130 The Poetry of Mary Robinsonestablished, affords the reclamation of the lovers’ physical intimacy
through the love letter; so, even as Robinson’s Petrarch and Pope’s
Eloisa struggle to renounce passion, they indulge in form as erotic
fantasy. Petrarch recalls his first sight of Laura, as Robinson enjoys
the erotic ambiguity of Petrarchan paradox: “Oft as the cross her
snowy fingers press’d, / Her auburn tresses veil’d her spotless breast”
(1: 152; 69–70). Perhaps recalling the cross with which Pope’s
Belinda adorns her breasts, Robinson shows her Petrarch fascinated
by the recollection of the image and all that it suggests, and the actual
knowledge it may recall to himself and his lover. Observing her reli-
gious devotion—her “conscious rapture”—initially ignites his desire
to know her in a different way. Through the allusion to Ovid and
Pope, Robinson is able to wink at her reader without explicitly deny-
ing or confirming the chastity of Petrarch’s relationship with Laura:
to tease is more the point.
Robinson’s portrayal of Petrarch is also irreverent. As he variously
pleads with Laura for physical consummation or angelic instruction,
Robinson’s Petrarch echoes Pope’s Eloisa and her “rebel passion”
throughout—a phrase that appears in both poems (Robinson 109,
Pope 26). And this Petrarch is excited not by Laura’s virginity but by
her “matron’s purity”—another Petrarchan oxymoron, perhaps—that
makes her a “brighter IDOL” than even “the sacred Virgin’s form,”
thus emphasizing again his desire for Laura’s sexualized body over
the veneration of the forms of Catholicism. These references perform
an allusion to Eloisa’s matronliness—that is, her sexual experience—
and her unwillingness to forget it. Robinson’s epigraph for “Petrarch
to Laura” comes directly from the passage in Pope’s poem (lines
197–200) where Eloisa refuses to renounce her carnal knowledge of
her lover:Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain, do all things, but forget.Robinson coyly selects four lines from Eloisa to Abelard that appear
between the most sexually suggestive parts of Pope’s poem. Just prior
to this passage, Eloisa confesses her longing for the physical intimacy
she shared with Abelard: “I view my crime, but kindle at the view, /
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new” (185–6). Refusing to deny her
sexual self, she asks, “How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense?”
(191). And, then, after the lines that constitute Robinson’s epigraph,9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1309780230100251_05_ch03.indd 130 12/28/2010 11:08:41 AM12/28/2010 11:08:41 AM
10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel RobinsonCopyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket iTr
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