R400530A. Sordello.
The Athenæum, 30 May 1840, pp. 431–432.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 422–424.
If it were Mr. Browning’s desire to withdraw himself from the inquest of criticism, he could scarcely have effected that purpose better than by the impenetrable veil, both of manner and language, in which he has contrived to wrap up whatever truths or beauties this volume may contain. Into his peculiarities of language—his quarrels with the prepositions, and other puerilities and affectations, it is scarcely worth while to enter, further than to hint to the author, that even if his truths and beauties lay nearer the surface than they do, they would recommend themselves far more agreeably in the accepted grammatical forms; and that euphony is one of the conditions of poetry, which, as a sort of usher to the rest, is less safely neglected than some of its higher and more essential qualities. The reader’s attention, during the first half of this volume, is necessarily occupied in mastering those novelties of mere construction, the perfect understanding of which is necessary to qualify him for grappling with the far more impracticable peculiarities of expression that lie below:—and the second half is exhausted in the attempt to acquire such a familiarity with the author’s manner, as may enable him to get at the meanings concealed in the oracles themselves. The first of these difficulties may, of course, be overcome. Like any system of short-hand, the author’s scheme of syntax may, with some trouble, be acquired. The second carries us too far into the regions of transcendentalism to offer any certainty of a satisfactory solution. The song of the bard falls dull and muffled on the ear, as from a fog; and if, at times, a breath of purer inspiration sweeps off the vapours, letting his voice come articulately to the understanding, it is but for a moment. Fold upon misty fold has stolen up, while we were yet rejoicing over our premature ευρηκα, and the singer is again lost to our apprehension in cloudy depths, whither it must be a long labour to learn to follow him. It is, nevertheless, these occasional outbreaks of light, giving assurance of a spiritual presence, that win the reader onward,—tempted, as he is, again and again, to throw down the book in despair. The dust and cobwebs of Time, the student is willing to remove, for the purpose of getting at the old spiritualities that lie beneath a covering, spread over them by the hand of Nature; but the author who chooses deliberately to put “his light under a bushel” of affectations, must not be surprised if men refuse the labour of searching it out, and leave him to the peaceable enjoyment of that obscurity which he has courted.
As we cannot conscientiously send our readers to the book itself, and yet feel bound to afford them some evidence of the art with which the author has concealed his treasures, let him work out the following problem, and give us its result if he can:—
But really, say.
All men think all men stupider than they
Since save themselves no other comprehends
The complicated scheme to make amends
—Evil, the scheme by which, thro’ Ignorance
Good labours to exist. A slight advance
Merely to find the sickness you die through
And nought beside: but if one can’t eschew
One’s portion in the common lot, at least
One can avoid an ignorance increased
Tenfold by dealing out hint after hint
How nought is like dispensing without stint
The water of life—so easy to dispense
Beside, when one has probed the centre whence
Commotion’s born—could tell you of it all
—Meantime, just meditate my madrigal
O’ the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe!
What, dullard? we and you in smothery chafe
Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin
The Horrid, getting neither out nor in,
A hungry sun above us, sands among
Our throats, each dromedary lolls a tongue,
Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap,
And you, ’twixt tales of Potiphar’s mishap
And sonnets on the earliest ass that spoke,
Remark you wonder any one needs choak
With founts about! Potsherd him, Gibeonites,
While awkwardly enough your Moses smites
The rock though he forego his Promised Land,
Thereby, have Satan claim his carcass, and
Dance, forsooth, Metaphysic Poet … ah
Mark ye the dim first oozings? Meribah!
And quaffing at the fount my courage gained
Recall—not that I prompt ye—who explained…
Presumptuous! interrupts one. You not I
’Tis, Brother, marvel at and magnify
Mine office: office, quotha? can we get
To the beginning of the office yet?
What do we here? simply experiment
Each on the other’s power and its intent
When elsewhere tasked, if this of mine were trucked
For thine to either’s profit,—watch construct,
In short, an engine: with a finished one
What it can do is all, nought how ’tis done; [p. 432→]
But this of ours yet in probation, dusk
A kernel of strange wheelwork thro’ its husk
Grows into shape by quarters and by halves;
Remark this tooth’s spring, wonder what that valve’s
Fall bodes, presume each faculty’s device,
Make out each other more or less precise—
The scope of the whole engine’s to be proved—
We die: which means to say the whole’s removed,
Dismounted wheel by wheel that complex gin,
To be set up anew elsewhere, begin
A task indeed but with a clearer clime
Than the murk lodgment of our building-time:
And then, I grant you, it behoves forget
How ’tis done—all that must amuse us yet
So long: and while thou turnest on thy heel
Pray that I be not busy slitting steel
Or shredding brass upon a virgin shore
Under a cluster of fresh stars, before
I name a tithe the wheels I trust to do!
If the above specimen be within the compass of the reader’s faculties, then he may refer to the volume, which abounds in such.
It will, no doubt, surprise our readers that we should have wasted so much time in the attempt to get at the meaning of a book which the author seems to have taken pains to mystify. We really believe this very mystification was the provocation to perseverance. There is, in fact, an air of philosophic pretension about the work, which leads to the inference that it must contain something—and again and again, with a zeal that deserved a better recompense, have we dived into its metaphysical depths, in search of precious things; but the waters were too muddy to show us the treasures which they may nevertheless conceal—and a more discouraging circumstance still is, that sometimes when we have succeeded in bringing up a pearl, it has turned out to be not worth the author’s hiding so carefully, or our labouring so hard to discover. If we understand Mr. Browning’s philosophic purpose, it is to paint the contest between the spiritual aspirations of an ardent nature and the worldly influences by which it is opposed; the disappointment which an enthusiastic heart, nursed, amid natural influences, into dreams of perfectibility, experiences in its attempts to impress its own character upon surrounding objects, and confer, by the act of its own will, those boons upon its fellow men, which are the slow and gradual gift of ages. If this be the object of the writer, his meaning is wrapped up in a very needless and absurd profusion of words: fold after fold of unfamiliar verbiage have we unwound in the hope of coming on the living spirit; and it is, after all, doubtful if we have been successful.
