Correspondence

1187.  EBB to John Kenyon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 20–22.

Wimpole Street

March 25– 1843–

My very dear cousin,

Your kindness having touched me much & your good opinion whether literary or otherwise being of great price to me, it is even with tears in my eyes that I begin to write to you upon a difference between us. [1] And what am I to say? To admit of course in the first place the injuriousness to the “popularity,” of the scriptural tone– But am I to sacrifice a principle to popularity? Would you advise me to do so? Should I be more worthy of your kindness by doing so?– & Could you (apart from the kindness) call my refusal to do so, either perverseness or obstinacy? Even if you could, I hope you will try a little to be patient with me—& forgive at least, what you find it impossible to approve.

My dear cousin, if you had not reminded me of Wordsworth’s exclamation

 

“I would rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn”– [2]

and if he had never made it, .. I do think that its significance wd have occurred to me, by a sort of instinct, in connection with this discussion. Certainly I wd rather be a Pagan whose religion was actual, earnest, continual, .. for weekdays, workdays, & songdays, .. than I would be a Christian who, from whatever motive, shrank from hearing or uttering the name of Christ out of ‘Church’. I am no fanatic—but I like truth & earnestness in all things,—& I cannot choose but believe that such a Christian shows but ill beside such a Pagan– What pagan poet ever thought of casting his gods out of his poetry? In what Pagan poem, do they not shine & thunder? And if I .. to approach the point in question, .. if I, .. writing a poem, the end of which is the extolment of what I consider to be Christian Truth over the Pagan Mythos,—shrink even there from naming the name of my God lest it shd not meet the sympathies of some readers, or lest it should offend the delicacies of other readers, or lest, generally, it shd be unfit for the purposes of poetry, .. in what more forcible manner than by that act, (I appeal to Philip against Philip) [3] can I controvert my own poem, or secure to myself & my argument a logical & unanswerable shame?–. If Christ’s name is improperly spoken in that poem,—then indeed is Schiller right,—& the true gods of poetry are to be sighed for mournfully!– [4] For, be sure that Burns was right, & that a poet without devotion is below his own order, [5] .. & that poetry without religion will gradually lose its elevation. And then my dear friend, we do not live among dreams. The Christian religion is true or it is not—and if it is true it offers the highest & purest objects of contemplation. And the Poetical faculty which expresses the highest moods of the Mind, passes naturally to the highest objects– Who can separate these things? Did Dante? Did Tasso? Did Petrarch? Did Calderon? Did Chaucer? Did the poets of our best British days? Did any one of these shrink from speaking out Divine names when the occasion came? Chaucer with all his jubilee of spirit & resounding laughter, had the name of Jesus Christ & God as frequently to familiarity on his lips, as a child has its father’s name. You say “our religion is not vital .. not weekday .. enough.” Forgive me—but that is a confession of a wrong, not an argument. And if a poet be a poet, it is his business to work for the elevation & purification of the public mind, rather than for his own popularity: while if he be not a poet, no sacrifice of self-respect will make amends for a defective faculty, nor ought to make amends.

My conviction is that the poetry of Christianity will one day be developed greatly & nobly—& that in the meantime we are as wrong poetically as morally, in desiring to restrain it. No! I never felt repelled by any Christian phraseology in Cowper—although he is not a favorite poet of mine from other causes—nor in Southey—nor even in James Montgomery—nor in Wordsworth where he writes “ecclesiastically”—nor in Christopher North—nor in Chateaubriand, nor in Lamartine.

It is but two days ago since I had a letter—& not from a fanatic,—to reproach my poetry for not being Christian enough—and this is not the first instance, nor the second, of my receiving such a reproach. I tell you this to open to you the possibility of another side to the question … which makes, you see, a triangle of it!!–

Can you bear with such a long answer to your letter,—& forbear calling it a “preachment.”? There may be such a thing as an awkward & untimely introduction of religion, I know, .. and I have possibly been occasionally guilty in this way. But for my principle I must contend,—for it is a poetical principle & more: and an entire sincerity in respect to it, is what I owe to you & to myself. Try to forgive me, dear Mr Kenyon! I would propitiate your indulgence for me by a libation of your own eau de Cologne poured out at your feet! It is excellent eau de cologne & you are very kind to me,—but notwithstanding all, there is a forboding within me that my “conventicleisms” will be inodorous in your nostrils,—& that you will place me on a pedes<tal …> [6] Pan is dea<d …> a Demi-se<mi …> Perverseness! or <…> is it? I ought to kn<ow …>

Affectionately & gratefully yours

Elizabeth B Barrett.

The quotation from Scripture about the “true just” & honest is ready to be sacrificed, if you pleas<e.> [7] It came naturally to my mind .. but I have no reason for caring particularly about it.

Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 4 Harley Place.

Publication: LEBB, I, 127–129 (in part).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. The difference apparently relates to the theological implications of “The Dead Pan,” which EBB dedicated to Kenyon. A headnote to the poem refers to a tradition mentioned in Plutarch’s De Oraculorum Defectu, “according to which, at the hour of the Saviour’s agony, a cry of ‘Great Pan is dead!’ swept across the waves in the hearing of certain mariners.” The passage in Plutarch (cap. 419) does not mention Christ.

2. “The World is Too Much With Us, Late and Soon” (1807), lines 9–10.

3. For an explanation of this phrase, see letter 262, note 9.

4. The headnote to “The Dead Pan” indicates that the poem was partly inspired by Schiller’s Götter Griechenlands and Kenyon’s paraphrase thereof in The Keepsake for 1843. EBB here refers to the second verse of Schiller’s poem.

5. In a letter of 12 February 1788 to Mrs. Dunlop, Burns said “an irreligious poet is a monster” (The Works of Robert Burns, ed. Allan Cunningham, 1834, VI, 228).

6. A portion of the flap of the envelope, on which these lines are written, has been torn away.

7. Line 260 of “The Dead Pan” reads: “What is true and just and honest”; the phrase “just and true” is found in Revelation, 15:3.

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