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Major Poems and Selected Prose
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) is, with Browning and Tennyson, one of the touchstone Victorian poets. He was a major critic and an important fiction writer as well. Emerging out of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, his bold and innovative work made him both a celebrated and controversial writer at home and a figure of international importance. Hugo, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé were among his great admirers.
Jerome McGann and Charles L. Sligh now present a generous sampling of Swinburne’s poetry and prose. This wide-ranging collection satisfies a long need for a comprehensive selection of Swinburne’s work. It is accompanied by learned and critically incisive commentaries and notes.
Jerome McGann and Charles L. Sligh now present a generous sampling of Swinburne’s poetry and prose. This wide-ranging collection satisfies a long need for a comprehensive selection of Swinburne’s work. It is accompanied by learned and critically incisive commentaries and notes.
- GenresPoetry
528 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2004
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136 people want to read
About the author
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1,204 books139 followersIn musical, often erotic verse, British poet and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote and attacked the conventions of Victorian morality.
This controversial Englishman in his own day invented the roundel form and some novels and contributed to the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerno...
This controversial Englishman in his own day invented the roundel form and some novels and contributed to the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerno...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 12, 2024
One would think, given the title Major Poems and Selected Prose that the main focus of any good, thorough review would be on the poetry.
This is neither a good nor a thorough review. There's just not enough time, and I don't have the energy to do a meaningful analysis. Swinburne is just too BIG! But there are notable highlights which I must . . . highlight . . . notably . . . nevermind.
We begin with poetry, of course. Swinburne's epic tragic poem "Atalanta in Calydon" is representative of much of his work as it seems to have little to do with Atalanta or Calydon, only as Atalanta is a prompt, of sorts, to Meleager's ultimately fatal actions. Normally, I'm not big on introductions that effectively spoil the entire story before it happens, but in this case, it helped a great deal to be able to understand what was actually happening throughout.
As one might expect, the intertwined themes of Eros and Thanatos predominate throughout. For an example of the admixture of both, I quote, in full, "Anima Anceps":
Till death have broken
Sweet life's love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said.
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
With song and saying,
Things flown and fled?
For this we know not -
That fresh springs flow not
And fresh griefs grow not
When men are dead;
When strange years cover
Lover and lover,
And joys are over
And tears are shed.
If one day's sorrow
Mar the day's morrow -
If man's life borrow
And man's death pay -
If souls once taken,
If lives once shaken,
Arise, awaken,
By night, by day -
Why with strong crying
And years of sighing,
Living and dying,
Fast ye and pray?
For all your weeping,
Waking and sleeping,
Death comes to reaping
And takes away.
Though time rend after
Roof-tree from rafter,
A little laughter
Is much more worth
Than thus to measure
The hour, the treasure,
The pain, the pleasure,
The death, the birth
Grief, when days alter,
Like joy shall falter;
Song-book and psalter,
Mourning and mirth.
Live like the swallow;
Seek not to follow
Where earth is hollow
Under the earth.
Among this and other gems, "Dolores" is one of the more amazing long-ish poems I've read. Again, it's easy to see why Swinburne is so renowned among poets. I don't know that I could write such a beautiful, despairing, mocking, and yearning poem if I took the rest of my life to do it. Brilliant.
And though Swinburne's archaic language and structure can sometimes be off-putting, at other times, he is melodious. "On the Cliffs," for example, is as much a song as a poem. Its sibilance is astounding and fluid. It feels natural, like poetry often doesn't.
Though death and love are frequent foci of attention, the strain of atheism is strong throughout Swinburne's work, an odd thing for a poem written in 1880. Odd as in rare, not as in "bizarre". Swinburne was openly antagonistic to religion in a way that wouldn't be expressed with any regularity until after the Great War.
The masterpiece in this volume is the long epic poem "Tristram of Lyonesse," which requires an attention and stamina like that of reading Ulysses or anything by Beckett. It exacts a toll on the brain! And yet, it is a rewarding, bittersweet opus on love, betrayal, and tragedy.
Confession: I have "wronged" a couple of people in my life. Two, specifically, that I can remember. Many, many years ago. But my actions still sting. When I read Iseult's lament herein, that sting returned, after, what, 35 years now? Such is the power of good poetry. Good poetry digs deep, and sometimes it hurts like hell.
Swinburne might be considered a straight-up Romantic poet, but "A Nympholept," a sort of hymn to the god Pan and, hence, to the winsomeness of Nature, is as thoroughly a Symbolist piece as I've ever read. This would pair well with a good long stare at a Gustave Moreau painting, for sure.
