Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon

by Algernon Charles Swinburne, Kenneth Haynes (Editor)

Republican, pagan, a sensualist alive to pleasure and to pain, Swinburne flouted the rules of Victorian decorum and morality in his life and work He created a unique means of expression through what Tennyson called his 'wonderful rhythmic invention', and yet his verse was influenced by poets from numerous periods and countries. Many of his poems are opulent hymns to sensual love, in all its aspects, and to death and to the loss of love. Swinburne's verse is immensely diverse in form: together these two works demonstrate its rich complexity and variety. As T. S. Eliot remarked, there is no reason to call his power over words anything but genius.

This volume brings together Swinburne's major poetic works, Atalanta in Calydon (1865) and Poems and Ballads (1866). Atalanta in Calydon is a drama in classical Greek form, which revealed Swinburne's metrical skills and brought him celebrity. Poems and Ballads brought him notoriety and demonstrates his preoccupation with de Sade, masochism, and femmes fatales. Also reproduced here is 'Notes on Poems and Reviews', a pamphlet Swinburne published in 1866 in response to hostile reviews of Poems and Ballads. In addition, this Penguin edition contains a preface, a table of dates, a commentary on the poems and two appendices, one of which is a map of the places mentioned in Atalanta in Calydon.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, British Literature, 19th Century, Fiction, Plays, Victorian

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1866

About the author

In 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...

Reviews

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the lost white feverish limbs
Of the Lesbian Sappho, adrift
In foam where the sea-weed swims,
Swam loose for the seas to lift...

This is typical: it has Sappho, it has death, it has the sea. He was as much fixated on Sappho because she threw herself into the sea, as because in her he has a spokeswoman for himself and his explorations. Sappho's perfect for him, it's not just that he's a perv.

Swinburne writes endlessly about the sea. I tried his novels and remember a few pages on a drowning man, than which, I thought at the time, I never expect to find a more lifelike experience written down. But the sea's everywhere, and I bet he set himself the task to be like the sea: similar, yes, to itself, yesterday, but infinitely different, and who's bored by the sea? I don't know better sea descriptions.

Poems & Ballads was his first splash and highly notorious. He's more attached to French Decadents than the English Pre-Raphaelites – he was Baudelaire's champion in England. In brief he explores cruelty; first the cruel instincts in love, then outward to the cruelty of the world. His pagans attack Christianity as too optimistic a religion, and in that untrue – as well as being life-negative and anti-sensual.

'Faustine' is about a decadent Roman, a female Faust, a queen given over to evil and evil lusts, but magnificent. One of his gaudy poems, that can be quite funny:

You seem a thing that hinges hold,
A love-machine
With clockwork joints of supple gold –
No more, Faustine.

Is that steampunk?
More gaudy is 'Dolores', a tribute to Our Lady of Pain...

What tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
Unwritten, unknown?

Not any more. And published in Victorian England.
But onto more serious poetry. 'Hymn to Proserpine' has a note 'After the proclamation in Rome of the Christian faith'. It's a pagan's lament for things past and lost, and uses the sea again, with ocean-rhythms:

Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye Gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire ye shall pass and be past;
Ye are Gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.

I've spent most time with 'Anactoria', which is Sappho in first person to her absconded lover. She too moves from cruelty towards Anactoria, in her abandonment, to a metaphysical statement. I think 'Anactoria' is a great poem. And once you get past the lesbian sadism, it culminates in Sappho's triumph as a poet. That may be an old claim – I shall not die. I'm a poet – but where is the claim made better?

Sappho is not the weary sort, weary of life and sensation like Faustine; she's healthy, she has far too much self for that. Yes, she swings between moods, and has her exhausted death-moods:

I would the sea had hidden us, the fire
(Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)
Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves,
And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.

