[New-Poetry] Criticism by others: Empson meets Sidney

[TheOldMole]

SEVEN   TYPES   OF   AMBIGUITY
as not to interfere with one another, in the prolonged and diffused 
energies of his mind.
Nowhere in English literature can this use of diffuseness as an 
alternative to, or peculiar branch of, ambiguity be seen more clearly 
than in those lovely sestines of Sidney, which are so curiously foreign 
to the normal modes or later developments of the language. This time I 
must do some serious quotation.
STREPHON.                                            KLAIUS.
strephon. You Gate-heard Gods, that love the grassie mountaines,
You nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
You Satyrs joyd with free and quiet forrests,
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which to my woes gives still an early morning:
And draws the dolor on till wery evening.

klaius. O Mercuric, foregoer to the evening,
O heavenlie huntresse of the savage mountaines,
O lovelie starve, entitled of the morning,
While that my voice doth fill the woeful vallies
Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
Which oft hath Echo tir'd in secrete forrests.

strephon. I that was once free-burgess of the forrests
Where shade from Sunne, and sports I sought at evening,
1 that was once esteemed for pleasant musique,
Am banisht now amongst the monstrous mountaines
Of huge despaire, and foul afflictions vallies,
Am growne a shrich-owle to myself each morning.

klaius. I that was once delighted every morning,
Hunting the wild inhabiters of forrests,
 I that was once the musique of these vallies,
So darkened am, that all my day is evening,
Hart-broken so, that mole-hills seem high mountaines,
And fill the vales with cries in stead of musique.

sirephon. Long since alas, my deadly Swannish musique
Hath made itself a crier of the morning,
And hath with wailing strength climbed highest mountaines:
Long since my thoughts more desert be than forrests:
Long since I see my joyes come to their evening,
And state throwen down to over-troden vallies.

klaius. Long since the happie dwellers of these vallies,
Have praide me leave my strange exclaiming musique,
Which troubles their dayes worke, and joyes of evening:
Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning:
Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forrests,
And make me wish myself laid under mountaines.

strephon. Me seemes I see the high and stately mountaines,
Transforme themselves to lowe dejected vallies:
Me seemes I heare in these ill-changed forrests,
The nightingales doo learne of Owles their musique:
Me seemes I feele the comfort of the morning
Turnde to the mortal serene of an evening.

klaius. Me seemes I see a filthie cloudie evening,
As soone as Sunne begins to climbe the mountaines:
Me seemes I feel a noisome scent, the morning
When I do smell the flowers of these vallies:
Me seemes I heare, when I doo heare sweet musique,
The dreadful cries of murdered men in forrests.

strephon. I wish to fire the trees of all these forrests;
I give the Sunne a last farewell each evening;
I curse the fiddling finders out of musique:
With envy doo I hate the lofty mountaines;
And with despite despise the humble vallies:
I doo detest night evening, day, and morning.

k.laius. Curse to myself my prayer is, the morning:
My fire is more, than can be made with forrests;
My state more base, than are the basest vallies:
I wish no evenings more to see, each evening;
 Shamed I have myself in sight of mountaines,
And stoppe mine eares, lest I go mad with musique.
 
strephon. For she, whose parts maintained a perfect musique
Whose beauty shin'de more than the blushing morning,
Who much did pass in state the stately mountaines,   
 In straightness past the Cedars of the forrests,
Hath cast me wretch into eternal evening,
By taking her two Sunnes from these dark vallies.
 
klaius. For she, to whom compared, the Alps are vallies,
 She, whose lest word brings from the spheares their musique
At whose approach the Sunne rose in the evening,
Who, where she went, bare in her forehead morning,
 Is gone, is gone from these our spoiled forrests,
Turning to deserts our best pastur'de mountaines.
 
strephon.   These mountaines witness shall, so shall these vallies,
 
klaius. These forrests eke, made wretched by our mustque,
 
strephon. Our morning hymn is this,
 
klaius.                                               and song at evening.
 
                     sidney, Arcadia.

The poem beats, however rich its orchestration, with a wailing and 
immovable monotony, for ever upon the same doors in vain. Mountaines, 
vallies, forrests; musique, eve­ning, morning; it is at these words only 
that Klaius and Strephon pause in their cries; these words circumscribe 
their world; these are the bones of their situation; and in tracing 
their lovelorn pastoral tedium through thirteen repetitions, with 
something of the aimless multitudinousness of the sea on a rock, we seem 
to extract all the meaning possible from these notions; we are at last, 
therefore, in possession of all that might have been implied by them (if 
we had under­stood them) in a single sentence; of all, in fact, that is 
im­plied by them, in the last sentence of the poem. I must glance, to 
show this, at the twelve other occasions on which each word is used.
Mountaines are haunts of Pan for lust and Diana for chastity, to both of 
these the lovers appeal; they suggest being shut in, or banishment; 
impossibility and impotence, or difficulty and achievement; greatness 
that may be en­vied or may be felt as your own (so as to make you feel 
helpless, or feel powerful); they give you the peace, or the despair, of 
the grave; they are the distant things behind which the sun rises and 
sets, the too near things which shut in your valley; deserted wastes, 
and the ample pastures to which you drive up the cattle for the summer. 
Vallies hold nymphs to which you may appeal, and yet are the normal 
places where you live; are your whole world, and yet limited so that 
your voice can affect the whole of them; are opposed to mountaines, 
either as places of shelter and comfort, or as places of humility and 
affliction; are rich with flowers and warmth, or are dark hollows 
between the hills.
 
Forrests, though valuable and accustomed, are desolate and hold danger; 
there are both nightingales and owls in them; their beasts, though 
savage, give the strong pleasures of hunting; their burning is either 
useful or destructive; though wild and sterile they give freedom for 
contempla­tion, and their trunks are symbols of pride.
 
Musique may express joy or sorrow; is at once more and less direct than 
talking, and so is connected with one's perma­nent feeling about the 
characters of pastoral that they are at once very rustic and rather 
over-civilised; it may please or distress the bystanders; and while 
belonging to despair and to the deaths of swans, it may share the living 
beauty of the lady, and be an inmate of the celestial spheres.
 
Morning brings hope, light and labour, evening rest, play and despair; 
they are the variety of Nature, or the tedious repetition of a day; 
their patrons Venus, whom one dare not name, and Mercury, who will bring 
no news of her. Morning, too, has often attached to it a meaning which, 
by an intelligent and illuminating misprint, is insisted upon in the 
eleventh (and subsequent) editions:

At whose approach the sun rose in the evening,
Who where she went bore in her forehead mourning,
Is gone, is gone, from these our spoiled forrests,
Turning to deserts our best pastor'd mountaines.

The form takes its effect by concentrating on these words and slowly 
building up our interest in them; all their latent implications are 
brought out by the repetitions; and each in turn is used to build up 
some simple conceit. So that when the static conception of the complaint 
has been finally brought into light (I do not mean by this to 
depre­ciate the sustained magnificence of its crescendo, but to praise 
the singleness of its idea), a whole succession of feel­ings about the 
local scenery, the whole way in which it is taken for granted, has been 
enlisted into sorrow and beats as a single passion of the mind.
 
 
-- 
Tad Richards
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