Ave Atque Vale by Algernon Charles Swinburne
"Ave Atque Vale" by Algernon Charles Swinburne is a significant elegy in English literature, crafted as a heartfelt tribute to the French poet Charles Baudelaire. The poem opens with evocative imagery, asking whether to adorn Baudelaire’s memory with rose, rue, or laurel, establishing a spiritual connection between the two poets. Swinburne's work resonates with Baudelaire's themes and stylistic choices, reflecting a deep kinship rooted in their shared exploration of unconventional subjects. Throughout the elegy, Swinburne employs allusions to Baudelaire’s poetry, reinforcing their bond and shared vision as poets. He contemplates Baudelaire’s afterlife, drawing upon specific images from Baudelaire's verses to speculate about his existence beyond death. Despite the sense of loss and the “chill and solemn earth” he feels in mourning, Swinburne finds solace in the enduring presence of Baudelaire’s poetry, suggesting that their connection persists through words. This elegy not only honors a fellow poet but also explores profound themes of love, loss, and the nature of artistic legacy.
Ave Atque Vale by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1868 (collected in Victorian Prose and Poetry, vol. 5 in The Oxford Anthology of English Literature,1973)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Swinburne wrote a number of elegiac poems of varying quality, but with “Ave Atque Vale,” he produced one of the important elegies of English literature. Not only had Swinburne introduced Baudelaire’s poetry in England with his The Spectator review of 1862, he also recognized in the French poet a kindred spirit. The opening lines of his elegy, “Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,/ Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?” call to Charles Baudelaire as his brother in a deep, spiritual sense.
These lines already convey the basic technique of Swinburne’s poem by drawing upon the words evocative of Baudelaire himself. The allusions to flowers parallel the title of Les Fleurs du mal (1857, 1861, 1868; Flowers of Evil, 1931), and in calling Baudelaire “Brother,” Swinburne echoes “Au Lecteur,” Baudelaire’s opening poem, where the latter addresses his reader as “mon frère.” Swinburne echoes the regular rhythms of Baudelaire’s verse, abandoning in this elegy his frequent anapests for iambic rhythm, though he concludes each stanza with a three-foot line that has the effect of leaving something unfinished, a feeling that one has been deprived, as Swinburne was by Baudelaire’s death.
The fraternity between the two poets lay largely in their exploitation of the unconventional. Rather than fresh flowers, Swinburne suggests “Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,/ Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat/ And full of bitter summer?,” flowers like the “sickly flowers” Baudelaire had cited to describe his work. This kinship of negative preoccupations reinforces their poetic vocation. Swinburne echoes the Romantic concept of the poet as seer, seeing “Fierce loves, and lovely leafbuds poisonous,/ Bare to thy subtler eye,” just as Baudelaire had characterized the poet as visionary in his work.
Multiple allusions to Baudelaire’s poetry follow as Swinburne speculates on what sort of existence he has found in the afterlife: “Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet/ Of some pale Titan-woman?” The image from Baudelaire’s “La Géante” posits his form of paradise, while Swinburne adopts Baudelaire’s vision of receding light from “Le Flambeau vivant” as an emblem of his own state: “Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find./ Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies.” As communion with Baudelaire has now been made impossible by his death, Swinburne finds consolation in the proximity of his poems: “These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold/ As though a hand were in my hand to hold.” Yet still he remains on the “chill and solemn earth” that contrasts to the sunny, tropical land that had portrayed Baudelaire’s vision of an earthly paradise.
Bibliography
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