#L.E.L.

[octaviasdread]

(don’t repost photos)

25.12.23

strangely the week i’ve been home from uni has included more days in london traversing christmas markets than my home town

truly making the most of winter magic before essay deadlines haunt my brain with ghosts of future word counts

wishing you all a happy, study-free holiday full of good books, amazing food, and lots of relaxation this december ✨

[cascadiums]

I love how good poems are at being ghosts. I haven't consciously thought about Letitia Elizabeth Landon in forever and suddenly her Sappho is haunting me again

[kerryhasastudyblog]

Went to the library again today. Got chapter 2 done but it's super short so I'll need to see if I should just add it to my intro or add stuff to flesh it out. Anyway tomorrow I think I'll work from home bc I need to run some errands in the morning.

My next chapter is going to be a rough one. Lots to cover: Romantic notion of poet/genius as gendered male, poems as women, rise of the "poetess" and its subsequent denigration and relegation to gift books etc., and the effect of sentimentality and sensibility on identity of women writers especially poets, and then the actual poets/"poetesses": L.E.L., Hemans, Barbauld etc. and the various ways they either conformed to or disrupted the identity.

[malojasnake]

– L.E.L., by Christina Rossetti

[sixminutestoriesblog]

snowdrops

Thou fairy gift from summer,

Why art thou blooming now?

The Snowdrop by Letitia Landon (L.E.L)

January in the Northern Hemisphere can be a hard time to celebrate a birthday. It's cold, winter still has a ways to go yet and everyone is pretty hung over from the rash of holidays that took up the past three months straight.

Enter the delicate and determined snowdrop.

Once upon a time, so the story goes in Germany, back when the world was new, Winter was sent out to find itself a color. Knowing how everyone raved about the beautiful colors of the Flowers, Winter went to them and asked if one of them would give him their color to wear. Prideful and protective of their own glory, the Flowers laughed at Winter and turned away from him. Only one didn't laugh. The snowdrop, small and dainty, offered to share its color with the Winter. In gratitude, Winter promised that the cold of its touch would never harm the little flower and it would be allowed to bloom during Winter's reign whenever the little flower liked.

The snowdrop, legend claims, can create its own warmth.

It is also one of the first flowers to bloom each year, often before the snow has even finished melting, its hard leaves able to push up through ice and frozen soil, popping up to carpet the forest floor in a very different white, filling the sharp winter air with its light fragrance. If you listen, the stories say, you can hear the faint sounds of their petal bells ringing, waking up the rest of the world to spring's arrival.

The plucky little snowdrop has been around for a very long time and they have a lot of stories that go with them.

In Romania and Moldova, snowdrops, sometimes called 'daughter of the wind', were the results of a hero's battle against Winter (or the Winter Witch). Winter had decided to prevent Spring, either by trapping the Sun or simply refusing to move on. The Sun's lover - or Lady Spring herself - fought with Winter and in each place their blood fell, snowdrops sprang up.

When Adam and Eve were chased from the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the world, Eve wept so bitterly that an angel took pity on her. He breathed onto a falling snowflake and everywhere the snow fell, snowdrops sprang up, to give the weeping woman hope and the promise of a better future.

Snowdrops were Persephone's tears when she was freed from Hades in Greek myth and their arrival heralded her return to her mother.

The flowers are sometimes called 'Candlemas bells' because Christian stories say that when Mary went to the Temple to be purified and to present Jesus there as her first-born on February 2, an angel gave her the gift of snowdrops.

Want another one?

In Homer's Odyssey, Sean Bean Odysseus is given a magical plant called 'moly' by Hermes. He uses this to resist Circe's poison. There's debate whether Homer's moly was truly meant to be a snowdrop - but at least as far back as Roman times, the snowdrop was believed to be an antidote against poison. In modern times, doctors are using it to help in the fight against Alzheimer's.

Don't get carried away with the home remedies just yet. Snowdrops can be toxic to pets and humans can suffer from imbibing too much as well.

Overall, given all the stories associated with snowdrops, it shouldn't surprise anyone that they are seen as symbols of hope and rebirth, or light in the darkness and triumph over tribulation. Their white color gives them a symbolism of purity. In the story of Snow White, her name is sometimes changed to Snowdrop. These little flowers give those worn down by the snow the promise of sunlight and brighter days to come.

