00001.tif

PDF

Download

Open document

Transcript (if available)

Content — - 1
I
i
ROBERT BROWNING'S THEORY OF THE POET, 1833-1841
by
Charles Leo Rivers
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1957
UMI Number: DP23021
All rights reserved
IN FO R M A TIO N TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI DP23021
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 - 1346
ph. D £ 59
T h is dissertation, w ritte n by
.............Ch,arle.s...L.eQ...Ei¥.ei?s.........
u n d e r the d ire c tio n o f his G u ida n ce C o m m itte e ,
and a p p ro v e d by a ll its m em bers, has been p re
sented to a n d accepted by the F a c u lty o f the
G ra du a te S chool, in p a r tia l fu lfillm e n t o f re
quirem ents f o r the degree o f
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
’ * r” * / f
Dean
D a th
G uidance C om m ittee
Chairman f
To
Laurel Rivers Sewards
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1
PAULINE: FREEDOM AS CRISIS............. 4l
III. PARACELSUS: A STUDY IN ROMANTIC IRONY . . . 64
IV. SORDELLO: A KNIGHT OF INFINITE RESIGNATION . 103
V. PIPPA PASSES: A KNIGHT OF F A I T H ...... 153
VI. AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY: THE FUNCTION OF THE
P O E T , . . 168
VII. CONCLUSION............................... 182
BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................... 201
CHAPTER I
I
INTRODUCTION
In his early poetry, that written between 1833 and
April, l84l, the dates respectively for the publication of
Pauline and Pippa Passes, Browning evolved, I believe, a the--
ory of the poet, a theory based on the idea of equilibrium
i
between subjective and objective tendencies in personality, a
theory correlated with and forming a synthesis of his ideas
on philosophy, religion, and psychology. In this study I
shall be concerned primarily with showing how Browning pro- j
gressively clarified his ideas on the function of the poet, 1
I
with regard both to society and to his own vocation as a po-
jet, in Pauline, Paracelsus. Sordello, and Pippa Passes. The
Essay on Shelley is included only because it throws light on
1
these early poems. The concept of subjectivity was new in j
the early nineteenth century. Coleridge, in the Biographia
iLiteraria, prefaces his chapter on the imagination with "a
j !
Chapter of requests and premonitions" in which he explores |
1
the- problems of subjectivity and objectivity as they relate j
l
to an understanding of the Imagination. He then abandons the
•chapter on the imagination midway, under the pretext, ex
pressed in the letter to "Dear C., " that "supposed substances
1 21
! 1
were thinned away into shadows, while everywhere shadows were
deepened into substances."^ Browning's theory of the poet j
can be viewed as probing into a problem which Coleridge had j
examined but never had brought to a conclusion. Instead of !
| !
approaching the poetic process by the avenue of the imagina
tion, as the romantic poets had done, he approaches it con
sistently through a theory of subjective-objective polarity,
a theory which Coleridge perhaps anticipated.
Elizabeth Barrett understood the importance of this po
larity in Browning's poetry:
You have in your vision two worlds, or to use the language
of the schools of the day, you are both subjective and ob
jective in the habits of-your mind. You can deal both with
abstract thought and with human passion in the most pas- !
sionate sense. Thus, you have an immense grasp in Art; and
no one at all accustomed to consider the usual forms of itj
could help regarding with reverence and gladness the gradu
al expansion of your powers.
This polarity, however, was too new or too philosophical for
iis contemporaries to appreciate. Indeed, even In the twen
tieth century his philosophy' is widely misunderstood. So
long as he emphasized subjectivity In his poetry he received
I
scant acclaim. Only when he stressed objectivity, as in the;
dramatic monologues and The Ring and the Book, was his genius
i !
j i
1(London, 1906), p. 157 * j
2The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett
Browning (New York, 1926), I, 8; referred to hereafter as
[Letters.
praised. But he complained, even after he had been accepted j
by the public, that critics failed "to give a general notion
i Q
of the whole works.' J
Browning destroyed all of his .juvenilia. and would have j
destroyed Pauline if it had not been published. Pauline. j
frankly experimental, is described by its author as a "crude J
preliminary sketch."^ DeVane says that Mill’s criticism of
its excessive subjectivity "changed the course of Browning’s
I i t 5
poetical career, ^ but one may see in the poem the beginning
of Browning's correlation between subjectivity and a dramatic
technique. The poem succeeds only too well in its presenta-
| !
tion of subjectivity. Mill says of it:
With considerable poetic powers, the writer seems to me
possessed with a more intense and morbid self-consciousness
than I ever knew in any sane human being. (Quoted in De- I
Vane, p. 46) ;
Its dramatic technique, however, owes much to Shelley's Alas-
tor and Epipsvchidion, two poems upon which it was modeled.
DeVane regards it as autobiographical rather than dramatic
and thinks that Browning thereafter abandoned subjectivity: j
. . . his main resolve was that never again would he reveal!
3pearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella ■
Blagden, ed. Edward C. McAleer (Austin, Texas, 1951), p. 220.'
^The Complete Poetical Works of Browning (Boston, 1895)j
p. 1.
^William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook (New York,
1955), P. 47. __________________ ________________________
I his own soul so crudely--henceforth his poetry would be
J "dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many
imaginary persons, not mine." (p. 47)
DeVane is right, of course, in saying that Browning regrettec
having identified himself so closely with Pauline's lover,
hut he fails to point out that Pauline is a dramatic presen
tation of subjectivity quite in line with Browning's further
development. Browning realized from Mill's criticism that
his analysis of subjectivity would have to be divorced from
any suggestion of a confession. So in Paracelsus he concen
trated upon intuition. In Sordello he attacked the problem
of relating the subjective to the objective world. And in
Pippa Passes he solved this problem by subordinating intui
tion to objective experience. We are God's puppets and en-
1
1
act His will best when least conscious of our own importance.'
jPippa is free of the intellectualism which characterizes
Pauline's lover, Paracelsus, and Sordello.
Subjectivity provides the hub of Browning's system of
l
thought, the center from which his ideas radiate. He writes'
to Miss Barrett with reference to Pauline:
Then, I had a certain faculty of self-consciousness, yearsj
and years ago, at which John Mill wondered, and which !
ought to be improved by this time, if constant use helps ,
at all. (Letters, I, 77-78) j
/
And again he writes:
. . . the language with which I talk to myself . . . is
j spiritual Attic, and "loves contractions, as grammarians
say; but I read it myself, and well know what it means,
! that's why I told you I was self-conscious--! meant that X
j 51
i i
! never yet mistook my own feelings, one for another. (I, 40)
i . |
Whether he was influenced by Descartes can not be definitely j
established, but Lionel Stevenson thinks that he uses the !
Cartesian ontological argument for the existence of God: t
i
Adopting the Cartesian method, Browning starts with the I
premise that God and the individual soul are the only real4
ities,^for the very fact that they transcend rational |
proof. I
i
But Browning relies upon subjectivity and the principle of
koubt more absolutely than does Descartes. Although the
French philosopher doubts the reality of everything except
liis own existence--Cogito ergo sum--he does not extend his
skepticism to religion. He remains a conventional Catholic, '
employing his philosophy only to establish premises for sci
entific knowledge:
I t
. . . as I observed that in the words I think, hence I am.I
there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their I
truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order I
to think it is necessary to exist, I concluded that I might
take, as a general rule, the principle, that all the things
which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true.7 j
i
3ut Browning, largely through Shelley's influence, which be-!
i
gan shortly after 1826, became skeptical of dogmatic theology
DeVane expresses the opinion of most of Browning's crit
ics regarding the poet's religion when he writes of his
^Darwin Among the Poets (Chicago, 1932), p. 39-
7 m scourse on Method, trans. John Veitch (La Salle, Il
linois^ 1949) 3 P^ 36' .
_6 _
relation to his mother:
This good, gentle, evangelical Christian inculcated her
doctrine in her son, and he became "passionately reli- *
gious," as he described himself in his later years. Prom
her teachings he never entirely broke free, save in the
. boyish rebellion which Shelley and Voltaire gave him li
cense for, and the quelling of that revolt is the theme of
Pauline. (p. 5)
This "boyish rebellion" was more, I believe, than an inter
lude. I regard it as a turning point in Browning’s career,
and fail to understand how DeVane can consider Pauline a
|'quelling" of the "boyish rebellion" inspired in part by
iShelley when Browning acknowledges Shelley as the inspira
tion of his poem, addressing him as "Sun-treader." Indeed,
ne accomplished in Pauline a compromise or adjustment be
tween belief and skepticism which was sufficiently brilliant
to last the rest of his life. He accepted religious belief
upon subjective evidence, but discarded all dogma save that
j
which remains alive within the heart. He remained a Chris
tian, but upon his own terms.
Browning's debt to Shelley can not be overestimated,
for he discovered through Shelley the "sun-road" of subjec
tivity. Shelley is the "Sun-treader," and Paracelsus places
foot upon the "sun-road." Browning rejects much of Shelley’s
thought, including his social theories, but he learns from
lim the function of the poet. In A Defence of Poetry Shelley
writes that "A poet participates in the eternal, the
I 71
] o
infinite, and the one." And in An Essay on Shelley Browning
says of the subjective poet:
He . . .is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not
so much with reference to the many below as to the one
above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all
things in their absolute truth. (Works, p. 1009)
Being a pantheist, Shelley does not distinguish between sub-
!
jective and objective reality. He believes that reality is ,
! ■ 1
one, that it is spiritual, and that, In the words of Spinoza>
Things represented in ideas follow, and are derived from
their particular attribute, in the same manner, and with
the same necessity as ideas follow . . . from the attribute
of thought.9
Browning, on the other hand, is a Cartesian dualist. So far
I
as I know, he is the only English poet to evolve a dualistic
theory of poetry.
A brief comparison of Browning’s philosophy with that ;
1
i
of existentialism is helpful in understanding the problem of
faith which underlies both his religion and his poetry. Ex
istentialism is not new in the twentieth century; it was not
:iew even in the writings of SjzJren Kierkegaard In the fourth
and fifth decades of the nineteenth century. Kierkegaard
Linds it In the Socratic dialectic, which does not neglect
subjective truth, and it is present in the philosophy of St.;
j
I
O
Essays and Letters (London, n.d.), p. 6.
^Philosophy of Benedict De Spinoza (New York, n.d.),
p. 82.
Augustine, one of the possible sources of Browning's philoso
phy. In his History of Philosophy. B. A. G. Puller says that
Augustine 1s
proof of the existence of the soul is akin to that later
used by Descartes. To doubt her existence is to assert it,'
since to doubt we must think, and if we think we must exist j .
And he explains that, according to Augustine, matter, as well
as soul, is
created out of nothing by divine fiat, [and] is conceived
. . . somewhat as Aristotle conceived it. It is not pri
marily extended substance or body, but potentiality infusec.
with seminal reasons which, upon proper occasion, give ef
fect to the Ideas in the divine mind and actualize particu
lar sensible images. Thus every detail of the enactment
of the divine plan in space and time, as well as the plan
itself, is preconceived from all eternity.
Here is a summary which holds for Browning’s philosophy as
well as for Augustine's. Like Descartes and Augustine,
Browning accepts doubt as the indispensable complement of
{faith. Bishop Blougram observes:
With me, faith means perpetual unbelief
Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot
Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. n
(11. 666-68)
And in An Essay on Shelley Browning writes of "the Ideas of j
'Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand"j
I I
t (
I
10(New York, 194-5), I* 354-, 355* Italics are mine. All
italics are those of the original passage unless otherwise !
noted. i
■^All line numbers are those of Robert Browning's Works,
ed. P. G. Kenyon (London, 1912, Centenary Edition).
(Works, p. 1009). These "seeds of creation" resemble Augus-;
| t
jtine's "seminal reasons." In The Ring and the Book, the Pope
*
explains:
. . . I am ware it is the seed of act,
God holds appraising in His hollow palm,
Not act grown great thence on the world below,
Leafage and branchage, vulgar eyes admire.
(X, 272-75)
3rowning believes that these seeds of action exist in precon
ceived potentiality, and that they become actualized through
bhe vision of the subjective poet. Once actualized, they
are adopted and disseminated by objective poets, until socie
ty has accepted them and is ready for new revelations from
I
another subjective poet. The subjective poet, however, is
not free to range at will in the subjective realm. As God's
j 1
agent he should choose for actualization only those ideas J
which fit the needs of the time. Truth, in itself, is with-
1
out existential value unless it provides historical continui
ty. Subjectivity must be matched with circumstance if it is;
i
to have full existence. .
Modern existentialism, in all of its variations, is a
criticism of abstractness and mechanization in western civ
ilization. Kierkegaard complains of the lukewarmness of in-,
stitutional Christianity. Martin Heidegger declares that
! yp
"Being must be opened out, so that the existent may appear.1 !
“ ^Existence and Being (Chicago, 19^9)? _ P-__ 304.__________
' - - 10;
i
Gabriel Marcel says that "The artist alone . . . really par'
ficipates in the reality of life."1^ Jean-Paul Sartre
writes:
The reality of every one’s existence proceeds . . . from j
the "inwardness" of man, not from anything that the mind :
can codify, for objectified knowledge is always at one or \
more removes from the truth. "Truth," said Kierkegaard, !
"is subjectivity."14 !
i
Browning similarly attacks those aspects of society which are
without fullness of being: motivation without joy and love,
and religious belief without genuine devotion. In Christmas
Eve and Easter Day he is critical of both ritualistic and
rational Christianity while praising the depth of feeling in
Dissenting, or Non-Conformist, Christianity. DeVane finds
I !
phis theme anticipated and well expressed in a letter (August
15* 1846) in which Miss Barrett continues a discussion of the
previous day:
I meant that I felt unwilling, for my own part, to put on
any of the liveries of the sects. The truth, as God sees
it, must be something so different from these opinions
about truth--these systems which fit different classes of 1
men like their coats, and wear brown at the elbows always!1
I believe in what is divine and floats at highest, in all .
these different theologies--and because the really Divine i
draws together souls, and tends so to a unity, I could pray
anywhere and with all sorts of worshippers, from the Sis-
tine Chapel to Mr. Pox's, those kneeling and those stand
ing. Wherever you go, in all religious societies, there is
a little to revolt, and a good deal to bear with--but it is
not otherwise in the world without; and, within, you are ;
1^The Mystery of Being (Chicago, 1950), II, xii.
1^Existentialism and Humanism (London, 1955)> p. 6.
■ • — ir
especially reminded that God has to be more patient than j
yourself after all. . . . The Unitarians seem to me to |
throw over what is most beautiful in the Christian Doctrine
but the Formulists, on the other side, stir up a dust, in I
which it appears excusable not to see. When the veil of i
the body falls, how we shall look into each other's faces,
astonished, . . . after one glance at God's. (Quoted in
DeVane, p. 198)
Browning was aware that the problem of avoiding the distor
tions of custom and intellect is not easily solved. He ac-
*
cepted Shelley's idea of imagination (an idea identified by
Benedetto Croce with intuition^) as a guide to subjective
truth, but scanned closely the relation of such truth to ob
jective reality. In The Last Ride Together (l855)> he asks:
What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen? (11. 58-59]
His conclusion regarding the role of the subjective poet in
society is that such a poet relates the part to the whole and
Lakes the whole live in the part. He believes that the pri-
Lary poetic intuition is subjectively conditioned, but he
thinks that an objective poet has a secondary intuitive pow-j
er which he focuses- on the world about him. Browning him
self, as we shall see, moves from a subjective toward an ob
jective position in his theory of the poet. I say toward,
| i
jfor he never abandons a subjective-objective tension.
Browning resembles Augustine in his belief that God in
^Aesthetics (New York. 1953). P. 1._____________________
the beginning activated two kinds of creation, each with its;
i
own type of being. Matter possesses what Sartre calls being-f
I
in-itself. A tree, an animal, a ship fulfill their essences^
attain perfection, but man possesses being-for-itself, a di
vided consciousness which is both objective and subjective
and has the dreadful responsibility of being able to say no
even to God. Being of a divided nature, man is essentially
I
imperfect, but his compensation is his power of projection,
his power to determine his own destiny. Man's true being be
gins with this power. The poet, says Browning in Sordello,
is the first man. The human race, not yet really human, is j
evolving toward objective fulfillment of its subjective po
tential . Browning looks forward to an age when man will be
truly human, much as Nietzsche looks forward to an age of
jsupermen.
The subjectivp-objective tension is determined by a ten
sion between being and nothingness. Martin Heidegger names
this latter tension Dasein, which means "being there" and
nay be broken down into "existentials." Fullness of exist- :
i
t
ence is measured in Dasein, the degree to which being is es-<
| I m I i m to t I I . ^
tablished. Heidegger thinks that man's life is determined j
by six existentials: convention, temporality, anxiety, freej
1 fi
jdom, resolution, and death. Resolution advances man in
! 16
I For this list I am indebted to Professor Ludwig _ __
spite of time and tradition, but freedom is measured in anxij
ety, and death is the summation of human existence. Like
I '
Heidegger, Browning sees human life in an existential frame.
I
It is subjected to the pressures of convention and temporal!-
i
jty; it is free to choose between alternatives; it may project
its will with mingled resolution and anxiety; and it encoun
ters the supreme test of death. In his development of a dra
matic technique for poetic analysis, he relies upon his
knowledge of existentials. In Paracelsus he discusses five
existentials: power, knowledge, love, risk, and death:
Power; neither put forth blindly, nor controlled '
Calmly by perfect knowledge; to be used i
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear: 1
Knowledge; not intuition, but the slow j
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil,
Strengthened by love: love; not serenely pure, j
But strong from weakness, like a chance-sown plant
Which, cast on stubborn soil, puts forth changed buds,
And softer stains, unknown in happier climes;
Love which endures, and doubts, and Is oppressed,
And cherished, suffering much, and much sustained,
And blind, oft-failing, yet believing love,
A half-enlightened, often-checkered trust. (V, 693~705)
Power includes resolution and freedom; knowledge involves
convention and temporality; risk equates with anxiety; and
iieath, for Browning as for Heidegger, Is the supreme test
I 1
for human existence. Browning also grants existential sta- j
tus to love, agreeing with Kierkegaard, who writes: j
Love's secret life is in the heart, unfathomable, and I
Marcuse's course in Neo-Kantianism and German Existentialism_
- • - - - 14
it also has an unfathomable connection with the whole of
existence. As the peaceful lake Is grounded deep in the
hidden spring which no eye can see, so a man's love Is
grounded even deeper In the love of God. If there were at
bottom no wellspring, If God were not love, then there
would be no quiet lake or human l o v e . 1?
To participate fully in his existence, the individual must
nave power to act and knowledge and love to motivate this
power. Since true participation in existence Involves sub
ordination of the individual to God, it is necessarily ethical.
In his early poetry, Browning is troubled by a problem
which is treated elsewhere only by Kierkegaard and, perhaps,
by Keats in his letters. Kierkegaard was almost exactly
Browning's contemporary, for he was born in Denmark less than
one year after the birth of the English poet. His books were
unknown to Browning, but in their emphasis upon subjectivity,
they are helpful in understanding Browning's early poetry.
Kierkegaard was not satisfied with his role of poet and
wished to take up serious work as a pastor. In his Journal,
he remarks:
I have now been enriched by loving Providence with so emi
nent an understanding of the truth as was seldom granted to
any man, and In addition equipped by the same love with j
eminent gifts for setting It forth. In this respect I must
only humble myself because of one thing: that I do not
have the strength to be myself the truth I have under
stood.1^
1?Works of Love (Princeton, 1946), p. 8.
•^Quoted in Denzil G. M. Patrick, Pascal and Kierke
gaard (London, 1947), II, 112-____________________________
_____
Kierkegaard's dilemma is precisely that of Browning's Sor- |
i
dello, who strives to unite the vision of the poet with the
action of the soldier and statesman, and dies under a strain
which he is unable to bear. Keats likewise sees that the po-
i j
et suffers under an existential deficiency:
A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence;
because he has no identity--he is continually . . . filling
some other Body--The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and
Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have
about them an unchangeable attribute--the poet has none.9
In Sordello Browning divides human existence into three
stages or levels: the aesthetic (I use the term in its Kant--
ian and Kierkegaard!an meaning of space-time perception),
the ethical, and the religious. These terms are Kierke
gaard's rather than Browning's, but they describe adequately
jthe three stages of human existence which are presented in ;
Sordello. Insofar as poetry is intended to give pleasure,
lit comes under the category of the aesthetic, but if it is
Lightly so classified, the poet should put aside poetry when
ie is ready for ethical participation in life. Kierkegaard
.so regards the occupation of the poet, but Browning rejects j
purely aesthetic poetry, interpreting the poet's function as
I
operative in all three stages. He accepts the fact that po
etry can not compete with action in immediacy. In The Last
I i
I i
Ride Together, he says that the poet is not one whit nearer 1
♦
___ 1^The Letters of John Keats (New York, 1952), p. 227-
r6_ l
ills own sublime "Than we who never have turned a rhyme" and !
that the great sculptor’s Venus is less attractive than "yon-
her girl that fords the burn." Yet Sordello dies because he
I ;
I :
forsakes poetry, his true medium, for action. He does not
I I
understand that poetry can have ethical value, that it is the
leaven which enables society to transcend convention and temj
porality. Paradoxically, the poet may not be the truth whicli
he understands, but this very proscription constitutes his
existential function. His subjectivity, by a kind of self-
abrogation, creates a work of art having genuine ontological
value. Keats understands this function of the poet, for he
speaks of
. . . looking upon the Sun the Moon the Stars, the Earth
and its contents as materials to form greater things--that
is to say ethereal things--but here I am talking like a
Madman greater things than our Creator himself made I!
(Letters, p. 30)
Friedrich Schlegel calls the romantic (or subjective) poet's
control over objective creation romantic irony (see my Chap
ter III). Indeed, he considers an ironically detached point
of view essential to the highest art, and attributes such anj
■attitude even to God, who is both immanent and transcendent j
in His relation to the universe. At the aesthetic level, the
ipoet can be no more than a spectator, an observer of life, ,
(but at the ethical and religious levels he may participate
I
jin life more deeply than the man of action.
j _____One of the chief puestions, then, in the_evolution of
I ' ‘ " TJ~
I
Browning's theory of the poet centers upon the nature of the
I i
poet's Dasein, his relation to reality. And Browning answers
this question in a manner suggestive of Carl Jung's idea of I
i
I po 1
the collective unconscious and Gabriel Marcel's idea of ;
Intersubjectivity. In himself the individual has no power
to create, but by withdrawing from his personal mind Into
'collective man" (Sordello. V, 103) he can avail himself of
bhe deepest human reservoirs and share in God's power, the
source of all creativity. Marcel observes:
I concern myself with being only in so far as I have a
more or less distinct consciousness of the underlying uni
ty which ties me to other beings of whose reality I al- ■
ready have a preliminary notion. (The Mystery of Being, 1
II, 17)
3rowning, however, was not content with such a withdrawal,
and he yearned for the rich, personal expression which he
ifound in Miss Barrett's poetry. He wrote to her:
. . . your poetry must be, cannot but be, infinitely more |
to me than mine to you--for you do what I always wanted, I
hoped to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first
time. You speak out, you,--I only make men and women
speak--give you truth broken Into prismatic hues, and fear
the pure white light, even if it is in me. (Letters, I, 6)
His attitude toward his own poetry Is curiously ambivalent.
As a man he felt the need for warm, personal relationships
such as existed for him with his mother and Miss Barrett,
j
but as a poet he was constrained to write almost from a sense
^ The Integration of the Personality (New York, 1939),
ip.._52.._________________________________________ ________________
of duty. Although in theory he was anti-intellectual!stic,
in poetic practice he could not bring himself to write spon-
' taneously. He remarked to Miss Barrett:
I have no pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere
act--though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a dutyJ
(I, 41)
And to Miss Haworth, he wrote in 1847:
I could, with an unutterably easy heart, never write an
other line while I have my being--which would surely be
very wrong considering how the lines fall to poets in the
places of this world generally. So I mean to do my best
whatever comes of it.21
He is something like Pippa in accepting his role in life
as divinely planned, but he does not have himself the spon-
| j
jtaneity which he can evoke in Pippa. He fears the "white
light" of subjectivity because, like his Sordello, he can
not communicate it without diffraction. Miss Barrett, he
•fchinks, writes from true inspiration, but for him the poetic
process begins with reconstruction. He says to her:
. . . the more one sits and thinks over the creative proc
ess, the more it confirms itself as "inspiration," nothing
more nor less. Or, at worst, you write down old inspira
tions, what you remember of them . . . but with that it be
gins. "Reflection" is exactly what it names itself--a re
presentation, in scattered rays from every angle of inci
dence, of what first of all became present in a great j
light, a whole one. (l, 98) :
Subjective immediacy, the white light of intuition, can
01
New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. William Clyde De-
|7ane and Kenneth Leslie Knickerbocker (New Haven, 1950),
p. 43.
not be communicated. "A town crier of inwardness," says
Kierkegaard, "is quite a remarkable species of animal." In
wardness, he maintains, requires for communication the
'doubly reflected thinking" of art:
Wherever the subjective is of importance in knowledge,
and where appropriation thus constitutes the crux of the
matter, the process of communication is a work of art, and
doubly reflected. Its very first form is precisely the
subtle principle that the personalities must be held de
voutly apart from one another, and not permitted to, fuse
or coagulate into objectivity. It is at this point that
objectivity and subjectivity part from one another.
Ordinary communication, like objective thinking in gen
eral, has no secrets; only a doubly reflected subjective
thinking has them. That is to say, the entire essential
content of subjective thought is essentially secret, be
cause it cannot be directly communicated. This is the
meaning of the secrecy. The fact that the knowledge in
question does not lend itself to direct utterance, because
its essential feature consists of the appropriation, makes
it a secret for everyone who is not in the same way doubly
reflected within himself. . . . Hence when anyone proposes
to communicate such truth directly, he proves his stupidi
ty; and if anyone else demands this of him, he too shows
that he is stupid.^2
i
Three points in this quotation should be kept in mind.
First, communication is upon two levels: that of ordinary
communication, which is objective; and that of art, which is
subjective but is reflected upon an objective medium, being
Ln this way doubly reflected. Second, the personalities of
the artist and the spectator undergo a withdrawal from the
t
I
Immediate context of their objectivity and meet upon common
^ Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton, 19^1),
p. 71. ___________________________________________________ _____
SO-j
I
j l
subjective ground. At the objective level, except for the
double reflection of art, they are "held devoutly apart."
And third, subjective thought which is doubly reflected in
an art form may be appropriated only by.persons who are them
selves doubly reflected. Here an important difference be
tween Kierkegaard's thought and Browning's must be noted. i
For Kierkegaard the self is absolutely solitary. "The only j
reality to which an existing individual may have a relation
that is more than merely cognitive," he remarks, is his own
reality, the fact that he exists" (Concluding Unscientific
Postscript, p. 280). For Browning, however, the self is more
than a mere cogito. It includes an evolutionary background,|
existing on a collective as well as on an individual level. !
!
The subjective poet, says Browning in the Essay on Shelley,
has to do
I
not with the combination of humanity in action, but with
the primal elements of humanity . . . and he digs where he
stands,--preferring to seek them in his own soul as the
nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the in
tuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such
a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque group
ings and tempestuous tossings of the forest trees, but
with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone.
He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, butj
rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we 1
must look deep into his human eyes to see those pictures \
on them. (Works, p. 1009) I
1
The subjective deals with the primal elements of humanity ,
| ;
and perceives through the eyes of collective man. j
One of the cardinal principles in Browning's philosophy'
— — 2T- ,
I I
and in his theory of the poet is that man is not creative,
| i
even though by nature he must fabricate a projection into the
i i
future, and so strive to create. This principle is not !
stated explicitly in his early poetry, but it is present in a
nascent state. In The Ring and the Book (1868) it takes de-j
i
Pinitive form: I
I
I find first
Writ down for very A B C of fact,
"In the beginning God made heaven and earth;"
From which, no matter with what lisp, I spell
And speak you out a consequence--that man,
Man,--as befits the made, the inferior thing,--
Purposed, since made, to grow, not make In turn,
Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow,--
Formed to rise, reached at, if not grasp and gain j
The good beyond him,--which attempt is growth,-- !
Repeats God's process in man's due degree,
Attaining man's proportionate result,--
Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. (I, 707-19)
The poet, therefore, Is not so much a creator as a witness to
the truth, the "seeds of creation." The subjective poet Is a
witness to subjective truth, to "roots and fibres naked to
the chalk and stone"; the objective poet is a witness to ob
jective phenomena, to "humanity in action." To be a proof
of existence the cogito must have an object. It must signify
experior ergo sum--I experience, therefore I am. Even the
cogito, then, Involves faith: animal faith in the objective
world, spiritual faith in the subjective world. Gabriel Marj
cel describes Rilke as "a witness to the spiritual": j
i
In using such an expression I am referring to the notion
of creative testimony to which my reflections during the
last ten years have led me to give an increasingl y ________
22'
important place. The witness, of course, is not just he
who observes or makes a statement; that is not what he
really is, but he is one who testifies and his testimony is
not a mere echo, it is a participation and a confirmation;|
to bear witness is to contribute to the growth or coming of
that for which one testifies.^
Ht can be said that the witness is one who "resuscitates"
truth. Man, as witness,
May so project his surplusage of soul
In search of body, so add self to self
By owning what lay ownerless before,--
So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms--
That, although nothing which had never life
Shall get life from him, be, not having been,
Yet, something dead may get to live again,
Something with too much life or not enough,
Which, either way imperfect, ended once:
An end whereat man's impulse intervenes,
Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive,
Completes the incomplete and saves the thing. ,
(The Ring and the Book. I, 723"3^j italics mine)
What passes for creation in man is really no more than ap
propriation, and progress is a projection of soul in search
of body. Poetry is the vision, the fuse, which sets off this
projection.
A distinction must now be made between the primary poet
ic experience--the poetic intuition--and the report of this
experience in poetry. The poet is unable to repeat this ex
perience himself or to induce it in his readers. Wordsworth
says that
. . . an emotion, kindred to that which was before the sub-’
ject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does j
23Homo Viator (Chicago, 1951), p. 213-
........... ............ ........: -------------23'
oh
itself actually exist in the mind.
And Shelley describes the mind in creation "as a fading coal,
which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind,
awakens to transitory brightness" (Essays and Letters, p. 3^0*
But Browning finds that the creative mind lags behind the
original experience, from which it is constantly removed by
an increment of newer experiences. He remarks to Miss Bar
rett :
You see sometimes how I talk to you,--even in mere talking
what a strange work I make of it. I go on thinking quite
another way; so, generally, I often have thought, the lit
tle I have written., has been an unconscious scrawling with
the mind fixed somewhere else: the subject of the scrawl
may have previously been the real object of the mind on
some similar occasion,--the very thing which then to miss,
(finding in its place such another result of a still prior
fancy-fit)--which then to see escape, or find escaped, was
the vexation of the time! One cannot, (or I cannot) fin
ish up the work in one's mind, put away the old projects
and take up new. (II, 11-12)
The poet Is a witness to the reality he has observed, but his
testimony, as Kierkegaard says, must be "doubly reflected"
to be communicated. It must be presented in an existential
[continuity of its own which is made possible only through
the ability of the poet to transcend his personal experience
and speak for collective man. For Browning, a poem Is not a
re-creation; It is a new production in which sensuous form
Ls appropriated for inspiration, new or old. The creative
2^Wordsworth: Representative Poems, ed. Arthur Beatty
(New York, 1937)',' P. 698. _______________ ____________________
process begins with Inspiration (see p. 18 above), but Its
i
rays fall obliquely. Browning rejoices In his Flight of the
Duchess, but he says of It:
It Is an odd fact, yet characteristic of my accomplishings
one and all in this kind, that of the poem, the real con
ception of an evening (two years ago, fully)--of that, not
a line is written--though perhaps after all, what I am go
ing to call the accessories in the story are real though
indirect reflexes of the original idea, and so supersede
properly enough the necessity of its personal appearance,
so to speak. But, as.I conceived the poem, it consisted
entirely of the Gipsy's description of the life the Lady
was to lead with her future Gipsy lover--a real life, not
an unreal one like that with the Duke. And as I meant to
write it, all their wild adventures would have come out
and the insignificance of the former vegetation have been
deducible only--as the main subject has become now; of
course it comes to the same thing, for one would never show
half by half like a cut orange. (Letters, I, 139) j
Wordsworth and Shelley cling devoutly to an emotion which is
recollected or experienced immediately, but Browning takes
such an emotion as the start for a new creation. It is usual
ly impossible, therefore, to interpret one of his poems in
jterms of its genesis, as can be done with a poem by Words
worth or Shelley. His poetry must be interpreted through an
analysis of its structure-texture meaning.
In the Preface to Paracelsus, he writes:
It is certain . . . that a work like mine depends on the
intelligence and sympathy of the reader for its success,--
indeed were my scenes stars, it must be his cottperating
fancy which, supplying all chasms, shall collect the scat
tered lights into one constellation--a Lyre or a Crown.
(Works, p. 12)
This idea probably owes much to lines in John Donne's Epitha- -
lamion on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine, which he
quotes in a letter to Miss Barrett. Referring to her let- |
i
bers, he says that "like Donne's bride" j
i
I take J
My jewels from their boxes; call j
My Diamonds, Pearls, and Emeralds, and make !
Myself a constellation of them all! (I, 417) j
Similarly, as a poet, he arranges in a constellation ideas
which can not be directly communicated and remain "a secret
for everyone who is not in the same way doubly reflected
Within himself." The constellation is a projective pattern
in which subjectivity is reflected upon an objective, sensu
ous medium. Apperception signifies perception of contempora
ry stimuli which is colored by memories of previously experi
enced percepts, and since it is a dynamic interpretation of
a perception, it is inevitably distorted. Browning main- !
“ tains, however, that the degree of distortion can be mini
mized by co-ordinating subjective with objective perception.
In other words, the distortion arises from "too much life or
not enough."
Browning's philosophy resembles Bergson's in its idea
that reality is given in experience rather than in reasoning;
f
and in its stress on the need for discarding the rigidities I
of convention. Miss Barrett could well be speaking for him j
I • i '
when she says of Carlyle:
He fills the office of a poet--does he not?--by analysing
humanity back into its elements, to the destruction of the
conventions of the hour. (Letters, I, 30)
„ 2(r
i
]
3rowning commends her poetry for its "fearless fresh living ,
I
work" (15-37)* believing that the poet dissolves all that is,
j j
dead or dying in a culture and preserves the elan vital of !
