BDSM in Victorian poetry
Reconsidering Swinburne’s “Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)”
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these are gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and sombre Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain?Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Dolores” (1866)
Nick Gisburne has a number of delightful recitations on his YouTube feed.
Swinburne’s “Dolores” may not be one of them. Listening to the entire recitation feels like an excruciatingly overlong joke.
But maybe that’s the point?
Victorian censors wouldn’t have let Swinburne get away with including a certain female anatomical part that rhymes with Dolores. Seinfeld did get away with that in 1993’s zany “The Junior Mint” — but in 1893, that ploy might land you in jail.
The metrical scheme of the poem “anapestic verse” — like limericks. Except these are “serious” verses! So so so serious! Death, pain, how a sadomasochistic experience is comparable to the Virgin Mary — intriguing effect for about 40 lines.
Pity the poem stretches 440 lines.
A joke? Maybe, maybe not. I visualize Swinburne strapped to a table, burning candle dripping wax on his chest, wincing anew with each drop, then begging his Lady of Pain not to release him until the entirety is finished.
Explicit sadomasochism…would have been rare in Victorian poetry. But Swinburne loved to tantalize.
What if Swinburne actually dedicated the poem to a real woman, rather than a literary fetish fantasy? Perhaps in a drunken bender, a flirtatious barmaid cut his tab, and infuriated, a handful of lines flashed through his brain — a sort of 19th century ‘revenge porn’ poetic spark — then, bam!
What if that barmaid is actually a goddess, the muse of pain and lightning?
One critic suggests that Swinburne’s poem resonates through Bob Dylan’s “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” A song I’d never heard before. Perhaps — looks like I’ll need to read his book to really know.
