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THE SONGWRITER AS POET:
IAN MCCULLOCH AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRADITION
Kristin F. Smith
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Chapter 4: The Idealized Woman
In Too Young to Kneel, a song from 1997, Ian McCulloch poses the question:
"Who's gonna hold you when you're too scared to feel?
Who's gonna cure you when the pain won't heal?
Who's gonna be there when your world goes wrong?
Who's gonna tell you you're the only one?" [IM; Too Young to Kneel; EVERGREEN; 1997]
His answer is simple and unequivocal: Woman, primarily in the person of the Beloved (though these lines have a good deal of the Mother figure in them as well). Dante Gabriel Rossetti agrees wholeheartedly:
"Not in thy body is thy life at all
But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall." [DGR; Life-in-Love; 1870]
In other words: 'you would be worse than nothing without her'. For both Rossetti and McCulloch, the Beloved stands as a figure of selfless benevolence, generosity of heart and encompassing power. She can not only "cure" the unhealable, but "yield" life when the spirit lies moribund. She is the compassionate intercessor between man and all the ills that beset him. In sum, she is Idealized Woman.
Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites did not originate the concept of the Idealized Woman. In western tradition, she comes to us from as far back as Mary, Mother of Jesus. The corollary notions of salvation through romantic love, and one's Beloved as savior have filled many a poet's pages from Medieval times onward. The Pre-Raphaelites embraced these themes as articles of faith. So does Ian McCulloch.
'Woman, come save me' might serve as his Poet's motto, for some variation of this plea turns up on nearly every album McCulloch has made, from CROCODILES [1980] to FLOWERS [2001]. Two exceptions, the drunken HEAVEN UP HERE and the starkly painful BURNED, hint at love as an anodyne. An early song, Rescue, offers a straightforward statement of the theme:
"If I said I'd lost my way
Would you sympathize?
Could you sympathize?
---------------------------------
Won't you come on down to my
Rescue" [IM; Rescue; CROCODILES; 1980]
Three years later, In Bluer Skies [1983] expands on this idea, endowing the Beloved with a power both sexual and spiritual and linking romantic/physical love to spiritual growth:
"Will we evolve tonight
Sparkle of brittle stars?
Can we dissolve tonight
Held by your hungry arms?
I'm counting on your heavy heart
Could it keep me from falling apart?" [IM; In Bluer Skies; PORCUPINE; 1983]
"Heavy" in these lines takes on shades of meaning to be found near the bottom of its dictionary definition: perhaps some combination of 'profound' and 'of great capacity'. In Bluer Skies prefigures Ocean Rain [1984], McCulloch's fullest realization of the theme. Rossetti paints this concept in La Donna della Finestra [1879]. Taken from the scene in La Vita Nuova in which a bereft Dante wanders the desolate streets of Florence, the painting depicts the lines:
"I lifted mine eyes to look; and then perceived a young and very beautiful lady, who was gazing upon me from a window with a gaze full of pity, so that the very sum of pity appeared gathered together in her." [Dante Alighieri; La Vita Nuova; 1295; DGR's translation; 1861]
Rossetti, in a note to his translation of these lines, identifies this 'beautiful lady at the window' as Gemma Donati, the woman Dante married. This is probably more wishful thinking than historical fact.
For both Rossetti and McCulloch, the curative powers of Woman extend beyond body, mind and heart to the soul itself, even to the gates of Heaven. Rossetti speaks of the Beloved as a potential intercessor there, her grace acting upon her lover's soul:
"And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!" [DGR; Love's Testament; 1869]
'When you go to Heaven,' he is saying, 'maybe you can pull me in too.'
Minus the elaborate Victorian syntax, McCulloch expresses the same idea in Heaven's Gate:
"Weak and weaker will
You deliver me?
And turn me into someone
That I want to be?" [IM; Heaven's Gate; MYSTERIO; 1992]
Like Rossetti, McCulloch makes frequent use of wordplays. There is a nice one here on "will", which works as a phrase with either "weak and weaker" or "you deliver me". In honor of this, we shall give the final word on Woman as savior to McCulloch's Poet in I'll Fly Tonight:
"I'm gonna mess you up
I'm gonna let you down
I'm gonna cut you to the bone
You're gonna lose your nerve
You're gonna learn to hate
You'll have a love you've never known
-------------------------------------
I'll fly tonight
Into your light" [IM; I'll Fly Tonight; EVERGREEN; 1997]
The gist of these alarming sentiments is, 'I am going to be a lot of trouble'. McCulloch makes this plain a few lines down, also softening the harshness of the lyric:
"If I should steer us far and long
Will you be near when I go wrong?" [IM; I'll Fly Tonight; EVERGREEN; 1997]
Clearly, the way to traverse this world of moral and mortal peril is with your Beloved at your side, ready to pick you up and dust you off.
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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