Commentary
Introduction
The
“Songs of the Art Catholic” comprised a
series of poems DGR gathered together in 1847 as part of an early
project in imaginative historical reconstruction. The project clearly
forecast the central pursuits of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The longest
contemporary account of this work is William Bell Scott's,
to whom DGR sent a manuscript copy of the “Songs” in late November
1847:
“a bundle of MSS. [including] the
<xref doc="a.1-1847.s244.raw">‘Blessed Damozel’</xref>
,
<xref doc="a.3-1847.raw">‘My Sister's Sleep’</xref>
, and other
admirable poems, marshalled under the title
‘Songs of the Art-Catholic’, still making
sunshine in the shady places of my memory. . . . The mastery in rhythm and
the invention in these poems were both equally astonishing to me, especially
in a youth of manifest immaturity, as apparent in certain peculiarities
evidently cherished as his favourite characteristics. But the title
applied to the poems collectively—‘Songs of the Art-Catholic’—was most perplexing. To one who had written and
published a long poem founded on the
progressive development of humanity, a believer in the three watchwords
of the French Revolution too, it seemed that somehow or other the Oxford
tractarianism just then distracting weak intellects had possibly already
undermined that of this wonderfully gifted boy!”
(see Scott,
<hi rend="i">Autobiographical Notes</hi>
, I. 245-246
).
The most self-conscious of writers and artists,
even as a young man, DGR must have sent his packet to Scott with
a purpose—perhaps indeed to test out the intellectual strength of his
remarkable poetic experiment on a man who would have little sympathy with
such a project.
We know for certain that
the contents of the packet included the two poems mentioned by Scott as well
as
<xref doc="a.2-1847.raw">“Mater Pulchrae Delectionis”</xref>
.
But other works must have been
included: almost certainly
<xref doc="a.4-1847.raw">“For an Annunciation, Early German”</xref>
,
probably
some of the translations that would later appear in the
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">Early Italian
Poets</xref>
, and perhaps
<xref doc="a.1-1846.raw">Henry the Leper</xref>
, for which DGR always
kept a certain fondness, or
<xref doc="a.2-1846.raw">“A Prayer”</xref>
.
<quote>
<xref doc="a.6-1847.s37.raw">“Retro Me,
Sathana!”</xref>
</quote>
may also have been written as an Art
Catholic work, though there seems little in it that could be
called specifically Catholic
.
The
“Songs of the Art Catholic” anticipate DGR's early
Pre-Raphaelite paintings and drawings, especially the Marian works, as well
as the related stories and poems. This entire body of materials, which
includes the translations of Dante and his circle, is of first importance
for understanding DGR's programmatic attitude toward his work. In this initial, and
defining, stage, DGR was articulating an historicist aesthetic along
Poe's and Browning's lines. Unlike those precursors, however, DGR was aiming
for a sacramental art in the strictest sense—i.e., an art which, when
practised, would generate sacred consequences. Like Scott (and his father
Gabriele), DGR was a completely secular man. But like Ruskin and Morris, he
felt keenly the spiritual emptiness of his age, and of the art and poetry
of his age. He was interested in “the
Art Catholic”
not as a means to recover its
institutional or sacerdotal set of forms,
but as the (historical) site and example of a living, sacred art.
Textual History: Composition
The known works were written in 1847, but an
extensive corpus of probable works, and related
materials, extends out from that year. When DGR abandoned the project
for the program of early Pre-Raphaelitism, the materials that had
formed parts of the
“Songs of the Art Catholic” were
redistributed into fresh forms—most notably the
<xref doc="a.8a-1850.raw">“Sonnets for
Pictures”</xref>
, which were first
printed (in
<xref doc="a.ap4.g415.1.4.rad" from="180" to="182">
<hi rend="i">The Germ</hi>
</xref>
) through the same inspiration
that created the “Songs of the Art Catholic”
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
The
“Songs of the Art Catholic”
never went beyond their manuscript existence. DGR seems to have gathered
them together in a manuscript book that he sent to William Bell Scott late
in 1847 (it may have been late in 1848).
Pictorial
At the time DGR was constructing this body of work he
was beginning his study of the early Italian painters. This study
would not become serious, however, until 1848-1849 when DGR came under
the tutelage of Ford Madox Brown and William Holman Hunt. DGR's
dissatisfaction with the Royal Academy and its historical approach to art
was, however, well developed in 1847, and had been energized early in the
year when he discovered the work of William Blake.
Historical
As William Bell Scott observed (see
<hi rend="i">Autobiographical Notes</hi>
, 245-246
),
these works testify to the impact that the Tractarian Movement was having in
England at the time. DGR's mother and sisters were heavily influenced
by it, and the secularist DGR plundered its urgencies for his own
purposes. One of the direct descendants of the
Songs of the Art
Catholic, the
<xref doc="a.3-1847.raw">“Songs of One Household”</xref>
project that
DGR initiated and then abandoned, underscores the contemporaneity
of this project: the one “Household” song that DGR
printed was the erstwhile “Art Catholic” piece
<xref doc="a.3-1847.raw">“My
Sister's Sleep”</xref>
(published in
<xref doc="a.ap4.g415.1.1.rad" workcode="11-1847" from="21">
<hi rend="i">The Germ</hi>
</xref>
no. 1).
Literary
DGR's earliest literary influences were old romances
and ballads, as well as the poetry of Dante and his circle. The sacred
elements in all such work, even the most secular forms of it, made a strong
and lasting impression of DGR's aesthetic attitudes. Also important at
this time was the work of Poe and, beginning in 1847, of Browning.