The Blessed Damozel
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Electronic Archive Edition: 1 File Name: 1-1847.s244
Description of the WorkDate: 1847-1870 (text); 1871-1881 (picture)
Classification Scheme of Iconographical Features:
Subject: The foundational Rossettian subject of the emparadised woman is
in this case imagined as dreaming downward, as it were, to her lover who
remains alive in the world. This imagination of the damozel is here
structured as the “dream-vision” of the lover himself.
Rhyme: a4b3c4b3d
4b3
Meter: sestet, iambic; alternating trimeter and tetrameter
Genre: ballad
Model:
Repainting:
Commentary
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The Blessed Damozel is DGR's single most
important literary work. It constitutes DGR's most important (and evolving)
interpretation of his Dantean inheritance. He was involved with it for
nearly the whole of his working life: in 1847 he produced the first
textual state of the work, a poem that went through a great many
subsequent revisions and changes. Then in 1871 he began work on the
pictorial rendering of the subject, and he continued to work on studies
and different versions of this picture for the next ten years. As a
“double work of art” it is unusual in DGR's corpus because
the poems preceded the pictorial treatments.
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The poem operates at three levels, or from three points of vantage:
the damozel's (from heaven), the lover's (from his dream-vision), and
the lover's (from his conscious reflection). The last of these is
signalled in the text by parentheses, which enclose the lover's thoughts
on the vision of his desire.
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The pictures of course have their own integral meanings, but they
should also be seen as “readings” of their precursive
texts. The composite body of texts and images makes up a
closely integrated network of materials; it is a network, moreover, that
stands as an index of DGR's essential artistic ideals and practises.
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DGR seems to have written the poem (in its first version) in 1846-47—the exact date
is uncertain but we judge it was prior to September 1847 partly from what DGR himself
told his mother in May 1873 (see Family Letters vol. 2, 293)
and partly from WMR's various comments on the work (see
both Works [1911] page 673 and
DGR as Designer and Writer page 126). That early text
appears not to have survived (but see below, Printing History) but it formed part of the group of poems DGR called
Songs of the Art
Catholic, according to William
Bell Scott ( Autobiographical Notes vol. 1, 245).
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The Pierpont
Morgan MS text may be a
memorial reconstruction of the original 1846-47 text that DGR
subsequently revised in 1850. The Morgan MS text was copied by DGR and given to the Brownings as
a gift, in 1855.
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After its initial composition in 1846-47, the poem was revised
and augmented in January 1850 as it was being prepared for publication
in The Germ: on 25 January WMR
notes in his PRB diary that “Gabriel finished up his Blessed Damosel, to which he added two
stanzas”. On the 26th and the 28th he added yet two more stanzas
(Fredeman, The P.R.B. Journal, 47-48).
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The poem was further revised through its various textual states
between its publication in no. 2 of The Germ and
its printing in the 1870 Poems.
The only record of revisions that survives, however, is what can be
traced through the 1870 prepublication states of the poem. The proof for the first
edition of the 1870 Poems—which is the last of
the prepublication states of that book—shows major revisions.
This proof was pulled around 1 March 1870 and it reflects a late
discussion of the poem by DGR and Swinburne, who agreed on various
revisions—notably the removal of the italics that were marking the
poet's moments of reflection in the poem (see Doughty and Wahl, Letters vol. 2, 798; and
Gosse and Wise, Letters of Swinburne vol. 2, 99). At
that point the revision process largely ended, though a few changes do
appear in later texts. The most notable of these is the new stanza 7
that DGR revised for the sixth edition of the 1870 volume. The
printer's copy manuscript for
this correction is in the Troxell Collection at Princeton.
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The Fogg painting was
“[c]ommissioned by William Graham in Feb. 1871 and finished in
1877. On 31 Dec. 1877 Graham asked for the predella to be added, which
was executed in five or six weeks” (Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné vol. 1, 142).
Early in 1878 DGR retouched areas of the picture and put the two
sections in the frame. The Leyland replica (Lady Lever
Art Gallery) was “begun at about the same time as the
Fogg version. The artist was still working on it in April 1879, and it
remained in his hands until the beginning of 1881, when Leyland bought
it. . . . The heads of three child-angels are substituted for the lovers
embracing in the background; the child below the Damozel has now been
omitted” ( Surtees, 144).
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Several finished drawings and studies for details in the picture are
important in their own right. Most significant are the Tate's Sancta Lilias (done in
1874) and the Fogg's drawing of the embracing
lovers (from 1876).
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This is one of DGR's signature works and it was recognized as such
very early. The numerous early printings of the poem testify to its
importance and its recognition, as does the Morgan
manuscript, which shows the kind of interest the
poem already had attracted by 1855. The critical and scholarly
literature on the poem is extensive.
