Victorian Poetry: In Memoriam A.H.H., Goblin Market and Other Poems, and other treasures
TalkClub Read 2022
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1AnnieMod
We cannot finish the year without some poetry - it was a major part of the Victorian literature after all. So we get two bonus books:
In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson and Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti.
Unlike the readalongs threads, this one is open for any Victorian era poetry - while I will love to see discussions about the two books, if you read any poetry that qualifies, come tell us about it and maybe you will convince someone else to read it as well :)
Even if you are not usually a poetry reader, try some poems of the times - you may be pleasantly surprised.
So what Victorian poetry do you plan to read?
In Memoriam A.H.H. by Alfred Lord Tennyson and Goblin Market and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti.
Unlike the readalongs threads, this one is open for any Victorian era poetry - while I will love to see discussions about the two books, if you read any poetry that qualifies, come tell us about it and maybe you will convince someone else to read it as well :)
Even if you are not usually a poetry reader, try some poems of the times - you may be pleasantly surprised.
So what Victorian poetry do you plan to read?
2MissBrangwen
I already started Goblin Market and I really enjoy it. It feels rather like reading a fantasy story so far. So far I have only read the first few pages, though, so I don't know where it will lead.
I have not read a lot of Victorian poetry so far (in fact, the only writer I can think of right now is Emily Brontë), so I am really looking forward to exploring these poems.
I have not read a lot of Victorian poetry so far (in fact, the only writer I can think of right now is Emily Brontë), so I am really looking forward to exploring these poems.
3thorold
I was one of the people who agitated for more poetry, so I’ve certainly got this in mind. Probably for next month, October seems to be filling up already. I read quite a lot of Victorian poetry for courses I took, and enjoyed it, but I’ve only been back to it sporadically since then.
4thorold
>2 MissBrangwen:
It would be so easy to read this the wrong way. How fortunate that Freud wasn’t around when Goblin Market was written…
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore;
She sucked until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away
It would be so easy to read this the wrong way. How fortunate that Freud wasn’t around when Goblin Market was written…
5MissBrangwen
>4 thorold: That's right!
Unfortunately I didn't continue with Goblin Market this week at all, but I hope to get to it soon again.
Unfortunately I didn't continue with Goblin Market this week at all, but I hope to get to it soon again.
6thorold
Back to the Victorians after a bit of a lull doing other things:
Goblin market and other poems (1862) by Christina Rossetti (UK, 1830-1894)
Christina was the youngest of the glamorous and talented Rossetti siblings, three-quarter-Italian and brought up in England in the intellectual afterglow of the Byron circle. Apart from being one of the most distinguished women poets of her time (her only real competitor on this side of the Atlantic being Elizabeth Barrett Browning), she's also remembered as the model for many of her big brother's paintings, especially as the Virgin Mary. And, like her brother and the other Pre-Raphaelites, she was heavily involved with the Oxford Movement, a religious revival that aimed to restore some lost medieval piety and glamour to Anglicanism, but ended up sending some of its most prominent followers into the arms of Rome. Partly for religious reasons, Christina never married, although she had at least three offers.
Goblin Market and other poems was Christina's first properly-published collection. The title-poem — her best-known piece after "In the bleak midwinter" — is an odd kind of fairy-tale ballad about two sisters who get involved with a bunch of dodgy supernatural fruit-and-veg salesmen, naive on the surface, but full of all kinds of troubling sexual and religious undercurrents when you start to look at it closely — perfect exam-syllabus material, especially since it's written with so much verve and assurance that it's always great fun to re-read. And the girls come out on top in the end, which helps!
The rest of the collection is a bit mixed, but there's a lot of good stuff there. Short lyric poems where the poet imagines herself abandoned by her lover, rejecting a suitor, widowed, marrying in the presence of a former lover's ghost, lamenting the transience of life and the seasons, etc. Possibly there is a little more focus on death than we might be entirely comfortable with as modern readers: there is a remarkable number of poems in which the speaker of the poem turns out to be talking to us from beyond the grave. Not surprising to learn that Christina had some struggles with depression during her life. But some of these poems are among the strongest in the collection, like the sonnets "After Death" and "Dead before death". Or "Sweet Death" in the religious section at the end. And just occasionally there's a wry touch of humour, as in "No, thank you, John", a woman's exasperated complaint to a tedious suitor straight out of a three-volume novel, who thinks he just has to go on proposing to her for her to realise that she loves him.
