling, lipping, munching, slavering, and biting; and indeed, on reflection, "Eden Bower" may be fairly considered as a complete epitome of the art of love as practised by the coterie poets. Since Mr. Rossetti is dissatisfied, let us try again. His book is a lottery-bag—we draw blindfold—but are always sure of a prize:—
"Bring thou close thine head till it glisten
Along my breast, and lip me, and listen!"
Once more,—conjugal bliss of Adam and Lilith:—
"What great joys had Adam and Lilith!
Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
As heart in heart lay sighing and pining."[6]
The result (next verse):—
"What bright babes had Lilith and Adam?
Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters," &c.
All this is savoury, and the whole poem is still more so; so that the reader feels a horrible sense of sliminess, as if he were handling a yellow serpent or a conger eel. Let me try blindfold once more for another "draw." This time my prize is from "Troy Town;" but, before I quote, let me once more premise that the poem as a whole is fleshlier and sillier than any extract. Helen's breasts, described by herself:—
"Each twin breast is an apple sweet!****Mine are apples grown to the south
(O Troy Town!)
Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
Taste and waste to the heart's desire;
Mine are apples meet for his mouth!"
So that Paris, poor fellow, has a fair prospect of being suckled by Helen, and is likely, after "tasting" her "apples" or "breasts meet for his mouth," to "waste" them (whatever that means) "to his heart's desire."
But already I hear the amazed reader cry, with Macbeth, "Hold, enough!" I have thus piled example upon example, all out of one small volume of verse; and I might readily go on quoting for pages more. I reject altogether the insinuation that my criticism was based on private grounds. I do not know Mr. Rossetti, have no grievance against him, and I can quite believe that in private life he is a most exemplary person; but in his poetry—to go no further at present than that very small phase of a portentous phenomenon—there is a veritably stupendous preponderance of sensuality and sickly animalism. I base that belief, not merely on stray expressions such as I quoted, not merely on lines about the "lipping of limbs," bubbling of kisses, "fawning of lips" in bed, munching of mouths, and all the inordinate coarseness of the fleshly vocabulary, but on the persistent choice of subjects repulsive in themselves, and capable of fleshly treatment, such as the lyric about Jenny the street-walker, who "advertises dainties through the dirt," and is serenaded by the poet in a brothel; the poem about Lilith the Snake, and her gripping and lipping, and general arts of fornication; and the nuptial sonnet which Mr. Rossetti studiously refrains from quoting, knowing that it would condemn him fatally in all decent eyes. I said, and I say, that the very choice of these subjects is deplorable, and that their treatment is offensive; and I said, and say, that the morbid habit penetrates into the writer's treatment even when, as very seldom happens, he chooses a subject by no means morbid in itself: all this without going beyond Mr. Rossetti; but if I go a little further, and look at that phenomenon of which he is a phase, I find decency outraged, history falsified, purity sacrificed, art prostituted, language perverted, religion outraged, in one gibbering attempt to apotheosize vice and demolish art with the implements of blasphemy and passion; I find that Mary of Scotland is a biting and scratching harlot, Sappho a lustful wild beast, Christ and Christianity scandals and abortions; and pursuing further my inquiry into this phenomenon, finding religion distorted into lust, and lust raving in the very language of religion, I take occasion to say—on public grounds only, with no grudge, with no personal animosity whatever—that a number of men of real though very limited ability are, blinded by their own little knowledge, the praise of vile minds, and the applause of a heartless clique, rushing headlong to literary ruin, and dragging many of the young generation with them. What Mr. Rossetti says in explanation is only to the point in so far as it is deplorably convincing that he himself is utterly unconscious of his own offences; does not, in fact, discriminate between passion and sensuality; and endeavours, writhing under what he thinks an unmerited imputation, to save himself on the plea of personal purity and dramatic motive.No one can rejoice more than I do to hear that Mr. Rossetti attaches a certain importance to the soul as distinguished from the body, only I should like very much to know what he means by the soul; for I fear, from the sonnet he quotes, that he regards the feeling for a young woman's person, face, heart, and mind, as in itself quite a spiritual sentiment. In the poem entitled "Love-Lily" he expressly observes that Love cannot tell Lily's "body from her soul"—they are so inextricably blended. It is precisely this confusion of the two which, filling Mr. Rossetti as it eternally does with what he calls "riotous longing," becomes so intolerable to readers with a less mystic sense of animal function.
- ↑ "Here a critical organ, professedly adopting the principle of open signature, would seem, in reality, to assert (by silent practice, however, not by enunciation,) that if the anonymous in criticism was—as itself originally inculcated—but an early caterpillar stage, the nominate too is found to be no better than a homely transitional chrysalis, and that the ultimate butterfly form for a critic who likes to sport in sunlight and yet to elude the grasp, is after all the pseudonymous." Surely human ingenuity never so tortured itself to clothe a simple meaning in cumbrous and affected words! The only parallel is the author's poetry, where a simple kiss becomes a "consonant interlude," and the ink in a love-letter is called "the smooth black stream that makes thy (the letter's) whiteness fair!"
- ↑ My complaint precisely is, that Mr. Rossetti's "soul" concurs a vast deal too easily.
- ↑ The italics are mine.—R. B.
- ↑ For a production quite in our modern manner, the reader had better refer to this extraordinary poem. I dare not quote another word.
- ↑ Compare Greene's "Menaphon's Eclogue:"—
"Her neck like to an ivory shining tower," &c. - ↑ Compare Carew:—
"Now in more subtle wreaths I will entwine
My sturdy limbs, my legs and thighs, with thine!"