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Emily and Anne Brontë’s Gondal poetry
The Brontë sisters are well-known for their novels, such as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights or Agnes Grey, which are now among the classics of English literature. However, their first attempt at professional writing took place a few years before the novels were published. Everything started with Charlotte’s discovery of the poems of her sister Emily as she wrote it in her biographical notice of Ellis and Acton Bell of 1850:
“One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS volume of verse in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, ─ a deep conviction that these verses were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music ─ wild, melancholy, and elevating”[1]
She persuaded her sister to try to publish them, and it finally ended with the three sisters publishing poems together (nineteen poems for Charlotte, twenty-one each for Emily and Anne) under the pseudonyms of Acton – Currer and Ellis Bell in 1846 (pseudonyms which they also took in order to publish their novels later). Unfortunately, only two copies were sold.
Even if they changed some geographical names in the poems to remove all traces of their shared imaginary kingdom, most of the poems published by Emily and Anne Brontë were directly taken from what is called the Gondal poems.[2] This fictitious world provided the setting and the characters for the poems they had been writing from their teenage years until their early deaths. Nobody was allowed to read these creations, not even their sister Charlotte and their brother Bramwell.
The name Gondal refers to a fictitious island in the North Pacific, divided into at least four kingdoms, named Gondal, Angora, Exina and Alcona. Later, another fictitious island is discovered in the South Pacific and colonized by the characters. It is called Gaaldine, and it is divided into kingdoms and provinces ruled by the royal families of Gondal. The main plot is based on the life of Augusta Geraldine Almeda or A.G.A., the queen of Gondal. She is also sometimes referred to as Rosina or Princess of Alcona, a province in Gondal. She was worshipped by all men and in a very Byronic fashion, she also had many lovers such as Lord Elbë, Amedeus, Lord Alfred, Fernando or Julius. Usually when one speaks of Gondal it is to refer to Emily Brontë’s poetry but since Anne Brontë shared the Gondal saga with her sister and contributed to the Gondal’s collection of poems, it makes sense to include her poems when studying whats is referred to as "the Gondal poetry".
Extract from Emily Brontë’s manuscript of the Gondal Poems
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The sisters were under the influence of Romantic literature from a very early age. The fact that Haworth was a rather remote village at that time may explain why the Brontë’s poetry or juvenile writings seem to be so out of fashion compare to the rest of the early British Victorian literature. All their readings relied on the books owned by their father, the books they borrowed at the Keighley Mechanics Institute, some books they borrowed in Ponden Hall or the articles from Blackwood’s magazine. Writers such as Milton, Shakespeare, Pope, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth or Southey formed the literary world they had been growing up with. Byron especially was a favourite of Anne and Emily Brontë, despite being considered as unsuitable for young ladies at that time. His influence was huge, as can be seen in the manner the two sisters wrote their diary papers, which was very much like Byron himself did.
It is then no surprise that the Gondal poetry possesses features much like the ones one can find in the poetry of the famous British Romantic poets from the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. The idea of a lost happy childhood as opposed to the corrupted world of grown-ups in Blake’s collection of poems Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789) is also to be found in the poetry of the sisters, like in Anne Brontë’s poem “Verses to a Child” or in her sister’s poems “I am the only being whose doom” and “E.W. to A.G.A”, the latter describing the state of innocence and purity (childhood) destroyed by life through a voyage at sea (the development towards experience and adult life). Wordsworth’s poem “We are seven” takes up the similar idea of a world of childhood devoid of sorrow which stands against the harsh reality of facts of adulthood, exactly like in Anne Brontë’s “A voice from the dungeon”, in which the persona harks back to the memory of her child to seek relief from her dreary situation, imprisoned alone in a dungeon. In the Gondal’s universe, childhood is always associated with happy memories and the personas who are often lost in a treacherous and corrupted world of adulthood often lament the loss of their innocence from childhood.
Blake’s “The Tyger”
Another obvious Romantic feature in Emily and Anne Brontë’s Gondal poetry is the visions experienced by the personas through imagination which give them a power to escape the ordeal of their real situation. Blake once stated, “I feel that man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision.”[3], a statement which utterly matches the idea of some Gondal poems. The best examples of that are Emily Brontë’s poem “To Imagination” and her sister’s poem “A Voice from the Dungeon”. In these poems imagination is seen as a transcendental power to escape a rather mournful reality. That attempt to erase reality through imagination and vision is also triggered by the fact that the personas are overwhelmed by gloomy feelings which have taken precedence over reason, a familiar theme in Romanticism and most of all in Byron’s poetry.
