On the Symbiotic Relationship between Pre-Raphaelite Poetry and Painting — A Case Study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris

Bao Zhongming,Jia Bingwei

(1.School of Foreign Languages　Beijing Institute of Technology,Beijing　100081;2.National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations,Paris　France　75013)



On the Symbiotic Relationship between Pre-Raphaelite Poetry and Painting — A Case Study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris

Bao Zhongming1,Jia Bingwei2

(1.School of Foreign LanguagesBeijing Institute of Technology,Beijing100081;2.National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations,ParisFrance75013)

The poetry and painting of such Pre-Raphaelite artists as Rossetti and Morris are intimately linked in terms of both the theoretic base and the techniques adopted in the process of creation,so much so that the interaction between the two could be labeled symbiotic.The paper aims to trace the origin of this kinship by adumbrating the relationship between poetry and painting from ancient Greece to the 19th century,illustrating the art aesthetic of John Ruskin (his defense for poetry and painting as sister arts and his philosophy of beauty in particular) as the foundation for the two target artists’ practice,and examining the diverse techniques employed in their artistic production.

poetry;painting;symbiosis;Pre-Raphaelite;Ruskin

The idea “symbiotic relationship” is derived from the concept of “symbiosis”.As “true symbiosis results when one entity progresses from total dependence to the status of a full partner”,〔1〕a true symbiosis between poetry and painting,so to speak,has been long established in Chinese classical poetry with either readers’ sensual and sentimental participation to present the pictorial verbally,or the compensative appearance of both arts on the same pieces of work.〔2〕In western art,although there is also a tradition of discussing poetry and painting in the same context,it was not until the Victorian period that these two forms of art were closely connected,to which point they could be truly called symbiosis.This new artistic trend counted largely on the Pre-Raphaelites’ innovative and contributive endeavor of working across the boundary between poetry and painting.Although the way the Pre-Raphaelite artists related poetry and painting has been a center of interest and abundant researches,they are mostly centered on this particular school:its artists,major subjects,social relevance,aesthetic methods and so forth.〔3〕Little attention has been paid to the relationship between poetry and painting inherited by the Pre-Raphaelite art from the tradition dating back to ancient Greece and Rome.This tentative study aims to investigate how poetry and painting are symbiotically related in the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris,put in the background of the western aesthetic view of the two forms of art.

Ⅰ.Poetry and painting as interrelated arts

The interrelated nature of poetry and painting has been present since the nascent stage of literature and art.The Pre-Raphaelites’ effort in preserving this link which propelled new styles in both arts is inherited from the long-established connection before and in the 19th century with the romantic period in between.

The intimacy between poetry and painting has been present in ancient Greek poets’ practice of writing poetry.As early as the 6th century BC,Simonides (556-468 BC),a Greek lyric poet,put forward a maxim that “painting is dumb poetry and poetry a speaking painting”,and Horace (65 BC - 8 BC),the leading Roman lyric poet,advanced his idea of “utpicturapoesis”,literally “as is painting so is poetry”.Both of them suggested the correlated nature of the two forms of art.Then,starting from Socrates,philosophers and critics began to explore the very essence of Art,and the relation between poetry and painting was changing with the different ways people perceived Art and with the diverse answers to such questions as “What is Art?” and “What is Art for?”

Socrates argued that the arts of painting,poetry,music,dancing,and sculpture are all imitations (Plato 2009:x.586-7;Lawsⅱ.667-8,ⅶ.814-16.).When explaining the nature of poetry,he used the powerful “mirror analogy” which was to influence western aesthetic theory for centuries.Abrams echoed the doctrine in his The Mirror and the Lamp:Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition by observing that “The recourse to a mirror in order to illuminate the nature of one or another art continued to be a favorite with aesthetic theories long after Plato.In Renaissance speculation the reference to a looking-glass is frequent and explicit”.〔4〕As late as the middle of the 18th century,the nature of the mirror was frequently adopted by important critics to illustrate the concept of imitation.For example,Leonardo Da Vinci believed that “the mind of the painter should be like a mirror which always takes the color of the thing that it reflects and which is filled by as many images as there are things placed before it….”〔5〕Lessing in his Laokoon,published in 1776,argued that “poetry,no less than painting,is imitation…,although poetry consists of a sequence of articulated sounds in time rather than of forms and colors fixed in space,and although,instead of being limited,like painting,to a static but pregnant moment,its special power is the reproduction of progressive action.”〔6〕

In the 18th century,the theory that art is to imitate nature was challenged by the Classic and Neo-Classic trends that perceived art as the imitation of not the gross and unselected reality itself,but the selected matters,qualities,or forms.So the mirror of art,instead of reflecting the “real nature”,is upgraded to reflect the “nature improved” or in the French phrase,la belle nature.〔7〕Joshua Reynolds,an influential English painter of the 18th century,proposed that painters should depict their subjects through idealization.〔8〕Dryden,applauded as “the father of the English criticism”,points out that “poetry,like painting,has an end,which is to please;that imitation of nature is the general means for attaining this end;and that rules serve to specify the means for accomplishing this end in detail.”〔9〕Thus,to have the expected effect of pleasing,the imitation of nature should not be unselective,but should present the “best Nature”,a display of intensified beauty.

