Vorticism

Vorticism (pronounced vawr-tuh-siz-uhm)

A short-lived movement in the British avant-garde, nurtured by Wyndham Lewis, which climaxed in a London exhibition in 1915 before being absorbed.

1914: The construct was vortic + -ism.  The Latin vortic was the stem of vortex, (genitive vorticis), an archaic from of vertex (an eddy of water, wind, or flame; whirlpool; whirlwind whirl, top, crown, peak, summit), from vertō (to turn around, turn about) from vertere (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European wer (to turn; bend).  The –ism suffix is from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Vorticism is a noun, vorticist is a noun & adjective and vorticistic is an adjective; the noun plural was vorticists,  The forms vorticistically & vortical seem never to have come into use.

Hieratic head of Ezra Pound (1914), by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915).

The name Vorticism was said to have been coined in 1914 by the poet Ezra Pound (1885–1972) years before fascism and madness possessed his soul.  Pound had already used the word "vortex" to describe the effect modernist poetry was having on intellectual thought in Europe and he used the word not in the somewhat vague sense it often assumed when used figuratively to suggest swirling turbulence but rather as a mathematician or meteorologist might: an energy which gathers from the surrounding chaos what’s around, imparts to it a geometrical form which, intensifying as it goes, arrives at a single point.  Pound’s coining of the name is generally accepted but some historians claim the name was chosen by the Italian futurist Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) who claimed all creative art could emanate only from a vortex of emotions.

Blast Magazine, July 1915.

Vorticism flourished only briefly between 1912-1915 as an overly aggressive reaction to what was held to be an excessive attachment to and veneration for delicacy and beauty in art and literature, preferring to celebrate the tools of modernity, the violence and energy of machines.  In painting and sculpture the angles were sharp and the lines bold, colors displayed in juxtaposition to emphasize the starkness of their difference and there was a reverence for geometric form and repetition.  The movement in 1914 published its own magazine: Blast: the Review of the Great English Vortex which was more manifesto than critique, a London-based attempt to gather together the artists and writers of the avant‐garde in one coherent movement.  It wanted the shock of the new.

Composition (1913), by Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957).

The idea was an art which reflected the strains of the vortices of a modern life in what was increasingly a machine age.  Thus, although it remains a footnote in the history of modern art, the label Vorticism refers to a political and sociological point rather than a distinct style such as contemporaries like Cubism or Futurism.  The timing was of course unfortunate and the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) robbed Vorticism of much of its initial energy; the exhibition eventually staged in London’s Doré Gallery in 1915 remained a one-off and, like much of the pre-1914 world, Vorticism didn’t survive the World War.

Dance Hall Scene (circa 1913), by CRW Nevinson (1889-1946).

Being unappreciated at the time, most of the paintings of the vorticists were lost but retrospectives have been assembled from what remains and the still extant photographic record and there’s now a better understanding of the legacy and the influence on art deco, dada, surrealism, pop art, indeed, just about any abstract form.  Graphic art too benefited from the techniques, the sense of line and color identifiable in agitprop, twentieth century advertising and, most practically, the “dazzle” camouflage used by admiralties in both world wars as a form of disguise for ships.

Juan Garrido, a graphic designer based in Caracas, Venezuela, created the display typeface Vorticism in 2013.  Reflecting the cultural and linguistic influences, while there are a number of typefaces called futurism (or some variation) and some based on the word "vortex", Mr Garrido's "Vorticism" is uniquely named.

Lindsay Lohan in the Vorticism typeface.

Ezra Pound (1919), by Wyndham Lewis.

Even in 1912, Vorticism’s use of bold, abstract, and geometric forms (often depicting movement and mechanical apparatuses) wasn’t new but the movement had an energy which attracted those wanting to create imagery which marked a dramatic break from the representational forms which then were still dominant early in the ear which would come to be known as the dawn of modernity.  In that sense, Vorticism is understood as one of a number of movements embracing a new aesthetic reflecting the dynamism and energy of the modern world.  That as a distinct entity Vorticism didn’t endure was in a way an indication of success rather than failure because its motifs and techniques were co-opted to serve as foundational aspects of many movements in modern art, the abstract and geometric forms underpinning Futurism and Constructivism as well as becoming a staple of commercial graphic art and advertising.  Perhaps the most obvious influence was the artistic legitimization of the integration of text into images, a practice borrowed from commerce and a notable signature of Dada and Surrealism.  The use of text as a visual element challenged traditional boundaries between different art forms, a tension which enabled Pop art to create was in some ways a novel ecosystem.  However, those same motifs have been used also as something illustrative of the destructive tendencies of the speed and spread of mechanical and industrial reality which the vorticists championed and Precisionism & Bauhaus celebrated, at least in a sanitized and idealized way which hid the essential ugliness below.

Réclame

Réclame (pronounced rey-klahm)

(1) In historic French use, publicity; self-advertisement; notoriety (in a positive sense).

(2) In historic French use, a talent for generating interest & getting attention; a gift for dramatization; a hunger for publicity.

(3) In modern English use (as a critique of social media content, celebrity culture etc), of public attention or acclaim achieved to an extent disproportionate to value or achievement.

1865–1870: From the French réclame, from the early fourteenth century reclaimen (call back a hawk to the glove) from the Old French reclamer (to call upon, invoke; claim; seduce; to call back a hawk) (which in the twelfth century entered Modern French as “réclamer”) and directly from the Latin reclāmāre.  Because the hawks used in falconry were, by definition, tame, “reclaim” by the mid fifteenth century was used to mean “make tame” (ie “reclaimed from the wild state of nature”), the use taken from the late fourteenth century sense of “subdue, reduce to obedience, make amenable to control”.  In Middle English, many “re-” words had conveyed no sense of “return or reciprocation”, the meaning “revoke” (an award, grant, gift etc) dating from the late fifteenth century while the sense of “recall (someone) from an erring course and direct them to a proper state” had emerged decades earlier.  The sense of “get back by effort” is thought by etymologists to have evolved under the influence of claim and the specific meaning “bring waste land into useful condition fit for cultivation” seems first to have been used in the context of agriculture in 1764, the idea again being again on the probably on notion of “reclaimed from the wild state of nature” rather than a suggestion of a return to a previous state of cultivation (although there were instances of both).  Land reclamation (the extending of the area available for urban settlement has been practiced for thousands of years but it has been practiced at scale only since the mid-nineteenth century when large-capacity mechanical devices became available.  Réclame is a noun; the noun plural is réclames.

