Up-Hill with Rossetti

Christina Rossetti is one of the first female poets I began to read. For the longest time- even prior to a refined interest in poetry- I’ve known her name (her brother established my favorite period in the history of art, the Pre-Raphaelite period). It wasn't until later in life, however, that I began to read her works. In fact, she’s the very first poet I posted on in my blog. I love her works dearly, deeply, a lot …

I just want to acknowledge and thank her for her works … happy birthday, my Victorian poet-friend

*****

Here, check out one of her works- a poem about life as a journy up a tough, tough hill ... but with hope at the end ...

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

Sudden Light

As with certain others (philosophers, scientists, artists, etc), I like acknowledging a poet’s date of birth. There’s a certain kind of ‘thank you’ about it, a certain kind of ‘I remember and appreciate what you left behind for us’ being expressed.

Anyhow, a couple days ago (on the 12th) I posted in Facebook an acknowledgement of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's date of birth some 183 years ago. Rossetti belongs to that period in the history of art known as Pre-Raphaelite (my favorite period). In fact, he’s the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (the rudimentary element of that period of art).

I came to learn that he, along with his sister Christina Rossetti, was also a prolific writer of poetry- incredible poetry! I posted a poem Rossetti wrote that, quite frankly, is one of my favorite of all time: Sudden Light. It’s a great poem about déjà vu and the recollection of love and love’s eternal restoration (at least, that’s my take on it).

Here’s that poem- I’ll try to break down the stanzas individually below, let me know what you think.


Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?



Of the Poem (Poetic Parameters & Commentary)

Stanza: Quintet (i.e. consisting of five lines)
Meter: Mixed (see side notes)
Rhyme Scheme: ababa (the first, third, and fifth lines being interlinked with the same lines of the following stanzas)

Some Side Notes

The meter of the first stanza, which is mimicked by the ones that follow, is mixed (that is, six syllables in line 1; eight syllables in lines 2 and 3; four in line 4; and ten in line 5). Here’s what it looks like:

I have been here before (trimeter)
But when or how I cannot tell (tetrameter)
I know the grass beyond the door (tetrameter)
The sweet keen smell (dimeter)
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore (pentameter)

I gotta say, I love love love the internal rhymes of the pentameters:

-The sighing sound, the lights around the shore
-Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore
-And day and night yield one delight once more

A Brief Commentary

About the Title

Why Sudden Light? Well, when one reads the poem it becomes quite clear that the poet is talking about déjà vu. What’s interesting is that (and I’m relatively certain of this) the French term wasn’t coined until Emile Boirac, a French psychic researcher, published his book in 1883, The Psychology of the Future. It’s highly unlikely that Rossetti, who died the year before, ever came across the technical term or the phrase.

Still, the phenomenon of déjà vu is something that humans have experienced from the get go. For Rossetti to dub it (albeit, poetically) sudden light makes perfect sense to me. (I wonder, however, if the term déjà vu had been in circulation during Rossetti’s time, would he have titled his poem differently?)

Stanza One

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

The poet immediately immerses us in the world of sensation: the grass beyond the door (sight and perhaps smell), the sweet keen smell (smell with a reference to taste), the sighing sound (hearing), the lights around the shore (sight, and perhaps hearing and smelling the shore as well). All these very tangible elements pull him directly into an experience he knows he had before, but has difficulty articulating.

Stanza Two

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turn'd so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

This stanza speaks of the catalyst of the déjà vu. The poet knows just (line 8) when it occurred: at the flight of a bird (that swallow's soar) and the look of his lover’s neck (your neck turn'd); a revelation immediately gives way (some veil did fall) and he suddenly realizes that this moment has occurred before (of yore).

Stanza Three

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death's despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

This is the more philosophical of the stanzas. In it the poet marvels that time, despite its transient nature (its eddying flight) and despite the reality of death (line 14)- that time would restore not only life itself, but also the very love of life once lived! Absolutely beautiful. I find it quite amazing that so much expression can be articulated in so little space (not to mention in poetic meter).

It never ceases to amaze me how utterly gifted we humans can be despite our particular dilapidations. Sometimes I’m so ashamed of the things we do that it makes me sick to my stomach. But then there are those moments, those sublime moments, when we excel and achieve what’s best in us. I promise you, I long for the day when that is the norm.

Every time I read a poem like the one Rossetti wrote here, I’m reminded of one of the most beautiful and truest quotes ever:

“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering - these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love - these are what we stay alive for.”

Dead Poet’s Society

Who Has Seen the Wind: Rossetti Poem

Here’s a neat little poem written by Christina Rossetti. It’s called: Who has seen the wind


Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.


