Ardour and Memory Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1879 December 29
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 is a sonnet carefully built to represent nature in symbolical terms, with the symbols all being ambiguous. The octave carries a series of figurations whose primary value is related to springtime and to summertime as periods of pleasure and fertile growth. But every line is at the same time made to carry an undertone of something degenerative, and so carries a forecast of the dark topics raised in the sestet. The double-meanings begin with the ambiguous symbol of the cuckoo, the bird who flourishes as an emblem of spring by bringing death to the offspring of other birds. (In the following lines note for example the phrases “leaves it”, “visit”, “sunset”, “furtive flickering”, and “lusts”.) The sonnet is a more personal version of many texts in Swinburne, most famously, I suppose, the great chorus in <bibl> <xref doc="a."> <title level="bk"> <hi rend="i">Atalanta in Calydon</hi> , “When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces”.

Textual History: Composition

DGR finished the sonnet on 28 December 1879, and sent a copy (titled “Pleasure and Memory”) to Jane Morris the next day. He sent copies as well to family members and friends, two of which conform to the manuscript sent to Mrs. Morris: a fair copy in the J.Paul Getty bound notebook, and another at Leeds (the Brotherton Collection) signed and dated “Xmas 1879”, as in the fair copy at Yale (Tinker Collection) (the latter is reproduced in facsimile in Sharp between pages 426-427). Other copies are: in the Library of Congress, a fair copy; and a corrected copy in the Fitzwilliam composite “House of Life” sequence. The sonnet is one of the earliest indications we have of DGR making practical moves to construct the augmented version of “The House of Life” that would eventuate in his 1881 volume of <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> .

The sonnet is worked up from DGR's notebooks, which exhibit scraps of lines from the early 1870s. Ashley Library Note Book I has drafts of line 6, line 14, line 11, and another stab at line 11. Ashley Note Book II has drafts of lines 2-3, line 1, lines 12-13, lines 13-14, and lines 10-11. The texts drafted in the Duke Library notebooks are: in Note Book II, line 10; and in Note Book III, lines 13, 12, line 11, and lines 6, 7-8, 10, 7.

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> , 228-229 Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> 163-164

1881 <hi rend="i">Ballads and Sonnets</hi> first edition text An oblique echo of Job 38:7. With: the preposition refers (ambiguously) both to “wind” (line 11) and to “verdure” (line 12). The syntax privileges the latter, the sense privileges the former; which is precisely why the ambiguity functions so well, and produces a complex synaesthesia. 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 Q (Delaware Museum, first author's corrected proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 4 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, first revise, author's corrected copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, first revise, author's corrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, first revise, uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, second revise, author's copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, second revise, author's copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, second revise, uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 9 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, late uncorrected proof, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, late uncorrected proof, author's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, late corrected printer's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, late corrected printer's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature Q (Delaware Museum, late set of uncorrected uncut proof sheets) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 1 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Small Notebook 2 (British Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871-1879? 0 Ardour and Memory (holograph fair copy, Brotherton Collection, Leeds University) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1873 0 Ardour and Memory DGR 1879 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 Bodleian Notebook II DGR 1870-1880 ? 0 Rossetti Album (miscellaneous collection, Getty/Wormsley Library) DGR and others 1835-1933 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Note Book III, Duke Library) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 0 Notebook Pages (Duke Library Note Book II) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1847-1848, 1878-1880 0 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A Record and a Study William Sharp 1882 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 Sonnets and Fragments (Princeton/Troxell bound manuscript volume) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1848-1881 0