This edition is a reprint of the 1870
A
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1380.
POEMS BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
IN ONE VOLUME.
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
By the same Author,
BALLADS AND SONNETS
. . 1 vol.
TO
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI,
THESE POEMS,
TO SO MANY OF WHICH, SO MANY YEARS BACK,
HE GAVE THE FIRST BROTHERLY HEARING,
ARE NOW AT LAST DEDICATED.
“
,” there seems to be aHabent sua fata libelli
goddess watching over the fates of books,
equally
whimsical as she who weaves the threads of our own
mortal existence. Upon one
she lavishes with un-
wearying hands the richest gifts of praise and reward,
while
others have to toil and struggle in darkness and
silence.
In Mr. Rossetti's book we gladly acknowledge one
of the rare cases where the
outward success of a work
of art has been proportionate to its intrinsic merits,
and
the rapid run of this first-born poetic production
of its author through a number of
editions, is the more
remarkable, as at first sight it seems to appeal rather to
a
narrow circle of esoteric worshippers than to the
mass of readers. The reception of the
book on the
part of the best organs of the English press was
most favourable; and not
as the least sign of a
complete success we might consider it, that violent
the
almost unanimous applause: for this dissent of
a few, makes the majority of Rossetti's
admirers only
the more evident.
It is natural to ask: whence this admiration and
envy, whence this astonishing
success of a book, the
popularising qualities of which in the sensational, or
in fact,
any other line, would be looked for in vain?
In answering this question as satisfactorily
as the
limits of space will permit, I hope at the same time
to fulfil my task of
introducing the work to continental
readers.
Rossetti's poems, therefore, must not be considered
only as the single emanation of
a single gifted individual,
but also as the result of a movement in which many of
the
most pre-eminent men of modern England co-
operate with our poet in various branches of
literature
and art. I should like myself to call this movement
the renaissance of mediæval feeling, in correspondence
with that other
renaissance of antique culture in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, as it
has
already been furnished with a name, or nickname (at
least in so far as its
tendencies affected the schools of
painting in this country), and as the expression
pre-
Raphaelite school has almost become a household
word in England, I must
unwillingly abide by this, in
many respects, inappropriate denomination. The
common
shibboleth of the chief representatives of this
like Holman
Hunt, Burne Jones, and Madox Brown,
might be called a strong opposition against the
smooth
conventional treatment of nature and the human
figure, as we find it in the
later cinquecentists. Most
of these men are, in an eminent sense, colorists, and in
the
treatment of their effects of colour, certainly
show some dependence on early Florentine
masters.
But all the chief members of the school soon suc-
ceeded in delivering
themselves of the “divine
” and
“
crookednessholy awkwardness
” of their earlier
attempts, and to
speak nowadays of a man, like, for
instance, Madox Brown, with his admirable faculty
of
rendering dramatic effect and human passion, as a pre-
Raphaelite painter, par excellence, and therefore elec-
tively related to Fra Angelico, would be
utterly absurd.
Mr. Rossetti was one of the originators and leaders
of the
pre-Raphaelite movement during its ephemeral
existence as a school of painting, and he also
forms
the connecting link between it and the group of poets
whose aspirations were more
or less imbued with the
same spirit of revived mediævalism. The names of
the
two poets, Morris and Swinburne, who form
with Mr. Rossetti himself the representative
triad of
this movement, are perhaps not as popular on the
other side of the channel as
they deserve. Here,
in England, they form the nucleus of a strong
and
importance. Their influence is also mani-
fested in the multifarious productions of
younger
poets, none of whom seem as yet to have quite passed
the preparatory stage of
imitators. The only poet
of independent claims, at all connected with
the
medæval school of poetry, is, in my opinion, the too
little known and
appreciated poet and painter William
Bell Scott, whose first efforts date back long
before
the rise of the pre-Raphaelite movement. It would
be a most interesting task to
trace the germs of this
movement in Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge, and Keats,
and to
compare it with the romantic revolutions in Ger-
many and France. But such a parallel,
valuable as
its results might be, would lead us altogether from our
present subject,
which is the individual poet, Rossetti.