I 1
1 ' i
his epoch. The poet, however, is inferior to both the paintj
er and the musician in the immediacy of his art. The painter
I !
is superior in the immediacy of his relation to the object.
The musician is superior in the immediacy, the purity, of
his subjectivity. But the poet surpasses both the painter
and the musician in achieving a balance between subject and
object. Since Browning believes that truth resides in sub
jectivity, he considers music to be closest to truth, closest;
to pure inspiration, but poetry serves best the function of ,
j
fusing man's physical and spiritual natures in becoming.
| 1
Kierkegaard says that language alone, of all media of expres
sion, is "absolutely spiritually qualified" to be "the proper
vehicle for the idea":
Language has its element in time, all the other media have
theirs in space. Only music takes place in time. But the
fact that it does take place in time is again a negation
of the sensuous. What the other arts produce suggests pre
cisely their sensuousness,, that it has its continuance in .
space.25 :
\
In being the vehicle for an idea, however, poetry must be ini
| 1
some measure intellectualized, with a consequent loss in im-;
mediacy. Browning's supremacy as an artist lies in his ;
j
2^Either/Or (Princeton, 1944), I, 55*
instinctive recognition of the fact that in poetry immediacy!
Lust be sacrificed; and in his creation of a higher, a re
flected, immediacy in his art form. Wordsworth tries to re
capture the lost immediacy of existential experience, but
though he succeeds admirably when his technique of recollec
tion works smoothly, this technique is not adapted to growth,
and the poet ultimately stifles. Shelley, as Keats perhaps
realized, is utterly deficient in immediacy of objective per
ception; he approaches the subjective immediacy of the musi
cian, but fails, except in The Cenci, to give his intuitions
firm, sensuous form. Browning, however, reconciles himself
to the loss of recollected immediacy in order to obtain a
new immediacy in the work of art. In both his philosophy
and his poetry, his mind works teleologically--in terms of
jfinal causes rather than in terms of intermediate agencies.
'It is his way," says Mrs. Browning, "to see things as pas
sionately as other people feel them."^
He was painfully aware of his inability to convey the
immediacy of his personal experience in poetry. He speaks
Lepreciatingly of his efforts in letters to Miss Barrett:
. . . if I speak (and, God knows, feel) as if what you
have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere 1
ability, it is from no absurd vanity, though it might seemj
so--these scenes and song-scraps are such mere and very j
* j
^ Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. E. G. Ken
yon (London. 1897VV I. 449................. .........
escapes of my inner power, which lives in me like the
light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have watched
! at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gal-
| lery, bright and alive, and only after a weary interval
leaps out, for a moment, from the one narrow chink, and
then goes on with the blind wall between it and you; and,
no doubt, then, precisely, does the poor drudge that car
ries the cresset set himself most busily to trim the wick
--for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard--
(this head of mine knows befter)--but the work has been in
side, and not when at stated times I held up my light to
you, (I, 17)
And again he remarks:
I think you like the operation of writing as I should like
that of painting or making music, do you not? After all,
there is a great delight in the heart of the thing; and
use and forethought have made me ready at all times to set
to work--but--I don't know why--my heart sinks whenever I
open the desk, and rises when I shut it. (I, 41.)
She replies:
Like to write? Of course, of course I do. I seem to live
while I write--it is life, for me. Why, what is to live?
Not to eat and drink and breathe,--but to feel the life in
you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyful
ly. And thus, one lives in composition surely--not always
--but when the wheel goes round and the procession is un
interrupted. (I, 44)
Browning admired her ability to lose herself in her work to
such a degree that poetic creation had the force of the most
Lntense immediate experience. In his humility, he failed to
realize that immediacy, to be presented in objective full
ness, must be diffracted through the lens of reflection, mus
undergo the double reflection of art, for the mind, without ]
this double reflection, operates as part of the immediate 1
and is unable to represent it faithfully. He places music
higher than poetry because of its immediacy of inspiration__
"C+
I
even though he recognizes the fact that this immediacy causes
i „ ;
it to be ephemeral. He quotes from Claude le Jeune that In |
| i
Music, the Beau Ideal changes every thirty years” (I, 539)•
| !
Believing, as he did, in a theory of evolution, he regards j
jbhis tendency toward obsolescence as a virtue, but this idea
blinds him to the true value of his own poetic creativity.
There may be here a discrepancy between theory and practice.
Browning's poetic practice is in accord with Kierkegaard's
ideas on music and language:
Music always expresses the immediate in its immediacy; it
is for this reason, too, that music shows itself first and
last in relation to language, but for this reason, also it
is clear that it is a misunderstanding to say that music is
a more perfect medium. Language involves reflection, and I
cannot, therefore, express the immediate. Reflection de- j
stroys the immediate, and hence it is impossible to express
the musical in language; but this apparent poverty of lan-j
guage is precisely its wealth. The immediate is really in-
i determinate, and therefore language cannot apprehend it;
but the fact that it is indeterminate is not its perfec
tion, but an imperfection. (Either/Or, I, 56)
In theory, however, at least in his early theory of the poet.
he gives priority to the immediacy of inspiration.
It will be remembered that he describes the poetic procj
ess as having its source in inspiration or in the recollec- \
!
bion of old inspirations: j
1
"Reflection” is exactly what it names itself--a representaj
tion, in scattered rays from every angle of incidence, of i
what first of all became present in a great light, a whole
one. (See above, p. 18)
I
He believes that the poetic process may result either from
Inspiration or from reflection, and regrets that his own____
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30- l
I
»
poetry belongs to the second type. But the reflection of ;
j^hich he speaks is itself grounded in inspiration. Miss Bar
rett clarifies this idea when she writes:
. . . still more wonderful than the first transient great
light you speak of, . . . and far beyond any work of re
flection, except in the pure analytical sense in which you
use the word, . . . appears that gathering of light on
light upon particular points, as you go (in composition)
step by step, till you get intimately near to things, and
see them in a fulness and clearness, and an intense trust
in the truth of them which you have not in any sunshine of
noon (called real!) but which you have then . . . and
struggle to communicate:--an ineffectual struggle with most
writers (oh, how ineffectual!) and when effectual, issuing
in the "Pippa Passes," and other master-pieces of the
world. (I, 99)
This remark on the "intense trust" in poetic intuition should
be compared with Browning’s statement that the creative proc-
I
ess "confirms itself as 'inspiration,1 nothing more nor less.'
Even Wordsworth does not freely accept poetic intuition as
justification for faith. "Its object," he says in defending
poetry as "the most philosophic of all writing, . . . is
l
truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative"
[Wordsworth: Representative Poems, p. 690). That is, he ap
peals to essence rather than to existence. But Miss Barrett
i
asks:
i
. . . is it not true that your inability to analyse the ;
mental process in question, is one of the proofs of the
fact of inspiration?--as the gods were known of old by not
being seen to move their feet,--coming and going in an
equal sweep of radiance. (I, 99) I
knd Heidegger says that "Poetry is the act of establishing j
I ' !
by the word and in the word" (Existence and Being, p. 30^-) *_J
31]
i
He maintains that it establishes the permanent, but the per
manent is not static or fixed. It is being, itself. Being
can not be comprehended through reason, which is no more than
a process of abstraction, but only through a Gestalt of the
whole personality. Reason is transcended in a poetic intui-
jtion which is an act of faith. Browning’s thought on poetic
conviction is close to Pascal's idea on the supremacy of
faith over reason:
Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not
the contrary of what they see. It Is above them and not
contrary to them.27
The faith of which Pascal speaks is not grounded in orthodoxy
but upon spiritual intuition. He paraphrases Augustine on
che submission of reason to faith:
Reason would never submit, if it did not judge that there
are some occasions on which it ought to submit. It is
then right for it to submit, when it judges that it ought
to submit. (Pensee 270)
In Christmas Eve and Easter Day Browning shows famili
arity with Pascal by remarking that
. . . the preacher is found no Pascal,
Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
Of making square to a finite eye
The circle of Infinity. (xxiij
He probably refers to Pascal's criticism of Montaigne as be
ing Ignorant of "squaring the circle, a greater world" j
27pensees and Provincial Letters (New York, 19^1), Pen
see 265.
(Pensee 63). He may or may not have known Pascal In his
formative period, but was acquainted with similar thought in
Greek drama. He tells Miss Barrett that long before knowing
her he looked at her translation of Prometheus "to see what
rendering a passage had received that was often in my
thoughts." This passage concerns
. . . proving the immortality of the soul apart from revel
ation, undying yearnings, restless longings, instinctive
desires which, unless to be eventually indulged, it were
cruel to plant in us. (I, 3*0.
And he writes to her:
. . . one thing I want to persuade you of, which is, that
all you gain by travel is the discovery that you have
gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your J
innate ideas--or not rightly in distrusting them, as the |
case may be. You get, too, a little . . perhaps a con- I
siderable, good, in finding the world's accepted moulds j
every where, into which you may run and fix your own fused :
metal,--but not a grain Troy-weight do you get of new goldj
silver, or brass. (I, 48-49)
Paracelsus expresses this same faith in subjectivity:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe:
There is an inmost centre in us all,.
Where truth abides in fulness; and around
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception--which is truth.
(I, 726-31)
This doctrine of reminiscence is, of course, Platonic, but
Browning sees in it a problem of faith which is not present >
I
in the Platonic dialogues and is to give rise to modern ex
istentialism. How can one believe in a truth which is sub- j
jective when all the criteria of reason are objective? The !
existentialist solution is that truth is measurable only in j
I i
experience; and Browning believes that subjective truth is
dormant until it is aroused by an appropriate situation. It
!
remains only essence until it is actualized in existence. I
!
I have said that Browning divides human existence into
l
three stages, which I have named the aesthetic, the ethical,
i
and the religious, a triadic system also found in the phi
losophy of Kierkegaard, whose discussion of this system
throws light upon its significance in Browning's poetry.
Kierkegaard thinks of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the re
ligious as both categories and stages. As categories, they 1
are present in each stage, but only one category is dominant.
In Either/Or, for example, he explains their operation in the
! !
aesthetic stage:
. . . when . . . I continue to use the expression "stage",
it must not be insisted upon as implying that each stage
existed independently, the one wholly separated from the
other. I might, perhaps, more pertinently have used the
word "metamorphosis." The different stages taken together
constitute the immediate stage, and from this we may per
ceive that the individual stages are rather a revelation ;
of a predicate, so that all the predicates rush down into j
the wealth of the last stage, since this is the real stage;
The other stages have no independent existence; they serve J
only as an introduction. (I, 59~6o) ;
I
He characterizes the first stage as desire which "possesses |
what will become its object, but . . . without having de- ;
Lired it" (I, 6l). Consequently it does not truly possess !
jits object:
1 The desire is quiet desire, the longing quiet longing, the
34 ‘ ]
ecstasy quiet ecstasy, wherein the object of desire is
dawning, and is so near that it is within the desire. (I,
6l).
The desire is without movement. In the second stage, the
ethical, "desire and its object are twins, neither of which
Is born a fraction of an instant before the other" (I, 64).
L
This desire aims at discoveries. The third stage is a syn
thesis of the first two. Desire now has its absolute object
in the individual. "If you remember that desire is present
in all three stages," says Kierkegaard, "then you can say
that in the first stage, desire is defined as dreaming, in
jthe second as seeking, in the third as desiring" (I, 65). To
exist fully, the individual must exist in the third stage,
jthe two preceding stages being only preliminary. Such was
I
Kierkegaard's theory, but in his life he was unable to make
the leap from the aesthetic subjective to the ethical objec
tive. Although believing that "desire and its object are
twins," he could not experience them as such. In other
I
words, he could not muster the faith to believe in the ob
ject of his desire.
1
Arland Ussher says that j
I
Kierkegaard's mistake lay in condemning the Aesthetic,
which alone can unite the subject with the object. In
this sense, he contrasted the "genius" (such as Socrates
was) with the Christian apostle, and saw the former as a
mere ironist. Having such a conception of art and phi
losophy, he remained, as philosopher and artist, no more
than an ironist himself.
But Browning does not make this error. In Sordello he de
fines his equivalent of the subjective poet almost in the
terms which Kierkegaard reserves for the ethical stage. The
class of poets in question
Proclaims each new revealment born a twin
With a distinctest consciousness within,
Referring still the quality, now first
Revealed, to their own soul. (I, 525~28)
Sordello's tragedy, like Kierkegaard's, results from his
failure to make a transition from the aesthetic to the ethi
cal stage, in spite of his determined desire to do so. In
fact, his failure stems from his determination. He trusts
in himself rather than in God. Browning subordinates subjec
tive truth to providence. The poet is not creative. He can
do no more than perceive the operation of divine creativity
in himself and in history, and the resources of his soul can
not potently unfold before history unfolds. He accepts his
tory with absolute faith, but this faith is absolute precise
ly because it is affirmed in spite -of doubt. Kierkegaard
points out that faith is not truly faith unless it exists
through relation to the absurd. I
i
I
The basic difference between Browning and Kierkegaard, j
I
so far as the theory of the poet is concerned, is that j
t
^®Journey Through Dread (New York, 1955)> P« 19*
• 3 6 I
Kierkegaard*s poet is only a spectator whereas Browning's !
poet is committed to ethical participation in life. This
participation, however, takes the form of faith, of accepting
bhe world as it is. To accept the world, the poet must firs'!
renounce the world. To make the motion of acceptance, he
must first make the motion of withdrawal, and these two mo
tions are clearly analyzed in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trem
bling. In this book Kierkegaard shows "how p-od tempted Abra-
1
ham, and how he endured temptation, kept the faith, and a
second time received again a son contrary to expectation."29
Abraham is described as a "knight of faith," of commitment,
as distinguished from a second spiritual type, "the knight
of infinite resignation," the knight of withdrawal or detachj
ment. One principal value of Fear and Trembling is that it ;
shows the difficulty in making the transition from withdrawal,
bo commitment, and this existential problem is the key to
Browning's development as a poet.
Denzil G. M. Patrick explains that the knight of infi-
j
t l 1
nite resignation is able and willing to surrender everything
finite for the sake of the infinite," whereas the knight of !
| I
faith "makes the 'double movement of infinity,' surrendering
the finite and accepting it again from God at every instant
i
of his life" (Pascal and Kierkegaard. II, 195)* Paradoxically
29(New York. 1954). p. 26.
37
the movement of faith has no existential value unless it is
made from the perspective of doubt, but if, after making the
movements of doubt, one is able to make those of faith, he
performs the marvelous.
Kierkegaard himself is to be equated with the knight of
Infinite resignation, whereas Browning, in my opinion, quali
fies as a true knight of faith, fulfilling the requirement of
making first the movement of the infinite and then the move
ment of the finite. The difference between the two authors
may be illustrated by their attitudes toward the women they
loved. Kierkegaard broke his engagement to Regina Olsen be
cause he did not have faith in his power to make her happy.
| I
In Fear and Trembling, Isaac is a symbol for Kierkegaard’s
sacrifice in renouncing Regina. But Browning married Eliza- :
beth Barrett in spite of every obstacle and in spite of her
own opinion that the marriage was absurd.
Kierkegaard does not identify the double reflection of a
work of art with the "double movement of infinity" which
| i
characterizes the knight of faith, for he restricts the j
Louble reflection of the artist to the aesthetic] whereas the
i i
I
double movement of the knight of faith is ethical, involvingj
| j
actual commitment. But in Browning’s theory the poet tran- j
Jscends the aesthetic, in fact renounces the aesthetic and
(triumphs over doubt in an act of poetic commitment. One ad
vantage in developing a theory of the poet rather than of ___
3B|
poetry is that so-called "pure poetry," or "poetry neat," as !
j
A. E. Housman terms it,3^ accounts only for certain types of
poetry. Most poetry, Housman admits, is read with composite
feeling, "for one constituent is supplied by the depth and
penetrating truth of the thought" (p. 89). Experiencing the
need of defining poetry as pure poetry, Kierkegaard writes:
Poetry deals with immediacy and cannot therefore think
an ambiguous situation. If for a single instant it is put
in doubt whether the lovers are solvent qua lovers, are ab
solutely ready within themselves for the union of love--a
single doubt of this sort, and with that poetry turns away
from the guilty one and says, "To me this is an indication
that thou dost not love, hence I cannot have any thing to
do with thee.''^1
He maintains that in poetry the tension of uncertainty is ad
missible between subject and object, but never within the I
! i
subjective itself. Regarding his own age as one of doubt, he
i i
i 1
thinks that it is incapable of true poetry: 1
That the age of poetry is past signifies essentially
that immediacy is no more. Immediacy is not entirely de- 1
void of reflection; as poetry conceives it, it has a rela-j
tive reflection by having its opposition outside itself. j
But only then is immediacy really at an end when the im
mediate infinity shall be grasped by an equally infinite
reflection. That very instant all tasks are transformed
and made dialectic in themselves; no immediacy is permittee,
to stand by itself or exposed merely to strife with another
power, but must strive with itself. (Stages on Life's Way, 1
P. 375)
He declares that "Faith is immediacy," but fails or is unable
3®"The Name and Nature of Poetry," in Brewster Ghiselin,
ed., The Creative Process (New York, 1955)> P» 87*
. j ^Stages on Life's Way (Princeton, 1940), p. 369. _______
■;o take the further step of admitting that poetry can follow !
wherever faith may lead, provided, as Wordsworth says, that
it "can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move
[its] wings" (Representative Poems, p. 692). His statement
! ' 1
that Poetry deals with immediacy and cannot think an ambigu
ous situation" implies that poetry is an act of faith, but he
believes that faith itself must go beyond immediacy:
Faith is immediacy, the immediate is not what one should
stop with, that is what they did in the Middle ages, but
since Hegel one goes further. (Stages on Life's Way, p.
271)
Browning, however, does take this further step, and so ad
vances poetry into the ethical. He becomes a knight of faith
because he drains with infinite resignation
. . . the cup of life's profound sadness, he knows the
bliss of the infinite, he senses the pain of renouncing
everything, the dearest things he possesses in the world,
and yet finiteness tastes to him just as good as to one
who never knew anything higher. (Fear and Trembling, p. 51)
What higher test of participation, of commitment, can life
offer than this ability of the poet to take delight "in
everything he sees, in the human swarm, in the new omnibuses,
in the sound of the water" (Fear and Trembling, p. 50)? j
j Browning learned from Shelley that man's glory is his j
weakness, his dependence upon a higher power. In his Essay j
on Christianity, Shelley writes:
We live and move and think; but we are not the creators
of our own origin and existence. We are not the arbiters
of every motion of our own complicated nature; we are not
the_masters_of_our__own.,imaginations_and_moods_of_mental __
---------- ---------------------------- : 2 4 . - 0"
being. There is a Power by which we are surrounded, like
the atmosphere in which some motionless lyre is suspended,
which visits with its breath our silent chords at will.
(Essays and Letters, p. 87)
But Browning believes that in one sense man is the arbiter of
I
his destiny. He is free to make the preliminary choice of
rejecting or accepting the Power which motivates the universe
If he elects to live and move and think for himself alone, if
l
he is insulated from love of other human beings and of God,
he can not hope for a full existence. If, however, he allows
God's Power to work through him, he becomes a puppet to di
vine will and participates in authentic being. In any abso
lute sense, truth is spiritual, subjective, but it is neces
sarily relative and imperfect in man's objective life. And
the function of the poet, for Browning as for Shelley, is to
bring man's objective life into correlation with subjective
truth. But whereas Shelley tries to reform the world, Brown
ing accepts the world as it is, realizing that it is a foil
for divine will and for man's subjectivity. Man's salvation
lies in subjective evolution, and, according to his view, the
poet provides the pattern, the impetus, for bringing man into
1
larmony with the divine dialectic of existence. !
CHAPTER II
PAULINE: FREEDOM AS CRISIS
DeVane describes Pauline as "Browning's autobiography to
his twentieth year, at once his Sartor Resartus and his Pre
lude ," observing that "he tells of his doubt and despair in
adolescence and his return to faith and health" (p. 44). The
extent to which this poem is autobiographical, however, is
far from clear, and it resembles Shelley's Alastor more than
the two books named by DeVane. Like Wordsworth, Shelley, anc,
Carlyle, Browning went through a period of anxiety and de
spair from which he was saved by faith in intuition. He dif
fers from Carlyle, however, by insisting on the need for per
sonal immortality and from Wordsworth by doubting the intui
tional power of the imagination. All four of the works we
are now considering--Sartor Resartus, The Prelude, Alastor,
and Pauline--are concerned with the problem of knowing truth,
but whereas Wordsworth and Carlyle solve this problem to
their own satisfaction, the one through British empiricism
and the other through German idealism, Shelley and Browning,
in Alastor and'Pauline. stress the perils in intuition rather
than its positive aspects. Accepting the idea that truth is
subjective, they point out the dangers which attend_________
. lf2r
subjectivity. Both poems contain autobiographical elements,
but the heroes should not be regarded as portraits of their
authors.
Newman Ivey White finds the "germ idea" of Alastor in
Shelley's letter of June 20, l8ll, to Elizabeth Kitchener, a
letter in which Shelley cautions "against too much introspec
tion" :
This is the tree [of] which it is dangerous to eat, but
which I have fed upon to satiety. . . . We look around us
. . . we find ourselves reasoning upon the mystery which
involves our being . . . we see virtue and vice . . . each
is separate, distinct . . . yet how racking it is to the
soul . . . to find that perfect virtue is very far from at
tainable, to find reason tainted by feeling, to see the I
mind when analysed exhibit a picture of irreconcileable in-j
consistencies, even when perhaps a moment before, it im
agined that it had grasped the fleeting Phantom of virtue.
In Alastor. Shelley probes into "the mystery which involves
I ,
our being," and shows the peril in striving for perfection.
Browning does the same in Pauline. Indeed, the thought of
i
jthe two poems is practically identical, with the difference
;hat the theme is presented allegorically by Shelley and
!
realistically by Browning. In the Preface to Alastor Shelley
states this theme as follows: "Those who love not their felj
low-beings live unfruitful lives and prepare for their old \
i |
age a miserable grave."2 And it should be noted that the j
1Quoted in Shelley (New York, 19^0), I, TOO.
O
The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley
(Boston. 1901). P. 88.
hero of Browning's poem pleads for Pauline's love, but she is
to receive in return "not love, but faith" (l. 43). Instead
I
i
of being a release from selfishness she is to be a screen to
protect it. The opening lines depict the hero as a nympho- :
lept rather than a true lover:
Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me--thy soft breast
Shall pant to mine--bend o'er me--thy sweet eyes,
And loosened hair and breathing lips, and arms
Drawing me to thee--these build up a screen
To shut me in with thee, and from all fear;
So that I might unlock the sleepless brook
Of fancies from my soul, their lurking place,
Nor doubt that each would pass, ne'er to return
To one so watched, so loved and so secured. (11. 1-9)
Like Alastor, Pauline has for hero a poet, and it is a
record of his formative experiences. Addressing Pauline, he
j . i
writes:
I
. . . thou said'st a perfect bard was one
j Who chronicled the stages of all life.
I And so thou bad'st me shadow this first stage.
(11. 883-85)
It will be observed that these lines, which fall at the end
t
of the poem, might more reasonably be expected at the begin
ning. But Browning did not complete the poem as planned. He
later wrote on the fourth page of Mill's copy:
The following Poem was written in pursuance of a foolish
plan which occupied me mightily for a time, and which had j
for its object the enabling me to assume & realize I know i
not how many different characters;--meanwhile the world was
never to guess that "Brown, Smith, Jones & Robinson" (as
the spelling books have it) the respective authors of this
poem, the other novel, such an opera, such a speech, etc.
were no other than one and the same individual. The pres
ent abortion was the first work of the Poet of the batch,
who wou1d have been more legitimately myself_than most of
w
the others; hut I surrounded him with all manner of (to my:
then notion) poetical accessories, and had planned quite a j
delightful life for him. (Quoted in DeVane, p. 4l) j
I
He had evidently planned a series of poems on successive !
i
i |
stages in the development of a poet, but suddenly changed his
plan. Though Pauline is labeled the first stage, the hero is
at the point of death at the end of the poem, and we may con-j
elude that Browning had given up his original project by the
time he published his poem.
Pauline is in the form of a confession, and its motiva
tion is almost psychoanalytic. The hero declares:
Ah dearest, whoso sucks a poisoned wound
Envenoms his own veins'. Thou art so good, ,
So calm--if thou shouldst wear a brow less light
Eor some wild thought which, but for me, were kept
From out thy soul as from a sacred star!
Yet till I have unlocked them it were vain
To hope to sing; some woe would light on me;
Nature would point at one whose quivering lip
Was bathed in her enchantments, whose brow burned
Beneath the crown to which her secrets knelt,
Who learned the spell which can call up the dead,
And then departed smiling like a fiend
Who has deceived God,--if such one should seek
Again her altars and stand robed and crowned
Amid the faithful I (11. 11-25)
The poet who has acquired knowledge for its own sake or for j
jthe advancement of selfish interests undergoes the danger of j
being divorced from spiritual values, and Pauline's lover
suffers from the guilt of Faustian knowledge. He realizes
jthat he can not hope for a return to a state of innocence:
J Sad confession first,
| Remorse and pardon and old claims renewed,
i ____ Ere_ I _c an be~~as„I_sha 11 _ b_e_no„more... (.11....25—2. 7 . )_______
4 5 _
The problem which Browning sets himself in Pauline is the re
lation of free will to the development of the poet, and he
finds a solution in his doctrine of weakness. With complete
freedom of choice, both in belief and in action, the hero of
the poem can obtain no bearings for charting a course. He
trusts all feelings equally, hears all sides, and makes no
decisions. With no strength in himself, he turns to God for
support and to Pauline for love. In this poem, however,
Browning does not take the further step of identifying love
with weakness as he does in the completed Saul. Like the he
ro of Sartor Resartus. Pauline's lover is in a state of cri
sis, but he has difficulty in distinguishing between intui
tion and selfishness:
I strip my mind bare, whose first elements
I shall unveil--not as they struggled forth
In infancy, nor as they now exist,
When I am grown above them and can rule them--
But in that middle stage when they were full
Yet ere I had disposed them to my will;
And then I shall show how these elements
Produced my present state, and what it is.
(11. 260-67)
The authors of Alastor and Pauline are less concerned with
extricating their heroes from a crisis than with determining
the causes for the crisis. At the time Browning wrote Paul
ine he had no definite solution for his problem, and he
found no satisfactory solution in Shelley.
Superficially the weakness of Pauline's lover results
from the inexorable dialectic, of selfishness, but as in the_
jiero of Alastor, this weakness is ambiguous. It results from
selfishness, but it also results from existential need. So {
j i
long as an individual is poised between subjective and objec
tive interests, he is safe from despair, but if he withdraws
into subjectivity and makes himself the center of his being,
he experiences desolation. "0 Pauline," exclaims the poem's
hero,
I am ruined who believed
That though my soul had floated from its sphere
Of Wild dominion into the dim orb
Of self--that it was strong and free as ever I
(11. 89-92)
In his withdrawal into subjectivity he is saved from complete
disaster by his imagination:
. . . of my powers, one springs up to save
From utter death a soul with such desire
Confined to clay--of powers the only one ;
Which marks me--an imagination which
Has been a very angel, coming not
In fitful visions but beside me ever
And never failing me. (ll« 281-87)
But he declares that he would not have ventured to hope
Had not the glow I felt at His [Shelley's] award, !
Assured me all was not extinct within. (11. 142-43) j
He hails Shelley as "sun-treader," sun being here, as in
Paracelsus (V, 631), symbolic of subjective intuition, but he
j J
considers himself too immersed in selfishness to participate !
| !
in Shelley's power:
Remember me who flung
All honour from my soul, yet paused and said
"There is one spark of love remaining yet,
1 _____ F-or_I_hav.e_nought_in_common_wi.th_him,—shapes___________
. , -4 7 _
Which followed him avoid me, and foul forms
I Seek me, which ne’er could fasten on his mind; i
.And though I feel how low I am to him,
Yet I aim not even to catch a tone !
Of harmonies he called profusely up; '
So, one gleam still remains, although the last,"
(11. 209-18)
He is trapped in the aesthetic level of existence and strives
Yutilely to advance to the ethical level. Mere desire is not
enough, for such desire is mere dreaming. "0 God!" he ex
claims ,
where do they tend--these struggling aims?
What would I have? what is this "sleep" which seems
To bound all? can there be a "waking" point
Of crowning life? (11- 811-14)
Pauline does not set forth a doctrine of affirmation, as
----------------------- > j
do Sartor Resartus and The Prelude, a doctrine In which manTs
j - " ■ 1 — —---- - ...- * j
place in the universe is assured. In Pauline affirmation j
rests upon risk and courage rather than upon a system of be-
I
jLief. In the concluding lines, lines which anticipate the
thought and phrasing of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,
jthe hero declares, "I seem dying, as one going in the dark/
To fight a giant." But in spite of this courageous attitude.
| i
the hero does not experience joy in life, even though he be-i
I 1
lieves such joy essential to fullness of being. A strange
ambivalence is discernible in the following lines:
Up for the glowing day, leave the old woods!
See, they part like a ruined arch: the sky!
Nothing but sky appears, so close the roots
And grass of the hill-top level with the air--
Blue sunny air, where a great cloud floats laden
With light , like a dead whale that white birds pick,. ___
Floating away In the sun in some north sea.
Air, air, fresh life-blood, thin and searching air,
The clear, dear breath of God that loveth us,
Where small birds reel and winds take their delight I
| (11. 781-90)
1
Stopford Brooke remarks:
The last three lines are excellent, but nothing could be
worse than the sensational image of the dead whale. It
does not fit the thing he desires to illustrate, and it vi
olates the sentiment of the scene he is describing, but its
strangeness pleased his imagination, and he put'it in with-f
out question.3
The dead whale, however, is symbolic of the despair which ex
!
Ists even in joy, a despair which is not transcended in Paul
ine and which Browning accepts as one of the pivots of his
philosophy, a despair which gives meaning to faith.
Pauline's lover finds hope in nature, but the promise of
nature does not suffice for a human being, since man's type j
of existence is different from nature's. He turns then to
subjective experience, but finds this a dead gulf. Overcome
Dy hysteria, he dreams that he is himself the fate from whicil
he flees (11. 98-97)- Terrified by the abyss of the self, he
declares:
I’ll look within no more.
I have too trusted my own lawless wants,
Too trusted my vain self, vague intuition--
Draining soul's wine alone in the still night,
And seeing how, as gathering films arose,
As by an inspiration life seemed bare
And grinning in its vanity, while ends
Foul to be dreamed of, smiled at me as fixed
j.The._P.o.e-try_o.f_Ro.bert_Br.O-wnlng_(-New_Y.ork.,-_ 1.9-0.2) - . - _ p . . _96_._
And fair., while others changed from fair to foul
As a young witch turns an old hag at night.
(11. 937-46)
He is terrified by a relativism in which the self is the sole
authority. Having reduced human existence to the cogito, he
l i
is appalled by the responsibility of determining ethical val*|
i
ues.
The witch symbol is used in Pauline to indicate the de
ceit and treachery which may lurk in subjectivity. The hero
compares himself with a young witch whose beauty seduces and
iegrades a god:
. . . then I was a young witch* whose blue eyes*
As she stood naked by the river springs*
Drew down a god--I watched his radiant form
Growing less radiant--and it gladdened me;
Till one morn, as he sat in the sunshine
Upon my knees, singing to me of heaven,
He turned to look at me* ere I could lose !
The grin with which I viewed his perishing:
And he shrieked and departed and sat long
By his deserted throne* but sunk at last*
Murmuring* as I kissed his lips and curled
Around him* "I am still a god--to thee." (11. 112-23]
And again he says:
I well knew my weak resolves*
I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep
Over its treasure, as one half afraid
To make his riches definite. (11. 996-99)
The negative factors in subjectivity are projected upon the \
witch symbol; the positive factors, as I shall presently
i
show* are projected upon Andromeda. The psychic conflict in
the hero’s personality is in this way dramatized in female
symbols.;—and-I—would-sugges.t—that—these--symbol s-~ar.e--anima--
figures. The term anima is used in Carl Jung's The Integra-i
i
tion of the Personality. After pointing out that feminine
traits are found in men and masculine traits in women, Jung
says:
Should you study this world-wide experience with due atten
tion, and regard the "other-side" as a trait of character,
you will produce a picture that shows what I mean hy the \
anima, the woman in a man, and the animus, the man in a i
woman. By putting together all the cases in which a man ;
has reacted to the influence of a mood (which is an emotion
or affect without sufficient cause), you can build-up a
definite personality.'4'
This personality of the anima (or animus), according to Jung,
manifests itself In various projections:
For the child the anima lurks in the supremacy of the moth
er, which sometimes leaves a sentimental attachment through
the whole life and seriously impairs the masculine develop-y
ment. To the primitive and to the man of the classical |
age, the anima appears as a goddess or demonic woman; while
for mediaeval man, mother church has a place beside the
Queen of Heaven and the witch. (p. 79)
Betty Miller has emphasized the significance of Browning's
attachment to his mother, observing:
He loved his mother so much, he was once heard to say,
"that even as a grown man he could not sit by her otherwise
than with an arm round her waist". As a grown man, he !
would not go to bed without receiving from her the good
night kiss of his childhood: delayed in town, whatever the!
hour of his return, he went at once to her bedroom in order
to seek it. Even at night, the separation between mother
and son was only partial. "My room", wrote Browning, "is
| The Integration of the Personality, p. 19- Note that !
Stewart Walker Holmes discusses resemblances between Browning
and Jung In "Browning's Sordello and Jung: Browning's Sordel-
lo in the Light of Jung's Theory of Types," PMLA, 56:758-96,'
September 1941._________ __________________________ _____________
• 5x
next to hers and the door is left ajar." Physiologically*
too* the intimacy between them was a remarkably close one.
So finely did the rhythms of their lives intertwine* that
no sooner was the mother indisposed than the son* too* suf
fered: as promptly, when the mother recovered* the son, in
turn, regained his health.5
And she says: |
f
The ideals of Shelley and those of Sarah Anna Browning
could not continue to exist under the same roof: the moment
had come in which he [Browning] must either deny his "wild
dreams of beauty and of good", or irreparably wound and
alienate his mother, "the one being", we are told* "whom he
entirely loved". (p. 11)
The attachment of Browning for his mother may well have di
rected the "other side" of his nature toward anima imagos*
particularly as this attachment was counter to his enthusiasm
Lor Shelley. Pauline herself may be considered an imago
closely linked with the mother image.
Jung stresses "the relation with the anima" as "a test
cf courage and--more than that--a test by fire of all of
man’s spiritual forces" (pp. 78-79). The anima* he says*
is a chaotic life-urge* to be sure* but something strange
ly meaningful also clings to it--something like secret
knowledge or hidden wisdom, in most curious contrast to its
irrational* elfin nature. (p. 80) |
"This aspect," he adds, "appears only to him who seriously
comes to terms with the anima." A psychic conflict may,
therefore* be dramatized in anima symbolism* and I believe
that such a conflict is so dramatized in Pauline. The young
^Robert Browning: A Portrait (New York* 1953)# PP- 1^~
1 ^ __________________________________________________________________________
witch represents subconscious disapproval of the hero's high j
aims, and it is interesting to note than in a later poem, j
j t
Paracelsus, Browning's sympathies are with the witch (V, 1924
205). In contrast to the young witch, however, Andromeda is
pictured as a symbol for hope and faith. The transition from
despair and loathing of self to steadfast hope is found in
;hese lines:
I begin to know what thing hate is--
To sicken and to quiver and grow white--
And I myself have furnished its first prey.
Hate of the weak and ever-wavering will,
The selfishness, the still-decaying frame . . .
But I must never grieve whom wing can waft
Par from such thoughts--as now. Andromeda!
And she is with me: years roll, I shall change,
But change can touch her not--so beautiful 1
With her fixed eyes, earnest and still, and hair I
Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze, j
And one red beam, all the storm leaves in heaven, j
j Resting upon her eyes and hair, such hair,
j As she awaits the snake on the wet beach
By the dark rock and the white wave just breaking
At her feet; quite naked and alone; a thing
I doubt not, nor fear for, secure some god
To save will come in thunder from the stars.
(11. 650-63)|
BeVane sees Andromeda as a symbol for the tension between j
faith and doubt in Browning's Parlevings with Certain People I
but he fails to see this same symbolism in the Andromeda of
Pauline. He says that "the step from science to theology" j
Ln the parleying "With Francis Furini" j
1
was an easy one for Browning, and it was made easier by I
the fact that Furini had painted a picture upon the sub
ject of Andromeda. Here was another example of the femi
nine nude, but more importantly, here was the symbol of
Browning's faith. One remembers from Pauline (11. 656-67)
----------------------------- 53n
the magnificent apostrophe to Andromeda. . . . The idea be4
came the major theme of Browning's poetry and life; it ap- .
pears notably in Count Gismond and The Ring and the Book,
and elsewhere; it led him to the rescue of Miss Barrett
from Wimpole Street. In the Parleying the symbol is used
in a different manner, for now Browning and his faith are
in the position of Andromeda, and the waste waters of
doubt and the blackness of ignorance shut them in on every
side, and Browning awaits the deliverer. In this brilliant
simile, then, does the poet once more assert his religious
position in 1887. (p. 515)
The symbol of Andromeda, however, I believe, is used with
precisely the same significance in Pauline as in the Parley
ing, if doubt and skepticism may be equated with the scien
tific attitude.
Frederick A. Pottle thinks that Browning's witch imagery
was influenced by Shelley, remarking that "no other poet |
6 !
. . . habitually imaged a witch as young and beautiful.'
But Browning condemns his witch in Pauline as a symbol for
selfishness and hedonism; whereas Shelley Idealizes his witch
of Atlas as a symbol for intellectual beauty. The conflict
| 1
in Shelley's poetry between good and evil shifts for Browning
to a conflict between a point of view which is centered in
the self and one which Is centered in an "out-soul," to use a
1
I
jterm from Sordello. To believe in something beyond the pe- j
riphery of self is an act of faith, but for Browning such
faith must be entirely divorced from self-interest. Browning
I ^Shelley and Browning: A Myth and Some Facts (Chicago,
1923), p. 46.
koes not attack institutionalized Christianity as do Shelley j
and Kierkegaard, but such an attack is implicit in his thinkj
ing. Religion which can not survive the dialectic of both I
j i
mind and heart is not, for Browning, true religion. He be- j
I 1
I
lieves in a dialectic of existence which can not be super- j
seded by tradition or dogma, and his problem as a poet is how
bo bring poetry into line with such a dialectic. The first
step in solving this problem is to transcend the self, and
Pauline is concerned with this first step. But Browning sees
j/ery clearly that in transcending the self one may also tran
scend the aesthetic, and he is keenly aware of the danger in
asceticism. Kierkegaard, as we have seen in the previous
chapter, feels the need to transcend poetry itself, since he
regards it as aesthetic in nature. Browning, however, fol- j
lows Shelley in believing that the poetic principle is essen-
l
jtial to the evolution of spiritual man, and agrees with
Wordsworth in the opinion that Nature does not betray the
aeart that loves her. He believes that we can know exist- ,
i
ence fully only through intuition which is correlated with an
objective equivalent, intuition which is a manifestation of
the whole man. This type of intuition is available to any
luman being, but it is specialized, according to Wordsworth,'
Shelley, and Browning, in the poet. In The Last Ride To
gether , a poem written between 1846 and 1855> if 1 may refer
i
,to a somewhat later poem, Browning writes:_______________ _____
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55H
What does it all mean, poet? Well, j
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
I What we felt only; you expressed I
You hold things beautiful the best, j
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay ' t is much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you--poor, sick, old ere your time--
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.
(11. 67-77)
It will be observed that the hero of this poem is a knight of
faith who relinquishes self, who sacrifices all that he holds
dear in complete faith that it will ultimately be restored to
him. This transcendence over self, however, is possible onljr
in action and can not be achieved abstractly. The "baffled j
hope" of Pauline's lover "Seeks out abstractions" (11. 607-
608). His difficulty is precisely that he can not find an
'atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings"--not on
ly in poetry, but also in life. Browning's quest in Pauline,
Paracelsus, and Sordello is for such an atmosphere.
The heart of Browning's theory of the poet, as of his
philosophy, is the problem of the self. This problem was not
acute for either Shelley or Elizabeth Barrett, for they were'
not self-centered. Byron said of Shelley after his death
jthat he was "the best and least selfish man I ever knew. "7
Browning, however, like the hero of Pauline was j
■ 7
Quoted in Newman Ivey White, Portrait of Shelley (New
York, 1945). P. 466.___________________________________________
; ---------------------------------------------
made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear Idea of consciousness ;
Of self, distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers.
[ll. 268-71)
He wrote to Elizabeth Barrett of his "faculty of self-con
sciousness" (see above, p. 4), and it is this faculty which
makes him at the same time a supreme analyst of personality
and a poet distrustful of his own motivation. Pauline’s lov-
| l
er tells how he first learned to turn his mind against itself
(11. 347-48):
As peace returned, I sought out some pursuitj
And song rose, no new impulse but the one
With which all others best could be combined.
My life has not been that of those whose heaven
Was lampless save where poesy shone out;
. But as a clime where glittering mountain-tops
And glancing sea and forests steeped in light
Give back reflected the far-flashing sun;
For music (which is earnest of a heaven,
Seeing we know emotions strange by it,
Not else to be revealed,) is like a voice,
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend,
To the green woods in the gay summer time:
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes
Which have made painters pale, and they go on
Till stars look at them and winds call to them
As they leave life's path for the twilight world
Where the dead gather. This was not at first.
For I scarce knew what I would do. I had :
| An impulse but no yearning--only sang. ;
i
And first I sang as I in dream have seen j
Music wait on a lyrist for some thought, I
Yet singing to herself until it came. (11. 357“79)
ie then sought to know what "Other minds achieved" (1. 384),
and discovered Shelley. But when he became disillusioned by
Shelley's ideas of reform, he could find no other vehicle for
' 57’
will. He could not return to the spontaneous singing which
had satisfied him while he was content to be in the orb of
|
self, a time when
I ne'er sung
But as one entering bright halls where all
Will rise and shout for him. (11. 77~79)
This preoccupation with self, so characteristic of Browning's
| I
thought, brings him within the existentialist orbit. "The
sxistentialist thesis," says Kurt Reinhardt, "asserts that
authentic existence can only be realized in and by the soli-
Q
tary individual." This authentic existence of the individu
al, however, is revealed through anguish and dread. "There
is only one suffering," says Gabriel Marcel: "to be alone" j
(quoted in Reinhardt, p. 203). And Kierkegaard writes:
The whole of existence frightens me, from the tiniest fly
to the mystery of the Incarnation. Existence is inexplica
ble to me in its totality, and the most inexplicable thing
of all is my own existence. (Quoted in Reinhardt, p. 27)
The only escape from this terror of existence is through com
munication with "others," and Browning was fortunate in being
l '
able to "communicate" with his mother and Miss Barrett. He j
cad difficulty, however, in determining the orientation of
the individual in society. How does the individual who is
faithful to the dialectic of existence adjust himself to a
Lociety that is governed by what Sartre calls bad faith--
®The Existentialist Revolt (Milwaukee, 1952), p. 236.
| " - 58"
mauvaise fol?
1
i Pauline. Paracelsus, and Sordello, Browning strives
!
to answer this question, and in each of these poems the hero
<
dies in a vain effort to transcend the self. In Pauline the i
I
hero can discover only this wisdom:
The soul would never rule:
It would be first in all things, it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled, but, that complete,
Commanding, for commanding, sickens it.
The last point I can trace is--rest beneath
Some better essence than itself, in weakness.
(11. 814-19)
In Paracelsus the hero risks all on intuition. And in Sor
dello the hero tries to force his will upon society, unaware
Of the irony in choosing the Guelf cause when his destiny
properly lay with the Ghibellines.
In perceiving that skepticism results in divided con-
i
sciousness, Browning shows affinities with Hegel:
In Scepti-cism Consciousness learns in truth, that it is di
vided against itself. And from this experience there is
born a new Type of Consciousness, wherein are linked the
two thoughts which Scepticism had kept asunder. The
thoughtless self-ignorance of Scepticism must pass away;
for in fact the two attitudes of Scepticism express One
Consciousness. This new Type of Consciousness is therefore
explicitly aware of its own doubleness. It regards itself
on the one hand as the Deliverer, changeless and self-pos
sessed; on the other hand it regards itself as the abso
lutely confounded and contrary; and it is the awareness of
this its own contradiction.°
But whereas Hegel reconciles these aspects of consciousness
^Hegel: Selections, ed. J. Loewenberg (New York, 1929),
JP. 7 9 - 8 0 . _______________________________ ____________
in "a dynamic and histrionic being dramatically impersonating
and ironically dissolving all possible views of reality” (p. |
xxxi), Browning, like Pascal and Kierkegaard, is convinced !
I <
I I
that ironic disparity can be transcended only by a leap of
faith. Loewenberg sees Hegel's system as a "philosophical
comedy" in which mind itself is the comic dramatis persona:
Mind itself in all its human manifestations, is an over
weening and unregenerate particular. Every mode of human
experience is deluded by its own partial vision, mistaking
for absolute what is but relative, and drawing everything
from its illusory perspective. The disproportionate exces
ses of the human mind are thus sadly in need of correction.
How? Hegel's own answer in terms of his idealism is itself
a comic instance; the dialectical method renders it absurdJ
The perspective of human experience, so he maintains, can
only be corrected by rising above it to an absolute or su
per-human experience with which it is continuous. The Phe
nomenology (the English translator of this work remarks ini
his preface) "enables us to determine the position of Abso-j
lute Truth, and the parallax of the Absolute can only be j
found if we take as our base-line the diameter of the orbit
of human experience." (pp. xxxvi-xxxvii)
Hegel is Kierkegaard's especial b£te noire, and the Danish
philosopher scoffs at the idea that the "system" corrects ab-|
surdity by rising above the level of individual existence. j
Browning likewise is loath to cancel out the individual in an
✓
absolute. He differs from Kierkegaard in putting human ex
istence upon two levels, the individual and the collective, |
! i
moving in Sordello toward the position that the collective
level is ethical since it is determined by the typically hu
man. Kierkegaard thinks of the aesthetic and the ethical as
stages in individual consciousness, and therefore has
difficulty in making a transition from the aesthetic to the
ethical. The self-centered and the ethical are mutually ex
clusive. Browning, however, like Marcel, believes that man
i
is historically conditioned and forms an integral part of a
group. Man exists both as an individual and as a social be-
| !
ing, and can find happiness only when these two existences
are in equilibrium. In Pauline there is no genuine commit
ment to either level; in Paracelsus commitment is purely in-
Lividual; and in Sordello it is purely social. Unless the
Individual is able to commit his whole personality to action,
,
to "engagement," if I may use an existentialist term, his ex--
istence, his participation in truth, is only partial.
In "The Ring and the Book: A Relativist Poem" Robert
Langbaum has endeavored to show in closely reasoned argument
that "The Ring and the Book derives its meaning from the relj
i
ativist ethos predominant in Western Culture since the En
lightenment."10 I suggest, however, that Browning presents
L critique of relativism rather than a relativist philosophy,
I :
l"Truth's ultimate source," says Langbaum, "is in the individ-r
j
ual mind" (p. 149). But it is the function of Browning's po
et to transcend the relativism of human reason and to bring
man into harmony with God's absolute wisdom. In aiding Pom-;
'pilia, Caponsacchi follows his instinct blindly, but the ;
»
10PMLA, 71:131, March 1956.__________ _
Pope declares that he Is blind ,
i I
. . . as a man would be Inside the sun, ;
Delirious with the plenitude of light ■
Should interfuse him to the finger-ends.
(X, 1562-64;
The sun Is here symbolic of subjective intuition just as it
i
is in Pauline and Paracelsus. So long as the individual is
i
confined within the orb of self he is bound by relativist
t
considerations, but let him break forth from this orb and he
will be bathed in the light of truth.
In Pauline, Browning has taken only the first step in
his philosophical development. He has established the prin
ciple of subjectivity, an idea which found confirmation in !
| t
Shelley's poetry. This principle, however, for Browning
jtakes the form of the divided self, and so brings him within
the circle of the existentialists. The one trait common to
all existentialists is this split in personality. Kierke-
i i
gaard discerns it in Socrates. Augustine is cited by William
I !
dames as a typical case of "discordant personality": ;
You all remember his half-pagan, half-Christian bringing up
at Carthage, his emigration to Rome and Milan, his adoption
of Manicheism and subsequent skepticism, and his restless
search for truth and purity of life; and finally how, dis
tracted by the struggle between the two souls in his breast
! and ashamed of his own weakness of will, . . . he heard a ;
voice in the garden say, "Sume, lege" (take and read), and;
opening the Bible at random, saw the text, "not in chamber
ing and wantonness," etc., which seemed directly sent to
his address, and laid the inner storm forever.ll I
1]~The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, n.d.) _ .
: 621
j
And the divided consciousness is present in Pascal, Kierke- i
| i
gaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Sartre. It
Loes not in itself make one an existentialist, but it is a
malady of the soul with which existentialism is concerned.
Pauline is written ostensibly by a poet who insists that
he has lost the power to write poetry. It is no more, Brown-
i
ing pretends, than a last feeble effort evoked by Pauline's
wishes:
Autumn has come--like Spring returned to us,
Won from her girlishness--like one returned
A friend that was a lover--nor forgets
The first warm love, but full of sober thoughts
Of fading years; . . .
I must not think, lest this new impulse die
In which I trust; I have no confidence:
So, I will sing on fast as fancies come;
Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints.
(11. 230-34, 256-59)
These lines in which spring has faded to autumn and love has
changed to friendship indicate that Browning in 1833 dis
trusted both emotion and intellect. Pauline's lover real
izes that abandoning himself to emotion is decadent--he
thinks that he was "Created by some power whose reign is
1
done" (1. 250). But he can discover no transition from the
subjective to the objective realm. He feels that he has "no
part in God or his bright world" (l. 251). He is completely
Jfree to choose his own destiny, but his freedom is a burden
p„._l68_.
to him. It is the freedom of hunted men who do not belong, ;
who steal to their mountain watch. The "new impulse" which !
flickers in Pauline is inspired by Shelley's confidence in
j
intuition, but Browning is unable at this time to convert it
i
into action.
CHAPTER III
i
PARACELSUS; A STUDY IN ROMANTIC IRONY
The need for understanding Browning's philosophy, if his
I
Doetry is to be properly understood, can not be overempha-
I
sized. In 1889 he wrote to Professor William Knight:
I am delighted to hear that there is a likelihood of your
establishing yourself in Glasgow, and illustrating Litera
ture as happily as you have expounded Philosophy at St.
Andrews. It is certainly the right order of things: Phi
losophy first, and Poetry, which is its highest outcome,
afterward--and much harm has been done by reversing the
natural process. i
Browning himself carries out this idea in Paracelsus and Sorj
dello. In the former poem he orients man in the universe,
and in the latter he analyzes the psychological development
of a poet. These poems set the pattern for the constellation
Lf his poetry, in which his best shorter poems shine with
gem-like brilliance. I have pointed out earlier a certain
ambivalence in his attitude toward his poetry: an emotional!
yearning for the aesthetic and an intellectual demand for the
jethical. This split In his personality shows itself in di
verse characters in Paracelsus and in the divided nature of j
•'■Quoted in Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of
Robert Browning (Boston, 1891), II, 594.
| 6' 5 " 1
jthe man Sordello. In a sense, Browning uses philosophy to
chasten romanticism and romanticism to motivate philosophy,
always from an ironic, a detached, point of view, a point of
| i
view which is characteristic of "romantic irony."
"Romantic irony" is a chameleon term which has had dif
ferent shades of meaning for different writers. For Irving
Babbitt it is no more than "self-parody" as in "a writer like
Heine, who is at once intensely sentimental and keenly Intel-
I g
lectual." Pauline’s lover could be called a romantic iron
ist in this sense of the word, for he is extremely critical,
even objective, in analyzing the flaws of his subjectivity, j
But for Friedrich Schlegel, who originated the term, it sig-j
nifies I
i
that objectivity in a romantic work of literary art which ■
nevertheless shows forth plainly the literary creator in
all his artistic power, glory, wisdom, and love toward his
creation.3
Schlegel sees in this paradoxical objectivity of the ideal
romantic author a higher type of objectivity than that found
| i
in classical literature, a type of creativity which resembles
that of God. Lussky explains:
While puzzling over the immanence and transcendence of
Shakespeare in his poetical creations, Schlegel could not !
have failed to recall to mind another very striking i
I
f
2The New Laokotin (Boston, 1910), p. 82.
^Alfred Edwin Lussky, Tieck's Romantic Irony (Chapel
Hill, North Carolina, 1932), p. 81. j
66
j instance of immanence and transcendence taught him in his
j early youth, namely, the immanence and transcendence of Goc.
; in his relation to the universe. God, according to the old
orthodoxy in which Friedrich Schlegel1s father had been J
steeped, is both immanent and transcendent in the works of i
creation. . . . Now by applying this doctrine of theology, |
with which he was doubtlessly well acquainted, to his spe-
i cific literary inquiry, Schlegel found a ready solution to
his problem. (pp. 68-69)
Romantic irony, therefore, is not just a literary theo-
«
ry; it has religious and philosophic implications. It under
lies Calvin's theory of the "elect," for though "chosen," the
'elect" have no knowledge of their good fortune. Believing
chat man can have no freedom of will except to err, Calvin
chinks that salvation is possible only through weakness:
. . . it is necessary that all the weapons of impiety
should be broken in pieces and consumed, that you may re
main unarmed, and have no help in yourself. The greater
your weakness is in yourself, so much the more the Lord as
sists you. ' j
I
But Browning maintains that it is ironical for God, who is
pure Intelligence, to thwart, to hem in the intelligence of j
1 1
man. Paracelsus declares: 1
GodI Thou art Mind I Unto the Master-Mind |
Mind should be precious. Spare my mind alone 1 j
All else I will endure; if, as I stand !
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down, j
I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career remain
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the wind
In these bright chambers level with the air, ;
i See thou to it'. But If my spirit fail,
Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. John Allen
(7th ed., Philadelphia, n.d.), I, 291. j
J My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
i Hast thou done well by me? So do not thou I
i Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed I
Hold me before the frequence of thy seraphs
And say--"l crushed him, lest he should disturb
My law. Men must not know their strength: behold,
Weak and alone, how he had raised himself."
(II, 229-45)
He complains that God sends "Vast longings to direct us" (I,
197) and then fails to indicate how these longings are to be
fulfilled. In reply to advice that he stifle these longings,'
he remarks ironically,
the sovereign proof
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.
(I, 186-88)
1
t
Faith in God is empty unless it is submitted to action, but
In espousing a tyrant aim he finds that "all life has been
I
forgotten" (II, 150)* He sickens
. . . on a dead gulf streaked with light
From its own putrefying depths alone. (II, 175~78)
Like Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, Paracelsus
3 - n<3 Sordello are quest poems, and their quests, like that of
I
Childe Roland, are doomed to failure. Their dark towers are
• i
the towers of subjectivity. Their heroes forego the material
I
perfection that is possible in nature for the challenge of |
the infinite, of spiritual evolution, because the imperfec- j
tion of man raises him above the animals. Spiritual evolu- j
1
tion begins after the cycle of material evolution has been !
completed, and man’s spiritual imperfection augurs an ensuing
. . - : — 68q
movement toward perfection. Browning equates spirit with
subjectivity, maintaining that truth is essentially subjec
tive. That is, the germ, the Platonic idea of truth, resides,
in the soul, and is only activated by circumstance. Truth is
absolute, but the degree to which it can be realized in a
particular situation is relative. The subjective infinite or
absolute, then, must be harmonized with objective circum
stance if personality is to function effectively.
Paracelsus begins his quest into the subjective, into
the resources of intuition, in Part One. He says to Festus,
his cautious friend,
. . . from childhood I have been possessed
By a fire--by a true fire, or faint or fierce, t
As from without some master, so it seemed,
Repressed or urged its current. (I, 425-28)
Neglectful of objective relationship, he considers his intui
tion of subjective truth to be proof of election:
What fairer seal
Shall I require to my authentic mission
Than this fierce energy?--this instinct striving
Because its nature is to strive? (I, 333~36)
But in Part Two he has emptied youth of all its gifts, and
in Part Three, he admits:
God’s intimations rather fail
In clearness than in energy: ’t were well
Did they but indicate the course to take
Like that to be forsaken. I would fain
Be spared a further sample. (Ill, 599-603)
In Part Four, Festus accuses his friend of being self-cen-
tered:___________________________________________ _____
! ------ 6 9 1
I do believe, what you call trust j
Was self-delusion at the best: for, seel
So long as God would kindly pioneer
A path for you, and screen you from the world,
Procure you full exemption from man’s lot,
Man’s common hopes and fears, on the mere pretext
Of your engagement in his service--yield you
A limitless license, make you God, in fact, j
And turn your slave--you were content to say 1
Most courtly praises! What is it, at last,
But selfishness without example? None
Could trace God’s will so plain as you, while yours
Remained implied in it; but now you fail,
And we, who prate about that will, are fools!
In short, God's service is established here
As he determines fit, and not your way,
And this you cannot brook. Such discontent
Is weak. Renounce all creatureship at once!
Affirm an absolute right to have and use
Your energies; as though the rivers should say--
"We rush to the ocean; what have we to do
With feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales,
Sleeping in lazy pools?" Set up that plea,
That will be bold'at least. (IV, 564-87)
In Part Five, however, Paracelsus, mortally wounded by assas-
1
sins, challenges God to show that he has done wrong in dar
ing! "
Truly there needs another life to come!
If this be all . . .
And other life await us not--for one,
I say 't is a poor cheat, a stupid bungle, j
A wretched failure. I, for one, protest j
Against it, and I hurl it back with scorn. !
(V, 274-79)
The lot of the subjectively existing individual in this mate4
rial world is ironic, but this very irony is cause for hope,
even though this hope rests purely in a leap of faith. Likej
Pascal, Browning rests his faith in Christ upon the horror of
alternatives rather than upon Christian doctrine.
Published in 1835* Paracelsus may have been influenced I
| I
by Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. which appeared serially in
Fraser's in 1833-34. The idea of the God-possessed man pro-j
vides the theme for both works, and the fact that Paracelsus !
!
<
contains the Vergilian phrase Sic itur ad astra (IV, l),
which appears also in Sartor Resartus.^ may not be coinci
dence. ' The resemblance, however, between Paracelsus's faith
in his "authentic mission" (I, 333) * "God's great commission1 '
[I, 143), and Calvin's belief in "a legitimate commission
from God" (Institutes, II, 803) suggests that Browning was
consciously exploring Calvinistic doctrine. A similar con
cept also underlies Carlyle's theory of the hero, for Car
lyle asserts that "The great man, with his free force direct j
i
|
out of God's own hand, is the lightning" that shall kindle
1
jthese languid times. But Carlyle solves the problem of free
will in terms of Fichte's dynamic philosophy, in which the
finite ego is a manifestation of the Absolute Ego; whereas
Browning insists upon the autonomy of the individual will,
his position being similar to Milton's.
The pivot of Sartor Resartus. as of Paracelsus, is "its
writer's search for faith: the point of earth round which i
i
j
}
^Ed. Charles Frederick Harrold (New York, 1937)* P- 291-
! f s
j On Heroes. Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History
(Boston, 19071, P. 17.
I i
jfche chapters revolve, like a starry zodiac.But Carlyle
makes an assumption regarding the human will that Is not to
be found in Browning. "In Novalis's mysticism, in Fichte's !
| I
ethical idealism, and in the Spinozistic pantheism of Goethe,"
I i
says Charles Frederick Harrold in his edition of Sartor Re-
sartus, "he found a ‘ 'new basis for a belief in freedom, dynam
ic force, vitalism" (p. 221, n. 3)* Carlyle and Browning
agree in subordinating the mensurative faculty to intuition,
but whereas Carlyle accepts intuition as a guide to conduct,
Browning maintains that its validity is only subjective and
jthat it may or may not accord with prudence. Harrold remarks
that "Carlyle relates fantasy and love in much the same man-;
ner as do Richter and Novalis, to denote the imaginative pow
er which transcends the real" (p. l4l,n.3.)> but Browning does
not think the "real" can be transcended, for man-, according
to his philosophy, is not truly creative.
His philosophy is oriented upon the triad of love,
knowledge, and power, with knowledge and power subordinate to
Love. John Bury explains this triad as follows: !
Love is a mere verbal abstraction unless it be conscious
of itself; and in order to be conscious of itself, it must I
reveal itself to itself. Its very nature and essence is to
manifest itself; until it do so, it is only potential idea]
not an actual reality. The conditions of its revelation, j
Browning shows us, are given by its two modes, Power and |
7Augustus Ralli, Guide to Carlyle (Boston, 1922), I,
145_ . ______________________________________________________________________
j 7' 2 ~]
Knowledge (or Intellect). Power Is the mode of Love's !
manifestation In Nature; Knowledge Is Love's recognition of
Itself through the medium of Power.° j
1
3rowning concurs in Calvin's belief that man has no grace in
himself--
that he who feels the most consternation, from a conscious-’
ness of his own calamity, poverty, nakedness, and ignominyJ
has made the greatest proficiency in the knowledge of him-j
self. For there is no danger that man will divest himself |
of too much, provided he learns that what is wanting in him
may be recovered in God. (institutes, I, 290) j
i
Browning, like Pascal, is convinced that man would be miser
able without God's love to support him over the abyss of
nothingness. And without love in his own heart man has no
way of availing himself of God's love. '
| :
| Paracelsus is a morality play in which Paracelsus and i '
Aprile represent, respectively, the quest for power through
knowledge and the love of beauty. They are both victims of a
dominant passion, an addiction to a partial truth, which
causes distortion in their lives. Paracelsus fails in his
ciuest for power because he is too self-centered and trusts
too absolutely in subjective truth. And Aprile dies in his |
I
quest for love because of sheer exhaustion. Browning argues
I j
that power results from a fusion of subjective and objective,1
a fusion of knowledge which is grounded in the individual j
with love which is directed outward to other persons and
i
O
°Edward Berdoe, ed., Browning Studies (London, 1895),
p. 32.
external objects. Aware of his excessive subjectivity, Para
celsus strives to emulate Aprile:
God I how I essayed
To live like that mad poet, for a while,
To love alone; and how I felt too warped j
And twisted and deformedI What should I do, j
Even though released from drudgery, but return
Faint, as you see, and halting, blind and sore,
To my old life and die as I began?
I cannot feed on beauty for the sake
Of beauty only, nor can drink In balm
From lovely objects for their loveliness;
My nature cannot lose her first imprint;
I still must hoard and heap and class all truths
With one ulterior purpose: I must know1 . (Ill, 964-76]
Before his death, however, he learns the true significance of
love. He tells Festus: j
What wonder if I saw no way to shun i
Despair? The power I sought for man, seemed God's.
In this conjuncture, as I prayed to die,
A strange adventure made me know, one sin
Had spotted my career from its uprise;
I saw Aprile--my Aprile there I
And as the poor melodious wretch disburdened
His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
And what proportion love should hold with power
In his right constitution; love preceding
Power, and with much power, always much more love;
Love still too straitened in his present means,
And earnest for new power to set love free. (V, 846-60]
He sees Aprile and himself as polar opposites that must be
combined to form the ideal person:
Let men
Regard me, and the poet dead long ago
Who loved too rashly; and shape forth a third
And better-tempered spirit, warned by both:
As from the over-radiant star too mad
To drink the life-springs, beamless thence itself--
______And the dark orb which borders the abyss, _____ _ ___
Ingulfed In icy night,--might have its course,
A temperate and equidistant world. (V, 885-93) j
i
But this conclusion does not solve the problem which has beeri
I i
troubling Paracelsus, the relation of the intuitive individu
al to society. The individual can not hope for' power unless
he shares social solidarity, but he loses his individualism
in direct ratio to participation.
The "one sin" which spots Paracelsus's career is ego
tism, and because of this sin he Is unable to make a transi
tion from the aesthetic to the ethical stage of life. He
recognizes this fact, and understands that the transition can
be only through love. But he can not surmount the irony of
being required to serve a "rabble" that rejects his love: j
''Have your will, rabble!" he exclaims--
while we fight the prize,
Troop you in safety to the snug back-seats
1 And leave a clear arena for the brave
j About to perish for your sport! (IV, 690-93)
I
The heroic individual must stand alone, but in doing so he is
censured for self-reliance. Paracelsus finds Festus’s criti
cism Inconsistent, remarking:
I was not born
Informed and fearless from the first, but shrank
Prom aught which marked me out apart from men:
I would have lived their life, and died their death,
; Lost in their ranks, eluding destiny:
But you first guided me through doubt and fear,
Taught me.to know mankind and know myself;
And now that I am strong and full of hope,
That, from my soul, I can reject all aims
Save those your earnest words made plain to me,
Now that I touch the brink of my design,______________
r
t
i
7 5
When I would have a triumph In their eyes, i
A glad cheer In their voices--Michal weeps,
And Festus ponders gravely I (I, 149-62)
He later acknowledges, however,
i
I
that we who make
Sport for the gods, are hunted to the end:
There Is not one sharp volley shot at us,
Which ’scaped with life, though hurt, we slacken pace
And gather by the wayside herbs and roots
To stanch our wounds, secure from further harm:
We are assailed to life's extremest verge.(Ill, 766-72)
And In Part Five he exclaims:
Ah, the curse, Aprile, Aprile!
We get so near--so very, very near!
'T is an old tale: Jove strikes the Titans down,
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work. (V, 121-25)'
I
Browning's irony is very different from Carlyle's, which
I
arises from "too defensive" an attitude. "I was blamed, and
I
by half strangers hated," observes Teufelsdrttckh,
for my so-called Hardness (H&rte), my Indifferentism to
wards men; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as
my favourite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply of
Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had striven to
envelope myself; that so my own poor person might live safe
there, and in all friendliness, being no longer exasperated
by wounds. (pp. 128-29) j
There would have been no need for irony if he had maintained j
'a bold attitude of attack." Paracelsus, however, maintains
precisely such an attitude, and encounters a series of ironic
checks. Carlyle's hero understands the requirements of cir-'
cumstance intuitively, but Browning's hero must set his i
course to accord with the ironic consequences of his deeds.
Carlyle believes that history is spun from heroism, but __
Browning believes that it is planned by God, and that the he-
I
\
ro is no more than an interpreter. His typical heroes--Para-
celsus, Sordello, Strafford, Luria--fail because their indi
vidualism does not accord with God’s immediate plan for the
world in which they live. Their subjective attainment does
not mesh with their objective accomplishment. Furthermore,
Browning is not interested in such accomplishment aside from
psychological considerations. In Strafford, for example, the
I
issue concerns loyalty rather than politics--the loyalty of
Strafford to Charles and of Pym to England. In King Victor
and King Charles, the political theme is curiously subordi
nated to a clash of personality. And in A Soul’s Tragedy. j
the tragedy results from the corruption of a liberal's soul
I
through power. The extent to which Browning differs from
Carlyle on the function of the hero is shown in his sonnet
!
Why I Am a Liberal:
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be-~
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free j
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men--eaeh in his degree 1
Also God-guided--bear, and gaily too? |
But little do or can the best of us:
That little is achieved through Liberty.
Who, then, dares hold--emancipated thus--
His fellow shall continue bound? Not I
Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."
Although written in 1885. this sonnet expresses the theistic
interpretation of history which underlies all of Browning's !
I ^
poetry. It will be remembered that the poet, according to |
I
1
Browning, does not create, and neither does the statesman.
Both are intermediaries between God and man, and their task
is to maintain an equilibrium between subjective and objec-
t
tive elements.
The theme of Paracelsus, like that of Pauline, resembles
bhe theme of Shelley's Alastor in showing the effect of soli
tude upon personality. The moral of Alastor is that 1 1 Those
who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives"
j f Works. p. 33); and Paracelsus's sin is that he sets himself!
apart from mankind. He tells Festus and Michal:
| If I can serve mankind
'T is well; but there our intercourse must end:
I never will be served by those I serve. (I, 611-13)
He is separated from existence by knowledge, by intellect:
This life of mine
Must be lived out and a grave thoroughly earned:
I am just fit for that and naught beside.
