Swinburnes Poems and Ballads - Essay Example

The Number 28 October “Hermaphroditus” is a poem from Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads volume, which was published back in 1866. While the subject of the poem is the transformation of a young and handsome man into a hermaphroditus, it is the destructive force of love that serves a tool of this abusive transformation. The fusion of the two beings – whom Swinburne apparently brought from ancient Greco-Roman mythology – into one whole is rather a rape than desired and voluntary coition. This is evidenced by the content of the last sonnet where the violent nature of coition is exposed, as well as by certain lines in the poem that point at the harsh character of love and the man’s reluctance to copulate with the outcome of turning into a hermaphroditus. This paper analyses the poem in terms of its depiction of the coition between a man and a woman as a rape committed by a woman. It discusses the reasons why the fusion of the two is rape and defies the opposite arguments in favor of the idea of voluntary love. The paper concludes with a summary of arguments that prove the violent nature of coition between the nymph and her beloved. To begin with, the man’s unwillingness to copulate and lose his sexual identity is evident in the poem. In “Hermaphoritus”, there is an implication of struggle and confrontation, which implies one’s reluctance to subject to the force and will of the other. To illustrate, “Strive until one be under and one above” (8). Moreover, the poem speaks of “great despair”, which implies that one of the two had negative feelings about what was happening (13). In addition, the last sonnet says that what is happening between the man and the woman is “not love but fear” (43), which means that the coition was not an act of unforced and willing copulation, but rather an act of abusive copulation, when one of the two experienced a range of negative emotions or, better, suffering. Finally, the unwillingness to copulate and transform or “melt into Salmacis” is evidently implied in the pre-last line of the poem that describes how “thy boy’s breath softened into sighs” (55). While sighs may be interpreted as sighs of pleasure, the preceding images of fear, destruction, pain, and unwillingness indicate that these are the sighs of a victim and the sighs of death. Representations of death in “Hermaphroditus” imply that the coition the sexual act between the man and the woman is a rape. While love is commonly linked to blossom and life, “Hermaphroditus”, which focuses on love and sex, contains numerous representations of death. For example, Swinburne’s description of lips in the first Sonnet of “Hermafroditus” reminds the description of a dead person’s lips; it evokes the feelings of destruction, demise, and decay. To illustrate, “Lift up thy lips, turn round, look back for love,   Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest;   Of all things tired thy lips look weariest, Save the long smile that they are wearied of” (1-4). Additionally, Swinburne mentions death directly by the use of the words “death”, “perished”, “sin”(in Biblical tradition sin equals death), “dead”, and flesh (flesh is linked to decay and demise in Biblical tradition as opposed to soul, which is immortal and cannot be ruined by death). For example, “Yet from them something like as fire is shed That shall not be assuaged till death be dead, Though neither life nor sleep can find out this. Love made himself of flesh that perisheth A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin; But on the one side sat a man like death, And on the other a woman sat like sin” (20-26). The allusions to death may be also found in Swinburne’s use of the following imagery: “strange end”, “tears”, “blood”, “water’s kiss”, “breath softened into sighs”, “large light turned tender in thine eyes”, “no sunset”, and “no moonrise”. Especially, the image of breath softening into mere sighs reminds of death and its agony, when the activity of a human being weakens and eventually stops. To illustrate, “Beneath the woman’s and the water’s kiss Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis, And the large light turned tender in thine eyes, And all thy boy’s breath softened into sighs; But Love being blind, how should he know of this?” (52-56). Having disclosed the violent nature of love in Swinburne’s “Hermaphroditus” and the images of death, the following interpretation of the poem evolves. Hermaphroditus went swimming in the waters of stream where a nymph lived. Salmacis, the nymph, felt great sexual desire to the man, so she raped him and destroyed his sexual identity through that rape. So Hermaphroditus became what he is understood today: a bisexual feature with no clear sexual identity. At the same time, Hermaphroditus did not want to copulate with such devastating outcome. He could have had some desire for the nymph, but he would reject being subject to transformation into a being that is neither “a woman for a man’s delight” nor a man that can “ease a woman sighs” (35-36). In other words, he was reluctant to be subject to the destructive love and undergo dissolution. The counter argument might be based on understanding the fusion of the two in “Hermaphroditus” as a voluntary act of love. Such epithets as “sweet”, “strong” (about desire), “gracious”, “desirable”, as well as metaphorical comparison of love with “gold bound round about the head” serve indicators of love’s presence in the act of sexual intercourse. At the same time, the argument may be easily disproved if one considers contrasting images of destruction. In this sense, it becomes clear that love and strong sexual desire is experienced by one of the two. This is the nymph who rapes her victim and takes away his sexual identity. In conclusion, the imagery of death and clear implications of the man’s unwillingness to have sex with the nymph and lose his identity as a man, sufferings that he is undergoing, and his demise at the end evidence that the sexual intercourse was a rape, rather than wiling coition. The argument that focuses on love and love words is disproved by uncovering the message of the poem as one person’s killing of the sexual identity of the other. Works Cited Swinburne, Charles A. Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon. Ed. Kenneth Haynes. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Print. Read More