Commentary
Introduction
Baum says the sonnet was composed “for his translation
of the
Vita Nuova
,
which he had completed in 1850”
(see Baum,
<hi rend="i">Poems, Ballads, and Sonnets</hi>
, 174n
). Baum's
“for
” should be taken to mean
that the sonnet is a gloss on the translation as that work constitutes
DGR's interpretive appropriation of his Dantean inheritance.
The sonnet is yet another expression of DGR's programmatic effort
to recover the ground of a vital artistic practise “in this the
twilight
” (
<xref doc="a.2-1849.s102.raw">'St. Luke the Painter”</xref>
) of the European
tradition. In painting, the program involved a turn to the primitive models of
the Pre-Raphaelites; in poetry it meant going back to the poetic practices DGR saw epitomized in the poems he translated in
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">
<hi rend="i">The Early Italian Poets</hi>
</xref>
. And in each case the move was conceived in “simple
”
terms—that is to say, in stylistic forms (like pastiche and translation) that
emphasized the authority of the origin. So in DGR's Dantean frame of
reference, the “child
”
is a figure that idealizes the spirit of submission and humility sought with such
difficult deliberation by the proud and talented Dante. Dante's greatness as a
poet arises from the devotional character of his work, and DGR
here adopts a similar devotional posture towards his greatest master.
Textual History: Composition
WMR dates the sonnet 1852 in
1911
. The Fitzwilliam “House of Life” composite manuscript contains two holograph copies of the sonnet: an early corrected draft manuscript and a fair copy that must date from 1869.
Textual History: Revision
The text of the poem as it appears in the
1870 volume
shows only one minor accidental change from the various proof texts that
preceded the book.
Printing History
The sonnet was first published in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw">Poems</xref>
; it
was first printed in August 1869 in the Penkill Proofs, and kept in DGR's
texts thereafter.
Literary
Along with its companion piece
<xref doc="a.2-1861.raw">”Dantis
Tenebrae”</xref>
, the sonnet locates a key moment in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.raw" workcode="2-1852">Poems</xref>
:
when the relation between DGR's original poetry and his translation work
is sharply defined. The translation project that first appeared under the title
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">
<hi rend="i">The Early Italian Poets</hi>
</xref>
(1861), and that centered in DGR's translations of
Dante, is intimately connected to all of DGR's work as artist and writer.
Indeed, as Pater was the first to see with perfect clarity, DGR's
remarkable stylistic innovations are all grounded in the experiments he
carried out when he tried to create translation of Dante and his
Circle that would be at once “literal”
and poetic.
Bibliographic
Baum's
<hi rend="i">
<xref doc="a.">Rossetti. Poems, Ballads and Sonnets</xref>
</hi>
,
174n.
Doughty,
<hi rend="i">A Victorian Romantic</hi>
, 125-126
Ray
<xref doc="a.ray001.rad" link="dead" from="21" workcode="2-1852" to="22">
<hi rend="i">Rossettiana</hi>
</xref>
, 21-22
McGann,
‘Medieval versus Victorian versus Modern’
, 101-109