Author Archives
Dr Michael Craske is a senior lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. He researches transgressive poetics, music, aesthetics, and perhaps transgressive anything (but mainly Swinburne, Wagner, and T. S. Eliot). He was once involved in diplomacy, of a Middle Eastern kind...
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‘The Music of the Venusberg: Richard Wagner and the poetry of Arthur Symons’
‘Sin was with us in my rooms; the Flesh was with us always; the Arch-demon arose from Hell whenever I evoked him and certainly my Venus and I came near, night after night, afternoon after noon, hell’s mouth. There, after… Read More ›
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‘“A Genius for Inaccuracy”: Edmund Gosse and the case of Swinburne’s missing “Ear”’
My essay on Edmund Gosse’s malign influence on Swinburne studies, both biographical and critical, is now available on the website of the International Walter Pater Society. ‘“A Genius for Inaccuracy”: Edmund Gosse and the Case of Swinburne’s Missing Musical “Ear”’ overturns… Read More ›
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‘Throwing a punch’ for Wagner: revolution, gender, and the soundtrack of Decadence
The original version of this article first appeared on the website of the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation in 2021. All the pictures are from my own collection. Hooligans are not normally associated with classical music. Concert halls tend to be… Read More ›
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Swinburne and Wagner
My PhD research into the relationship between the poetry of Algernon Charles Swinburne and the music of Richard Wagner can be found by following the link below. Parts of this research were first presented at the Poems & Ballads 150th… Read More ›
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“Let us adore spilled blood”
The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture contains thirty essays exploring some of the Victorian era’s greatest moral infractions, titillations, and transgressions. Published earlier this year and edited by Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier, it contains… Read More ›
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Volupté: Vernon Lee, Richard Wagner, and Dame Edna Everage
My article on Vernon Lee (1856-1935) has been published in Volupté: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies. Provocatively entitled ‘Lying Down or Standing Up for Music’, it examines ideas about ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ in Lee’s final work, Music and its… Read More ›
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‘Wild with petulance and impatience’: Swinburne, Gosse, and music.
My essay on Edmund Gosse’s malign influence on Swinburne studies, both biographical and critical, is available in the latest issue of the International Walter Pater Society’s journal. ‘“A Genius for Inaccuracy”: Edmund Gosse and the Case of Swinburne’s Missing Musical… Read More ›
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Lot 228: A bookish harmony in black and gold
One of Swinburne’s bookcases, designed and painted by the artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is up for sale at the Lyon & Turnbull auction house next week (21 April 2021). Shown in the auction house’s picture left, the bookcase stood… Read More ›
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‘A Match’: Swinburne in Paris, Richard Monckton Milnes, “William Blake”, and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser”
2020-12-04_12-39-13-4 The first two stanzas of A Match by Jeremiah Rhodes, published in 1868. Swinburne’s poem ‘A Match’ from his 1866 collection Poems and Ballads would become one of his most popular lyrics and the poem most often set to… Read More ›
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A Swinburne song catalogue, a work in progress, and two Holy Grails
Here is a catalogue of songs which were set to the lyrics of Swinburne and published between 1866-1920. It also lists a few important unpublished songs and some musical oddities and odds and ends that I’m not sure how to… Read More ›
Verseandmusic.com 