Commentary
Introduction
The title's typically Rossettian
wordplay anticipates in the first sonnet's concluding lines: for
it remains a nice question whether the “Sun” is incorporate with
the shame or merely an observer of shameful things. The same
problem then applies to the “I” who records his own
observations (line 12).
Within
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">
<hi rend="i">The
House of Life</hi>
</xref>
the first sonnet recalls
<xref doc="a.2-1853.raw">“The Hill Summit”</xref>
.
<xref doc="a.2-1850.raw">“Autumn Idleness”</xref>
takes up
related isues as well, and in fact opens with a phrase that echoes this
poem's title (“The sunlight shames November
”); it was brought into even closer relation with this sonnet when it was included in
<xref doc="a.22-1881.raw">
<hi rend="i">The
House of Life</hi>
</xref>
in the 1881
<xref doc="a.2-1881.1stedn.rad" workcode="18-1869">
<hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi>
</xref>
volume.
When DGR added the second sonnet to form the pair he altered the textual
situation in two ways. First, he enlarged the argument so that it would have a specifically
social and political dimension. Second, the enlargement allowed DGR to open the argument
toward a more benevolent reading of the processes of cultural declension. The second
sonnet develops affinities with a Nietzschean “Eternal Return” via the apparent renunciation of any Christian redemptive economy. The journeying world and its individual persons are “All soulless now” as they wend a way toward “nearer nothingness”. Unlike Swinburne, who would represent this condition as ultimate human freedom, DGR asks us to see the situation from the point of view of a person like Swinburne's Tannhauser in
<xref doc="a.">“Laus Veneris”</xref>
—that is to say, as a freedom dogged by fearful anxieties passed along by the fact of monotheistic histories.
Textual History: Composition
Sonnet I was probably written in the summer of 1869 (which
is Doughty's date), though it could have been written anytime before
August 1869, when it was printed in the first proofs for the coming
1870 volume of poems. Two manuscripts are gathered in the Fitzwilliam composite
“House of Life” sequence, a corrected draft and a fair copy. Another corrected copy is housed in the library of University of British Columbia.
The second sonnet was written later, in 1873, when it was titled
“The World's Soul”. One of DGR's notebooks has a prose summary as well as a draft of the octave. A heavily corrected draft is in the Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” sequence and another fair copy is in the Bodleian. Two further copies are in the Troxell composite “House of Life” sequence: a corrected draft and a fair copy.
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
Sonnet I was first printed in August 1869 as part of the
Penkill Proofs; the sonnet remained in all proof stages and was published
in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw" workcode="18-1869">
<hi rend="i">Poems</hi>
</xref>
and thereafter. It is
<hi rend="i">The House of Life</hi>
Sonnet XLIV in the 1870 volume, and Sonnet XCII in the 1881
Poems and Ballads
volume. Sonnet II was first published in the
latter text and numbered Sonnet XCIII.
Historical
The second sonnet recalls the mordant point of view developed in
DGR's
“On
Refusal of Aid Between Nations”
.
Literary
As
Sharp notes (429-430
),
the first sonnet is a deliberate reworking of Shakespeare's Sonnet 66.
Autobiographical
Baum comments that the first sonnet's “interest is
largely autobiographic
” (
<hi rend="i">House of Life</hi>
, 209
).
And the sonnet may easily be read
as an expression of DGR's regrets for wasting his talents and virtues on
unworthy pursuits, in particular luxury, success, and money.
Bibliographic
WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
, 252.
Baum,
<hi rend="i">House of Life</hi>
, 208-210.
Doughty,
<hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi>
, 397-398.