Poems of the Week: “Decadongs”
I have always been fond of the English decadents. In an age of blustering nationalism, industrialism, and ideological zaniness, poets like Lionel Johnson and Ernest Dowson preserved some little corner of beauty. Yes, they drank too much, experimented too much, affected too much, but they wrote poems worth remembering. I've already presented some Johnson, so let us try my favorite of Dowson's small corpus.
Spleen
(For Arthur Symons)
I was not sorrowful, I could not weep,
And all my memories were put to sleep.
I watched the river grow more white and strange,
All day till evening I watched it change.
All day till evening I watched the rain
Beat wearily upon the window pane.
I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.
Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me
The shadow of a shadow utterly.
All day mine hunger for her heart became
Oblivion, until the evening came
And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep,
With all my memories that could not sleep.
Here is another, Ad manus puellae
I was always a lover of ladies' hands!
Or ever mine heart came here to tryst,
For the sake of your carved white hands' commands;
The tapering fingers, the dainty wrist;
The hands of a girl were what I kissed.
I remember an hand like a fleur-de-lys
When it slid from its silken sheath, her glove;
With its odours passing ambergris:
And that was the empty husk of a love.
Oh, how shall I kiss your hands enough?
They are pale with the pallor of ivories;
But they blush to the tips like a curled sea-shell:
What treasure, in kingly treasuries,
Of gold, and spice for the thurible,
Is sweet as her hands to hoard and tell?
I know not the way from your finger-tips,
Nor how I shall gain the higher lands,
The citadel of your sacred lips:
I am captive still of my pleasant bands,
The hands of a girl, and most your hands.
Many of the Decadents were drawn, for reasons both sensuous and spiritual (it is not always hard to distinguish) to the Roman Church. Here is a rare religious poem of Dowson,
Benedictio Domini
Without, the sullen noises of the street!
The voice of London, inarticulate,
Hoarse and blaspheming, surges in to meet
The silent blessing of the Immaculate.
Dark is the church, and dim the worshippers,
Hushed with bowed heads as though by some old spell.
While through the incense-laden air there stirs
The admonition of a silver bell.
Dark is the church, save where the altar stands,
Dressed like a bride, illustrious with light,
Where one old priest exalts with tremulous hands
The one true solace of man's fallen plight.
Strange silence here: without, the sounding street
Heralds the world's swift passage to the fire:
O Benediction, perfect and complete!
When shall men cease to suffer and desire?
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Dr. Fleming,
These poets echo the old England of Bede, Chaucer and Shakespeare. They might be decadent in the eyes of puritans but their sins remind of a poem entitled, The Penitent.
I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut myself within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"
Alas for pious planning —
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My Little Sorrow would not weep,
My Little Sin would go to sleep —
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, "One thing there's no getting by —
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"
Thanks for getting me to look at Dowson for the first time in ages. What a musical craftsman he is! Rather like a depressed Catullus. I also enjoyed many of the other decadents I found or rediscovered in the Penguin anthology, Decadent Poetry from Wilde to Naidu. I noticed a kind of topical colloquy going on between several of them at a time. The book contains two other poems entitled "Spleen". The one by Arthur Symons, to which Dowson's is perhaps a replay, reflects more of the peevishness more usually associated with spleen:
The roses were all red,
The ivy was all black:
Dear, if you turn your head,
All my despairs come back.
The sky was too blue, too kind,
The sea too green, and the air
Too calm; and I know in my mind
I shall wake and not find you there.
I am tired of the box-tree's shine
And the holly's, that never will pass,
And the plain's unending line,
And of all but you, alas!
This is almost a parody of the splenetic mood. It's word-for-word perfect, though. As John Gray's "Spleen" isn't, I think:
The roses every one were red,
And all the ivy leaves were black.
Sweet, do not even stir your head.
Or all of my despairs come back.
The sky is too blue, too delicate:
Too soft the air, too green the sea.
I fear -- how long had I to wait! --
That you will tear yourself from me.
The shining box-leaves weary me,
The varnished holly's glistening,
The stretch of infinite country:
So, saving you, does everything.
Besides revealing that Gray and Symons have a common source, a French poem by Paul Verlaine, Gray's version, with its pettish parenthesis, inadvertent melodrama (caused by the proposition that the lady will have to "tear" herself away from the poet's clutches), and unfortunate placement of "country" so that it scans as an iamb, induces laughter rather than the wry smile Symons (and Verlaine before him) provokes.
Dowson's "reply" is a quite different and, I think, better poem, as Dowson is generally a better poet than Symons and a much better poet than Gray. Dowson seems to really know spleen and not to find it funny.
Correction: There should be a question mark in my last parenthesis: "(and Verlaine before him?)".
Gray wrote a few good poems but nearly disappeared in the course of his life. Dowson, as you note, has a delicate musical gift that is equalled by few poets in English. Symons I have tried hard to like but gave up in the end. There is a nice older collection entitled "Aesthetes and Decadents." As a young man I collected editions from the period. I have a beautiful first--quite handsome--of Whistler's "The Baronet and the Butterfly" as well as Symons first Collected Poems. I haven't opened any of them except a 2nd edition of Dowson for probably 25 years.
Yes, they were all fond of Verlaine, though all go back to the master, Baudelaire. From the fleursdumal.org website I borrow. Since the translator Geoffrey Wagner was a friend and frequent contributor to Chronicles, I don't think anyone will object too much
Spleen
Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle
II nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;
Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;
Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,
Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.
— Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.
— Charles Baudelaire
Spleen
When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;
When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;
When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,
All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.
— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
Spleen
When the cold heavy sky weighs like a lid
On spirits whom eternal boredom grips,
And the wide ring of the horizon's hid
In daytime darker than the night's eclipse:
When the world seems a dungeon, damp and small,
Where hope flies like a bat, in circles reeling,
Beating his timid wings against the wall
And dashing out his brains against the ceiling:
When trawling rains have made their steel-grey fibres
Look like the grilles of some tremendous jail,
And a whole nation of disgusting spiders
Over our brains their dusty cobwebs trail:
Suddenly bells are fiercely clanged about
And hurl a fearsome howl into the sky
Like spirits from their country hunted out
Who've nothing else to do but shriek and cry —
Then long processions without fifes or drums
Wind slowly through my soul. Hope, weeping, bows
To conquest. And atrocious Anguish comes
To plant his black flag on my drooping brows.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
When the Low, Heavy Sky
When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid
Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,
And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed
A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair;
When Earth becomes a dungeon, where the timid bat
Called Confidence, against the damp and slippery walls
Goes beating his blind wings, goes feebly bumping at
The rotted, moldy ceiling, and the plaster falls;
When, dark and dropping straight, the long lines of the rain
Like prison-bars outside the window cage us in;
And silently, about the caught and helpless brain,
We feel the spider walk, and test the web, and spin;
Then all the bells at once ring out in furious clang,
Bombarding heaven with howling, horrible to hear,
Like lost and wandering souls, that whine in shrill harangue
Their obstinate complaints to an unlistening ear.
— And a long line of hearses, with neither dirge nor drums,
Begins to cross my soul. Weeping, with steps that lag,
Hope walks in chains; and Anguish, after long wars, becomes
Tyrant at last, and plants on me his inky flag.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Flowers of Evil (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1936)
Spleen
when low skies weightier than a coffin-lid
cast on the moaning soul their weary blight,
and from the whole horizon's murky grid
its grey light drips more dismal than the night;
when earth's a dungeon damp whose chill appals,
in which — a fluttering bat — my Hope, alone
buffets with timid wing the mouldering walls
and beats her head against the dome of stone;
when close as prison-bars, from overhead,
the clouds let fall the curtain of the rains,
and voiceless hordes of spiders come, to spread
their infamous cobwebs through our darkened brains,
explosively the bells begin to ring,
hurling their frightful clangour toward the sky,
as homeless spirits lost and wandering
might raise their indefatigable cry;
and ancient hearses through my soul advance
muffled and slow; my Hope, now pitiful,
weeps her defeat, and conquering Anguish plants
his great black banner on my cowering skull.
— Lewis Piaget Shanks, Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)
Spleen
When the low and heavy sky presses like a lid
On the groaning heart a prey to slow cares,
And when from a horizon holding the whole orb
There is cast at us a dark sky more sad than night;
When earth is changed to a damp dungeon,
Where Hope, like a bat,
Flees beating the walls with its timorous wings,
And knocking its head on the rotting ceilings;
When the rain spreads out vast trails
Like the bars of a huge prison,
And when, like sordid spiders, silent people stretch
Threads to the depths of our brains,
Suddenly the bells jump furiously
And hurl to the sky a horrible shriek,
Like some wandering landless spirits
Starting an obstinate complaint.
— And long hearses, with no drums, no music,
File slowly through my soul: Hope,
Conquered, cries, and despotic atrocious Agony
Plants on my bent skull its flag of black.
— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)
The poem "Benedictio Domini" is beautifully Catholic. Thank you for introducing me to Ernest Dowson.
It's quite wonderful to see all those versions, with the original, together. I confess to finding the two by translators with independent and greater reputations as original poets more pleasing than the others. Campbell's is the more English version because of his pentameters, and Millay's the more French because she oberves the original's alexandrines, I think quite magnificently. Each version has its own felicities and oddnesses: Why does Shanks descry a coffin-lid while everybody else sees just a lid? Why does Millay render "l'Ésperance" [l. 6] as "Confidence" when everybody else assigns it the usual English equivalence as "Hope"? One could learn some French simply by comparatively poring over these five Englishings.
It's also clear that Dowson's "Spleen" is much closer in understanding to Baudelaire's than Symons's, Gray's, or, presumably, Verlaine's. The subtly humorous (mocking?) Verlaine-Symons-Gray regard for spleen suits my temperament more than Baudelaire's far more somber feeling for it. But that says nothing about the quality of either French or all the English poems.
During my infatuation with Yeats I read a bit about the Decadents due to his early association with them, but these poems are the first I've read by an actual Decadent, unless reading Marius The Epicurian counts. I was never sold on why these aesthetes, living what seemed to me at the time to be idle and comfortable, as well as sensuous, lives, had so much to complain about. What more could a young man want than to inhabit a Beardsley/Lautrec world, trading, I assumed, tales of mistresses?
I'm indebted to Dr. Fleming and Mr. Olson for bringing out the fine craftsmanship of these poets, and allowing me to savor some lovely imagery:
Dark is the church, save where the altar stands,
Dressed like a bride, illustrious with light,
Where one old priest exalts with tremulous hands
The one true solace of man's fallen plight.
Indeed.