By its nature, 21
Essays proceeds by bursts of rapid fire posting followed by lengthy
blocks of radio silence. We’re in dormant mode right now. There will
be more posting ahead, I promise.
While I’ve been resting from my labors here, I’ve kept busy
blogging on my new project Tour America’s Treasures. It’s a great new tourism/history blog. Please visit…
and tweet, link, and share with friends!
Now… here’s my upcoming 21 Essays schedule:
15 Days on SkullIsland: Starting
Friday, March 2, I plan to launch a 15-day series on SkullIsland,
focusing on that remote island’s landscape, fauna, and flora as presented in
the 1933 King Kong. I’ll
be looking at the people who conceived and created Kong’s playground as well as
the science and art that inspired them. My boundary is the date of
original release, April 7, 1933. There’ll be no Son of Kong, no speculations on Charles Foster Kane’s pet pterodactyl,
and no Peter Jackson. If I step over the 1933 dateline, cry foul.
6 Days of Blackmail: For
six days, from May 13 to 18, 21
Essays will participate in “For the Love of Film: The Film
Preservation Blogathon.” This year’s goal is to raise money to increase
accessibility of the recently discovered silent film The White Shadow, directed by Graham Cutts with major assistance
from Alfred Hitchcock. Naturally, it’s the Hitchcock connection that’s
sparked widespread interest in this movie so most of the participating bloggers
will be shadowing Hitchcock. I’m leaning toward a close examination of
Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail,
one of the master’s first ventures into his soon-to-be trademark suspense
territory.
After that… well, I’ve got big summer plans for a 21-essay
run on a subject that’s not movie-related. But more on that later!
Midwinter-blogging,
essay 12 of 12 blog entries on
“In the Bleak
Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti
The King's College Choir sings "In the Bleak Midwinter" in
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, England.
A Deeply Moving Song
I think it would be a mistake to entirely
neglect a mention of the musical settings in this midwinter blogging
series. When I first began research on “In the Bleak Midwinter,” I knew and loved the song
through its Gustav Holst setting. Therefore, I
was delighted to discover that “In the Bleak Midwinter” had been named “Best
Carol of All Time” by a 2008 BBC music magazine poll of choirmasters and other
choral experts. However, looking into the matter a bit further, I found
that it was a Harold Darke setting—and not the Holst I knew and loved—that
achieved this acclaim. Up to that point, I hadn’t even heard the Darke music.
The results of the BBC poll still strike me as odd but I’m
willing to accept this is what you get when you poll people in the choral
business rather than the general public. The songs they chose are lovely,
even if rather unfamiliar:
1. In the Bleak Midwinter
2. In Dulci Jubilo
3. A Spotless Rose
4. Bethlehem Down
5. Lully, Lulla
6. Tomorrow Shall be My Dancing Day
7. There is No Rose
8. O Come All Ye Faithful
9. Of the Father's Heart Begotten
10. What Sweeter Music
I like the appreciation that Jeremy Pound, deputy editor of BBC Music Magazine, issued in defense of
their #1 pick on the Christmas hit parade: “While some of the carols
nominated may seem unfamiliar, does any other song get to the very heart of
Christmas as understatedly but effectively as ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’?”
Furthermore, Pound said that “In the Bleak Midwinter” was “nigh-on perfect as a
carol text… There’s the winter cold, the coming of Christ, the
description of the nativity scene and, finally, that ‘What shall I give him?’
moment of self-reflection. And then there’s the music.”
The Holst setting was composed at the request of his friend
Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 1906 Anglican Hymnal. It was written as a
simple hymn, not a choral arrangement, and the melody received the name
“Cranham” for the town Cranham, Gloucestershire where it was written.
The original Harold Darke setting was conceived as a choral
arrangement with organ accompaniment and tenor and soprano solos. Darke
composed it in 1909, a few years after Holst contributed his version to the
hymnal. Thanks to seasonal broadcasts of the King’s College Choir singing
“In the Bleak Midwinter,” this arrangement has become very well known in England.
In the United States,
it remains much less familiar.
Kate McGarrigle performing
"In the Bleak Midwinter."
I think both versions are great and it’s been a real
pleasure compiling great performances of both arrangements on the Music Room
sections of this blog.
Today’s closing selection is particularly moving.
