Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti Read online

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  (1828-1882)

  Contents

  The Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  BRIEF INTRODUCTION: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

  The Poems

  LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Prose

  HAND AND SOUL

  THE STEALTHY SCHOOL OF CRITICISM

  The Biographies

  ROSSETTI by Lucien Pissarro

  RECOLLECTIONS OF DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI by T. Hall Caine

  Extract from ‘FIGURES OF SEVERAL CENTURIES’ by Arthur Symons

  The Delphi Classics Catalogue

  © Delphi Classics 2014

  Version 1

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  By Delphi Classics, 2014

  COPYRIGHT

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Delphi Poets Series

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

  © Delphi Classics, 2014.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

  Delphi Classics

  is an imprint of

  Delphi Publishing Ltd

  Hastings, East Sussex

  United Kingdom

  Contact: [email protected]

  www.delphiclassics.com

  NOTE

  When reading poetry on an eReader, it is advisable to use a small font size and landscape mode, which will allow the lines of poetry to display correctly.

  Interested in Rossetti’s poetry? Then you’ll love these eBooks…

  Rossetti’s Complete Paintings, as well as the Complete Poetry of his sister Christina Rossetti and his close friend Algernon Charles Swinburne

  For the first time in publishing history, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of these important Pre-Raphaelites.

  www.delphiclassics.com

  The Poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  38 Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London — Rossetti’s birthplace

  Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting of his sister Christina with their mother, Frances Polidori, who was the sister of Lord Byron’s friend and physician, John William Polidori

  The poet’s father, Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo

  BRIEF INTRODUCTION: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

  by Richard Garnett

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–1882), painter and poet, eldest son of Gabriele Rossetti and of Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (1800–1886), was born on 12 May 1828, at 38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place. His full christian name was Gabriel Charles Dante, but the form which he gave it has become inveterate. Charles Lyell [q. v.], the father of the geologist, was his godfather. His father, born at Vasto in the kingdom of Naples on 28 Feb. 1783, had been successively librettist to the opera house and curator of antiquities in the Naples museum, but had been compelled to fly the country for his share in the insurrectionary movements of 1820 and 1821. After a short residence in Malta he came over to England in 1824, and established himself as a teacher of Italian. In 1826 he married the sister of John William Polidori [q. v.] In 1831 he was appointed professor of Italian in King’s College. He was a man of high character, an ardent and also a judicious patriot, and an excellent Italian poet; but he is perhaps best remembered by his attempts to establish the esoteric anti-papal significance of the ‘Divine Comedy.’ He published several works dealing with this question, namely a commentary on the ‘Divina Commedia,’ 1826–7 (2 vols.), ‘La Beatrice di Dante,’ 1842, and ‘Sullo Spirito Antipapale che produsse la riforma,’ 1832 (placed on the pontifical index and translated into English by Miss C. Ward, 1834, 2 vols). He died on 26 April 1854, leaving four children, Maria Francesca [see under Rossetti, Christina Georgina], Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina Georgina [q. v.] Mr. W. M. Rossetti alone survives (1897).

