Edith Sitwell with brothers Osbert and Sacheverell.
History of Edith Sitwell | Heart and Mind | Aubade
Edith Sitwell with brothers Osbert and Sacheverell.
History of Edith Sitwell | Heart and Mind | Aubade
Being the first child of Sir George Sitwell and Lady Ida, she was born
on September 7, 1887. Edith Sitwell was the daughter of a prestigious earl,
but this did not mean that she was any happier because of her aristocratic
surroundings. Sitwell expressed her disassociation from her parents in her
autobiography. She once complained, "My parents were strangers to me from
the moment of my birth" (Ellmann 449). Sitwell's father was described as
"an extreme eccentric and an impossible parent; as for her mother, she was
upset by Edith's unusual features and then by her great height" (Ellmann 449).
Sitwell's poetry possesses the constant themes of her strong sense
of feminism and her fondness for nature including its complex cycles.
Sitwell has an artistic nature that is genuinely unique, and this uniqueness
has drawn many admirers to investigate what the true meaning is behind her
important works. Some of her memorable works include Facade, The Canticle
of the Rose, and Gold Coast Customs. Sitwell's strongest poetic influences
were T.S. Eliot's Prufrock, Baudelaire, Blake, Pope, Yeats, Thomas,
Stravinsky's music, and the growth of modern art. Sitwell admired T.S.
Eliot's ability to "see the world with different eyes" (Ellmann 448).
Within Facade, the poems were known to be abstract in that they could
not be easily translated. Sitwell commented, "they [the poems] are patterns
in sound...they are, too, in many cases virtuoso exercises of an extreme
difficulty..." (Ellmann 448). One of the many subjects Sitwell expands on
is "the growth of consciousness. Sometimes it is like that of a person who
has always been blind and who, suddenly endowed with sight, must learn to
see; or it is the cry of that waiting, watching world, where everything we
see is a symbol of something beyond, to the consciousness that is yet buried
in this earth-sleep..." (Ellmann 448).
As Sitwell grew older, she often changed the general theme of her
poetry to being "hymns of praise to the glory of life" (Ellmann 448). After
gaining quite a name for herself by obtaining degrees at Cambridge and Oxford,
she died in 1964. Her poetry in Facade is still highly acclaimed for its odd
explorations of sound and image. Two of her poems, Heart and Mind and Aubade,
are below along with interpretations.
SAID the Lion to the Lioness-'When you are amber dust,-
No more a raging fire like the heat of the Sun
(No liking but all lust)-
Remember still the flowering of the amber blood and bone,
The rippling of bright muscles like a sea,
Remember the rose-prickles of bright paws
Though the fire of that sun the heart and the moon-cold bone are one.'
Said the Skeleton lying upon the sands of Time-
'The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps...so is the heart
More powerful than all dust. Once I was Hercules
Or Samson, strong as the pillars of the seas:
But the flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
Is but a foolish wind.'
Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,
And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,
Remember only this of our hopeless love
That never till Time is done
Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.'
Within Heart and Mind, one can sense Sitwell's passion for life and
its powerful realities.
With such bold phrases as,
The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Sitwell possesses an understood reverence for the worldly forces of nature,
and her poetry is filled with her own interpretations of experience. The
ideas of Time, Consciousness, and Love are constant throughout her poems.
The reader can conclude that Sitwell has reached an epiphany on her personal
view of life. The basic theme of Heart and Mind is the overall hopelessness
of a situation involving lovers that will never bond completely and will
always remain separate because of the way people tend to separate or become
more foolish as time progresses.
Jane, Jane
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;
Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane come down the stair.
Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,
Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.
But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,
Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.
The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,
Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.
In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,
As carrots or as turnips, shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.
Cockscomb hair on the cold wind.
Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak wind...
Jane, Jane
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!
Aubade seems to be a simple poem, but there are two parallel
perceptions expressed within the poem. These are a servant girl's blind
perception and the actual witness's perception that is obviously more
sensitive to the surrounding environment. The actual witness is the one who
makes the detailed observations such as,
Each dull wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light
Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.
Again, Sitwell fills Aubade with light and dark imagery intoxicated with
colors, shapes, and distinct textures. Feelings of solitude and emptiness
are in Aubade because this poem is about two lovers parting and the feelings
and perceptions of the one left behind. Sitwell concludes the poem with the
same phrase that the poem began with to complete the poetic cycle and at the
same time emphasizing the endless thought cycles of the one lover deserted.
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/mbp/77.html
http://www.amherst.edu/~bmhall/edith.html
http://www.cyber-nation.com/victory/quotations/authors/
quotes_sitwell_dameedith.html
http://www.inlink.com/~mpgpc/cmgthink9.html
Sitwell, Edith. "Edith Sitwell" and "Aubade." The Norton Anthology
of Modern Poetry . Ed. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair.
London : W.W. Norton & Company, 1988. 447-454.
Sitwell, Edith. "Heart and Mind." The Oxford Book of Twentieth
Century English Verse. Ed. Phillip Larkin. New York :
Oxford University Press, 1973. 217-224.