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

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СКАЧАТЬ the feelings and sympathies of other souls and thus adjusts their attitudes towards the Divine. It is not the highest function of such a personality to TEACH, but rather to INFORM, in the earlier and deeper sense of the word. Whatever mere doctrine he may promulgate, is of inferior importance to the spontaneous action of his concrete life, in which the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, breathe and live. What is born in the brain dies there, it may be; at best, it does not, and cannot of itself, lead up to the full concrete life. It is only through the spontaneou and unconscious fealty which an inferior does to a superior soul (a fealty resulting from the responsiveness of spirit to spirit), that the former is slowly and silently transformed into a more or less approximate image of the latter. The stronger personality leads the weaker on by paths which the weaker knows not, upward he leads him, though his steps be slow and vacillating. Humility, in the Christian sense, means this fealty to the higher. It doesn’t mean self-abasement, self-depreciation, as it has been understood to mean, by both the Romish and the Protestant Church. Pride, in the Christian sense, is the closing of the doors of the soul to a great magnetic guest.

      Browning beautifully expresses the transmission of personality in his ‘Saul’. But according to Browning’s idea, personality cannot strictly be said to be transmitted. Personality rather evokes its LIKE from other souls, which are “all in degree, no way diverse in kind.” (‘Sordello’.)

      David has reached an advanced stage in his symbolic song to Saul. He thinks now what next he shall urge “to sustain him where song had restored him?—Song filled to the verge his cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye and bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?” So once more the string of the harp makes response to his spirit, and he sings:—

      “In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.

       Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree—how its stem

       trembled first

       Till it passed the kid’s lip, the stag’s antler; then safely outburst

       The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these, too, in turn

       Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet more was to learn,

       E’en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates

       shall we slight,

       When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight

       Of the palm’s self whose slow growth produced them? Not so!

       stem and branch

       Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine

       shall staunch

       Every wound of man’s spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.

       Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!

       By the spirit, when age shall o’ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy

       More indeed, than at first when, inconscious, the life of a boy.

       Crush that life, and behold its wine running! each deed thou hast done

       Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e’en as the sun

       Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him,

       though tempests efface,

       Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace

       The results of his past summer-prime—SO, EACH RAY OF THY WILL,

       EVERY FLASH OF THY PASSION AND PROWESS, LONG OVER, SHALL THRILL

       THY WHOLE PEOPLE, THE COUNTLESS, WITH ARDOUR, TILL THEY TOO GIVE FORTH

       A LIKE CHEER TO THEIR SONS: WHO IN TURN, FILL THE SOUTH AND THE NORTH

       WITH THE RADIANCE THY DEED WAS THE GERM OF.”

      In the concluding lines is set forth what might be characterized as the apostolic succession of a great personality—the succession of those “who in turn fill the South and the North with the radiance his deed was the germ of.”

      What follows in David’s song gives expression to the other mode of transmitting a great personality—that is, through records that “give unborn generations their due and their part in his being”, and also to what those records owe their effectiveness, and are saved from becoming a dead letter.

      “Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb—bid arise

       A grey mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies,

       Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame

       would ye know?

       Up above see the rock’s naked face, where the record shall go

       In great characters cut by the scribe—Such was Saul, so he did;

       With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid—

       For not half, they’ll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,

       In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend

       (See, in tablets ’tis level before them) their praise, and record

       With the gold of the graver, Saul’s story—the statesman’s great word

       Side by side with the poet’s sweet comment. The river’s a-wave

       With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:

       So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part

       In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!”

      What is said in this passage is applicable to the record we have of Christ’s life upon earth. Christianity has only to a very limited extent been perpetuated through the letter of the New Testament. It has been perpetuated chiefly through transmissions of personalities, through apostolic succession, in a general sense, and through embodiments of his spirit in art and literature—“the stateman’s great word”, “the poet’s sweet comment”. Were it not for this transmission of the quickening power of personality, the New Testament would be to a great extent a dead letter. It owes its significance to the quickened spirit which is brought to the reading of it. The personality of Christ could not be, through a plastic sympathy, moulded out of the New Testament records, without the aid of intermediate personalities.

      The Messianic idea was not peculiar to the Jewish race—the idea of a Person gathering up within himself, in an effective fulness and harmony, the restorative elements of humanity, which have lost their power through dispersion and consequent obscuration. There have been Messiahs of various orders and ranks in every age—great personalities that have realized to a greater or less extent (though there has been but one, the God-Man, who fully realized), the spiritual potentialities in man, that have stood upon the sharpest heights as beacons to their fellows. In the individual the species has, as it were, been gathered up, epitomized, and intensified, and he has thus been СКАЧАТЬ