THE VILLANELLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 743, 16 August 1929, Page 14

THE VILLANELLE

(Written for THE SEN) i 'JUICK. tripping movement and 1 “* sparkling rhymes are the most | notable characteristics of this intricate verse-form. Nobody can resist the , appeal of its elusive charm or of its rhyme repetitions, so easy of analysis, yet so difficult of imitation. One of the finest examples of the Villanelle is that by W. E. Henley, who sings of the charms of the measure even while using the measure itself. 1 dainty thing's the ViUanelle, Sty. musical, a jewel in rhyme — Jt serves its purpose passing well. .4 double-clappered silver bell That must be made to chink in chime — A dainty thing's the Villanelle; And if you wish to flute a spell, Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime, It serves its purpose passing well. You must not ask of it the swell Of organs grandiose and sublime—--1 dainty thing's the Villanelle. And filled with sweetness as a shell Is filled with sound, and launched in time. It serves its purpose passing well. Still fair to see and good to smell, _4.*t in the guaintness of its prime, A doing thing's the Villanelle — /■ serves ifs purpose passing well. After quoting Henley's poem, there seems very little left to say of the Villanelle. Criticism is rather impossible, as the form is too stereotyped to allow of much freedom, or even of the expression of any very deep i nought. But Villanelles are hard to i impose, the attributes most essential to the poet being a humorous or himsical fancy, and an ear for dainty, i tusical rhymes. Milton could scarcely ave cared for them — he, the austere writer of the beautiful, solemn organ armonies that the Villanelle cannot produce. The word “Villanelle,” from the Spanish Villancejo or Villaneico, was applied In the latter half of the sixteenth century to literary imitations of rustic songs. There was nothing very definite about the form, except that there was always the refrain. It was not until the seventeenth century, that Richelet and other prosodlsts distinguished the restricted and complicated metre of Jean Passerat from the Irregular rumblings of his contemporaries. The following poem Is one of his, and it is now the recognised mode for yillanelles: J’ay perdu ma tourterelle: ■ Est-oe-point elle que j'oy ’ ; je veux aller apres elle. i? T u regrettes ta femelle, " Hilas! aussy fay-je moy ; if J’ay perdu ma tourterelle. T Si ton amour est fiddle . Aussy est ferme ma foy , Je veux aller apres elle. ' Ta plaints se renouvellet Toujours plaindre je me dog; J'ay perdu ma tourterelle. En ne voyant plus la belle Plus rien de beau je ne voy Je veux aller apres elle. Mort, que tant de jois j’appelle, Prens ce qui se donne a toi J'ay perdu ma tourterelle Je veux aller apres elle. The Villanelle is easy enough to define—a poem of nineteen lines arranged in tercets, with only two rhymes throughout. The first and third lines of the first tercet are repeated alternately as the last line of the other tercets, and together, they make up the last two lines of the quatrain at the end of the poem. The length of the Villanelle is not fixed, but a large number of strophes would tend to become monotonous, especially as the rhyming effect would become strained with the effort to build a very long poem on two rhymes alone. No very serious attempt has been made to revive the Villanelle from the dormant state Into which It has fallen, with the exception of the collection by J. Boulmier, a nineteenth century poet. Some poets, however, are not unwilling to test their metrical skill In a tussle with the Villanelle, tor mastery of this complicated form spells to the poet technical ability no less than does the perfect execution of some of Paganini’s pieces to the musician. Leconte de Lisle Is perhaps the only French poet who has attempted to make the Villanelle his medium for the expression of very serious sujects; but the modern Englishman’s serious thoughts are usually so complicated that he could not, even if he wanted to, compress them Into the space afforded by the Villanelle. A clear-cut diamond, polished and finished, the Villanelle In the hands of a master, can be so brilliant as almost to dazzle us. Oscar Wilde’s poem, “Theocritus" (O singer of Persephone, In the dim. meadows desolate. Dost thou remember Sicilyt . . .) Is surely •ne of the finest in English. Any desired effect, whether serious, trivial, humorous, or satirical, can be achieved by skilful management of the measure, and the surprisingly varied meanings of the repeated lines are often its greatest attraction. Now a question, now an. exclamation, now a bare statement, the repetition is always striking. This little poem by May Probyn is a dainty example of what I mean: — The daffodils are on the lea — Come out, sweetheart, and bless the sun I The birds are glad, and so are we. This mom a throstle piped to me, “ 'Tis time that mates were woo’d and won — The daffodils are on the lea.” Come out, sweetheart, their gold to see, And building of the nest begun — The birds are glad, and eo are we. You said—bethink you l —“It shall be When, golden smocked, and■ winter done, The daffodils are on the lea.” Yet. an you will, to change be free I How sigh gout “Changes need we none — The birds are glad—and so are wet” Come out, sweetheart ! the signs agree. The marriage tokens March has spun — The daffodils are on the lea; The birds are glad and so are wet CHRISTINE COMBER. Auckland. N.Z. AUTHOR WRITES NEW NOVEL “Bonzer Jones” is the title of Mr. Walter Smyth's new novel, which is to be published by Mills and Boon In September. Mr. Smyth’s previous books. “Jean of the Tussock Country” and "The Girl from Mason Creek,” were very successfully received. “Bonzer Jones” deals with life on a back-country sheep station, and contains many pages of thrills and exciting adventure. .

