Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendour swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled night
And know the stars at noon.
The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.
Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers' feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As 'twere an heart that beat.
Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.
Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:
A land without any order,—
Day even as night, (one saith,)—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.
What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.
And do you ask what game she plays?
With me 'tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But 'tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o' the sun.
Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
The card that followeth:
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The Rossetti Archive ‘The Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ellis&White (1881)
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/1-1881.1stedn.rad.html#A.R.45 (15-3-06)
POETIC COMMENTARY
The poem that I’m going to analyze is “‘The Card-Dealer’ written in 1852 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). This poem is a commentary on the painting by Theodore von Holst (1810-1844) known by the titles ‘The Wish’ or ‘The Fortune Teller’ and painted in 1840. The three titles are appropriate to announce or suggest the contents of the poem and the painting.” (The Rossetti Archive)
‘The Card-Dealer’ deserves special attention. It represents the painting’s action. In the painting, there is a woman who has a pack of cards in her hands and some of them on a table. She is sitting in an armchair. It seems that she is playing with them and she is going to make an ace up. The poem is about a woman whose lust and ambition for money and jewellery, makes her dependent on men. She manipulates them to achieve her aims and plays with them as if it were a card game. Rossetti described her ‘strange and fatal lady’. The poem is composed of 9 stanzas of 6 lines each one and the rhyme is abcbdb. He added in the poem physical and psychological descriptions about her.
To begin with, the author of the poem stresses the woman’s face. She is like an immaculate virgin because she looks pale and because of her hair. But she conceals another personality. She has a penetrating and persuasive look which Rossetti compares with the ‘wine’. You can’t stop drinking it. Moreover, her look is dark and sinister and she hides something beside of it. Her eyes have seen all kind of tricks that she has used in her card-games. She is the only one which appears in the painting and it is as if she really feels alone.
There is one difference between the painting and the poem. The woman in the painting has dark hair and eye-brows and the other one has ‘golden hair’ (line 12). It can be a metaphor because the poet may be referring to the fact that she needs a man who covers her hair in gold (to be blonde), which represents purity, to hide who she really is, a dark-haired woman.
On the other hand, the poet describes the painting deserving his attention in ‘the gold’ and the diamonds that she has inside of a jewel case behind her. She collects them and has a lot but, her feeling of ambition seems to continue and she dreams of being still richer.
In the third stanza, there is a comparison between ‘the dancers’ (the men), and ‘the cards’. Both of them fall down at her feet or on the table as she pleases. Furthermore, the poet compares the cards with a ‘heart that beat’. The cards are clearly the men with which she plays.
In both cases, the poem and the painting, Rossetti and von Holst stressed the woman’s hands. Her fingers are sensitive and soft because they have to handle the cards carefully. In the poem, Rossetti mentioned that the woman has a ring for each finger. There is a metaphor in line 24 ‘The great eyes of her rings’. The diamonds shine like eyes which are like the woman’s eyes that represent luxury. As opposed to the poem, the woman in the painting doesn’t have any rings on her hands. It is a device which is used by the painter to focus the audience’s attention just on the cards. She doesn’t have any ‘gems upon her hand’ either as the poem agrees (line 26). But the gems could be the cards too.
In the fifth stanza, Rossetti addresses the reader or the new woman’s love ‘with thee’ and he explains to him the play she plays. He knows of the existence of other lovers and both, he and them, are a pack of puppets. The poet knows her secret. She played with him and the poet advices the other lovers that she is a greedy person. She knows perfectly well how to bring you closer to her land. If you go inside of this land, you will be greedy too. You will be capable of anything to win her love/attention. There, they ‘play together’, the woman, the poet and the lovers. She hypnotizes men. This image doesn’t appear in the painting, it has been deduced by the poet.
The lovers, who rest on their laurels, are exiled. If you don’t offer her everything she wants all the time, you don’t stand there: ‘Nor the sleeper awakeneth’ (line 34). It is ‘the shadow of death’ (line 36) because the lover cannot survive if he loses his money.
The seventh stanza is related to the painting. The poet describes the French playing cards that are composed by hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. Actually, hearts and diamonds are the cards that we could identify clearly in the image. They symbolize men and wealth. She runs on the heart of her lovers. The diamonds are necessary to enrich her. Clubs and spades don’t appear in the painting but the poet mentioned them too. They are black symbols which represent darkness. The second one metaphorically is used as an instrument ‘to dig a grave’, the grave of a lover. She plays with all men with the same cards.
In the 8th stanza, the poet addresses the ‘new lover’ again as if he wasn’t a rival. In the play, the poet was a winner or a loser as the cards wanted. ‘With thee’ your future is uncertain because she is still playing her cards. With the third ‘with him’ his fortune is still to come.
She knows that you see the card she is playing. And you know that when your card falls down, it would mean you will be out of sight. The poet stresses the words ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ with capital letters because the game she is playing involves them. You think that she is tremendously alive and that she loves you but, on the contrary, she doesn’t have love feelings.
Although there aren’t any men in the painting, the poet has done a good interpretation of it. It’s more interesting to think about that she is playing with men than that she is just playing cards alone. Then, you pay all your attention looking at her, her face, her hair, her hands, her dress, the cards, and the diamonds (necklaces, brooches, earrings...).The jewel case, the table and the armchair are of dark wood, very characteristic of wealthy houses. As well as this, if a man would appear, he would be beside her, at her back, in the shadow. There is one aspect that the poet doesn’t mention: the dress. Theodore von Holst has been careful with the woman’s outfit. She wears a dress which bright her chest. He has used a light colour to bring it out. She wears a long-sleeved dress. Both sleeves are full of yellow, white and maroon colours and details like precious stones.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
The Victorian Web: An Overview ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti’, George P. Landow (January 2000)
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dgr/bioov (15-3-06)
The Rossetti Archive ‘The Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription’, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ellis&White (1881)
http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/1-1881.1stedn.rad.html#A.R.45