In French, réclame was a noun & verb and by the mid nineteenth century it was used usually to mean “a small advertisement” of the type which typically appeared in newspapers or other publications (as opposed to billboards or banners or buildings).  Depending in context, the forms avertissement & publicité (often clipped to pub) could be used as synonyms.  The word spread in Europe and other colonial empires including the Mauritian Creole reklam, the Danish reklame, the Dutch reclame, the Indonesian reklame, the German Reklame, the Hungarian reklám, the Polish reklama, the Romanian reclamă, the Italian reclame, the Norwegian Bokmål reklame, the Norwegian Nynorsk reklame, the Spanish reclame, the Swedish reklam, the Finnish reklaami, the Turkish reklam, the Estonian reklaam and the Russian рекла́ма rekláma.  The noun in French has a special use in the sport of falconry (in the sense of “reclaim”) where it was a call and sign for the bird of prey to return to the gauntlet of the falconer.  The use in falconry was inherited from the Old French verb reclamer (to implore; to shout to), from the Latin reclāmāre, from reclāmō, the construct being re- (used as an intensifier in the sense of “opposite, against” + clāmō (cry out, shout), from the primitive Indo-European root kele (to shout).  In the Old French, as a transitive verb, reclamer could mean (1) to protest, (2) to object or (3) to claim, reclaim.

In English, for centuries, words have come and gone, some going extinct and some later revived, sometimes enduringly.  The twenty-first century rediscovery of réclame though is unusual in that when reclame previously was used in English it was as an alternation spelling or reclaim whereas the newly re-purposed réclaim is a borrowing from late nineteenth century Modern French.  That which is embarked upon in the quest for fame or notoriety can be described neutrally (commercial, promotion, advertizing, content provision etc) or negatively (hoopla, hype, noise, propaganda etc) and réclame recently was added the latter class.  It is used to describe those who by virtue of their activities on social media, in “reality” content generally or as part of celebrity culture have achieved a level of acclaim or public attention wildly disproportionate to any substantive achievement or contribution.

L'Homme réclame (Publicity man, 1926), collage on cardboard by Aleksandra Ekster (1882-1949), collection of the National Gallery of Australia (Accession Number: 77.11.1 (1977)).

Aleksandra Ekster (who in the West is often exhibited as Alexandra Exter)) was a Russian artist whose work covered a remarkable range of twentieth century movements.  Beginning as a noted figure in the pre-revolutionary Russian avant-garde before moving to the West, her output included Cubism, Futurism and even some in the vein of Vorticism although it was Art Deco which owes her the greatest debt and her influence there was neglected by historians until recently.  Had she been a man, she might earlier have been better appreciated.

Réclame as now used is thus a word of cultural snobbery and one which encapsulates a certain hierarchical model of what’s a respectable profile and what’s not: being “Instagram famous” definitely is not.  Curiously, it seems the word is deployed as a weapon by those with definite opinions on the difference between “high quality” pop culture and that in the field less deserving rather than by those of the type who distinguish only between the “high or experimental” and “everything else”.  As a critique, réclame is a new way of describing those “famous for being famous”, a characteristic identifiable in the West for well over a century but now a genuine mass-phenomenon because the distribution channels have become so extensive and wide.  What is derided as the community of réclame is just a business model in action, content providers providing supply to fulfill demand.  Of course, the model has operated to increase both the audience and the volume of aggregate demand, something which seems further to depress the critics but culturally, probably little has changed in the internet age; it’s just that things are on a bigger scale and more obvious.

Paris Hilton (b 1981, left) & Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right), Los Angeles, 2003.

Also helpful in many ways is Ms Hilton’s recently published book Paris: The Memoir (Harper Collins London, (2023), pp 336, ISBN 0-0632-2462-3) which, while genuinely a memoir is interesting too for the deconstruction of the subject the author provided in a number of promotional interviews.  There have over the years been many humorless critics who have derided Ms Hilton for being “famous for being famous” but the book makes clear being the construct that is Paris Hilton is a full-time job, one which demands study and an understanding of the supply & demand curves of shifting markets; a personality cult needs to be managed.  She displays also a sophisticated understanding of the point made by comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who once explained the abstraction of a personality cult by pointing to his huge portrait and saying “…you see, even I am not Stalin, THAT is Stalin!”  Ms Hilton may never have done anything as useful as find a cure for cancer or invent a new nuclear weapon but she’s a cog in the machine which keeps the economy ticking over and collectively, the activities of the réclame set continue to generate a not insignificant chunk of the revenue which funds some of the advances in technology which have been so transformative.  Their contribution need not be seen as culturally inferior to that of the literary festival circuit, it's just different.

Novecento

Novecento (pronounced no-vee-chen-toh)

(1) In Italian, nine hundred (900).

(2) In Italian the “twentieth century (1900s)”, the term used in the modern way to define the century as 1900-1999 rather than the strictly correct 1901-2000.

(3) As Novecento Italiano (literally the “Italian 1900s”), the Italian artistic movement founded in Milan in 1922 with the aim of representing the fascism of Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943) in artistic form.