But she's a presence, a personality, as the other women in this book aren't. She has a voice. Though at her lover's feet in one sentence, in the next she is above her, above her love. In her throes she can say, Last year when I loved Atthis, and this year/ When I love thee. You can see why Anactoria ran away. She has Aphrodite under thumb: Mine is she, very mine. Aphrodite offers her redress:

...and she bowed,
With all her subtle face laughing aloud,
Bowed down upon me, saying, 'Who doth thee wrong,
Sappho?'

She's nothing if not possessive:

That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat
Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet
Thy body were abolished and consumed
And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!

Her own cruelty morphs into that of God (singular):

For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings
The mystery of the cruelty of things?

And she goes on with a vision of the universe's cruelty. With a God behind it:

Is not his incense bitterness, his meat
Murder? his hidden face and iron feet
Hath not man known, and felt them on their way
Threaten and trample all things and every day?

On behalf of the suffering she declares,

Him would I reach, him smite, him desecrate;
Pierce the cold lips of God with human breath
And mix his immortality with death.

The last third shifts to her victory over Anactoria, and over death, and over God in fact.

Yea, thou shalt be forgotten like spilt wine,
Except these kisses of my lips on thine
Brand them with immortality; but me –
Men shall not see bright fire nor hear the sea...

and so on and so on, without they think of Sappho, or know her, for I Sappho shall be one with all these things. This is her conquest of God:

But, having made me, me he shall not slay...
Of me the high God hath not all his will.

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful, sensual, pre-raphaelite-esque.




(some I liked)




I wish we were dead together to-day,
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
Out of the world’s way, out of the light,
Out of the ages of worldly weather,
Forgotten of all men altogether,
As the world’s first dead, taken wholly away,
Made one with death, filled full of the night.
How we should slumber, how we should sleep.
----




My life is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
Divide my flesh and spirit with soft sound,
And my blood strengthens, and my veins abound.
I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath;
Let life burn down, and dream it is not death.
I would the sea had hidden us, the fire
(Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?)
Severed the bones that bleach, the flesh that cleaves, And let our sifted ashes drop like leaves.
I feel thy blood against my blood: my pain
Pains thee, and lips bruise lips, and vein stings vein.
Let fruit be crushed on fruit, let flower on flower,
Breast kindle breast, and either burn one hour.
----




Ah that my mouth for Muses’ milk were fed
On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled! That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste
The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist!
That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat
Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet
Thy body were abolished and consumed,
And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed!
Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,
The paces and the pauses of thy feet!
Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air
The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!
Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong
---




If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or grey grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune,
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle,
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon;
If I were what the words are,
And love were like the tune.
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death,
We’d shine and snow together
Ere March made sweet the weather
With daffodil and starling
And hours of fruitful breath;
If you were life, my darling,
And I your love were death.
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy
We’d play for lives and seasons
With loving looks and treasons
And tears of night and morrow
And laughs of maid and boy;
If you were thrall to sorrow,
And I were page to joy.
If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May,
We’d throw with leaves for hours
And draw for days with flowers,
Till day like night were shady
And night were bright like day;
If you were April’s lady,
And I were lord in May.
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain,
We’d hunt down love together,
Pluck out his flying-feather,
And teach his feet a measure,
And find his mouth a rein;
If you were queen of pleasure,
And I were king of pain.
----




Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said –
I wist not what, saving one word – Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.

[William Masero · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles Swinburne is one of the most underrated poets ever.

[Lisa of Troy]

Annotated Book in F. Scott Fitzgerald's College of One

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems and Ballads *** -- Swinburne is one of the early moderns, though he seems trapped between worlds. He was willing to go into 20th century themes and subjects (atheism, homosexuality, masochism, etc.) that Tennyson and Browning would never dare touch 30 years earlier, but he seems caught in Browning’s and Tennyson’s 19th century aesthetics.

This volume offers a musical selection of poems, rich in rhyme and variegated rhythms. The verse almost sings on the page. But the constant rhyme and ballad format, no matter how cleverly done, becomes cloying. This is especially noticeable because the poems are slavish to the meter, which is a dangerous thing when one ventures into anapests. In a way, he reminds me of Poe in that he shows immense technical skill, but seems just off the mark. I wished he had mixed in some blank verse for variety.

