Alice Meynell (1847-1922)Essayiste et poétesse britannique. La poésie, les essais et les articles journalistiques d'Alice Meynell firent d'elle l'écrivaine la plus connue du XIXe siècle. Elle fut également une suffragette active.
Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson est née à Barnes, (Londres) mais passa son enfance en Italie, où elle fut éduquée par son père. Sà mère était une pianiste de concert, et sa soeur devint la fameuse peintre militaire Elizabeth Butler. En 1872, elle se convertit au catholicisme. Son premier livre de poésie, Preludes, fut publiée en 1875 et louangée par les critiques aussi éminents que John Ruskin et George Eliot.
En 1877, elle épousa Wilfrid Meynell, un journaliste, avec lequel elle eut huit enfants. Ensemble, les Meynells éditèrent plusieurs magazines, notamment le Catholic Weekly Register (1881-95) et le mensuel Merry England (1883-95). Alice Meynell écrivit aussi pour ces publications ainsi que pour d'autres revues telles que le Pall Mall Gazette, pour lequel elle rédigea une chronique hebdomadaire en 1894, et devenant son critique d'art de 1902 à 1905. À cette époque, elle était engagée activement dans le mouvement des suffragettes.
Sa poésie délicate, qui ressemble à celle d'Elizabeth Barrett Browning et de Christina Rossetti, parut en volumes en 1893, 1896, 1902, et 1917.
Tiré de : The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women, © Market House Books Ltd 1998. Tous droits réservés.
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide :
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all
The innumerable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul !
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The myriad forms of God those stars unroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.Alice Meynell, tiré de The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917)
The Poet sings to her Poet
As the full moon shining there
To the sun that lighteth her
Am I unto thee for ever,
O my secret glory-giver !
O my light, I am dark but fair,
Black but fair.
Shine, Earth loves thee ! And then shine
And be loved through thoughts of mine.
All thy secrets that I treasure
I translate them at my pleasure.
I am crowned with glory of thine.
Thine, not thine.
I make pensive thy delight,
And thy strong gold silver-white.
Though all beauty of mine thou makest,
Yet to earth which thou forsakest
I have made thee fair all night,
Day all night.Alice Meynell, tiré de Later poems (1902)
Références :
- The Poems of Alice Meynell (1923) : http://poetry.elcore.net/CatholicPoets/Meynell/index.html
- Academy of American Poets - Alice Meynell : https://poets.org/poet/alice-meynell
- Poetry Foundation - Alice Meynell : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-meynell
- Alice Meynell Poems : https://mypoeticside.com/poets/alice-meynell-poems
- Poem Hunter - Alice Meynell : https://www.poemhunter.com/alice-meynell/
- All Poetry - Alice Meynell : https://allpoetry.com/Alice-Meynell
- Alice Meynell : https://pennyspoetry.fandom.com/wiki/Alice_Meynell
- Books by Meynell, Alice : http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/546
Bibliographie :
- Badeni, June, Alice Meynell : A Life (1981)
- Halladay, Jean R, Eight Late Victorian Poets Shaping the Artistic Sensibility of an Age Lewiston (1993)
- Hamilton, G. R., Poetry Review, 38 (1947) : 325-30
- Kaplan, Cora, Salt and Bitter and Good: Three Centuries of English and American Women Poets (1975)
- Meynell, Sir Francis, "Address at the Poetry Society Celebration for the Alice Meynell Centenary", Poetry Review 38 (1947) : 477-85.
- Meynell, Viola, Alice Meynell : A Memoir (1929)
- Meynell, Wilfrid (ed.), Alice Meynell (1926)
- Moeyes, Paul, "The Eye of the Whirlwind : The Poetry of Alice Meynell" Neophilologus 80:1 (1996) : 149-58.
- Schlack, Beverly Ann, "The Poetess of Poets : Alice Meynell Rediscovered", Women's Studies 7 (1980) : 111-26.
Oeuvres :
- Preludes (1875)
- Poems (1893)
- The Rhythm of Life (1893)
- Other Poems (1896)
- The Colour of Life (1896)
- The Children (1897)
- London Impressions (1898)
- The Spirit of Place (1899)
- Later Poems (1902)
- Ceres Runaway (1909)
- Ten Poems (1913-15)
- Poems on the War (1916)
- A Father of Women (1917)
- Hearts of Controversy (1917)
- Second Person Singular (1921)
- Last Poems (1923)
- Collected Poems (1940)
- Prose and Poetry : a centenary selection (1947)
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