An Italian word which translates literally as nine-hundred (900), the construct being nove (nine) +‎ cento (hundred).  Nove was from the Latin novem, from noven (contaminated by decem, the original form preserved in nōnus), from the Proto-Italic nowem, from the primitive Indo-European hnéwn̥, the cognates including the Sanskrit नवन् (navan), the Ancient Greek ἐννέα (ennéa), the Gothic niun and the Old English nigon (which became the English nine).  Cento was from the Latin centum, from the Proto-Italic kentom, from the primitive Indo-European ḱm̥tóm, the formal cognates including the Sanskrit शत (śata), the Old Church Slavonic съто (sŭto) and the Old English hund (from which English, with an appended suffix, gained “hundred”. In Italian, the adjective novecentistico (feminine novecentistica, masculine plural novecentistici, feminine plural novecentistiche) is used generally of “twentieth century art” while “Novecento Italiano” was specifically of the movement (1922-1943) associated with Italian fascism.  However, “novecentistico” is sometimes used casually in the sense of “modern art”.  Novecento is a noun and novecentesco & novecentistico are adjectives.

Mussolini, Italian fascism and the Novecento Italiano 

In Italy and beyond, the curious coming to power in 1922 of Benito Mussolini (an event less dramatic than the Duce’s subsequent “March on Rome” propaganda would suggest) triggered many events and Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) always acknowleded the debt the Nazi state owed because "Mussolini was the one who showed us it could be done").  One of the more enduring Italian footnotes of the epoch was the Novecento Italiano, opportunistically announced as having been “formed” in Milan in 1922 (although some “members” at the time appear not to have been aware they’d "joined".  What attracted the movement’s founders was the what Mussolini called “la visione fascista” (“the Fascist vision” and sometimes translated as “the Fascist platform” (la piattaforma fascista)) although, as the years went by, most seemed to conclude Mussolini dealt more in concepts than plans (even the so-called "corporate state" was never really "corporatized").  The Duce had expressed his disgust at the decadence of the modern Italian people, believing they had been seduced by French ways into “elevating cooking to the status of high art”, declaring he would never allow Italy to descend to the level of France, a country ruined by “alcohol, syphilis and journalism”.  His vision extended also to reviving national vigour with “the beneficial hygiene of war”, something which worked only until his army was confronted by forces with more firepower than the brave but out-gunned (and out-gassed) Abyssinian (Ethiopian) tribesman.  Mussolini was harking back to the glories of the Roman Empire which has once stretched from “Hadrian’s Wall to the first cataract of the Nile, from Parthia to the Pillars of Hercules” and while so much of fascism was fake and bluster, the Duce genuinely was intoxicated at the notion he might be a “new Roman Emperor”.

Paesaggio urbano (Urban Landscape, circa 1924), oil on paper mounted on board by Mario Sironi.  Despite his latter day reputation, not all Sironi's representations of streets and buildings were gloomy, cold scenes but the ones now most popular seem to be; they must suit the twenty-first century zeitgeist.  Sironi was a devoted and leading Futurist and traces of that really never left his works; his most compelling technique was to exclude the human element from his urban scenes or deliberately have the figures dwarfed by the built environment.  The supremacy of the state over the individual was a core component of fascism and although as a motif it isn't apparent in all of the Novecento Italiano's output, it's a recurrent theme in Sironi's works. 

It was a vision which appealed to a certain sort of artist, one with a mind full of the grandeur of Italy's classical artistic heritage and the possibilities offered by science and the techniques of modernity, something seen as an authentic continuation of the works of Antiquity and the Renaissance whereas other threads in modern art, like the Futurism which had come to dominate avant-garde Italian art, were derided as “the work of skilled draftsmen”.  Futurism had also been disruptive and Italy had suffered more from the effects of World War I (1914-1918) that its status as a nominal victor might have been expected and like Mussolini, one of the Novecento Italiano’s key themes was a “return to order”, presumably the cultural analogue of “making the trains run on time”.  Again reflecting the post-Renaissance “construction” of a certain “idea” of the perfection of things in the ancient world, the movement sought a “return” to the Classical values of harmony, clarity, and stability.  They were pursuing a myth which remains to some persuasive, even today.

Lindsay Lohan as the Novecento Italiano might have depicted her: Lindsay (2019) by Sam McKinniss (b 1985), from a reference photograph taken 22 July 2012, leaving the Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood, Los Angeles.

The most obvious influence on the movement was a return to the imagery associated with Antiquity (albeit with many of the exemplars from later artists), with mythological or historical subjects, emphasizing form and balance, a deliberate rejection of the abstraction and dynamism of Cubism, Vorticism or Futurism.  Instead, a figurative and realist prevailed, an attempt deliberately to place the movement as the inheritor of Italy’s artistic heritage.  The movement was founded by a number of prominent figures but remains most associated with art collector, critic & journalist Margherita Sarfatti (1880–1961).  That focus is probably unfair to others but signora Sarfatti also wrote advertising copy for the Partito Nazionale Fascista (the PNF, the National Fascist Party) and perhaps more significantly, was also Mussolini’s mistress, a form of administrative horizontal integration not unfamiliar to the Duce.  Prominent members of the movement included Mario Sironi (1885-1961), known for his monumental and often sombre depictions of urban landscapes and political figures, Achille Funi (1890-1972) who focused on classical subjects with modern interpretations and Felice Casorati (1883-1963), in many ways the most interesting of the movement because few were more accomplished in the technique of fusing elements of modernism with a sharp focus on form and structure; the (not always complimentary) phrase “technical ecstasy” might have been invented to critique his output.  The most comprehensive collection of the movement’s works is displayed in Rome’s La Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art).

Donna al caffè (Woman in the Café, 1931), oil on canvas by Antonio Donghi (1897-1963). The subject matter (a lone woman at a café table) was familiar in European art but the artists of the Novecento Italiano anticipated the later technique of "photographic clarity", achieved with the air of stillness, reminiscent of the precision with which Renaissance portraits were staged though without their sumptuous detailing.  As well as the movement's focus on clarity, order, and balance, there was a new interest in depicting "ordinary" urban citizens in scenes of a detached, almost serene realism.  In the work of the Novecento Italiano, woman tended to be represented as what the fascist state would have liked their citizens to be.

