William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti/Chapter 3

by Johanna Christina Emerentia Bassalik-de Vries

Influence of W. Blake's Poetry.

The poetic influence of W. Blake on Rossetti made itself mainly felt in the first period of Rossetti's literary career. It mostly concerns Blake's lyrical poems and more especially Blake's "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience". Before these poems Blake had written the lyrics known under the name of "Poetical Sketches". These early poems are all of them written in an Elizabethan strain and show us that Blake must have been an ardent student of Shakespeare and the other poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hewlett^[1] laboriously informs us of the sources from which these songs have been taken. And indeed it is easy to perceive that lines like:

"Bring me an axe and a spade,
Bring me a winding-sheet,
When I my grave have made,
Let winds and tempests beat;"

(My Silks and fine Array)

have been inspired by the Grave Digger's Song in Hamlet. Also the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher, a new edition of whom had appeard in 1770, is apparent in many of these songs. But if imitated, these poems are perfect imitations of their prototypes. There is the song beginning "Love and harmony combine", or the one dedicated to Memory; the above mentioned "My Silks and fine Array"; all of these can rank with the best lyrics the Elizabethan age has produced. The most beautiful is the passionate "Mad Song", which already touches a more personal note than is conceivable with the Elizabethan ideal of lyric poetry. In Blake's early productions another influence than the above named is still visible. His "Contemplation" and "The Couch of Death", two pieces of lyrical prose are evidently written under the influence of Ossian. Also in the Prophetic Books Blake uses Ossian's rythmical prose. And he writes in a MS. note on Wordsworth's Supplementary Essay: "I believe both Macpherson and Chatterton: that what they say is ancient, is so."

These influences, however, show themselves only in the poems of his youth and slightly in the Prophetic Books. The Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience, Blake's splendid sequels of lyrics, are entirely original; here the poet is altogether himself, free from any influence. It is difficult to delineate the charms, which these poems possess. They form a unity and have a mutual relation to each other and should, in order to be fully appreciated, be read as a whole. The Songs of Innocence give us glimpses of a primitive, naive world, where men and beasts alike are filled with innocent, youthful happiness and joy. In some of these poems the events of every-day life are transfigured as seen by Blake's keen and exalted mind, e.g. in "Holy Thursday", in which he describes his meeting with the Charity Children at St. Paul's. Also in the Nurse's Song, in which is told how a nurse at sunset calls the children home from their sports. Besides these we find the pure lyrical song represented in the "Laughing Song" with its happy ring of merry voices; in the "Spring", a very vocal poem despite the imperfect rhymes. Other poems express a child-like piety as "the Lamb" and "A Cradle Song". In all these songs we find a tender loveliness which hardly reappears in Blake's subsequent writings. The "Songs of Experience", written five years later, are deeper, already they show forth Blake's mystic ideas; but though the melody and simplicity of expression remain the same, they have lost in freshness and spontaneity. As an example I quote the first stanza of the beautiful "Cradle Song" with its soft melancholy:

"Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night,
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep".^[2]

Highly remarkable are the poems "The Little Girl Lost" and "The Little Girl Found". In these Blake illustrates in a beautiful allegory one of his favourite doctrines viz. the physical nature has a right to be indulged in. It is true, and this holds good for Blake's Songs of Experience in general, that we do not easily catch the meaning of these poems; but then the language is so musical, the rhymes are so natural and profuse, the bold images so highly imaginative, that we feel that here we read true poetry of the highest kind. Blake represents in these poems physical nature by the lost girl Lyca (from the Greek word for wolf) who errs through a dense forest:

"Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told;
She had wander'd long
Hearing wild birds' song".

The parents, the reasonable powers in man, go out to seek her:

"All the night in woe
Lyca's parents go
Over valleys deep,
Where the deserts weep".

They find, however, that the beasts of prey, the symbols of free, natural life, have taken Lyca under their protection.

"Sleeping Lyca lay,
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View'd the maid asleep."

At last they too acknowledge the natural powers, which at first they feared because of the fierce desires they inspire. Gloryfied the lion stands before them:

"On his head a crown;
On his shoulders down
Flow'd his golden hair.
Gone was all their care."

Only now, after having returned to nature, they can live happily:

"To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell;
Nor fear the wolfish howl,
Nor the lion's growl".

These two poems "The Little Girl Lost" and "The Little Girl Found", can stand as typical examples for Blake's Songs of Experience. In the same strain are written: "A Little Boy Lost", "A little Girl Lost," "The Fly," "The Chimney Sweeper," etc. All of these poems illuminate one of Blake's philosophical doctrines. The language too is always the same: the words, for the greater part of Teutonic origin, are very simple and often monosyllabic. In the metre also the same tendencies can be observed: generally short-lined stanzas rhyming in couplets are used. Besides end-rhyme interlinear rhyme occurs, where the lines are prolonged, e.g.:

"And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be:
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briers my joys and desires."
(The Garden of Love.)

The same in the opening stanza of "the Angel":

"I dreamt a dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen."^[3])

Also in these poems alliteration is found in great profusion, every poem contains several examples of this, so that it will suffice when I give one, chosen at random:

"The Sword sang on the barren heath,
The Sickle in the fruitful field;
The Sword he sang a song of death
But could not make the Sickle yield."
(Couplets and Fragments.)

Another peculiarity of style in these poems consists in the repetition of the same words; often at the beginning of a line:

"I was angry with my friend,
I told my wrath, my wrath did end;
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow".
(Christian Forbearance.)

Sometimes a whole line is repeated, the order of the words slightly changed, or exactly the same:

"And I wept both night and day,
And he wiped my tears away,
And I wept both day and night,
And hid from him my heart's delight."
(The Angel.)

And in "The Lamb":

"Little lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is callèd by thy name,
For he calls himself a lamb.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!"

Occasionally even a whole stanza is repeated as in "The Tiger", where the first and last are identical.

In 1793 Blake had published another small volume of poetry: "The Gates of Paradise". These verses show the same peculiarities of style as the foregoing, but the thoughts expressed in them are full of bitterness, as far as their meaning can be understood, hidden as they are in a maze of mysticism. These poems together with the Book of Thel form the transition between Blake's lyrical period and his Prophetic Books. When Blake wrote the Prophetic Books he had lived a secluded, lonely life for several years. There had been a time when by the influence of Flaxman the doors of Mrs. Mathew's^[4]) drawing-room had been opened for Blake. We hear of social gatherings, where the wits of the day, the modish painters and dramatists united in brillant "conversazione". They are now forgotten these literary luminaries of those days; even their names, should I enumerate them, would sound meaningless. Yet Mrs. Mathew's "salon" was famous then and even visited occasionally by sprightly Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. Here Blake and his young wife Catherine were regular visitors, and Blake sang his songs to tunes of his own. But Blake's wilful and eccentric character and some grave defects in Catherine's breeding were the cause of Blake's breaking with this circle. In a very bitter satire, "The Island in the Moon", Blake exposes the weaknesses of the different persons who visited Mrs. Mathew's drawing-room. After his worldly failure Blake never tries to mix with the world again, put disgusted with social life, altogether withdraws from society. This voluntary seclusion of a man so highly imaginative as Blake of course had as a result, that he altogether lost contact with the world. He simply writes down his abstract fancies as he sees them before his mental eye, never troubling himself with the thoughts of the impression these fancies would make on the minds of other persons.

Especially the Prophetic Books are full of these wild fancies, and were looked upon by William Rossetti as not free from a tinge of insanity, which opinion seems to have been shared by his brother. Therefore D. G. Rossetti could appreciate the drawings which adorn the works of Blake, the pieces of lyrical song which occasionally relieve the monotony of Blake's rythmical prose, could be impressed by some beautiful descriptive lines as they often occur in Blake, but could not be much influenced by works which he regarded as the aberrations of a sick mind, be it the mind of a genius. I believe Rossetti did not think it worth while to subject Blake's works to a closer investigation for this reason. In his correspondence with Mrs. Gilchrist about the editing of Blake, Rossetti writes: "the truth is that as regards such a poem as "My Spectre"^[5] I do not understand it a bit better than anyone else; only I know better than some may know, that it has claims as poetry apart from the question of understanding it and therefore is worth printing".

In the same way Rossetti does not understand Blake when he calls Blake's painting of a tiger in streaks of red and green, "an unaccountable perversity of colour" (Literary Paper on W. Blake). Of course it would have been easy to see for Rossetti, who himself uses symbolical colours very often, that Blake here for the reason of symbolism deviates from the natural colouring of his tiger. However Rossetti did not think it necessary to seek for an explanation, convinced as he was, that this explanation, both here and in the aforenamed poem, was given already by the "slight tinge of insanity" which is to be found in Blake's works and more especially in the Prophetic Books. In this madness which Rossetti addicted to Blake we have to see the main reason of the comparatively small influence of the Prophetic Books on Rossetti. Moreover, unlike Blake, Rossetti never loses sight of the public he writes for, always the fancies of his imaginative brain are kept in proper check, remindful as he is of the limitations of the ordinary reader. "Above all ideal personalities", Rossetti writes in a letter probably to Mr. Sharp, "with which the poet must learn to identify himself, there is one supremely real . . . namely that of his reader." This is another reason why we do not find in Rossetti's poetry much of the Prophetic Books; with their violent speech, fleeting ideas, and dark symbolism these are so altogether unfit for the general reader. But though, as a rule, Rossetti is more reserved in the expression of his ideas, yet occasionally we find a sonnet in which the turbulence of sounds, the choice of words, and the far too strong imagery are very Blakean.

Most distinctly this influence of Blake's Prophetic Books can be seen in a sonnet entitled "After the French Liberation of Italy", which sonnet I will quote fully, as it is not generally included in D. G. Rossetti's works.

"Lo the twelfth year — the wedding-feast come round
With years for months — and lo the babe new-born;
Out of the womb's rank furnace cast forlorn,
And with contagious effluence seamed and crowned.
To hail his birth, what fiery tongues surround
Hell's Pentecost — what clamour of all cries
That swell from Absalom's scoff to Shinei's,
One scornful gamut of tumultuous sound!

For now the harlot's heart on a new sleeve
Is prankt; and her heart's lord of yesterday
(Spurned from her bed, whose worm-spun silks o'erlay
Such fretwork as that other worm can weave)
Takes in his ears the vanished world's last yell,
And in his flesh the closing teeth of Hell."

This sonnet reads like a passage of Blake's Prophetic Books; the same dim flight of ideas, vaguely expressed in a "fiery tongue" can be found in Blake's Jerusalem, America, Daughters of Albion, or any one of the Prophetic Books we like to open. Apart from this sonnet and a few more, where the same influence is traceable, though not in the same degree, we have to see in Rossetti's exaggerated love for allegory a tendency developed after Blake's example. So we find e.g. in a simple narrative poem like Jenny, dealing with an up to date question, the problem of primitive sin in its crudest and at the same time best-known form, inserted a personification of lust; though very graphic and beautiful in itself, this allegory in which lust, "like a toad in a stone sits from the time the earth was cursed, deaf, blind and alone", seems altogether out of place in this particular kind of poem, dealing with a realistic subject of every-day life.

Far greater is the influence exercised on Rossetti by Blake's lyrical poems. The characteristics of the Songs of Innocence and the Songs of Experience which I pointed out before, can be found in the poems of Rossetti especially in the early ones. However, what Blake found out as it were accidentally and applied half-consciously, has been used by Rossetti systematically, in perfect consciousness of its effect. Therefore Rossetti's poems gain in clearness and construction, but lose in freshness and spontaneity, when compared to Blake's. We find back Blake's naiveté and simple directness of speech in many early poems for example in "The Staff and Scrip"; in the ballad "The white Ship", and in "My Sister's Sleep", a descriptive poem. Best of all this simplicity is exemplified in an admirable termination. Rossetti put to the ancient stanza "How should I your true-love know?" (Hamlet IV. 5,25) under the title of "An old Song ended,"^[6]) here comes a quatrain which reads almost exactly like one of Blake's Songs of Innocence in its child-like turn of phrase:

"For a token is there nought,
Say, that he should bring?"
"He will bear a ring I gave
And another ring."

In these poems we find a preference for monosyllabic words of Teutonic origin, with which often great dignity of expression has been achieved e.g. in the "White Ship"^[7]) the lines:

"The ship was gone and the crowd was gone,
And the deep shuddered and the moon shone"

or in the following lines from "The Staff and Scrip":^[8])

"Uncover ye his face", she said.
"O changed in little space!"
She cried, "O pale that was so red!
God, God of Grace!
Cover his face!"

Exactly as in Blake's lyrics, a profuse use of alliteration has been made; we also find the repetition of the same words, the same phrases or occasionally the same stanzas. Of Rossetti's use of alliteration I will not give examples, as there are hardly any poems in which no alliterative lines occur. I will merely mention the poem called "Chimes"^[9]) in which alliteration has been carried to an excess, and where we find lines like:

Lost love—labour and lullaby
And lowly let love lie,

where the sense has been sacrificed to the melody of sound.

Very interesting is the use Rossetti makes of the repetition of the same phrase or line; by using these lines at regular intervals they form a kind of chorus to his poems, and remind the reader continually of the mood which forms the back-ground of the poetical image. The most striking example is his poem "Troy Town",^[10] where the too frequent repetition of the same words is almost monotonous. The poem opens with the following stanza:

"Heaven-born Helen, Sparta's queen,
(O Troy Town!)
Had two breasts of heavenly sheen.
The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
All Love's Lordship lay between.
(O Troy's down,
Tall Troy's on fire.)"

In fourteen stanzas the refrain "O Troy Town! Troy's down, Tall Troy's on fire!" besides the last word of the third line "heart's desire" are repeated exactly in the same place, and we feel that we have too much of a good thing. Far happier the repetition of the same words has been applied in the ballad "Sister Helen";^[11] the refrain shows slight changes in accordance with the thoughts expressed in the stanza concerned; here the constant tragic appeal to the holy virgin heightens the dramatic force of the poem. I will quote the first and last stanzas of this ballad, which illustrates a well-known superstition of the middle-ages and tells the story of a deceived bride who avenges herself on her unfaithful lover by making a wax-image of him which she burns and the melting of which causes the death of the deceiver. The events are told in the form of a dialogue between the bride and her little brother.

"Why did you melt your waxen man,
Sister Helen?
To-day is the third since you began."
"The time was long, yet the time ran.
Little brother."
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Three days to-day between Hell and Heaven!)

and the last stanza:

"Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
Sister Helen?
Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?"
"A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
Little brother!"
(O Mother, Mary Mother,
Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

These repetitions of the same words as a burden Rossetti uses with more or less effect in many other poems except the above mentioned. We find it in "Eden Bower", "A Death-Parting", "The Cloud Confines", and several others. I believe to have made sufficiently clear now that we have to see the influence of Blake in the foregoing qualities of Rossetti's poetry. It will, however, have been noticed that like the influence of the philosophy of Blake, the influence of his poetry, though distinct and by no means insignificant, has been of a general kind. Blake's style and metre appealed to Rossetti, but we cannot say that one particular poem of Blake took a stronger hold on Rossetti's imagination than another. A direct influence of Blake's poetry cannot be traced, as far as I can see, in any of Rossetti's poems, a single one excepted. This poem is "The Blessed Damozel."^[12] It has been written as a contribution for the Germ,^[13] when Rossetti was still in the prime of his youth; it is among the first and at the same time one of the best, if not the very best poem of Rossetti and undoubtedly the poem which has mostly served of all Rossetti's poetical works to render him famous. In this lyric which sings of the longings of a holy virgin in heaven for the lover whom she left behind on earth, Rossetti blends in a wonderful way human devotion and pious mysticism. D. G. Rossetti himself says that the subject of the Blessed Damozel had been suggested to him by E. A. Poe's poem the Raven; what Poe had done for earthly love, he would do for the love in heaven. Critics all agree that this poem owes little to any previous writer. Benson^[14] sees traces of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner in it; Joseph Knight^[15] speaks of Rossetti being inspired when writing this poem by the pictures of the early Italian painters; even if these influences do exist they are very vague; far more real is in this instance Blake's influence; here indeed Rossetti owes much to this author.

We find in this poem, that physical facts have been introduced in an abstract subject, a very bold thing to do which Rossetti achieved with splendid tact. The Blessed Damozel is represented as standing on the rampart of Heaven; she sees the souls pass by her like thin flames, and

". . . . bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm,
Until her bosom must have made
The bar she leaned on warm."
(stanza 8.)

And again afterwards the spiritual virgin most ethereal of beings

 
". . . .laid her face between her hands and wept"
(last stanza.)

Blake very often introduces physical processes in abstract themes, though generally the effect is rather grotesque, owing to Blake's exaggeration. As an example for this a "Memorable Fancy" can serve in which Blake expresses his thoughts about the origin of the "principle of the human perception". This Memorable Fancy opens with the words "The Prophets Isaiah and Ezechiel dined with me" and somewhat further now we find written "After dinner I asked Isaiah etc." I need not point out the ridiculousness of representing spiritual visions of the prophets as taking dinner; but yet the same principle which Blake followed here has been honoured in the Blessed Damozel.

Further we find here instances of Blake's art as a painter influencing the poetry of D. G. Rossetti. Blake made illustrations for the Book of Job. These belong to his most splendid engravings. On plate 15 of this series the morning stars are depicted, represented as an endless row of angels singing, with hands uplifted for joy. Under the engraving is written: "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Rossetti admired this engraving highly and we find the image of the "singing stars" in the Blessed Damozel:

"The stars sang in their spheres"
(stanza 9.)
"Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together".
(stanza 10.)

There was another engraving of Blake's, which suggested to Rossetti the seven stars, the Blessed Damozel wears in her hair, as we can read in the opening stanza of this poem.

"And the stars in her hair were seven."
(stanza 1.)

In a large engraving of Blake we find these seven stars adorning the hair of a beautiful figure of a woman, probably a soul admitted into eternity. This engraving forms the title-page of Night III of Young's Night-Thoughts, a work which Blake illustrated.

And at last we can trace Blake's influence in the eighteenth stanza of the Blessed Damozel. Here the handmaidens of the virgin are enumerated, and the series of these melodious names, which do not all of them represent saints, seem to have been inserted for the sake of euphony only.

"We two, she said, will seek the groves
Where the lady Mary is,
With her five handmaidens, whose names
Are five sweet symphonies,
Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
Margaret and Rosalys".
(stanza 18.)

This same kind of enumeration we find in more than one case with Blake, the greatest resemblance to the foregoing is however shown in the Laughing Song, where the following stanza occurs:

"When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing
Ha, ha, he!"

With this last rather striking example of Blake's literary influence on Dante Gabriel Rossetti I will close the discussion of Blake's direct influence. I think I have fully shown the different items in which this influence existed, also how it made itself felt mostly in the first period of D. G. Rossetti's literary career, when the Praeraphaelitic love for naïve and natural expression could not but result in a great appreciation of Blake. Putting together for, the sake of clearness, the principal facts which formed the bias for these and the following investigations we find in chronological order:

a) 1847.Rossetti finds in the British Museum the Ms. Book of Blake, now known as "the Rossetti Ms."

b) 1856.Rossetti receives as a New - Year's gift Haley's^[16] "Ballad of the Eagle" illustrated by Blake and writes in a letter to William Allingham^[17]: "Old Blake is quite as loveable by his oddities as by his genius, and the drawings to the ballads abound with both. Nearly faultless are the Eagle and the Hermit's Dog." "As regards engraving these drawings—with the Job,—present the only good medium between etching and formal line that I ever met with."

c) 1859.Rossetti enumerates the "Choicest English Poems" and includes Blake's The Angel. (Letter to W. Allingham, Christmas 1859.)

d) 1860.Alexander Gilchrist asks Rossetti to send him the Ms. Book of Blake, which he wants to use for his work on Blake.

e) 1861-63.After the death of Alexander Gilchrist (Nov. 1861), Rossetti together with Mrs. A. Gilchrist completes Gilchrist's work on Blake. Rossetti writes a finishing chapter of Blake's Life (included now in his works. Literary Papers. William Blake vol. I. p. 443) but his chief concern was the editing of Blake's poems. Out of the confused heap of Blake Mss. he chose and polished and even made small alterations, filled up an occasional gap or substituted an unreadable word and thus gave us the beautiful selection of Blake's poems we find in the second volume of Alexander Gilchrist's work on Blake.

f) 1875.Towards 1875 and 1881 Rossetti writes two notices on the paintings of Samuel Palmer^[18] and says in these: "The possessors of his works have what must grow in influence, just as the possessors of Blake's creations are beginning to find" and further on "His works are clear inspiration, which is a point very hard to attain to in landscape art; but in him one may almost say that it was as evident as in Blake."
(Rossetti, vol. II, p. 504 and 529.)

g) 1880.Rossetti writes a sonnet on Blake. (Five English Poets, vol. I, p. 338.)

 

—————

1. Contemporary Review, Vol. 28; 1876. William Blake. Imperfect Genius
2. Blake, Works ed. by Gilchrist II, 73.
3. Imperfect rhymes such as dream-mean, more-poor, echoèd-bed etc. occur very frequently.
4. Mrs. Mathew (1720—1800) was the wife of a popular clergyman, the Rev. Henry Mathew. They discovered and fostered the genius of Flaxman, and it is said that Mrs. Mathew, learned as well as elegant, would read Homer in the original to Flaxman when he was a boy.
5. "My Spectre around me night and day
   Like a wild beast guards my way;
   My Emanation far within
   Weeps incessantly for my sin."
   
   

   Lyrical Poems by William Blake. Introduction by Walter Raleigh. Oxford 1905, p. 100.

6. ibid. p. 300.
7. ibid. p. 137.
8. ibid. p. 75.
9. ibid. p. 330.
10. ibid. p. 305.
11. ibid. p. 66.
12. ibid. p. 232.
13. The Germ was a periodical devoted to the art principles of the Praeraphaelites. Only two numbers were issued, the first in Jan. 1850.
14. Rossetti, by A. C. Benson. London 1904, 1906
15. Life of D. G. Rossetti, by Joseph Knight. London 1887.
16. William Haley (1745—1820) was "poet, country gentleman and patron of art and literature." He was a great friend of Blake and Cowper, whose biography he wrote. The poems he wrote are of no literary value; the full title of the above mentioned poem is: "Ballads on Anecdotes relating to Animals."
17. William Allingham, a friend of Rossetti, was a great lover of literature and art and a sound art critic. In 1874 he was appointed editor of Fraser's Magazine, and for many years edited this periodical.
18. Samuel Palmer (1805—1881) was an English landscape painter of the romantic school. Besides his watercolours he is known by his beautiful illustrations of Milton's Allegro and Penseroso.