Introduction to Robert Browning [67]
life through Messiah, when you will return to the Divine Law.' See also on Isaiah 39:18. Of the potter's clay passage, Isaiah 29:16, he has only a translation, `Shall man be esteemed as the potter's clay', and no comment that could ever have given Browning a hint for his use of the metaphor in his poem, even if he had ever seen Ibn Ezra's commentary. See Rabbi Ben Ezra's fine `Song of Death' in stanzas 12-20 of the grimly humorous Holy-Cross Day."
A Grammarian's Funeral.
-- * "Grammarian" mustn't be understood here in its restricted modern sense; it means rather one devoted to learning, or letters, in general. --
Shortly after the revival of learning in Europe.
The devoted disciples of a dead grammarian are bearing his body up a mountain-side for burial on its lofty summit, "where meteors shoot, clouds form, lightnings are loosened, stars come and go! Lofty designs must close in like effects: loftily lying, leave him, -- still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying".
This poem is INFORMED throughout with the poet's iterated doctrine in regard to earth life, -- to the relativity of that life. The grammarian, in his hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, thought not of time. "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." "Oh, if we draw a circle premature, heedless of far gain, greedy for quick returns of profit, sure bad is our bargain!"
The poem "exhibits something of the life of the Scaligers and the Casaubons, of many an early scholar, like Roger Bacon's friend, Pierre de Maricourt, working at some region of knowledge, and content to labor without fame so long as he mastered thoroughly whatever he undertook" (`Contemporary Rev.', iv., 135).
But the grammarian was true to one side only of Browning's philosophy of life. He disregarded the claims of the physical life, and became "soul-hydropic with a sacred thirst". *
-- * "Every lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink the more we shall thirst." -- Tillotson, quoted in `Webster'. --
The lyrico-dramatic verse of this monologue is especially noticeable. There is a march in it, exhibiting the spirit with which the bearers of the corpse are conveying it up the mountain-side.
An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician.
Karshish, the Arab physician, has been journeying in quest of knowledge pertaining to his art, and writes to his all-sagacious master, Abib, ostensibly about the specimens he has gathered of medicinal plants and minerals, and the observations he has made; but his real interest, which he endeavors to conceal by passing to matters of greater import to him, as he would have his sage at home believe, is in what he pronounces "a case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy". His last letter brought his journeyings to Jericho. He is now on his way to Jerusalem, and has reached Bethany, where he passes the night.
The case of mania which so interests him, -- far more than he is willing to admit, -- is that of Lazarus, whose firm conviction rests that he was dead (in fact they buried him) and then restored to life by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who afterwards perished in a tumult. The man Lazarus is witless, he writes, of the relative value of all things. Vast armaments assembled to besiege his city, and the passing of a mule with gourds, are all one to him; while at some trifling fact, he'll gaze, rapt with stupor, as if it had for him prodigious import. