Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

“Il Rosseggiar Dell‟Oriente”: Christina Rossetti‟s Italian Poems

Supervisor: Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment Prof. Dr. Gert Buelens of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels” by Vanessa Vanleene

2007-2008

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Gert Buelens, not only for his wonderfully insightful help and criticism but also for introducing Christina Rossetti to me in de first place. If it had not been for that Rossetti question on the oral exam of English Literature: New Period in my second year of university, this amazing poet might have never caught my attention. Thank you also, to Prof. Claudia Crocco, who thought with me on a tricky linguistic problem until it was adequately solved. Other than that, I have my parents to be eternally grateful to. They supported me when I learned my first Italian words, enthused me to visit Italy and booked my ticket when I decided to go and study there. Not only have they always created a perfect background for a student of English and Italian literature, they were at all times, more than ready to assist when this student had once again taken on too great a workload. Finally, many thanks to my lovely friends, who inspired me with their endless enthusiasm.

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Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………………………...2 Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…5 1. Rossetti’s Italian Roots…………………………………………………………………………….…9 1.1. Italian Youth………………………………………………………………………………………..9 1.2. The Italian Heritage……………………………………………………………………………14 1.3. The Italian Voyage……………………………………………………………………………..19 1.4. The Last Italian Connection……………………………………………………………..…23

2. Rossetti’s Italian Work………………………………………………………………………………26 2.1. On Rossetti’s Italian Translations…………………………………………………….…26 2.2. On Rossetti’s Italian Poems………………………………………………………………..31

3. Rossetti’s Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente……………………………………………………...... 41 3.1. On Translation…………………………………………………………………………………...41 3.2. On Images………………………………………………………………………………………....44 3.2.1. Love………………………………………………………………………………………...44 3.2.2. Death……………………………………………………………………………………….49 3.2.3. Nature………………………………………………………………………………………55 3.3. On The Poems…………………………………………………………………………………..57

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………...122 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………………………….124

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Introduction

Christina Rossetti painted by James Collinson 1848

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Introduction

I cannot tell you how dear the Italian language is to me, so dear that I

will not attempt to compare it with my native English: only as I think in

English I have naturally written in it also; indeed I am a very imperfect

Italian scholar, not a “scholar” at all, but a warm admirer merely.

(1867 letter from Christina Rossetti to Elihu Burritt)

In the course of the last two decades, Christina Rossetti’s life, love and religion have been examined from many different angles. All of her remaining personal letters and documents have been scrutinised in an attempt to discover every possible detail on her chronic illnesses, her failed relationships and her strict religious beliefs. More recently, fortunately her literary output too has received its due attention. Yet, one major element of her identity as a writer and one major part of her writings have been utterly neglected:

Rossetti’s Italian descent and her Italian poems. Sadly, the consequence of that overlook has been that a major portion of her literary work remains unappreciated. The ambiguity which characterises so much of Rossetti’s poetic output originated in the clash of her three-quarter

Italian blood with the nineteenth-century Anglican society she grew up in. It was unclear however, what other consequences – if any at all – her Italian descent had had on her life and work. I was intrigued to discover an entire chapter of untranslated Italian poems in the posthumously published volume of New Poems. Apparently, Christina Rossetti’s Italian was good enough to allow herself to be inspired into writing Italian poetry.

From the Italian chapter of New Poems, I have, for this dissertation, selected one cycle entitled Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente or The Rubifying of the East, which consists of 21 Italian poems. In my research, I have discovered that this Italian series of poems is mentioned in

Vanleene 6 some of Rossetti’s major biographies, yet no one has translated, let alone discussed, this work in any detail. In Georgina Battiscombe’s 1981 biography, two pages are dedicated to mere speculation about whom Rossetti might have written the Italian poems for. Ten years later,

Kathleen Jones reserved only one page of Rossetti’s life story for an introduction to and some fragments of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente. The Italian work received most attention from Valeria

Tinkler-Villani who published a twelve page article on the Italian Poems. But, since there are over 60 Italian poems in Rossetti’s New Poems alone, only a few lucky ones were briefly touched upon. Yet Tinkler-Villani’s work provided me with a starting point for my own detailed analysis of the poetic cycle.

The first chapter of this dissertation is concerned with the investigation of how well a girl of Italian descent - but born and raised in England - could learn to master the language of her

Mediterranean father. Furthermore, I intend to look into the manifold Italian influences

Rossetti experienced; from reading the greatest Early Renaissance Italian poets to discovering nineteenth century Italy on a voyage there. I will elaborate on the way her character was shaped as she was locked away in a rigid Victorian society in the colourful company of Italian expatriates and relatives and the consequences of all that on her religious convictions. The second chapter will provide an overall perspective on the broad Italian production of Christina

Rossetti and her family members, most of which has not been translated nor systematically examined. I will also attempt to situate Rossetti’s Italian work in its rightful place in her entire literary oeuvre. The third chapter, then, will zoom in on Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente, as a clearly delineated cycle of poems which represents an important part of her Italian work. I will provide a general framework on the technique of the translation of literature, especially poetry, from Italian to English. Before the actual discussion of the poems, I will also shed light

Vanleene 7 on the most frequently used images of the cycle. The final part provides the 21 Italian poems with the English translations and the individual discussion of their content.

I aim to indicate how important Italy and the Italian language really were to Christina

Rossetti by providing a clear and, especially, complete overview of all the Italian ingredients of her life. My goal is to spark readers’ and critics’ interest in Rossetti’s Italian work by fully covering one of her cycles. I hope that my translations will help to introduce these poems to a readership that was, up to now, not aware of The Rubifying of the East.

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1. Rossetti’s Italian Roots

Gabriele Rossetti drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1853

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1. Rossetti’s Italian Roots

1.1 Italian Youth

“Avrà piu spirito di tutti,”1 Gaetano Polidori enthusiastically exclaimed when his youngest granddaughter Christina Georgina Rossetti spent the summer at his house near

Little Missenden in Buckinghamshire. All of his grandchildren - Christina, Gabriel, Maria and

William shared great literary and artistic talents amongst them. The Rossetti siblings inspired each other throughout their lives, reading and criticising one another’s manuscripts. Their talents have to be accounted for by their genes and the extensive literary tradition upheld by the Rossetti family.

Gabriele Rossetti, their Italian father, had been a controversial figure in his native country: the debates generated by his outspoken political mindset led to his fleeing his

Neapolitan place of origin to seek refuge in England. There he was introduced to the daughter of another Italian exile, Gaetano Polidori2, an author and secretary to the Italian dramatist

Alfieri. The freshly arrived immigrant Gabriele Rossetti fell head over heels in love with

Frances Polidori. Not only did they share the same origins, Frances also challenged him intellectually. She had enjoyed an education as a governess and was harbouring great literary potential herself. However, she decided to concentrate on a career as a model Victorian housewife, thus also honouring the Italian values with respect to family life. Her intellectual potential was nipped in the bud by her exemplary modesty and self-abnegation. In the 19th

1 “avrà più spirito di tutti” = “she will be the most witty one of them all” 2 Influenced by Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, Gaetano’s son John, wrote a gothic novel The Vampyre.

Vanleene 10 century, these last two were highly esteemed but also very restrictive feminine qualities which Christina Rossetti would seek to embody throughout her entire life.

Frances gave birth to all of her four children in the first four years of her wedded life.

As the Rossettis could only afford one servant, Christina’s mother was constantly occupied with running a well-functioning household. The Rossetti family had at their disposal an annual salary of approximately two hundred pounds from Gabriele’s post as a Professor of Italian at

King’s College, London. Even with the additional fees from private students, the family had to keep a close eye on their expenses. The fact that all of Gabriele’s writings had been banned in

Italy, because of their anti-church and often downright anti-Christian tone, did not facilitate their precarious financial situation.

Being the eldest of four and intellectually the most precocious, Maria could already write English as well as Italian at the age of five. Maria3, Dante4, William5 and Christina6 all learned Italian from their father, the grandparents and the many Italian visitors to the household. The Rossettis kept close contact with several Italian families in London. Even though the children mostly kept to themselves, they were, on occasion, allowed to play with

Signor Rovedino’s children. Rovedino was a musician and family friend who taught Maria music, singing, and elocution. Another colourful visitor of the Rossetti household was Mr.

Parodi, the dancing-master who spoke a “curious lingo, compounded of Italian, English, and whatsoever else” (Harrison 1: 3)7.

“Gabriel and Christina were known as the ‘two storms’, both inheriting a volatile

Italian temperament from their father. Christina was the more fractious of the two,

3 Maria Francesca Rossetti (17 February 1827 - 24 November 1876) 4 Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 –9 April 1882) 5 William Michael Rossetti (25 September 1829 – 5 February 1919) 6 Christina Georgina Rossetti (5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894) 7 The first volume of Christina Rossetti’s letters, edited by A.H. Harrison in 1997. Henceforth, this volume will be abbreviated as Harrison 1.

Vanleene 11 passionate and given to terrible tantrums ” (Jones 5). Throughout her youth, Christina Rossetti spent each holiday with her grandparents in Buckinghamshire. Like his son-in-law, Gaetano taught Italian in London and was ever faithful to his Mediterranean origins. “He was a genuine eccentric, much loved by his grandchildren, who could be found translating Milton into Italian before lunch and indulging his passion for carpentry in the afternoon” (Jones 7).

Christina Rossetti was overcome with grief when he passed away as a result of a stroke on 16

December 1853. Notwithstanding his old age, “Grandpapa had been her most constant friend, tutor, consoler and critic,” always readily providing comments and suggestions for her poetry.

(Harrison 1: 92)

Christina Rossetti was a happy and vivacious child. Her impulsive and warm character might have rendered her an equally spontaneous adult, but between 1842 and 1847 a metamorphosis took place. During this period, the young Rossetti felt pressured to turn into a reserved and scrupulous adult, in life as well as in writing. Her Italian temperament was definitely curbed by her strict upbringing in the English evangelical tradition. Rossetti suffered greatly under all of the rules imposed by her surroundings. She wrote a great many poems which stress how heartily she regretted the psychological corset that English society forced her to wear.

The poem ‘Enrica, 1865’ describes this painful difference between herself and her

Italian friend, Enrica Barile.

We Englishwomen, trim, correct, All minted in the selfsame mould, Warm-hearted but of semblance cold, All-courteous out of self-respect.

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She, woman in her natural grace, Less trammelled she by lore of school, Courteous by nature not by rule, Warm-hearted and of cordial face. (Jones 9) Rossetti, thereby, clearly categorises herself as an Englishwoman, notwithstanding the profound Italian influences of her childhood. Apparently, her education was one fit for a typical middle-class lady. As a consequence, she had to curb her passionate temper in order to fit the Victorian notions of feminine submission. Rossetti tried to copy her exemplary mother, who was the epitome of a controlled, phlegmatic Victorian upper-middle-class wife and mother. Christina Rossetti and her mother visited Italy for the first time in 1865. The trip left her with a profound sense of belonging. The utopian Italian land of freedom turned out to actually exist and fulfil all of her imaginings. Later on William stated that:

The Italian amenity, naturalness, and freedom from self-centered [sic] stiffness, struck

a chord in her sympathies to which a good deal of what she was used to in England

offered no response. If Christina, along with our mother, could at this time have made

up her mind to live permanently in Italy, it would, I fancy, have suited her much the

best both for her health and for mental satisfaction. (Harrison 1: 238)

Instead of remaining in Italy, Christina Rossetti returned home to struggle with her subdued

Italian personality all of her life. Not only did it resurface in her poetry but from her puberty onwards she suffered severely from nervous illnesses. Her panic attacks and palpitations quickly led to the then popular diagnosis of hysteria. Hysteria was thought to originate in the womb and was thus considered to be an exclusively female affliction. Some nineteenth- century psychiatrists did make a connection between social repression and nervous illnesses.

Sigmund Freud chose to ignore the social pressures on women but Charles Mercier located

Vanleene 13 hysteria’s origins in the lack of outlet for adolescents in full emotional development. No wonder that Rossetti, with her rebellious and passionate nature, struggled as a result of the restrictive social expectations. According to Jones, there are indications in Rossetti’s work of

“the struggle between conformity and ‘difference’ that seems at times to have stretched

Christina’s sanity to breaking point” (114).

Unlike her brother Dante, Christina Rossetti learned to somehow tame her unruly disposition. In order to persevere, she sought refuge in the strict rules of her faith. The female members of the Rossetti family dedicated themselves to the severe Anglo-Catholic religion.

Frances Rossetti had given all four children a conventional but thorough religious education and the family had first attended two typical places of worship: Holy Trinity Church

Marylebone and St. Katherine’s Chapel Regent’s Park. In 1843, they started to attend services by William Dodsworth in Christ Church Albany Street. Dodsworth was a fierce supporter of the High Church Oxford Movement or the ‘Tractarians’. William and Dante Gabriel could not be motivated to follow the strict rules of this faith. Their young critical minds might have benefited from all those years they had spent away, in school, while the girls had to content themselves with singing, dancing and language classes at home. Gabriele Rossetti had been raised a catholic and remained one throughout his life, notwithstanding his antipapal writings, his exile from Italy and the different faith of his wife. He was not much of a practitioner until the end of his life when he turned to a vague Evangelical form of Christianity.

For Christina Rossetti, the High Anglican faith would remain one of the most important and determining factors of her life. The shy, austere adult Rossetti was a far cry from the happy young girl of the summer holidays spent at her grandparents’ home. In the meantime, she did deliberately reject “the two options available for Victorian women of her class:

Vanleene 14 marriage or employment as a governess” (Leavy 107). She continued to live as a semi-recluse until her death in 1894, at all times entirely devoted to her religion and her family.

1.2. The Italian Heritage

The Italian language and culture were always at the centre of Christina Rossetti’s life.

As mentioned before, the Rossettis had a great many Anglo-Italian friends. These visitors were of the utmost importance, as their stopovers provided a possibility of actively practising the

Italian language. Some of these figures have been identified. Christina Rossetti refers for instance to three Italian gentlemen in an 1850 letter to William Michael Rossetti: “Mr.

Sangiovanni presented me with a small clay dog and Maria with a busto romano which reminds us both of Mr. Ciocci: and we met Mr. Pistrucci by appointment” (Harrison 1: 45).

Mr. Benedetto Sangiovanni - by profession a modeller of picturesque figures in clay - was an old, greatly esteemed, family friend. William describes him as typical of the Italians who visited the Rossetti’s home during their childhood. He claims they were “odd characters, queer characters, shady characters, picturesque characters, high-minded and exalted characters, and some quite commonplace as well” (Harrison8 1: 46) with ultra-liberal or downright revolutionary political views. Mr. Ciocci was a defrocked Italian priest who teased

Gabriele Rossetti into writing anti-catholic tirades and expositions. Gabriele had by then lived in England for so many years that without his informants, he no longer related to the problems and frustrations with the Italian Catholic Church as he had before. Mr. Filippo

Pistrucci was a family friend as well. He earned his living by teaching Italian and producing

8 The editor, Antony H. Harrison quotes William Michael Rossetti in a footnote to provide some additional information for Christina Rossetti’s comment on the family’s Italian friends. The original source is William Michael Rossetti’s Some Reminiscences. London, 1906.

Vanleene 15 paintings on the side. All of these characters coloured the lives of the Rossettis with their imported Italian habits and southern flair. Another frequent visitor was Christina Rossetti’s cousin Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti, who played a major role in the translation of her English work into Italian. I will elaborate on his influence in the second chapter of this dissertation.

All of these fellow Italians fanned Rossetti’s enthusiasm for the Italian language. Even so, her Italian was not perfect. In an Italian letter to her father, written at the age of 12, she starts out by apologising for the many blunders she will be making. The original manuscript was lost, but William - who translated the document - agrees that the mistakes were

“tolerably numerous, but not such as to affect the sense” (Harrison 1: 3). Christina Rossetti’s love for the Italian language continues to shimmer through in her correspondence. She uses many enriching terms, phrases and expressions mostly when addressing her brothers.

Individual Italian words such as “mediante”9, “virtù”10, “parocco”11, “pazienza”12, “anche”13,

“illustrissima”14 and “recordarsi”15 pop up in her sentences. Italian words are sometimes used to better coin a new term, to stress a certain quality or simply to enrich her language.

Sometimes, they are used in an intertextual way. Thus the word “recordarsi” has an additional meaning in a letter to Dante Gabriel when she writes: “No, I am sorry to say, I do not recall ‘La

Pia,’ of whom it is so obviously seemly to ‘recordarsi’” (Harrison 2: 241)16. According to

William, the reference will be clear to a reader of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia. Indeed, in the fifth canto of Purgatory, Pia de’ Tolomei asks Dante to remember her: “Ricordati di me,

9 Mediante = through 10 Virtù = virtue 11 Parocco = priest 12 Pazienza = patience 13 Anche = also 14 Illustrissima = extremely illustrious 15 Ricordarsi = remember 16 The second volume of Christina Rossetti’s letters, edited by A.H. Harrison in 1999. Henceforth, this volume will be abbreviated as Harrison 2.

Vanleene 16 che son la Pia”17 (295 v.133). Rossetti also indulges in more colloquial expressions such as

“tanto meglio per me18,” “la cara prole19,” “cari plegni20,” and “di proprio pugno21.” These always stand out from the rest of the text because Rossetti tends to indicate them with quotation marks. Some of her shorter notes are even entirely written in Italian. This 1881 letter to William reads: “La madre ha cambiats *sic+ di pensiero intorno a ‘Blake’, riflettendo che in questo momento tiene da leggere quanto le basta” (Harrison 2: 302). Rossetti here states that her mother has changed her mind about ‘Blake’, reflecting that at the moment she has enough to read. Her continued fascination with the Italian language also appears from a letter to William in which she explains how she and a visitor delved into some linguistic research: “Last night there was a Neapolitan gentleman with us and we made one more effort to unearth ‘croce vuota22’; but neither did he recognise the term” (Harrison 1: 283).

