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The Kissed Mouth - The Argument and The Index

 

“Bocca baciata non perda ventura, anzi rinnova come fa la luna.” 

THE ARGUMENT

Dante Gabriel Rossetti is near death. In a delirium, from the advance of his last illness or from the effects of drink and opiates, he imagines himself to be still at home, at night and alone. He is visited in turn by the memories or essences of three women. These spirits also embody the past, the recent present, and the future or eternity. The first apparition takes the form of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, now dead. The second is his lover, Jane Burden Morris, also the wife of his friend, now parted from him by circumstance and by her choice. The last is Dante’s Beatrice as Rossetti has imagined or dreamt her over the course of his life.

 

THE INDEX

  1. Rossetti Alone
    1. A House Empty of Life
    2.  Elements 
  1. The Apparition of Elizabeth Siddal
    1. The Figure and the Ground
    2. This Loving Hand
    3. Stillborn Love 
  1. The Apparition of Jane Burden Morris
    1. The Queen of Beauty/The Kissed Mouth
    2. Love So Solid Seeming 
  1. The Apparition of Beatrice
    1. A Superscription
    2. The House of Life
    3. The Unkissed Mouth
    4. The New Life

 NOTES AND SOURCES

a fool in the forest

  • The personal & cultural web journal of George M. Wallace, an attorney practicing in Pasadena, California.
    An Index of Enthusiasms.

Epigraphs

  • A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the
        forest,
    A motley fool; a miserable world!
    As I do live by food, I met a fool
    Who laid him down and bask'd him
        in the sun,
    And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good
        terms,
    In good set terms and yet a motley
        fool.

    As You Like It,
    Act II, Scene 7


    L'homme y passe à travers des
        forêts de symboles
    Qui l'observent avec des regards
        familiers.

    Les Fleurs du Mal,
    “Correspondances”


    [T]here is almost no subject-matter, and what little one can disentangle is foolish....
    One would call the style verbose, except that by definition verbosity is the use of words in excess of the occasion, and there seems to be no occasion.

    Yvor Winters,
    Forms of Discovery, Ch. 7

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