In Lyrical Ballads,the acknowledged beginning of the English Romantic period,Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” If the previous aesthetic theories dealt with the relation between art and nature (art is to imitate nature) or the beholder (art should exhibit the improved nature to serve an end or aim),both of which leave the artist himself to triviality,the Romantic theory unprecedentedly put the artist at the center of the critique of art.As Abrams most aptly summarizes,poetry is perceived as “the overflow,utterance,or projection of the thought and feelings of the poet;or else…poetry is defined in terms of the imaginative process which modifies and synthesizes the images,thoughts,and feelings of the poet.”〔10〕As a result,painting as in alliance with poetry was superseded by music,because music is a form of art preserving the least imitation,and it is the direct utterance of the soul.

Meanwhile,the style of painting became increasingly parted from nature,as works of the predominant academic art followed a set of rituals,which were idealized and far from real.In time,John Ruskin,praised as “the most eloquent and influential interpreter of the visual arts that British has ever produced”〔11〕came to the rescue of William Turner (1775-1851) who was derided for depicting the beauty of nature through his own observation.The product of Ruskin’s defense,Modern Painters,exerted great influence on the Victorian audience,and inspired the Pre-Raphaelite movement,offering the Pre-Raphaelites much public support against adversity.

Ⅱ.The theoretical establishment of the symbiosis between poetry and painting

Ruskin’s exhaustive elaboration of aesthetic theories in Modern Painters refreshes the contemporary perception of art.The paper can afford to focus only on those most relevant to the shaping of symbiosis in the practice of Rossetti and Morris,namely,his alliance of poetry and painting as sister arts based on the oneness of their essence as well as his philosophy of beauty.

By exploring the underlying connection between different forms of art,Ruskin proves that painting and poetry,as expressive languages,share the same characteristics and aims in order to achieve greatness.He also states that poetry and paintings should be able to arouse people’s sympathetic imagination,enabling them to project themselves in the emotional state of another person.〔12〕

To amend the over subjective flaw in the romantic flow,Ruskin devised his philosophy of beauty,which consists of two parts:the Typical Beauty and the Vital Beauty.Simply put and in light of Landow’s interpretation,the former embodies Ruskin’s belief in Infinity and refers to forms of expressing the nature of God,which are categorized into unity,variety,repose,symmetry and purity.Of these features,unity and variety are most closely related to the works of Rossetti and Morris in that without unity objects would be like scattered sand devoid of rule or spirit and even can hardly exist,while without variety the unity loses its nuance and attraction.In other words,unity and variety form an organic whole which accounts for the great beauty.〔13〕

Vital Beauty,in contrast,involves the expression of the happiness and energy of life.It is concerned with emotions,with internal reactions,and with notions of psychology and morality on which romantic poetic theory depends.〔14〕In significant association with the pleasure that we feel unselfishly at the sight of the vitality of all living things that accounts for the source of beauty is the faculty of sympathy,which,in Ruskin’s own words,gives rise to “all these higher sensations of beauty in the plant.”〔15〕No wonder Landow concludes that “the notion of disinterested pleasure is at the center of Ruskin’s aesthetic theory.”〔16〕

Ruskin’s hearty laud for nature and systematic analysis on the forms of its beauty largely encouraged the Pre-Raphaelite artists’ meticulous observation of nature,leading to their precise depiction of all details ranging from the grain of the grass to the folds of the cloth.Equally important is the concept of vital Beauty and the related conception of sympathy,which can be seen substantially in Rossetti’s double commitment to poetry and painting.