Unless you were a Victorian. Because - of course. Snowdrops had a habit of growing in cemeteries and church yards and so Victorians viewed them as omens of illness at best and death at worst. Seeing a single snowdrop was bad. Bringing a single snowdrop inside your house was nothing short of inviting death in.

Luckily, that doesn't have to stop the rest of us from being delighted by these determined flowers and holding to the faith that, when the snowdrops arrive, better days are soon to come.

[gothiclit]

hypothetically. if i do a romantic poetry poll. the big six (byron, keats, shelley, coleridge, wordsworth, blake) will be there. l.e.l. and felicia helmans as well. any other ideas on who to add?

[jorichingsuk]

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[a-lil-neptunian]

🌊 Calypso Watching The Ocean 🪸

Letitia Elizabeth Landon “L.E.L.”

Years, years have pass'd away,

Since to yonder fated bay

Did the Hero come.

Years, years, have pass'd the while

Since he left the lovely isle

For his Grecian home.

He is with the dead—but She

Weepeth on eternally

In the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

Downwards floateth her bright hair,

Fair—how exquisitely fair!

But it is unbound.

Never since that parting hour

Golden band or rosy flower

In it has been wound;

There it droopeth sadly bright,

In the morning's sunny light,

On the lone and lovely island

In the far off southern seas.

Like a marble statue placed,

Looking o'er the watery waste,

With its white fixed gaze;

There the Goddess sits, her eye

Raised to the unpitying sky:

So uncounted days

Has she asked of yonder main,

Him it will not bring again

To the lone and lovely island

In the far off southern seas.

To that stately brow is given,

Loveliness that sprung from heaven—

Is, like heaven, bright:

Never there may time prevail,

But her perfect face is pale;

And a troubled light

Tells of one who may not die,

Vex'd with immortality

In the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

Desolate beside that strand,

Bow'd upon her cold, white hand,

Is her radiant head;

Silently she sitteth there,

While her large eyes on the air

Traced the much-loved dead:

Eyes that know not tears nor sleep,

Would she not be glad to weep,

In the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

​

Far behind the fragrant pile,

Sends its odours through the isle;

And the winds that stir

In the poplars are imbued

With the cedar's precious wood,

With incense and with myrrh,

Till the azure waves beneath

Bear away the scented breath

Of the lone and lovely island

In the far off southern seas.

But no more does that perfume

Hang around the purple loom

Where Calypso wove

Threads of gold with curious skill,

Singing at her own sweet will

Ancient songs of love;

Weary on the sea-wash'd shore,

She will sing those songs no more

In the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

From the large green leaves escape

Clusters of the blooming grape;

Round the shining throne

Still the silver fountains play,

Singing on through night and day,

But they sing alone:

Lovely in their early death,

No one binds a violet wreath,

In the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

Love and Fate—oh, fearful pair!

Terrible in strength ye are;

Until ye had been,

Happy as a summer night,

Conscious of its own sweet light,

Was that Island-queen.

Would she could forget to grieve,

Or that she could die and leave

The lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

She is but the type of all,

Mortal or celestial,

Who allow the heart,

In its passion and its power,

On some dark and fated hour,

To assert its part.

Fate attends the steps of Love,—

Both brought misery from above

To the lone and lovely island

Mid the far off southern seas.

[fregolicotard]

13.09.2022

“I deck myself with silks and jewelry, I plume myself like any mated dove: They praise my rustling show, and never see My heart is breaking for a little love.“ Christina Rossetti - L.E.L.

#256of365

[aaknopf]

In L.E.L.: The Lost Life and Scandalous Death of Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the Celebrated “Female Byron,” Lucasta Miller introduces us to the life story of a lost female poet, whose untimely death in West Africa in 1838 was shadowed by rumors of foul play. Read and admired in her time by the likes of the young Brontës, Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning) and Edgar Allan Poe, L.E.L. burst on the scene under these tantalizing initials in 1821, with a poetry column in the weekly Literary Gazette. Miller sees her as a post-Byronic poet, occupying the natural next chapter in a cultural story about poets as the tragic heroes of their own verse (a type expertly established by Byron). However, in a century that would bring us a wealth of female poets, L.E.L., Miller argues, was also a “proto-postmodern” whose true subject was not actually love but “all is vanity.” In the passage below, from a chapter entitled “Lyre Liar,” Miller considers the way in which L.E.L. negotiated the hypocritical culture in which she lived, using the language of romantic love to create a knowingly ambiguous voice, as she trod an increasingly tortured line between artifice and authenticity, disguise and self-exposure.

from L.E.L.