Another notable long poem is "The convent threshold", which seems to be a kind of pendant to her brother's "Blessed Damozel" — the speaker of the poem is a woman who has been involved in a relationship that has gone wrong in some unspecified but spectacular way involving lots of blood. She has repented and is entering a convent, but on the doorstep she pauses to urge her lover to do the same, so that they can be reunited in Paradise later.
It's fun to re-read these poems after a gap without much exposure to Victorian poetry: sometimes what Rossetti has to say about religious and female experience might seem a little trite and obvious in hindsight, but that probably wasn't the case at the time, and it's clear that she meant every word of it. What remains striking above all is the confidence and strength with which she fits her deceptively simple language into a precision-aligned poetic structure.
Goblin market and other poems (1862) by Christina Rossetti (UK, 1830-1894)
Christina was the youngest of the glamorous and talented Rossetti siblings, three-quarter-Italian and brought up in England in the intellectual afterglow of the Byron circle. Apart from being one of the most distinguished women poets of her time (her only real competitor on this side of the Atlantic being Elizabeth Barrett Browning), she's also remembered as the model for many of her big brother's paintings, especially as the Virgin Mary. And, like her brother and the other Pre-Raphaelites, she was heavily involved with the Oxford Movement, a religious revival that aimed to restore some lost medieval piety and glamour to Anglicanism, but ended up sending some of its most prominent followers into the arms of Rome. Partly for religious reasons, Christina never married, although she had at least three offers.
Goblin Market and other poems was Christina's first properly-published collection. The title-poem — her best-known piece after "In the bleak midwinter" — is an odd kind of fairy-tale ballad about two sisters who get involved with a bunch of dodgy supernatural fruit-and-veg salesmen, naive on the surface, but full of all kinds of troubling sexual and religious undercurrents when you start to look at it closely — perfect exam-syllabus material, especially since it's written with so much verve and assurance that it's always great fun to re-read. And the girls come out on top in the end, which helps!
The rest of the collection is a bit mixed, but there's a lot of good stuff there. Short lyric poems where the poet imagines herself abandoned by her lover, rejecting a suitor, widowed, marrying in the presence of a former lover's ghost, lamenting the transience of life and the seasons, etc. Possibly there is a little more focus on death than we might be entirely comfortable with as modern readers: there is a remarkable number of poems in which the speaker of the poem turns out to be talking to us from beyond the grave. Not surprising to learn that Christina had some struggles with depression during her life. But some of these poems are among the strongest in the collection, like the sonnets "After Death" and "Dead before death". Or "Sweet Death" in the religious section at the end. And just occasionally there's a wry touch of humour, as in "No, thank you, John", a woman's exasperated complaint to a tedious suitor straight out of a three-volume novel, who thinks he just has to go on proposing to her for her to realise that she loves him.
Another notable long poem is "The convent threshold", which seems to be a kind of pendant to her brother's "Blessed Damozel" — the speaker of the poem is a woman who has been involved in a relationship that has gone wrong in some unspecified but spectacular way involving lots of blood. She has repented and is entering a convent, but on the doorstep she pauses to urge her lover to do the same, so that they can be reunited in Paradise later.
You sinned with me a pleasant sin:
Repent with me, for I repent.
Woe's me the lore I must unlearn!
Woe's me that easy way we went,
So rugged when I would return!
It's fun to re-read these poems after a gap without much exposure to Victorian poetry: sometimes what Rossetti has to say about religious and female experience might seem a little trite and obvious in hindsight, but that probably wasn't the case at the time, and it's clear that she meant every word of it. What remains striking above all is the confidence and strength with which she fits her deceptively simple language into a precision-aligned poetic structure.
7thorold
THE WORLD.
SONNET.
By day she wooes me, soft, exceeding fair:
But all night as the moon so changeth she;
Loathsome and foul with hideous leprosy,
And subtle serpents gliding in her hair.
