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Page 84
What of Lazarus? What change has been wrought in him? Is he in any way
unfitted for this life? To what does Karshish compare him, with his
sudden wealth of insight behind the veil of the next world? Which of
the two men is better fitted for the condition in which he is placed?
What religious significance does the story of Lazarus come to have to
Karshish? What parallel ideas do you find in Rabbi Ben Ezra and in
this poem? Compare George Eliot's story, _The Lifted Veil_.
SAUL. (PAGE 196.)
This is generally regarded as one of Browning's greatest poems. Even
his detractors concede to it beauty of form, fervor of feeling, and
richness of imagery. The incident upon which it is based is found in
1 Samuel, chapter xvi. Saul is in the depths of mental eclipse, and
David has been summoned to cure him by music. The young shepherd sings
to him first the songs that appeal to the gentle animals; then the
songs that men use in their human relationships,--songs of labor, of
the wedding-feast, of the burial-service, of worship; then he sings
the joy of physical life, ending in an appeal to the ambition of King
Saul. Saul is roused, but not yet brought to _will_ to live. So
David sings anew of the life of the spirit, the spirit of Saul living
for his people. Then a touch of tenderness from the king flashes into
David a prophetic insight: If he, the imperfect, would do so much for
love of Saul, what would God, the all-perfect, do for men? And so he
reaches the conception of the Christ, the incarnation.
The poem is full of echoes of the Old Testament, fused with the spirit
of modern Christianity and modern thinking. It is touched here and
there with bits of beauty from Oriental landscape. The long, even
swell of the lines carries one along with no sense of the roughness so
common in Browning's verse. Rising by steady degrees to the climax, we
feel, like David, some sense of the "terrible glory," some sense of
the unseen presences that hovered around him as he made his way home
in the night.
ONE WORD MORE. (PAGE 224).
_One Word More_ was appended to Browning's volume _Men and
Women_ (1855), by way of dedication of the book to his wife. It is
characteristic of its author in its reality of feeling, in its seeking
an unusual point of view, in its parenthetic and allusive style, and
its occasional high felicity of expression. Those who feel overpowered
by Browning's vigor and profundity of thought, might stop here to note
the exquisite inconsistency between the examples cited and the thing
thus illustrated. The painter turning poet, the poet turning painter,
the moon turning her unseen face to a mortal lover; these are compared
to Browning the poet,--writing another poem. The only difference in
his art is that the poet here speaks for himself in the first person,
and not, as usual, dramatically in the third person. The idea of the
poem may be found, stripped of digression and fanciful comparisons, in
the eighth, twelfth, fourteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth stanzas.
Something of the same idea appears in _My Star_.
5. =Rafael,= etc. More commonly spelled Raphael. Born in Italy in
1483, died in 1520; generally regarded as the greatest of painters.
The Sistine Madonna, at Dresden, is considered his greatest work. See
lines 21-24.
Only four of his sonnets exist. A translation of these is given in
Cooke's _Guide Book to Browning_. There is no authentic record of
such a "century of sonnets" having ever existed.
10. Tradition is dim and uncertain as to the identity of this love of
Raphael's.
27. =Guido Reni= (1576-1642). A celebrated Italian painter. Berdoe
says that the volume owned by Guido Reni was a collection of a hundred
drawings by Raphael.
32-33. =Dante= (1265-1321). The greatest of Italian poets. His
_Divina Commedia_, consisting of the _Inferno_, _Purgatorio_,
and _Paradiso_, is his most famous work. His romantic passion
for Beatrice (pronounced B[=a]-[.a]-tr[=e]-che) is referred to in his
_Divina Commedia_, and is recounted in his _Vita Nuova_.
37-43. In allusion to the fact that Dante freely consigned his
enemies, political and personal, living or dead, to appropriate places
in his _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_.
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