I told you once, I cannot now enjoy,
Unless I deem my knowledge gains through joy;
Nor can I know, but straight warm tears reveal ■
My need of linking also joy to knowledge:
So, on I drive, enjoying all I can,
And knowing all I can. . (IV, 358-66)
He learns that intuition of subjective greatness is not in
jitself proof of election. Only when coupled with joy and
jlove, only when projected upon the objective world, does in
tuition prove itself valid. But love and joy are not prod-
i
ucts of vo 1 ition. In Two in the Campagna Browning_asks_,____
7 8 “
How is it under our control
To love or not to love? (11. 28-29)
love and joy, then, are true signs of that election which is j
open to all who participate in God's love and joy. j
Ironically, Paracelsus knows why he fails, but is unable
to change his nature, his intellectual insulation is so com
plete. In Part Two, Browning introduces Aprile into the con-'
tinuity of the poem almost as a figment, a projection, of his^
hero's thought. Paracelsus has been meditating on the fail
ure of reward to spring out of toil "As bursts the flower
from earth and root and stalk" (II, 277) and has been de
pressed by the thought of unmerited punishment. His depres
sion is very much like Job's:
What use were punishment, unless some sin
Be first detected. (II, 278-79)
He hears Aprile's voice in the distance, and it seems a voice
from out of his past. Aprile sings or chants:
I hear a voice, perchance I heard
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it stirred
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when first
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear--
As if all poets, God ever meant
Should save the world, and therefore lent
Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused
To do his work, or lightly used
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavor,
So, mourn cast off by him forever,--
As if these leaned in airy ring
To take me; this the song they sing.
T 9 -
Lost, lost! Yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home. ;
Come, cornel for we j
Will not "breathe, so much as breathe I
Reproach to thee, • i
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath. !
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come I thou last
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the last
Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more
Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,--shouldst redeem
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
(II, 281-314]
In the text, these lines seem, indeed, to belong to Paracel- 1
| i
sus, for they are prefaced only by the parenthetical "A voice
from within." But the next shift in speakers is to Paracel
sus, and consequently these lines must be attributed to !
i
Aprile, who is in love with the self-gratification of love
rather than with its legitimate projection. He cries:
"I have gone through
The loveliness of life; create for me
If not for men, or take me to thyself.
Eternal, infinite love!" (II, 484-87)
His love, like Paracelsus’s knowledge, is geared to the in- 1
I
finite rather than to the finite. j
1
Neither Aprile nor Paracelsus is able to transcend the |
aesthetic stage of life. To enter the ethioal stage, they i
j ;
must transcend self-interest and participate Joyfully in
God's universe. The texture of existence is woven by God's
power, and love and knowledge can be fulfilled only through |
| i
coalescing with this power. Paracelsus says that save for an
element of doubt !
i
I stood at first where all aspire at last
To stand: the secret of the world was mine.
I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
But somehow felt and known in every shift
And change in the spirit,--nay, in every pore
Of the body, even,)--what God is, what we are,
What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss,
Prom whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds; in whom is life forevermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes; where dwells enjoyment there Is he:
With still a flying point of bliss remote,
A happiness in store afar, a sphere
Of distant glory in full view. (V, 635~50)
Existence is incomplete if any diminution of thought or feel-
i
ing occurs. Because of "narrow thought” Paracelsus becomes i
| !
warped; because of too expansive love Aprile becomes ex
hausted. Love, knowledge, and power unite to break down the
barriers of the purely aesthetic life, but they can destroy
an individual if not combined properly. The success of each
force depends upon a preordained, an existential equilibrium
among all three, and man's gift of free will is ironic since
me is free only to err. I
l
I
The interpretation of the theory of love and knowledge |
i
Paracelsus presents a peculiarly intricate problem. Josi-f
ah Royce observes:
The antithesis between "knowledge," as the occultist con-
ceives it, and "love," as the poet views it, Is the___
sr:
contrast between looking in the world of outer nature for
a symbolic revelation of God, and looking in the moral
world, the world of ideals, of volition, of freedom, of
hope and of human passion, for the direct incarnation of
the loving and the living God.^
But William 0. Raymond, in opposition to Royce's views, ;
writes:
It seems . . . unmistakable that Browning's portrayal of
love in the spirit of romantic idealism, in the second pari
of Paracelsus, involves the poem up to this point in a |
measure of self-contradiction. If the presentation of love
throughout Paracelsus must be considered as all of one
piece, the difficulty extends itself to the entire work.
It is, however, not in the second, but in the fifth can
to of the poem that Paracelsus realizes most fully the
causes of his failure, and obtains his deepest insight into
the nature of love. In the last words of the dying Para- |
celsus, love is conceived of in a way that cannot be re- I
garded as a mere reiteration or enforcement of that roman
tic ideal of love embodied in the impassioned reveries of
Aprile.10
Wis conclusion is that "Browning has given in the final canto
of Paracelsus, not a romantic or Platonic, but a Christian
\ *
representation of love."
Raymond's interpretation, however, fails to account for
the structural symmetry of the poem which requires that
Aprile suffer from lack of knowledge even as Paracelsus suf
fers from lack of love. If the concept of love in Part Five
differs from that in Part Two, then the symmetry is lost. It
J
I
9"The Problem of Paracelsus," The Boston Browning Socif
etv Papers (New York, 1897), p. 240.
lOrphe Infinite Moment (Toronto, 1950) t PP« 169-70.
i
s true that love combined with knowledge equates with Chris-j
tian love, but Browning does not make this equation explicitJ
His poem Is purely on an existential level. Existence re
quires that love be balanced by knowledge. j
! i
j Royce’s Idea that knowledge focuses upon outer nature j
! '
while love focuses upon the moral world is misleading. '
Browning thinks that knowledge provides control over subjec-
jtive-objective relations, but this control should accord with
the ethical criteria of love. Paracelsus errs in relying too
much upon inward-centered or intuitive knowledge. He learns
hat such knowledge must be adapted to circumstance. It does
i
hot share in ethical existence, however, unless it is moti
vated by love. Love, therefore, although a subjective force,
is directed outward. It is a motion of commitment, and
i
I
through its agency man is able to make the transition from
aesthetic to ethical life. When it is directed upon God, man
participates in religious life. Both love and knowledge arej
j ’
subordinate to power, power being the manifestation of God in
he universe. Faith, furthermore, is correlated with power
rather than with love or knowledge. One of the paradoxes in
Paracelsus is that God demands intuitive faith, but punishes
jfaith that involves risk, in spite of the fact that faith inj
volving no risk is not faith. The romantic passion of Para-I
celsus leads to disaster while the quietism of Festus goes
unreproved. Browning's God is much like Calvin’s in
requiring absolute faith as a condition of human existence, ^
faith which is a recognition of divine power operating in thd
universe.
In Paracelsus, Browning shows himself to be a romantic
Ironist by assuming towards his subjective ideas an impartial.,
detached attitude similar to God's. The principal characters,
represent allegorically tendencies in his own nature, but
■■;hese tendencies are tested in the poem with complete objec
tivity. He sees value in Carlyle's "Worship of Sorrow," but
questions the effectiveness of such worship. It is enough,
he thinks, to strive merely to understand God's plan. A
cjuietism in his thought inclines him toward Festus rather
than toward Paracelsus or Aprile. He desires equilibrium in
existence; and most of his typical poems deal with persons
who have gained or lost equilibrium. Carlyle, however, em
phasizes the contribution of the hero regardless of cost.
Teufelsdrtickh could well speak for Paracelsus:
. . . what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or is the God
present, felt In my own heart, a thing which Herr von Vol
taire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me? To the
"Worship of Sorrow" ascribe what origin and genesis thou
pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been gener
ated; is it not here? Feel it in thy heart, and then say
whether it is of God1 . This is Belief; all else is Opinion,
--for which latter whoso will, let him worry and be wor- I
ried. (p. 19^) |
i
Carlyle regards history as a dynamic process activated by in-}
spired heroes who are fragments of divine force; Browning,
J \
like Milton, sees history as an ambiguous web spun into the
ifuture, a web In which filaments of divine will predominate,
hut are often crossed by strands of perverse individualism.
Browning's philosophy is really upon three levels--those
of God, history (or society), and the individual. The main
brend of history is predetermined by God, but the individualj
must be tested in existence if he is to develop an ethical j
nature. To believe, the individual must act, must risk the
swift currents of existence, but to survive engagement with
out sorrow he must not exceed legitimate degrees of love,
knowledge, and power. Milton says in the First Book of The
Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty that
f
Lucifer, before Adam, was the first prelate angel; and both
he, as is commonly thought, and our forefather Adam, as wei
all know, for aspiring above their orders, were miserably
j degraded.
I
And both Paracelsus and Sordello are similarly punished for
aspiring too high. Festus excels in both love and knowledge,
but remains aloof from existence, making no test of his power
According to both Milton and Browning, the individual
must relinquish self-will in his relation to history, which
is divinely planned, but must exert self-will in those ethi
cal relationships which develop personality. He is caught
midway in a tension between the finite and the infinite, and ■
must reconcile a movement toward the one with a movement
I
l
( _ _
I The Student's Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New
York, 1933), p. 510. ____________________________________
----------------- 8— I
toward the other. The dual nature of man, as this duality j
was developed in post-Cartesian philosophy, necessarily in
volves a paradox. Pascal pointed out in the seventeenth cen-
! I
:ury that the eoglto leaves man In an anomalous situation: j
I
For in fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in compar-j
ison with the Infinite, an All In comparison with the Noth
ing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is |
infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end
of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from ’
him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of j
seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite
in which he is swallowed up. |
What will he do then, but perceive the appearance of the
middle of things, in an eternal despair of knowing either
their beginning or their end. All things proceed from the
Nothing, and are borne towards the Infinite. Who will fol
low these marvellous processes? The Author of these won
ders understands them. None other can do so. (Pensee 72)
Fichte, however, constructs a metaphysics to accommodate the
cogito, postulating an Absolute Ego (God) that obtains self-
consciousness and self-knowledge by division into finite egos
and non-egos which mutually determine each other. The ego
establishes self-knowledge by a succession of six Ansttisse or
shrusts which begin with unreflective sensation and culminate
i
(
in "intellectual perception," in which the ego "recognizes
itself as the originator of the laws that govern its think
ing, and knows Itself to be the basis of Its own knowledge" 1
(Fuller, II, 282). |
I l
| Schlegel adapts this theory of intellectual perception
i
to the problem of explaining creativity in literature, main
taining that the author creates his fictional world in much
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------86"!
! I
jfche same way as the ego creates the non-ego; the author re
mains aloof, but still mingles with his creation without di
minishing its objectivity. Schlegel names this process ro
mantic irony because the work of art so created has its ori
gin in subjectivity but conforms to objective laws.
Probably Browning was unfamiliar with Schlegel*s theory,
cut in his attempt to account for his own mental processes in
the composition of poetry he approaches Schlegel*s basic
idea. Schlegel believes that the romantic ironist must ne
cessarily be a self-conscious craftsman. He must compensate
for a lack of subjective spontaneity by creating an objective
or dramatic world in which the complexity of his subjective
experience is reflected. In Paracelsus, Sordello, and Pippa j
| i
Passes, Browning perfects gradually his ironic technique. In1
i
Paracelsus and Sordello the dissociation between author and
!poem is still incomplete, but in Pippa Passes he finally
achieves complete dissociation, fulfilling perfectly the pat
tern of romantic irony as set forth by Schlegel.
Browning's philosophy resembles Pascal's rather than
i
(Fichte's, but he was influenced indirectly by Fichte through!
Carlyle. He agrees with Pascal that man is poised between
the infinite and nothingness, but he believes that the infi
nite may at times be glimpsed through rifts in the finite. !
If a theistic interpretation be substituted for Fichtean j
■metaphysics in the following passage from Sartor Resartus, a[
j 871
certain resemblance between Browning and Carlyle may be un- j
derstood:
Who am I; what is this Me? A Voice, a Motion, an Ap
pearance; --some embodied, visualised Idea in the Eternal !
Mind? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes]
j us-but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was i
; not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, j
I written in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of
jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, j
harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear toi
whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate
meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and
Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remot
est century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof; sounds
and many-coloured visions flit round our sense; but Him, |
the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we
see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not.
(pp. 53-54)
In Pichtean terms, the Unslumbering One is the Absolute Ego;
the ego is the Dreamer; and the non-ego is the Dream. The
I
ego, then, experiences reality in half-waking moments of in-
1
tuition. But Browning does not grant such validity to intui
tion. He distinguishes sharply between truth as essence and
truth as existence, maintaining that man, in his finite rela
tionships, must give priority to existence rather than to es
sence. The tragedies of Paracelsus and Sordello result from]
the effort to force essence upon existence, the effort to fit;
the infinite to the finite. Carlyle's hero is "an eye to us
all; a heaven-sent Bringer of Light" (Heroes. Hero-Worship,
p. 158). Browning’s hero learns the extent of his power
through ironic checks and balances.
I
( Betty Miller misconstrues Browning's subordination of
reason to intuition, falling to perceive that this subordina
tion is occasioned by skepticism rather than faith:
The ideals of Shelley and those of Sara Anna Browning could,
not continue to exist under the same roof; the moment had
come in which he must either deny his "wild dreams of beau
ty and of good," or irreparably wound and alienate his
mother, "the one being," we -are told, "whom he entirely
loved." Paced with this deadlock between head and heart,
Browning found his own solution. Reason divided him from
the one being he could love: reason, therefore, must be
sacrificed. With a truly Herculean effort, which seems to
have absorbed all his youth's strength, Browning performed
upon himself an act of re-grafting: reversing,.deliberate
ly, the laws of his own growth. The agony of that effort
is reflected in Paracelsus: inspiring both the cry
God I Thou art Mind! Unto the Master-Mind
Mind should be precious. -Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure . . .
and its antithesis,
. . . mind is nothing but disease,
And natural health is ignorance.
Forcibly, in the course of this struggle,.reason was de
throned and degraded: that "power Repressed," as he had it,
"to Love" became thenceforward, more important than "to
KNOW." (Robert Browning: A Portrait, pp. 11-12)
Mrs. Miller fails to note the irony in her first quotation.
She does not take into account its context. And.she fails to
explain that in her second quotation Browning is faithful to
jthe ideas of the historical Paracelsus in subordinating mind
jto a vital principle residing in the body. Natural health is
ignorance because the body, by virtue of its powers, is able
j f c o cure itself; whereas excessive mental activity, putting
too much strain upon the body, acts as a disease. Browning,!
! j
however, sees wider meaning in this idea, for is not_________j
rationalism a disease infecting the modern world? Carlyle
speaks of "Knowledge, the symptom of derangement."12
Browning does not sacrifice reason to love; there is no
regrafting, as Mrs. Miller avers. His position is that rea
son is not able to give certitude of man's being. There is
no evidence that he ever was an atheist, except in the tech
nical sense of being dissatisfied with Christian dogma, and j
ho evidence that he ever became an orthodox Christian. He j
finds grounds for religious belief in subjective experience,
but such experience can not be rationalized. Paracelsus and
Sordello, like St. John in A Death in the Desert, experience
transcendent vision when dying, but this transcendence can ;
i
occur only when the body is disintegrating. St. John asks
now he can reassure his fellow men:
Can they share
--They, who have a flesh, a veil of youth and strength
About each spirit, that needs must bide its time,
Living and learning still as years assist
Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see--
With me who hardly am withheld at all,
But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,
Lie bare to the universal prick of light? (11. 198~205:
-The dying Paracelsus has less insight than the dying St. 1
lohn, but he dies with equal faith:
If I stoop
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud,
It is but for a time; I press God's lamp
-^Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (Boston, n.d.), II,
346. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ '_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------901
j i
j Close to my breast--its splendour, soon or late,
| Will pierce the gloom. (V, 899_903)
i
I
And the dying Sordello casts
Himself quite through mere secondary states !
Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates, j
Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid -
I By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade}
! And on Into the very nucleus probe j
That first determined there exist a globe. j
As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved,
So seemed Sordello1s closing-truth evolved
By his flesh-halfs break up. (VI, 459-67)
If Intuition could have sufficient power or be sufficiently
unencumbered, it could be tested in time, as St. John says in
A Death in the Desert, and could dispart the instant as if it
j i
were opening a star out into a world. The feebleness of av- ;
j I
erage intuition, however, may be compensated by faith, which
transcends but does not contradict reason. Faith, in its
true sense, may bridge the gap between intuition and reason, !
but it must never violate the dialectic of existence. I
i
j The problem of relating Intuition to faith leads into
bhat of the infinite moment, the moment of sudden conver
sion. "To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace,
to experience religion, to gain assurance," says William
I i
i i
J ame s,
i
are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or
sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously !
wrong, inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and conscious
ly right, superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer 1
hold upon religious realities. (Varfebies of Religious Ex- I
j perience, p. 186)
Infinite and finite are fused in the moment of conversion;
this fusion must he produced in an existential context, and J
j j
should bring about transition from an aesthetic to an ethical
I
life.
In Pippa Passes and The Ring and the Book, the moment of
f
conversion is compared to lightning in a thunder storm. Ot-j
I !
oima says to Sebald: j
Buried in woods we lay, you recollect; j
Swift ran the searching tempest overhead;
j And ever and anon some bright white shaft
I Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,
I As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead. . . . (I, 190~97]
And the Pope, after describing a thunder storm, says:
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, i
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.(X, 22J-2Q)
iParacelsus, however, fails in his quest for the infinite mo
ment. He reads from his journal:
I
"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,' 1
It is the echo of time; and he whose heart
Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech
Was copied from a human tongue, can never
Recall when he was living yet knew not this.
Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him
Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,
It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after, J
An altered brow and eye and gait and speech |
Attest that now he knows the adage true, !
'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'" I
(II, 43-53)
i
I
His quest for the one hour is futile because he is self- \
! i
' j
willed. He says: j
«
I have subdued my life to the one purpose
__________ Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,__________
92r
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.
(II, 106-108)'
Browning's idea of the infinite moment is comparable
|
with similar Ideas in the works of Carlyle and Kierkegaard.
In Sartor Resartus, Teufelsdrtickh, after going through peri
ods of despair and indifference, experiences faith and finds
salvation through action:
"Here, then, as I lay in that CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE; cast,
doubtless by benignant upper influence, into a healing
sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke
to a new Heaven and a new Earth. The first preliminary
moral Act, Annihilation of Self . . ., had been happily ac
complished; and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its I
hands ungyved." (p. 186)
Such an experience is similar to experiences undergone by
| I
Paracelsus and Sordello, but with this difference. Brown
ing's heroes do not succeed in correlating subjective with I
i !
objective life. Carlyle sees about him a constant interpenet
tration and fusion of infinite and finite:
Fantasy with her mystic wonderland plays into the small
prose domain of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith.
In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is
ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment
and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to ;
blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it |
were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man j
guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He every-j-
1 where finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recognized as
| such or not recognized. (Sartor Resartus, pp. 219~20) |
! I
But for Browning the antithesis between infinite and finite
Ls between subjective and objective, and the fusion is hardly'
ever complete. Consequently, his problem is more complex
jthan Carlyle's. Both believe that the mind should not be
self-conscious. In Characteristics Carlyle speaks of "an unj
healthy state of self-sentience, self-survey" (Essays» II, |
360), a state which occasions the crisis of "the Everlasting
No" in Sartor Resartus. But whereas Carlyle abjures intro- i
1
spection, Browning finds in it his "sun-road." His philoso
phy, like that of Descartes, is essentially Platonic in its
koctrine of reminiscence. Descartes writes:
I have essayed to find in general the principles, or first
causes, of all that is or can be in the world, without tak
ing into consideration for this end anything but God him
self who has created it, and without educing them from any
other source than from certain germs of truths naturally
existing in our minds. (p. 68)
j
Browning believes that truth is subjective, innate, and that :
it rarely finds objective fulfillment. His remark that all
poetry" is "a putting the infinite within the finite"^ raay
t
echo Carlyle's remark that love is "a discerning of the Infi-j
| 1
nite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real" (Sartor Resartus,
p. l4l). But poetry and love are highly subjective and do
not necessarily involve historical truth. j
In Paracelsus and Sordello Browning endeavors to estab-
lish intuitive or poetic truth, but is ever aware of its lim-j
itation. If it is to be extricated from the aesthetic, if it;
i
is to win ethical value, it must be related to history. It 1
must serve the community. Kierkegaard believed that his 1
; "^Quoted j_n w. G. Collingwood, The Life and Work of John
Ruskin (New York, 1893), I, 233._______________________________
! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9'bi
i i
proper vocation was to be a poet, to express himself in the 1
aesthetic medium, but he felt a personal responsibility to |
undertake ethical action. When he wrote his Postscript he ;
thought that he had exhausted his poetic vein and that the |
i
time had come to participate vigorously in life. In his |
I i
Journals he remarked, i
I
I am after all essentially a poet, and . . . I must defi
nitely stop being an author when I have no more property.
. . . I am so far a poet, absolutely no more, and it is a
forlorn hope to try to go beyond my limits. (Quoted in
Patrick, II, 112)
The difference between aesthetic and ethical behavior, as
these terms are used by Kierkegaard, is shown by the fact
I
that the aesthetic does not involve direct moral action and ,
;
the ethical does. Poetry, he thinks, is strictly aesthetic !
i i
because the poet is only a spectator:
. . . I have now been enriched by loving Providence with sc
eminent an understanding of the truth as was seldom granted
to any man, and in addition equipped by the same love with j
eminent gifts for setting it forth. In this respect I must
only humble myself because of one thing: that I do not have
the strength to be myself the truth I have understood.
(Quoted in Patrick, II, 112) j
browning, like Kierkegaard, experienced a sense of deficiencjj
in being a spectator, b.ut whereas the Danish author, like j
I s
Paracelsus and Sordello, committed himself to an unequal con-^
test with society, Browning ultimately accepted the role of j
spectator, believing that the role of the poet is to be God's
i
interpreter.
In Kierkegaard[ s terminology, as _in Browning_[s_ and __
Carlyle's, the Instant Is "the moment in which time is j
touched by eternity" (Patrick, II, 148), but Kierkegaard was
l
too stern to find such a moment in either poetry or love. In
the year before his death, he wrote a series of articles j
called The Instant, in which he attacked the nominal Christi-j
anity of the Danish state church. By "instant" he means a j
moment of crisis, of decision, in which man is free to choose
t j
God. For Kierkegaard the choice lay between subjec.tive truth
I
and the falsity, the lukewarmness, the mauvaise foi. to use
i
Sartre's term, of society. But in the sickness which pre
ceded his death, he said:
I have had to forget all the Instants and the rest in order
to get peace, and think I have had a fitting, significant, !
and difficult enough task. (Quoted in Patrick, II, 15^-)
For Carlyle and Kierkegaard, then, each in his own way, the
instant is a moment of decision, a moment in which vision is
actualized. But for Browning, the instant may be no more
!
than an insight which promises future fulfillment, not im
mediate actualization. Kierkegaard suffers acutely, as do
Paracelsus and Sordello, because he is too weak to be the <
I '
I l
truth he sees; but Browning considers this very weakness, ;
! j
this very imperfection, a ground for believing that man, as a
i
type, is still at a primitive level of evolution and will bej
i
at future levels of existence, the truth which poets now en- (
j i
vision. Love, however, permits immediate possession of the
i
i
infinite when fixed upon a person who truly loves in return.
I Browning's doctrine of imperfection appears first in
I j
Paracelsus, and it appears cloaked in irony. Irony Is pres- i
i
ent when an author intends either more or less than he says, i
! I
and in Paracelsus Browning attributes the doctrine of imper
fection, with full historical justification, to his hero.
There is no suggestion that this doctrine has special meaning
for the author. A similar instance of irony is found in Rab
bi Ben Ezra. In which the author's beliefs are similar to the
creed of a Jew who was born in 1092. With remarkable philo
sophical dexterity, Browning manipulates ideas so as to be
true to both the person in the poem and himself. He appro
priates the Aristotelian single progression from simple and
imperfect to complex and perfect, which was one of the his
torical Paracelsus's basic ideas. The belief of this Renais
sance physician that God is immanent in the universe and that
i j
man is the culmination and focal point of the evolutionary i
process is expressed in these lines: j
i
The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth, j
And the earth changes like a human face
God renews
His ancient rapture. Thus he dwells in all,
From life's minute beginnings, up at last
To man--the consummation of this scheme
Of being, the completion of this sphere
Of life: whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o'er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole,
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
9 7
Convergent in the faculties of man.
Power--neither put forth blindly, nor controlled
Calmly by perfect knowledge; to be used
At risk, inspired or checked by hope and fear:
Knowledge--not intuition, but the slow
Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil,
Strengthened by love: love--not serenely pure,
But strong from weakness, like a chance-sown plant
Which, cast on stubborn soil, puts forth changed buds
And softer stains, unknown in happier climes;
Love which endures and doubts and is oppressed
And cherished, suffering much and much sustained,
And blind, oft-failing, yet believing love,
A half-enlightened, often-chequered trust:--
Hints and previsions of which faculties,
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out dimly the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last. So far the seal
Is put on life; one stage of being complete,
One scheme wound up: and from the grand result
A supplementary reflux of light,
Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle.
progress Is
The law of life, man is not Man as yet.
Nor shall I deem his object served, his end
Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,
While only here and there a star dispells
The darkness, here and there a towering mind
O'erlooks its prostrate fellows: when the host
Is out at once to the despair of night,
When all mankind alike is perfected,
Equal in full-blown powers--then, not till then,
I say, begins man's general infancy.
(V, 653-54, 680-716, 742-52)
In his theory of intuition, Browning is closer to Kierkegaarc.
than to Carlyle, for he does not regard intuition as tran
scendent. He does not have "the eye that flashes direct into
the heart of things, and sees the truth of them" (Heroes. He-
co-Worship, p. 93)- He subordinates intuition to knowledge
---------- 96
which is used at risk, thus making existence itself the test
of truth. The poet, therefore, is in a peculiar situation,
for he must rely largely upon intuition.
We now come to a very important point, the relation of
Language to existence, and I hope to show that Browning's po
sition on this subject, even though he does not examine it
formally, is more tenable than Kierkegaard's. The relation
of language to existence is crucial in the evaluation of the
poetic function, for if language is regarded as of secondary
importance, if words are inferior to action, the importance
of poetry is certainly diminished. Kierkegaard restricts po
etry to the aesthetic, believing that his work as a poet is
only preliminary to his work as a man. He suffers deeply be
cause his aptitudes fit him for the poetic rather than for
the space-time world. His dilemma is precisely that of Sor-
dello, who excels as a poet, but yearns to be a man of action;
or of Paracelsus, who excels as a scholar, but is unable to
convert his knowledge to deeds. Browning would agree with
!£ierkegaard in holding that "Language involves reflection,
and cannot, therefore, express the immediate" (Either/Or, I,
56). But whereas Kierkegaard sees no contribution of art to
ethical life, Browning sees in the psychological process of
krtistic creation the pattern for ethical behavior. He woulc.
agree with Martin Heidegger:
. 991
]
! possesses; on the contrary, it is only language that af- i
fords the very possibility of standing in the openness of |
the existent. Only where there is language, is there
world, i.e., the perpetually altering circuit of decision !
and production, of action and responsibility, but also of
commotion and arbitrariness, of decay and confusion. |
I
I
Poetry, says Heidegger, j
is the act of establishing by the word and in the word. j
What is established in this manner? The permanent. But 1
can the permanent be established then? Is it not that '
which has always been present? No! Even the permanent 1
must be fixed so that it will not be carried away, the j
simple must be wrested from confusion, proportion must be I
set before what lacks proportion. That which supports and '
dominates the existent in its entirety, must become mani- !
fest. Being must be opened out, so that the existent may
appear. (Existence and Being, pp. 300, 304)
Browning, remember, says that poetry does not create, that iii
resuscitates, providing an alloy by means of which truth may
| i
be established, may be fixed or opened out. He follows Shel-j
ley in believing that poetry shadows forth a potential rela- ;
tion between intuition and action, and in regarding the poet
as the prototype of future man.
Browning’s theory of personality resembles both Nietz
sche's theory of the superman and Jung's theory of the col- |
lective unconscious. Like Nietzsche, he establishes a dif
ference in kind between animal and human nature. Walter A.
Kaufmann says that Nietzsche
accepted Darwin's doctrine concerning the lack of any car
dinal distinction between man and animals as incontroverti
ble empirical fact but he tried to counter this "deadly" !
; gospel with the new, Nietzschean, assertion that man can j
j rise above the beasts. . . . There are certain pursuits i
I which are super-animalic, and the man who engages in them !
1 is a truly human being and has a unique worth. The artist,1 .
; ----------------------------------------------------- ro'cn
i
j saint, and philosopher are representatives of true humanity
1 and culture. (Quoted in Reinhardt, p. 82) ;
I i
And Jung brings to mind Browning’s distinction between indi-;
vidual and collective personality when he writes that indi- '
vidual personality •
appears to rest upon a deeper layer that does not derive j
from personal experience and achievement but is inborn. ;
. . . This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious, j
I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of i
the unconscious is not individual, but universal; in con- j
trast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of
behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in
all individuals. The collective unconscious, so far as we
i know, is self-identical in all Western men and thus const!- •
tutes a psychic foundation, superpersonal in its nature,
that is present in every one of us. (Integration of the
Personality, pp. 52-53)
i !
In Sordello, Browning uses the same term "collective" to sig-
j j
nify a similar idea, declaring that "collective man/ Out- |
I i
strips the individual" (V, 103-104).
Browning and Nietzsche believe that man will in time
beach higher levels of perfection. Sartre, however, sees
this concept of perfection as a mirage, and his distinction
oetween the "in-itself" (11en-soi) and the "for-itself" (le '
I
oour-soi) is instructive in clarifying the distinction be-
jtween animal and human existence. "The 1 en-soi, 1 . . . the
(Dbjective world of things," says Reinhardt in his chapter on
! !
Sartre, "is undivided, impregnable, massive, unshakable": 1
Confronted with the massivlty and ontological integrity1
of the en-soi, man experiences himself not only as discordf
ant and fragmentary but also as free. Freedom, in Sartre’s
view, thus results from the fact that man is not self-suf-
| ficient, not fully real and therefore actually inferior to
TOT"!
the fullness of being of the en-soi. Man's freedom, in ,
other words, is a consequence of his ontological inferior!-!
ty, of a diminution of his being (une decompression d'etre )J
But, understanding himself as thus divided and incomplete, j
man strives to fill this lacuna in his being: he aspires to
the plenitude of the en-soi, but in doing so he wants to
i retain the consciousness of his own self, his prerogative
as a "pour-soi.1 1 For what good would it do him to attain
to the fullness of being without being conscious of it and
thus without being able to enjoy it?
The goal of all human striving is thus an ideal "self,"
combining the fullness of being with the fullness of con
sciousness. Man, says Sartre, is nothing but this striving
to become "l'en-soi-pour-soi" or, in other words, the
striving to overcome the debility of his being by diviniz
ing himself. But such a goal is impossible of attainment:
the "en-soi-pour-soi" is by definition a self-contradictory
concept: it attempts to unite two types of being which by
their very nature exclude each other. Man is therefore,
Sartre concludes, "a futile passion" (une passion inutile),
(pp. l60-6l) |
Sartre and Browning are concerned with the same problemJ
she alien nature of man in a physical universe, the aliena- !
sion of man in the modern world. Sartre yearns for ontologi
cal stability. "My freedom? It's a burden to me," declares
Mathieu in The Age of Reason.1^ And Sordello is depressed by
she thought that stone outlingers flesh:
Nature has time, may mend j
Mistake, she knows occasion will recur; I
Landslip or seabreach, how affects it her !
With her magnificent resources?--I j
Must perish once and perish utterly. (Ill, 98-102)
Browning, however, sees in man's freedom compensation for
weakness. To be perfect is to possess "the plenitude of thej
l2|(New York, 19^7), P- 157-
en-soi," but such possession is stultifying. Instead of ad-
i ;
i
vocating possession of any kind, Browning advocates abandon- |
j l
ment. He would agree with Gabriel Marcel, who believes that j
I j
''Having1 is a source of alienation," that people who possess
objects "are in danger of being imprisoned or devoured by
jthem" and "suffer a loss of being or an 'ontological defi
ciency.1"-^ Browning believes that the promise of "becoming'
!
offers more than the security of the "become."
! Browning, then, is a romantic ironist in his intellectu
al detachment, in his objective presentation of subjective
conflict, in his belief that salvation is through weakness,
in his idea that faith is maintained through the tension of
doubt, and in his idea that man must simultaneously be reconj
i j
ciled to imperfection and strive to be perfect. In Paracel-I
I
sus, he shows the dangers of reckless intuition; in Sordello,
he examines the dual nature of the poet with reference to the
aesthetic and the ethical.
t
I
I
■^F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Predicr
ament (London, 1953) . P. 1^-3 . _________________________ j
I
I
CHAPTER IV
SORDELLO: A KNIGHT OF INFINITE RESIGNATION
Browning began work on Sordello in 1833* just after com-’
; pieting Pauline, but the poem was not published until 1840.
During these seven years, says DeVane,
there were four distinct periods of composition, and four
different Sordellos were written. The final result may be
said to be a conglomeration of all these conceptions. (pp.
72-73) - |
DeVane's study of these four periods, however, seems to blind
him to the continuity of the poem. He says that in the first
I
version "Browning was chiefly interested in the development ;
of a soul," but he fails to show the relationship of this
idea to the completed poem, In spite of Browning's assertion
In 1863 that his "stress lay on the incidents in the develop
ment of a soul" (Works, p. 7^-) • DeVane points out that the
publication of Mrs. Busk's poem on Sordello in 1837 caused \
] I
Browning to rewrite his poem with particular emphasis on the!
historical element, but Browning says that "The historical
decoration was purposely of no more importance than a back
ground requires" (Works, p. 7*0* Furthermore, Browning has !
| i
made no attempt to interpret the historical Sordello, who j
I 1
lived for approximately sixty-nine years, participated in a {
10'^
i
tavern brawl, and abducted his patron’s wife. Browning may
have begun Sordello with the intention of writing a poem
i
'rather of a more popular nature," as he wrote to W. J. Pox I
t
in 1835 (see DeVane, p. 73)* but his theme remained centered
in developing his theory of the poet. He found the poem dif
ficult to write mainly because he forced his plot to conform
co his poetic theory.
