Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson (AQA A-Level English Literature A): Revision Notes

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson

Introduction

This Decadent poem explores the speaker's overwhelming inability to forget his former lover, Cynara, despite his attempts to move on with other women. Written during the height of the Decadent movement in the 1890s, the poem consists of four stanzas, each containing six lines with an alternate rhyme scheme (ABACBC). The poem mimics the speaker's unruly behaviour through its irregular metre, reflecting his fascination with excess and indulgence as he tries unsuccessfully to drown out memories of Cynara through hedonistic pleasures.

Synopsis

Stanza 1

The speaker addresses Cynara directly, confessing that the previous night, whilst with another woman, the memory or shadow of Cynara fell between them. He experiences the old passion he still maintains for Cynara even in the company of someone else. Two refrains are introduced here that repeat throughout the poem: 'But I was desolate and sick of an old passion' and 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion'.

Stanza 2

We discover the woman the speaker is with is a prostitute, described through the synecdoche bought red mouth. This reveals the speaker's attempt to find physical comfort and distraction from his grief.

Stanza 3

The speaker confesses his attempts to enjoy life without Cynara fail. Despite trying to move on through pleasure and indulgence, he cannot shake the persistent memories of his old passion for her. He tries dancing, throwing roses, and various forms of entertainment, but nothing works.

Stanza 4

The final stanza shows that even with music, dancing and wine, Cynara's memory remains. When he goes to bed, his thoughts inevitably return to her. The refrain 'I have been faithful to you Cynara! In my own fashion' refers to his inability to rid her from his mind, suggesting a form of mental or emotional fidelity despite his physical infidelity.

Context

Historical context

Victorian England was a society characterised by prosperity and conservative values, alongside rapid and constant change. The Industrial Revolution pushed wealth into urban centres whilst leaving rural areas impoverished. By 1900, when Dowson died in London, the city was both crowded and dirty, yet full of wealth and potential. A deep divide existed between rich and poor.

Queen Victoria's accession to the throne marked a turning point. Under her reign, Britain became an empire with extreme self-belief in its moral superiority and role as a model Kingdom. However, near the end of this period, there was pining for simpler times and growing exhaustion with the power Britain had assumed.

Literary context

Ernest Dowson led a life troubled by poverty and was supposedly in love with a girl half his age, which tormented him throughout his final years. His work exemplifies the Decadent Movement, which he contributed to significantly.

The Decadent Movement was led by belief in 'art for art's sake' and nostalgia. This poem embodies the movement through the speaker's miserable lament whilst indulging in expensive pleasures like fine feasts, food and wine.

Dowson also took inspiration from the Pre-Raphaelite movement, in which poets wrote of legend, love and tragedy. This inspiration appears in the lily-like appearance of Cynara - pale, delicate, and idealised.

The Rhymers' Club

A group of male poets based in London founded in 1890 by W B Yeats and Ernest Rhys, which included Dowson. Whilst mostly a social club, the group produced two anthologies of poetry, contributing to the literary landscape of the 1890s.

The Decadent Movement

The Decadent Movement emerged in the 1890s, consisting of radical themes such as self-indulgence, eroticism and rebelliousness. This horrified the Victorians, who generally believed literature should promote ethics and morality. Many thought literature could encourage virtuousness, which the Decadent Movement seemed to work against.

There are three key aspects that define Dowson's poem as Decadent:

Perversity

Perversity appears in how the speaker cannot banish Cynara's memory whilst indulging with a new lover. He tells us 'I was desolate and sick of an old passion', yet he seems to gain perverse pleasure from thinking about her whilst with another woman. The woman he is with is a prostitute (her bought red mouth), adding to the decadent atmosphere.

We remain unsure whether Cynara is dead or alive. The speaker addresses the poem to her in a strange attempt to reassure her of his faithfulness in my fashion, which itself contains perversity.

Love of excess

The speaker engages sexually with multiple women despite insisting to Cynara he is faithful. This leads into the second characteristic: love of excess. The poet recounts, with pride, his excessive emotionalism and behaviour in attempts to expunge Cynara's memory.

