The poem (and the composite work it belongs to)
represents another example of the “truth”
of art as that idea was
being pursued by a critic like Ruskin and by the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
In contrast to the sonnets
But the sonnet performs other functions if read in
the context of the drawing named in its title. Its relation to that
picture is underscored by the word “draws” in line 10—a
word DGR frequently puns upon in his verse. In this frame of reference,
“Mary Magdalene”
is not the biblical character but the
visioned creature of DGR's drawing. That Magdalene is an artistic creature
who figures centrally in an argument DGR is making, in this very
composite work, about an aesthetic ideal DGR wishes to define and
promote. The argument is visibly instantiated in the drawing as a
collision between two styles of representation: a realist style here
associated with the street and its extreme pictorial recession; and
an iconic style associated with the head of Jesus. The latter,
aggressively “out of drawing”
, enters the picture as a
recollection of primitivist pictorial methods. DGR and the other
Pre-Raphaelites had been attacked, when they first appeared on the scene
in the early 1850s, for their ignorance of the rules of perspective. The
truth, of course, was that they wanted to call into question the
authority of those rules, and to argue the expressive power of more
primitive styles. DGR in particular associated the iconic style with
the power of art to transcend reality.
This was one of the “seven new
sonnets”
DGR wrote and sent to his printer in mid-September 1869 (see DGR's
The sonnet went through its proof texts in 1869-70 with only one minor (punctuation) change.
The
Greatly admired by Ruskin, the drawing was one of DGR's
most celebrated (see Sharp,
DGR sketched the scene of the picture for Mrs. Clapburn,
though it is clear that he was describing “The scene represents two houses opposite each other,
one of which is that of Simon the Pharisee, where Christ and Simon, with
other guests, are seated at table. In the opposite house a great banquet
is held, and feasters are trooping to it in cloth of gold and crowned
with flowers. . . .Mary Magdalene. . .has been in this procession, but
has suddenly turned aside at the sight of Christ, and is pressing forward
up the steps of Simon's house, and casting the roses from her hair. Her
lover and a woman have followed her out of the procession and are
laughingly trying to turn her back. The woman bars the door with her arm.
Those nearest the Magdalene in the group of feasters have stopped short in
wonder and are looking after her, while a beggar girl offers them flowers
from her basket. A girl near the front of the procession has caught sight
of Mary and waves her garland to turn her back. Beyond this the narrow street
abuts on the high road and river. The young girl seated on the steps is a
little beggar who has had food given her from within the house, and is wondering
to see Mary go in there, knowing her as a famous woman of the city. Simon
looks disdainfully at her, and the servant who is setting a dish on
the table smiles, knowing her too. Christ looks toward her from within,
waiting till she shall reach him. A fawn crops the vine on the wall where
Christ is seen, and some fowls gather to share the beggar girl's dinner,
giving a kind of equivalent to Christ's words:
(from a July 1865 letter to Mrs. Clapburn, quoted in Surtees, ‘Yet the dogs under the
table eat of the children's crumbs’
.”
A Catalogue Raisonné
The text was first set in type in mid-September 1869
for the
Jan Marsh has noted the picture's indebtedness to Dürer's “
The general literary context for the sonnet is the gospel of
“realizes”
the scene (in both drawing and poem) with far more
detail than Luke provides; indeed, DGR's is a re-imagining of the events
alluded to in Luke, a highly concrete suggestion of what might have happened.
In the design Mary has left a festal procession, and is ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she sees Christ. Her lover has followed her and is trying to turn her back.
“Drawing”, where the
“Bridegroom's face”appears literally as a drawing or iconic image set in DGR's own
Drawing.