A note on the two biographies on CGR that I read: The main differences

This summer I read Jan Marsh's Christina Rossetti: A Writer's Life as well as Georgina Battiscombe's Christina Rossetti: A Divided Life. Here are some notes on the difference between the two. Marsh's win's hands down for the most comprehensive examination of the writer and her work to date. It's exhaustive and contains a wealth of information. It is also the first (or so the author claims) to look seriously at CGR's religious literary output. Marsh spends too much time tho' contemplating whether or not CGR was a victim of sexual abuse at her father's hands. As we have nothing but the poet's behavior to go on, I happen to think this is a fruitless avenue to pursue.

All this said, I found Battiscombe's style more approachable and I think I would have understood Marsh's better having read B's first. She lays out CGR's life in a much more fluid way - the characters that play in the poets life are much more memorable in this bio. Her focus is primarily on the division of eros and agape in the author's life and poetry.

More later.

The Convent Threshold

This is a longer narrative poem so I am including a link so you can look at it online (whenever I copy and paste poems here, I have to re-format the lines, which is annoying to say the least). Here is a copy for your reading pleasure:
http://www.web-books.com/classics/Poetry/Anthology/Rossetti_C/Convent.htm

Here's Marsh's comments:
"a dramatic monologue in which a penitent woman on the verge of entering a convent after an apparently illicit love affair, urges her lover to repent also. Partly based on the story of Heloise and Abelard, which CGR would have known in Pope's 'Eloisa to Abelard' (1717), it was the poem in her first volume that spoke most powerfully to the young Gerard Manley Hopkins, who conceived of his 'Against the World' as a response" (442).

What strikes me most profoundly in this poem is that although the speaker exhorts her former lover to look heavenward and pray for God's forgiveness for their "pleasant sin," her ultimate goal of renunciation is not necessarily to see and worship God, but rather to be one day reunited with her lover (if he repents as well). She continually looks upward toward purification, he earthward at fleeting humanity. But the last lines reveal: "There we shall meet as once we met/And love with old familiar love." What is odd here is the fact that love is not transmuted into a brotherly, chaste sort of love as one might expect; the old familiar love was a passion that lead to an illicit encounter, so it seems that she looks forward to being united with him romantically. The dreams the speaker has read like Old Testament prophetic visions: 1) a figure who ascends to heaven and discovers that love is ultimate dwarfing everything else - even knowledge (which is what Eve sought when she ate the fruit in Eden). Knowledge may also refer to experience here - could they not have experienced a more profound love had they not physicalized it? 2) The second vision is frightening and puts the speaker in her grave, her hair bedewed and her heart dust. This further emphasizes the fleeting nature of the body as opposed to the soul. She seems to descend further as he tries to grasp her and this inability to physically be together makes him 'reel.' 3) Her final dreams are all of him. We don't know what they are but they have a physical effect on her for when she wakes, her hair is grey and there is frozen blood on the sill where she struggled. Is this a struggling for his soul? next she says he may not recognize her anymore, her hair hidden, her face pale. This seems to relate back to the image of her in the clay. She is physically dead to him. Her decision to enter the convent deadens her to earthly things. The struggle in the poem once again is between eros and agape. She chooses agape, but she holds out a hope for eros in a final meeting with her love in paradise. This type of problem is typical of CGR - the unresolved feelings and unclear message create a greater tension in the poem. Just why is the speaker entering the convent?

May

I cannot tell you how it was;
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and breezy day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last eggs had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird forgone its mate.

I cannot tell you what it was;
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
With all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and grey.
(1855)

Marsh doesn't anthologize this poem in her collection of CGR's poems. Too bad - it's a profound poem and may best exemplify some of the elusivity of the author. I remember being shocked by the poem the first time I'd read it. Although the first stanza portends something bad happening, I was not prepared for the last line of the poem. Even the second stanza didn't prepare me for it. I asked one of my office mates to read only the first stanza to see what tone she detected. Her answer was "foreboding." She confirmed what I'd remembered from my initial reading. There is a reflective tone - things that once were, no longer are - and yet the reflection anticipates a revelation of some sort. The poem anticipates some current sadness; nevertheless, the final line stings.

