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The History of Literature
745 Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti (Halloween Fun-Size Edition)
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The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone, it's Jack Wilson telling you that the History of Literature podcast tour through Literary England is still accepting deposits and we'd love to have you join us. We will be visiting some of the greatest literary sites in history, including walks, tours, pub visits and leisure time activities. And with visits from scholars and other special guests as we experience the amazing cities of London, Oxford and Bath in a small group accompanied by yours truly. If you love literature and if you love life, you are not going to want to miss this. It's next year in May of 2026, but we need you to put down a deposit now so we can finalize the itinerary. 2026 is around the corner, people. Give yourself something to look forward to next spring. You can find out more at John Shores Travel John S H O R S Or you can find the links to the itinerary and sign up page@historyofliterature.com hope to see you soon. The detective said missing kids usually come home. What happens when they don't? Based on a true story. Police looking for John Gacy. We discovered bodies. By the looks of it, they're younger men. The things he did. He's sick. The system failed. These families. Devil in disguise. John Wayne Gacy. Streaming now only on Peacock. Do you know how many there are? Up to you to find out. Hello. It's Halloween time, and here's what we have for you today. Three and a half years ago, I got carried away when reading a poem by Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, which just blew me away. It was so strange and so eerie. It put me into a Halloween state of mind. In April or May or whenever it was, I dropped everything and did an episode, a double episode, in fact, that we released in June of that year. But even at the time, I remember thinking, oh boy, this really should be a Halloween episode. Thematically, it belongs in October. So after some listener feedback and some requests, we decided we're going to do that today. We've combined both episodes into one and you will hear the double episode in all its glory. A jumbo episode of the History of Literature podcast. Two episodes, back to back, all devoted to Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. And we touch on a lot of other stuff too. I hope you enjoy it. Hello. I will cut right to the chase. This is one of the strangest poems I have ever read. It's disturbing, yet fascinating, bewitching, compelling, unforgettable. Choose your adjective and choose your analysis. But don't worry, you kind of can't be wrong unless you insist that your analysis is comprehensive and exhaustive. There is no correct answer. Or rather, there is no single correct answer. This poem has defied interpretation and will continue to do so as long as people care about poetry. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti Today on the history of literature Foreign Here we go. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. I will confess that this was not on the schedule. I pulled this book off the shelf. I've been pulling a lot of books off the shelf. I bought that shelf full of little penguin books. You know those, the little black ones. A full set of those. I got one year for Christmas. And by bought I mean I paid for them and told my family that they were giving it to me for Christmas so I would have a present along with everyone else. And then I wrapped it up with a tag that said to dad from Santa. And then this thing. It's a little hard to get the books out until you take a couple out. It sat on my shelf for a while. Sometimes I would pry one out and put them in my coat pocket. These are little books, thin. They cost a pound in England and two bucks in the States if you buy them individually. I got a volume discount. There are no prefaces, no author bios, no commentary. Just some straight literature. A little shot of literature. Like a shot of something golden and warm that I love to drink when I am in Scotland. Why beat around the bush? It's called whiskey and it's a godly drink on a rainy day. You can get it in the States too, of course. These little penguin books. Penguin. When are you going to get around to sponsoring the history of literature podcast? I talk about you all the time for free. I feel like a spurned lover. Anyway, these little penguin books are also like a godly drink. Fire water for the soul. They go down sharp, they go down smooth. They warm the blood and ease the mind, setting things inside me aflame. The dancing flame is a good metaphor for today, as we will see. So I have a big schedule, a calendar with all these episodes planned out. More Whitman on the way, more Kierkegaard. Still have lots to do, plenty of interviews already recorded, lined up, ready to go. And then, blammo. I pull out one of these little black beauties and it transports me. It shocks my system. I sat in my little black car in a lonely parking lot waiting for someone to emerge from a building. My timeless wait, listening to the Beatles channel on Sirius xm. Well, I have my Little idiosyncrasies. And that is one I come and go on the Beatles. You can't live on the Beatles alone. But when the mood is right, that is a Great channel. Michael McKean on Memorial Day weekend doing the top 100. Sign me up, and I'm reading this poem. Goblin Market and blammo blam mo. Man, did this poem hit me hard. Here's why I think, look, I've been doing this a long time. Reading, analyzing, interpreting, judging, comprehending, absorbing, whatever you want to call it. Whatever you want to call whatever I do with literature. I might not be the best at it or even very good at it, but I'll say this for myself. I'm not new to it. I've been doing it with a lot of books for a long time. It's rare that I read a great work of literature these days and have it seize me by the throat like this one did. Reminded me of how I used to read when things were kind of a mystery to me. I didn't have an immediate frame of reference. I didn't have an immediate answer. I didn't think, ah, yes, here's how this little piece fits into the larger puzzle. Here's the shape and the colors. I know where it goes and what it does. How nice. How satisfying. Snap. I like this puzzle, and I like putting it together. This was like the old days. This was like, whoa, what's this? First time I ever read Palefire. What is this? Ulysses? Come on. What is this? I can't even tell what these colors are. What is this picture going to be? I can't get my mind around the shape. This piece might be from a different puzzle altogether. I might need to stare at this for a while before I can figure it out, if I ever will. And all that sounds cerebral, but it was more than that. It was like the first time I read Lolita or the first time I read Keats or Shakespeare at an even younger age. It was like. It was like saying, this makes me feel a certain way. This is pulling me in different directions, and I'm not sure what that even means. This poem was doing that to me. These are conflicting feelings I'm having. This is operating on me at several different levels all at once. Christina Rossetti, man, I've read her poems before, but not this one. Somehow I missed it. I thought I had the gist of Rossetti, but no, no, no. If I ever read this, I do not remember it. And unlike most literature, I read it with a kind of scholarly detachment. The podcaster's perch above the fray. Well, this one pulled me right into the fray, like those demons at the bottom of Michelangelo's Judgment painting, grabbing souls by the ankles and pulling them into the dark, hot soup. That's what these goblins in this market did to me. We can thank Christina's brother, Dante Gabriel, the painter and the poet, for the amazing title Goblin Market. He was a great champion of hers. He believed Christina to be the finest poet around and definitely a kind of elevated, transcendent poet as she was. But he was smart enough and artistic enough to change the title from A Peep at the Goblins, which was her original title, to Goblin Market. That has to be the best title. Change this side of Fitzgerald, changing the name of his novel, the High Bouncing Lover, to the Great Gatsby. So what I want to do with this is to invert our usual course of business here. Ordinarily, I give you the author, the biography and so on, all the context you need, hopefully, and then I deliver the goods, the main course, the best works. In this case, I'm going to start with the poem Goblin Market. I'll give you the very briefest of backgrounds and then will read the poem in all of its bizarre and confounding glory. Confounding, but also completely irresistible glory. And yes, it is glorious, though it's also dark and disturbing, too. And then in our next episode, or in a subsequent episode, we'll follow up with everything worth saying about Christina Rossetti and the Pre Raphaelites who surrounded her, even though she wasn't quite one. And we will try to figure out how this person wrote this poem, what it means that she did, and what people have tried to do to figure out just who she was, this Goblin Market writer. How brief can we be with our introduction here? Christina Rossetti. The poem is kind of long, so we got to get. We got to make time for that. Christina Rossetti was a Victorian poet, born in London in 1830 and dying 64 years later, also in London in 1894. Her family was an incredible literary family. We'll go into all of that next time. She was a devout Christian. She wrote devotional poems and poems for children. She was engaged twice, but never married. I think she had three relationships. We'll talk about that, too. She's often lumped in with a group called the Pre Raphaelites, which included her brother, Dante Gabriel. And she's often linked, either by comparison or contrast, to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was a slightly older contemporary. But truly, Christina Rossetti's poetry is unlike anyone Else's. Okay, I think that's enough for now. Like I said, we're starting with Goblin Market. We'll have a little more about Christina Rossetti along the way, but we are going to dive right into the poem. Warning you now, it is wild and strange. We're going to celebrate it, analyze it, and then we'll fill in the context around it and the interpretations of it later. Hang on to your hats, people. Fasten those bonnets. I've double knotted mine. Goblin Market after this. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Morning and evening maids heard the goblins cry. Come buy our orchard fruits. Come buy, come buy. Apples and quinces, lemons and oranges, Plump, unpecked cherries, melons and raspberries bloomed, down cheeked peaches, swart headed mulberries, wild freeborn cranberries, crab apples, dewberries, pineapples, blackberries, apricots, strawberries, all ripe together in summer weather. Morns that pass by, fair eves that fly, Come by, come buy. Okay, that's the beginning of the poem. Some goblins calling out to maids morning and evening. You start to think the poet is maybe getting a little carried away with the fruits. Right? We're barely into this poem and it's dominated by all these examples of fruit. What do we have? A dozen? Sixteen. And guess what? We're not done. Back to the poem. Our grapes fresh from the vine. Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp boluses, rare pears and greengages, Damsons and bilberries. Taste them and try. Currants and gooseberries, Bright fire like barberries. Figs to fill your mouth, Citrons from the south. Sweet to tongue and sound to eye. Come buy, come buy. What is going on here? The goblins want people, these maids in particular, want them to sample these fruits. They've got it all. What do we get from this catalog of fruits? It's kind of exotic and seemingly forbidden. If these were plain, unadorned fruits, apples, bananas, strawberries, the stuff we eat for subsistence, this would not be so tempting, right? And they wouldn't be urging so much. Citrons from the south, bright fire like barberries. Figs to fill your rare pears. Some of these fruits I haven't even heard of. They sound exotic. But what is going on? Why do goblins want to sell the maids these fruits? Where are the men? Aren't they buying anything? Well, of course. First thing that jumps to mind, at least to my mind. Goblins tempting a woman to eat fruit sounds an awful lot like eve Being pitched by the snake, right? Try this, eat this. Don't ask too many questions. Come on, come on, come on. Do it, do it, do it. Come by, come by, come by. And the second thing this brings to mind is drugs. Based on what we know of the 19th century England society, it could be tea and caffeine. But that's kind of laughable. More likely we're in the world of opium, right? An exotic substance that goblins are eager to get us to try. Because once you do, you're hooked and all your money will go to them. But why wouldn't they try to sell that to men as well? Why just these maids are the goblins. Men who are trying to tempt women. That brings up a third potential analogy here. Men who say, try this, try this. Maybe it's sex that they're offering. Maybe men are like Eve's Satan saying, oh, we've got some goodies for you. You'll feel good, whether that's physical pleasure or the self esteem boost of feeling wanted by men. But we're all snakes at heart, aren't we? We're goblins. But we've got something tempting here. So what do we have? Sex or drugs or just generalized sin? The fruit of the tree of knowledge. Something very dangerous in this fruit. That's how it feels. Something ominous going on here. Back to the poem. Evening by evening among the brookside rushes. Laura bowed her head to hear. Lizzie veiled her blushes. Crouching close together in the cooling weather with clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips. Lie close, Laura said, pricking up her golden head. We must not look at goblin men. We must not buy their fruits. Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry thirsty roots. Come by, call the goblins hobbling down the glen. Let's pause there. The rhyme scheme is all over the place. You get lips and tips and a couplet. You get said and head back to back. Then men. Glen. Here's what the rhyme scheme is from that little section that I just read. A, B, C, B, D, D, E, E, F, F, G, H, F, H, I, G. Unpredictable, right? Rhymes popping up here and there. And what do we have going on? Lizzy and Laura crouching close. Who are they? Who knows what soil these fruits came from? What kind of soil would that be? Is there a patch of sinful soil somewhere? Poisoned fruit from poisoned trees, from poisoned soils. Hmm, seems like it must be a metaphor. We're in the presence of evil somehow, it would seem. And these two, Lizzie and Laura, are in a kind of embrace, clasping arms, cautioning lips, tingling cheeks and fingertips. I've had sexual relationships that did not feel that intimate. Back to the poem. Oh. Cried Lizzie. Laura. Laura. You should not peep at goblin men. Lizzie covered up her eyes covered close, lest they should look. Laura reared her glossy head and whispered like the restless brook. Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzy. Down the glen tramp little men. One hauls a basket, one bears a plate, One lugs a golden dish of many pounds weight. How fair the vine must grow. Whose grapes are so luscious. How warm the wind must blow through those fruit bushes. No, said Lizzie. No, no, no. Their offers should not charm us. Their evil gifts would harm us. She thrust a dimpled finger in each ear shut eyes and ran. Curious, Laura chose to linger, wondering at each merchant man. One had a cat's face, one whisked a tail, One tramped at a rat's pace. One crawled like a snail, One like a wombat, prowled obtuse and furry. One like a rattle, rattle. R A T E L. That's what we call a honey badger. One like a rattle tumbled. Hurry scurry. She heard a voice like voice of doves cooing all together. They sounded kind and full of loves in the pleasant weather. Okay, here we go. Now we really see the divergence between these two. Lizzy is cautious. Laura's definitely more tempted. But what are these goblins? Now we see them through Laura's eyes. Are they cute, disgusting, villainous, friendly? Some combination of the above in Laura's point of view anyway, they sound like doves cooing all together. Kind and full of loves in the pleasant weather. Not a horrible screech, not a. Not grunts and guttural sounds as we might expect from goblins, but doves cooing all together. It's so seductive, this song they're singing to Laura. Rossetti spent a lot of time outdoors when she was young on her grandfather's country estate. She really gets nature. Of course, her uncle was John Polidori, Byron's doctor, who also wrote, famous for writing a story called the Vampire. The first vampire story. One of the first, anyway, was before Dracula Vampire, when it was spelled with a Y instead of an I. That's how long ago it was. Over 200 years ago now. So the nature that Rossetti got was nature with some teeth or fangs, as the case may be. What's Laura up to? How is she taking all this in? Back to the poem. Laura stretched her gleaming neck like a rush embedded swan like a lily from the beck, like A moonlit poplar branch like a vessel at the launch when its last restraint is gone. Ooh, those are good lines. My goodness, this is getting downright sexual, isn't it? Something pent up here. Is that just me? Gleaming neck like a swan bursting forth. This is what if. What's the Rodgers and Hammerstein line? June is busting out all over. I know it's about a calendar month and springtime in that musical, but I never fail to think of bosoms when I hear that line. June and her cleavage in a low cut blouse. Which I suspect was something they were trying to make me think of this vessel at the launch when its last restraint is gone. And what does that connotate to you? This is to me. It's that moment when you've had a few drinks, your inhibitions are gone and you start to think, all right, screw it, I'm in. What vice do you want to indulge? What do you got? As Brando might say. Okay, back to the poem backwards. Up the mossy glen turned and trooped the goblin men with their shrill repeated cry. Come by, come by. When they reached where Laura was. Ooh, that took me by surprise. They're here. I didn't. I didn't get that. They were on their way to Laura. I thought our heroes were safely tucked away. I guess Lizzy has run away with her hands between her ears, her eyes closed, not wanting to do this peep at the goblins. But Laura has stayed and watched. And now the goblins are here. Come by. Come buy by. By the way, come buy this. Buy this from us. Buy our fruits. That's what they're saying. Okay. When they reached where Laura was, they stood stock still upon the moss, Leering at each other, brother with queer brother. Signaling each other, brother with sly brother. Oh, man, Christina Rossetti. She just does whatever the hell she wants, doesn't she? Look at that rhyme scheme. A, B, A B. Except it's A, A, A, A. She rhymes other with brother, and then she rhymes other with brother again. Leering at each other, brother with queer brother. Signaling each other, brother with sly brother. What stands out when you do rhyme schemes like that? Other brother, other brother. Well, it's the word before that then, isn't it? Queer brother, sly brother. Isn't that what jumps out? Leering at each other, brother with queer brother. Signaling each other, brother with sly brother. Hmm. I don't know what's scarier. That they're strange. That's how we read queer when we see it in the 19th century. Doesn't have the gay connotation we give it. Brother with strange brother. Is it scarier that they're strange or that they're sly? Mm. I'd say sly is scarier to me. Okay, back to the poem. One set his basket down, one reared his plate. One began to weave a crown of tendrils, leaves and rough nuts. Brown men sell not such in any town. One heaved the golden weight of dish and fruit to offer her. Come buy, come buy was still their cry. Laura stared but did not stir, Longed, but had no money. The whisk tailed merchant bade her taste in tones as smooth as honey. The cat faced purred, the rat faced spoke a word of welcome, and the snail paste even was heard. One parrot voiced and jolly cried pretty goblin still for pretty Polly. One whistled like a bird. These voices coming at her. It's interesting that they want her to buy this. You think they'd be giving some of it away. But no. They want her to be invested in this. They want her to want it. And in fact, here we go. Back to the poem. But sweet tooth Laura spoke in haste. Good folk, I have no coin to take were to purloin. I have no copper in my purse. I have no silver either. And all my gold is on the first that shakes in windy weather above the rusty heather. You have much gold upon your head, they answered all together buy from us with a golden curl. Hmm. Now this is where it gets truly amazing. Laura jumps right in and it's almost painful to read this. And yet I'm not at all sure that's what the poem wants from us. I feel bad for being scared. I'm confused. I kind of want Laura to get what she wants. I'm not sure what to think at this point. I want her to go away, like Lizzy, who seems so practical and wise. Hmm. You don't know what to think, so you just listen. She clipped a precious golden lock. She dropped a tear more rare than pearl, Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red, sweeter than honey from the rock, stronger than man rejoicing wine, clearer than water flowed that juice. She never tasted such before. How should it cloy with length of use? She sucked and sucked and sucked the more fruits which that unknown orchard bore. She sucked until her lips were sore, Then flung the emptied rinds away, but gathered up one kernel stone and knew not was it night or day as she turned home alone. What does this sound like to you? Addiction. An orgy. Is this what sex looks like to someone who's never had it? Who wants to have it, who is terrified of it? Fascinated by it, Feeling the yearning of it. My God. God, what the hell is this? And where the hell was Lizzy all this time? When Laura was sucking and sucking and sucking until her lips were sore? Here we go. Lizzie met her at the gate full of wise upbraidings. Dear, you should not stay so late. Twilight is not good for maidens. Should not loiter in the glen in the haunts of goblin men. Do you not remember, Genie? Oh, boy, Jeannie, there's a genie. J, E A N I E. What happened to Genie? Well, Lizzie's gonna tell us how she. Let me back up. Do you not remember, Genie? How she met them in the moonlight? Took their gifts, both choice and many Ate their fruits and wore their flowers plucked from bowers where summer ripens at all hours but ever in the noonlight she pined and pined away Sought them by night and day Found them no more but dwindled and grew gray Then fell with the first snow While to this day no grass will grow where she lies low. I planted daisies there a year ago that never blow you should not loiter so rhyme scheme again. Christina Rossetti. She just gets on a roll, doesn't she? And just one more thing. And one more thing. And here's one more. This'll rhyme too. We'll hear about some critics who got this all wrong. Who did not. Who thought she was making mistakes. You would have to be a moron to think this is just someone who couldn't count, right? Or couldn't keep track of her rhymes. Or somehow was just blowing it, making mistakes. But for every genius, there is some highly intelligent moron there to blow it. Okay, substance wise. In the poem, I'm still confused. There's some addiction. We see Genie, who seems to have had a terrible experience with this. But what is the addiction here? Opium makes the most sense, right? You'll feel good, but you'll want more and more. You'll get hooked. Sex. That's also possible, if a bit more wild. It's a bit more of a stretch. It's something. Maybe we just need to accept that it's just Goblin fruit. Doesn't have to be an analogy to some particular thing. Right? It can just stand for bad things. Things that are bad for us in general. That we can't resist. Okay, back to the poem. Nay, hush, said Laura. Nay hush, my sister. I ate and ate my fill yet my mouth waters still Tomorrow night I will buy more. And kissed her have done with sorrow I'LL bring you plums to morrow fresh on their mother twigs, cherries worth getting. You cannot think what figs my teeth have met in what melons icy cold piled on a dish of gold too huge for me to hold, what peaches with a velvet nap, Pellucid grapes without one seed odorous indeed, must be the mead whereon they grow and pure the wave they drink with lilies at the brink and sugar sweet their SAP. I kinda want this stuff now. I want what she wants. Laura is in deep. She wants to get Lizzie hooked too. And I'm in deep too. This stuff sounds great. I kind of hope that Lizzy wants it too. And yet, of course, I'm terrified of it. And I'm terrified we're going to see something horrible happen to Laura, who is in the grip of something that feels supernatural and out of our control. Let's take our final break and see what happens to these two at this Goblin Market. Hey folks, the countdown is on. Holiday shopping season is officially here. Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique high quality finds you won't see anywhere else. 