Commentary
Introduction
DGR distinguishes the differences in
awareness that are possible in the same persons: “love”
is the
subject of the verb “Knows”
(lines 1-2), whereas the two
lovers do not at first possess their own love's
total intuitive apprehension. In the argument of this sonnet, their
fuller understanding may come “too late”
(line 10)
ever to actually achieve love's complete understanding.
The sonnet is the first of a group that DGR places
at a central place in the sequence of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
. All of the sonnets in the group
were written many years before their printing in DGR's 1870 volume. They function in a kind of
prefigurative relation to the project of the sonnet sequence, as
<xref doc="a.3-1854.raw">“The
Landmark”</xref>
shows very clearly. The other sonnets in this group are
<xref doc="a.3-1854.raw">“The Landmark”</xref>
,
<xref doc="a.1-1855.raw">“A Dark Day”</xref>
, and
<xref doc="a.2-1853.raw">“The Hill Summit”</xref>
. In 1881
DGR added
<xref doc="a.2-1850.raw">“Autumn Idleness”</xref>
to the group, another early work, as well as
<xref doc="a.5-1873.raw">“The Heart of the Night”</xref>
(writen in 1873).
This sonnet is a monitory text that can be
usefully read beside
<xref doc="a.3-1869.raw">“Lovesight”</xref>
and
<xref doc="a.10-1870.raw">“Stillborn Love”</xref>
. Its brilliant wordplays (see glosses below) are central to its meaning and they exhibit Rossetti's characteristic skill with extreme forms of poetic wit and artifice.
Textual History: Composition
According to WMR this was written in January 1853
(see WMR,
<hi rend="i">Family Letters</hi>
I. 167
). He dates it “?1857”
(see
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
but the 1853 date is correct, as the
early manuscript in the Duke University
Library shows. The text in the Fitzwilliam composite
manuscript is not substatively
different from the printed texts, which are also quite stable.
Textual History: Revision
At some point DGR (temporarily) altered the manuscript title from
“Known in Vain”
to “Work and Will”. This alteration would have been made
after the 1869-1870 printings of the sonnet, for in all those cases it
is printed “Known in Vain”, which is the title it kept through the 1881 and all subsequent printings.
Printing History
First printed as sonnet XIII in the sequence of
sixteen sonnets published in the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" workcode="1-1853">Fortnightly Review</xref>
in
March 1869. It was then printed in mid-August 1869 as part of the
Penkill Proofs and
remained in all proof stages until it was published in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="1-1853">Poems</xref>
and thereafter. It is
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
Sonnet XXX in the 1870 volume, and Sonnet LXV in 1881.
Autobiographical
WMR reads the sonnet in a straight autobiographical
vein, as an expression of DGR's self-reproach at his “desultory”
artistic habits. This reading appears to be his response to the title
“Work and Will” that DGR once gave to the sonnet.
DGR told Hall Caine that he set the highest
value on this sonnet (see Caine,
<hi rend="i">Recollections</hi>
237
).
Bibliographic
Baum, ed.,
<hi rend="i">The House of Life</hi>
165-166
WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer.</hi>
229