Mr Cresswell And The World On August 2 there appeared in these columns an open letter from Mr IVa! - ter D'Arcy Cresswell to Mr Quentin Pope , offering certain criticisms against an anthology of New Zealand verse projected by Mr Pope. The criticisms rested largely on Mr Pope’s choice of iwo poems by Mr Cresswell, who considers them unrepresentative of his best work.

The following is Mr Pope’s reply. WHEN Mr Walter D’Arcy Cresswell wrote me a long and stilted letter from London in answer to a modest request that 1 might use two of his poems in an anthology of modern New Zealand verse, 1 marvelled momentarily at the fact that any man, even though a poet, should use such an occasion for a sermon on poetry, on New Zealand and the world, and on the merits of Mr Cresswell. I marvel no longer; the sermon was designed for print; the personal details were for self-adver-tisement; and I stand publicly rebuked. My judgment is impugned, and I have been unfair to Mr Walter D’Arcy Cresswell. Well, well! I am still puzzled at the fact that Mr Cresswell thought the occasion of sufficient Importance to break Into print about it. In the first place, there is no arguing about matters of taste. If I did not choose more than two of Mr Cresswell’s poems, that Is largely because I did not choose them. It does not mean that lam not attracted by other poems of Mr Cresswell; it means, as everyone who has ever undertaken the work of an anthology must know, that I had to work within limits of space. In the first place I wished to cover the field; and there are 58 modern New Zealand poets in the book. In the second place, Mr Cresswell is represented by two poems, “Words” and “Polynesia,” which are likely to consume as much space as five poems by Eileen Duggan. In the third place, curious as It may seem, it does not appear to me that Mr Cresswell, for all his habit of turning an occasional glowing phrase, has either the craftsmanship or the matur ity of some other New Zealand poets. Perhaps I know iffore of our verse than Mr Cresswell, who has, after all, not been In a position to examine a great deal of it. And In answer to the gentleman who thinks that New Zealanders need good news from him to lift them to a conception of poetry removed from that of Bracken or Lawson or Johannes Andersen, I put forward the statement that there is in the country at the moment a defin ite poetic impulse, resulting in litera ture. It was because of this conviction that I produced my anthology for issue in London. It is impossible to read the later work of Eileen Duggan, the emotional moments of Alison Grant or Ishbel Veitch, the feeling of Robin Hyde and Doreen Price and Helen Glen Turner, the craftsmanship and sentiment of A. R. D. Fairburn and Helena Henderson, the realistic little word-pictures of TJna Currie, the philosophy of John Beaglehole and Alan Mulgan and Arnold Wall, without realisation that there Is being created something which is extraordinary in a community as small and isolated as this. It is impossible, too, to believe that a country so rich in effort has any need of inspiration from Mr Walter D’Arcy Cresswell. There is not enough of feeling controlled to a definite end In Mr Cresswell to enable him to write anything that approaches Eileen Duggan’s “Saint Peter” or “Juniper," or “The Oxen." There is not enough of insight to enable him to rival Ishbel Veltch’s "Vision” or Alison Grant’s “Red and White.” There will never be enough maturity to produce anything to rival P. W. Robertson’s "Invocation,” or irony and philosophy enough to lead to such a thing as O. N. Gillespie’s “The Court of Arches.” Mr Cresswell has music, sometimes he has emotion, often he has unintelligibility. He is not (though one might suspect he thinks so> our best poet. He is not, I should think, among our best 10 poets. If the selection I have made from his work is poor, I regret it. I did not, of course, know that he divided his volume into earlier and later work, but since I have learned this it is significant that I have found earlier in his book freshness and spontaneity, and later much wrestling with words, preciosity, and fine phrases elbowing crudities and imperfectly expressed conceptions. I omitted with reluctance one sonnet the title of which I forget, but it has to do with the poet, and is, I think, the only poem in the book that Mr Cresswell has succeeded in selling to an English journal of standing. But then, in an anthology, something has to go. Mr Cresswell’s sonnet seemed to me less important than some other poems by odd people who will be represented by only one piece of verse. And for this reason I cannot agree that even If the book is unfortunate enough to do Mr Cresswell less than justice It will be greatly marred. QUENTIN POPE. Wellington. . , _