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Algernon Charles Swinburne

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English poet, playwright and novelist (1837–1909)
"Swinburne" redirects here. For other uses, seeSwinburne (disambiguation).

Algernon Charles Swinburne
Swinburne c. 1892
Swinburnec. 1892
Born(1837-04-05)5 April 1837
London, England
Died10 April 1909(1909-04-10) (aged 72)
London, England
OccupationPoet, playwright, novelist and critic
EducationEton College
Alma materBalliol College, Oxford
PeriodVictorian era
Literary movementDecadent movement,Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Notable workPoems and Ballads
Signature

Algernon Charles Swinburne (5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909) was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays – all tragedies – and collections of poetry such asPoems and Ballads, and contributed to theEleventh Edition of theEncyclopædia Britannica.

Swinburne wrote about manytaboo topics, such aslesbianism,sadomasochism, andantitheism. His poems have many common motifs, such as theocean,time, anddeath. Several historical people are featured in his poems, such asSappho ("Sapphics"),Anactoria ("Anactoria"), andCatullus ("To Catullus").[1]

Biography

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Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1862, byDante Gabriel Rossetti

Swinburne was born at 7Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, on 5 April 1837. He was the eldest of six children born to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Henry Swinburne (1797–1877) and Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the3rd Earl of Ashburnham, a wealthyNorthumbrian family. He grew up at East Dene inBonchurch on theIsle of Wight.[2] The Swinburnes also had a London home at Whitehall Gardens, Westminster.[3]

As a child, Swinburne was "nervous" and "frail", but "was also fired with nervous energy and fearlessness to the point of being reckless."[4] He went horseback riding and wrote plays with his first cousinMary Gordon who lived nearby on the Isle of Wight. They secretly collaborated on her second book,Children of the Chapel, which contained an unusual number of beatings.[5]

Swinburne attendedEton College (1849–53), where he started writing poetry. At Eton, he won first prizes in French and Italian.[4] He attendedBalliol College, Oxford (1856–60), with a brief hiatus when he wasrusticated[6] from the university in 1859 for having publicly supported the attempted assassination ofNapoleon III byFelice Orsini.[7] He returned in May 1860, though he never received a degree.

Swinburne spent summer holidays atCapheaton Hall inNorthumberland, the house of his grandfather,Sir John Swinburne, 6th Baronet (1762–1860), who had a famous library and was president of theLiterary and Philosophical Society inNewcastle upon Tyne. Swinburne considered Northumberland to be his native county, an emotion reflected in poems like the intensely patriotic "Northumberland", "Grace Darling" and others. He enjoyed riding his pony across the moors; he was a daring horseman, "through honeyed leagues of the northland border", as he called the Scottish border in hisRecollections.[8]

In the period 1857–60, Swinburne became a member ofLady Trevelyan's intellectual circle atWallington Hall.

After his grandfather's death in 1860 he stayed withWilliam Bell Scott in Newcastle. In 1861, Swinburne visitedMenton on theFrench Riviera, staying at the Villa Laurenti to recover from the excessive use of alcohol.[9] From Menton, Swinburne went toItaly, where he travelled extensively.[9] In December 1862, Swinburne accompanied Scott and his guests, probably includingDante Gabriel Rossetti, on a trip toTynemouth. Scott writes in his memoirs that, as they walked by the sea, Swinburne declaimed the as yet unpublished "Hymn to Proserpine" and "Laus Veneris" in his lilting intonation, while the waves "were running the whole length of the long level sands towardsCullercoats and sounding like far-off acclamations".[10]

NPG P416. Swinburne with nine of his peers at Oxford, ca. 1850s (Left to right: 1.Joseph Frank Payne, standing; 2. George Rankine Luke, sitting; 3. John Warneford Hoole, standing; 4. Algernon Charles Swinburne, sitting; 5.Thomas Hill Green, standing; 6.John Nichol, sitting; 7.James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, standing; 8.Albert Venn Dicey, sitting; 9.Aeneas James George Mackay, standing; 10.Thomas Erskine Holland, sitting)[11]

At Oxford, Swinburne met severalPre-Raphaelites, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He also metWilliam Morris. After leaving college, he lived in London and started an active writing career, where Rossetti was delighted with his "little Northumbrian friend", probably a reference to Swinburne's diminutive height—he was just 5'4".[12]

