R671106A. General Review Essay.
The Marlburian, 6 November 1867, pp. 173–174.
Listed in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 398.
In an early number of the Marlburian an attempt was made to point out some of the gorgeous beauties which will repay the patient reader of the great unappreciated poet of our time. It was readily acknowledged that he has often disfigured his writings with unnecessary obscurities, that he has assumed in many cases that the world shares his own acquaintance with minute and apparently unimportant events in history. But at that time no defence was offered for thus refusing to open to all an easy way to their initiation in the sublime mysteries of his creation. It is chiefly the object of this paper to show that, while much is lost by such obscurities, they are in part essential in such high communications, in part beneficial to those who make them their study.
In the first place then it appears that in order to appreciate even imperfectly the highest productions of art an intense application and study is necessary. It was the first maxim of the great mediæval natural philosophers that no one could be admitted to their most elemental secrets without years of discipline spent in self-purification and contemplation. If this was true, how much more is it true of those higher secrets of which the poet holds the key? The soul of man is chained earthwards with fetters as strong in these days as a few centuries ago.
All high truths must be approached through symbols; words are the symbols by means of which the poet high-priest reveals his religion to humble worshippers; and words, when they do their best, but
half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.
This being the case men are apt to content themselves with the symbol, and, when the poet, in order to make the truth shine more brightly from behind it, gives it refinement and transparency, complain that the idol which they could see and touch has been taken from them and only obscurity and intangible shadows given in its place. The few will gaze and meditate in patience till some form of transcendent beauty, however indistinct, shapes itself in the darkness, fully rewarding them for their toil. The rest turn away in scorn, calling the poet an impostor, and asking for symbols, which are not symbols and cannot fade away, and for poets, who will be their high priests and build their altars.
So far obscurity is unavoidable in the treatment of nature’s truth: we next maintain that involved sentences and difficult constructions are, not only excusable, but also conducive to a better understanding on the part of the reader.
Such obscurities as these result, partly from the profuseness and rapidity with which nature whispers her complex secrets into the poet’s ear, partly from the poet’s wish that the reader should feel compelled to linger until he has mastered the full sense of every [p. 174→] passage. Art does not analyse, it does not describe piece by piece. Its object is to present a whole in its living completeness to the mind’s eye, throwing the prominent features into strong relief, allowing what is less important to fall into the background. Hence the poet must attempt to overcome the natural imperfection of his tools, words. The main idea must be given in bold out-line, and the minor details inserted unobtrusively in their places. This cannot always be done without doing some violence to language. Hence arise many of those parentheses which render the writings of Browning and other word-painters obscure. Comparative freedom from these difficulties may be attained at times in the highest art. The writings of Tennyson, more especially his In Memoriam, and the compositions of Mozart, present in this particular to some extent a contrast to the works of Browning and Beethoven. We will allow that they are all equally great. But there is one difference between the two former and the two latter. To the enjoyment of the poems of Browning, and the music of Beethoven, an intense study of their inner meaning is necessary. Tennyson on the other hand may be read, and Mozart heard with pleasure by those who have little sympathy with their highest thoughts. There is an external melody, in both, in the latter a smooth unruffled surface, which bears us along, little inclined to take the trouble to explore the depths below.
This is a little of much that might be said in defence of obscurities in poetry of the highest kind. In conclusion we may be permitted to quote the letter, in which Robert Browning dedicates one of his most difficult and yet most beautiful poems, Sordello, to J. Milsand, of Dijon:—
“Dear Friend,—Let the next poem be introduced by your name, and so re-pay all the trouble it cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or a book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since; for I lately give time and pains to turn my work into what the many might—instead of what the few must—like: but after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so—you, with many known and unknown to me, think so—others may one day think so: and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours, R.B.”
V. P. V. D.
Reviewed:
General Review Essay (RB).
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