The Romantic Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Robert Browning. Robert Browning

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      CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      1833-1841

      “... I press God’s lamp

       Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late,

       Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day.”

      Browning Visits Russia—“Paracelsus”—Recognition of Wordsworth and Landor—“Strafford”—First Visit to Italy—Mrs. Carlyle’s Baffled Reading of “Sordello”—Lofty Motif of the Poem—The Universal Problem of Life—Enthusiasm for Italy—The Sibylline Leaves Yet To Unfold.

      From Camberwell to St. Petersburg was somewhat of a transition. This was Mr. Browning’s initial excursion into a wider world of realities, as distinguished from that mirage which rises in the world of dreams and mental nebulæ. “To know the universe itself as a road,—as many roads,” is the way in which the beckoning future prefigures itself to the artist temperament.

      “All around him Patmos lies

       Who hath spirit-gifted eyes.”

      The eyes thus touched with the chrism of poetic art see the invisible which is peopled with forms unseen to others, and which offers a panorama of living drama. It is the poet who overhears the “talk of the gods,” and when he shall report

      “Some random word they say,”

      he becomes

      “... the fated man of men

       Whom the ages must obey.”

      This was the undreamed destiny hovering over the young poet, luring him on like a guiding cloud which became a pillar of fire by night.

      Among his London friends was the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the Russian Consul-General, who, being suddenly summoned to Russia on some secret mission of state, invited Browning to accompany him. Browning went “nominally in the character of secretary,” Mrs. Orr says, and they fared forth on March 1, by steamer to Rotterdam, and then journeyed more than fifteen hundred miles by diligence, drawn by relays of galloping horses. The expedition was to Browning a rich mine of poetic material. The experience sank into the subconsciousness as seed to await fruition. In his “Ivan Ivanovitch,” where is seen

      “This highway broad and straight e’en from the Neva’s mouth

       To Moscow’s gates of gold,”

      and in which the unending pine forests rising from the snow-covered ground are so vividly pictured; and in “Colombe’s Birthday,” where is seen the region of the heroine,—

      “Castle Ravestein—

       That sleeps out trustfully its extreme age

       On the Meuse’ quiet bank, where she lived queen

       Over the water-buds,...”

      and the place

      “... when he hid his child

       Among the river-flowers at Ravestein,”

      it can be seen how all this country impressed his imagination. Professor Hall Griffin finds in the fifth book of “Sordello” an unmistakable description of the most famous and oldest portrait of Charlemagne, which hangs in the Council Hall of the Rath-haus, in Aix, which Mr. Browning saw on this trip. During these three months he saw something of Russian society, and on the breaking up of the ice in the Neva in spring, witnessed the annual ceremony of the Czar’s drinking the first glass of water from it. Much of the gorgeous, barbaric splendor of Russian fairs and booths, “with droshkies and fish-pies” on the one hand, and stately palaces on the other, haunted him, and reflected themselves in several of his poems. Especially did the Russian music and strains of folk-song linger in his memory for all the after years.

      On his return from Russia Browning had some fancy for entering on a diplomatic career, and was momentarily disappointed at not receiving an appointment to Persia, which he had in mind; fortunately for him and for the world he was held to the orbit of his poetic gift. Diplomacy has an abundance of recruits without devastating poetic genius to furnish them. The winter of 1834 found him deeply absorbed in “Paracelsus.” This poem is dedicated to the Marquis Amédée de Ripert-Monclar, who was a great friend of Browning at this time. The Marquis was four years his senior; he was in England as a private agent for the Duchesse de Berri and the Royalist party in France to the English government. The subject of the poem is said to have been suggested by the Marquis, although the fact that all this medieval lore had been familiar to Browning from his earliest childhood must be accounted the pre-determining factor in its creation. William Sharp quotes Browning as having once said of his father: “The old gentleman’s brain was a storehouse of literary and philosophical antiquities. He was completely versed in medieval legend, and seemed to have known Paracelsus, Faustus, and even Talmudic personages, personally,” and his son assimilated unconsciously this entire atmosphere.

      Both “Paracelsus” and “Sordello” seem to spring, as by natural poetic evolution, from “Pauline”; all three of these poems are, in varying degree, a drama of the soul’s progress. They all suggest, and “Paracelsus,” especially, in a great degree embodies, the Hegelian philosophy; yet Mr. Barrett Browning expresses his rather positive conviction that his father never read Hegel at any period of his life. Dr. Corson regarded these early poems of Browning as of peculiar value in showing his attitude toward things. “We see in what direction the poet has set his face,” said Dr. Corson, “what his philosophy of life is, what soul-life means with him, what regeneration means, what edification means in its deepest sense of building up within us the spiritual temple.” Dr. Corson further illuminated this attitude СКАЧАТЬ