Ⅲ.Rossetti’s and Morris’ practice on the symbiotic relationship

As two major exponents of Pre-Raphaelite ideal and practitioner of the sister arts,thanks to their innovative strategy of thinking across the boundary,Rossetti and Morris revolted against the academic convention,devoted themselves to exceptionally truthful and detailed depiction of nature,and helped shape the vigorous and avant-garde Aesthetic Movement〔17〕as well as promoting modern and contemporary poetic development,that of American poetry in the 20th century in particular.〔18〕

Rossetti began his attempt in combining poetry and painting by composing some sonnets on pictures.This attempt was later matured and intensified into a systematic scheme of creation of the “picture-sonnet”,an artistic form composed of the paired works of poetry and painting,and reached its acme in his long poem “The House of Life”.Morris’s similar attempt is mainly embodied in his first published poems Defense of Guenevere.Greatly influenced by Rossetti,Morris’s poems display a decorative nature and a main concern of the “utilization of pictures,conceived literally and as imaginary”.〔19〕The value of the two artists’ poems resides mainly in the aesthetic experience they provide to the reader.Notably,the focus on the aesthetic experience in both poetry and painting motivated the alliance and interaction between the two forms of art,which echoes Ruskin’s contention of considering both poetry and painting as expressive language adopting the instrument of imagination.Through imagination,the emotional intensity of their work is heightened,which is another distinctive feature of their experimentation.A high level of consistency is found between their work and Ruskin’s theory of beauty,which is like one ideology actualized in two different situations (in poetry and in painting).Owing to limited spacing,the analysis here is content with the pattern,which is more concerned about the form,and the act of sympathy,which prioritizes the way of expression.

The poetry and painting of Rossetti and Morris echo Ruskin’s theory of Typical Beauty in that they display the harmonious combination of unity and variety in their form through pattern.The pattern,in poetry,takes the form of repeated stanzas,rhyme and refrains while in painting the highly planar space,the juxtaposition of color and the arrangement of “things”.Take Tune of the Seven Towers,one of Morris’s poems and Rossetti’s paintings which share a same title for a case study:

No one goes there now:

For what is left to fetch away

From the desolate battlements all arrow,

And the lead roof heavy and grey?

Therefore,said fair Yoland of the flowers,

This is the tune of Seven Towers.

No one walks there now;

Except in the white moonlight

The white ghosts walk in a row;

If one could see it,an awful sight,

Listen! Said fair Yoland of the flowers,

This is the tune of Seven Towers…〔20〕

The repeated refrains (the italics) with slight variety (“listen” and “therefore”) build up the frame of the whole poem,which intertwine the lines into a unity.As “the tune of Seven Towers” in the refrain refers to the title of the poem,it is more like an aside telling the audience about the story.The monologue in the body and the repeated refrain compose the pattern of the poem,but the former is a vivid account of a desolate battlement with a sensitive prayer while the latter is an aloof statement isolated from the content of the monologue.This abrupt contrast between the two parts of one poem creates a sense of estrangement and at the same time reinforces its intensity,since the refrains in each stanza cut the entire poem into fragments of images and utterances,forcing the audience to picture or feel the scenes or emotions depicted,and the repetition of the refrain functions to unite the fragments together.

The watercolor by Rossetti which inspired the poem shares with it the same title,and is also highly patterned.Helsinger in her Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts made an insightful analysis of the pattern in this painting:

Patterned clothing,hangings,pennants,and curiously designed furniture fill every available inch of the shallow space depicted.There is no orienting horizon,indeed no unfilled opening to an exterior world.There is no linear indication of spatial recession….There are no bold contrasts of light and shadow or areas of greater and lesser sharpness of detail,such as realistic painting conventionally deploys to enable us to distinguish figure from ground.The picture appears itself as a highly patterned piece of color,Rossetti’s version of the “tune” that so absorbs the attention of his figures.〔21〕

Like the poem,which is more like a combination of fragmented utterance or scenes instead of an affluent story with an entire set of plot,the painting is also a unity of juxtaposing figures or pieces of color.While in the poem,the major monologue is mixed with the aside,the figure and the ground are also blended together in the painting.Both the poem and the painting are rendered into a large scheme or pattern.This technique can be seen in most of Rossetti’s illustrations.〔22〕

As introduced in the previous section,sympathy,the observer’s faculty to enter for an instant into another person’s feelings and make that person’s pleasure his own,is key to Ruskin’s theory of Vital Beauty.Rossetti’s poems on paintings,largely expanding the readers’ sensory experience,extensively elicit this kind of faculty through their translation from paintings.

Rossetti’s poetry,particularly when stimulated directly by pictures,follows and recreates for a reader or beholder the interplay of sensory perception with imagination that potentially heightens any kind of experience…,it shares common ground with romantic efforts to revitalize lyric poetry by promoting a more complex view of mental process,where imagination,working on the material of sensory experience…can reach further than or different from Enlightenment reason.〔23〕

Rossetti embarked his innovation on poetry with some poems inspired by Renaissance paintings.In the poems translated from these paintings,he adopts a method of establishing the “inner standing point”,the figure through which the sensory consciousness is expressed to allow a fuller immersion of the reader or spectator into the situation presented in the poem or painting.〔24〕The poem “For an Allegorical Dance of Women,by Antrea Mantegna” is a telling instance.

SCARCELY,I think;yet it indeed may be

The meaning reached him,when this music rang

Clear through his frame,a sweet possessive pang,

And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.

