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Vallance Review 32,
April 2004
 [Part 1 of 2 Vallance Reviews on Alan Seeger, April & May 2004]
Alan Seeger was born in New York City on July 22, 1888 and died as a legionnaire in the French Foreign Legion on the battlefield at Belloy-en-Santerre, France on July 4, 1916. During his childhood and youth he had often been in frail health. He was a highly sensitive and erudite, well-read young man. Educated at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1910, he regularly contributed verse to the now defunct Harvard Monthly. His life suddenly altered radically after he left Harvard, as he spent the next two years living the life of a "bohemian" in Greenwich Village before finally emigrating to France in 1912. He fell head-over-heels in love with Paris, as she embodied his own ideals of life. There he kept up his hedonistic lifestyle in the Left Bank's radical culture, with scarcely a care in the world. In 1914, he traveled to England, there spent some intimate time with his father at Canterbury Cathedral. While in England, he tried unsuccessfully to have his poetry published. Upon his return to Paris, World War I broke out and he almost immediately enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. Wounded at the front in February, 1915 and invalid from bronchitis again in March, 1916, he recuperated at Biarritz before returning to the Somme front in June, 1916. In an all out attack on Belloy-en-Santerre the next month, he was fatally wounded. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre (War Cross) and the Médaille Militaire for outstanding bravery. Alan Seeger was sure his poetry, which he cherished almost as much as those he so greatly loved, would stand the test of time. His last ever letter bequeathed these instructions: "I will write you soon if I get through all right. If not, my only earthly care is for my poems. Add the ode I sent you and the three sonnets to my last volume and you will have -- opera omnia quae existant -- ." [1.1] These poems were at long last published in 1917, a year after his death. This slim volume contains the now famously poignant prophetic poem, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death." At heart, Alan Seeger was a latter-day Elizabethan and a true Romantic. Like John Keats before him, his was a consuming passion for beauty -- his sole "religion". He passionately adored women and he idealized war, going even so far as to extol it outright in one of his "Renaissance" style sonnets, "Sidney", which concludes on this rather gallant note:
I frolicked, poor of purse but light of heart, And lived in strict devotion all along To my three idols--Love and Arms and Song. A natural-born lyric bard, he was never a poseur; his was a courageous, ingenuous and forthright nature. He gave others everything he had and was, fearlessly and with barely a hint of regret. Like Rupert Brooke, another of the dashing "War Poets" of the early Twentieth Century, he was one of the impassioned spirits of his day and age, and he will forever be remembered as an immortally charming young man, whose genius was in his ability to poetize everything his eyes beheld and his silver hands touched. [1.2] This Sonnet is Representative of Alan Seeger's Renaissance Heritage
With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine. The morning planet poised above the sea [2] Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid; Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid, That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes, Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs. Alan Seeger (1888-1916) For its sheer musicality, we are bold to compare this masterful sonnet with these verses (or for that matter, any other lines) from John Milton's early lyric poem, "L'Allegro":  Sandro Botticelli, "The Birth of Venus" (1485) But come thou goddess fair and free, L'Allegro: verses 11-26 John Milton (1608-1674) [4] Of this fantastical lyric paen, Sigmund Spaeth, author of Milton's Knowledge of Music (1913) has this to say: "Milton is truly a poet-musician.... His poetry reciprocates by idealizing his music... To Milton, music is able to express every variety of human emotion. In L'Allegro it represents the climax of joy.... The sublimity of music is constantly implied by Milton." [5] Arguably, John Milton was not, strictly speaking, a poet of the High Renaissance, since he was born in the Seventeenth Century, and was, at least on the surface of things, a product of his own times. But John Milton was not of the school of the Cavalier Poets, and his poetic opus, all told, is more classically inspired and more profound than the often affected poetry of the Cavalier poets. Indeed, John Milton was closer to the late Renaissance poets and even to William Shakespeare in the style and deportment displayed at least in his early poetry, and