According to Winifred Gerin, Byron’s poetry possesses five main characteristics:
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A passion beyond control in which the persona is subjected to total self-abandonment.
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The pain of life, where the dreams of love can so seldom be realized and the only cure to be found is in oblivion and death
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The revolt of the victim against fate’s decree and society’s inept substitutes for a full and glorious existence
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The pride, ambition and daring of the victims opposing their fate
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The sin into which their rejection of society draws them, their consequent isolation and ultimate ruin.
Naturally, Byron being so popular among the Brontë children, those Byronic characteristics have all to some extent found their way into Emily and Anne Brontë’s poetry. What is the most conspicuous is the passionate bursts of feelings inherent to the Byronic universe. Derek Stanford described this Byronic influence upon the Gondal’s characters: “These beings are never shown as making use of their understanding. They never reason or appeal to logic but declaim and plead to the emotions. Their speeches are not arguments but rhapsodies─ effusions”[4]. However, if this Byronic passion permeates most of the Gondal’s collection of poems, Emily Brontë feminizes it. She applies the language of Byronic passion to female characters, thus prompting a reversal of the gender role of Byron’s poems. It is the female characters, like Augustine Geraldine Almeda, who are lamenting the loss of their loved one, and giving way to passionate bursts of emotion. That is something which does not appear so clear in the poems written by her sister Anne, as it is in turn the male and the female characters who retain the role of remembering a passionate love, like Alexandrina Zenobia in “The Captive’s Dream” and Alexander in “Lines inscribed on the wall of a dungeon on the southern P of I by A.H.”.
Illustration of Byron’s “The Corsair”
Oblivion and death as a cure to the ordeal of life constitutes another important thematic in the Gondal’s universe. A widespread belief among Romantic poets was that only death could unite the soul with imagination, nature and beauty, that we can find happiness and peace only by leaving the world of the living to enter the eternal world of the dead free of the strain of life. Some scholars argue that Emily applies this principle to her arts and even to herself, though there are various competing hypotheses about her death.[5] However, this idea to unite the soul, imagination and nature is not so emphatic in Anne and Emily Brontë’s poems as it is in Romantic poetry. If one can find this death wish to reach eternal liberty in a poem like “Julian. M. and A.G. Rochelle─”, in another poem, one of the most famous of the entire Gondal’s saga, entitled “R. Alcona to J.Brenzeida”, the death wish to escape the ordeal of a life made unbearable by nagging feelings of despair is first acknowledged and then opposed by a stoical will to stand strong and to face her dreadful situation with courage.
Much has already been said about the bound between nature and Romanticism, as it is to some extent considered to be the very source of Romanticism (be it for literature or other kinds of arts like painting for instance), so naturally, it occupies a particular place in the sisters’ poetry. It can be attributed three main functions:
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A mirror of feelings
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A unity between the soul and the natural elements
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A pantheistic view of life
The way nature is perceived can either be “blithesome as a mountain doe’s” (l.11, “The lady of Alzerno’s hall”) or “faintly beams through dreary clouds,” (l.23, “The lady of Alzerno’s hall”). The way nature is described reflects the state of mind of the persona. A good example of this constant link between nature and the persona is the poem “Geraldine”, in which the death of the persona’s child takes place while the summer day is vanishing, or in “Verses by Lady Geralda”, with nature working as a metaphor for the death of the happy youth of the persona, as she “cast that flower away” (l. 53), to let it “die and wither there” (l. 54) to imply the loss and decay of her happy innocence of childhood through the destruction of the flower. This bound between nature and the mind is something which the British Romantic poets had all been using extensively in their poetry. In Byron’s poem “Heaven and Earth” the description of the sky mirrors the feeling of the persona. In Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage the persona “found his spirit participating in the violence of an Alpine tempest and drew a parallel with the explosion of his mind in poetry”.[6] Other Romantic works following the same kind of pattern are for instance Wordsworth’s “The Prelude”, Coleridge’s “Dejection” or Shelley’s Adonais.
