“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Christina Rossetti - exploring your favourite quotations

Choose your favourite phrase or line (up to two lines maximum) in the set poems by Rossetti and explain why it is your favourite.  Explore the significance of this quotation and the effects it creates.  Due by Monday, February 8th.

27 comments:

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  2. One of my favorite quotations comes from “Jessie Cameron”:
    “But Jessie she comes home no more, / No more again.” l.71-72
    I like this quotation because it conveys, in few words, a very stirring emotion. Firstly, we have this assonance in [o] which creates a lamenting and sorrowful tone. The repetition of “no more” emphasizes the sense of danger and inevitability already evoked in the poem. We thus understand that Jessie can’t escape her fate. Moreover, the tragic intensity of the scene is reinforced by Rossetti’s use of the short line. Indeed, a short line concludes each stanza. It could hint at the tragic ending of the poem. By breaking the rhythm of the stanza, “No more again” can foreshadow the rupture in Jessie’s life.
    This quotation shows that any sound, word, structure or imagery is of vital importance to understand the meanings of Christina Rossetti’s poetry.

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  3. One of my favourite quotations is from "Paradise" l.33-34 :
    "I saw the gate called Beautiful;
    And looked, but scarce could look within;"
    I really like this quotation because it shows the human's limits eventhough the speaker did get a glimpse of what lies beyond those limits. Indeed, the gate here called Beautiful represents the human limits and the fact that the speaker tries to see what lies beyond reveals her curiosity: she wants to know what's there. Furthermore, through the appeal to sight the reader can recreate what the speaker sees.
    To conclude, thanks to this quotation the reader is possible to see what the speaker observes through her curiosity and the sensory language.

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  4. "A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
    A fool to snap mu lily"

    This quotation from "A daughter of Eve" is propably my favourite one from Christina Rossetti's poems. For me, in poetry, the form is as important as the meaning and one would be nothing without the other : with these two lines I am completely satisfied. On a linguistic level we have the anaphora "A fool", the parallelism of the two lines and the iambic pentameter : all give rythm and make this passage easy and pleasant to read. And on a symbolical level the two flowers convey the main idea beautifully. First the rose, symbol for beauty, love but also pride, is "pluck too soon" that is removed before it was fully prepared and the same goes for the symbol of purity and innocence, the lily.
    I think that it prettily illustrates this story of a fallen woman, everything she lost and the self-reproach ensuing.

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  5. In the fourteen poems that we studied, one of my favourite quotations comes from "Love from the North":

    "Till now I've neither heart nor power
    Nor will nor wish to say him nay."

    I love these two lines because according to me they perfectly represent the ambiguity in Christina Rossetti's poetry. On the one hand, we can interpret it as a will of the speaker to stay because she says she doesn't have the "heart" to say him nay but on the other hand, she explains that she doesn't have the "power". The tone can be interpreted either as loving or fearful. The speaker expresses different ideas and thus, the reader is lost and confused. Furthermore, it is written in iambic tetrameter : the rhythm is heavy and it creates a serious atmosphere. Is the speaker free or imprisonned ?
    To sum up, I've chosen this quotation because it is characteristic of her style which intrigues me.

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  6. « Like two wands of ivory
    Tipped with gold for awful kings. » l 190,191

    This quotation is from Goblin Market, after Laura has tasted the goblins’ fruits, when the two sisters enjoy the shelter and warmth of their home that is described as their « nest ». This probably one of my favorite imagery in Rossetti’s poems, as it conjures up many associations for me. First, the word « ivory » gives a both visual and tactile quality to the simile, as one can really picture typically Pre-Raphaelite young women, with smooth and almost translucent skin. As often in her poetry, those two lines also juxtaposes conflicting ides : while we have the impression of something very dainty and luxurious with the expression « tipped » and rich materials such as « gold », the allusion to « awful kings » is quite surprising and adds a touch of weirdness and cruelty. This could illustrate the struggle between antagonist notions (light and darkness ; sin and redemption..) that prevails throughout the poem. Finally, I really liked the image of the elephant’s tusks that CR has chosen to depict the sisters. Laura and Lizzie could represent two sides of human nature, like passion and reason, hence the tusks symmetrically opposed yet somehow united are particularly well-suited : succumbing to or repressing dark impulses being two natural aspirations that co-exist in every one of us.