especially in the twin lyrical Odes, "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso", than he ever was to the Cavalier Poets of his own Century. Not to recognize the bursting spontaneity of "L'Allegro" as the flight of imagination of a young poet in love with life and with the music and harmonies of life is to fly in the face of reason. Similarly, Alan Seeger's sonnets, composed almost four hundred years later, reveal a very similar youthful zest, a cheerful and loving outlook on life and a willingness to venture forth in spirited joy. What really amazes, however, is the striking similarity in intensity, tone, nuanced imagery and of the innate sense of pure rhythm running through both Milton's lyric, "L'Allegro", and Alan Seeger's exquisite sonetto ("little song"), "Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest...?" The similarities are indeed so striking as to be impossible to ignore. While the actual rhythms of the two poems are not the same, what is remarkable about each of these poems alike is the sheer consistency of the rhythm in each, the amazing grace of music which pervades the whole. Yet the same can be said of Alan Seeger's equally mellifluous sonnet, and indeed it was. In his Introduction to The Poems of Alan Seeger (1916), William Archer typifies the sonneteer's genius in these words, which I feel obliged to quote entire: But I think no discerning reader can fail to be impressed by one great virtue pervading all the poet's work-- its absolute sincerity. There is no pose, no affectation of any sort. There are marks of the loving study of other poets, and these the best. We are frequently reminded of this singer and of that. The young American is instinctively loyal to the long tradition of English literature. He is content to undergo the influence of the great masters, and does not seek for premature originality on the by-paths of eccentricity. But while he is the disciple of many, he is the vassal of none. His matter is always his own, the fruit of personal vision, experience, imagination, even if he may now and then unconsciously pour it into a mould provided by another. He is no mere echo of the rhythms of this poet, or mimic of that other's attitude and outlook. [6] (italics mine)There are telltale markers in this citation from William Archer's Introduction to Alan Seeger's Poems, phrases which hold up a mirror, as it were, to the conclusions drawn by Sigmund Spaeth about Milton's musicality in his own poetry. Where Spaeth refers to John Milton's "tendency to poetize the actual, concrete elements and materials of the art. He takes the common facts of ... music as he finds them, and then exalts them to the level of his own poetic imagination." [7] That assertation could just as well apply to the gracious musical measures of Alan Seeger's sonnets. In a word, Alan Seeger seems to have been more than passingly familiar with the fresh breath of lyricism that sprang up in Renaissance poetry, and quite possibly even with John Milton's, "L'Allegro" itself, whether consciously or "now and then unconsciously", as his devoted biographer, William Archer, so aptly put it. Alan Seeger's Musical Ear and John Milton's "L'Allegro" While it would be ludicrous to suggest that Alan Seeger's musical ear mimics John Milton's, there are clearly parallels in the manner in which each poet so consistently applies his peculiar enharmonics to his own lyric verse. The rhythms are dissimilar; the approach similar. It would seem, then, that the young John Milton and the young Alan Seeger had each his own inner ear remarkably tuned to universal harmonics, which Percy Bysshe Shelley so compellingly invokes as: That principle of essential universal and natural harmony does indeed infuse both the young Milton's "L'Allegro" and Alan Seeger's song-like sonnets to the core. But there is more. The ancients, most notably the Greek and Roman epic and lyric poets, the likes of Homer, Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Horace and Vergil, all alike considered poetry the domain of lyricism, which to the ancient ear literally meant, the lyre's influence. It was common practice in antiquity for poetry to be recited to the accompaniment of the lyre or similar plucked instrument, as Shelley more than once intimates in his own Defence (1821). While this practice has, lamentably, all but died out in recent Centuries, it was still the norm for not only the French Provençal troubadours but also for the early Italian sonneteers, as William Sharp and I myself have previously illustrated: These abbreviated “canzone” or “sonettos” were recited or probably even sung to the accompaniment of the lute, mandolin or other such similar musical instrument. According to William Sharp of the Sonnet Board [1], “sonettos” were almost certainly in existence, and at least sung to the accompaniment of musical instruments,... [9] And the most