Although not a work much commented upon by DGR's early readers, it seems one of his most interesting early poems, underscoring very plainly his deep involvement with the fantastic traditions of romanticism (both artistic and poetical). The poem is explicitly—as its original printed version showed—an interpretive meditation on Theodore Von Holst's painting
“illustrate”or comment upon a picture. DGR had seen the painting in 1848 in the London house of Lord Northwick.
DGR's admiration for Von Holst was early and intense. An engraving after one
of “that great painter”
Von Holst's works hung on the wall of DGR's
room in March 1848, as he told Ford Madox Brown (see Doughty and Wahl,
The poem is especially useful for throwing into relief DGR's
early programmatic involvement with “Art Catholic”
and Dantean materials. In all this work what most draws DGR's attention are
aesthetic possibilities: in particular, the spiritual power of artistic and
poetical practises.
The poem connects directly to DGR's drawings illustrating Faust, Von Chamisso, and Poe, which he executed in 1846-1848.
One of the most interesting parts of the poem is its pair of
invented epigraphs. The first of these is in English prose, the second
in French verse. Both epigraphs survive in a
DGR wrote a version of the poem (which he seems to have first titled
On 2 September 1869 DGR wrote to WMR that he had just sent to his printer
“an old poem, the
(see
See Commentary (Reception History) for the 1870
First printed in
The poem is a meditation/commentary on the painting by
Theodore von Holst (1810-1844), a London painter in the Blake/Fuseli tradition
who was much admired by DGR. The poet's note to the text printed in 1852 refers
to this picture as representing “a beautiful woman, richly dressed, who is
sitting at a lamp-lit table, dealing out cards, with a peculiar fixedness
of expression”
. The painting is
It should be pointed out that the details of the poem do not correspond exactly to those of the painting.
There is a A Catalogue Raisonné
D. M. R. Bentley's essay on the poem stresses its pivotal place in DGR's repeated concern with the themes of death and chance in both his writings and his pictures. Particularly notable are works like
“H. H. H.”(as in the original publication of
“people used to say my style was hard”(see Sharp,
“I am sorry you found a stanza in the(Vingt-et-un poem obscure. On referring to the rough copy, I find that it was intended to indicate that state before death when the forms of things may be supposed to be lost, while their colours throb, as it were, against the half-closed eyelids, making them to ache with confused lights. I suppose it is dangerous for a man who has not had the advantage of dying to attempt a description of death, and afterwards unfortunately there are obstacles in the way”
“The game of Twenty-One”and there concluded the poem.
“In the last line the(see‘game of twenty-one’refers to the title of the poem, which I thought would be sufficient explanation.‘Vingt-et-un’is, as you of course know, the title of a game of cards, at which I have supposed the lady of the picture (personifying, according to me, intellectual enjoyment) to be playing, since twenty-one is the age at which the mind is most liable to be beguiled for a time from its proper purpose”