A Theory of Poetry: Swinburne’s “A Dark Month”

Whether Swinburne’s poetry bears any substantial meaning or referentiality to the world outside of it has been one of the central questions Swinburne scholars have dealt with since the very beginning of Swinburne scholarship. George Meredith’s view of Swinburne’s poetry as lacking an “internal centre” and T. S. Eliot’s perception of Swinburne’s verse as carrying nothing but the “hallucination of meaning”¹ have had a profound influence on later generations of Swinburne readers and shaped, in many respects, the field of Swinburne studies as we know it today. Probably one of the most recent references to the question of poetic meaning in Swinburne can be found in the debate that took place between Peter Anderson and Rikky Rooksby,² in which Meredith and Eliot’s earlier observations have been replaced by a discussion about the structuralist versus post-structuralist nature of Swinburne’s verse. Anderson’s reading of Swinburne defines him as a proto-Derridean poet who is concerned with unraveling the inherent “void” which language assumes. “What [Swinburne’s] poetry demonstrates,” Anderson argues, “is how not even the most consummate control, entrancing euphony and striking metrical mastery can conceal what is everywhere revealed: the vanishing of the word into itself, the void” (p. 18). For Rooksby, on the other hand, the nature of Swinburne’s poetic language indicates a genuine humanist concern, as the undoing of poetic boundaries represents the blurring of boundaries between self and other. Swinburne’s poetry does not present “a void,” Rooksby writes, “but a tumultuous energy, elemental, suffering but undefeated, ever eager to pass beyond itself into union.”³

In this context, Swinburne’s “A Dark Month” proves to be highly significant. The sequence, written during May 1881, depicts Swinburne’s state of mind following the departure of the seven-year-old Herbert (Bertie) Mason on what was supposed to be a one-month trip with his parents.⁴ Swinburne, who had been living under the care of Theodore Watts-Dunton next to the Masons for almost two years, was completely taken by the child at that point. Thus the darkness of “A Dark Month” primarily represents Swinburne’s emotional state as a result of Bertie’s absence. “A Dark Month,” it is important to note, has never been considered as one of the poet’s greatest achievements. In fact, for most critics, “A Dark Month” and the biographical and poetic circumstances that led to its composition mark the beginning of the gradual deterioration of Swinburne’s poetic abilities. His move to Putney and the new peaceful life that he had led since then, along with his rather disturbing poetic and personal interest in children, caused “A Dark Month” to be regarded as one of the dozens of second-rate poems that Swinburne has been accused of writing in the last three decades of his poetic career.⁵

And yet, while the poetic quality of “A Dark Month” may be questioned, the sequence very clearly indicates that even during his later years Swinburne kept examining, refining, and reconceptualizing his views on poetry and poetics. As Jerome McGann has recently noted, “some of [Swinburne’s] most important theoretical arguments come . . . in his verse.”⁶ And indeed, in “A Dark Month,” Swinburne develops a unique view of the referential relationships between poetic language and extra-poetic objects. This view, I argue, manages to free the discussion of Swinburne’s poetics from the structuralist/post-structuralist dichotomy and so provides us with an alternative theoretical approach to his poetry.

“A Dark Month” revolves around two central concerns: the absence of its main object—that is, the child—and the challenges Swinburne faces when trying to represent that object poetically. These concerns, I argue, can be traced throughout the sequence and thus function as the basis for Swinburne’s theory of poetry as it is presented in “A Dark Month.”⁷ One of the images Swinburne uses in order to depict the child’s absence is that of the empty house:

I pass by the small room now forlorn   Where once each night I passed I knew A...