Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae

Hello! I thought I'd start this off with a poem; after a long think, I've chosen Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson. Dowson lived from 1867 until 1900, dying six months before his 33rd birthday. His death had followed a rapid decline in his mental and physical health, after his father and mother died in 1894 and 1895 respectively. He had become a Catholic in 1892, and as such was buried in a Catholic cemetery. He is probably best remembered for the all-consuming infatuation he seemed to develop with an eleven-year-old girl, Adelaide Foltinowicz. He unsuccessfully proposed to her four years after meeting her, and to his dismay she went on to marry a tailor.

Possibly the only photograph of him. Love those striped trousers, though.

He was part of the Decadent movement, whose other members included Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons and Lionel Johnson. They believed in following an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality over nature, and lived typically opulent and, well, decadent lifestyles. When Dowson died, Wilde said "Poor wounded wonderful fellow that he was, a tragic reproduction of all tragic poetry... he knew what love was".

He wrote this poem in 1894. Here it is:

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine

There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;

And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

    Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,

Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

    When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

    Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,

    Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Hopefully you've picked up the general theme of the poem - it is told from the perspective of a young man who has been spending his nights drinking, dancing, partying and seeing prostitutes. Yet, all the time, he cannot get the thought of Cynara, another woman, from his mind, not matter how hard he tries. In the end, he longs to be with her again, and insists that he has been true to her, in his own way - even if that way involved getting off with several other women. His point is that, emotionally, he has remained faithful, because she has supposedly loved her and only her the whole time.

The title comes from a line of Horace's Odes, Book IV, I, in which the speaker begs the Roman Goddess of Love, Venus, to free him from his erotic passion, because he is too old. At the end, he confesses he was fallen madly in love with Lignurius, a beautiful young man. You can read the whole poem in translation here: 

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceOdesBkIV.htm

Essentially, Dowson has taken one line from Horace and expanded upon it to give it a new meaning, but at the same time there are links between the two. The passion Horace attaches to Lignurius is the same as that which Dowson attaches to Cynara; one is yearning for someone from the past, the other for a new love. In classical mythology, Cynara (Latin for artichoke) was a beautiful maiden who lived  on the island of Zinari; she was found by Zeus, who fell in love with her at once and took her up to Olympus to be a Goddess. However, she missed Earth and made frequent visits home, but then Zeus found out, he was furious and turned her into an artichoke. Arguably this shows the same obsessive love as Dowson shows in Non Sum Qualis.

An interesting fact: the title for Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone Wth the Wind comes from the third stanza of this poem. She said she liked the "far away, slightly sad sound" of the line.

The poem is full of phrases indicating opulence and a wild lifestyle that was typical of young man in the 1890s, a time when prostitutes were commonplace, and wealthy young gentlemen lived pleasure-seeking lifestyles, sometimes - but not always - in the name of art. This theme is emphasised by the repetition of 'and' in 'the kisses and the wine' and 'madder music and for stronger wine', which indicate excess.  Such images of opulence are seen all across literature, but perhaps the most prominent example is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of its most famous lines comes at the start of Chapter III, describing Gatsby's parties in the Summer of 1925: "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars." The repetition of "and" in this line creates an image of excess that was so typical of the post-war era of the 1920s, just as it was in the 1890s, in its own way.

This whole exercise was mainly an excuse to discuss Gatsby and include this photo. You're welcome.

All the excessive lengths to which the speaker goes to wipe Cynara from his mind are depicted with emotive, almost violent, imagery: 'her bought red mouth' is a euphemism for a prostitute, and the red imagery is echoed in the next verse, 'flung roses, roses riotously with the throng'. You can see the speaker throwing bright red blooms all about him in a passionate, half-drunk frenzy, trying to forget everything and focus on the moment. But, of course, he cannot. Cynara's 'pale, lost lilies' contrast with the redness of the prostitutes (indicating the idea of a scarlet woman) and the parties. Cynara is pure, perfect, and utterly irresistible to the speaker, and he cannot forget her, even though he longs to do so. Each morning, when 'the dawn was grey' and 'the lamps expire', the sobering emptiness of the Morning After the Night Before come rushing at the speaker, and he is left feeling hollow, and wants to fill that hollowness with Cynara once again.

I love this poem. I love it for the same reasons I love The Great Gatsby; it is full of beautiful, intense descriptions of glorious indulgence and excess, but acknowledges the emptiness that such times bring when they are over. And that's something we can all relate to, in one way or another - whether we experienced something so wonderful we didn't want it to end, but it did, or we've tried to forget the sad things in our lives by attempting to enjoy ourselves for brief periods of time, but we couldn't. It's remarkable that such a notion has permeated the consciousness of people for centuries, and that Dowson managed to capture it over one hundred and twenty years ago in a way that is still relatable today.

I hope this entry has either introduced you to a new poem, or maybe helped you to understand or enjoy it more, or possibly helped you prepare for a poetry exam. If you have any poem, novel or writer you'd like to see on here, please let me know and I promise to get round to it in good time.

See you soon!