For it is the chief characteristic of Swinburne's work, and the one which will be noted5 of him throughout whatever changes the future may bring to our taste, that his motive6 (if one may use this[Pg 55] metaphor) was the landscape and the air of England—especially of South England and of that very roll of land from the chalk to the chalk, from the northern Avon of Wiltshire to the cliffs of the Island which a man surveys from the ridges of which I speak.
Let it not be forgotten that revolutions in taste are among the most certain as they are among the most mysterious proofs of the power of rapid change combined with unity7 which is peculiar to Europe, and which has been discovered in no other civilisations than that of the Europeans. Only some very few have escaped the chastening of that reflection. There are indeed some classics—one might count them upon the fingers of both hands—which no transition of taste much raises or much diminishes, and chief among these is the sovereignty of Homer. But almost all the others do suffer violent neglects, nay8, may be for a generation and more violently despised; or again, violently adored. And so rapid are these fluctuations9 of opinion—and so sincere while they remain—that we must always approach with extreme care the criticism of a contemporary. The fluctuations of opinion will at last decide an average. Truth will be plotted out, a clear and intellectual thing, from the welter of mere10 stimulus11. Criticism will acquire, and with every new critic acquire further, certitudes and fixed12 points of judgment13; and the reputation of a great poet is moulded and informed by the process of time, as all other worthy[Pg 56] things are moulded and informed by the process of time. Let us attempt then to stand apart from the feeling of the moment and to ask ourselves what certainly was present in the work of the great writer who died in this uprush of new weather, and this invitation to life that was sweeping14 over his own land. It is by qualities which, whether we approve them or disapprove15, are certainly present in a writer that his reputation with posterity16 will be made, not by the emotions of the moment which those qualities arouse; nor is any great writer (nor any small one, for that matter) to be judged in general terms, but in particular—since writing is like a man's voice, and always has in it, no matter who produces it, if it be closely examined, characters not general but individual. A man who should have resisted the wave of enthusiasm for Lord Byron, but who should carefully have noted what at any rate he was, what his verse was and what it was not, who should have distinguished18 between what he certainly did easily and what he as certainly could not do, might have praised too much or too little, but that which his analysis had distinguished would enable him to know more or less what kind of posterity would judge Byron, and how. He would have been able to guess, for instance, that a time of youth and of largesse19 would have drunk him in great draughts20, a time of age and of exactitude would have found in him a mere looseness of words; he would have been able to see why foreigners especially could discover his greatness;[Pg 57] why the reading of him was proper to a time of active and physical combat against oppression, was improper21 to any nation which a long peace had corrupted22, or to any class which the opportunity for every licence and the power through wealth to approach every enjoyment23 had satiated and cloyed24.
If we so examine Swinburne we shall, as I have said, first notice that in all his work the mere nature of South England drives him. It is the expression often uncontrolled, always spontaneous, of an intense communion with that air, those colours, such hills and such a sea. In this Swinburne, wholly novel as was his medium of expression, was peculiarly and rigidly25 national. Whoever best knows that landscape and that sky best feels him. Whoever in the future most neglects it or knows it least will least fully17 appreciate or will perhaps even neglect his work. In whatever times the inspiration of that belt of land weakens in the men who inhabit it (it weakened in the Eighteenth Century, for instance), in such a time the influence of Swinburne's work will weaken too.
Next there must be noted that in him much more than in any other writer of the language, or, at any rate, much more than in any other modern writer of prominence26, words followed rhythm, and the poem, though an organised and constructed thing, went bowling27 before the general music of its metre as a ship over-canvased goes bowling before the general gale28. That music underlies29 all lyrical expression,[Pg 58] and for that matter poetry of every other kind as well, all critics have always known. But it is modern to make of it, as it were, the necessary and conscious substructure of the work, and Verlaine, who put it in his Poetic30 Art as the chief rule to consider "Music and always Music," was, in laying down such a law, the extreme expression of his time. Sense is not sacrificed wholly in any place, it is but rarely imperilled even by this motive in Swinburne. But one feels that reason has in the construction no divine place, but is subsidiary—as it is subsidiary in unworded tunes32, as it is subsidiary in great and vivid dreams, as it is subsidiary (since one should be just even in judging extravagance) in all the major emotions of the human soul: in love, in combat, in despair. And in this necessary service of rhythm, this bondage33 to music, is to be discovered the source of another characteristic in the work: the perpetual repetition. Two men, both sedulous34 and scholarly admirers, will be equally struck by the apparently35 contradictory36 judgments37 that Swinburne was unequalled in the range of his vocabulary, and that Swinburne was, quite beyond parallel, repetitive. Each judgment would strike one of the two types of admirer as a paradox38 or a truism. Yet both are true, and both have an illuminating39 meaning when his work is considered. That vast vocabulary (and if you will be at the pains to note word upon word or to make a short concordance you will see that the word "vast" is just)—that vast vocabulary, I say,[Pg 59] proceeded from the necessity of satisfying the ear. An exact shade of length and emphasis were needed; they must be exactly filled, and some one word out of the thousands upon thousands which the numerically richest language of our time possesses must be hit upon to do the work. This surely was the source of that wide range. So also was it the source of the repetition.
