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Porphyro and Madeline: The Epilogue By Byron

“Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see…”

—John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes”

_A long, hard gallop brought them to the coast;
_They bribed a captain bound for northern Crete
_To stow them in his vessel’s hold. A host
_Of troubles plagued the voyage: hunger, heat,
_Discomfort, mal de mer, and a complete
_Absence of any well-considered plan
_For living in a world that was replete
_With boorish types who, almost to a man,
Showed not a whit of interest in their love’s élan.

_Ashore at Candia, in one hectic week
_They managed to pick up a smattering
_Of low demotic Turkish, slangy Greek,
_And merchants’ lingua Franca. Everything
_They had was bartered, pawned, or sold to bring
_Money for food and lodging in a town
_That saw them as mere transients, no ring
_On either’s finger. Soon each tradesman’s frown
Grew deeper with the tatters on poor Madeline’s gown.

_Candia swarmed with sailors, steerage, slaves;
_The streets were hot with wine and whores and dice;
_Porphyro thought of home, where hardened knaves
_Could not conceive a tenth of Cretan vice.
_Hunger, however, is not over-nice
_In its insistent pleadings, and at last
_All starving people find they have a price.
_Though principles in solid bronze be cast
No belly can endure for long a total fast.

_They met an old bawd—Angela by name—
_A fat Venetian bona roba who
_With practiced eye judged Madeline’s trim frame
_As just the bait to lure a salty crew
_Of mariners on shore-leave to her stew.
_She took them in, restyled the girl’s long hair,
_Gave Porphyro a shave, and scrubbing too,
_Then fed and clothed and counselled the young pair,
And Madeline she christened as “Colette the Fair.”

_At first it was not easy. Madeline
_Despised the vulgar, loutish, grunting set
_Of males she had to do with, but in time
_Habits hardened. Porphyro would fret
_When drunken toasts were bawled to “sweet Colette”
_Yet soon he grew accustomed to the ways
_Of a port’s easy virtue, and he’d get
_Clientele from taverns, inns, and quays
To “find relief at Angela’s”—or some such phrase.

_All three prospered in their furtive trade,
_And when old Madame Angela was dead
_She left the business to her favorite jade,
_The capable Colette, who, being head,
_No longer dealt with customers. Instead
_She trained prospective girls in coquetry
_And tricks of pleasure. Porphyro (’tis said)
_Took to religion in old age, and he
Died with his hands entangled in a rosary.

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Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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26 Responses

  1. Paul A. Freeman

    A great mix of classic and colloquial language brings this tale to life.

    My fave lines: ‘They managed to pick up a smattering / Of low demotic Turkish, slangy Greek, / And merchants’ lingua Franca’.

    Perfect length to hold the reader’s attention and yet detailed enough to educate and show off the author’s poetic worth.

    Thanks for the read, Joseph.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Paul. I had to mention the mix of languages that would have been spoken on Crete at the time — Greek from its ancient history, Turkish from its Ottoman rulers, and the Mediterranean’s “lingua Franca” (a hodgepodge of French, Italian, Maltese, Spanish, and God knows what else, used as a business idiom in coastal areas).

      Reply
  2. Julian D. Woodruff

    Very impressive, Joseph. I am now doing initial editing on my own narrative, which uses precisely the rhyme formula you adopt (but with no accented line beginings, and allowing 6 or so unaccented line endings), and have struggled no end to adhere to the formula without either straying from the narrative course or stretching for rhymes. In your hands such an assignment seems as easy as it does for Keats and Shelley. Further, your telling is most engrossing and imaginative. (Obviously, and characteristically, you had no worries about what Keats would have done.) Congratulations on a brilliant piece of work!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Julian. I avoided feminine endings because I wanted the poem to have a racy tone, and because the lines are heavily enjambed. A major concern was to make the text sound like it was written by Lord Byron, and to have Byron “puncture” a Romantic bubble. Believe it or not, when I read this piece at a poetry gathering some years ago, some diehard fans of Keats and the Romantics berated me for my “lack of reverence.”

      Reply
  3. Brian Yapko

    Joe, what a tour de force of sophisticated poetic skill and sensibility! To take a classic and complex Keats piece like The Eve of St. Agnes and then “complete” it in the style of Lord Byron is an extremely ambitious endeavor – one which you pull off with great aplomb. A poem like this opens up so many creative possibilities – building on the Classical tradition by crafting sequels of existing works, or by borrowing a great poet’s style and/or sensibility. This is not per se a new idea. I’ve seen many a variation on William Blake’s The Tyger or poets who try to imitate the style of Keats or Byron or Tennyson or Pope. But such pieces are usually either so derivative or clumsy that it is difficult to admire them. In contrast, your epilogue (which strikes me as more of a “sequel”) to the Eve of St. Agnes is so successful as to defy any trivializing of the effort. It does not stand alone since it relies so heavily on Keats, but it nonetheless succeeds in building a beautiful edifice of its own. A slightly disconnected and shocking sequel which still works – in metaphorical terms rather like I.M. Pei’s pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre. Or, perhaps, those Medieval Cathedrals begun in 1250 but not completed until the 19th Century with unexpected Renaissance, Rococo and neo-Gothic elements added to the original concept.

    It would be overly simplistic to interpret your piece as mere satire – yes, it’s funny. And it shocks the sensibilities by imagining a career of prostitution and pandering for beloved romantic characters. And yet it is more. It is deeply entertaining in the same picaresque way that Candide or Tom Jones are. You are actually making points regarding human nature that are valid and compelling. You’ve changed Keats’ tone without changing genres. It is no longer the Gothic, slightly claustrophobic piece Keats wrote. Here is where Byron comes in. You’ve opened it up, you’ve propelled us from the greyness of England to sunny Crete – the sultry Mediterranean and clear Byronic territory — where people speak Greek and Turkish and where morals more easily relax. And it is here that our lovers play out their second act.

    And what a second act! You turn all romantic notions on their head as you move the characters forward into unexpected, more world-weary directions. And yet, although you describe dire circumstances, there’s little that’s sad about this. Yes, poverty brings Madeline and Porphyro into extreme circumstances so that Madeline ends up prostituting herself (an interesting echo of Cunegonde in Candide.) But sometimes one must shrug and get on with things. And note the “professional” name you chose for Madeline. Colette – an exotic and no-doubt elegant-sounding name in coarse Crete. Not all readers may know that Colette was the nom de plume of a 20th Century French author of a novella about a would-be courtesan named “Gigi.” This became the basis for the famous Lerner & Loewe musical. A lovely echo here.

    The second act that you envision for Madeline and Porphyro is cynical yet good-natured. I’m reminded a bit of Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” where Act II takes familiar fairytale characters and drops them into an “ever after” they could not possibly have desired or anticipated. Compromises are made as is inevitable in life.

    And you do an interesting thing with the character of Angela. You create the madam of a brothel who happens to bear the same name as the maid/friend character in the Keats original. A nice way of rounding out and formalizing your amusing inversion of characters while at the same time fleshing out the full implications of the challenged morals of these star-crossed lovers. Angela is like that actress who plays a dual-role in a play or movie.

    This poem is so much fun one almost forgets to note the mechanics of it. Spenserian stanzas just like the Keats original. Delightful rhymes and delight in the unexpected down to the apparent remorse Porphyro experiences at the end of his life. After making a bundle.

    Joe, I apologize for writing such a long comment but I have two quick additional points to make. First, the length of your piece. You clearly could have gone into exhaustive detail in this poem and made it as long as Keats’ original. That you exercised restraint indicates that you understood that there is great danger when an author overloads a form with too much material. Getting it right-sized is essential. You succeed in this admirably. Always leave them wanting more rather than wishing it was over already.

    The second quick point: poets and authors need not worry unduly about creating material which is inspired by characters in old poetry or Shakespeare plays or the like. Given their age, copyright concerns are moot. I do not support plagiarism in any form. But there is no reason not to build or improvise on stories or characters by Shelley or Chaucer or Daniel Defoe. Not only is it permitted – it can be great fun.

    I could keep going, Joe, but I have taxed your patience enough. Suffice it to say, this is a rollicking, sophisticated, entertaining poem which should be studied with the original. A delight from start to finish.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, I never thought that any reader would catch those sly allusions to “Angela” in the Keats poem, and to the “Colette” of the “Gigi” story. The angelic name of Angela was perfectly ironic for a whorehouse madam, and since Colette’s novella is about a girl being trained as a high-class courtesan, that name was just right for a Madeline who is being prepared for a new career.

      Your perceptions always go right to the heart of what I have intended. I wanted a comic, picaresque, down-to-earth, unidealistic poem in the voice of a rakehell sensualist like Byron who comments sardonically on what things happen to people in real life. A young couple can fall madly in love, elope, and dash off to a foreign place, as Keats describes. But how will they live? What will their income be? How will others regard them? These are the sort of questions that Sancho Panza would have asked Don Quixote, and that never can be answered by a Romantic or a dreamer.