While the verse is at times bold, it doesn’t consistently have the verve and energy of the opening pages of Atalanta in Calydon. (Honestly, few works do.) In fact, the poems are very repetitious and grow wearying. The word “lips” appears 220 times in Poems and Ballads. That might make sense since many of these are love poems. But the word “foam” comes up almost 40 times in 45 poems. (By comparison, Shakespeare, in his entire oeuvre, used “foam” 14 times.)

I think another -- and more serious -- problem is that all the poems seem inspired or informed by other poems or literature. The works seem separated from life. Swinburne writes from some kind of Parnassus, and the imagery seems detached and disembodied. He offers more poems about ideas than people. No one can deny Eliot’s literary garlands, but his poetry still seems attached directly this world with descriptions of the streets, the people, and the cities.

I am perhaps a bit too unkind. There are some excellent poems in this book. I liked Anactoria, Hymn to Proserpine is outstanding, but also worth reading are Anactoria, Dolores, and Felise (especially starting line 186 where Swinburne finally gets to the point).

Some of my favorite lines:


From A Lamentation:

For all things born one gate
Opens, no gate of gold;
Opens; and no man sees
Beyond the gods and fate. (p. 101)

From April:

When the fields catch flower
And the underwood is green,
And from bower unto bower
The songs of the birds begin,
I sing with sighing between.

Madonna Mia

She is more strong than death,
Being strong as love. (p 189)

Atalanta in Calydon **** -- You can see my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


If you are looking for a good, thoughtful edition of Swinburne’s works, this edition edited by Morse Peckham is outstanding. It provides an excellent introduction to Swinburne’s poetry and thoughtful commentary. The commentary is a bit out of date and un-PC (being now 50 years old), but still better than you’ll find about anywhere else.

[Leonardo]

...cuando leí los comentarios del mismo poeta sobre el paganismo (como ser en "Atlanta") deduje que antes que el Galileo respirara sobre él, el mundo era si es posible más gris, que después que hubo respirado. El poeta sostenía (por cierto en lo abstracto) que la vida era una oscuridad absoluta. Y no obstante, en cierta forma, el Cristianismo había logrado oscurecerla. Era un pesimista el mismo hombre que acusaba de pesimista al Cristianismo. Pensé que algo estaba mal. Y por un loco instante cruzó mi mente la idea, de que tal vez no fueran los mejores jueces de la relación de la religión con la alegría, aquellos que, según sus propios comentarios, no poseían ni alegría ni religión.

Ortodoxia Pág.50-51

[Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Could not one day withhold,
One night; and like as these
White ashes of no weight,
Held not his urn the cold
Ashes of Heracles?
For all things born one gate
Opens, no gate of gold;
Opens; and no man sees
Beyond the gods and fate."

[Joseph Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bro, who invited the girl to The Great Calydonian Boar Hunt?

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This contains two works, with introduction and notes:

Poems and Ballads [1st series] [1866]

This was a re-read, from the beginning of 2009. It didn't seem at all familiar, apart from one or two poems. I remember being very impressed the first time; this time not so much. I think Swinburne is a poet one has to be in the right mood (a very pessimistic or depressed mood, I guess) to appreciate; if one is, he reverberates, if not, he seems cold and formal. That was the case this time. His most frequent subject matter is the end of love, the day when one says, "I was in love and she seemed the most beautiful, witty, wonderful person in the world; and today she seems so very ordinary and I don't feel anything at all." But there are some other themes; how could I have forgotten the refrain, "When three men hold together, the kingdoms are less by three" from "A Song in Time of Order"?
Atalanta in Calydon [1865]

A play in verse, in imitation of Greek tragedy. The story of Meleager and Atalanta, and the hunt of the Calydonian boar, was alluded to in the Iliad, and it was the subject of a play by Euripides, lost except for some fragments; Swinburne's version is taken mainly from Ovid and Apollodorus. This is an interesting story, and Swinburne tells it well and in good poetry; he experiments with prosody, inspired by though not strictly imitating the original classical models. It would have been better had he imitated the length and conciseness of the Greek tragedies as well; this is much longer than any extant Greek play and at times seems diffuse and repetitive, almost padded, the fault of much of his other poetry.

