Commentary
Introduction
This is an important sonnet for understanding several of the most
essential features of
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The
House of Life</xref>
project. First, one
wants to recognize that the Dante allusion in the first quatrain signals
the pervasive presence of Dante and the entire stil novisti
tradition (recovered by DGR in his translations in
<xref doc="a.1-1861.raw">The Early Italian Poets</xref>
). As always with his use
of medieval materials, however, DGR's
method is to adopt a decorative and pictorial approach. That is to say,
he “thinks” through what this sonnet calls “shadow[s]”
and “image[s]”. Ideas like the medieval “spirits of
mine eyes” are recognized rather than cogitated—as it were assented to,
though not as an ideologue would assent, but rather as an historian or an
ethnographer. In this way DGR's Neo-Platonism assumes a radical and almost
materialist character, for his approach collapses the distinction between
mind and matter.
Second, the sonnet constructs a startlingly paradoxical argument in the
sestet. The general form of the argument is important, its “if/then”
structure: if I were no longer to see love's images and shadows on earth,
then how would I be able to hear the sounds of the dying year? Baum speaks for
many readers when he reads this as a question that “introduce[s] the motif of Despair ”
into the sequence (see Baum,
<hi rend="i">Poems, Ballads, and Sonnets</hi>
, 262
). But the form
of the proposition sets up an expectation of a thought such as:
if I can no longer see the images of love in the world, then what hope can I
have for the future? But the form of the proposition
urges one to expect a very different thought: if I can
no longer see the images of love in the world, then what unhope would be
available to me any longer? The strong
allusion to Shelley argues that DGR is no more expressing a thought of despair
in this sonnet than Shelley is in
<xref doc="a.shelley001.002.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Prometheus Unbound</hi>
</xref>
or the
<xref doc="a.shelley001.005.rad" link="dead">“Ode to the West Wind”</xref>
.
Knowledge-through-images and shadows is a knowledge that shifts and
changes its forms, and that operates in a dialectic of firm uncertainties, as
it were. So the sonnet concludes by staring at words like Hope and Death
in the realization that their affective value—which is to say, for DGR, their
love-value—must shift and change in perpetuum.
Textual History: Composition
Tisdel dates the poem ?1853-62, which Baum follows, but
it was almost certainly written between March and August 1869, which
is the date assigned to it by WMR and Fredeman (see Peattie,
<hi rend="i">Letters of WIlliam Michael Rossetti</hi>
; and Fredeman,
“Rossetti's ‘In Memoriam’”
65
)
The only manuscript seems to be the corrected copy gathered into the Fitzwilliam composite
“House of Life”
manuscript.
Textual History: Revision
DGR made some slight changes to the poem when he first
printed it in August 1869 in the Penkill Proofs; it did not change except accidentally thereafter.
Printing History
First printed in mid-August 1869 as part of the
Penkill Proofs, the
sonnet remained in all proof stages and was published
in the 1870
<xref doc="a.1-1870.1stedn.rad" workcode="3-1869">Poems</xref>
and thereafter. It is
<xref doc="a.44-1869.raw">The House of Life</xref>
Sonnet III in the
1870 volume, and Sonnet IV
in the 1881 Ballads and Sonnets.
Literary
The Dante allusion in the octave operates not so much
cognitively as apparitionally—which seems appropriate enough in the
context of a work that argues by images. In the sestet DGR finishes his
sonnet with a clear general allusion to Shelley: the most relevant text is
of course the
<xref doc="a.shelley001.005.rad" link="dead">“Ode
to the West Wind”</xref>
, but DGR is recalling as well
<xref doc="a.shelley001.002.rad" link="dead">
<hi rend="i">Prometheus Unbound</hi>
</xref>
(Act II scene 1), and the hyacinth leaves
which draw Asia to “pursue the sound” to “the world unknown”.
Bibliographic
Baum,
<hi rend="i">The House of Life</hi>
, 69-70.
Fontana,
“Representations of the Kiss”
, 80-88.
Talon,
<xref doc="a.talon001.rad" link="dead" from="14" workcode="3-1869" to="25">
<hi rend="i">DGR: The House of Life</hi>
</xref>
1966), 14-25.
WMR,
<hi rend="i">DGR as Designer and Writer</hi>
, 187.