Rossetti on suicide

Para Ruvadear

Encontre, entre las cartas de Rossetti, algunas cosas que pense que te interesarian. Van aqui, un poco al azar y al aventon, esperando que te gusten.

De algunos ejercicios en versificacion que emprendia con sus amigos...

I dared not cry upon His strength to shield
My soul from weapons it was bent to wield
Itself against itself.

Death- an arched path too long to see the end,
But which hath shadows that seem pure and cool.

Were’t not exceeding well
To shake my soul out of this tiresome life
For a call any-whence and any-whither?

***

From the Letters...

Rossetti enjoyed an excitement in musing upon death and suicide, but preferred keeping them at a distance. His fun was in posing, in reading and spinning these fantasies, not in experiencing them. Literary interest, mainly.

“Apropos of death, Hunt and I are going to get up among our acquaintance a Mutual Suicide Association, by the regulations whereof any member, being weary of life, may call at any time upon another to cut his throat for him. It is all of course to be done very quietly, without weeping or gnashing of teeth. I, for instance, am to go in and say, ‘I say, Hunt, just stop painting that head a minute, and cut my throat’, to which he will respond by telling the model to keep the position as he shall only be a moment, and having done his duty, will proceed with the painting.” Rossetti, Letters.

D. G. Rossetti (1965-1967), Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ed. Oswald Doughty and John Robert Wahl, 4 vols., Oxford.