  Dante Rossetti’s environment — political, literary, and artistic — was such as to stimulate his precocious powers. At the age of five or six he composed three dramatic scenes entitled ‘The Slave,’ childish in diction, but correct in spelling and metre. At the age of eight he went to a preparatory school, and at nine to King’s College, which he left at thirteen, having made fair progress in the ordinary branches of knowledge. His reading at home was more important to him; his imagination was powerfully stimulated by a succession of romances, though he does not appear to have been then acquainted with any English poets except Shakespeare, Byron, and Scott. The influence of the last is visible in his boyish ballad of ‘Sir Hugh the Heron,’ written in 1840, and printed three years later at his maternal grandfather’s private press. Of artistic attempt we hear comparatively little; he was, however, taught drawing at King’s College by an eminent master, John Sell Cotman [q. v.], and upon leaving school in November 1841 he selected art as his profession. He spent four years at F. S. Cary’s drawing academy in Bloomsbury Street, where he attracted notice by his readiness in sketching ‘chivalric and satiric subjects.’ Neither there nor at the antique school of the Royal Academy, where he was admitted in 1846, was his progress remarkable. The fact appears to have been that in his impatience for great results he neglected the slow and tiresome but necessary subservient processes. His literary work was much more distinguished, for the translations from Dante and his contemporaries, published in 1861, were commenced as early as 1845. Up to this time he seems to have known little of Dante, notwithstanding his father’s devotion to him. By 1850 his translation of Dante was sufficiently advanced to be shown to Tennyson, who commended it, but he advised careful revision, which was given. His poetical faculty received about this time a powerful stimulus from his study of Browning and Poe, both of whom he idolised without imitating either. He would seem, indeed, to have owed more at this period to imaginative prose writers than to poets, although he copied the whole of Browning’s ‘Pauline’ at the British Museum. ‘The Blessed Damozel,’ ‘The Portrait,’ the splendid sonnets ‘Retro me Sathana’ and ‘The Choice,’ with other remarkable poems, were written about 1847. They manifest nothing of young poets’ usual allegiance to models, but are absolutely original — the product, no doubt, of the unparalleled confluence of English and Italian elements in his blood and nurture. The result was as exceptional as the process.

  The astonishing advance in poetical powers from ‘Sir Hugh the Heron’ to ‘The Blessed Damozel’ had not been visibly attended by any corresponding development of the pictorial faculty, when in March 1848 Rossetti took what proved the momentous step of applying for instruction to Ford Madox Brown. His motive seems to have been impatience with the technicalities of academy training and the hope of finding a royal road to painting; great, therefore, was his disappointment when his new instructor set him to paint pickle-jars. The lesson was no doubt salutary, although, as his brother says, he never to the end of his life could be brought to care much whether his pictures were in perspective or not. More important was his introduction through the school of the Royal Academy to a circle of young men inspired by new ideas in art, by a resolve to abandon the conventionalities inherited from the eighteenth century, and to revive the detailed elaboration and mystical interpretation of nature that characterised early mediæval art. Goethe and Scott had already done much to impregnate modern literature with mediæval sentiment. A renaissance of the like feeling was visible in the pictorial art of Germany. But what in Germany was p
ure imitation became in England re-creation, partly because the English artists were men of higher powers. Little, however, would have resulted but for the fortune which brought Rossetti, Madox Brown, Woolner, Holman Hunt, and Millais together. The atmosphere of enthusiasm thus engendered raised all to greater heights than any could have attained by himself. By 1849 the student of pickle-jars had painted and exhibited at the free exhibition, Hyde Park Corner, a picture of high merit, ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,’ which sold for 80l. One inevitable drawback was a spirit of cliquishness; another, which might have been avoided, was the assumption of the unlucky badge of ‘pre-Raphaelite,’ indicative of a feeling which, though Rossetti shared in early years to a marked degree, he very soon abandoned. No one could have less sympathy with the ugly, the formal, or the merely edifying in art, and his reproduction of nature was never microscopic. The virtues and failings of the ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ school were well displayed in the short-lived periodical ‘The Germ,’ four numbers of which appeared at the beginning of 1850, under the editorship of Rossetti’s brother William Michael, and to which he himself contributed ‘The Blessed Damozel’ and the only imaginative work in prose he completed, the delicate and spiritual story ‘Hand and Soul.’

