Al-Joulan, Nayef Ali (1999) "Essenced to language": the margins of Isaac Rosenberg. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4946/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] 'Essenced to Language': The Margins of Isaac Rosenberg Nayef Ali Al-Joulan BA (English Language and Literature) 1993 Yarmouk University, H. K. of Jordan MA (English Literature and Criticism) 1996 Yarmouk University, H. K. of Jordan A thesis submitted to the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, for the degree of Ph.D. August, 1999 11 Abstract Isaac Rosenberg was more than just a war poet, and a general failure to take this into consideration has contributed to the belated recognition of the distinctions of his work. He started writing long before the Great War and, as a working-class London Jew, he schooled himself to respond to issues of class, culture, art and poetry. It was this combination of dependency and self-sufficiency which sustains his mature work; and which gave him a sense of himself as an Anglo-Jewish poet. In order to illuminate Rosenberg, Chapter One considers the conditions ofthe Jewish community in the East End of London at the turn of the century, and examines the writer's attitudes to the Zionism in vogue at the time. Chapter Two investigates the striking echoes of Freudian psychology which feature in Rosenberg's work, and which are related to the Jewish heritage of both writers. Chapter Three investigates Rosenberg's feminine principle, suggesting that, as part of an Orphic vision of art, it fused an allegorical 'female god', with seductive females familiar from Jewish narratives, effectively combining English and Hebrew cultures. Chapter Four traces Rosenberg's working-class literary heritage, and suggests that his treatment of class differs from his Gentile contemporaries in that it parallels Freudian and Marxist perceptions, while manifesting a modem Jewish insight. Chapter Five details the role class and race played in the critical marginalising of Rosenberg; special attention is given to the 'Georgian' literary ideals of the period, against which Rosenberg reacted and which influenced his reputation and the reception of his poetry. Chapter Six focuses on Rosenberg's debts of origin, and his 'anxiety of influence', uncovering his revision of his precursors, in light of a modem urban, and Jewish perspective. The thesis concludes by examining Rosenberg's idea of language as a vehicle for mental essence, suggesting that the roots for this perception lie in the painter's mind, along with class and race associations. 111 © Copyrights to the author: Nayef Ali AI-Joulan, 1999. IV Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents IV List of Abbreviations V Acknowledgements vi Introduction 8 Part I The Margins ofJ ewishness: A Jew in the East End Chapter I The Partial Fate: Rosenberg and Zionism 18 Chapter II The Dead Past 56 - 'Past days are hieroglyphs' 56 - 'Moses must die to live in Christ' 74 Chapter III In the Underworld 92 -'The Old Prometheus' 92 -Daughters of War 107 Part II Literary Margins: Intellectuals, Artists and the Masses Chapter IV The Working-class Jew and the Ordeal of Gentile Civility 132 -Rosenberg and the Working Class 132 -The Jewish Cockney: The Alter-ego ofModemity 153 Chapter V The Social Mission: Marginalising Isaac Rosenberg 175 - The Door Knocker 175 -Responsive Voices 192 Part III Language Essences: The Margins of Tradition and Talent Chapter VI 'Essenced to Language' 220 -Blown Words 220 -The Influence of Anxiety 233 Bibliography 246 v List of Abbreviations CW: Isaac Rosenberg, The Collected Works OfI saac Rosenberg, ed. Ian Parsons (London: Chatto and Windus, 1984) CPW: Matthew Arnold, The Complete Prose Works ofM atthew Arnold, ed. R. H. Super, 11 vols. (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1960-77) SE: The Standard Edition oft he Complete Psychological Works ofS igmund Freud, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth Press, 1953-74) VI Acknowledgements lowe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Royal family of Jordan; the late King Hussein, may God bless his memory, who awarded me a scholarship to pursue my Ph.D., and H. M. King Abdullah Ibn AI-Hussein who continued the sponsorship. I am grateful to H. R. H. Prince Gazi Ibn Mohammad, the cultural secretary of H. M. the King. My sincere appreciation goes to my supervisor Dr. David Pascoe who has been unfailingly helpful in guiding me while conducting this thesis and who unsparingly gave me of his time, kindness, invaluable assistance and practical help. I should also like to thank Mr. Sa'ad Sroor, former Chairman of the Jordanian Lower House of Parliament; Dr. Vassiliki Kolocotroni, Dr. Adam Piette, Mr. Richard Cronin and Miss Ingrid Swanson, from the Department of English Literature, University of Glasgow; and to Mohammed al-Dahmesh. Special thanks to my uncle Nazzal AI-Joulan whose support and caring I will never forget and to Dr. Nayel AI-Sharah, Dr. Fahmi Okour and his wife Dr. Tatiana Okour. My heartfelt gratitude is due to my father, mother, brothers and sisters whose encouragement and patience kept me going when energy occasionally flagged. To all I say I am deeply indebted; however the inevitable mistakes are exclusively my responsibility. Vll In memory of King Hussein, to my country and my parents Introduction: 'The Doomed Mouth' Rosenberg is long dead, but his words are still capable of speaking for him: None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass, Or stood aside for the half used life to pass Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth, "Dead Man's Dump" (lines 27-9Y The final verb on line 28 carries a peculiar energy, as a 'half used life', perhaps borne on a stretcher, is allowed to 'pass' before the onlookers, who stand aside respectfully; and then, while the preposition, 'out', clings tenaciously to the verb across the enjambment, only to expire early in the following line, the life force emerges from 'those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth' in the form of dying breath; or, perhaps, haemorrhaging body fluid. This is Rosenberg at his radical best; the lines draw attention to that "sense of something hidden and felt to be there," (CW, 260) which he claimed existed in all verse, and which the present study attempts to discover in his own writing. In that same letter to Edward Marsh he also said: "poetry should be definite thought and clear expression, however subtle; I don't think there should be any vagueness at all" (CW, 260); and so where Owen writes of 'doomed youth', Rosenberg's gazing at 'nostrils' and 'mouth' here is far less abstract. It is, instead, 'essenced to language', and the point at which words begin to fail: "where the words lose their interest as words[,] and a living and beautiful idea remains." (CW, 198). For Rosenberg, words, like the hapless infantry man, were expendable, serving only to detonate his ideas: "Now when my things fail to be clear I am sure it is because of the luckless choice of a word that would flash my idea plain as it is to my mind." (CW, 260). Perhaps it because of such unique vision that Rosenberg still lives in the margins of modem English poetry, his voice entombed in "the fragments of the broken years." (CW, 277). As Joseph Cohen, Rosenberg's most persuasive I Isaac Rosenberg, The Collected Works of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Ian Parsons (London: Chatto and Windus, 1979) repr. 1984, p. llO. Further references will be cited in parentheses and abbreviated as Cw. Introduction, N A. AI-Joulan 9 champion, puts it: "beginning with Eliot in 1920, critics have emphasised the significance of his poetry without telling us precisely why we should read it and bless his memory.,,2 T. S. Eliot had asked: "Let the public, however, ask itself why it has never heard of the poems of T. E. Hulme or of Isaac Rosenberg ... let the public also notice, in every case, who was the publisher. It will see, in the end, that the disease of contemporary reviewing is only a form of radical malady of journalism."3 It was hardly a recommendation; instead Rosenberg, appreciated, but unread so soon after his death, had been recruited for Eliot's crusade against the conservatism of contemporary publishers. Commenting fifteen years after the publication of the 1922 volume of Rosenberg's poems, F. R. Leavis wrote that it was "disquieting now to think that the volume did not establish Rosenberg's reputation. Even Mr. Eliot, who stopped to call attention to Rosenberg, appears to have left him with a passing mention.,,4 Yet despite this, in the remainder of his career, "Dr. Leavis followed Mr. Eliot's example."s The critical heritage of Rosenberg (such as it exists) incorporates many incidental suggestions and claims, which this thesis will develop. Jon Silkin alleged that: "it is uncertain how much Rosenberg's working-class origins and Jewishness contributed to his comparative oblivion between the two wars, but it is not a factor to be dismissed.,,6 Perhaps not; but, equally, echoing Eliot's earlier proposition, there needs to be an awareness of the materialistic and elitist nature of the period's criticism, publishing and reviewing, so clearly revealed in Rosenberg's work. In "The Door Knocker", Rosenberg commented on the materialism that controlled poets, particularly those belonging to the underprivileged classes; hence the poet suffered the fact that "[P]ropaganda is a necessary evil." (CW, 280). In fact, Rosenberg's many critical insights were overlooked in previous studies of his work, 2 Joseph Cohen, "Isaac Rosenberg: From Romantic to Classic", Tulane Studies in English, 10, 1960, p.129. 3 T. S. Eliot, "A Brief Treatise on the Criticism of Poetry", Poetry Bookshop Chapbook, 1920. 4 F. R. Leavis, "The Recognition ofIsaac Rosenberg" in Scrutiny, vol. 1, no. 2 (1937). p. 229. 5 E. O. G. Davies, "Isaac Rosenberg", Unpublished Masters Thesis, Univ. of Nottingham, 1975, p. 207. 6 Jon Silkin, Out o/Battle: The Poetry o/the Great War (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1987), pp. 273-74.