This week, a passionate cry for justice from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
'Write a nation's curse for me' ... Drawing of captives on a slave ship, c 1700. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) is often overlooked as a writer of political poetry. When that aspect of her work is considered, it's usually in connection with her passionate advocacy of the movement for Italian unification, the Risorgimento. But she had other important causes. She protested against child labour in Britain, and lent her voice to the Bostonian women's campaign for the abolition of slavery. (It's probably relevant that both her parents' families had considerable slave-owning interests in the West Indies.)
"A Curse for a Nation", written in 1854, is a simple, striking, three-part polemic against the continuing slave trade in America's Deep South. It begins with a Prologue, which records the summons to write. Barrett Browning overturns the tradition's trope: the poet is visited by a male angel rather than the muse. The nature of the commission is also unusual - to write a curse. Cora Kaplan's ground-breaking 1975 anthology of women's poetry, Salt and Bitter and Good, takes its title from the angel's description of "A curse from the depths of womanhood".
The poem was a response to the infamous proposal to annex Cuba as a slave state - by force if necessary. It was published in Boston in the 1855 edition of the radical Christmas annual, The Liberty Bell, and went on sale at the "anti-slavery bazaar" organised by Maria Weston Chapman, where it fetched up on a table selling 19th century Boston's equivalent of "fine knacks for ladies" - cloaks, cuffs, purses, inkstands, etc.
I found it exciting, when the poet was "rediscovered" by feminist academics in the early 70s, to read the verse novel Aurora Leigh for the first time and realise that Barrett Browning was a vastly more interesting and intellectually challenging poet than the "little Portugese" (Robert's nickname) of the love sonnets, From the Portugese. The political verse has been a more recent discovery for me. Some of it tends to melodrama, but I rather admire the unembellished punchiness of "A Curse for a Nation".
"The Curse" which follows the Prologue is not literally a curse, of course, though it clearly expresses the belief that slavery and those who promote it are accursed. The insistently hammered-out refrain ("This is the curse. Write.") seems to add a further message of its own. The power of transformation doesn't reside in cursing. It lies in moral argument. The resonant imperative, write, addresses the poet's sister-campaigners, surely, rather than the slave-owners and the opponents of abolition. And, of course, it's the political poet's necessary "memo to self". Read more about the poem's history here - including an additional stanza from the original text.
A Curse for a Nation (Prologue)
I heard an angel speak last night
And he said 'Write!
Write a nation's curse for me
And send it over the Western sea.'
I faltered, taking up the word:
'Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.
'For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.'
'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse to night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.'
'Not so,' I answered. 'Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land's sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:
'For parked-up honours that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:
'For love of freedom which abuses
Beyond the straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest and suspicion:
For an oligarchic parliament,
And bribes well-meant.
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?'
'Therefore', the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse tonight.
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.'
'Not so,' I answered once again.
'To curse, choose men.
For I, a woman, have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.'
'Therefore,' the voice said, 'shalt thou write
My curse tonight.
Some women weep and curse, I say
(And no-one marvels) night and day.
'And thou shalt take their part tonight,
Weep and write.
A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt, and bitter, and good.'
So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed,
What all may read.
And thus, as was enjoined on me,
I send it over the Western sea.
The CurseI.Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation's height,
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others, - for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.
Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of freedom's foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time
On writhing bond-slaves, - for this crime
This is the curse. Write.
Because ye prosper in God's name
With a claim
To honour in the old world's sight,
Yet do the fiend's work perfectly
On babes and women - for this lie
This is the curse. Write.
II.Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people's smouldering fire,
And warm for your part,
Shall never dare - O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.
We shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death;
And only under your breath
Shall favour the cause.
This is the curse. Write.
Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak;
And, counting the sin for a sin,
But your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.
When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge His elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound the tramp of a foe
That's driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.
When wise men give you their praise,
They shall praise in the heat of the phrase,
And sicken afar;
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.
When fools write taunts on your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o'er the wall;
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.
Go! while ill deeds shall be done,
Plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of the witnessing Universe
With a curse of yours.
THIS is the curse. Write.
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