Twice the poet repeats the line "I cannot tell you how it was..." this could be taken two ways, either she cannot tell because she knows but for some reason is unwilling to reveal what it was. Or she doesn't know herself. The latter seem to be the case for in the second line of the second stanza she continues with "But this I know" the inference is I don't know, but I know some part or aspect of it. Again nature's transitory state is used to exemplify this change. My neighbor Anna viewed the poem in terms of a loss of sexual innocence, a disillusionment with sexual experience, maybe even menstruation. The poet is 25 at this point, so I don't think this is what she's writing about. Again, I'm tempted to go and look at what was happening in her life at the time of writing, but I won't - Sola Poema! (as I'm sure Martin Luther would say if he were here).

The internal rhyme in the final line forces the reader to slow down - the rolling sound of "old" and "cold" has an hypnotic effect like a dirge. The "it came to pass" of line two seems to indicate that "it" was some event that like the end of spring brought about some change. And it seems to have come suddenly - an event of one day. The speaker does not say what she was like before May passed, before she was old, cold, and grey, but we have the spring-like imagery to go on and this does tell us something. The poppies had not grown up in the corn fields yet, eggs had not yet hatched, and the bird had not left his mate. This last seems the most revealing conveying: My love had not yet departed. Whatever "it" was, it brought joy with its arrival and sorrow with its sudden departure. CGR punctuates words nicely by means of repetition. First, May is repeated three times in the poem. Whole lines are repeated. But my favorite word repetition is "pass" and "passed." Pass is used differently between the stanzas. First: "it came to pass" - conveying an advent of something. In stanza two this line is changed to "it did but pass" - conveying departure. the next two lines deepen this idea by repeating the words "passed" and describing the passage: it left with the spring month and it left with all things sweet.

In an article on the Victorian Web, Abagail Newman discusses the direct address of the poem. CGR is intentionally pulling us in while betraying nothing of the secret. I don't think however she is keeping a secret. Rather the poet may be, but the speaker is almost asking the reader to help her discern what it is.

"I planted a hand" (from SingSong)

I planted a hand
And there came up a palm,
I planted a heart
And there came up balm.

Then I planted a wish,
But there sprang a thorn,
While heaven frowned with thunder
and earth sighed forlorn.
(1869)

This poem, while moody like the others has at least an instructive message to it. The valuing of hand and heart over wishes (the practical over fantasy) seems straightforward. The double possible meaning of palm both as the center of the hand and a shade-giving plant is a nice image for the former could evoke the idea of hand-holding while the later has a caring aspect to it. However, notice how the poem becomes much more interesting in the second stanza. The stanza itself is far more complex than the first: visually, symbolically, in its actual statement. It's as if she moved out of the nursery on the second verse. I just caught an image of CGR with one of her nieces or nephews on her lap reciting the first stanza to the child and then muttering the second as an aside to William or Lucy Rossetti - but that's a rather cynical fancy on my part. CGR is however, much more at home with the dark - the initial reads in a trite way, the second has depth. But it is the marriage of the two (light and dark) that make them both better. In typical fashion, we are left a bit uncomfortable by this poem.

"If hope grew on a bush" (from SingSong)

If hope grew on a bush,
And joy grew on a tree,
What a nosegay for the plucking
There would be!

