by Stevie Smith
‘The Ambassador’ (p. 282): Smith adds subtitle in own copy and for SP; removed from CP. Cf. John Lemprière’s Classical Dictionary for Schools and Academies (1832), which misprints ‘Casmillus’ for ‘Casmilus’.
‘Persephone’ (p. 283): ‘I was born good’ revised from ‘I had been good’ in author’s copy of HL; original version in CP. Drafts include final excised stanza:
More fair than Sicilian air
Is that frost’s breath there
More dear more dear.
‘Do Take Muriel Out’ (p. 285): follows performance and author’s copy substitution of ‘wan’ for ‘glum’ and ‘footsteps’ for ‘footprints’; early draft in UT has ‘deceiver’ for ‘believer’.
‘The Weak Monk’ (p. 286): cf. S. T. Coleridge, ‘The Mad Monk’ (1800), ll.21–3, and William Blake, ‘The Grey Monk’ (1803), which is quoted in OTF, p. 106; follows punctuation and lineation from version Smith prepared for PMP.
‘Le Singe Qui Swing’ (p. 287): cf. René Fauchois’ play Le Singe qui parle (1925), adapted into the silent film The Monkey Talks (1927), dir. Raoul Walsh. Smith playfully introduced the poem in performance as ‘an Indian childhood memory’.
‘Pad, pad’ (p. 288): Smith revised penultimate line in her copy of American SP from HL and CP’s ‘Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad’; Smith offered the revised version in readings and for PMP.
‘The Afterthought’ (p. 291): Smith revised penultimate line in her copy of American SP from HL and CP’s ‘What is that darling? You cannot hear me?’; in some performances, she substituted ‘grace’ for ‘mercy’. Cf. Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1845), where Dupin describes a parlour-room game which requires players to find large and small words on a board to illustrate the human propensity to overlook the obvious: the larger words ‘escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident’. Smith also invokes Katherine Craster’s poem ‘The Centipede’s Dilemma’ (1871), which gave its name to the psychological process whereby self-reflection impairs the performance of everyday activities (‘the centipede syndrome’), and Titurel, the Holy Grail-keeper who lived for five hundred years. There is a more indirect allusion to Homer’s Odyssey XI. ll.60–70, where the dead Elpenor explains to Odysseus that he has remained in the land of the dead as he didn’t think to bring a ladder with him. The drawing appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘Ménélas, je suis Hélène et je veux rentrer chez moi!’
‘The Wanderer’ (p. 292): punctuation follows later version prepared for PMP. Published in SP with drawing used for ‘Farewell’ in NWBD. Cf. Lewis Caroll, ‘’Tis the Voice of the Lobster’, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), ch. X, and Isaac Watts, ‘’Tis the Voice of the Sluggard’ (1715).
‘No Categories!’ (p. 293): drawing appears in SAMHTO with caption: ‘If we have not this power what power have we?’
‘The Deserter’ (p. 295): Smith’s performance copy revises ‘admit’ to ‘agree’, inverts line 8 from ‘they say as a matter of fact’, and adds ‘continue to’ in line 3: CP has ‘come’ for ‘comes’.
‘I rode with my darling …’ (p. 296): HL and CP have ‘angrily’ for ‘thoughtfully’, which Smith revised for performances and in a letter to Kathleen Farrell, now at UT. Some performances had ‘beaming’ for ‘burning’. For l.22 cf. Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, published two years later.
‘God and Man’ (p. 298): draft subtitle indicates the poem should be sung to the traditional English folk song ‘Villikins and his Dinah’.
‘Mr Over’ (p. 299): first published in The Holiday Book (1946), p. 57, where final two stanzas are elided. TFP illustrates the poem with drawing of woman carrying funeral wreath; the drawing is used to illustrate ‘My Muse’ when reprinted in TFP.
‘My Cats’ (p. 300): in performance Smith glossed the second line as a reference to the North Berwick witch trials; the subtitle was added for PMP.
‘Our Bog is Dood’ (p. 302): for final stanza, see S. T. Coleridge, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798), ll.596–604.
‘Le Revenant’ (p. 306): introduced in performance as ‘My Uncle’ or ‘Ghosts’.
‘Friskers or Gods and Men’ (p. 307): in Greek mythology, Galanthis was changed into a cat by Hera as punishment for intervening in Hera’s attempt to prevent Heracles’ birth.
‘Cool and Plain’ (p. 308): Celia in TH presents the poem as a diary entry written when ‘London life is not so easy’, p. 148.