The central theme of Sordello concerns a divided con
sciousness, a divided allegiance. Sordello, like Hamlet,
wavers between his aesthetic bent as a poet and his ethical
obligations as a man. As in Paracelsus, Browning's point of,
view toward his hero is ironic, for whereas Paracelsus fails I
I 1
| !
jthrough self-will, Sordello fails because he overcomes self-j
1 j
will. The peculiar irony of his fate is that he renounces
self-will through an act of will. He is intensely subjective
and has difficulty in finding ethical projection for his sub
jectivity. Rebelling against the role of poetic spectator,
he complains of being screened from existence: j
"Mantua's yoke, J
My minstrel's-trade, was to behold mankind,-- \
My own concern was just to bring my mind ;
Behold, just extricate, for my acquist, 1
Each object suffered stifle' in the mist j
Which hazard, custom, blindness interpose I
i Betwixt things and myself." (ill, 198-204) (
He shows the influence of Shelley in believing that man will!
recognize truth if his mind is undistorted by custom and tyrj
anny, but whereas Shelley maintains an almost stoical___ j
, r051
dedication to truth, Browning insists that truth must he re- 1
Hated constantly to its existential context. His emphasis is
upon struggle rather than upon longing. Shelley believes i
i „
that hope is able to create From its own wreck the thing it
contemplates" (Prometheus Unbound. IV, 574), but Browning
prefers a partial, immediate success to. contemplation of a
remote ideal.
t
Sordello, Browning traces the psychological develop
ment of an introspective poet. He does not use the terms
'subject!vd' and "objective" which he is later to employ in
bhe Essay on Shelley (see Chapter VI), but in the first book!
of Sordello he describes two varieties of poet which corre- I
spond to the two categories in the Essay. I shall, there
fore, avail myself of these terms in the present discussion. 1
i ;
In his interest in subjectivity, Browning shows himself to be
still under the influence of Shelley, who is Interpreted as a
pattern for the subjective poet in the Essay. But his ironic
I i
detachment causes him to throw subjectivity into objective
I i
f
relief. By polar logic, the subjective- poet requires the j
balance of an objective poet, and I suggest that Browning j
[ I
bonsiders Keats to be such a poet. "Shelley," says W. Hall
Griffin, "proved an introduction to Keats, whose works were j
'soon procured."1 The so-called "pleasure thermometer" in
1W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, The Life of Robert __
1 0 5 '
Endymion--a revision dealing with gradations in perception--
I
"a regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth," j
i . . !
Keats called it (Letters, p. 90)--may have suggested the fol-!
lowing lines on objective poets:
One character
Denotes them through the progress and the stir,--
A need to blend with each external charm,
Bury themselves, the whole heart wide and warm,-- '
In something not themselves. (I, 505-509)
ln Endymion, Keats writes:
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with essence; till we shine,
Pull alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold
The clear religion of heaven! Fold
A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness,
And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress
Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds,
And with a sympathetic touch unbinds I
Aeolian magic from their lucid wombs . . . !
Feel we these things?--that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. (I, 777~97)
Keats believes that man knows truth through perception of
i
beauty in which mind and emotion co-operate creatively to
break through the veneer of custom and habit, and participate
in being. Browning, however, sees in the worship of beauty !
an experience which renders the personality captive to the
aesthetic phase of life. Objective poets, he says,
would belong
To what they worship--stronger and more strong
! Thus prodigally fed--which gathers shape
Browning (New York, 1912), p. 53 - ____________________________ j
1 — _ _ _ _ _ _ _ r 0 7 _ l
i !
And feature, soon imprisons past escape
The votary framed to love and to submit
Nor ask, as passionate he kneels to it,
Whence grew the idol's empery. (I, 509“515)
: I
Keats thinks that when we combine with the beautiful object
'Life's self is nourished by its proper pith" (Endymion, I,
i
$14), but Browning believes that the soul can not properly
find complete satisfaction in the objective world, which is
necessarily alien:
So runs
A legend; light had birth ere moons and suns,
Plowing through space a river and alone,
Till chaos burst and blank the spheres were strown
Hither and thither, floundering and blind:
When into each of them rushed light--to find
Itself no place, foiled of its radiant chance.
Let such forego their just inheritance. (I, 515-22)
l
Aprile may be considered as the prototype of Eglamor, the po
et who is Sordello's opposite, and both are examples of light
which rushes upon objects and is "foiled of its radiant
chance."
The reader should keep in mind that the terms "subjec-
I
;ive" and "objective" may be misleading. The objective poet
is not strictly objective and the subjective poet is not
strictly subjective. Browning explains that the subjective 1
i !
poet must balance his subjectivity against objective rela- |
tionships: !
I
. . . there's a class that eagerly looks, too, 1
On beauty, but, unlike the gentler crew,
Proclaims each new revealment born a twin
With a distinctest consciousness within,
Referring still the quality, now first
108'
Revealed, to their own soul--its instinct nursed
In silence, now remembered better, shown
More thoroughly, but not the less their own;
A dream come true; the special exercise
Of any special function that implies
The being fair, or good, or wise, or strong,
Dormant within their nature all along--
Whose Fault? So, homage, other souls direct
Without, turns inward. "How should this deject
Thee soul?" they murmur; "wherefore strength be quelled
Because, its trivial accidents withheld,
Organs are missed that clog the world, inert,
Wanting a will, to quicken and exert,
Like thine--existence cannot satiate,
Cannot surprise? Laugh thou at envious fate,
Who, from earth's simplest combination stampt
With individuality--uncrampt
By living its faint elemental life,
Dost soar to heaven's complexest essence, rife
With grandeurs, unaffronted to the last, '
Equal to being all I (I, 523-47)
In this complex passage, Browning affirms the Platonic doc-
jtrine of remembrance and declares that with the appearance of
individuality in the gradations of nature, man acquired free'
will. The subjective poet, therefore, is concerned with the
I •
expression of personality rather than with the creation of
Deauty.
Browning explores his theory of subjective and objective
mentality in Sordello, but he does not use these terms, prob-
| !
ably because he regarded them as inappropriate in poetry. j
j
Elizabeth Barrett refers to them, it will be remembered (see!
p. 2 above), as well known in "the schools of the day"; and
j t o explain further the terms in question, I quote from Sir !
t i
William Hamilton's notes to The Works of Thomas Reid, issued!
l ^
In November, 1846: j
Subject and subjective, without any qualifying attrib- I
ute, I would therefore employ . . . to mark out what in
heres in, pertains to, or depends on, the knowing mind
whether of man in general, or of this or that individual
man in particular; and this in contrast to object and ob
jective, as expressing what does not so inhere, pertain,
and depend. Thus, for example, an art or science is said
to be objective, when considered simply as a system of
speculative truths or practical rules, but without respect
of any actual possessor; subjective when considered as a
habit of knowledge or a dexterity, inherent in the mind,
either vaguely of any, or precisely of this or that, pos- i
sessor. I
j
But . . . an object of knowledge may be a mode of mind, !
or it may be something different from mind; and it is fre
quently of importance to indicate precisely under which of
these classes that object comes. In this case by an inter
nal development of the nomenclature itself, we might em
ploy, on the former alternative, the term subject-object;
on the latter, the term object-object.
j
Earlier, Coleridge used these terms in the Biographia Li ter a- 1
ria (1817), and remarks in Aids to Reflection (1825)
1
1
! on the assistance which those that labour after distinct
| conceptions would receive from the re-introduction of the
j terms objective, and subjective, objective and subjective
I reality, and the like, as substitutes for real and notion
al , and to the exclusion of the false antithesis between j
real and ideal.^
Coleridge, it will be observed, equates objective with real
and subjective with notional, but maintains that the subjec
tive ideal is to be regarded as real. Browning, however,
|
sists that truth is always a subjective intuition. For
i
Browning as for Keats, truth is not truth until it is
^(Edinburgh, 1863), II* 808.
3(London, 1893)* P* 117* n. 1.
in'
I " ' " l i e n
I j
experienced as such, and the experience is its own testimonyi
The poet is a witness to truth as he perceives it. Through
out his poetry Browning disregards beauty which is not sub- j
ordinated to the knowing mind, and his poetry, consequently, I
i ' !
lacks the empathy which characterizes Keats’s imagery. Like
Shakespeare and Milton, he consistently remains aloof from
his work, always the conscious craftsman, the romantic iron- !
i
ist. In lo7o he says in retrospect:
Here's my work: does work discover--
What was rest from work--my life?
Did I live man's hater, lover?
Leave the world at peace, at strife?
Call earth ugliness or beauty?
See things there in large or small? I
Use to pay its Lord my duty?
Use to own a lord at all? I
j I
I Blank of such a record, truly j
Here's the work I hand, this scroll, j
Yours to take or leavej as duly, •
Mine remains the unproffered soul. j
(At the ' ’Mermaid." 11. 17-28)
For Browning, as for Sordello, there is a schism between man
and poet, and the course of his early poetry is determined by
his effort to reconcile the two halves of his nature. After
Sordello he gives up the effort, accepting his role of poet ;
1 1
*
as restricted to being an interpreter of life. To the end,
however, he was haunted by a sense of existential inferiori-1
by. Mrs. Orr remarks:
. . . it is at first sight difficult to reconcile [Brown- |
ing's] . . . high positive estimate of the value of his po
etry with the relative depreciation of his own poetic gen-
; ius which constantly marks. _his attitude, towards _that ._of .his
— ----■ --- irr
wife. The facts are, however, quite compatible. He re
garded Mrs. Browning’s genius as greater, because more
spontaneous, than his own . . . he underrated the creativeJ
hence spontaneous element in his own nature, while claiming
primarily the position of an observant thinker; and he
overrated the amount of creativeness implied by the poetrv
of his wife. (Robert Browning: Life and Letters. II, 393;
Sordello's tragedy results from a personality conflict, but
Browning does not make clear in his poem whether he is at
fault because of his unproffered soul or because he tries to
force his poetic nature to perform a function which is not
properly that of a poet. His error, actually, is attributa-
I
ble to both causes. He fails as a poet because he asks poet
ry to perform an immediate existential function; and he fails
as a man because he measures deeds by the potential values i
envisioned in poetry. In Sordello Browning does not give hii
solution to the problem of determining the poetic function;
but in his future poetry, of which Pippa Passes is an exam
ple, he distinguishes sharply between the functions of man
and poet. As man, the individual must participate in life,
i
but as poet, he is strictly an Interpreter, a term which in
volves a degree of participation which is not present in the
idea of spectator. Shelley, too, thinks of the poet as an ;
interpreter, but always with the onus of inciting to action.
In Shelley there is the same confusion between man and poet
that is found in Sordello. But Browning divorces the poet !
from action, even though as an interpreter of life the poet
should remain faithful to existential categories._____________
The first two books of Sordello center upon the contrast
l
between Sordello and Eglamor in somewhat the same way as the
I
second part of Paracelsus centers upon the contrast between !
i 1
Paracelsus and Aprile. Eglamor, "the best Troubadour of Bon-f
! „
iface, is defeated by Sordello in a contest of jongleurs,
and Browning says explicitly that Eglamor "lived Sordello1s
opposite": ^
For him indeed was Naddo's notion right,
And verse a temple-worship vague and vast, j
A ceremony that withdrew the last ;
Opposing bolt, looped back the lingering veil
Which hid the holy place: should one so frail
Stand there without such effort? Or repine
If much was blank, uncertain at the shrine
He knelt before, till, soothed by many a rite, ,
The power responded, and some sound or sight j
Grew up, his own forever, to be fixed, j
In rhyme, the beautiful, forever 1--mixed
With his own life, unloosed when he should please, |
Having it safe in hand, ready to ease j
All pain, remove all trouble; every time
He loosed that fancy from its bonds of rhyme,
(Like Perseus when he loosed his naked love)
Faltering; so distinct and far above
Himself, these fanciest He, no genius rare,
Transfiguring in fire or wave or air j
At will, but a poor gnome that, cloistered up !
In some rock-chamber with his agate cup, j
His topaz rod, his seed-pearl, in these few |
And their arrangement finds enough to do 1
For his best art. Then, how he loved that artl '
The calling marking him a man apart :
From men--one not to care, take counsel for !
Cold hearts, comfortless faces--(Eglamor i
Was neediest of his tribe)--since verse, the gift, i
Was his, and men, the whole of them, must shift 1
Without it, e’en content themselves with wealth !
And pomp and power, snatching a life by stealth.
(II, 197-226]
Sordello's victory over Eglamor may well represent the
triumph of romanticism over eighteenth-century neo-classi
cism, for Naddo*s theory of poetry, which resembles that of
Pope, is right for Eglamor (II, 197)* Browning remarks:
I am loth
To say the rhymes at last were Eglamor*s;
But Naddo, chuckling, bade competitors
Go pine; "the master certes meant to waste
No effort, cautiously had probed the taste
He’s please anon: true bard, in short,--disturb
His title if they could; nor spur nor curb,
Fancy nor reason, wanting in him; whence
The staple of his verses, common sense:
He built on man's broad nature— gift of gifts,
That power to build. (II, 492-502)
This emphasis on common sense and on the idea that the true
bard combines spur with curb brings to mind Pope's Essay On
Criticism. Pope admires "superior sense" (I, 200), observing:
Some, to whom heaven in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
*Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed:
The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
(I, 80-87)
bike Naddo, he thinks that "seeds of judgment" (I, 20) reside
in man's common nature. And furthermore, the eighteenth cen-
cury regard for right reason is reflected in Naddo's advice
co Sordello:
"Now, you're a bard pas.t doubt
And no philosopher; why introduce
Crotchets like these? fine, surely, but no"use
In poetry--which still must be, to strike,
Based upon common sense." (II, 788-92)
He counsels:
I ----- — ■ ---------- rrr
"As well you hid
That sense of power, you have! True bards believe
All able to achieve what they achieve--
That is, just nothing--in one point abide
Profounder simpletons than all beside,
j Oh, ay I The knowledge that you are a bard ;
Must constitute your prime, nay sole reward’ .1 1 j
(II, 814-20)
i
Sordello, however, like Paracelsus, is aware of an instinct
for power lurking in the depths of his nature and rebels
J
against Naddo’s opinion that the poet is only a spectator.
E. D. H. Johnson is justified in his opinion that Egla
mor "foreshadows the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of the artist whol
ly devoted to aesthetic discipline," but he errs strangely
I
when he says that Eglamor "clearly belongs" to Browning's i
| |
second category of poets, that which I have labeled "subjec
tive."^ Donald A. Smalley's opinion is more sound, for he
i
writes that Eglamor
I lost himself in his subject, unable to derive any general
j truth from it, unable to suggest a greater significance for
I an object than its own beauty.5
I
Such an Interpretation places Eglamor in the first or objec-j
;;ive" category of poets.
j
The theory of history which underlies Sordello resembles
I
Shelley's theory of progress rather than Carlyle's theory of!
^The Alien Vision of Victorian Poetry (Princeton, 1952)J
p. 78. 1
1 I
I ^"Sordello: Its Significance for Browning's Career as a
Poet," unpublished doctoral dissertation (Harvard University,
1939), P. 12.___________________________________________________J
1 1 5 1
bhe hero, for Browning makes his hero a guide and a teacher
rather than a man of action. Sordello, furthermore, is typi-j
j I
cally a Shelleyan hero in advocating ideas which are ahead of
his time. Browning's theory of history is illustrated better
fn Strafford than in Sordello, for Pym's will coincides with
kestiny when he chooses to support the people against the
king, but Sordello1 s choice, made in thirteenth century Italy],
is much more complicated than Pym's. Porter and Clarke, I
believe, oversimplify his problem when they write;
A period of ferment . ' . . critical for the future of
European civilization is disclosed in "Sordello," and upon;
the will of its hero rests the advancement of humanity at a
juncture so singularly favorable for his action that never j
again did so opportune a moment befall. What Dante dreamed
might be done and had no power to do, his forerunner had j
: vision to conceive, sudden power thrust upon him to do, but
not force enough to effect.6 j
Browning himself fosters this oversimplification:
I As Knight, Bard, Gallant, men were never dumb
In praise of him: while what he should have been,
Could be, and was not--the one step too mean j
For him to take,--we suffer at this day
Because of: Ecelin had pushed away i
Its chance ere Dante could arrive and take j
That step Sordello spurned, for the world's sake: '
He did much--but Sordello's chance was gone.
(VI, 828-35)'
In this summary, however, he does not make clear the nature j
I i
of Sordello’s choice. Like Strafford and Pym, Sordello is
I
required to choose between the power of a king and the rights
^Browning1s Poetical Works. ed. Charlotte Porter and
ielen A. Clarke (New York, 1898), II, vii. _________________
of a people, but the Issue Is not clear. The Emperor of thej
Holy Roman Empire was not Italian, and the Pope did not rep
resent the will of the people. Porter and Clarke quote
Bryce’s observation that the Emperors of the Holy Roman Em
pire
might have become, had they seen their opportunity and been
strong enough to improve it, the exponents and guides of
the political movement, the pioneers, in part at least, of
I the Reformation. (Works, 1898, II, xxviii)
I
But Browning is hardly reasonable in suggesting that Sordel
lo, merely by becoming chief of the Ghibellines, could have
rendered effective the power of the Emperor in Italy. One
reason for the obscurity of Sordello is that Browning's in
terpretation of his historical background is not convincing,
particularly when he shows his hero no match for the wily and
I
dominating Salinguerra. Had he accepted the Emperor's gam
bit, he would probably have had to play the Emperor's game,
prompted by Salinguerra. It should be kept In mind, however,
that Browning makes no attempt to be historically accurate,
and for purposes of interpretation we must accept his premise
that Sordello had the opportunity to unite Italy.
The entire moral of the poem lies in the reason for Sor--
hello's failure. Browning says explicitly that he failed be--
J
cause serving the Ghibellines was too mean a step for him toj
take. But certain critics have attributed his failure to j
weakness of will. Porter and Clarke say that he did not have
I_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ j
.force enough to grasp the offered power:
The fatal moment for Italy's future Sordello held between
his hesitating hands till the auspicious act looked black
with personal temptation and was thrust beneath his foot,
with the last flare of will his smouldering life could sum4
j mon. For that sole insufficiency fair Italy, although she
i has held the torch for all Europe, herself scarcely yet
j walks erect and free among her sister-nations. (Works,
j 1898, II, viii)
knd Earl Hilton, in "Browning's Sordello as a Study of the
1 . .
tfill, remarks that Salinguerra, Palma, Ecelin, and Alberic
expressed their wills and fulfilled what Browning at one
point refers to as their "functions." Sordello did not,
and Italy suffers yet, Browning tells us, for the first
steps he might have taken but did not.'
He says that "the familiar Victorian faith in the active life
i
lies behind Sordello, with Browning's special attention de- j
I <
voted to the will as source of action" (p. 1128), and con- !
1
tinues:
The concern with the will is evident, first, in the very
repetition of the word "will" (as noun) at least twenty-
four times in the course of the poem. It is evident par
ticularly in the account of Sordello's development. It is
apparent again in the treatment of the same theme--will in
relation to action--in the persons surrounding Sordello,
with the purposeful activity of others specifically con- ;
trasted with Sordello's inaction. (p. 1128) .
! 1
One must certainly agree with Hilton that the problem of Sorj
Lello's will provides the axis of the poem, but Sordello is 1
1 1
more than 1
i
. . . a Hamlet as seen by the early nineteenth century: the
j young man whose very sensitivity and perceptiveness block
7PMLA, 69:1131, .December 1954.
II81
him from action . . . Jung’s "modern man" a century before :
his time. (p. 1128) !
i |
Sordello's failure, however, does not result from weakness olj
will so much as from a profound dissociation from existence, j
Browning says of himself that he lacks "Sordello's Will" (III,
680). Like Paracelsus, Sordello strives to force his will
upon the world, to save the Italian people on his own terms.
I
He fails to act because, as a poet, he does not think in
•berms of action. He is possessed by a "strange disbelief
that aught/ Was ever to be done" (VI, 758-59). It Is true
that he envies the "single path" of less complicated natures,
but Browning ironically criticizes both his hero's inactivity
and the Victorian faith in the active life. i
Disturbed by the problem of good and evil, Sordello [
weighs the advantages of aiding the people's "Now" through |
accepting the mandate offered him by Salinguerra with those j
of the "To-Come" promised by the Guelf cause:
Sordello's miserable gleam
Was looked for at the moment: he would dash
This badge, and all it brought, to earth,--abash ;
Taurello thus, perhaps persuade him wrest !
The Kaiser from his purpose,--would attest |
His own belief, in any case. Before !
He dashes it however, think once morel I
Bor, were that little, truly service? "Ay, I
I' the end, no doubt; but meantime? Plain you spy !
Its ultimate effect, but many flaws 1
Of vision blur each Intervening cause. !
Were the day's fraction clear as the life's sum !
Of service, Now as filled as teems To-come
With evidence of good--nor too minute
A share to vie with evil I No dispute,
'T were fitliest maintain the Guelfs in rule." j
----------------------- 1 ' I T T !
(VI, 194-209. Italics mine)
Sordello, however, was
Without a function: others made pretence
To strength not half his own, yet had some core
Within, submitted to some moon, before
Them still, superior still whate'er their force,--
Were able therefore to fulfil a course,
Nor missed life's crown, authentic attribute.
To each who lives must be a certain fruit
Of having lived in his degree . a stage,
Earlier or later in men's pilgrimage,
To stop at; and to this the spirits tend
Who, still discovering beauty without end,
Amass the scintillations, make one star
--Something unlike them, self-sustained, afar,--
And meanwhile nurse the dream of being blest
By winning it to notice and invest
Their souls with alien glory, some one day
Whene'er the nucleus, gathering shape alway,
Round to the perfect circle--soon or late,
According as themselves are formed to wait.
Sordello's failure is primarily existential. As I shall ex-
I
plain later in this chapter, Browning accepts the theory of
I
the will set forth in Shelley's Queen Mab, the theory that
will Is subordinate to motive, and he shows that motive, to
be functional, must be integrated with circumstance. Too j
| i
eager for perfection, Sordello is unreconciled to the limitaj
tions and compromises of the Now. J
Browning is preoccupied with the dualism betweeA the in-r
finite soul and the finite world. It is the function of the
1
!
poet "to challenge life for us" (I, 549)* to vindicate our ;
i
race, to aid "our more bounded wills" (I, 553) in our gradual
evolution. But the poet fails to perform this function if he
(VI, 58-76. Italics mine]
law
does not relate his vision of truth to present action. Sor-
iello's tragedy is that he finds this world
"--Too narrow an arena to reward
Emprise--the world's occasion worthless since
Not absolutely fitted to evince
Its mastery I" Or if yet worse befall,
And a desire possess it to put all
That nature forth, forcing our straitened sphere
Contain it,--to display completely here
The mastery another life should learn,
Thrusting in time eternity's concern. (I, 558-67)
de suffers from the leprosy of perfectionism:
The leprosy confirmed and ruinous
To spirit lodged in a contracted house I
(I, 885-86)
A low voice adjures him after his dream of perfected Rome
fades:
"Sordello, wake’ .
God has conceded two sights to a man--
One, of men's whole work, time's completed plan,.
The other, of the minute's work, man's first
Step to the plan's completeness: what's dispersed
Save hope of that supreme step which, descried
Earliest, was meant still to remain untried
Only to give you heart to take your own
Step, and there stay, leaving the rest alone?
Where is the vanity? Why count as one
The first step, with the last step? What is gone
Except Rome's a&ry magnificence,
That last step you'd take first?--an evidence
You were God: be man now'. Let those glances fall I
The basis, the beginning step of all,
Which proves you just a man--is that gone too?
(V, 84-99)
The two sights to which Browning refers are the twin reveal-
ments of the subjective poet. The soul, according to Brown
ing, is eternal and has infinite potentialities, but only
bhose potentialities can be activated which are fitted to the
'"' -----------------121H
present. Man is free to meet the challenge of environment, j
hut this freedom is limited by existence. Joy is the result
of co-ordination between soul and body; sorrow is the result
of the soul's failure to adjust to environment:
Soul on Matter being thrust,
Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time
On Matter: let the Soul's attempt sublime
Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent
By more or less that deed's accomplishment,
And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid?
Let the employer match the thing employed,
Fit to the finite his infinity,
And thus proceed forever, in degree
Changed but in kind the same, still limited
To the appointed circumstance and dead
To all beyond. (VI, 492-503)
The poet, therefore, is the agent who perceives intuitively
;he will of God in a particular situation.
I
In the divine comedy of history, however, the will of
God remains obscure. Browning's thought that
Venice seems a type
Of Life--'twixt blue and blue extends, a stripe,
As Life, the somewhat, hangs 'twixt naught and naught
(III, 723-25!
may echo Pascal's idea, quoted in the previous chapter, that
man trembles "between those two abysses of the Infinite and
Nothing," or, perhaps, Carlyle's observation that "He stood
in the lapse of Time: he saw Eternity behind him, and before
him" (Essays, III, 328). The heroes of Pauline, Paracelsus,
and Sordello are all oppressed by the dreadful ambiguity of
jexistence and by fateful indecision in choosing between the
infinite and the finite. In Paracelsus and Sordello, ________
X 2 2 ^
i
Browning seems to argue for suppressing the infinite insofar ,
t |
as it does not relate to the finite. But on the other hand, j
i
i
like Sordello, he is drawn irresistibly to the infinite. He I
| I
writes to Miss Barrett:
There is more in the soul than rises to the surface and
meets the eye; whatever does that, is for this world's im
mediate uses; and were this world all, all in us would be
producible and available for use, as it is with the body
now--but with the soul, what is to be developed afterward
is the main thing, and instinctively asserts its rights--so
that when you hate (or love) you shall not be so able to
explain "why." (I, 133)
This letter explains the lack of genuinely tragic emotion in
Browning's poetry, for the very failure of his heroes in this
| i
world insures their advancement in the next. The moral of
I
Sordello is much more profound than that suggested by Porter
J
and Clarke and by Hilton: that Sordello fails because he re
jects the implements placed in his hand by fortune. R. W.
I
Church comes closer to the truth:
His temptation, it would seem, was when, after SalinguerraI
had recognised him as his long-lost son, after he had lis-|
tened, first with amusement and then with impatient scorn,;
to Sordello's gathering earnestness and passion, Salinguer--
ra had offered him the armed leadership of Lombardy, per
haps Italy. There it was for him to take, if he would.
But to take it, was to take it with its small chances of '
justice and mercy, with all its uncertainties--witness Sa-:
linguerra himself--of violence and cruelty: it was to con-;
tinue that which had appalled his soul with its ghastly J
terrors. That, surely, was not what he was called to; and!
he resisted the temptation. But he had only strength to
refuse it, and no more: he had not heart or will to see
what it led to; and refusing it, in Mr. Browning's story,
he dies: his work left undone in despair, his divine work [
unfinished, while the poor hermit-bee, which had been workj
ing all the day, was able to accomplish what God had given;
4
In other words, Sordello regarded Salinguerra's offer as a
temptation, and his refusal is an act of will rather than a
weakness.
Sordello fails because of conflict between his spiritual
i
and physical natures, and Browning’s point is that the indi
vidual should be poised between the two. If the individual
loses his balance either way, his existence is diminished.
The individual pursues his own karma, his own Dasein, through
cycles of existence independently of what may be called the
collective karma or Dasein of mankind. Sordello is true to j
the promptings of his soul in rejecting the Emperor's badge,
I
but such promptings, as Browning makes clear in Paracelsus,
are not indubitable criteria of judgment. They need to be
correlated with circumstance, and Sordello did not have suf-
i
ficient insight into "men's whole work" or sufficient faith
in his destiny to evaluate his subjective judgments.
Browning gives a clue to his own interpretation of his
poem when he remarks to Miss Barrett concerning lines 52 to j
57 in the fifth book of the Purgatorio that they are "just my
Sordello's story." He gives this translation:
. . . sinners were we to the extreme hour;
j Then, light from heaven fell, making us aware,
So that, repenting us and pardoned, out
^Dante and Other Essays (London,,„1.888 . 2.49._________ j
1 2 4 “
Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him
Who fills the heart with yearning Him to see.
(Letters, I, 347)
1
Sordello ends with a mystical intuition of being which coun
teracts the tragic implications of the theme. Its hero dies
with
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,
Wider than some spent swimmer's if he spies
Help from above in his extreme despair. (VI, 6l4-l6)
Compare these lines with the symbolism of Andromeda in Paul
ine. This extreme despair, according to Browning, is an es
sential prerequisite for true faith.
Kierkegaard, I believe, would accept Sordello as a
"knight of infinite resignation" as distinguished from a sec--
end spiritual type, the "knight of faith." In Fear and Trem
bling, as I have explained above (p. 36), he tells how Abra
ham obeyed God's command that he sacrifice Isaac without
question. He explains Abraham as a knight of faith, confes
sing that he (and here I identify Kierkegaard with his pseu
donym, Johannes de Silentio) makes
other movements, . . . the movements of infinity, whereas
faith does the opposite: after having made the movements of
infinity, it makes those of finiteness. (p. 48)
Patrick explains that the knight of infinite resignation "is
able and willing to surrender everything finite for the sake
of the infinite" whereas the knight of faith "makes the
'double movement of infinity,' surrendering the finite and
accepting it again from God at every instant of his life"
(II, 195).
I stress the point that Kierkegaard does not make a to- |
;al identification between Johannes and himself, but they are
alike in being unable to make the movements of faith. "The
I
knights of the infinite resignation," says Kierkegaard,
I :
I are easily recognized: their gait is gliding and assured.
Those on the other hand who carry the jewel of faith are |
likely to be delusive, because their outward appearance
bears a striking resemblance to that which both the knights
of infinite resignation and faith profoundly despise . . .
to Philistinism. (p. 49)
Neither Kierkegaard nor Sordello is "gliding and assured";
i
both are profoundly disturbed and uncertain. But they are,
nevertheless, knights of infinite resignation, for having j
| i
made the movements of infinity they are unable to make those I
of the finite. Both believe that they must shape their own j
i
destiny, whereas the knight of faith
lives as carefree as a ne'er-do-well, and yet he buys up
the acceptable time at the dearest price, for he does not
do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd. And
yet, and yet . . . this man has made and every instant is
making the movements of infinity. With infinite resigna
tion he has drained the cup of life's profound sadness, he
knows the bliss of the infinite, he senses the pain of re
nouncing everything, the dearest things he possesses in the
i world, and yet finiteness tastes to him just as good as to j
one who never knew anything higher, for his continuance in
the finite did not bear a trace of the cowed and fearful j
spirit produced by the process of training; and yet he has ;
this sense of security in enjoying it, as though the finite
life were the surest thing of all. (p. 51) j
If Sordello had been a knight of faith, he would have ac- ;
cepted the Emperor's badge. !
In his early poetry Browning was learning to make the__
r _ 126]
'double movement of infinity” which characterizes the knight j
of faith. Henry James was later to say of him:
. . . it is impossible not to believe that he had arrived
somehow, for his own deep purposes, at the enjoyment of a
double identity. It was not easy to meet him and know him
without some resort to the supposition that he had literal
ly mastered the secret of dividing the personal conscious
ness into a pair of independent compartments. The man of
the world--the man who was good enough for the world, such
as it was--walked abroad, showed himself, talked, right
resonantly, . . . and did his duty; the man of the "Dramat
ic Lyrics,” of "Men and Women," of "Pippa Passes,” of "Colj
ombe1s Birthday," of everything, more or less, of the order
of these,--this inscrutable personage sat at home and knew|
as well as he might in what quarters of that sphere to look
for suitable company. The poet and the "member of society'
were, in a word, dissociated in him as they can rarely
elsewhere have been.9
This description suggests curiously the knight of faith,
whose "gait is as indefatigable as that of the postman" (p. j
50) and before whom Johannes de Silentio exclaims, "Good
1 !
Lord, is this the man? Is it really he? Why, he looks like'
a tax-collector1 ."
The pivot of Browning’s theory of the poet is the twin
revealment, the double movement of the knight of faith, the
ratio between infinite and finite in any given experience.
Human existence, says Browning, is measured in degrees of be
ing. Sordello meditates:
"The common sort, the crowd,
Exist, perceive; with Being are endowed, '
However slight, distinct from what they See,
^William Wetmore Story and His Friends (Boston, 1904),
II, 88-89. '___ ____________
However bounded; Happiness must be, ,
To feed the first by gleanings from the.last, i
Attain its qualities, and slow or fast
Become what they behold; such peace-in-strife,
By transmutation, is the Use of Life,
The Alien turning Native to the soul
Or body--which instructs me;,I am whole I
There and demand a Palma; had the world
Been from my soul to a like distance hurled,
'T were Happiness to make it one with me:
Whereas I must, ere I begin to Be,
| Include a world, in flesh, I comprehend
j In spirit now. (ill, 159-7*0
Browning here makes as clear a distinction between essence
and existence as can be found in any existentialist philoso
pher. Being, he maintains, does not reside in essence, but
in the actualization of essence in existence. For the human
individual, however, being can not be static. It depends up4
on projection, upon the subjective appropriation of alien
elements. Total knowledge would cancel out the alien world--
"... and this done, what's to blend
With? Naught is Alien in the world--my Will
I Owns all already; yet can turn it--still
Less--Native, since my Means to correspond
With Will are so unworthy, 't was my bond
To tread the very joys that tantalize
Most now, into a grave, never to rise. :
I die then'. Will the rest agree to die? I
Next Age or no? Shall its Sordello try
Clue after clue, and catch at last the clue
I miss?--that's underneath my finger too,
Twice, thrice a day, perhaps,--some yearning traced
Deeper, some petty consequences embraced
Closer!” (ill, 174-87)
To function organically in experience the mind must be Igno-!
rant of the outcome; otherwise it ceases to be creative and
becomes mechanical. Man may have his vision of "time's
r 2 .8 n
completed plan," but the "minute's work" comes first and must
|
be executed with spontaneity. The poet should not attempt
action for he can not do so spontaneously. His function is f
zo inspire others to action, and this action then has the au
thenticity of poetry.
As Hilton points out (see above, p. 117) and as our dis-j
cussion has indicated, Browning struggles in Sordello with
the problem of the will, the problem of maintaining the in
tegrity of the personality without rendering it self-cen-
t
tered. In his theory of twin revealment he works out a sys
tem of reciprocity between subjective and objective tenden-
| i
cies in which will is subordinated to an "out-soul," an ex- j
I
pression which may owe much to similar ideas in Shelley's po-|
etry and prose. I cite only the following sentence from A
Defence of Poetry:
i
i
i The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our
nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beauti
ful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our i
own. (Essays, p. 12) j
Browning would disagree, however, with Shelley's opinion, ex-j
pressed with regard to Epipsychidion, that
. . . the error . . . consists in seeking in a mortal image
the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal. (Works, p. 298)
In Epipsychidion Shelley takes as his text Teresa Emilia Viv4
iani's "own words," which may be rendered: 1
j
L'anima, the soul that loves, projects itself beyond crea
tion, and creates for itself in the infinite a world all
its own, very different from this obscure and fearful gulf.
