Rossetti English
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1828～1882. An English poet, painter. William Michael Rossetti, a critic, and Christina Rossetti, a poet, are his younger brother and sister. He is one of the main members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His famous poetic works are The House of Life and others. His representative works of paintings are Beata Beatrix and others.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was often criticized: for example, Max Nordau in Degeneration wrote on Rossetti’s The Blessed Damozel: "Rossetti's The Blessed Damozelis not based upon the scientific knowledge of his time, but upon a most of undeveloped germs of ideas in constant mutual strife." (Degeneration, P.91.)
Vernon Lee and Rossetti had a lot of similarities: they both devoted themselves to Dante’s Vita Nuova. However, Lee didn’t like Rossetti and other artists of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood. Lee called them 'fleshly school of poetry' and her remarks on them were generally negative. Walter Hamlin of Lee’s novel Miss Brown is said to have been modelled after Rossetti.
In ‘The Child in the Vatican’ contained in Belcaro, Lee wrote on Rossetti’s poem 'the Blessed Damozel' and the painting with the same tile: "if Mr. Rossetti invent a story about a Blessed Damozel, and then paint a picture representing her looking down from heaven, the story, the idea of the Blessed Damozel is given by Mr. Rossetti, the painter, that is the man who conceives the visible appearance of actions; the two artists happen to be united in one person, but they are two distinct artists nevertheless, and the painter is not the artist who conceives the idea of the action, but the one who conceives the form of the action. Thus, the artist is the man who conceives the form."
When Rossetti’s wife Elizabeth died, Rossetti buried the manuscripts of his poems with her body. Later, he exhumed them, her body kept the beauty of her lifetime. This episode, whether it is true or fictitious, might give Vernon Lee a hint to write ‘A Wedding Chest.’ In this short story, Desiderio, a protagonist, buries her fiancée and later exhumes it.
Rossetti’s short story ‘The Orchard Pit’ is a typical femme fatale story. ‘Hand and Soul’ has the artist protagonist. Rossetti’s stories are somewhat similar to Lee’s stories.
