Introduction to Robert Browning [23]
with each muscle sinking back Into the sleepy smooth it leaped from late. Under the great guard of one arm, there leant A shrouded something, live and woman-like, Propped by the heart-beats 'neath the lion-coat. When he had finished his survey, it seemed, The heavings of the heart began subside, The helping breath returned, and last the smile Shone out, all Herakles was back again, As the words followed the saluting hand."
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.
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,
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.
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,