Of the Poem:

I think I like it because it reminds me of John 3:8:

The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.*

There’s no doubt in my mind at all that this verse was in her head when she wrote this. I'll have to ask her.


*KJV, which I think makes it sound better.

Christina Rossetti: Insight from a Friend

"Have you seen her brother's painting of the Annunciation? Young Christina was his model for Mary. Her expression in the painting is beyond description, but somehow I think it is an expression that she must have worn often for I hear it in her poems."


Thank you, Mr. Doug P. Baker. You're right: Beyond Description ...

In an Artist's Studio: Rossetti Poem

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; -- every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light;
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.


Of the Poem:

This happens to be the very first one of Christina Rossetti’s poems that I came to read. While reading it, what first came to mind was the kind of insatiable passion that consumes a person so much so that the object of their desire is reflected in everything they see, hear, or do.

Next was my thought of Plato, who believed that the beautiful objects we behold in our existence are no more than mere reflections or copies of a higher Beauty- a Beauty whose eternal idea and form transcend the temporal and spacial beauties we see in this all too human realm.

Although Christina's poetic use of an artist's studio is quite natural (considering her background with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood), that very first impression mentioned above was not that it represented a particular artist, or a woman, or even art itself ... rather, it seemed to represent an obsession of passion, and not necessarily in the negative sense of obsession. Turns out that initial thought might not have been far off from the poet's intention.

Her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was one of the leading artists of the Brotherhood and had a many young ladies to model for his works. One in particular was Elizabeth Siddal- a somewhat tall, slender, beautiful girl with 'copper' color hair. He was immediately taken by her. And after a short period of modeling for him, he dropped almost all of his other models, and stopped her from modeling for fellow artists. She became very quickly his sole consuming subject- not only in his drawings and paintings, but his poems too.

Unfortunately, Siddal's story is a sad one. Already prone to melancholy and illness, the still birth of her daughter only served to exasperate her problems. After becoming pregnant again, Siddal overdoses on laudanum. It's unclear whether or not this was an accident.

In 1863, a year after her death, Dante produced Beata-Beatrix (the painting above), where his beloved 'Lizzy' bore representation of a praying Beatrice. There's no question that the bulk of Dante's works of art centered on Elizabeth Siddal, that there was within him an insatiable desire to know her beauty and represent it in those works. Obviously I don't know the finer details of their relationship, but I'd like to imagine a time that they were immutably in love, so that even when apart they were together. Edith Piaf's song, Tu Es Partout, contains lyrics to the like:

Tu es partout car tu es dans mon coeur
Tu es partout car tu es mon bonheur
Toutes les choses qui sont autour de moi
Meme la vie ne represente que toi
Des fois je reve que je suis dans tes bras
Et qu'a l'oreille tu me parles tout bas
Tu dis des choses qui font fermer les yeux
Et moi je trouve ca merveilleux

English Translation:

You are everywhere because you are in my heart
You are everywhere because you are my happiness
Everything that is around me
Even life does not represent you
Sometimes I dream that I am in your arms
And you speak softly in my ear
You tell me things that make me close my eyes
And I find that marvelous

I imagine that this is the point of Rossetti's poem (that is, provided it's devoid of sarcasm) ...

Pre-Raphaelite Poet: Christina Rossetti*

Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894)

Christina Rossetti was born in London, one of four children of Italian parents. Her father was the poet Gabriele Rossetti; her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti also became a poet and a painter. Rossetti's first poems were written in 1842 and printed in the private press of her grandfather. In 1850, under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she contributed seven poems to the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ, which had been founded by her brother William Michael and his friends.

Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling. Rossetti's best-known work, Goblin Market and Other Poems, was published in 1862. The collection established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry. The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, appeared in 1866 followed by Sing-Song, a collection of verse for children, in 1872 (with illustrations by Arthur Hughes).

By the 1880s, recurrent bouts of Graves' disease, a thyroid disorder, made Rossetti an invalid, and ended her attempts to work as a governess. While the illness restricted her social life, she continued to write poems. Among her later works are A Pageant and Other Poems (1881), and The Face of the Deep (1892). Rossetti also wrote religious prose works, such as Seek and Find (1879), Called To Be Saints (1881) and The Face of the Deep (1892). In 1891, Rossetti developed cancer, of which she died in London on December 29, 1894. Rossetti's brother, William Michael, edited her collected works in 1904, but the Complete Poems were not published before 1979.

Christina Rossetti is increasingly being reconsidered a major Victorian poet. She has been compared to Emily Dickinson but the similarity is more in the choice of spiritual topics than in poetic approach, Rossetti's poetry being one of intense feelings, her technique refined within the forms established in her time.


*Biography from Poets.org