Vision of Nature in Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism
The Pre-Raphaelite circle is about art and literature
and the term originated from Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an English
group of painters, poets and critics linked to Ruskin, founded in 1849
by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt;
they drew upon the works of Shakespeare, Keats and Tennyson.
Pre-Raphaelitism in painting had two forms; the first dealt with the
symbolic naturalism and it is related to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
whereas the second form is about erotic medievalism and took form in the
late 1850s.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html>)
It is this second stage that had more relevance in
poetry and which grows out of the first, under the direction of Rossetti
and it is named Aesthetic Pre-Raphaelitism, which produced the Arts and
Crafts Movement and the Aesthetes and Decadents. The themes of this
second stage are: eroticized medievalism and pictorial techniques and
all the poets associated with the Pre-Raphaelitism movement draw upon
the poetic continuum that descends from Spenser through Keats and
Tennyson, which emphasizes lush vowel sounds, sensuous description,
subjective psychological states, elaborate personification, and complex
poetic forms.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/3.html>)
Pre-Raphaelitism in poetry had major influence upon the
writers of the Decadence of the 1890s, such as Ernest Dowson, Lionel
Johnson, Michael Field, and Oscar Wilde, as well as upon Gerard Manley
Hopkins and William Butler Yeats.
(cf.<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/4.html>)
One of the most important poets of the Aesthetic
Pre-Raphaelitism is Algernon Charles Swinburne, although he is
considered a decadent poet. He was born in London in 1837, and was a
Victorian English poet, and his poetry was highly controversial at the
time, much of it containing recurring themes of sadomasochism,
death-wish, lesbianism and irreligion. Many of his early poems dealt
with the Victorian fascination together with the Middle Ages; some of
his poems are in medieval style, tone and construction. After the first
Poems and Ballads, Swinburne's later poetry is devoted more to
philosophy, politics and love.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/acsbio1.html>)
One of his poems, By the North Sea, deals with
the theme of Nature landscape, as some Romantics dealt with. But the
landscape is described here in a different way, that is to say: a bleak,
desolate landscape, where natural forces are anthropomorphized and have
the task of presiding over the world in place of religion and the Sun
assumes an almost divine importance.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/newman10.html>)
He genders natural forces and gives them relationships
with one another, the sea is female, the death is male and the Sun is
divine; at the beginning of the poem, negative adjectives are attributed
to the sea, then she (the pronoun assigned to the sea) becomes a
recipient, it becomes subordinated to the Sun and at the end of the poem
she has a harmonious and positive position. I agree that he probably
does an analogy between the uncertainty, danger, power inherent in love
as well as in the natural world in terms of nature and time.
(cf.<
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/newman10.html>)
In my opinion the turn of the role of the sea, first a
passive one, because she receives the dead from her lord Death, then an
active one, because she devours the dead, finally another time passive,
receiving songs and being played upon as a musical instrument by the
powerful Sun, can be considered conforming to the Victorian values
regarding what makes a good woman and what not, that is to say if the
woman behaviour is active, consequently she is a bad woman, by the
contrary a passive role is considered the right behaviour for
her.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/newman10.html>; and
personal opinion)
This poem is a form of a meditation on land-and
seascape; the poet describes a spiritual bleakness worthy in terms of a
bleak external world. The setting is the ruins of Dunwich on the Suffolk
coast, a centre of religion during the Middle-Ages, and it is an emblem
of the way of time has already destroyed the faith. He transformed his
experience of the wasteland into a poem, he described a "desolate,
fruitless, exhausted place ruled by Death and the Sea", and it is a
landscape "dispeopled of visions without spirits of any sort". There is
not the presence of human beings or gods, everything is
bleakful.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/swinburne4.html>)
I guess that this idea of downfall of the Christian
church, derives from his view of the religion itself; he came from an
Anglican family, but he was interested in Christian religion; his
treatment of Christianity is a delightful one in opposing organized
religion and savagely attacked the Roman Catholic Church for its
political role in a divided Italy. Moreover, I think that one
possibility of the predominance and function of bleak images in the
poem, is to anticipate the later, post-modern view of isolation,
Godlessness and colourless landscapes. I have noticed these bleak images
in the following lines of the poem.
