The Hours of Fiammetta

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Title: The Hours of Fiammetta
A Sonnet Sequence
Author: Rachel Annand Taylor
Release Date: November 7, 2007 [eBook #23392]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
HOURS OF FIAMMETTA***
E-text prepared by Ruth Hart
THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA
A Sonnet Sequence
by
RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR
"Thou which lov'st to be
Subtle to plague thyself"--
London:
Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street
MCMX

_The "Epilogue of the Dreaming Women" is reprinted by
permission
of the "English Review."_
PREFACE
There are two great traditions of womanhood. One presents the
Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more
confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of the
unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality as
definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the processes
of art, though she rarely becomes a conscious artist, except in delicate
and impassioned modes of living. Indeed, matters are cruelly
complicated for her if the entanglements of destiny drag her forward
into the deliberate aesthetic effort. Strange, wistful, bitter and sweet,
she troubles and quickens the soul of man, as earthly or as heavenly
lover redeeming him from the spiritual sloth which is more to be
dreaded than any kind of pain.
The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these
present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and
imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again.
They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of
hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and
intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing
them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to
some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed.
The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself
in an obstinate idealism that cannot come to terms with the assaults of
life. No single sonnet expresses absolute truth from even her own point
of view. The verses present the moods, misconceptions, extravagances,
revulsions, reveries--all the obscure crises whereby she reaches a state
of illumination and reconciliation regarding the enigma of love as it is,
making her transition from the purely romantic and ascetic ideal
fostered by the exquisitely selective conspiracies of the art of the great
love-poets, through a great darkness of disillusion, to a new vision
infinitely stronger and sweeter, because unafraid of the whole truth.

Fiammetta is frankly an enthusiast of the things of art; and her
meditations unfortunately betray the fact that Etruscan mirrors are as
dear to her as the daisies, and that she cannot find it more virtuous to
contemplate a few cows in a pasture than a group of Leonardo's people
in their rock-bound cloisters. For the long miracle of the human soul
and its expression is for her not less sacredly part of the universal
process than the wheeling of suns and planets: a Greek vase is to her as
intimately concerned with Nature as the growing corn--with that Nature
who formed the swan and the peacock for decorative delight, and who
puts ivory and ebony cunningly together on the blackthorn every
patterned Spring.
The Shaksperean form of sonnet yields most readily the piercing
quality of sound that helps to describe a malady of the soul. But the
system of completed quatrains in that model suits more assured and
dominating passion than the present matter provides. A more agitated
hurry of the syllables, a more involved sentence-structure, sometimes a
fainter rime-stress, seem necessary to the music of bewilderment.
CONTENTS
THE PROLOGUE OF THE DREAMING WOMEN.
I. THE
PRELUDE
II. PERILS.
III. THE PEACE TO BE.
IV.
STATUES.
V. THE WEDDING-GARMENT.
VI. THE DEATH
OF PROCRIS.
VII. THE WARNING.
VIII. THE
ACCUSATION.
IX. THE MEDIAEVAL MIRROR-CASES (1).

X. THE MIRROR-CASES (2).
XI. THE PASSION-FLOWER.

XII. THE VOICE OF LOVE (1).
XIII. THE VOICE OF LOVE
(2).
XIV. DREAM-GHOSTS.
XV. MEMORIA SUBMERSA.

XVI. A PORTRAIT BY VENEZIANO.
XVII. THE ENIGMA.

XVIII. THE DOUBT.
XIX. THE SEEKER.
XX. THE HIDDEN
REVERIE.
XXI. SOUL AND BODY (1).
XXII. SOUL AND
BODY (2).
XXIII. THE JUSTIFICATION.
XXIV.
ASPIRATIONS.
XXV. THE ANAESTHETIC.
XXVI.
DIVINATION.
XXVII. SUB-CONSCIOUSNESS.
XXVIII.
SATIETY.
XXIX. THE CONFESSION (1).
XXX. THE

CONFESSION (2).
XXXI. COMRADES.
XXXII. THE SUM
OF THINGS.
XXXIII. REACTION.
XXXIV. THE IDEALIST.

XXXV. WOMAN AND VISION.
XXXVI. ART AND WOMEN.

XXXVII. DESTINY.
XXXVIII. CONFLICT.
XXXIX.
PREDECESSORS.
XL. TRANSITION.
XLI. THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE.
XLII.
SPELL-BOUND.
XLIII. THE NIGHT OBSCURE OF THE
SOUL.
XLIV. THE CONQUEST OF IMMORTALITY.
XLV.
WOMEN OF TANAGRA.
XLVI. THE INVENTORY.
XLVII.
COMFORT (1).
XLVIII. COMFORT (2).
XLIX. THE
CHANGE.
L. AT THE END.
LI. THE SOUL OF AGE.
LII.
HYPNEROTOMACHIA.
LIII. THE REVOLT.
LIV. AFTER
MANY YEARS.
LV. TREASURE.
LVI. THE SOUL TO THE
BODY.
LVII. THE