In the "Dedicatory Epistle" with which he prefaced the first volume of his Collected Poems in 1904, A. C. Swinburne laid down the law about poetic form. "Law," he proclaimed, "not lawlessness, is the natural condition of poetic life; but the law must itself be poetic and not pedantic, natural and not conventional." (1) This pronouncement asserts that poets are subject to some kind of law, a striking claim to make about the very poems that had shocked the reading public four decades earlier by violating poetic and social taboos. But Swinburne then qualifies the claim, invoking a Romantic tradition in which both law and poetry, two presumably conventional things, are alike "natural." He insists paradoxically that the law must bow to poetry, the thing that it is supposed to govern. At the very moment that he invokes the law, conjuring its existence for his reader, he also commands it, setting forth strictures about what it must do or, rather, what it must be. My main goal here, in exploring this paradoxical attitude, is to consider the way Swinburne's poetry and criticism together contribute to a larger nineteenth-century discourse in which poets, critics, and metrists sought to work out the laws of English verse both in theory and through practice. Unlike Kirstie Blair and Jason Rudy, who align Swinburne with a somatic or physiological understanding of meter, I pursue a less materialist approach here. (2) I argue that Swinburne's implicit metrical theory relies on a concept of law that extends, for him, from poetics to politics. Though my approach is primarily formal and contextual, I claim that for Swinburne form has wider implications. More specifically, the concept of law that grounds his poetic theory derives in part from the republican politics he espoused, while also gratifying the masochistic sexuality that his most recent biographer has characterized as "rooted in his temperament." (3) In Swinburne scholarship, the republican commitments and the sexual investments have generally been regarded as at odds with each other. Critics often proceed either by emphasizing the oppositional potentialities of his sexual politics at the expense of his republicanism or--less often--by isolating the republicanism from the eroticism. Richard Dellamora, in his study of Swinburne's sexual politics, dismisses the explicitly political, republican Songs before Sunrise (1871), the successor to Poems and Ballads (1866), as "disappointing." (4) Isobel Armstrong, responding primarily to Atalanta in Calydcm (1865) and Poems and Ballads, similarly argues that "the real political centre ... is in the poetry of desire, the consuming, exhausting desire, which needs to be ever stimulated and ever expanded." (5) More recently, Stephanie Kuduk Weiner has turned to Songs before Sunrise in her study of Swinburne as a republican poet, defending the book's aesthetic as well as political value by arguing that its poems enact formally the "republican aesthetic" that they articulate. (6) Julia F. Saville's account of Swinburne as a "cosmopolitan republican" stands as an exception to this tendency to cordon off the republican commitments from the eroticism, particularly in her superb reading of "Les Noyades." (7) I wish to bring these aspects of his work together at the level of poetic theory and form. I return to Poems and Ballads, which does not form a part of Kuduk's analysis, and to criticism Swinburne wrote in the 1860s, to argue that his prosodic theory and practice are partly grounded in his politics, represented by his admiration for Giuseppe Mazzini. I trace the implicit connections between the political, the aesthetic, and the erotic in poems that experiment with some form of the hexameter and in the criticism in which he comments on prosodical matters. What interests me is the way Swinburne's ideas about poetics, expressed in his criticism and enacted in his poetic practice, are inflected by both his political and his erotic investments. …

