1877. EBB to Thomas Westwood
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 144–145.
[London]
[early] April– 1845. [1]
The sin of Sphinxine literature, I admit. Have I not struggled hard to renounce it? Do I not day by day? Do you know that I have been told that I have written things harder to interpret than Browning himself?—only I cannot, cannot believe it—he is so very hard. Tell me honestly (and although I attribute the excessive good-nature of the Metropolitan criticism to you, I know that you can speak the truth truly!) if anything like the Sphinxineness of Browning, you discover in me;—take me as far back as the Seraphim volume and answer! As for Browning, the fault is certainly great and the disadvantage scarcely calculable, it is so great. He cuts his language into bits—and one has to join them together, as young children do their dissected maps in order to make any meaning at all—and to study hard before one can do it. Not that I grudge the study, or the time. The depth and power of the significance (when it is apprehended) glorifies the puzzle. With you and me it is so—but with the majority of readers—even of readers of poetry—it is not and cannot be so.
The consequence is that he is not read, except in a peculiar circle very straight and narrow. He will not die, because the principle of life is in him—but he will not live the warm summer life which is permitted to many of very inferior faculty, because he does not come out into the sun.
Faithfully your friend,
E. B. Barrett.
Publication: LEBB, I, 254–255.
Source: Kenyon Typescript, British Library.
1. Dated by internal reference to EBB’s “sin of Sphinxine literature” (see letters 1881 and 1900).
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