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DGR's picture is an erotic variation on a distinctively
Venetian style of representing the enthroned Virgin Mary, i.e., at
half-length. In the traditional pictures, the Virgin usually holds
the Christ child, and is surrounded by attendant angels and saints. Here
the child is absent, although his surrogate in DGR's painting is clearly
the damozel's lover, pictured in the predella. The saints and angels
of tradition are refigured as the group
of embracing lovers (or as the child-angels put in the Leyland
replica). The lover in DGR's predella
also recalls the votive
figures that appear in any number of public or domestic votive Madonnas,
where the picture is made an offering for some public
or private mercy. The votaries
typically appear at the feet of the Madonna (if it is full length), or
in some corner or lowly place that suggests the votary's humility. DGR's
picture, while clearly personal in its votive aspect, necessarily also
carries a public and even political significance: for in the context of
DGR's programmatric Pre-Raphaelite ideals, the damozel (like Dante's
Beatrice) is a guiding personal and social emblem. Important
precursors of
DGR's version of this widely dispersed treatment of the Madonna would be
Simone Martini's Maestà
fresco (1315), Dürer's various woodcuts, and
Cimabue's celebrated Trinita Madonna (ca. 1270)
in the Uffizi, which has come to stand as an index of the change from a Byzantine style of treatment to a
more human and sympathetic style.
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The text of the poem underwent a continuous
process of alteration up to the final (1881) text
published in DGR's lifetime. DGR originally intended to have it printed (in
1846 or 1847) in the family magazine Hodgepodge,
as he recollected in a letter to his mother in May 1873. That event did not come about, however, for
the private periodical—initiated in 1843—was not revived in those years. So the poem was first published in
The Germ no. 2
(Feb. 1850); again in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856).
William Heeley invited DGR to contribute to the
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,
probably in the late summer or fall
of 1855. (See Grylls, Portrait of Rossetti, 61.)
The poem also appears in the 1869 proofs and trial books for the 1870
edition of Poems,
in different positions; first collected
in a published edition in the Poems of 1870 and thereafter. Also, the 1870 text of the first four stanzas
appears on the frame (designed by Rossetti) of Rossetti's oil painting of
The Blessed
Damozel.
Two interesting minor (variant) texts were published (in the United States) between 1856 and
1870: The Crayon (May 1858), 124-25 and The New Path (Dec. 1863), 103-4. Both derive from the 1856 printing.
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Thus four basic versions of the poem survive,
with the (lost)
1846-47 original text comprising a possible fifth. To summarize the
complex structural differences we assign stanza numbers from the
received ( 1881)
version, whose sequence was established in the 1870 edition
of the Poems.
The four versions
are 1. the Germ
text (1850), 25 stanzas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
6.1, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 16.1, 16.2, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 22.1,
23, 24); 2. the Pierpont Morgan
manuscript text (1855), 20 stanzas (sts. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13,
14, 15, 16, 9, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24); 3. the
Oxford and Cambridge Magazine text (1856), 23 stanzas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13,
14, 15, 16, 11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24); 4. the 1870
Poems
text, 24 stanzas (1-24). DGR
made numerous local revisions, including important revisions while
the 1870 text was in press and after its first edition appeared.
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An untraced manuscript containing 13 of the
received 24 stanzas was sold at Sotheby's on 1 May 1914. The manuscript
(“containing many alterations from the printed version”) consisted
of stanzas 1-5, 12-13, 18-23. This manuscript sequence might represent the
now lost 1846-1847 original text of the poem.
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The most important pictorial connection is of course DGR's own
painting after the ballad, done in
the 1870s.
The poem generally
recalls various paintings of the Assumption and
more especially the Coronation of the
Virgin. Rossetti's eroticism
radically transforms such materials, however. Faxon (209) compares
the work to Botticelli's Mystic Nativity.
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The poem scatters all kinds of Catholic, and in particular
medieval, trappings—especially
religious trappings. In all this it picks up on the contemporary
enthusiasm for the Gothic, on one hand, and for the revivial of interest
in Marian lore and mythology, which appears throughout DGR's work. The
poem's presentation of an imagined passage
through levels of heaven (lines
73-132) distinctly recalls various forms of the so-called
ladder of perfection. The idea of a
heavenly hierarchy of intercessors for the grace of
God—with the Blessed Virgin as “the
Mediatrix of All Grace”—is deeply medieval. As with so much of
Rossetti's work, in particular at
this early period, Dante's La Vita Nuova
is a key point of
departure, along with the other stil
novisti writings that DGR was translating in the late
1840s and that he eventually gathered in his
book The
Early Italian Poets (1861).