中文翻译：

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Hexametrists 中的斯威本

在 1904 年为他的诗集第一卷作序的“献身书信”中，AC 斯威本制定了关于诗歌形式的法则。“法律，”他宣称，“不是无法无天，是诗意生活的自然条件；但法律本身必须是诗意的而不是迂腐的，自然的而不是传统的。” (1) 这一声明断言诗人受某种法律的约束，这是对四年前因违反诗意和社会禁忌而震惊大众的诗歌做出的惊人声明。但是斯威本随后对这一主张进行了限定，援引了一种浪漫主义传统，在这种传统中，法律和诗歌这两种可能是传统的事物都一样是“自然的”。他自相矛盾地坚持认为，法律必须屈从于诗歌，即它应该统治的事物。在他援引法律，为他的读者召唤它的存在的那一刻，他也命令它，对它必须做什么，或者更确切地说，它必须是什么提出严格要求。在探索这种矛盾的态度时，我的主要目标是考虑斯威本的诗歌和批评如何共同促成一个更大的 19 世纪话语，在这个话语中，诗人、评论家和度量主义者试图在理论上和通过实践。与 Kirstie Blair 和 Jason Rudy 不同，他们将 Swinburne 与对米的身体或生理理解保持一致，我在这里追求的是一种不那么唯物主义的方法。(2) 我认为斯威本隐含的格律理论依赖于对他来说从诗学延伸到政治的法律概念。虽然我的方法主要是正式的和上下文的，我声称，对于斯威本形式具有更广泛的影响。更具体地说，作为他的诗学理论基础的法律概念部分源于他所支持的共和政治，同时也满足了他最近的传记作者将其描述为“植根于他的气质”的自虐性欲。(3) 在斯威本奖学金中，共和承诺和性投资通常被认为是相互矛盾的。批评家通常要么以牺牲他的共和主义为代价，要么强调他的性政治的对立潜力，要么——不经常地——将共和主义与色情隔离开来。理查德·德拉莫拉 (Richard Dellamora) 在他对斯威本 (Swinburne) 性政治的研究中，驳斥了《日出》(1871)、《诗与歌谣》(1866) 的继任者之前明确的政治共和歌曲，作为“令人失望”。(4) 伊莎贝尔·阿姆斯特朗 (Isobel Armstrong) 在 Calydcm (1865) 和 Poems and Ballads 中主要回应了亚特兰大，同样认为“真正的政治中心……是在欲望的诗歌中，是消耗性的、精疲力竭的欲望，需要不断地刺激并且不断扩大。” (5) 最近，斯蒂芬妮·库杜克·维纳 (Stephanie Kuduk Weiner) 在研究斯威本作为一名共和党诗人时转向了《日出之前的歌曲》，通过辩称其诗歌正式制定了他们所表达的“共和党美学”，从而捍卫了这本书的美学和政治价值。(6) 朱莉娅·F·萨维尔 (Julia F. Saville) 将斯威本 (Swinburne) 描述为“世界共和主义者”的描述是这种将共和主义承诺与色情隔离开来的倾向的一个例外，尤其是在她对“Les Noyades”的精彩阅读中。(7) 我希望在诗学理论和形式的层面上将他作品的这些方面结合起来。我回到《诗与歌谣》，它不构成库杜克分析的一部分，回到斯威本在 1860 年代所写的批评，论证他的韵律理论和实践部分基于他的政治，以他对朱塞佩·马志尼的钦佩为代表。我在试验六音阶的诗歌和他对韵律问题的评论中追溯了政治、美学和情色之间的隐含联系。我感兴趣的是斯威本关于诗学的思想，在他的批评中表达并在他的诗作实践中得到体现，并受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 我回到《诗与歌谣》（这不构成库杜克分析的一部分）和斯威本在 1860 年代所写的批评，论证他的韵律理论和实践部分基于他的政治，以他对朱塞佩·马志尼的钦佩为代表。我在试验六音阶的诗歌和他对韵律问题的评论中追溯了政治、美学和情色之间的隐含联系。我感兴趣的是斯威本关于诗学的思想，在他的批评中表达并在他的诗作实践中得到体现，并受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 我回到《诗与歌谣》（这不构成库杜克分析的一部分）和斯威本在 1860 年代所写的批评，论证他的韵律理论和实践部分基于他的政治，以他对朱塞佩·马志尼的钦佩为代表。我在试验六音阶的诗歌和他对韵律问题的评论中追溯了政治、美学和情色之间的隐含联系。我感兴趣的是斯威本关于诗学的思想，在他的批评中表达并在他的诗作实践中得到体现，并受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 争辩说他的韵律理论和实践部分基于他的政治，以他对朱塞佩·马志尼的钦佩为代表。我在试验六音阶的诗歌和他对韵律问题的评论中追溯了政治、美学和情色之间的隐含联系。我感兴趣的是斯威本关于诗学的思想，在他的批评中表达并在他的诗实践中得到体现，并受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 争辩说他的韵律理论和实践部分基于他的政治，以他对朱塞佩·马志尼的钦佩为代表。我在试验六音阶的诗歌和他对韵律问题的评论中追溯了政治、美学和情色之间的隐含联系。我感兴趣的是斯威本关于诗学的思想，在他的批评中表达并在他的诗作实践中得到体现，并受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 他的诗学思想在他的批评中表达并在他的诗歌实践中得到体现，受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。… 他的诗学思想在他的批评中表达并在他的诗歌实践中得到体现，受到他的政治和色情投资的影响。…