He speaks of flinging roses and dancing, engaging in music, drinking wine and eating lavishly. However, his efforts prove vain, and the image created is one of hysteria and madness.

Egotism

These two elements - perversity and excess - combine to create egotism. The poem becomes a nod to the poet and his psychopathy. His conflicted response to the dilemma drives the poem. We learn little about other characters. The only description of Cynara is her pale, lost lilies, contrasting with the bought red mouth of the prostitute.

Ernest Dowson

The poet led a tragic life. Born in London in 1867, he became a key figure in the Decadent movement but died at the young age of 32 from tuberculosis. He made very little money and had problems with drugs and alcohol.

The title

The title is taken from a great Latin poem written by Horace. In Horace's poem, the speaker implores Venus to stop raging erotic wars on him, warning he is advanced in years and she should wage her wars on a younger, better endowed man. There is a volta where the speaker finally confesses love and attraction to a man called Ligurinus.

Literally translated, it means 'I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cyanara'. Ultimately, the original poem concerns not being able to let Cynara go and seeing her in everything. The speaker implies he is past his prime. Later, we discover the speaker longs for a woman who is gone; he is love-sick.

Themes

Love and loss

The speaker laments the loss of Cynara, his former lover. Set after the woman has left him, he attempts unsuccessfully to fill the void she left with other women. The speaker uses emphatic sounds like ah and yea to express his anguish.

To numb the pain of Cynara's absence and his desire for her presence, the speaker seeks indulgence, joy and substitute intimacy. Regardless of his reckless philandering, Cynara remains constantly in his mind. An interesting dichotomy exists between absence and presence. Cynara is physically distant but emotionally present in the speaker's mind, resulting in his confused and reckless state.

Possibly, the two characters share the fact that the woman they pine after is beyond them and out of reach. It is the pain of being unable to have what they want that makes them grieve so much for their losses.

The reference to the speaker's soul - upon my soul between the kisses and the wine - suggests he believes Cynara has a special connection with him, like she is the only one who can reach this intimate part of him. This contrasts with the loveless encounter he has with the prostitute.

Although the speaker engages in lovemaking within the poem, he is not present; his mind is with Cynara and the soul connection. While love may be defined differently from person to person, Dowson here implies the speaker and Cynara experienced a spiritual and deep love. This contrasts with the shallowness of making love to a woman he does not care for, reducing her to merely bought red mouth.

Love through the ages according to history and time

The employment of the same title as another historically acknowledged poem is important as a means of acknowledging that the same tumultuous emotions exist across time. The speaker makes no indication when his lover, Cynara, left him. Referencing lilies as pale, lost lilies, the speaker may indicate Cynara is dead, as lilies are traditional funeral flowers. However, this can also be interpreted as the speaker's acknowledgement of the death of their relationship.

The poem is not grounded in time or concrete facts, and the pain of loss feels endless and unintelligible. This timeless quality suggests that the anguish of lost love is universal and eternal.

Truth and deception

Something can be said of the speaker's perception of the woman he sleeps with - her bought red mouth. The speaker's dehumanising reduction of the woman through synecdoche to her lips is a striking contrast to the more tender line that precedes it: night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay.

Does the speaker think the sleeping woman in his arms is in love? For he is certainly not. He brushes away her love: Surely the kisses...were sweet as he cannot care for her because he is so preoccupied with Cynara's memory. Surely implies emotional distance; he knows in any other time or to another person they would have been sweet, but he does not experience them as such. Simultaneously, he posits and questions their sweet nature. However, his emotional distance does not stop him from sleeping with her and getting his sexual fulfilment and satisfaction. This quick path to sexual satisfaction is implied in the easy rhyming of beat and sweet.

He is deceptive in his sexual engagement with the red mouth, allowing her to sleep in his arms and talking of the close proximity of their beating hearts, implying a level of intimacy which he clearly does not feel.

He is deceptive in his definition of faithful when addressing Cynara, as we know he has committed infidelity. For this reason, his insistence in my fashion seems like an extremely weak argument. The clause in my fashion follows an exclamation, and coming after this exclamation, it sounds deflated. The clause sounds rather subdued, as if the speaker has realised the cheapness of his version of fidelity or the hollowness of his assertion that he has been faithful.

