The Sonnet's Last Stand

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote A Sonnet Is a Moment’s Monument in 1881, very much at the tail end of the sonnet’s era. He attempts to increase the effectiveness of his defense of the form, despite its restrictive nature, by delivering his argument as a sonnet. However his defense of the sonnet as a form, at times, seems to be a mere veil for a subtle defense of his own body of work. The first stanza speaks of the confluence of emotion, events, and time that leads to the creation of a sonnet. A person who did not experience the “dead deathless hour” which inspired the sonnet, he argues, cannot be expected to understand the poem. This is less of a defense of the sonnet as an art form, and more of a shield against present and potential critics of Rossetti’s sonnets. Rossetti merely claims that the sonnet is a unique tribute to its particular inspiration and is therefore above criticism. The second stanza then strays from Rossetti’s defense of his own work and focuses on the defense of the sonnet, ostensibly the purpose of this poem. He claims that the sonnet reveals the soul of the poet and also illuminates the reader providing a path to god, the source of the poet’s power. This second portion of the sonnet’s defense is not as passionate; the flowery language and increasingly complex metaphors cover for a lack of substance that hints at the author’s true intentions in writing the poem. While he demonstrates that the sonnet can act as a vessel for these beautiful words, the more concrete and clear claims were made during first stanza in defense of his own work. The irony is that this defense of the sonnet has been weakened by its own constrictive nature. Rossetti is forced to expand his poem, to conform to the rhyming convention, and his poem suffers from a slightly dual nature. Sadly, prose may have been a better medium to defend both his own sonnets and the sonnet as a form.

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