3 - Spirit
Summary
To give, to give, not to receive,
I long to pour myself, my soul,
Not to keep back or count or leave
But king with king to give the whole:
I long for one to stir my deep –
I have had enough of help and gift –
I long for one to search and sift
Myself, to take myself and keep.
You scratch my surface with your pin;
You stroke me smooth with hushing breath; –
Nay pierce, nay probe, nay dig within,
Probe my quick core and sound my depth.
You call me with a puny call,
You talk, you smile, you nothing do;
How should I spend my heart on you,
My heart that so outweighs you all?
Your vessels are by much too strait;
Were I to pour you could not hold,
Bear with me: I must bear to wait
A fountain sealed thro’ heat and cold.
(‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’, (PP 53, ll. 25–44))‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’ is startling in its assertion of self and its criticisms of the patronizing superficiality of ordinary romantic relations. Rossetti, doubtless aware of the poem's outspoken and erotic content, suppressed the original text composed in 1857, only publishing a radically modified version in 1885, entitled ‘ “Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive” ‘ (CP ii. 267). The unrevised poem is, however, much more interesting and intense in its charting of the process by which frustration generates first repression and then redirection of libidinous energy towards Christ. In common with many of Rossetti's explicitly devotional writings, which form the focus of this chapter, ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’ is insistent, challenging, and unexpected.
The speaker of ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’ makes it clear that she has multiple desires, that she wants both to give and to receive, to ‘pour herself’ and to be penetrated. She articulates a wish for equality and reciprocity seemingly impossible in Victorian culture, where human men appear hopelessly fixed in sexual attitude: their ‘vessels’ cannot ‘hold’ the flood of female sexuality, and so the speaker 's ‘fountain’ must remain virginally ‘sealed’ until self can join other in heavenly plenitude.
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- Information
- Christina Rossetti , pp. 55 - 72Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1998