‘The Rehearsal’ (p. 311): draft includes excised dedication to the singer Hedli Anderson (1907–90); Smith attended a performance of Elisabeth Lutyens’ Stevie Smith Songs (1948) in 1949.
‘Thank You’ (p. 314): cf. William Wordsworth, ‘Alice Fell’ (1802), ll.41–4.
‘The Ride’ (p. 315): cf. Lord Byron, ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’ (1812–18), ll.1639–47.
‘I Am’ (p. 316): cf. John Clare, ‘I Am’ (1848). Smith swaps l.10’s ‘did’ and ‘thought’ in performance.
‘From the Coptic’ (p. 323): cf. Genesis 2:7. Drawing used to illustrate ‘How far can you Press a Poet?’ (p. 12) in TFP.
‘In Protocreation’ (p. 326): MS in UT notes it is homage to Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), the British astronomer who helped define nucleosynthesis. Cf. ‘The New Age’.
‘Do Not!’ (p. 327): Smith revises final line in letter to Kathleen Farrell from HL’s ‘despairing, flee strife’; original version retained for CP. In SAMHTO, the drawing appears with the caption: ‘Wag, wag!’
‘The Death Sentence’ (p. 328): for final two lines cf. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, IV.i, l.294.
‘The Leader’ (p. 332): this portrait of Hitler had been accepted for publication in New Statesman in 1944, but was not printed by the time of his death, so withdrawn by the author.
‘Who Shot Eugenie?’ (p. 334): fifth stanza quoted as a complete poem in OTF, p. 244.
‘Voices about the Princess Anemone’ (p. 338): illustration used as cover for first edition of The Holiday (1949).
‘Deeply Morbid’ (p. 340): first published in The Holiday Book (1946), pp. 58–9; earlier version has ‘canvas’ for ‘pictures’, ‘Stays her gaze’ for ‘Hangs her eye’, and ‘athwart the spray’ for ‘across the spray’.
NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING (1957)
Published by André Deutsch in October 1957. Only twenty-one drawings appear in the original volume; Smith at first agreed to publish the poems without drawings, but later offered to return her advance rather than to go press without them. Five were added for SP, and twelve for TFP, although the drawing for ‘In the Park’ was removed, and the original drawing for ‘Every Lovely Limb’s a Desolation’ was used to illustrate ‘I Remember’. Nineteen of these poems were chosen for SP, and a further eleven for TFP. Smith selected poems for inclusion with Deutsch editor Diana Athill, drawing on comments made by Laurie Lee.
‘Not Waving but Drowning’ (p. 347): first published in the Observer (29 Aug. 1954) then revised for publication in essay ‘Too Tired for Words’, Medical World (Dec. 1956), which puts lines 3–4, 9, 11–12 in speech marks, and reduces second stanza to three lines with breaks after ‘dead’ and ‘way’; the first two lines of this revised stanza are also in speech marks. A typed draft shows an illustration of a man being pulled from the water in place of the deliberately disjunctive female figure in published versions.
‘“What is she writing? Perhaps it will be good”’ (p. 350): for picture and title cf. Francisco de Goya’s etchings ‘It may be that is he good’ (c.1818–24), ‘Bad poets’ (c.1818–24), and ‘What is this hubbub?’ (1810–14).
‘The Fairy Bell’ (p. 351): this follows the final version of the poem Smith prepared for PMP, which revises ‘enchantment’ to ‘enjoyment’, and adds an additional line break after ‘hat’; the printed PMP
version has the typo ‘plying’ for ‘flying’.
‘The New Age’ (p. 353): the MS in UT notes the poem, like ‘In Protocreation’ (p. 326), is a homage to Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), the British astronomer who helped define nucleosynthesis; Smith quotes line 11 in her review of Douglas Hewitt’s The Returning Waters (1954), Frontier (Spring 1961), pp. 41–2.
‘The Blue from Heaven’ (p. 354): follows revised version prepared for PMP, which revises tenth stanza from NWBD’s:
That Arthur has fallen from the grandeur
Of his power all agree
NWBD has ‘powers’ for ‘power’ in final stanza.
‘A Dream of Comparison’ (p. 360): cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, X, ll.1001–6.
‘My Hat’ (p. 362): the drawing was printed without the poem in TFP, bearing the caption ‘Away, Away!’
‘Fafnir and the Knights’ (p. 371): in some performances Smith omitted the third stanza and substituted ‘green grass’ for ‘long grass’. As noted in SSAS, Fafnir is from the Norse myth the Vosungsaga, and appears in Wagner’s Siegfried (1876): in the opera, he is a giant changed to a dragon, and slain by Siegfried.
