The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hours of Fiammetta, by Rachel Annand
Taylor

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Title: The Hours of Fiammetta
A Sonnet Sequence

Author: Rachel Annand Taylor

Release Date: November 7, 2007 [eBook #23392]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA***

E-text prepared by Ruth Hart

THE HOURS OF FIAMMETTA

A Sonnet Sequence

by

RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR

"Thou which lov'st to be
Subtle to plague thyself"--

London:
Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street
MCMX

_The "Epilogue of the Dreaming Women" is reprinted by
permission of the "English Review."_

PREFACE

There are two great traditions of womanhood. One presents the
Madonna brooding over the mystery of motherhood; the other, more
confusedly, tells of the acolyte, the priestess, the clairvoyante of
the unknown gods. This latter exists complete in herself, a personality
as definite and as significant as a symbol. She is behind all the
processes of art, though she rarely becomes a conscious artist, except
in delicate and impassioned modes of living. Indeed, matters are cruelly
complicated for her if the entanglements of destiny drag her forward
into the deliberate aesthetic effort. Strange, wistful, bitter and
sweet, she troubles and quickens the soul of man, as earthly or as
heavenly lover redeeming him from the spiritual sloth which is more
to be dreaded than any kind of pain.

The second tradition of womanhood does not perish; but, in these
present confusions of change, women of the more emotional and
imaginative type are less potent than they have been and will be again.
They appear equally inimical and heretical to the opposing camps of
hausfrau and of suffragist. Their intellectual forces, liberated and
intensified, prey upon the more instinctive part of their natures, vexing
them with unanswerable questions. So Fiammetta mistakes herself to
some degree, loses her keynote, becomes embittered and perplexed.
The equilibrium of soul and body is disturbed; and she fortifies herself
in an obstinate idealism that cannot come to terms with the assaults of
life. No single sonnet