      And it’s true that I do not look at this poem as a satire primarily, but as an entertaining afterthought. It is not about real persons, but fictional characters, while satire tends to be more closely connected with the real world and individuals. If my poem satirizes anything, it is dreamy Romanticism, Schillerian idealism, and moral “Uplift,” as Mencken expresses it.

      And I did keep the thing to a manageable length. I have always tried to follow the maxim of an ancient Greek poet of the Alexandrian period, who said “Mega biblion, mega kakon.” That means “a big book is a big evil.” And yes, of course there are many honorable exceptions to that.

      Thank you again for your very insightful and appreciative comments.

      Reply
      • Brian Yapko

        Joe, a couple of thoughts in response to your reply. First, on the issue of the “anti-romanticizing” the fate of Keats’ lovers — there were two ways you could have run with this: the picaresque, unjudgmental way you wrote your epologue; or you could have turned it full tragedy, like the story of Fantine in Hugo’s Les Miserables. But to score your point regarding the compromises people must make in life, you chose by far the more effective tone. And it’s indeed a marvel of tone — a light touch which does not moralize or condemn but which does not exactly endorse or praise either. When it comes to moral issues — as in your Aphrodiac or the Contract Murder — you are particularly adept at detachment — at not injecting your morals into the piece.

        As for the subject of literature being “right-sized” — I agree that there are many honorable exceptions to the idea works should not be overlong. My point is that the subject matter must be sufficiently weighty to justify a weighty form. A war is a good subject for an epic. The death of a hamster probably would not be. This consideration regarding the corrolation between gravity of subject and weight of form is the very reason why something mock-heroic like The Rape of the Lock is funny. This idea of proportionality is central to the success of satire.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Dear Brian —

        You’re absolutely correct. A judgmental or condemnatory response to the actions of the two characters would have been a poetic disaster, and would have turned the piece into one of those monitory sermons or homilies about the need to follow scriptural guidelines. Moral judgments are poison in poetry, and they turn readers off — except when they are being used in the savage attacks of satire or lampoon that readers find exciting.

        All I wanted to do in this poem is show what Porphyro and Madeline MIGHT have done when their money ran out. Madeline became a courtesan, and Porphyro became her pimp. The art of the piece lay in my attempt to put the story into the sardonic language of the great Byron, one of the contemporaries of Keats.

  4. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Dr. Salemi, Brian cornered the market on comments praising your poetic genius. I can do no less than echo his substantial contribution and add my highest regards for the brilliance of your intellectual overture.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, LTC Peterson. I’ve written many poems, but this one has always been one of my favorites.

      Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, James. Bleak, yes — as all of our human compromises are.

      Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    I simply love this stark, dark, witty and gritty counterpoint to Keats’ fairytale ending. To me it speaks boldly and unsettlingly with its striking Byronic flourish, offering some bawdy, far-from-romantic twists with poetic panache. I love the way it takes lovey-dovey ideals and peels off their surface veneer… brutally and beautifully. I especially like the very real and very raw view of a “happy ending” in the closing stanza. Joe, thank you!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Susan. I certainly did want to make the poem “bawdy” and “far from romantic,” as you say. It wasn’t that I don’t appreciate the original Keats poem, but that I wanted a less ethereal and more incarnational view of a love relationship, even if it winds up in a bawdy house. I had to turn to Lord Byron for the proper voice and style.

      Reply
  7. Drilon Bajrami

    Joe, while I have no familiarity with the canon of the Keats’ poem, when it comes to the objective quality of poetry, you always write it splendidly. I enjoyed the poem’s narrative along with its metre and rhymes, which always adds an enchanting element to poetry that freeverse lacks. I guess I’ll have to add “The Eve of St. Agnes” to my ever-growing list of poems to read.

    I was agrieved last week when I sat down to read “The Pearl” by the Gawain poet, a translation recommended by Evan, only to find a broken link. Finding quality translations that are true to the poetics of the canon it’s translating is difficult in the age of freeverse. To this day, Albania’s Shakespeare/Goethe, Gjergj Fishta, is only poorly translated to English, with no metre and no rhymes, despite him writing his poems very formally. One day, I will undertake this endeavour. (My Albanian definitely needs some work first though!)

    Thousands of years of brilliant poets writing brilliant poems but so little time to read them all — alas! (At least I can skip the freeversists!)

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Drilon, there is an old English folk belief that a girl will dream of her future husband if she performs certain rituals and says certain prayers before going to bed on the Eve of St. Agnes’s Day.

      Keats wrote a long poem about how a girl did this, but during the night a young man who loved her showed up in her bedroom posing as the vision of her future husband, and he eventually convinced her to run away with him. The poem is really about the interplay of fantasizing or dreaming with the demands of actual, living reality. The theme is very typical of Romanticism.

