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THE SONGWRITER AS POET:
IAN MCCULLOCH AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRADITION
Kristin F. Smith
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PART TWO: MCCULLOCH AND ROSSETTI
Chapter 3: The Thematic Backdrop
Both Rossetti and McCulloch work out particular ideas against a broader thematic canvas. Rossetti deliberately imposed this unifying structure upon his major work, The House of Life [1870/1881], forging a large collection of sonnets written over many years into a coherent narrative. For McCulloch, structure seems innate, and defines the parameters of a moral and spiritual worldview. Both Rossetti and McCulloch write much of man's problems in a mutable, indifferent, even hostile world. Both seek, if we may phrase it in the grandiose Victorian manner, to define man's place in the universe. For Rossetti, self-described "bondman" of "Lady Beauty" [DGR; Soul's Beauty; 1866] and songster of the god Love, this meant primarily the place of man as artist. For McCulloch, also a troubadour of the human heart, it means the place of man as man. Both McCulloch and Rossetti chronicle the journey of one human soul, not all humanity. And for both, the key to surviving this journey is human love.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti found his painter's eye in depictions of idealized Woman, and his poet's voice in themes of love and loss, moral and spiritual uncertainty, salvation through romantic love, and the fragility of the creative spark. "I should wish," he wrote, "to deal in poetry chiefly with personified emotions; and in carrying out my scheme of the House of Life [his collection of sonnets]... shall try to put in action a complete 'dramatis personae' of the soul" [Doughty/Wahl; LETTERS II; 850]. Rossetti's House of Life is indeed a Victorian maze of his own soul, the poems arranged by him not according to their dates of composition, but as a way of telling us his story.
Just what that story is has been hotly debated for over a century. We may read it as almost entirely about Rossetti's Poet, the Poet's Beloved, and the Unnamed Lady he also loves. Or, much of it may tell of the Poet and his two great loves, painting and poetry - which apparently gave him as much trouble as the women. The poems interconnect with one another in various ways, and reading them in different contexts may alter the meanings. Taken as a whole, the House of Life sonnets constitute a moving statement of Rossetti's major theme: the soul's difficult pilgrimage.
In telling his tales, Rossetti much preferred concreteness to abstraction, real people to allegory (and the god Love was as real to him as a turnip.) He usually deals with abstract moral issues - for example, the terrible price of hatred and revenge in the ballad Sister Helen [1852] - by writing about individuals who find themselves caught in webs of their own devising.
He was a master of elaborate poetic conceits, and frequently personified even such abstract concepts as "the little outcast hour" in which a love comes to naught:
"Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
His hours elect in choral consonancy." [DGR; Stillborn Love; 1870]
Lest we be overcome by pity for this poor little thing, we should note that at the end of the poem the parents show up.
Rossetti cared mainly for Love and Art. Almost every piece of work he did comes back to one or both of these. In Love, he found both great joy and overwhelming sorrow, and he wrote unsparingly of both. In Art, he sought after ideals he knew he could never reach, and many of his poems speak painfully of goals not met. He was always aware of time and transience.
He once described himself as "[Love's] singer" [DGR; Love's Last Gift; 1871], and he wore the mantle well. Rossetti's poetic universe hinges upon romantic love. It was a religion to him. His depictions of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell, and everything in between generally center around how this will affect the lovers. (Rossetti's work teems with lovers.) In The Blessed Damozel [1847-1870], his best-known ballad poem, a couple is separated by forces beyond their control. She is in Heaven, he is still on earth. They yearn for reunion. Rossetti relates their plight as simply one of love; of two hearts in pain because they are not together. The larger moral and spiritual issues, even the vividly-described metaphysical realm itself, constrict into the man's plaintive question:
"But shall God lift
To endless unity
The soul whose likeness with thy soul
Was but its love for thee?" [DGR; The Blessed Damozel; 1847-1870]
Ian McCulloch explores much the same thematic territory as Rossetti, though with less artifice and a much looser design. Like Rossetti, he builds his tales around the manifold ways of love, the anguish of loss, the need for redemption, and the pain and uncertainty which dwell within the human soul. McCulloch's 'dramatis personae' consist of characters both human and metaphysical, and some are allegorical. But his abstract concepts remain abstract (no little orphaned hours). Instead, he gives us concise word portraits of all-too-human characters:
"Knows what she feels but he's never felt her
Wanted a home but he needed a shelter
Never gonna win with the hand he dealt her" [IM; An Eternity Turns; FLOWERS; 2001]
McCulloch is a moral writer, though not a moralistic one. Like Rossetti, he remains nonjudgmental. He is not given to lecturing. He offers advice only sporadically, some version of 'Don't look down', 'Stay true' and 'Everything is going to be all right' being his standard counsels. Like Rossetti, he often seems uncertain. But inherent in his work are concepts of right and wrong, Good and Evil:
"All the simple stuff never understood
Like right from bad and wrong from good" [IM; Never Stop; single; 1983]
His central question is, how does one live with grace and dignity when, though there are "angels in the thunderclouds" [IM; Supermellow Man; FLOWERS; 2001] there is also a "[devil on your] shoulder" [IM; Angels and Devils; single; 1984]? How do you maintain your soul?
In McCulloch's lyrical universe, the angel and the devil coexist - and conflict -- within each human being. Many of his characters are themselves 'lost', at least temporarily. They must pick their way through minefields, and sometimes they make wrong choices. But even if they choose (and some choose deliberately) to do wrong, they usually know what right is:
"Ancient rules wrong from right
Wish I'd found you when you could save me" [IM; Supermellow Man; FLOWERS; 2001]
McCulloch is at his core a love poet. Like Rossetti, he finds salvation in romantic love, and nearly everything he has written touches upon this. In a song from 1989, McCulloch's Poet tells us simply:
"Love provided with all provisions
That was all I ever wanted" [IM; Toad; single; 1989]
McCulloch's defining work must be his transcendent love song, Ocean Rain, a chronicle of the soul's perilous voyage through all the storms and rough seas life holds in store:
"All at sea again
And now my hurricanes
Have brought down this ocean rain…." [IM; Ocean Rain; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]
Confused, bewildered ("at sea"), drenched in troubles perhaps self-generated ("my hurricanes") and, he tells us, "Sailing to sadder shores", this individual is in dire need of a protective dry-dock. He finds one true refuge, the understanding soul of the Beloved:
"Your port in my heavy storms
Harbours the blackest thoughts" [IM; Ocean Rain; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]
Previous Table of Contents Next
An Annotated Discography: Works by Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, Electrafixion and Glide (off-site link)
Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion: Album Reviews (off-site link)
The Bunnymen Concert Log: A comprehensive, annotated listing of concert dates, venues and set lists for Echo and the Bunnymen, Ian McCulloch and Electrafixion (off-site link)
Bunnymen.info - The (Unofficial) News Source (off-site link, run by Charles Pham)
Aldems' Political Quotations: Apt and Otherwise
BlindFool and Scruffy Dog: Dilettantes-at-Large
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