After the poetry is a mixture of criticism, essays, and what must be short pieces of fiction (unless I misread and they are sensationalized early journalism, but I think not). Swinburne's first critical essay here is absolutely scathing and brutal. He tries to pass it off as an unemotional exercise meant to help the poet in question, but the shots he takes are lethal, if on the mark.
Swinburne's review of Les Fleurs du Mal is pretty good.
Mine's better.
While reading his essays, I had a bit of serendipity: last month my wife and I visited the Chicago Institute of Art, which hosts Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix". And herein is an essay, heretofore unknown to me, by Swinburne about, among other things, that very painting. It's got me thinking about how the internet has made such art widely available, but how tawdry jpegs are in comparison to seeing the artwork in person. Is such ready access to art a good thing if the secondhand reproduction is so poor and if it is impossible to adequately represent the piece on a screen, given the subtleties of the original? Discuss . . .
Finally, one last quote from the book that I found amusing and true, from a piece that is an exceprt from Swinburne's erotic novel Lesbia Brandon:
It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.
Indeed they do.
This is neither a good nor a thorough review. There's just not enough time, and I don't have the energy to do a meaningful analysis. Swinburne is just too BIG! But there are notable highlights which I must . . . highlight . . . notably . . . nevermind.
We begin with poetry, of course. Swinburne's epic tragic poem "Atalanta in Calydon" is representative of much of his work as it seems to have little to do with Atalanta or Calydon, only as Atalanta is a prompt, of sorts, to Meleager's ultimately fatal actions. Normally, I'm not big on introductions that effectively spoil the entire story before it happens, but in this case, it helped a great deal to be able to understand what was actually happening throughout.
As one might expect, the intertwined themes of Eros and Thanatos predominate throughout. For an example of the admixture of both, I quote, in full, "Anima Anceps":
Till death have broken
Sweet life's love-token,
Till all be spoken
That shall be said.
What dost thou praying,
O soul, and playing
With song and saying,
Things flown and fled?
For this we know not -
That fresh springs flow not
And fresh griefs grow not
When men are dead;
When strange years cover
Lover and lover,
And joys are over
And tears are shed.
If one day's sorrow
Mar the day's morrow -
If man's life borrow
And man's death pay -
If souls once taken,
If lives once shaken,
Arise, awaken,
By night, by day -
Why with strong crying
And years of sighing,
Living and dying,
Fast ye and pray?
For all your weeping,
Waking and sleeping,
Death comes to reaping
And takes away.
Though time rend after
Roof-tree from rafter,
A little laughter
Is much more worth
Than thus to measure
The hour, the treasure,
The pain, the pleasure,
The death, the birth
Grief, when days alter,
Like joy shall falter;
Song-book and psalter,
Mourning and mirth.
Live like the swallow;
Seek not to follow
Where earth is hollow
Under the earth.
Among this and other gems, "Dolores" is one of the more amazing long-ish poems I've read. Again, it's easy to see why Swinburne is so renowned among poets. I don't know that I could write such a beautiful, despairing, mocking, and yearning poem if I took the rest of my life to do it. Brilliant.
And though Swinburne's archaic language and structure can sometimes be off-putting, at other times, he is melodious. "On the Cliffs," for example, is as much a song as a poem. Its sibilance is astounding and fluid. It feels natural, like poetry often doesn't.
Though death and love are frequent foci of attention, the strain of atheism is strong throughout Swinburne's work, an odd thing for a poem written in 1880. Odd as in rare, not as in "bizarre". Swinburne was openly antagonistic to religion in a way that wouldn't be expressed with any regularity until after the Great War.
The masterpiece in this volume is the long epic poem "Tristram of Lyonesse," which requires an attention and stamina like that of reading Ulysses or anything by Beckett. It exacts a toll on the brain! And yet, it is a rewarding, bittersweet opus on love, betrayal, and tragedy.
Confession: I have "wronged" a couple of people in my life. Two, specifically, that I can remember. Many, many years ago. But my actions still sting. When I read Iseult's lament herein, that sting returned, after, what, 35 years now? Such is the power of good poetry. Good poetry digs deep, and sometimes it hurts like hell.
Swinburne might be considered a straight-up Romantic poet, but "A Nympholept," a sort of hymn to the god Pan and, hence, to the winsomeness of Nature, is as thoroughly a Symbolist piece as I've ever read. This would pair well with a good long stare at a Gustave Moreau painting, for sure.