Swinburne was analcoholic andalgolagniac and highly excitable. He liked to beflogged.[13] His health suffered, and in 1879 at the age of 42, he was taken into care by his friend,Theodore Watts-Dunton, who looked after him for the rest of his life atThe Pines, 11 Putney Hill,Putney.[14] Watts-Dunton took him to the lost town ofDunwich, on the Suffolk coast, on several occasions in the 1870s.[15]

Swinburne's gravestone
Swinburne's grave atSt. Boniface Church, Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, pictured in 2013

In Watts-Dunton's care Swinburne lost his youthful rebelliousness and developed into a figure of social respectability.[1] It was said of Watts-Dunton that he saved the man and killed the poet. Swinburne died at the Pines[16]: xii  on 10 April 1909, at the age of 72, and was buried atSt. Boniface Church, Bonchurch on theIsle of Wight.[17]

Work

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16 Cheyne Walk, home to Swinburne
Blue plaque at 16 Cheyne Walk
The Pines, Putney
Blue plaque at The Pines, Putney
Swinburne caricatured byCarlo Pellegrini inVanity Fair, 1874

Swinburne's poetic works include:Atalanta in Calydon (1865),Poems and Ballads (1866),Songs before Sunrise (1871),Poems and Ballads Second Series, (1878)Tristram of Lyonesse (1882),Poems and Ballads Third Series (1889), and the novelLesbia Brandon (published posthumously in 1952).

Poems and Ballads caused a sensation when it was first published, especially the poems written in homage toSappho of Lesbos such as "Anactoria" and "Sapphics": Moxon and Co. transferred its publication rights toJohn Camden Hotten.[18] Other poems in this volume such as "The Leper", "Laus Veneris", and "St Dorothy" evoke a Victorian fascination with theMiddle Ages, and are explicitly mediaeval in style, tone and construction. Also featured in this volume are "Hymn to Proserpine", "The Triumph of Time" and "Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)".

Swinburne wrote in a wide variety of forms, includingSapphic stanzas (comprising 3hendecasyllabic lines followed by anAdonic):

So the goddess fled from her place, with awful
Sound of feet and thunder of wings around her;
While behind a clamour of singing women
     Severed the twilight.[19]

— "Sapphics", stanza 6

Swinburne devised the poetic form called theroundel, a variation of the FrenchRondeau, and examples of this form were included inA Century of Roundels dedicated toChristina Rossetti. Swinburne wrote toEdward Burne-Jones in 1883: "I have got a tiny new book of songs or songlets, in one form and all manner of metres ... just coming out, of which Miss Rossetti has accepted the dedication. I hope you and Georgie [his wife Georgiana, one of theMacDonald sisters] will find something to like among a hundred poems of nine lines each, twenty-four of which are about babies or small children". Opinions about these poems vary, some finding them captivating and brilliant while others see them as over-clever and contrived. One of these poems,A Baby's Death, was set to music by the English composerSir Edward Elgar as the song "Roundel: The little eyes that never knew Light". English composerMary Augusta Wakefield set Swinburne'sMay Time in Midwinter to music.

Swinburne was influenced by the work ofWilliam Shakespeare,Percy Bysshe Shelley,Catullus,William Morris,Dante Gabriel Rossetti,Robert Browning,Alfred Lord Tennyson, andVictor Hugo.[16] Swinburne was popular in England during his lifetime but his stature has greatly decreased since his death.

After the firstPoems and Ballads, Swinburne's later poetry became increasingly devoted to celebrations ofrepublicanism and revolutionary causes, particularly in the volumeSongs before Sunrise.[1] "A Song of Italy" is dedicated toGiuseppe Mazzini; "Ode on the Proclamation of the French Republic" is dedicated to Victor Hugo; and "Dirae" is a sonnet sequence of vituperative attacks against those whom Swinburne believed to be enemies of liberty.Erechtheus is the culmination of Swinburne's republican verse.[1]

He did not stop writing love poetry entirely; indeed his epic-length poemTristram of Lyonesse was produced during this period but its content is much less shocking than that of his earlier love poetry. His versification, and especially his rhyming technique, remained in top form to the end.[1]

Reception

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Swinburne is considered a poet of theDecadent school.[20] Rumours about his perversions often filled the broadsheets, and he ironically used to play along, confessing to being apederast andhaving sex with monkeys.[21]

Renée Vivien, the English poet, was highly impressed with Swinburne and often included quotations from him in her works.[22]

In France, Swinburne was highly praised by theSymbolist poetStéphane Mallarmé, and was invited to contribute to a book in honour of the poetThéophile Gautier,Le tombeau de Théophile Gautier (Wikisource): he answered by writing down six poems in French, English, Latin, and Greek.