Brother and sister Rufus and Martha Wainwright sing the Darke setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter,”
accompanied by their mother Kate McGarrigle in her last public performance at
the Royal Albert Hall. She died six weeks later of sarcoma. It’s
beautiful to see this very talented family performing together, expressing their
love for each other
through the words and music of “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Kate McGarrigle.
The Music Room
Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, and Kate McGarrigle
sing “In the Bleak Midwinter”…
Reference Sources
Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti
Selected Poems of
Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska
Christina Rossetti: A
Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh
The Achievement of
Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent
Christina Rossetti
(Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom
Christina Rossetti’s
Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe
Christina Rossetti:
Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico
Genius by Harold
Bloom
The Man Who Invented
Christmas by Les Standiford
The Pre-Raphaelites
by Andrea Rose
Victorian Painting
by Christopher Wood
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but
always double-checking everything!)
Midwinter-blogging,
essay 11 of 12 blog entries on
“In the Bleak
Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti
Rossetti’s Other
Christmas Poems
Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their
famous Christmas tree.
Our modern Christmas was being born while Christina Rossetti
(1830-1894) was growing up. She was ten
when Charles Dickens published A
Christmas Carol and 18 when a woodcut of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert’s Christmas tree went the Victorian version of viral—swiftly popularizing
the Christmas tree throughout England and the States. These two events
were key in shaping the Christmas that we know and celebrate today. The
idea of Christmas as a family-centered holiday, complete with opportunities for
organized gift-giving, began to take firm hold upon the public imagination.
The Rossetti family appears to have always enjoyed
Christmas, mainly welcoming the occasion as a time for a quiet family
reunion. Rossetti’s Christmas poetry displays a genuine fondness for the
holiday, even apart from its religious importance. Around the same time
she wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter,” she also wrote this charming little
untitled verse:
Common Holly hears a berry
To make Christmas Robins merry: —
Golden Holly bears a rose,
Unfolding at October’s close
To cheer an old Friend’s eyes and
nose.
Admittedly, Rossetti’s voluminous writings cover many
Biblical topics, with the Christmas poetry only accounting for a relatively
small percentage of the total. In all, there are approximately 30 poems which
feature strong Advent or Christmas themes. Most are forgotten today, but
two of them broke from the pack to become seasonal favorites. Obviously
one of these is our primary subject, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The other is
“Love Came Down At Christmas,” first published without a title in Rossetti’s
book Time Flies: A Reading Diary
(1885) and later anthologized with the title “Christmastide” in 1893.
“Christmastide”
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.
Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?
Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.
Sometime in the two decades following Rossetti’s death,
someone set “Christmastide” to the Irish melody called “Gartan” and it made it
into an alternative edition of the Episcopal Church’s hymnal, edited by the
Rev. Dr. Charles Hutchins, in 1920. While never achieving the wide
popularity of its cousin “In the Bleak Midwinter,” it’s retained a secure place
in hymnals for nearly a century.
Here’s one final favorite of mine, which showcases
Rossetti’s enthusiasm for paradoxes. “In the Bleak Midwinter” plays with the
traditional Christian paradox of an infinite God present in a tiny baby.
Rossetti’s “Christmas Eve” finds a whole new set of paradoxes in the holiday:
“Christmas Eve”
CHRISTMAS hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
“Saint Columba Altarpiece,” central panel, circa 1455,
by
Rogier van der Weyden, from the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Music Room
Tine Thing Helseth plays an instrumental version of “In the Bleak Midwinter”…
... and Jars of Clay perform
“Love Came Down at Christmas.”
Reference Sources
Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti
Selected Poems of
Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska
Christina Rossetti: A
Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh
The Achievement of
Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent
Christina Rossetti
(Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom
Christina Rossetti’s
Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe
Christina Rossetti:
Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico
Genius by Harold
Bloom
The Man Who Invented
Christmas by Les Standiford
The Pre-Raphaelites
by Andrea Rose
Victorian Painting
by Christopher Wood
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but
always double-checking everything!)
Midwinter-blogging,
essay 10 of 12 blog entries on
“In the Bleak
Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti
Off to America
Christina Rossetti portrait by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The American literary journal Scribner’s Monthly requested a Christmas poem from Christina
Rossetti in 1872. She sent them “In the Bleak Midwinter.” As she
tended to offer already-written poems when fielding requests like this, it’s
difficult to determine when the poem was written.
