R640700B. Sordello; Poems (1864); Men and Women.
The Christian Examiner, July 1864, pp. 51–64.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 343.
There are few poems, at least in our familiar English speech, that so much tempt and repay study, as those of Robert Browning. The most superficial reader may find, scattered freely over his pages, passages of the most exquisite beauty and of the grandest strength; but by the side of these he will be very apt to find those that are not free from harshness or obscurity. Obscurity, except in a riddle-book, is always a fault; and when it is united with strength, and when it is not the result of affectation, it is a pardonable fault. If we may judge by the “Sordello,” and by the pains which the author professes to have taken to make it commonly intelligible, it would seem that the instinct of clear expression, of perfect external form, was not natural to Browning. To this lack is to be added the fact, that to those unfamiliar with it dramatic poetry is less easily read than any other. Especially is this the case when there is given only a fragment of a drama, a soliloquy to which the reader is to add all the surroundings, plot, and characters. Yet when all of this is taken into the account, there remains the question, whether there are not at the heart of these poems certain elements not wholly in harmony, which may account in some degree for the presence of the occasional harshness and obscurity just spoken of, by the side of so much power and beauty.
In dramatic poems the author is hidden. Only once in his collected poems does Robert Browning break through this reserve, or appear in his own person. From the words put into the mouths of the characters, it is hardly fair to argue back to the author. Yet few writers have such purely objective and [p. 52→] all-embracing genius as to permit the laws and the movements of the world to be represented indiscriminately by it. Most such writers, especially those who are possessed of any good degree of moral earnestness, are apt to seize upon one particular aspect of life, or to represent things more or less in their relation to this. It is our object in this article to trace, if we can, this central spirit and life in the poems of Robert Browning. We may thus be able to contemplate them in some measure as a whole, and if we cannot argue from this, with absolute confidence, to the spirit of the writer, we may yet be able to see how these poems thereby take root in the present age,—how the spirit of the age utters itself in them.
We will say beforehand, that our examination of these poems will be, as befits our space and our object, special, and not general. We shall for the most part take for granted the genius that is in them, which could alone have prompted to this investigation, and confine ourselves to the object just stated.
“Sordello,” which was one of the earliest published poems of Robert Browning, is in some respects one of the most marked. It is by far the most obscure, to some it is the only obscure poem in the volumes. At the same time, it contains the utmost profusion of the beauties in which the writings of Browning abound; and by the predominance of the critical element in it, and also by the fulness of its development, it forms the fittest introduction to all the rest.
We will illustrate this, by seizing two or three marked points in the course of the poem. It is the history of a spirit that was never fully at one with itself. It is thus a story of discord and disappointment, of final harmony reached only at the cost of life. Sordello lives at first alone, in the midst of a beautiful nature. Here he constructs ideally his own world. He dreams himself to be, as it were, a god. Nature and man figure in his dream according to his fancy, himself being always supreme. It is the vision of youth, that has had as yet no contact with the real world. Soon, however, the satisfaction that there was in this visionary life is lost. He awakes, and lo! it was a dream. He longs for reality. In the second marked epoch of the story, we find him in the world, in the midst of camp and court, filling the place of a minstrel. [p. 53→] The analysis in this part of the poem is wonderful. Sordello fails because he is larger than his work. The man and the poet separate. Now and then, in a fit of inspiration, he accomplishes a miracle of art, but his intellect mingles too obtrusively in the business. His heart and his intellect are not at one. The intellect refines the language, smooths the lines, but the great life of the heart cannot pour itself through this artificial channel. Moreover, at the best, his heart cannot content itself with a song, as its expression. Everywhere you find indications that the life of the poet is not in the poem. Thus, while far inferior spirits make the sweetest music, in the poems of Sordello there is always a discord, which shows that the life of the heart and the form of the intellect are at variance. He gives up the work, and flees from it, back to his wilderness.
In the next marked epoch of the story, we find Sordello in the midst of sterner realities. He is brought into the thick of the strife of Guelf and Ghibelline. The cause of the Guelf he takes to be that of the oppressed people, and sides with it. He makes to the Ghibelline leader, with whom he finds himself brought into contact, a most impressive plea for them. The Ghibelline noble listens, approves his eloquence, smiles at his earnestness, and finally divulges the fact, that Sordello is his son, and gives him the badge which shall mark him to be the heir of his nobility and of his cause.
