Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  We know little of Browning’s inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834. It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away. He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist: the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures: what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of great dreamers!

  In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University, that of the world of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his, when asked if he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge, — “Italy was my University.”

  But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg, attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested him, but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention. That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is manifest from the remarkably picturesque and technically very interesting poem, “Ivan Ivanovitch” (the fourth of the `Dramatic Idyls’, 1879). Of a truth, after his own race and country — readers will at once think of “Home Thoughts from the Sea”, or the thrilling lines in “Home Thoughts from Abroad”, beginning —

  ”Oh, to be in England,

  Now that April’s there!” —

  or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work —

  ”I cherish most

  My love of England — how, her name, a word

  Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!”

  — it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South that he oftenest thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried: “O Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!” As for Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her: but who has worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love, as Browning? One alone indeed may be mated with him here, she who had his heart of hearts, and who lies at rest in the old Florentine cemetery within sound of the loved waters of Arno. Who can forget his lines in “De Gustibus”, “Open my heart and you will see, graved inside of it, Italy.”

  It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present one to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy, Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of intensest life!

  It is pleasant to know of one of them, “The Italian in England”, that Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem to certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman could sympathise with them.

  After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his `Wanderjahr’ in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo, that white little hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints for “Sordello” and “Pippa Passes”, and whither he returned in the last year of his life, as with unconscious significance he himself said, “on his way homeward.”

  In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year, he returned to Camberwell. “Sordello” he had in some fashion begun, but had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout the autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835, “Paracelsus”. In this period, also, he wrote some short poems, two of them of particular significance. The first of the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature `Z’ in the August number of the `Monthly Repository’ for 1834. It was never reprinted by the author, whose judgment it is impossible not to approve as well as to respect. Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this earliest effort is not the most fortunate. It was in the `Repository’ also, in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, four in all.

  The song in “Pippa Passes”, beginning “A King lived long ago,” was one of these; and the lyric, “Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?” afterwards revised and incorporated in “James Lee”, was another. But the two which are much the most noteworthy are “Johannes Agricola” and “Porphyria”. Even more distinctively than in “Pauline”, in their novel sentiment, new method, and generally unique quality, is a new voice audible in these two poems. They are very remarkable as the work of so young a poet, and are interesting as showing how rapidly he had outgrown the influence of any other of his poetic kindred. “Johannes Agricola” is significant as being the first of those dramatic studies of warped religiosity, of strange self-sophistication, which have afforded so much matter for thought. In its dramatic concision, its complex psychological significance, and its unique, if to unaccustomed ears somewhat barbaric, poetic beauty, “Porphyria” is still more remarkable.

  It may be of this time, though possibly some years later, that Mrs. Bridell-Fox writes: — “I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having just returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the date for certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of Cities. He used to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces, the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle, moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and then utilising the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and palace, on bridge or gondola on the vague and dreamy surface he had produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood.”

  “Paracelsus”, begun about the close of October or early in November 1834, was published in the summer of the following year. It is a poem in blank verse, about four times the length of “Pauline”, with interspersed songs. The author divided it into five sections of unequal length, of which the third is the most extensive: “Paracelsus Aspires”; “Paracelsus Attains”; “Paracelsus”; “Paracelsus Aspires”; “Paracelsus Attains”. In an interesting note, which was not reprinted in later editions of his first acknowledged poem, the author dissuades the reader from mistaking his performance for one of a class with which it has nothing in common, from judging it by principles on which it was not moulded, and from subjecting it to a standard to which it was never meant to conform. He then explains that he has composed a dramatic poem, and not a drama in the accepted sense; that he has not set forth the phenomena of the mind or the passions by the operation of persons and events, or by recourse to an external machinery of incidents to create and evolve the crisis sought to be produced. Instead of this, he remarks, “I have ventured to display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and have suffered the agency, by which it is influenced and determined, to be generally discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not altogether excluded: and this for a reason. I have endeavoured to write a poem, not a drama.” A little further, he states that a work like “Paracelsus” depends, for its success, immediately upon the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: “Indeed, were my scenes stars, it must be his co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms, shall connect the scattered lights into one constellation — a Lyre or a Crown.”

