TIME PERCEPTION IN THE LONGER VICTORIAN LINES

"Life is short, birds are flying." said Cemal Süreya, associating the short verse with the short time in lifespan.[1] Actually, “how long” was time for the Victorians who were exposed to the increasingly rapid pace of life? Considering that they died in almost their twenties, the concept of time must have been striking for them. Thus, the length of the lines in Victorian poetry cannot be considered independent of the concept of time. In the Victorian Era, the stretching lines can be related to the perception of time.

First of all, the reason for the stretching lines in the Victorian Era can be interpreted as poets’ attempts to slow down the rapid speed of time. The long lines in Victorian poetry may be used by the poet as a coping mechanism for this intense pace. The Victorian Era was a period when people's perception of time changed with outstanding technological developments since trains accelerated transportation and machines also accelerated the production of products. Hence, these technological developments have made the world, sped up for people. The longer lines in Victorian poetry might be the extension of a grasp of time with words. The poet desperately lengthens his/her lines with a disability to keep up with the pace of time. In such a way, the poet slows down the reader and makes the reader pause in the flow of time. At that time, photography was capturing the moment for the first time, and the efforts in Robert Browning's poetry can be an attempt to capture the moment. This shows that Browning’s poetry with stretched lines can also be interpreted as a piece of time that is once “held” and fixed through language. For example, in “Pictor Ignorus” a painter's effort to be permanent through art can be seen with the longer lines.[2] Here, Browning extends the time along with the longer lines, in line with the speaker's desire for permanence and immortality. Also, the strange rhymes in the stretching lines such as “shrunk” and “sunk” may be an endeavor for "shrinking" time.[3] The meaning is sort of suspended in the stretching lines as time is being suspended. Like a bullet, the speaker could convey meaning quickly in short sentences. Yet, Browning prefers the longer lines. The transmission of meaning slows down over time with the length of lines. The reader’s interested eyes on the poem is kept for a longer period with the longer lines. Thus, the speaker maintains his/her permanence with the longer lines for a longer time as a solution to the pace of time due to technological innovation.

Another reason for the longer lines in the Victorian Era may be related to the effect of grieving over death on the perception of time. According to Henri Bergson, the time perceived by the subject and the time shown by the clock could be different.[4] In other words, depending on our subjectivity, some moments are long for some of us, and some moments are short for others. For a grieving person, time is not brief and fluid, nonetheless, it is burdensome, long, and challenging. Despite the glitz of technological advances, the Victorian Era was also known for poverty and the deaths of a myriad of people. In this sense, the longer lines in Victorian poetry may be an indication of the longer perception of time, related to the grief and melancholy of the dark atmosphere. For instance, the combination of long and short lines in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam" can be an example of the grieving lyrical self’s perception of time.[5] The longer lines of Tennyson indicate long and exhausting moments of the grieving self of the poem, while the short lines may demonstrate comfort, relaxation, and a break. The uncertainty in Tennyson's syntax, mixed with the long and short lines also reflects the uncertainty of mechanical time for the grieving self. The grieving lyrical self is indecisive and weak, thus not able to figure out how to finish the line. Moreover, for Martin Heidegger, the notion of time already exists with death rather than with eternity; thus, there might be no measuring, our perception of length and shortness is just related to the ending coming from death.[6] The endpoint of the longer lines in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” also moves away from us with words, just like life gets longer and its ending gets farther away. The stretching lines might be related to the end of life, a desire to be away from the end. Yet, the high amount of short lines in “In Memoriam” makes the reader feel anxious since the end is very near: the end of a sentence, the end of the day, the end of life. Hence, poetry becomes shaped by grieving on our very end "death," pertaining to the perception of time.

As a result, the longer lines cannot be considered independently of the conditions of the Victorian period. I believe that these conditions affected the perception of the time of the period and were also reflected in the form of the longer lines in the poem. Browning and Tennyson are examples for us that our perception of poetic form will not be independent of time.

References

Bergson, Henri. Tr. Miraç Katırcıoğlu. Düşünce ve Devingen. İstanbul: Maarif Basımevi, 1959.

Browning, Robert. Ed. Horace E. Scudder. The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Words of Robert Browning. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1895.

Heidegger, Martin. Tr. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Time and Being. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

Süreya, Cemal. Sevda Sözleri. İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2013.

Tennyson, Alfred Lord. Ed. Robert W. H. Junior. Tennyson’s Poetry. Newyork: W.W. Norton, 1999.

[1] Cemal Süreya, Sevda Sözleri (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2013), 293.
[2] Robert Browning, ed. Horace E. Scudder, The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Words of Robert Browning (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1895), 341.
[3] Ibid, 341.
[4] Henri Bergson, tr. Miraç Katırcıoğlu, Düşünce ve Devingen (İstanbul: Maarif Basımevi, 1959), 6.
[5] Alfred Lord Tennyson, ed Robert W. H. Junior, Tennyson’s Poetry (Newyork: W.W. Norton, 1999), 213.
[6] Martin Heidegger, tr. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson, Time and Being (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 277.

Burcu Uzun was born in Istanbul in 1997. She graduated from Boğaziçi University, Department of Turkish Language and Literature. She performed as a street poet in Vienna while she was an Erasmus student at the University of Vienna. She continues her master's degree in the Department of Turkish Language and Literature at Boğaziçi University now. She works as a volunteer at the Rainer Maria Rilke Association Paris, and publishes her articles on her blog, called “The Seed Hull.” Also, she translated Italian American author Dr. Emanuel Pettener’s stories into Turkish that were published the Hece Öykü Magazine.