R460600C. Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy.
The New Monthly Belle Assemblée, June 1846, pp. 370–372.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 395–397.
With this eighth number Mr. Browning closes the first series of those infinitely various productions which he has published under the fanciful title of “Bells and Pomegranates;” and as it is one which seems to have puzzled many of his readers, perhaps we cannot do better than quote his own explanation. In reply to inquiries he says—
“I only meant by that title to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alternation or mixture of music with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought; which looks too ambitious thus expressed, so the symbol was preferred. It is little to the purpose that such is actually one of the most familiar of the many Rabbinical (and Patristic) acceptations of the phrase; because I confess that, letting authority alone, I supposed the bare words, in such juxtaposition, would sufficiently convey the desired meaning.”
It signifies, however, almost as little by what general title these poems are to be known, as the binding in which they are enclosed might do; and a few numbers back we had occasion to dwell more fully on Mr. Browning’s claim to be ranked as a true and great poet than we have now the space to do. “Luria” is essentially an heroic production; a beautiful truth idealized; a creation that could only have emanated from a mind accustomed to find its daily food in the noblest aspirations of humanity. We do not apprehend this drama was ever intended for theatrical representation, although we can understand how actors of genius might in its embodiment delight a cultivated and sympathising audience; but it possesses none of the claptrap effects and bustling activity which are necessary to please the general taste, lowered and corrupted as it has been by the greedy seekers of an evanescent popularity.
Luria is a Moorish captain of Florentine troops, faithful to the death, but doubted by the ungrateful city of his adoption, surrounded by spies, and exposed at last to all the temptations a discovery of their falsehood could present. But he is above and beyond them; loving Florence with that sort of human love that makes us blind to weaknesses and ready to forgive faults. The five acts of the tragedy comprise five periods of one day—morning, noon, afternoon, evening, and night; into which is crowded a life-time of emotion. Extracts can give but a very faint idea of the peculiar beauties of this drama; for its unity of plot and purpose is one of the greatest. There are single and short passages of great power—the power of a fresh coinage, stamping some truth which we instantly recognize in the glowing words which make it Poetry; but even these passages belong to the work in such a manner that they are weakened by isolation. We must try, however, to make a selection from the many we have scored. The following seems to us full of beauties not to be appreciated at a first hasty reading:—
Luria. Ah, noon comes too fast!
I wonder, do you guess why I delay
Involuntarily the final blow
As long as possible? Peace follows it!
Florence at peace, and the calm, studious heads
Come out again, the penetrating eyes;
As if a spell broke, all’s resumed, each art
You boast, more vivid that it slept awhile!
’Gainst the glad heaven, o’er the white palace-front
The interrupted scaffold climbs anew;
The walls are peopled by the Painter’s brush;
The Statue to its niche ascends to dwell;
The Present’s noise and trouble have retired
And left the eternal Past to rule once more.
You speak its speech and read its records plain,
Greece lives with you, each Roman breathes your friend—
But Luria—where will then be Luria’s place?
Domizia. Highest in honour, for that Past’s own sake,
Of which his actions, sealing up the sum
By saving all that went before from wreck.
Will range as part, with which he worshipped too.
Lur. Then I may walk and watch you in your streets
Leading the life my rough life helps no more,
So different, so new, so beautiful—
Nor fear that you will tire to see parade
The club that slew the lion, now that crooks [p. 371→]
And shepherd-pipes come into use again?
For very lone and silent seems my East
In its drear vastness—still it spreads, and still
No Braccios, no Domizias anywhere—
Not ever more! Well, well, to-day is ours!
Dom. (to Braccio) Should he not have been one of us?
Lur. Oh, no!
Not one of you, and so escape the thrill
Of coming into you, and changing thus—
Feeling a soul grow on me that restricts
The boundless unrest of the savage heart!
The sea heaves up, hangs loaded o’er the land,
Breaks there and buries its tumultuous strength;
Horror, and silence, and a pause awhile;
Lo, inland glides the gulf-stream, miles away,
In rapture of assent, subdued and still,
’Neath those strange banks, those unimagined skies!
Well, ’tis not sure the quiet lasts for ever!
Your placid heads still find our hands new work;
Some minutes’ chance—there comes the need of mine—
And, all resolved on, I too hear at last.
Oh, you must find some use for me, Ser Braccio!
You hold my strength; ’twere best dispose of it!
What you created, see that you find food for—
I shall be dangerous else!
Brac. How dangerous, Sir?
Lur. Oh, there are many ways, Domizia warns me,
And one with half the power that I possess,
Grows very formidable! Do you doubt?
Why, first, who holds the army ....
Dom. While we talk
Morn wears, we keep you from your proper place
In the field!
Lur. Nay, to the field I move no more!
My part is done, and Puccio’s may begin!
I cannot trench upon his province longer
With any face. You think yourselves so safe?
Why see—in concert with Tiburzio, now—
One could ....
Dom. A trumpet!
Lur. My Lucchese at last!
Arrived, as sure as Florence stands! your leave!
[Springs out.
Dom. How plainly is true greatness charactered
By such unconsciousness as Luria’s here,
And sharing least the secret of itself!
Be it with head that schemes or hand that acts,
Such save the world which none but they could save,
Yet think whate’er they did, that world could do.
Brac. Yes: and how worthy note, that those same great ones
In hand or head, with such unconsciousness
And all its due entailed humility,
Should never shrink, so far as I perceive,
From taking up whatever offices
Involve the whole world’s safety or mishap,
Into their mild hands as a thing of course!
The Statist finds it natural to lead
The mob who might as easily lead him—
The Soldier marshalls men who know as much—
Statist and Soldier verily believe!
While we poor scribes .... you catch me thinking, now,
That I shall in this very letter write
What none of you are able! To it, Lapo!
[Exit Domizia.
This last, worst, all affected childish fit
Convinces me: the Past was no child’s play;
It was a man beat Pisa—not a child.
’Tis mere dissimulation—to remove
The fear, he best knows we should entertain.
The utmost danger was at hand. ’Tis written?
Now make the duplicate, lest this should fail,
And speak your fullest on the other side.
Secretary. I noticed he was busily repairing
My half-effacement of his Duomo sketch,
And to it, while he spoke of Florence, turned
As the Mage Negro King to Christ the Babe.
I judge his childishness the true relapse
To boyhood of a man who has worked lately,
And presently will work, so, meantime, plays:
Whence more than ever I believe in him.
And towards the close of the last act, after the victorious but mistrusted Luria has taken the fatal draught, and when one by one his spies and enemies are learning to believe in him:—
Lur. My own East!
How nearer God we were! He glows above
With scarce an intervention, presses close
And palpitatingly, His soul o’er ours!
We feel Him, nor by painful reason know!
The everlasting minute of creation
Is felt there; Now it is, as it was Then;
All changes at His instantaneous will,
Not by the operation of a law
Whose maker is elsewhere at work!
His soul is still engaged upon his world—
Man’s praise can forward it, Man’s prayer suspend,
For is not God all-mighty? To recast
The world, erase old things and make them new,
What costs it Him? So man breathes nobly there!
And inasmuch as Feeling, the East’s gift,
Is quick and transient—comes, and lo, is gone—
While Northern Thought is slow and durable,
Oh, what a mission was reserved for me,
Who, born with a perception of the power
And use of the North’s thought for us of the East,
Should have stayed there and turned it to account,
Giving Thought’s character and permanence
To the too-transitory Feelings there—
Writing God’s messages in mortal words!
Instead of which, I leave my fated field
For this where such a task is needed least,
Where all are born consummate in the art
I just perceive a chance of making mine—
And then, deserting thus my early post,
I wonder that the men I come among
Mistake me! There, how all had understood,
Still brought fresh stuff for me to stamp and keep,
Fresh instinct to translate them into law!
Me who ....
Dom. Who here the greater task achieve,
More needful even: who have brought fresh stuff
For us to mould, interpret and prove right—
New feeling fresh from God, which, could we know
O’ the instant, where had been our need of it?
—Whose life re-teaches us what life should be,
What faith is, loyalty and simpleness,
All their revealment, taught us so long since
That, having mere tradition of the fact,
Truth copied falteringly from copies faint,
The early traits all dropped away—we said
On sight of faith of yours, so looks not faith
We understand, described and taught before.
But still the truth was shown; and tho’ at first
It suffer from our haste, yet trace by trace
Old memories reappear, the likeness grows,
Our slow Thought does its work, and all is known
Oh, noble Luria! what you have decreed
I see not, but no animal revenge,....
It cannot be the gross and vulgar way
Traced for me by convention and mistake
Has gained that calm approving eye and brow, [p. 372→]
Spare Florence after all! Let Luria trust
To his own soul, and I will trust to him!
Lur. In time!
“A Soul’s Tragedy” is a very different production from “Luria.” On a first perusal we were inclined to deem it inferior, and we still think it obscure; but a light dawns as again and again we refer to its pages, fascinating enough from the philosophic truths and quaint similies in which they abound. We suspect that its purpose is to the full as lofty as that of Luria; and that its text might be a warning for them to “take heed” who “think that they stand.” Robert Browning’s genius is so much in advance of all that is vulgar and trite and common-place, that—as has been the case with so many great poets—his appreciators must be a gradually enlarging circle. That it is already so large as it is, we look upon as a hopeful sign of mental advancement in the popular mind; which shows that this is becoming of a different quality from that which had to be taught to recognise so many of its now acknowledged masters.
[Camilla Toulmin]
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. VIII. Luria; and A Soul’s Tragedy (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1846.
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