R551201B. Men and Women.
The Atlas, 1 December 1855, pp. 771–772; 22 December 1855, pp. 819–820.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 311–313.
The announcement in our columns that Robert Browning has published two volumes of poems, has no doubt excited the curiosity of our readers, and they will expect that we shall say something about them without delay. Reviewing Robert Browning is, however, no easy task to any one, and especially difficult for a newspaper critic, because he cannot claim the space necessary to accomplish the matter with any reasonable amount of satisfaction. We take up anything from Browning in a spirit of faith, but he is an arrow-headed poet—that is, one that writes in arrow-headed characters, quite unintelligible to the uninitiated, and demanding the patient exercise of decyphering talents at the hands of his most devoted worshippers. To enter into delicate and subtle thoughts, to paint character and depict passion exhibited and acting under extraordinary circumstances, is Browning’s prerogative, and for depth of meaning, range of illustration, and psychological anatomy, he stands unrivalled among the masters of modern song. But he cannot write half-a-dozen words plainly—he requires of his readers, either a preliminary acquaintance with his own pursuits and trains of thought, or a laborious study analogous to what one has to give to unlock the treasures of a dead language or an unknown tongue. Men and Women are no exception to these remarks. At first sight, much is unintelligible, and much appears trivial; but they are well worth the pains to understand, and contain matter which no living writer could have produced or rivalled in its peculiar way.
The two volumes contain fifty poems painting men and women under various aspects and conditions. As the ablest and most powerful we consider “In a Balcony,” “An Epistle,” “Cleon,” and “Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” “In a Balcony” consists of a few dramatic scenes of wonderful depth and power. Norbert, a young statesman, has triumphed over great difficulties, united two crowns, and won the affection and admiration of his Queen. The moving power of his career has been love for Constance, the Queen’s cousin, and just before a great festival in his honour, he and Constance are in a balcony, and the situation gives the title to the piece. Norbert wishes to go to the Queen and claim the hand of Constance for his reward. To this Constance objects, and recommends him to tell her that he has served her for herself—any other course she thinks will wound the Royal pride. Norbert follows the advice, and acts his part so powerfully that the Queen is mad with love for him, and pours out all her hopes to Constance, declaring that “all women love great men,” and that although her youth and beauty are gone, Norbert may love “the poems in her soul.”
Then follows a love scene between Norbert and Constance, which is interrupted by the entrance of the Queen. To save appearances, Constance speaks as if Norbert’s heart were with the Queen. Norbert does not understand this, and thinks she is playing him false; but in a little while he exclaims, addressing the Queen:—
But no, you cannot, madam, even you,
Create in me the love our Constance does.
Or—something truer to the tragic phrase—
Not you magnolioa-bell [sic, for yon magnolia-bell] superb with scent
Invites a certain insect—that’s myself—
But the small eye-flower nearer to the ground;
I take this lady!
The Queen witnesses the scene in silence, but her manner shows that her hopes are crushed. Norbert says:—
Madam—why grasp you thus the balcony?
Have I done ill? Have I not spoken the truth?
How could I other? Was it not your best
To try me, and what my love for Constance meant?
Madam, your Royal soul approves,
The first, that I should choose thus! So one takes
A beggar—asks him what will buy his child,
And then approves the expected laugh of scorn
Returned as something noble from the rags.
Speak, Constance, I’m the beggar! Ha, what’s this?
You two glare each at each like panthers now.
Constance—the world fades: only you stand there!
You did not in to-night’s wild whirl of things
Sell me—your soul of souls, for any price?
No—no—’tis easy to believe in you.
Was it your love’s mad trial to o’ertop
Mine by this vain self-sacrifice? Well, still—
Though I should curse, I love you. I am love,
And cannot change! love’s self is at your feet.
[The Queen goes out.]
Constance.—Feel my heart; let it die against your own.
Norbert.—Against my own! explain not; let this be—
This is life’s height. [p. 772→]
Presently the guard comes in, and the reader is left to imagine the rest. This is an exquiste poem, but one which a short notice and brief extracts can do no justice to.
We must reserve our further comments for next week, before which we hope the poems will be in the hands of many of our readers.
[Continued in the issue of 22 December 1855.] [p. 819→]
We resume our notice of Men and Women with the consciousness that we cannot do justice to them by brief extracts and short comments. There are few striking passages which bear being transplanted from their context. The poems must be read laboriously before their meaning becomes apparent, and Mr. Browning is infected with the prevailing faults of the modern pre-Raphaelite school of painters. Like them, he elaborates and finishes with an exactitude that is at once admirable and painful. Scarcely ever do we meet with a broad, bold touch, such as may be found in some of his earlier productions; he builds not with blocks of stone, but with grains of sand; and yet when hostile criticism has done its worst, there are pieces in these two volumes besides “In a Balcony,” which we spoke of in our first notice, that the higher class of readers will be thankful to receive.