  In November 1852 Rossetti, who had at first shared a studio with Holman Hunt in Cleveland Street, and afterwards had one of his own in Newman Street, took the rooms at 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, which he continued to occupy until his wife’s death. The street is now pulled down. From 1849 to his father’s death in 1854 his history is one of steady progress in art and poetry, varied only by the attacks, now incomprehensible in their virulence, made by the press upon the pre-Raphaelite artists, and by a short trip to Paris and Belgium, which produced nothing but some extremely vivid descriptive verse. It is astonishing that he should never have cared to visit Italy, but so it was. The years were years of struggle; the hostile criticisms made his pictures difficult to sell, although ‘The Annunciation’ was among them. He eschewed the Royal Academy, and did not even seek publicity for his poems, albeit they included such masterpieces as ‘Sister Helen,’ ‘Staff and Scrip,’ and ‘The Burden of Nineveh.’ These alone proved that Rossetti had risen into a region of imagination where he had no compeer among the poets of his day. Rossetti did not want for an Egeria; he had fallen in love with Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a Sheffield cutler and herself a milliner’s assistant, a young lady of remarkable personal attractions, who had sat to his friend Walter Deverell as the Viola of ‘Twelfth Night,’ and came to display no common ability both in verse and water-colour painting. Her constitution, unhappily, was consumptive, and delicacy of health and scantiness of means long deferred the consummation of an engagement probably formed about the end of 1851. She sat to him for most of the numerous Beatrices which he produced about this time. A beautiful portrait of her, from a picture by herself, is reproduced in the ‘Letters and Memoirs’ edited by his brother.

  Rossetti’s partial deliverance from his embarrassments was owing to the munificence of a man as richly endowed with genius as he himself, and much more richly provided with the gifts of fortune. In spite of some prevalent misconceptions, it may be confidently affirmed that Mr. Ruskin had nothing whatever to do with initiating the pre-Raphaelite movement, and that even his subsequent influence upon its representatives was slight. It was impossible, however, that he should not deeply sympathise with their work, which he generously defended in the ‘Times;’ and the personal acquaintance which he could not well avoid making with Rossetti soon led to an arrangement by which Ruskin agreed to take, up to a certain maximum of expenditure, whatever work of Rossetti’s pleased him, at the same prices as Rossetti would have asked from an ordinary customer. The comfort and certainty of such an arrangement were invaluable to Rossetti, whose constant altercations with other patrons and with dealers bring out the least attractive side of his character. The arrangement lasted a considerable time: that it should eventually die lay in the nature of things. Ruskin was bound to criticise, and Rossetti to resent criticism. Before its termination, however, Mr. Ruskin, by another piece of generosity, had enabled Rossetti to publish (1861) his translations of the early Italian poets. Another important friendship made in these years of struggle was that with Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who came to Rossetti, as he himself had gone to Madox Brown, for help and guidance, and repaid him by introducing him to an Oxford circle destined to exercise the greatest influence upon him and receive it in turn. Its most important members were Mr. Swinburne and William Morris. Other and more immediately visible results of the new connection were the appearance of three of Rossetti’s finest poems in the ‘Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,’ to which Morris was an extensive contributor, and his share (1857) in the distemper decorations of the Oxford Union, which soon became a wreck, ‘predestined to ruin,’ says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, ‘by fate and climate.’ About the same time ‘The Seed of David,’ a triptych for Llandaff Cathedral, Rossetti’s only monumental work, representing the Infant Saviour adored as Shepherd and King, with pendants depicting David in both characters, was undertaken, though not completed for some time afterwards. It is most difficult to date Rossetti’s pictures from the variety of forms in which most of them exist, and the uncertainty whether to adopt as date that of the original sketch, or of some one of the completed versions. Generally speaking, however, his most inspired work may be referred to the decade between 1850 and 1860, especially the magnificent drawings illustrative of the ‘Vita Nuova.’ ‘Mary Magdalen,’ ‘Monna Rosa,’ ‘Hesterna Rosa,’ ‘How they met themselves,’ ‘Paolo and Francesca,’ ‘Cassandra,’ and the Borgia drawings may be added. These were the pictorial works in which Rossetti stands forth most distinctly as a poet. He may at a later period have exhibited even greater mastery in his other predominant endowment, that of colour; but the achievement, though great, is of a lower order. Another artistic enterprise of this period was his illustration of Tennyson, undertaken for Edward Moxon, in conjunction with Millais and other artists (1857). The fine drawings were grievously marred by the carelessness and mechanical spirit of the wood-engravers. He succeeded better in book illustration at a somewhat later date, especially in the matchless frontispiece to his sister’s ‘Goblin Market’ (1862). He was also labouring much, and not to his satisfaction, on his one realistic picture, ‘Found,’ an illustration of the tragedy of seduction, occupying the place among his pictures which ‘Jenny’ holds among his poems. It was never quite completed. Somewhat later he became interested in the undertaking of William Morris and Madox Brown, for that revival of art manufacture, which produced important results.

