Severed Selves Between Meetings Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1871
abbaaccadeedde iambic pentameter sonnet
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>This sonnet initiates a sequence of five related sonnets that were added (as a unit) to the 1881 version of <xref doc="a.22-1881.raw"> <title level="wrk">“The House of Life” . The sequence forms a kind of commentary on the sonnet they follow in 1881, “Sleepless Dreams” .

The sonnet is a good example of how DGR works the poetry of the sequence so as to permit a double reference for the Beloved: in biographical terms, either to DGR's dead wife Elizabeth, or to the Innominata, Mrs.Morris.

Also notable is the formal disposition of the images. The octave lays down a series of four figurative equivalences for the “severance” taken up in the poem. The octave ends on an open grammar, licensing the sestet to pick up and elaborate the last of these images.

Line 4's “stream” may refer to the ocean, as in the phrase “ocean stream”, or to the Penwhapple—the stream in the glen at Penkill that is the focus of “The Stream's Secret” and that figures so prominently in the 1870 version of “The House of Life” (see “Farewell to the Glen” as well as the next sonnet in the 1881 sequence, “Through Death to Love” where the motifs of this sonnet are carried forward).

Textual History: Composition

Three integral manuscripts survive: an early holograph corrected copy in the Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” manuscript; a fair copy from that manuscript; and another fair copy in the Bodleian Kelmscott Love Sonnets group. DGR's draft revision for line 14 is scripted into Ashley Notebook II.

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Printing History

First published in the 1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> and collected thereafter.

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

WMR, <hi rend="i">DGR Designer and Writer</hi> , 209 Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> , 121-122

1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> first edition text 1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> first edition text The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1886 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), first edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 October 17 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), second edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1882), fourth edition Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1882 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), (author's proofs, British Library copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 April-June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, first author's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 3 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete first revise, author's corrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete first revise, uncorrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete first revise, uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete second revise, author's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 9 May 1881 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete second revise, uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, incomplete third revise, author's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete third revise, uncorrected copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete third revise, partial uncorrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, complete third revise, author's copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, final proof, uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 The Bodleian Notebook (“Kelmscott Love Sonnets”) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1874 0 The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911) Dante Gabriel Rossetti William Michael Rossetti 1911 0 Twelve Sonnets and Some Other Poems by Dante G. Rossetti (Library of Congress posthumous MS book) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1848-1881 0 Sonnets and Fragments (Princeton/Troxell bound manuscript volume) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1848-1881 0