E570228A. Aurora Leigh.
Edinburgh Weekly Review, 28 February 1857, pp. 7–9.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, 291–293.
We looked forward to and hailed the appearance of this book somewhat as Columbus and his companions did the sight of a new world—a world of mountain, stream, and forest,—a world that would probably be rich in mines of gold and precious stones. To pursue our somewhat extravagant parallel, difficulties perhaps there might be; uncouth inhabitants, inextricable labyrinths, rocks and shoals, but, at all events, there was sure to be no dearth. We knew we should find plenty and to spare on the shores of this unknown world. We have not been disappointed. “Aurora Leigh” has indeed far surpassed our expectations, for, with some shortcomings, some specks on its radiant disk, it is assuredly, to use Mrs Browning’s own words, “the most mature” of her works, as it is the most original, and the one into which her “highest convictions upon life and art have entered.” We look on it as marking an epoch in literature, for it is, in many respects, an innovation on long-accepted uses in poetry. And brim-full of noble poetry it is,—the poetry of one who felt, even before she thought, and whose ever-widening range of study among books and inanimate nature rather than among men, has matured the fruits of her lofty imagination, added a deeper colour to her thoughts, and strengthened her cry of passionate sympathy with all suffering humanity.
“Aurora Leigh” has been called “a modern epic” and a “three-volumed novel.” It has met with ample justice, generally speaking, from the weekly press, but has had, notwithstanding, the hard blow of “incomprehensibility” dealt at it here and there. It is an epic, inasmuch as it treats of the passionate struggles, and the half-conquest, half-failure, of two heroic natures in their life-battle, and it is so far a novel (as the meaning of the word is now generally accepted), that the fable is of our own time; its events, which are, with one exception, common-place enough, terminating, it may be supposed, in the year of grace eighteen hundred and fifty-six. As to a misconception of the views put forth by Mrs Browning in this poem, or difficulty in understanding its purpose, we cannot believe that any one bringing the requisite amount of thoughtfulness to the task, and who will hear the singer patiently to an end, will mistake her “convictions” as they shape themselves ultimately, after presenting to us the various mental phases of Aurora’s mind. The reader may, indeed, disagree with Aurora, or with Romney, in one or other of whose mouths the esthetical portions of the poem are to be found. He may find himself somewhat perplexed between the creeds of the two apostles of the spiritual and the practical, during his progress through the book; but in the final reconciliation and typical marriage of the two, he will not fail to see Mrs Browning’s solution of the questions she propounds.
That the language of “Aurora Leigh” should be rich, fertile, picturesque, every one acquainted with Mrs Browning’s writings will anticipate. But it is something more. It is, generally speaking, clear. With the exception of a few hard words, a few obscure classical allusions, there is nothing in the language to puzzle even an unlettered reader. If we turn to Mrs Browning’s early works, we find what an advance this last poem is in that mastery over the expression of thought which makes it tangible to the apprehension of ordinary minds. Her husband, with all his splendid gifts, has not yet acquired this capacity of making himself generally understood. We are aware that the doctrine of his school is, “Get out your thought—no matter how—then add as many flowers and graces as you will—but your thought is everything.” To which we reply, “By all means, only let us have it.” Machiavelli’s principle that language was meant to conceal thought may be very well in the world of diplomacy; clearly it is not so in the world of books. We desire to behold the statue that the artist models for us, face to face: we are not content dimly to apprehend its outline through the sculptor’s drapery. Trivial fancies, on the other hand, may gain something by not being seen too closely: the conceits of our seventeenth century poets are well suited to involve finely-carved phrases. They remind us of the pigeons at a French Restaurant, which appear of goodly proportions, till, cutting into them, we find the smallest possible amount of bird beneath a superstructure of lard and stuffing. Mr Browning, however, is a poet of a very different stamp. Here is no poverty, rather exuberance of thought, deep as it is discursive, scattered with sudden jerks of the hand, as it were, over high and low ground, no matter where it falls, or how. It is the natural bent of his mind, not affectation, that renders his style so obscure, so difficult to follow. We have heard it whispered that he has become so sensible of this himself, that he is now engaged in re-writing that hardest of poetic riddles, “Sordello,” and in beating out into thin gold leaf the knotted lumps of precious ore it contains. We hope it is so, for, however much we may deplore, we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that he is at present little read and less appreciated, that there are few who will say to him, in the words of Romney to Aurora:—
. . . . You have shown me truths,
. . . . . . Truths not your’s indeed
But set within my reach by means of you;
Presented by your voice and verse the way
To take them clearest.