In the United States, horror fiction writerH. P. Lovecraft considered Swinburne "the only real poet in either England or America after the death of Mr.Edgar Allan Poe."[23]

T. S. Eliot read Swinburne's essays on the Shakespearean and Jonsonian dramatists inThe Contemporaries of Shakespeare andThe Age of Shakespeare and Swinburne's books on Shakespeare and Jonson. Writing on Swinburne inThe Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, Eliot wrote Swinburne had mastered his material, and "he is a more reliable guide to [these dramatists] thanHazlitt,Coleridge, orLamb: and his perception of relative values is almost always correct". Eliot wrote that Swinburne, as a poet, "mastered his technique, which is a great deal, but he did not master it to the extent of being able to take liberties with it, which is everything."[24] Furthermore, Eliot disliked Swinburne's prose, about which he wrote "the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined sentences, are the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a disorderly mind."[25]

Swinburne was nominated for theNobel Prize in Literature every year from 1903 to 1909. In 1908 he was one of the main candidates considered for the prize, and was nominated again in 1909.[26][27][28]

Selections from his poems were translated into French byGabriel Mourey:Poèmes et ballades d'Algernon Charles Swinburne (Paris, Albert Savine, 1891), incorporating notes byGuy de Maupassant; andChants d'avant l'aube de Swinburne (Paris, P.-V. Stock, 1909). Italian Decadent writerGabriele D'Annunzio repeatedly emulated Swinburne in his own poetry, and it is believed that his acquaintance with Swinburne was primarily through Mourey's French translations.[29]

Verse drama

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  • The Queen Mother (1860)
  • Rosamond (1860)
  • Chastelard (1865)
  • Bothwell (1874)
  • Mary Stuart (1881)
  • Marino Faliero (1885)
  • Locrine (1887)
  • The Sisters (1892)
  • Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899)

Prose drama

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Poetry

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^† Although formally tragedies,Atalanta in Calydon andErechtheus are traditionally included with "poetry".

Criticism

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Major collections

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  • The poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 6 vols. London: Chatto & Windus, 1904.
  • The Tragedies of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 5 vols. London: Chatto & Windus, 1905.
  • The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise, 20 vols. Bonchurch Edition; London and New York: William Heinemann and Gabriel Wells, 1925–7.
  • The Swinburne Letters, ed. Cecil Y. Lang, 6 vols. 1959–62.
  • Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Terry L. Meyers, 3 vols. 2004.

Ancestry

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Ancestors of Algernon Charles Swinburne
SirJohn Swinburne, 3rd Baronet
SirEdward Swinburne, 5th Baronet
Mary Bedingfield
SirJohn Edward Swinburne, 6th Baronet
Robert Dillon, Lord ofTerrafort
Catherine/Christiana Dillon
Martha Newland
Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne
Bennett Alexander Bennett
Richard Henry Alexander Bennet ofBeckenham
Mary Ash
Emilia Elizabeth Bennet
Peter Burrell of Langley Park
Elizabeth Amelia Burrell
Elizabeth Lewis
Algernon Charles Swinburne
ColonelJohn Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham
John Ashburnham, 2nd Earl of Ashburnham
Jemima Grey, Countess of Ashburnham
George Ashburnham, 3rd Earl of Ashburnham
John Crowley/Crawley
Elizabeth Crowley/Crawley, Countess of Ashburnham
Theodosia Gascoygne/Gascoigne
Lady Jane Henrietta Ashburnham
SirHugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland
Algernon Percy, 1st Earl of Beverley
Elizabeth Seymour, Duchess of Northumberland
Lady Charlotte Percy, Countess of Ashburnham
Peter Burrell of Langley Park
Isabella Burrell, Countess of Beverley
Elizabeth Lewis