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  8. "I'd rather answer 'No' to fifty Johns
    Than answer 'Yes' to you. "

    I choose this quote from "No Thank You John", because I like the image of the women it conveys, we know that when Christina Rosseti was writing women were powerless and here she is the one in control. This is emphasised by the hyperbole "fifty" that shows her commitment to her decision. We can also almost hear the ironical may be bitter too tone. The rythme makes me think of a song, the end of a couplet as it is the end of any possible chance for John. This quote is also ambiguous, why is she so inclined to say him No ?
    I think that overall I choose this quote because I was feeling some sympathie for this women who stood against this man and also because we can find some trace of the ambiguous Rossetti's style.

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  9. My favorite quote of Christina Rossetti's poetry can be found in her poem Jessie Cameron, on lines 53-54. The speaker states, commenting on Jessie's suitor, that "Some say his grandam was a witch, / A black witch from beyond the Nile". This quote is, to me, totally representative of this poem which is based on mystery and uncertainty as black magic is here one more possible explanation of the suspicious disappearance of the two characters. Perhaps he put a spell on her or harmed her with some powers of his, we might think. There are so many clues like this one in the poem, all tending towards different intepretations, that the reader might be confused and give importance to such an information as this one because it is thoroughly developed in a whole stanza, even if it seems absolutely irrational. This can thus highlight the importance of gossips in the poem and show how they can bias our perception of the events. This is done through the anaphora "Some say" which shows how things are repeated to make us believe them and distorted to create rumors. Moreover, by making his "grandam" a witch who lived "beyond the Nile", Christina Rossetti plays around boundaries and tresholds to create a sense of relative distance from these secrets, like she does for the rest of the possible explanations of their death. This furthermore justifies his "gipsy blood" as in the 19th century, gispies were still believed to come from Egypt. While doing so, she deepens the mystery around the death of the characters as she associates an eerie atmosphere to the suitor, always leaving the reader free to interpret the poem as he like, which is a strengh of her poetry, the unknown being pretty recurrent theme of it.

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  10. My favorite quote :
    "Better by far you should forget and smile
    Than that you should remember and be sad"

    I chose this quotation from the sonnet "Remember" because it means a lot for me and because I like the fact that it shoes how strong the speaker his and how much she cares about her addressee's happiness. I also highlights the opposition between remembrance and forgetfulness that we can find at the end of this sonnet which emphasizes the fact that ambiguity and strength are two typical themes of Rossetti's poetry. Even tough this poem is about death, these final lines bring a certain sense of hope and recovery that I find really interesting because it allows the reader to interpret those lines the way he wants. This idea of freedom and even emancipation is a recurrent idea in Rossetti's poetry which somehow reflects her state of mind.

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  11. One of my favorite quotes from Rossetti's set poems must be the last two lines from "Song", when the speaker declares that "Haply [she] may remember,/ And haply may forget". The peacefulness of these lines is what really moved me, I could feel the calm and serene tone of the speaker, showing that she/he is now free from any doubts or regrets, and is prepared to die. The antithesis between remember and forget, as well as the parallelism of the two verses create a sense of indifference, as if the speaker has decided to just accept his/her fate, and to stop being so confused and frustrated by the idea of death, and not knowing what will happen next. Moreover, the repetition of "haply" doesn't give any other choice to the speaker (and also the reader) but to feel joyful about what will occur, the speaker is now in peace with itself and feels liberated from any burden such as regrets or sorrow. The "And" might be disturbing, as we could be expecting a "or", to show the two different possibilities for the speaker; to remember or to forget. The choice of "And" conveys the idea that the speaker is not viewing these two as opposite ideas and that one will not be missing without the other, the speaker will accept one and the other the same way.
    However, the ambiguity that can be found in many of Rossetti's poems is also present in these two final verses. The reader could, on the contrary, think that the speaker is actually trying to convince itself by repeating "haply", and is still very nervous about the idea of passing away and not to know if it will remember, or forget.
    Therefore I really like this quote because of it's ambiguity and also an idea of chance and fate introduced that the speaker seems to be accepting while trying to find peace before passing away.