  In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a point of interest — the statement of the author’s hope that the readers of “Paracelsus” will not “be prejudiced against other productions which may follow in a more popular, and perhaps less difficult form.” From this it might fairly be inferred that Browning had not definitively adopted his characteristic method: that he was far from unwilling to gain the general ear: and that he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation of poetry written on lines similar to those of “Paracelsus”. Nor would this inference be wrong: for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately upon the publication of “Paracelsus”, determined to devote himself to poetic work which should have so direct a contact with actual life that its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate in the mysteries and delights of verse.

  In his early years B
rowning had always a great liking for walking in the dark. At Camberwell he was wont to carry this love to the point of losing many a night’s rest. There was, in particular, a wood near Dulwich, whither he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and eagerly along the solitary and lightless byways, finding a potent stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed, with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving like a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances, even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost by the alertest sense in the day’s manifold detachments. At this time, too, he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later life. Not only many portions of “Paracelsus”, but several scenes in “Strafford”, were enacted first in these midnight silences of the Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as the poet once declared, he came to know the serene beauty of dawn: for every now and again, after having read late, or written long, he would steal quietly from the house, and walk till the morning twilight graded to the pearl and amber of the new day.

  As in childhood the glow of distant London had affected him to a pleasure that was not without pain, perhaps to a pain rather that was a fine delirium, so in his early manhood the neighbourhood of the huge city, felt in those midnight walks of his, and apprehended more by the transmutive shudder of reflected glare thrown fadingly upward against the stars, than by any more direct vision or even far-borne indeterminate hum, dominated his imagination. At that distance, in those circumstances, humanity became more human. And with the thought, the consciousness of this imperative kinship, arose the vague desire, the high resolve to be no curious dilettante in novel literary experiments, but to compel an interpretative understanding of this complex human environment.

  Those who knew the poet intimately are aware of the loving regard he always had for those nocturnal experiences: but perhaps few recognise how much we owe to the subtle influences of that congenial isolation he was wont to enjoy on fortunate occasions.

  It is not my intention — it would, obviously, be a futile one, if entertained — to attempt an analysis or elaborate criticism of the many poems, long and short, produced by Robert Browning. Not one volume, but several, of this size, would have to be allotted to the adequate performance of that end. Moreover, if readers are unable or unwilling to be their own expositors, there are several trustworthy hand-books which are easily procurable. Some one, I believe, has even, with unselfish consideration for the weaker brethren, turned “Sordello” into prose — a superfluous task, some scoffers may exclaim. Personally, I cannot but think this craze for the exposition of poetry, this passion for “dissecting a rainbow”, is harmful to the individual as well as humiliating to the high office of Poetry itself, and not infrequently it is ludicrous.

  I must be content with a few words anent the more important or significant poems, and in due course attempt an estimate by a broad synthesis, and not by cumulative critical analyses.

  In the selection of Paracelsus as the hero of his first mature poem, Browning was guided first of all by his keen sympathy with the scientific spirit — the spirit of dauntless inquiry, of quenchless curiosity, of a searching enthusiasm. Pietro of Abano, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, were heroes whom he regarded with an admiration which would have been boundless but for the wise sympathy which enabled him to apprehend and understand their weaknesses as well as their lofty qualities. Once having come to the conclusion that Paracelsus was a great and much maligned man, it was natural for him to wish to portray aright the features he saw looming through the mists of legend and history. But over and above this, he half unwittingly, half consciously, felt the fascination of that mysticism associated with the name of the celebrated German scientist — a mysticism, in all its various phases, of which he is now acknowledged to be the subtlest poetic interpreter in our language, though, profound as its attraction always was for him, never was poet with a more exquisite balance of intellectual sanity.

  Latest research has proved that whatsoever of a pretender Paracelsus may have been in certain respects, he was unquestionably a man of extraordinary powers: and, as a pioneer in a science of the first magnitude of importance, deserving of high honour. If ever the famous German attain a high place in the history of the modern intellectual movement in Europe, it will be primarily due to Browning’s championship.

  But of course the extent or shallowness of Paracelsus’ claim is a matter of quite secondary interest. We are concerned with the poet’s presentment of the man — of that strange soul whom he conceived of as having anticipated so far, and as having focussed all the vagrant speculations of the day into one startling beam of light, now lambently pure, now lurid with gross constituents.*

  —

  * Paracelsus has two particular claims upon our regard.

  He gave us laudanum, a discovery of incalculable blessing to mankind.

  And from his fourth baptismal name, which he inherited from his father,

  we have our familiar term, `bombast’. Readers interested

  in the known facts concerning the “master-mind, the thinker,

  the explorer, the creator,” the forerunner of Mesmer and even

  of Darwin and Wallace, who began life with the sounding appellation

  ”Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus ab Hohenheim”,

  should consult Browning’s own learned appendical note,

  and Mr. Berdoe’s interesting essay in the Browning Society Papers, No. 49.

  —

  Paracelsus, his friends Festus and his wife Michal, and Aprile, an Italian poet, are the characters who are the personal media through which Browning’s already powerful genius found expression. The poem is, of a kind, an epic: the epic of a brave soul striving against baffling circumstance. It is full of passages of rare technical excellence, as well as of conceptive beauty: so full, indeed, that the sympathetic reader of it as a drama will be too apt to overlook its radical shortcomings, cast as it is in the dramatic mould. But it must not be forgotten that Browning himself distinctly stated he had attempted to write “a poem, not a drama”: and in the light of this simple statement half the objections that have been made fall to the ground.

  Paracelsus is the protagonist: the others are merely incidental. The poem is the soul-history of the great medical student who began life so brave of aspect and died so miserably at Salzburg: but it is also the history of a typical human soul, which can be read without any knowledge of actual particulars.

  Aprile is a projection of the poet’s own poetical ideal. He speaks, but he does not live as Festus lives, or even as Michal, who, by the way, is interesting as being the first in the long gallery of Browning’s women — a gallery of superbly-drawn portraits, of noble and striking and always intensely human women, unparalleled except in Shakespeare. Pauline, of course, exists only as an abstraction, and Porphyria is in no exact sense a portrait from the life. Yet Michal can be revealed only to the sympathetic eye, for she is not drawn, but again and again suddenly silhouetted. We see her in profile always: but when she exclaims at the last, “I ever did believe,” we feel that she has withdrawn the veil partially hiding her fair and generous spirit.

  To the lover of poetry “Paracelsus” will always be a Golconda. It has lines and passages of extraordinary power, of a haunting beauty, and of a unique and exquisite charm. It may be noted, in exemplification of Browning’s artistic range, that in the descriptive passages he paints as well in the elaborate Pre-Raphaelite method as with a broad synthetic touch: as in

  ”One old populous green wall

  Tenanted by the ever-busy flies,

  Grey crickets and shy lizards and quick spiders,

  Each family of the silver-threaded moss —

  Which, look through near, this way, and it appears

  A stubble-field or a cane-brake, a marsh

  Of bulrush whitening in the sun. . . .”

  But oftener he prefers the more succinct method of landscape-painting, the broadest impressionism: a
s in

  ”Past the high rocks the haunts of doves, the mounds

  Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,

  Past tracks of milk-white minute blinding sand.”

  And where in modern poetry is there a superber union of the scientific and the poetic vision than in this magnificent passage — the quintessence of the poet’s conception of the rapture of life: —

  ”The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,

  And the earth changes like a human face;

  The molten ore bursts up among the rocks,

  Winds into the stone’s heart, outbranches bright

  In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,

  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask —

  God joys therein. The wroth sea’s waves are edged

  With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate,

  When in the solitary waste, strange groups

  Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like,

  Staring together with their eyes on flame —

  God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.

  Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:

  But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes

  Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure

  Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between

  The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost,

  Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;

  The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms

  Like chrysalids impatient for the air,

  The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run

  Along the furrows, ants make their ado;

  Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark