R411002A. Pippa Passes.
The Examiner, 2 October 1841, pp. 628–629.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 396–399.
Paracelsus announced a new and original poet—one of the rarest things met with in these days, much cried out for, much sought after, and, when found, much objected to. We dare say that Paracelsus did not succeed: we never heard of a second edition: but we find it an agreeable circumstance to remember, that from this journal it had its first and heartiest acknowledgment.
Mr Browning has published since then: in our opinion, not so well. But yet not so, as to falsify any anticipation formed of the character of his genius. To write a bad poem is one thing: to write a poem on a bad system is another, and very different. When a greater curiosity about the writer shall hereafter disentomb Sordello, it will not be admired for its faults, but, in spite of them, its power and its beauty will be perceived. It had a magnificent aim, and a great many passages in which justice was done to that, and to the genius of the designer. The temptations which too easily beset a man’s pride in his own originality; the enticing and most dangerous depths of metaphysics, which are, to the young and genuine thinker, as the large black eyes of Charlotte were to Werter, a sea, a precipice: into these the poet fell. But to rise again. The misfortunes which are apt to occur in this literal world of ours, the seas and precipices that receive one here, the bogs and pitfalls, are seldom recoverable: but he that
has been led astray
Through the Heaven’s wide pathless way
finds, soon or late, the guide that brings his footsteps home.
This Pippa Passes is worthy of the writer of Paracelsus. We call it, without doubt, a piece of right inspiration. It is in a dramatic form, and has fine dramatic transitions, but its highest beauty is lyrical. It gushes forth, an irrepressible song. Its rich variety of verse, embodying the nicest [p. 629→] shades of poetical and musical rhythm, flows in a full tide of harmony with each lightest change of sentiment. We want no better assurance of entire sincerity, for the Idea presented in the poem. No one ever yet managed to get utterances of this kind, out of what Mr Carlyle calls the region of Sham.
The story of the poem is, simply, one day’s adventures of a little, black-eyed, pretty singing girl, of Asolo in the Trevisan: a poor, ragged little thing, employed in the silk mills of the place: what we should call a factory child, of some fourteen years of age, and with but one single holiday all the year round, yet inspired, by the healthy Italian sky and air, with songs and cheerfulness. New Year’s Day has arrived; that single holiday of hers; and with the first line of the poem she has sprung out of her little bed in her “large, mean, airy chamber,” full of anticipations of a day of unalterable gladness, in which she shall be free to go singing and enjoying herself as she pleases, all around the little old town of Asolo.
Day!
Faster and more fast
O’er night’s brim day boils at last;
Boils, pure gold, o’er the cloud-cup’s brim
Where spurting and supprest it lay—
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of eastern cloud, an hour away—
But forth one wavelet then another curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be supprest,
Rose-reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
Day, if I waste a wavelet of thee,
Aught of my twelve-hours’ treasure—
One of thy gazes, one of thy glances,
(Grants thou art bound to, gifts above measure),
One of thy choices, one of thy chances,
(Tasks God imposed thee, freaks at thy pleasure),
Day, if I waste such labour or leisure,
Shame betide Asolo, mischief to me!
But then, in turn, the light-hearted singer asks of this long waited for, great joy bringing Day, not to be sullen to her, or spoil mirth with frowns or storms:
For let thy morning scowl on that superb
Great haughty Ottima—can scowl disturb
Her Sebald’s homage? And if noon shed gloom
O’er Jules and Phene—what care bride and groom
Save for their dear selves? Then, obscure thy eve
With mist—will Luigi and Madonna grieve
—The mother and the child—unmatched, forsooth,
She in her age as Luigi in his youth,
For true content? And once again, outbreak
In storm at night on Monsignor they make
Such stir to-day about, who foregoes Rome
To visit Asolo, his brother’s home,
And say their masses proper to release
The soul from pain—what storm dares hurt that peace?
But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil,
Bethink thee, utterly next twelvemonth’s toil
At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil!
So come into the little silk-winder’s head, people she has heard great talk about, in “the little town below.” The first is the handsome ill-tempered wife of the miserly old owner of the neighbouring silk mills, with whom spiteful gossip has of late connected a foreign lover, the German Sebald: the second is a pair that hang more pleasantly about her thoughts, a young sculptor and his young bride that have just come to Asolo, and of whom she herself had caught a glimpse the night before:
So strict was she the veil
Should cover close her pale
Pure cheeks—a bride to look at and scarce touch,
Remember Jules!—for are not such
Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,
As if one’s breath would fray the lily of a creature?
Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,
Keep that foot its lady primness,
Let those ancles never swerve
From their exquisite reserve,
Yet have to trip along the streets like me
All but naked to the knee!
the third are a mother and son who live in an adjoining turret, and whose love for each other, and supposed quiet happiness, have made a deep impression upon her: the fourth is a great Monsignor, the youngest of three brothers, who have a large family estate in Asolo, and who, the second and childless brother having now followed the eldest to the grave, has left his priestly duties at Rome to say mass for the dead, and possess himself of the inheritance.
Morning, noon, eve, night—little Pippa, still at her humble toilet, delightedly dwells upon all the treasures of that holiday, difficult to be exhausted by her, and still those four sets of human figures come back upon her, as filling up, somehow, the morning, the noon, the evening, the night. They are for all the year far from her, but then for that day she is free, she has a holiday, and may go near to them. Why, she even thinks, she could love, be happy, feel content, say masses, just like them. Why should she not, for all that long day at the least, be as they? Well .. she will pass by them, look at them at all events, and who knows if she may not even move them somehow, be almost important to them, ragged little silk girl as she is? For the new year’s hymn of Asolo has come into her head, with what it says about all service ranking the same with God, and about His presence filling each corner of the earth, and about every one working only as He wills, and being, best or worst, His puppets only: “no last, no first.” And so she ends her talk to herself and trips off into the street.
I am just as great, no doubt,
As they!
A pretty thing to care about
So mightily—this single holiday!
Why repine?
With thee to lead me, Day of mine,
Down the grass path gray with dew,
’Neath the pine-wood, blind with boughs,
Where the swallow never flew
As yet, nor cicale dared carouse:
No, dared carouse! [She enters the street.
The division of the poem into four scenes is now begun, and the first is the house of Ottima at this early morning. We find that the previous night had witnessed a dark action: the murder of old Luca by the wife and paramour. It is told in a scene between the guilty pair, written with an intensity and, if we may so call it, a sensual extravagance, which issue rightly from such a drunken deed of passion and of blood. In the mind of the paramour, however, the sense of guilt gradually weighs down every other, till scarcely the stronger and more sustained will of Ottima can drag him from the now palpable and not to be evaded horror which threatens, out of his repentance and remorse, to discover and overwhelm them both. But at the last her will prevails; Sebald yields; guilt triumphs; and he is crowning Ottima his spirits’ arbitress again, “magnificent in sin,”—when a girl’s voice, singing cheerfully without, arrests him. It is a song about the spring of the year and the morning of the day, about the lark on the wing and the snail on the thorn, about God in His heaven, and all being right with the world. The conscience of Sebald is more fatally struck; the scales that fenced and hardened it, melt and drop off; Sin fascinates no longer; the little peasant’s voice has righted all again.
And this, carried with the light, unconscious steps of Pippa, from morning to noon, from noon to evening, from evening to night, is the purpose and Idea of the poem. It is to inculcate the faith in higher than mere actual things: it is to encourage the hope that all who do rightly and cheerfully what duty they are called to, however humble, may aspire to their share of influence on the whole great scheme of the world: it is to express the truth that, at once encircling the meanest and the greatest, there is a fulness of divine life which acts upon our own existence, to be made suddenly visible or sensible by the lightest thing; and that all, even when the greatest contraries appear to be at work, is yet, to the mind of thoughtful insight, interdependent and harmonious.
Pippa’s Noon song restores the artist to more real views of his art, and to that true bride from which the disease of his mind would else have parted him: Pippa’s Evening song falls upon a troubled scene in the turret of Luigi, and, restoring him to that patriotic resolve from which his mother’s fears were fast dissuading him, averts the levelled bayonets of Austria: Pippa’s Night song penetrates the palace of Monsignor, and disperses a design by which the over-tempted priest would have worked her own destruction. And then, unconscious of it all, she returns to her little bed, in her large, mean, airy chamber.
Full of wise and naïve thoughts is she, of what she has passed and seen: the sanctity of those people about Monsignor, for example, who had been driving her and other poor girls from the palace gate:
The pious man, the man devoid of blame,
The . . . ah, but—ah, but, all the same;
No mere mortal has a right
To carry that exalted air;
Best people are not angels quite—
While—not worst people’s doings scare
The devils; so there’s that regard to spare!
And full of tired happiness she is, at having really been, in fancy, all she had designed to be at her morning’s toilet:
And now what am I? .. tired of fooling!
Day for folly, night for schooling ..
New year’s day is over—over!
Even my lily’s asleep, I vow:
Wake up—here’s a friend I pluckt you.
See—call this a heartsease now!
But as she is placing them together, the red sun drops into a black cloud; there falls a drear, dark close to her poor holiday; and thus the poem closes.
[After she has begun to undress herself.
Now one thing I should like to really know;
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being this long day—
. . . Approach, I mean, so as to touch them— so
As to .. in some way .. move them—if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind
Silk to-morrow, silk may bind
[Sitting on the bedside.
And broider Ottima’s cloak’s hem—
Ah, me and my important passing them
This morning’s hymn half promised when I rose!
True in some sense or other, I suppose.
[As she lies down.
God bless me tho’ I cannot pray to-night.
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right.
All service is the same with God—
Whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we. . . . . [She sleeps.
We are told no more, but can guess what the morning brings. This good Pippa is no longer the ragged little silk-winding girl; but Felippa, the rich and wealthy niece of Monsignor; the daughter of his elder brother, whom the wicked second brother had removed for seizure of her inheritance.
The defect in the execution of the work—the whole conception seems to us to have extraordinary beauty—lies in the scene with the young sculptor and his bride. Here, with some few exquisite exceptions, the language is so fitful and obscure, the thoughts themselves so wild and whirling, the whole air of the scene so shadowy and remote, that, with its great blots of gorgeous colour too, we are reminded of nothing so much as of one of Turner’s canvasses—pictures of Nothing, as some one has called them, and remarkably like. But the very reverse of this, is the general style of the poem: suited to what it has to express: now crisply cutting out the thought, now softly refining or enlarging it; swelling or subsiding at the poet’s will; and never at any time failing of originality.
Our sketch has omitted mention of two incidental scenes. The first is of some German students: the second of the poor girls at the gate of Monsignor. From the first, which is written in clear and manly prose, we shall take an admirable glimpse of character:
1 Stu. Schramm (take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody), will Jules lose the bloom of his youth?
Schramm. Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world; look at a blossom—it drops presently and fruits succeed; as well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body because its earliest favourite is dead and done with, as that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object is superseded in due course. Has a man done wondering at women? There follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. Has he done wondering at men? There’s God to wonder at; and the faculty of wonder may be at the same time grey enough with respect to its last object, and yet green sufficiently so far as concerns its novel one; thus…
1 Stu. Put Schramm’s pipe into his mouth again
The dramatic truth, the local colouring is invariably well kept. Our extract from the other scene is a song of touching sweetness:
You’ll love me yet!—and I can tarry
Your love’s protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April’s sowing.
I plant a heartfull now—some seed
At least is sure to strike
And yield—what you’ll not care, indeed,
To pluck, but, may-be, like
To look upon .. my whole remains,
A grave’s one violet:
Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.
What’s death?—You’ll love me yet!
A few lines more, and we have done. They shall be from the scene of mother and son in the turret of Asolo, and brief as they are beautiful.
When the mother seeks to calm the son’s ardent Italian indignation against Austria, by suggesting the impossibility of escape from her bloodhounds, the young man answers:
Luigi. Escape—to wish that even would spoil all!
The dying is best part of it—I have
Enjoyed these fifteen years of mine too much
To leave myself excuse for longer life—
Was not life pressed down, running o’er with joy,
That I might finish with it ere my fellows,
Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay?
I was put at the board head, helped to all
At first: I rise up happy and content.
He is afterwards reminded that patriotism is sometimes an easy virtue for a selfish man:
he loves himself—and then, the world,
If he must love beyond,—but nought between:
As a short-sighted man sees nought midway
His body and the sun above ..
and, more persuasive still, he is reminded of his loved Chiara
. . with her blue eyes upturned
As if life were one long and sweet surprise.
And Luigi must then have perished, but that Pippa Passes, and saves him.
Let us conclude with a hope that she may get the welcome she deserves. Whomever she passes, she cannot but do good to—opening generous hopes, suggesting cheerful thoughts, awakening virtuous impulses.
[John Forster]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. I. Pippa Passes (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1841.
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