See also

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References

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  • Joshi, S. T. (1993).Lord Dunsany: a Bibliography / by S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. p. 2.
  1. ^abcdeWalsh, John (2012),An Introduction to Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bloomington: The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project, retrieved4 December 2015
  2. ^"Algernon Charles Swinburne".www.poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved3 May 2016.
  3. ^Cox, Montagu H; Norman, Philip."No. 3 Whitehall Gardens Pages 204-207 Survey of London: Volume 13, St Margaret, Westminster, Part II: Whitehall I. Originally published by London County Council, London, 1930".British History Online. Retrieved7 August 2020.
  4. ^ab"Algernon Charles Swinburne Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Algernon Charles Swinburne".www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved3 May 2016.
  5. ^Mitchell, Jeremy; Powney, Janet (11 May 2023),"Gordon [married name Leith], Mary Charlotte Julia [known as Mrs Disney Leith] (1840–1926), novelist and Icelandic traveller",Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press,doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000382399,ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8, retrieved2 September 2023
  6. ^Swinburne, Algernon (1919), Gosse, Edmund; Wise, Thomas (eds.),The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, vol. 1–6, New York: John Lane Company, retrieved4 December 2015
  7. ^Everett, Glenn."A. C. Swinburne: Biography".Victorian Web. Retrieved4 December 2015.
  8. ^Swinburne, Algernon (2013),Delphi Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated), Delphi Classics,ISBN 9781909496699, retrieved4 December 2015
  9. ^abTed Jones (15 December 2007).The French Riviera: A Literary Guide for Travellers. Tauris Parke Paperbacks. pp. 185–.ISBN 978-1-84511-455-8.
  10. ^Scott, William (1892),Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, London: Forgotten Books, retrieved4 December 2015
  11. ^’’Algernon Charles Swinburne with nine of his peers at Oxford’’https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitExtended/mw08504/Algernon-Charles-Swinburne-with-nine-of-his-peers-at-Oxford
  12. ^Edmund Gosse,The Life of Algernon Swinburne, 1917 (The Macmillan Company), p. 258, cited (w/ a Google-book link) at"Before Dawn by Algernon Swinburne". Archived fromthe original on 12 May 2015. Retrieved26 November 2012..
  13. ^John O‘Connell (28 February 2008)."Sex and books: London's most erotic writers".Time Out. Archived fromthe original on 10 April 2019. Retrieved26 November 2015.
  14. ^Blue Plaques Listing for London, English Heritage, Accessed December 2009.
  15. ^W.G.Sebald, The Rings of Saturn, Harvill 1998 / Vintage 2002 pp. 161-66
  16. ^abMaxwell, Catherine (2012), "Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)",The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 236–249,doi:10.1017/CCOL9780521895156.018,hdl:1880/43796,ISBN 9781139017183
  17. ^Wilson, Scott.Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Locations 45952-45953). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition
  18. ^Walter M. Kendrick, "The secret museum: pornography in modern culture", University of California Press, 1996,ISBN 0-520-20729-7, p.168
  19. ^Swinburne 1889, p. 229.
  20. ^Alkalay-Gut, Karen (2000)."Aesthetic and Decadent Poetry", in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry, edited by Joseph Bristow. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 228.ISBN 978-0521646802.
  21. ^Everett, Glenn (June 2000)."A. C. Swinburne: Biography".www.victorianweb.org.Archived from the original on 27 April 2022. Retrieved6 December 2007.
  22. ^"Renée Vivien | French poet | Britannica". 15 April 2024.
  23. ^H.P. Lovecraft,Selected Letters: Volume 1. Sauk City: WI: Arkham House, 1965, p. 73
  24. ^Eliot T.S.Reflections on Vers Libre New Statesman 1917
  25. ^Eliot, T. S. (1998).The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays. Mineola NY: Dover Publications. p. 10.ISBN 978-0486299365.
  26. ^"Algernon Charles Swinburne".The Nomination Database for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Nobel Foundation. April 2020. Retrieved14 March 2021.
  27. ^Helmer Lång,100 nobelpris i litteratur 1901–2001, Symposion 2001, pp. 25, 56.
  28. ^Wilhelm Odelberg,Nobel: The Man and His Prizes, p. 97.
  29. ^Brown, Calvin S. (June 1940)."More Swinburne-D'Annunzio Parallels".Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.55 (2):559–567.doi:10.2307/458461.ISSN 0030-8129.JSTOR 458461.
  30. ^"Cleopatra".dvpp.uvic.ca. Retrieved14 February 2025.

Sources

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External links

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