An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Robert Browning

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      It is not so much the glory of flesh which Euripides represents in Herakles, as the indulgence of appetite, at a time, too, when that indulgence is made to appear the more culpable and gross.

      This idea of “the value and significance of flesh”, it is important to note, along with the predominant spiritual bearing of Browning’s poetry. It articulates everywhere the spiritual, so to speak—makes it healthy and robust, and protects it against volatility and from running into mysticism.

2. The Idea of Personality as embodied in Browning’s Poetry.

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      A cardinal idea in Browning’s poetry is the regeneration of men through a personality who brings fresh stuff for them to mould, interpret, and prove right—new feeling fresh from God—whose life re-teaches them what life should be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness, all once revealed, but taught them so long since that they have but mere tradition of the fact—truth copied falteringly from copies faint, the early traits all dropped away. (‘Luria’.) The intellect plays a secondary part. Its place is behind the instinctive, spiritual antennae which conduct along their trembling lines, fresh stuff for the intellect to stamp and keep—fresh instinct for it to translate into law.

      “A people is but the attempt of many to rise to the completer life of one.” (‘A Soul’s Tragedy’.)

      Only the man who supplies new feeling fresh from God, quickens and regenerates the race, and sets it on the King’s highway from which it has wandered into by-ways—not the man of mere intellect, of unkindled soul, that supplies only stark-naked thought. Through the former, “God stooping shows sufficient of His light for those i’ the dark to rise by.” (‘R. and B., Pompilia’.) In him men discern “the dawn of the next nature, the new man whose will they venture in the place of theirs, and whom they trust to find them out new ways to the new heights which yet he only sees.” (‘Luria’.) It is by reaching towards, and doing fealty to, the greater spirit which attracts and absorbs their own, that, “trace by trace old memories reappear, old truth returns, their slow thought does its work, and all’s re-known.” (‘Luria’.)

      “Some existence like a pact

       And protest against Chaos, …

      … The fullest effluence of the finest mind,

       All in degree, no way diverse in kind

       From minds above it, minds which, more or less

       Lofty or low, move seeking to impress

       Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed

       Step after step, by just ascent sublimed.

       Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage,

       Is soul from body still to disengage,

       As tending to a freedom which rejects

       Such help, and incorporeally affects

       The world, producing deeds but not by deeds,

       Swaying, in others, frames itself exceeds,

       Assigning them the simpler tasks it used

       To patiently perform till Song produced

       Acts, by thoughts only, for the mind: divest

       Mind of e’en Thought, and, lo, God’s unexpressed

       Will dawns above us!” (‘Sordello’.)

      A dangerous tendency of civilization is that towards crystallization—towards hardened, inflexible conventionalisms which “refuse the soul its way”.

      Such crystallization, such conventionalisms, yield only to the dissolving power of the spiritual warmth of life-full personalities.

      The quickening, regenerating power of personality is everywhere exhibited in Browning’s poetry. It is emphasized in ‘Luria’, and in the Monologues of the Canon Caponsacchi and Pompilia, in the ‘Ring and the Book’; it shines out, or glints forth, in ‘Colombe’s Birthday’, in ‘Saul’, in ‘Sordello’, and in all the Love poems. I would say, en passant, that Love is always treated by Browning as a SPIRITUAL claim; while DUTY may be only a worldly one. SEE especially the poem entitled ‘Bifurcation’. In ‘Balaustion’s Adventure: including a transcipt from Euripides’, the regenerating power of personality may be said to be the leavening idea, which the poet has introduced into the Greek play. It is entirely absent in the original. It baptizes, so to speak, the Greek play, and converts it into a Christian poem. It is the “new truth” of the poet’s ‘Christmas Eve’.

      After the mourning friends have spoken their words of consolation to the bereaved husband, the last word being, “Dead, thy wife—living, the love she left”, Admetos “turned on the comfort, with no tears, this time. HE WAS BEGINNING TO BE LIKE HIS WIFE. I told you of that pressure to the point, word slow pursuing word in monotone, Alkestis spoke with; so Admetos, now, solemnly bore the burden of the truth. And as the voice of him grew, gathered strength, and groaned on, and persisted to the end, we felt how deep had been descent in grief, and WITH WHAT CHANGE HE CAME UP NOW TO LIGHT, and left behind such littleness as tears.”

      And when Alkestis was brought back by Herakles, “the hero twitched the veil off: and there stood, with such fixed eyes and such slow smile, Alkestis’ silent self! It was the crowning grace of that great heart to keep back joy: procrastinate the truth until the wife, who had made proof and found the husband wanting, might essay once more, hear, see, and feel him RENOVATED now—ABLE TO DO, NOW, ALL HERSELF HAD DONE, RISEN TO THE HEIGHT OF HER: so, hand in hand, the two might go together, live and die.” (Compare with this the restoration of Hermione to her husband, in ‘The Winter’s Tale’, Act V.)

      A good intellect has been characterized as the chorus of Divinity. Substitute for “good intellect”, an exulted magnetic personality, and the thought is deepened. An exalted СКАЧАТЬ