Bluestocking Oxford

By Asha Levy

‘At the time I began to write, a change in the direction, imagery, and rhythms in poetry had become necessary, owing to the rhythmical flaccidity, the verbal deadness, the dead and expected patterns, of some of the poetry immediately preceding us.’

This statement from the opening pages of Dame Edith Sitwell’s ‘Some Notes on my own Poetry’ is strikingly similar to modernist Ezra Pound’s declaration to ‘Make it new’. However, Sitwell’s early twentieth century poetry has never quite made it into the modernist canon, despite her apparently modernist drive for change. She was an extremely well-connected figure; she supported Dylan Thomas, aided the publication of Wilfred Owen’s poetry, and had links with Roger Fry, Aldous Huxley, Jean Cocteau, among others. She wrote hundreds of poems, many essays and biographies, and one novel. Edith Sitwell received the Royal Society of Literature medal for poetry, three honorary doctorates and a DBE. Considering this prolific literary output, it is hard to see why her work has been forgotten.

While clearly an influential figure, Sitwell’s reputation often stole attention from her work. Her public image was tied to her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell, and their collective eccentricity. The siblings often dressed elaborately, and Edith constructed a public persona that emphasised her physical similarity to Queen Elizabeth I. F. R. Leavis’ later declaration that ‘the Sitwells belong to the history of publicity rather than of poetry’ showcases the extent to which this courting of public attention was seen as symptomatic of a frivolous attitude and a lack of commitment to producing serious poetic work. Furthermore, unlike T. S. Eliot and Pound, Sitwell’s poetry was influenced by the Decadent movement. Stylistically similar to Oscar Wilde and Paul Verlaine, Sitwell’s brand of modernism has been termed ‘ornamental’ by literary critic Deborah Longworth. An emphasis on superficial extravagance, aesthetic quality, and performativity, contrasted sharply with Eliot and Pound, and served to heighten critics’ tendency not to take Sitwell’s poetry seriously. This preference for superficiality raised a moral argument for dismissal: Adolf Loos’ 1908 essay ‘Ornament and Crime’ suggested that decadent ornament was associated with degeneration and waste. Sitwell’s decadent ideology was set out in her poetry anthology, Wheels; as the 1916 ‘Preface’ makes clear:

‘Along this royal straight avenue of Time, 

From the dim splendour of the ages past,- 

Deck’d out in golden plumes, and wreathed with flowers, 

On a triumphal car, and with a cavalcade, 

Rides Moloch, God of blood: 

And in his hand a fingered treatise on Simplicity.’

‘Simplicity’ must be sacrificed. Sitwell had, as Evelyn Waugh said, declared ‘war on dullness’ favouring the ‘rare and lovely and elaborate’.

Sitwell’s 1922 Façade: An Entertainment exemplifies both her ornamental modernism and its disparaging reception. A combination of her own poetry, staging by her brothers, and music by William Walton, Façade cemented her reputation. The poems that make up the work are dream-like, often reminiscent of fairy tales, and full of exotic words and exaggerated rhyme. The poems were read by Sitwell through a large megaphone behind a curtain and mask. Many left the unusual performance disgruntled and confused. Virginia Woolf wrote ‘I don’t really understand … I don’t really admire’, while Daily Graphic theatre critic Hannen Swaffer called the performance ‘Drivel They Paid to Hear’. The incomprehensibility of Façade was not appreciated.

However, Façade offers insights into Sitwell’s understanding of poetry and its purposes: the work is an experimental move away from the Georgian tradition of poetry. In ‘Some Notes’, Sitwell explains she uses rhythm and rhyme to explore the physicality of her poetry. Understanding lies in the physical, even tangible qualities of sound. She achieves this through rhyming unusual word choices, such as ‘corraceous’ and ‘orchidaceous’ from ‘The Wind’s Bastinado’. These polysyllabic words ground the poems, providing a tangible and emphatic balance to the absurd content of many Façade poems. Conversely, Sitwell’s emphasis on rhyme and repetition also highlights her playfulness. After all, Façade is an ‘Entertainment’. Indeed, Aldous Huxley defended Façade by arguing it offered the only possible emotional response to World War One: acceptance through amusement. Sitwell’s extravagant rhyming and repetition creates a macabre comicality that enables the acceptance of death. This is especially clear in ‘Pere Amelot’ when the titular character dies and the poem ends by recalling the first stanza: ‘Pere Amelot nods in his white nightcap … / He knows there is nothing at all!’ The oddly cheerful, jaunty final line suggests a gleeful acceptance of meaningless death: ‘He knows there is nothing at all!’ is deliberately irreverent. Death’s inevitability is emphasised by the regular ABAB rhyme scheme alongside the poem’s circularity. The grotesque humour allows the reader or listener to experience both the horror of untimely death and enables humour at its expense.

Moreover, the 1930 epigraph to Façade sets up the poem to explore the possibility of horrific truth beyond illusion: ‘This modern world is but a thin match-board flooring spread over a shallow hell’. The poem ‘Clowns’ Houses’ establishes a nightmarish world where illusions are the last defence against the horrific reality of death. While there is no escape from death’s grasp, the reader is made painfully aware of just how fragile hopeful illusion is. Sitwell places humanity in ‘Tall houses; like a hopeless prayer / They cleave the sly dumb air’ within the wider illusion of the world (‘Beneath the flat and paper sky / The sun, a demon’s eye’). The prayer from the houses must be hopeless since the very fabric of the world is deceptive, meaning they are unable to pray to something true. The pitiful prayers and ‘star-bright masks’ of Sitwell’s poetic world cannot stop the ‘Chill Silence’ of death, just as the destruction of World War One was not mitigated by prayer and patriotic slogans. While ‘Pere Amelot’ uses acceptance through amusement to manage the emotional impact of a nihilistic death, ‘Clown’s Houses’ portrays accepting death as horrifying. There is no escape from death through illusion, but illusion provides a tenuous distraction against death’s inevitability. Where ‘Pere Amelot’ is humourous, ‘Clowns’ Houses’ is painfully upfront.  

Looking beyond the dismissive public critical opinion of Sitwell reveals a deeper interest in what constructs poetic meaning, and complex explorations of death, truth, and hope. Façade‘s performance provides a demonstration of the power of ornament: Sitwell dresses up the fear, uncertainty, and horror surrounding death with humour and rhythm. Death is turned into an aesthetic object, highlighting its horror while simultaneously allowing investigation of it. Sitwell’s Façade poems blend delightful lyricism with painful observations on reality. Her emphasis on death’s presence rings true in today’s conflicted world.
 

References

The Many Facades of Edith Sitwell, ed. by Allan Pero and Gyllian Philips (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017)

Bennett, Deborah Tyler. Edith Sitwell: the Forgotten Modernist (England: Sheffield Hallam University, 1996).

Whitworth, Michael H. ‘Value and Evaluation’, in Reading Modernist Poetry (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

Edith Sitwell, ‘Façade’, in Collected Poems, ed. by Edith Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1930 [1922]), p. 149-174

Wheels: An Anthology of Verse, ed. by Edith Sitwell, 2nd edn (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell, 1917 [1916]).

Edith Sitwell, ‘Some Notes on My Own Poetry’, in Selected Poems, ed. by Edith Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1936), p. 9-55