Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (04/07/87)
Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
A note of refleKTion for all like-minded fans:
Rossetti was also divided between his commitment on the one hand
to introspection and self-discovery -- to painting his soul as
it was -- and his belief on the other hand that the ideal of the
self must not lie within the self. There must be an external ideal
around which it can move in order and harmony. "Seek thine ideal
anywhere except in thyself," he wrote in his notebook. "Once fix
it there, and the ways of thy real self will matter nothing to
thee, whose eyes can rest on an ideal already perfected".
-- from Barbara Chalesworth, "Dark Passages: The Decadent
Consciousness in Victorian Literature"
-- Andrew