      Keats was a brilliant poet, but unfortunately he died very young.

      It is hard to find a satisfactory translation of “The Pearl” by the Gawain poet, because the dialect of the poem is very old and obscure, and much of the narrative is filled with theological complexity.

      Reply
      • Drilon Bajrami

        I see, thanks for elucidating the plot of the narrative, now your poem makes more sense, too. I just Googled Keats and he died very young, indeed, only 25 years old. Incredible what he already achieved at that age, if only he had more decades to keep on developing. Byron also died pretty young, 36, and he’s my personal favourite when it comes to English poets. I’m grateful we have their poetry to still enjoy.

        I think Evan recommended the Sophie Jewett translation, as it’s the only one where I can confirm the translation uses metre and rhyme and attempts to also have the alliteration of the original, too. It excites me that you say the poem has theological complexity, as that adds even more value and meaning to the poem.

        I think I need to start to read some Kierkegaard (I’ve already watched lectures on him), as I want to read philosophy that I might not agree with completely, and not being Christian, he fits. I also tried some Alucin of York (read a few pages of one of his books), and I think I’ll be avoiding Christian monks! I like my philosophy to have more range than how best to worship God!

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        The main theological concern of the “Pearl” poem is whether baptized Christian children who die very young, before reaching the age of reason, can achieve salvation. The question is this: if they had never been exposed to religion, and had never learned to distinguish right from wrong, and had never prayed or done good work pleasing to God, how could they receive a reward in heaven? The answer is this: these innocent children are saved by right, since they have committed no sin at all.

      • Drilon Bajrami

        I would agree with that, the innocent children shouldn’t be punished for something that is out of their control, like getting a disease and dying. I wonder what the Gawain poet would think about a child dying before their baptism, such as complications from their birth.

        And what do you personally think would happen to someone living in the deepest, most remote corners of the jungles of the Congo, who’s never heard of Christ or Christinaity, if they’ve lived a good and “moral” life, let’s say? There’s no common consensus from the little research I’ve done but I think it would be equally harsh to punish those people, too.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Theologians have debated these questions for centuries. Some believed that any non-baptized person would be necessarily damned, even infants. Others felt that if such a person was a non-Christian due to “invincible ignorance” (as you describe a person living in a time or place where he could never even hear of Christianity), he would be judged by God according to some other standard.

        Others spoke of something called “the Baptism of Desire,” which meant that the person sincerely desired to be baptized, but happened to die before it could be done. Such a person would be assumed to have been baptized, but like anyone else he would be judged based on his deeds in life.

        St. Thomas Aquinas taught that an unbaptized person (any non-Christian or pagan) was given a choice when he reached the age of reason and accountability (around 5 to 7 years of age). God would present him with a clear moral choice for good or for evil. If the child chose for good, he would thereby receive the Baptism of Desire, and would be accepted as a member of Christ’s Body (the Church), no matter what religion he happened to practice. Of course, like everyone else, at his death he would be judged by the deeds he had done.

    • Margaret Coats

      Drilon, let me recommend to you “Pearl” superbly translated by Simon Armitage. Since I believe you are in the UK, take a look at Waterstones, where it was overstocked, with copies selling not long ago for a few pounds. Or try a used book shop. Though Armitage is Poet Laureate with many published books, none can match his “Pearl.” It is true to the medieval stanza form and stylistic devices. That should encourage you about translating Gjergi Fishta. The quality of the original matters greatly.

      Even with Armitage’s fairly clear modern English, it is difficult to understand “Pearl” because of deep multiple layers of emotion and theology, much of it expressed in symbol. Joseph Salemi is correct that the grieving father who has lost a two-year-old daughter at first has doubts of her salvation. But the intelligent, articulate beauty he meets in his dream vision (who turns out to be his daughter) shows him he should have known better. Extreme grief made him doubt, and wish his baptized child to be alive again with him, while she now enjoys a spiritual nature he cannot imagine. One of the themes of the work is the greatness of sacramental baptism. It is not just a purifying necessity for salvation (though that is Catholic teaching). It creates what is called a sacramental “character” in the soul of the person baptized (those who theorize “baptism of desire” acknowledge that it is a poor substitute without the sacramental character). The Pearl Poet doesn’t discuss this in theological terms, but sure as heaven, he has the Pearl, recognized at last by her father, give a patient, lengthy discourse displaying supernatural wisdom and knowledge. The father is overwhelmed with love for her and tries to cross the stream between them–which causes him to lose the dream vision because he is still only mortal. Many difficulties plague him (her appearance not corresponding with her age at death, the inability of anyone to see the soul of another and its spiritual state, before or after death, and the great metaphysical divide between the living and the dead). “Pearl” demands a worthy reader!

