On "At Dieppe" and "At Glan-y-Wern" by Arthur Symons

etext of the poems

The two Colour Studies of Symons immediately strike one as almost diametrically opposed in tone, mood, and, well, in colour. But an intriguing, subtle "reversed" parallel reveals itself if we differentiate between what is there in the reality created by the text, and what is placed alongside it; or, to adopt Ms Babits's terms, between the view, and the vision.

In "At Dieppe", grass, sea, sky, stone, hotel, and pebble are all there in the view. "Lead" and "slate" are used to describe the sea and the sky, respectively, but we are hardly required to imagine lead instead of water beyond the shore, or slate tiles instead of the firmament. Hence they are placed outside the conjured reality; they form the layer of vision in the poem.

In "At Glan-y-Wern", the situation is a bit more complicated. Even a superficial reading reveals that robe, shutter, glass, curtain, lace, hair, mouth, and face are all parts of its reality, and thus, the view. But what are we to make of "Below, a red rose, climbing, pressed / Against the roses of her mouth"? Is the first rose "there" in reality? Perhaps, yes. And the second one? We are led to conclude that the rose once appears as part of the view, but for the second time, it is a vision that helps us visualize the mouth placed on the layer of the view.

The way I read the line "O'ertrailed with foliage like a bower", the foliage is also part of the view--despite the fact that a lady standing in a white dress with a rose lightly touching her lips and the last rays of the setting sun casting playful shadows of verdant and blooming boughs on her forehead makes a kitschy scene indeed. The bower, however, serves only as a point of reference, and is not indicated to be there in the reality of the text.

The situation of the flower in "Amongst the flowers herself a flower" echoes that of the rose. The first instance appears to denote "real" entities, whereas the second one cannot but be part of the vision, as it is equated with "she", and the two cannot appear alongside each other any more than sea and lead could. The same observation also applies to the tiger-lily.

Now let us summarize our findings. In "At Dieppe", the view only contains elements from inanimate nature or the flora (sand, sea, sky, stone, pebble, and grass, apart from the hotel), whereas the lead and slate on the layer of vision are elements more related to "culture". In "At Glan-y-Wern", a similar dichotomy can be found, but the situation appears to be reversed. Now cultural elements (robe, shutter, glass, etc.) are all in the view, along with the body parts of the lady. The vision, however, contains elements from nature, and, more specifically, the flora only: the rose, the bower, the flower, and the tiger-lily. It is interesting to see that faced with a view inherently incorporated in nature or in culture, the poems appear to reach for the opposite realm for elements in the vision to describe further what is "there" in the view.