Love and sex

Dowson, rather scandalously for the time, makes reference to sex work through bought red mouth. Although prostitution was common in Victorian times, it was taboo to write about it.

By insinuating the woman is a prostitute, the speaker brings into question whether sex is an act of love. Nevertheless, he seems to conflate it in within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; we can assume love here is a euphemistic reference to sex.

The connection the speaker has with Cynara seems more intimate and closer to what we socially define as love than he has with the woman he performs the love-making act with. The reader is led to question the speaker's perception of love and what he uses sex for. The pleasing rhyme of the second stanza implies fulfilment after the sex act, but the lapse into the refrain creates a disconnect with the act of making love and actually being in love. The speaker is not in love with the woman he has sex with.

Proximity and distance

Something can be said of the simultaneous proximity and distance of Cynara's character. Although she is mentioned repeatedly and noticeably (thanks to the exclamation and its pausing effect), she is never physically present in the poem. She is lost, far away, and the reader is unsure whether or not she is dead. However, she maintains a persistent presence throughout. She dogs the speaker's thoughts, and this is mirrored in the way the refrain interrupts the events the speaker relates.

Structure

Form

The form is unconventional in that it doesn't use a traditional love poetry form, such as a sonnet. Instead, it has its own unique shape. There is regularity: four stanzas totalling 24 lines. Each stanza is made up of a sestet (six lines), and the fifth line of every stanza is slightly shorter than the others.

This regularity is pleasurable when accompanied by the use of repetition. Together they reflect the cyclical and predictable nature of the speaker's memories of Cynara. The consistency in form means it is easier for the reader to accept the poem's constantly changing pace and rhythm from line to line.

Metre

The metre is similarly unconventional. At first it appears to follow iambic hexameter (lines of six feet: da-dum):

Last night, ah yes-ternight, betwixt her lips and mine

However, this steady opening line gives no indication of the strange metre that follows. For the rest of the stanza, the stresses are very irregular:

• There fell thy sha-dow, 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

It is important to note that although the poem does not conform to a strict metre, it is not in free verse. A loose iambic hexameter is vaguely followed. The irregularities in metre are juxtaposed with the metrical regularity of the fifth line's refrain. This line is in pentameter (five beats instead of six), creating an element of consistency in a poem which is otherwise very rhythmically diverse. Like Cynara's ghostly visitations, the poem's metre is unpredictable.

Rhyme scheme

The rhyme scheme of the poem is constant and follows the pattern ABACBC. The C rhymes are always the same words: passion and fashion. They repeat in each of the four stanzas, emphasising the speaker's faith in his passion, if only in his own idiosyncratic way.

Although the rhyme scheme is regular, it is quite uncommon in English poetry. The first three lines have an ABA rhyme, and it seems like the poem will follow a conventional shape of ABAB. But then the C rhyme is introduced, separating the B rhymes.

Language

The title

It is possible to read Dowson's poem in light of the poem from which it takes its title. In Horace's poem, Cynara has a different function completely. Cynara is the speaker's former flame, and her name is only invoked to highlight the speaker's age; he is no longer youthful and capable of withstanding emotional tumults as he was when he was with Cynara. He begs his new lover Venus to spare [him] the torments of passion. Cynara in Horace's poem is unimportant to the speaker; his heart is with Venus.

Use of phrases

The speaker's repetition in the form of the refrain I have been faithful to three, Cynara! In my own fashion makes the poem song-like and draws on the speaker's honest and true belief that his inability to rid Cynara from his mind is a form of faithfulness. He acknowledges through the clause in [his] fashion that this form of faithfulness is not commonly accepted, but the repetition creates a sense of pleading for Cynara, to whom the poem is addressed, to listen and appreciate his unique form of loyalty.

