Heart's Haven Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1871
abbaabbacdcddc 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>The sonnet is interesting for its explicit declaration about the office that “Love” performs in the dynamic of eros and aesthesis being represented in <xref doc="a.44-1869.raw"> <title level="wrk">“The House of Life” sequence. “Lulls us to rest with songs” is necessarily self-reflexive in context so that DGR's sonnet sequence itself is explicitly associated with a world of sleep and dreams. As such, the aesthetic realm functions as a device of (fantasy) protection against the traumas of the (apparently) waking, “real” world. In all of DGR's work, however, the latter is itself always perceived as socially traumatized, so that DGR's aesthetic fantasia functions ultimately as a revelatory device: a second-order dream world decodes the truth about the first-order dream world (commonly known under its mystified and fantastical name “reality”).

Textual History: Composition

Composed summer 1871 (before 13 August). Four complete manuscripts come down to us and a fifth must have existed. The earliest of these is the corrected copy in the Bancroft collection. The other manuscripts are the copies in the Fitzwilliam (with one correction), and two fair copies, one at Princeton, the other among the Kelmscott Love Sonnets in the Bodleian. DGR sent a copy to William Bell Scott in a letter of 13 August 1871 that Scott later printed in his <hi rend="i">Autobiographical Notes</hi> (page 146). Scott's transcript differs slightly from the received text of the sonnet.

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> , 198-199 Baum, ed., <hi rend="i">House of Life</hi> , 97-98

Ballads and Sonnets first edition text Ballads and Sonnets 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 N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 1) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 2, corrected) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, fourth revise, copy 3, corrected) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 6 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, WMR's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, DGR's copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 - 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, partial and uncorrected copy) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May- 1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature N (Delaware Museum, final proof, uncorrected copy 2) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 18 -1881 June 0 Ballads and Sonnets (1881), proof Signature O (Delaware Museum, first author's proof) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1881 May 3 0 The House of Life, A Sonnet Sequence (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Princeton/Troxell collection) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1869-1881 0 The House of Life (composite manuscript posthumously arranged, Fitzwilliam Museum) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1845 - 1881 0 Heart's Haven (corrected holograph copy, Bancroft Collection) Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871 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 Autobiographical Notes of the Life of William Bell Scott, Volume 2 W. Minto 1892 0