‘Songe d’Athalie’ (p. 373): cf. Jean Racine, Athalie (1692) II.v, ll. 29–52.
‘Away, Melancholy’ (p. 377): cf. George Herbert, ‘The Bag’ (1633); an additional comma has been added after ‘God’ in the fifth stanza, following Spalding’s suggestion in SSACB, p. 223
‘Dido’s Farewell to Aeneas’ (p. 379): cf. Virgil’s Aeneid (29–19 bc), IV, ll.652–65.
‘Childe Rolandine’ (p. 380): cf. Robert Browning, ‘Child Rolande to the Dark Tower Came’ (1855), a poem Smith also invokes in ‘A Soldier Dear to Us’ (p. 605).
‘The Jungle Husband’ (p. 382): punctuation follows later version prepared for PMP, and follows Smith’s preferred spelling of ‘gray’. In performance, Smith noted: ‘He does not like her very much, and is rather drunk.’
‘“Come on, Come back”’ (p. 383): poem was drafted in 1920s, and originally titled ‘Incident in the Great War, 1991–7’; punctuation follows revised version prepared for PMP.
‘I Remember’ (p. 386): cf. Littleton C. Powys, Still the Joy of It (1956), p. 34:
[…] we were married in the little Roman Catholic church of St. Mary’s at Hampstead […] our wedding night coincided with the most spirited German air raid that had been experienced in London for a long time; and the confusion was increased by a very large fleet of our own bombers passing over London on their way to Germany at the same time.
In interviews, Smith misremembered the poem’s source as Llewellyn Powys. The version in NWBD left out the couplet beginning ‘What rendered the confusion worse’, which was supplied in an erratum slip.
‘God the Eater’ (p. 390): cf. George Herbert, ‘Love (III)’ (1633).
‘God the Drinker’ (p. 391): cf. Goya’s etching ‘Porque fue sensible’ (1799) for epigraph.
‘A Dream of Nourishment’ (p. 395): William Blake, ‘Infant Sorrow’ (1794), ll.7–8: the second stanza alludes to Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, where the dead are required to drink a saucer of blood before they can be seen by the living.
‘The Airy Christ’ (p. 396): in NWBD, Smith includes subtitle ‘after reading Dr Rieu’s translation of St Mark’s Gospel’. Cf. St. Mark’s Gospel: A New Translation from the Greek (1951) trans. Dr E. V. Rieu; text follows later version prepared for PMP, which substitutes ‘splendour’ for ‘grandeur’, ‘blazing’ for ‘burning’, and removes subtitle.
‘Dear Little Sirmio’ (p. 400): cf. Catullus, Carmen XXXI. Smith wrote to Athill: ‘I also send you a list of poems I would be willing to leave out if necessary and I have put Laurie Lee’s comments on each in brackets […] there is no “No” of his I want – except perhaps (?) the queried “No” of “Dear Little Sirmio”’ (27 Apr. 1955, UT).
‘“Great Unaffected Vampires and the Moon”’ (p. 401): cf. The Spectator held a poetry competition in 1952 to introduce the titular line, which is taken from Hilaire Belloc’s Caliban’s Guide to Letters (1903). Belloc offers the line in a specimen review of imagined poet Mr Mayhem, where the reviewer describes it as a line ‘the Anglo-Saxon race will not readily let die’.
‘The Celts’ (p. 402): in some performances, Smith added ‘Lloyd George’ after ‘Old Age Pensions’; the only Welsh prime minister of Britain expanded state benefits in the 1920 National Health Insurance Act.
‘The Passing Cloud’ (p. 403): the Bethlehem Royal Hospital specialises in the treatment of mental illness; its former nickname gives us the word ‘bedlam’.
‘Loin de l’Être’ (p. 405): trans. ‘far from it’.
‘King Hamlet’s Ghost’ (p. 412): cf. Hamlet (1602), I.i, l.45. Smith revises penultimate line from ‘speak to me’ in her own copy: original retained in CP.
‘At School’ (p. 413): cf. Dante, Divina Commedia, I.v, ll.113–38. The poem takes life in her notebook as poem about the Cold War:
What good will it do if we
stop making the atom bomb
– it’s not we who are going to
drop it on us.
The English don’t want war, they’ve
nothing to gain. The Russians
want the world; we’ve
had it.
Because of the plan we’re in fear
Because of the stormy weather
In some performances Smith began l.33 with ‘Hold my hand tight’.
‘Can it Be?’ (p. 416): CP omits opening speech marks.
‘The Old Sweet Dove of Wiveton’ (p. 417): Wiveton, in Norfolk’s Glaven Valley, was one of Smith’s favourite holiday destinations.
