Love's Nocturn

DGR conceived the poem as a kind of dramatic monologue: “The first conception of this poem was of a man not yet in love who dreams vaguely of a woman who he thinks must exist for him. This is not very plainly expressed, and not I think very valuable; and it might be better to refer the love to a known woman whom he wishes to approach” (see his letter to to WMR 14 Sept. 1869: ( Fredeman, <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> , 69. 154 ). He revised the poem to encourage this latter interpretation, though it does not prevent the other.

The poem's influence on W. B. Yeats was profound, as one can see especially in lines 50-63.

Textual History: Composition

The poem was written in 1854, according to WMR ( 1911 ), and then heavily revised when it was passing through the 1869-1870 pre-publication revisions for the publication of the 1870 <hi rend="i">Poems</hi> . The Fitzwilliam manuscript is the earliest surviving text and served as printer's copy for thePenkill Proofs.

Textual History: Revision

This was one of the first poems to be revised during the 1869-70 process of preparing the <xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="1-1854">Poems</xref> 1870 for publication, and the revisions were extensive. In September 1869 the first of this poem's major revisions is made in the Penkill Proofs for this poem, where four stanzas are added in manuscript by DGR (stanzas 2, 18, 20, and a stanza that was subsequently dropped following stanza 21). Another stanza followed stanza 7 in the proofs but was excised in a later proof.

In this early state of the text, one can see quite clearly that the poem is closely cognate with, for example, the Willowwood sonnets (see especially lines 22-26).

Printing History

First set in type in the Penkill Proofs (Lewis's second proof state), which DGR received in mid-August 1869. The poem was much revised in the pre-publication process that culminated in the 1870 <xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="1-1854">Poems</xref> , where it was first published. Collected thereafter.

Pictorial

Lines 50-70 of the poem, a central section, connect the work directly with the doppelgänger theme that so fascinated DGR. The key pictorial work here is what DGR called his Bogie drawing, <xref doc="a.s118.raw">How They Met Themselves</xref> . DGR originally made this drawing in 1851 for G. P. Boyce, and in 1861—during his honeymoon in Paris—he made a new version. The original is lost. (See Surtees I. 74 and DGR's letter to Boyce, 3 February 1861: Fredeman, <hi rend="i">Correspondence</hi> , 61 10 ).

Literary

In Rossettian terms, the poem's central situation should be compared with Chiaro dell Erma's dream vision of his soul in <xref doc="a.46p-1849.sa76.raw">Hand and Soul</xref> , and of course with the many variant versions of such dream visions that appear throughout his work, including <xref doc="a.1-1847.s244.raw">The Blessed Damozel</xref> , the <xref doc="a.14-1869.raw">Willowwood</xref> sonnets of <xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">The House of Life</xref> , and dream texts like <xref doc="a.21-1869.raw">The Stream's Secret</xref> . The ultimate origin of this kind of visionary poem, for DGR, is the love poetry he translated and eventually published as <xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">The Early Italian Poets</xref> : see for example Cino da Pistoia's <xref doc="a.186d-1861.raw">Sonnet. A Trance of Love</xref> ; Bonaggiunta Urbiciano's <xref doc="a.239d-1861.raw">Canzonetta. How He Dreams of his Lady</xref> , and of course various dream texts of Dante (for example, <xref doc="a.11d-1861.raw">A very pitiful lady, very young</xref> in <xref doc="a.9d-1861.raw">The New Life</xref> ).