      Reply
  8. C.B. Anderson

    You are a wicked man, Joseph, with a wickedly sharp mind and an acute understanding of what goes into a good poem and what, perforce, should come out of one. I’ve been waiting a long time for this one.

    Reply
  9. Joseph S. Salemi

    Thank you, Kip. I try not to be too wicked in my personal behavior, but in poetry wickedness is as essential as lubricant in a V-8 engine.

    Reply
  10. Margaret Coats

    Joe, your Byronic story translates the Keats romantic escapade into practicality. It is sad for loss of love–but that could be expected either way (Byronic or postmodern) as the enamored young couple ages. I agree with Brian Yapko and yourself that you do well to keep the account of aging brief and focused on necessity in the new environment. Madeline loses her identity and takes on that of Colette, getting beyond her dislike of prostitution to become a successful businesswoman. Porphyro has a part in the business at first, but turns out to be an unnecessary male, ultimately turning to religion. I am intrigued by “entangled in a rosary” because I recall George Sand’s Lelia, where someone gets strangled by a rosary in a passionate murder at the end. I was unimpressed by the poverty of Sand’s plot, and according to the comp lit prof, Sand added the strangling in a later edition to increase transgressiveness in a novel where the main attraction was transgression so redundant as to be boring. My point of view, that is. The novel was quite successful at the time, and must have been considered one of Sand’s best for it to be re-read in this graduate course. Just wondered if you know of it. I am impressed by the quality of your plot in quickly and capably sketching this Byronic outcome for Keats’s young lovers.

    Reply
  11. Mary Jane Myers

    Joseph

    Bravo! This poem is both energetically erudite and wickedly witty. In one of my reading groups, we hacked our way through the rollicking Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the extrovert Byron’s “resurrection” of Spenserian stanza form in 1812. The introvert Keats then used the form in 1820, with his lushly romantic Eve of St. Agnes. You have combined the two very different personalities: Keats, so swoonily sweet, now with his tale’s “epilogue” as told by Byron, so obnoxiously transgressive. The Byron persona takes over with an outrageous “what really happened afterward” (wink, wink!) poem, utilizing a perfect rendition of the meter and rhyme of the Spenserian form.

    (Note: Five years ago, I attempted a poem in this form. It’s tricky—so many “b” rhymes, so little time!—and that extra iamb in the final “c” rhyme line—in short, my attempt was feebly mediocre!).

    My favorite phrases (and there are so many!):
    showed not a whit of interest in their love’s elan;
    of low demotic Turkish, slangy Greek;
    the streets were hot with wine and whores and dice;
    though principles in solid bronze be cast no belly can endure for long a total fast;
    despised the vulgar, loutish, grunting set;
    took to religion in old age, and he died with his hand entangled in a rosary. (Note: The rosary is from 1208, so your reference is genuinely “medieval”–but don’t forget the “brown scapular!—its genesis supposedly in 1251—so Porphyro might have known about it!–more powerful even than the rosary on a deathbed!)

    Simply mah-velous: and you need to include this one in your next collection!

    Sincerely
    Mary Jane

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Dear Margaret and Mary Jane —

      Thank you both for your kind comments and insightful perceptions. I’m answering you together because you have both brought up the image of Por- phyro’s rosary beads, which are entangled in his hands at his death.

      This image is partially an allusion to the character of “The Beadsman” in the original poem by Keats — that is, a chantry-pensioner who is paid to pray for others (usually deceased, but sometimes living). In the Keats poem he is an old man, and he appears at the very start of the poem and also at the end. Here are those lines:

      Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
      His rosary…

      The Beadsman, after countless Aves told,
      For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.

      My parallel image of Porphryo dying with his rosary beads entangled in his hands is a bow to this figure, who is also dead at the closure of the Keats poem. I have not read George Sand’s Lelia, so nothing from that novel was in my mind when I wrote my poem.

      Note that Keats uses the verb “to tell” when referring to the saying of the prayers in a rosary. This was the older English idiom for the act – “to tell one’s beads.” It even appears in a nursery rhyme about Robin Hood:

      Robin Hood, Robin Hood, telling his beads,
      All in the greenwood, among the green leaves.

      The brown scapular is indeed medieval, and would not have been anachronistic if Porphyro had it. But Keats was Protestant by birth, and I don’t think he knew about that small sacramental. The rosary, however, was very widely known even among non-Catholics.

      Thank you both again for your appreciative remarks.

      Reply

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