The natural elements can also become a real living presence and are given a voice to address the persona’s feelings, creating a unity between them. In Emily Brontë’s poem “A.G.A To The Bluebell─”, the persona directly speaks to the bluebell to seek comfort until the flower itself recount its life experience which is like that of the persona. Anne Brontë’s “To the North Wind─” follows the same pattern, with the wind taking the role of the bluebell and becoming like a wise supernatural force which soothes the anguish of the persona, Alexandrina Zenobia. The wind receiving a voice is actually a recurrent Romantic pattern[7] which embodies a pantheistic conception of the universe like in Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, where natural elements take a God-like presence in the poem, something familiar to what one can find in many poems of the Brontë sisters, with the natural world and the soul merging together to reach a perfect state of bliss like in “The night is darkening round me” for instance. The accomplishment of the self can be attained only when perfect harmony exists between the self and the natural world all around. Moreover, this pantheistic conception of nature is also closely related to imagination, visions and the world of childhood. Thus, one can summarize the Romantic cycle of life in this manner: at first comes the world of childhood, free of care, a world in which one is happy. But this state cannot last forever, and one must enter the world of the grown-ups, where innocence, hopes and happiness submit to life’s cares. Only imagination can bring back some happiness, through visions of the past which are linked with metaphorical natural elements, and as a last resort, death will eventually bring eternal harmony between imagination, visions, nature and the soul.
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Italy, painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1832)
With regards to personas, Romantic poetry offers a great variety of types. The persona may be a child as in many of Blake’s poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience, sailors, shepherds, thieves, ordinary people as in many of Wordsworth’s poems. It can also be animals, like in a few lines of “The Ancient Mariner” or as it has already been said natural elements like the wind. All those types of personae can be found in some of Emily and Anne Brontë’s poetry, but the strongest influence here derives once again from Byron and his typical Romantic hero. While Wordsworth or Coleridge’s poems show rather common characters, Byron’s ones have supernatural characters as in “Manfred”, are involved in great battles and events as in “The Siege of Corinth”, or are great warriors as in “The Giaour” and bandits and outlaws as in “The Corsair”. Similarly, most of the Gondal’s characters are queens, kings, emperors, murderers sent by rivals etc. There are not many Gondal poems featuring an unnamed or ordinary persona compare to the ones featuring Augusta Geraldine Almeda the queen of Gondal, or Lord Elbë, Lord Alfred, Julius Brenzaida who becomes emperor in the plot. Even in Anne’s poems, where the influence of Byron is lesser, characters bear titles like Lady Geralda, or are prisoners and closely guarded, which implies that they are probably high figures of Gondal, like Alexandrine Zenobia or Alexander April.
The way those personae express themselves is also extremely similar to the personae in Byron's poetry. They often resort to great passionate ejaculations or take a weary tone to describe their states of mind in a dark moody manner. Sometimes lines alternate between passion and despondency in a same poem, giving a typical Byronic rhythm to it where fierce and fiery lines are contrasting with placid and subdued ones. The Byronic character is an integral part of the Gondal saga, even though, as it has already been discussed, it is sometimes female characters who are taking the role given to male personae in Byron’s poems.
Portrait of Lord Byron
Much has been said about the influence of the great British Romantic poets, but the Romantic influence on the sisters is wider, and other writers belonging to an enlarged vision of Romanticism must be taken into account. This is the case for instance of Sir Walter Scott. He was a much-admired figure among Romantic poets and his poetry was much celebrated. One of his most famous contribution to Romantic literature is the publication of his three tomes of Scottish ballads, known as the border ballads[8], which had a huge influence on Emily and Anne Brontë. The best example will be to compare Scott’s song “Fair Helen of Kirconnell” with Emily Brontë’s poem “A.G.A”, or her sister’s one “Call me away”. Not only does the subject of the poems is similar, with a persona witnessing and lamenting the death of the loved one, but the rhythm is identical as well, with most of the lines following an octosyllable pattern. Naturally, Scot’s ballads are also full of great battles and revolts, of kings overthrown by act of treasons, like in “The Battle of Philiphaugh” or “The Gallant Grahams”.
William Cowper may not be often discussed as a Romantic poet. He belongs to the Romantic period, even though he wrote moralizing poetry and religious hymns with frequent elements of nature. However, one can still find typical Romantic features like the blessings of nature or the retreat from life in his main poetic achievement "The Task: A Poem, in Six Books". Anne Brontë being the most religious and concerned with moral aspects in all her writings, it is no surprise that Cowper’s influence is strong in her poems. However, this influence is felt beyond the sheer religious aspect of Cowper’s works and more in their deeper meanings. In Cowper’s hymns, written in partnership with curate John Newton and which bear the name "Olney Hymns", one of the most widespread theme is the inherent sinfulness of man, something also present in Anne and Emily Brontë’s poetry and very close to the Romantic idea of a corrupted adulthood. Mankind is deceitful and cannot help but sins. The idea of atonement which is closely bound to that of sinfulness is of an unreligious kind in Emily Brontë’s poem. It is not towards God that the personae are seeking atonement, but towards their dead lover, like in “Julian. M. and A.G. Rochelle” or “R.Alcona to J Brenzeida”.
