The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

148 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

a recrimination against Phaon’s heartlessness coupled with the self-

pitying hope that, in his grief, he will at last be sorry (1: 342–3). At

the end of the sequence, instead of choosing the Temple of Chastity

over the Bower of Pleasure, Sappho speciously reproaches Phaon for

directing her to the Leucadian rock, where she will either perish or

emerge from the waters below, cured of the destructive passion he

has provoked. In case of the former, she hopes he will remember with

regret her “fatal fondness” and her “peerless fame” (XLII; 344; 4).

If she survives, she promises to rededicate her poetry to Phoebus,

or Apollo, instead of to Venus. But again, this is fallacious reason-

ing, contingent as it is upon Phaon’s rejection of her and a magical

restoration of her poetic faculties. The Ovidian Sappho demonstrates

a similar line of thought that Robinson’s sequence ultimately cannot

endorse. In the penultimate sonnet, Sonnet XLIII, Robinson shows

Sappho atop the “dizzy precipice” where the poet- character reflects

upon the possibility that she may be able to emerge from the waters

below a better poet, if she survives,

So shall this glowing, palpitating soul,

Welcome returning Reason’s placid beam,

While o’er my breast the waves Lethean roll,

To calm rebellious Fancy’s fev’rish dream;

Then shall my Lyre disdain love’s dread control,

And loftier passions, prompt the loftier theme! (344; 9–14)

Thus the poet- narrator’s voice resurfaces, for the sonnet sequence is

finally Robinson’s denunciation of “love’s dread control” and reap-

pointment of her own lyre to “loftier” themes than unrequited love,

because she realizes the stereotypical constraints love poetry enforces

upon the woman poet and the inevitable circumscription of her fame.

For Robinson, the story of Sappho’s end finally is a myth of poetic

dissolution. Given Robinson’s penchant for writing monodies and

elegiac laments, the conclusive sonnet of Sappho and Phaon surpris-

ingly is no requiem for the actual, historical Sappho, who may or may

not have perished in the waters off Cape Lef kada. The sonnet is more

interested in itself as a comment upon Robinson’s entire project: the

personified muse sheds a tear of sympathy but “Bids the light Sylph

capricious Fancy f ly” (1: 344; 3). That is to say, the narrative of the

poem, despite the tragedy of Sappho’s death, is nothing more than the

product of “capricious Fancy”; the true import of the poem resides

in the poet’s ability to transform her source material into a more pro-

found rumination, as “Ref lection pours the deep and frequent sigh, /

O’er the dark scroll of human destiny” (6 –7). That destiny, Robinson

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1489780230100251_05_ch03.indd 148 12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM12/28/2010 11:08:43 AM

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