Inclusiveness
Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828 - 1882)
The changing guests, each in a different mood, Sit at the roadside table and arise: And every life among them in likewise Is a soul’s board set daily with new food. What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?— Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes, Of what her kiss was when his father wooed? May not this ancient room thou sit’st in dwell In separate living souls for joy or pain? Nay, all its corners may be painted plain Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well; And may be stamped, a memory all in vain, Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.
Latent Book Club Analysis Of Inclusiveness
I first came across this beautiful two stanza poem in Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, Hitch 22. Hitch had travelled to visit his hero, South American literary titan Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He spent a memorable couple of days with Borges, who was by then of advanced age, and severely diminished eyesight; lunching with him, helping him down stairs and reading poetry to him.
On taking his leave, Borges insisted on presenting Hitch with a gift. Hitchens of course refused, but Borges gave it anyway, quoting the most memorable lines from the poem:
What man has bent o’er his son’s sleep, to brood
How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?
Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes.
Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
According to Hitch, this remained the "only Dante Gabriel Rossetti sonnet I can unfailingly recall".
As Hitch observed, it is a traditional 14 line sonnet. It has an ABBA rhyme scheme; the final couplet ends in the obverse mode, namely BA. The first stanza comprises 8 lines, the latter six.
Dogmatic analysis aside, this is a lustrous poem. We are presented with an image of changing roadside travellers at a table. Each person is unique, but they have a common humanity: they all have the human experiences which are of themselves relatively unremarkable - although as stanza two alludes, they may interpret it differently.
The thoughts that Hitchens quotes interpose the scene setting of the first stanza with the metaphysical questioning in the last are, we assume, common to us all. And indeed, these snatches from the edge of consciousness do seem compelling; and real. both questions have a dark theme, the first of evident death and the second of a faded (dead?) era. They feel profound because we can imagine ourselves thinking them. The closeness of death adds to their gravity.
The latter stanza seems to me to allude to that, despite the fact we all share similar experiences, we choose to interpret them differently; or at least we have the means to do so. This is the symbolism of the ‘ painted plain’ room. We can choose what we want on these walls. As Hamlet himself tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
HAMLET
Denmark's a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ
Then is the world one.
HAMLET
A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.ROSENCRANTZ
We think not so, my lord.
HAMLET
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.Hamlet, Act II Sc II.
As Rosetti has it, we have the choice to see what we want on these walls of the room of our soul: either ‘pictures of some life spent well,’ or ‘a memory all in vain’.
Rosetti presents us with the choice - both of how to live and how to interpret these events. Hamlet comes to the same conclusion - events are only given significance by the way we look at them. Hamlet had chosen the route of hell in his torment in Elsinore. We can make another choice.
Much like analysing Rosetti’s Inclusiveness, seeing the values we want reflected in the narrative of our lives is an act of interpretation.
What stories will you be telling yourself, and will they be that of a life spent well?