So far, the Gondal poetry appears to be just a perfect example of British Romantic poetry, with slight differences like the Byronic male role given to female personae or the presence of stoicism in some of Emily Brontë’s poem but the sisters developed a Romantic of their own and some of their poems clearly opposed Romanticism in important aspects. One of the topics cherished by Romantic poets was revolution, of which they were ardent supporters. Blake believed that the French Revolution was the first sign of the fall of a corrupted world before the emergence of a better one. Byron joined the Greek Revolution and died in Greece. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley never concealed that they felt great sympathy towards the French revolutionaries. They took some distance with the French Revolution when the revolutionaries started to wage wars against other countries, but they remained nonetheless in favour of the concept of revolution. Wordsworth’s poem “Great men have been among us” emphasizes perfectly the Romantic view on revolution. It shows the disillusionment concerning the French Revolution but the idea of revolt still remains attractive. This enthusiasm for revolutions does not seem to be shared by the two Brontë sisters. In the Gondal poems, revolutions are something barbaric giving no reason to rejoice. The best example of that is Emily Brontë’s poem “R. Gleneden─” in which the persona is unable to join the revolutionaries in their celebration of victory. In this poem, even though the victors now have a land where they are free to live at peace, the persona mourns the losses inflicted by this victory which has indeed a bitter taste.
As a conclusion, one can say that the Gondal poetry displays a major influence from British Romanticism, especially from Byron, but with the fictitious world of Gondal the two sisters indeed created their own Romantic universe, sharing most characteristics of their Romantic predecessors, but sometimes deviating from what the male Romantic poets previously wrote, reversing the gender of the Byron heroes for instance, and even going against the Romantic idea of revolutions, thus distinguishing their poems from sheer Romantic poetry and developing a Romanticism of their own.
Written by David Poingt
[1] BARKER, Juliet, The Brontës, a Life in Letters, London: Viking, 1997, Chapter Seven, p. 140.
[2] There exist two different manuscripts in Emily Brontë’s handwriting; one entitled “Gondal Poems” where the original poems without the modifications made for the publication can be found.
[3] Letter to Revd Dr Trusler, 23 August 1799 (extract). Blake wanted to illustrate some of Trusler’s works, and Trusler rejected the idea saying: ‘Your fancy seems to be in the other world, or the world of spirits, which accords not my intentions’. The extract from Blake’s letter was to answer this refusal. WU, Duncan, Romanticism: An Anthology. Second Edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998, p. 114.
[4] STANFORD, Derek, and SPARK, Muriel, Emily Brontë, her life and Work, London : Arena Edition, 1985, Chapter III, p. 138.
[5] There are two ways to interpret Emily’s death. Some say that she let herself die willingly of her disease in order to reach the world of imagination and escape life, others argue that she tried to get rid of her disease by resorting purely to her will and that she failed. The fact she finally accepted to see a doctor just a few hours before dying is open to interpretation. The supporter of the first hypothesis will say that she felt death coming, and since she was sure of her triumph she accepted to see the doctor only to relieve her sisters’ anxiety, while supporters of the second assumption will say that she accepted to do so because she felt death coming and realized she had failed to heal by herself.
[6] ABRAMS, M.H. (ed.), English Romantic Poets – Modern Essays in Criticism – Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1975, p. 42.
[7] ABRAMS, M.H., op. cit., pp.40-52. Abrams explains hpw the wind is given a voice to express itself in Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge or De Quincey’s poems.
[8] Maureen Peeck-O’Toole gives a definition of the border ballad: “The bare rolling stretch of country from the North Tyne and Cheviots to the Scottish southern, uplands was for a long time the territory of men who spoke English but had the outlook of Afghan tribesmen; they prized a poem almost as much as plunder, and produced such an impressive assembly of local narrating songs that some people used to label all our greater folk poems as ‘Border ballads’.” In PEECK-O’TOOLE, M., Aspects of Lyric in the Poetry of Emily Brontë, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, Chapter II: “Gondal and Non Gondal Poetry”.
Bibiography
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ABRAMS, M.H. (ed.), English Romantic Poets – Modern Essays in Criticism – Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 1975
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BARKER, Juliet, The Brontës, a Life in Letters, London: Viking, 1997
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PEECK-O’TOOLE, M., Aspects of Lyric in the Poetry of Emily Brontë, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, Chapter II: “Gondal and Non Gondal Poetry”.
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STANFORD, Derek, and SPARK, Muriel, Emily Brontë, her life and Work, London : Arena Edition, 1985
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THE BRONTËS, Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal – Selected Writings, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Christine Alexander, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 2010.
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WU, Duncan, Romanticism: An Anthology. Second Edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998
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