PROSERPINA
Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall,—one instant
and no more
Admitted
at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted
once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this
Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar,
how far away,
The
nights that shall be from the days that were.
Afar from mine own self
I seem, and wing
10 Strange ways in thought, and listen
for a sign:
And still some heart unto
some soul doth pine,
(Whose sounds mine inner
sense is fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring,)—
“Woe's me for thee, unhappy
Proserpine!”
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/1-1872.s233.raw.html
Ballads and Sonnets
(1881), first edition
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1881 October 17
According to the title of the poem, we realize that it makes reference
to a character related to Latin mythology, Proserpine. In order to understand
what the poem is about, we should have a look at the rape of the Proserpine
myth.
One
day, Proserpine, a young maid of spring, was out picking wildflowers with
her mother, Ceres, goddess of grain when she saw the white petals of the
narcissus flower. She began straying far from her mother. Out of the dark
depths sprang Pluto, god of the underworld. He grabbed Proserpine and drove
his chariot back into the caves of the earth ... Ceres, devastated by the
kidnapping allowed the earth to become barren. Mercury, the messenger god,
wandered the underworld until he came to the misty throne room of Pluto and
Proserpine. There he told Pluto he must return Proserpine. She remembered
the joyful times of her mother's love, the wildflowers, and open sunlit meadows.
Before returning Proserpine, Pluto offered her the seeds of a pomegranate
fruit. When Ceres heard this, she told Proserpine that the fruit was a symbol
of marriage. As a result, when Fall and Winter
come, the earth grows cold and barren because Proserpine must return to the
underworld with Pluto. But when she comes back, Ceres turns the world to spring
and summer. (Chrys Gakopoulos
Mythology)/.
The poem follows the typical
structure of sonnets. Its rhyme is A-B-B-A-A-C-C-A-D-E-E-D-D-D. We can find
visual rhyme: wing-bring-murmuring; pine- Proserpine. But also phonetic rhyme:
cheer-drear-here-were; more-door; grey-away; sing-pine- Proserpine.
In my opinion, this poem
is a king of self-reflection. Proserpine is making a reflection about what
she has done. She is considering her acts as errors and she is regretful
because she is far away from everything she wants. The poem is divided in
4 sentences until the last verse, according to everything that Proserpine
loves and they are far from her, v1-v3; v4-v5; v6-v8, v9-v-13. The presence
of Proserpine, Jane Morris, is justified through the use of the first personal
pronoun “must thrall me here (v.5), chills me (v.7), Afar from mine own
self I seem (v.9)”. The structure of this poem is similar to the dramatic
monologue that Robert Browning uses in most of his poems. There is an author,
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti, but at the same time the main character of the poem
is who experiments the sensations, the narrator. The presence of the author,
D.G.R. can be found in the last verse “Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”
Here, when he is exclaiming Proserpine, the author is addressing to Jane
Morris. In this verse the author shows all his feelings. It is a kind of
a scream of despair.
If we look at Dante Gabriel
Rossetti’s biography, we find a curious detail that has an important relation
to that poem and that myth. The one of his lovers was Jane Morris, who is
the model of the picture. “Between 1871 and 1874,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poetry focuses on his love for Jane Morris” (Jerome
J. McGAnn. biographyl).
But this relationship didn’t have a happy end, because she got married with
William Morris. For this reason, the poem could be interpreted as a way in
which the author expresses his love and as we can see in the 11th
verse, “And still some heart unto some soul doth pine”, acts as an allusion
to his purpose to seduce Jane from her unhappy marriage (Peter Nahum
and Sally Burgess. drawings/5.html). We can justify it through the adjectives
that the poet uses throughout the whole poem, referring to the coldness “cold
(v.1), grey (v.6), chills (v.7), the great use of the adverb “afar”.
In verse 5 “Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here” the author
curses the “Dire Fruit”, the pomegranate because for tasting it, she was
obliged to stay in hell with her husband, making Jane his slave. This verse
can also show the Victorian society, because in those times you couldn’t
marry with the man you loved, the marriages were arranged. The middle social
classes got married between them in order to maintain their reputation.
If we pay attention to
the picture, we can observe a woman with wavy black hair, solemn eyes, curved
mouth, and sinuous neck. A woman, who remains in the darkness, symbolizing
the desire, something horrible. There is a contrast
of light: the half-light creates an atmosphere of intrigue that makes us
want to investigate this world that is far away from us. Something forbidden
always attracts more than something that is allowed. The light, which comes
inside the room, symbolizes the upper world. It can be understood as the
desire of going out from that place where she remains. At this point, we find
a parallelism between Jane Morris and Eve. According to the Christian Religion,
Eve tasted the apple of sin and she was expelled from paradise and Adam.
On the other hand, the light is concentrated on her hands and on her face.
The woman has in her hands the sin fruit, the pomegranate. The author has
drawn a little byte that means the beautiful girl has eaten that fruit coming
from hell and she is condemned to stay there “Dire fruit, which, tasted
once, must thrall me here.” The light in her face shows a sinful woman.
She represents the “femme fatale”. She is showing parts of her body, which
to show them was a sin, the uncovered shoulder, the long wavy hair, and her
neck. One image that the author has drawn in the picture to show the desire
and the temptation of sin is the wavy hair. (Meghan Edwards '06.edwards12.)
Other interpretation could be that the wavy hair is a metaphor which represents
the Snake. According to the Christian Religion, the snake was who incited
Eve to taste the apple. “This kind of picture can be interpreted as a criticism
of that society,” because in the 19th century any vice and bad
habit must be eliminated not only in public places, but also in the most
secret places of their house”. (Quesada Monge,
Rodrigo. Perfiles.). In
the left corner, we can see an incense lamp. If we follow the Greek or Latin
mythology, Gods feed on ambrosia and when a Mortal wants that God to help
him, they light this kind of lamps in order for the smoke to arrive to the
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Edwards12. The
Devouring Woman and Her Serpentine Hair in Late-Pre-Raphaelitism. Pre-Raphaelites,
Aesthetes, and Decadents. Meghan Edwards '06, English/History of Art
151,BrownUniversity,2004.
http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/edwards12.html (25.02.06)
Biography: The Complete Writings and
Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A hypermedia Research Archive. EDITOR:
Jerome J. McGAnn
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/biography.html (25.02.06)
Mythology:
Rape
of Proserpine. Chrys Gakopoulos
Art Director, Communications and
http://www.public.asu.edu/~chrysg/portfolio/mythology/.
(25.02.06)
Drawings/5.
Proserpine.
Commentary Peter
Nahum and Sally Burgess.
http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/drawings/5.html
(25.02.06)
Perfiles: Quesada Monge,
Rodrigo. EL GERMEN (1850) :