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And bring your holiday spirit outdoors with unique decor like one of our Santa inflatables. Whatever your style, find the right pieces at the right prices this holiday season at the Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. It's best enjoyed over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata Delivering vacation vibes any way or anywhere you drink it. Find out more@rumchata.com drink responsibly Caribbean rum with real dairy cream, natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agafe LoCo Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved. We are back. Lizzy, who's wise and more cautious, says to Laura, don't you remember Genie? She wanted this so bad. She died from wanting this stuff. Couldn't get more and died. We planted flowers and Laura says, who cares? I'm getting more. She kisses Lizzie just like an out of control addict. She says, there, there. Things will be all right. And I'll get you some too. You'll love it, trust me. Sounds just like an addict. Oh, I hate stories of addiction. But I can't stop reading. Laura is headed back to Goblin Market and we are back in the poem Golden Head by golden Head. Like two pigeons in one nest, folded in each other's wings they lay down in their curtained bed like two blossoms on one stem, like two flakes of new fallen snow. Like two wands of ivory tipped with gold for awful kings. Moon and stars gazed in at them, Wind sang to them lullaby Lumbering owls flying forbore to fly not a bat flapped to and fro round their rest, Cheek to cheek and breast to breast, Locked together in one nest. Hmm, it's quite a vivid passage. Are they in love? Well, yes, they're sisters. But there seems to be some suggestions of passion here too. Lots of people who have read this will say it's sisterly love. It's an intense friendship. They have a connection, but it's kind of erotic too. Cheek to cheek and breast to breast locked together in a curtained bed. Is this supposed to be incest? What are we supposed to take from this? Here's a weird word. Two wands of ivory tipped with gold for awful kings. That's what they look like. Wands of ivory tipped with gold. Ivory, because of their white skin, presumably tipped with gold. Their blond hair. Wands of ivory tipped with gold. These finery, this jewel like object for awful kings. Why awful? Does that mean full of awe or awful as we might think of it? Bad, evil, Terrible? If this is the first time you're reading this, do you have any idea what's going to happen? Where is this poem headed? I don't know where I am. I have no idea what's happening. What's going to happen. And yet it's so compelling. I can't stop watching this scene and I'm not sure why. Here we go. Early in the morning, when the first cock crowed his warning neat like bees as sweet and busy Laura Rose with Lizzy, Fetched in honey, milked the cows, Aired and set to rights the house. Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat Cakes for dainty mouths to eat. Next churned butter, whipped up cream, Fed their poultry, Sat and sewed. Talked as modest maidens should. Okay, this is good. A nice morning scene. Everything is good in life. Maybe the goblins are gone. Maybe this was some kind of nightmare that's disappeared. Maybe this is all in the past. Except we know what's coming, don't we? Talked as modest maidens should. Lizzy with an open heart. Laura in an absent dream. Oh, no. Laura's going through the motions. She's still hooked even now in the morning. Talked as modest maidens should. Lizzie with an open heart. Laura in an absent dream. One content, one sick in part. One warbling for the mere bright day's delight. One longing for the night. Oh, dear God. Oh, I want the warbler. I'm with Lizzy again. I don't want Laura to be in an absent dream. I want the warble with the mere bright day's delight. Why Mir. Why can't that be everything? And one longing for the night. That's why. Because we are hooked on sin. We're all Lauras. We're hooked on whatever's bad for us. What's addictive and destructive. On sex or drugs or bad men or women or whatever is out there that's evil. Evil. Wintry queens. Danger. Smooth talking serpents, Brothels, promising fun. Piles of cocaine, Opium dens, Bright, loud casinos. Whatever it is, we long for the night. At length. This is back to the poem. At length. Slow evening came. Slow evening, slow evening. This is how an addict waits through the day. An addict who longs for the night. Slow even. What a great word. Christina Rossetti. You are kind of tearing me apart with this. You're like, well, actually, let me tell one Christina Rossetti. Actually, let me tell two Christina Rossetti stories at this point. The first one is that a man proposed to Christina Rossetti. And she said, my dear, no, you're Catholic. Roman Catholic. That's not going to work. Dante actually pointed it out to him, said, my sister is not going to accept a proposal from someone who is a Roman Catholic. She is high Anglican. Well, the man said, fine, I'll be Anglican. Does that work for you? And Christina Rossetti said, yes. And then he said, I can't do it. I'm too Catholic. And she said, well, then I can't do it. I'm Too Anglican. No go. The second suitor was no good. She loved him quite a bit, but he was a free thinker, which did not work for her, as Christian as she was. And the third suitor was a painter named John Brett. And she wrote a poem called Imagine Proposing to Someone. Imagine being the suitor, Mr. Brett. Imagine proposing to this person, this poet, and then opening her book and seeing that she called a poem. No, thank you, John. With the lines, I never said I loved you, John, why will you tease me day by day? That's the first story. Those are her three nutshell. That's a nutshell version of her three potential suitors. She never married. If anything, her religious piety kept getting in the way. And she does have this reputation of being kind of reserved, kind of buttoned up, kind of withholding. A proper Victorian. But when she was older. This is the second story. When she was young, she was fiery, a storm, her father called her. And when she was older, she said this to her passionate niece. Once, when her niece was going through a moment of passion, Christina, who was older now, said to her, quote, you must not imagine, my dear girl, that your aunt was always the calm and sedate person you now behold. I too had a very passionate temper, but I learnt to control it. On one occasion, being rebuked by my dear mother for some fault, I seized upon a pair of scissors and ripped up my arm to vent my wrath. I have learnt since to control my feelings. And no doubt you will. End quote. This is who we have writing Goblin Market. So devoted to God and religion that she'll forego love and marriage and burning with a fever that can sometimes rage out of control, forcing her into recklessness which she forever tries to control. Keep that in mind as we return to the poem with Lizzie and Laura. We've got a bit of Lizzy inside. Christina, we've got a bit of Laura in there, too. Back to the poem. At length, slow evening came, they went with pitchers to the reedy brook Lizzy most placid in her look, Laura most like a leaping flame. I laughed out loud at this. These are four lines. Have you ever been with an addict? Have you ever been with someone who's out of control, who's doing something that's dangerous and reckless? You know it's bad for them and you can't stop them. At length, slow evening came, they went with pictures to the reedy brook Lizzy most placid in her look, Laura most like a leaping flame. Here she goes. Goodbye, Laura. I feel like she's Already a goner. Back to the poem. They drew the gurgling water from its deep. Lizzy plucked purple and rich golden flags. Then turning homeward, said the sunset flushes those furthest loftiest crags. Come, Laura. Not another maiden lags no wilful squirrel wags. The beasts and birds are fast asleep. But Laura loitered still among the rushes and said the bank was steep, and said the hour was early still, the dew not fallen, the wind not chill. Listening ever but not catching the customary cry Come by, come by. With its iterated jingle of sugar baited words. Not for all her watching, once discerning even one goblin racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling, let alone the herds that used to tramp along the glen in groups or single of brisk fruit merchant men. This is sad. It's like those addicts who try to scrape cocaine off the floor. You feel their pain, their need. Even though you're glad they're not getting it, you still kind of want it for them. You want them not to want it so much. That's Laura. She doesn't hear it. She doesn't hear these goblins. She desperately wants it. Till Lizzy urged. Oh, Laura, come. I hear the fruit call, but I dare not look. You should not loiter longer at this brook. Come with me home. The stars rise, the moon bends her arc, each glow worm winks her spark. Let us get home before the night grows dark, for clouds may gather, Though this is summer weather. Put out the lights and drench us through. Then if we lost our way, what should we do? Lizzy is practical. She says, I hear the fruit call. Did you catch that? Lizzy heard it, but she's strong enough to resist. She dares not look. It's getting dark. She says the glow worms are winking, the moon's ark is bending. It's a beautiful scene by this brook. Christina Rossetti is very good at setting a scene in just a few words. Like one of those art directors who can make magic in the theater with just a few props and some lighting, transporting us immediately into another world. Lizzy heard the fruit call. That's a big deal. Laura turned coal as stone to find her sister. Heard that cry alone, that goblin cry. Come buy our fruits. Come by. Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit? Must she no more such succous pasture Find gone deaf and blind. Succous S U C C O U S that's a word we don't use much. It means juicy. What a word to use here. There's dainty fruit and Succus pasture. It's like the eye wants one thing. Dainty, unthreatening, pristine, beautiful. But the mouth wants something else altogether. If the fruit was not dainty, but big, juicy, messy, well, that wouldn't appeal to the eye, would it? It would look kind of disgusting, like it was spoiled. But once you put that fruit in your mouth, you don't want it to be dainty. You want it to burst with juice and flavor. You want it like an animal wants it. You want it to feel good in your mouth. Wet again. This could be the world of drugs. That pert little pill, that clean white powder on a gleaming mirror, that sharp and shiny needle. Whatever the mechanism, it appeals to the eye. But then the feeling appeals to the body and the blood sex, too. That beautiful or handsome package on the outside. Well dressed, rich, elegant, smooth, maybe not rich and elegant, maybe trim, well groomed, put together, clean. And then. So you want that. Your eye wants that. But then your body, it's going to all come apart, isn't it? In a wild, sweaty frenzy. Dainty fruit. A succus pasture. But Laura doesn't get it. She doesn't. She. She didn't hear the call. She doesn't get what she wants. Back to the poem. Her tree of life drooped from the root. She said not one word in her heart's sore ache, but peering through the dimness, not discerning, trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way. So crept to bed and lay silent till Lizzie slept. Then sat up in a passionate yearning and gnashed her teeth for balked desire and wept as if her heart would break. Now, Goblin Market is kind of like a children's poem, and it was marketed as such at various times in the past hundred and more than 100 years. Rossetti also wrote children's poems. And you can kind of see how parts of this would feel like it is one, too. Halloween Monsters. Goblins may be a moral to the story. Temptation Fruit. It feels like a children's poem, but my goodness, read this poem. How could you give this to a child? Trudged home, her picture dripping all the way. Maybe this is pre Freud. So it didn't leap out at Rossetti's editors and readers, but it's hard not to read that. Well, you know what I'm saying here. Rossetti herself, for what it's worth, always insisted that Goblin Market was not a children's poem. Not for children. Hmm. I don't think I need to be explicit about what's being conjured up here. And then Laura crept to bed. Waiting for Lizzie, that killjoy, to fall asleep. I'll just be silent here until I can tell that Lizzie is asleep. And then sat up in passionate yearning and gnashed her teeth for Bach Desire. Ugh. And then wept as if her heart would break. She's so hooked. She's like a monster. She's not human anymore. She's given herself over to this fruit. Oh, we never saw Eve like this. You have to look at modern day renditions