The publication of the poem was a decidedly minor event in
Rossetti’s life. It didn’t pay much and didn’t receive much notice after
it was released into the world. Rossetti was recovering from a serious
illness at the time, rarely venturing from the house or even from
Scribner's Monthly, Dec. 1872.
her
bed. Most likely, she didn’t give much further thought to the poem after
sending it off to America.
At this point in her life, Christina Rossetti had
established a reputation for herself as one of England’s leading poetesses.
The very popular Elizabeth Barrett Browning had recently died and Rossetti was
widely considered to be her successor. But positive critical appreciation
did not go hand in hand with financial success or commercial popularity.
She had to be content with intellectual admiration in the absence of a
breakthrough work like Browning’s Sonnets
from the Portuguese, a model for a woman poet’s potential for popular
success in the Victorian era.
From both a commercial and critical standpoint, Rossetti’s
most popular poem was “Goblin Market,” published ten years earlier in
1862. “Goblin Market” tells a dark fairy tale of two sisters, one of whom
makes a deal with local goblin merchants and nearly dies from the
experience. Rossetti was a very Christian writer, frequently drawing from
her deeply held Anglican beliefs. But while “Goblin Market” can be read as a
sort of Christian moral story, its primary fascination has always resided in
its uncanny and sexualized imagery.
Title page of Goblin Market and Other Poems, designed and
illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
“Goblin Market” is an altogether different type of poem from
“In the Bleak Midwinter.” As Rossetti’s reputation has ebbed and flowed
over the past 150 years, these two poems have come to represent Rossetti in the
mass culture. “Goblin Market” has remained the critical favorite,
inspiring reams of academic interpretation.
By contrast, “In the Bleak Midwinter” has received scant critical
attention, but it can boast the only Rossetti lyrics that are instantly recognized
far and wide.
Curiously, Rossetti never lived to see the outbreak of
popularity for her little poem. It only began to receive attention after
it was published in a 1904 “Collected Works” edition a decade after her death.
Rossetti knew her work was good and expected it to last. But if she returned today to google her poetry to see which poems people were
still talking about, she probably would expect to see “Goblin Market,”
“The Convent Threshold,” “Birthday,” “Remember,” and other serious poems. I imagine she’d be
surprised to see a blog dedicating 12 entries to that little poem called “In
the Bleak Midwinter” 149 years after she sent it off to a far-away publisher.
The Music Room
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa sings “In the Bleak Midwinter”…
Reference Sources
Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti
Selected Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska
Christina Rossetti: A
Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh
The Achievement of
Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent
Christina Rossetti
(Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom
Christina Rossetti’s
Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe
Christina Rossetti:
Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico
Genius by Harold
Bloom
The Man Who Invented
Christmas by Les Standiford
The Pre-Raphaelites
by Andrea Rose
Victorian Painting
by Christopher Wood
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but
always double-checking everything!)
“In the Bleak
Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti posed as Mary: “The Girlhood of
Mary Virgin,” 1849, oil on canvas by
Dante
Gabriel Rossetti. From the collection
of
the Tate Britain, London, England.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Christina Rossetti's Eyes
Using minimalist strokes in her poem “In the Bleak Midwinter,” Christina Rossetti paints a
picture of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is a maiden, she is
transported by bliss, she feeds her baby, and she worships with a kiss.
Christina Rossetti’s brother, the great Pre-Raphaelite
artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, had earlier depicted Mary as a character in two
of his first paintings, Girlhood of Mary
Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini!.
His model for Mary was his sister Christina, aged 18 when posing for Girlhood of Mary Virgin and 20 for Ecce Ancilla Domini. The first
painting received some acclaim when first exhibited; the second was
harshly criticized in very public forums. During Christina’s life, both
paintings were well known and the subject of growing praise. They remain
classics of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
How does it feel to be the face of Mary? Especially for
a person as devout as Christina Rossetti?
“When a young girl, at the time
that she sat for the virgin in the picture now in the National Gallery, she (Christina
Rossetti) was, as both her mother and Gabriel
have told me, really lovely, with
an
extraordinary expression of pensive sweetness.”