Gone with the wind is a phrase which provided author Margaret Mitchell with the title of her 1936 novel. It is one of several images of things passing and fading in the poem. Others with similar implications include:

• The feast is finished and the lamps expire
• Betwixt her lips and mine / there fell thy shadow
• When i awoke and found the dawn was grey

This sense of good times being over links back to the title, 'I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara', which also contains a sense of the best moments having passed.

The tense shift

In the final stanza, the tense moves into the present: when the feast is finished and the lamps expire. This evokes the present importance of the speaker's compulsion. The speaker's use of sick emphasises the pain he feels is not a poeticism; what he is experiencing is closer to disease, to real and acute sickness.

The shift into present tense in the second line of the final stanza is striking, particularly because the preceding line, I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, maintains the past tense and carries on the narrative of the feast from stanza 3.

Use of exclamation

Although there is a certain element of movement and progression throughout the poem, there are carefully choreographed stops and pauses as well. An exclamation mark after every Cynara! creates a natural caesura when the poem is read aloud; her name is paused on.

It is as if the sound of Cynara's name causes so much emotion that he naturally exclaims. Visually, it is abrupt and forceful. The reader is forced to pause over the word, which consequently extends for an extra half beat. Consequently, emphasis is given to the name.

Epimone

And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, / Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head

The phrase is repeated to encourage readers to reflect on the speaker's despondent emotional state. The speaker becomes fixated on his emotions and caught up in the past he desires. Consequently, the epimone draws out a strong sense of his grieving for the past and for Cynara, because he repeatedly emphasises his present mental turmoil.

Rhyme in the second stanza

• 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;

The rhyming of the second stanza is satisfying and implies that in the moment of love making, the speaker is fulfilled. This satisfaction, as it transpires, is purely physical. He revels in the sensuality of the state he is in after making love to the woman but recognises the sweetness of her kisses are meaningless and subsequently loses a sense of their sweetness (Surely paradoxically implies an element of uncertainty).

Final stanza analysis

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, / Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire

In the last stanza, it is evident that the speaker's desire is insatiable. Cynara torments him, or his idea of her does, and he is unable to escape from the thought of her. In this way, he is unable to escape from himself, because Cynara is not really there.

Victorians had a fear of primitive and base sexual desires because they prided themselves on being civilised. Many people believed humans were created by God, yet this view was being contested by Darwin's theory of evolution, which posits that humans evolved from but from ape-like species. This theory frightened many Victorians, and the idea that they developed from a perceived lowly and base-like animal was discomforting for many. As a result, many were eager to dissociate themselves from the base and the animal, but Dowson, in accordance with the Decadent tradition, does not shy away from lust and desire.

Critical views

Stephanie Kuduk Weiner: Sight and sound in the poetic world of Ernest Dowson

It is interesting to consider why Dowson does this, when for example, in 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' and 'She Walks in Beauty', a lot of effort is put into describing female features. Furthermore, in Elizabethan love poetry - notably Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 - blazon was a popular device in which women's features (her lips, eyes, etc) were minutely described and praised.

Thus, in contrast, we question why Cynara appears in such a shadowy physical form. Possibly, it is her presence the speaker mourns, not necessarily her beauty but her essence, her mind and even their sexual chemistry (hinted at in hungry for the lips of my old desire); he misses the companionship of a lover, rather than the aesthetics. This may hint at a more mature love than one that initially flourishes from physical attraction.

Dowson's poetry is closer to Hardy's strained awkwardness

Comparisons with other poems

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynare and The Ruined Maid

Romantic love of many kinds

Both poems consider situations that are less than romantic. In this poem, the speaker hires a prostitute, which Amelia in 'The Ruined Maid' uses sex and relationship as a means of ascending the social ladder. Both poems explore the idea of prostitution. This poem, in its Decadent mode, describes the speaker's sexual interaction with a bought red mouth. Meanwhile, 'The Ruined Maid' forgoes any explicit sexual language but Hardy, in his repeated use of ruin, strongly implies Amelia's sexual endeavours have resulted in her new luxurious lifestyle; she may not be hired for the night like the woman in Dowson's poem, but she is probably a kept woman.