But I believe that,leaning tow’rds them,he

Just felt their hair carried across his face

As each girl passed him;nor gave ear to trace

How many feet;nor bent assuredly

His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought

To know the dancers.It is bitter glad

Even unto tears.Its meaning filleth it,

A secret of the wells of Life:to wit:—

The heart’s each pulse shall keep the sense it had

With all,though the mind’s labour run to nought.(32)

This poem is inspired by Mantegna’s painting Parnassus,Mars and Venus (1497).

Here,the “inner standing point” is the painter or poet who stares at this painting and is gradually absorbed in the situation depicted with all his faculties open,where he can hear the music,see the rock and the ridged sea,and even feel the girls’ hair carried across his face.His sympathetic imagination is thus fully awakened to receive all the messages to be expressed by the painting,and more:by imaginatively putting himself in the pictured scene,a kind of deep emotion is aroused:he feels “bitter glad” and “a secret of the wells of life”.This poem can be seen as a compensation for the painting,since it leads the spectator of the painting to animate all the sounds and feelings that cannot be presented by the canvas and brush,but can be fully sensed through imagination.So the poem intensifies the effect of the painting,making it more appealing and vivid,and the poem,as I see it,cannot be separated from the painting as it is vague and may lose its power when interpreted alone.〔25〕

To sum up,the value of Rossetti’s and Morris’s poetry and painting resides mostly in their aesthetic qualities,which are acquired through the interaction between the two arts,when the emotional intensity of the poems is largely elevated and the expressive nature of the painting thoroughly realized.Despite their origin in the Romantic poetry,the poems of Rossetti and Morris are innovative,exotic and aesthetically purified,echoing Ruskin’s theory of beauty.We can find the same techniques adopted in both their poetry and painting,either in the form (the pattern) or in the method of expression (the act of sympathy),which speaks volumes for the symbiotic relationship established by the two artists between the twin forms of art.

〔1〕Hancock,P.A.Mind,Machine and Morality toward a philosophy of human-technology symbiosis,Burlington:Ashgate Publishing Company,2009,p.57.

〔2〕吴东平：《中国画及其题诗浅论》，《江汉论坛》1997年第12期。

〔3〕See,for example,C.Cruise,Pre-Raphaelite drawing (London:Thames & Hudson Ltd.,2011);K.R.Fry,“The Victorian Decorative Impulse in the poetry of William Morris,”Dissertation,University of Missouri,1966;M.E.Greene,“A Study of D.G.Rossetti’s Poetry and Aesthetic,” Dissertation,Indiana University,1969;E.K.Helsinger,Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts — Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris (New Haven:Yale University Press,2008).

〔4〕〔6〕 〔7〕〔9〕〔10〕Abrams,M.H.，The Mirror and the Lamp:Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition,London;Oxford;New York:Oxford University Press,1953,pp.32,13,35,17,55.

〔5〕McCurdy,E.(ed.),Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notebooks,London:Empire State Book Company,1923,p.163.

〔8〕Wark,R.R.(ed.),Discourses on Art,Calif.:San Marino,1959,p.42.

〔11〕〔12〕〔15〕Barrie,D.(ed.),Modern Painters by John Ruskin,New York:Alfred A.Knopf,Inc.,1987,xv,pp.6,223.

〔13〕〔14〕〔16〕Landow,G.,The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin,Princeton:Princeton University Press,1971,p.90,148-49,162.

〔17〕Staley,A.,The New Painting of the 1860s-between the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetic Movement,New Haven;London:Yale University Press,2011,p.340.

〔18〕〔21〕〔23〕 〔24〕Helsinger,E.K.Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite Arts — Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris,New Haven:Yale University Press,2008,pp.2,8-9,24,32.

〔19〕Fry,K.,The Victorian Decorative Impulse in the poetry of William Morris,University of Missouri,1966.

〔20〕Morris,W.,The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems,London:Bell and Daldy,1858,119-201.For limited spacing,the quote includes only 2 stanzas of the total 7.

〔22〕The patterned structure is widely used in Morris’s poems like “The Blue Closet”,where refrains serve as the frame and color words (purple,green,gold,blue and grey) call up the pictorial imagination.

〔25〕More examples could be found in Rossetti’s series of portrait-like paintings and the accompanying poems.For the painting Lady Lilith,for instance,he composed a sonnet “Body’s Beauty”.The poem and painting form an organic whole to provide pure aesthetic experience thanks in part to the technique of “the act of sympathy”.

About the authors：Bao Zhongming,doctor of literature,associate professor at School of Foreign Languages,Beijing Institute of Technology;Jia Bingwei,MA candidate at National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations,Paris Diderot University,France.