Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

subject—which Wordsworth sought and found in his best pages—Rossetti liked to add adornments, sometimes foreign to the subject itself. Rossetti actually studiedShakespeare a lot, and in many of his poems, his language, no less passionate than Shakespeare’s for being more artificial, shows this. For example, there is a poem in which he speaks of insomnia, and he says that sleep watches him from afar while he is awake “with cold commemorative eyes,” “
con fríos ojos conmemorativos
.” 10 You see, it is perhaps the first time that the word “eye” is joined with “commemorative,” which surely can be justified etymologically, for it is eyes that remember, that commemorate the past.
    Rossetti frequented drawing academies, painting academies, and met a girl named Siddal, who was his model for almost all his paintings. 11 And thereby was created a type, the Rossetti type, as other painters have done subsequently. This girl was a tall girl with red hair, and a long neck (like Edith Swanneck about whom we spoke when we talked about the death of the last Saxon king of England,Harold) and with full lips, very sensual lips, that I think are now again in fashion. But this type was new then, and so Miss Siddal was the Black Queen or Mary Magdalene, or any other Greek or medieval character. They fell in love. Rossetti married very young and then found out what he already knew: that this woman had a very sickly constitution. Rossettitaught drawing at a night school for workers founded by the great critic and writer [John] Ruskin, who was a patron of thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Now, Rossetti had other models. One model he used only a few times, but he fell in love with her, physically in love, according to what has been said. She was a large woman, also with red hair—red hair always held a fascination for Rossetti—and she was so large that he jokingly called her “the elephant.” But he could do so with impunity, for she was not offended by it.
    And now we come to the tragic event, one of the most tragic events of Rossetti’s life. This event does not figure in all the biographies, as it has only recently come to light. Because until the beginning of this century, it was understood in England that these things were not to be spoken of. But the last biography of Rossetti speaks quite frankly about this episode, and I think I can recount it without lacking in decorum.
    One night, the poet Swinburne went to Rossetti’s house to eat. They ate together, and after dinner, Rossetti told him that he had to go teach a class at the college for workers founded by Ruskin, and he invited Swinburne to accompany him. Swinburne and Rossetti said goodbye to Rossetti’s wife, and once they had turned the corner, Rossetti told Swinburne that he did not have to teach a class that night, that he was going to visit “the elephant.” Swinburne understood perfectly, and the two men said goodbye to each other. Swinburne, anyway, already knew this about Rossetti and was not unduly surprised. Rossetti remained very late at the house of “the elephant,” let’s say—I forgot her name. And when he returned, he found that his house was dark, and his wife was dead. She had died from swallowing a fatal dose of chloral, which she often took for insomnia. 12 Rossetti immediately understood that she knew everything and had committed suicide.
    I forgot to say that Rossetti spent his honeymoon with his wife in Paris, and that while there, he painted a very strange painting, considering what happened later, and considering Rossetti’s superstitious nature. The canvas, which does not have—in my opinion—any artistic merits, is in the Tate Gallery or maybe the British Museum, I don’t remember, and is called “How They Met Themselves.” I don’t know if you know about a superstition that exists in many countries of the world, the superstition about the double. In German, the double is called the
Doppelgänger
, and means the one who walks next to us. 13 In Scotland, where this superstition still exists, the double is called the “fetch” (“fetch” in English means “to seek”), and it is understood that if a man meets himself, it is a sign that death is approaching. 14 In other words, that the apparition of the double is coming to fetch him. And there is a ballad byStevenson, which we will look at later, called “Ticonderoga,” about the “fetch.” 15 Now, this painting by Rossetti is not about an individual who meets