R400500B. Sordello.
The Monthly Chronicle, May 1840, pp. 476–478.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 421–422.
We opened “Sordello,” a new poem by Mr. Browning, with the most pleasurable anticipations, and closed it with the most painful disappointment, [p. 477→] after reading patiently through the six books, still hoping—still deceived. We were to read of that Sordello whose name has ever rung in our hearts, whom Dante saw in Purgatory—
Non ci diceva alcuna cosa,
Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando,
A guisa di leon quando si posa;
and we were to hear of him from the poet who had touched us with his “Paracelsus.” We confidently expected that the crudeness and harshness which were the small drawbacks on that deep-thinking and delightful poem, would have been softened down by additional experience, while the thoughts would have been riper and mellower, and the execution of the whole more perfect: but we missed every thing except the faults of that work—we missed the fervent hopes, the wild dreams of Paracelsus, the idyllic gentle wisdom of Festus, the exquisite beauty and gentleness of Michal, and the passionate noble extravagance of Aprile. “Sordello” has the worst of all poetical faults—dulness: in spite of the attempts at liveliness in the narrative—of throwing a minstrel romantic ease and rambling discursiveness into it—the poem is dull to sleepiness. The story is badly and tediously unfolded—the reflections for the most part are commonplace and prosaical—the versification is every where rugged, imperfect, and inharmonious—and the imagery seldom novel or striking. It is interspersed with the worst sort of wordy metaphysics, equally unattractive and old. As a specimen of the versification we open at random, and find—
Ecelo, dismal father of the brood,
And Ecelin, close to the girl he wooed;
Auria, and their child, with all his wives,
From Agnes to the Tuscan that survives, &c.
—p. 20.
And such lines are constantly appearing. Those who remember Mr. Browning’s tragedy of “Strafford,”—which a witty friend said was a tragedy in a constant spasm—could not very well tolerate the short abrupt sentences of which the speeches were composed, and which bore more resemblance to the mode of elocution adopted by our facetious friend Jingle (in Pickwick), than any thing we have been accustomed to recognise as dramatic; precisely this fault has he preserved in “Sordello.” Take a couple of specimens.
Time stole: by degrees
The Pythons perished off; his votaries
Sunk to respectful distance; songs redeem
Their pains, but briefer; their dismissals seem
Emphatic; only girls are very slow
To disappear: his Delians! Some that glow
O’ the instant, more with earlier loves to wrench
Away, reserves to quell, disdains to quench;
Alike in one material circumstance—
All soon or late adore Apollo! Glance
The bevy through, divine Apollo’s choice,
A Daphne!
Time fleets
That’s worst! Because the pre-appointed age
Approaches. Fate is tardy with the stage
She all but promised. Lean he grows and pale,
Though restlessly at rest. Hardly avail
Fancies to soothe him. Time steals, yet alone
He tarries here! The earnest smile is gone.
How long this might continue matters not:
For ever, possibly; since to the spot
None come: for lingering Taurello quits
Mantua at last, and light our lady flits
Back to her place disburthened of a care.
Strange—to be constant here if he is there!
Is it distrust? Oh, never! for they both
Goad Ecelin alike—Romano’s growth
So daily manifest that Azzo’s dumb
And Richard wavers … let but Frederich come!
Mr. Browning seems to have forgotten that the medium of art must ever be the beautiful; he seems to be totally indifferent to pleasing our imaginations and fancy by the music of verse and of thoughts, by the grace of his diction as well as of his imagery; and when this want of a sweet flowing beauty both in thought and versification—a want of that “linked sweetness long drawn out,”—is coupled with a positive want of dramatic or speculative [p. 478→] interest in the story, and a by no means new or newly put moral, we may be pardoned if we say we regard “Sordello” as a failure in toto.
There is no task in criticism more unpleasant or more superficial than that of finding fault, especially where you have no great balance of praise as a counterpoise, and this becomes doubly unpleasant when the subject under consideration is the work of an author who has already given such indications of genius as are to be found in “Paracelsus.” But criticism would be valueless if it were not strictly just.
Reviewed:
Sordello (RB), London: Moxon, 1840.
___________________