In an 1863 letter to her friend and fellow writer Anne Burrows Gilchrist, Rossetti even proposes to teach her young children some Italian. “I shall indulge myself by staying with you and your nice children and your agreeable friend til’ the following Saturday. I suppose Italian would at present be premature, otherwise I might instill [sic] its elements into my young friends: - how delighted they would be!” (Harrison 1: 177)

Of all the Rossetti siblings, only her brother William was to have children. She did not see her nieces Olive, Helen, Mary nor her little nephew Arthur very often but her love for children inspired Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book which she went on to publish in 1872.

Rossetti wrote an endearing letter to her friend Caroline Gemmer in 1872, in which she puts this particular work in its context.

17 “May you remember me, who am la Pia” 18 Tanto meglio per me = so much the better for me 19 La cara prole = the dear progeny 20 Cari plegni = dear pledges 21 “Mamma hopes to write you ‘Di proprio pugno’.” = with her own fist, herself 22 Croce vuota = hollow or empty cross

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No, please: I am not very hopeful about Sing Song; - but perhaps I may buy a copy

myself! For a young friend23 not ½ a year old. That will truly be a wide sale. The young

friend is baby of another young friend of mine, and grandson to two of my kindest and

dearest old friends. How the young people grow up and put one out of date. (Harrison

1: 415)

Christina Rossetti was also influenced by her Italian heritage with regard to her cultural interests. She enjoyed Italian opera, kept herself informed about Italian politics and allowed herself to be inspired by the greatest Italian writers. Her favourite musical piece was Pietro

Trepassi Metastasio24’s opera Clemenza di Tito (1734), set by Scarlatti, Mozart, and Gluck. She mentions in a letter to her closest friend of over 40 years, Amelia Barnard Heimann that she and William plan to take her mother to see Garibaldi25’s entrance at Nine Elms Station,

London.

William declares in his “Memoir” of his youngest sister that as a child, she was most definitely the least bookish of the family, not at all applying herself to her studies. However, from her teenage years onwards, she did become more studious, even engaging in scholarly research26 later on. In a letter to William Michael, dated 1846, Christina Rossetti enthusiastically talks about her appraisal of Tasso’s work. She further mentions that she has:

23 Golde Moeller’s baby, Bernhardt 24 “Pietro Trepassi Metastasio (1698-1782), the finest poet of the Arcadian School, played an important role in the development of opera. 25 “Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807 – 1882) was responsible for most of the military victories of the Risorgimento, the Italian war of independence against the Austrians. He was a man of the people who succeeded because he was a master of guerrilla warfare and propaganda. In 1861 a new kingdom of Italy was established, but Garibaldi opposed it and became something of an embarrassment to the government. He was, however, enormously popular outside Italy, and his reception during his April trip to England has been described as rapturous.” 26 Christina frequently visited the British Museum Library, from 1876 to the year of her death.

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“also read a little of Dante’s Inferno, a very small portion of Petrarca, and sundry productions of Tasso. His Lodi di Amore are most beautiful” (Harrison 1: 7).

One is intrigued by her reference to Ariosto as she states that she has hardly been able to read any of Ariosto as she has not brought “a list of the prohibited passages”. She goes on claiming “What little I have seen, however, seems very fine, and makes me greatly regret my omission”. The list of prohibited books and of prohibited passages was mainly a matter of church law, but it was sometimes supported by secular law as well. Without the list, Rossetti would not have known which chapters were considered too explicit and therefore inappropriate for a young, Christian female.

During her lifetime, Rossetti read the oeuvres of many great Italian writers, such as

Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. She had studied various Italian literary techniques and used these in her English poetry. According to Bernard Richards, “Christina Rossetti came quite close to the spirit of the Shakespearian and Petrarchan sonnet” (76). Indeed, in a response to some of Dante Gabriel’s suggestions the poet stated: “Amongst your ousted I recognize sundry of my own favourites, which perhaps I may adroitly re-insert when publishing day comes round: especially am I inclined to show fight for at least one terza-rima27 in honour of our Italian element” (Harrison 1: 209). She was thus much influenced by these fourteenth- century writers that it should not come as a surprise that some of her Italian vocabulary was inspired by the Renaissance rather than the nineteenth century.

27 Terza Rima is a three-line stanza form which was first used by Dante Alighieri in La Divina Commedia. Its rhyme scheme follows the a-b-a pattern.

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1.3. The Italian Voyage

On 22 May 1865, William, Christina and their mother travelled to Italy. It was hoped that the voyage would strengthen Christina Rossetti’s health as her psychological symptoms were accompanied by severe physical problems such as shortness of breath, heart palpitations and the coughing up of blood. It was to be her first visit to what she considered her native country. One month earlier, Rossetti enthusiastically informed Anne Burrows Gilchrist that

kind William talks of taking me in [sic] his holiday to enjoy my first glimpse of Italy. Our

plans are unsettled: but if we go, I hope our Mother will accompany us and obtain her

first glimpse also; and perhaps we may start in the course of next month, not to return

I suppose for about 5 weeks. (Harrison 1: 247)

To spare the already fragile Rossetti, the trip was conducted in easy stages, stopping in Paris and in Lucerne, Switzerland. When they finally arrived in Italy, she was immensely touched by the experience: Christina Rossetti felt that she had come home. William Michael Rossetti recorded “the intense relief and pleasure with which she saw lovable Italian faces, and heard musical Italian speech” (Jones 134). Rossetti’s biographer Kathleen Jones indicates rather drily that this romantic appreciation of the beloved patria might have been shattered had their stay in Italy been of longer duration. The idyllic and brief visit made Rossetti fall in love with the country, its inhabitants and its language. The song of a nightingale in the blossoming nature of Lake Como, on a perfect evening of mild June temperatures, proved sufficient to inspire a poem.

Vanleene 20

A host of things I take on trust: I take The nightingales on trust, for few and far Between those actual summer moments are When I have heard what melody they make. So chanced it once at Como on the Lake; But all the things then waxed musical; each star Sang on its course, each breeze sang on its car, All harmonies sang to senses wide awake. *…+ (Jones 134) The Rossettis thoroughly visited the province of Lombardia, making stops in Milan, Pavia,

Brescia, Bergamo and Lecco. They travelled east for a while, staying in Verona in the Venice region, before heading north again. A lack of funds prevented them from travelling further south. As a consequence, they visited only two of the twenty regions of the country. The poetry inspired by the voyage indicates how deeply Christina Rossetti felt for her fatherland.

Her return to England marks the beginning of a period of depression, illness and heartache for her scarcely discovered but already abandoned patria.

Farewell, land of love, Italy, Sister-land of Paradise: With mine own feet I have trodden thee, Have seen with mine own eyes: I remember, thou forgettest me, I remember thee.

Blessed be the land that warms my heart, And the kindly clime that cheers, And the cordial faces clear from art, And the tongue sweet in mine ears: Take my heart, its truest tenderest part,

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Dear land, take my tears. (Jones 135)

The poems stirred by the Italian encounters are all in English, although some carry a more exotic Italian title, such as ‘Italia, Io Ti saluto28.’ In a letter to Anne Gilchrist Christina described the trip as follows: “Our small continental tour proved enjoyable beyond words; a pleasure in ones *sic+ life never to be forgotten” (Harrison 1: 254). The Italian experience was definitely a most happy one, which allowed Rossetti to once more connect with her origins. She had now grown exceedingly proud of her families ties:

My Mother throve abroad, and not one drawback worth dwelling upon occurred to

mar our contentment. Such imaginable beauties and grandeur of nature as we beheld

no pen could put on paper; so I obviously need not exert

myself to tell you what Lucerne was like, or what the lovely majesty of St. Gothard

[sic], or what the Lake of Como, with its nightingale accompaniment, or what as much

of Italy as we saw to our half-Italian hearts. (Harrison 1: 254)

Her enthusiasm reaches its culminating point when she states that not only the Italian people are a noble people, but “its very cattle are of high born aspect”. Indeed, Rossetti concludes: “I am glad of my Italian blood”. Even several years after the trip to Italy, the writer never ceases to make explicit references to her roots. When addressing her brothers, she often refers to their “Italian half” (Harrison 2: 205) or to their Neapolitan origins. In an 1880 letter to William she states: “I hope you all are basking in weather such as we here are having – warm but not overwhelming, sunny, delicious, fit for ‘nativi di Londra, oriundi di Napoli29’-” (Harrison 2:

234).

28 “Italy, I salute you” 29 London natives, originally from Naples

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The Mediterranean fatherland was considered some kind of a wonderland for the other members of the family as well. In 1893, Lucy Rossetti, William’s wife, undertook a trip to

Italy. Again it was hoped the voyage would improve her health as Lucy was suffering from tuberculosis. In October, she took her three daughters - Olive, Helen and Mary - to the Lago

Maggiore in Northern Italy in order to benefit from the healthy surroundings. It was to no avail however, and William and his son Arthur had to travel South in haste, only to arrive at

Lucy’s deathbed in San Remo.

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1.4. The Last Italian Connection

Christina Rossetti depended greatly upon her brother William throughout her life, whilst - and possibly because of that possessive claim on her sibling - entertaining a knotty relationship with her sister-in-law Lucy. Christina truly disagreed with their lack of faith, as this

Rossetti branch had not baptised any of their four children. However, after the death of all of their closest relatives - Maria, Dante and both their parents - Christina relied even more heavily upon William’s visits. The following letter clearly indicates how she tried to encourage her brother to visit her more often.

Padrone! Questa tua casa!30

You are welcome on the most cupboard love terms, always and every way welcome.

You shall have a cup of tea, and I will show you a book or two if you care to look at

them… Why not always come here on Shelley (society) nights?

Your affectionate old sister

(Jones 215)

Indeed William had always proven to be a most caring brother to her. In 1866, when Christina had received a marriage proposal from the man she loved, Charles Bagot Cayley, William offered the couple to live “as free inmates of my *William’s+ house” (Harrison 2: 283) or tenants without charge, since Cayley was of little means and William wanted to give them a chance to build a comfortable life together. She eventually did not marry Cayley because of their religious differences, but William’s offer was certainly a very generous one.

30 Master! This is your house!

Vanleene 24

Christina Rossetti passed away on 29 November 1894. Even though she meticulously destroyed all letters and other personal papers - like so many writers of the period – her literary reputation suffered from the conflation of her life and poetry throughout the twentieth century. More recently critics31 have regretted that more attention has been paid to Christina’s life than to her actual work. Angela Leighton, for instance, points out that

“William Michael Rossetti’s edition of Christina Rossetti, famously includes her manuscript datings, like the recorded evidence of a life lived behind the writing, a context behind the text” (136). William, by then a renowned editor, understood the commercial importance of an appealing personality - or preferably an icon - behind a writer’s name. It is a businesslike mindset that the modernists, such as Henry James and James Joyce (Demoor 11), would go on to exploit even further at the beginning of the twentieth century. Admittedly, even without

William’s adding of the dates, Christina’s poetry cannot be said to be very impersonal. There is a very outspoken, strong presence of a lyrical I which often addresses a “you”. On the other hand, as Leighton puts it: “her lyrics employ all sorts of evasive tactics to disguise self- confession” (136). Even though the lyric “I” can be entirely unattached to the poet’s self, the presence of a lived life behind that “I” can be overwhelmingly strong. As Virginia Woolf mentioned in “A Letter to a Young Poet”: “It is apparently easier to write a poem about oneself than about any other subject” (189).

31 “It is useful to start off with this bare recital of a few essential biographical facts, since one of the embarrassments of studying the work of Christina Rossetti is that in so doing one becomes inevitably involved in the minutiae of her life, his life, their lives. All this is undoubtedly interesting, but *…+ one wishes it were not the case.” (Beauty and Beast 8)

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2. Rossetti’s Italian Work

Lake Como Italy Nineteenth century

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2. Rossetti’s Italian Work

2.1. On Rossetti’s Italian Translations

As far as Christina Rossetti’s Italian work is concerned, very little of it was published during her lifetime. The only poems in Italian which were actually printed were translations of her English poetry. ‘Goblin Market’ was her first work to be translated. The English version had been out since 1862 when it was picked up by Rossetti’s cousin Teodorico Pietrocola

Rossetti. Born in Naples, this Rossetti lived there for 23 years until he was convicted to the death penalty for his part in the revolutionary risings of 1848. Like his cousin, Gabriele

Rossetti, he thereupon fled to England in order to save his life. Teodorico translated the writings of several major English writers, such as Lewis Carroll and Christina Rossetti. His enthusiasm for Italian versions of his niece’s literary work must have stirred something in

Christina’s “half-Italian heart” (Harrison 1: 254). From the sixties onward, Christina Rossetti’s oeuvre is replenished with Italian titles, Italian poems and Italian translations.

In 1870, Rossetti composed a collection of nursery rhymes which she intended to publish. Sadly, the first edition of her prose experiment Commonplace sold so few copies that she decided to release her publisher Ellis from his obligation to publish Sing-Song32 next. “I am so sorry for all the money you have spent on Sing-Song, which may well hide its diminished head for one while… I fear my poor little book is troublesome to you (nearly) even as it were in its grave” (158). As a result, she was once more without a publisher until 1872, when she found a new publisher in George Routledge & Sons. Sing-Song was then published with illustrations by Arthur Hughes33. Despite the laudatory reviews, this collection of sweet and

32 Christina Rossetti spells the title of the work in various ways: Sing-Song, Singsong, SingSong and Sing Song. I shall use Sing-Song as that is the way it was spelled on the first publication. 33 Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), was a English Pre-Raphaelite painter and book illustrator.

Vanleene 27 honest rhymes went through only two English editions and one American edition during her lifetime. Curiously enough it did rather better posthumously as it stayed in print until early in the twentieth century. It was during her lifetime still, however, that Teodorico Pietrocola-

Rossetti took it upon himself to translate those children’s songs in Italian at the end of the

1870s. William explains the genesis of the translation of Sing Song in the final notes of New

Poems.

Our cousin Teodorico Pietrocola-Rossetti first made some translations from that book,

whose title he rendered as Ninna-nanna; herein I follow his lead. His translations were

felicitous. Inspirited by his example, Christina made other – and I conceive, in poetic

essentials, still better – translations. Readers familiar with Singsong will perceive that

numerous compositions in that volume remain untranslated. (393)

William was the one who had sent his sister’s work to Teodorico, as can be gathered from this letter by Christina Rossetti. “Teodorico’s address is as you give it. I am quite glad you told him of my Sing Songs, as I had a fancy for his knowing of them tho’ it was somewhat formidable to announce them myself” (Harrison 2: 185). The project was one the entire family worked on together. Christina passed Teodorico’s translations to Dante for approval: “Teodorico has sent over a few ‘Sing Songs’ & wants them shown to you: so here they are” (Harrison 2: 195).

Christina Rossetti at times felt uncertain about her own ability to translate into Italian:

“Of course I only venture to prefer my own in case their Italian could pass muster, -& very likely it could not, which would make all the difference” (Harrison 2: 195). Indeed, from several letters to Dante Gabriel, it appears that Christina was not at all convinced of her own knowledge of the Italian language. “I was charmed at the good success of my SingSongs with you. But it would indeed need a better Italian than I to translate the whole series: think of my writhing helpless before “Heartsease in my garden bed” or “In the meadow”-!!” (Harrison 2:

Vanleene 28

186). This letter dates from 1878, more than a decade after she had written most of the

Italian Poems selected for discussion in the present work. Apparently she was reluctant to translate poems of hers which were already known to the general public.

As it turns out, Christina was probably the most fluent in Italian of all the Rossetti children. Simonini says on behalf of Dante Gabriel that “in his later life Rossetti was by no means bilingual, and it is probable that his sister Christina surpassed him in degree of facility in the Italian language” (132). William Michael also considered his sister’s Italian work to be of high quality:

I consider that her Italian verses are, from a poetical point of view, every bit as good as

her English verses, while the exquisite limpidity of the Italian language adds something

to the flow of their music. There are likely to be some inaccuracies and blemishes of

diction, but perhaps only a native eye would detect these – mine barely does. (Preface

Rossetti viii)

For the publication of Sing-Song, she eventually did prefer her own translations over her cousin’s, but he definitely inspired her and proved to be of great help. Her final versions – more adaptations than literal translations – were published in the Italian chapter of New

Poems.

Dante Gabriel complained about the influence a translation in Italian could have on a literary work. Signor Luigi Gamberale, of Campobasso who “produced some Italian translations from poems by Dante Gabriel and Christina”, might not have done his job to

Dante’s satisfaction, as the poet protested in this letter to William Michael:

Italian poetry suffers so much, in comparison with English, from amplification. In his

*Gamberale’s+ Gentì there are nearly 200 lines more than in my Jenny. I gave him my

Vanleene 29

views as to how much this lessened emphasis. But I think *translations of+ Christina’s

things better done. (Harrison 2: 289)

The translated work of both Rossettis was eventually published in Poeti Inglesi e Tedeschi,

Moderni o Contemporanei (Florence, 1881). Dante Gabriel, though, did write seven more poems in Italian, but only translated four of them, since the other three would not be suited to Victorian ears.

AMONG the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti there are a group of poems written in

Italian which have received practically no attention. These consist of seven mostly

short poems, four of which are accompanied by Rossetti's own English translations.

(Simonini 130)

So three of these poems were left untranslated because “the charming frankness and naivety of the subject could not have been turned well into Victorian English” (Simonini 135).

The fact that the Italian of the Rossetti siblings was not perfect, was merely the consequence of their lack of practice. Dante Gabriel and Maria never visited Italy, unlike

William Michael Rossetti, who travelled to his father’s native country on several occasions.

