E510614A. Casa Guidi Windows.
The Leader, 14 June 1851, pp. 560–561.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 311–314.
mrs. browning’s new poem.
That Mrs. Browning is gifted with the special faculty which demarcates poets from verse writers—singers from speakers—we have already in these columns emphatically declared; the great deficiency in her writings we found to be a want of experience, an imperfect grasp of life, a certain unsubstantiality which made the arabesques upon her Temples more important than the Temples themselves. In her Casa Guidi Windows we notice an immense improvement. The subject is grave with sad memories and disappointed hopes, and although vast in its scope, and somewhat abstract in its treatment, is animated by the lifeblood of reality. Out of reality it grew: direct to reality it appeals. She was there in Florence—not there in bodily presence merely—but there in spirit, in sympathy, in hope, in gladness and in sadness; and the actual experience of the things she utters in musical creativeness has given a graver and more touching tone to the rhythm of her thoughts, such as transcends all excellence of imagery and chastened expression. Criticism may point out many a flaw in these verses, but the heart recognizes in them the true heart utterance. The difference between feigning and creating—between imagining scenes and language for things which others have experienced, and of taking from the world of our experience things which Art raises into its own world of plastic beauty—this difference, we say, which lies at the root of all asthetics, Mrs. Browning illustrates in such poems as the majority of those previously published by her compared with Casa Guidi Windows.
Having thus intimated that it belongs to the comparatively small class of poems, another question immediately presses itself upon the critic, viz., What rank does it hold in that class? A question we, with all humility, decline to answer at this early period. Long acquaintance with a work of art is indispensable to its thorough appreciation; nay, the greater the work the longer is this critical apprenticeship needful, as every one will testify in such cases as Hamlet, Faust, Fidelio, Don Giovanni, The Triumph of Galatea, or the frescoes in the Loggie. Without intimating that Casa Guidi Windows is of that family, or requires any unusual amount of sagacity for its appreciation, we would rather, for the present, at least, avoid endeavouring to settle its rank, content if we can lure the reader into the proper desire of possessing it.
The subject is Italy, or more especially Tuscany, in the memorable 1848. Her own words best describe her purpose:—
“No continuous narrative, nor exposition of political philosophy, is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving a warm affection for a beautiful and unfortunate country; and the sincerity with which they are related, as indicating her own good faith and freedom from all partisanship.
“Of the two parts of this Poem, the first was written nearly three years ago, while the second resumes the actual situation of 1851. The discrepancy between the two parts is a sufficient guarantee to the public of the truthfulness of the writer, who, though she certainly escaped the epidemic, ‘falling sickness’ of enthusiasm for Pio Nono, takes shame upon herself that she believed, like a woman, some royal oaths, and lost sight of the probable consequences of some obvious popular defects. If the discrepancy should be painful to the reader, let him understand that to the writer it has been more so. But such discrepancy we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions of our nature … the discrepancy between aspiration and performance, between faith and dis-illusion, between hope and fact.”
From her windows in the Casa Guidi she hears a little child singing O bella libertà, and this sets her musing upon Italy past and present, more especially as in the past Italy appears crowned with the deathless glories of her heroes and artists:—
“Less wretched if less fair,” perhaps a truth
Is so far plain in this—that Italy,
Long trammelled with the purple of her youth
Against her age’s due activity,
Sate still upon her graves, without the ruth
Of death, but also without energy
And hope of life. “What’s Italy?” men ask:
And others answer, “Virgil, Cicero,
Catullus, Cæsar.” And what more? to ask
The memory closer—“Why, Boccaccio,
Dante, Petrarca,”—and if still the flask
Appears to yield its wine by drops too slow,—
“Angelo, Raffael, Pergolese,”—all
Whose strong hearts beat through stone, or charged, again,
Cloth-threads with fire of souls electrical,
Or broke up heaven for music. What more then?
Why, then, no more. The chaplet’s last beads fall
In naming the last saintship within ken,
And, after that, none prayeth in the land.
Alas, this Italy has too long swept
Heroic ashes up for hour-glass sand;
Of her own past, impassioned nympholept!
Consenting to be nailed by the hand
To the same bay-tree under which she stepped
A queen of old, and plucked a leafy branch;
And licensing the world too long, indeed,
To use her broad phylacteries to staunch
And stop her bloody lips, which took no heed
How one quick breath would draw an avalanche
Of living sons around her, to succeed
The vanished generations. Could she count
Those oil-eaters, with large, live, mobile mouths
Agape for maccaroni, in the amount [p. 561→]
Of consecrated heroes of the south’s
Bright rosary? The pitcher at the fount,
The gift of gods, being broken,—why, one loathes
To let the ground-leaves of the place confer
A natural bowl. And thus, she chose to seem
No nation, but the poet’s pensioner,
With alms from every land of song and dream;
While her own pipers sweetly piped of her,
Until their proper breaths, in that extreme
Of sighing, split the reed on which they played!
Of which, no more: but never say “no more”
To Italy! Her memories undismayed,
Say rather “evermore”—her graves implore
Her future to be strong and not afraid—
Her very statues send their looks before!
The least sensitive of critics must, we think, appreciate the power of expression manifest in that passage. She does not, however, follow in the dilettante error of keeping her admiration fixed upon the past, and the illustrious dead who should stimulate to rivalry, not overshadow and oppress by their greatness:—
The dead upon their awful vantage ground—
The sun not in their faces—shall abstract
No more our strength.
Respect for them! but respect also for the living forces which in their turn will take rank among the dead:—
’Tis true that when the dust of death has choked
A great man’s voice, the common words he said
Turn oracles.