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  12. One of my favourite quotes from Christina Rossetti's selected poem is
    "I shall not see the shadows,
    I shall not feel the rain;"

    First of all it made a lot of sense for me to choose a quote from "Song" since it is my favourite poem of the book and I have grown a certain fondness of it.
    It was difficult to choose a particular quote from this poem but I ended up choosing this one because it represented what the whole poem meant to me.
    In my opinion this poem is a message that is very likely to be sent to the narrators loved ones ( represented by "my dearest" in the poem) asking for them not to moan when he/she eventually dies. But I have noticed a larger message in this poem, something to reflect on on, and that is that death is nothing to worry about. The only thing to worry about is the way in which you eventually go. Once you are gone, you know nothing, and nothing or nobody knows you, just "dreaming through the twilight". Therefore you just wish that people do not moan, haply they will remember , and haply may forget.

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  13. Since I do not exactly have a favourite quotation of all the Christina Rossetti poems we have studied, I picked one that has a strong visual connotation. Even though "In an Artist's Studio" is not my most preferred poem, I enjoyed when the speaker confesses about the artist "feed(ing) upon (the muse's) face by day and night, / And she with true kind eyes look(ing) back on him". Just like presented in class, I imagine the artist being a sort of vampire who, instead of blood, needs the muse's ideal beauty to live. Indeed, the verb "feeds" (l.9) means the muse is vital to him to stay healthy or alive because when one doesn't feed himself, he may become sick or even die. Moreover, the artist might overfeed himself with her since he feeds of the muse's face “day and night”: this suggests he is so obsessed with her formosity, he can not stop contenting himself with her beauty. Furthermore, the fact the muse “with true kind eyes looks back on him” may hint at she holding a superior position. Indeed, her gaze is so powerful, she enchants the artist with the kindness of her eyes. In addition, her superiority is enhanced by the artist's obsession with her, meaning she is the one in power and he is her idolater even though her superiority only exists because of him idealising her.

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  14. The quotation I choose is « Laura stretched her gleaming neck / Like a rush-imbedded swan ».
    I found this quotation is very important in the story as it depicts Laura but also foreshadows her actions. It symbolises to me the beautiful blend of gorgeous imageries and complex meaning present in Rossetti’s poetry. Indeed the comparison with the swan combined with the “gleaming” neck describe Laura’s purity. Moreover, the abundance of the goblin’s stalls is induced by the simile of the swan imbedded in rush. The word imbedded indeed makes us think that Laura is drowned in the luscious fruits as the swan is imbedded in rushes. Furthermore, we can expect the swan to be next to a stream (as the presence of rushes implied) and thus this introduces the fact that Laura is about to yield to the temptation as carried by the flow. This idea is reinforced by the first verse of this quotation where Laura stretches her neck, as to see better the fruits of the goblins, and thus to get nearer to them and this foreshadows her future action of tasting the fruits. Moreover as she is compared to an animal, like the goblins are, she is getting closer to them by this mammal association. Eventually, Rossetti plays with the ambiguity of the image of the swan. Indeed this animal when white is symbol of purity but black swans also exist and they are often associated with evil. As the color of the animal is not mentioned, this could foreshadow the future perversion of Laura by the evil fruits.

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  15. "No more to laugh, no more to sing, / I sit alone with sorrow." from A Daughter of Eve.

    This quote is one of my favorites (I have many more!) because it shows how one single choice could determine a woman's life at Christina Rossetti's time. It sums up a big part of the poem: the consequences on the narrator's life after losing her virginity too soon.
    The repetition of "no more" really speaks to me, as it emphasizes the fact that sorrow has replaces joy in the narrator's life and that nothing seems to distract her from her loner's destiny.
    These two lines really make us think about what it meant to be a woman in the Victorian Era. Not to be forgotten, gender roles were an important theme in Rossetti's poetry, and that's another reason of why I believe this quote is important.