After the death of Gabriele Rossetti, with whom the Rossettis communicated in Italian, they had to seek out occasions to work on their active knowledge of the language. Their passive understanding was quite extensive thanks to their work as translators. Dante Gabriel for one translated Dante Alighieri, several early Italian poets, the poet Conte Giacomo Leopardi and the French poet François Villon. Dante’s elder sister, Maria Rossetti composed an introduction to the work of Dante Alighieri called The Shadow of Dante (Jones 146). According to

Battiscombe, the work, which appeared in 1871, is still one of the best introductions to Dante studies.

Vanleene 30

William, in his turn, published a translation of Dante’s Inferno in the year 1865. The reviews however, were not encouraging as his translation of that first part of La Divina Commedia was considered too literal. Christina Rossetti too translated a great many literary works in her lifetime, from both Italian and French into English. In the 1850s, she contributed to Dr

Waller’s Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography34, providing the entries for several literary, religious, and political figures. To this end, she studied a number of major Italian authors such as Petrarch and Leopardi. Furthermore, she helped William with a translation of Memoirs and

Correspondence of Mallet du Pan. William and Dr Benjamin Paul intended to publish this

French aristocrat’s views on the effects of the French Revolution in England. For the translation of the work, a very thorough knowledge of French was required, which Christina could provide.

34 Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography. A Series of Original Memoirs of Distinguished Men of All Ages and All Nations, by Writers of Eminence In the Various Branches of Literature, Science and Art. ed. John Francis Waller, 14 vols., and published by William Mackenzie in London, Glasgow, and Edinbrugh. Three editions, non dated.

Vanleene 31

2.2. On Rossetti’s Italian Poems

The Italian poems William collected in New Poems were actually written before and just after the very period Kathleen Jones considers Rossetti’s most fruitful one.

In the years between 1856 and 1862, Christina wrote much of her best poetry. She was

in full control of her technique and its perfection ordered the raw and sometimes

turbulent emotions she expressed, providing a dramatic tension between the powerful

emotion and the tight form that contained it. (73)

The poems I have selected for scrutiny here, from the volume Il Rosseggiar dell’Oriente, were conceived at the end of the 1860s. Jones claims that Christina herself considered her early poetry superior to her later religious writings. I believe that the Italian poems fall outside that chronological subdivision as they have never been thoroughly studied, let alone compared to

Rossetti’s other writings. The poet may have turned to the Italian language at the time because she felt she had sufficiently explored poetry in the English language. According to

McGann: “*h+er reputation was established in the 1860s and 1870s, when Adventism35 reached the apogee of its brief but influential career” (133). She was regarded one of the most powerful and important contemporary English poets in the last decades of the late nineteenth century. Her reputation declined when the literary taste of critics, public and fellow writers began to change.

35 Adventism is a extremely religious branch of conservative Protestantism started by William Miller (1782-1849). The adherents believe in a Second Advent of Jesus.

Vanleene 32

The style of her verse is simple, chaste, and severe, but it is also recognizably in a

Victorian stylistic tradition, and in that respect it is ‘orthodox’ precisely where modern

poets and New Critics looked for the ‘unorthodox.’ Her poetry does not get worked up

at the surface. (McGann 130)

William Rossetti took it upon himself to edit Christina’s letters and oeuvre after her death, much the same as he had done for Dante Gabriel. In 1895, he presented a volume of

233 New Poems, selected from all of Christina Rossetti’s unpublished poetry. He divided the work in four chapters: ‘General Poems’, ‘Devotional Poems’, ‘Italian Poems’ and ‘Juvenilia’. In

Rossetti’s case, any kind of subdivision is hard to follow rigidly, and thus two of Christina’s earliest Italian Poems: “Amore e Dovere” and “Lisetta all’Amante” are located in the Juvenilia- part. These were written when Christina was only a young teenager, somewhere between

1845 and 1847. The themes of love and faithfulness -so extensively drawn on in her later

Italian work- already surface in these very early poems.

William’s editing has received a good deal of criticism as it seems he tried to create an idealized version of his sister’s life. He changed and erased words, thus altering both mood and content of previously unpublished poetry.

As a result of all of these posthumous actions, Rossetti's artistic successes and talents

were stressed far less than the example she supposedly set of the perfect Victorian

woman who posed no threat to the masculine portion of her society in either a

personal or professional capacity. (Spaise 53)

Vanleene 33

During her lifetime too, Rossetti’s poetry was often praised for its ‘femininity’. It was supposedly non-intellectual and it lived up to the expectations society imposed on its women poets. Artists who crossed the boundaries, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were punished for it with harsh critical reviews. Dante Gabriel Rossetti even coined a term – with a decisively negative slant - for Barrett Browning’s energetic, strong and intellectual poetry, namely:

“falsetto muscularity”. As a nineteenth-century woman poet, Rossetti belonged to an electively separate female tradition. The critics, but also the poets themselves recognised that as a fact. According to Leighton, Rossetti did look at “other women poets as sources of comparison, or emulation” (124).

Problematic was that a poet who stayed within the gendered boundaries of literature would not be fairly measured up to her male counterparts. Even critics in the first half of the twentieth century used this so-called double standard. Jerome McGann indignantly points out that,

first, … the New Criticism ignored her work and, second, that those who praised her

did so in terms which were bound to prove largely ineffectual: she is a pure

craftswoman, she is the best woman lyricist of the nineteenth century, she is an

impassioned mystical poet, she is the poetess of the Tractarian movement; her verse is

‘spontaneous,’ ‘ascetic,’ ‘unblemished,’ and ‘sweet’ (132).

It was not until the 1970s and the emergence of feminist literary criticism that Rossetti’s musicality and lyricism got the attention it deserved.

Amongst the New Poems William had discovered, was the cycle Il Rosseggiar Dell’

Oriente, which had been locked in Christina’s desk because of their highly personal tone and

Vanleene 34 content. In general, as Spaise puts it, “*d+uring her lifetime, Christina kept much of her poetry very private, not even sharing it with her brother or other family members. In this way, she retained control over her words and their intended meaning” (57). Rossetti might have expected these poems to be of little success with the English audience, but her secrecy also points at a romantic motive.

The cycle contains 21 poems, most of which are lyrics. Its title: The Rubifying of the

East36 refers to the colour of the sky as the sun rises. It is quite a remarkable choice, appearing to put across a positive image of hope and new beginnings. Actually, Rossetti’s favourite time of the day was twilight, the exact opposite of sunrise. She considered sunset

“the time of fantasy, a time which lies between the pleasure of the past and the judgment of the future, between delightful memory and ascetic goal, between regret and grace” (Leighton

139). Clearly, in this group of poems, Rossetti intends to talk of the beginning of things. Any negative events of the past have been erased overnight, there is now only hope for that which has yet to take place.

There is also a subtitle to the cycle: Canzoniere all’amico lontano, or Songbook for the far(away) friend. This subtitle triggers speculations as to who this “amico lontano” might be.

The first poem of the cycle was written in 1862, not coincidentally the happiest and healthiest period of Rossetti’s life. During these years, she built up a warm friendship -based on their many shared interests- with the Russian-born Charles Bagot Cayley. According to Leighton,

Rossetti’s poems are not always that easy to link to her personal life:

36 Battiscombe translates the title as “The rosy light in the east”, but that is a very free translation as there is no mentioning of light in the Italian sentence. I considered it more accurate and still clear enough to use the reference to the red colour of rubies.

Vanleene 35

Critics who have tried to fix on a single biographical inspiration for her poems, whether

James Collinson, Charles Cayley or even William Bell Scott, have had to wring their

conclusions from the baffling emotional chronology and determined secretiveness of

much of her verse. (141)

Rossetti met Cayley in 1850 when he started to study Italian with Gabriele Rossetti as his tutor. He quickly became an intimate of the Rossetti family and Christina felt deeply for him. Even though a marriage to Cayley had been pending for years and they definitely cared very much for one another, Rossetti’s strict ideas about religion foiled their marriage plans.

He proposed to her in 1866 but she declined the offer because he appeared non-committal in faith. She decided that she could never commit herself to someone who differed so much on such a fundamental issue. Her passionate adherence to her beliefs could never be compatible with the agnostic convictions of her lover. They remained close friends and companions until

Cayley’s death on 6 December 1883 which came as a great shock to Christina; even though his health had been deteriorating for a while. The agnostic Cayley is considered the object of her only genuine romantic feelings during her adult life and he presumably inspired a good deal of her love poetry from the 1860s onwards. All of the Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente poems were written right in the middle of the confusing period when she eventually chose for her religion and against the love of her life. Upon his death, Cayley left Rossetti a small legacy and he is also one of the few correspondents whose letters she preserved.

According to William Michael, there are two groups of Christina Rossetti’s poems, that were inspired by Cayley. Both the cycles Monna Innominata and Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente were written in the sixties. Monna Innominata is a wonderful sonnet sequence which gives voice to the deepest feelings of an “Unnamed Woman” of the courtly love tradition. The work

Vanleene 36 was published in 1881 but did not quite get the attention it deserved. William Bell Scott for one was very enthusiastic about Rossetti’s sonnets, stating: “The series appears to me equal or superior to anything she has done, or anyone else has done” (quoted in Battiscombe 132).

Even though many sonnets fit the Rossetti-Cayley situation, some do not do so at all. In fact, the content of the poems from Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is much more conspicuously autobiographical. The leitmotif throughout the cycle is the union with her lover in the life after death. “Once again Christina writes as a woman separated from her lover by an insuperably though undefined barrier” (Battiscombe 133). I will discuss the influence of

Rossetti’s personal love life on the cycle and the images she uses, in the third chapter of this dissertation.

One of the major themes of the cycle stems from the insurmountable barrier between the narrator and her lover. This barrier is created, or enforced, by the incapability of communication between the two.

The power of the self and the strength of its voice is confirmed by two more features

of the Italian poems: the theme of speaking out or being silent – that is, the

affirmation of the self through language – and the range of poetic techniques

employed. All the poems are lyrics – yet the stress is often on what is not said. (Villani

39)

In several poems, the speaker explicitly mentions that an extra layer of meaning lies hidden in the words on the page. The fact that she states that something is not yet openly articulated in the poem, is a suggestion for the reader to look into it. The narrator makes up for not having spoken her true feelings at that particular situation by speaking up now. She used to rely on

Vanleene 37 the fact that well-timed silence should say more than speech but that produced no satisfying results.

While Rossetti’s ballads and narrative poems contain the dynamics of a sexual politics

which threatens to disorder all their emotional and religious messages, her lyrical

works, for which she has always been better know, seem to fall into a more traditional

mould. (Leighton 140)

The basic metre used in Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is iambic and the poems vary in length from 6 (“Luscious and sorrowful”) to 28 lines (“Iddio c’illumini”). Valeria Tinkler-Villani points out that it is not just the varying length which makes these poems so special but also the choice of language:. “The diction is not nineteenth-century Italian diction – “sirocchia”,

“aita”, “fidanza”, “quel che fue fue” are words common in Dante or Tasso” (40). This comes as no surprise if the manner in which Rossetti acquired her knowledge of Italian is taken into account. Whereas her family ties provided her with the basic notions of the language, she deepened her knowledge significantly by reading, studying and, on occasion, translating these great Italian Renaissance writers.

“Thus, we have a body of poems written to a ‘distant friend’ which are at times secular, at times like prayers addressed to Christ or God, but in which the persona, the friend or lover and Christ become a trinità united by love” (Villani 38). The images, such as “the heart”, which she used to refer to these three figures are often used interchangeably: “The continuous use of the same images (the rose, the heart, Christ) functions like a continuous chain of ideas placed in a slightly different light; it is the same effect, though looser, created

Vanleene 38 by a sestina” (41). The devotional aspects and the many references to the mysterious lover both pervade the entire Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente cycle.

The Italian poems are very dense with intense emotions and heartfelt sentiment.

“Rossetti is the century’s true Sappho because, in her poetry, she sings, loves and dies with effortless, unquestioning spontaneity” (Leighton 141). Sappho, the ancient Greek lyric poet, was indeed a key figure for Rossetti, Barrett Browning and their female contemporaries. Born on the island of Lesbos in the first century BC, she is one of the first known female poets. She haunted the imagination of many Victorian writers and was even considered to represent “all the lost women of genius in literary history” (Gubar 46). Her poems were difficult to reproduce in English because of their length-based meters, but that did not keep Elizabeth

Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti from producing translations and variations on

Sappho’s poetic ideas. May Sarton too has placed Sappho “in the company of Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti”, claiming that : “Only in the extremity of spirit and flesh / And in renouncing passion did Sappho come to bless”. Indeed, Sarton hereby proves that in the woman poet “something is lost, strained, unforgiven” (quoted in Gubar 60). Rossetti was very much intrigued by the person and poetics of Sappho, and this mysterious Greek writer inspired several poems. Sadly, once again, “Christina Rossetti's ‘Sappho’ (1846) and ‘What

Sappho Would Have Said Had Her Leap Cured Instead Of Killing Her’ (1848) were excised from her collected work by William Michael Rossetti” (Gubar 44). He probably feared for his sister’s reputation if she would be linked to Sappho’s infamous homoerotic stories.

Rossetti generally kept within the boundaries of what was expected from a female poet’s output. She listened to Dante Gabriel who “habitually cautioned his sister against

Barrett Browning’s unwomanly range and tone” (Leighton 118). Even though there were

Vanleene 39 many reciprocal influences “the very monotony which Barrett Browning criticised in L.E.L.37 is embraced by Rossetti, half-apologetically and half-boastfully, as her natural idiom.” She sticks to the image of being a singing improvisor whose work is spontaneously roused by music.

“Musical and melancholy, they *Rossetti’s lyrical works+ have long been acclaimed as examples of a pure womanly verse which is sexually unambiguous and perfectly sincere”

(Leighton 140). Rossetti does also mock this standing model of a singing poetess as she goes beyond the expected limits. Living tones become “posthumous groans” (Rossetti quoted in

Leighton 118) in her melancholic verses, in which the narrator often speaks from beyond the grave.

According to biographer Georgina Battiscombe, Rossetti’s poetry might have been

“too subtle and too sad” to “make a strong appeal to the general public” (13). Yet, as Ford

Madox Ford pointed out, “suffering is a thing of all the ages” (quoted in Battiscombe 13). The particularly sensitive Rossetti lived in constant conflict with herself and naturally found inspiration for her work in her own experiences. William Bell Scott, upon meeting her for the first time, described her in these terms: “The girl was Christina, who had already at seventeen written, like her brother, some admirable lyrics, nearly all overshaded with melancholy”

(Battiscombe 59).

37 Letitia Elizabeth Landon, born in 1802, provided a model of tragic creativity to the First generation of VIctorian women poets. The Rossetti children were familiar with L.E.L.’s work and Christina Rossetti sought to inhabit some of the registers and attitudes made popular by Landon at the beginning of the century. (Leighton 75)

Vanleene 40

3. Rossetti’s Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente

Illustration by Florence Harrison For Rossetti’s “My Heart is Like a Singing Bird”

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III. Rossetti’s Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente

3.1. On the translation

“I am a translation because I am a woman”

(S. de Lotbinière-Harwood quoted in Simon 1)

As the objective of this essay was to introduce and discuss Rossetti’s Italian poetry, translating these poems into English was an important, additional task. Georgina Battiscombe relied on

Vanessa Fox to provide literal translations of certain fragments she intended to use in her biography. Valeria Tinkler-Villani made her own translations for the few poems she discussed in “Christina Rossetti’s Italian Poems”. No translations have yet been published of the entire cycle Il Rosseggiar Dell’ Oriente so I had to translate them myself. I decided to stick as closely to the text as possible so as to best represent the vocabulary Rossetti has employed. This does mean that end rhyme is lost on most occasions. The natural rhythm and sound quality of the many open vowels of the Italian language obviously could not be preserved in the English poems.

Eugene A. Nida summarises the task of a competent translator, by stating that s/he

“first analyses the message of the SOURCE language into its simplest and structurally clearest forms, transfers it at this level, and then restructures it to the level in the RECEPTOR language which is most appropriate for the audience which he intends to reach” (484). W. H. D. Rouse however, distinguishes between two different kinds of translation: “one is an art, an end in itself; the other is a test, or a method of explanation, a means to another end” (105). In his opinion, works of great literature then belong to the first group as the translations need to be appreciated by a public which does not know the originals.

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Poetry is central, being the ultimate challenge at the complex heart of the art of

literary translation. More so than prose, poetry, because of its prosody, is polysemous,

with many layers of meaning – aesthetic, phonic, and expressive – to transpose

between tongues.

(Barnstone 4)

The translator has a great responsibility to honour the tone, content and style of the originals. In poetry, synonymy and full equivalence are impossible and logically, according to

Basnett-McGuire, “poetic art is therefore technically untranslatable” (quoted in Barnstone

11). Rouse notes that success in this first kind “can at best only be partial, because no word in any language covers exactly the same ground as a word in another language, and the associations of words are so different” (105). However, Walter Benjamin in his Task of the

Translator has proposed a word-for-word literality which almost threatens comprehensibility.

Examples of many different styles of translation can be found in literary history. For example,

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s translations of four of his own Italian poems in English can be studied as examples of the art of translation. “The poet’s translations are not only surprisingly faithful but also remarkably literal and keyed throughout exactly to the note of the original” (Simonini

136). Christina Rossetti translated her own Sing-Songs very freely into Italian, so much so even that the translations were actually more adaptations than literal renditions of the originals. To do the opposite and translate her Italian writings into English is no mean feat.

Simonini describes it as such: “There can be no English equivalent of the charming simplicity and playfulness of the Italian. In English the whole thought becomes crude and shallow”

(134).