“An Epistle containing the strange medical experience of Karshish, the Arab physician,” takes us back to the first days of Christianity, and recounts the journey of the writer to Palestine, where he becomes acquainted with the story of Lazarus, whom he met after his return to mortal life. This poem is itself a profound study, and will be admired in proportion to the attention with which it is read. Of course, Karshish treats the case as a medical one, and would have sought out the great Nazarene physician himself, but upon inquiry he found he had—
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused—our learning’s fate—of Wizardy,
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule,
And creed prodigious as described to me.
He finds Lazarus full of strange life, but dead to much that interested others:—
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds—
’Tis one. Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling fact—he will gaze, rapt
With stupor at its very littleness.
. . . . .
Should his child sicken unto death—why look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of his daily craft?
While a word, a gesture, glance, from that same child,
At play, or in the school, or fast asleep.
Will start him to an agony of fea[r,]
He is conscious of the spiritual life around the earthly life—“his heart and brain move” in the spiritual world; “his feet stay here:”—
And oft the man’s soul springs into his face,
As if he saw again and heard again,
His sage that bid him “Rise,” and he did rise.
Something, a word, a tick of the blood within
Admonishes—then back he sinks at once
To ashes, that was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade,
Whereby he earneth him his daily bread—
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Lazarus tells him of Christ—it is madman’s speech, but he cannot shake it off—“it is strange.”
“Cleon” is another picture from early Christian times. He is a poet, an architect, a philosopher, and his soul swells with pride at the treasures of wisdom that it contains, and yet neither thought nor action satisfy him. He grows spiritually more able to enjoy life in its highest forms, but his corporeal organism decays, and death creeps upon him. Protos, the king, writes to question him upon death and the possibility of immortality. He replies to the king’s observation, that poets and artists live in their works:—
But sayest thou
Sappho survives, because we sing her songs;
And Æschylus, because we read his plays!
Why, if they live still, let them come and take
Thy slave in my despite—drink from thy cup—
Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive?
Say, rather, that my fate is deadlier still,—
In this, that every day my sense of joy
Grows more acute, my soul (intensified
In power and in sight) more enlarged, more keen;
While every day my hairs fall more and more;
My hand shakes, and the hoary years increase—
The horror quickening still from year to year,
The consummation coming past escape,
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy—
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men’s mouths,
Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou—
I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over much,
Shall sleep in my urn. It is so horrible
I dare at time imagine to my sense,
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus.
. . . . .
But no,
Zeus has not revealed it; and alas!
He must have done so were it possible.
The King wants the address of one called “Paulus,” to whom also he has written. Cleon knows it not, but the King cannot think “a mere barbarian Jew”—
Hath access to a secret shut from us!
Tais, indeed, takes us to the past—and the doubts, the fe[a]rs, the hopes, the stubborn pride of learning, such as St. Paul encountered, are before us now.
“Bishop Blougram’s Apology” is composed of excellent reasons for being a bishop and accepting orthodoxy, instead of losing one’s way in heresy. It is too prolix, but admirably true, and full of a fine vein of satire which cuts on all sides. We can only give one specimen, which is an excellent rebuke of “other worldliness,” and a morbid craving for some non-existent state:—
Do you know, I have often had a dream.
. . . . .
Of man’s poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day,
Through ever trying to be, and ever being
In the evolution of successive spheres,
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Half-way into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery, [p. 820→]
Half-way into the next still, and on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from north to south,
Scouts fur in Russia—what’s its use in France?
In France spurns flannel—what its need in Spain?
In Spain drops cloth—too cumbrous for Algiers!
Linen goes next—and last the skin itself,
A superfluity at Timbuctoo.
When through his journey was fool at ease?
Leaving the bishop quite at ease, we pass on to say a few words about the remaining poems. “The Last Ride Together” has great power and beauty. The “Statue and the Bust” is also fine, but with a questionable moral. “Instans Tyrannus” has a great thought in it, and so of some more; but many, we confess, we care nothing about; and some—perhaps, indeed, all we do not like—we have not yet decyphered. We trust we have said enough to direct the right sort of readers to two remarkable volumes; but with all our love for Browning—and it is great—we do protest against the arrow-headed school, which makes every utterance as puzzling as a Babylon brick. Pray let him write plain vernacular English which all can make something of, although the wisest may perceive the most.
Reviewed:
Men and Women (RB), London: Chapman & Hall, 1855.
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