A Superscription

title  See WMR's note (1911). The title may mean either a text written over another text (as in a palimpsest), or a text inscribed above something (another text, a picture, a doorway, etc.). In the latter case the superscription functions as a kind of summary view of the text or texts that it superscribes. DGR may be glancing at the text in Matthew 22: 20 and the words of Jesus, “Whose is this image and superscription?”. That text is at the center of the “coin of tribute” passage, which DGR foregrounded in the sestet to the sonnet that heads up the whole of “The House of Life” sequence, his “Sonnet on the Sonnet”.

1-2  WMR's gloss on the sonnet established the common reading that identifies the second person pronouns with the living DGR and the first person pronouns with his “dead and wasted life”. That other identifications are possible is quite clear, particularly if one responds to the sonnet's suggestion that the speaker is a figure in a picture, or perhaps is the picture itself.

3  dead-sea shell: CR told WMR when he was working on the proofs for DGR as Designer and Writer that the phrase “suggests much more than your note recognizes; and I conjecture that so it did to Gabriel” (see WMR, Family Letters 173 ). WMR then added the long footnote that extended his gloss on this phrase. The addition emphasized personal and memorial meanings, and glanced at DGR's emotional attachment to his dead wife (though without specifically mentioning her).

6  spell: DGR works this word to suggest the enchanting power of language, especially poetic language.

8  screen: the word recalls Dante's “screen ladies”, and it signifies as well the art work's function of veiling its subject. (See line 6, where the word “spell” has a double meaning involving an aesthetic reference.)

11  winged Peace: an epithet recalling the classical Winged Nike, a figure of Victory. The “Peace” here echoes to “The Vase of Life”, which immediately preceded this sonnet in the 1870 sequence.

12  The syntax is either “Thou shalt see me . . . and [thou shalt] turn apart . . .”, or “Thou shalt see me smile, and thou shalt see me turn apart”. The difference will define whether the addressed person exerts any action of his/her own in the situation. The “smile” recalls the enigmatic smile of Leonardo's Mona Lisa.