Goblin Market

Have you guys read Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market? I’ve been going through pre-Raphaelite withdrawal (I realize they packed pretty much everything exciting that happened to the pre-Raphaelites into the six episodes of Desperate Romantics, and that’s one of the reasons why the show is so good, because there’s so much going on - but damn, I still want more), so I was reading “Goblin Market,” and man, it is brilliant.

It’s hard to pick out quotes for you, because it’s a poem that works by excess. It’s not that any one line is so brilliant, but that all together they add up to something overwhelming.

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;—

Guillermo del Toro would be the perfect director for an adaptation: think of the portrayal of temptation when Ofelia sees the table laden with food, so much of it and so beautiful. And the faun shows that del Toro could capture the goblins’ macabre fascination.

One had a cat’s face,
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry

English used to have a number of words for things that are terrifying but beautiful, or beautiful in part because terrifying: sublime, wonderful, even awful (as in full of awe). All of them have lost the connotations of terror, and the language is impoverished for the loss.

“Goblin Market” tells a story of two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, who see the goblin market. Lizzie leaves; but Laura stays, and eats of the goblin fruit, then begins to waste away for want of it. At last Lizzie goes to the goblin market to get fruit for Laura: she doesn’t eat it herself, but stands there while the goblins smash it all over her to try and make her eat. At last they give up, and Lizzie rushed back to Laura, and cries:

“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me.

...I might make them not sisters in a film adaptation, because really that sounds rather incestuous.

Anyway, it’s a splendid poem. A movie version is probably a pipe dream, but I figured I could share the poem with you, at least.