DGR began the poem in London on 2 August 1869, according to WMR. At the time he called it “a central
representative treatment of its splendid
subject
” (see his letter to Alice Boyd of 21 September 1869,
I would wish to be known by” (see his letter to Thomas Gordon Hake, 21 April 1870,
The poem is indeed one of DGR's core texts, both in its themes and in its manner of treatment. It locates the equivocal fatalities of beauty and love in a primal scene and complicates the moral issues by weaving the action into a domestic structure of relations. The poem cuts into the Eden story and the story of the Fall from Paradise via the myth of Lilith, which is not treated directly in the bible.
The poem connects to a great many of DGR's works, both pictorial and textual. In the 1870
The erotic intensity of the poem is deepened by the social and personal aspects of the subject that run through the text in dark undercurrents. An apocalyptic destruction (at once psychic and cultural/historical) is hinted throughout the ballad.
DGR must have read the poem to his sisters shortly after completing it at the
end of September, for at that time Gabriel writes me that he has done the best he
has yet accomplished in the ‘
” (
Begun on 2 August 1869, perhaps in conceptual form and perhaps even in a
prose outline such as DGR sometimes made for projected works, the poem was
worked on during the rest of the summer.
An interesting and unincorporated variant appears in the
The frontmatter of the
The
The poem was first set in type around 3 October 1869 in the
DGR executed a drawing
Virginia Allen has shown the relation of this kind of subject, in DGR and other late Victorian writers, with the politically charged Woman Question—in particular, with the social import of the rise of the “new woman”. As the contemporary elements in a painting like
The poem moves out from the Alphabet of Ben
Sira) where the story is told that God first gave Lilith to Adam as his
consort. She refuses to submit to his authority and disappears into the air,
and later haunts his dreams. This source text explicitly defines the
conflict and disagreement as a struggle for sexual power. The fact that
Lilith, unlike Eve, was created directly from the earth (like Adam)
underscores the authority of her claim to equality with Adam. She flees him
when he refuses to grant her this equality.
The poem is a darker working of Keats'
DGR's manipulation of the ballad structure is impressive. The couplet rhymes
in each stanza are often loose, and all are feminine. DGR's technique is no
mere poetic virtuosity, but a subtle device for establishing what he liked
to call an inner standing point
toward the material. That
move erodes the distance between the poet/narrator and his poetical
characters—as if the entire discourse were contained within the
same moral atmosphere.
The diction and phrasing of the poem are biblical throughout.
The association of the poem with Fanny Cornforth comes via DGR's inclination to use her as his model for his various treatments of Lilith-like figures. But the association is radically complicated when one unravels the associations that radiate from related works like
Dante Gabreiel Rossetti
“Life and Works of DGR” vol. 2
Dante Gabreiel Rossetti Revisited
It rather troubles me that the first verse is readable in an inflection not intended . . . i.e. . . . not at once [to] emphasize the first” (it
'Twas so with Lilith the wife of Adam (etc.)/That not a drop of her blood was human” (see his letter to Swinburne of 28 February 1870,
O thou fairest among women”).