Commentary
Introduction
The sonnet forms a pair
with
<xref doc="a.2-1852.raw">“On the <title level="wrk" lang="Italian">Vita Nuova of Dante”
, and both call attention to the crucial Dantean significance
of all of DGR's work. The word
“Tenebrae”
in the title signals
the element of mystery and secret meanings which both DGR and his father
explored in their work with Dante. DGR's work characteristically darkens (in
a psychological sense, at any rate) these
darknesses, as this poem emphasizes when it associates (in line 6)
the Dantean mysteries with the
<xref doc="a.dante002.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Commedia</hi>
</xref>
's
<xref doc="a.dante002.1.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Inferno</hi>
</xref>
.
Dante's journey passes through to the
<xref doc="a.dante002.2.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi>
</xref>
, but for DGR that goal
remained at best
<xref doc="a.16-1870.raw">“The One Hope”</xref>
of his desire. Consequently, the
sonnet's conclusion—where DGR's father is seen under the dominion of
“the night”
—lifts the “darkness”
explored in this
poem to a position of great (and decidedly ambiguous) power.
Textual History: Composition
WMR dates the sonnet 1861 (see
1911, 668n
), thus
associating it directly with DGR first book
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">
<hi rend="i">The Early
Italian Poets</hi>
</xref>
(1861).
Textual History: Revision
The text first put into print, in the
First Trial Book,
differs slightly from the received text. DGR introduced the received
changes when he corrected those proofs, and the present text appears
in the Second Trial Book.
Printing History
First printed in the First Trial Book at the end of
September 1869, and eventually published in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="2-1861">Poems</xref>
a few
months later, and collected thereafter.
Literary
The poem of course feeds upon the key Dantean works of
the
<xref doc="a.dante005.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Vita Nuova</hi>
</xref>
and the
<xref doc="a.dante002.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Commedia</hi>
</xref>
, as well as on DGR's father's
lifelong scholarly involvement with the latter in particular. The sonnet's
octave refers directly to Gabriele Rossetti's study
<xref doc="a.gr006b.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">La Beatrice di Dante</hi>
</xref>
(1842).
Autobiographical
The sonnet is an elegy for DGR's father Gabriele, the
celebrated Dante scholar. He died in 1854. The works of Gabriele Rossetti
that bear most strongly on DGR's work are
<xref doc="a.gr003.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri con comento
analitico . . . </hi>
</xref>
,
2 vols. (1826-27);
<xref doc="a.gr006a.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Il Mistero dell'Amor
Platonico</hi>
</xref>
5 vols. (1840); and
<hi rend="i">La
Beatrice di Dante</hi>
(1842).
Bibliographic
Mégroz,
<hi rend="i">Painter Poet of Heaven and Earth</hi>
179-180
Ray
<xref doc="a.pr5247.r38.rad" link="dead" from="22" workcode="2-1861" to="23">
<hi rend="i">Rossettiana</hi>
</xref>
22-23