The comparisons with “Nazi art” are sometimes made but because art was a topic of little interest to Mussolini (who preferred the Autostrada (the world’s first motorways (freeways)), tanks and battleships, never in Italy as there anything so so dictatorial and the funding was spread to ensure the widest support for the regime.  That was a contrast with Hitler who to his dying day never ceased to think of himself as “an artist” and assumed the role of the Third Reich’s chief critic and censor, meaning there was a recognizably political theme to the art of the period.  Interestingly, while artists in the Reich increasingly “worked towards the Führer” and dutifully churned out what they knew would be “regime approved”, more than one memoir from his contemporaries recorded how little interest he took in them, responding with delight only to stuff like landscapes or portraiture he thought works of genuine beauty.  Really, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen “Nazi” paintings or sculptures; it was just that hundreds of artists produced them thousands of times.

Dafne (1934), oil on plywood by Felice Casorati.  Casorati’s work often featured mythological subjects but, unlike many, he surrounded them with simplified forms, drawing attention to his sense of focus, precise structure and clarity.  Here, Daphne (in Greek mythology transformed into a laurel, the tree sacred to Apollo), is rendered in a figurative, geometric style with flat, muted colors, the work, while obviously modernist, owing a debt to classical traditions, Mannerism and hinting even at the Italian Primitives.

So the movement was neither monolithic nor “political” in the way things were done in the Third Reich and certainly nothing like the even more severe regime which prevailed in comrade Stalin’s (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) Soviet Union but it was supported to some extent by the Fascist state and while that association proved helpful, even before the tide of World War II (1939-1945) turned against Italy, as early as the mid-1930s the historic moment of Novecento Italiano had already passed as the world responded to the latest “shock of the new”, the language of surrealism and other adventures in abstraction capturing the imagination.  When in 1943 Italian Fascism “burst like a bubble” and Mussolini was removed from power, the movement was dissolved.  However, artistically, the legacy was real in that it did foster a dialogue between modernism and tradition in European art and ensured the Italian state during the inter-war years became involved in the commissioning of monumental and representational public art, beginning a tradition which continues to this day.

Orphism

Orphism (pronounced awr-fiz-uhm)

(1) The religious or philosophical system of the Orphic school, a religion of Ancient Greece, widespread from the sixth century BC onwards, a blend of pre-Hellenic beliefs including the Thracian cult of Dionysius Zagreus.  The name was derived from the movement supposedly being founded by the mythological prophet Orpheus.

(2) In fine art, a movement of the early twentieth century most associated with French artist of the Parisian school Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) although it was his longer-lived wife Sonia Delaunay (1885–1979) who produced a greater volume of work.  The movement is also known as orphic cubism and while not pure abstraction, it differed from Cubism in removing the need to maintain a representational relationship with the subject, the works rather imaginings of a viewer’s imagination.

Early 1800s: The construct was Orph(eus) (from the Greek root Ὀρφεύς) + -ism.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The term Orphism emerged (with others) in the language of those classical scholars and historians who in the early nineteenth century were categorizing and analyzing various aspects of the less documented movements, religions and schools of thought from Antiquity, especially the Greek, the Roman material having earlier been better studied.  In the historic texts from Antiquity and later, the myths, rituals, and writings attributed to Orpheus or the associated the associated religious practices are discussed or described without the use a single encompassing term.

Homage to Blériot (1914), oil on canvas by Robert Delaunay.

The use to describe the fork of cubism (a description which offends some) was in 1912 co-opted (as orphisme) by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) (who five years later would also coin “surrealism”), the construct being Orpheus +‎ -ism.  The adjective Orphic (of or related to Orpheus or the doctrines attributed to him) dates from the 1670s, from a Latinized form of the Greek orphikos (pertaining to Orpheus).  The earlier adjective was Orphean, in use at least by the 1590s.  Orphism & orphist are nouns, orphic is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is orphics.  When used of the religion or the art movement as a proper noun, an initial capital should be used (although the practice seem to be to use lower case in the case of the latter).

Singer Flamenco (1916), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay.

In Greek mythology, Orpheus was the son of Oeager and his mother was usually asid to be the Muse Calliope although in some tales it was Polhymnia or Menippe, daughter of Thamyris.  This was how things were in the days before copyright.  What is a constant in the myths is that Orpheus was of Thracian origin and lived in a region bordering Olympus.  The most famous tale of Orpheus is of his love for his wife, the nymph Eurydice, struck dead when she stepped on the serpent which bit her.  Heartbroken, Orpheus descended to the underworld to beg the gods to restore her to life.  Playing the lyre (for which he was credited with adding two strings to match the nine Muses), he so charmed the monsters of Hades they agreed to restore her to Earth but imposed one condition: Orpheus must walk back to the light with Eurydice following and must not look back until they had left the underworld.  The pair had almost reached to gates to Earth when a terrible doubt struck Orpheus and he had to turn to make sure Eurydice was there.  As soon as she fell into his glance, she died.  Orpheus tried to return to again rescue her but his entry was barred.  Inconsolable, he lived again in the human world but was killed by the women of Thrace who resented his fidelity to Eurydice, her precious memory more to him than the flesh & blood of their earthly charms.  The alternative history is darker.  Whatever happened in the underworld, after returning, Orpheus invented pederasty and his lover was Calais, the son of Boreas.  According to this tale, young men would meet at Orpheus’s house, leaving their weapons outside where they were taken by women angered at being neglected; together they took their revenge by killing an decapitating Orpheus, his head and lyre cast into the ocean.  They drifted to the shores of Lesbos where the women accorded the remains funerary honors, accounting for why the island produces so many fine lyric poets.

Lindsay Lohan imagined with an orphic influence.

