Proserpine

1
Proserpine Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874
2
Persephone in Mythology

• Daughter of Zeus and Demeter
• Abducted into the Underworld
• Return to Underworld four months per year
• Pomegranate, coming of Spring

3
Dual Feminine Nature

• Queen of Underworld vs. Goddess of Spring
• Innocent Maiden vs. Experienced Lover
• Imagined ideal vs. let down of reality
• Persephone is bound to her husband and only
  allowed to be free for a certain part of the
  year, much like DGR and Jane Morris
  
• or
• Persephone is a beautiful woman condemned to live
  in the underworld, stuck in a loveless marriage

4

• The Blanzifiore (Snowdrops)
• Spring flowers vs. pomegranate

5
PROSERPINA.(FOR A PICTURE.) Afar away the lig
ht that brings cold cheer Unto this wall,o
ne instant and no more Admitted at my dista
nt palace-door. Afar the flowers of Enna from th
is drear Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must th
rall me here. Afar those skies from this Ta
rtarean grey That chills me and afar, how
far away, The nights that shall be from the days
that were. Afar from mine own self I seem, an
d wing Strange ways in thought, and listen
for a sign And still some heart unto some
soul doth pine, (Whose sounds mine inner sense i
s fain to bring, Continually together murmuring,
) Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!
Ballads and Sonnets, DGR, 1881
6
She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her
palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand. As she
passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her
from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting
for a moment the light of the upper world and
she glances furtively toward it, immersed in
thought. The incense-burner stands behind her as
the attribute of a goddess. The ivy-branch in the
background (a decorative appendage to the sonnet
inscribed on the label) may be taken as a symbol
of clinging memory. DGR, 1878
Idea that arts imaginative sources are located
in the underworld (Beatrice Dante)