Vanleene 43

Clearly, a translator finds herself in the precarious position of making many decisions which all have grave consequences. Given poetry’s delicate construction process several factors need to be taken into account when translating it. Choosing to give priority to one aspect is always choosing against a whole array of other elements the poet has carefully selected, such as vocabulary, rhythm, grammar and metaphors. Sherry Simon remarks that

“*b+ecause they are necessarily ‘defective,’ all translations are ‘reputed females’” (1).

Translators and women are linked to one another because they “have historically been the weaker figures in their respective hierarchies: translators are handmaidens to authors, women inferior to men” (Simon 1).

Still, the business of translating has also proven beneficial to female authorship.

“Despite its historical status as a weak and degraded version of authorship, translation has at times emerged as a strong form of expression for women – allowing them to enter the world of letters, to promote political causes and to engage in stimulating writing relationships”

(Simon 39). George Eliot, for instance, started her literary career by translating the German philosopher David Friedrich Strauss (Das Leben Jesu) and Augusta Webster worked on

Classical Greek tragedies.

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3.2. On the themes

3.2.1 Love

Christina Rossetti’s biography is of great importance for her love poetry because “the story of her life is part of the baffling biography of her imaginative writing, with its anachronistic dramas of lost love, missed meetings and highly ‘composed’ despairs” (Leighton

119). Right after Rossetti’s death most of the biographies, for example Mackenzie Bell’s, promoted the image of the ‘Saint Christina’: the virtuous, religious poet who took care of her parents and brothers her entire life. She seemed to have loved only in the context of family and work. These accounts of her life completely omitted Rossetti’s two love interests James

Collison and Charles Bagot Cayley, and the pain their break-up caused. In these early biographies, “*e+ven less was revealed about her volatile temper, failed love affairs, and her devotion to her art” (Spaiser 53). In the poems, however, many traces can be found of the passion generated by the act of self-sacrifice in her love life. Jones talks in this context of

“great suffering” and even “the denial of her sexuality” (227).

According to Leighton, “Rossetti is a great love poet, not because she idealises love beyond the lies and cruelties of the passions, but because she enters those lies and cruelties with total imaginative abandon” (134). The heart is a riddle, it lies and blinds the lovers with false arguments. Rossetti is most certainly not naive when it comes to love’s treacheries. At the age of seventeen already, she wrote the strikingly mature poem ‘The Dream’ which ends with this quatrain :

Truly love’s vain; but oh! How vainer still Is that which is not love, but seems; Concealed indifference, a covered ill,

Vanleene 45

A very dream of dreams. (Leighton Women Poets 146)

All in all, “Desire is not, for Rossetti, a moral or even an aesthetic solution; it is a moral nonsense. The heart is not an ultimate touchstone of truth and sincerity, but a place of indecipherable secrets and strategies” (Leighton Women Poets38 134).

Leighton compares Rossetti’s loveless -and often dying- female protagonists with those of fellow writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Both poets, at some level, identified themselves with their death-bound protagonists. “The problem with such models, however is that they re-emphasise the sentimental suicidalism of women’s poetry. After all, Barrett Browning was a Lady of Shalott who got out and lived, while Rossetti, though ‘weary’ for a lover in her poems, in life banished them all from her door” (Leighton Women Poets 119).

The heart in Rossetti’s poems is not merely used to represent the persona, her lover and Jesus. It assumes a concrete position of its own, separating the voice of the persona from her own heart, which seems to belong to both the lover and God. It is quite difficult to separate love and religion in Rossetti’s work. In general, the distinction between her secular and religious poetry is blurred, “since all of her best work is generated through a poetic grammar that is fundamentally religious in origin and character” (137). McGann also states, however, that “*w+e must, of course, distinguish between her "Devotional" and her nondevotional [sic] poetry, partly because she made such a distinction and partly because it is an important distinction in fact. But if a large part of her work is not specifically devotional, it is virtually all ‘religious’ in its orientation” (137). Sylvan Esh agrees that “*r+eligious material is diffused throughout much of Rossetti's work, intermixed even with the poems that fall

38 To avoid confusion with Leighton‟s article “In Time, and Out: Women’s Poetry and Literary History” I have used up till here, I will refer to Leighton’s book Victorian Women Poets. Writing against the Heart as: (Leighton Women Poets).

Vanleene 46 outside the group of more than 450 usually categorized as belonging to her body of devotional poetry” (836). We find many of these “mixed” poems in Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente, and these are just as strong, aesthetically, as her strictly religious poems. According to Ralph

Bellas, these kinds of poems benefit from the addition of “intense personal reflection and emotion” (quoted in Esh 836). Rossetti was also very much influenced by Letitia Elizabeth

Landon39’s poems, which were laden with melancholy, in tone and metre. “Rossetti, in particular, took the myth and made a life’s work of it, both in her poetry, and also, in a curiously perverse way, in her life’s choices. Silence, death and rejection in love become her own special creative atmosphere *…+” (Leighton 46).

Many of the images Rossetti draws on in her sonnet cycle are inspired by her faith.

Indeed, Catholic religion also uses the heart in various prayers. In the Book of Common

Prayer, it is employed to refer to truthfulness, dedication and allegiance. Each service will start with the praising of God for his goodness in the form of:

The Lord will be with you

And with thy spirit

Lift up your hearts

We lift them up unto the Lord

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God

It is meet and right so to do.

Other than that, the required response to the Ten commandments is always “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” When considering the Italian services, the use of the word “cuore” stands out even more. The ‘Atto di carità’ and the ‘Atto di dolore’

39 Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802-1838), referred to as L.E.L., was an English poet and novelist.

Vanleene 47 start out with the sentences: “Mio Dio, Ti amo con tutto il cuore sopra ogni cosa40” and “Mio

Dio, mi pento e mi dolgo con tutto il cuore dei miei peccati41”. In fact, most common prayers open with “Ti adoro, mio Dio, e Ti amo con tutto il cuore42”.

Rossetti did not only break off the engagement with her intimate and devoted friend

Charles Bagot Cayley, the anonymous “Amico lontano” of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente. In 1850, she had also changed her mind about marrying Pre-Raphaelite painter, James Collinson. They had been engaged for over two years when Collinson decided to reconvert to Roman

Catholicism. According to Harrison, Rossetti stranded herself on the island of spinsterhood on purpose when she refused Cayley’s marriage proposal at the age of 36. “But these decisions should not surprise us, given Rossetti's deep antipathy toward marriage as a way of life for women and as an institution” (426). D'Amico, on the other hand, suggests that it was her faith which "led her to consider the unmarried state closer to God" (quoted in Spaiser 219). It is unclear what Rossetti’s exact ideas on marriage were, and according to Spaiser this dubiousness shimmers through in her poetry.

One of the problems in attempting to interpret Rossetti's feelings toward marriage and

husbands is in establishing whether she is referring to a secular marriage with a flesh

and blood man or a spiritual marriage with Christ. This "double entendre," which is

also found in medieval verse, runs through a majority of her poems which focus on the

lover or the husband. (56)

40 “Mio Dio, Ti amo con tutto il cuore sopra ogni cosa” = “My Lord, I love You with all my heart more than anything else” 41 “Mio Dio, mi pento e mi dolgo con tutto il cuore dei miei peccati” = “My Lord, I repent and I regret my sins with all my heart” 42 “Ti adoro, mio Dio, e Ti amo con tutto il cuore42”= “I adore You, my Lord, and I love You with all my heart”

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Regardless of whether Rossetti did not get married because she disagreed with the institution of marriage or with inter-religious marriage, the fact remains that her spinsterhood and the issuing childlessness rendered her truly unhappy. Freud proclaimed in Civilisation and its

Discontents that “we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as when we have lost our love-object or its love”. According to his theory of the “Pleasure Principle”: it is better to control your vulnerability by restricting your love. If you do not put yourself in an exposed situation, there should be decisively less distress.

Nevertheless, Rossetti’s refusal of two suitors did not help her attain more bliss. She actually loved Cayley and losing him only resulted in overwhelming melancholy.

A recurrent theme in Rossetti’s Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is the reunification of two lovers after death. In order for that to work out in her own life, however, she really needed to convince Cayley to become a practising member of the Church of England. Rossetti feared that the agnostic Cayley was destined to end up in hell. It is unclear whether Rossetti, outside of her poems, ever tried to convince her beloved to become an active member of the church.

If she did, he must have refused as the only certainty is that they both remained single for the rest of their lives.

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3.2.2. Religion

Rossetti’s obsession with her faith began at a very young age. As a teenager, she adopted a very plain, Madonna-like style. Her hair was tied back in two buns on either side of her head and, like her mother, she always sported a basic frock of a sober hue. This pure image entirely met with the Victorian standards of the appropriate look for a woman. She started to cultivate an attitude of self-mortification and self-denial. The early diagnosis of hysteria did not help the matter as most physicians’ prevalent cure for the disease “was to enforce self-control, that is, obedience to culturally dominant, and one might add generally repressive, standards of conduct and behavior in every aspect of a young girl's life” (Harrison

424). For instance, it was when young Christina Rossetti was being treated by Dr. Charles J.

Hare that she started to go to confession. This became “a nearly lifelong practice for her but a highly controversial one even among High Anglicans” (Harrison 424).

She went to great length to stick to her religious principles, going so far as to deny herself any participation in her favourite game, chess, as this generated emotions of too extreme a nature. Intense rejoicing in case of victory or great disillusion upon loss were considered unsuitable for a respectable young woman. Tractarianism – or Anglo-Catholicism – was not so much concerned with liturgy as it was with doctrine. High Anglican women were only allowed to excel if it was merely for the purpose of excelling or in dedication to Christ.

Still, according to William, Christina Rossetti was always well aware of her literary talents.

“She believed herself ‘Truly a poetess’ and ‘a good one’” (Leighton 126). The sales of her work, the critics’ reactions and her brothers’ comments confirmed her ideas on the quality of her art. On top of that, she received lots of unsolicited manuscripts from aspiring artists to overview. She had to be cautious about enjoying her success, as her faith prohibited her to

Vanleene 50 take pride in work and personal ambition. It also prescribed very strict inner discipline and, as suggested before, banned any display of emotion. Rossetti therefore often makes a sudden switch to a positive and exemplary message at the end of her poems. A religious moral in the endnote would ease her conscience and minimize the critics’ reactions.

Her religious convictions also hindered her appreciation of other artists’ work. She was amazed at the beauty of Swinburne’s poems, which she received from Dante Gabriel. Sadly, the very same work also contained “lines so offensive to her, like ‘The supreme evil, God’

(Swinburne, 1904: IV, 287), that she covered them over with little strips of white paper”

(Leighton 126). William has also dedicated New Poems to “Algernon Charles Swinburne A generous eulogist of Christina Rossetti who hailed his genius and prized himself the greatest of living British poets”.

Christina Rossetti’s sister Maria joined the Anglican Sisterhood at All Saints in the year

1875. This move to the cold naked rooms of the convent, caused a lot of worry in the Rossetti household as Maria had by then been diagnosed with cancer. She succumbed to her illness in

November of the same year. It is plausible that Maria withdrew from society especially to come to terms with herself, her God and her imminent death. “Maria became a nun in the recently founded Anglican Sisterhood of All Saints, while Christina in some sense internalised the role of nun, living a life of punctilious religious exercises and resorting to religious scruples on each of the two occasions when she received a proposal of marriage” (Leighton Women

Poets 120). Dante was raised in the same strict Anglican tradition as his sisters but he was not interested in the severe, orthodox doctrine of the faith. As Leighton puts it: “Dante Gabriel adopted a medievalised aesthetic mysticism, which flowered into the sensual religiosity of the

Pre-Raphaelite creed” (Leighton Women Poets 119). William too, ostentatiously turned his back on religion, its rules, its restrictions and consequently also its proclaimed salvation. He

Vanleene 51 became a free-thinker and confirmed agnostic. As mentioned earlier, the fact that he did not have any of his children baptised created a lot of tension between him and his devout sisters.

According to Maurice Bowra: “Only in God could she *Rossetti] find a finally satisfying object for the abounding love which was the mainspring of her life and character” (quoted in

Battiscombe 81). With a history of two annulled engagements to two perfectly agreeable men, Rossetti had indicated that no human love would be able to fulfil her. An 1857 poem called ‘The Heart Knoweth Its own Bitterness’ ends with the lines:

How should I spend my heart on you,

My heart that so outweighs you all?

(Battiscombe 131)

The plural you of the final line indicates not one specific individual but the whole breed of human lovers.

Several of her poems cannot be clearly classified under either “secular” or “religious” poetry as Rossetti’s faith was organic, pervading her entire poetic output. When compared to her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, though, she is decisively more religious in her use of themes and motifs. There are many explicit references to God, Jesus and other biblical figures such as John The Baptist. Rossetti makes it interesting by using these Saints in an unexpected way. As mentioned before, God and her anonymous beloved ones are often used interchangeably as she brings into play a capitalised “You” to refer to either of them. In the poem ‘Lassuso Il Caro Fiore’, after pleading with her beloved for his conversion, she also daringly names herself John The Baptist: “Io qual Giovan Battista43”.

43 “Io qual Giovan Battista” = “I that John the Baptist”; in „Lassuso Il Caro Fiore‟

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“Before Gerard Manley Hopkins’ work was published she was regarded as the greatest religious poet of the nineteenth century, and is still considered to be one of the finest in the

English language” (Jones 112). On the other hand, by the time Rossetti hit her forties, her growing fanaticism started to put curbs on her imagination: “By limiting her imagination, she began slowly, systematically, but unknowingly, to kill the source of her creative inspiration”

(Jones 163). In the summer of 1874, she published her first volume of exclusively devotional prose called Annus Domini. It is a collection of prayers for each day of the year with an additional scriptural text.

One of the themes which recurs in more than half of the Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente poems, is her strong belief in a reunion with her lover after death. Christina Rossetti, like

Emily Dickinson, considered death as the liberation of the spirit from matter in Paradise, the beginning of true life. Rossetti draws on this three-fold theme, which includes "the vanity of all earthly things, the anticipation of an early death, and the looking forward to heaven"

(Bellas quoted in Esh 836). By being dead, the lyrical I “overcomes the problem of an exhibitionism which is too readily associated with woman’s appealing goodness and sincerity.

Rossetti needs a place from which to speak which will not be the over-exposed stage of the

Capitol or, its real Victorian equivalent, the admiring family drawing-room, and finds it in the grave” (Leighton 143). The objective of this posthumous state is the gaining of an afterlife of the imagination, untroubled by weeping or remembering.

Furthermore, Rossetti’s faith led her to believe that a woman’s place was second to that of a man’s. Yet, a brighter future lay ahead because "In heaven there would be neither male nor female, and all would be equal before God. If a woman felt powerless and insignficant [sic] in this world, she could . . . turn to the promises of heaven" (quoted in

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Spaiser 214). This is exactly what Rossetti’s narrators and protagonists do to comfort themselves in their heartbroken state of being. Spaiser concludes:

In a perfect world, and with an ideal application of the concept of Christian charity,

there would be none of the injustices toward women which Rossetti witnessed and

was compelled to explore in her poetry. And this, naturally, leads us to the vast

number of poems in which the speaker rejoices in being able to leave her earthly

bonds and achieve an existence of true equality in the afterlife. (65)

Rossetti made the motif of Death her own, contradicting the finality of death. In some of her poems, “the time of being dead is itself a secret between-time, not a conclusion” (Leighton

Women Poets 159). The lyrical I thus lingers in a dreamland somewhere between heaven and earth.

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

(CP: I, 58, ll. 13-16) (Leighton 159)

Yet in her Italian poems, the narrator has her goal – Heaven – very well-defined in her mind.

She is relying on the Afterlife to unite her with her lover and complete a love which was not possible in Life.

Rossetti’s knowledge of Christian prayers might also have inspired one of her favourite literary techniques: repetition. A litany, for example, is a prayer consisting of a series of invocations by the priest with responses from the congregation. These are typically repetitious in nature. Indeed, a striking element in the Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente poems, are the many cases of exact or near repetition. Christina Rossetti had used this technique in her

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English work, such as ‘Goblin’s Market’ and Monna Innominata but it also appears very frequently in her Italian poetry. Repetitions are to a certain extent also linked to the formal conventions of the poetic forms Rossetti works with, such as the sonnet and the pentameter.

Nevertheless, there are several other reasons to reuse certain words, images and grammatical constructions.

According to Esh:

the repetition of an image (actually the constant reappearance of nearly similar,

increasingly generalized or reduced images, since with each reappearance the

experience of perception changes) serves to disintegrate the original image as the

original meaning is gradually suspended by a predominance of rhythm and sound.

(839)

Basically, the constant recycling of a certain element empties that element from its original meaning. “Taken to its extreme, the latter effect begins by its excessive presence to call into question the actual existence of the objects named by these terms” (Esh 839). This technique can be used to question the significance of certain objects of belief, such as love, God, or faithfulness, in general or in specific cases.

Esh believes that the repetitions in the Monna Innominata cycle, for example, reappear so extensively that the reader is no longer interested in discovering the nature of the narrator’s losses. The repetitions reinforce the idea that no resolution can ever be obtained.

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3.2.3. Nature

Nature is present in Rossetti’s Italian work in quite a subtle way, mostly providing metaphors for love. In Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente, her favourite elements are nesting birds and flowers, especially the rose. In the cycle, “Flower” is used to represent the narrator herself, her beloved or even God. Dante Gabriel was worried that Christina Rossetti’s poetry was not more strongly rooted in nature. He even wrote to her, advising her to follow the path of a

“typical female” poet. “I wish you would try any rendering either of narrative or sentiment from real abundant Nature, which presents much more variety, even in any one of its phases, than all such ‘dreamings’” (Jones 61). The “dreamings” Dante is referring to, are the mystical poems which link Christina Rossetti’s work to Brontë and Dickinson. It was considered quite a shame that Rossetti’s urban upbringing seemed to lead to little receptivity of nature’s lyrical possibilities. The poet preferred the wanderings of the mind to extensive landscape descriptions. There are some exceptions, like the Italian poem “O Uommibatto” -which is not part of the Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente cycle- describing Dante Gabriel’s beloved wombat. He had bought the animal in 1869 and it quickly became the centre of attention as the entire family produced poems and drawings of the animal.