(cf.<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/acsbio1.html>
, <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/lynch8.html> and
personal opinion)
A land that is lonelier than
ruin
A sea that is stranger than death
Far
fields that a rose never blew in,
Wan waste
where the winds lack breath;
Waste endless and boundless and
flowerless
But of marsh-blossoms fruitless as
free
Where earth lies exhausted, as powerless
To
strive with the sea.(first stanza)
Miles, and miles, and miles of
desolation!
Leagues on leagues on leagues
without a change!
Sign or token of some eldest
nation
Here would make the strange land not
so strange.
Time-forgotten, yea since time's
creation,
Seem these borders where the
sea-birds range(lines 145-150)
"Where is man" the cloister murmers wailing:
Back the
mute shrine thunders -- "Where is God?"(lines 431, 432)
In stanza's 1 and 3, Swinburne draws on words such as
"endless," "boundless," "flowerless," "fruitless," powerless,"
"herdless," "sheepless," "relentless," "sleepless," "restless,"
"songless," "breathless," and "deathless" to create an image of a place
so empty that it is devoid of almost all life and even death.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/swinburne4.html>)
The pastures are herdless and sheepless,
No pasture or shelter for herds :
The
wind is relentless and sleepless,
And
restless and songless the birds
Their
cries from afar fall breathless,
Their wings
are as lightnings that flee;
For the land has two lords that are
deathless:
Death's
self, and the sea.(lines 17-24)
But, as we can see in the following stanzas, the poet
reflects on this setting, and he changes his opinion, in his view this
desolate and depressing place creates a sense of "peace and wonder".
This change of opinion, showed in lines 151-156, suddenly present a
nature: "Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder" and Swinburne thinks
of nature as in Wordsworth’s poem Daffodils, that is to say, the
vision of nature like a place of tranquility and an escape from society.
If at the beginning the poem shows a negative opinion about nature, he
changes his vision to a more positive one, and he embraces to a more
romantic vision of nature.
(cf. <
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/buron9.html>)
I believe that this change of opinion is a contradiction
in the poem and the poet probably looks for an ironic effect.
Nevertheless this change of view, in the previous sections we can
understand that this landscape is not so desolate, because the poet
assigns the role of man and woman to the nature, so I can conclude that
the reader has to interpret this kind of landscape as a peopled one,
where human being is merged into nature, or another possibility is a
criticism towards the society that destroys the nature if it is not
merged into nature, so we can understand why at the beginning of the
poem the poet considers nature as a desolate place, and when the human
being learns to respect and love nature, by incorporating himself (for
example in the poem the personification of the sea, the sun, the wind
etc.), nature becomes a gladly and beautiful place, where man can find
peace and wonder.
Slowly, gladly, full of peace and wonder
Grows his
heart who journeys here alone.
Earth and all its thoughts of earth
sink under
Deep as deep in water sinks a stone.
Hardly knows it if
the rollers thunder,
Hardly whence the lonely wind is blown.(lines
151-156)
(cf. <
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/buron9.html> and
personal opinion)
In the final section, the poet turns away from "the
shadow of this death/this place of sepulchres"(lines 494, 495) to sing a
paean to the sun, which for Swinburne represents the powers of poetry
and imagination. The paean for the sun is a solemn, greek song to the
god Apollo. We can see the use of this kind of paean in the following
lines.
O Sun, whereof all is
beholden,
Behold now the shadow of this
death,
This place of the sepulchres,
olden
And emptied and vain as a
breath.
The bloom of the bountiful
heather
Laughs broadly beyond in thy
light
As dawn, with her glories to
gather,
At darkness and night. (Lines 493-500)
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/swinburne4.html>)
Another theme is the endlessness and the eternity of
human life, in contrast with the vision of romantic poets, which
considered Nature as an endless place; the land, which "with dead men's
bones is rotten" (Line 395), and where the God of Time rules, reminds
the reader of the ephemeral nature of human life, the setting -- a
desolate seashore -- remains unending and unchanging. He characterizes
the land as "Waste endless and boundless and flowerless" (Line 5), the
wind as "relentless and sleepless" (Line 19), and the birds in it as
"restless and songless" (Line 20). Swinburne's repetitive combination of
these adjectives ending in "less" emphasize precisely what the landscape
lacks: borders, fluctuation, and life itself. In continually looking to
these unchanging natural forces, Swinburne succeeds in representing the
brevity of human life as an eternal condition.