------------ : -------------— r29~ j
j (Works, p. 632) |
i
The out-soul, in Browning's philosophy, offers the one possi
ble escape from solipsism. The soul that loves a kindred
soul does not project itself beyond creation; it projects it-
| 1
self into creation.
His probing of the will's function leads Browning to an
idea which I have already discussed in relation to the idea
of evolution in Paracelsus, an idea which is similar to Sar
tre's concept of two kinds of being, being-in-itself and be-
ing-for-itself. This distinction between two kinds of being
has relevance for Sordello after he has become disillusioned
regarding the resources of the will: !
i
Sordello well or ill
Is finished: then what further use of Will,
Point in the prime idea not realized,
An .oversight? inordinately prized,
No less, and pampered with enough of each
Delight to prove the whole above its reach.
"To need become all natures, yet retain
The law of my own nature--to remain
Myself, yet yearn . . . as if that chestnut, think.
Should yearn for this first larch-bloom crisp and pink,
Or those pale fragrant tears where zephyrs stanch
March wounds along the fretted pine-tree branch I j
Will and the means to show will, great and small,
Material, spiritual,--abjure them all
Save any so distinct, they may be left
To amuse, not tempt become! and, thus bereft, !
Just as I first was fashioned would I be! i
Nor, moon, is it Apollo now, but me j
Thou visitest to comfort and befriend!
Swim thou into my heart, and there an end,
Since I possess thee!" (Ill, 33~53) :
Sordello, weary of the endless strife of becoming, yearns for
the absoluteness and security_ of being-in-itself. In his
: --------------------------------------- 130:
| i
childhood he had fancied himself Apollo being comforted by
the moon, but now, in his despair, he experiences his own be--
i
ing. He himself comes into existence. He is free to shape J
his own destiny, but in so doing he must control environmentJ
subdue his own nature, and risk his being on a single choice.
Existential engagement, however, involves a diminution, a
partial relinquishment of being-in-itself. It necessitates a
i j
leap into becoming, and Sordello is unable to make the leap.
■Paradoxically, he is not free to refuse freedom. As in Pas
cal's wager, he must choose, for even refusal is a choice. i
In failing to choose he loses his chance to exist, but he is
jfcemperamentally unable to make the decision which his will :
would force upon him. And when Salinguerra finally forces
I
him to decide, the decision kills him.
i
}
A distinction should be made, however, between Sordel-
I
lo's problem and Browning's, for the solution which is open
jto the author is not open to his hero. Browning's solution j
is that of romantic irony. The poet, as a craftsman, must
remain himself, must keep open all avenues of freedom. But
this very lack of personal commitment enables him to project|
himself into any number of persons in all conceivable situa-!
i
tions. The distinction between poet and man is essential to
!
his art, and if this dissociation involves a certain loss in
!
.existential being, such loss is compensated in the vision of\
jthe poet. Thought must precede act, and the vision of the
poet becomes the actuality of tomorrow. Furthermore, if the
i
poet, as poet, is deficient in existence, existence itself is
deficient in being; and if it is to possess the fullest pos
sible being in its projection, it requires the vision of the
poet. As a man, however, the poet may participate fully in
existence.
The three main divisions of Sordello correspond to Kier
kegaard's three stages on life's road. The first and second
books deal with the aesthetic stage of Sordello's life, his
development through the influence of nature and society upon
his selfish aims. Early in the third book he becomes dis
satisfied with the aesthetic life, and the ethical stage be-
| i
gins to unfold. Transition from the aesthetic to the ethical
life, however, is possible only through the agency of an out-
soul, and Sordello, like Paracelsus, is completely self-cen
tered. Unable to make the transition to the ethical life, he
is "finished." His difficulties arise precisely because he
does not love an out-soul. Of the need for such a love,
Browning says:
Of a power above you still j
Which, utterly incomprehensible,
’ Is out of rivalry, which thus you can
Love, tho' unloving all conceived by man--
What need I And of--none the minutest duct
To that out-nature, naught that would instruct
And so let rivalry begin to live—
But of a Power its representative
Who, being for authority the same,
Communication different, should claim
___ A course, the first chose but this last revealed--______
i - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 3 2 1
i
i
This Human clear* as that Divine concealed-- I
What utter need! (VI, 591-603)
Palma explains the out-soul to Sordello when she tells him of
ner love:
"How dared I let expand the force
Within me, till some out-soul, whose resource
It grew for, should direct it? Every law
Of life, its every fitness, every flaw,
Must One determine whose corporeal shape
Would he no other than the prime escape
And revelation to me of a Will
Orb-like o'ershrouded and inscrutable
Above, save at the point which, I should know,
Shone that myself, my powers, might overflow
So far, so much; as now it signified
Which earthly shape it henceforth chose my guide,
Whose mortal lip selected to declare
Its oracles, what fleshly garb would wear I
--The first of intimations, whom to love; !
The next, how love him." (Ill, 319-34)-
By "prime escape" I think Palma means the escape from
i '
the self, the escape from the aesthetic into the ethical life.
i
An out-soul is a force in the external world which provides
the individual with objective fulfillment. Palma from the
first is true to her moral instincts. She knows intuitively
that she dare not let the force within her expand until she j
l
is directed by her out-soul, and consequently she never loses
her equilibrium between subjective and objective elements in
her nature. Sordello, however, allows his subjectivity to
| i
expand until it overshadows the world about him. Capable of j
being satisfied only by absolute truth, he finds no joy in i
existence. Not until he dies does he enter the religious
I
i
stage in which life is illuminated by divine light: __________
i- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - :- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --------------- ---------- 1333
. . . at last !
The main discovery and prime concern,
All that just now imported him to learn,
Truth's self, like yonder slow moon to complete
Heaven, rose again, and, naked at his feet,
Lighted his old life's every shift and change, |
Effort with counter-effort; nor the range j
Of each looked wrong except wherein it checked,
Some other--which of these could be suspect,
Prying into them by the sudden blaze?
The real way seemed made up of all the ways--
Mood after mood of.the one mind in him;
Tokens of the existence, bright or dim,
Of a transcendent all-embracing sense
Demanding only outward influence,
A soul, in Palma's phrase, above his soul,
Power to uplift his power,--such moon's control
Over such sea-depths,--and their mass had swept
Onward from the beginning and still kept
Its course. (VI, 26-45. Italics mine)
Sordello's failure results from the fact that the sky above
him held no moon, no out-soul--
. . . and so, untasked of any love
His sensitiveness idled, now amort,
Alive now, and, to sullenness or sport
Given wholly up, disposed itself anew
At every passing instigation, grew
And dwindled at caprice, in foam-showers spilt,
Wedge-like insisting, quivered now a gilt
Shield in the sunshine, now a blinding race
Of whitest ripples o'er the reef--found place
For much display; not gathered up and, hurled i
Right from its heart, encompassing the world.
So had Sordello been, by consequence, I
Without a function. (VI, 46-58) |
i
Palma's phrase "A soul . . . above his soul" might serve as a
i
translation for Shelley's epipsvche. Lacking the motivationj
of such a soul, Sordello insists upon a rational interpreta-'
tion of existence and can not act intuitively. Although he
renounces the aesthetic life he can not be effective
ethically until he has reached the religious stage of life, a
|
Stage which is revealed to him in the metamorphosis of death.
Ironically, however, as Browning explains later in Pisgah-
Sights, the illumination which he craves would render him un-
I
fit for ethical action since he would be acting from knowl
edge rather than from desire. I have said that Sordello’s
!
problem is precisely Kierkegaard’s, for neither is able to
make the transition in existence from the aesthetic to the
ethical and religious stages. Sordello enters the religious
stage only through the transcendental experience of death. i
The true function of will is shown in the portrait of
Hildebrand, a portrait which contrasts sharply with that of ,
Sordello:
"See him stand !
Buttressed upon his mattock, Hildebrand
Of the huge brain-mask welded ply o'er ply
As in a forge; it buries either eye
White and extinct, that stupid brow; teeth clenched,'
The neck tight-corded, too, the chin deep-trenched, I
As if a cloud enveloped him while fought
Under its shade, grim prizers, thought with thought
At dead-lock, agonizing he, until
The victor thought leap radiant up, and Will, i
The slave with folded arms and drooping lids j
They fought for, lean forth flame-like as it bids.
Call him no flower--a mandrake of the earth, j
Thwarted and dwarfed and blasted in its birth,
Rather,— a fruit of suffering’s excess,
Thence feeling, therefore stronger: still by stress
Of Strength, work Knowledge’ ." (V, 161-77) !
jPhis portrait sets in relief Sordello's
j . . . accustomed fault of breaking yoke,
Disjoining him who felt from him who spoke. 1
______________________________________________________ (V,. ..333-34)
- I35^
He becomes !
i
l
] Sundered in twain; each spectral part at strife
With each; one jarred against another life;
The Poet thwarting hopelessly the Man~-
Who, fooled no longer, free in fancy ran
Here, there: let slip no opportunities
I As pitiful, forsooth, beside the prize
To drop on him some no-time and acquit '
His constant faith (the Poet-half’s to wit-- i
That waiving any compromise between !
No joy and all joy kept the hunger keen
Beyond most methods)--of incurring scoff
! Prom the Man-portion--not to be put off
With self-reflectings by the Poet's scheme,
Though ne'er so bright. (II, 657“70)
i
The dissociation of Sordello's poetry from life is shown in
;these lines:
Song, net deeds, '
(For we get tired) was chosen. Fate would brook j
Mankind no other organ; he would look I
For not another channel to dispense I
j His own volition by, receive men's sense I
Of its supremacy--would live content, I
Obstructed else, with merely verse for vent.
Nor should, for instance, strength an outlet seek
And, striving, be admired: nor grace bespeak
Wonder, displayed in gracious attitudes: ]
Nor wisdom, poured forth, change unseemly moods;
But he would give and take on song's one point.
Like some huge throbbing stone that, poised a-joint,
Sounds, to affect on its basaltic bed, '
Must sue in just one accent; tempests shed
Thunder, and raves the windstorm: only let
That key by any little noise be set--
The far benighted hunter's halloo pitch
On that, the hungry curlew chance to scritch j
I Or serpent hiss it, rustling through the rift, 1
However loud, however low--all lift I
The groaning monster, stricken to the heart. 1
(II, 440-61)
As a poet, Sordello felt himself to be a "throbbing stone"
incapable of capturing in his verse the modulations of
1361
existence.
By the end of the second book
. . . the complete Sordello, Man and Bard,
John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land,
That on the sea, with, open in his hand,
A bitter-sweetling of a book--was gone.
Then, if internal struggles to be one
Which frittered him incessantly piecemeal,
Referred, ne'er so obliquely, to the real
Intruding Mantuansi ever with some call
To action while he pondered, once for all,
Which looked the easier effort--to pursue
This course, still leap o'er paltry joys, yearn through
The present ill-appreciated stage
Of self-revealment, and compel the age
Know him--or else, forswearing bard-craft, wake
Prom out his lethargy and nobly shake
Off timid habits of denial, mix
With men, enjoy like men. (II, 690-706)
John's angel Is In Revelation, Chapter 10. John relates
:hat he saw a "mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed
With a cloud"--
And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his
right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth.
. . . And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give
me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat
it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be
in thy mouth sweet as honey.
A symbol for Browning's ideal poet, one combining subjective
with objective, ethical with aesthetic, the angel with his
'bitter-sweetling of a book" foreshadows the Idea behind
Bells and Pomegranates. "I only meant by that title," says
Browning,
to indicate an endeavour towards something like an alterna
tion, or mixture, of music with discoursing, sound with
sense, poetry with thought. (Works, p. 128)
John's earth-sea symbolism reappears in the amphibian pro- I
jLogue to Fifine at the Fair, reflecting a permanent schism in
Browning's own nature. But whereas Browning balances dexter-!
ously and ironically between man and poet, Sordello loses his
equilibrium.
In the third book, the "ignominious exile of mankind" is
rescinded through Palma's influence, and Sordello
resolves to be
Gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy,
Soul of this body--to wield this aggregate
Of souls and bodies, and so conquer fate
Though he should live--a centre of disgust
Even--apart, core of the outward crust
He vivifies, assimilates. (Ill, 555~6l)
j
He wishes to serve mankind, but like Paracelsus remains aloof
I
from those he would serve. He believes that he can benefit |
I 1
mankind by supporting the Ghibelline party, but can fix upon
no external power to implement his aims:
External power'. If none be adequate,
And he stand forth ordained (a prouder fate)
Himself a law to his own sphere? "Remove
All Incompleteness I" for that law, that love? |
Nay, if all other laws be feints,--truth veiled ;
Helpfully to weak vision that had failed |
To grasp aught but its special want,--for lure, ;
Embodied? Stronger vision could endure ,
The unbodied want: no part--the whole of truth I j
The People were himself: nor, by the ruth j
At their condition, was he less impelled
To alter the discrepancy beheld, !
Than if, from the sound whole, a sickly part ;
Subtracted were transformed, decked out with art, j
Then palmed on him as alien woe--the Guelf :
i To succor, proud that he forsook himself. j
( All is himselfj all service, therefore, rates
j Alike, nor serving one part, immolates
1 _____ The rest. (VI. 111-29) ____________________________
The prophecy of the first book that Sordello will thrust "in
jfcime eternity's concern" is fulfilled. He refuses to sacri
fice his vision of the whole to the achievement of the part.
i
i
In spite of willing to be a man of action, he continues to
jthink as a poet, and his only possible release from his di
lemma is through death--
Is the cloud of hindrance broke
But by the failing of the fleshly yoke,
Its loves and hates, as now when death lets soar
Sordello, self-sufficient as before,
Though during the mere space that shall elapse
'Twixt his enthralment in new bonds perhaps?
(VI, 555-60. Italics mine)
The Ghibelline cause offers Sordello an out-soul, the
kaiser, whom Sordello rejects as unworthy. The Guelf cause,
which Sordello sees as that of liberalism, offers no clear
course of action. DeVane writes that
The liberal spirit which his reading of Shelley had im
planted in Browning had borne fruit in Strafford, had been
the generating force in Sordello, Pippa Passes TPart III),1
King Victor and King Charles, and The Return of the Druses 1
This flaming spirit had led Browning to accuse Wordsworth
of apostasy in The Lost Leader. In A Soul's Tragedy, Chi-
appino is a lost leader, in truth, and Browning's faith in
liberalism--at least in the virtue of its leaders--shows
itself disillusioned almost to the point of cynicism. (p.
192)
But according to my interpretation of Pauline, Paracelsus,
| 1
and Sordello, Browning's attitude toward social reform is j
just as disillusioned in his early work as in A Soul's Tragej
Jdy, with the possible exception of Strafford, in which social
reform is part of the historical pattern. In Pauline, the
r i"3'9i
t
hero says of his dream that "Men were to he as Gods and eartii
as heaven":
. . . suddenly without heart-wreck I awoke :
As from a dream: I said n'T was beautiful,
Yet but a dream, and so adieu to it I" (11. 448-50)
And Paracelsus says of his lectures at Liechtenfels:
Saul Is among
The prophets! Just so long as I was pleased
To play off the mere antics of my art,
Fantastic gambols leading to no end,
I got huge praise: but one can ne'er keep down
Our foolish nature's weakness. There they flocked,
Poor devils, jostling, swearing and perspiring,
Till the walls rang again; and all for me!
I had a kindness for them, which was right;
But then I stopped not till I tacked to that
A trust in them and a respect--a sort
Of sympathy for them; I must needs begin
To teach them, not amaze them, "to Impart
The spirit which should instigate the search
Of truth," . . . I spoke out.
Forthwith a mighty squadron, in disgust,
Filed off. (IV, 82-98)
likewise, Sordello's ardor for reform is chilled by thought
of "Ferrara's squalid sons" (V, 9)- And after he has made
his brilliant plea for the rights of the people, Browning re
marks :
My poor Sordello! what may we extort
By this, I wonder? (V, 666-67)
Browning explains the action of the will at objective
and subjective levels through the use of two symbolic meta
phors, those of the machine and the sphere. The machine met
aphor is used to explain the basic flaw in Sordello's nature,
his inability to Implement his ideas. The sphere metaphor is
used to explain the ability of the soul to advance, presuma
bly by utilizing the machine of the body. In the first two
books Sordello exploits self-consciousness. In the first
I
book he allows his fancy free play in nature. In the second
lie extends this free play of fancy to human beings--
I Men no more
Compete with him than tree and flower before.
Himself, inactive, yet is greater far
Than such as act, each stooping to his star,
Acquiring thence his function; he has gained
The same result with meaner mortals trained
j To strength or beauty, moulded to express
Each the idea that rules him; since no less
He comprehends that function, but can still
Embrace the others, take of might his fill
With Richard as of grace with Palma, mix
Their qualities, or for a moment fix
On one; abiding free meantime, uncramped
By any partial organ, never stamped
Strong, and to strength turning all energies--
Wise, and restricted to becoming wise--
j That is, he loves not, nor possesses One
I Idea that, star-like over, lures him on
j To its exclusive purpose. (II, 379~97)
He assumes "the mastery such dreams allot . . . In virtue of
his simple will" (II, 360, 364). He exclaims:
". . . no machine
To exercise my utmost will is mine:
Be mine mere consciousness! Let men perceive
What I could do, a mastery believe,
Asserted and established to the throng
By their selected evidence of song
Which now shall prove, whate'er they are, or seek
To be, I am— whose words, not actions speak,
Who change no standards of perfection, vex
With no strange forms created to perplex,
But just perform their bidding and no more,
At their own satiating-point give o'er,
While each shall love in me the love that leads
His soul to power's perfection." (II, 427-40)
The poet, according to this view, reflects the desires of
I
collective man and exercises no will of his own. Browning
j i
intrudes into his tale to remark ironically:
i
(Dear monarch, I "beseech,
Notice how lamentably wide a breach
Is here: discovering this, discover too
What our poor world has possibly to do
With it! As pigmy natures as you please--
So much the better for you; take your ease,
Look on, and laugh; style yourself God alone;
Strangle some day with a cross olive-stone!)
(II, 415-22)
In his desire to play the part of an aloof god, Sordello has
1
become, in Sartre's phrase, a useless passion. He prefers
the empty freedom of essence to the limitations of existence.
j By the end of the second book Sordello thinks that he j
may have neglected his will--
The Body, the Machine for Acting Will, !
Had been at the commencement proved unfit;
That for Demonstrating, Reflecting It,
Mankind--no fitter: was the Will Itself
In fault? (II, 994-98)
Browning thinks of will as being on two levels. On*one level
it signifies potential power; on the other determination to j
j t
act. George Willis Cooke thinks that Browning means by willj
the power in virtue of which we feel potentially an experi
ence or quality; i.e., while one may not actually realize a
thing, he feels that he has the spiritual capacity to real
ize it.40
This definition holds, however, only for one aspect or one j
40a Guide-Book to the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Rob
ert Browning (Boston, 1891), P» 392.
level of Browning's Idea of will. When Sordello speaks of j
will early In Book Two, he thinks of will as similar to imag-j
I . .
ination In the capacity to realize in himself all his im
ages” (Cooke, p. 392). But later he speaks of "Acting Will"
I
or will that projects itself into existence. These two lev-
j
els of the will correspond, in a limited sense which will he
made clear presently, to Gabriel Marcel's idea of two levels
of reflection--that which concerns experiences confined to
jthe categories of "seeing" and "having" and that which tran
scends objective knowledge. Browning's first type of will is
proper for poets and philosophers, but should not be confused
with the second type, acting will, which is purely practical
and immediate in its nature. Will, as Browning thinks of it,1
i i
is contained in Marcel's idea of reflection as one-of its i
elements.
Unable, like Paracelsus, to free himself from self-con
sciousness, Sordello becomes the theater for conflict between
I *
the two levels of will, a conflict between subjective and obj
jective forces-- 1
i
The last face glances through the eglantines,
The last voice murmurs, 'twixt the blossomed vines,
Of Men, of that machine supplied by thought
To compass self-perception with, he sought '
By forcing half himself--an insane pulse 1
Of a god's blood, on clay it could convulse, ;
Never transmute--on human sights and sounds, J
To watch the other half with; irksome bounds
It ebbs from to its source, a fountain sealed
Forever. Better sure be unrevealed
Than part revealed. (Ill, 23“33)_______________________
A knight of infinite resignation, Sordello can not stoop from
the infinite potentialities of consciousness to the finite
star of immediate fulfillment. True contemplation, says Mar
cel , i
I
l
is a possibility only for somebody who has made sure of his
grip on reality; for somebody who floats on the surface of
reality, or who, as it were, skims over the thin ice of
that surface on skates, for the amateur or the dilettante, j
the contemplative act is inconceivable. (The Mystery of '
Being. I, 123)
And Reinhardt observes:
The perspective of "le voir. I1avoir et la mort" (seeing,
having, and death) is decisively overcome and transcended
in that creative reflection which pays homage to reality in
an act of absolute engagement, that is, in the act of faithi
In this act the total reality of my self addresses itself I
to the totality of being and is absorbed in the presence of
f that totality. (p. 221) j
Sordello is shut out from the act of faith precisely because
he does not have totality of self and consequently can not be
absorbed into the totality of being. In choosing conscious
ness over finite existence he shows himself to be a knight of
infinite resignation, whose gait, at least in the beginning,
I • i
is gliding and assured.
The full significance of the machine metaphor Is ex-
i
plained most clearly in the long interpolation at the end of!
l I
the Third Book. In his own person, Browning speaks:
I
What do we here? simply experiment [
Each on the other's power and its intent j
When elsewhere tasked,--if this of mine were trucked
For yours to either’s good,--we watch construct,
In short, an engine: with a finished one,
______What it can do, is_ all, - -naught, how '_t Is done. _
But this of ours yet in probation, dusk 1
A kernel of strange wheelwork through its husk J
Grows into shape by quarters and by halves; ,
Remark this tooth's spring, wonder what that valve's ,
Fall bodes, presume each faculty's device,
Make out each other more or less precise--
The scope of the whole engine's to be proved;
We die: which means to say, the whole's removed, i
Dismounted wheel by wheel, this complex gin,--
To be set up anew elsewhere, begin
A task indeed, but with a clearer clime
Than the murk lodgment of our bui1ding-time.
And then, I grant you, it behoves forget
How 'tis done--all that must amuse us yet
So long: and, while you turn upon your heel,
Pray that I be not busy slitting steel
Or shredding brass, camped on some virgin shore
Under a cluster of fresh stars, before
I name a tithe o1 the wheels I trust to do'.
So occupied, then, are we: hitherto,
At present and a weary while to come,
The office of ourselves,--nor blind nor dumb,
And seeing somewhat of man's state,--has been, I
For the worst of us, to say they so have seen; :
For the better, what it was they saw; the best
Impart the gift of seeing to the rest. (Ill, 837-68)
The idea of body as machine is widened to include personali
ty. The primary function of the individual is to evolve a
personality capable of twin revealment, a machine for fitting
Infinite to finite. The will alone can not suffice to make
such an adjustment; it must be equipped with the proper mech-j
anism, a mechanism that is constructed from past experience j
and is suited as well as possible to present need. Society
i !
is a machine created by collective man under the guidance of j
I !
poets. It is essential to the evolution of individual per- j
I 1
sonality, but plays no more than a secondary role. One's |
)
primary duty is to oneself, but one's karma can be worked oul:
only through relation to others, through love. In 1845
I , i
Browning wrote to Miss Barrett concerning the function of the
I ' i
i |
will: i
. . . all passive obedience and implicit submission of wilJ
and intellect is by far too easy, if well considered, to be
the course prescribed by God to Man in this life of proba- j
tion--for they evade probation altogether, though foolish :
people think otherwise. Chop off your legs, you will never
go astray; stifle your reason altogether and you will find I
it is difficult to reason ill. "It Is hard to make these
sacrifices I"--not so hard as to lose the reward or incur
the penalty of an Eternity to come; "hard to effect them,
then, and go through with them"--not hard, when the leg is
to be cut off.--that it is rather harder to keep it quiet
on a stool, I know very well. The partial indulgence, the
proper exercise of one's faculties, there is the difficulty
and problem for solution, set by that Providence which I
might have made the laws of Religion as indubitable as i
those of vitality, and revealed the articles of belief as !
certainly as that condition, for instance, by which we |
breathe so many times in a minute to support life. But 1
there is no reward proposed for the feat of breathing, and |
a great one for that of believing--consequently there must j
go a great deal more of voluntary effort to this latter j
than Is implied in the getting rid of it at once, by adoptT
ing the direction of an infallible church, or private judg-j-
ment of another--for all our life is some form of religionJ
and all our action some belief, and there is but one law,
however modified, for the greater and the less. In your
case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
yourself; that is, to God in the end. (I, 220-21)
In working for his own perfection the individual is at the j
same time working for that of collective man. And if the in{
I i , !
dividual happens to be a poet, he imparts the gift of seeing
I 5
I i
to the rest." |
The sphere metaphor is rendered complex by involving
both a "Series of spheres" (VI, 552), or existential stages j
of being, and the sphere of individual personality, which j
^ ■ 146^
| i
identifies itself successively with these existential
spheres, progressing ever upward in a kind of ladder of be-
! >
ing. This upward progression, through a series of deaths
which are also births, is motivated by joy—
for, what is joy?--to heave
Up one obstruction more, and common leave
What was peculiar, by such act destroy
Itself; a partial death is every joy;
The sensible escape, enfranchisement
Of a sphere’s essence: once the vexed--content
The cramped--at large, the growing circle--round,
All's to begin again--some novel bound
To break, some new enlargement to entreat;
The sphere though larger is not more complete
Now for Mankind's experience. (VI, 261-71)
Sordello weighs his two alternatives and evaluates them in
terms of sphere imagery. In favor of the Emperor's cause het
argues:
"Life I Yet the very cup whose extreme dull 1
Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full,
Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed
; So oft a better life this life concealed,
And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path j
Have hunted fearlessly--the horrid bath,
The crippling-irons and the fiery chair.
'T was well for them; let me become aware
As they, and I relinquish life, tool Let'
What masters life disclose itself1 . Forget j
Vain ordinances, I have one appeal-- j
I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel; j
So much is truth to me. What Is, then? Since ;
One object, viewed diversely, may evince i
Beauty and ugliness--this way attract,
That way repel,--why gloze upon the fact?
Why must a single of the sides be right? . ;
What bids choose this and leave the opposite? '
Where's abstract Right for me?--in youth endued i
With Right still present, still to be pursued,
Thro' all the interchange of circles, rife
Each with its proper law and mode of life.
______Each_ to-be,dwelt at ease in. (VI. 42Q-SlT Italics mine)
Discarding the relativism of this argument, however, Sordello
casts
I Himself quite through mere secondary states
Of his soul's essence, little loves and hates,
Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid
By these. (VI, 459~62)
I i
I
So much was plain then, proper in the past;
To be complete for, satisfy the whole
Series of spheres--Eternity, his soul
Needs must exceed, prove incomplete for, each
Single sphere--Time. (VI, 550-54)
j
Browning would have Sordello strike a mean between his soul1e
absoluteness and the relativism of the earthly sphere, a mear.
:.n which Infinite fuses with finite to form an organic wholeJ
But the completeness, the perfection of each sphere is for
j
man no more than a prelude to a sphere to come. The glory of
man is that he can not rest in perfection. Whether his pres4
| i
ent sphere be small or great is not of ultimate importance.
I
The essential factor is that he have the purchase of infinite
against finite to enable him to rise to a higher level of ex
istence. !
Even while Browning was completing Sordello, however, he
i i
became aware of a new source of inspiration in the objective :
world, which was to counterbalance the subjectivity of his }
I 1
first three major poems and was to find expression in Pippa ;
| I
Passes. DeVane says that Browning's trip to Italy in 1838 j
I 1
"provided a new approach to Sordello" (p. 8l), a conversion j
j 1
'to pity for suffering humanity in a moment by the sight of
* I
the peasants and townsmen, whose 'warped souls and bodies' |
| I
moved him” (pp. 8o-8l). Evidence that Italy wrought a change
in Browning's thought Is found In the Interpolation at the
end of Book Three, in which he says of the Venetian peasant
girls:
I ask youth and strength
And health for each of you, not more--at length
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race
Might add the spirit's to the body's grace,
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards.
But in this magic weather one discards
Much old requirement. (Ill, 717-23)
But this shift in point of view occurs in an interpolation,
and its effect upon Sordello is far from being as clear as
DeVane suggests. Even though Sordello shows concern for af-;
J 1
flicted humanity, his personality remains divided and insu- j
lated. The structure of the poem is determined by its basic
j
idea, and Browning does not depart from this idea even though
be shows signs of being tired of his project in such lines as
I muse . . . on a ruined palace-step !
At Venice: why should I break off, nor sit !
Longer upon my step, exhaust the fit ;
England gave birth to? (HI, 676-79) |
l
He finds new inspiration in the Italian peasant girls-- |
That Bassanese I
Busied among her smoking fruit-boats? These 1
Perhaps from our delicious Asolo
Who twinkle, pigeons o'er the portico j
Not prettier, bind June lilies into sheaves I
To deck the bridge-side chapel, dropping leaves '
Soiled by their own loose gold-meal? Ah, beneath ]
The cool arch stoops she, brownest cheek!--if I make
A queen of her, continue for her sake
Sordello's story? (ill, 681-91)_________ __
1 1
He does not do so, however, for a sad dishevelled ghost
(ill, 696) plucks at him to distract his attention from the
| t
.peasant girls. This ghost represents humanity, for he speaks
later of
the sad
Dishevelled form, wherein I put mankind .
To come at times and keep my pact in mind.
(Ill, 968-70;
I
Browning addresses this sad form as follows--and I quote at
length because this complicated passage indicates that Brown
ing is remaining faithful to his design as it was conceived
in England:
To mistrust
Mel--nor unreasonably. You, no doubt, 1
Have the true knack of tiring suitors out
With those thin lips on tremble, lashless eyes
, Inveterately tear-shot: there, be wise,
Mistress of mine, there, there, as if I meant [
You insult I--shall your friend (not slave) be shent
For speaking home? Beside care-bit erased
Broken-up beauties ever took my taste
Supremely; and I love you more, far more
Than her I looked should foot Life’s temple-floor.
Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where
A whisper came, "Let others seek!--thy care
Is found, thy life's provision; if thy race
Should be thy mistress, and into one face 1
The many faces crowd?" Ah, had I, judge
Or no, your secret? Rough apparel--grudge
All ornaments save tag or tassel worn
To hint we are not thoroughly forlorn--
Slouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go
Alone (that's saddest, but it must be so)
Through Venice, sing now and now glance aside,
Aught desultory or undignified,--
Then, ravishingest lady, will you pass
Or not each formidable group, the mass
Before the Basilic (that feast gone by,
God's great day of the Corpus Domini)
And, wistfully foregoing proper men,_____________________
Come timid up to me for alms? And then .
The luxury to hesitate, feign do I
Some unexampled grace 1--when, whom but you
Dare I bestow your own upon? And hear
! Further before you say, it is to sneer
I call you ravishing; but I regret !
Little that she, whose early foot was set (l. 77^)
Forth as she'd plant it on a pedestal,
Now, i1 the silent city, seems to fall
Toward me--no wreath, only a lip's unrest
To quiet, surcharged eyelids to be pressed
Dry of their tears upon my bosom. Strange
Such sad chance should produce in thee such change,
My love I (ill, 740-81)
DeVane does not discuss this passage as a whole, but he
Quotes lines 773“80, bracketing Palma's name after she in
line 774 (p. 8l). In this interpretation he is in accord
with Griffin and Minchin, who hold the same view (The Life of
l ----------- r
Robert Browning, p. 98). Such an interpretation in the re- '
j j
vised edition of A Browning Handbook (1955), however, is dif
ficult to explain in view of the fact that DeVane helped to
edit New Letters of Robert Browning (1950). In a letter to
Miss Haworth (May, l84o) printed in this volume, Browning
writes: ;
!
All I need remark on in your note is the passage you want ;
cleared up: "What are you to be glad of?' Why that as I
stopped my task awhile, left off my versewriting one sunny
June day with a notion of not taking to it again in a hur-:
ry, the sad disheveled form I had just been talking of, j
that plucked and pointed, wherein I put, comprize, typify i
and figure to myself Mankind, the whole poor-devildom one ;
sees cuffed and huffed from morn to midnight, that, so :
typified, she may come at times and keep my pact in mind, I
prick up my republicanism and remind me of certain engage-;
ments I have entered into with myself about that same, re
newed me, gave me fresh spirit, made me after finishing
Book 3d commence Book 4th. (New Letters of Robert Brown-
_ _im _i 8 ) .
i X5in
i
i i
!,So, to our business, now," exclaims Browning--
the fate of such
As find our common nature--overmuch
Despised because restricted and unfit
To bear the burthen they impose on it--
Cling when they would discard it; craving strength
TO leap from the allotted world, at length
They do leap,--flounder on without a term,
Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy, unless . . .
But that's the story--dull enough, confess'.
(Ill, 975-84)
Browning slips into one form of romantic irony, self-depreci
ation. Sordello represents at the same time one aspect of
his creator's personality--that which makes the movement to
ward infinity--a type of personality that is to be condemned,
he is a "god's germ," but this germ is doomed to remain in
infancy unless it can take shape in the material world. The
I
movement toward infinity is permissible only when balanced by
a compensating movement toward the finite, but such a move
ment is impossible without faith. Sordello does not under
stand that evil is j
. . . the scheme by which, thro' Ignorance,
Good labors to exist. (Ill, 803-804) J
In wishing to abstract good from evil, he succeeds only in
driving a deeper wedge between the two halves of his nature.
| t
The more he strives to find a medium for engagement, the more
he drifts away from existence.
j
The two sides of Sordello’s personality are symbolized
In the peasant girls and the dishevelled ghost, and
'-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------j5 2"1
alternative conclusions are theoretically possible. At the j
end of the third book Browning toys with the idea of making a
peasant girl the queen of his poem, but his choice is really
made for him by the consistency of Sordello’s personality. |
i i
In his intense subjectivity, Sordello is typical of the ro
mantic yearning for the infinite, and he could not be ex
pected to discard his self-consciousness. Browning, however,
i j
cJid find release from morbid subjectivity in the magic weath
er of Italy. He learned to make the movement toward the fi
nite which is characteristic of the knight of faith.
I
CHAPTER V
PIPPA PASSES: A KNIGHT OP FAITH
Pippa Passes is the obverse of Sordello, a positive ex- j
pression of what is presented negatively in the longer poem.
