United States or Iceland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That mysterious entity “the public,” would, no doubt, like to get one; but we have always shared Rossetti’s own opinion that a man of genius is no more the property of the “public” than is any private gentleman; and we have always felt with him that the prevalence in our time of the opposite opinion has fashioned so intolerable a yoke for the neck of any one who has had the misfortune to pass from the sweet paradise of obscurity into the vulgar purgatory of Fame, that it almost behoves a man of genius to avoid, if he can, passing into that purgatory at all.
In the volume before us, as in all her previously published writings, we see at its best what Christianity is as the motive power of poetry. The Christian idea is essentially feminine, and of this feminine quality Christina Rossetti’s poetry is full. In motive power the difference between classic and Christian poetry must needs be very great.
W. M. Rossetti’s love of facts is accompanied by an equally strong love of making an honest statement of facts—a tabulated statement, if possible; and no one writing of Rossetti need hesitate about following his brother to the last letter and to the last figure.
The translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849. Rossetti’s gifts as a translator were, no doubt, of the highest.
Meynell’s selections from his works is one of Rossetti’s finest crayons. It is, however, too heavy in expression for Hake. Full of fine qualities as is his best poetry, full of intellectual subtlety, imagination, and a rare combination of subjective with objective power, there is apparently in it a certain je ne sais quoi which has prevented him at present from winning his true meed of fame.
No doubt one reason why the preference was given to Bognor was the fact that Blake’s cottage at Felpham was close by, for businesslike and unbusiness-like qualities were strangely mingled in Rossetti’s temperament, and it was generally some sentiment or unpractical fancy of this kind that brought about Rossetti’s final decision upon anything.
This at least may be said, that the moment the language of the prose note is so “adequate” and rich that it seems to be what Wordsworth would call the natural “incarnation of the thought,” the poet’s imagination, if it escapes at all from the chains of the prose expression, escapes with great difficulty. An instance of this occurred in Rossetti’s own experience.
Now, if we wished to show that rhythmic life is in poetry the most important of all, our example would, we think, be Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s prose paraphrase of his brother’s sonnets. The obstacles against the adequate turning of poetry into prose can be best understood by considering the obstacles against the adequate turning of prose into poetry.
It is no disparagement to say of Morris that when he began to write poetry the influence of Rossetti’s canons of criticism upon him was enormous, notwithstanding the influence upon him of Browning’s dramatic methods. But while Rossetti’s admiration of Browning was very strong, it was a canon of his criticism that humour was, if not out of place in poetry, a disturbing element of it.
Word Of The Day