adept of all early sonneteers at playing the lute and singing his own sonnets to its accompaniment was none other than Francesco Petrarch himself. For him, his "sonetti" or "little songs" were just that, songs, lyrics to be accompanied by music. Since the Rinascimento in Italy, many great sonneteers have had their sonnets put to music, but without exception, posthumously only. Amongst these we count Francesco Petrarch himself, whose sonnets were set to composition by none other than Franz Liszt, Pierre de Ronsard, a large number of whose sonnets have been scored to music by several promient French composers, William Shakespeare and Rainer Maria Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus." [10] Recall too Peter Zanette's glorious Choral Anthem, "Brighter Orbs on High", which is also posthumously scored late in 2003 for William Lisle Bowle's, "On Listening to Handel's 'Messiah' in Gloucester Cathedral" (1789). [11] It is not a great leap of the imagination from the previous observations for us to reasonably conclude that Alan Seeger's highly melodic Sonnet XVI, the featured sonnet for this review, can also readily be adapted to a musical score worthy of its exalted beauty. Such a composition is probably realizable in the not too distant future. Yet, this is only the specific conclusion we may draw. There is also a general one, and that is: at the outset of the Third Millennium, the literary, plastic and musical arts are now all poised for an assimilation or integration of the Fine Arts such as we have never before witnessed in their long history. We are in the almost enviable position even to surpass and outclass the ideals of the ancient poets, for whom the expression of lyrical poetry was synonymous with music. Indeed, the ancient Greek playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) went even so far as to incorporate elaborate "choroi", or choruses into their plays. What is particularly significant about the Greek choruses in plays, notably in the great tragedies, is that these choruses were (generally Doric) lyric poetry inserted into the woof and web of the drama. In short, ancient Greek tragedy was in large part sung. But today, in the early Twenty-First Century, we can go even further -- indeed much further. The time has come for the multi-media production of artistic creations, whereby lyric poetry, including (or should I say rather especially) the "sonetto" or "little song", the sonnet, are almost ideally suited for musical, even cinematic software accompaniment. The challenge to poets and artists alike is great, and will as likely be even more demanding in the near future. The time has come when the poet-musician-cinematographer artist can and, I surely believe, will create multi-media lyrics of profound and lasting artistic merit. Such media-driven artistic productions will soon no longer necessarily have to be posthumous. They will be the outpourings of highly imaginative and skilled artists who will be able to literally create sung or orchestrated cinematic poetry. Such poetic creations will surpass in form even the most rebellious poetic experiments of the Twentieth Century, too often counter-productive for their disdain of time-honoured poetic traditions. On the other hand, some in the latest generation of poets who are truly Neo-Romantics and "traditionalists" at heart, will at last have all the scope in the world still to create formal multi-media poetry, and this includes sonnets, which we as poet-musician-cinematographers (who knows, perhaps even laser artists?) will be in the position to actually bring to fruition. Now, while I myself am no musician, and cannot count myself amongst such fortunati, I have at least had the foresight in the recent past to enlist the very real talents of a gifted contemporary Canadian composer, Peter Zanette, to set William Lisle Bowle's sonnet previously mentioned to music. In the concluding Chapter of "The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet", in Canadian Spirit Voices (2003), I went to get lengths expounding this very hypothesis [12]. It bears repetition here, if only for this reason, that the early sonneteers of the Italian, French and English Renaissance, veered closer to music in their sonnets than ever had the purely literary tradition of sonneteering, which prevailed from the latter half of the Sixteenth Century right on through to our own day and age. The time has arrived, however, for lyrical poets and sonneteers to come full circle to the "sonetto" as music, and even beyond. The marriage of poetry with multi-media beckons us even now, and will be consummated in the near future. How Far is Alan Seeger's Style Reminiscent of the Renaissance Sonneteers? As the old saying goes, one needn't look very far. As we have already seen, William Archer explicitly recognizes Alan Seeger's great debt to the Renaissance master poets in his own