I have mentioned the whole matter only as
the
necessary foil in which we must consider his indi-
viduality, in order to
understand the peculiarities of
its subjective being.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in May, 1828,
the son of Gabriele Rossetti, the
well-known Italian
patriot and Dante scholar. Rossetti, the father, was
one of the
leaders of the popular party at Naples,
which he inflamed with his patriotic songs. He
had
to leave his position at the Museo Borbonico and his
country, in consequence of the
disastrous events of
poems,
in which tyrannicide was preached but too openly,
prevented him from obtaining a
reprieve of the sen-
tence, like many other refugees. He settled down in
London, and
married a lady of Italian origin, but
English birth. The weary hours of his exile
the
Italian patriot beguiled with studies on Dante, in
which a comprehensive knowledge
of the great poet
and historian is strongly mixed with violent modern
party spirit.
According to him the whole of the
With these few remarks we must leave Rossetti
the painter, and turn to the poetic
side of his creative
power. The two faculties are blended in him so per-
fectly, that
it would almost be impossible to fully
comprehend the one without the other. Only he
who
has been fortunate enough to admire in the artist's
noblest
womanly types, can quite appreciate the mys-
terious charms of his Blessed Damozel, who
or of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, whose dangerous
long hair we know from
Mephisto's description. Such
creations I should call essentially pictorial; the
won-
derfully graphic arrangement in the grouping of the
different motives, reminds one
strangely of the har-
monious effect of perfect colour and design, and is to
me only
perceptible through the medium of a pre-
vious pictorial conception, as ultimately blended
with
the throbbing passion of lyrical poetry, and trans-
ported from the visible world
to the intangible realms
of thought and sound. I will not here enter upon
a
controversial disquisition of the limits of fine art
and poetry, a task, by the way,
which after Lessing
might scarcely be called grateful; much less is it my
intention to
decide whether such a blending of two
heterogeneous arts is an advantage of both poetry
and
painting. My wish is not to write a criticism of Mr.
Rossetti's poetry, but merely
to acquaint the reader, as
his
inspiration flows. In that respect I hope my ex-
cursion on the domain of art criticism
will not appear
quite irrelevant to the subject.
Another important element in Rossetti's poetical * The reader will notice Mr. Rossetti's statement about the chronology of
development seems to me his
Italian origin, combined
with his acquaintance, from the years of childhood,
with the
treasures of the mediæval poetry of that
country. The first fruit of this
knowledge was a col-
lection of translations from “in all respects
praise-
” book, as Witte calls it, was published in
worthy
1861, and
remained for ten years the only poetic
utterance of its author, if we except a few
poems
now and then brought out in periodical publica-
tions.
circle of readers, but made a decided
mark in the
not very rich reproductive literature of England.
What was most admired,
and is most admirable in it,
is the thorough entering of the translator into the
spirit
of his remote originals, while he at the same
time reproduces in his northern idiom, the
finest
nuances of their metrical artificialities, with aston-
ishing skill. Who, versed
in Italian literature, can
his poems, at
the beginning of this volume, which shows that his first poetical
efforts must have been
nearly coeval with those of his pictorial genius.
tive
and essentially southern mixture of religious and
amorous feelings as we find it in the
close repro-
duction of Jacopo da Lentino's sonnet “
I might quote scores of other poems of far more
complicated structure than a
sonnet, in which there is
no trace of that uncomfortable straight-waistcoat feel-
ing
which one never loses in so many translations.
But still more we are struck with the
perfect conge-
niality of author and translator in Dante's Vita Nuova.
Here the
continuous equal flow of concentrated feel-
ing gave Rossetti an opportunity of rendering
all
the peculiarities and mediæval quaintnesses of his great
model's style,
with a fidelity which almost produces
the effect of momentary forgetfulness on the part of
of
the lingua di sì
a short passage from the
It may be considered as a fair speciment of Mr. Rossetti'sDèh peregrini, che pensosi andate.
“About this time, it happened that a great number of persons
undertook a pilgrimage, to the end that they might behold that
blessed portraiture bequeathed unto us by our Lord Jesus Christ, as
the image of his beautiful countenance (upon which countenance
my dear lady now looketh continually). And certain among these
pilgrims who seemed very thoughtful, passed by a path which is
well-nigh in the midst of the city where my most gracious lady was
born and abode, and at last died.“Then I, beholding them, said within myself: ‘These pilgrims
seem to be come from very far; and I think they cannot have
heard speak of this lady, or know anything concerning her. Their
thoughts are not of her, but of other things; it may be, of their
friends who are far distant, and whom we, in our turn, know not.’
And I went on to say: ‘I know that if they were of a country
near unto us, they would in some wise seem disturbed, passing
through this city which is so full of grief.’ And I said also:
‘If I could speak with them a space, I am certain that I should make
them weep before they went forth of this city; for those things
that they would hear from me, must needs weeping in
any.’”
