The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

146 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

of appropriate English eroticism—as opposed to that of the Greeks—

Addison blatantly encourages the willful misreading of the poem.

Robinson’s solution to the problem of Sappho’s homoeroticism is far

more ingenious: she transforms the original ode (as she would have

known it) by projecting Sappho’s desire for Phaon onto the Sicilian

Maid she imagines Phaon seducing. In the octave, with bitter irony, the

poet- character praises the Sicilian maid for her conquest, only to point

out with mocking instruction that it is Phaon who really is in control

of the situation. She visualizes the maid’s sexual “transports” occa-

sioned by his attentions toward her, which she notes are centered upon

her breasts, “that iv’ry throne,” and, with a mildly surprising double

entendre, compares her erotic sighs and sexualized body to the f lower

that attracts the bee. The octave concludes thus with imagery not in

Sappho’s original poem, and nearly consummates a mixed metaphor

in the suggestion of the bee’s sting, harmless to the f lower itself but

potentially painful to the observer of this particular scene.

This sonnet performs a number of impressive feats. It does not

merely paraphrase Philips’ translation in sonnet form, which Robinson

would have found easy enough to do since the sixteen- line poem is

of a similar length. Robinson’s formal intentions, however, preclude

doing so: She captures the gist of the original ode for the octave,

but wants to turn the sonnet at the volta for the dialectical purpose

she understands to be essential to a legitimate sonnet. The sonnet

concludes,

Yet, short is youthful passion’s fervid hour;

Soon, shall another clasp the beauteous boy;

Soon, shall a rival prove, in that gay bow’r,

The pleasing torture of excessive joy!

The Bee f lies sicken’d from the sweetest f low’r;

The lightning’s shaft but dazzles to destroy! (9–14)

In the original poem, Sappho’s female speaker transposes her desire

for the woman through her praise of the man who is fortunate enough

to enjoy the pleasures the speaker envies. Robinson’s adaptation is a

dark triangulation that ultimately replaces desire with anger, jealousy,

and the destruction of both Sappho and the maid. The figure of the

bee turns out to be a red herring; its sting replaced with the far more

destructive yet similarly phallic “lightning’s shaft” that “dazzles to

destroy.” Obviously, Robinson has mastered Petrarchan f lourishes

such as the oxymoronic “pleasing torture,” but these resonances are

made all the more profound through the medium of Petrarch’s form,

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1469780230100251_05_ch03.indd 146 12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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