Critics at the time were profoundly unsettled by the extreme moral and philosophical relativism they found in her 1829 collection The Venetian Bracelet. It dis­turbed them far more than L.E.L.’s earlier innuendos had done. “In read­ing many of her poems,” went one review, “we caught ourselves saying instinctively, ‘There is falsehood here.’ But on a second perusal, in a dif­ferent state of mind, we are sure that we might have said, ‘There is truth here.’ Is truth variable then? Is there no external standard to distinguish it from its contrary?”

The most striking piece in the volume was the deceptively simple “Lines of Life,” arguably Letitia’s signature poem. The title was taken from Shakespeare’s bitter and enigmatic Sonnet XVI, which casts doubt on the truth of art, and on the ability of “barren rhyme” and “painted counterfeit” to transcend time or even communicate.

“Lines of Life” reads like a perverse parody of an evangelical hymn, and draws us into such a vortex of multiple ironies that it becomes almost an antipoem. L.E.L. twines us, and is herself twined, in the classic philosopher’s “liar’s paradox.” Is she, the poem asks, a truth-telling liar or a lying truth-teller? Either way, the reader is placed in an impossible position. So is the poet, who can only be true to herself by being false to herself, since personal honesty is an act of self-betrayal.

She begins with an aggressive refusal to reveal her inner self, which turns, paradoxically, into a confession of her complicity in the culture of lies:

Well, read my cheek, and watch my eye,— Too strictly school’d are they, One secret of my soul to show, One hidden thought betray.

I never knew the time my heart Looked freely from my brow; It once was check’d by timidness, ’Tis taught by caution now.

I live among the cold, the false, And I must seem like them; And such I am, for I am false As those I would condemn.

I teach my mouth its sweetest smile, My tongue its softest tone; I borrow others’ likeness, till Almost I lose my own.

I pass through flattery’s golden sieve Whatever I would say; In social life, all, like the blind, Must learn to feel their way.

I check my thoughts like curbed steeds That struggle with the rein; I bid my feelings sleep, like wrecks In the unfathom’d main.

I hear them speak of love, the deep, The true, and mock the name; Mock at all high and early truth, And I too do the same.

I hear them tell some touching tale, I swallow down the tear; I hear them name some generous deed, And I have learnt to sneer.

I hear the spiritual, the kind, The pure, but named in mirth; Till all of good, ay, even hope, Seem exiled from our earth [ . . . ]

More on this book and author:

Learn more about L.E.L. by Lucasta Miller

Browse other books by Lucasta Miller

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link

[dragoneyes618]

Life has dark secrets; and the hearts are few That treasure not some sorrow from the world– A sorrow silent, gloomy, and unknown, Yet colouring the future from the past. We see the eye subdued, the practised smile, The word well weighed before it pass the lip, And know not of the misery within: Yet there it works incessantly, and fears The time to come; for time is terrible, Avenging, and betraying.

-“Secrets” by Letitia Elizabeth Landon

[catilinas]

lads does your poetic work ever call attention to the relations among the romantic “I,” the assenting “ay,” and the gazing eye

[howifeltabouthim]

I deck myself with silks and jewelry, I plume myself like any mated dove; They praise my rustling show, and never see My heart is breaking for a little love

Christina Rossetti, from “L.E.L.”

[kxowledge]

My heart is breaking for a little love.

Christina Rossetti, L.E.L. in Selected Poems (ed. Roe)

[arsanimarum]

Christina Rossetti, L.E.L. Selected Poems

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, known to many of her readers as L.E.L., was born in London in 1802. Landon's first collection of verse was published in 1821, and was commercially successful, though neglected by critics. A second poetry collection followed in 1824. It was also very popular and went through six editions in one year. Landon’s popularity reached its height the following year with the publication of The Troubadour: Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures, and Historical Sketches. She continued to publish poetry collections, as well as four novels. Landon’s style was highly influential to popular verse in the early 19th century, and she was hailed as a “Female Byron”. 

Letitia Elizabeth Landon died in 1838 at the age of 36.