In the final years of her life, Christina bestowed all her love and attention on a young poet called Lisa Wilson. Lisa too described Christina as her dearest friend and even her spiritual mother. Lisa was nicknamed ‘Fior di Lisa’ meaning Fleur de Lys in Italian. Christina attributed a poem to her in 1892, reusing the rose motif which has been so extensively used in Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente.

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The Rose is Love’s own flower, and Loves no less The Lily’s tenderness. Then half their dignity must Roses yield To Lilies of the Field? Nay, diverse notes make up true harmony; All-fashioned Loves agree; Love wears the Lily’s whiteness and Love glows In the deep-hearted Rose. (Jones 220)

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3.3. On the poems

IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST

CANZONIERE ALL’AMICO LONTANO SONGBOOK FOR THE FAR (AWAY) FRIEND

1 1 Amor Dormente? Slumbering Love?

Addio, diletto amico; Fare thee well, dear friend; A me non lece amore; Love does not serve me; Chè già m’uccise il core Because already my heart murders me Amato amante. Beloved love. Eppur per l’altra vita And still for the other life Consacro a te speranze; I dedicate hopes to you; Per questa, rimembranze For that, memories Tante e poi tante. Many and still so many.

Dicembre 1862. December 1862

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The leading poem of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is a prime example of Rossetti’s poetic technique: her play with repetitions, repetitions with variation and oppositions. Within merely eight lines, she experiments with various forms of love and lover such as: “amore” and “amato amante” (v.4). The lyrical I starts out by saluting her dear friend and sending him away for love does not serve her now. The first two lines go readily to the heart of the problem as it is not exactly a mere friend she is sending away. She calls him “amato amante” so the feeling she tried to avoid has already manifested itself. The love has taken up residence in her heart. As is indicated in the title, she is possessed by a slumbering feeling she is unable to deal with. However sleeping (“dormente”) it still is, the presence is definitely threatening her emotional wellbeing. Between the 4th and the 5th line there is a small volta after which the speaker announces that there is hope, but that hope is located in the ‘other’ life. This shared future in the afterlife is foregrounded by the memories of what they have already experienced together. These memories will have to suffice until the first day in the hereafter. This spiritual theme is strengthened by the use of a verb linked to religious liturgy:

“consacrare” which stands for “dedicate” as well as “consecrate”.

In Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente Christina Rossetti employs many different poetic forms and several rhyme schemes. This poem follows the ABBCDEEC rhyme scheme which makes it an octavilla italiana. According to Alfred Coester, an octavilla italiana with tetrasyllabic verses means “rhyming a (free), bbCd (free), eeC (the oxytone in the fourth and eighth verses is characteristic)”.(11) This poetic form is often used in Spanish Romantic poetry and its origins can be located in singing.

The use of the octavilla italiana in the type of poem to which the name of cantata has

been given was, nevertheless, earlier. A cantata is a narrative with one or more lyric

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poems intercalated in the text and in which the protagonist speaks or sings. The

narrative part of such a poem is usually written in hendecasyllabic verse, either

rhymed or blank, while the lyric part which expresses a more intense emotion

consists of octavillas italianas. (Coester, 13)

All of the poems in this cycle are characterised by end rhyme. Rossetti was very well trained at finding rhyming words as she played the game of ‘bouts rimés’ with her siblings, for years on end. It was the children’s favourite pastime to make up these ‘bouts rimés’ sonnets which are poems composed, in competition, to prescribed end-rhymes. In addition, the Italian language, more so than English, is amazingly rich in vowel-ending words. The first poem is quite simple in syntax as well as vocabulary. It relies on repetition and well-chosen pauses to reveal the appropriate meaning. These kinds of straightforward verses reappear throughout the entire cycle.

.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 2 2 Amor si sveglia? Love Awakes?

In nuova primavera In new spring Rinasce il genio antico; The ancient spirit is reborn Amor t’insinua “Spera” – Love insinuates “hope”- Pur io nol dico. Still I do not tell.

S’ “ama” ti dice Amore, Yes, “love” Love tells you S’ ei t’incoraggia, amico, Yes, she encourages you, friend, Giurando “è tuo quel core”- Pledging “it is yours that heart”- Pur io nol dico. Still I do not tell.

Anzi quel cor davvero No indeed that heart really Chi sa se valga un fico44? Who knows if it’s worth a fig? Lo credo, almen lo spero: I believe it, at least I hope: Ma pur nol dico. But still I do not tell.

Gennaio 1863. January 1863.

44 Colloquial expression

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The two first poems of this Italian cycle are intricately linked to one another. The title of the second poem “Amor si sveglia?” very obviously relates to the previous one “Amor

Dormente”. Whereas love was initially still sleeping, it now seems to be waking up. Its presence is much stronger, definitely less passive. Its specific state, however, remains uncertain, as is indicated by the question mark in the title. These twin poems were written within a month’s interval and they depict a very different emotional attitude.

The poem starts from the opposition of new and old. The “genio antico” she refers to is the universal feeling of love which has been around since the beginning of mankind. It is the oldest human emotion of all which blossoms in springtime. This ancient spirit is entirely renewed each time it is reborn between two different people. It is a beautifully constructed poem about speaking out versus keeping still. One of Rossetti’s fortes is the way she skilfully constructs her poems. The tension which builds up in the first two paragraphs culminates wonderfully in the last one. An important feature in the structure of this poem, is the “Pur io nol dico” at the end of each stanza. The final time, it is repeated with a small but significant variation when “ma” is added. This addition of ‘but’ stresses the finality of the decision of not speaking out: “Ma pur io nol dico”.

Love is personified and literally assumes the voice of speaking up: it insinuates, tells, encourages and pledges. All of its actions are directed towards the friend. This friend is clearly not aware of the heart he possesses. The Lyrical I, herself, cannot tell what is on her mind and thus remains locked in her mute state of being. The result is a suggestion of despair in the final lines of the poem.

The poem starts out quite positively with the idea of love and hope in springtime, but the speaker seems to be sick and tired of the tormenting uncertainty involved. Moreover, the question mark in the title seems to suggest that the lyrical I is not convinced of the

Vanleene 62 awakening love within herself. Even if she were to be more certain of the way she feels, she is not planning to act on it and speak up. Rossetti herself was at the time experiencing a similar situation in her private life. She had befriended Cayley for quite a while but their mutual love remained unspoken of. It is very tempting to link this poem to Rossetti’s own love life. According to Battiscombe “Christina was more than a little in love with him *Cayley+ before he brought himself to recognise that he was in love with her” (121). Cayley only proposed to her somewhere between 1864 and 1866, but they had been acquainted since he had been a twenty-year-old pupil of her father.

Already in the winter of 1857 Rossetti wrote a poem which deals with the very theme of keeping a secret. It is an intriguing poem to anyone familiar with her Italian poems because that 1857 poem is similar to “Amor si sveglia?” in the sense that the lyrical I here also insists on her own silence while still wanting to reveal something to a “you”. The narrator persists in not telling what is on her mind even though she is clearly haunted by her own secret. This English poem was written five years prior to “Amor si sveglia?” and was possibly an earlier version of the Italian poem since Cayley and Rossetti had then started to develop their friendship.

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. . . .

Perhaps some languid summer day, When drowsy birds sing less and less, And golden fruit is ripening to excess,

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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. (Battiscombe 93)

Rossetti is also in the habit of including references to different seasons in her poetry, often relying on their typical connotations to reveal some half-hidden message. In “Amor si sveglia?”, “primavera” is used to project an image of hope, love and new life, very much like the title of the entire cycle.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 3 3 Si rimanda la tocca-caldaja The “Tocca-caldaja” is Sent Back

Lungi da me il pensiere Far from me the thought D’ereditar l’oggetto Of inheriting the object Ch’una fiata45 in petto Which a breath in the chest Destar ti seppe amor. Could awaken in you love. Se più l’usar non vuoi, If you don’t want to use it no more, Se pur fumare nol puoi, If even smoking it you can no more, Dolce ti sia dovere Sweet for you will be the need Il conservarlo ognor. To preserve it forever.

45 “una fiata” should be “un fiato”

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“Si rimanda la tocca-caldaja” is the most difficult poem of the cycle to discuss as the meaning of a keyword in the title is unclear. In fact, there is no such thing as a “tocca-caldaja” in the

Italian language. It is composed of the verb “toccare” and a misspelled version of “caldaia”.

“Touch” and “kettle” put together could point at a heating device of some sort, yet the content of the poem does not support this interpretation. Another device which also generates heat by burning natural fuels in a small cavity, is a pipe. A “tocca-caldaia” could then be used as a pet name for somebody’s favourite smoking gadget. Considering the rest of the poem, this theory seems very feasible. The narrator is talking of a material element as it can be inherited and preserved. The beloved person in the poem used to smoke this certain object which generated a “fiato” in his chest.

In the nineteenth century, the smoking of pipes was very common practice but best known and most popular were the clay pipes. These clay versions were thrown away after a few smokes. In this case, the sentences “Se più l’usar non vuoi, Se pur fumare nol puoi” do make perfect sense. But the final line which refers to the sweet need of the addressee to preserve it, is somewhat strange. There is no use in keeping this object once it has performed its duty. Clay pipes had a relatively short lifespan and where not expensive at all.

In the first line of the poem too, the narrator explicitly states that she is not at all thinking of inheriting this “tocca-caldaia”. Perhaps the lyrical I insists on keeping the object because it has done such a good job. If it has performed satisfactorily, it should not be coldheartedly tossed away by its user. It is possible that the speaker does actually want it as a keepsake and then, the first line is only meant to indicate that she is not yet thinking of inheriting that object as her “love” is hopefully not going to pass away any time soon.

This immediately raises questions as to whom this poem was written for. The mysterious smoker is only once denominated as “amor”. It could have been Rossetti’s

Vanleene 66 grandfather, father, one of her brothers or Cayley. Although the negative effects of smoking were not known at the time, it was not considered to be such a positive thing. Indeed, in a nineteenth century manual for finding a good husband a list of things to avoid clearly also includes smoking: “ . . idleness, intemperate use of intoxicating drinks, smoking, chewing, snuffing tobacco, the taking of opium, licentiousness in every form, gambling, swearing and the keeping *sic+ late hours at night” (quoted in Gordon 228).

The fact that Rossetti had the specific term “Tocca-caldaja” for it, seems to indicate that this was actually the way they called the object. If so, it is most likely that this was a commonly used term within the Rossetti household and thus only known to the intimate family members. The elder Rossetti generation, her grandfather and father, had passed away at the beginning of the 1850s. This is several years prior to the period this poem probably came into existence. This poem and the fifth one, are the only ones in this cycle which have not been dated. Yet William Michael must have published it in third place in Il

Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente for a reason. Possibly, Christina Rossetti herself had arranged them in this order. The dated poems follow each other in a chronological sequence so this one was probably written somewhere between 1863 and 1867.

Notwithstanding its rather unusual subject, the poem is a wonderful example of

Rossetti’s technical skill of inserting music in her work.

The irregularity which so much displeased Ruskin is of [sic] the greatest charms of her

poetry; in her verse ‘it is this quality of the unexpected, the avoidance of the cliché in

metre, the fact that here and there you must beat time in a rest of the melody, that

gives it its fascination and its music,’ said Ford Madox Ford. (Battiscombe 102)

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Father Rossetti performed as an librettist at the opera as a young man. None of his children inherited his fine singing voice but certain musical qualities do emerge in their literary work.

Rossetti’s poems are rhythmically very balanced and she has a fine ear for creating these beautiful sound sequences. Virginia Woolf wrote of her: “Your instinct was so clear, so direct, so intense, that it produced poems that sing like music in one’s ears – like a melody by Mozart or an air by Gluck” (Battiscombe 102). Another keynote of Rossetti’s poems is her control of the formal features of her poetry. She accomplishes a very balanced work of art through some beautifully conjured mirroring syntaxes or echoing word orders, as is demonstrated in the next poem.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 4 4 Blumine risponde Little Flower Answers

S’io t’incontrassi nell’eterna pace, If I would meet you in the eternal peace, Pace non più, per me saria diletto; No longer peace, for me it would be S’io t’incontrassi in cerchio maledetto, pleasure; te più di me lamenterei verace. If I would meet you in the cursed circle, Per te mia vita mezzo morta giace, For you more than me I would genuinely Per te le notti veglio e bagno il letto: mourn. Eppur di rivederti un dì m’aspetto For you my life lies half dead, In secol che riman, non che in fugace. For you at night I awake and soak the bed: E perciò “Fuggi” io dico al tempo; e omai But still I expect to see you again some “Passa pur” dico al vanitoso mondo. day Mentre mi sogni di quel che dici e fai In centuries which remain, nothing but Ripeto in me, “Doman sarà giocondo, fleeting. Doman sarem” – ma s’ami tu lo sai, And thus “flee” I tell time; and now E se non ami a che mostrarti il fondo? “pass too” I tell the vain world. Whilst I dream of what you say and do Gennaio 1867. I repeat to myself, “Tomorrow will be joyous, Tomorrow we will be” – but if you love you know, And if you do not love, why show you the end?

January 1867.

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‘Blumine risponde’ is a sonnet in which the narrator projects her hopes for the future in the afterlife. The larger perspectives of heaven and hell confuse the simplicities of the ballad.

The first two “s’io t’incontrassi” indicate the two possible destinations after death. One is peaceful: heaven, the other cursed: hell. Whatever the outcome, the lyrical I is clearly ready for both. The lyrical I describes what the consequences of her lover’s arrival would be. The monotony of eternal peace would become pleasure and in hell she would forget her own sorrow in worrying for her beloved. In the first sentences, in opposing “eterna pace” and

“pace non più,” the poet separates the “peace that lasts forever” and the end of that peace only by a comma. Thus, the narrator hints at the double meaning of “pace,” first as a synonym of the afterlife, then indicating the peaceful state of being. Upon meeting her beloved in the hereafter, the speaker would be able to accept her death. In the third line, yet another term is opposed to “eterna pace”, namely the “Cerchio maledetto” or cursed circle.

There too, her concerns would lie exclusively with the wellbeing of her lover.

It is clear that the two lovers cannot be together in this world but his image actually keeps her awake at night. The expression “bagno il letto” or “I soak the bed” draws the attention. Most likely, this is a hyperbolic expression of her grief . The lyrical I is clearly unable to work through the fears and tensions generated by their precarious emotional relation.

The repetition of various words and the parallelisms in the lexical constructions are recurrent throughout the poem. There is not only the initiating “S’io t’incontrassi” in both the first and third line, but also the fifth and sixth line each start with “Per te”. Almost every word in this poem is mirrored; sometimes the resemblance between the repetitions is exact as in “Doman sarà, Doman sarem” (l.12-13), sometimes the result of the reflection is the

Vanleene 70 opposite: “vita mezzo morta” or “half dead life” (l.5). The final three lines are a perfect culmination of this procedure as the narrator explicitly refers to this repeating with “ripeto in me” after she has used “dico” twice in the previous lines. After her plea for time to pass quicker, she uses “doman” anaphorically when referring to their potentially shared future.

This “Doman” is not to be taken literally, it represents any possible day in the future.

Rossetti also opposes “s’ami” to “se non ami”. She states that voicing her feelings should not be necessary because if he loves her, he should know that she longs to be with him. If he does not love her, however, there is obviously no use in her speaking out.

The title of the poem, too, is quite remarkable as there is no obvious link between this specific poem’s title and its content. Here, biographical elements can provide an interesting explanation. Christina Rossetti often used the image of a flower, more specifically the rose, to refer to herself. This was not an original use of the image. Indeed, flowers and especially roses have been the stock image for women for several centuries now. One only has to think of Elton John’s song about the Princess of Wales, “Goodbye English Rose”.

Interestingly, Cayley had himself in 1867 published a poem in The Nation: ‘Noli me Tangere’ in which he used these flower images. Not only does he use the conventional flower imagery

(roses with thorns as well as touch-me-nots), the title is also a well-known biblical reference.

“Noli me Tangere”, Latin for “do not touch me” is the shattering phrase spoken by Jesus to

Mary Magdalene when she recognizes him after his resurrection. In the poem, though,

Cayley further addresses his beloved as “Luscious and sorrowful bird o’the roses”, so any link to Christ’s resurrection is here better omitted

Luscious and sorrowful bird o’the roses, To the vexed March winds prematurely singing

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Would that a warm hand I could have held thee; Kept from a withering chill thy timid heart.

Now have I terrified, now have I pained thee Now with stiffening blood have I tangled All thy bosom’s tremulous plumage, For a thorn, for a thorn was against it. (Kathleen Jones 141)

In this fictional poetic dialogue between the lovers, “Blumine” or Rossetti thus seems to cleverly respond to Cayley’s poem in which he recognises the pain he has caused in her.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 5 5 Lassù fia caro il rivederci The Reunion, Dear, Will Be in the World Above Dolce cor mio perduto e non perduto, Dolce mia vita che mi lasci in morte, Sweet heart of mine lost and not lost, Amico e più che amico, ti saluto. Sweet life of mine which leaves me in Ricordati di me; chè cieche e corte death, Fur le speranze mie, ma furon tue: Friend and more than friend, I greet you. Non disprezzar questa mia dura sorte. Remember me: because blind and brief Lascia ch’io dica “Le speranze sue Were my hopes, but were yours: Come le mie languiro in questo inverno” – Do not despise my cruel faith. Pur mi rassegnerò, quel che fue fue. Allow me to say “his hopes Lascia ch’io dica ancor, “Con lui discerno Like mine fade in this winter” – Giorno che spunta da gelata sera, And still I will submit, what has been has Lungo cielo al di là di breve inferno, been. Al di là dell’inverno primavera.” Allow me to say still, “With him I discern Day which rises from a frozen evening, Long heaven up high from brief hell, Winter’s paradise from spring.”

