Edith Sitwell

It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.

Edith Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was an English poet and critic.

Quotes

Let us speak of our madness.

Poetry...is the deification of reality.

My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.

The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

• Let us speak of our madness. We are always being called mad. If we are mad — we and our brothers in America who are walking hand in hand with us in the vanguard of progress — at least we are mad in company with most of our great predecessors and all the most intelligent foreigners. Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth were all mad in turn. We shall be proud to join them in the Asylum to which they are now consigned.
  • Yea and Nay: A Series of Lectures and Counter-lectures Given at the London School of Economics in Aid of the Hospitals of London, edited by C. David Stelling (1923), § IV, Poetry and Modern Poetry

• Daisy and Lily,
  Lazy and silly,
  Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea,—
  Talking once more 'neath a swan-bosomed tree.
  • "Prelude to a Fairy Tale", Rustic Elegies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), p. 56

• Jane, Jane,
  Tall as a crane,
  The morning light creaks down again!
  • "Aubade". Collected Poems (London: Duckworth, 1931), p. 178

• I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her "a beautiful little knitter".
  • Describing Virginia Woolf in a letter to Geoffrey Singleton (11 July 1955); John Lehmann and Derek Palmer, eds., Selected Letters (1970)

• My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
  • "Some Notes on My Poetry". Collected Poems (1957)

• As for the usefulness of poetry, its uses are many. It is the deification of reality. It should make our days holy to us. The poet should speak to all men, for a moment, of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
  • Lecture "Young Poets" (1957), published in Mightier Than the Sword: The P.E.N. Hermon Ould Memorial Lectures, 1953–1961 (1964), p. 56
  • Variants:
    • Poetry is the deification of reality.
      • Quoted in Life magazine (4 January 1963)
    • The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
      • Quoted in Rosalie Maggio, ed., The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992), p. 247

• The poet is a brother speaking to a brother of "a moment of their other lives" — a moment that had been buried beneath the dust of the busy world.
  • "The Poet's Vision" (1959)

Façade

• Jumbo asleep!
  Grey leaves thick-furred
  As his ears, keep
  Conversation blurred.
  • 5. "Lullaby for Jumbo"

• Sir
  Beelzebub called for his syllabub in the hotel in Hell
  Where Proserpine first fell,
  Blue as the gendarmerie were the waves of the sea,
  Rocking and shocking the barmaid.
  • 27. "When Sir Beelzebub"

• The fire was furry as a bear.
  • 164. "Dark Song"

• White as a winding sheet,
  Masks blowing down the street:
  Moscow, Paris London, Vienna — all are undone.
  The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
  The world's floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.
  • "The Last Gallop" [1]

Clowns' Houses (1918)

Oxford: Blackwell

• The King of China's daughter
  So beautiful to see
  With her face like yellow water, left
  Her nutmeg tree.
  Her little rope for skipping
  She kissed and gave it me —
  Made of painted notes of singing-birds
  Among the fields of tea.
  I skipped across the nutmeg grove, —
  I skipped across the sea;
  But neither sun nor moon, my dear,
  Has yet caught me.
  • "Variations on an Old Nursery Rhyme"

The Wooden Pegasus (1920)

Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
Slowly enveloped me.

Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
The fire and splendour of the ancient world.

• Lovely Semiramis
  Closes her slanting eyes:
  Dead is she long ago.
  • "Eventail"

• The busy chatter of the heat
  Shrilled like a parakeet;
  And shuddering at the noonday light
  The dust lay dead and white
  As powder on a mummy's face,
  Or fawned with simian grace
  Round booths with many a hard bright toy
  And wooden brittle joy:
  The cap and bells of Time the Clown
  That, jangling, whistled down
  Young cherubs hidden in the guise
  Of every bird that flies;
  And star-bright masks for youth to wear,
  Lest any dream that fare
  — Bright pilgrim — past our ken, should see
  Hints of Reality.
  • "Fifteen Bucolic Poems", VII. "Clowns' Houses"

• Tall windows show Infinity;
  And, hard reality,
  The candles weep and pry and dance
  Like lives mocked at by Chance.
  The rooms are vast as Sleep within;
  When once I ventured in,
  Chill Silence, like a surging sea,
  Slowly enveloped me.
  • "Fifteen Bucolic Poems", VII. "Clowns' Houses"

• Within your magic web of hair, lies furled
  The fire and splendour of the ancient world;
  The dire gold of the comet's wind-blown hair;
  The songs that turned to gold the evening air
  When all the stars of heaven sang for joy.
  • "The Web of Eros"

The Sleeping Beauty (1924)

London: Duckworth & Co.

• In the great gardens, after bright spring rain,
  We find sweet innocence come once again,
  White periwinkles, little pensionnaires
  With muslin gowns and shy and candid airs,
  That under saint-blue skies with gold stars sown
  Hide their sweet innocence by spring winds blown,
  From zephyr libertines that like Richelieu
  And d'Orsay their gold-spangled kisses blew.
  • VIII

•    Amid the dew’s bright beams
  The summer airs, like Weber waltzes, fall
  Round the first rose who, flushed with her youth, seems
  Like a young Princess dressed for her first ball.
  • VIII

Street Songs (1942)

London: Macmillan & Co.

Still falls the Rain —
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss —
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.