But oh! in windy autumn,
When frail flowers whither,
What should we do for hope and joy,
Fading together?
(1869)

Each stanza is a single sentence. First, and exclamation, then a question. I'm always startled by this type of poem by CGR, not only because of the rather sad outcome, but because the shortened last line arrests me. It's highly appropriate for this type of poem (i.e. nursery) but it still has such a halting effect. Of course that type of surprise works well with the subject of the poem - hope and joy, like blossoms on a tree or bush, come and go in due season. I guess the hope in the poem is found in the fact that these things will again return, but the overall mood does not seem hopeful. The ending question is not encouraging - what do we do when hope and joy fade? What are we left with? Presumably a dead looking, bare tree. The autumn is described as windy - an image of hope and joy being torn off by the wind as they slowly fade. I have no idea what possible effect CGR hoped to produce on children with this one - perhaps more little novices in her cult of melancholy. I know this seems cop-out-ish of me, but I really don't see the point unless it is to show some of the allure of sorrow. The poem's cadence doesn't read nearly as darkly as the second stanzas words dictate - maybe it's not meant to be taken so seriously.

"Dead in the cold" (from SingSong)

Dead in the cold, a song-singing thrush,
Dead at the foot of a snowberry bush, -
Weave him a coffin of rush,
Dig him a grave where the soft mosses grow,
Raise him a tombstone of snow.
(1869)

This is the first of three poems I'll be writing about written in the collection "SingSong" for children (if you can believe that!). First, a general note by Marsh on the overall collection: "Early in 1870 CGR completed a collection of poems for young children - her own Nursery Rhymes - which she submitted to DGR's publisher F.S. Ellis as 'a marketable proposition,' with thumbnail sketches for each piece indicating how she conceived the volume. her illness and Ellis's inexperience led to trouble and delay, and in 1871 CGR negotiated a new contract with the Dalziel Bros, who produced SingSong (title suggested by FLR) for George Routledge. Arthur Hughes made attractive and much-praised illustrations - CGR particularly liked his image of a black crow turning grey in the wash - and the book was published for Christmas 1871. It is carefully structured, from waking rhymes at the beginning to bedtime rhymes at the end, and includes over 120 separate poems; many, as WMR noted, 'are perfectly suited for figuring among her verse for adults, and evenfor taking an honoured place as such' (PW, p. 490). In 1878, hearing her cousin Teodorico Pietrocola Rossetti was aiming to translate the text into Italian, CGR made her own attempts at thirty-three of the rhymes, which figure among her most accomplished and witty Italian poems. Not all critics have shared WMR's assessment; according to the Pelican Guide to English Literature (1958, vol. 6, p. 89), SingSong 'contains too much talk of death and transience to be useful in the nursery.'"

Well, this poem is indeed about death - today an odd subject for the nursery. Yet the poem is beautiful and in an age of higher child and infant mortality rates, there must have been an odd comfort about it. From both biographies I've read on CGR, I've learned of her own first-hand experience burying a dead animal. It seems as a child she buried a small rodent or mole in the ground and was horrified when she went to dig it up three days later to find it decomposing with a beetle crawling out of it's stomach.

In its own right though, I think the poem is beautiful. The imagery is cool and spare, but the action of the poem is a caring one - as children, we often will bury a dead animal and hold a funeral of sorts. This funeral, however, seems more related to nature than the divine; the tombstone is of snow - which will melt away with the coming spring. The bird is also associated with winter - dying, where once it sang the spring and summer before. Despite her work in the anti-vivisection movement (which showed her obvious care for animals) she does not confuse souless animals with immortal humans. There is a reward for humans, but animals return to the earth. The gentle repetition makes for a nice rhythmic song in the bird's honor. The first two lines focus on the death and the last three on the preparations for its burial. I think it is a poem children would be more comfortable with than adults - children understand death more honestly.

"The Lowest Place"

Give me the lowest place: not that I dare
Ask for that lowest place, but Thou hast died
That I might live and share
Thy glory by Thy side.

Give me the lowest place: or if for me
That lowest place too high, make one more low
Where I may sit and see
My God and love thee so.
(1863)

Marsh's comment: "In some sense, a 'signature poem' of CGR's occupying final position in her collected edition of 1875."