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The principal source is generally Dantean, and especially
the material that centers in the Vita
Nuova. The most revealing passage
is probably the famous canzone “Donne ch'avete
intelletto d'amore” which comes in
section XIX. The canzone
treats the position that Beatrice, the emparadised beloved, has in
relation both to mortal creatures, including Dante, and
the beings of heaven, including God.
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Rossetti's approach is strongly eroticized in both the poetical
and pictorial treatments of his subjects. This difference
from Dante seems to explain DGR's comment of 1848 in a letter to his
aunt Charlotte Polidori:
“Where Hunt, in his kind letter [to DGR, 31 March 1848] speaks
of my ‘Dantesque heavens’ he refers to one or two of the poems the
scene of which is laid in the celestial regions, and which are written
in a kind of Gothic manner which I suppose he is pleased to think
belongs to the school of Dante” (Doughty and Wahl, Letters vol. 1, 39).
DGR seems to be distinguishing “the school of
Dante”, where
love is radically sublimated, from those other “Gothic” poets of love
who preserve the “fleshly” character of the relation. For the poem is
pervaded by many features of various stil novisti
poets, including Cavalcanti, Jacopo da Lentino, Cino da Pistoia, and
Ciullo d'Alcamo, all translated by Rossetti. See for example
d'Alcamo's “Dialogue. Lover and Lady”,
which probably gave DGR the model for his poem's
metrical scheme; and see also Lentino's
“Sonnet. Of his Lady in
Heaven” and
Cino's “Canzone. To Dante Alighieri”
for more secular imaginations of emparadised lovers. Finally,
Petrarch's influence is apparent in a general way; particularly apposite
are Rime sparse nos. CCLXXIX, CCLXXXV,
CCLXXXVI, and CCCII.
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Other important
sources include the book of Revelation; Philip James Bailey's
Festus, which Rossetti was reading
repeatedly when he was composing his poem, and which features the
separation of the title
character from his beloved and emparadised Angela;
and E. A. Poe's “The Raven”, which
Rossetti told Hall Caine (in 1881) had
inspired the poem: “I saw that
Poe had done the utmost it
was possible to do with the grief of the lover on earth, and
so I determined to reverse the
conditions, and give utterance to the yearning of the loved one
in heaven” (Caine, Recollections, 284). The poem
may owe just as much to Poe's “To One in Paradise”,
however, which also deals with “the grief of
the lover on earth”. DGR's fascination with Poe and
in particular “The Raven” appears very
clearly in the drawings he made for Poe's poem.
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DGR may have borrowed the stazaic form from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's “Poet's Vow”.
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Begun as a stil novist
exercise, the poem later assumed a distinct
autobiographical dimension as
the figure of the damozel opened itself to parallels with Elizabeth
Siddal whom he met in 1849
and married in 1860. Her death in February 1862 translated her
to the heaven figured in
Rossetti's poem. Devoted as he was to her, or at any rate to his
image of her, Rossetti became
haunted by her ghostly presence—a haunting all the more
powerful because of Rossetti's
remorse over his infidelities to Siddal before and during their marriage.
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There is a vast amount of scholarship devoted to this
work. Key documents are:
Baum, “The Blessed Damozel”.
Bentley,
“A Young Man's Fantasy”.
Faxon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 207-209.
Fredeman, “Rossetti's ‘The Blessed Damozel’”.
Gregory, “Life and Works of DGR” vol. 2, 105-107, 113, 119-120.
Howard, The Dark Glass, 40-49.
Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial, 175, 188-190.
Mégroz, Painter Poet of Heaven in Earth, 167-169.
Olivero,
“Il
Petrarca e Dante Gabriele Rossetti”.
Rees, Poetry of DGR, 63-65.
Riede, DGR and the Limits of Victorian Vision, 82-85.
Sharp, DGR: A Record and a Study, 335-339.
Stephens, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 84-88.
Stein, Ritual of Interpretation, 147-153.
Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné vol. 1, 141-145.
Vogel, DGR's Versecraft, 91-111.
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Annotations to Verse
Basis Text: 1881 Edition text
Line title See WMR's note (1911).
Damozel: old French spelling, which signals the poem's
conscious adoption of a medieval style.
Line 2 bar: “suggests the protective barrier placed
in front of paintings in nineteenth-century galleries”
(Stein, Ritual of Interpretation, 148).
Line 4 Dante, Paradiso III.11-12.
Line 5 “From the Old Masters” (Baum, “The Blessed Damozel”, li);
and see Dante, Purgatorio XXX. 21. The lily symbolizes purity and is one of the flowers
associated with the Madonna. The number three has mystical associations;
it particularly recalls the Trinity.
