Christina Rossetti

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Christina Rossetti; portrayed by her brother

Christina Georgina Rossetti (born December 5, 1830 in London , † December 29, 1894 ibid) was a British poet in the Victorian era .

Life

Family and childhood

Christina Rossetti's father was the Italian poet and scholar Gabriele Rossetti , who had to flee Naples and found political asylum in England . Her mother Frances Polidori was the daughter of the writer Gaetano Polidori and a sister of the writer John Polidori . Christina was homeschooled with her three siblings Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), William Michael Rossetti (1829-1919) and Maria Francesca Rossetti (1827-1876). Like all of the siblings, she spoke perfect Italian.

Christina was often ailing in her youth and wrote poetry at an early age. A first volume of poetry was printed by her grandfather Gaetano Polidori in 1847 in his own print shop.

The mother Frances and her two daughters, initially devout members of the evangelical branch of the Church of England , turned in the 1840s to the Oxford movement , the "Tractarians", who campaigned for a church of the forefathers by distributing tracts. Christina Rossetti was consecrated at Christ Church in 1845.

Due to illness and poor eyesight, the father had to give up his position at King's College in 1845. The mother tried to absorb the financial difficulties with a day school in Arlington Street, where they supported the daughters. Another school in Frome, Somerset , had to be abandoned after a year.

Engagements, religious orientation, travel

Christina Rossetti fell in love in 1848 with the painter James Collinson , who was one of her brothers' pre-Raphaelite friends. He had left the Anglican Church and joined the Roman Catholic Church. Collison proposed marriage to Christina and returned to the Anglican Church for her sake. When Collison rejoined the Catholic Church in 1850, Christina broke off the engagement. This disappointment shook her badly.

Under the pseudonym Ellen Alleyne, she published seven poems in 1850 in The Germ , the magazine of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood . The father Gabriele died on April 26, 1854.

Her beliefs played a very crucial role in her life and influenced all of her decisions. So she gave z. B. stopped playing chess because she was too happy to win. She pasted over anti-religious passages from Algernon Swinburne's poem Atalanta in Calydon , opposed nudity in paintings and refused to see Parsifal because it celebrated pagan mythology.

The four Rossetti siblings in 1864

In 1861 she traveled to Paris and Normandy with her mother and brother William . In 1862 Christina fell in love with Charles Bagot Cayley from St. Petersburg , who had studied with her father. Cayley wanted to marry her. The obstacle was the financial, with her brother William Michael having offered a dowry, but most of all Cayley was agnostic and could not meet her expectations on matters of faith. The two remained on friendly terms.

A second trip to the continent, again with mother and brother William, took her in 1865 over the Gotthard Pass to Verona (Italy) and back over the Splügen Pass to Schaffhausen .

Illness, strokes of fate

In the 1870s, Christina Rossetti wrote for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge . When her brother William married in 1874, she moved with her mother and her two sisters to No. 30, Tarrington Square. In 1871, at the age of 41, she contracted Graves' disease , a disease of the thyroid gland . This disfigured and severely disabled her. She started writing religious essays.

Her sister Maria died in Birchington-on-Sea in 1876 ​​and her brother Dante Gabriel in 1882 after she and her mother had cared for him for several weeks. Her mother died on April 8, 1886. Her aunt Charlotte followed her aunt Eliza in 1890 and 1893, who had looked after Christina for many years.

Christina Rossetti at the age of around 60

Christina Rossetti succumbed to longstanding cancer in 1894. She was buried in her parents' grave in Highgate Cemetery, London.

Poetry

Christina Rossetti wrote since her youth. Many of her poems are about suffering on earth, death, the afterlife (heaven, paradise) and unhappy love. Another large part make up her children's poems, above all Goblin Market , which, as Christina repeatedly emphasized, is "just a fairy tale". But there are a lot of pictures and symbols that leave the work open for complex interpretations. The rose that Christina chose as her personal mark is often found in her poems.

The portrait of Christina Rossetti , by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti


The Milking-Maid (Das Milchmädchen)

The year stood at its equinox,
And bluff the North was blowing.
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
green hardy things were growing.
I met a maid with shining locks,
Where milky kine were lowing.

She wore a kerchief on her neck,
Her bare arm showed its dimple.
Her apron spread without a bacon,
Her air was frank and simple.

She milked into a wooden pail,
And sang a country ditty -
An innocent fond lovers' tale,
That was not wise nor witty.

She kept in time without a beat,
As true as church-bell ringers,
Unless she tapped time with her feet,
Or squeezed it with her fingers.

I stood a minute out of sight,
Stood silent for a minute,
To eye the pail, and creamy white
The frothing milk within it.

To eye the comely milking maid,
Herself so fresh and creamy.
"Good day to you!" at last I said,
She turned her head to see me.
"Good day!" she said with lifted head,
Her eyes looked soft and dreamy.

And all the while she milked and milked
The grave cow heavy-laden.
I've seen grand ladies, plumed and silked,
but not a sweeter maiden.

But not a sweeter fresher maid
Than this in homely cotton,
Whose pleasant face and silky braid
I have not yet forgotten.

Perhaps my rose is overblown,
Not rosy or too rosy.
Perhaps in farmhouse of her own
Some husband keeps her cozy.
Where I should show a face unknown? -
Good bye, my wayside posy!

