Collected Poetry and Prose

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Jerome McGann (Editor)

A major poet, writer, and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was seen as the dominating cultural presence in the second half of the nineteenth century. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite movement, revised and reimagined Blake’s project of marrying images and texts, and was a shaping influence on Modernist aesthetic ideas and practices. His translations are original poetical works in their own right.

Jerome McGann, a leading figure in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, presents a generous selection of Rossetti’s poetry, prose, and original translations. The collection, which includes important writings unavailable in any edition of Rossetti ever printed, is accompanied by McGann’s learned and critically incisive commentaries and notes.

Genres: Poetry, 19th Century

456 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

British poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, brother of Christina Georgina Rossetti, founded the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, a society, in England in 1848 to advance the style and spirit of Italian painting before Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio); his known portraits and his vividly detailed, mystic poems, include "The Blessed Damozel" (1850).

This illustrator and translator with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais later mainly inspired and influenced a second generation of artists and writers, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the Symbolists, a group of chiefly French writers and artists, who of the late 1800s rejected realism and used symbols to evoke ideas and emotions. He served as a major precursor of Aestheticism, an artistic and intellectual movement or the doctrine, originating in Britain in the late 19th century, that from beauty, the basic principle, derives all other, especially moral, principles.

Reviews

[T. Tokunaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

【Sensual and Metaphysical Love / Dante Gabriel Rossetti / Poems】

'See my breast, how like it is;
　　　　　　　　(O Troy Town!)
See it bare for the air of kiss!
Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
O for the breast, O make it his!
　　　　　　　 (O Troy's Down,
　　　　　　　　 Tall Troy's on fire!) (Troy Town)

Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
He heard the utter harmony
Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
So that all ended with her eyes,
Hell, Purgatory, Paradise. (Circa the conclusion of Dante at Verona)

And each knew each, as the moments sped,
Less for one living thank for one dead:

And every still star overhead
Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead. (The White Ship)

What Dante Gabriel Rossetti did in these poems is basically turning mythology into simple love stories with a lot of sensual pleasures shown in the small nouns and particles like "breast" and "trembling." These small words are enough to convince me that love (or its pertained physicality, I'd say) is not only a theme of metaphysics as I took it for - but also it's a great pleasure with which I can indulge myself.

The clumsy intellectualism inserted into the sheer joy is probably the reason why he was critiqued so much, but personally, I'd like to accept that, considering its being Victorian. His talent didn't show its best in sonnets either, but I don't mind that either. I don't mind a poet with a lot of mediocre works, if they have three poems deserving the title of masterpiece.

His talent probably lies in expanding the possibilities of the objective correlatives (oh, reminiscent name!) to the greater supremacy of love, both sensual and metaphysical. And that's what I love greatly when reading poetry.

P.S. His early poems collected in the last parts of this book are magnificent, but in their technical immaturity. They were kind of too raw to show you, but if you're willing to read them, search titles like "World's Worth," Down Stream," "The Church Porch," and "The Ballad of Jan van Hunks."

[Kelly Carvacho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rossetti was a painter and a poet. His true strength in poetry was being able to paint a picture with words, a picture that he could eventually put onto canvas. His poems have such a lyrical quality to them and are best read aloud. One of my favorite poems by Rossetti is titled "The Card Dealer" and was written after seeing a painting by Theodor von Holst. Rossetti used vivid details while describing the woman in the painting. This can be seen in the fourth stanza, when he writes "Her fingers let them softly through/Smooth polished silent things;/And each one as it falls reflects/In swift light-shadowings,/Blood-red and purple, green and blue,/The great eyes of her rings." I love how beautifully written his poetry is and can only hope to be able to richly describe a subject as well as Rossetti.