On a poetic level, this piece is very effective for it shows the poet's economy. In just two four line stanzas she is able to convey the aim of her entire life. The repetition of the word 'lowest' (or simply 'low' in line 6) both in title and text is effective in that it not only shows the poet's focus, but also creates a prayer or hymn-like feel. Many of CGR's works are, of course, quite lyrical - this poem is no exception. It reads like a song. The word repetition gives it a sort of mantra feel, though I don't like that word because I feel CGR would find it too pagan sounding. Catechetical carries no emotion behind it, and the poem definitely has an emotional tone.

What is so fascinating about this poem, however, is that it still ends up saying more about the mindset of the poet rather than the object of her affection. I wouldn't label it completely self-absorbed, but it does seem to betray the poet's sense of her inadequacy before a just and holy God. Marsh, I think would see this as an example of the poet's fear of God the father, and her dependence on the grace of God the son - Jesus Christ. That she is addressing Christ is apparent in that she mentions in lines two and three Christ's sacrifice (on the cross). Yet there is an interesting aspect to her request - she makes it not out of a sense that she deserves it, but because it has been freely offered her through Christ's sacrifice. But she states that because of this she may share a place in glory 'by thy side' (l.4). Does this mean that Christ - the model of humility and servanthood on earth - will also occupy a low place? This doesn't seem to be the case - CGR most certainly would not have interpreted it this way given her knowledge of the New Testament (esp. Revelation). She may mean by 'by thy side' more generally: sharing in the glory of Heaven. I think this is the meaning she is going for. However, the line does betray a striving behind the humility - not a false humility. Perhaps there is a discrepancy between her request and her internal hope. That this is an on-going struggle for the poet is evident in Marsh's description of CGR's final days - her struggle seems continually to be between an Old Testament sense of judgment and a New Testament promise of grace. She hopes for the latter, but fears the former.

Sister Maude

Who told my mother of my shame,
Who told my father of my dear?
Oh who but Maude, my sister Maude,
Who lurked to spy and peer.

Cold he lies, as cold as stone,
With his clotted curls about his face:
The comeliest corpse in all the world
And worthy of a queen's embrace.

You might have spared his soul, sister,
Have spared my soul, your own soul too:
Though I had not been born at all,
He'd never have looked at you.

My father may sleep in Paradise,
My mother at Heaven-gate:
But sister Maude shall get no sleep
Either early or late.

My father may wear a golden gown,
My mother a crown may win;
If my dear and I knocked at Heaven-gate
Perhaps they'd let us in:
But sister Maude, oh sister Maude,
Bide you with death and sin.

I don't have access to Marsh's comments on this one - I'll add them later, when I have the book in front of me. My impressions? The tone is vindictive - completely unlike the image of sisters that we see both in "Goblin Market" and in the life of the poet. By all accounts, Christina and Maria, her sister, were devoted to each other - "Goblin Market" was dedicated to Maria. This poem carries none of the "no friend like a sister" moralizing present at the problematic end of "Goblin Market." Rather the speaker curses Maude for betraying her and her lover. The implication is that jealousy is at the root of it. Maude wishes the beloved were her own, for the poet mentions that even if she (speaker) had not been born, he still would not have even looked at Maude. The poem's rhyme scheme in the first four stanzas is characteristic of a ballad (abcb) with the last stanza having the rhyme scheme abcbdb. Stanzas 1, 4, and 5 all draw comparison between Maude and the other members of the family (specifically Mother and Father), while stanzas 2 and 3 develop information about the poet, her love, and her sister's jealousy. What becomes most significant is the classifying of degrees of sin and guilt. Though never stated, an illicit relationship between the speaker and the beloved is implied by words like "shame" as well as by the fact that the speaker question whether or not she and her lover will be admitted into heaven (the fact that their sin is linked implies a sexual transgression). Maude's treachery is considered to be a more weighty sin than fornication - the poet damns her to hell. A major reason for this may be found in the implication that Maude's action directly or indirectly caused the man's premature death (Did the father kill him? Did he die of grief or shame?).

