Sound and Vision: Mysticism, Dante’s Commedia and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Zaynub Zaman. (Student number 200710664) January 2020 Table of Contents List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ........................................................................................................................ 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 6 Getting personal: Rossetti and the Anglo-Catholics ................................................... 27 Chapter One. .............................................................................................................. 58 Despairing over Dante: Plagued by Infernal Anxieties. .......................................... 58 ‘Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell’: Medusa, Moral Paralysis and Morbid Fascination. ...................................................................................................................... 68 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 97 Chapter Two. ............................................................................................................. 99 Liminal Spaces: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante’s Ante-Purgatory, and the Earthly Paradise. .................................................................................................................... 99 Rossetti and Purgatory .................................................................................................. 102 ‘I am as the center of the circle […] but with thee it is not thus’: the gaze, reunion and delayed gratification. .............................................................................................. 113 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 144 Chapter Three. ......................................................................................................... 146 Mirroring Desire: The prism of Paradisal Delights. ............................................. 146 A paradise full of mirrors: Dante, Rossetti and Bonaventure’s Inferior Mirror of Man ................................................................................................................................. 149 The mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux ...................................................................... 176 ‘Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst/ And exquisite hunger’: conjugal union, and Beatific Vision. ............................................................................................ 179 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 191 Chapter Four. .......................................................................................................... 193 Songs of Praise and Silence. ................................................................................... 193 Theological Origins ........................................................................................................ 198 Music & Lyrics ............................................................................................................... 207 ‘An aching pulse of melodies’: Devoted Souls and Soul Music ................................. 216 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 231 Chapter Five. ........................................................................................................... 233 The Sound of Silence. ............................................................................................. 233 ‘Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass’: Dante, Rossetti, and mystical silence. .. 237 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 265 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 267 Note on the Text Rossetti’s poems, sonnets and songs are taken from Jan Marsh’s Collected Writings because as a modern edition it provides a more complete picture of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s burgeoning poetical maturity and the location of each work within his poetic evolution than Jerome McGann’s more selective Collected Poetry and Prose. For sonnets from The House of Life sequence I use the 1881 first edition because it offers a more comprehensive rendering of the sonnet sequence than is available in Poems (1870) and whilst Jerome McGann’s edited edition oscillates between the former and later versions, selecting variants as ‘“Reading texts”’1 he does so in order to convey his chosen interpretation of the poem. I have opted, generally, to use Jan Marsh’s Collected Writings, supplementing (where appropriate) from Rossetti’s originally published editions in cases where textual variations are significant or require referencing. For Dante’s Commedia I have chosen to make use of the dual English- Italian translated edition by Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez because I am mindful that Rossetti would have read the Commedia in its original Italian. As such, I will make reference to both the English translation and the original Italian text of the Commedia, especially in the first instance but without repetition. Finally, all biblical references will be taken from the King James Version as this is the version that has had the most pervasive influence on English literature. 1 Jerome McGann, ‘Introduction’, in Collected Poetry and Prose, ed.by Jerome McGann (London: Yale University Press, 2003, p.xxviii-xxix. 1 List of Abbreviations Works (and Collections) of Rossetti BS Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ballads and Sonnets (London: Ellis, 1881). CPP Collected Poetry and Prose, ed. by Jerome McGann (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). CW Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Collected Writings, ed. by Jan Marsh (London: J.M. Dent, 1999). DHC Dante and His Circle: With the Italian Poets Preceding Him (London: Ellis, 1874). DMR Dear Mr Rossetti: The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Hall Caine 1878-1881, ed. by Vivian Allen (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). DGRJM Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Jane Morris: Their Correspondence, ed. John Bryson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). EIP The Early Italian Poets From Ciullo D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300), (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1861). FLM Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir, ed. by William Michael Rossetti, 2 vols, (London: Ellis, 1895), Fredeman The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. by William E. Fredeman, Vols.1-7, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004). LDGR Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. by Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). NL The New Life (La Vita Nuova) of Dante Alighieri, trans. by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1899). P Poems, (London: Ellis, 1870). PNE Poems. A New Edition, (London: Ellis & White, 1881) WDGR The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. by William Michael Rossetti (London, Ellis, 1911). Works by Dante Inferno Inferno, ed. by Durling et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Purgatorio Purgatorio, ed. by Durling et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Paradiso Paradiso, ed. by Durling et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Other Works 2 OSOS Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs, trans. by Kilian Walsh and Irene Edmonds, 4 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1971– 1980). BCSW Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works trans. by G.R. Evans (HarperOne: New York, NY, 2005). 3 Abstract Dante Gabriel Rossetti was saturated in the poetry of Dante, whose presence in his life was mediated by his father’s lifelong Dante scholarship. This would be a fraught but defining relationship for Rossetti. As William Michael Rossetti would comment in his Memoir: ‘Dante Alighieri was a sort of banshee in the Charlotte Street houses; his shriek audible even to familiarity, but the message of it not scrutinized’.2 It is the contention of this thesis that contrary to prevailing critical assumptions, Rossetti’s understanding of the aesthetics and theology of Dante’s Commedia has been underestimated, and that this understanding informed his own poetry, particularly in its more theological inflections. As such, I argue, Rossetti’s mystical expression can and should be traced back to Rossetti’s exposure to (and sometimes fraught) relationship with the aesthetics and theology of Dante’s Commedia, which is itself formed out of a dialogue with the mystic tradition in both medieval and patristic theology. The mystics who populate Dante’s Paradiso – Augustine, Bonaventure, Bernard of Clairvaux and others – consistently employ an erotic language that reappears in the sonnets of The House of Life, the subjects of Rossetti’s paintings, and in much of his poetry. Rossetti did not encounter this mystical expression exclusively through the Commedia, but undoubtedly its presentation in Dante’s seminal work was a key influence on both Rossetti’s understanding and representation of the soul’s relationship to God, and also of the lover’s analogous relationship with the beloved, from