Christina Rossetti - Poetical Works, 1904

ed. W.M.Rossetti

PREFACE

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI's first published poetic volume, which had been preceded by some poems issued in a more scattered shape, was produced in 1862; she died in 1894. It seems now to be the time that her Poetical Works should be brought out in a duly co-ordinated form, practically (though not in the most absolute possible sense) complete.

Her Poetic volumes appeared as follows:--

1. Verses, privately printed, 1847. This volume has been reissued to the public at a recent date, but without any authority obtained, nor I suppose legally needed, from the representatives of the writer. 

2. Goblin Market and other Poems, 1862 (Macmillan) 

3. The Prince's Progress and other Poems, 1866 (Macmillan)

4. Sing-Song, 1872 (Routledge, now Macmillan)

5. A Pageant and other Poems, 1881 (Macmillan) The volumes 2, 3, 4 and 5 have been reissued in a collected form, introducing a moderate number of additional poems.

6. Verses, 1893 (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge). These poems are reprinted in the volume here named from three earlier volumes of combined prose and verse.

7. New Poems, 1896 (Macmillan). Collected and edited by myself after Christina's death.

From this list it will be seen that the Firm of Macmillan & Co., Limited, has now and heretofore been in a position to deal with all Christina Rossetti's poems, except only the Verses, 1893, No.6 on the list. Those Verses include many of the finest devotional poems that she ever wrote; and to bring out, without including these, an edition of her poems professedly or proximately complete, would have been a fallacious attempt. By an arrangement made with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, we are enabled to include the Verses in the present edition.

The division of my sister's writings in this edition runs thus: the Longer Poems, Juvenilia, Devotional Poems, General Poems, Poems for Children and Minor Verse, and Italian Poems. Each of these sections is arranged in order of date, so far as the conditions (as to which some details are given in my Notes) reasonably allow. I think that readers already interested in Christina Rossetti's poetry will find some pleasure in tracing the sequence of dates. They will learn that some of her best poems were written at a very early period of her youth. Her own arrangement of her poems in the latest collected edition (which, as already indicated, includes only the volumes that I have numbered 2, 3 and 5, and not the other four volumes) may also be regarded as a point of some interest; I give that Table of Contents in an Appendix (A). That her arrangement in all instances was not merely haphazard may be taken for granted - she consulted her brother Dante Gabriel a good deal, with regard at any rate to No.3; at the same time, I do not percieve that any very definite plan has been followed in the latest collected edition. One clear distinction is made - that of separating the poems which first appeared in vol. 5 from those which are proper to vols. 2 and 3; the contents of 2 and 3 are fused together without any regard to dates of composition or of first publication, and perhaps even with some inclination to keep this point in a haze.

As to the few Italian poems, I have had before now occasion to remark that they appear to me to be in essentials as good as those in English, although I could readily suppose that in some points of diction, etc. they are not up to the standard of verse written by a native Italian. Later on I was somewhat surprised to find, in an Italian literary paper named Il Marzocco, a criticism expressed in the folowing very adverse terms: `She wrote also some Italian verses; but, if I am to judge of them from the specimens I know, they not only do not add anything to her fame as a poet, but rather detract from it, so formless and inept do they seem to me. It might almost be thought that the writer of those verses did not, as we know she did, speak from early childhood her paternal language.' This criticism is signed `Th. Neal,' an English-seeming name which is used (as I have been informed) by an Italian writer. I quote the observation for whatever it may be worth, and for candour's sake, but can hardly help thinking that it must be harsher than the circumstances warrant. Recently I have had occasion to converse with a literary Italian, well versed in English; he considers that Christina's Italian verses are not undeserving of commendation, and assimilate to native work more nearly than those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

With regard to the volume above-mentioned entitled New Poems, which I edited in 1896 after my sister's death, it has been alleged by some critics that I raked together all that I could find, and presented all to the public, who would gladly have dispensed with many. As a statement of fact, I know this to be incorrect; and as a matter of opinion, I consider it mistaken. So far from raking together all that I could find, I left unused a considerable number of compositions that were at my disposal; and in the present edition I still leave these unused. I add in an Appendix (B) a list of them; this is perhaps not of much concern to anyone, but it serves to confirm my assertion, and may perhaps be regarded with favour by some future editor, who might really be minded to carry to its utmost limit the `raking-together' process. And I will not pretend to deny that, in the case of a writer who has attained a certain standard (it must be a high one) of fame and popularity, I consider that that process has a good deal to say for itself.

The contents of the volume named New Poems are of course reproduced, in their due order of date, etc., in the present edition. In prefacing that volume I made the remark: `I conceive some of the compositions herein contained to be up to the level of Christina Rossetti's best work [~sNote 1~PnCGR Note 1~K1~E], and the great majority of them to be well up to her average.' This is an opinion which I still entertain, although aware that several critics of the New Poems formed and expressed a very different judgment. They seemed to find little to commend in the volume, and much to object to, both in the poems themselves and in my action as their editor. Those critics and I must apparently agree to differ as to the general ratio of merit in the New Poems, and as to the question whether an editor is justified in publishing, after the death of the writer, compositions which had remained unpublished during the lifetime of the latter. I myself apprehend that (both in the case of my sister and of other writers) there may have been a variety of reasons why poems did not get published in their lifetime, which reasons do not continue to operate posthumously to any valid extent; and that the person who comes into possession of the poems of the deceased has a full right - amounting in some instances almost to a duty - to publish what he considers to be good enough for the purpose, and to be unexceptionable on other grounds.

[ * Note 1 ]. It is possible that some readers might like to know which are the compositions referred to. I will therefore give a list of them (which follows the order of their pagination in the New Poems, not in the present edition). They are twenty-six in number, viz., The Summer is Ended, A Pause, Restive (which is now reprinted as Section 3 of Three Stages), Long Looked For, Let Patience have her Perfect Work, In an Artist's Studio, Meeting (If we shall live, we live), Under Willows, A Sketch, If I had Words, Now They Desire, Not Yours but You, By the Waters of Babylon, Birds of Paradise, Il Rosseggiar dell' Oriente; and (more especially) A Soul, Cobwebs, A Chilly Night, Acme, Introspective, To-day and To-morrow, En Route, By Way of Remembrance, Sleeping at Last, There remaineth therefore a Rest for the People of God (Come, blessed sleep, most full, most perfect, come), and The Heart knoweth its own Bitterness (When all the over-work of life).

In the volume New Poems there were some slight or out-of-the-way items -- such as Bouts-rimés Sonnets, An Alphabet for Children, etc., - which, according to the plan of that book, were mixed up with poems of a more serious and artistic kind. In the present volume I have coupled those items, under the name of `Minor Verse,' with the Poems for Children, and have thus, I hope, removed any substantial objection to their inclusion.

I may glance here at a point of typography in the present volume - a point which, although small, is not wholly trivial. The system followed as to the indenting of lines, so as to mark metre and rhyming, is far from uniform. In some instances no indenting whatever appears; in others it is consistently, in others again only partially, carried out. The discrepancy affects chiefly, on the one hand, those poems which were published by Christina herself, and, on the other hand, those which I put together in the New Poems - my preference being for a fully applied process of indenting. This process is more difficult of application to Christina's compositions than to most others, owing to the exceptional degree of latitude which she allowed herself in varying (and I think very generally with fine rhythmical effect) the number of feet in one and the same piece. Thus the marking of the length of lines by indenting would frequently conflict with a similar marking of the rhymes. When I had to deal with the proofs of the present volume I found that to attempt to make the scheme of indenting uniform throughout would involve an amount of trouble to the Printers as well as myself which seemed out of proportion to any contingent advantage; therefore, though somewhat reluctantly, I have left the indenting (or non-indenting) to reappear in much the same form as in the original volumes from which the present one is compiled.

The poems of Christina Rossetti are marked by certain key-notes of feeling which, although they could not be allowed to govern the arrangement of the compositions in this edition, deserve to be borne in mind by her readers; and among the readers there may be some who would like to be furnished with a clue for following out, as the inclination prompts them at the moment, one or other of these trains of sentiment. It may perhaps be said that the two ideas most prevalent of all are the strenuous and onerous effort to attain to the salvation of the soul in heaven, and the ardent absorbing devotion to the work and the very person of the Saviour Jesus Christ. These ideas are diffused over the whole area of the authoress's Devotional Poems, and are to be traced in other compositions as well. It would, I think, be superfluous to call attention to particular poems embodying those paramount ideas, and I therefore limit myself to other ideas, subordinate, yet still marked and dominant, - some of them of much importance in themselves, others not thus important but highly characteristic of Christina Rossetti. I will define them thus: (1) Personal Experiences and Emotions; (2) Death; (3) The Aspiration for Rest (and her ideal of bliss appears to have consisted in ultimate rest, only less absolutely than in the promised fruition of heaven); (4) Vanity of Vanities; (5) A Love of Animals, and more especially such animals as are frequently regarded as odd or uncouth, rather than obviously attractive; (6) Winter - almost invariably contemplated as dismal and repugnant; (7) The loveliness of the Rose. In the Appendix (C) I give a reference to the principal instances (not by any means to all instances) in which these themes are prominently brought forward.

In my Notes at the end of the volume many details will be found bearing upon the occasions which gave rise to particular poems, the significance of the poems, etc. For such compositions as appeared in the volume of New Poems the Notes appended to that volume are here re-used, with modifications and omissions.

Brief though the foregoing remarks are, they may perhaps serve as being all that I need personally say about the Poems of my Sister. To puff them is neither my business nor my inclination. To analyse them in any painstaking manner is outside my editorial scope - many of them in fact have already sunk deep into the feelings and the memory, and I might say the conscience, of poetic readers. I think it well, however, to add to my Preface a condensed Memoir of Christina Rossetti. Up to the date of her death little was publicly known about her, as she had led an extremely quiet and even a secluded life. Since then the Biography by my friend, Mr Mackenzie Bell, has appeared - January 1898. When that work came out some very erroneous opinions were expressed about it in the press - not of course in all the critiques, but in two or three of the most influential. The view thus propounded, and propounded in a very confident tone, was that I had been a main performer in Mr Bell's book: the voice might be the voice of Jacob, but the hands were the hands of Esau. The critics must permit me to tell them that this was totally untrue. Their semi-omniscience was at fault. The simple facts of the case are as follows: - Mr Bell, soon after Christina's death, formed the project of writing a biographical and critical study of her. As he had known nothing personally of Christina except during some thirteen months preceding her death, he was necessarily aware that his biographical materials must be obtained from some one else; and he very correctly opined that I knew much more about her than any other person living, and that therefore it would be expedient to apply to me for a large majority of his information. He asked whether I would furnish such information, and I said yes; and in the course of his work he addressed to me a great number of questions, mostly in writing, to which I replied, also mostly in writing. At one stage of the matter I put it very plainly to Mr Bell that, while I was happy to return a direct and full reply to most of his inquiries, I neither expected nor intended to regulate in any way the use he might make of my answers; and on this plan I acted throughout, except that in some very few instances I found, when he sent me the proofs of his book, that he had reproduced in my own off-hand terms some details (generally affecting outsiders) which I thought not fitted to be published in the same terms. These few instances I pointed out to Mr Bell, and he, with the right feeling which invariably marked his treatment of such matters, at once conformed to my views. I observed in the proofs a great number of other instances in which he had quoted my precise phrases. In several of these cases my opinion was that it would have been better, on literary or other grounds, if he had simply worked up into his own narrative the facts which I placed at his disposal (without quoting my precise words, or even naming me as the informant), or if he had merely utilized my details so far as tacitly to avoid making any mis-statement; but, faithful to the view that the book ought to be his in the fullest sense, and in no sense mine, I advisedly abstained from raising any objection or demur on this point. The critics to whom I have referred, while treating Mr Bell and his book with some favour in the comparative if not the positive degree, fell foul of me in something not unlike like the superlative degree - and this mainly on the ground, erroneously imagined by themselves, that most of the things which they disliked in the book had been foisted into it by me in a spirit of dictation at once arrogant and obtuse, and had been by Mr Bell too tamely permitted to appear. Both Mr Bell and I had reason to complain of these critics: Mr Bell for being falsely credited with a degree of sheepish acquiescence which had tended to spoil his book, and I for being falsely arraigned of an offence not enacted by me but invented by my censors, who thereupon abused me for doing what I had not done, and for defects of mind and character evidenced by the imputed doing of it.

But all this is an old story, and barely worth referring to now. I glance at it chiefly because it has constituted one of my reasons for preferring on the present occasion to write something - a very little - about my sister in the way of biography. Mr Bell's treatment of the subject is in many respects meritorious, but need not prevent a relative from stating a few facts in his own way. A reader of the poems ought to know who and what their authoress was. I propose to put him in possession of that amount of knowledge, and of little beyond that.

W.M.ROSSETTI.

LONDON, September 1903.

[ William Rossetti's Memoir of his sister, referred to above, is transcribed separately; to view, click here >> ... ]

.END

[ Return to Notes on Christina Rossetti's Poems &c.]

(The Rejoice & Sing Enchiridion:edited by David Goodall; last amended 28/12/03)