of drug addicts to see someone going through these kind of spasms. Back to the poem. Day after day, night after night, Laura kept watch in vain, in sullen silence of exceeding pain. She never caught again the goblin cry, Come by. Come by. She never spied the goblin men hawking their fruits along the glen. But when the noon waxed bright, her hair grew thin and gray. She dwindled as the fair full moon doth turn to swift decay and burn her flower, fire away her addiction. Her unfulfilled addiction is basically robbing her of life. Oh, my God. If you could eat that stuff, that fruit, would you? Lots of people would. Lots of people would. They know the risks. They know the odds. And yet they still smoke cigarettes. They still gamble. They still have unprotected sex with strangers in dangerous places. They still go diving into opium den. They usually regret it afterwards. Or they regret it for a little while and then they go back for more. This is what happens when you go for broke. And when you go broke, Laura does not have anything left except her memory of what she wants. Her aching desire, that bitter and inescapable ache, that yearning that makes her gnash her teeth. That's all she has left. Except she does have one thing. A little seed that Ms. Rossetti planted at the beginning, when we were busy looking at other things. Here's something we barely noticed. But it was there one day. Remembering her kernel stone. This is in Laura's point of view, remembering her kernel stone. She set it by a wall that faced the south, dud it with tears, hoping for a root, watched for a waxing shoot, but there came none. It never saw the sun, it never felt the trickling moisture run. While with sunk eyes and faded mouth she dreamed of melons as a traveler sees false waves in desert. Drouth with shade of leaf, crowned trees and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze. She no more swept the house, tended the fowls or cows, fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat, brought water from the brook, but sat down listless in the chimney nook and would not eat. How pathetic. She has a stone that she's hoping will grow into goblin fruit. She waters it with her tears. She sees fruit in her visions, like a mirage, like a fake oasis in a desert. She sees those melons, but nothing. They're not real. She can't enjoy real life either, because it's not as good as the one that she sampled that night. Where's Lizzy in all this? Well, here she is. Tender. Lizzy could not bear to watch her sister's cankerous care. Yet not to share, she night and morning caught the goblins cry. Come buy our orchard fruits. Come buy, come buy. Beside the brook along the glen she heard the tramp of goblin men. The yoke and stir. Poor Laura could not hear. Longed to buy fruit to comfort her, but feared to pay too dear. She thought of Genie in her grave who should have been a bride but who for joys brides hope to have fell sick and died in her gay prime in earliest winter time with the first glazing rhyme. With the first snowfall of crisp winter time. Okay, that rhyme's keen. Again, rhyme time. Rhyme time. And just one more. And one more and one more. But the real news here is a Lizzie still hears these cries. Why is that? Why can she hear them and Laura can't? Is it because she's the one who hasn't given yet? She's the virgin, so to speak, of whatever it is they want from her. They want to spoil virgins. Maybe virgins in the sense of those who have not sampled their fruit. They want a fallen woman. Laura's a fallen woman and they've disappeared. They don't need her anymore. They want to make people fall. They just want that fall. They want to destroy. And then they disappear, leaving the women like Genie to die. Genie who died and Laura who is dying. And look at this clue. Here's the strongest evidence that we're talking about sex here. Or premarital sex. This is the line that everyone cites when they're trying to make this argument. Genie, who should have been a bride, but who, for joys brides hope to have, fell sick and died. End quote. Okay. The joys brides hope to have. That's physical love, right? Sex. We would say now, and Genie grabbed it early, too early, and then died. Can you read this as not being about sex and losing one's virginity? It's so strong as a metaphor that it's hard to see what it even actually would be. The figurative interpretation overpowers the literal one. What would this be? How. Why would Brides be in here. If we were just talking about the goblin fruit brides hope to have what? The goblin fruit. Or is it just the idea of getting what you want? Some readings of this, citing this passage and a few others, is that it's about lesbian love, forbidden love. That sort of fits here too. She wanted the joys brides hoped to have, so she seized an opportunity, maybe like a woman seizing them with another woman outside of marriage. Something forbidden. And then she was spoiled, ruined. She no longer had a place in Victorian society. She couldn't get married now because she knew there was something better out there, something that appealed to her more. The pleasures of sex with women. And so she would wither away as Laura is on her way to doing a spinster in the language of the time. All this is in the. In the era, the views of their era. It doesn't really comport with our view today, but you can see how it would fit with Rossetti's time. If this is what Rossetti's talking about. Still not clear to me. There's a lot here that doesn't really fit with this interpretation too. Okay, let's go back to the poem. We got to find out what happens. Do you know? Can you guess? I can't. And I've read this before. Multiple times recently. Okay, back to the poem. Here we go. If my voice sounds different, it's because I had to pause to get some breakfast and I included some juicy blackberries on my cereal. Okay, here we go. Back to the poem. Till Laura, dwindling, seemed knocking at death's door. Then Lizzie weighed no more, better and worse, but put a silver penny in her purse, kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furs, at twilight halted by the brook, and for the first time in her life began to listen. And look. That's interesting. Listening only you can resist. Or at least Lizzy can. Come by, come by. That's all they ever say. That's huckster talk, right? The fruit doesn't talk. But looking, looking at the goblins, looking at the fruit, that's what hooks you. Ignore this seedy looking man with the brown teeth and the patchy scalp. Look at the gleaming needle. Or ignore this hideous parking lot in this old lobby with the vomit colored carpet. Inside is a bright and shiny casino with deep green felt and colorful poker chips just waiting for you. Lizzy. Lizzy, wanting to help Laura. What's she going to do? She kisses Laura, who's half dead. Liz has got to do something, right? Sacrifice herself, maybe heads out With a silver penny. Lizzy. Oh no, Lizzy, please. Here we go. Laughed every goblin when they spied her peeping came towards her. Hobbling, flying, running, leaping, puffing and blowing. Chuckling, clapping, crowing, clucking and gobbling, mopping and mowing. Full of airs and graces. Pulling wry faces, demure grimaces. Cat like and rat like, rattle and wombat like. Snail paste in a hurry. Parrot voiced and whistler. Helter skelter, hurry. Scurry. Chattering like magpies, Fluttering like pigeons. Gliding like fishes. After that word fishes, there's a dash. We pause for breath. That's quite a flurry of activity. These goblins are hella active. Loud, noisy, laughing, swarming. They want something. They're excited. They laugh when they see her. Lizzie, the good one. They've seen her every day. But this time is different. This time she's brought money and this time she's peeping. This time she wants to want. She's willing. This is the churchgoer who wants to be bad. I can tell you this. I knew a woman once. A gorgeous woman. Everyone was in love with her. She was sweet and pure. And one night she wanted to be bad. And she sought out a bad man. A wild man. Someone who was known for being kind of living on the edge. A rebel. And she demanded something from that man. She demanded it from him. And he was sort of shocked. And the story got around. And I am much more mature now in the ways of the world. But that story still gets me. Whatever was in her that needed to come out, something in her snapped. For just that one night she wanted something. She wanted it and she demanded it. That's Lizzy. She's on the verge of this too. Only there's something noble about what she's doing. She's doing it for Laura. She's doing it to try to save someone else. Let's hear what happens. We'll back up a few lines so we can get the full effect. Helter skelter, hurry, Scurry. Chattering like magpies. Fluttering like pigeons. Gliding like fishes. Hugged her and kissed her, Squeezed and caressed her. Stretched up their dishes, panniers and plates. Look at our apples, russet and done Bob at our cherries, Bite at our peaches, Citrons and dates. Grapes for the asking. Pears red with basking out in the sun. Plums on their twigs, Pluck them and suck them. Pomegranates, figs. Good folk, said Lizzie, mindful of Jeannie. Give me much and many. Held out her apron, tossed them her penny oh, look at that. She just wants to buy. She doesn't want to eat. She says, I'll pay you. I'm taking them to someone else. I'm here to buy opium for my friend who is suffering without it. Tried to quit cold turkey or was forced to quit cold turkey. But I can tell she's dying from not having it. Will they sell it to her if she doesn't want to eat it? If she won't taste the fruit, will they sell it to her to give to someone else? Let's see. Back to the poem. Nay, take a seat with us. Honor and eat with us, they answered, grinning. Our feast is but beginning night, yet is early warm, and dew pearly, wakeful and starry. Such fruits as these no man can carry. Half their bloom would fly, half their dew would dry, Half their flavor would pass by. Sit down and feast with us. Be welcome guest with us, Cheer you and rest with us. Thank you, said Lizzie. But one waits at home alone for me. So without further parleying, if you will not sell me any of your fruits, though much and many, give me back my silver penny I tossed you for a fee. They began to scratch, their pates no longer wagging, purring, but visibly demurring, grunting and snarling. One called her proud, cross grained, uncivil. Their tones waxed loud. Their looks were evil, lashing their tails. They trod and hustled her, elbowed and jostled her, clawed with their nails, barking, mewing, hissing, mocking. Tore her gown and soiled her stocking, twitched her hair out by the roots, stamped upon her tender feet, held her hands and squeezed their fruits against her mouth to make her eat again. This poem is something you could give to a child. It's got the sing song tones of a nursery rhyme almost. But don't do it. Or when the child grows up, he or she will probably say, my God, how could you have given me this poem? It's so violent. What do they want from her, these goblins? They don't want to give the fruit away. They want to be there when it's eaten. They want to see someone giving themselves over to the fruit, succumbing to the succousness. What will Lizzie do? She's now being assaulted. She fight back, resist. How does she help Laura? How does she escape? Here we go. White and golden, Lizzy stood like a lily in a flood Like a rock of blue veined stone lashed by tides obstreperously like a beacon Left alone in a hoary roaring sea sending up a Golden fire like a fruit crowned orange tree white with blossoms, honey sweet sore beset by wasp and bee Like a royal virgin town Topped with gilded dome and spire close beleaguered by a fleet mad to tug her standard down. Here's where I think Christina Rossetti had to see that this was about sex, right? That had to have been the intention. Lesbian love, maybe, but love of some kind. Sex, Virginity. This is a royal virgin town with a fleet around, all around. Lizzie trying to tug her standard down, take her virginity, deflower her. These are all outdated concepts, sort of. They're not as outdated as we'd like to think. Maybe the history of this is thousands of years old. What will Lizzy do? Back to the poem. One may lead a horse to water, 20 cannot make him drink. Though the goblins cuffed and caught her, coaxed and fought her, bullied and besought her, scratched her, pinched her black as ink, kicked and knocked her, mauled and mocked her. Lizzie uttered not a word, would not open lip from lip, lest they should cram a mouthful in, but laughed in heart to feel the drip of juice that syruped all her face and lodged in dimples of her chin and streaked her neck, which quaked like curd. Okay, this part has been compared to sex. Not to be too explicit here. I think you can maybe get the picture. They're in a frenzy. It's violent. This is not a pleasant scene. It's not consensual at all. This is sexual violence. Goblin violence. But me analogy here to sex is very strong. She keeps her lips shut tight and instead she winds up with juice on her face, lodging in her chin, streaking her neck. I think you know what this juice could represent, right? Her neck is streaked. It quakes like curd. My goodness. Christina Rossetti does whatever the hell she wants and doesn't look back. Here we go at last. The evil people, worn out by her resistance, flung back her penny, kicked their fruit along whichever road they took, not leaving root or stone or shoot. Some writhed into the ground, Some dived into the brook with ring and ripple. Some scudded on the gale without a sound. Some vanished in the distance in a smart ache tingle. Lizzie went her way, knew not was it night or day, Sprang up the bank, tore through the firs, threaded cups and dingle and heard her penny jingle, bouncing in her purse, Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran as if she feared some goblin man dogged her with jibe or curse or something worse. But not one goblin scurried after Nor was she pricked by fear. The kind heart made her windy paste that urged her home. Quite out of breath with haste and inward laughter, she is surviving. What she's been through is awful. It's hard not to see this as something like rape. In fairness to Rossetti, it's not. It's someone resisting goblins who want her to eat fruit. But the language and imagery here is so strongly suggestive, it feels like she has survived something very violent, something intrusive. Feels like she's a survivor of sexual violence. Back to the poem. She cried, Laura, up the garden. Did you miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises. Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeezed from goblin fruits for you. Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me, Laura, make much of me. For your sake I have braved the glen and had to do with goblin merchant men. Wow. That was not a turn I expected from Christina Rossetti. Or from anyone, for that matter. You want this so much, Laura? This fruit? And this semen like juice? Well, it's all over me. Come and kiss me and drink me up. You want sin? I'm stained with it. Come and clean me with your tongue and take all you want. Laura started from her chair, flung her arms up in the air, clutched her hair. Lizzy, Lizzy, have you tasted for my sake the fruit forbidden? Must your light, like mine, be hidden, your young life, like mine, be wasted, undone in mine undoing and ruined in my ruin? Thirsty, cankered, goblin ridden, she clung about her sister, kissed and kissed and kissed, her tears once again refreshed, her shrunken eyes dropping like rain after a long, sultry drought. Shaking with agueish fear and pain, she kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth. This is so explicit, you almost wonder if Rossetti didn't see it. That's one theory I have. Maybe she was pulling in the sexual metaphors without being fully aware of just how overpowering they would be. Look at Laura. Here she feels bad for about a millisecond, and then she goes for the good stuff. Poor Lizzie never got to taste it. And what does it mean for Laura, by the way? We had a word in there, Aguish, which looks like a misspelling of anguish, but it's not. It means quivering, shaking with a Jewish fear and pain. She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth. Hmm. What does this mean for Laura? Her lips began to scorch. That juice was wormwood to her tongue. She loathed the feast. Writhing as one possessed, she leaped and sung, rent all her robe and wrung her hands in lamentable haste and beat her breast. Her locks streamed like the torch borne by a racer at full speed. Or like the mane of horses in their flight. Or like an eagle when she stems the light straight toward the sun. Or like a caged thing freed, or like a flying flag when armies run. Swift fire spread through her veins, knocked at her heart, met the fire smoldering there and overbore its lesser flame. She gorged on bitterness without a name. Ah, fire. Fool. To choose such part of soul consuming care. Sense failed in the mortal strife. Like the watchtower of a town which an earthquake shatters down like a lightning stricken mast, Like a wind uprooted tree spun about like a foam topped waterspout Cast down headlong in the sea. She fell at last pleasure passed and anguish passed. Is it death or is it life? What a wild response. She gorged on bitterness without a name. What is the metaphor here? It's gone. There is none. This doesn't fit with sex anymore. And it doesn't fit with drugs. We're in another realm. This goblin fruit has transcended anything known on earth. It's in Rossetti's imagination now. Something you want so badly you die from not having it. And then you get it. And it's not what it's supposed to be. It doesn't do to you what it's supposed to do. And you gorge on it anyway. And it slays you like a watchtower falling in an earthquake, or a wave that crashes into the ocean. Is it death or is it life? What a question. When you're so bereft you think you might be dead. This wanting is so powerful. And then. Do we get an answer? Is this question just rhetorical? Well, we get kind of an answer. Life out of death. That night, long Lizzie watched by her, counted her pulses flagging stir, felt for her breath, held water to her lips and cooled her face with tears and fanning leaves. But when the first birds chirped about their eaves and early reapers plodded to the place of golden sheaves and dew, Wet grass bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass. And new buds with new day opened of cup like lilies on the stream. Laura awoke as from a dream, laughed in the innocent old way, hugged Lizzie, but not twice or thrice. Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray. Her breath was sweet as May, and light danced in her eyes. Wow. A kind of rebirth. Why? Because Lizzy has sacrificed for her? Or because the fruit no longer tastes so good? So the spell of addiction is broken. Or maybe a bit of both. Days, weeks, months, years afterwards, when both were wives with children of their own, their mother hearts beset with fears, their lives bound up in tender lives. Laura would call the little ones and tell them of her early prime, those pleasant days long gone, of not returning time. Would talk about the haunted glen, the wicked, quaint fruit merchant men. Their fruits like honey to the throat, but poison in the blood. Men sell not such in any town. Would tell them how her sister stood in deadly peril to do her good and win the fiery antidote. Then joining hands to little hands, would bid them cling together. For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands. Wow. Okay, so a fallen woman can get married. We see. And there's a happy ending. Here the power of sisterhood and sacrifice pays off. Laura tells the story of how brave her sister was, tells them to the children. They both have children here. Both are wives. Laura seems to tell Lizzie's children and her own about what happened, how brave Lizzie had been. The moral of the story, Resist temptation. Do what you can to help a friend, especially a sister, resist it too. Be wary of goblin men, wicked fruit merchant men, however quaint they may seem. And remember to help each other and to trust your loved ones. Your sisters especially. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I'm a little out of breath. What a wild journey to get to this point. I will not forget this poem. I will not forget Goblin Market and I will not forget Christina Rossetti. We will hear more about this remarkable poem and this remarkable poet. Lizzy and Laura might be finished with the honey in the throat and the poison in the blood, but we are still peeping and those goblins are still laughing. We're hooked on Christina Rossetti and we're coming back for more. Hello. In a previous episode, we looked at Goblin Market, one of the most unusual poems of the Victorian era and indeed, one of the strangest poems I have ever read. It's a mysterious creature, an odd goblin of a poem. Nearly as mysterious as the poet who authored it and the demonic figures she dreamed up. Her name was Christina Rossetti. How in the world did she come to write this poem? Was it the devil speaking through her and taking over? She came from an incredible family and was kind of an incredible person. She lived in incredible times. Does any of that explain Goblin Market? Just who was Christina Rossetti? We examine her life and her poetry today on the history of literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. I'm Jack Wilson. I'm glad you're here today. Christina Rossetti. Wow. So we have recently looked at William Blake with the help of our guest, John Higgs. Blake was a visionary. He was an iconoclast. And now here comes Christina Rossetti, who in some ways is very unlike Blake. She was not out there throwing bombs. Her reputation as a person was, and mostly still is one of moral probity, religious determination, and stalwart allegiance to her faith. Famously, in Britain, at least, she wrote poems that have been set to music as Christmas hymns, In the Bleak Midwinter and Love Came down at Christmas. We don't listen to those too much in the States, so I have no particular nostalgia for them, but I know at least one of the tunes. Here's in the Bleak Midwinter, in case it's new to you. Right. You know that one, right? Maybe. Okay. While the lyrics are taken from this poem, listen for the ease with which Rossetti sets forth her words. They flow with simplicity, with grace, with unaffected art. Listen to how she uses repetition, how effective and with such fearlessness, and how the changes in rhyme and rhythm, the patterns and unexpected distortions of the pattern, serve to emphasize and punctuate her thoughts. In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone Snow had fallen, Snow on snow, Snow on snow in the bleak midwinter long ago our God heaven cannot hold him Nor earth sustain Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ Enough for him whom cherubim worship night and day A breastful of milk and a mangerful of hay Enough for him whom angels fall down before the ox and ass and camel which adore angels and archangels may have gathered there Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air. But only his mother in her maiden bliss worshipped the beloved with a kiss. What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can, I give him, Give my heart. It's such a lovely and somber poem. The music they found for it is very suitable. It's the sadness of a winter's day. Probably not one in Bethlehem, but in northern climes, where the sun doesn't shine all that many hours and is often Covered by clouds. When it does, it's that late afternoon dying of the twilight. There's the humility of knowing the wintry sun is going down and we are poor and powerless to prevent it. And yet there's promise, promise of a mother's kiss. A mother in maiden bliss, as Rossetti sort of was, too. A maiden blissful with the joys of Christian devotion, bestowing a kiss, worshiping the beloved. And we poor and lowly people, all of us give our heart because it's all. All we have and all that's important. Lovely stuff. Who was she? How did the same person write Love Came down at Christmas, which is even more devout and, one might say a little on the preachy side, and many other Christian poems, and then spin out something with as much gusto for sin as Goblin Market. I know, I know Goblin Market has a message of redemption and sisterly love and all that, but it's weird. It's Halloween more than Christmas. It's disturbing. You wouldn't give it to children, not if you're paying attention to it, anyway. And you wouldn't read it in church. The message to me, the sisterly love and redemption, is almost tacked on an afterthought, like the sort of thing you do after the sinning is over and you're looking around at the Vegas hotel room with the tiger in the bathtub. I don't mean to be describing the hangover. I wouldn't mind erasing that movie from my hard drive. Nothing against it. Kind of like Bradley Cooper. He seems like a decent enough guy, but he's no Christina Rossetti. So let's get back on track. Christina Rossetti was born in December of 1830 in London, where she lived most of her life. Her family was quite extraordinary from a literary and artistic standpoint. Her father was Gabriele Pasquale. Pasquale means Easter, by the way. Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti, a great expert in Dante, who had left Naples in 1824 and worked in London as a professor of Italian. He married a woman named Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori. And if that name, Polidori, rings a bell with you, congratulations. You are likely to be a fan of Romantic poetry and prose, too. Francis's brother's name was John Polidori. John Polidori was Byron's doctor, and he has a claim to fame himself. Literary fame, that is. He was traveling through Europe with Byron and Shelley and Shelley's new paramour, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley. This crew was all staying Together at a house near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It was rainy and they were bored. Byron proposed that everyone should write a ghost story. Mary Shelley happened to write the first version of Frankenstein, and Polidori wrote the Vampire, which became the first vampire story, the first modern vampire story published in English. So there we go. That was Christina Rossetti's uncle, though he died before she was born. To recap, her mother's brother wrote the Vampire. Her father was a great scholar of Dante, and her siblings, two brothers and a sister, were also literary and artistic, especially her older brother, Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, whom we know better as Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He wrote poems himself and he translated works, but he was probably most famous for his illustrations and paintings. He was a leader of the Pre Raphaelite movement. This was a reference to the painter Raphael and a rejection of the style that came after Raphael and Michelangelo. These people, the Pre Raphaelites, wanted intense colors, lots of detail, complex compositions. They used living people as models. Christina herself posed several times, as did her mother. Literature was deeply embedded into the works and imagination of the Pre Raphaelites. They adored Keats and Blake. Dante made illustrations for the published edition of the poem. We looked at last time, Goblin Market. But let's turn to Christina. She was in this deep literary world where all her siblings wanted to be poets. Her father adored and was an expert in poetry, and a mother whose own brother was in close proximity to the greatest poets of that era. Christina was born the same year as Emily Dickinson, by the way. A nice harmony, as if we've set two queens on the chessboard at the same time. Monarchs of poetry in their own way, powerful figures who could do almost anything with their craft, move anywhere on the board, though these two were separated by an ocean and lived very different lives. Rossetti was in a prominent family, and even within it, she was known for her gifts. These were the sort of siblings who would write poems for fun, for games, parlor games. One person writing a line, and then they would all try to finish it with a couplet, or someone would suggest a topic and a rhyme scheme, and they would scurry off to their separate corners and write a quick sonnet on that subject. And Christina was the best of them. Even Dante, who himself grew up and wrote some excellent poetry, even Dante acknowledged it, believed in Christina's talent. Some other games and occupations in this, by all accounts, happy childhood, included chess, trips to the zoo and putting out a family newspaper. Apparently, Christina's first poem was one she dictated to her mother. It was just two lines. Cecilia never went to school without her gladiator. I kind of love this poem. If a child wrote it, let's take my own kids out of it. If my kids wrote it, I think, oh, how cute, how wonderful. Let's put this on the fridge. If some other child wrote it, I'd say, oh, nice. Aren't kids wonderful? So clever. And I would try to appear to be as interested as the person telling me about the poem. Probably a parent or grandparent. But frankly, my interest would be a little bit strained as it is when others describe their dreams to me or tell me that they misheard something and were momentarily confused. Ha ha. Lol. Lol. Lol. But when it's a future poet, someone as deft and difficult to absorb as Christina Rossetti, I am intensely intrigued because this could be a clue. Her first poem. Hmm. At the risk, then, of reading too much into this little piece of Juvenalia. Juvenalia coming from Juvenal, of course, who probably saw a few gladiator competitions in his day. Actually, we know that he did because he wrote about female gladiators. But that's for another show. Christina Rossetti's little poem about Cecilia going to school with her gladiator tells me much more about Christina's young mind, already sparkling like a firecracker. It tells me she was steeped in stories from history, the gladiators being right there, prominent, the way dinosaurs might be in a child's mind today. It tells me that Christina can imagine a little girl going to school with one needing protection, perhaps blending the routine and everyday and actual with something from history. It's like saying, whenever I brush my teeth, the T. Rex puts the paste on my brush. Cecilia isn't headed back to Rome or doesn't live there. She's going to school, probably around the corner right there in London, but she's sure to take along a gladiator of all things. The other thing this tells me is how much these Rossettis were thinking in terms of poetry. Because, hey, guess what? This is not really much of a poem. It's basically a sentence that's been divided into two lines partway through. There's no reason why this being spoken aloud would be a poem and not just a single prose sentence. Except that the family recorded it as a poem. Christina herself maybe framed it that way. Here's my poem. It's two lines. It tells me that whether it was Christina or her mother, it's a family that values poetry, that finds it wherever they can, that plucks verses from the air the way other families might pluck fruit from their trees. If this family is hungry and happens to be underneath fruit trees with ripe fruit, as I hope they are and do for the sake of my metaphor, as well as for their own good health and nutrition. Last time we talked about Rossetti as an older, calmer woman, describing her bouts of temper to her niece, her youthful bouts of temper, a temper that had once driven her to cut her own arm with a knife. And indeed her father said, I've got two Maria and William and two Storms, Christina and Gabriel. Gabriel, Dante. Gabriel once drew a sketch of his sister Christina as a teenager. Was she posing with a smile, maybe sitting with her notebook writing poetry? No, in his depiction, she's destroying a room in a fit of anger. She seems to have responded to this internal chaos with a turn to religion. Or maybe I should say, in order to harmonize her religious impulses with her own chaotic behavior, she developed a plan of strict religious adherence. She went to church a lot. She set up a plan to prevent herself from being vain and idle. She put strict rules of behavior around herself and abided by those rules. She was a devout Anglican. Her younger brother described her as a fountain, sealed, with all that personality tamped down, repressed, perhaps one might psychoanalyze from our 21st century couch. Anyhow, something blocked her personality, her anger, her temper. Something blocked it from appearing. It's interesting that her younger brother doesn't say that she lost her spirit or her energy faded or she matured into something less stormy. He described it as a sealed fountain, not a dried up one. Presumably Christina's personality still exhibited some signs of the fountain, even if her actions were no longer the sort that would tear up the room or self, stab the arm. Maybe he saw it in her writing, at least some of the time. There were Christian poems like Good Friday and poems about a fallen woman, like Twice. Many of her poems take an earthly love, with all its sins and pain and the shame of premarital sex, etc. Sins of the Victorian age, and turn that love towards something higher, like the sisterly love we saw in Goblin Market or the love of God. Here's her poem. Twice I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love. I said, let me fall or stand, let me live or die. But this once hear me speak, O my love, O my love. Yet a woman's words are weak. You should speak, not I. You took my heart in your hand with a friendly smile, with a critical eye you scanned and set it down and said, it is still unripe. Better wait a while. Wait while the skylarks pipe till the corn grows brown. As you set it down, it broke. Broke. But I did not wince. I smiled at the speech you spoke, at your judgment that I heard. But I have not often smiled since then, nor questioned since, nor cared for cornflowers wild, nor sung with the singing bird. I take my heart in my hand. O my God. O my God. My broken heart in my hand thou hast seen. Judge thou my hope was written on sand. O my God. O my God. Now let thy judgment stand. Yea, judge me now. This contemned of a man, this marred one heedless day this heart take thou to scan both within and without. Refine with fire its gold, purge thou its dross away. Yea, hold it in thy hold, whence none can pluck it out. I take my heart in my hand, I shall not die, but live before thy face I stand aye, for thou callest such. All that I have, I bring. All that I am, I give. Smile thou and I shall sing, but shall not question much. Twice that poem is called what's twice in this poem, what's happening twice? Judgment. At least in my interpretation. This is a woman who has given herself to her lover, causing her to be judged by others here on earth. You sinner. You fallen woman. You hussy. No word about the man, of course. The cat who brought this about, who was also a sinner. That's been around forever. The famous double standard. And is still with us, isn't it? The man is Wink, wink. Just being a man. Boys will be boys. Locker room talk. He's sowing his oats. He's following his nature like the scorpion on the frog's back. Women trust men like this, put their hearts in the hands of these men, the men might use them. And society doesn't say, well, the cruel cat is the one who pays. It says, you lose, woman. You gave up your virtue. You surrendered it to your disgrace. We now cast you out. You have become a woman with a reputation in quotation marks. And then the second judgment, the judgment of God. And I don't see Christina Rossetti in this poem saying it's unfair to face God so much as she's saying this is what will happen. And it does happen to women every day. And our hearts must be with them. They must make some amends, if not to society, then to God. At least it's right and proper that they do so. It's an aching poem. Aching to be good, to be pure, even as impurity steals over us. Inevitably Attacks us, makes us do things. We can't resist impulses. It takes a lifetime to tamp down. Christina Rossetti never married. She lived with her mother all her life. She was in love a couple of times, but she rejected three suitors because of religious differences. In retrospect, I wonder if she'd have been happier in a convent, free from the pain of not letting herself be with the men that she sometimes actually did love and want to be with. She also rejected the pre Raphaelites, sort of. She did not consider herself to be one, even as her brother led the group and invited her in. And some of her poetry was published in pre Raphaelite journals. She also posed for their paintings, giving them a face multiple times to use. And maybe her face became emblematic of what we know of them, how we think of them. This introspective and melancholy woman, who as a younger woman was quite striking and who turned into a matronly or anti figure fairly quickly, something she herself was conscious of. It's a spirit that animates one of my favorite poems of hers, one that isn't about a fallen woman or a turn to God. It's not a hymn or a Christmas carol, but a sonnet giving us insight into something right here on earth in London, in an artist's studio, where men who paint portraits of women idealize and objectify those women. It reminds me of men who want so badly to understand female desire and to have it in their lives that they write novels or screenplays in which women want to have sex just as much as any man does. Which is certainly potentially true in life in the real world. Women have that power and that agency, and God bless them, why not, if that's what they want to do? But sometimes you suspect that the men who are authors are inventing a character they really, really, really hope they could meet one day. Imagine this. How great life would be if I met a woman who was this frank and open about sex and who wanted to have sex with me as much or more than I wanted to have sex with her. A sexual jackpot. My life flooded with those coins, Everything finally going my way. Well, this sonnet doesn't go quite that far down the sexual path. It's more about beauty and youth. But there's something related there. This is called in the artist's studio, one face looks out from all his canvases One self Same figure sits or walks or leans. We found her hidden just behind those screens that mirror gave back all her loveliness A queen in opal or in ruby dress A Nameless girl in freshest summer greens. A saint, an angel. Every canvas means the same one, meaning neither more or less. He feeds upon her face by day and night, and she with true kind eyes looks back on him. Fair as the moon and joyful as the light. Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim. Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright. Not as she is, but as she fills his dream. Yes, I'll pose for you, one can almost hear Christina saying to her brother and to the other artists who wanted her to sit for their paintings. Yes, I'll allow my face to be the one you're putting into this costume or historical scene or other situation. And my face will adorn your studio. And at night you'll gaze at it, imagining that it's me gazing back at you, constantly in love with you or angry at you, or here to be your muse in whatever way. Yes, it's my face with those true, kind eyes you've painted. But they're not my eyes. My eyes will be with my actual face and my body, thank you very much. A face and a body that will be far away and will be aging and will not be yours. They never were. I didn't give them to you. And that painting is not me. It's you. Your projection, your idea, your paint, your art, your dream. It's me, frozen in time. But it's not actually me, is it? It's always been you. The meaning is what you gave it. You don't take from me. You take from yourself. Unfortunately, Christina's health was not great. She had what was diagnosed as Graves disease. And she wasn't all that healthy before that. Coughs, angina, swellings, breathlessness. All this sickness and debilitating illness. And a few breakdowns too. She was writing poetry and keeping up with her brother and his art, even as her father got sick and the family grew impoverished. And she was going to work as a governess, but was too sick to do so. But she did volunteer to help women's prisoners. Women prisoners. Which perhaps fueled all those poems she wrote about fallen women for whom she was empathetic in a kind of a but for the grace of God way. She published poems. Critics admired them, but they didn't sell all that well. And some of the critics truly did not get her. Ruskin was one. Ruskin was hugely influential. He dominated the scene. But he was himself an odd guy, in my opinion, with some very fixed and decisive opinions, often wrong headed or misthought or coming from a wellspring of dogmatic thinking that blinded him. Let's take a quick break and then talk about Ruskin and his misreading of Goblin Market, how he missed the boat on that one. And then we'll talk about some people who did appreciate Christina Rossetti a bit more, including one of our great heroes. And if you have listened to previous episodes, you know we have a rule here at the History of Literature podcast. When we hear from Virginia Woolf, we don't try to follow. She gets the last word, as she will again today. She wrote an essay called I Am Christina Rossetti. And if that doesn't hold your interest, I might as well give up, because I don't think anything can. Ruskin and then Wolf after this, Thursday Night Football is on and it's only on Prime Video, a game of entrance. This week it's an AFC clash as the Baltimore Ravens meet the Miami Dolphins. Can he get to the end zone? Yes. Coverage begins at 7pm Eastern with Football's Best Party TNF tonight presented by Verizon. Not a Prime member? Not a problem. Simply sign up for a 30 day free trial. It's the Ravens and Dolphins Thursday at 7pm Eastern only on Prime Video. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com amazonprime for t tip. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com as you know, if you've listened to this podcast before, I'm a huge Beatles fan and so I will start with the story of George Martin and Ringo Starr. Ringo's not on the earliest Beatles records, not because he wasn't in the band. And we're ignoring here the earliest earliest of their records when they backed up Tony Sheridan and all that and their demo albums and all that. Let's just start with their first real records, Love Me do and the B side P.S. i love you two Lennon McCartney songs. John and Paul and George on guitar and singing. George Martin, the uber producer presiding over the session. And Ringo Starr, where was he sitting behind his drum kit? No, he was on the sidelines. Ringo Starr, the greatest drummer in Liverpool, the one who fit with the others that turned them from a triangle with a dot into a square. They kicked Pete Best out of the band to make way for Ringo and it changed Everything, they felt it. It was like the fourth and fifth concluding line of a magic spell. You don't cast a four line spell with three lines. For this particular spell you needed all four. And Ringo was the fourth. They made the magic, they all felt it, except George Martin. He said, that's not what we need. For the record, I'm going to use this session musician I've hired. His name is Andy White. Here he is, he's going to Playboys. Do whatever you want. For the tour, you can have Ringo. He looks good, he's got the hair like you guys. Girls might love him, whatever. But for the record, we're going to use Andy White. Ringo never really got over the slide. He was so good natured and good humored. He didn't dwell on it either. But if you're the drummer in a band, you don't want to play the tambourine while someone else sits at the kit. What was George Martin's problem? Well, some say that he didn't actually have a problem with Ringo. He had hired Andy White after hearing Pete Best, who didn't keep time that well and who played with a kind of driving and heavy handed and monolithic style. And they turned up for their session with Ringo, the new guy, and George Martin just said, hey, I've already hired a drummer, I'm going to stick to my plan. You've got a new guy, but I know what my guy can do. Feel free to use Ringo on the tour, but here we're putting this on wax. We got. We gotta have a. We gotta have Andy White. Here's a tambourine, Dingo, or whatever your name is. Others say no. He did hear Ringo, but he didn't appreciate him at first. Ringo was a feeling drummer, he kept great time, but he grooved with the musicians. He found the pocket, which most people today say, yes, that's what you need for a band who's playing live, not a machine. You're not doing this in Pro Tools. You want a drummer who will fit the song and his fellow musicians. Someone who can find that pocket and stay in it. But that's what people say, in part because of Ringo. And this was before Ringo. George Martin, God bless him, had to adapt to the Beatles as he went along. They were breaking rules left and right. He did not yet know that they were not just breaking rules, they were rewriting the rule book. Not just accidentally breaking rules because they didn't know better. They were breaking them on purpose because they did what two songwriters in the band? Yes, please. Backwards music Feedback. No. Real lead singer or a shared lead. Yes and yes and yes. All of that long hair, psychedelia, a bed in the studio. Yes, go with it as long as it lasts. By 1970, George Martin was going with the flow. But in 1962, he was there to say, hmm, the drumming in this band is not so crisp. I've got a studio musician who can give me the perfect crisp drumming. I want Andy White. Ten years later, we'd have a John Bonham in Led Zeppelin who was irregular all over the place, but in a way that's suitable for the song, a way that's brilliant. A way that it looked. These aren't mistakes. This is a drummer that's playing with feelings, with genius. You can put a metronome on this and say, oh, wrong, wrong, wrong again. He sped up, he slowed down. Ooh, what's going on? What's wrong with this guy? He's terrible. But try to do this, try to play this well, try to play this perfectly for the song. Jimi Hendrix heard John Bonham and said, my God, his foot is like. It's like he's playing castanets. John Bonham died and his fellow Led Zeppelin members said, led Zeppelin is no more. We can't do it without Bonham. He's essential. You wouldn't say that about a metronome. You wouldn't say that about a studio musician. You say that about a fellow artist. So here is an isolated drum track from the Led Zeppelin song Heartbreaker. Try to find the pattern here. And then when you can't, just admire the sound that has no pattern. A sound full of speeding up and slowing down. A sound that matches the music which you can hear faintly in the background in this track. A sound full of surprises. Sam. Okay, can you hear that? Those aren't mistakes, are they? They're deliberate. Okay, let's skip ahead a little bit in the song. We'll hear the conclusion of Heartbreaker or something closer to the end and listen again for the patterns, the breaks in the patterns, the flourishes, the seeming mistakes. See how it sounds to you. Okay, could you hear that? Could you hear how it would get into a little bit of a. A pattern and then it would break the pattern. You get the sense he's, ah, that he's feeling the music. He's feeling the guitar and the singing and he's going with what is flowing out of his heart and his body, probably his groin. Knowing Led Zeppelin, with someone like Christina Rossetti, maybe it's her heart and her mind and her soul, her Soul looking to the heavens. Anyway, John Bonham is Ringo to the max. If by Ringo we mean someone who's in the pocket or playing with the band or playing what the song needs, as opposed to perfect time or flawless drumming or no mistakes. Because Ringo did have perfect time. Actually, you can hear that over and over on the studio sessions. He was a metronome. He could be flawless, he could play with no mistakes, but he also played with the song, which is what the other Beatles appreciated. It's not him, it's you. It's what you use as your framework that needs to change. It's like saying this painting is bad because it doesn't look like real life. Here, look at my photograph of the stars in the night sky and. And see, this painting doesn't look anything like that. And Van Gogh says, my night is starry in just this way. Deal with it. Look at how the reality of this painting I've painted is more vivid and more alive and more vibrant and more true than your lousy photograph. Ruskin read Goblin Market and wrote a letter to Dante Gabriel. Your sister, he said. Keep in mind that John Ruskin was the foremost critic of his day. Your sister should exercise herself in the severest commonplace of meter until she can write as the public like. Until she can write as the public like, as the. No doubt George Martin would have justified Andy White in the same way. Look, boys, you might like. You might like, Ringo and all, but I need to give the public what it expects. They'll think we're just a bunch of amateurs who can't tell good drumming from bad. Your sister should exercise herself. It's so condescending. She needs to work harder. She's making mistakes everywhere. She should go and practice, work harder and not send these works out into the world until she can fix herself. So annoying. Here's a tambourine. Zingo. Get out of our way. Christina Rossetti was listening to a different tune, one that was dreamy and hypnotic, with fits and starts and surprising rhymes and jigsaw patterns, not smooth lines, wormholes and wrinkles in time, jumps, leaps. And we are lucky to be able to hear what her ear heard. We follow the crooked path she created. Because a goblin market is not an army marching in perfect formation across an empty parking lot for us to gaze upon and admire for their rigidity and their discipline. A goblin market is going to be full of twists and turns and surprises jumping out of the shadows. Right? Right. Isn't that what you would expect from goblins at a market? Ruskin come on Ruskin was so influential. Look, I don't want to sound like Jonathan Franzen damning Oprah with faint praise, but I love that Ruskin loved art. I love that he was a champion of painting and poetry. I think his heart was generally in the right place. And who am I to criticize someone who inspired Proust? But my goodness, to ask someone like Christina Rossetti to follow Ruskin's advice is a little like people today who slavishly follow Thomas Jefferson. And yes, I'm using that word slavishly with some intention here, a bit of purpose. We podcasters are humans too. We find the pocket where it suits us. I'm in the pocket, going with what my heart tells me to say. It's a little like mindlessly following some guy from hundreds of years ago who had never heard of an