The Complete Works of Robert Browning: Poems, Plays, Letters & Biographies in One Edition. Robert Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ You know I am not superstitious — here is a note I made in a book, Tuesday, July 21, 1863. “Arabel told me yesterday that she had been much agitated by a dream which happened the night before, Sunday, July 19. She saw Her and asked ‘when shall I be with you?’ the reply was, ‘Dearest, in five years,’ whereupon Arabella woke. She knew in her dream that it was not to the living she spoke.” — In five years, within a month of their completion — I had forgotten the date of the dream, and supposed it was only three years ago, and that two had still to run. Only a coincidence, but noticeable… .’

      In August he writes again from Audierne, Finisterre (Brittany).

      ‘… You never heard of this place, I daresay. After staying a few days at Paris we started for Rennes, — reached Caen and halted a little — thence made for Auray, where we made excursions to Carnac, Lokmariaker, and Ste.-Anne d’Auray; all very interesting of their kind; then saw Brest, Morlaix, St.-Pol de Leon, and the seaport Roscoff, — our intended bathing place — it was full of folk, however, and otherwise impracticable, so we had nothing for it, but to “rebrousser chemin” and get to the south-west again. At Quimper we heard (for a second time) that Audierne would suit us exactly, and to it we came — happily, for “suit” it certainly does. Look on the map for the most westerly point of Bretagne — and of the mainland of Europe — there is niched Audierne, a delightful quite unspoiled little fishing-town, with the open ocean in front, and beautiful woods, hills and dales, meadows and lanes behind and around, — sprinkled here and there with villages each with its fine old Church. Sarianna and I have just returned from a four hours’ walk in the course of which we visited a town, Pont Croix, with a beautiful cathedral-like building amid the cluster of clean bright Breton houses, — and a little farther is another church, “Notre Dame de Comfort”, with only a hovel or two round it, worth the journey from England to see; we are therefore very well off — at an inn, I should say, with singularly good, kind, and liberal people, so have no cares for the moment. May you be doing as well! The weather has been most propitious, and to-day is perfect to a wish. We bathe, but somewhat ingloriously, in a smooth creek of millpond quietude, (there being no cabins on the bay itself,) unlike the great rushing waves of Croisic — the water is much colder… .’

      The tribute contained in this letter to the merits of le Pere Batifoulier and his wife would not, I think, be endorsed by the few other English travellers who have stayed at their inn. The writer’s own genial and kindly spirit no doubt partly elicited, and still more supplied, the qualities he saw in them.

      The six-volume, so long known as ‘uniform’ edition of Mr. Browning’s works, was brought out in the autumn of this year by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co.; practically Mr. George Murray Smith, who was to be thenceforward his exclusive publisher and increasingly valued friend. In the winter months appeared the first two volumes (to be followed in the ensuing spring by the third and fourth) of ‘The Ring and the Book’.

      With ‘The Ring and the Book’ Mr. Browning attained the full recognition of his genius. The ‘Athenaeum’ spoke of it as the ‘opus magnum’ of the generation; not merely beyond all parallel the supremest poetic achievement of the time, but the most precious and profound spiritual treasure that England had produced since the days of Shakespeare. His popularity was yet to come, so also the widespread reading of his hitherto neglected poems; but henceforth whatever he published was sure of ready acceptance, of just, if not always enthusiastic, appreciation. The ground had not been gained at a single leap. A passage in another letter to Miss Blagden shows that, when ‘The Ring and the Book’ appeared, a high place was already awaiting it outside those higher academic circles in which its author’s position was secured.

      ‘… I want to get done with my poem. Booksellers are making me pretty offers for it. One sent to propose, last week, to publish it at his risk, giving me all the profits, and pay me the whole in advance — ”for the incidental advantages of my name” — the R. B. who for six months once did not sell one copy of the poems! I ask 200 Pounds for the sheets to America, and shall get it… .’

      His presence in England had doubtless stimulated the public interest in his productions; and we may fairly credit ‘Dramatis Personae’ with having finally awakened his countrymen of all classes to the fact that a great creative power had arisen among them. ‘The Ring and the Book’ and ‘Dramatis Personae’ cannot indeed be dissociated in what was the culminating moment in the author’s poetic life, even more than the zenith of his literary career. In their expression of all that constituted the wide range and the characteristic quality of his genius, they at once support and supplement each other. But a fact of more distinctive biographical interest connects itself exclusively with the later work.

      We cannot read the emotional passages of ‘The Ring and the Book’ without hearing in them a voice which is not Mr. Browning’s own: an echo, not of his past, but from it. The remembrance of that past must have accompanied him through every stage of the great work. Its subject had come to him in the last days of his greatest happiness. It had lived with him, though in the background of consciousness, through those of his keenest sorrow. It was his refuge in that aftertime, in which a subsiding grief often leaves a deeper sense of isolation. He knew the joy with which his wife would have witnessed the diligent performance of this his self-imposed task. The beautiful dedication contained in the first and last books was only a matter of course. But Mrs. Browning’s spiritual presence on this occasion was more than a presiding memory of the heart. I am convinced that it entered largely into the conception of ‘Pompilia’, and, so far as this depended on it, the character of the whole work. In the outward course of her history, Mr. Browning proceeded strictly on the ground of fact. His dramatic conscience would not have allowed it otherwise. He had read the record of the case, as he has been heard to say, fully eight times over before converting it into the substance of his poem; and the form in which he finally cast it, was that which recommended itself to him as true — which, within certain limits, was true. The testimony of those who watched by Pompilia’s deathbed is almost conclusive as to the absence of any criminal motive to her flight, or criminal circumstance connected with it. Its time proved itself to have been that of her impending, perhaps newly expected motherhood, and may have had some reference to this fact. But the real Pompilia was a simple child, who lived in bodily terror of her husband, and had made repeated efforts to escape from him. Unless my memory much deceives me, her physical condition plays no part in the historical defence of her flight. If it appeared there at all, it was as a merely practical incentive to her striving to place herself in safety. The sudden rapturous sense of maternity which, in the poetic rendering of the case, becomes her impulse to self-protection, was beyond her age and her culture; it was not suggested by the facts; and, what is more striking, it was not a natural development of Mr. Browning’s imagination concerning them.

      The parental instinct was among the weakest in his nature — a fact which renders the more conspicuous his devotion to his own son; it finds little or no expression in his work. The apotheosis of motherhood which he puts forth through the aged priest in ‘Ivan Ivanovitch’ was due to the poetic necessity of lifting a ghastly human punishment into the sphere of Divine retribution. Even in the advancing years which soften the father into the grandfather, the essential quality of early childhood was not that which appealed to him. He would admire its flower-like beauty, but not linger over it. He had no special emotion for its helplessness. When he was attracted by a child it was through the evidence of something not only distinct from, but opposed to this. ‘It is the soul’ (I see) ‘in that speck of a body,’ he said, not many years ago, of a tiny boy — now too big for it to be desirable that I should mention his name, but whose mother, if she reads this, will know to whom I allude — who had delighted him by an act of intelligent grace which seemed beyond his years. The ingenuously unbounded maternal pride, the almost luscious maternal sentiment, of Pompilia’s dying moments can only associate themselves in our mind with Mrs. Browning’s personal utterances, and some notable passages in ‘Casa Guidi Windows’ and ‘Aurora Leigh’. Even the exalted fervour of the invocation to Caponsacchi, its blending of spiritual ecstasy with half-realized earthly emotion, has, I think, no parallel in her husband’s СКАЧАТЬ