Introduction to Robert Browning [34]
an act of love, -- the bestowal of princely gifts upon him whose song gives life its joy, -- men shall remark the King's recognition of the use of life -- that his spirit is equal to more than merely to help on life in straight ways, broad enough for vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. He ascribes to the King, in the building of his tower (and by this must be understood the building up of his own selfhood), a higher motive than work for mere work's sake, -- that higher motive being, the luring hope of some EVENTUAL REST atop of it (the tower), whence, all the tumult of the building hushed, the first of men may look out to the east. *
-- * Tennyson uses a similar figure in `The Two Voices'. The speaker, who is meditating whether "to be or not to be", says: -- "Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Though watching from a ruined tower How grows the day of human power." The ruined tower is his own dilapidated selfhood, whence he takes his outlook upon the world. --
By the eventual rest atop of the tower, is indicated the aim of the Greek civilization, to reach a calm within the finite, while the soul is constituted and destined to gravitate forever towards the infinite -- to "force our straitened sphere. . . display completely here the mastery another life should learn." (`Sordello'.) The eventual rest in this world is not the Christian ideal. Earth-life, whatever its reach, and whatever its grasp, is to the Christian a broken arc, not a perfect round.
Cleon goes on to recount his accomplishments in the arts, and what he has done in philosophy, in reply to the first requirement of Protos's letter, Protos, as it appears, having heard of, and wonderingly enumerated, the great things Cleon has effected; and he has written to know the truth of the report. Cleon replies, that the epos on the King's hundred plates of gold is his, and his the little chaunt so sure to rise from every fishing-bark when, lights at prow, the seamen haul their nets; that the image of the sun-god on the light-house men turn from the sun's self to see, is his; that the Poecile, o'erstoried its whole length with painting, is his, too; that he knows the true proportions of a man and woman, not observed before; that he has written three books on the soul, proving absurd all written hitherto, and putting us to ignorance again; that in music he has combined the moods, inventing one; that, in brief, all arts are his, and so known and recognized. At this he writes the King to marvel not. We of these latter days, he says, being more COMPOSITE, appear not so great as our forerunners who, in their simple way, were greater in a certain single direction, than we; but our composite way is greater. This life of men on earth, this sequence of the soul's achievements here, he finds reason to believe, was intended to be viewed eventually as a great whole, the individual soul being only a factor toward the realization of this great whole -- toward spelling out, so to speak, Zeus's idea in the race. Those divine men of old, he goes on to say, reached each at one point, the outside verge that rounds our faculty, and where they reached, who could do more than reach? I have not chaunted, he says, verse like Homer's, nor swept string like Terpander, nor carved and painted men like Phidias and his friend; I am not great as they are, point by point; but I have entered into sympathy with these four, running these into one soul, who, separate, ignored each other's arts. The wild flower was the larger -- I have dashed rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, and show a better flower, if not so large.
And now he comes to the important questions in the King's letter -- whether he, the poet, his soul thus in men's hearts, has not attained the very crown and proper end of life -- whether, now life closeth up, he faces death with success in his right hand, -- whether he fears death less than he, the King, does himself, the fortunate of men, who assigns the reason for thinking that he does, that
-- * Tennyson uses a similar figure in `The Two Voices'. The speaker, who is meditating whether "to be or not to be", says: -- "Were this not well, to bide mine hour, Though watching from a ruined tower How grows the day of human power." The ruined tower is his own dilapidated selfhood, whence he takes his outlook upon the world. --
By the eventual rest atop of the tower, is indicated the aim of the Greek civilization, to reach a calm within the finite, while the soul is constituted and destined to gravitate forever towards the infinite -- to "force our straitened sphere. . . display completely here the mastery another life should learn." (`Sordello'.) The eventual rest in this world is not the Christian ideal. Earth-life, whatever its reach, and whatever its grasp, is to the Christian a broken arc, not a perfect round.
Cleon goes on to recount his accomplishments in the arts, and what he has done in philosophy, in reply to the first requirement of Protos's letter, Protos, as it appears, having heard of, and wonderingly enumerated, the great things Cleon has effected; and he has written to know the truth of the report. Cleon replies, that the epos on the King's hundred plates of gold is his, and his the little chaunt so sure to rise from every fishing-bark when, lights at prow, the seamen haul their nets; that the image of the sun-god on the light-house men turn from the sun's self to see, is his; that the Poecile, o'erstoried its whole length with painting, is his, too; that he knows the true proportions of a man and woman, not observed before; that he has written three books on the soul, proving absurd all written hitherto, and putting us to ignorance again; that in music he has combined the moods, inventing one; that, in brief, all arts are his, and so known and recognized. At this he writes the King to marvel not. We of these latter days, he says, being more COMPOSITE, appear not so great as our forerunners who, in their simple way, were greater in a certain single direction, than we; but our composite way is greater. This life of men on earth, this sequence of the soul's achievements here, he finds reason to believe, was intended to be viewed eventually as a great whole, the individual soul being only a factor toward the realization of this great whole -- toward spelling out, so to speak, Zeus's idea in the race. Those divine men of old, he goes on to say, reached each at one point, the outside verge that rounds our faculty, and where they reached, who could do more than reach? I have not chaunted, he says, verse like Homer's, nor swept string like Terpander, nor carved and painted men like Phidias and his friend; I am not great as they are, point by point; but I have entered into sympathy with these four, running these into one soul, who, separate, ignored each other's arts. The wild flower was the larger -- I have dashed rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, and show a better flower, if not so large.
And now he comes to the important questions in the King's letter -- whether he, the poet, his soul thus in men's hearts, has not attained the very crown and proper end of life -- whether, now life closeth up, he faces death with success in his right hand, -- whether he fears death less than he, the King, does himself, the fortunate of men, who assigns the reason for thinking that he does, that