Introduction to Seeger's Poems (1917). Alan Seeger too is not the least bit reticent about his profound admiration for the grand poetic traditions of the Renaissance English poets, even of Francesco Petrarch himself, the presumed "father" of the sonnet as we know it today. That Alan Seeger was enamoured of the Renaissance poets in general is more than passingly apparent. He specifically dedicates at least four of his sonnets to Francesco Petrarch: "A paraphrase of Petrarca, `Quando fra l'altre donne . . .'" & Sonnet VII, first series, "a woman crowned/With all perfection, blemishless and high,", Sir Philip Sidney (Other Sonnets, I) and to the "Immortal Bard", William Shakespeare, "With a Copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets". In other sonnets where he does not specifically mention Renaissance poets by name, his very style and the metaphors he constantly invokes often remind us of similar verses composed by such famous forbears as: Joachim du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard (Alan Seeger spoke and read French well), Sir Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. I need cite only two or three notable examples to amply illustrate the point. In his Sonnet XII (first series), Alan Seeger resorts to this telling image:
To a slow river at whose silent verge... There is a striking correspondence between Seeger's ingenuously felt verses and Joachim du Bellay's similar sentiments, as vividly expressed in his nocturne sonnet, "L'Olive, Sonnet LXXXIII":
Un grand troupeau d'étoiles vagabondes, Et, pour entrer aux cavernes profondes,... As of now the night was amassing vast Or perhaps there are similar echoes of Pierre de Ronsard in these exquisite lines or Alan Seeger's:
Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's way on the woods below,... (translation by Richard Vallance in Canadian Spirit Voices, 2003) Practically any of the Pierre de Ronsard's lovely sonnets in his, "Amours de Marie" could be held up to the same mirror. Or take this vivid image, for instance, from Alan Seeger's Sonnet II (first series):
Quite apart from the fact that Petrarch himself so often penned similar such imagery some six Centuries before Alan Seeger, these lines, and many others in his sonnets, invariably remind us of the kind of imagery we might expect from Thomas Wyatt, Edmund Spenser and any number of the sonneteers of the Elizabethan court. And yet, strange as it may seem, this particular sonnet is about a woman he has encountered, probably somewhere on the streets of "a silken city famed afar", early Twentieth-Century Paris! Anachronisms, Archaisms and Conceits -- Do They Mar Seeger's "Renaissance" Sonnets? The sole reservation I find myself harbouring with Alan Seeger's sonnets (especially the first series) is this: Seeger, who is after all a Twentieth Century poet, too often resorts to reliance on anachronistic language, and especially on the archaic pronouns, "thee" and "thou" to embellish his work, with the result that it sometimes sounds a little affected and quaint. Allow me a few examples: "Like as a dryad,...", and "Come thou no less...." (Sonnet XII), Such poetic phrasing, however melodious, a modern reader might find ever so slightly mars the otherwise pristine quality of Alan Seeger's devotionals to his Renaissance forbears. These anachronisms are all the more regrettable for their being inconsistent with his mainstream style, where he rather more scrupulously avoids using archaic language. Oddly, while the archaic pronominals "thee" and "thou" crop up fairly often in his first series of sonnets, he seems to have realized that such verbiage was, as it were, "a little off" when he came to compose his later second series, "Other Sonnets". In these, the archaic pronouns are gone. The second series of sonnets therefore sound more familiar and more natural to the modern reader's ear. But there is more. Conceits: Here again, Alan Seeger's fondness for "Renaissance" conceits, such as:
Lives the fair face it mirrors even so,... (Sonnet XII) and I fancied, while you stood conversing there, Superb, in every attitude a queen,... (Sonnet XIII)) lend a Camelot air of proverbial ages past to his sonnets, which to my mind at least, ever so slightly mars what is otherwise exquisite poetry. There are plenty more examples of affected phraseology in Seeger's sonnets, but these extracts alone serve to illustrate how far he was willing to go in resorting to what amount to Renaissance conceits resuscitated in Twentieth Century sonnets. He even admits as much himself:
Her whom west winds with natal foam bedewed,... where "the latter days" indeed refer to his own Century. In the same sonnet, he goes on, with nostalgia and not without Reason, to extol the merits of reviving the age-old worship of Beauty and of Love, ideals which his own bereaved Century, and ours too, seem almost to have forgotten quite.