Left to himself, Sordello is dragged to and fro by opposite counsels. His heart prompts him to reject the offered prize, to be true to the cause of the people at whatever cost; yet his intellect responds with bewildering sophistry. On the one side, it paints the little, the almost nothing, that he, or any individual, can do to hurry onward the great evolution of History; and on the other side, the absolute and irretrievable loss which the sacrifice would bring to himself. The whole passage is in that species of sophistical reasoning which we find in “Bishop Blowgram’s apology,” and of which Browning is a consummate master. We tremble for Sordello. Will his heart be able to answer this reasoning,—to extricate itself from the folds of this subtle casuistry? Whether the heart answered or not, we cannot say. We only know that it [p. 54→] triumphed. When his friends return, they find Sordello sitting, with the badge of his nobility under his foot, dead.
They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the veil
Aside,—and you divine who sat there dead,
Under his foot the badge; yet, Palma said,
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,
Wider than some spent swimmer, if he spies
Help from above, in his extreme despair,
And head far back on shoulder thrust, turns there,
With short, quick, passionate cry.
The story is thus of one who might have been much, but was outwardly nothing, because the heart and the brain were not in harmony. Sordello was a kind of Hamlet. The longing was intense, the thought was discursive. Thus the power of the heart wasted itself, as the burden of a surcharged thunder-cloud that is hovering over some populous city escapes through thousands of rods and spires, instead of gathering itself for one mighty stroke; only there is this difference,—the heart of Sordello felt that it was made for the stroke.
In the “Christmas Eve” we have passed out from the wilderness of the “Sordello”; a wilderness full of sweets and of magnificence, but where we have to force our way through the tangle, and rather make than find our path. In the “Christmas Eve” all is clear before us. But we find only more distinctly, and in vaster presentation, the same antagonism, the shock of which shattered the earthly life of Sordello. In the body of this poem, we have two grand pictures set over against each other. One is a description of the Christmas worship at St. Peter’s, a passage that, better than anything we know, might take the place of a journey to Rome, so palpitating is it with the very thrill and ecstasy of worship. The other is an almost equally striking picture of a scene in a lecture-room in a German university. The first of these is represented as the worship of love.
Their Faith’s heart beats, though her head swims
Too giddily to guide her limbs.
The other is the worship of pure intellect with only
the lurking drop of blood that lies
In the desiccated brain’s white roots. [p. 55→]
Christ, borne upon the flowing folds of whose garment the narrator had visited these opposite forms, finds something to approve in each; but the poet, rightly enough desiring a method of worship in which intellect and heart shall be alike present, rather arbitrarily selects that of “Mount Zion,” a little chapel of which he had already given us a ludicrous picture, in the Dutch style, and where he derived spiritual benefit, it is true, but only while he was asleep, dreaming the visions just referred to. Whatever one may think of his choice, or of the manner of it, the main point for us, in our present investigation, is, that the heart and the head were at variance, and their strife silenced, rather than satisfied, by the sudden decision last mentioned.
The “Easter Day” begins with the exclamation,
How very hard it is to be
A Christian!
The discussion that supports this assertion we need not analyze. It is the same kind of intellectual wrestling with the spiritual instinct, in which we have already remarked the subtle power of Browning. The striking element of the poem is the judgment scene, which paints the penalty of failure in the Christian life. This portrayal many of our theologians might study with profit. The individual finds himself alone in the presence of the sublime pomp of the judgment. He is found to have chosen the world; and his penalty is, that he has what he has chosen, that is, the world empty of all higher life. Then follows the masterly analysis of the worthlessness of the best which the world possesses after the spiritual life has been taken out of it. This conception of the judgment reminds one of that of Ary Scheffer, in his “Christus Redemptor,” in which we see Sloth sleeping and Avarice counting its treasure, not knowing that they are already condemned,—gathered already among those at the left hand of the Judge.
The contrast between the head and the heart, which we have found to lie at the root of the poems we have thus far examined, very naturally assumes a dramatic, and even a tragic form. Thus, when we approach the dramatic poems of Browning, we are not surprised to find the chief actors embodying the opposite elements of this antagonism. This is very marked [p. 56→] in the “Paracelsus.” The hero of this poem sought to solve the mystery of the universe by pure knowledge. He is aroused from his fruitless dream by coming in contact with the poet Aprile, who has sought to compass the same object through the heart only. Paracelsus says to him:
I too have sought to know as thou to love,—
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty and I power. We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us?
The capitals, which are the author’s, show that the contrast between knowledge and love lies at the very centre and heart of the poem.