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  16. I think my favourite quotation from Christina Rossetti's poems is one from "In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857":
    "Close the pistol to her brow -
    God forgive them this!"
    While following the metrical pattern of the rest of the poem, these two lines stand out to me for the palpable atmosphere they create. The word "close" is repeated for the third time in an anaphora on this line, and this repetition builds tension up to the lines of the quotation. But the third repetition of "close" is the one that releases this tension, and that creates a feeling of immediacy - you can almost feel the cold metal of the pistol on your own brow.
    The exclamation on the next line emphasises the helpless situation the two lovers are in, and the word "God" brings the crucial theme of religion into a poem where it is surprisingly absent, compared to most of Rossetti's poems.
    Finally, I think that the dash at the end of the first line of the quotation further emphasises these same feelings of immediacy and danger - but it also adds an aspect of its own. Placed at the end of a line, it symbolises something abrupt, possibly the horrible, ominous death that lingers in the atmosphere of the entire poem, awaiting the lovers in their immediate future.

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  17. I particularly like these two lines from Jessie Cameron:

    "She should have hastened to her home
    While yet the west was flushed with fire,"
    - lines 65 and 66

    I don't think this is really very important on a larger scale when talking about Christina Rossetti's poetry - after all, it doesn't relate to any themes, nor does it have any ambiguity to show for like so many of her other lines. However the way it is expressed so simply and so beautifully points to her remarkable diction, and the way she often uses poetry merely to 'show off' her dexterity with language, as well as her awareness of the power of creation that poetry gives her. The most striking image here stems from the expression 'flushed with fire'; both the terms 'flush' (an unusual and rather intriguing word) and 'fire' connote the warm, intense colours we associate with sunset, which the expression as a whole is qualifying (this is made even more vivid by the fact that the sound [ai] for me conjures up the precise colours of sunset, kind of orange and pink and gold at once, but I realise this might be going a bit far in terms of literary analysis as not everyone has that association - still that's probably why the phrase appeals to me). The word 'fire' also conveys a sense of urgency and danger, which is further expressed by the alliteration in [h]; this makes one feel almost breathless. The sounds also perfectly evoke the surroundings, the consonances in [sh], [f] and [w] describing the motion of the waves and the hissing of the 'sea-foam' mentioned in the following lines. All in all the poetic language here is rich and very well chosen and perfectly illustrates the content of the poem, which is in my opinion a recurrent feature of Rossetti's poetry and one of the reasons it is so enjoyable.

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  18. My favorite quotation from Christina Rossetti's poems that we studied would probably be from "In An Artist's Studio" :
    "Not as she is but as she fills his dream", which is the last line of the poem.
    I really like how this verse sounds ! I think it really summarizes the poem, and we understand how the speaker ses the muse. This woman is only a representation that the painter choses how he makes her look according to how he feels about her. I found it was a very interesting way of seeing an artist's work and we could see a bit or irony there, with the idea that the painter only paints for himself, to "fill his dream".

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  19. One of my favorite a quotations from the poems we studied is "White and golden Lizzie stood/ Like in a lily in a flood". I loved this imperfect rhyming pair of lines because of the imagery. Indeed a lily being a fragile and small flower versus a flood being an unstoppable, powerful, devastating and huge water catastrophe, the opposition between the two elements of this verse emphasize the danger Lizzie is facing but also how inescapable the situation she is in is. Also the symbolism of "white and golden" as purity, innocence or even preciousness brings pitty for Lizzie because the reader can't do anything to save her and it is unfair. As a whole, I found this quote interesting for the literary aspect but also the softness of how it sounds and how contrasting it is compared to the situation that is happening.

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  20. My favorite quotation is from Goblin Market, l.523/524 : "Is it death or is it life? Life out of death". These two lines are quite apart and don't fit in the girls' speech. We can wonder who is asking the question? Is it the narrator or is an intervention of the poet herself? Also, these lines are split between two stanzas and make a chasm. The answer is quite ambiguous and can have a lot of different interpretations. For example, we can understand that we get the best out of the worst. I liked this quotation for its various meanings and the fact that it draws the reader's attention and make him think about important themes: life and death.

