Heart's Compass Love's Compass Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1871
abbaabbacddccd iambic pentameter sonnet
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>The sonnet is heavily invested in Dantean materials and comprises a kind of aesthetic recapitulation of Dante's neo-platonic thought. DGR seems to be thinking back through the relation of Beatrice and Love as explicated in his <xref doc="a.9d-1861.raw">translation</xref> of the <xref doc="a.dante005.rad" link="dead"> <title level="wrk"> <hi rend="i">Vita Nuova</hi> . The translation represents Dante's autobiography as a prolepsis of the culminant visions in the <hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi> . The final sonnet of the latter is a useful reference point for reading “Heart's Compass”.

DGR's “fleshly” orientation to his Dantean inheritance is, however, very clear, not least in the sestet's reversion to its sublunar courtly orientation. The octave's culminant paradisal image (“furthest fires”) illustrates what DGR here calls an “ambiguous art”, referencing as it does both Dante's paradisal world of light and a very human eroticism.

Textual History: Composition

Four holograph manuscripts survive: an early, perhaps the first, draft in the British Library, written in the autumn of 1871; and three fair copies: the copy in the Fitzwilliam compilation of “The House of Life”, the copy in the Library of Congress, the copy among the Kelmscott Love Sonnets.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First printed in the 1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> and collected thereafter.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

WMR, <hi rend="i">DGR Designer and Writer</hi> , 201-202 Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> , 103-104

Ballads and Sonnets First Edition Text Compass: the word operates within the orbit of a set of related words that DGR scatters through his sonnets: “passion”, “compassion”, “passionate”, “compassionate”, and variations on the “pass”. Ballads and Sonnets First Edition Text The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Heart's Compass Love's Compass Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), first edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 October 17 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), second edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1882), fourth edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1882 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), (author's proofs, British Library copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April-June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, first revise, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April 28 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, first revise, copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April 28 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, second revise, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 3 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, second revise, copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 3 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, third revise, author's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 4 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, third revise, duplicate copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 4 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, third revise, duplicate copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 4 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 2, corrected) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 3, corrected) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, WMR's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, DGR's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, partial and uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May- 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, uncorrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 The Bodleian Notebook (“Kelmscott Love Sonnets”) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1874 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0 Twelve Sonnets and Some Other Poems by Dante G. Rossetti (Library of Congress posthumous MS book) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1848-1881 0