In the “Pippa Passes” we have the pure, innocent, and loving heart, embodied in the simple maiden, who, looking over the world, sees only love, where we are about to see the most terrible tragedies, and who goes forth, with only her artless song of faith, and changes the course of all those fearful histories, of which she knows and dreams nothing. The simple song of trust,—
God’s in his Heaven,—
All’s right with the world!—
has power to transform, for a moment, the most polluted soul, and check it in the turning moment of its life. Here we have the heart, free and glad, unconsciously entering upon the dominion of the world. The poem is full of tragic power. It is a condensation of tragedies. Each act is as if a fifth act. Yet for a moment the tragic collision between the heart and the intellect has ceased. Love alone moves through these scenes of strife, unconscious, unstained and undisturbed, yet controlling all.
In the “King Victor and King Charles” we meet the old struggle. Victor is the king of craft. Charles the king of simple, straightforward honesty and right. King Victor says to Charles:
You are now the king; you’ll comprehend
Much you may oft have wondered at,—the shifts,
Dissimulation, willingness I showed.
But Charles answers:
No! straight on shall I go,
Truth helping; win with it or die with it. [p. 57→]
In another part of the dialogue, the same contrast is even more strongly emphasized. In this play craft gives way to honesty. The head resigns in favor of the heart, which thus is openly and consciously crowned.
In the “Colombe’s Birthday,” the sweetest, though by no means the strongest, of the plays of Browning, the heart, which we have just seen crowned, abdicates its kingdom. Colombe,—
Our play-queen
For whom, to furnish lilies for her hair,
We’d pour our veins forth to enrich the soil,—
for the love of love, leaves her throne and the grander honors that were promised her. She resists the specious arguments that would prove to her, that respect and honor and wealth and royalty can take the place of love, and fill the void that it has left. Thus she goes forth with love only, happier in her banishment than she had been on her throne.
In the “Blot in the ’Scutcheon,” the heart is pierced and slain. Love, innocent and ignorant, becomes entangled with the cold maxims of the world. Silent, unwilling to defend itself, unable to utter a word of excuse or palliation, it meets the harsh judgment, which is a prejudgment. Its stern and pitiless sentence is death.
These five plays, which we have taken as they are at present grouped, stand thus connected, as the five acts of a grand and solemn tragedy. Persons, scenes, interests, events, are different, but the real actors are in all the same. The heart and the intellect are at strife. At first we see them simply one over against the other. Then we see the heart unconsciously entering upon its supremacy. Then we see it openly crowned; then an outcast and a wanderer from its kingdom, and at last pitilessly slain. We do not say that the poet consciously brought them into this relation. We can only say that the relation exists; and if it was effected without conscious purpose, it only shows more strongly how deep a hold this tragic relation must have taken on the mind of the poet, that it should thus embody itself in such varied, complete, and exhaustive forms.
In the three remaining plays, we meet the same collision, only, if possible, in a sharper antagonism. We return more [p. 58→] nearly to the thought in “Sordello.” We have the two forces at variance in the same individual, their resolved antagonism ending only in his death. In the “Return of the Druses” and “Luria,” we have an Oriental heart, seeking to become united with the intellect of the Occident. The spontaneous instincts of the soul, not content with their own simple ways, seek to clothe themselves with the wisdom and the arts of the West. The struggle is a failure, and the violent strife has only a fatal termination. In the “Return of the Druses,” Djabal exclaims to Anael:
And was it thou that betrayedst me? ’T is well;
I have deserved this of thee, and submit;
Nor ’t is much evil thou inflictest; life
Ends here. The cedars shall not wave for us—
For there was crime, and must be punishment.
See fate! By thee I was seduced—by thee
I perish—yet do I, can I repent?
I, with my Arab instinct, thwarted ever
By my Frank policy,—and, within torn,
My Frank brain, thwarted by my Arab heart—
While these remained in equipoise, I lived
—Nothing; had either been predominant,
As a Frank schemer or an Arab mystic,
I had been something;—now, each has destroyed
The other—and behold, from out their crash,
A third and better nature rises up—
My mere man’s-nature! And I yield to it—
I love thee—I—who did not love before!
And Luria exclaims, in the play that bears his name:
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 other work!
His soul is still engaged upon his world—
Man’s praise can forward it, man’s prayers 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! [p. 59→]
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 poet,
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 instincts to translate them into law!