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The title of the fifth poem “Lassù fia caro il rivederci” would have worked equally well for the previous one. Again, the topic is the reunion with a –beloved- friend in the afterlife. “Dolce cor mio” with which the poem opens is an ambiguous expression. It could refer to her own heart which she has lost to somebody. She tries to keep her feelings in check however, so the heart is not entirely lost. The “dolce mia vita” is then also an explicit reference to her own life. More likely however, the “dolce cor mio” and “dolce mia vita” are ways to denominate her beloved. She has lost him as her lover but perhaps they still keep in touch.

Her lover and life have left her behind in a deadening state of unhappiness. This idea of losing her lover but keeping her friend, is reinforced by the third line which explicitly indicates that they are actually still befriended.

This poem is a very strong example of how Christina combines several types of repetitions, paradoxes and superlatives to generate a specific effect: directing the reader to focus on a certain word and its shades of meaning, or simply to add symmetry to the poem. The first lines are an enumeration of paradoxes. The narrator opposes lost and “not lost” hearts, life and death and the friend who is more than a friend. The confusion between lover and friend from the third line “Amico e più che amico, ti saluto” reminds of the first poem of the cycle.

In this opening poem too, the narrator salutes her friend “addio, diletto amico” but then addresses him as “amato amante”.

Even though nothing came of it, these two loving friends did have the same hopes concerning a mutual future. These expectations were blind and short-lived for both of them.

Winter has arrived in their love life, nothing more than a cold period of decay and little hope.

Indeed, the hopes of both lovers are entirely lost. “Do not despise my cruel faith” might

Vanleene 74 refer to the sad future the narrator now believes she faces. In Rossetti’s case, if she refused a marriage proposal at the age of 36, she was destined to remain single all her life.

Whereas Rossetti still spoke of springtime in the second poem of the cycle, this much darker poem is set in the context of winter. The opposition of winter versus spring, returns in the final line. Again a decisive finality to their worldly relationship is introduced with the “ti saluto”. The lyrical I is actually saying goodbye to her love and life. Apparently, they will not see each other again for quite some time as she has to ask her friend to remember her. Even though the narrator accepts that their beautiful dreams fade in wintertime: “quell che fue fue”, the title indicates there is more to come. Their love might come to an end for this lifetime; there is plenty of hope for the future. In the end, the heart is not entirely lost.

Indeed, the poem ends quite positively with a final love declaration. In that concluding quatrain, the narrator explains the immense influence her beloved had on her life. He enables her to distinguish sunrise from sunset and eternal paradise from brief hell.

The final line is a complex one as there are various ways of translating it.

Lungo cielo al di là di breve inferno,

Al di là dell’inverno primavera

The grammar of the Italian version is not entirely clear. Rossetti reuses the “al di là” from the previous line which can mean “up high” as well as “heaven”. I believe that the second time over, it is used to refer to heaven. “Al di là dell’inverno” would then be “winter’s heaven”.

For that sentence to make sense in its totality, it should then be “Al di là dell’inverno di primavera” but Rossetti omitted “di”. If this was the intended grammar, the translation would be “Winter’s heaven from spring”. Another possibility is that Rossetti meant to say

“With him I discern Heaven from wintery spring” but again the Italian grammar is not correct. The adjective of “inverno” should then be “invernale”.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 6 6 I Am Not The Rose but I Am Near You Non son io la rosa ma vi stetti appresso

Happy house where many times already Casa felice ove più volte omai I sat talking well and even laughing Siede il mio ben parlando e ancor ridendo, Happy woman who sits with him Donna felice che con lui sedendo Making him cheerful with everything you Lo allegri pur con quanto dici e fai, say and do, giardin felice dove passeggiai Happy garden where you pass Pensando a lui, pensando e non dicendo, - Thinking of him, thinking but not telling, - Giorno felice fia quand’io mi rendo Happy day will be when I yield Laddove passeggiando a lui pensai. There where passing you think of him. Ma s’egli vi sarà quand’io vi torno, But will he be present when I return there, S’egli m’accoglie col suo dolce riso, If he welcomes me with his sweet laugh, Ogni uccelletto canterà dintorno, Each bird in the neighbourhood will sing, La rosa arrossirà nel vago viso :- The rose will turn red in the pretty face:- Iddio ci dia in eternità quel giorno, God gives us in eternity that day, Ci dia per quel giardino il paradiso. Gives us for that garden paradise.

Aprile 1867. April 1867.

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This poem has a mysterious ring to it. In the first place because of the unclear reference to Rossetti’s favourite metaphor: the rose. The title explicitly states that she is not the rose. If she is not, perhaps there is another woman who is the “rosa” to the man she is speaking of. Another possibility is that Rossetti here reacts against the conventional image of the rose, as did Wollstonecraft at the end of the 18th century. Yet, she uses the rose as a metaphor in several other poems without this ambiguity.

Rossetti here pictures a state of exclusion from the places where the beloved lives.

She has visited his house and enjoyed herself there on several occasions. Sadly, what she once experienced is now the joy of another woman. The narrator first puts her hopes on the day she will return to the “giardin felice”. The garden where the other woman has walked, cherishing thoughts of the unnamed man. In that happy garden by the happy house, it will be a happy day when the lyrical I returns to meet her love. The garden of Paradise is a typically medieval literary and pictorial motif which goes back to Mankind’s perfect happiness in the Garden of Eden. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also used the same theme in their artwork. Rossetti uses images of nature to describe the overwhelming joy she will feel if her beloved welcomes her with his sweet smile. Birds will sing their songs and flowers will don their brightest colours. And it is not any random flower; it is again a rose which turns red. The personification of the flower with the pretty face supports the idea that the rose is once again used metaphorically. The rose is blushing, but if Rossetti is “not the rose”, then it is unclear who is. This image is puzzling as the reference to the reddening rose comes right after the description of their reunion in the happy garden.

This poem does not insist as much as others on keeping a certain secret yet “non dicendo.” is mentioned in passing (l.6).

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“This is the voice of a very self-conscious self, which definitely does not communicate

in a lyrical, spontaneous flowing of feeling, a pathetic ‘inborn idiom of a pure and

impassioned heart’. It sounds rather like a kind of belcanto issuing from a static

physical positioning: the poems are arias of an opera being sung.” (Villani 41)

This poem also stands out for the variation within its repetition. The repetition of “felice” in different contexts: “casa felice”, “donna felice”, “giardin felice” and “giorno felice” indicate the transitory nature of such a happy feeling. The more it is repeated, the more it seems to disconnect from its original meaning. Indeed, as it turns out, the garden where the two would meet again is actually paradise. It is only in the afterlife that God will provide such a

“giardin felice” for them to be together at last. According to Villani, Rossetti often combines references to secular love with references to God. “The balance is such that one never knows whether to take the religious or the secular as metaphorical. Occasionally the speaker turns to God and a future Paradise only at the end of a poem in order to conclude on a note of hope” (37). Villani believed that God in this poem “becomes merely a way out, a tool for obtaining the beloved”. Indeed, it is in God’s hands to grant the two this longed for day of reunion, someday in eternity.

This poem is one which Battiscombe thought could refer to William Bell Scott instead of Cayley. Scott was a intimate friend of the Rossetti family who is sometimes considered to be Rossetti’s third love interest, be it one for which there is very little proof. The rose referred to in this poem would then be Alice Boyd. Battiscombe states: “The poem beginning

‘Casa felice óve piú volte òmai’ *sic+ matches so exactly with the life Alice Boyd and Scott lived together at Penkill and Christina’s delight in the lovely surroundings there” (134). It was the scholar Mrs Lona Mosk Packer who first came up with the idea of a secret romance

Vanleene 78 between Rossetti and Scott which she claims lasted from 1848-9 until 1857. This would mean that Rossetti was still engaged to Collinson when she fell in love with Scott, who was a married man himself. It is very probably that Packer simply read more into Rossetti’s lifelong friendship with Scott than there really was. As Battiscombe puts it:

A man and a woman who are in love for as long as eight years must be either

preternaturally lucky or extraordinarily discreet (which Christina was but Scott was

not) if they are to keep their love secret. Yet no breath of gossip, no whisper of family

tradition hints at the existence of any such romance.

William Bell Scott was actually a well-known flirt and he did live together with Alice Boyd as lovers notwithstanding his married status. Chances are very small however, that even if

Rossetti had entertained such a relationship with Scott, she would return to this topic up ten years later.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 7 7 Lassuso il caro Fiore There Above the Dear Flower Se t’insegnasse Iddio If God would teach you Il proprio Amor così, His own love like that, Ti crederei, cor mio, Would you believe, heart of mine, Al caro Fiore. In the dear Flower. Il caro Fior ti chiama, The dear Flower calls you, “Fammi felice un dì” ; - “Make me happy some day”; - Il caro Fior t’ama The dear Flower loves you Ti chiede amore. He asks you love.

Quel Fiore in paradiso That Flower in paradise Fiorisce ognor per te; Flowers always for you; Sì, rivedrai quel viso, Yes, you will see that face again, Sarai contento: You will be glad: Intorno al duol ch’è stato Concerning the suffering which has been Domanderai “Dov’è?” You will ask “Where is it?” Chè passerà il passato Because the past will be over In un momento. In a moment.

Ed io per tanta vista And I for so much insight In tutta eternità, In all of eternity, Io qual Giovan Battista I that Giovan Battista Loderò Dio: I will praise God: L’amata tanto amata The much beloved love Tuo guiderdon sarà; Will be your reward; E l’alma tua salvata And your saved soul Sarammi il mio46. Will be mine. Aprile 1867. April 1867.

46 This should be “la mia” as it refers to the female word “alma”.

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The seventh poem of the cycle is a very straightforward plea for conversion. The narrator tries to convince her non-religious lover (l.3) to put his trust and beliefs in God’s hands.

Rossetti here uses the image of the Flower to refer to God as well as to the narrator herself.

Especially in line 7, “Fior” can stand for “Iddio” or for the narrator. The Lyrical I loves and asks to be loved, as in any healthy relationship. However, it might also be divine love which comes from God and needs to be returned by the worshipper. The capital letter can point in the direction of God given the fact that “Iddio” too is capitalised. Capitals, on the other hand, can also be used to generalise a term and make it more encompassing. It is at no point clearly delineated who this “Fior” is. As I have mentioned before, Rossetti often represents herself as a rose and might have done so in this case as well.

In the second paragraph the narrator offers an outlook on the afterlife. It is a reference, Rossetti makes on several occasions in the Canzoniere all’ Amico lontano. The hereafter provides a new life and a new chance for the couple. In Paradise, there will be no suffering and every painful event of the past will be no more than a bad memory. The flower which always flowers for “you” in heaven, can again be either God or the lyrical I.

In the third paragraph, the narrator already anticipates how she will thank God,

“loderò Dio”, for the reuniting of the lovers in heaven. After death, the beloved love will be the reward of his conversion. Here it is clear that the narrator is talking about herself, or at least about a woman, as it is the “amata” who will be the reward. In Italian, the ending of the word indicates the gender of the loved one. The real reward for the narrator then, will be the saved soul of her beloved. She will have saved that soul as if she were John the

Baptist. It is quite a daring comparison she makes between herself and one of the most important martyrs of Christian faith. Saint John the Baptist was a Jewish preacher who baptised large crowds of repenting people seeking salvation on the banks of the river Jordan.

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He also performed this purification rite on Jesus Christ himself. The narrator clearly considers this conversion to be of the utmost importance.

From time to time, Rossetti uses the same word in a different syntactic position. She did so in the first poem, playing around with versions of “amore”, “amato” and “amante”. All throughout this poem too, she uses “ama”, “amore” and “amata” in various forms. The first sentence of the second stanza stands out because of the play with “Fiore” and “Fiorisce”: the noun “flower”” is combined with the third person singular of the verb “to flower”.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 8 8 Sapessi pure If Only You Knew

Che fai lontan da me, What do you do far from me, che fai, cor mio? What do you do, heart of mine? Quel che facc’io That what I do È ch’ognor penso a te. Is always think of you.

Pensando, a te sorrido, Thinking, I smile at you, Sospiro a te: I sigh at you: E tu lontan da me And you far from me Tu pur sei fido? Are you faithful too?

Maggio 1867. May 1867.

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The eighth poem of the cycle is a very short one. It seems rather simple at first sight as its vocabulary and syntax are relatively straightforward, it actually resembles a short love letter.

The simplicity of the form, however, does not necessarily point to a frivolous content.

Indeed, the poem asks for the reassurance that her love, “cor mio”, is being faithful to her.

Apparently, the two lovers are separated by a great distance and communication is neither swift nor easy. Naturally, the narrator wonders what occupies her lover’s actions each day. It is a question which requires an urgent answer as the “what do you do” construction is repeated twice in only one sentence: “Che fai lontan da me, che fai, cor mio?”. When the narrator answers the question for herself, it is obvious what inspired the poem. Indeed, she is thinking about her lover all the time, all day long. Naturally, this pondering on her far away love creates a dual feeling. She smiles at him because she loves him so, but she is also weary for his absence. In fact, she cannot help but sigh longingly. We are, of necessity, reminded of

Tennyson’s “Marianna”: “She only said, 'My life is dreary/ He cometh not,' she said”.

The narrator needs to deal with many uncertainties which are not simply the result of their separation. It seems as though their relationship is actually not that well defined. The title, again, plays an important role. It provides extra information for the correct understanding of the poem. The title creates an immediate tension: if only he knew what?

How much she loves him? Then what? The construction obviously raises questions as to how the sentence continues before her mind’s eye. The poem itself does not provide a direct answer for it. Yet, its goal is clearly to inform the speaker’s lover that she spends all her time thinking of him. If her lover knew how much she longs for him, he might feel pressured to stay loyal too. There is a hint of doubt, a hint of suspicion that the obviously long distance and as a consequence the lapse of time that separates them might tempt the lover to forget her.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 9 9 Iddio c’illumini God Illuminates Us

Quando il tempo avverrà che partiremo When the time comes for us to part Ciascun di noi separata via, Each of us go our separate way, Momento che verrà, moment estremo Moment which must come, the last Quando che fia: moment Whenever it may be: Calcando l’uno inusitata traccia, Seguendo l’altro il solito suo corso, One walking the unusual trail; Non ci nasca in quel dì vergogna in faccia The other following his common path, Nè in sen rimorso. That day no shame will be born in the face Nor remorse in the bosom. Sia che tu vada pria forte soletto, O sia ch’io ti preceda in quel sentiero, Whether you go first strong alone, Deh47 ricordiamci allor d’averci detto Or whether I precede on that track, Pur sempre il vero. Oh let us remember having told each other Quanto t’amavo e quanto! E non dovea Still always the truth. Esprimer quell’amor che ti portavo: Più ma assai più di quel che non dicea How much I loved you and how much! Nel cuor ti amavo. And I did not have to Express the love I felt for you: More but much more than that which I did not say In my heart I loved you.

47 Italian word used to encourage. Depending on the context, it can be translated simply as “oh” or in stronger expressions as “For pity‟s sake”.

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Più di felicità, più di speranza; More than happiness, more than hope; Di vita non dirò, chè è poca cosa: I cannot say more than life, such a small Dolce-amaro tu fosti in rimembranza thing: A me gelosa. Bitter-sweet were you in my jealous memory. Ma a me tu preferisti la virtude, La veritade, amico: e non saprai But above me you preferred integrity, Chi amasti alfin? Soltanto il fior si schiude The truth, friend: and you will not know D’un sole ai rai. Who you loved in the end? Only the flower opens itself Se più di me la Veritade amasti, To the rays of a sun Gesù fu quel tuo sconosciuto Amore : - Gesù, che sconosciuto a lui parlasti, If more than me you loved the Truth, vincigli il core. Jesus was the unknown love to you : - Jesus, who unknown you talked to, Maggio 1867. Won of him the heart.

May 1867.

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“Iddio c’illumini” is one of many in Rossetti’s series of poems of goodbyes. According to the title, what they do is with God’s blessing. If you consider the positioning of this poem in the entire collection, this separation is again linked to death. It is not a voluntary decision to go their separate ways, it is a result of the passing of time. It is an inescapable moment which is bound to happen someday. That moment when they will be separated is not just any moment, it is the “momento estremo” or the end of their lives. Furthermore, the “quando che fia” indicates the uncertainty of the exact timing of that fate.

The second stanza elaborates on why their paths will be separated. The moment one of them dies, she or he will walk the “inusitata traccia”, leaving the other one behind in life.

Neither of them will, at that point, need to be ashamed nor feel sorry. The explanation for that statement follows in the next quatrain. No matter which one of them goes first, there is one great comfort they share. The narrator stresses how grateful they should be for the openness between them. There are no lies which will need to be regretted.

The fourth stanza actually makes you wonder how correct that statement is. The narrator claims she never needed to verbalise how deeply she felt for him. Indeed, she even loved him much more even than everything she did not say. She counted on her silence to speak for her and she loved him even more than that which he was supposed to derive from her nonspeaking. This poem is supposed to provide that final truth, the one thing the lyrical I has until now never really expressed.

