POETRY // IMITATION GAME

Ribbing the Big Boys

Notes on G.K. Chesterton’s “Variations on an Air”

by Joshua Mehigan

EXCERPT //

G.K. Chesterton’s “Variations on an Air” first appeared in The New Witness, in 1920. The full sequence also includes two devastating spoofs of Robert Browning and Charles Algernon Swinburne. It might be difficult to appreciate how tricky it would have been in 1920 (or would be now) to pull off so thorough and effortless a take-down of Browning, Tennyson, Whitman, Swinburne, and Yeats. Though Yeats, at 55, was the only one still alive, Chesterton could hardly have chosen five more popular and critically-acclaimed poets as victims. All five also happen to be highly acclaimed for a reason. Chesterton, too, was a literary celebrity. But there is no question who had the advantage. Fortunately Chesterton’s mix of talents as a critic, poet, and satirist allowed him to find out each of these poet’s rhetorical excesses and go to town with them. If you are unfamiliar with the poems of Tennyson, Yeats, or Whitman, it is still possible to gain a full appreciation of Chesterton’s parodies. You might first want to consult some of their poetry—for example Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” or Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” But all you really have to do is read each of Chesterton’s variations aloud, with as much solemnity as you can muster. //

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