Edith Sitwell

Edith Sitwell (September 7 1887 – December 9 1964) was a British poet and critic.

Publicity and controversy

Her unusual appearance provoked critics almost as much as her verse, and throughout her life she was the subject of more or less virulent personal attacks from Geoffrey Grigson, F. R. Leavis and others, which she returned with vigour. As she lay dying, the critic Julian Symons published the last of these attacks in The London Magazine of November 1964, accusing her of 'wearing other people's bleeding hearts on her own safe sleeve.' Her 'enemies' were treated with scorn; after Noel Coward wrote a skit on Sitwell and her two brothers as 'The Swiss Family Whittlebot' for his 1922 revue London Calling she refused to speak to him until they were reconciled after her triumphant 70th birthday party at London's Festival Hall. To her friends she showed great sweetness and invariable kindness.

Related Topics:
Geoffrey Grigson - F. R. Leavis - Julian Symons - The London Magazine - Noel Coward - London Calling

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Sitwell was most interested by the distinction between poetry and music, a matter explored at 1923 in Façade, published in 1922, and set to music by William Walton, a series of abstract poems the rhythms of which counterfeited those of music. Façade was performed behind a curtain with a hole in the mouth of a painted face and the words were recited through the hole with the aid of a megaphone. The public received the first performance with bemusement, but there were many positive reactions.

Related Topics:
Poetry - Music - Façade - 1922 - William Walton - Megaphone

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