E510610A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Globe and Traveller, 10 June 1851, p. 2.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 309–310.
The documents of diplomacy, the Stateman’s speech, the Stump Orator’s harangue, are all in their several departments fit topics for the journalist’s comment; nor should the political poem, when it wings its vigorous flight to the very summit of the highest contemporary argument, pass unnoticed and unchallenged. The case of Italy, as stated by a fair resident of Florence, an intelligent and stout-hearted English woman, a calm eyewitness of the last three years’ eventful proceedings, must command respectful attention; but when the exponent of Italian feelings is the most gifted of England’s poetic daughters; and when the lyre she lifts on behalf of that bright land is attuned to the sweetest social harmonies and the deepest human sympathies, the claim on her own country’s hearing becomes paramount.
The recently published poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning is not entitled “Italy,” an appellation the copyright of a living octogenarian; it makes no such comprehensive promise; yet is it as substantial an epic as if occasioned by the loss of Paradise, the delivery of Jerusalem, or the discovery of the Cape. To Mr. Thackeray we leave the task of showing how far Addison’s “Iliad rising out of one campaign” was a pompous inanity. Under the modest announcement of “Casa Guidi windows” we find an amount of condensed wisdom, passionate inspiration, deep pathos, and glowing fancy rarely gathered into a volume of so few pretensions.
We know not whether, in putting forward the windows of her Florentine residence, the fair exile’s thoughts wandered homewards to the crystal encasement of the world’s industry in contrast to the mournful prospect Italy unfolds. A balcony under that sunny clime has been hitherto associated with ideas of quite another sort from the lofty and stern philosophy here dealt with, and its windows never yet were the medium of such enlightment as this; from the days of Horace, when they used to witness the playful assault of thoughtless petulance,
Quatiunt fenestras
Ictibus crebris juvenes protervi,
down to those of Juliet, when more refined and deferential courtship characterized the homage of the serenader. That the Crystal Palace has part in her thoughts the following deeply dantesque outburst intimates:—
O gracious nations! give some ear to me.
You all go to your Fair, and I am one
Who at the roadside of humanity
Beseech your alms! a justice to be done.
So prosper! in the name of Italy!—(p. 128).
And the voice which thus appeals to the congregated pilgrims of Europe, is not the mere sentimental whine of helpless and hopeless despondency, but the thrilling utterance of firm faith in the unvanquishable progress of manhood, and the ineradicable vitality of nationhood. From the very outset this feeling is in healthy predominance, and she strikes the key-note of her poems thus:—
I heard last night a little child go singing
Neath Casa Guidi’s windows, by the church,
O bella liberta! O bella!
And she hails the exulting tone of the infant carol as the harbinger of a different music from the wail of Filicaia and his tuneful followers in the doleful strain over the Niobe of nations when they called her childless among mothers, widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers might a shamed sister, “had she been less fair she were less wretched.” With impressive energy she scouts the habit of seeking comfort in the mighty past for present imbecility—“O dead, ye shall no longer cling to us with your stiff hands of desiccating praise, and hold us backward by the garment thus,” and eloquently urges the new generation to graft fresh offshoots of modern growth on the old stock of ancestral glory. Is it, she exclaims, because old Jubal “blew into delight the souls of men with clear-piped melodies” that wind instrumentation should not give birth to progressive change, and bursting traditionary trammels, David should not sweep the harp or
Mirian clash her cymbals to surprise
The sun, between her white arms flung apart
With new glad golden sounds?
And such a cymbaleer is the true-hearted English-woman who seeks in this noble effort of her minstrelsy to inspirit the land of her adoption. As accomplished in the wide range of learning as ever was our Lady Jane Grey, as dauntless in her advocacy of impeached patriotism as our Lady Russell, the soul of Judith or of Deborah animating her fragile frame, she comes forth to rescue from obloquy the glorious cause which the selfish and mean among our men have blasphemed, and which with the true instinct of womanhood she appreciates in all its genuine worth and dignity. She fears not to talk of Garibaldi’s wife—
Of her who at her husband’s side in scorn
Outfaced the whistling shot and hissing waves,
Until she felt her little babe unborn
Recoil within her from the violent staves
And bloodhounds of the world.
And at the close of her magnificent epic, in which the events of the late Italian struggle swell up, culminate and finally collapse in disastrous catastrophe, she again recurs to the holy chord of maternal feeling, which the noble English matron touches thus:—
Stand out my own young Florentine,
Not two years old, and let me see thee more,
And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine.
Stand out my blue-eyed prophet; thou to whom
The earliest world daylight that ever flowed
Through Casa Guidi windows chanced to come,
And be God’s witness that the elemental
New springs of life are gushing everywhere.
Such are a few prismatic tints, which we fling at random on our pages as they radiate from the windows of Casa Guidi; and we bespeak for such emanations of brilliancy as shine through the crystal medium of dazzling verse, whatever share of public attention can be afforded in the monopoly claimed by Paxton’s pellucid palace, where there the industry of Penelope, and the fascinations of Circe, will exert their rival witcheries throughout the summer, we fear to the neglect of every less attractive Muse.
Hic in reducta valle caniculæ,
Vitabis æstus et fide Teia,
Dices laborantes in unum,
Penelopen vitreamque Circen.
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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