Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-04-21
A PAINTERS POETRY.

Il was said once by writer anxious to
make out case against the pre- Raphaelite
school of modern poetry, that one OF the
chief characteristics of Rossetti's verse was
its sensuality, and certain quotations were
given to prove this. Time has efectuaily
disposed of that charge, and the misreprc-
sentations on which it was founded have
been adequately confuted ; but it has hardly
been sufficiently noticed, that the real
ground of the accusation is due to the fact
of the poet painter being unable to dissev.
er his pictorial from his poetic faculty. He
habitually thought IF such an expression
is allowablel in terms of painting. He
could not discover his most purely intellect
nal ideas from color and form, and it is the
intrusion Of these physical facts into his po-
etry In places where they are unexpected
and unnecessary that gives to hasty read
era and superficial critics such wrong i'm
preston. And in the same way as he
charges poem with more color and form
than it can well bear with reference to it's
special subject, SO does he charge his pict-
ure with weight of idea which their form
and color scarcely realize, and in both he
calls upon the spectator to be at once the
witness and the interpreter of his work.
From this there results in his poetry the
following effect that he is at his finest
when he has to tell some plain story, or ex-
emplify some comparatively simple thought,
the insertion into which of physical fac's
will highten the meaning rather than jar
upon it or in verses that treat intellectual
ideas from a purely sensuous basis, such,
for instance as in those sounets which are
concerned with the passion of love. When,
however he seeks to treat either purely
intellectual or apurely spiritual subject he
fails almost inevitably, and that apparently
in painting as well as in poetry. Like An.
t9us, if he is held off the earth too long,
his strength fails him. 1t is this painter
like quality which makes his verse so puz-
cling, for in ideas it is almost without ex-
ception of singularly pure and intellect
ual character. Turn from his verse to his
painting, and the same curious contradic.
tion is forced upon our attention. We find
continually in his pictures, where the paint.
er's individuality is most manifest, that the
reproduction of the sensuous part of his
subject is, SO to speak, interfered with by
the strange half.re6ning, half.abstract
quality of his intellect. This is especially
evident in its treatment of the form of the
human body, in which he has two meth
DDS, both adapted to the same end, or
rather, perhaps, both unconsciously tending
to the same end. One is to leave out as
much as possible all detailed drawing, to
snffuse the whole body in mist of color,
in which no modelling of flesh or structure
of bone is clearly visible. The other meth.
cd is to accentuate those portions of the
body or the features which best help to |
express emotion, and so to use and arrange
them as to produce definite emotional |
idea. The long necks in which so many of |
his female figures rejoice, the slender hands
with fingers turning round one another, the
heavy curved lips, and all the other physi-
cal peculiarities to be traced in his works,
are all due to the passionately sensuous, but |
equally passionately intellectual, nature of |
Rossetti they are the record of man
whose sense of beauty was always being
disturbed by his sense of feeling. -[Con.
temporary Review.