By day she wooes me to the outer air,
Ripe fruits, sweet flowers, and full satiety:
But through the night, a beast she grins at me,
A very monster void of love and prayer.
By day she stands a lie: by night she stands,
In all the naked horror of the truth,
With pushing horns and clawed and clutching hands.
Is this a friend indeed; that I should sell
My soul to her, give her my life and youth,
Till my feet, cloven too, take hold on hell?
Christina Rossetti
8MissBrangwen
>6 thorold: Thank you for this wonderful review! It is very helpful in coming to grips with the poems. I enjoy reading them, but I still find it hard to really stick with the book and continue reading. That is why I am still stuck somewhere in the middle.
9thorold
...and the other one:
In memoriam A. H. H. (1850) by Alfred Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)
This is probably the ultimate mid-Victorian poem, everything you need to know about British culture around the time of the Great Exhibition condensed into one novella-length (just under 3000 lines) piece of verse. Reflecting on his reaction to the sudden death of his college friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22 in 1833, Tennyson analyses the process of grieving and recovery, and examines what death means to him in the context of Christian (Anglican) religious ideas and the way they have been shaken up by recent scientific discoveries. Fossils, descent from apes, age of the planet, Nature "So careful of the type ... So careless of the single life", and all the rest of it. You name it, it's in there somewhere.
The sections of the poem follow a roughly chronological sequence, starting with the poet reacting to news of his friend's death and following in his imagination the progress of the ship bringing his remains back to Britain, and ending years later with the happy marriage of the poet's sister Emilia, who had been engaged to marry Arthur. Along the way he goes back and forward through different ways of dealing with grief and loss, sometimes depressed and desperate, sometimes reconciled to the idea that "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all."
And of course this is a poem full of lines that have entered the language, from "Nature red in tooth and claw" to "Ring out, wild bells". It was a huge hit in its time, and copies flew off the presses, especially after Queen Victoria announced that she had taken great consolation from it after the death of her husband in 1862. Tennyson ended up with the Laureateship and a peerage, with a standing more like that of a former prime minister than a poet.
Reading it 170 years on, of course there's a lot that feels archaic, and the endless pattern of tetrameter quatrains in ABBA rhyme-scheme can seem a bit mechanical, but there's also a lot in his insight into the way we deal with loss and death that still feels relevant and helpful: I don't suppose many people read this without thinking about the way the poet's reflections would map onto a loss in their own lives, and probably feeling better about it as a result.
In memoriam A. H. H. (1850) by Alfred Tennyson (UK, 1809-1892)
This is probably the ultimate mid-Victorian poem, everything you need to know about British culture around the time of the Great Exhibition condensed into one novella-length (just under 3000 lines) piece of verse. Reflecting on his reaction to the sudden death of his college friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22 in 1833, Tennyson analyses the process of grieving and recovery, and examines what death means to him in the context of Christian (Anglican) religious ideas and the way they have been shaken up by recent scientific discoveries. Fossils, descent from apes, age of the planet, Nature "So careful of the type ... So careless of the single life", and all the rest of it. You name it, it's in there somewhere.
The sections of the poem follow a roughly chronological sequence, starting with the poet reacting to news of his friend's death and following in his imagination the progress of the ship bringing his remains back to Britain, and ending years later with the happy marriage of the poet's sister Emilia, who had been engaged to marry Arthur. Along the way he goes back and forward through different ways of dealing with grief and loss, sometimes depressed and desperate, sometimes reconciled to the idea that "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all."
And of course this is a poem full of lines that have entered the language, from "Nature red in tooth and claw" to "Ring out, wild bells". It was a huge hit in its time, and copies flew off the presses, especially after Queen Victoria announced that she had taken great consolation from it after the death of her husband in 1862. Tennyson ended up with the Laureateship and a peerage, with a standing more like that of a former prime minister than a poet.
Reading it 170 years on, of course there's a lot that feels archaic, and the endless pattern of tetrameter quatrains in ABBA rhyme-scheme can seem a bit mechanical, but there's also a lot in his insight into the way we deal with loss and death that still feels relevant and helpful: I don't suppose many people read this without thinking about the way the poet's reflections would map onto a loss in their own lives, and probably feeling better about it as a result.
