“Come, Dark-eyed Sleep”: Michael Field and the Performance of the Lyric as a Radical Fantasy

Mayron Estefan Cantillo Lucuara

doi:10.14198/raei.2021.35.02

Abstract

This article seeks to illustrate how the Michael Fields articulate their Sapphic poetry in Long Ago (1889) not only in keeping with their own Shakespearean aspirations and with Robert Browning’s hybrid formula of dramatic lyrics, but also in connection with Jonathan Culler’s theory of the lyric as a performative genre. Much recent scholarship has broken ground in the rediscovery and reappraisal of the Fields’ literary stature, yet the general critical approach has been divisive in addressing their poetry and their verse dramas separately. Some critics have taken heed of how their lyrics in general exhibit an intrinsic dramatic temper, yet no systematic inquiry has discussed how this lyrical dramaticity is manifest in any particular instance. Thus, this article singles out Long Ago’s second poem for its powerful performative energy, offering a close reading of each line, and demonstrating that it amounts to a hybrid dramatic lyric, as well as a tragic and transgressive performance in which a new Sappho takes centre stage as a Dionysian apologist of radical erotic fantasies.

Highlights

Fin-de-siècle authors Katharine Bradley and her niece Edith Cooper, a prolific duet who wrote pseudonymously as Michael Field, have attracted considerable critical attention, since the 1990s
Premised on Culler’s notion of the lyric performance, this article shows how Michael Field’s second poem in Long Ago most effectively illustrates the dramaticity of their verse by shaping what could be viewed as a performance of erotic insomnia, anxiety and self-deception in which a reinvented Sappho becomes a persuasive dramatic persona through the use of apostrophes, imperative forms and other rhetorical devices of ritualistic iteration to seek divine assistance in her romantic tragedy or to make her disdainful beloved, a ferryman named Phaon, more attainable, and to engage the reader in the memorable repetition of her assertive desire
What we see in this oneiric metaphysics is a transgressive gender performance—one in which Sappho acts as a domineering dreamer and liar while her beloved is implicitly reduced to a malleable, ideal object

Summary

Introduction

Fin-de-siècle authors Katharine Bradley and her niece Edith Cooper, a prolific duet who wrote pseudonymously as Michael Field, have attracted considerable critical attention, since the 1990s. Premised on Culler’s notion of the lyric performance, this article shows how Michael Field’s second poem in Long Ago most effectively illustrates the dramaticity of their verse by shaping what could be viewed as a performance of erotic insomnia, anxiety and self-deception in which a reinvented Sappho becomes a persuasive dramatic persona through the use of apostrophes, imperative forms and other rhetorical devices of ritualistic iteration to seek divine assistance in her romantic tragedy or to make her disdainful beloved, a ferryman named Phaon, more attainable, and to engage the reader in the memorable repetition of her assertive desire This is lyric II in full: COME, dark-eyed Sleep, thou child of Night, Give me thy dreams, thy lies; Lead through the horny portal white The pleasure day denies. I care not if I slumber blest By fond delusion; nay, Put me on Phaon’s lips to rest, And cheat the cruel day! (ll. 1-12)

First Quatrain

Second Quatrain

Third Quatrain

Conclusions