Luria thus attempted to make the instincts of his heart subservient to the intellect of the West, as Djabal, in the “Return of the Druses,” attempted to make the cunning of the West the instrument of the inspiration of his heart. The first ill-effect of the failure of Luria was that these instincts became deadened. When Husain, his Moorish companion, suspects deceit and peril, Luria says of him:
He keeps his instincts, no new culture mars
Their perfect use in him; just so the brutes
Rest not, are anxious without visible cause,
When change is in the elements at work,
Which man’s trained senses fail to apprehend.
But here,—he takes the distant chariot-wheels
For thunder, festal fire for lightning’s flash,
The finer traits of cultivated life
For treachery and malevolence; I see!
Yet Husain was right. It was the insight of Luria that was at fault, and afterward, seeing his mistake, and feeling already its penalty, he was forced to exclaim:
I, born a Moor, lived half a Florentine;
But, punished properly, can die a Moor.
“A Soul’s Tragedy,” the next and last of the dramas, explains itself by its own title. There is the same skilful cas- [p. 60→] uistry that we meet so often; only here it is the soul, and not the body, that perishes.
We have thus met, at every step, the same antagonism that we found in the “Sordello.” We have, as far as we have gone, taken the poems in the succession of their present arrangement, and have omitted only the “Strafford,” an early poem, which, though it is not without power, can hardly claim a place among the marked products of the genius of Browning. We have found everywhere the divergence between the heart and the intellect, sometimes taking the form of fruitless attempts at reconciliation, sometimes of open and fatal strife. The question now meets us, Is there in the poems of Browning anything to counterbalance the tragic result we have been contemplating? He has given us, in perfect and even sublime delineation, the conflict. Does he anywhere give us, in equally clear utterance, the solution and the victory? This word is spoken in the poem called “Saul.” The song of the shepherd minstrel, his soul fresh from nature, as his harp-strings were kept cool and fresh through the noonday heat by the lilies, “still living and blue,” that were twined about them, goes up with cheerful faith, and speaks the truth, which all the tragic struggles we have just contemplated could not compass. This truth, reached through the life of nature in its beauty and the life of man in its glory, is simply that the heart should put complete faith in its highest impulse, and should fearlessly crown it as divine. We will not mar, by any attempt at abstract, the course of simple, but yet subtle thought, by which the song reaches this triumphant issue:—
O, speak through me now!
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wilt Thou—so wilt Thou!
So shall crown thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—
And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in!
Thus the minstrel, looking through the love of his own soul, saw the coming Christ, standing in the glory of the Father.
O Saul, it shall be
A face like my face that receives thee; a man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever! A Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand! [p. 61→]
We need hardly remark how wonderfully, in this whole poem, the shepherd life of David, and his Messianic prophecies, are mingled with the strange and touching power that we read his song had over the soul of the moody and haunted Saul. It is enough for our present purpose to see how it furnishes the solution of the mystery which broods darkly over so many of the other poems. In considering it, in its relation with them, two facts are of interest. One is, that the first part of the “Saul” was published in the volumes with the Tragedies, its triumphant close not then having been completed. The other is, that the substance of the close of the “Saul” was written grandly, and embodied in the early part of the poem called “Christmas Eve.” In this, however, it did not seem to satisfy the thought of the poet, for it is used only to make way for a settling down in the little “Zion” above referred to, while in the “Saul” it sets the heavens in a glow and the earth in a rapture.
It would of course be impossible to give to the minor poems of Browning the same sort of examination that we have given to the more important ones. The attempt would, moreover, be fruitless. They are written in every mood, and adapted to various circumstances and characters. They are thus separate and diverse. Some are mere fancies, some pictures, some playful, some passionate. In nearly all of them we find the marks of wonderful genius, though for the most part less perfectly exhibited than in the longer poems. Though they are thus not susceptible of the same sort of analysis that we have given to the others, we cannot help feeling the presence of the same spirit that was in them; of something even of the same unreconciled elements of heart and intellect, the antagonism of which, as we have seen, gives the tragic power to so many of the longer pieces. This influence gives to many of the minor poems something of this same power, while it is also the cause of many of the faults that have been alluded to, which repel so many readers. It will be easily understood how the same cause can work both strength and weakness, by calling to mind the case of a man under the influence of some great sorrow. When he speaks of his grief, his grief itself gives him eloquence; but when he speaks of anything else, it [p. 62→] gives him an air of preoccupation, injuring the flow, the strength, and the clearness of his language.