However, one key difference between the two poems is that 'The Ruined Maid' considers a less emotionally charged form of relationship to lay bare the way in which relationships can be manipulated for means other than emotional satisfaction. In contrast, Dowson's speaker is tortured by the absence of Cynara, and despite his unsavoury actions, his love is intense.

Love and loss

In this poem, the speaker's loss is evident as he is unable to rid Cynara from his mind and finds that despite his hedonism, he is unsatisfied and unhappy. Loss in the poem is grotesque; it forces the speaker to go to extremes in order to attempt to overcome his loss and pain and ends with him being morally degraded by his activities.

The loss in 'The Ruined Maid' is in great contrast to this form of loss. The poem explores how Amelia has left her previous, more morally sound (as dictated contextually by the Victorian period) life behind in order to live a more lavish lifestyle. We see that in this process she has left behind a whole community of people and her friend, who remains unnamed. This is evident in the way the two interact and the friends points out the ways in which Amelia has changed, ostracising herself. We question whether her aspirations for material things and a comfortable life are worth the loss in friendship and potential for other forms of love within the country community, as her position as a mistress is unstable and on the terms of rich man she works to satisfy.

Social conventions and taboos

Social conventions are challenged in both poems as they engage with a topic that was highly taboo within Victorian societies: prostitution.

Approval and disapproval

The question of approval, in both cases, is up to the reader; they must ask themselves whether they think Amelia's actions are justified and in the same way whether the speaker in this poem is right in his justification of faithfulness when he engages in sexual affairs with another woman when he writes and is so emotionally tied to Cynara.

Socially, however, in the case of the speaker in this poem, we may condemn his behaviour and dismiss his professions of faithfulness; however, we can be accepting of his mental state of turmoil. Loss and grief is a deeply painful experience and the speaker is unguided in his methods of dealing with how he feels.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynare

Love and sex

Although sex in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is not overt, we can interpret a certain amount of sexual activity between the two lovers which increases the knight's infatuation with his lady in the meads. The insinuation in she looked at me as she did love / and made sweet moan is subtle and fitting of the time it was written, when even talk of sexual activity was scarce and especially rare in writing because of the social shock factor it had.

The sweet moan gives the man the power, a shift in the power dynamics, as he is able to pleasure the faery woman and assert his masculine identity. This is later subverted as she lull[s him] asleep; the woman reclaims control and uses her powers to send the exhausted knight to sleep.

Love and loss

The loss experienced by the knight in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is intense and raw. This is emphasised by the pace of the poem when the couple are together and the number of things they do together. The poem is a rush of love and emotion in the middle, straddled by the two scenes where the knight wallows palely loitering. The knight's loss is emphasised by the barren landscape which he inhabits: the cold hill's side, no birds sing. The speaker in this poem does not like the knight accept his loneliness, but instead attempts to fill the emptiness with other women, dancing, feasting and wine.

The love of the two men is similar in its obsessive nature. The knight cannot extricate himself from the grip of the faery's child because the love he feels is so strong that it is constantly compared to something other worldly, something so intense it cannot be mortal. The woman is a seductress, a sorcerer, a faery. The sense that he has been bewitched illustrates the intensity with which love is felt.

Another similarity between the two is their obsession which is founded in their own conjuring-up of the women they desire. We meet neither woman in the flesh in the poems; they are both iterations of the man's mind. In this poem, the speaker remembers Cynara and is haunted by thy shadow and in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' the knight awoke and found me here which gives the impression all that came before the awakening was a dream. Is it possible that the men conjure up the women they most deeply desire? The knight wants an all encompassing, rich and intense love from a beautiful and pure woman, the height of femininity and purity but perversely also wants to be slave to this love; he wants a love so intense that he would do anything for it. The speaker in this poem wants a love which satisfies him both physically and mentally. The Cynara figure is never given much substance, except for her pre-Raphaelite pale lost lilies complexion. Could this mean that he desires a submissive woman, a woman that doesn't stop him from acting as he pleases yet remains faithful to him and hangs around like a shadow?