For Love shone in their eyes, and in their ears Come unto me, Love beckoned them, for lo!... In these three verses alone our adept sonneteer appears to have largely redeemed himself from the very charges of reliance on anachronistic language I have just now laid at his feet. In the context of these lines, the phrase, "Come unto me,....", which only a moment ago seemed oddly passé, now appears to be faithful to the compelling conclusion Seeger so vividly draws. Seeger himself feels more than justified in honouring the ideals of that bygone age of chivalry and high ideals, rather than allowing himself to become mired in the far baser so-called "ideals of our present day" which brought the World to the brink of Wold War I. This remarkably lofty idealism he clearly shares with John Milton, who also abhorred war-mongering of any kind. John Milton's "L'Allegro" and Alan Seeger's Sonnet XVI as Music
For a musician's perspective on both John Milton's "L'Allegro" and Alan Seeger's Sonnet XVI (first series), I enlisted the resources and help of my friend, Peter Zanette of Ottawa, the composer of the choral anthem, "Brighter Orbs on High", music set to William Lisle Bowles' sonnet on Handel's 'Messiah'. Here is what Peter has to say about the musical characteristics of each of these poems in turn: John Milton's "L'Allegro": Scanning "L'Allegro" for its metrics, I soon realized that I was dealing here with what could be seen as a madrigal, presumably played andante moderato. At least, that is the musical idiom the poem suggested to me as a musician. I pointed out to Richard that I was able to discern a definite melodic pattern, repeating itself every fourth line. In poetic terms, this would translate into a poem comprised of a succession of 4 verse stanzas. In musical parlance, the metronomic measure might approximate 124 beats per minute, or in laymen's terms, a lively "walking pace". Milton's poem displays a remarkably steady, poised sense of rhythm. This assessment of Milton's lyric paen very closely echoes Sigmund Spaeth's overall evaluation of Milton's musical knowledge: "There is in the poet's conception a "secret power of harmony." It controls the laws of Nature and the universe. It alone can "hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union." Such harmony as this is much more than mere musical concord." [13] Alan Seeger's Sonnet XVI (first series): On the other hand, according to my musician friend, Alan Seeger's Sonnet XVI is couched in an entirely different metric pattern, albeit relatively consistent, which translates in turn into a more complex musical idiom. In Peter's own words: I found Alan Seeger's sonnet far more challenging musically than Milton's poem. While the overall rhythmic pattern is consistent with the sonnet's poetic meter, the iambic pentameter, it is this latter which introduces numerous problems for the musician attempting to set it to a score. There are surprising rhythmic changes, some of them sudden, such as the shift from the measured beat of the first verse, "Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest" to the much more rapid "his delicate virginity" in verse 11. Moreover, from a musician's perspective, this poem is strikingly climactic, the last two lines requiring some sort of vivid resolution. And on that note we end this month's review. Stay tuned next month for Part 2 of our discussion of the Sonnets of Alan Seeger, Alan Seeger: a true Romantic at Heart© by Richard Vallance & Peter Zanette, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, March 26 2004 REFERENCES & NOTES:
[1.1] "opera omnia quae existant..." Latin = "extant works", "surviving publications" or "posthumous works" The Vallance Review is frequently cited in our Canadian sonnet journal, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1706-4524. To read the current issue or any back issues, you may visit the sonnet journal's Home Page here: 
SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4524 |