Whereas in Sordello's nature the poet thwarts hopelessly the
man, in Pippa the love of man reveals the true function of
|
the poet. Griffin observes that
Pippa . . ., like Sordello, is solitary, but the life of
the solitary self-conscious Sordello, (of whom Browning had
evidently come to weary, or he could not have described j
that life as a "sorry farce") accomplishes nothing, and his
song is of no avail, while the lonely little Pippa is ut- 1
terly unconscious of self, yet her songs affect the lives j
of all with whom she comes in contact. (p. 126) i
I I
Composed while Sordello was approaching completion, Pippa
Passes has for its "queen" just such a Venetian peasant girl
as tempted Browning to forsake the "sad dishevelled ghost" ;
bhat had been his inspiration in England. Pippa sings to a
floweret, "Love thy queen, worship me!" (Introduction, 1. :
103). In Pippa Passes, Browning completes the dissociation
1 I
from self which is essential to romantic irony, creating in j
Pippa the emotional spontaneity which he could not experience
I
in his own person. Pippa is the personification of the joy 1
kn life that is denied to Paracelsus and Sordello.
!
j _____Pippa may be described as a knight of faith as __
! " ' 15'41
i ;
distinguished from Sordello, who has been presented in the
previous chapter as a knight of infinite resignation. Like
I .
J i
Kierkegaard's knight of faith, Pippa "has drained the cup of
life's profound sadness." She knows "old-year's sorrow" and
»
| (
the threat of "new-year's sorrow" (Introduction, 11. 31* 3^)•
And though she does not know "the pain of renouncing every
thing," she has nothing to renounce, except self-interest.
i
This she renounces freely, making simultaneously the movement
of self-relinquishment which is characteristic of the knight
of infinite resignation and that of affirmation, which is
characteristic of the knight of faith. Her faith, however, j
| j
is less naive and prosaic than that of Kierkegaard's knight, j
who "hasn't four pence to his name," and yet "fully and firmj
iy believes" that his wife has prepared a dainty dish for him
i I
:(p. 50). Pippa makes no demands upon God. She commits her
self unreservedly to his keeping, asking no more than that
she be His puppet. Destitute as she is, she believes that
she is as dear to God as "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones," that
"All service is the same with God" (Introduction, 1. 190).
i
The central problem in Pippa Passes concerns the appar-.
lent contradiction between the theme of faith in the rightness
of the world and that of imperfection which inheres in things
as they are. Hoxie N. Fairchild'thinks that Browning shows I
remarkable affinity with Pope's deism:
Browning's eventually immense success as a Victorian _
I “ 1551
I i
j prophet perhaps lay In his ability to combine the Andrea |
del Sarto theme and the Pisgah-Sights theme in a single I
gospel of active inactivity. . . . As if they were riding a
mechanical horse, his disciples could enjoy plenty of vir- ;
lie exercise without the disquietude of going anywhere in
particular. . . . "Whatever is, is right"--"All1s right
with the world." Pippa and Pope seem to understand each
other.1
j
Such an interpretation, however, does not take into account
the Calvinistic doctrine of free will that underlies Brown
ing's thought, the doctrine that man has free will only to
sin. Browning makes a distinction between God's world and
man's that is radically foreign to Pope’s thought. When Pip
pa sings that "All's right with the world" she is referring
bo the world of nature, a world which does not participate in
n 1
man's depravity. Nature, for Browning as for Cowper, is but
! i
a name for an effect,/ Whose cause is God" (The Task, VI, j
26o-6l). And Pippa's song on nature is intended as a con-
<
trast to the world of illusion and sin in which Sebald and
Ottima are living. Man's true existence, Browning makes
llear, depends on his being God's puppet, but this word must
not be misconstrued. To become God's puppet requires a
i
unique act of will, an act which relinquishes self-will in ;
1
order to perform a "mimic creation" (Ring and the Book, I, j
740), which is man's supreme achievement. This "mimic crea
tion" is both the motivating force in poetry and the
■^"Browning's Whatever Is, Is Right," College English.
■12:382. April 1951. ___________ _________________
T56~1
actuating force in human existence. And Pippa supplies in
her impersonations of "Asolo's Pour Happiest Ones," in her
"mimic creation," precisely the motivation to solve a crisis
in each of their lives.
Pippa Passes differs from Sordello in being a study of
poetic function. Sordello is unable to find a function be
cause he insists upon cognition of results, but Pippa,
through intuitive fidelity to being, to "presence" of being,
to borrow a term from Gabriel Marcel, participates in being
and reveals its truth to others through spontaneous song.
Marcel links the idea of "presence" to "creative fidelity," a
I i
I i
jterm which may be correlated with Browning's "mimic creation'
in its subordination of personality to participation in be
ing. "A presence to which we are faithful,"- says Marcel,
is not at all the same thing as the carefully preserved ef-
i figy of an object which has vanished; an effigy is, when
all is said and done, nothing but a likeness; metaphysical
ly it is less than the object. Whereas presence, on the
contrary, is more than the object, it exceeds the object on
every side. . . . When I say that a being is granted to me
as a presence or as a being (it comes to the same, for he :
is not a being for me unless he is a presence), this means
that I am unable to treat him as if he were merely placed
in front of me; between him and me there arises a relation-r
ship which, in a sense, surpasses my awareness of him; he ■
is not only before me, he is also within me--or rather,
these categories are transcended, they have no longer any
meaning.^
The "Happiest Four" in Asolo become for Pippa "presences," as
^Philosophy of Existence (London, 19^9)* PP- 23“24.
Parcel understands this term. And in her intuition of "pres
ence" Pippa perceives a truth which comes as a corrective |
| ’ i
revelation to the person concerned. "Creative fidelity," ac-
j j
cording to Marcel, !
consists in maintaining ourselves actively in a permeable
state; and there is a mysterious interchange between this
free act and the gift granted in response to it. (p. 24)
Pippa is characterized perfectly by this "permeable state." I
All primary creation is God's, but man is able to appropriate
God's creativeness at a lower level if his heart remains open
bo His "everlasting bliss" (Paracelsus, V, 643).
In Pippa Passes, the case for the poet is stated in its
| !
simplest terms. Pippa's singing is only play, but because of
her sincerity and uncorrupted nature, she is a spokesman for
I
God. Ironically, without trying she influences the lives of,
I
those around her; whereas Sordello, because of his serious
ness and soul-searching, fails. Her subjectivity never over
balances or disconcerts her objective life. Her indulgence
Ln fancy is a compensation for the bleakness of her daily
life, a source of strength for the coming year. She accepts
■fancy upon its own terms without weighing its relation to ex-
| I
istence. Sordello, It will be remembered, rejects fancy be-j
I I
'cause of its free deviation from existence, but Pippa enjoys)
i
fancy as an opportunity to participate in being, and this i
participation induces others to correct their existence in
the light of the truth she envisages. Her songs arise from
. . - . r581
her profound need for God’s love, and they answer a need In I
each of the four she impersonates. The effectiveness of a
poem for those who hear or read it depends upon their need
for the poem's truth and upon their ability to appropriate
i
this truth in their own lives. Browning now definitely |
shapes his theory of the poet to conform to human need. j
Pippa plans her impersonations to accord with four lev
els of love--illicit, conjugal, filial, and religious. But
unknown to her, the lives of those she impersonates are com
plicated by upworthy motivation. Sebald has committed mur
ker; Jules contemplates revenge; Luigi doubts himself and hii
! ' !
cause; and the Bishop is tempted by self-interest and regard!
for his family name to permit the betrayal of his brother's
daughter, Pippa herself. Each impersonation is linked with a
particular aspect of human existence: Sebald and Ottima with
domestic tragedy, Jules and Phene with art, Luigi and his
mother with politics, and the Bishop, of course, with reli-
I . i
gion. i
Scene One, devoted to Ottima and Sebald, sets up the
contrast of good and evil which dominates the poem, a con
trast which is symbolized in sunlight and shadow and finds
counterpoint in the contrast between Lucca's spilled blood j
i
Jand Ottima's bloodlessness. Ottima speaks of dawn's "blood-i
red beam through the shutter's chink" (Part I, 5)* Sebald
says of his crime, attempting to accustom himself to it: __
Best speak again and yet again of it, ,
Till words cease to be more than words. "His blood," j
For instance--let those two words mean "His blood" j
And nothing more. Notice--I'll say them now, ;
"His blood." (I, 43-47) I
He says that he can not scent blood in the Shrub-house, and
when offered the choice of black or white wine, overwhelmed
by the symbolism, he exclaims, "No, the white wine--the white
i
1 I
wine" (Part I, 68). But after hearing Pippa sing of God, he
sees Ottima empty of all grace and exclaims:
My God I
Those morbid, olive, faultless shoulder-blades--
I should have known there was no blood beneath!
(I, 254-56]
Saved by his contrition, he is proud of his torments and wel
comes his own death. His brain is drowned in the waters of j
| I
repentance--
j i
, . . . all I feel
Is . . . is at swift-recurring intervals,
A hurrying-down within me, as of waters
Loosened to smother up some ghastly pit-- 1
There they go--whirls from a black, fiery sea! i
(I, 277-81}
This sea which overwhelms Sebald is in contrast to "that dusk
green universe" (introduction, 1. 94) of Pippa's metaphorical
I I
ocean.
I
J
The interlude which follows Part One shifts the reader's
I
attention to the world outside Lucca's house. A group of |
students are plotting "friendly vengeance" on Jules, a >
I
'strutting stone-squarer" who has labeled them "dissolute,
brutalized, heartless bunglers" (I, 325* 330-31)- They have
r6 'c r
; played upon his vanity to entice him Into marriage with
Phene, "a model he might hire by the hour" (l; 346). She has
been given bitter lines to recite to Jules at the moment of
ills greatest happiness. At the apple's core, he is to find
i
’the noisome fly"--
"For insects on the rind are seen at once,
And brushed aside as soon, but this is found
Only when on the lips or loathing tongue."
(II, 173-75)
Jules Is a Sordello type, a perfectionist whose attitude to
ward art Is intellectual rather than emotional. "He has been
accustomed," Gottlieb reads from one of his letters to Phene,
!
"to have Canova's women about him, in stone, and the
world's women beside him, in flesh; these being as much
below, as those, above--his soul's aspiration.
(I, 349-52)
But now he is to have the "reality." Gottlieb protests that
;he plotters "wipe off the very dew of his youth" (I, 354),
but Schramm, the philosopher in the group, explains:
Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world: look
at a blossom--it drops presently, having done its
service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and
where would be the blossom's place could it continue?
As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body,
because its earliest favourite, whatever it may have first
loved to look on, is dead and done with--as that any
affection is lost to the soul when its first object, what
ever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due
course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body's
eye or the mind's, and you will soon find something to
look on'. (I, 358-70)
The fallacy in Schramm's reasoning lies in his analogy of
spiritual with material being. Nature, as Sordello observes
, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------r6xi
I
j ( see p. 98 above), is indifferent to change, but man, if he
perishes, perishes utterly. Loyalty has no meaning in the
material world, but it is of utmost import to man.
The students overlook the fact that Phene, barely four-
I
teen years old, is as pure and sincere as Pippa herself. Her
j |
paleness, a symbol for her purity, is stressed from the first,
and her name, "by interpretation, sea eagle" (I, 427)* as
sociates her with the seas which border her native Greece.
Gottlieb alone perceives in her the potentiality of rising to
che level of Jules' love.
Part Two opens with Phene overcome simultaneously by her
love for Jules and shame for her duplicity, which she had j
thought to be part of a harmless joke. Frightened by her ex- 7
I I
treme consternation, Jules exclaims: I
I <
Do. not die, Phene 1 I am yours now, you
Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,
If you'll not die: so, never die I' (II, 1-3)
In lines poignant with dramatic irony, he is troubled by her
dual emotions of pity and wonder:
Again those eyes complete
Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow, |
Of all my room holds; to return and rest !
On me, with pity, yet some wonder too: ;
As if God bade some spirit plague a world,
And this were the one moment of surprise !
And sorrow while she took her station, pausing J
O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy 1 1
(II, 29-36)
But dramatic irony is transformed to purest irony in the
swift reversal from Phene's betrayal of Jules to Jules'
“ “ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- r g-2 -l
betrayal of Phene. And Browning beautifully correlates this !
I i
shift in dramatic emphasis with evolution in Jules' theory of
art.
i
Jules shows knowledge of Michelangelo's theory of free
i
carving when he sees in Phene the perfect material for the
highest possible art. Michelangelo, it will be remembered,
writes in one of his sonnets:
The best of artists hath no thought to show
which the rough stone in its superfluous shell
doth not include; to break the marble spell
is all the hand that serves the brain can do.3
Jules combines this theory of free carving with the idea of
man as the summation of earthly being, which had been ex- j
pressed in Paracelsus (see p. 96 above). Before finding "the
real flesh Phene," he says, 1
1
1
I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
| For better nature's birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form 1
Of beauty--to the human Archetype. 1
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that--the tree, the flower--or take the fruit,--
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs,
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and Just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang. i
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
j How I divined their capabilities'.
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air's embrace,
Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom; ;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
Q / 1 -
JThe Sonnets of Michelangelo, trans. J. A. Symonds (LonT
don. 1950), P. 47. J
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1631
i
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble I--1neath my tools
More pliable than jelly--as it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the Earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked; !
Refine it off to air, you may,--condense i’ t
Down to the diamond;--is not metal there,
When o'er the sudden specks my chisel trips?
--Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,
Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?
Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised |
By the swift implement sent home at once,
Flushes and glowings radiate and hover
About its track? (II, 82-113)
In awakening Phene's potentialities, Jules succeeds In
the medium of life as he had never succeeded in marble, but
he does not realize immediately that the criticism of his
fellow students Is, in some measure, justified. Phene does,
indeed, come as a destroyer into his life, but contrary to [
i
jthe expectations of the plotting students, he profits from
I
his love. In Part Four, the Bishop, who has been Jules' pa-
j
tron, reads from a letter in which Jules says that he will
turn painter In order to escape from his habit of relying on
other men's techniques. ’ ’Foolish Jules'." says the Bishop, J
l
and yet, after all, why foolish? He may--probably will-- !
fail egregiously; but if there should arise a new painter,I
will it not be in some such way by a poet, now, or a musi
cian, (spirits who have conceived and perfected an Ideal
through some other channel) transferring it to this, and
escaping our conventional roads by pure ignorance of them.!
j (IV, 62-69) |
t I
jlules, like Paracelsus, wishes to cut every bond t,o the ab- 1
stractions and conventions of the past so that he may build
pnly upon the immediate intuition of truth Just as Jules__
‘ s
decides to be revenged upon Lutwyche and his fellows and to '
separate from Phene, Pippa passes, caroling a ballad of KateJ
who renounced the crown of Cyprus to be lady at Asolo:
Give her but a least excuse to love me I
When— where--
How--can this arm establish her above me,
If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
("Hist"--said Kate the queen;
But "Oh--" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
"'Tis only a page that carols unseen.
Crumbling your hounds their messes!") (II, 253~6l)
Pippa sings of a page in love with a queen who has no need
for his love, and Jules understands at once that the secret
of love is need. "How strange!" he exclaims--
i
Look at the woman here with the new soul, ,
Like my own Psyche,--fresh upon her lips I
Alit the visionary butterfly, j
Waiting my word to enter and make bright, |
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
j Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
Prom taint or foul with stain, as outward things
Fastened their image on its passiveness:
Now, it will wake, feel, live--or die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be art--and, further, to evoke a soul
From form be nothing? (II, 288-300) ;
He destroys his models to begin art afresh, intending to worll
from life on "Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas" (II, !
327). i
I
The theme of need which begins with Pippa's thirst for J
joy and continues with Ottima's need for Sebald's love and !
1
iPhene's need for Jules, finds expression once again In Ita-
| ' 1
Ply's need for Luigi's patriotism. Pointed out by Bluphocks,[
r 6 5 _ ,
I
a professional informer, Luigi is to be arrested if he lin- |
j I
gers in Asolo. He meets his mother inside a turret, is urged
by her to abandon his plan to free Italy by assassinating a
tyrant, and is wavering in his determination when he hears
i
j
Pippa singing of an aged king who was loved by his subjects
He exclaims, "'Tis God's voice calls; how could I stay?"
(ill, 229). He goes to his appointment with death full of
i
10pe and joy.
The fourth episode heightens the ironic element in the
poem, for Pippa saves her own life, serves her own need, by
ler singing. The Bishop has come to Asolo to dispose of his i
1
dead brother's estate. Ugo, a treacherous steward who has j
| i
managed this estate since the death of an elder brother four
teen years ago, boasts of frightening his master to death and
i
confesses to having connived with his master to abduct and
conceal the elder brother's daughter, the true heir to the
estate. This daughter is Pippa, and just as Ugo offers to !
have Bluphocks seduce her and leave her to perish in the j
brothels of Rome, Pippa sings beneath the window. Ugo has '
| 1
phreatened to disgrace the Bishop's family if he is arrested-
I
and has played upon the Bishop's self-interest. But like the
I :
jPope in The Ring and the Book, the Bishop is sick and has onj
ly a short time to live. "I have whole centuries of sin to I
j 1
redeem," he observes, "and only a month or two of life to do
it in" (IV. 135-37). Pippa1s song closes with "Suddenly God
. , -j-gg-j
book me I" And the Bishop thrusts all possible temptation j
aside in his haste to act justly.
Luigi, as we have seen, describes Pippa*s singing as the
voice of God, and in each of the four episodes in Browning’s
I
poem, she is God's unwitting messenger. After she has sung
outside Luca's house, Sebald exclaims, "God's in his heaven!
Do you hear that? Who spoke?" (I, 229)* After hearing Pip
pa, Jules yearns to hear "God's voice plain as I heard it
first, before/ They broke in with their laughter" (II, 304-
305). And the Bishop's thought that God is about to take him
is echoed in Pippa's song. Her singing calls forth the truej
uncorrupted person in those who face decision and who under
stand her meaning. Even as a sculptor reveals the "clear
primordial creature" in a block of marble, Pippa evokes a new
soul in Sebald, Jules, Luigi, and even the Bishop. Her art
not only produces form from unshaped stuff; it also evokes a
I
soul from form. Pippa, to be sure, is ignorant of her power.
With charming humility she says to herself after her holiday,'
I
Now, one thing I should like to really know: !
How near I ever might approach all these
I only fancied being, this long day-~
Approach, I mean, so as to touch them, so
As to--in some way--move them--if you please,
Do good or evil to them some slight way.
For instance, if I wind- 1
Silk to-morrow, my silk may bind I
And broider Ottima*s cloak's hem. !
Ah, me and my important part with them,
This morning's hymn half promised when I rose!
True ih some sense or other, I suppose. (IV, 342-53)
; ------------------------- 167"
t 1
In Pippa Passes, Browning has finally transcended the dim ort)
of self, the passion for self-supremacy which troubled Mill
and which pervaded his earlier poetry. He is troubled no j
longer by God's ambiguity; he questions no longer the func-
i
tion of the poet. He agrees with Shelley that poetry is a
corrective for "the selfish and calculating principle," that
:Lt "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in
man" (Essays and Letters, pp. 33^ 36).
/
CHAPTER VI
AN ESSAY ON SHELLEY: THE FUNCTION OF THE POET
j Although written in 1852, Browning's Essay on Shelley !
may be considered with his early work., for it is a testimoni
al to his youthful enthusiasm for Shelley and reflects some
of the basic ideas in his early poetry. Indeed, he writes in
conclusion:
It is because I have long held these opinions in assur
ance and gratitude, that I catch at the opportunity offered
to me of expressing them here; knowing that the alacrity to
fulfil an humble office conveys more love than the accept
ance of the honor of a higher one, and that better, there
fore, than the signal service it was the dream of my boy
hood to render to his fame and memory, may be the saying of
a few inadequate words upon these scarcely more important
supplementary letters of Shelley. (Works, p. 1014)
The words "assurance and gratitude" suggest that the opinions
Expressed in the Essay were derived to some degree from Shel
ley, and perhaps some of them were so derived. But, if so, j
they have undergone a sea-change. The Essay deals with I
I i
Browning's own theory of the poet rather than with Shelley'Si
1
theory, and Shelley is discussed only as a typically subjec
tive poet in accordance with the idea of subjectivity devel-j
1 1
oped in Browning's early poetry. The defense of Shelley is ,
anchored in the distinction between subjective and objective;
r6
An Essay on Shelley is largely a re-statement, a co-or
dination, of ideas on the theory of the poet which appear in
Pauline, Paracelsus, and Sordello. hut it also advances a
I
theory of historical periodicity, of alternation between sub
jective and objective phases. This concept, I believe, was
almost certainly influenced by Carlyle's cyclic theory of
listory. "As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn diastole,"
says Carlyle,
must the period of Faith alternate with the period of Deni
al; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all
Opinions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, be fol
lowed by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter
of dissolution. (Sartor Resartus, p. 112)
le may also have known Goethe's theory of periodic alterna-
ions between epochs of faith and denial (a source for Car
lyle's numerous statements on this idea), the Saint-Simonian
^theory of alternation between "organic" and "critical"
epochs,'*' and Comte's theory of interaction between social
statics and dynamics. His friend Harriet Martineau published
a translation of The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte in
1853* and Comte's idea of dynamic and static tendencies in
society may have led Browning to consider the social aspects
of his own theory of subjective and objective poets. Instead
of agreeing with Carlyle, Goethe, and the Saint-Simonians
j ■''See Hill Shine, Carlyle and the Saint-Simonians (Balti
more, 1941), pp. 30-49*
! : ' ~ ~ 1 7 0 "
I
chat a constructive epoch is necessarily followed by one ;
which is destructive, Browning believes with Comte that an j
epoch- of spiritual progress is followed by one in which this I
I
progress is objectively consolidated. Social evolution, ;
I
bherefore, is not periodically retrogressive, but spirals
continuously upward. Shelley defines history as a "cyclic
poem written by Time upon the memories of men" (Essays and
Letters. p. 22), but his cycles depend upon the dominance or
i
I
subsidence of the "poetic principle," not upon an alternation
of complementary tendencies.
The introduction to Browning's Essay is misleading, if i
not illogical, in its sharp distinction between subjective j
and objective poets, for no poet can be purely subjective orj
purely objective. Browning realizes this difficulty, observ-j
i
ing
I
! that it seems not so much from any essential distinction ir.
the faculty of the two poets, or in the nature of the ob
jects contemplated by either, as in the more immediate
adaptability of these objects to the distinct purpose of
each, that the objective poet, in his appeal to the aggre
gate human mind, chooses to deal with the doings of men
(the result of which dealing, in its pure form, when even
description, as suggesting a describer, is dispensed with,
i is what we call dramatic poetry); while the subjective po-;
et, whose study has been himself, appealing through himself
to the absolute Divine mind, prefers to dwell upon those j
external scenic appearances which strike out most abundant
ly and uninterruptedly his inner light and power, selects ;
that silence of the earth and sea in which he can best hear
the beating of his individual heart, and leaves the noisy, J
! complex, yet imperfect exhibitions of nature in the mani
fold experience of man around him, which serve only to dis
tract and suppress the working of his brain. (Works, p.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- JJJ-
The difference between the two types of poets, then, is one
of degree or emphasis, but Browning unaccountably refuses to
renounce the possibility of pure types. There is no reason,
he says,
why these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue here
after from the same poet in successive perfect works, exam
ples of which, according to what are now considered the ex
igencies of art, we have hitherto possessed in distinct in
dividuals only. A mere running in of the one faculty upon
the other is, of course, the ordinary circumstance. Far
more rarely it happens that either is found so decidedly
prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively
pure; while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the
silver side set up for all comers to challenge, there has
yet been no instance. (Works, p. 1009)
If Browning had been content to ascribe to these faculties
only the possibility of eminent states, his argument would be
defensible, but his concept of the "perfect shield" never has-
been and never can be actualized, if by this metaphor he
means a purely subjective or objective poet.
Browning, of course, does not endeavor to prove that
Shelley is strictly subjective. He says, rather, that his
pre-eminent virtue is a "spheric poetical faculty," the facul
ty of combining "an external might of sincere passion with an
internal fitness and consonancy" (Works, p. 1011). He is
here, perhaps, echoing Shelley's own observation regarding
Homer and Sophocles:
Their superiority over . . . succeeding writers consists in
the presence of those thoughts which belong to the inner
faculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which
are connected with the external: their incomparable perfec-
tion consists in a harmony of the union of all. (Essays__
--------------------- ' XY2T
and Letters. p. 19)
Shelley is saying that the true poet must perceive and par
ticipate In both subjective and objective truth, and must
harmonize the two types of perception. This idea lies at the:
center of Browning’s theory of the poet. Pauline's lover
=rrs, as we have seen, because he floats from his sphere of
wild dominion into the dim orb of self. Browning, however,
seems to have learned the lesson of Alastor better than did
Shelley, for he strives to counteract his tendency to drift
toward subjectivity. His development as a poet is marked by
a gradual, steady shift from subjective to objective emphasis
in his poetic technique, but this shift never loses its sub
jective-objective tension. The sphere metaphor as symbolic
of a rounded subjective-objective life appears in Pauline anc
- Paracelsus, but is especially important in Sordello.
It may be argued that Browning means no more than that
Shelley is starlike when he speaks of his "spheric poetical
faculty"
as its own self-sacrificing central light, radiating equal
ly through immaturity and accomplishment, through many
fragments and occasional completion, reveals it to a compe
tent judgment. (Works, p. 1011)
But in view of the repeated sphere symbolism in his early po
etry, I believe that the metaphor, as used in the Essay, has
wider significance. C. Willard Smith mentions
Browning's intention to relate the star-image to other im-
portant images of the poem as the story of Sordello's final
1 T 3 -
struggle unfolds. His method is to suggest, rather than to
define this relationship through the device of verbal as
sociation . ^
And as an example of the relationship of star to sphere, he
quotes from Sordello:
External power 1 If none be adequate
And he stand forth ordained (a prouder fate)
Himself a law to his own sphere? "Remove
All incompleteness'." (VI, 111-14)
Smith'here equates sphere with star, and similarly I believe
ohat spheric in my last quotation from the Essay denotes both,
sphere and star. It refers back in context to "the whole be
ing moved by and suffused with a music at once of the soul
and the sense" and forward to the "self-sacrificing central
light."
A correlation also may be found between the comment in
Sordello that "God has conceded two sights to man" (see above,
p. 120) and the observation in the Essay that the reproduc
tion of things external by the objective poet
has been obtained through the poet's double faculty of see
ing external objects more clearly, widely, and deeply than
is possible to the average mind, at the same time that he
is so acquainted and in sympathy with its narrower compre
hension as to be careful to supply it with no other materi
als than it can combine into an intelligible whole. (Works,
p. 1008)
One of Browning's fundamental ideas is that man, particularly
;he poet, should exercise his double faculty of striving to
^Browning' s Star-Imagery (Princeton, 19-41), p. 92.
— — ---------------------------------
perceive the whole plan as well as acting to perform "the
minute's work." The theme of Sordello concerns the "fault of
breaking yoke" (V, 333)> the fault of renouncing immediate
action for the contemplation of abstract perfection, the
fault that marks him as a knight of infinite resignation.
The theme of Pippa Passes, however, concerns the double move
ment of aspiring to perfection through faith and performing
with joy the minute's work--or play. Faith and work are the
jcey words in understanding the "two sights" which God has ac
corded man. Both objective and subjective poets endeavor to
widen man's perception of truth, the objective poet with ref
erence primarily to the external world, the subjective poet
With emphasis upon the inwardness of the soul.
Browning imposes his ideas of subjectivity and objectiv
ity upon Shelley's opinion that "Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world" (Essays and Letters, p. 4l). In
Sordello he declares that the poet is "earth's essential
icing" (V, 506), and in the Essay he presents a theory of so
cial progress which rests upon the guidance of subjective anc.
objective poets. He agrees with Shelley that poetry "creates
anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds
by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration" (Es
says and Letters, p. 37)* and that "an energetic development"
of poetry "has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free
development of the national will, has arisen as it were from
TT5
a new birth" (p. 40). But he sees the decline of subjective
or objective activity as an opportunity for revival through
the complementary faculty. "Either faculty," he remarks,
in its eminent state is doubtless conceded by Providence as
a best gift to men, according to their especial want.
There is a time when the general eye has, so to speak, ab
sorbed its fill of the phenomena around it, whether spirit
ual or material, and desires rather to learn the exacter
significance of what it possesses than to receive any aug
mentation of what is possessed. Then is the opportunity
for the poet of loftier vision to lift his fellows, with
their half-apprehensions, up to his own sphere, by intensi
fying the import of details and rounding the universal
meaning. The influence of such an achievement will not
soon die out. A tribe of successors (Homerides), working
more or less in the same spirit, dwell on his discoveries
and reinforce his doctrine; till, at unawares, the world is
found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of a reality,
on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a
fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year's
harvest. Then is the imperative call for the appearance of
another sort of poet, who shall at once replace this intel
lectual rumination of food swallowed long ago, by a supply
of the fresh and living swathe; getting at new substance b3’
breaking up the assumed wholes into parts of independent
and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for re
combining them (it will be the business of yet another poet
to suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's
outer and not inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and
different creation from the last, which it displaces by -the
right of life over death,--to endure until, in the inevita
ble process, its very sufficiency to itself shall require
at length an exposition of its affinity to something highei;
when the positive yet conflicting facts shall again precip
itate themselves under a harmonizing law, and one more de
gree will be apparent for a poet to climb in that mighty
ladder, of which, however cloud-involved and undefined may
glimmer the topmost step, the world dares no longer doubt
that its gradations ascend. (Works, pp. 1009-1010)
The subjective poet works as the agent of a "harmonizing
Law," a law which orients man in contemporary existence, but
always with, reference to present imperfection and the promise
| -..— : --------------176"
of future perfection. Browning speaks of Shelley's ’ 'Remains'
as
1
examples, in fact, of the whole poet's function of behold
ing with an understanding keenness the universe, nature anc.
man, in their actual stage of perfection in^imperfection.
(Works. p. 1010)
In explaining social evolution, however, he actually gives
more credit to the objective than to the subjective poet, for
the renewing process begins by breaking up assumed wholes in
to parts without making value judgments. The subjective poet
harmonizes these parts under a higher principle which it is
his function to disclose. But Browning is now describing hi£
own theory of the poet rather than Shelley's, even though his
statement on the "understanding keenness" of the poet applies
as well to Shelley as to himself. It also fits Carlyle. In
deed, Browning wrote to Carlyle in 1851, mentioning his Essay
on Shelley:
I have put down a few thoughts that presented themselves--
one or two, in respect of opinions of your own (I mean,
that I was thinking of those opinions while I wrote).3
Alba H. Warren, Jr., has endeavored to show that
Browning's aesthetic as a whole differs only slightly, if
at all, from Carlyle's: a version of the transcendental or
idealistic theory of Kant and the post-Kantians in Germa
ny.
3;Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Thomas J. Wise (New
iaven, 1933), P- 36-
^English Poetic Theory. 1825-1865 (Princeton, 1950),
d. 111.
— — -------------------------------
But Warren ignores the problem of relating Browning’s aes
thetic to his philosophy. Unquestionably, as I believe I
have demonstrated in this dissertation, Browning was influ
enced by Carlyle in certain ways. His philosophy and his
theory of the poet, however, remain oriented in a theistic
system which is peculiarly his own. The wide difference be
tween Carlyle's estimate of Shelley and Browning's is indica-
tive of a corresponding gap between their philosophies and
their theories of the poet. In reply to Browning's letter,
Carlyle remarked:
I am not sure but you would excommunicate me,--at least lay
me under the "lesser sentence," for a time,--if I told you
all I thought of Shelley! Poor soul, he has always seemed
to me an extremely weak creature, and lamentable much more
than admirable. Weak in genius, weak in character (for
these two always go together); a poor, thin, spasmodic,
hectic, shrill and pallid being;--one of those unfortu
nates, of whom I often speak, to whom "the talent of' si
lence," first of all, has been denied. The speech of such
is never good for much. Poor Shelley, there is something
void, and Hades-like in the whole inner world of him; his
universe is all vacant azure, hung with a few frosty mourn
ful if beautiful stars; the very voice of him (his style,
&c.), shrill, shrieky, to my ear has too much of the ghost!
(Letters of Robert Browning, pp. 367-68)
Browning's doctrine of imperfection, his idea of strength in
weakness, his concept of doubt are utterly foreign to Carlyle,,
Browning's defense of Shelley rests principally upon his
transcendental ability to go beyond the limitations of con
temporary mankind. Browning believes in a Socratic theory of
knowledge, in which the soul, having had a prior existence,
has resources which are beyond rational understanding. The
178
Individual, says Browning, does rightly in trusting to his
innate ideas. He affirms with Shelley that Christian belief
must cast loose from dogma and find justification in the life:
of the present age. Like Kierkegaard, he identifies subjec
tivity with the Christian concept of the soul, asserting that
Shelley, had he lived,
would have ranged himself with the Christians; his very in
stinct for helping the weaker side (if numbers make
strength), his very "hate of hate," which at first mis
translated itself into delirious Queen Mab notes and the
like, would have got clear-sighted by exercise. The pre
liminary step to following Christ, is the leaving the dead
to bury their dead--not clamoring on his doctrine for an
especial solution of difficulties which are referable to
the general problem of the universe. Already he had at
tained to a profession of "a worship to the Spirit of good
within, which requires (before it sends that inspiration
forth, which impresses its likeness upon all it creates)
devoted and disinterested homage," as Coleridge says,--and
Paul likewise. (Works, p. 1013)
E have already compared the faith of Browning's subjective
poet in the "one above him" with Shelley's faith in "the
sternal, the infinite, and the one" (see above, pp. 6-7).
'Gradually," says Browning, Shelley
was leaving behind him . . . low practical dexterity, un
able to keep up with his widening intellectual perception;
and, in exact proportion as he did so, his true power
strengthened and proved itself. Gradually he was raised
above the contemplation of spots and the attempt at effac
ing them, to the great Abstract Light, and through the dis
crepancy of the creation, to the sufficiency of the First
Cause. (Works, p. 1013; italics mine)
This quotation is particularly significant, for it identifies
the ontological argument for the existence of God (an argu
ment based upon the logical analysis and definition of His
............. ■ 1 T 9 "
nature), here forced arbitrarily upon Shelley's thought, with
the doctrine of imperfection. And Browning quotes from Shel
ley's Boat on the Serchio--
All rose to do the task He set to each,
Who shaped us to His ends and not our own
(11. 30-31) —
rather convincingly, as evidence that Shelley by 1821,.the
date of the poem, had come to believe in a personal God.
