The Woodspurge by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I've been feeling nostalgic about my Form Six lessons and school. Honestly speaking, I kinda miss Katok. I miss the lessons (well... some lessons) and rushing for my next class or chilling out in the library (sort of). One of my favourite lessons was AS Literature. It's absolutely my ultimate favourite subject. I kinda regret not taking Literature and instead took the AS one. However, at the same time, if I took Literature, I would not have encountered one of the nicest teachers I ever had (I don't even remember her being angry O_O!) and get to know some nice people. During the period of studying poetry, each person was assigned to two (I think there's a few that got three) poems and we had to research and eventually presented it as well as printing the notes to everyone. I got "The Woodspurge" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Today I'm gonna post my Woodspurge project. =D

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The Woodspurge

The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walk'd on at the wind's will,--
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was,--
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flower'd, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,--
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

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The Woodspurge by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Biography

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He was born in London to parents of Italian descent, the scholar Gabriel Rossetti and Frances Polidori. Originally named as Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, he changed the order of his name to stress his kinship with the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. He was the brother of the poet Christina Rossetti, the critic William Michael Rossetti and the author Maria Francesca Rossetti.

He aspired to be a poet and attended King’s College School. However, he also wished to be a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass’s Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845 and later enrolled at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, however, he studied there briefly. After leaving the Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in September 1848 by Rossetti along with John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. They were soon joined by William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner. The Brotherhood goal was to return to simplicity, to a direct presentation of nature and to faithfulness and accuracy in detail. The name was derived from the Italian Renaissance painter, Raphael, who was a symbol for them of a departure from the simplicity of presentation and the use of bright colours, which produced a direct emotional effect in pre-Renaissance paintings. The ideas of this group were applied to poetry as well as to painting: simplicity of syntax and imagery with themes that concentrated on creating emotional effect.

“The Blessed Damozel” was first published in the periodical called The Germ and became one of Rossetti’s most well known poems. It is about a story of how two lovers are separated by the death of the Damozel and how she wishes to enter a paradise, but only if she can do so in the company of her beloved.

In 1850, Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, who became a model for many of his paintings and sketches. After an engagement lasting nearly ten years, they were married in 1860. Elizabeth became pregnant in 1861 but the pregnancy ended in a stillborn daughter. In February 10, 1862, she died from a self-administered overdose of laudanun. Overcome with grief and increasingly depressed, Rossetti enclosed a journal containing the only copies he had of his many poems in his wife’s coffin, a dramatic gesture which he later regretted.

Although poetry was simply a relaxation from painting early in Rossetti’s career, writing poetry became more important to him in his later life. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translation of Italian poetry.

In the late 1860’s, Rossetti began to suffer from headaches and failing eyesight. He became addicted to the drug chloral, which he used to cure his insomnia. Before publishing his newer poems, he became obsessed with retrieving the poems he had buried in his wife’s coffin. As a result, he exhumed his poems from his wife’s grave and published the old poems with his newer ones in 1870 in the volume Poems by D. G. Rossetti. However, the poems were not well-received by critics. In 1881, he published a second volume of poems, Ballads and Sonnets.

Towards the end of his life, Rossetti sank into a morbid state, clouded by ill health from his drug addiction to chloral and increasing mental instability, possibly worsened by his reaction to the critical attack on his poetry from the manuscript poems he had buried with his wife. In a vain attempt to recover his health, he died at the country house of a friend in the seaside town of Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, on Easter Sunday in 1882.

Analysis

“The Woodspurge” is a sixteen-line poem divided into four-line stanzas that describe a grief-stricken narrator in an outdoor setting. In his depressed state, the narrator emotionally observes the details of the woodspurge, a species of weed that has a three-part blossom.

The poem’s first stanza presents a countryside and begins to suggest the narrators’s state of mind. The narrator is not walking toward a specific destination; he moves in the direction the wind is blowing and once the wind ceases, he stops and sits in the grass. The fact that his walking and stopping are guided merely by the wind indicates aimlessness and passivity

The narrator’s posture in the second stanza indicates that he feels exceedingly depressed. Sitting on the grass he is hunched over with his head between his knees. This shows that he is insecure. His depression is so severe that he cannot even groan aloud or speak a word of grief. His head is cast down, as is his soul – so much that his hair is touching the grass. He remains in this position for an unknown length of time but long enough that he “heard the day pass”.

In the third stanza, “My eyes, wide open, had the run” let the readers know about the sudden changes in his attitude. He finally accepts what had happened and knows that he has to move on. From his seated position, he says there are “ten weeds” that his eyes can “fix upon”. This reflect that he sees his problem and becomes aware of it. He realises that the “weeds” (his problem) are in his way and the hardiness of the “weeds” tells that the problem that he faced are hard to be rid of. Out of that group, a flowering woodspurge captures his complete attention and he is dramatically impressed by the detail that it flowers as “three cups in one”.

The narrator attributes his depressed state to “perfect grief” in the final stanza. He then comments that grief may not function to bring wisdom and may not even be remembered. He implies that he himself learned nothing from his grief that day and can no longer remember its cause. However, “One thing then learnt remains to me”: He had been visually overwhelmed by the shape of the woodspurge and consequently, its image and the fact that “The woodspurge has a cup of three” have been vividly burned into his memory forever.

Themes and Meanings

Although the cause of the narrator’s sorrow is never specified, the poem was written in the spring of 1856 when Rossetti was in an anguished state. He was experiencing intense strife with Elizabeth Siddal over the issue of her desire for marriage. Rossetti was also tormented at that time about relationships with other women and what he perceived as lost of artistic opportunities. However, nothing in the poem points to these specific issues. By leaving the cause of the narrator’s depression unspecified, Rossetti gives universal expression to the psychological phenomenon of acute mental awareness and heightened sensation simultaneously with mental and emotional distress.

Although “The Woodspurge” has a plant’s name as its title, the poem does not have nature, or even the woodspurge itself, as its subject. Nature does play an indirect role in the poem, but it is not the focus here or in other works by Rossetti. Both in his painting and poetry, the function of nature is to act as a background for the presentation of human action and emotion. The depiction of details from nature is not meant to draw attention to nature itself but to mirror an inner experience.

In conclusion, “The Woodspurge” is about the narrator’s grief and that an insignificant detail or image can remain vivid after emotional pain is forgotten. It concentrates on creating emotional effect, accuracy of detail and the use of nature as a framework for the expression of the mental and emotional state of the narrator.