Truth and deception

'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is full of supernatural references, especially concerning the faery's child which insinuates a certain amount of unworldly magic or influence over the knight. The woman is portrayed as the deceptive character; she appears full beautiful, implying an external beauty as well as a moral and internal purity, through the use of full. However, the knight appears to discover that she is not such a woman and he is ultimately deceived by the visage of her feminine beauty and purity. Firstly, he suggests that the woman was not pure: I saw pale kings and princes too.../ they cried - "La Belle Dame Sans Merci! Thee hath in thrall!". This suggests that the woman has duped many men and is not the pure, idyllic woman a man of the time would see fit and desirable. Despite this, the knight still yearns for her, which suggests to contemporaneous readers that her witchery and deception is so strong that the knight is helpless and unable to break free from whatever spell she has cast upon him. In a way, gender expectations are subverted, as the woman has all the power and leaves the knight weak and helpless. We question whether Keats wanted to expose the weakness of man (his counterpart, the woman) and demonstrate a shocking female power or whether he wanted to warn male readers of the deceptive nature of the female. Secondly, the woman abandons him and is not the subservient female ideal of the time.

Both men engage in self-deception and this leads us to question the truthfulness of their female counterparts. Is the woman in 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' real or a figment of the knight's imagination? How truthful is the speaker in this poem? Was he really in love with Cynara or does he simply desire what he cannot have? Is this the same case for the knight?

Absent from Thee and Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynare

Romantic love of many kinds

Both poems consider a form of love that is removed from the romantic and relies heavily on physical attraction and lust. Both speakers desire the physical satisfaction found in a woman's body; in this poem, this is shown through the speaker's use of a prostitute, the bought red mouth, and similarly, in 'Absent from Thee', the speaker uses some base heart unbless'd. In both cases, the speaker alludes to their listener or reader (who the poem is addressed to), that this is insufficient in some way and they will always return to their lover. In 'Absent from thee', this is seen in wearied with a world of woe, / To thy safe bosom I retire and in this poem, the speaker continually returns to Cynara, who plagues his mind and sexual endeavours with other women.

In this poem, the speaker names his lover which marks the poem as more of a romantic gesture than in 'Absent from Thee'. The lack of naming in the latter makes for a more impersonal address and the reader is left wondering whether the speaker is calling to God or to his lover. The love in 'Absent from thee', unlike in this poem, is therefore religiously intertwined. However, some may have at the time considered the use of religious imagery to address a lover sacrilegious.

Love and loss

In this poem, the speaker's loss is very apparent: he is unable to rid Cynara from his mind and unable to move on with other women. It is unclear whether Cynara has left him or whether she has died but it is obvious that her absence has a significant mental effect on the speaker as he seems to descend into madness in the final stanzas: I cried for madder music and stronger wine,/ but when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,/ then falls they shadow.

In 'Absent from Thee' the speaker does not grieve in the same way when he is away from his lover. Rather, he tells her ask me not when i return. In this respect, the two poems are opposed. Further, the speaker of 'Absent from Thee' is the one who has left, while Dowson's speaker has been left behind. This is significant as it gives the speaker in 'Absent from thee' more power and control over his situation than the speaker of this poem.

Truth and deception

Both the speakers in this poem and 'Absent from thee' are deceptive in their insistence on their fidelity and their justifications for their innocence. In this poem, the speaker insists numerously that he has been faithful in own fashion. He invents a new form of faithfulness, whereby he engages in sexual acts with other women but thinks of Cynara whilst doing so. Similarly, in 'Absent from Thee' the speaker asks his lover to allow him to prove his faithfulness through the torments that come with sleeping with other women. The men are deceptive in their insistence of truly loving the women they address. It is evident that they are aware of their faults by subtle indications in the language. In 'Absent from Thee', the speaker takes pains to let his lover know that without her he struggles and is weak, and in this poem, the speaker's continuous insistence of his faithfulness alerts the reader that he is aware he has been the opposite, and the deflated and subdued nature of in my fashion after the emotive I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! signals some awareness that this faithfulness is cheap. As readers, we are made aware of both the truth in the men's words and the ways in which they warp the truth in attempts to remain favourable in their lovers' eyes.

Remember!