Commentary
Introduction
The sonnet is remarkable and has always been admired. Its title supplies the initial
suggestion that is borne out in the unfolding text: that the object of our attention is a
thing to be simultaneously looked at and read, as if it were a text superscribed over some
sort of picture. In this respect the sonnet comes as a textual translation of the
Rossettian double work of art. The allegorical names in the first two lines operate figurally
rather than semantically—they correspond exactly to the moral attributes raised up
as iconic forms in the
<xref doc="a.9-1848.s40.raw">Mary's Girlhood</xref>
sonnets.
The sonnet is equally a paradigm of the way DGR manipulates pronouns throughout
The House of Life
sequence. Almost invariably the personal pronouns lie open to several available
referents: the key ones are the poet, the Beloved, the Innominata, the sonnets themselves, and
the reader, but local circumstances continually bring forward other options. In this case the
first person pronoun is primarily identified with the sonnet and/or the picture that the
sonnet figurally constructs and/or the (allegorical) figure in that picture who holds the
shell and the mirror.
The ornamental presentation of ideas and an extreme instability of reference: these
conditions, typical of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
sonnets and of this sonnet especially, tend to short-circuit traditional modes of
interpretive comment. The sonnets resist explication in terms of organized meanings (meanings
proliferate as the sonnets tease us into thoughts about them), and also in terms of thematic
and/or biographical reference (different narratives can always be applied at any juncture).
This last situation is nicely illustrated in the sonnet's concluding lines, which center in
the enigmatic
<xref doc="a.op76.rap">Mona Lisa</xref>
image. Ambushed by the recollection of unfulfilled desire, the soul may be imagined
to be erotically transfixed. DGR's own comment is interesting and pertinent: “I am well aware that the greater proportion of my poetry is suited only to distinctly poetic readers. To this class belong what I think perhaps the most of myself —that is, the Sonnets; and none more than the one you mention, called ‘A Superscription.’ This is decidedly (painful as it is) a favorite of my own. Nothing I ever wrote was more the result of strong feeling, as you may perhaps think traceable in it” (see letter to Alicia Losh, 19 October 1869:
Fredeman, Correspondence,
69. 186
).
Textual History: Composition
On 24 January 1869 WMR noted in his diary that DGR had just written this sonnet and sent off the
sequence of sixteen
to the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" workcode="52-1869">Fortnightly Review</xref>
for publication (
Rossetti Papers,
380
). So it appears this was the last of that group to be written. Two manuscripts are
preserved in the composite Fitzwilliam manuscript of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
sonnets, one a heavily revised
holograph, the other a fair copy by Charles
Fairfax Murray.
Textual History: Revision
The substantive character of all the printed texts is identical.
Iconographic
The controlling trope is iconographical: as if a text of some kind were being imagined as an
allegorical painting or an allegorical figure in a painting. The figure holds a shell and a
mirror, which are themselves allegorical devices for art.
Printing History
First printed as Sonnet VIII in the sequence of sonnets
published in the
<xref doc="a.ap4.f7.5.rad" workcode="2-1868">Fortnightly Review</xref>
(March 1869) as the first instantiation of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
project. These sixteen sonnets were printed again in the Penkill Proofs in August and kept through
all prepublication texts until its publication in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="2-1868">Poems</xref>
. The sonnet is numbered XLVI in
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
as published in the1870 volume, and XCVII in thesequence as published
in 1881.
Autobiographical
Many readers have read the sonnet as a cryptic representation of DGR's persistent sense of
guilt and regret, partly for what he imagined as his own responsibility in his wife's suicide,
and partly for the unfulfilled state of his love for Jane Morris.
Bibliographic
Baum, ed.,
<hi rend="i">The House of Life</hi>
,
215-218
McGann,
<hi rend="i">DGR and the Game that Must be Lost</hi>
, 136-137
Rees,
<hi rend="i">The Poetry of DGR</hi>
,
116-117
Riede,
<hi rend="i">DGR and the Limits of Victorian Vision</hi>
,
143-144
WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
,
257-258
Wagner,
<hi rend="i">A Moment's Monument</hi>
, 141-142