[Lilith · Rating 5 out of 5]

It wouldn't be fair for me to write a review of this book, since I am in love with Swinburne. I have been reading him, studying him, exploring him for over two years now (PhD reasons). He never ceases to amaze me, he never stops surprising. I have probably read and re-read Poems and Ballads dozens of times in these two years, but with every reading I notice something that had slipped my attention the last time.

This collection of poems is a gem. It is not his best work imo ("Tristram of Lyonesse" is), but it is his most known, most reviewed and criticised work. It shows all of his roots: Pre-Raphaelites, Baudelaire, Sappho, de Sade... and so on.

His poetry might not be everyone's cup of tea--masochism, sadism, vivid expressions of female sexuality uncommon for 19th century, obsession and death--but for those who love poetry, for those who love pondering about the lines they read, believe me Swinburne is a fruit for thought.

I really can't pick a favourite in all the poems of the collection, but if I have to I would definitely advice anyone to at least read "Phaedra," "Faustine," "The Masque of Queen Bersabe," "The King's Daughter." These are some of my absolute favourites, not only for their story, but also for the rhythm, the rhyme and the musicality of the lyric. Indeed as an anonymous reviewer wrote in Athenaeum of 1889 “no bard of the present age has a genius more akin to [Sappho's], more passionate and fiery than Mr. Swinburne.”

[Jonathan Dickstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional, less-known, romantic poet.

[David Sterritt]

Returning to the great Swinburne after a long hiatus, I’ve found much enjoyment in the Penguin Classics collection “Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon,” although parts of the latter work, a drama in verse, were a bit of a slog. Swinburne was a daring and roguish writer, and many of his poems were predictably shocking to some 19th-century readers and critics. His defense of such transgressive works as “Anactoria” and “Dolores” and “The Garden of Proserpine” is reprinted in this edition, and the essay remains entertaining and edifying to this day. This edition’s critical apparatus, by Kenneth Haynes, is jammed with information about allusions, references, sources, and rhyme schemes of individual poems, some of it useful, some redundant. In all, an engaging volume of impressively diverse works by a poet I continue to admire.

[zoe ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Being sexless, wilt thou be
Maiden or boy?"

This was oddly enjoyable, and made me have a deep look into Algernon Charles Swinburne, which was very interesting and humorous, because Oscar Wilde had random issues with him "pretending" (in his eyes) to be gay. It's weird but I love the idea of a gay male poet pretending to be a woman to write about lesbian experiences

"All the Loves wept, listening; sick with anguish,
Stood the crowned nine Muses about Apollo;
Fear was upon them,

While the tenth sang wonderful things they knew not.
Ah the tenth, the Lesbian! the nine were silent;"

[Descending Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights ~ "The Triumph Of Time" "A Leave Taking" "Fragoletta" "Rondel" "Satia Te Sanguine" "A Lamentation" "A Match" "Before The Mirror" "To Victor Hugo" "The Garden Of Proserpine" "Sapphics" "August" "Love and Sleep" and "The Year of Love".

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could love Swinburne for Hymn to Proserpine alone, not to mention The Triumph of Time, Hendecasyllabics & St Dorothy...and Atalanta in Calydon is quite a mature work. (But what's this Masque of Queen Bersabe?

[Rebecka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to return this before I finished it, but poetry is usually not my favorite, so I was grateful to make it as far as I did. I really liked some of the imagery, but was disappointed that so many of the poems seemed to echo each other. I think I just needed more variety than what this book offered.

[Katherine Hunnicutt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to return it to the library. It's much better to own poetry books since you can't really appreciate them if you zip through. I would like to have this one.

[Katie Rutter · Rating 3 out of 5]

he probs found it hot but the nods to same sex female desire are beautiful