This is the sort of poem I imagine CGR being embarrassed by in later life; the human passion (eros) has yet to be sublimated by the divine passion (agape). Yet the spiritual is not far off: the attainment or loss of heavenly reward is still at stake. That CGR most often sympathized with the fallen woman in her works is apparent, but again we need to be careful not to spend too much time making assumptions about the poet's own life. It is enough to know the theme is an important one to her body of work. This theme stands out more in her early work, but is replaced by themes of religious longing as time goes by.

Personally, this poem does not resonate strongly with me. I've never been a fan of the ballad form. The almost violent nature of the speaker is interesting for CGR, but there remains something contrived about it.

What do you think, gentle readers?

A quick note: Marsh's only comment regarding this poem is to say that it was first published in 1862, but later repressed by CGR. This confirms my suspicions that she may have later regretted the tone of this piece.

"Winter: My Secret"

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I!
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.


Marsh's only footnote regarding this poem is that in the manuscript, it was originally entitled "Nonsense." This does tell us something, however, about CGR's own take on the poem. The published title, while it may seem somewhat conventional, becomes teasing within the context of the body of the poem.

This is Rossetti at her most playful. Her elusivity - which seems to take on a more desperate tone in other poems - becomes the subject of the poem. She teases the reader, leading them along a path that ultimately leads nowhere - or rather leads back to the subject of the unknowability of the secret itself.

It is tempting with a writer like CGR to look at her poems autobiographically (i.e. confessionally), and yet I think this is a disservice to her as a poet. While she may personally be dealing with issues of morality or longing in her own life - she seems to be speaking on a larger scale. But again that push and pull tempts us to want to check the date of a particular poem against her autobiography to find the "real" meaning behind the text. This poem seems to address that need of readers to find out.

The use of seasons creates an interesting tone: is Winter the secret itself as the title might suggest? It doesn't seem to be. It seems more to represent the idea of one trying to pry the secret from the holder. The reader is winter, against which the poet must cover up, "veil", and "mask" herself. What is more, although the poem is light, the description of winter with its winds paints the picture of a relentlessly annoying attack: nipping, biting, whistling, bounding, surrounding, buffeting, surrounding, nipping, clipping, and pecking. It's not violent, just bothersome to the poet - we may even perceive it more as a problem of the poet, for she answers the readers' protest that they would not peck. Her reply of belief means little, for she leaves the "truth untested still" (l.22). She does not trust winter. By extension, we could say the poet is afraid of letting people in - they are cold and intrusive.

Spring is no better with its transient state: flowers that wither (c.f. to Biblical allusions in the NT. Flowers usually represent the finite. Unlike God's word, flowers will wither and pass away), the weather cannot be trusted.

Only late summer, with its "languid" quality is fit for the poet to reveal her secret. But even here we are teased with a line (30) that sits uneasily, for it describes fruit ripening to excess. The image is lush, but to the point of being sickening (is the fruit rotten?) and looks forward to the fruit imagery of "Goblin Market" written 2 years later. The poet creates a visual suspension: The birds are "drowsy", the wind and warmth are held in a sort of in-between state. Here the poet takes on the laziness of the image: "Perhaps my secret I may say/" (l.33) [my italics]. But the final line - "Or you may guess." is jarring and not at all in keeping with the languid tone developed in the final stanza.

What, then is the secret? Is it the poet herself, wearing a concealing cloak, veil and mask? Or is there no secret at all - the poet teasingly suggests this, not so much to introduce a possibility as to deepen the mystery surrounding the secret. Or perhaps this is merely all a way of discussing the subject of secrets - does the knowledge itself matter as much as the fact that it remains hidden, or known only by a select few? The idea of the secret - the fact that something is unknowable, tantalizes our curiosity. This is the essence of a secret. If known, there is no secret, only a fact or idea. By not telling us, the secret - Rossetti (almost sadistically) creates mystery. This idea is not a new 0ne for CGR, but it has never been so fully explored and "teased" out. She still creates the tension - she wants us to know, but she doesn't want us to know. Again to assume that the secret is something specific in the poet's life is to miss the point of the poem. Rather the poem allows us the damnable pleasure of not knowing.