Line 6 Revelation 1:16 and 12:1. In the
painting the damozel
has a crown of six stars, not seven. The discrepancy defines the crown as the
Pleiades, which traditional astrology saw as composed of seven stars, though one—the “lost
Pleiad”—was
invisible. This “Lost Pleiad”, a favorite subject in the
romantic tradition since Byron, is Merope, who was cast from her starry
place because she fell in love with a mortal man. In this context the
Damozel is the Lost Pleiad. Symbolically the Pleiades are a
favorable sign, a forecast of good weather for navigation and
agriculture. The number seven in this
context also suggests the seven joys and seven
sorrows of the Madonna:
compare “Mary's Girlhood I”,
lines 9-10. In coronation pictures of the
Blessed Virgin, she is customarily crowned with twelve
stars (symbolizing the twelve apostles).
Line 9 Textual: The reading “robe” in the Morgan
MS text is
correct.
Line 18 The “ten years” distinctly recalls the length of time
between the death of Beatrice and her reappearance to Dante in the Purgatorio.
Line 19-24 Textual: This stanza appears in italics in all the
prepublication texts of 1869-70.
Line 30 Textual: The received sixth stanza follows this line in all
texts but the Morgan MS, where it is not
part of the text.
Line 35-36 Dante, Paradiso XXII. 133ff.
Line 36 Textual: After line 36, the 1850 Germ text
prints an extra stanza.
Line 37-40 Textual: The received reading was first printed in the sixth
edition (1873) of the 1870 Poems;
all earlier texts have different readings.
Line 54 Alluding to the ancient idea of the music of the
spheres; here, that music is echoed in the damozel's voice.
Textual: The received tenth and
eleventh stanzas follow this line, but in the Morgan MS text stanza ten
is missing altogether and stanza eleven follows received
line 96. In The Germ text received stanzas 10 and 11 are not present.
Line 61-66 See Scott (Autobiographical Notes vol. 2, 113-114), who records that in 1869 DGR
found a tame bird on a footpath at Penkill and took it for
“the spirit
of my wife”.
Textual: Italicized in all 1869-70 prepublication texts from the
Penkill proofs through the proofs for the first edition. The stanza is
not present in The Germ text, while in the Morgan MS, the 1856 Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, and all
1869-70 prepublication texts the stanza
follows received line 96.
Line 71 Matthew 18:19.
Line 74 In the Book of
Revelation the
angels are all clothed in white.
Line 76-78 Revelation 22:1; also Dante, Paradiso XXX. 49-51,
61-64.
Line 79-84 Revelation 4:5, 5:8, 8:3.
Line 86 Revelation 22:2.
Line 87 The dove is a traditional figure of the Holy
Ghost.
Line 97-102 Textual: The Morgan MS text
puts received stanza eleven in this position in its sequence, as does the
1856 Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
text and all the 1869-70
prepublication texts. Two different stanzas appear
here in the 1850 Germ text.
Line 103-4 Dante, Vita Nuova,
“Sonnet. That lady of all gentle
memories”, 1-4. (See Rossetti's translation of this sonnet.)
Line 107-8 St. Cecilia: an early virgin martyr, closely associated
with the Virgin Mary in the mythology of Cecilia's life. In the middle
ages she emerged as the patroness of sacred music. Gertrude: patron
saint of pilgrims and travellers. Margaret: either Margaret of Antioch,
popularized in the Golden Legend, or perhaps the 13th century
Margaret of Cortona, a kind of Mary Magdalene surrogate. Rosalys: she
summarizes DGR's procedure in handling these female figures. Rosalys is
a kind of pure signifier, a linguistic construct made from two of the
Madonnna's most characteristic symbols (the rose and the lily). The
extremity of DGR's secular spirituality also appears in this signifier, for
the rose=beauty/passion/love while the lily=chastity/purity/devotion.
Line 114 Textual: Received stanza twenty comes after this line but is
omitted in the Morgan MS text.
Line 126 Jameson: “the Madonna . . . is
the especial patroness of
music and minstrelsy. Her delegate Cecilia patronised sacred
music. . . . When the angels are singing from their music books, and
others are accompanying them with lutes and viols, the song is not
always supposed to be the same” (Legends of the Madonna, 62).
Line 132 Textual: The Germ text has an extra stanza
after this line.
Line 136-7 Cavalcanti, “Sonnet. A Rapture concerning his
Lady”, 1-2.
Line 139-44 Dante, Paradiso XXXI. 91-2.
Reading Text: 1881 Edition text
Viewing Image: Fogg oil
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