R460800B. Luria and A Soul’s Tragedy.
Hood’s Magazine, August 1846, pp. 179–184.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 400–402.
We have just quoted among our Gems, from Dr. Farquharson’s Preface to his Pleasures of Home, an apothegm which it behoves Mr. Browning, of all living authors, to take into his especial consideration—to ponder over, again and again—and, [p. 180→] if he would ever write anything that is to have a chance of outliving himself, or his generation, to adopt, henceforth, as his omnipresent monitor and guide. This truth lies in a small compass, but it is of golden significancy, and asserts, that, True fame can only be obtained by him who can write for all. Mr. Browning’s poetical course has been so erratic; he has indulged in such flagrant and enormous violations of every rule of English composition; has crowded such ellipses upon ellipses into his pages, till, very often, grammar has taken flight together with sense from their intrusion—that, if ever man deserved the title of The Great Obscure, he is the man. This is a strong opinion, and, with a strong fact which he proffers to us himself in this 8th and last part of his “Bells and Pomegranates,” we take leave, in starting, to back and approve it. This is no less than the fact that he finds it necessary, “in reply to inquiries,” to “take the opportunity of explaining what he meant to indicate,” by his very first step in its publication—the mere title and text-head with which, for eight consecutive parts, he has ushered his poetry into public notice. If Mr. B. be a modern Sphynx, the world of moderns have neither time, nor inclination, to become riddle-solvers; and posterity, which will deprive him of personal friendship, on the one hand, and of the ephemeræ of the “omne ignotum pro magnifico” class, on the other, will be, by so much the less, inclined to such a tasking of its attention, and powers. But let our strong fact speak for us, expressed in Mr. B.’s own language, and signed with his own initials:—“Here ends my first series of ‘Bells and Pomegranates;’ and I take the opportunity of explaining, in reply to inquiries, that 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. ‘Faith and good works’ is another fancy, for instance, and perhaps no easier to arrive at: yet Giotto placed a pomegranate fruit in the hand of Dante, and Raffaelle crowned his Theology (in the Camera della Segnatura) with blossoms of the same; as if the Bellari and Vasari would be sure to come after, and explain that it was merely ‘simbolo delle buone opere—il qual Pomo granato fu però usato nelle vesti del Pontefice appresso gli Ebrei.’—R. B.”
We should not have spoken as we have, had Mr. B.’s obscurities, and other faults, been exceptional, and few and far [p. 181→] between; but they are the reverse; they feature all his works—they are the rule, and beauties (of which there are many examples, though very few of these unflawed, and of the “totus teres atque rotundus” order) the exception. If Mr. B. sin against taste, &c., through idiosyncracy of the contemplative, or constructive faculty, his style is irremediable, and his productions will perish from men’s memories—if he err from affectation, or a mistaken idea of the necessity of appearing singular, in order to arrest attention, a small access of wisdom may yet right him with his contemporaries, and, inasmuch as he has material in him, give him a fair chance of future renown. But he has no time to lose. He must reform at once, and never know relapse.
Taking “Luria” for our present purpose, seeing that we are rather dealing with the mode of expressing thoughts, than with the thoughts as a whole, forming a subject and a story, we may briefly state that it is a Tragedy founded on a struggle between Hireling Physical Force, typified in the Moor, Luria, and Intellectual Force, dominating all other, and ultimately triumphant in the Florentine Councils, and on behalf of the Florentine Republic—statecraft and civilization using up the uncouth power they finally antagonise and crush.
As a specimen of better-class writing, before pointing out much that is exceptionable, we will first give the Soliloquy of Dominizia, the Lady-Spy of Florence upon Luria; but, through Luria, working out, or fain to work out, ends of her own upon her employers— We follow the punctuation of the original text.
noon.
Dominizia.
Well, Florence, shall I reach thee, pierce thy heart
Thro’ all its safeguards? Hate is said to help—
Quicken the eye, invigorate the arm,
And this my hate, made of so many hates,
Might stand in scorn of visible instrument,
And will thee dead … yet do I trust it not;
Nor man’s devices, nor Heaven’s memory
Of wickedness forgot on earth so soon,
But thy own nature,—Hell and thee I trust,
To keep thee constant in that wickedness,
Where my revenge may meet thee: turn aside
For gratitude a single step, or shame,—
Grace thou this Luria, this wild mass of rage
That I prepare to launch against thee now,
With other payment than thy noblest found,—
Give his desert for once its due reward,—
And past thee would my sure destruction roll.
But thou who mad’st our house thy sacrifice, [p. 182→]
It cannot be thou dost except this Moor
From the accustomed fate of zeal and truth;
Thou wilt deny his looked-for recompense,
And then—I reach thee! Old and trained, my sire
Could bow down on his quiet broken heart,
Die awe-struck and submissive, when at last
The strange blow came for the expected wreath;
And Porzio passed in blind bewilderment
To exile, never to return,—they say,
Perplexed in his frank simple honest soul
As if some natural law had changed,—how else
Could Florence, on plain fact pronouncing thus,
Judge Porzio’s actions worthy such an end?
But Berto, with the ever-passionate pulse,
—Oh that long night, its dreadful hour on hour,
In which no way of getting his fair fame
From their inexplicable charges free,
Was found save to pour forth the impatient blood
And show its colour whether false or no!
