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Thomas Wyatt:
'The torment of love unsatisfied'
 When Cardinal Wolsey, the eminence grise of Henry VIII's reign, fell
from grace and became isolated at court, the recent television series,
'The Tudors:, had him apply these words to himself: "They flee from me
that sometime did me seek With naked foot, stalking in my chamber."
These are actually, however, the opening words of a poem by Thomas
Wyatt (1502-1542), a poet and statesman of the time, who was rumoured to
have been the lover of Anne Boleyn before Henry took her for his second
wife. If this were true, (as may well have been the case considering
that Wyatt was later imprisoned twice on suspicion of adultery with
Anne), these lines could have reflected his feelings about having had to
give her up in the first instance.
The fact is, though, that Wyatt had more than one love interest and
the poem could well reflect some other such experience. At any rate, it
is his most famous poem and stands as an apt introduction to one who
serves as a link between two great periods of English poetry, the
mediaeval and the Elizabethan. Here is the rest of the first verse and
the final third verse: "I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek, That
now are wild and do not remember That sometime they put themselves in
danger To take bread at my hand; and now they range, Busily seeking with
a continual change.
"It was no dream: I lay broad waking, But all is turned thorough my
gentleness Into a strange fashion of forsaking; And I have leave to go
of her goodness, And she also, to use newfangleness. But since that I so
kindly am served I would fain know what she hath deserved."
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Thomas
Wyatt |
The poem is in 'rime royal', a stanza form introduced into English
poetry by Chaucer, onsisting of seven lines in iambic pentametre rhyming
ababbcc. In sensibility, though, the poem has little affinity with
Chaucer. It looks ahead, rather, to the intensely personal type of
experience dealt with in Shakespeare's sonnets. Wyatt actually
introduced the sonnet to England, having become acquainted with the form
on his travels abroad as a diplomat, and he translated many of the
sonnets pf the Italian master , Petrarch, into English. However, his own
sonnets along with his other love poetry, such as the above example, are
a far cry from the courtly love sentiment of the conventional sonnet.
The mistress is not idealized as one who is beyond reproach and to
whom unquestioning devotion is due. While Wyatt acknowledges the
desirability of the beloved, he is free with criticism of her unkindness
and inconstancy whenever encountered. His diction, rhythm and tone are
not flowery, smooth and adoring but realistic, varied and disenchantedly
ironic.
The opening lines quoted at the beginning are a good example.
Consider the blunt realism of the words "naked" and "stalking" and the
way the rhythm of this second line is broken midway to continue in a
more conversational lilt.
Also the feeling of bitterness that the lines convey.
It is this personal, realistic and conversational quality of Wyat's
poetry that is appealing and sometimes arresting. Here is another
example in a different form:
"What meaneth this! When I lie alone I toss, I turn, I sigh, I groan;
My bed me seems as hard as stone: What means this? "I sigh, I plain
continually; The clothes that on my bed do lie, Always me think they lie
awry; What means this?
"In slumbers oft for fear I quake: For heat and cold I burn and
shake; For lack of sleep my head doth ake; What means this?"
Note how effectively the form supports the feeling. The identical
rhymes of the first three lines of each verse, with the monotony of
their rhythm, convey a sense of frustration and suffocation.
Sharply contrasted with this is the identical refrain at the end of
each verse with its agitated question indicating the poet's inability to
understand, let alone accept the situation. There is nothing typical or
amusing about this type of love-sickness. It is sickeningly real, and
the reader is made to feel it.
On the strength of his exposure to the literary culture of the
Continent, Wyatt considered it his mission to experiment with the
English language and raise its powers of expression to be on par with
those of the mainland tongues. Hence his introduction of various verse
forms, apart from the sonnet, into English, such as the terza rima,
ottava rima, monorhymes and triplets with refrains as seen above, satire
etc.. This does not mean, however, that he turned his back on the
English tradition. We have seen how he resorted to Chaucer's rime royal
in his best known poem.
And even in his employment of the new forms, the continuing influence
of the older forms of his own country is apparent. This accounts, in
fact, for his flair for varying his rhythms to enhance the
conversational and personal quality of his verse, vide the following
lines written, evidently, from prison: "Sighs are my food, drink are my
tears; Clinking of fetters such music would crave. Stink and close air
away my life wears, Innocency is all the hope I have. Rain, wind, or
weather I judge by mine ears, Malice assaulteth that righteousness
should save, Sure I am, Brian, this wound shall heal again But yet,
alas, the scar shall remain."
The scanning of these lines is not obvious. The lilt of the first two
and a half lines is clear enough, but then the rhythms seem to go awry.
Many have, indeed, attributed this apparent waywardness to a lack of
technical skill on Wyatt's part, but this is merely to adopt the
standard of the repetitively regular metres that eventually dominated
English poetry.
It is necessary to discern the additional influence of the Middle
English tradition, which is represented not only by Chaucer but by the
alliterative style derived from Old English which we saw at work last
week in 'Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight.' If we incorporate the
caesura, or midway pause, in each line, the rhythms make more sense and
we realise that the verse is made up of separate rhythmical and
syntactical units. Eg., "Stink and close air away my life wears,
Innocency is all the hope I have;.......Sure I am, Brian, this wound
shall heal again But yet, alas, the scar shall remain." Read thus, the
verse slows down and becomes more conversational and intimate, and the
experience more immediate.
This example also helps us to see the process whereby the style of
'Gawayne' proved to be the precursor of Shakespeare's style, Wyatt's
experimentation providing that synthesis between old and new metres that
the former could turn to his advantage.
This strategic position that Wyatt occupies in the English poetic
tradition is mainly why he has been included in this series. But we
would be wanting in perception if we did not acknowledge the
experiential value of his poetry.
Wyatt, after all, is very much the precursor of Donne, whose poetry
abounds even more forcefully with what Eliot calls the "torment of love
unsatisfied." If Donne's experience was that of the failure to combine
both spiritual and physical fulfillment in his love relationships,
Wyatt's was of the failure to find permanent fulfillment of any kind in
his own.
This is a telling commentary on the courtly society of which he was a
part, in which love was interchangeable with lust and promiscuity was
the order of the day. It was a society in which we could say, as it is
often said of business and politics, there were no permanent
relationships, only permanent interests.
Wyatt's tragedy is that he was a victim of these circumstances. His
failure was that, unlike Donne, he had no perception of what was needed
to rise above them. His contribution to posterity is that he enables us
to realize how like his society was to the high society of today, to
which the entertainment and the advertising industries keep encouraging
us all to aspire. |