Incidental, too, to this main philosophic purpose, there are a number of minor philosophic ventures, surrounded by an array of language which makes them look provokingly oracular, but which, as we have hinted, turn out, when examined, to be very commonplace truths. Of the author’s profundities, and his peculiar manner of enunciating them, when he chooses to be most intelligible, the few lines that follow exhibit a fair specimen:—
Ecelin perished: and I think grass grew
Never so pleasant as in Valley Rù
By San Zenon where Alberic in turn
Saw his exasperated captors burn
Seven children with their mother, and, regaled
So far, tied on to a wild horse, was trailed
To death through raunce and bramble-bush: I take
God’s part and testify that mid the brake
Wild o’er his castle in Zenone’s knoll
You hear its one tower left, a belfry toll—
Cherups the contumacious grasshopper,
Rustles the lizard and the cushats chirre
Above the ravage: there, at deep of day
A week since, heard I the old Canon say
He saw with his own eyes a barrow burst
And Alberic’s huge skeleton unhearsed
Five years ago, no more: he added, June’s
A month for carding off our first cocoons
The silkworms fabricate—a double news,
Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose!
As examples of the pregnant thought, and quaint poetry, and significant illustration, that from time to time lure the reader over the rough ground of the general page, we may offer the following:—
Alas, from the beginning Love is whole
And true; if sure of nought beside, most sure
Of its own truth at least; nor may endure
A crowd to see its face, that cannot know
How hot the pulses throb its heart below;
While its own helplessness and utter want
Of means to worthily be ministrant
To what it worships, do but fan the more
Its flame, exalt the idol far before
Itself as it would ever have it be.
* * * *
True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind
Into a treasure, helped himself to find
A beauty in himself; for, see, he soared
By means of that mere snatch to many a hoard
Of fancies; as some falling cone bears off
The eye, along the fir-tree-spire, aloft
To a dove’s nest.
* * * *
He, no genius rare,
Transfiguring in fire or wave or air
At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up,
In some rock-chamber with his agate cup,
His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few
And their arrangement finds enough to do
For his best art. Then, how he loved that art!
The calling marking him a man apart
From men—one not to care, take counsel for
Cold hearts, comfortless faces (Eglamor
Was neediest of his tribe) since verse, the gift,
Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift
Without it, e’en content themselves with wealth
And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth.
So Eglamor was not without his pride!
The sorriest bat which cowers through noontide
While other birds are jocund, has one time
When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime
Of earth is its to claim, nor find a peer.
* * * *
Venice, a type
Of Life, ’twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As Life, the somewhat, hangs ’twixt nought and nought.
* * * *
For if a wealthy man decays
And out of store of such must wear all days
One tattered suit alike in sun and shade,
’Tis commonly some tarnished fine brocade
Fit for a feast-night’s flourish and no more;
Nor otherwise poor Misery from her store
Of looks is fain upgather, keep unfurled
For common wear as she goes through the world
The faint remainder of some worn-out smile
Meant for a feast-night’s service merely.
These few specimens, despite the mannerism which characterizes them all, may satisfy the reader that it might be worth Mr. Browning’s while to use the language of ordinary men, and to condescend to be intelligible, which need not prevent his being profound. To mannerism—which does not outrage nature, and become distortion—we by no means object; and for originality we are very thankful; but not for such as has been here displayed. We will give one extract of great length—a description of Caryatides by sunset—in which the quaintness of the style has not overlaid the poetry, nor originality become mere extravagance:—
But quick
To the main wonder now. A vault, see; thick
Black shade about the ceiling, through fine slits
Across the buttress suffer light by fits
Upon a marvel in the midst: nay, stoop—
A dullish grey-streaked cumbrous font, a group
Round it, each side of it, where’er one sees,
Upholds it—shrinking Caryatides
Of just-tinged marble like Eve’s lilied flesh
Beneath her Maker’s finger when the fresh
First pulse of life shot brightening the snow:
The font’s edge burthens every shoulder, so
They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed,
Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed,
Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veil
Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,
Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length
Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength
Goes when the grate above shuts heavily;
So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,
Like priestesses because of sin impure
Penanced for ever, who resigned endure,
Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs;
And every eve Sordello’s visit begs
Pardon for them: constant as eve he came
To sit beside each in her turn, the same
As one of them, a certain space: and awe
Made a great indistinctness till he saw
Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress chinks,
Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinks
And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain
Her load were lightened, one shade less the stain
Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt
From off the rosary whereby the crypt
Keeps count of the contritions of its charge?
Then with a step more light, a heart more large,
He may depart, leave her and every one
To linger out the penance in mute stone.
Having placed the author in this favourable and intelligible point of view before the public, we will leave him there, with a final word of advice. Let his Muse be ever so eccentric in her flights, so long as she remains within sight she will find admirers even of her eccentricities; but if she would be appreciated by understandings of this earth, she must keep somewhere or other on this side of the clouds.
[Thomas Kibble Hervey]
Reviewed:
Sordello (RB), London: Moxon, 1840.
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