Despite this perhaps unpromising history, it was Orpheus who lent his name to the religious movement and school of philosophy.  So many of the details are lost to history that often it’s described as a “mysterious cult” but it was long-lasting and is regarded as the last truly Greek religion although modern scholars don’t doubt the foreign influences in its origin.  It was the tales of Orpheus using music to seduce the gods of the underworld that the critic and poet Guillaume Apollinaire recalled when in 19123 he first came upon Robert Delaunay’s canvases of swirling, colorful shapes, recalling in technique the works of the cubists yet unlike them, in mostly non-representational form.  The Orphists of Antiquity had believed it had been the art of music which had opened up one otherwise-inaccessible underworld and Apollinaire co-opted the name to describe the process (that does seem to be drawing a long bow) by which modern artists were borrowed elements from music and science to inject powerful sensation into painting.  One can argue with aspects of that but doubtlessly there was a contribution to the evolution of abstract art.

La Tour Eiffel (1911), oil on canvas by Robert Delaunay.

Orphic art is distinctive even now and must at the time have been striking, characterized by shapes rendered in color, often in spheres and other geometric forms, curves especially prominent.  Compositionally, the technique was to assemble these shapes in a way to encourage a viewer to sense a vibrating, lyrical harmony and Apollinaire regarded the pieces as essentially musical although he claimed their power was such they transcended any single art form.  The critic in him was also a structuralist who anticipated later writing by stating Orphism was “pure art” that had no need for any semblance of identifiable imagery; it was instead, “the pictorializing of light.”  Those last pre-war years were certainly a time of ferment in art and for more than a decade the cubists had been re-imagining and re-packaging space and perception.  Orphism might not be a fork of Cubism but the influence seem undeniable, the schools sharing the same interest in breaking down solid objects and challenging the traditional conceptions of space, volume, angle and even time.  What was most novel about orphism was the intrusion of those vivid, colors which could jar or sooth: color as a language of lyricism.

Rythme-couleur 1076 (1939), oil on canvas by Sonia Delaunay.

Delaunay genuinely was interested in the actual process of vision. While the point of Cubism was what people saw and what they thought about it, he focused on how the eye sees and what the brain does with the information to turn it into movement or music; his interest was the optical structure of vision and he never forgot the eye was an out-growth of the brain.  After all, once imagery is deconstructed, there is only color and light passing to the brain through the retina and from this information comes the instinctive or learned constructs of shape, texture, depth & time; something four dimensional from a two dimensional object.  That can of course be a quality of any painting but what Orphism attempted to do was add the fifth dimension of lyricism.  Sonia Delaunay outlived her husband by many decades and lived to see the influences of orphism incorporated into the orthodoxy of design, fashion and commercial art of all types, fields in which she would practice almost to her last days.  In that sense it was a success although that very absorption led some of the sterner (and usually more conservative) critics to claim it was a cul-de-sac, melting away to invisibility whereas movements like Cubism, Surrealism and even pop-art left motifs which endure to this day.  That seems a harsh and particularly reductive reductionism but it is possible to write a convincing history of twentieth century art without mentioning Orphism, whereas to ignore other movements which in their time created the same sort of stir would leave obvious gaps.  Perhaps it was a victim of the forces of its era and like vorticism, after World War I (1914-1918), it wasn’t what people wanted to see.

Prosaic

Prosaic (pronounced proh-zey-ik)

(1) Of writing or speaking, straightforward; matter-of-fact; lacking the feeling or elegance of poetry.

(2) Something commonplace or dull; matter-of-fact or unimaginative; overly plain, simple or commonplace, to the point of being boring.

(3) Of or having the character or form of prose, the ordinary form of spoken or written language, rather than of poetry (now of technical use only).

1650-1660: From the fifteenth century Middle French prosaïque and directly from the sixteenth century Medieval Latin prōsaicus (in prose), from the Classical Latin prōsa (prose), from prorsus (straightforward, in prose), from the Old Latin provorus (straight ahead), the construct being pro- (forward) + vorsus (turned), from vertō (to turn), from the primitive Indo-European wer- (to turn, to bend).  The original meaning was technical, distinguishing text as prose rather than poetry and in this sense was usually written as prosaicus (in prose).  The first hints of literary hierarchy were first noted in French in 1746 when used to contrast the “character” of prose in contrast to the “feeling” of poetry.  The sense of describing something ordinary or mundane first seen in French in 1813, a meaning soon adopted in English.  Prosaic & prosaical are adjectives, prosify is a verb, prosified & prosifying are verbs & adjectives, prosaicness is a noun and prosaically is an adverb.

Figurative use of poetic & prosaic:  Jaguar E-Type (XK-E, 1961-1974) (left) & Jaguar XJ-S (1975-1996) (right).  "Poetry in motion" is a cliché but when the E-Type first was seen, that was the phrase some journalists chose.

Whether Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) ever called the E-Type "the most beautiful car in the world" remains uncertain (though he certainly never issued a denial) but over the decades plenty have echoed the sentiment, sometimes using the phrase "poetry in motion".  By 1975, the world had changed and there were now rules with which to comply and although the XJ-S (later XJS) wasn't really a replacement for the E-Type, because of the timing, that was the basis on may of the early reports based at least some of their critique.  Dynamically, on about any objective measure, it was a better car than the E-Type but nobody is known to have claimed it was better looking and in some contemporary reviews, the styling was described as "prosaic".  It might have been more accurate to use the word "pragmatic" and the lines perhaps aged better than many at the time anticipated, the car in (almost) continuous production for over twenty years and the platform endured until 2006, providing the underpinnings for the first generation of Jaguar's XK8 (1996-2005) and the Aston Martin DB7 (1997-2004), both of which looked better than the XJ-S although neither matched the timeless E-Type.  Upon release, there was much comment about the styling lacking the appeal of the E-Type but the XJ-S was less a replacement than an entry into a new market segment, the anyway declining sports car segment abandoned.  Regarding its capabilities, the press were fair, one publication noting it was smooth, quiet and luxurious yet "capable of speeds that would have won a grand prix not 15 years ago".  That comparison was admittedly with Formula One's voiturette (1.5 litre, naturally aspirated) era but it was an indication that even in the troubled 1970s, there had been progress.   

