There are few who have heard of Katherine Mansfield and even fewer knowing of her poetry. She was better known for her short stories, but sadly today these too do not receive the attention they should. Katherine Mansfield was the wife of John Middleton Murry, and it was he who published a collection of her poetry after her sudden death.
Comments and Analyses by Ferrick Gray
Introductory Comments
There are few who have heard of Katherine Mansfield (Mansfield from here on) and even fewer knowing of her poetry. She was better known for her short stories, but sadly today these too do not receive the attention they should.
Mansfield was the wife of John Middleton Murry, and it was he who published a collection of her poetry after her sudden death. It is believed that she likely would not have taken well to their publication, and unfortunately Murry had edited a lot of her poetry in his attempt to make her poetry more welcome and known to the general public.
Mansfield never considered herself a poet and was quite content to write casual verses and did not intend to have her poetry published, apart from those that appeared in journals by her own choice.
Nevertheless, her poetry is quite startling and refreshing and deserves to be recognized. Many of her poems were merely rough sketches and drafts that she never revised as she did not wish to be bothered with it. It was Murry who attempted to edit and change her poems. For better or worse? Many say for the worse.
The two poems Very Early Spring and The Awakening River are not necessarily outstanding or important pieces of work, but then Mansfield held her poetry as secondary to her short stories.
Although there may be a certain plainness to them, they do have a style which evokes striking imagery. Both poems deal with Nature and in some ways, they are a conversational piece with respect to whom they were supposed to have been written by. The language is simple, allowing the reader to enjoy the images rather than trying to determine what the poem is about. Intellectually, it is the construction of the images, and pleasurably, it is the realization of the image.
We can safely assume that both poems were complete because he had them published long before her death in a literary review edited by Murry called Rhythm. They appeared in the 1912 Volume 1, Number 4 (p30) under Mansfield’s name but calling them translations of Boris Petrovsky. This however, was one of a number of pseudonyms Mansfield used throughout her short but productive life.
It was the second poem, The Awakening River that provoked a blistering attack on Rhythm from Alfred Orage in his The New Age on April 18, 1912 (p589). We rarely, if ever see such things today. (Why is that?)
The Poems (as they appeared in “Rhythm”)
Very Early Spring
The fields are snowbound no longer
There are little blue lakes and flags of tenderest green.
The snow has been caught up into the sky
So many white clouds—and the blue of the sky is cold.
Now the sun walks in the forest
He touches the boughs and stems with his golden fingers
They shiver, and wake from slumber.
Over the barren branches he shakes his yellow curls.
. . . . Yet is the forest full of the sound of tears . . . .
A wind dances over the fields.
Shrill and clear the sound of her waking laughter,
Yet the little blue lakes tremble
And the flags of tenderest green bend and quiver.
The Awakening River
The gulls are mad-in-love with the river
And the river unveils her face and smiles.
In her sleep—brooding eyes they mirror their shining wings.
She lies on silver pillows: the sun leans over her.
He warms and warms her, he kisses and kisses her.
There are sparks in her hair and she stirs in laughter.
Be careful, my beautiful waking one! you will catch on fire. .
Wheeling and flying with the foam of the sea on their breasts
The ineffable mists of the sea clinging to their wild wings
Crying the rapture of the boundless ocean.
The gulls are mad-in-love with the river.
Wake! we are the dream thoughts flying from your heart.
Wake! we are the songs of desire flowing from your bosom.
O, I think the sun will lend her his great wings
And the river will fly away to the sea with the mad-in-love birds.
(Translated from the Russian of Boris Petrovsky).
KATHERINE MANSFIELD.
Metrics
Due to the style of poetry, a full metrical analysis will not show anything more than analyzing a few verses. So, we shall look at four verses from each poem to see if we can discover anything interesting about them.
Very Early Spring (vs 1-4)
Thĕ fi͞elds | ăre snŏwbo͞und | nŏ lōngĕr
Thĕre ăre līt | tlĕ blūe lăkes | ănd flāgs ŏf |tēndĕr | ĕst gre͞en
Thĕ snōw | hăs be͝en ca͞ught | ŭp īntŏ | thĕ skȳ
Sŏ māny̆ | whĭte clo͞uds | ănd thĕ blu͞e | ŏf thĕ skȳ | ĭs cōld
We note the presence of the anapest which accounts for the pleasant rhythm along with the amphibrachs. This flow Mansfield has created is very much in line with the content of the poem.