This principle Mrs Browning wisely seems to have put before her when she sat down to write the present poem; its language, as we have said, is more perspicuous, and therefore more powerful than that of many of her former works. We have no intention of entering into the story, which has very little merit, except that of educing the character of Aurora and Romney, with the particular principles which they represent, and of giving some strong light-and-shade pictures in the diorama of life brought before us. It is an autobiography; and each book, except the first, is supposed to be written soon after the events it records. This gives a peculiar vividness to the narrative; it has something of the freshness of a journal. We have no after-time knowledge and reflections set down when the romance was happily ended: we have hardly a hint given us, indeed, (though we guess it from the beginning) of the secret ruling passion of Aurora’s life. She is the daughter of an English father, and of an Italian mother, whom the former first saw in a procession at Florence, thus admirably painted,—
A train of priestly banners, cross and psalm,—
The white-veiled rose-crowned maidens holding up
Tall tapers, weighty for such wrists aslant
To the blue luminous tremor of the air,
. . . . . . . .
From which long trail of chanting priests and girls,
A face flashed like a cymbal on his face,
And shook with silent clangour brain and heart,
Transfiguring him to music.
Aurora therefore unites by nature the stern reflective character of the north with the brilliant passionate imagination of the south. But while circumstances tend to develope the former, the latter for many years finds its only vent in the books she gives to the world. Her childhood is admirably described. We get a key [p. 8→] to the after-character in a few touches which are worth whole pages. The Italy of her childish recollections, and her father
Whom love had unmade from a common man,
But not completed to an uncommon man,
are excellent. How wonderfully beautiful is the description of the orphan’s parting with her old nurse, the dismal voyage, and her first impression of England!
The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy,
Drawn backward from the shuddering steamer-deck,
Like one in anger drawing back her skirts
Which supplicants catch at. Then the bitter sea
Inexorably pushed between us both,
And sweeping up the ship with my despair
Threw us out as a pasture to the stars.
Ten nights and days we voyaged on the deep;
Ten nights and days, without the common face
Of any day or night, the moon and sun
Cut off from the green reconciling earth
To starve into a blind ferocity,
And glare unnatural . . . .
. . . . . . . .
Then land!—then England! oh, the frosty cliffs
Looked cold upon me. Could I find a home
Among those mean red houses through the fog?
. . . . . . . .
Was this my father’s England? the great isle?
The ground seemed cut up from the fellowship
Of verdure, field from field, as man from man;
The skies themselves looked low and positive
As almost you could touch them with a hand,
And dared to do it, they were so far of
From God’s celestial crystals, all things blurred
And dull and vague. Did Shakespeare and his mates
Absorb the light here?—not a hill or stone
With heart to strike a radiant colour up
Or active outline on the indifferent air!
Not less good, in its way, is the picture of the maiden-aunt, and the gradual unfolding of Aurora’s mind in the outwardly monotonous life, through the inward world of books, is powerfully told. The passages that describe the young girl’s first consciousness of her own gifts of poetry are very fine. Doubts came later; “all analysis comes late”—there was no lack of self-confidence then. Who amongst us, who at eighteen fancied he could write a sonnet, will not acknowledge the truth and beauty of the following:—
Many fervent souls
Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel
If steel had offered, in a restless heat
Of doing something. Many tender souls
Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,
As children, cowslips:—the more pains they take,
The work more withers. Young men, ay, and maids,
Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse
Before they sit down under their own vine,
And live for use. Alas, near all the birds
Will sing at dawn,—and yet we do not take
The draffering swallow for the holy lark.
. . . . . . . .
And so, like most young poets, in a flush
Of individual life, I poured myself
Along the veins of others, and achieved
Mere lifeless imitations of live verse
And made the living answer for the dead
Profaning nature.
This is but the fluttering of her wings: Aurora’s muse is ambitious and original, and soon takes a far higher flight. She feels the sense of responsibility great gifts bring with them. She looks to something beyond praise and answers Romney’s tirade against poetesses, thus,—
. . . . I would rather dance,
At fairs on tight-rope, till the babies dropped
Their gingerbread for joy,—than shift the types
For tolerable verse, intolerable
To men who act and suffer. Better far
Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means
Than a sublime art frivolously.
This is a great truth, excellently put. As to the opinion advanced further on, that a poet’s “sole work is to represent the age,” we cannot quite agree to it, in a literal sense, though advocated in Mrs Browning’s most eloquent captivating manner. “Poets,” she says most truly, should
Exert a double vision; should have eyes
To see near things as comprehensively
As if afar they took their point of sight,
And distant things as intimately deep,
As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.
I do distrust the poet who discerns
No character or glory in his times
And trundles back his soul five hundred years.
If we remember rightly, Mr Landor in an introductory passage to his “Imaginary Conversations” (themselves admirable instances of vitality infused into the past) defends the choice of classical subjects by reminding us that the greatest works of art in all times have been illustrations of these subjects. Human nature is human nature whether under a Roman toga or a paletot. The noisy inconstant mob in “Julius Cæsar” is very like a Paris mob of the present day. Yet Julius Cæsar is, in reality, nearer to us, more tangible, in this age of learning and research, than he was to Shakespeare. After all, a man can only write well what he feels strongly. If his imagination be more deeply stirred by dreaming of the past than by a study of the present, with a wistful glance at the future, so that he rouses our human sympathies, and his words be true and earnest, we care not, he will surely not lack listeners. This brings us to speak of the only serious fault we find in “Aurora Leigh.” There are passages—among them the greater part that relates to Lady Waldemar,—we cannot accept as true pictures of this every-day life of ours, which it is Mrs Browning’s object at once to paint and to elevate by the refining gold of poetry. For instance, our introduction to the great lady is on this wise. She visits an utter stranger (that stranger, a woman, and a possible rival), and at once pours out a tale of her unrequited love for said stranger’s cousin. We must admit this is not very natural. What, then, shall we say to that grotesque marriage-meeting of “St Giles in Frieze” with “St James in Cloth of Gold?” We fancy we hear some sarcastic young gentleman reading this passage aloud for the edification of a select circle, and enquiring “whether you call that poetry? or whether it is supposed to be a picture of real life?” We candidly answer we don’t think it much like either. Certainly it is not poetry. Whether it may be a foreshadowing of manners and customs in the year 1956, we will not attempt to determine; in the present day the scene is impossible. But with this exception, we fearlessly challenge the sarcastic young gentleman to cite a passage throughout “Aurora Leigh,” which does not breathe the very spirit of poetry, in single lines of marvellous beauty, not to speak of the longer, fuller, and what will be called the more “striking” passages. The poem gains in vigour and intensity as it proceeds: each “Book,” widening in compass as it embraces new elements of thought and action, and carrying us on irresistibly to the end, like the rush of a mountain-torrent swelling onward as it goes. The description of Marian Erle and her child is most touching and beautiful, and her story, perhaps, the most dramatic and powerful passage in the book. The picture of Paris which precedes this is absolutely Turneresque in its vivid brilliancy and breadth of touch.
Throughout the poem we have rich and glowing pictures from nature, and the profound thoughts of an original thinker hand in hand, or following each other step by step. The generality of poets are classed under some such head as “descriptive,” “dramatic,” or “didactic,” and exhibit some specialite, as the French term it, beyond the limits of which they rarely step. It is not saying too much to affirm that Mrs Browning unites these various qualities in this one poem. She is never satisfied with a superficial glance; from the fair face of inanimate nature, from cities, men, and books, she draws twofold, impressed with the truth she so grandly utters,—
. . . Natural things
And spiritual,—who separates these two
In art, in morals, or the social drift,
Tears up the bond of nature, and brings death,
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,
Is wrong, in short, at all points.
This is a lesson our young naturalistic school of poets would do well to bear in mind. Here is one who also can paint weeds and butterflies with a pre-Raphaelite delicacy of touch; such is not the aim and end of Art. We wish the limits of this notice would admit of our quoting some of the fresh and felicitous delineations of Italy, with which the Seventh Book abounds; but we have only room for a few brief remarks on the concluding portion of the poem. We are prepared to hear it objected that the catastrophe which befalls Romney was suggested by a similar incident in “Jane Eyre.” Possibly so; this is too unimportant to be the [p. 9→] ground of a serious charge; but, were it not for the loss of those fine lines—
O calm, grand eyes, extinguished in a storm,
Blown out, like lights o’er melancholy seas.
we could wish Romney’s sight had been spared. The whole scene is very beautiful in which they meet once more, and the barriers between them are, one by one, broken down. The Christian philosophy of a lifetime is to be found in the study of these two noble natures, one ministrant to the physical, the other to the spiritual wants of their fellowmen, each acknowledging the failure of their self-reliant schemes,—
Beloved . . . we must be here to work;
And men who work can only work for men,
And not to work in vain, must comprehend
Humanity, and so work humanly,
And praise men’s bodies still by raising souls
As God did first.
We have purposely brought forward conspicuously what appear to us as the little specks and flaws in this great work, because we had rather weigh them honestly, grain by grain, in the balance, than see them heaped together in the pages of some bitter article—the immeasurable preponderance of beauty being blindly or obstinately ignored. It is not in the power of a review, happily, to make or mar a book now-a-days; by its own merits will it live or die. We are not afraid for “Aurora Leigh.” All who, like ourselves, have risen from its perusal with elevated feelings of delight and benefit, with a thrilling heart and a quickened pulse, will not fear for it the strong gas-light of criticism. They will feel that here is no false colouring, no make-up of paint, but real flesh and blood, informed by a master-spirit. They will find themselves lingering over passages of extraordinary depth and pathos. They will take the book to their hearts, not dismiss it with a single reading. And lastly, they will not hesitate to pronounce it “the most remarkable poem ever produced by a woman.”
[Charles Hamilton Aidé]
Reviewed:
Aurora Leigh (EBB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1857.
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