1983 Jaguar XJ-S Lynx Eventer shooting brake.

What many regard as the best-looking XJS version were the "shooting brakes" (a kind of station wagon) made by specialist coach-builders, the best-known of which was the Lynx Eventer, 67 of which were made.  Critics at the time noted the rear treatment rendered a better balanced shape and much the same observation was made of the convertible (1988-1996) version (less so the SC "cabriolet" (1983-1988)).  Although the pre-war shooting brakes often were built for the HFS (hunting, fishing & shooting) set who needed space for shotguns, fishing rods, hunting hounds and such, in the 1980s they emerged in the niche of the "horsey" set although there was obviously appeal for those who liked the image even if they never sat in a saddle.  In naming the Eventer, Lynx may have had in mind the sport of "eventing", an equestrian sport in which a single horse & rider compete against others across the three disciplines of dressage, cross-country, and show jumping, the roots in the drills European armies conducted to ensure officers seeking a commission in the cavalry possessed the requisite skills.  Eventing has a reasonably impressive death toll of both riders and beasts but it continues to exert a pull with women especially drawn; that's not surprising because some girls fall in love with horses at pony club and never quite recover.

1986 "Daimler S Design Study".

The shooting brake coachwork eliminated the buttresses that were the design's most distinctive feature and interestingly, they were sacrificed also when the factory in 1986 undertook a “design-study” for a proposed "luxury version", to be sold as the “Daimler S”.  The shape was judged most pleasing, unlike the “Coupé” version of the Jensen Interceptor (1966-1976), a reputed 60 of which were built in 1975-1976.  Without the dramatically expansive rear window (nicknamed "the fishbowl"), the design didn't please many and it was later revealed that, struggling to recover from the mid-1970s recession and collapse in demand for big, thirsty cars (both a consequence of the first oil shock), the company had exhausted their supply of closed body shells so "cobbled together" a top to be attached to some of remaining convertible (1974-1976) bodies awaiting completion.  That's may account for why it looked like something of a design college project that may (generously) have been graded a "C-" but, approaching bankruptcy, Jensen was in its death throes.

The original Jensen Interceptor (1966-1976, left) "saloon" and the hastily improvised Coupé (1975-1976, right).  The vinyl glued to the roof didn't help and it was a difficult time for the dying company but Jaguar's execution of the same concept (add a roof to a convertible) on the one-off Daimler S was more accomplished.  Verging on the brutish, nobody ever called the Interceptor's lines "poetic" but the appeal has endured and even today there are companies offering "refurbishment packages" including modern power-trains and electronics.

One thing the Daimler S had in common with the unfortunate Interceptor Coupé was the project being relatively cheap to execute because much of the engineering work had already been done in creating open versions (a full convertible by Jensen; the “SC” version of the XJS with a Triumph Stag-like fixture atop).  Sales of the XJ-S SC were sufficiently encouraging for a team to be formed to produce a conventional convertible, one aspect of the project a removable hard-top (always a factory option for the smaller E-Type).  Because of the sheer size (and consequently weight) of such a structure, that proved unviable but, the styling done, the idea of a “notchback coupé” was explored, the “Daimler” brand available to enable the thing to be sold at a higher price.  The prototype Daimler S required more than welding on the aborted hard-top but not much more, the main differences the different rear-side windows and fluted fittings on the grill & trunk (boot) lid trim.  The planned interior fit-out (a more lavish use of timber veneers, carpet & leather) was never fitted to the prototype and wilder thoughts in the engineering office included AWD (all-wheel drive) but none of the speculation ever even reached the drawing boards.  The one-off Daimler S did get as far as US focus groups for "market reaction" to be assessed but it had the misfortune of being displayed with a prototype XJ-S convertible and while the response to the coupé was polite, the convertible was received with an enthusiasm matched by the US dealer network, none of whom needed a focus group to tell them where demand lay.  While the lines of neither the Lynx Eventer or Daimler S would be likely to attract the epithet "poetic", both shapes improved on the original.  

Prosaic is an example of the figurative adoption of a word with a precise technical meaning assuming such popularity that the original sense became relegated to specialists.  Once, any text not poetic was “prosaic” (ie “written in prose”), and this description denoted nothing negative; it was just a way of distinguishing between written forms, reflecting prosaic’s origins in the Latin prosa (prose).  However, by the seventeen century, poetry had come to be regarded as a most superior form of expression, considered more beautiful, imaginative, and emotional, prose relegated to the status of the mundane and procedural.  The figurative use evolved from this and prosaic came to be used to refer to anything thought ordinary or unimaginative including music, ideas, architecture, Jaguars etc.  The adjective thus transformed into a synonym for "colorless, drab, lifeless, lacklustre, humdrum, dull, pedestrian, unimaginative" etc and this resulted in phrases which once would have been thought bizarre or tautological: “prosaic poetry” & “prosaic prose”.  In its original technical sense (distinguishing the style of writing used for poetry from other literature), the word is now rarely used other than by those somewhere in the "literature business" and, even there, use can be challenging because of the implications of the modern sense(s).  Still, for those who wish to emphasise certain bad texts are worse even than others, the comparative is "more prosaic" and the superlative, "most prosaic".

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953, left) and his wife Caitlin Thomas (née Macnamara; 1913-1994, right) in the bar of Brown’s Hotel, Laugharne, Wales, 1938.