Perhaps we can best illustrate our meaning, though only partially, by remarking, that, in reading the poems of Browning, we feel ourselves brought into the presence of a spirit in which the religious element is naturally very predominant. Not even the spirit of Mrs. Browning seems to us to have been more strongly religious than that of her husband. Yet, while the poems of the one are full of expressions of religious faith, in those of the other such expressions are not frequent. The theme has an evident fascination for the writer. The song plays about it, and plays with it. It criticises and questions. Sometimes we meet the grandest and most confident utterances. But, for the most part, when we meet these, we come upon them suddenly. It is the flash of something which is a power and a mystery. It is vague, yet real. Many of the lighter poems of Browning produce the same effect that we experience when we hear light, graceful airs played upon an organ. We enjoy and admire, but at the same time we have a certain unsatisfied feeling. Something in the performance itself, however beautiful this may be, suggests that the full power of the instrument has not been brought out. What, played upon a piano, would give simply pleasure, upon the organ leaves us, though pleased, not quite content. In the minor poems of Browning we sometimes, indeed, have pieces so exquisitely performed that we rest wholly satisfied. An example of these is the piece entitled, “How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.” Sometimes we get the full, satisfying, and inspiring organ-peal, as in the “Instans Tyrannus,” and “The Grammarian’s Funeral.” But often, among magnificent descriptions and beautiful images, we feel as if we were not in full communication with the author, as if his heart were not wholly in the work. Sometimes the mark of this is a touch foreign to the matter, as in the concluding verses which mar the sweet picture of the “Guardian Angel.” Sometimes it is merely a harshness and obscurity, such as were referred to at the beginning of this article. Sometimes it is a mannerism, a trick of style, by which, as soon as we glance at a page, we see that we have a poem of Browning [p. 63→] there, even before we see whether we have a poem worth reading or not. Sometimes it is only that universal, dramatic form, assumed, not for the pleasure of the development of a central plot, but simply for that of speaking with different voices, of analyzing various characters. From all this we are tempted to believe that the great heart and the equally great intellect of the poet have not worked out for themselves a perfect harmony. His spirit has no absolute ground of its own from which it can speak its own word. There are indications, for instance, of a lack of faith in traditional, religious forms, which there has yet been no strength to cast off. Even the magnificent poem of “Saul” may have been a single expression of what is not a permanent mood. We say all this doubtfully, as helping to indicate this presence of elements not wholly in harmony, which we feel at the heart of many of these poems. It is at least a striking fact, that the only instance in Browning’s collected works, “the first time and the last time,” that the poet throws off this reserve, and utters a hearty word in his own name and person, is when he addresses one to whom love and reverence were alike obviously and rightly due. To Mrs. Browning the heart could give its utmost love, and the intellect, finding nothing to object to its devotion, could only rival the heart’s love by its own admiration. It is, we say, a striking fact, that to her the only direct word of the poet is uttered. We can imagine that here the restless discord of the nature was stilled, and we feel a sense of peace when we hear the poet utter, in his own voice, and from his own soul,
Here where the heart rests, let the brain rest also.
We may refer, also, in the same connection, to the two poems that stand together in the June number of the “Atlantic Monthly,” the one, “Under the Cliff,” utterly sad and questioning; and the other, “Prospice, ” one of the grandest utterances of courage and faith that have ever been hurled into the face of death; yet the distinctness and certainty of the faith rest only on one beloved form,—
Then a light, then thy heart,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest! [p. 64→]
However we may err in tracing any connection between these poems and the spirit of their author, we cannot mistake in connecting them with the spirit of the times. The great discord between the head and the heart, between intellect and faith, is the predominant characteristic of the age. Old forms of thought are failing. Wherever faith finds a foothold, the intellect comes prying, doubting, and disturbing. The age is accused of having a “suspense of faith,” of infidelity, of materialism. But the discord is not with infidels and materialists alone. It runs far back into the very heart of the Church. This restless search, this unsatisfied longing, this harrying discord, can have but one solution. The song that the shepherd boy sings in the “Saul” to the disquieted king, is the only music that can soothe the troubled spirit of the present. The truth there uttered is its only resting-place. The strife between the heart and the intellect cannot cease until the heart has learned to trust, with simple faith, its own highest impulse, and to crown it as divine. It must learn to take for granted, that, as the mountains stand by the power of God, as the sun shines with his glory, so the heart loves and can love only in his love. Thus it will have reached a resting-place, where the intellect cannot disturb it, but can only help it by ministering to its need of outward forms and service. While it rests here, it matters not what forms it may assume or may reject. If it does not rest here, it is also no matter what forms it may assume, for all are alike empty and worthless.
[Charles Carroll Everett]
Reviewed:
Sordello, Strafford, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864.
Poems (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864.
Men and Women (RB), Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856.
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