R640500C. Sordello, Strafford, Christmas Eve, and Easter Day.
The Continental Monthly, May 1864, p. 601.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 337.
The contents of this volume, though now first presented to the American public, are not the latest of the author’s writings. It completes, however, Messrs. Ticknor & Fields’ reprint of his poetical works. His growing popularity calls for the present publication. We would fain number ourselves among the admirers of the husband of Elizabeth Barrett; the man loved by this truly great poetess, to whom she addressed the refined and imaginative tenderness of the “Portuguese Sonnets?” of whom she writes:
“Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which, if cut deep down the middle, shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.”
Before the man so loved and honored, we repeat, we would fain bow in reverence. But it may not be; we cannot receive him as a true poet—as in any poetic quality the peer of his matchless wife. We hear much of his subtile psychology—we deem it psychological unintelligibility. His rhythm is rough and unmusical, his style harsh and inverted, his imagery cold, his invective bitter, and his verbiage immense. His illustrations are sometimes coarse, his comparisons diminish rather than increase the importance of the ideas to which they are applied. His pages are frequently as chaotic as those of Wagner’s music; leaf after leaf may be turned over in the despairing search for a single crystallized idea. Fiery sparks, flying meteors, inchoate masses of nebulous matter are around us, but no glass in our possession can resolve them into ordered orbs of thought and beauty. If a man have anything to say, why not say it in clear, terse, vigorous English, or why use worlds of vigorous words to say nothing. Some years ago, one of Browning’s books was sent for review to Douglas Jerrold, who was then just recovering from an attack of brain fever; after reading it for some time, and finding that he failed to arrive at any clear idea of the meaning of its lines, he began to fear that his brain was again becoming confused, and, handing it to his wife with a request that she would look over it in his absence, went out to drive. Returning in the evening, his first question was: “Well, my dear, what do you think of Browning’s poem?” “Bother the gibberish,” was her indignant reply, “I can’t understand a word of it.” “Thank God,” exclaimed Jerrold, clapping his hands to his head triumphantly, “then I am not actually insane.”
Reviewed:
Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864.
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