Elizabeth Daryush (8 December 1887 – 7 April 1977) was an English poet.
Life
Daryush was the daughter of
Robert Bridges
Robert Seymour Bridges (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was an English poet who was Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is ...
; her maternal grandfather was
Alfred Waterhouse. She married Ali Akbar Daryush, a Persian government official whom she had met when he was studying at the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, and thereafter spent some time in
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
; most of her life was spent at the Bridges' family home, Stockwell, in
Boars Hill
Boars Hill is a Hamlet (place), hamlet southwest of Oxford, straddling the boundary between the Civil parishes in England, civil parishes of Sunningwell and Wootton, Vale of White Horse, Wootton. Historically, part of Berkshire until the Local ...
, outside
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
.
The garden of their Boars Hill home was left by Ali as a memorial garden, named after Elizabeth, and managed by the
Oxford Preservation Trust
The Oxford Preservation Trust was founded in 1927 to preserve the city of Oxford, England. The Trust seeks to enhance Oxford by encouraging thoughtful development and new design, while protecting historic buildings and green open spaces.
The T ...
.
Writings
Poetry
Daryush, daughter of English poet laureate Robert Bridges (some of her early work was published as Elizabeth Bridges), followed her father's lead not only in choosing poetry as her life's work but also in the traditional style of poetry she chose to write. The themes of her work are often critical of the upper classes and the social injustice their privilege levied upon others. This characteristic was not present in her early work, including her first two books of poems, published under the name Elizabeth Bridges, which appeared while she was still in her twenties. According to John Finlay, writing in the ''Dictionary of Literary Biography'', Daryush's "early poetry is preoccupied with rather conventional subject matter and owes a great deal to the Edwardians."
Syllabic style
Daryush took her father's experiment in
syllabic verse a step farther by making it less experimental; whereas Bridges' syllable count excluded elidable syllables, producing some variation in the total number of pronounced syllables per line, Daryush's was strictly aural, counting all syllables actually sounded when the poem was read aloud. It is for her successful experiments with syllabic meter that Daryush is best known to contemporary readers, as exampled in her poem ''Accentedal'' in the
quaternion form.
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic.
Life
Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and in Pasadena, where his grandparen ...
, the poet and critic, considered Daryush more successful in writing syllabics than was her father, noting that her poem ''Still-Life'' was her finest syllabic experiment, and also a companion-piece to ''Children of Wealth''. Winters considered the social context of ''Still Life'', which is nowhere mentioned, yet from which the poem draws its power.
Characteristics
Beyond its social content, Daryush's work is also recognized for a consistent and well-defined personal vision. As Finlay noted, "For her. . .poetry always dealt with the 'stubborn fact' of life as it is, and the only consolations it offered were those of understanding and a kind of half-Christian, half-stoical acceptance of the inevitable." However, he also argued that Daryush's best poems transcend such fatalism, "dealing with the moral resources found in one's own being. . .and a recognition of the beauties in the immediate, ordinary world around us." In many of her terse short poems, there is formal and intellectual mastery; her last, longest and most ambitious poem, 'Air and Variations,' was a formal tribute to
Gerard Manley Hopkins Daryush has been described as a pioneer technical innovator, a poet of the highest dedication and seriousness whose poetry grapples with life's intensest issues.
Works
* ''Sonnets from Hafez and other Verses'' (1921) as Elizabeth Bridges
* ''Verses'' (1930) (OUP)
* ''Verses, Fourth Book'' (1934)
* ''Poems'' (1935) (Macmillan)
[https://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/elizabeth_daryush_2012_7.pdf ]
* ''The Last Man and Other Verses'' (1936)
* ''Selected Poems'' (1948) edited by
Yvor Winters
Arthur Yvor Winters (October 17, 1900 – January 25, 1968) was an American poet and literary critic.
Life
Winters was born in Chicago, Illinois and lived there until 1919 except for brief stays in Seattle and in Pasadena, where his grandparen ...
* ''Verses: Seventh Book'' (1971) Carcanet Press
* ''Selected Poems'' (1972) Carcanet Press
* ''Collected Poems'' (1976) Carcanet Press
References
External links
*
* Examples of Daryush poetry inc ''Still-Life'
* The Poetry of Elizabeth Daryush – by Donald Davie Poetry Nation No 5 197
{{DEFAULTSORT:Daryush, Elizabeth
1887 births
1977 deaths
English women poets
20th-century English poets
20th-century English women writers