My brothers never had a friend like me
Close in their need to watch the time, then speak,
—Burst with a wakening laughter on their dream,
Say, Florence was one falsehood, so false here,—
And show them what a simple task remained—
To leave dreams, rise, and punish in God’s name
The City wedded to its wickedness—
None stood by them as I by Luria stand!
So, when the stranger cheated of his due
Turns on thee as his rapid nature bids,
Then, Florence, think, a hireling at thy throat
For the first outrage, think who bore thy last,
Yet mutely in forlorn obedience died!
He comes .. his friend .. black faces in the camp
Where moved those peerless brows and eyes of old!
We have called this better-class writing than ordinary from Mr. B.’s pen, and, yet, even this extract cannot be read off, and comprehended in its main purposes, at once. It requires rereading—interpretation!—not, as all best poetry does, to fetch out, into more prominence, latent touches of beauty; but for simple certainty as to the broad and general meanings intended to be expressed. What of resource or power, for instance, does Dominizia imply, or allude to, when she says of Florence she might
Will thee dead.
And, again—
Past thee would my sure destruction roll. [p. 183→]
How elliptically abrupt her exclamation—
To leave dreams, rise, and punish!
Look, moreover, at the huge parenthesis, beginning—“Oh that long night”—and ending at its seventh line, with—“then speak.” Taking this whole Parenthesis, with the single line that precedes, and the six lines that follow it, we defy any one to sort their sentences into such sequence and intelligibility, inter se, as all writing that is to endure—that is not to repel—should display. The whole fourteen lines are, in fact, a jumble, as far as composition is concerned, even, if they are so fortunate, in this particular instance, as not utterly to extinguish the sense.
One more sample, out of this better-class extract, and we pass on to other matters—
He comes … his friend … black faces in the camp.
Nothing but the context, and the adjacent “Enter Luria and Husain,” would make it obvious in this paucity of words, that Luria was approaching, accompanied by his friend.
In addition to the pervading inexplicitness and obscurity which distinguishes, in a greater or lesser degree, all Mr. B.’s compositions, they abound with specimens of loose, hastily-constructed, unpolished, and unmusical lines which grate, past endurance, on a correct ear. Take the following, out of a host of such, with which Luria and a Soul’s Tragedy are studded. They are, literally, thick as weeds. Let them suggest to their author—a thorough weeding:—
Incompleteness, Incompleteness!
Brac. Ah, we scribes!
Might join to, and complete the body,—a sketch—
And again where the cloak hangs, yonder in the shadow.
I said it needs must be a busy moment
For one like you—that you were now i’ the thick.
In behalf of correct composition, we here pause to protest against all the “O’Nights”—“O’Mornings”—“I’ the thicks”—“’Gan speaks,” “I’ faiths”—et id genus omne, in all the world. They are blemishes in the old Poets, and the servility of copying what are confessedly such, enlarges them into abominations in the New.
Another fault of rhythm, which often mars the flow of Mr. B.’s Verse, as it does that of very many of our present Dramatists, is the use of the Endecasyllabic, or Eleven-footed line, in cases where the extra foot comes in Jerkily in the midst of [p. 184→] 12its flow, instead of smoothly, as an elongation of the sound, at the end—
But Berto, with the Ever passionate pulse,
For Italy to boast her show of the age.
By the sole bearing of their Visible Star.
The palm-trees and the pyramid over all.
The boundaries lost now, shall be found again.
Might stand in scorn of Visible instrument.
With the acknowledged metre of Blank or other Verse, these prescribed jerks or jumps, in its quantities can only be paralleled in impropriety, with an extra note thrown by a Musician into any given part of an established tune. They are faults, however much indolence, for its own sake, may struggle to prate them into beauties. This remark leads on to another which our observation and experience forcibly suggest, viz., that loose and careless writers, by themselves and their champions, frequently expend more time in bootless attempts to justify their deformities and malformations, than would suffice for their complete correction. For these objections which we have just been urging we claim no more than their due—they are minor, and subordinate to the great Cardinal Defect of style, involved in the want of general obviousness of connected meaning, and of self interpretation, as one reads, on the spot.
The explanatory testimony of Mr. B. himself to his own apt mode of imparting his meanings to others, added to that which presents itself above, even in a piece of writing which is quoted for its being less blemished than usual with Mr. B.’s faults, is, we think, sufficient (considering the space to which we are limited) to justify us in tendering him the advice we have given, and for the purpose of admonishing the reading public not to be led away by the praises of friendly, or mystified, worshippers of a style which is essentially elliptical, abrupt, and very frequently indeed puzzling and unintelligible, to esteem it as the perfection of recondite beauty, and the model of future fine writing. There are critics who would fain (if their outrageous panegyrics are to be confided in) achieve as much for Mr. B.; and they are his very worst enemies—the “Pessimum genus inimicorum, laudantes.” They would confirm him in errors which are too gross to permit him a chance of either popularity or future fame. We, thoroughly respecting all that is good and great in him, would have him dissever it at once and for ever from the dross—the leaven that leavens too much the whole lump—and step forth into the light of Fame, readable by, and, therefore, read by—all.
Reviewed:
Bells & Pomegranates. No. VIII. Luria; and A Soul’s Tragedy (RB), London: Edward Moxon, 1846.
___________________