(cf.<
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/keefe8.html>)
What is more, Swinburne explains why the landscape has
lost all of its vitality and has been replaced with ruins and a sense of
ghostliness. Swinburne claims that the worship of God and Christianity
has died over the course of time, which has also led to the death of the
land and its people.
Ah, less mighty, less than Time
prevailing,
Shrunk, expelled, made nothing at
his nod,
Less than clouds across tho sea-line
sailing,
Lies he, stricken by his master's
rod.
Here is all the end of all his glory
--
Dust, and grass, and barren silent
stones.
Dead, like him, one hollow tower and
hoary
Naked in the sea-wind stands and
moans,
Filled and thrilled with its perpetual
story:
Here, where earth is dense with dead
men's bones. (lines 427-438)
Finally, Swinburne’s opinion is that, he seems to accept
time and its effects despite its potentially destructive nature, time
and nature destroy what man has built up, and he acknowledges these
effects. But I propose that not only time has this destructive power,
but man as well and also the nature is the responsible of man’s death
and of destroying what he has built up. I think that it is a
concatenation of the effects that time, nature and man produce each
other. Anyway , at the end of line 427 "time prevailing", then it is the
time that rules nature and man and its effects are just to destroy
nature and to cause man’s death.
(cf.
<http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/akim8.html> and
personal opinion)
Bibliography:
- Painting’s section, preraphaelite introduction by
George P. Landow <http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/1.html>
<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/3.html>
<http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/4.html>
home: www.victorianweb.org 15/12/2006
- Authors’section, A.C. Swinburne biography by Glenn
Everett <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/acsbio1.html>
home: www.victorianweb.org 16/12/2006
-Swinburne's "By The North Sea": Desolation by Tess
Lynch <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/lynch8.html>
home: www.victorianweb.org 17/04/2007
- Gendered Nature in Swinburne's "By the North Sea" by
Abigail Newman <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/newman10.html>
home:www.victorianweb.org 17/04/2007
- Authors’section, "By the north sea" by George
P. Landow <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/swinburne4.html>
home:www.victorianweb.org17/12/2006
- Extreme Contradictions in Swinburne's "By the North
Sea" by Melissa Buron <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/buron9.html>
home:www.victorianweb.org 17/12/2006
- "Waste endless and boundless:" A.C. Swinburne's "By
The North Sea" section by Reed Keefe. <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/keefe8.html>
home:www.victorianweb.org 17/12/2006
- Desolation and Destruction in Swinburne's
"By the North Sea" by Angela Kim <http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/swinburne/akim8.html>
home:www.victorianweb.org 17/12/2006
1. The Group by Mora Vives Maria
Carmen http://mural.uv.es/mamovi3/group
2. The
Movement by Mora Vives Maria Carmen http://mural.uv.es/mamovi3/movement
3. Conclusion
by Mora Vives Maria Carmen http://mural.uv.es/mamovi3/collective2
4.
The Modernist Tradition by Lozano Arago Sara http://mural.uv.es/saloa/collective2.html
5.
New Romantics in the forties by Mármol Rodríguez
M. Elena http://mural.uv.es/memaro2/secondpapercol.html
6.
The victorian Poetry by Sanchis Garcia-Astilleros Inmaculada http://mural.uv.es/insangar/paper3.html
7.
The British Poetry Revival by Sarrio Chaques Maria Aranzazu http://mural.uv.es/masacha/collective2.html
8.
Georgian Poets by Sendra Ferragud Tania Maria http://mural.uv.es/tasenfe/georgianpoets
9.
Modernism by Tadevosyan Ani http://mural.uv.es/tadevosy/secondcoll.html