The fifth stanza is the last one which explicitly expresses the speaker’s feelings for her beloved. He represented more than happiness and more than hope to her. She states that

“more than life” would be an understatement as that is only a “small thing”, in the mean time suggesting that she clearly attaches little importance to life for the sake of living.

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“Dolce-amaro” introduces a striking change of tone in this poem. In her memory, there are these moments of jealousy which in hindsight introduce rather bitter associations to her beloved. Perhaps things were not as rosy-coloured as depicted in the first part of the poem. Indeed, as it turns out in stanza six, the friend – not lover – preferred the virtue of integrity over the persona of the speaker. Now, she announces, the man will never know whom he loved in the end. Rossetti then relies on a metaphor to explain this statement some more. The flower will only expose its heart when it is sufficiently stimulated. She never opened up to him because of his insistence on integrity and the ensuing missing encouragement.

In the final stanza, the narrator provides her beloved with the most important and final truth of which he was unaware until now. Jesus was that unknown love whom he unknowingly talked to and Jesus has enclosed him in his heart.

Rossetti enjoys experimenting with punctuation marks in her poetry. She frequently inserts commas, full stops and question marks, thus breaking the rhythm which in turn indicates her uncertainty of mind, but the exclamation point in line thirteen stands out:

“Quanto ti amavo e quanto!” Like her fellow poet Emily Dickinson, Christina also likes to experiment with the possibilities of typography. Capital letters are used to provide the poem with a more general feel, hinting at universality. “Truth”, for example, is written in small characters in lines 12 “vero” and 22 “veritade” but it is capitalised in the final stanza

“Veritade” where Jesus Christ is mentioned.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 10 10 Amicizia Friendship Sirocchia son d’Amor Sister Am I of Love

Venga Amicizia e sia la benvenuta, Friendship comes and it will be welcome, Venga, ma non perciò sen parta Amore: It comes, but love does not leave Abitan l’uno e l’altra in gentil core therefore: Che albergo ai pellegrini non rifiuta. The one and the other live in the sweet Ancella questa docile e compiuta, heart E quei tiranno no ma pio signore: Which does not refuse the pilgrims Regni egli occulto nè si mostri fuore, shelter. Essa si sveli in umiltà dovuta. The obedient and accomplished maid, Oggi ed ancor doman per l’amicizia, And that tyrant no rather lord: E posdomani ancor se pur si vuole, His hidden reign does not show outside, Chè dolci cose apporta e non amare: He veils himself in due humility. E venga poi, ma non con luna o sole, Today and still tomorrow for the Giorno d’amor, giorno di gran delizia, friendship, Giorno che spunta non per tramontare. And still the day after that it is also needed, Agosto 1867. Because she brings sweet things and not bitter: And she comes then, but not with moon or sun, Day of love, day of great delight, Day which rises not to set.

August 1867.

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The tenth poem of the 21 poems of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is one which represents the tension between friendship and love within one heart. The title “Amicizia Sirocchia son d’Amor” indicates how friendship and love co-exist. In the heart the narrator is speaking of, love arrived first. Now friendship is welcomed into that heart as well, but that does not mean that there is no space for both of them. The sweet heart is one which harbours any

“pilgrim” who asks for shelter.

After this brief introduction, a metaphorical part follows which elaborates on the nature of the heart and the type of love which has taken up residence there. The heart is represented by an obedient maid who performs her duties as required. She provides help wherever necessary and takes care of her guests. There is also a tyrant, Love, who is the master of it all. The outside world has no idea of the firm grip he has on his kingdom because he veils himself in a false humility. Friendship should come today, tomorrow and the day after that and join him in the heart. As the sister of love, “Amicizia” brings great delight with her. Friendship will appear on a day of love, no mere day of sunrise and sunset. When friendship comes, it will be an eternal day in which the sun will not set again.

Rossetti here tackles the problem of combining friendship and love. The conclusion is that it should not be a problem as the two are brother and sister yet Love tends to be an overwhelming and stubborn presence. Luckily, the heart is sweet and kind enough to provide a safe haven for both of them. This arrival of Friendship is something which is being looked forward to as Love has reigned singlehandedly for too long.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 11 11 Luscious and sorrowful Luscious and Sorrowful

Uccello delle rose e del dolore, Bird of roses, and of pain, Uccel d’amore, Bird of love, Felice ed infelice, quel tuo canto Happy and unhappy, is your song È riso o pianto? Laughter or lament? Fido all’infido, tieni in freddo lido Faithful to the unfaithful, in a cold place Spina per nido. you keep A thorn for a nest. Agosto 1867

August 1867.

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“Luscious and Sorrowful” is a remarkably strong and melancholic poem. According to

Valeria Tinkler-Villani: “instead of mere variations on clichés we find very compressed, sharp strokes” (36). The narrator is here talking about a desperate love but rather than explicitly naming it she is merely suggesting it through the images and the chosen vocabulary. It is an intricate puzzle of notions and of sounds. Rossetti has here produced a melancholic poem with the peculiar, hollow effect of echoes. The compression of ideas is highlighted by paradoxes, which in the last two lines rely particularly on the repetition of the syllable “-ido”.

First this repetition creates a similarity in sound between the two opening and contrasting words (“fido” – “infido”). That same syllable –ido is echoed in the image of a cold place, the

“freddo lido”. One would expect a nest to be the exact opposite of a cold place, yet “nido” and “lido” are united in sound for a reason. The “nido” the narrator refers to is not a welcoming and warm place: not only has the nest been created in a cold place, it is also made of a thorn. “Because of its totally different sound, then, the image of the thorn

(‘spina’) stands out and receives full emphasis” (Villani 36). Obviously, Rossetti is using this cold and prickly nest metaphorically. This “bird” she refers to has built its nest in unpleasant surroundings. On top of that, the nest is made of the wrong material, so it will be painful rather than useful.

The imagery of birds and their archaic nests is usually applied in a very different way.

A sweet, be it naïve example of this typical use of nature, is the unnamed poem by Dora

Greenwell, Rossetti’s confidante and fellow poet.

Two birds within one nest; Two hearts within one breast; Two spirits in one fair Firm league of love and prayer,

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Together bound for aye, together blest. (Leighton women poets 124)

Greenwell was a religious mystic who considered Christians to be “too deeply pledged to a foregone conclusion to be bold and fearless in tracking out ultimate truth” (Dorling quoted in Leighton 306). Yet, as Leighton points out, Greenwell’s poetry, in comparison to Rossetti’s poetry, was “much more ‘deeply pledged’ to the metrical and sentimental expectations of the day” (124).

“Luscious and Sorrowful” is the only poem of the cycle with an English title. Rossetti has yet another poem which goes by the same title. This is a poem which was published during her lifetime in Monna Innominata (1881), a cycle of sonnets thought to have been heavily influenced by her Italian work.

Beautiful, tender, wasting away for sorrow; thus to-day; and how shall it be with thee to-morrow? Beautiful, tender –what else? A hope tells. Beautiful, tender, keeping the jubilee In the land of home together, past death and sea; No more change or death, no more Salt sea-shore. It is somewhat similar in tone but presents more elaborate, complex images and expressions. It is certainly no translation nor even an imitation of the original Italian version but the Italian one could have worked inspirational.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 12 12 O forza irresistibile O Irresistible Force Dell’ umile preghiera Of the Humble Prayer

Che ti darò, Gesù Signor mio buono? Who will give You, my good Lord Jesus? Ah quello ch’amo più, quello Ti dono: Ah the one who loves most, he gives to Accettalo, Signor Gesù mio Dio, You: Il sol mio dolce amor, anzi il cor mio; Accept it, Lord Jesus my God, Accettalo per Te, siati prezioso; My only sweet love, even my heart, Accettalo per me, salva il mio sposo. Accept it for You, it will be valuable to Non ho che lui, Signor, nol disprezzare, You; Caro tienilo nel cor fra cose care. Accept it for me, save my husband. Ricordati del dì che sulla croce I have nothing else but him, Lord, do not Pregavi Iddio così, con flebil voce, despise him, Con anelante cor: “Questo che fanno, Keep him dear in your heart amongst Padre, perdona lor, ch’essi non sanno.” beloved things. Ei pur, Signor, non sa Quello che sdegna, Remember the day that on the cross Ei pure T’amerà s’uno gl’insegna. You prayed to God so, with melancholic Se tutto quanto appar, che a Te non piace, voice, Fugace spuma in mar, nebbia fugace; With yearning heart: “What they do, Successo o avversità, contento o duolo, Father, forgive them, because they do not Se tutto è vanita fuorché Tu solo; know.” He too, Lord, knows not what disdains, He too will love you if someone teaches him. If everything how much it seems, what You do not like, Fleeting foam on the sea, fleeting mist; Success or trial, happiness or suffering, If everything is vain except only You;

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Se chi non prega Te nel vuoto chiama; If he who does not pray [to] You, calls in Se amore amor non è che Te non ama; - emptiness; Dona Te stesso a noi, ricchi saremo; If love is not love who does not love You Poi nega quanto vuoi, chè tutto avremo: Give Yourself to us, rich we will be; Di mel più dolce Tu, che ben ci basti; And then deny all You want, because D’amore amabil più, Tu che ci amasti. everything we will have: Settembre 1867. Sweeter than honey are You, which suffices for us; Of more loving love, You who have loved us. September 1867.

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The title of the twelfth poem “O forza irresistibile Dell’umile preghiera” seems to announce a strictly devotional poem. Formally it looks like a prayer and there is the abundant use of “accettalo” which reminds of the prayer of oblation. In this prayer, spoken after communion, the priest will pronounce “accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” and “we beseech Thee to accept this our bounden duty and service”. As to content, this poem also starts out like a prayer, with the lyrical I beseeching Jesus to accept her heart. She is almost desperately asking her God to acknowledge that she loves Him most.

In the sixth line, it is clear that this anxious request of accepting her love is to ensure the salvation of her husband. Her plea changes as she asks God to enclose her husband in His heart. All sorts of arguments are used to convince Jesus to help her out. She reminds Him of the great forgiveness He showed on the day of His crucifixion. He then asked God His Father to forgive His executioners as the latter did not know what they were actually doing. The lyrical I now asks Jesus to display the same kind of kindness and forgive her husband for not believing. She states that her beloved is not reluctant to believe, he has simply never been taught. Also, she argues that human love is part of the heavenly love and the superiority of the latter is bound to embrace the more lowly kind of love. If all earthly things are lost, if each mortal endeavour is in vain and her beloved should call from that emptiness then God should respond. Her beloved’s love should be part of Lord Jesus’ all-embracing love.

The closing of the poem states that the lovers will have all they need if all they have is

Christ’s love; the lines read

Di mel più dolce Tu, che ben ci basti; D’amore amabil più, Tu che ci amasti

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The power that remains with the reader is not God’s love or His mercy, but simply “love”.

The contrast with the title “O forza irresistibile Dell’umile preghiera” could, again, be read as blasphemous; “even seventeenth-century religious poems making use of secular or physical love, such as many of Herbert’s poems, have a stronger emphasis on the religious love than on a secular solution” (38). But Rossetti seeks a religious solution to a secular problem: saving her earthly lover who has another or no faith.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 13 13 Finestra Mia Orientale My Eastern Window [In Malattia] [During Illness]

Volgo la faccia verso l’oriente, I turn my face East, Verso il meriggio, ove colui dimora :- Towards noon, where he resides :- Ben fai che vivi ai lati dell’aurora; You do well living at the side(s) of dawn; Chi teco vive par felice gente. They who live with you seem happy Volgo verso di te l’occhio languente, people. Lo spirito che teme e spera ancora; I turn to you the weak eye Volgiti verso quella che ti onora, The soul which is afraid and still hopes; T’ama, ti brama, in core e colla mente. Turn to that which you honour, Debole e stanca verso te mi volgo: Loves you, desires you, in the heart and Che sarà mai questo che sento, amico? with the mind. Ogni cara memoria tua raccolgo, - Weak and tired I turn to you: Quanto dirti vorrei! Ma pur nol dico. What will ever be that which I feel, friend? Lungi da te dei giorni me ne dolgo: Each sweet memory of you I obtain,- Fossimo insieme in bel paese aprico! How much I’d like to tell you! But still I do not tell. Fossimo insieme! Far from you I mourn the days: Che importerebbe We would be together in the beautiful U’ si facesse illuminated land! Il nostro nido? We would be together! What importance would it have Where we would make Our nest?

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Cielo sarebbe Heaven would almost be Quasi quel lido. That place. Ah fossi teco, Ah if you were, Col cor ben certo With a certain heart D’essere amato Of being loved Come vorrebbe! The way it should be! Sì che il deserto Yes the desert S’infiorirebbe48. Would blossom. Ottobre 1867 October 1867.

48 The correct form of “s‟infiorirebbe” should be “s‟infiorerebbe”.

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The title of the thirteenth poem “Finestra Mia Orientale (In Malattia)” relates to the general title of the entire cycle Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente. In the first line of this poem, the East is mentioned once again; in fact this poem could be seen as the title poem of the series of

Italian poems. The title also indicates the circumstances under which it was written. Rossetti suffered from poor health all her life: she was diagnosed with several mental illnesses which often resulted in actual physical symptoms. Harrison states that the “psychological symptoms were accompanied by physical ones: shortness of breath, constriction of the chest and a feeling of suffocation, heart palpitations, and a cough” (416). Her health was rarely strong after her mid-teens when she suffered a severe nervous breakdown. In the 1860s, she was thought to suffer from angina, consumption and even tuberculosis. All these diagnoses were later on withdrawn but fact remained that by 1864, the 34-year-old Rossetti had begun to cough up blood. These mysterious illnesses kept her to her bed with little else to do during these prolonged periods of resting than worry about her situation. Rossetti was regularly treated by the best medical practitioners in London, such as Queen Victoria’s personal physician Sir William Jenner, but even they could do very little to relieve her pain.

In this poem, her physical suffering is worsened by the mental agony of not being able to say what is on her mind. The narrator is longing to tell the truth as her silence has become unbearable. She addresses a man who lives at the sides of dawn, there where the

East turns red in the morning. He lives a good life there, in the company of happy people.

The contrast with the suffering lyrical I is immense. Yet, in her weak state of being, she still manages to hope for his return. She honours, loves and desires him passionately.

Nevertheless, in the tenth line, she asks her “amico” to define her feelings for her as she does not know anymore how to. According to Spaiser, “*Rossetti+ was urging men and

Vanleene 100 women to be honest in expressing their feelings for each other and to share blame equally for their negative or destructive actions toward one another” (66). It is unclear what has happened between the two protagonists in this poem but it is clear that the lyrical I is trying to start communication.

From the 17th line onwards, the poem’s form changes where the description of their reunion in paradise commences. This is the only time Rossetti speaks of seeing her beloved again in a beautiful land which is not in the afterlife. The place is almost like heaven, but apparently it is not. Actually this is an illuminated land in between where the couple could nest. If only, she laments, this “friend” could be convinced of her love, “il deserto s’infiorirebbe”.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 14 14 Eppure allora venivi And Still Then You Came

O tempo tardo e amaro ! – O late and bitter time! – Quando verrai, cor mio, When will you come, heart of mine, Quando, ma quando? When, but when? Siccome a me sei caro Since you are dear to me Se cara a te foss’io, If I was dear to you, Ti andrei cercando? Would I go looking for you?

Febbrajo [sic] 1868. February 1868.

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“Eppure allora venivi” is an incredibly melancholic poem which projects a lot of uncertainty and heartache in a mere six lines. It is a monologue which represents the narrator’s inner struggle. The lyrical I is waiting for the one she loves, notwithstanding the fact that she is not even certain of his allegiance to her. Grave uncertainties worry her because their love is not at all defined. “Se cara a te foss’io” seems to indicate that her beloved has never expressed such a feeling, otherwise she would not need contemplate looking for him. Rossetti believed that there should be “a moral equality between the sexes with regard to personal behavior, and if change was necessary within a relationship, it should be shared by both parties and not be regarded as solely the woman’s duty” (Spaiser 66). “Quando verrai, cor mio, Quando, ma quando?” sounds so desperate with the threefold repetition of “quando” that it is no longer pleading but begging. The “Cor mio” could indicate that they are lovers, but it is not at all certain.

It is interesting to contrast this poem to “No thank you, John” written in 1860, only 8 years earlier. The narrator of this second poem seems to be altogether very different. To be sure, this is a mocking poem clearly written in answer to a number of accusations. It is characterised by an odd and wry humour and was probably written for John Brett, one of the suitors Christina Rossetti turned down.

I have no heart? - Perhaps I have not; But then you’re mad to take offence That I don’t give you what I have not got; Use your own common sense. Let bygones be bygones: Don’t call me false, who owed not to be true: I’d rather answer ‘No’ to fifty Johns Than answer ‘Yes’ to you. (Battiscombe 70)

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 15 15 Per Preferenza As a Preference Felice la tua madre, Happy (is) your mother, Le suore tue felici, Your sisters (are) happy, Che senton quanto dici, Who hear everything you say, Che vivono con te, Who live with you, Che t’amano di dritto Who rightfully love you D’amor contento e saggio: With content and wise love: Pur questo lor vantaggio But that advantage of theirs Non lo vorrei per me. I would not want for me. Quel grave aspetto tuo To see your severe looks Veder di quando in quando, From time tot time, Frattanto andar pensando Whilst thinking of “Un giorno riverrà”; “I’ll see (him) again one day”; Ripeter nel mio core To repeat in my heart (Qual rosa è senza spine?) (Which rose is without thorns?) “Ei sa che l’amo alfine- “He knows I love him in the end- M’ama egli ancor?” Chi sa! Does he still love me?” Who knows!