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  21. One of my favourite quotation is from "Jessie Cameron" : "And [pride was] in her foot, which might have fled/ But would not fly" mainly because of its ambiguity. It could be interpreted in different ways, it could mean that her suitor is depriving her from her freedom or it could mean that she doesn't want to leave, either because of her pride or because she simply does not want to. In any case, with the word 'fled' it seems like she is trapped (by either the suitor or her feelings) and we know something dangerous will happen. I like that it is free of interpretation and how Rossetti manages to play with words thanks to her ambiguity and thus play with the reader, who has to read the lines many times. The ambiguity also allows her to convey the complexity of the situation, how hard it was for a woman to get rid of her suitor during the Victorian era.

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  22. I chose the quotation from Paradise: “I hope to see these things again, But not in dreams by night”.
    For me it expresses more than what the whole does, as a matter of fact, it represents the goal that we aim to achieve, something that we desire more than anything else. It is the supreme thing to attain, that we hope we will do, but not in dream. Actually, it could apply to every person who dreams about something in life that he/she wishes to get, and then he/she wakes up, and expects to see or get this in real life. It can be whatever we can imagine, abstract or concrete and that is what, according to me, is the most powerful quotation of Christina Rossetti's set poems.

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  23. One of my favourite quotation come from In the Roung Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857: "Young, strong, and so full of life: / The agony struck them dumb."
    I love this quotation because it really emphasises the tragic aspect of the poem. I like the effect caused by the use of to similar sounding words ("young" and "strong"), as it links them together and makes the second line even more striking. Overall, I love how those two lines sound, and I think that it really shows the tragedy of the couple's situation and thus summarises the main idea of the poem.

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  24. When thinking of the poems I have read written by Chistina Rossetti, there is one quote that really stands out to me.
    It is in Goblin Market when the fruits are being described for the first time; as "sweet to tongue and sound to eye".

    Firstly, the appeal to the sense holds a major role in the effectiveness of this quotation. Indeed, in such a short quotation we can notice the presence of three sences -taste, and sight- but also hearing with the word "sound". Furthermore, there is a play on the word "sound", at first sight it seems like it is part of the synesthesia but when hearing it I thought of the expression "safe and sound". This second interpretation coincides with the general meaning of the passage. Indeed, it conveys the idea that the vision is subjective, thus the fruits are sound to "eye" so it only seems sound which underlies that it actually isn't. This ambiguity and attention to detail in order to leave a part of mystery highlights even more this idea that appearances are deceptive.
    I also liked it for its rhythm and sound, indeed, the two parts of this quote have the same pattern with a long sound "sweet "sound" and then two shorter ones "to tongue" "to eye". The assonance in "s" gives an impression of comfort and delight to the reader which is being contradicted by the harsher sounds oft he shorter sounds with alterations in "t". All these characteristics are very present in Chrisitna Rossetti's poetry that's why I found this quote even more evocative and representative of her work.

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  25. The two lines that striked me when reading Goblin Market is

    "Lizzie with an open heart,
    Laura in an absent dream"

    I particularly loved this quote because it reflects the contrast between the two sisters, thanks to the parallelism used, and an unusual contrast. It seems like Rossetti is opposing Lizzie's kindheartedness and Laura's dreamy nature, which is not common, as dreams are often related to feelings, especially since both are associated with romanticism. The opposition between the two adjectives "open" and "absent" are also to me very interesting to understand the poem as a whole : she is not just the curious girl who is tempted by goblin men, she's also somewhat detached from reality, whereas Lizzie is "open" to the world aound her, making her more sensible. Lizzie is also very humane, despite the fact that she's open to what is around her, and remains so during the whole poem. Lizzie, with her open heart, is a steadfast character in the poem, bright with constant kindheartedness and courage, as opposed to Laura, who next to her unwaveringly bright sister seems to be a changeable force, feeling either too intensely (easily tempted by life's pleasures in the case of goblins offering their savory fruits) or not enough, being detached from reality.

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    Replies
    1. The two lines are* (and sorry for posting late)

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