As the origin in the Latin prosa or pronersa oratio (straightforward discourse) suggests, “prose” is the language in its direct, unadorned form, flowing in the way of style(s) written or spoken in everyday life.  It differs from poetry or verse in not being restricted in rhythm, measure or rhyme although, in literary theory, there exists also “poetic prose” and the “prose poem”.  Literary theory however has, in the last sixty years-odd, constructed a large and sometimes bewildering array of technical terms and categories and the possible number of distinct prose forms may be close to limitless.  Poetic prose is prose which approximates to verse in the use of rhythm (perhaps even a kind of meter) in the elaborate and ornate use of language, and especially in the use of figurative devices like onomatopoeia, assonance and metaphor.  Except in experimental form, poetic prose usually is deployed only as a literary device, appearing in short works or in brief passages in longer pieces in order to achieve a (not always entirely clear) specific effect although the common element seems to be something like “an elevation of the emotional temperature”.  Authors interpolating passages of poetic prose have included Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)), Herman Melville (1819–1891), Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), James Joyce (1882–1941, whose use of poetic prose wasn’t always immediately accessible), Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and William Faulkner (1897–1962).  Classic examples of the “hybrid form” are sectionsof the narrator’s narrative in the radio play Under Milk Wood (1952) by Dylan Thomas (1914–1953).

The Collected Prose of T.S. Eliot (2024), in four volumes, edited by Archie Burnett.

A prose poem is a composition printed as prose but distinguished by elements common in poetry, such as often elaborately contrived rhythms, figures of speech, rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance, consonance and startling imagery.  In academic use, it’s the tragic and only posthumously recognized French proto-symbolist Aloysius Bertrand (pen name of Louis Jacques Napoléon Bertrand, 1807-1841) who is acknowledged as having introduced prose poetry to French writing and, more that others, it was him who (retrospectively) made it a fashionable sub-genre among the avant-garde, the seminal work being Gaspard de la Nuit-Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot (Gaspard of the Night-Fantasies in the Manner of Rembrandt and Callot, 1842), a collection of fantasies in the manner of the Dutch painter Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn; 1606-1669) and Jacques Callot (circa 1592–1635, a printmaker in the baroque style, born in the then independent Duchy of Lorraine).  Although it was the intricacy of the ornate and rhythmical language that contributed to the recognition of the prose poem as a literary form, upon publication, it made little impact and only later became influential though for more than a century it remained neglected in English.  When French critics finally took notice, the initial spread of the work owed much to the dazzling images, a number of which were, by the standards of the age, monumentally grotesque.  The influence on the French poet, essayist, translator and art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) was obvious in his Le Spleen de Paris (Paris Spleen, 1869 and better known by its subsequent title Petits Poèmes en prose (Little Poems in Prose)), a collection of 50 short prose poems and one of the building blocks of literary modernism.  The symbolist poets and surrealists also acknowledged a debt, as did T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) although his fork of modernism was so striking it seems almost unfair much to dwell on the precursors.

Lindsay Lohan, a poem by Amber Tambling, from the collection Dark Sparkler (2015).

Actress and author Amber Tamblyn (b 1983) solved the writer's dilemma about whether to handle the subject of Lindsay Lohan in prose or poetry by using no text at all.  The publisher HarperCollins described her third collection Dark Sparkler (2015) as a “…hybrid of poetry and art exploring the lives and deaths of actresses who began their careers as child stars.”  The book, which included original artwork by a number of artists, was well received, critically and commercially.  The title was well-chosen because Dark Sparkler was a catalogue of murder and suicide but what attracted much comment was the inclusion of one living soul: Lindsay Lohan, her entry (on page 47) blank but for her name as the title.  An author’s relationship ultimately is with their readers but first it’s with their critics and the response to that one proved it’s possible to deconstruct text even when it doesn’t appear.  As the postmodernists explained, even a blank page is "text" to be deconstructed to find meaning and should the conclusion be there is "no meaning", that too is "a meaning".  Whether fashionable or not, postmodernism made a contribution to literary criticism and remains available for readers to take from it what they will.  Some of the critical reaction to Ms Tambling's Lindsay Lohan was something in vein of those who approached John Cage’s (1912–1992) 4:33 (1952) in that, without much with which to work, the only obvious question seemed to be “What did you mean?”  Ms Tamblyn did say she found it “upsetting” when, after reading several of the poems dedicated to starlets who died young, she spoke the words “Lindsay Lohan” and the audience laughed; perhaps, in the age of the TikTokers she’d not now be surprised.  The poet claimed the inclusion of the piece in its unusual form was not to say “you’re next” but explicitly to avoid writing anything about a life in progress, the idea being Ms Lohan’s life was her own story to write.  Like any work of prose or poetry, page 47 was there for people to take from it what they found but presumably, the interpretative range might be wider than for those reading something like John Keats’ (1795-1821) ode To Autumn (1820).

Prose & poetry: shifting sensibilities

Products in the marketplace, prose and poetry are as subject to the whims of fashion as cars or frocks.  Some products fail while others succeed and that success may be fleeting or endure for generations but “success” is also nuanced, some items receiving critical acclaim but few sales while other are derided by the critics yet achieve either a brief or sustained popularity.  More intriguingly, some fade into obscurity for a century or more, only to be “re-discovered” by a new generation, often to enjoy a brief revival (as happens in fashion) or even enter the canon (as happened with the music of the Italian composer of the Baroque Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) who, neglected for centuries, gained recognition in the 1920s).  The trend of “coming and going” from favour is a feature of literature, partly explained by the use of language shifting, making something once accessible seem to new generations stilted and clumsy.  A handful of authors have benefited from this, William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) texts in many places needing explanatory notes yet valued as “period pieces”, the works surviving by virtue of timeless thematic power.  Similarly, were a modern author to adopt the style of Jane Austen (1775–1817) it would seem absurd but her writings remain valued because they’re imagined as “capturing the moment of their time” (although the evidence suggests even the subset of society she documented were likely in speech not often so precise).

Frontpiece for first edition of The Faerie Queene (1590).  It's an example of one of those works essential in the study of English literature yet now hardly read (at least by choice, students may find it imposed).