Repetition is discovered in literature under two aspects. It is deliberate and admiringly designed, or it is involuntary and an odious40 symptom of fatigue41. The repetitions of Catullus in their way, the repetitions of the Hebrew poets in theirs, were meant to be; or rather (for their voluntary quality is obvious) they were exactly designed to produce a particular effect, and did produce it; the repetition of those who fail, involuntary and symptomatic of fatigue, may be neglected. Swinburne's repetitions were neither of the one kind nor of the other; they were the recurrence42 of a set of words or of single words which suited the sound in his head. And just as to fit exactly a void of known form one word exactly fitting must be found (fitting not reason but the ear) so those which had been found to fit particular rhythms must be used again to fit those rhythms when they recurred43, as naturally and as necessarily as a man picks up this tool and that to do some particular bit of carving44 which he has found it apt for in the past. The word in Swinburne was subordinate.
It is a commonplace, and a true one—to pass to[Pg 60] another matter—that the English writers of the later Nineteenth Century (and not the writers alone) reposed45 upon the Jacobean translation of the Old Testament46. That unique and fundamental piece of work, the monumental characters in which appear more largely with every process of retreat from it, whether in time or in conviction, has so formed that generation that it was itself almost unconscious of the enormous effect. Swinburne is as full of it as Kipling; the ready-made phrases of weary political discussion are full of it. The whole national life, in so far as modes of expression are concerned, was filled with it. Many of Swinburne's rhythms were the rhythms of the English Psaltry, and perpetually you will find some sounding final phrase, especially if it ends in an interrogation, to be a phrase of biblical character or even a biblical transcription. Herein, again, as in that effect of landscape and of air, he is national in every particle of his poetic being; and one may remark that this note is the note of unity in him, and that a recognition of it explains what has confused so many critics of his life and of his opinion. The man who in youth was ardent47 for a liberty which leant much nearer to anarchy48 than to the republic, who ranged, as the fashion was over all Europe, to find subjects for that mood, in age perpetually sounded a note which had in it something exaggerated of fury and of protest against whatever might be thought to be weakening the very old and fixed boundaries of the national[Pg 61] life. Yet it was the same man whose extreme facility poured out in either field; the passionate49 protest of the first years was a protest drawn50 from the untrammelled nature about him which ran through him and made him write. The convinced and extreme political insistence51 of his later verse was drawn from the same source. It was still the surroundings of his own land that compelled him.
There is one last thing to be said: the work has been called pagan. It is the commonest praise or blame attached to the achievement. Those who attach it, whether in praise or blame, have not clearly seen the pagan world. By pagan we mean that long, long manhood of Europe (a thousand years long to our knowledge—how much longer we know not) in which the mind certainly reposed and was certainly in tune31 with the nature of the Mediterranean52. Swinburne's great love of that mood was the love of a foreigner, of a much belated man, and of a man of the North. The sea of the Atalanta in Calydon is an English sea. All that attitude in him was reaction and a protest. It was full of yearning53: now pagan paganism was not full of this. The very earliest moment in which a protest of that kind is to be found is the Fourth Century. For the transformation54 between the old and the new lay in this, that there came upon our race in the first four centuries of the Roman Empire a yearning which must be satisfied, and men since then have accepted an assuagement55 of it or have passionately56 protested[Pg 62] against that assuagement, or have cynically57 ridiculed58 it, but they have never remained other than profoundly influenced by it. What is called "paganism" since that change came is not of marble and is not calm: it is a product, not of the old time, but of the new.
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1
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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wilts
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| （使）凋谢，枯萎( wilt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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unity
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| n.团结，联合，统一；和睦，协调 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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fluctuations
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| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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disapprove
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| v.不赞成，不同意，不批准 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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largesse
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| n.慷慨援助，施舍 | |
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draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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cloyed
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| v.发腻，倒胃口( cloy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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bowling
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| n.保龄球运动 | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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underlies
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| v.位于或存在于（某物）之下( underlie的第三人称单数 )；构成…的基础（或起因），引起 | |
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poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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sedulous
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| adj.勤勉的，努力的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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42
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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43
recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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44
carving
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| n.雕刻品，雕花 | |
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45
reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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47
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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48
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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49
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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50
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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51
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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52
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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53
yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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54
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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55
assuagement
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| n.缓和；减轻；缓和物 | |
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56
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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57
cynically
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| adv.爱嘲笑地，冷笑地 | |
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ridiculed
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| v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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