While Dante Gabriel Rossetti was best known as a painter and a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he was also a gifted poet. He wrote many poems but initially left them unpublished. In 1862, when his wife Elizabeth Siddal died from a laudanum overdose, Rossetti, overwhelmed with grief, placed the bulk of his poems in her coffin to be buried with her. Years later, while preparing his first collection of poetry, he realised that some of his best work, of which he had no copies, lay entombed with his wife. He needed the poems for his book and, with great reluctance but at the encouragement of his friends, arranged for his wife’s grave to be secretly exhumed. The poems were retrieved and were eventually published in 1870 under the title Poems.
Apart from the macabre circumstances surrounding the publication of Rossetti’s poetry, the poems themselves were controversial as well. Their sensual and erotic qualities violated Victorian moral standards, provoking outrage, among critics in particular. One of the most controversial poems was Jenny — a dramatic monologue, narrated by a male customer observing a sleeping prostitute. In connection with Jenny, Rossetti wrote the following letter to his aunt Charlotte Polidori, shortly after his poetry collection was published. He explains why he had not sent her a copy of his book yet, worried that she might be shocked or offended by the poem. In later years, Rossetti came to regret his decision to exhume his poems, attributing it to a "weakness of yielding to the importunity of friends, and the impulse of literary ambition".
16 Cheyne Walk.
24 May 1870.
My dear Aunt,
I just hear from Mamma, with a pang of remorse, that you have ordered a copy of my Poems. You may be sure I did not fail to think of you when I inscribed copies to friends and relatives; but, to speak frankly, I was deterred from sending it to you by the fact of the book including one poem (Jenny) of which I felt uncertain whether you would be pleased with it. I am not ashamed of having written it (indeed I assure you that I would never have written it if I thought it unfit to be read with good results); but I feared it might startle you somewhat, and so put off sending you the book. I now do so by this post, and hope that some if not all of the pieces may be quite to your taste. Indeed, I hope that even Jenny may be so, for my mother likes it on the whole the best in the volume, after some consideration.
I dare say you have heard, from that only too partial quarter, of the commercial success of the book. The first thousand sold in little more than a week is not amiss for poetry. The second edition is now out, and I have already received £300 for my share of the profits. Of course it will not go on like this for ever, but perhaps a quiet steady sale may be hoped to go on. I am now about to re-publish my book of the Early Italian Poets, as perhaps a new edition may profit by the luck of the other book.
I hope you are well, and that it may not be long before we meet.
%20(1).jpg)
0 comments