But we are not to grow supine, and live like modern nobles on the achievements of our forefathers:—
The emphasis of death makes manifest
The eloquence of action in our flesh;
And men who, living, were but dimly guessed,
When once free from their life’s entangled mesh,
Show their full length in graves, or even indeed
Exaggerate their stature, in the flat,
To noble admirations which exceed
Nobly, nor sin in such excess. For that
Is wise and righteous. We, who are the seed
Of buried creatures, if we turned and spate
Upon our antecedents, we were vile.
Bring violets rather! If these had not walked
Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile?
Therefore bring violets! Yet if we, self-baulked,
Stand still a-strewing violets all the while,
These had as well not moved, ourselves not talked
Of these. So rise up with a cheerful smile,
And, having strewn the violets, reap the corn,
And, having reaped and garnered, bring the plough
And draw new furrows ’neath the healthy morn,
And plant the great Hereafter in this Now.
Noble writing, some of this; but the whole of the first part is inferior, we think, to the second, written three years afterwards, in 1851, when all the hopes of Italy had been frustrated, when it seemed as if Italy did—
Only sing of beauty
As little children take up a high strain,
With unintentioned voices, and break off,
To sleep upon their mothers’ knees again.
What a charming image! how tender in its scorn! Something less delicate but not less forcible, is in this passage of sarcasm painting the braggadocio spirit:—
How grown men raged at Austria’s wickedness,
And smoked,—while fifty striplings in a row
Marched straight to Piedmont for the wrong’s redress!
Who says we failed in duty, we who wore
Black velvet like Italian democrats,
Who slashed our sleeves like patriots, nor forswore
The true republic in the form of hats?
We chased the archbishop from the duomo door—
We chalked the walls with bloody caveats
Against all tyrants. If we did not fight
Exactly, we fired muskets up the void
To show that victory was ours of right.
We met, discussed in every place, self-buoyed
Except, perhaps, i’ the chambers, day and night:
We proved that all the poor should be employed,
And yet the rich not worked for anywise,—
Payers certified, yet payers abrogated,
Full work secured, yet liabilities
To over-work excluded,—not one bated
Of all our holidays, that still, at twice
Or thrice a-week, are moderately rated.
We proved that Austria was dislodged, or would
Or should be, and that Tuscany in arms
Should, would, dislodge her, in high hardihood!
And yet, to leave our piazzas, shops, and farms,
For the bare sake of fighting, was not good.
We proved that also—“Did we carry charms
Against being killed ourselves, that we should rush
On killing others? What, desert herewith
Our wives and mothers!—was that duty? Tush!”
At which we shook the sword within the sheath,
Like heroes—only louder! and the flush
Ran up our cheek to meet the victor’s wreath.
Nay, what we proved, we shouted—how we shouted,
(Especially the little boys did) planting
That tree of liberty whose fruit is doubted
Because the roots are not of nature’s granting—
A tree of good and evil!—none, without it,
Grow gods!—alas, and, with it, men were wanting.
Is not that glorious writing, the indignation tempered by wit turning the rude iron into bright steel? And in another strain how fine is this outburst upon that penny trade sophism—spawned by the Manchester School upon a real though misguided philanthropy—the Peace Agitation:—
A cry is up in England, which doth ring
The hollow world through, that for ends of trade
And virtue, and God’s better worshipping,
We henceforth should exalt the name of Peace,
And leave those rusty wars that eat the soul—
(Besides their clippings at our golden fleece).
I, too, have loved peace, and from bole to bole
Of immemorial, undeciduous trees,
Would write, as lovers use, upon a scroll
The holy name of Peace, and set it high
Where none should pluck it down. On trees, I say,—
Not upon gibbets!—With the greenery
Of dewy branches and the flowery May,
Sweet mediation ’twixt the earth and sky,
Providing, for the shepherd’s holiday!
Not upon gibbets!—though the vulture leaves
Some quiet to the bones he first picked bare.
Not upon dungeons! though the wretch who grieves
And groans within, stirs not the outer air
As much as little field-mice stir the sheaves.
Not upon chain-bolts! though the slave’s despair
Has dulled his helpless, miserable brain,
And left him blank beneath the freeman’s whip,
To sing and laugh out idiocies of pain.
Nor yet on starving homes! where many a lip
Has sobbed itself asleep through curses vain!
I love no peace which is not fellowship,
And which includes not mercy. I would have,
Rather, the raking of the guns across
The world, and shrieks against Heaven’s architrave.
Rather, the struggle in the slippery fosse,
Of dying men and horses, and the wave
Blood-bubbling .... Enough said!—By Christ’s own cross,
And by the faint heart of my womanhood,
Such things are better than a Peace which sits
Beside the hearth in self-commended mood,
And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits
Are howling out of doors against the good
Of the poor wanderer. What! your peace admits
Of outside anguish while it sits at home?
I loathe to take its name upon my tongue—
It is no peace. ’Tis treason, stiff with doom,—
’Tis gagged despair, and inarticulate wrong,
Annihilated Poland, stifled Rome,
Dazed Naples, Hungary fainting ’neath the thong,
And Austria wearing a smooth olive-leaf
On her brute forehead, while her hoofs outpress
The life from these Italian souls, in brief.
O Lord of Peace, who art Lord of Righteousness,
Constrain the anguished worlds from sin and grief,
Pierce them with conscience, purge them with redress,
And give us peace which is no counterfeit!
We must tear ourselves away from this record of hopes, shared with all the generous, to be afterwards so cruelly disappointed by the turn of events. It is a noble poem: full of sustained impassioned music and delicate imagery, with abundant faults for the querulous to crow over, but so lofty in sentiment, and so thoroughly poetical in execution, that criticism runs into eulogy.
[George Henry Lewes]
Reviewed:
Casa Guidi Windows (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
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