After the poetry is a mixture of criticism, essays, and what must be short pieces of fiction (unless I misread and they are sensationalized early journalism, but I think not). Swinburne's first critical essay here is absolutely scathing and brutal. He tries to pass it off as an unemotional exercise meant to help the poet in question, but the shots he takes are lethal, if on the mark.
Swinburne's review of Les Fleurs du Mal is pretty good.
Mine's better.
While reading his essays, I had a bit of serendipity: last month my wife and I visited the Chicago Institute of Art, which hosts Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "Beata Beatrix". And herein is an essay, heretofore unknown to me, by Swinburne about, among other things, that very painting. It's got me thinking about how the internet has made such art widely available, but how tawdry jpegs are in comparison to seeing the artwork in person. Is such ready access to art a good thing if the secondhand reproduction is so poor and if it is impossible to adequately represent the piece on a screen, given the subtleties of the original? Discuss . . .
Finally, one last quote from the book that I found amusing and true, from a piece that is an exceprt from Swinburne's erotic novel Lesbia Brandon:
It's odd that words should change so just by being put into rhyme. They get teeth and bite; they take fire and burn.
Indeed they do.
May 2, 2020
Word maker-upper
Love it
You go with yourself Swinburne
Love it
You go with yourself Swinburne
November 3, 2024
I have not read this entire collection, but the works I have read are listed and rated below:
“Ave Atque Vale”: The speaker mourns the death of the poet Charles Baudelaire. This poem provides a more hopeless view of death than many other poems do. Rating: 3.5/5
“A Forsaken Garden”: The speaker conveys the hopelessness presented by the ultimate death of all things through his description of a desolate oceanside. Rating: 3/5
“Hertha”: A goddess, who describes herself to be the one true source of all things, preaches to humanity a kind of humanistic religion which is to bring the death of all other religions. Rating: 4.5/5
“Hymn to Porserpine”: After the issuance of the edict of Millan, the speaker contemplates the replacement of the pagan religion with Christianity and the change that time brings. He does not submit to Christianity’s rule, but instead submits to the goddess of death. Rating: 2.5/5
“The Lake of Gaube”: The speaker demonstrates the need for fear for the health of the soul and life using the image of a diver diving deep into a lake and feeling the possibility of death all around him. Rating: 3.5/5
“Poeta Loquitur”: Swinburne presents a parody of his own writing, saying that his poetry is no good and is nothing but wind. Rating: 2/5
“Sonnet for a Picture”: The speaker parody’s the human view of passion and romance as the ultimate end/good. Rating: 2/5
“Ave Atque Vale”: The speaker mourns the death of the poet Charles Baudelaire. This poem provides a more hopeless view of death than many other poems do. Rating: 3.5/5
“A Forsaken Garden”: The speaker conveys the hopelessness presented by the ultimate death of all things through his description of a desolate oceanside. Rating: 3/5
“Hertha”: A goddess, who describes herself to be the one true source of all things, preaches to humanity a kind of humanistic religion which is to bring the death of all other religions. Rating: 4.5/5
“Hymn to Porserpine”: After the issuance of the edict of Millan, the speaker contemplates the replacement of the pagan religion with Christianity and the change that time brings. He does not submit to Christianity’s rule, but instead submits to the goddess of death. Rating: 2.5/5
“The Lake of Gaube”: The speaker demonstrates the need for fear for the health of the soul and life using the image of a diver diving deep into a lake and feeling the possibility of death all around him. Rating: 3.5/5
“Poeta Loquitur”: Swinburne presents a parody of his own writing, saying that his poetry is no good and is nothing but wind. Rating: 2/5
“Sonnet for a Picture”: The speaker parody’s the human view of passion and romance as the ultimate end/good. Rating: 2/5
October 27, 2013
Ahhh Swinburne---I'm surprised that he doesn't come back into fashion these days---his poetry is overwrought, there's no denying that, but it's PURPOSELY overwrought and that makes all the difference. I gotta say he captures a certain subconcious intensity that I have yet to see in any other writer since. The only reason this is not 5 stars is because he has some tedious exercises in neoclassicism.
Want to read
June 21, 2007I'm actually reading this collection of swinburne's poems: [http://www.amazon.com/Swinburne-Selec...], but I can't find it on goodreads, and anyway they've probably both got basically the same selections.
January 6, 2011
A great edition, very useful introduction.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews