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Unit 20: The Victorian Age (Pre-Raphaelite Poetry)

Twelve struck. The sound, by dwindling years Notes
Heard in each hour crept off, and then
The ruffled silence spread again
Like water that a pebble stirs.
Our mother rose from where she sat:
Her needles, as she laid them down,
Met lightly, and her silken gown
Settled; no other noise than that.

20.3.4 Sensuousness
Like Rossetti most Pre-Raphaelites were painters as well as poets. That explains much of the
sensuousness of their poetry as well as their loving concern for details. Much of their poetry is
as concrete as painting. Referring to Rossetti, Compton-Rickett observes: “That the pictorial
element is more insistent in Rossetti than in Keats is obviously due to the fact that Rossetti’s
outlook on the world is essentially that of the painter. He thinks and feels in pigments.” But this
thinking and feeling “in pigments” sometimes leads the Pre-Raphaelites to excess, giving rise to
two defects:
Too much concern for detail without thematic relevance or any other functional signifi-
cance. For instance, see the following lines from Rossetti’s My Sister’s Sleep:
Without, there was a cold moon up,
Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
The hollow halo it was in
Was like an icy crystal cup.
Excessive recourse to colourful decoration which within limits is pleasing enough, but
becomes a cloying confection if carried beyond. As a typical instance of the Pre-Raphaelite
taste for decoration consider the following lines from Christina Rossetti’s Birthday:
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes!
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes:
Work it in gold and silver grapes
In leaves and silver fleur-de-lys.
A quaint feature of Rossetti is his interchange of sensory functions: he appears to be capable, for
instance, of hearing with his eyes and seeing with his ears. Thus in Silent Noon we have the phrase
“visible silence”, and last four (parenthetical) words in The Blessed Damozel are “I heard her
tears.”

20.3.5 Fleshly School of Poetry

The sensuousness of the Pre-Raphaelites was considered culpable by the prudish Victorians when
it came to the beauties of the human body. The Pre-Raphaelites made no bones about the exhibition
of their voluptuous tendencies. But it is difficult to charge them with grossness or immorality.
Swinburne and others strongly reacted to the charge of Buchanan that the poetry of their school
was “fleshly.” Such poem as Rossetti’s Troy Town and The House of Life are somewhat “fleshly,”
but Rossetti is not an indecent sensualist as he deals with the physical body as something interfused
with the inner character and even the spirit itself. Swinburne, however, was much too daring.
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