Mr. Watts-Dunton
The Athenaeum
January 5, 1895
Even though a beauty of personality comes through in many of
the poems, it’s hard to find that pensive sweetness in later drawings and
photographs of Rossetti. You can see that it’s the same person who posed
for the paintings but there’s a hardness to her that can intimidate even now. The mystical beauty captured in the paintings
is absent.
We sing Rossetti’s lyrics to “In the Bleak Midwinter” and
“Love Came Down at Christmas” at our church, but there’s another very notable
link to Rossetti. In one of the church hallways, there’s a print on the
wall of one of the world’s most famous paintings, William Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World. It has
been reproduced millions of times—our church is one of thousands that displays
it. In the picture, Jesus stands outside the door and knocks.
Christina Rossetti was one of Hunt’s models for the face of
Jesus. In an 1898 letter to Edward Clodd, Hunt remembered:
“As I had to have some living being
for the colour of the flesh with growth of eyebrows and eyelashes, the solemn
expression, when the face was quiescent, of Miss Rossetti promised to help me
with some shade of earnestness I aimed at getting…” *
Other models also contributed to Hunt’s vision, but it’s
generally believed that his painting of Christ’s eyes was largely inspired by
Rossetti. They may be her eyes.
Detail of "The Light
of the World."
Mary, Jesus, Christina—virgins all. At the time she
was posing, Christina would not have anticipated that she herself would remain a
maiden all her life. She did know she was going to be a poet though, and
she was confident that she had the talent to succeed. Pause to notice
Jesus’ eyes the next time you pass a reproduction of The Light of the World. They
are reverent, sensitive, and unyielding—the eyes of a smart young poet perhaps?
* Accurate transcription: Although Mr. Hunt’s grammar is a bit dodgy, his main points are understandable.
An older Christina Rossetti: Christina and Her Mother," 1877, chalk
drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From the National Portrait Gallery,
London, England.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The Music Room
The Indigo Girls sing “In the Bleak Midwinter”…
Reference Sources
Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti
Selected Poems of
Christina Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska
Christina Rossetti: A
Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh
The Achievement of
Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent
Christina Rossetti
(Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom
Christina Rossetti’s
Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe
Christina Rossetti:
Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico
Genius by Harold
Bloom
The Man Who Invented
Christmas by Les Standiford
The Pre-Raphaelites
by Andrea Rose
Victorian Painting
by Christopher Wood
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but
always double-checking everything!)
“In the Bleak
Midwinter,” a poem by Christina Rossetti
A fresco in Cappadocia,
Turkey, circa
12th century.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Three Syllables
The last line of each stanza of Christina Rossetti’s “In the
Bleak Midwinter” has three syllables, with the stresses falling on the first
and third syllables. Bump-ba-bump. Here they are:
First stanza: Long ago.
Second stanza: Jesus Christ.
Third stanza: Which adore.
Fourth stanza: With a kiss.
Fifth stanza: Give my heart.
All the other 35 lines are longer, most employing a
three-beat rhythm as well as a couple that drop to two and a couple that
stretch out to four. The last line is always terse—just three unadorned
syllables. It can be difficult to pick up on the compactness of these
lines if you have the familiar Gustav Holst melody lodged in your head.
The song lengthens each of these phrases to put them on a par with the other
lines. It’s nice, but leaves a false impression of the original.
Actually the whole poem is remarkably terse. There are
few frills. A line like “Frosty wind made moan” is marvelously compact,
as is “Earth stood hard as iron.” Rossetti has been criticized for being
too feminine in her writing—insufficiently aggressive—but that complaint seems
foreign to this poem. “Earth stood hard as iron” is lean and mean.
It gives the lie to the fool’s game of assuming gender based on style.
Most would guess the blacksmith wrote it, not the Victorian spinster.
The three kings arrive in Rozhdestvo (Christmas), a
1996 short film by Russian
animator Mikhail Aldashin.
But nothing beats the last lines of each stanza for
minimalist effect. They close each stanza abruptly, delivering a swift punch
line then falling silent. The close of the first stanza, “Long ago,” propels
us into the past (there’s nothing prior to the eighth line to indicate that the
poem is taking place long ago). The close of the third stanza, “Which
adore,” conveys the purity of the worshipping animals. The close of the
fourth stanza, “With a kiss,” promotes Mary’s worship above that of angels.