The idea for defending Shelley as a typically subjective
poet may have been suggested to Browning by Carlyle's lecture'
on "The Hero as Poet," delivered on Tuesday, May 12, 1840.
Indeed, he may have had this lecture in mind when he remarked,
to Carlyle that he was thinking of some of his opinions when
he wrote his Essay. Macready mentions seeing Browning at
this lecture (New Letters of Robert Browning, p. 19, n. 8),
in which Carlyle contrasts Dante with Shakespeare, the one
'world-deep" and the other "world-wide" (Heroes and Hero-Wor
ship. p. 128). "As Dante," observes Carlyle,
was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of'
the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its In
ner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the
Outer Life of our Europe. (p. 143; italics mine)
3rowning similarly contrasts Shakespeare with Shelley, re
marking that the one
is properly . . . the fashioner; and the thing fashioned,
his poetry, will of necessity be substantive, projected
from himself and distinct (Works, p. 1008)
while the other
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- r8D“
is rather a seer . . . than a fashioner, and what he pro
duces will be less a work than an effluence. (p. 1009)
jlarlyle, to be sure, ranks Shakespeare higher than Dante be
cause he combines insight with his ability to delineate men
and things, whereas Browning maintains that it is idle to in
quire which of these two poetic faculties is the higher or
rarer endowment. The reader should observe, however, that
3rowning weights the scale in favor of the subjective poet,
attributing to him precisely the combination of insight and
faithful delineation which Carlyle finds in Shakespeare. In
deed, Browning's ideal poet is really a fusion of the two
bypes, avoiding the extremes of both. "These opposite ten
dencies of genius," says Browning,
will be more readily descried in their artistic effect thar.
in their moral spring and cause. Pushed to an extreme and
manifested as a deformity, they will be seen plainest of
all in the fault of either artist when, subsidiarily to the
human interest of his work, his occasional illustrations
from scenic nature are introduced as in the earlier works
of the originative painters,--men and women filling the
foreground with consummate mastery, while mountain, grove,
and rivulet show like an anticipatory revenge on that suc
ceeding race of landscape-painters, whose "figures" disturb
the perfection of their earth and sky. (Works, p. 1009)
The poetic faculty of either the subjective or the objective
poet should be spheric. The poetic function, whether subjec
tive or objective, establishes harmony between man and na
ture, the difference between the two types of genius residing
in their orientation rather than in their materials. The
contribution of the objective poet Is characteristically
— — ----------------------- 181“
Impersonal and dramatic. Consequently, says Browning, al
though we covet the biography of the objective poet, "we turn
with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency--
t
the subjective poet of modern classification" (Works, p.
1009). The functions of these two types of poets are comple
mentary. The one draws toward God; the other lifts mankind.
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSION
Browning’s critics, I believe, have been far from clear
In explaining the importance of his early work in his devel
opment as a poet. Their views may be summed up in DeVane's
istatement that we see in the first three long poems "the
young man trying to put himself right with God and his world,
but most of all seeking to find himself" (p. 16). He regards
Pauline and Sordello, however, as false starts, observing of
the latter that
The advantages of writing Sordello’s story were by-prod
ucts of the effort. The poem, like a storm, cleared the
poet's spirit and led him to Pippa Passes and the shorter
poems. (p. 16)
I have endeavored to show that Browning attacked in these po
ems the central problem in his evolution as a poet, the rela
tionship of subjective to objective truth. It is true that
be was trying to orient himself in the world aesthetically,
sthically, and religiously, but in addition to this effort,
be was trying to determine the function of the ideal poet and
now he might best fulfill this function. Pauline, Paracel
sus , and Sordello represent a preliminary movement in his in
tellectual and emotional development, both as an individual
T83
and as a poet, a movement toward the subjective, the infinite.
Kierkegaard describes such a preliminary movement as one of
infinite resignation in which the individual abandons the fi
nite and leaps into eternity. But Browning and Kierkegaard
do not actually make this leap. They contemplate it, but see
uhat it should be subordinated to a second movement, one to
ward the finite, the objective. They become ironists in
;heir perception that man can appropriate the infinite only
through the medium of the finite.
In Pauline Browning shows that a mind addicted to sub
jectivity "must dissipate itself" (1. 291)* In Paracelsus
;he two movements are reflected in Paracelsus and Aprile, in
intuition which is directed upon the infinite and love which
is directed upon the finite. In Sordello they appear as a
split in the hero's personality, a schism between poet and
man, between the passion for the infinite and the passion for
she finite. This schism is projected from the author's own
personality and accounts for much of his obscurity. John
Kenyon was impressed by the contrast between Browning's "com
mon sense" and his "muddy metaphysical poetry" (Letters, I,
78). And Miss Barrett remarks to Browning:
You never guessed perhaps, what I look back to at this
moment in the physiology of our intercourse, the curious
double feeling I had about you--you personally, and you as
the writer of these letters, and the crisis of the feeling,
when I was positively vexed and jealous of myself for not
succeeding better in making a unity of the two. (I, 372)
............. r « r
En Pauline, Paracelsus, and Sordello, Browning was under an
actual compulsion to explore, to express as best he could,
jthe impulses of his subjective nature, even though he knew
that the subjective gambit is doomed to failure, so far as
communication is concerned. He tells Miss Barrett that he
can not unlock his secret self even to her:
Don't you remember I told you once on a time, that you
"knew nothing of m£? . . . To be grand in a simile, for
every poor speck of a Vesuvius or a Stromboli in my micro
cosm there are huge layers of ice and pits of black cold
water— and I make the most of' my two or three fire-eyes,
because I know by experience, alas, how these tend to ex
tinction . . . I am utterly unused, of these late years
particularly, to dream of communicating anything about that;
to another person (all my writings are purely dramatic as
am always anxious to say} that when I make never so little
an attempt, no wonder if I bungle notably. (I, j6)
In Pippa Passes, Browning reverses the technique devel
oped in his earlier long poems. Following the lead of his
experiments in drama, he works from the objective to the sub
jective, and so puts into practice a theory similar to Kier
kegaard's idea of "doubly reflected thinking in art" (see
above, p. 19)- He uses his skill in subjectivity to analyze
psychological types in definite situations, mastering this
projective technique so well that Miss Barrett declares:
It is quite startling, I must tell you, quite startling and
humiliating, to observe how you combine such large tracts
of experience of outer and inner life, of books and men, of
the world and the arts of it. (I, 168)
Browning's aim as a poet is to achieve a balance between in
ner and outer life, an equilibrium between spiritual and
185
physical attributes in which human existence can have the
highest possible expression. He remains faithful simultane
ously to ideal man and to actual man, maintaining that the
poet's loyalty to truth is the magnetic force guiding mankind
boward perfection--a perfection which it is not in his nature
over to possess.
DeVane says that Browning, in Sordello, is a "semantic
stutterer," a "romantic, impatient utopian . . . hypnotized
by vast visions" (p. 16), but such an interpretation does not
take into account the patience with which he sought to ful
fill the true function of a poet, regardless of the cost to
himself in labor and public regard. Browning does not share
DeVane's opinion that "in 1840 the disadvantages of having
written Sordello far outweighed the advantages" (p. 16). He
explains to Alfred Domett:
Here is, without affectation, the reason why I have gone
on so far although succeeding so indifferently: I felt so
instinctively from the beginning that unless I tumbled out
the dozen more or less of conceptions, I should bear them
about forever, and year by year get straiter and stiffer ir.
those horrible cross-bones with a long name, and at last
parturition would be the curse indeed. Mine was the better
way, I do calmly believe, for at this moment I feel as
everybody does who has worked--"in vain"? no matter, if the
work was real. It seems disinspiriting for a man to hack
away at trees in a wood, and at the end of his clearing
come to rocks or the sea or whatever disappoints him as
leading' to nothing; but still, turn the man's face, point
him to new trees and the true direction, and who will com
pare his power arising from experience with that of another1
who has been confirming himself all the time in the belief
that chopping wood is incredible labour, and that the first
blow he strikes will be sure to jar his arm to the shoulder
186
present and wait like such a fellow as the first of these;
if the real work should present itself to be done, I shall
begin at once and in earnest . . . not having to learn
first of all how to keep the axehead from flying back into
my face.1
He scorns Tennyson’s concern for criticism--
Tennyson reads the Quarterly and does as they bid him, witl
the most solemn face in the world--out goes this, in goes
that, all is changed and ranged. Oh me1 . (Letters. I, 19)
And one of his pleasures in corresponding with Miss Barrett
is the discovery of a person whose judgment he seeks and val-
ues--
You do not understand what a new feeling it is for me tc
have someone who is to like my verses or I shall not ever
like them after! So far differently was I circumstanced of'
old, that I used rather to go about for a subj'ect of of
fence to people; writing ugly things in order to warn the
ungenlal and timorous off my grounds at once. I shall nev
er do so again at least! (Letters, I, 98)
The shift of point of view in Pippa Passes, the easing
of psychic tension, results from Browning's conclusion that
the poet is born, not made. He turns his attention from the
orizing about the function of the poet to being a poet. He
ceases to strive for a subj'ective "break through" to truth.
He says to Domett:
Prom the beginning, I have been used to take a high ground,
and say, all endeavour elsewhere is thrown away. Endeavour^
to think (the real thought), to imagine, to create. or
whatever they call it--as well endeavour to add the cubit
to your stature! nascitur poeta--and that conceded to hap
pen, the one obj'ect of labour is naturally what you
•^Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed. Frederic G. Ken-
von (London, 190b). pp. 127-28. ______________
x 8 r
reeommend to me, and I to myself. (p. 127)
En Pippa Passes he takes earth as his vineyard and revels In
his new freedom of poetic expression.
E. D. H. Johnson, I believe, oversimplifies in The Alier.
Vision of Victorian Poetry, at least so far as Browning is
concerned. He finds in "the writers who came of age in the
L830's and 1840's"
a kind of tension originating in the serious writer's tra
ditional desire to communicate, but to do so without be
traying the purity of his creative motive even in the face
of a public little disposed to undergo the rigors of aes
thetic experience. (p. xi)
:3ut the tension in Browning’s poetry does not result so much
from the attempt to reconcile artistic integrity with popular
demand as from the attempt to reconcile subjective with ob
jective elements in his own nature and in his theory of the
poet. Browning's creative motive is itself a synthesis of
bhese two forces, and his concern over the indifference of
his public should not be overstressed. He regarded himself
as a Moses commissioned to perform the consecrated act of
bringing water out of rock, poetry out of existence. The po
st assuages his people's thirst for being, but his gift is
brackish to their taste. A transitional figure between pres
ent and future, he is not appreciated by his contemporaries
and is barred from entering Canaan. Like Moses, like the
grammarian in A Grammarian's Funeral, he is ultimately buriec.
sn a top-peak. remaining "still loftier than the world_______
T 8 8 -
suspects,/ Living and dying." The tension in Browning is be-'
tween man and poet much as in Moses it is between man and
prophet. In Sordello (III, 826), One Word More, Pisgah-
Bights. and, I believe, in A Grammarian * s Funeral, Moses ap
pears explicitly or implicitly as a symbol for the poet's du
al function of correlating life's whole with its parts. And
Like Moses, Browning sometimes revolts against his task--"Any
Lodge in a garden of cucumbers for me" (Letters, I, 4l)i
This ambivalence in his attitude toward his mission as s .
poet is overlooked by G. K. Chesterton, who says that his
work has the mystery which belongs to the complex; his life'
the much greater mystery which belongs to the simple. He
was clever enough to understand his own poetry; and if he
understood it, we can understand it. But he was also en
tirely unconscious and impulsive, and he was never clever
enough to understand his own character.2
Chesterton is too often carried away by his delight in para
dox, and his idea of the simple man writing complex poetry is
easily confuted by a perusal of Browning's letters. Pew po
ets have been more self-analytical, more perceptively self-
sons cious, than Browning. Indeed, this trait tended to
stifle his lyrical expression, forcing him into the indirec
tion of dramatic verse.
P. L. Lucas finds Browning's intellectual endeavors
shildish if not simple:
^Robert Browning (London, 1936), p. 1.
................... r S ' c r
As we look back to-day on Browning's life and work, both
alike seem to me to gain a sudden Interest at the point
where he turns from a rather childish philosopher into a
passionate human being.3
This opinion is, admittedly, ex cathedra. Lucas regards
Browning's philosophy as a.worn-out credo without permanent
significance, but he does not push to a conclusion his curi
ous idea that the great poetry of the Victorian era was gen
erated by delusion:
This conviction of their own importance as thinkers and
teachers may have helped them as well as hindered; if it
led them to believe in much nonsense, it may also have
helped them to believe in themselves, and so to accomplish
much that "we half-believers in our casual creeds" cannot.
For though our generation can criticize the Victorian po
ets, let us frankly admit that it cannot equal them. Even
a flimsy banner may be better to fight under than none at
all. (p. 25)
Be is, of course, right in his opinion that faith is essen
tial to great poetry, but faith in a delusion provides dubi
ous inspiration for great poetry. The question of Browning's
concept of faith, therefore, is crucial in evaluating his
theory of the poet, and if it be considered childish and na
ive, the depth of his theory must suffer correspondingly.
Browning does not evade the challenge of doubt. Like
Pascal and Kierkegaard, he understands that man can never
cest in a static faith. Like Bergson, he understands that
man is constantly responsible for maintaining his own
^Ten Victorian Poets (Cambridge, 19^0), p. 25*
------------- ---------- -— _ — ---------------------------- rgcr
"duration" as a human being. He complains of the faithless
ness of professed Christians, distinguishing sharply between
faith and the torpor of assurance. He shows remarkable af
finity with Kierkegaard, and even with atheistic existential
ism, in stressing the uniqueness of man's being. Coleridge
iefines faith as "fidelity to our own being--so far as such
Deing is not and cannot become an object of the senses" (Aids
to Reflection, p. 3^1). This definition holds for Browning
as well as for Coleridge. But Browning rests his entire case
for the dignity of human nature on man's attribute of projec
tion, his power for creating his own destiny, which sets him
apart from animals but prevents him from ever becoming per
fect. Man can never remain fixed in existence. His apper
ceptive consciousness is a flux which is differentiated from
Lower orders of being by its yearning for the infinite and
from higher orders by its own finiteness.
This problem of man's unique being, as it appears in
Browning, may be considered a corollary of the concept of the
great chain of being. Milton says of it in Samson Agonistes:
God of our Fathers, what is man I
That thou towards him with hand so various,
Or might I say contrarious,
Temperst thy providence through his short course,
Not evenly, as thou rul'st
The Angelic orders and inferious creatures mute,
Irrational and Brute. (11. 667-73)
And Browning's idea of man's relation to nature may be con-
fcrasted with Matthew Arnold's. In his sonnet To An__________
-------- ----------- ---- ------------------ 1FT
Independent Preacher. Arnold writes:
"In harmony with Nature?" Restless fool,
Who with such heat dost preach what were to thee,
When true, the last impossibility;
To be like Nature strong, like Nature eool:--
Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more,
And in that more lie all his hopes of good.
Nature is cruel; man is sick of blood:
Nature is stubborn; man would fain adore:
Nature is fickle; man hath need of rest:
Nature forgives no debt, and fears no grave;
Man would be mild, and with safe conscience blest.
Man must begin, know this, where Nature ends;
Nature and man can never be fast friends.
Fool, if thou canst not pass her, rest her slave I
Arnold sees man in conflict with nature, but Browning regards
man as a consummation of nature, the beginning of a new spi
ral that rests upon nature and leads upward into unexplored
heights of spiritual being. This idea of man's uniqueness is
more or less implicit in the Renaissance concept of man, but
I do not believe that it becomes a premise for faith in any
English poet except Browning. The romantic poets tend to
break down man's isolation. Joseph Warren Beach says that
Shelley
is fond of listing the phenomena of the universe so as to
bring a variety of natural objects into the same picture
with the activities of man,--all equally subject to change
and decay. . . . Conscious man and unconscious forest and
ocean are lumped together, in their helplessness and muta
bility, and set over against the constant and tranquil es
sence which he calls Power. Shelley has gone farther than
Wordsworth in effacing the lines of demarcation between mar.
and the other children of nature.
^The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth Century Nature Po-
5&P5L (N ew_Yorlc,JIl_9-36A ,__qp, , - . . . 2 b3^5lL... __ ...........
192
Browning, however, re-establishes this demarcation and rests
his case for man's spiritual being upon it.
Browning's interest in the Renaissance stems from his
humanistic philosophy. He does not label himself a humanist,
but his concern for man's being anticipates the humanistic
bias in the thought of Irving Babbitt, T. S. Eliot, and even
Jean-Paul Sartre. Eliot, a professed disciple of Babbitt, is
alarmed by positivistic tendencies in his master's humanism.
He believes that humanism is culture and that it is appropri
ate only for an "intellectual aristocracy." "My objection,"
be declares,
is that the humanist makes use, in his separation of the
"human" from the "natural," of that "supernatural" which he;
denies.5
Browning would agree with Eliot's opinion that "Humanism
makes for breadth, tolerance, equilibrium and sanity," but h€:
would not’agree that it "can have no positive theories about
philosophy or theology" (p. 400). Insisting upon unity in
nan's thought and life, he includes both philosophy and the
ology in his humanism; and in Paracelsus and Sordello. he at
tacks the idea that humanism should be reserved for "lords of
nind" fParacelsus, I, 498). He believes that pride in cul
ture should be balanced by humble acceptance of life's entire
fabric. His humanism strips man of illusions and accretions
^elj5c,ted„E_sb_avs_.L._191Z-193.2 iNew York. 1932). p . 397.
193
to reveal his true existentials--the factors which determine
human existence.
I venture to assert that Browning's philosophy is a form
of existential humanism. After criticizing the cult of hu
manity that ends in Comtian humanism, Sartre defines his ides,
of existential humanism as follows:
Man is all the time outside of himself: it is in projecting
and losing himself beyond himself that he makes man to ex- I
ist; and, on the other hand, it is by pursuing transcendent
aims that he himself is able to exist. Since man is thus
self-surpassing, and can grasp objects only in relation to
his self-surpassing, he is himself the heart and centre of
his transcendence. There is no other universe except the
human universe, the universe of human subjectivity. This
relation of transcendence as constitutive of man (not in
the sense that God is transcendent, but in the sense of
self-surpassing) with subjectivity (in .such a sense that
man is not shut up in himself but forever present in a hu
man universe)--it is this that we call existential human
ism. This is humanism, because we remind man that there is
no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned,
must decide for himself; also because we show that it is
not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking,
beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of
some particular realisation, that man can realise himself
as truly human. (Existentialism and Humanism, pp. 55-56)
, Sartre defines humanism in an absolute sense, assuming that
for man no universe can exist beyond human perception. He
leaves mankind in a void, floating in an abyss of nothing
ness, but his very word abandoned signifies a relation to a
higher power. Pascal, I believe, has a truer existentialism
bhan Sartre, for he makes no assumption regarding man's posi-
bion in the universe. He leaves open the avenue of spiritual
being, accepting the fact that man's life in this world is nc
1 9 - 4 -
inore than a fleeting spark caught momentarily between two
eternities. He grants that man may truly be in just such a
predicament as Sartre envisages, but he also holds that man
may be part of a divine plan. I have argued that Browning's
ideas on this subject are either similar to or influenced by
Pascal's. His boast in his last poem, The Epilogue to Aso-
Lando, that he "never turned his back but marched breast for
ward" is not idle. If one were to read the Epilogue without
:-cnowledge of Browning's existential humanism, he might con-
;3ider it bombast. Browning himself, just before his death-
lllness, said of the third stanza,
It almost sounds like bragging to say this, and as if I
ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's
true, it shall stand. (Quoted in DeVane, p. 553)
The banner under which he fought is not, in my opinion, flim-
sy, for his faith in man's destiny was forged and tempered ir.
the fires of doubt and skepticism. The first principle of
Bescartes' method may well have been his guiding text:
. . . never to accept anything for true which I did not
clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoic.
precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more ir.
my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly
and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt. (Dis
course on Method, p. 19)
Browning's theory of equilibrium between the infinite
and the finite in art may be compared with Hegel's idea of
the concrete universal, and the use of this term also links
3rowning's theory of the poet with John Crowe Ransom's
......' ----------- T95~
concept of poetic ontology. In Hegel's aesthetics
Art's peculiar feature . . . consists in its ability to
represent in sensuous form even the highest ideas, bringing
them thus nearer to the character of natural phenomena, to
the senses, and to feeling. (Hegel: Selections, p. 314)
Hegel's idea that the content of art is spiritual and its
form sensuous is similar to Browning's idea of subjective in
finite and objective finite; but Hegel's theory rests on a
pantheistic system in which Absolute Spirit manifests itself
successively in art, religion, and philosophy. For Hegel art
is no more than a preliminary withdrawal of mind from the
byranny of the objective world to prepare it for the higher
reaches of religion and philosophy. This withdrawal is ac
complished in three steps. In symbolic art, the spiritual
idea seeks for but fails to find adequate form. In classical,
art, the content is itself the concrete idea. And in roman
tic art, the unity of the spiritual idea and its sensuous
form is destroyed. Spirit can not be portrayed according to
its true essence in a fusion of spiritual and sensuous ele
ments "for the true essence of Spirit is its infinite subjec
tivity" (p. 325)* Browning, however, distrusts subjectivity
that is not fitted to the objective world. Man's peculiar
Bssence can not be dissociated from environmental machinery,
either in this life or in a future life.
Ransom follows Kant rather than Hegel in his definition
of the concrete universal in a poem:
1 9 6 ”
. . . the moral Universal of the poem does not use nature
as a means but as an end; it goes out Into nature not as a
predatory conqueror and despoiler but as an Inquirer, to
look at nature as nature naturally is, and see what its owr
reception there may be.^
He observes that Kant sees nature as "a dense 'manifold of
sense,' a tissue of events whose effects are massive and in
tricate, beyond the grasp of the understanding." But he be-
Lieves that "It is Kant's monumental achievement to have dis
cerned how it is that nature nevertheless sometimes appear
beautiful" (p. 170). Browning differs from both Ransom and
Kant--and resembles Hegel--in maintaining that the poetic
universal is always subjectively determined. In Pauline,
Paracelsus. and Sordello. he analyzes the difficulties in
following an excessively subjective method, and it is strange;
that he diagnoses accurately in these poems the reason for
their failure--he does not "Fit to the finite his infinity"
(Sordello, VI, 499)• He does not present a concrete univer
sal. In Pippa Passes, however, he follows his own advice and
makes the universal the center of an objective world. In
deed, Ransom quotes Pippa's morning song to illustrate Kant's
idea "on the right way to construe the complex experience of
beauty"--
I will have to quote a small English poem which makes na
ture purposive with an almost excessive clarity, and indeed
carries a tag of identification so pointed as to be
^Poems and Essays (New York, 1955)* P- 166. _____________
I 9 T
embarrassing. (p. 172)
His interpretation of Pippa's universal, "a feeling of joy,"
However, is limited and, perhaps, condescending:
We are given to understand that everything is joyful like
Pippa, that all nature is animated in the morning light.
And that would be the poem; except that she must conclude
by putting in her theological Universal, in which,she has
been well instructed: the world rejoices because Pippa's
God is now its God too, and he is in his heaven ordering
all. (p. 172)
His Kantian reserve does not allow Pippa an intuition of di
vine being, but the full meaning of her lines requires that
such an intuition be understood. In Paracelsus Browning says
that "God tastes an infinite joy/ In infinite ways" (V, 643“
4-4) and that He is present in all joy. He is, therefore,
present in Pippa's joy, and she is aware of His presence.
Ransom has called Pippa's universal "a feeling of joy,"
but it is more than that. Pippa has replaced the "sad di
shevelled ghost" that symbolizes mankind in Sordello. She is
a . complex of those universals which make up ideal humanity--
joy, loyalty, love, and faith in God's power--and Browning's
technique is to introduce her universals into a concrete, a
situation, in which she serves as a catalyst, causing those
about her to fulfill their true natures. In a way, this
technique is an adaptation of that in Paracelsus and Sordello,
for the heroes in these poems may be regarded as unsuccessful
catalysts.
In spite of his acceptance of Pippa's song as a concrete
universal in the Kantian mold, Ransom condemns it, in his
'Poetry: A Note on Ontology," as Platonic poetry, by which he
means poetry that emphasizes ideas rather than images. He
ieclares that it
is a piece of transparent homiletics; for in it six pretty,
co-ordinate images are marched, like six little lambs to
the slaughter, to a colon and a powerful text.'
As I have observed in my discussion of this poem, these lines
should not be divorced from their context, in which they have
a . peculiarly ironic force. If they were simply homiletic,
Ransom1s censure would be deserved, but even their homiletic
bone is determined by irony rather than by a desire to edify.
As a man, Browning may, in his moral earnestness, be accused
of homiletic intention, but as a poet, as a craftsman, he
meticulously fuses universal with concrete. The Platonist,
says Ransom in the, same essay, believes that "nature is ra
tional and that by the force of reasoning we shall possess
it" (p. 36), but Browning does not believe that truth can be
:cnown by reason. He is an anti-rationalist. Ransom thinks
of ontology as related to things, but Browning, like the ex
istentialists, distinguishes between the ontology of nature
and the ontology of human nature, and if his poetry seems at
times too purposive, it is because he regards human nature
^Critiques and Essays in Criticism, 1920-1948, ed. Rob
ert Wooster Stallman (New York, 19^9), P- 35•
199
as purposive. In his own way, Browning is as strict an on-
bologist as Ransom, but always with the dominant idea that
Jbhe soul is above and behind the intellect and that the in
tellect is a servant either to the soul or to the senses.
Re is thus able to show individuals in definite situations
working out their destinies, and he is faithful to ontologi
cal values, both subjective and objective.
Ransom says that Metaphysical Poetry
accomplishes precisely the sort of representation that it
means to. It suggests to us that the object is perceptual
ly or physically remarkable, and we had better attend to
it. (p. 46)
But he pays more attention to the rhetorical aspects of a po
em than to the poet’s state of mind. His approach, actually,
:Ls rhetorical rather than psychological. Jacques Maritain,
on the other hand, declares:
The primary requirement of poetry, which is the obscure
knowing, by the poet, of his own subjectivity, is insepara
ble from, is one with another requirement--the grasping, by
the poet, of the objective reality of the outer and inner
world: not by means of concepts and conceptual knowledge,
but by means of an obscure knowledge which I shall describe
. . . as knowledge through affective unionP ■
Re says that the poet’s intuition
is an obscure grasping of his own Self and of things in a
knowledge through union or through connaturality which is
born in the spiritual unconscious, and which fructifies in
the work. (pp. 83-84)
O
Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York, 1955)*
p. 83.
- — ” 200"
Browning's intuition strives to do just this in his early po
st^--it strives to know the Self and to correlate it with
the external world in a meaningful way. Before one can be-
Lieve in the Self as a spiritual entity, however, one must
believe in God. Maritain is a Catholic, a twentieth-century
fhomist, and a Christian existentialist. Browning, born one
year before Kierkegaard, shows himself to be a Christian ex
istentialist by stressing the subjective aspects of the human
person, considered as a creature of God. He wrote to Miss
Barrett,
I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a
man and too weak a one) to live and just write out certain
things which are in me, and so save my soul. (Letters, I,
213)
The poet, however, according to Browning, does more than save
iis own soul. He also saves the collective soul of mankind
by showing how human existence may be fulfilled.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
3abbitt, Irving. The New Laokofln. Boston, 1910.
3each, Joseph Warren. The Concept of Nature in Nineteenth
Century Nature Poetry. New York, 1936.
3erdoe, Edward, ed. Browning Studies. London, 1895*
The Boston Browning Society Papers. New York, 1897-
3rooke, Stopford Augustus. The Poetry of Robert Browning.
New York, 1902.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Letters of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, ed. P. G. Kenyorn 2 vols. London, 1097•
3rowning, Robert. Browning's Poetical Works, ed. Charlotte
Porter and Helen A. Clarke. 12 vols. New York, 1898.
_________________ . The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Horace E.
Scudder. Boston, 1895-
_________________ . Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to
Isabella Blagden, ed. Edward C. McAleer. Austin, Texas,
1951.
_________________ . Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Thomas J.
Wise. New Haven, 1933*
. The Letters of Robert Browning and Eliza
beth Barrett Browning. 2 vols. New York, 1926.
New Letters of Robert Browning, ed. Wil
liam Clyde DeVane and Kenneth Leslie Knickerbocker. New
Haven, 1950.
_________________ . Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, ed.
Frederic G. Kenyon. London, 1906.
_________________ . The Works of Robert Browning, ed. P. G.
Kenyon. Centenary Edition. 10 vols. London, 1912.
205
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans.
John Allen. 2 vols. Philadelphia, n.d.
Carlyle, Thomas. Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. 4
vols. Boston, n.d.
. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in
History, ed. John Chester Adams. Boston, 1907-
. Sartor Resartus. ed. Charles Frederick
Harrold. New York, 1937.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. Robert Browning. London, 1936.
Church, R. W. Dante and Other Essays. London, 1888.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Aids to Reflection. London, 1893-
Biographia Literaria. London,
1906.
Oollingwood, W. G. The Life and Work of John Ruskin. 2
vols. Boston, 1893•
Cooke, George Willis. A Guide-Book to the Poetic and Dramat
ic Works of Robert Browning^ Boston, 1891.
Croce, Benedetto. Aesthetics. New York, 1953*
Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method, trans. John Veitch.
La Salle, Illinois, 1949.
DeVane, William.Clyde. A Browning Handbook. New York, 1955 •
Hliot, Thomas Stearns. Selected Essays. 1917-1932. New
York, 1932.
Fairchild, Hoxie N. "Browning's Whatever Is, Is Right," Col
lege English. 12:377-382, April 1951.
Fuller, B. A. G. History of Philosophy. 2 vols. New York,
1945.
Griffin, William Hall, and Harry Christopher Minchin. The
Life of Robert Browning. London, 1912.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel: Selections, ed. J.
Loewenberg. New York, 1929-
--------------------------- — ----- ~soir
Heidegger, Martin. Existence and Being;. Chicago, 1949.
Milton, Earl. "Browning's Sordello as a Study of the Will,"
PMLA, 69:1127-1134, December 1954.
ilolmes, Stewart Walker. "Browning's Sordello and Jung:
Browning's Sordello in the Light of Jung's Theory of
Types," PMLA. 56:758-796. September 1941.
Mousman, Alfred Edward. "The Name and Nature of Poetry." Ir.
Brewster Ghiselin, ed., The Creative Process. New York,
1955.
James, Henry. William Wetmore Story and His Friends. 2
vols. Boston, 1904.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. New
York, The Modern Library, n.d.
Johnson, Edward Dudley Hume. The Alien Vision of Victorian
Poetry. Princeton, 1952.
.lung, Carl. The Integration of the Personality, trans. Stan
ley Dell. New York, 1939-
Meats, John. The Letters of John Keats, ed. Maurice Buxton
Forman. New York, 1952.
; Kierkegaard, Sjzfren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to
"Philosophical Fragments. trans. David F. Swenson and
Walter Lowrie; ed. Walter Lowrie. Princeton, 1941.
___________________ . Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, trans.
David F. Swenson, Lillian Marvin Swenson, and Walter
Lowrie. 2 vols. Princeton, 1944.
___________________ . Fear and Trembling, trans. and ed. Wal
ter Lowrie. New York, 1954.
___________________ . Stages on Life's Way, trans. Walter Low
rie. Princeton, 1940.
___________________ . Works of Love, trans. Lillian Marvin
Swenson. Princeton, 1946.
Langbaum, Robert. "The Ring and the Book: A Relativist Po
em," PMLA. 71:131-154, March 1956.
------------------------------------------- 2U5~
Lucas, Frank Laurence. Ten Victorian Poets. Cambridge, Eng
land, 1940.
Lussky, Alfred Edwin. Tlec^s Romantic Irony. Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, 1932.
Parcel, Gabriel. Homo Viator, trans. Emma Craufurd. Chi
cago, 1951.
_. The Mystery of Being, trans. G. S. Fraser
and Rene Haguel. 2 vols. Chicago, 1950, 1951-
_. The Philosophy of Existence. London, 1949.
Maritain, Jacques. Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.
New York, 1955.
Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Sonnets of Michelangelo, trans.
J. A. Symonds. London, 1950.
Miller, Betty. Robert Browning: A Portrait. New York, 1953.
Milton, John. The Student's Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patter
son. New York, 1933*
3rr, Mrs. Sutherland. Life and Letters of Robert Browning.
2 vols. Boston, 1891. '
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees and Provincial Letters. New York,
Modern Library, 1941.
Patrick, Denzil G. M. Pascal and Kierkegaard. 2 vols. Lon
don, 1947.
Pottle, Frederick A. Shelley and Browning: A Myth and Some
Facts. Chicago, 1923.
Ralli, Augustus. Guide to Carlyle. 2 vols. Boston, 1922.
Ransom, John Crowe. Poems and Essays. New York, 1955*
_. "Poetry: A Note on Ontology." In Robert
Wooster Stallman, ed., Critiques and Essays in Criti
cism. New York, 1949*
Raymond, William 0. The Infinite Moment. Toronto, 1950.
~ 206
Reid, Thomas. The Works of Thomas Reid, ed. Sir William Ham
ilton. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1863 (1st edition, November.
1846).
Reinhardt, Kurt F. The Existentialist Revolt. Milwaukee,
1952.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Age of Reason. New York, 1947.
_. Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Phil
ip Mairet. London, 1955.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Boston, 1901.
______________________ . Essays and Letters, ed. Ernest Rhys.
London, n.d.
Shine, Hill. Carlyle and the Saint-Simonians. Baltimore,
1941.
Smalley, Donald A. "Sordello: Its Significance for Brown
ing's Career as a Poet." Unpublished doctoral disserta
tion. Harvard University, 1939*
Smith, Charles Willard. Browning's Star-Imagery. Princeton,
1941.
Spinoza, Benedict. Philosophy of Benedict De Spinoza. New
York, n.d.
Stevenson, Lionel. Darwin Among the Poets. Chicago, 1932.
Jssher, Arland. Journey Through Dread. New York, 1955*
Warren, Alba H., Jr. English Poetic Theory, 1825-1865.
Princeton, 1950.
Afhite, Newman Ivey. Portrait of Shelley. New York, 1945-
_. Shelley. 2 vols. New York, 1940.
Wordsworth, William. Wordsworth: Representative Poems, ed.
Arthur Beatty. New York, 1937*
Ctalvarsltv of Southern HAMfwwyifr

Linked assets