‘My Heart Goes Out’ (p. 422): this version follows the revised punctuation Smith prepared for the essay ‘What Poems Are Made Of’ (Vogue, 15 March 1969).
‘Who is this Who Howls and Mutters?’ (p. 425): cf. Goya’s etching ‘What is this hubbub?’ (1810–14).
‘Magna est Veritas’ (p. 427): cf. Esdras 4.41, Latin Vulgate (‘Magna est veritas et prævalet’). Smith’s likely source was Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Bk. III, but see also Coventry Patmore’s ‘Magna est Veritas’ (1877) and Frank Richards, Billy Bunter’s Bolt (1956), ch. 3: ‘The truth is great and shall prevail a bit’.
‘In the Park’ (p. 429): for first two lines, see Scottish folk ballad ‘The Twa Corbies’. Typed draft used in performances substitutes ‘leaped’ for ‘barked’. The illustration appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘Thus grew up a friendship that endured to the end of their lives’.
‘The Occasional Yarrow’ (p. 435): cf. Wordsworth’s ‘Yarrow Unvisited’ (1807), ‘Yarrow Visited’ (1815)’, and ‘Yarrow Revisited’ (1834).
‘Die Lorelei’ (p. 441): cf. Heinrich Heine, ‘Lorelei’ (1822). The poem is a direct translation, but the final line is Smith’s own.
‘Farewell’ (p. 442): this was also included in Scorpion between ‘Angel Boley’ and ‘The Donkey’, although grouped in NWBD for CP.
SELECTED POEMS (1962)
Published by Longmans in September 1962. An American edition was published by James Laughlin in 1964 with the illustration for ‘Every Lovely Limb’s a Desolation’ on the cover; Smith’s hope was that US readers would take it for a self-portrait. The original edition included 113 poems in total: sixteen new poems alongside ninety-seven from her previous five collections.
‘Thoughts about the Person from Porlock’ (p. 445): cf. Coleridge’s preface to Kubla Khan (1816). Version published in X: Quarterly Review, Vol. 1, 1959, has additional verse after ‘need not stay’:
Oh this Person from Porlock is a great interrupter
He interrupts us forever
People say he is a dreadful fellow
But really he is desirable.
In performance, Smith read out the subtitle ‘Thoughts About the Person from Porlock (contd.)’ which follows the seventh stanza. Text follows revised version prepared for PMP, which substitutes ‘tomorrow’ for ‘this evening’.
‘Thoughts about the Christian Doctrine of Eternal Hell’ (p. 448): version included in talk ‘Some Impediments to Christian Commitment’ given to the St Anne’s Society, 9 Dec. 1968, includes additional material after the fourth stanza:
Kill, kill the damned! Let them die utterly!
Oh no, this would not be Godly.
For you see in this they say his love is seen especially
That he does not kill the damned, but keeps them alive to suffer perpetually,
Our own Bishop Gore, when he said: They may perhaps eventually lose consciousness,
Was not I am afraid being strictly orthodox.
Who makes a God? Who shows him thus?
It is the Christian religion does.
Oh, oh, have none of it,
Blow it away, have done with it.
This God the Christians show
Out with him, out with him, let him go.
Among Christians today it is usual
To say, The damned choose hell; this is equivocal
No creature chooses eternal pain, and was not meant
When Christ said: They went away into everlasting punishment.
Oh, oh, let it go,
It is abominable to believe so.
Poor Christian lov’st so much Christ’s loving words
You must pretend he did not say the other words.
What sin and pain hell’s doctrine hath brought
Europe is stained with the bitter draught
Oh why must Man so bitterly devise
Pain for himself? He is not wise,
But imaginative, and likes to be powerful,
And above all he likes his days to be full.
Yes, I think it was sweetness and cruelty and tedium
That made Men set up religion.
All religion, throw it away
It is our duty to throw it away.
‘Was He Married?’ (p. 451): in some performances, Smith added ‘Yes’ before ‘only human beings feel this’ and omitted the stanza beginning ‘… find a soft brightness’.
‘Was it not curious?’ (p. 454): the poem rests on Smith’s misattribution of Gregory the Great’s words to St Augustine, although her introduction to the poem in 1960s readings refused to confirm whether this was accidental: ‘There is a poem here, which I am not quite sure is allowable, but the soft missed rhymes seduce me so much I will read it to you […] I began it carelessly forgetting it was Gregory not Augustine who said Non Angli sed Angeli’ (UT). Cf. Pierre Batifoll’s Saint Gregory the Great (1922), trans. John L. Stoddard.