And this brings us to the most important lines of the
poem. This three-syllable line is unusual in Rossetti’s writings and in
poetry in general. It does, however, allow Rossetti to construct the
poem’s stanzas around the natural rhythm of “Jesus Christ.” Each of these
last lines duplicates that beat—the rhythm of the name Jesus Christ. The
very devout Christina Rossetti centers her poem on that rhythm.
This rhythm then closes the poem with Rossetti’s no-frills
declaration of her gift, spoken to the rhythm of Jesus Christ, “Give my
heart.” These simple last lines exalt their subjects—the barnyard
animals, Mary’s gift of a kiss, and Rossetti’s gift of her heart.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him...
That’s the buildup. Followed
by:
Give my heart.
Three syllables, leaving nothing more to be said.
“The Adoration of the Shepherds,” 1646, oil on canvas,
Here’s the fifth and final stanza of Christina Rossetti’s
“In the Bleak Midwinter.”
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.
“In the
Bleak Midwinter,” fifth stanza
Christina
Rossetti
Each of the poem’s five stanzas has eight lines. The
second and fourth lines rhyme, as do the sixth and eighth. In most cases,
each of the first seven lines receives three stresses; a few lines depart
from this structure and have four. The meter is largely driven by
trochee—the poetry term for a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed
syllable. (The trochee is the reverse of the iamb favored by
Shakespeare.)
I find it hard to read the poem without falling into the
rhythms of the popular music setting. But it’s good to remember that
these rhythms are not necessarily Rossetti’s. I think the last stanza
nicely demonstrates how the popular Gustav Holst melody alters the way we hear
the poem’s original built-in music.
Stained glass from
L'eglise Notre-Dame
de l'Assomption,
Eymet, Dordogne,
France.
In the original poem, the line “What can I give him”
receives three stresses: What, I, and him. But in the familiar
music setting, the first word “What” is drawn out into two syllables,
transforming it into a trochee. This changes the rhythm, resulting in the
stresses falling on: What, can, give (also sung as if it were two
syllables with the stress falling on the first), and him.
This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with the music
setting. The melody is beautiful and the new stresses do no damage to
the poem’s meaning. The only difficulty is in attempting to recover a
reading of the line the way Rossetti wrote it—with the stress on the word “I.”
There’s a good reason for the stress to fall on the word
“I.” This concluding stanza takes off in a new direction from the four
that precede it. It collapses the centuries, placing the author on the
holy ground of the nativity, forcing her to confront the question: How
should I respond? It’s a personal question that requires introspection.
When Rossetti writes in the first person in her poems, she
frequently deploys a fictional narrator—the “I” is not necessarily
Rossetti. With “In the Bleak Midwinter,” you can’t tell if this is meant
to be the case. The “I” might be Rossetti or might not be.
Personally, I like to think that this really is Rossetti speaking in the first
person: that the question is, “What shall I, Christina Rossetti, give the
Christ child?”
The shepherd can give a lamb. The wise man will give
something appropriate (perhaps myrrh, frankincense, or gold if we associate
wise man with magi). Notice how both of Rossetti’s examples are
men. Now we turn to Christina Rossetti. Growing up middle class in
Victorian England, professions were largely closed off to her.
Educational opportunities were limited. She had little money of her
own. She literally had very little to give, except for the volunteer time
that she gave to serving the Anglican church and its missions and, of course,
her poetry.
The line “Give my heart” closes the poem, even as it
completes her gift of poetry to the child.
"Virgin and Angels Adoring the Christ Child," glazed earthenware,
circa 1460s-70s, by Luca Della Robbia (1400-1482). Frame attributed
to Andrea Della Robbia (1435-1525). From the collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Music Room
James Taylor sings “In the Bleak Midwinter”…
Reference Sources
Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by William M. Rossetti
Selected Poems of Christina
Rossetti, edited by Marya Zaturenska
Christina Rossetti: A
Writer’s Life by Jan Marsh
The Achievement of
Christina Rossetti, edited by David A. Kent
Christina Rossetti
(Bloom’s Major Poets), edited by Harold Bloom
Christina Rossetti’s
Faithful Imagination by Dinah Roe
Christina Rossetti:
Faith, Gender and Time by Diane D’Amico
Genius by Harold
Bloom
The Man Who Invented
Christmas by Les Standiford
The Pre-Raphaelites
by Andrea Rose
Victorian Painting
by Christopher Wood
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but
always double-checking everything!)