iPhone or believed that, I don't know, the moon was made of cheese or something. It's time that we stop following you, Aristotle, and, sorry, Isaac Newton, we aren't going to count the letters in the Bible to see when the world is going to end or whatever it is you think is important to do. And when you hear that John Ruskin was probably so freaked out by his wife's pubic hair, that's what people have speculated. It's the best explanation for Ruskin's complete shock and surprise by what he discovered on his wedding night and his appalling response afterwards. You just think, you know what? This guy Ruskin might not have all the answers. Confidence and his profound, intense self confidence notwithstanding, maybe he didn't have all the answers. And when he tells Dante Gabriel Rossetti to make Cristina work just a little harder and maybe she won't make quite so many mistakes, well, I stand from the viewpoint of the 21st century to say leave Christina alone. Thank God she didn't adapt herself to what Ruskin wanted. We would not have the poems we have with mystery and magic alongside her supreme talent and brazenness and the execution of her poetry. I learned long ago in pedagogy seminars that the worst teachers were the ones who had found a way to teach that worked for them and who assumed that therefore they just needed to instruct all other teachers in how to teach like they do, because their way is the one true way. Consistency is the hobgoblin of foolish minds. We have goblins, then we have fools. I'll take Christina Rossetti's goblins and leave the foolishness to the carping John Ruskin. We wouldn't have these poems if Christina had listened to him and we would not perhaps have the admiring essay of Virginia Woolf, which we will take a look at after this. Virginia Woolf wrote her essay I Am Christina Rossetti, on the occasion of what would have been Rossetti's 100th birthday. Woolf had been reading a biography of the poet and she acknowledged that, hey, this woman was shy and probably would not have loved us talking about her life. But biographies are irresistible and so we shall not resist. We're going to look at this Italian family in their impoverished little home. Woolf points out, with what comes close to snobbery may have been snobbery, giving her the benefit of the doubt, but it might have, might have been snobbery that the Rossetti's Italian ness meant that they didn't really try to be upstanding like middle class British families did. They were happy to wear whatever clothes they wanted and have organ grinders over to dinner. Woolf describes a young, shy Christina Rossetti who was very religious, absorbed in her relationship with God, the relation of the soul to God, and Christina Rossetti's God was dark and harsh and not one who loved pleasure. In fact, the theater was hateful to Cristina Rossetti. Opera was hateful. Nakedness was hateful. Even chess was wrong. All these guilty pleasures, something dark and hard, like a kernel had formed in the center of Christina Rossetti's being, says Virginia Woolf. And that thing was, of course, religion. This was all very real to her, as it was for the other Rossettis too, like her mother and like her sister Maria, who, this is pretty funny, who refused to visit the mummy room at the British Museum because the day of Resurrection might suddenly dawn and it would be very unseemly to watch the mummified corpses rise into immortality. They might prefer to have some privacy. Wolf chuckles at this, but Christina admired it in some ways. It was the place Cristina was trying to get, this place where Maria lived naturally. What was the difference between the two? Christina was a poet. She was a poet to her core, at heart, at soul. Poets and poetry can take one into realms that devotion cannot. And maybe, maybe those realms, maybe those impulses are at odds with one's strongest religious impulses. Wolf describes this world of Christina Rossetti's as like living in a tank. The fish swims round and round as we watch, and suddenly the fish breaks out and smashes the glass. And then Wolf tells a story of a tea party given by a woman named, of all things, Mrs. Virtue Tebbs. And someone said something, perhaps something casual and frivolous about poetry. This is what Wolf imagines may have been said, and then, quote, suddenly there uprose from a chair and paced forward into the center of the room, a little woman dressed in black who announced solemnly, I am Cristina Rossetti, and having so said, returned to her chair. With those words, Wolf says, the glass is broken. The glass of this fish tank. Yes, she seems to say, I am a poet. Wolf cites the critics of Rossetti and the biographers of Rossetti and says they are looking at a fish in a tank, thinking she's all contained. But Christina breaks the glass. Even now, even after all this time, we see her do it with her poetry. Biographers rattle around with her unimportant trifles, the engagements, the quaint little stories. And what's truly important about her, where her great soul genius takes over is in her poetry. Professors, says Woolf, get it wrong. Professors say things like, quote, the meter of the principal poem, Goblin Market may be best described as a de doggeralized skeletonic with the gathered music of the various metrical progress since Spenser utilized in the place of the wooden rattling of the followers of Chaucer. There may be discerned in it the same inclination towards line irregularity which has broken out in different times in the Pindaric of the late 17th and earlier 18th centuries and in the rhymelessness of Sayers earlier and of Mr. Arnold later. Wow, that is quite a taxonomy. But the poets, Woolf says the poets see Rossetti for what she is. The poets like Swinburne, who said that Rossetti's New Year hymn was touched as with the fire and bathed as in the light of sunbeams, tuned as to chords and cadences of refluent sea, music beyond reach of harp and organ, large echoes of the serene and sonorous tides of heaven. Or the more poetically minded lecturer who said, I think she is the best poet alive. The worst of it is you cannot lecture on really pure poetry any more than you can talk about the ingredients of pure water. It is adulterated, methylated, sanded poetry that makes the best lectures. The only thing that Christina makes me want to do is cry, not lecture, end quote. And Virginia Woolf says, what are we to do with criticism and biography of such a person, such an artist? Let us turn instead to the poems themselves. And so she does, and she concludes her essay in this. Oh, Christina Rossetti, I have humbly to confess that though I know many of your poems by heart, I have not read your works from COVID to cover. I have not followed your course and traced your development. I doubt indeed that you Developed very much. You were an instinctive poet. You saw the world from the same angle, always years. And the traffic of the mind with men and books did not affect you in the least. You carefully ignored any book that could shake your faith, or any human being who could trouble your instincts. You were wise, perhaps. Your instinct was so sure, so direct, so intense, that it produced poems that sing like music in one's ears, like a melody by Mozart or an air by Gluck. Yet for all its symmetry, yours was a complex song. When you struck your harp, many strings sounded together. Like all instinctives, you had a keen sense of the visual beauty of the world. Your poems are full of gold dust and sweet geraniums, varied brightness. Your eye noted incessantly how rushes are velvet headed and lizards have a strange metallic mail. Your eye indeed observed with a sensual Pre Raphaelite intensity that must have surprised Christina, the Anglo Catholic. But to her you owed perhaps the fixity and sadness of your muse. The pressure of a tremendous faith circles and clamps together these little songs. Perhaps they owe to it their solidity. Certainly they owe to it their sadness. And your God was a harsh God. Your heavenly crown was set with thorns. No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes Death, oblivion and rest lap round your songs with their dark wave. And then, incongruously, a sound of scurrying and laughter is heard. There is the patter of animals feet and the odd guttural notes of rocks and the snufflings of obtuse, furry animals grunting and nosing. For you were not a pure saint by any means. You pulled legs, you tweaked noses. You were at war with all humbug and pretense. Modest as you were, still, you were drastic, sure of your gift, convinced of your vision. A firm hand pruned your lines, a sharp ear tested their music. Nothing soft, otose, irrelevant, cumbered your pages. In a word, you were an artist. End quote. An artist. We started this episode with the question, where did Goblin Market come from? Christina Rossetti was an unlikely source for such a poem about sin. But was she really unlikely? Who knows more about the Satan than those who believe firmly in God? Who knows more about divorce than those who believe strongly in marriage? Who knows more about sin than those who believe one's soul is at stake? Religion makes believers feel the consequences of sin more strongly. The temptations to the pull, the ecstasy and the agony of it. Where did this come from? Her religion, her worldview, her belief system, but also from her poet's mind. This poem, Goblin Market, was pulled from the fire, hot and glowing, from that realm that poets bravely dip into. It's not clear where, and it maybe wasn't known to her either. In my reading of Goblin Market, the verses and imagery are not thought by Christina's mechanical brain, but dreamed into life by her genius, like the flames that come roaring out of a dragon's nostrils. Part myth, part magic, instinctive, unknowable, but there. And that's how to read this too. Read her poetry in that spirit. Don't be the reader who's surprised and shocked like a man on his wedding night who sees something he thinks is some kind of grotesque imperfection. Be the reader who's capable and worthy of watching the dragon roar. We're lucky to have these unearthly things to push us towards sensations we might never have felt before. Leave the tambourine to the small minded bean counters. Find yourself in the great booming groove that rakes across your spine and rips up the screaming skies. So there we go, Goblin Market, back from the grave. Or as we prefer to call it, the archive, where those zombie episodes are just waiting for you to reanimate them. With a little click you can bring them to life like Victor Frankenstein, only hopefully with better results and none of the consequences. Go play God with some of our corpses. We don't mind a bit. In fact, we welcome it. Okay, coming up soon, a black woman roams through the romantic archives. We travel to Paris for some surprising discoveries about Ms. Gertrude Stein. We go to New England for a visit to the devil. We go back to the age of Shakespeare to look at their fascination with wills and will making and Christopher Marlowe. We hear from a horrible Russian poet. We get all wild with Jane Austen and we celebrate 10 years of the history of literature podcast with some old friends. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. What does it mean to live for the common good? Introducing the Garrison Institute presents the Common Good, the brand new podcast from the Garrison Institute, a leading, not for profit organization exploring the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world. Hosted by me, Jonathan F.P. rose, a co founder of the Garrison Institute. The series dives into the threads that bind us all. First you'll discover the interdependent nature of life with environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken and trailblazing plant intelligence researcher Monica Gagliano. Next, we unlock the mysteries of the mind with renowned psychiatrist Dan Steven Siegel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Finally, we experience compassion in action with social justice activist Conda Mason and environmental leader Bill McKibben. We invite you to listen, reflect, and join us in acting for the common good. Follow the Garrison Institute presents the Common Good on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are Listening now the town of Milton may seem normal at first glance, but the shadows are cursed and the expansive woods surrounding town are forbidden. They call it the void, and nobody comes back alive. You're headed straight for the void. Milton lives suspended in time, trapped by a darkness that seems to be creeping closer and closer. It's safe. The void is kept at bay. Is it, though? Join three friends as they embark on an epic journey into the heart of darkness. The Void Wherever you get your podcasts, this is just the beginning.