  During this period he wrote little poetry, designedly holding his poetical gift in abeyance for the undivided pursuit of art. The ‘Early Italian Poets,’ however, went to press in 1861, and was greeted with enthusiasm by Mr. Coventry Patmore and other excellent judges. The edition was sold in eight years, leaving Rossetti 9l. the richer after the acquittal of his obligation to Mr. Ruskin. It was, however, reprinted in 1874 under the title of ‘Dante and his Circle, with the Italian Poets preceding him: a collection of Lyrics, edited and translated in the original metres.’ The book is a garden of enchanting poetry, steeped in the Italian spirit, but, while faithful to all the higher offices of translation, by no means so scrupulously literal as is usually taken for granted. The greatest successes are achieved in the pieces apparently most difficult to render, the ballate and canzoni. That these triumphs are due to genius and labour, and not to the accident of Rossetti’s Italian blood, is shown by the fact that he evinced equal felicity in his renderings of François Villon. The ‘Early Italian Poets’ comprised also the prose passages of the ‘Vita Nuova,’ admirably translated.

  Rossetti’s marriage with Miss Siddal took place at Hastings on 23 May 1860. He had said, in a letter written a month previously, that she ‘seemed ready to die daily.’ He took her to Paris, and on their return they settled at his old rooms at Chatham Place. No length of days could have been anticipa
ted for Mrs. Rossetti, but her existence closed prematurely on 11 Feb. 1862, from the effects of an overdose of laudanum, taken to relieve neuralgia. Rossetti’s grief found expression in a manner most characteristic of him, the entombment of his manuscript poems in his wife’s coffin. They remained there until October 1869, when he was fortunately persuaded to consent to their disinterment. Chatham Place had naturally become an impossible residence for him, and he soon removed to Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, a large house which for some time harboured three sub-tenants as well — his brother, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. George Meredith. He occupied it for the rest of his life. For the seven years following his wife’s death Rossetti was an ardent collector of old furniture, blue china, and Japanese bric-à-brac. The same period proved one of great pictorial productiveness, and his partiality for single figures, generally more or less idealised portraits, increased. The place in this department which had been held by his wife and the beautiful actress, Miss Herbert, was now to a large extent filled by Mrs. William Morris; but many beauties in all ranks of society were proud to sit to him, as appears from the list given by his brother (Letters and Memoirs, i. 242–3). He hardly ever attempted ordinary portraiture, except of himself or some very intimate friend or near connection. Among the most famous of the single figures painted about this time may be mentioned ‘Beata Beatrix,’ ‘Monna Vanna,’ ‘Monna Pomona,’ ‘Il Ramoscello,’ ‘Venus Verticordia,’ and ‘Sibylla Palmifera.’ Of work on a grander scale there is little to notice, though some previous works were repeated with improvements. ‘The Return of Tibullus to Delia,’ one of the most dramatic of his productions of this period, exists only as a drawing; and he never carried out the intention he now entertained of making a finished picture from his magnificent drawing of ‘Cassandra.’ A work of still more importance fortunately was accomplished, the publication of his collected ‘Poems’ in 1870 (new edit. 1881). The new pieces fully supported the reputation of those which had already appeared in magazines; and the entire volume gave him, in the eyes of competent judges, a reputation second to that of no contemporary English poet after Tennyson and Browning.