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THE SONGWRITER AS POET:
IAN MCCULLOCH AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE TRADITION
Kristin F. Smith
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Chapter 6: Salvation Through Romantic Love
Rossetti and McCulloch, like most poets who believe in Woman as savior, put their faith as well in what Rossetti refers to as Love's "sovereign counter-charms" [DGR; Heart's Haven; 1871]. They view romantic love as a means of maintaining one's soul, one's integrity; of survival in what McCulloch calls "a world of wire" [IM; Nocturnal Me; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]. Both Rossetti and McCulloch write of love as a shield and a shelter against the stupidities and perils of the larger world. Their lyrical lovers make a separate peace, and establish their own small world. McCulloch's Poet describes his earthly paradise as:
"A world that's true
Through our clean eyes" [IM; Silver; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]
The Beloved is the sine qua non of this happy state. "You're living proof/At my fingertips", the Poet tells her [IM; Silver; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]. The love world offers its inhabitants opportunity for redemption ("Through our clean eyes"), a place in which to work out their spirits' growth and their own destinies. McCulloch expands on this in another song from OCEAN RAIN, the joyously optimistic Crystal Days. The Poet says that he and the Beloved have come to this place:
"Tattered and torn and born to be
Building a world where we can
Purify our misfit ways
And magnify our crystal days" [IM; Crystal Days; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]
These last lines sound more like the Pre-Raphaelitism of Holman Hunt than of Rossetti, who seemed to expect the Beloved to carry out all the purification work, but the difference is one of emphasis. We have the lovers together in a setting made idyllic by their love - a very Rossettian concept.
Rossetti's love world is sequestered, inward-looking. It seems fragile and ephemeral:
"When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone),
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?" [DGR; Lovesight; 1869]
This is like a scene from his watercolors of the 1850s -- medieval lovers tucked away in cozy little castle rooms, a hint of angels in the background, and the rich detail of an occasional dragon's head left forgotten in a box behind a chair. Painter James Smetham described one of these pictures as "one of the grandest things, like a golden dim dream." [UT]. This poem is the same, and seems apt to shatter if we touch it.
Rossetti's poems written during the years of his involvement with Jane Morris [Note 2] often express defensiveness, as though the inhabitants of the love world feel besieged:
"Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,--
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And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,--
Against all ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms." [DGR; Heart's Haven 1871]
The love world includes physical as well as spiritual union, each being an integral part of the other, as both men make clear, Rossetti perhaps more graphically:
"I was a child beneath her touch, a man
When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,
A spirit when her spirit looked through me,
A god when all our life-breath met to fan
Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
Fire within fire, desire in deity." [DGR; The Kiss; 1869]
McCulloch is generally more circumspect than this, going for lushly erotic romanticism (Burn For Me; FLOWERS; 2001), with an occasional foray into the raunchy (Feel My Pulse; BURNED; 1995). He has written one song which is overtly about sex. Nocturnal Me features some clever word usage ("what's won is one"), and stands as the explicitly physical counterpart to Silver and Crystal Days:
"An icecap fire, old burning wood
In a world of wire
Ignites our dreams of starry skies
It's you and me
Us realized; our bigger themes....
Take me internally
Forever yours
Nocturnal me" [IM; Nocturnal Me; OCEAN RAIN; 1984]
This manages to be both explicit in meaning and symbolic in language - a nice trick.
In Ship of Fools [1987], McCulloch employs some fairly blunt imagery in a joyous commemoration of love, physical love in particular:
"In the bedroom you will find her
All your life returned
She sucked you in and lit the fire
Struck you up and watched you burn....
Hark the herald angels singing
All the holy bells are ringing" [IM; Ship of Fools; single; 1987]
Again, McCulloch presents us with an image of the Beloved as a powerful, healing figure. She stands as a bestower of spiritual life itself ("All your life returned"). And even the angels in Heaven above celebrate the lovers' union. Rossetti would have painted them in, trumpets, bells and all.
We may sail on a "ship of fools" [Note 3],the song concludes the song concludes, but with love we can set our own course along the rivers and through the seas of life and find our own stars to steer by, as we head for "home" - in all its connotations:
"Head in the stars you're heading for home
In search of dreams that you can call your own" [IM; Ship of Fools; single; 1987]
Rossetti expresses the same concept in Paolo and Francesca da Rimini [1855], one of those jewel-like watercolors in which the lovers, rapt in each other, never notice what the outside world is doing. For Paolo and Francesca, it is just as well. They are the illicit lovers encountered by Dante and Virgil in the second circle of the Inferno. Rossetti depicts the doomed pair swirling through a Dantean Hell, arms clasped around each other and looking not overly disheartened by the situation. Perhaps Rossetti is telling us that wherever you are is all right, so long as you like the company.
Note 2: It is difficult to date many of Rossetti's earlier poems. Some existed only in the notebook he buried with Lizzie Siddal Rossetti in 1862. When he recovered the manuscript in 1869, he revised it extensively, giving all the poems the skill and polish of his mature style. Lovesight has the delicate, dream quality suggestive of Lizzie Siddal, and the second part of the sonnet forebodes the loss of the Beloved:
"O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring…." [DGR; Lovesight; 1869] Back to text
Note 3: The Ship of Fools [1500] is the title of a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. It has been interpreted variously, most often as a commentary on humanity or, more specifically, on the corrupt Church of Bosch's time. That McCulloch has the former interpretation in mind is suggested by another song from the same period as Ship of Fools. In Lover I Love [1986], the Poet remarks to the Beloved: "You and I bought a ticket on a floating zoo" [IM; Lover I Love; CRYSTAL DAYS (retrospective box set); 2001]. Early McCulloch inspiration Jim Morrison was much influenced by Bosch and also did a song titled Ship of Fools. It bears little relation to the McCulloch song. McCulloch has mentioned Bosch in interviews. Back to text
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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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