E510611A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Guardian, 11 June 1851, p. 424.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 310.
We lately spoke at length, and in the highest terms, of the genius of Mrs. Browning; and upon seeing a poem entitled Casa Guidi Windows, advertised with her name, we anticipated a beautiful and imaginative work, worthy of her high standing among the poets of our day. But this is not the case; and we are sorry to be obliged to pronounce it an unmistakeable and complete failure. This is, we confess, a great disappointment, and we can only hope that it is to be explained entirely, as it is no doubt partly, by the unmanageable character of the subject she has chosen, and her want of command over the terza rima, the difficult metre which she has selected for its treatment. From the windows of her house “Casa Guidi,” at Florence, Mrs. Browning sees the rising of the people in the earlier part of the Italian revolution, when Tuscany was promised a constitution, and Pio Nono was believed to be a great political reformer. Her hopes and aspirations about Italy, consequent on this popular movement, form the subject of the first part of the poem. In the second, the Grand Duke returns at the head of the Austrians, and the people (or rather the mob) throughout Italy are put down. On this Mrs. Browning expends a great deal of diffuse and rather commonplace reflection and regret. She is really not at home in politics and social philosophy, and is neither clear nor striking in her views, and her mode of giving them expression. Her diction and versification even are far more slovenly than is at all usual with her, and though, of course, there are some fine images and noble lines, we cannot say that, as a whole, the poem will at all raise her reputation. She must get better heroes than Mazzini and Garibaldi.
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
___________________
