|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 4
The charge of obscurity so often made against Browning's poetry must
in part be admitted. As has been said above he is often led off by his
many-sided interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that interfere
with simplicity and beauty. His compressed style and his fondness
for unusual words often make an unwarranted demand upon the reader's
patience. Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a repulse
to the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore is not worth the
smelting; often it yields enough to reward the greatest patience.
Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely and deeply through
men and books. He was born in London, near the great centres of the
intellectual movements of his time; he travelled much, especially in
Italy and France; he read widely in the literatures and philosophies
of many ages and many lands; and so grew into the cosmopolitanism of
spirit that belonged to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.
In all art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning
this was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to
_Sordello_, written thirty years after its first publication, he
said: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul:
little else is worth study." This interest in "the development of
a soul" is the keynote of nearly all his work. To it are directly
traceable many of the most obvious excellences and defects of his
poetry. He came to look below the surfaces of things for the soul
beneath them. He came to be "the subtlest assertor of the Soul in
Song," and like his own pair of lovers on the Campagna, "unashamed of
soul." His early preference of Shelley to Keats indicated this bent.
His readers are conscious always of revelations of the souls of the
men and women he portrays; the sweet and tender womanhood of the
Duchess, the sordid and material soul of the old Bishop of St.
Praxed's, the devoted and heroic soul of Napoleon's young soldier, the
weary and despairing soul of Andrea del Sarto,--and a host of others
stand before us cleared of the veil of habit and convention. The
souls of men appear as the victors over all material and immaterial
obstacles. Human affection transforms the bare room to a bower of
fruits and flowers; human courage and resolution carry Childe Roland
victoriously past the threats and terrors of malignant nature, and
the despair from accumulated memories of failure; death itself is
described in _Evelyn Hope_, in _Prospice_, in _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_, as a phase, a transit of the soul, wherein the material
aspects and the physical terrors disappear. In Browning's poetry, the
one real and permanent thing is the world of ideas, the world of the
spirit. He is in this one of the truest Platonists of modern times.
To many young readers this method in art comes like a revelation.
Other poets also portray the souls of men; but Browning does it
more obviously, more intentionally, more insistently. It is well,
therefore, to have read Browning. To learn to read him aright is to
enter the gateway to other good and great poetry.
Out of this predominating interest in the souls of men, and out of his
intense intellectual activity and scientific curiosity, grows one of
Browning's greatest defects. He is often led too far afield, into
intricacies and anomalies of character beyond the range of common
experience and sympathy. The criminal, the "moral idiot," belong to
the alienist rather than to the poet. The abnormalities of nature
have no place in the world of great art; they do not echo the common
experience of mankind. Already the interest is decreasing in that part
of his poetry which deals with such themes. Bishop Blougram and Mr.
Sludge will not take place in the ranks of artistic creations. Nor can
the poet's "special pleading" for such types, however ingenious it
may be, whatever philanthropy of soul it may imply, be regarded as
justification. Sometimes, indeed, the poet is led by his sympathy and
his intellectual ingenuity into defences that are inconsistent with
his own standards of the true and the beautiful.
The trait in Browning which appeals to the largest number of readers
is his strenuous optimism. He will admit no evil or sorrow too
great to be borne, too irrational to have some ultimate purpose of
beneficence. "There shall never be one lost good," says Abt Vogler.
The suicides in the morgue only serve to call forth his declaration:--
"My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
* * * * *
That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|