Commentary
Introduction
Written as a commentary on the painting
<xref doc="a.s193.rap">Sibylla
Palmifera</xref>
(commissioned in 1866), the
sonnet represents one of DGR's
most important statements of his
artistic ideals. But the two works do not
integrate well, and while DGR regularly exploited
disjunctions between the elements of his
various double works of art, in this case the
differentials are not especially effective.
The problem perhaps lies not so much in the
conception as in the execution of the
picture, which seems far less
successful as an integral work than the sonnet.
The sonnet generates two distinct
(if closely related) self-presentations. These correspond
to the two main versions of the sonnet: the 1870 text (titled
“Sibylla Pamifera (For a Picture)”), and the 1881 text
(titled “Soul's Beauty”).
The 1870 sonnet develops a reflection on the specific
painting, which (according to the sonnet: lines 4-14) DGR
executed as a consequence of the
vision he had of “Beauty enthroned”
(line 3). The 1881
sonnet, by contrast, offers itself
as a general comment on the relation of the artist to the idea of the
Beautiful.
The sonnet pivots around two allusions: first, to Dante's
<xref doc="a.dante002.2.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi>
</xref>
(line 10);
second, to Botticelli (line 11). Dante
supplies DGR with a key text for rethinking
the relation between imaginative vision and artistic
execution; and he suggests, via the Botticelli allusion, that
this relation has to be imagined as a continual pursuit: that its
achievement comes in and as the pursuit, which is the
perpetual execution of
one's ideal attachments. Furthermore, by
placing Dante and Botticelli in such close textual proximity,
DGR effectively recalls their artistic/historical
relation—specifically, the relation between Dante's epic poem and
the famous series of illustrations that Botticelli produced for it.
In the sonnet,
the Dante/Botticelli relation serves as a figural
analogue for DGR's own “double work of art
”, which is of course
being exemplified in this very instance of DGR's work. Here
it would be fair to say that the textual work more fully illustrates
DGR's ideal of the “double work of art”
: for it is the textual
work that so brilliantly doubles
itself as at once a textual
and a pictorial event. The doubling centers in the play DGR makes
with the words “drew”
and “draw”
(lines 4, 6).
The most important of DGR's many wordplays (appearing in
various texts), it enacts the fusion of a
textual act and a pictorial one. That fusion then turns to an
emblem off all the equations DGR
is committed to: the harmonic unity of Love, Life, Death, Art, Poetry.
Finally, one wants to remember that this sonnet
forms a pair with
“Lilith (For a Picture)” titled in 1881
<xref doc="a.2-1867.s205.raw">“Body's Beauty”</xref>
.
Elena Rossetti Angeli aptly notes that the two sonnets and their
accompanying pictures constitute “a new expression of Amor Sacro e Profano of Titian”
(see Angeli,
<xref doc="a.angeli001.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">DGR con 107 illustrazioni</hi>
</xref>
(1906) page 31
. See also DGR's
translation of Dante's sonnet on much the same theme,
“Of Beauty
and Duty”
.
Textual History: Composition
DGR wrote the sonnet around May 1866 (see Doughty,
<hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi>
685
). The Fitzwilliam manuscript is a fair copy made for the 1869-1870
printings; the Delaware manuscript is probably a slightly earlier copy. DGR's pencil note on folio 9 of the Fitzwilliam manuscript reads: “Palmifera and Lilith to be called Soul's Beauty and Body's Beauty”.
Textual History: Revision
Once printed (in 1868), the text remained substantively
unchanged thereafter. Its major revision involves its respositioning in
DGR's works: in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="1-1867.s193">Poems</xref>
the sonnet appears among the
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">“Sonnets for Pictures”</xref>
, but
in 1881 DGR made it a part of
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw" workcode="1-1867.s193">The House of Life</xref>
.
Production History
DGR did several studies for this picture as early as
1864 (see Surtees,
<hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi>
, I. 112
), but he did not commence the painting
until he received the commission for it in 1866 from George Rae. DGR
finished the work in December 1870.
For detailed commentary on the production history see the commentary for the finished oil.
Reception
The point of departure for all later responses is
Swinburne's essay included as Part II of the
<xref doc="a.n5054.r47.rad" from="47" workcode="1-1867.s193" to="48">Notes on the
Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868</xref>
(pages 47-48).
Iconographic
The sonnet organizes itself around images of
“the principle of Beauty”
conceived in the form of
idealized
woman. More particularly, the octave's “Beauty enthroned”
not only references DGR's painting
<xref doc="a.s193.rap">“Sibylla
Palmifera”</xref>
, for
which this sonnet was written; it recalls any number of
traditional Madonna paintings. The sestet (see line 11)
evokes the ideal erotic female figures of Botticelli.
Printing History
First printed in May, 1868
as part of Swinburne's essay included as Part II of the
<xref doc="a.n5054.r47.rad" from="48" workcode="swinburne006">Notes on the
Royal Academy Exhibition, 1868, Part II</xref>
(page 48).
Reprinted in September 1869 in the Penkill Proofs for the 1870 volume of
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref>
, it was eventually
published in the
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" from="270" workcode="1-1867.s193">Sonnets
for Pictures, and Other Sonnets</xref>
section of the volume. In 1881
DGR printed it as sonnet LXXVII in
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">The House of Life</xref>
sequence in his
<xref doc="a.2-1881.1stedn.rad" from="239" workcode="1-1867.s193">Ballads and Sonnets</xref>
volume.
Pictorial
The sonnet gives a general rendering of
the painting which inspired it,
<xref doc="a.s193.rap">Sibylla Palmifera</xref>
(i.e., the palm-bearing sibyl, a figure
of peace and benevolence).
The sonnet is thus an interpretation of “the Principle of
Beauty”
, which DGR called the “conception”
of the painting. This principle, he told WMR,
“draws all high-toned
men to itself, whether with the aim of embodying it in art or only of
attaining its enjoyment in life”
(see WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
, 56
).
Literary
The phrase
“Thy voice and hand shake still”
distinctly recalls Dante's
<xref doc="a.dante002.2.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi>
</xref>
XIII. 78,
which contains the discourse of St. Thomas
Acquinas on the material instantiations
of perfection. The Dante allusion is important
since the passage involves one of his central statements about
artistic practise and its relation to the divine sources of vision.
The most pertinent section runs from lines 31-87. DGR imagines
the relation of Nature to his Beatricean figure (lines 5-8)
by reworking Dante's
discussion of the heavenly spheres' relation to materialized forms. In effect,
DGR interposes the figure of “Lady Beauty”
as the presiding
heavenly presence. In doing so—it is of course a move he repeatedly
makes (most famously in
<xref doc="a.1-1847.s244.raw">The Blessed
Damozel</xref>
)—DGR once again draws
upon his reading of this passage in Dante (lines 79-87), which argues for
the perfection of two material human beings: Jesus and his mother, the Blessed
Virgin.
Bibliographic
Cooper,
<hi rend="i">Lost on Both Sides</hi>
153-154
Doughty,
<hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi>
,
346-347, 685
Faxon,
<hi rend="i">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</hi>
162-165
Marillier,
<hi rend="i">DGR: An Illustrated Memorial</hi>
242-243
Mégroz,
<hi rend="i">Painter Poet of Heaven and Earth.</hi>
285-286
Psomiades,
Body's Beauty
, 119-123
WMR and Swinburne,
<xref doc="a.n5054.r47.rad" from="47" workcode="swinburne006" to="48">Notes on the
Royal Academy Exhibition</xref>
, 47-48
WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
,
51-52, 55-56, 90-91, 238-239
Riede,
<hi rend="i">DGR and the Limits of Victorian Vision</hi>.
220-221
Sharp
<hi rend="i">DGR: A Record and a Study.</hi>
201-203
Stephens,
<hi rend="i">Dante Gabriel Rossetti.</hi>
64-65
Surtees,
<hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi>
I. 111-112(Virginia Surtees. )