Even among professional critics, opinions will be divided, the English poet & satirist Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in his last days noting approvingly of Edmund Spenser’s (circa 1552-1599) Epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590-1596; some 35,000 lines in stanzas): “…there is something Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one’s old age as it did in one’s youth. I read the Faerie Queene when I was about twelve with a vast deal of delight; and I think it gave me as much when I read it over about a year or two ago.”  Although dutifully still acknowledged as Spenser’s magnum opus, it’s now read only by students of literary history or linguistics; it’s unlikely many of them go much beyond what they need for their purposes to extract because it’s so tiresomely archaic.  Even in the nineteenth century it was thought “hard work with not enough reward”, the Whig historian Thomas Babington “T.B.” Macaulay (1800–1859) in 1831 summing up: “Spenser, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make allegory interesting.  It was in vain that he lavished the riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the House of Temperance.  One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades the whole of The Faerie Queene.  We become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men and women.”  His call for modernism would within decades be answered and his view of the poem’s fate in the hands of readers would not differ greatly if written today:  Of the persons who read the first canto one in ten reaches the end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perseveres to the end of the poem.  Very few and very weary are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast.”  Even before TikTok, attention spans had shortened.

By the twentieth century, tastes certainly had shifted to prose that was punchier and conveyed meaning with less of the author’s display of erudition.  Writing of Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), the author and critic (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957; best remembered for his seminal contribution to short-lived Vorticist movement that was extinguished by the blast of World War I (1914-1918)) dismissed her prose as “…a cold, black suet-pudding.  We can represent it as a cold suet roll of fabulously reptilian length.  Cut it at any point, it is the heavy, sticky, opaque mass all through and all along . . . it is mournful and monstrous composed of dead and inanimate material.”  As Vorticism demonstrated, even in artful form, Lewis knew how to make meaning clear, but Stein may have had the last laugh, he mostly forgotten while she often still is referenced although that’s more for her place in the LGBTQQIAAOP pantheon than any literary contribution.

Portrait of Virginia Woolf (circa 1917), oil on canvas by Roger Fry (1866-1934).

Still, Gertrude Stein is at least remembered for something.  In the rich field of novelists with diminished reputations there’s no example better than the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), among the most widely read (to the bafflement of some critics) of the nineteenth century.  His legacy endures curiously in those he inspired (notably Jane Austen) but the wordy style didn’t survive the onset of modernity, E. M. Forster (1879–1970) in Aspects of the Novel (1927) finding him prolific yet slight, saying: “He is seen to have a heavy mind and a trivial style.  He cannot construct.  He has neither artistic detachment nor passion, only a temperate heart, gentlemanly feelings and an intelligent affection for the countryside; this is not basis enough for great novels.”  The English vicar John Skinner (1772–1839) made scant contribution to theology but is remembered as one of the amateur antiquarians and archaeologists England produced in the days of empire and his writings make clear he had the qualities of patience of perseverance demanded by all his callings.  He’d have needed both to plod through Scott’s The Black Dwarf (1816 and one of the “Waverley Novels”), Skinner noting in his diary in 1830: “…strive to amuse myself by reading novels and have finished that of the Black Dwarf by Sir Walter Scott.  I must be reduced to a sad state when I feel obliged to read such nonsense for a pastime.”  While unfair to suggest any connection, some years later, Skinner committed suicide, blowing his brains out with a shotgun.  Although still sometimes the subject of academic study (it transpired Scott’s texts were rich pickings for the deconstructionists of postmodernism), Scott is now little read although, counterintuitively, Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was a fan, in 1932 lamenting him as among the last to echo the Shakespearean style in dialogues: “We have lost the art of the poetic speech” she concluded.  When madness overtook her, Woolf chose a more romantic form of suicide.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

William Topaz McGonagall (circa 1825–1902) was a Scottish poet of Irish ancestry, now acknowledged as perhaps the worst poet ever to have been published in English, a fair achievement given the wealth of modern competition.  His best known work remains The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), lamenting the disaster of 28 December, 1879 when, during a severe gale, the central section of Dundee's Tay Rail Bridge collapsed, sending to their deaths in the freezing water the 80-odd souls aboard the Wormit-Dundee train passing at the time.  Regarded during its brief existence as a triumph of Victorian (1837-1901) engineering, the Tay Rail Bridge was nearly two miles (3.2 km) long and then the longest in the world but it had been built with an insufficient allowance for lateral wind-load, the structure that night succumbing to the gale-force winds estimated at 80 mph (130 km/h, 70 knots).  An enquiry was conducted and the designer, Sir Thomas Bouch (1822-1880) (dubbed a Knight Bachelor at Windsor Castle on 26 June, 1879 by Victoria (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) in recognition of the quick and economic construction of the bridge) was found for primarily responsible for the disaster.  His health suffered as a consequence of the event and within a year of the collapse, he was dead.

The Tay Bridge after the collapse (National Library of Scotland image).

Whether the The Tay Bridge Disaster can be said to be prosaic is debatable because there are probably better adjectives but critics have long been united that it's a very bad piece of poetry and it's doubtful a re-rendering in prose would be much of an improvement, one writing of it that McGonagall was “deaf to poetic metaphor, employing inappropriate rhythms that resulted in unintentionally amusing poetry.”  Said to be wholly oblivious to the invective almost universally directed to his oeuvre of over two-hundred pieces of verse, his sheer awfulness and tenacity caused him to be remembered to this day for at least something while countless poets who were merely earnest and competent are long forgotten.  Whether The Tay Bridge Disaster is the "worst ever" poem is up to readers but the problem with poetry is that its appreciation is a specific skill-set and not all possess the skill.  Were the critics to have praised the piece as a work or rare genius and pronounced it a masterpiece, many of us would have taken their word for it.

The Tay Bridge Disaster by William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”
 
When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”
 
But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.
 
So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.
 
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.