I need not add how greatly Rossetti has, by
his masterly translation, increased the
general in-
terest in Dante's and his contemporaries' poetry inRossetti. B
especially
that of Dante's, has scarcely passed out of
its teens.
With equal distinctness as in these translations we
discern the influence of
Rossetti's Italian nationality
in his original productions.
First of all we might mention in this respect, his
marked predilection for the
sonnet form, which he
wields with the ease of perfect mastership, and never
applies in
its so-called English or Shakespearean de-
terioration. For after all, those poems of
fourteen
lines which we find in the great English bard, marvel-
lous as the may be in
thought and passion, are from
a strictly formal point of view, scarcely defensible.
At
any rate the expression, sonnet, as applied to them,
is a decided misnomer. I will leave it
to Shakespeare-
enthusiasts quand même
derful blossom of lyrical poetry, beginning:
or any other of the immortaly hundred and fifty-four,
is a bad sonnet, or no sonnet at
all. Although Ros-
setti, as Mr. Sidney Colvin has cleverly pointed out,
seems
occasionally influenced by Shakespearean in-
spiration, he happily has not followed the
English poet
in this respect, and his sonnets consist, in accordance
with their innate
symmetry and with the great Italian
models, of the orthodox two quatrains with twice re-
sponding
with its form, the spirit of the sonnets
and songs in “
Other poems in this book, show that Rossetti
is also well acquainted with the
productions, and
thoroughly imbued with the spirit, of the early litera-
pointed out a
certain kind of rhyme in Rossetti's
poetry in which the last syllable of a word of
three
or more syllables receives a sort of artificial accent,
or to use the technical
term, where a proparoxytonon
is turned into an oxytonon, and made to rhyme with
a
monosyllable, like in audiblè shell, (p.254) promisèth:
death
(p. 224). This, it has been said, is an affected
archaism on the part of a modern poet, and
amounts
to the same as the uncouth license of ancient rhyme-
sters who coolly
misaccentuate words like countrìe,
ladìe, wherever it suits their
convenience. In reality,
however, these two cases are entirely different. In the
former
case, the unaccentuated last but one syllable
confers to the ultima a weak or suspensive
accent
(schwebender
makes its position in the masculine
rhyme-syllable
quite permissible, and sometimes, indeed, adds consi-
derably to the
sonorous beauty of a poem; with this,
however, I will not by any means commit myself
to
the assertion that a modern poet may not here and there,
where he intends to produce
a particular effect, be justi-
fied in applying the second mentioned, from a
strictly
metrical point of view, decidedly objectionable kind of
rhyme. A beautiful
specimen of the suspensive rhyme,
as we might call it, is to be found in Kit
Marlowe's
charming pastoral
t
in the word the
in the first line of page XXI
is type damaged.
Another valuable addition to the variety and
beauty of his metrical formations,
which Rossetti has
taken from English sources, is the burden or refrain
which forms a
conspicuous part of his narrative
stanza. Sometimes, as for instance in “
So much about what Rossetti owes to the casual
influences of nationality and
artistic knowledge. But
what we most admire in his work, is something which
lies
entirely beyond the pale of nationality, and
much more beyond that of acquired skill. I
am
speaking of his wonderfully deep conception of the
female type, of woman in her
relativeness to man.
With this we have at last touched the keynote of
Rossetti's
creative power. For it is this conception
of ideal beauty, as revealed in womanhood,
and
the poet's ardent longing for this ideal, which form
the transcendental basis of
all his creations. We
always hear the same grand, albeit monotonous sym-
phony played
as in an undertone, whether the poet
sings the pure love of the “
* See
POEMS.
[Many poems in this volume were written between 1847 and
1853. Others are of
recent date, and a few belong to the inter-
vening period. It has been thought unnecessary
to specify the
earlier work, as nothing is included which the author believes to
be
immature.]
* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their services in the
shadow of the
great bulls. (Layard's ‘
ch. ix.)
*
* Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was now his
fellow-guest at
Verona.
* “Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io fossi.
the reproach is difficult to render, depending as it
does on the literal meaning
of the name Cane.
* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante, as a
recalcitrant
exile.
** “stelle.
“stelle.
“stelle.
* “Quomodo sedet sola civitas!
“Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her,
child!”—(Mrs. Quickly.)
[The first twenty-eight sonnets and the seven first songs
treat
of love. These and the others would belong to separate sections
of the projected
work.]