The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

The English Sappho 137

uses Pope’s translation as her epigraph for the entire sequence, “Love

taught my tears in sadder notes to f low, / And tun’d my heart to ele-

gies of woe” (7–8). But this is ironic because the Ovidian source makes

a clear distinction between elegiac measure and lyric form. Sappho

writes, “Ask not the cause that I new numbers chuse” because Phaon

knows full well the effect his rejection has had on her. Sappho’s choice

becomes a rhetorical appeal that demonstrates her debility, the degen-

eration of her lyric voice, previously articulated through lyric forms—

one of which, the Sapphic quatrain, bears her name.

Importantly, Robinson restores the lyric form by adapting the

Ovidian epistle to the Petrarchan sonnet. But the narrative frame

mediates the lyric voice of the poet- character by figuratively present-

ing each sonnet as the production of the poet- narrator, even when the

voice is supposedly Sappho’s. McGann makes an important point that

the alteration in the title from “Sappho to Phaon” to Sappho and Phaon

puts Sappho “in a larger context of understanding”—in symmetrical

balance with her lover, Phaon (108). However, I contend that Phaon

remains in Robinson’s adaptation as much a cipher as he is in Pope’s

translation—perhaps even more so. The Petrarchan tradition requires a

subjective- obje c t i ve bi n a r y t h at R obi n s on c le a rl y m a i nt a i n s. I n t h i s way,

Robinson also asserts her performative authority as the poet- maker and

Petrarchan ventriloquist of Sapphic passion. Before Sappho, the poet-

character, speaks in the poem in Sonnet IV, the poet- narrator provides

the introductory sonnet plus a curious pair of poems, Sonnets II and

III, that offer competing allegories of poetics. The first one describes

the Temple of Chastity, an immaculate classical structure dedicated to

the repudiation of sexual passion; here, “Pale vestals kneel the Goddess

to adore, / While Love, his arrows broke, retires forlorn” (1: 329;

13–4). These vestals have transcended earthly passion, difficult as that

progress has been. The “steps of spotless marble” that lead to the altar

are covered with “deathless roses, arm’d with many a thorn” and the

“frozen f loor” is “Studded with tear- drops petrified by scorn” (9–12).

The vestals—not necessarily virgins—have chosen this path and thus

have defeated Cupid who “retires forlorn.” In Sonnet III, in contrast

to the Temple of Chastity, Robinson, alluding perhaps to Spenser, pres-

ents the Bower of Pleasure, where “sportive Fawns,” or fauns, sug-

gesting, of course, satyrs, and “dimpled Loves,” or Cupids, indulge

in sensual pleasures. Here “witching beauty greets the ravish’d sight”

and is “More gentle than the arbitress of night,” or the moon, a sym-

bol of chastity. This sonnet concludes with a comparison between the

two locations: “HERE, laughing Cupids bathe the bosom’s wound; /

THERE, tyrant passion finds a glorious tomb!” (1: 330; 13–4). The

9780230100251_05_ch03.indd 1379780230100251_05_ch03.indd 137 12/28/2010 11:08:42 AM12/28/2010 11:08:42 AM

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

Cop

yright material fr

om www

.palgra

veconnect.com - licensed to Univer

sitetsbib

lioteket i

Tr

omso - P

algra

veConnect - 2011-04-13