An English Eccentric: Edith Sitwell and Her Experiments with Sound in Fa？ade

Throughout Edith Sitwell’s poetic career, one specific factor was always in the foreground in her works, that is, the experimental use of sound. Especially in her earlier period, employing rhythm as an experimental arrangement of sounds dominated the bulk of her poems. Sitwell prioritised this technical element over thematic components, and thus developed an inventive approach to the art of poetry in the early twentieth century. Her famous poetry collection, Fa？ade (1922) can be considered one of the most distinguished examples of her experimental manner, consisting of several abstract poems which were compiled for dramatic performance and for William Walton’s music. With Walton’s contributions, Sitwell combined the elements of music and poetry in Fa？ade, and she formed a new artistic domain where she could express and improve her poetic style by working on the use of sound and rhythm. The reason for her emphasis on the role of rhythm in poetry was not only its significance as a technical attribute but also its functioning as a representative of the century’s spirit. For Sitwell, the rhythm of the twentieth century must not be the rhythm of the eighteenth or the nineteenth centuries, on the contrary, it should reflect the soul of its era. Accordingly, Sitwell advocated that poetry should be compatible with the tone of the period in which it is produced. Therefore, the poems in the collection were designed to be as unsteady, tumultuous, and complex as the era they belonged to, and this composition was achieved through her experimental style. In this respect, the primary aim of this article is to discuss Sitwell’s technical and stylistic experiments with sound in her Fa？ade poems and examine her perception of artistic creation in the twentieth century