(From the poem The Milking-Maid ( ' The Milk Maid ' ) by Christina Georgina Rossetti)

Works

  • Goblin Market and Other Poems . London: Macmillan, 1862. German: Viktoria-Verlag, Meißen 2005, ISBN 3-936671-13-3 .
  • Maude: prose and verse , 1850 Publisher: Duffield New York 1906, online
  • "The Prince's Progress and other Poems." 1866
  • Sing-song, a nursery rhyme book (1872, 1893), with 120 Illustrations by Arthur Huges. Publisher: MacMillan & Co. London, 1893, online
  • Commonplace, and other short stories . Publisher: FS Ellis, London 1870, online
  • "Annus Domini, a Prayer for each Day of the Year." 1874.
  • "Speaking Likenesses." 1874.
  • "Seek and Find." 1879.
  • "Called to be Saints." 1881.
  • "Letter and Spirit" 1883.
  • "The Face of the Deep, a Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse." 1892.
  • Time flies: a reading diary (1886), online
  • Reflected Lights from "The Face of the Deep" . 1893, online
The End of the Year , 1856
Posthumous publications, translations into German
  • Can suffer: English and Italian poetry . Translated and with an afterword by Heinrich Hudde. Pano-Verlag, Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-907576-58-6 .
  • Monna Innominata: Mistress Unnamed . A sonnet made of sonnets. Transferred from Heinrich Hudde. Dragon Press, Berlin 2002.
  • New Poems by Christina Rossetti: Hitherto Unpublished Or Uncollected . Edited by William Michael Rossetti . Publisher: MacMillan & Co., London 1896, online
  • Poems of Christina Rossetti. Chosen and edited by William Michael Rossetti . Publisher: MacMillan & Co., London 1904, online
  • Rebecca W. Crump: Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti . In two volumes. A Variorum Edition. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge 1986. ISBN 978-0-8071-1246-5

Settings

1.  Oh what comes over the sea (from: New Poems , 1896/1904) - 2.  When I am dead, my dearest (=  song from: Goblin Market and other Poems , 1862) - 3.  Oh roses for the flush of youth (=  song from: Germ , 1850) - 4.  She sat and sang alway (=  song from: Goblin Market and other Poems , 1862) - 5.  Unmindful of the roses (=  One Sea-Side Grave ) - 6.  Too late for love (from: The Prince's Progress and other Poems , 1866)
  • Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: A lament ("Why were you born when the snow was falling ..."; 1910) for voice and piano
  • Sidney Homer: Seventeen lyrics from Sing-song: op. 19 , voice and piano. G. Schirmer, New York (c1908), online
  • Uwe Strübing : Five songs (op.86; 2006) for soprano and piano. Premiere March 24, 2011 Erlangen (Redoutensaal; Rebecca Broberg [soprano], Lilian Gern [piano])
1.  An End ("Love, strong as Death, is dead ...") - 2.  A song ("When I am dead, my dearest ...") - 3.  Cobwebs ("It is a land with neither night or day ..." ") - 4.  What would I give (" What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through ... ") - 5.  Echo (" Come to me in the silence of the night ... ")
  • Wolf-Dietrich Hörle: Remember: For mixed choir , score published by Waldkauz-Verlag, Solingen, WK 4004
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: Rest (1902; for mixed choir SSATB), Bosworth Music

literature

Contemporary literature
  • William M. Rossetti (Ed.): The family letters of Christina Georgina Rossetti. With some supplementary letters and appendices , Brown, Langham & Co., London 1908, online
  • Ellen A. Proctor: A brief memoir of Christina G. Rossetti . Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London 1896, online
  • Rev. BF Westcott, Lord Bishop of Durham: An appreciation of the late Christina Georgina Rossetti . Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London 1899, online
  • M. Ignatia Breme: Christina Rossetti and the influence of the Bible on her poetry. A literary and stylistic investigation . H. Schöningh, Münster 1907, online
  • Christina Georgina Rossetti in: Theodore Watts-Dunton: Old familiar faces . EP Dutton & Co., New York, 1916, online
Newer literature
  • Dinah Roe: The Rossettis in Wonderland. A Victorian Family History . House Publishing, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-907822-01-8 .
  • Benjamin Mason: Poetry of Christina Rossetti . Kindle edition 2011.
  • David Clifford / Laurence Rousillon (eds.): Outsiders Looking in: The Rossettis then and Now . Anthem ress, London 2004, ISBN 1-843311062 .
  • Kathleen Jones : Learning not to be first: The Life of Christina Rossetti . St. Martin's Press, New York 1992, ISBN 0-312070179 .
    • German: The lonely rose. The life of Christina Rossetti , Goldmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-442-72016-8 .
  • Ralph A. Bellas: Christina Rossetti . Twayne Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 1977, ISBN 0-805766715 .
  • Georgina Battiscombe: Christina Rossetti: a divided life , London: Constable, 1981, ISBN 0-09-461950-6 .

Web links

Commons : Christina Rossetti  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual references, source

  1. ↑ The Oxford Tractarians, renewers of the Church  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / justus.anglican.org  
  2. ^ London Metropolitan Archives - Christ Church, Albany Street
  3. ↑ Cayley Family History
  4. ^ History of the SPCK ( Memento of the original from May 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spck.org.uk
  5. ↑ The grave of Christina Rossetti and her parents
  6. ^ A Gallery of English and American Women Famous in Song (1875), JM Stoddart & Company, p. 205.
personal data
SURNAME Rossetti, Christina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rossetti, Christina Georgina (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1894
Place of death London