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詩人 L. S. ベヴィントン |
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L. S. ベヴィントン バイオグラフィー＆ビブリオグラフィー (3) |
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A Life of Louisa Sarah Bevington
By. Eijun Senaha Hokkaido University |
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What, with this fenced human mind,
What can I do to help my kind?
I such a stammerer, they so blind! --- “My Little Task” (1882) |
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| In 1882, Bevington’s second volume of verse appeared under the title Poems,
Lyrics, and Sonnets and found, this time, less favor in scientific and more in literary circles. Her personal understanding of nature,
religion, and people in Key-Notes broadened her outlook on various social problems of late Victorian England as her provocative
expressions became more polished and literary. In the epigraph, along with Wathen Mark Wilks Call and an anonymous German philosopher,
Bevington again quotes Emerson: “You must have eyes of science to see in the seed it nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet
to perceive in the thought its futurities.” Her dedication to “C.A.V.” takes a form of sonnet, and it declares her role as a
literary activist: |
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Not that the theme is worthy, nor the lay
Such as your heart would have, one time in three;
Yet, battling, I would chaunt of victory
All life’s night through: though dubious dream of day
Scarcely suffices me to shed one ray
O’er the fierce field where you must fighting be;
Yet you have brought a little sword to me
Of strange new metal that I would essay.
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Thus, Bevington indicates her concern about the poet’s literary as well as
social roles along with six other poems on the subject of the poet. The whole volume consists of two parts; forty-two poems in
“Poems and Lyrics” and twenty-one in “Sonnets.” One of Bevington’s new literary techniques is the use of companion poems:
the pairs, such as “Steel or Gold (A Question)” and “Gold and Steel (The Answer),” “Unperfected” and “Perfected,”
“Hope deferred” and “Hope Preferred,” and “Love’s Height” and “Love’s Depth,” present her ambivalence and meditative
process on various subjects. The tone of the collection is more serious than Key-Notes and describes problems of society,
home, and individual relationships. Her ideological shift, from a romantic natural poet to a political anarchist, is evident
in this volume. As Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds mention, “her verse draws on evolutionary theory to decentre, as do Field,
Naden and Blind, the egocentric power of human passion (‘Egoisme à Deux’ and ‘Measurements’). Darwinism, with its large-scale,
natural, geological imagery, provided a useful model for the idea of inevitable social change.”
“Egoisme à Deux” and “One More Bruised Heart” are the most discussed poems in this volume.
The former refers to a cosmic theory by using such terms as “nebulous,” “chaos-elements,” and “accidents,” and, as
Kathleen Hickok mentions in Victorian Poetry, is a product of “the metrical experimentation, romantic theme, and the poetic diction” |
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The title translates as “Egoism for Two,” “Egoism of Two,” or “Intimate Egoism.”
The first two lines of each stanza present scientific descriptions of creation, geologic time, and evolution of species.
The second two lines of each stanza raise the possibility that natural forces at work were commanded by a Will,
a Thought, a Longing--in short, by some kind of deity who foresaw the intimate two of the title and guided
cosmic events so as to arrange and endorse their love. |
However, the poem is ended with a question; “Was it divine?” The answer hangs. Hickok analyzes the
diction: “Not only is the love, ‘you’ and ‘I,’ probably accidental; the very presence of life on the planet, of human breath,
may be accidental as well. The philosophy of the poem is agnostic at best.”
In “One More Bruised Heart,” nearly a century after Blake’s accusation of societal child abuse, Bevington
exposes what’s happening at home: |
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One more bruised heart laid bare! One victim more!
One more wail heard! Oh, is there never end
Of all these passionate agonies, that rend
Young hopes to tatters through enslavements sore? |
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