The Awakening River (vs 8-11)
Whe͞elĭng | ănd flȳĭng | wĭth thĕ fōam | ŏf thĕ sēas | ŏn thĕir bre͞asts
Thĕ ĭnēff | ăblĕ mīsts | ŏf thĕ sēa | clīngĭng tŏ | thĕir wīld wĭngs
Crȳĭng | thĕ rāptŭre | ŏf thĕ bo͞und | lĕss ōce͝an
Thĕ gūlls ăre | mād-ĭn-lŏve | wīth thĕ | rīvĕr
Once again we find the anapest and amphibrach coming into play along with the occasional dactyl. The combination of these three in particular create a unique rhythm, and in this case sits extremely well the content it is reflecting. We can easily imagine the waves, their breaking and the excitement of the gulls caught in these four verses.
Both poems are written using much the same construct, being a rather relaxed anapestic meter. Although one may be inclined to label this as the (fictitious) vers libre, we can see and feel that there is something more structured in Mansfield’s writing.1
Pseudonyms and The New Age Response
Mansfield used a number of variations of her name with family and friends, but with respect to her poetry apart from Katherine Mansfield, she used Elizabeth Stanley, Lili Heron and Boris Petrovsky. It was Boris Petrovsky that inspired the rather cruel attack regarding the poem The Awakening River.
Alfred Orage savaged Rhythm mid-April in 1912. Much of the comment, and there is a lot, was aimed at the editor Murry.
In criticising “Rhythm” we did not depart from this basis; and so judging, we were brought to conclude that “Rhythm” was the production of persons who were not living the life of art, but were running after sensationalism; dancing with seals in delirium, dreaming of murderous hags and degenerate children, playing with sadism and devil-worship, gazing at drunken tramps amid daffodils until themselves lost all sense of æsthetic so it were stark naked, pampering pretty feelings until the very rivers seemed to lie in a sexual ecstasy. Is anything in all that a subject for art? They are things for effeminates only!
The emphasized part (my emphasis) was aimed at The Awakening River. Orage certainly did not mix words.2 The article Present-Day Criticism is included at the end of this essay.
It is unclear whether Murry or Mansfield responded to this criticism, although an article About Rhythm signed off by both appeared in the next number. This may have been their response to Orage without being provocative. The article had a very calm appeal to it, was well worded albeit somewhat dismissive.
What was the reason to be so critical? Apart from the pretense of being poems apparently translated by Mansfield, not a great deal. These poems were quite new. A brightness, an uninhibited willingness of expression. Something that was not commonly accepted at the time.
Both poems do have a distinct femininity about them which may indeed cast some disbelief as coming from a male writer. However, on the other side, it is a women who has completed the apparent translation and some of her characteristics will necessarily carry over. Her poetry and vignettes have similar characteristics as in evocative imagery for that instant in time.
Admittedly The Awakening River does have a more sexual arousal to it. This fact was more the reason for the criticism from Orage who seemed to imply something not natural with Petrovsky by his (Orage) use of effeminates. We have to realize that there was an effort to reform poetry and break out of the rather dull meters many had adopted as the norm, Not that it was wrong, but there was never any change. Due to this effort, many of the diehards would not accept this push and were extremely critical of those who made the attempt.
Opinion
It is a shame, that today poets like Mansfield are not appreciated by the broader public. Their work has been drowned by the thousands, if not millions of wannabes who all write in the same mediocre manner and live the lie of this vers libre. Sure, there are some good poets out there, some excellent poets, but these too are slowly washed away. There are societies that preserve the work of past poets like Mansfield, but unfortunately they cannot compete with the likes of the social media poets. That is, if we are foolish enough to call them poets.
- Do remember that the poet is rarely, if ever concerned with what metrical feet occur in their verses. The poet has a form of melody in mind that they write to which imparts the rhythm into their poem using the best words and placement to create the desired effect. The analysis here is merely to see and explain why it is happening. ↩︎
- Orage’s name did not appear at the end of the article, but at many times, even in other journals, the editor’s name was not mentioned. However, it was very clear who the writer was in this instance due to the content. ↩︎