• Still falls the Rain —
  Dark as the world of man, black as our loss —
  Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
  Upon the Cross.
  • "Still Falls the Rain", l. 1 (1940)
  • Full text online at Poetry archive — with audio of Sitwell reading the poem · A Poetry Channel reading of the poem · Canticle 3, '"Still Falls the Rain'" a classical musical composition by Benjamin Britten in which the poem is sung

• Still falls the Rain
  At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
  Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us.
  • "Still Falls the Rain", l. 9

• Still falls the Blood from the Starved Man's wounded Side:
  He bears in His Heart all wounds, — those of the light that died,
  The last faint spark
  In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending dark.
  • "Still Falls the Rain", l. 16

• See, see where Christ's blood streames in the firmament:
  It flows from the Brow we nailed upon the tree
  Deep to the dying, to the thirsting heart
  That holds the fires of the world, — dark-smirched with pain
  As Caesar's laurel crown.
  Then sounds the voice of One who like the heart of man
  Was once a child who among beasts has lain —
  "Still do I love, still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee."
  • "Still Falls the Rain", l. 27

Green Song & Other Poems (1944)

London: Macmillan & Co.

• The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
  Is greater than all gold, more powerful
  Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
  Like all that grows or leaps... so is the heart
  More powerful than all dust.
  • "Heart and Mind"

• The flames of the heart consumed me, and the mind
  Is but a foolish wind.
  • "Heart and Mind"

• Remember only this of our hopeless love
  That never till Time is done
  Will the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one.
  • "Heart and Mind"

The Canticle of the Rose (1949)

New York: The Vanguard Press

Mother or Murderer, you have
given or taken life —
Now all is one!

• Oh how the Vacancy
  Laughed at them rushing by.
  "Turn again, flesh and brain,
  Only yourselves again!
  How far above the Ape
  Differing in each shape,
  You with your regular
  Meaningless circles are!"
  • "Marine", I. "Switchback"

• Mother or Murderer, you have
  given or taken life —
  Now all is one!
  • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb", I. "Dirge for the New Sunrise"

• Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the
  Light —
  The marrow in the bone
  We dreamed was safe... the blood in the veins, the
  sap in the tree
  Were springs of Deity.
  • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb", I. "Dirge for the New Sunrise"

• The living blind and seeing Dead together lie
  As if in love... There was no more hating then,
  And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.
  • "Three Poems of the Atomic Bomb", I. "Dirge for the New Sunrise"

• Lily O’Grady,
  Silly and shady,
  Longing to be
  A lazy lady.
  • "Popular Song"

Taken Care Of (1965)

Hutchinson of London

Eccentricity...is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

• The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
  • Preface

• Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
  • Ch. 15

• Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.
  • Ch. 19

• I'm not the man to baulk at a low smell,
  I’m not the man to insist on asphodel.
  This sounds like a He-fellow, don’t you think?
  It sounds like that. I belch, I bawl, I drink.
  • "One–Way Song", p. 118

• There are people, also, who cannot believe that beauty and gaiety are a part of goodness.
  When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.
  • p. 221

The Last Years of a Rebel (1967)

The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (1967) by Elizabeth Salter

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

• I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
  • p. 24

• People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.
  • p. 24

• I wouldn't dream of following a fashion... how could one be a different person every three months?
  • p. 24

• I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
  • Last words to her personal secretary (Elizabeth Salter) as she was being carried into an ambulance

• The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves.

• I am resigned to the fact that people who don't know me loathe me. Perhaps it is because I am a woman writing poetry. It must be annoying to a man who wants to write to see this horrid old lady who can.

• Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.

Attributed

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.

I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.

If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?

• I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.
  • In The Observer (30 April 1950). Reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd ed. (1979)

• I have taken this step because I want the discipline, the fire and the authority of the Church. I am hopelessly unworthy of it, but I hope to become worthy.
  • On converting to Roman Catholicism at the age of 67, in news reports (15 Aug 1955); reported in James B. Simpson, ed., Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988), p. 321

• I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.
  • In Life magazine (4 January 1963). Attributed variant: "I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish."^{[citation needed]}

• It is a part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees.
  • In The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, Special Supplement (1966), p. 2047

• The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.
  • In Elizabeth Salter, ed., Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind: An Anthology (1976), p. 176

• My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
  • In Reader's Digest, vol. 111, no. 666 (October 1977)

• A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits.
  • In Jon Winokur, Writers on Writing (1986), p. 24

• Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?
  • In Victoria Glendinning, Edith Sitwell, a Unicorn Among Lions (1981), p. 54, and in Abby Adams, An Uncommon Scold (1989), p. 74

• I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.
  • In Abby Adams, An Uncommon Scold (1989), p. 176

• I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.
  • In Abby Adams, An Uncommon Scold (1989), p. 226

• Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.
  • In Evan Esa, 20,000 Quips & Quotes (1995)

Misattributed

• Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
  I let the stars assume the whole of night.
  But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
  Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.
  • This is from the poem "Answers" by Elizabeth Jennings, which has wrongly been attributed to Sitwell at a few sites on the internet.

Quotes about Sitwell

Each of them is inhabited by a bland demon...valid enough to give them the right to speak with the authority of artists. —Rebecca West

• I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. … I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. … I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
  • The character "Sam" in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

• Her tall figure, swathed in black, looking like some strange eccentric bird... she seemed like an ageing princess come home from exile.
  • Alec Guinness on her appearance at her official reception into the Roman Catholic Church in August 1955.

• Each of them is inhabited by a bland demon, as the German metaphysicians used to call that which gets into a man and makes him creative, not so forcibly that it turns them away from criticism, but valid enough to give them the right to speak with the authority of artists.
  • Rebecca West, of Edith and her two brothers, in The Strange Necessity (1928) Ch. 5

External links

• "Edith Sitwell: A Nearly Forgotten Poetess"
• Brief biography at Poetry Connection
• Brief biography at CatholicAuthors
• The Sitwell Family
• "Heart and Mind"
• Song Texts online