È questo assai più dolce It is that much sweeter Dell’altro, al parer mio: than the other, in my opinion: Essere in ver desio To be in true desire O tutto o nulla49 a te; Or everything or nothing50 to you; Nè troppo vo’ lagnarmi I do not want to complain too much Ch’or stai da me diviso, That you are separated from me now, Se un giorno in Paradiso If some day in Paradise Festeggerai con me. You will celebrate with me. Marzo 1868. March 1868.

49 Ma no; se non amante siimi amico: 50 But no; if not lover you would be friend: Quel ch‟io sarò per te non tel predico. That what I would be for you I could not predict.

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In “Per Preferenza” the narrator sets out to figure out which one of two situations is most preferable. In a way, she is jealous of her beloved’s mother and sisters who enjoy his company every day. Their love is unquestioned and so is their frequent contact. No matter how wonderful that is, the lyrical I does prefer her own situation over theirs. She can only see him occasionally, and there is always some uncertainty as to when they will meet again.

She, however, can love him as lovers do, not with the “amor contento e saggio” of family members. For this, however, she pays a dire price as she can never be certain of his dedication to her. Rossetti adds “Qual rosa è senza spine?” in brackets, which puts the situation in perspective. There is never a rose without a thorn, and in spite of the uncertainty, she prefers her own position to that of the relatives who live with him in close proximity.

The narrator prefers to be “everything or nothing” to him, rather than some constant factor in the background. This bold statement is immediately softened in the footnote as she admits that she would not know how to interact with him as a friend. The speaking voice concludes that there is no need to grieve for their separation as long as they will meet in

Paradise.

“Like all poets, Christina must write of love and death, but she writes of them with a difference. For her the common position is reversed; death is the bringer of joy, love the bringer of grief” (Battiscombe 76). In Rossetti’s work, love is hardly ever fulfilled, on the contrary: it only leaves a devastating trail of broken-hearted lovers.

This poem, however, is one which stands out for its light-heartedness. Even though the topic is similar to that of the other poems in this cycle, the mood is quite different. Rossetti adds sentences between brackets, quotations and even footnotes which all help to ease the

Vanleene 105 general feeling. Even though the question “Does he still love me? Who knows!” is very serious, the adding of certain punctuation marks creates an image of a very different lyrical I.

This is a speaking voice, a sad, even cynical one at times, but one that hints at a happy union in the afterlife.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 16 16 Oggi Today

Possibil non sarebbe It would not be possible, Ch’io non t’amassi, O Caro: That I did not love you, O Beloved: Chi mai si scorderebbe Who could ever forget Del proprio core? His own heart? Se amaro il dolce fai, If you turn bitter what is sweet, Dolce mi fai l’amaro; Sweet you turn the bitter for me; Se qualche amor mi dai, If you give me some love, Ti do l’amore. I give you the love. Marzo 1868. March 1868.

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“Oggi” is a brief poem written in 1868, which reuses various techniques and motifs from previous poems. First of all, there are the confusing references to God and an anonymous lover, both denominated with a capitalised “Caro”. Battiscombe claims this to be one of

Rossetti’s strengths as “Of all the tensions which tore her apart and shaped both her character and her poetry by far the most acute, and the most fruitful, was the tension between the two loves, human and divine” (81). According to Maurice Bowra too “it was this conflict between her human self and her divine calling which created her most characteristic poetry” (quoted in Battiscombe 81). It should not surprise then, that this confusion of sacred and secular returns throughout all of her work, in English as well as in Italian. One of her favourite comparisons is built on the union of God and her beloved as they are both referred to as “c(u)ore”. “Chi mai si scorderebbe del proprio core?” or “Who could even forget his own heart”, proves that it would be impossible for her not to love them.

Other than that, Rossetti likes to work with the opposition “dolce” and “amaro”. She used it in the ninth poem: “Dolce-amaro tu fosti in rimembranza A me gelosa” and in the fourteenth poem “O tempo tardo e amaro” as well. On those occasions, it was a melancholic narrator using “amaro” for its most negative connotations. In “Oggi”, the speaker’s beloved turns sweet into bitter things like a miracle worker but reverses the situation again for her.

The lyrical I concludes with a final request for “some” love for which she will give “the” love in return.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 17 17

Ti do l’addio, I wish you goodbye, Amico mio, My friend, Per settimane For weeks Che paion lunghe: Which seem long: Ti raccomando I advise you Di quando in quando From time to time Circoli quadri, Square circles, Idee bislunghe. Oblong ideas.

Marzo 1868. March 1868.

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According to Angela Leighton, Rossetti is the “most calculatingly self-inventing and self- mythologising [sic+ of poets, whose verse, far from being a ‘one-stringed’ tune of the heart, is full of obliquities, secrets and riddles” (119). This seventeenth, unnamed poem is indeed an intense and puzzling one. The fact that it is untitled is also very rare in Rossetti’s oeuvre.

All of the other poems in this Italian cycle were given a meaningful title, and some even a subtitle.

It is interesting to compare the first line of this poem to the final line of the previous one. Whereas Rossetti ended the previous poem with “Ti do l’amore”, she now starts out with “Ti do l’addio”. The difference could not be bigger; while the previous speaker was ready to give “the” love, this one is saying her goodbyes. The other poem was written for

“caro”, here the addressee is a mere “amico”. The lyrical I does provide her friend with some advice for the long weeks which lie ahead. This advice, however, does not seem to make any sense and it has a stingy edge to it. It is unclear what the images are supposed to relate to.

Apparently, pondering about unattainable schemes such as impossible metrical figures and

“elongated ideas” should help time pass faster.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 18 18

RIPETIZIONE REPETITION

CREDEA di rivederti e ancor ti aspetto; I believed to see you again and still I await Di giorno in giorno ognor ti vo bramando: you; Quando ti rivedrò, cor mio diletto, From day to day each time I long for you: Quando ma quando? When shall I see you again, my beloved heart, Dissi e ridissi con perenne sete, When but when? E lo ridico e vo’ ridirlo ancora, Qual usignol che canta e si ripete I said it and I said it again with Fino all’aurora. unquenched thirst, And I am saying it again and I want to say Giugno 1868. it yet again, Like a nightingale which sings and repeats Until daybreak.

June 1868.

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In “Ripetizione”, the deliberately silent narrator of the other poems becomes one who obsessively repeats her message. The speaker cannot hold her peace any longer or she simply believes that this is a message she is allowed to put forward. Obviously, this message would never reach anyone - let alone her beloved - as these poems were never published in

Rossetti’s lifetime. The title of the poem covers the content perfectly. It is not the first line, or simply a random word from the poem, but it is clearly linked to the repetitious elements.

Whereas the first stanza is all about “rivedere” her beloved, the second stanza concentrates on “dire” and “ridire” how much she longs to see him again.

There are a couple of poems in which Rossetti uses the word “quando” as a cry from the heart exceptionally often. In ‘Eppure allora venivi’ (14) the sentence: “Quando verrai, cor mio, Quando, ma quando?” is almost an exact copy of the third and fourth line of this poem:

“Quando ti rivedrò, cor mio diletto, Quando ma quando?”. The only difference is the punctuation and the adding of “diletto”. In the previous poem (16) too, “quando” is used a couple of times and the expression “di quando in quando” becomes “di giorno in giorno” in

‘Ripetizione’ indicating that the speaker is seemingly tormented by time and by endless waiting.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 19 19

Amico e più che amico mio Friend and More than Friend of Mine

COR mio a cui si volge l’altro mio core My heart, to which my other heart turns Qual calamita al polo, e non ti trova, Like a magnet to the pole, and does not la nascita della mia vita nuova find you, Con pianto fu, con grida, e con dolore. The birth of my new life Ma l’aspro duolo fummi precursore Was with weeping, with screams and with Di speranza gentil che canta e cova; pain. Sì, chi non prova pena amor non prova, But the cruel pain was a precursor to me E quei non vive che non prova amore. Of the sweet hope which sings and O tu che in Dio mi sei, ma dopo Iddio, hatches; Tutta la terra mia ed assai del cielo, Yes, those who do not feel pain do not feel Pensa se non m’è duol disotto a un velo love, Parlarti e non ti dir mai che ti bramo :- And he lives not, who does not feel love. Dillo tu stesso a te, dolce cor mio, O you who are in God to me, but after Se pur tu m’ami dillo a te ch’io t’amo. God, For all of my earth and a lot of the sky, Agosto 1868. Think if it does not hurt me under a veil To speak to you and never tell you that I long for you :- Tell it to yourself, sweet heart of mine, If you love me too, tell yourself I love you.

August 1868.

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“Amico e più che amico mio” is a love sonnet written for a friend. This friend who is actually much more than a friend, was mentioned before in the fifth poem ‘Lassù fia caro il rivederci’.

Rossetti uses the expression “cor mio” twice within the first line, once as a rhetorical trope for her beloved and the second time “mio core” to really speak of her heart. Her heart turns to her lover like metal to a magnet, but he is nowhere to be found. The lyrical I has gone through a really painful period which in hindsight was a precursor to the sweet hope she now can cherish. The second quatrain concentrates on the present state of loving and living after the suffering.

After the octave, the narrator addresses her lover in a passionate love declaration with an explicit comparison to God. These passionate statements of how her lover reigns her world and most of the sky, become even more interesting with the speaking voice’s statement in the final tercet. The man who is her God on earth does not know how she feels as she has hidden under a veil of silence. They have talked as friends on many occasions but never has she informed him of how deeply she in fact longs for him.

In the last lines, the meaning of the referents needs untangling, but syntactically their use is clear. Here, the “sweet heart of mine” which is being addressed is not, as in most love lyrics, simply a metaphor for the lover. It is a double metaphor, because the lover himself is a metaphor for the persona’s own heart. “Although well hidden in language, the implication is that, by way of a pilgrimage of loving in various ways, the speaker affirms her self through love” (Villani 39).

In this poem, the narrator explicitly refers to how she really needs to keep her silence. It is not a debatable choice, her silence is already firmly decided upon. It is more important to keep silent than to end her – and perhaps his – suffering. She is not willing to

Vanleene 114 take any risks.

In another – English – poem “Twice”, written in the 1860’s Rossetti also locates the responsibility of speaking out with her beloved. She feels unable to articulate how she feels and points out how she has been obvious enough in her silence, a theme touched upon in previous Italian poems as well.

I took my heart in my hand, (O my love, O my love), I said: Let me fall or stand, Let me live or die, But this once hear me speak – (O my love, O my love)- Yet a woman’s words are weak; You should speak, not I.

In the fourth paragraph of ‘Twice’ Rossetti also switches to a religious tone:

I take my heart in my hand, O my God, O my God, My broken heart in my hand: Thou hast seen, judge Thou. My hope was written on sand, O my God, O my God: Now let Thy judgment stand- Yea, judge me now. (Battiscombe 117)

There is no need for brackets anymore, as God’s love is something the narrator needs not be secretive about. With her broken heart in her hand, she turns to God to find comfort in His

Vanleene 115 judgement, by repenting and obtaining forgiveness. As in Rossetti’s own life, in the conflict between mundane and divine love, religion turns out to be the only stronghold.

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 20 20

Nostre voluntà quieti Our tranquil wishes Virtù di carità Virtue of benevolence

VENTO gentil che verso il mezzodì Kind WIND which to the midday51 Soffiando vai, deh porta un mio sospir, Blowing goes, oh carry a sigh of mine, Dicendo ad Un quel che non debbo dir, Saying to Someone that which I should not Con un sospir dicendogli così: say, Quella che diede un “No” volendo un “Sì” With a sigh telling him thus: (Volendo e non volendo-a che ridir?), She who gave you a “No” whilst wanting a Quella ti manda: E’ vanità il fiorir “Yes” Di questa vita che meniam costì. (Wanting and not wanting- to what use Odi che dice e piange: E’ vanità repeating?), Questo che nasce e muore amor mondan; She sends you: It is idle the flourishing Deh leva gli occhi, io gli occhi vo’levar, Of this life which we lead here. Verso il reame dove non in van Hate who says and weeps: It is idle Amasi Iddio quanto ognun possa amar That which is born and dies mundane love; Ed il creato tutto in carità. Oh turn your eyes up , I want to turn my eyes up, Agosto 1868. Towards the kingdom where not in vain They love God the way anybody could love And creation all in benevolence.

August 1868.

51 “Mezzodì” can stand for “midday” as well as “South”.

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The penultimate poem of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente is a sonnet too, but it is far less passionately about love than the previous one. There is also a remarkable difference between the tone of the two titles ‘Amico e più che amico mio’ and now, ‘Nostre voluntà quieti’ subtitled ‘Virtù di carità’. The narrator asks the wind to be so kind as to carry a sigh to

“Someone”. This sigh is laden with meaning as it should reveal the rest of the poem to a certain man. This man is referred to as “Un” with a capital letter, offering the possibility of blending this figure with God. The speaker then defines herself as the person who uttered a

“No” whilst wanting a “Yes”. The situation is complicated as she adds that she wanted but also not wanted this yes. The explanation has already been given outside of this poem, as is indicated by the “a che ridir?” There is no use in repeating what has said before, the entire line is even put between brackets, indicating that it is not of real importance for the Wind’s message.

Further on, the narrator concentrates on the vanity and fleetingness of all the life and love in this world. The utter and complete “vanità” of everything is underlined by the repetition of the phrase. Once again, there is really only one hope left. For that, the lyrical I insists that her beloved looks up together with her, towards the holy kingdom. In heaven, true love is manifested in the hearts of those who linger there. They have found the one thing that is not in vain, and that is loving God and each other in perfect benevolence.

In 1857, Rossetti wrote another poem in English which deals with the same subject of a woman’s secret, yet told from the viewpoint of the man.

Now if I could guess her secret

Were it worth the guess?

Time is lessening, hope is lessening,

Love grows less and less. . . .

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I will give her stately burial,

Stately willow branches bent

Have her carved in alabaster

As she dreamt and leant

While I wondered what she meant.

(Battiscombe 93)

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IL ROSSEGGIAR DELL’ORIENTE THE RUBIFYING OF THE EAST 21 21

Se così fosse If It Were like That

Io più ti amai che non mi amasti tu : - I loved you more than ever you loved me : Amen, se così volle Iddio Signor; - Amen, quantunque mi si spezzi il cor, Amen, if the Lord God willed it so; Signor Gesù. Amen, although my heart might break, Lord Jesus. Ma Tu che Ti ricordi e tutto sai, Tu che moristi per virtù d’amor, But You who remember and know Nell’altro mondo donami quel cor everything, Che tanto amai. You who died for love’s virtue, Agosto 1868. In the other world grant me that heart That I so loved. August 1868.

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The final poem of the cycle “Se così fosse” ends in a way which is fairly characteristic for the entire series. It is more clearly religious in theme, with references to God’s omniscient love and Jesus’ sacrifice for love’s virtue. Yet even in this case, “God or Jesus stand for powers which are stronger than time and death and which can unite the lovers. The very last poem in the cycle relies on this idea, and so brings the whole cycle to a close in terms of such love”

(Villani 37). Here, for the first time, there is a clear difference between capitalised “tu” and the “tu” used to refer to her lover. Here, ‘tu’ becomes ‘Tu’: the way to address the lover in the first stanza is also the way she addresses Jesus in the second, with no more change than a capital letter. Rossetti also plays with “I” and “you” in various syntactical positions until it becomes difficult to distinguish who is who. The two parts of the first line, for example, mirror each other almost perfectly.

The speaker begs Jesus to give her “quel cor” which logically would refer to the beloved’s heart. Syntactically, on the other hand, “quel” seems to refer to the heart already mentioned in the poem – the speaker’s own heart. In the entire cycle the image of the heart reoccurs obsessively and in this very last poem the lover’s heart and the speaker’s heart seem to become one after all.

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Conclusion

‘Christina in a tantrum’ drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1853

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Conclusion

Too often has Christina Rossetti been depicted as a overly religious, painstakingly decent ‘saint’ who renounced all earthly passions. This is not only a result of William Michael

Rossetti’s careful guarding –and even shaping – of his sister’s reputation, Christina Rossetti also allowed herself to be dictated by the strictest rules of her faith. Fortunately, she still needed to vent her feelings and energy in her writing. It is indeed in her poetry that we truly discover the passionate nature of this great poet. None of her work therefore, should be allowed to get lost and forgotten notwithstanding a possible language barrier. Especially if these poems were written in Italian, a language which was of huge importance to the poet and thus perhaps even more concealing. I have only been able to provide a general overview of the poems of Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente as this dissertation set out to introduce an entire cycle of unknown work. I do hope that it can initiate thorough research into all of Rossetti’s

Italian work as I believe much more is yet to be uncovered.

I have endeavoured to prove that scholars have so far underestimated how much importance Rossetti attached to her Italian descent. She only travelled to Italy once, but she was nevertheless an undisguised Italian patriot who took immense pride in her origins.

Throughout her life, she actively practised her Italian to keep it as fluent as possible.

We will never be certain as to why Rossetti decided to keep those Italian poems so firmly locked away. Whether she was that uncertain about the quality of her Italian, whether she feared the English audience would not understand or a certain man would understand them too well – these poems almost did not make it until now. Even in the most precarious of situations, the lyrical I in Il Rosseggiar Dell’Oriente could not break the silence and allow her heart to speak, perhaps neither could Christina Rossetti.

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Works Cited

“Rossetti, having just had a fresh consignment of “stunning” fabrics from that new shop in Regent Street, tries hard to prevail on his younger sister to accept at any rate one of these and have a dress made of it from designs to be furnished by himself. D.G.R. ‘What is the use, Christina, of having a heart like a singing bird and a water-shot and all the rest of it, if you insist on getting yourself up like a pew- openener?’ C.R. ‘Well, Gabriel, I don’t know – I’m sure you yourself always dress very quietly.’”

Max Beerbohm cartoon

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