Properzia Rossi's (and Felicia Hemans') "Fairy world of song and art"

After our visit to the museum last Thursday I began thinking about the inextricable links between poetry and its so called ‘sister arts’, especially in the context of the nineteenth century. Poetry, music and the visual arts were all intertwined as cultured members of society were expected to be well versed in both the Classical and contemporary canons of each. Hemans’ “Properzia Rossi” reflects the connections between all of these arts and explores them through the lens of a Renaissance story of a female sculptor’s unrequited love. After the first two stanzas, nearly every subsequent one makes mention of Rossi’s sculpture (visual art), music, song/sound, and thought, which I take to mean Hermas’ interpretation of Rossi’s thoughts that are then transcribed in the poem. The eighth stanza addresses all of these elements directly, beginning with a reference to the previous stanza: “ Yet the world will see; Little of this, my parting work, in thee” (my italics). “This”, I surmise, refers to Rossi’s “brief aspirings” that “die ere long; In dirge-like echoes,” and “thee” signifies the relief sculpture Rossi creates of her love interest Ariadne. In lines 83 through 85 Hemans states, “Yet how my heart, In its own fairy world of song and art; Once beat for praise!” The stanza ends with: “And tho' the music, whose rich breathings fill; Thine air with soul, be wandering past me still; And tho' the mantle of thy sunlight streams; Unchang'd on forms instinct with poet-dreams” (I believe “thine air” in this instance refers to the blue sky of “glorious Italy” in lines 87 and 88).

The ending line is of particular interest to me in that it is a self-referential acknowledgement of the tangible or intangible “forms” imbued with sunlight and “soul” that inspire the thoughts that become poetry, or “poet-dreams.” Hemans posits this documentation of “poet-dreams” as a as a lasting relic of a bygone era and account of unrequited love that will endure far longer than either its subject or its writer, in the same way that Rossi’s sculpture outlasts both its subject and its maker. This sentiment appears at the very beginning of the poem in lines 9 through 12: “May this last work, this farewell triumph be,–Thou, lov'd so vainly! I would leave enshrined; Something immortal of my heart and mind; That yet may speak to thee when I am gone…” Not only does Rossi’s work outlast its anguished maker, but it is intended to speak, perhaps in poetic verse, to her beloved in her absence, rendering love as “strong as death” (line 59).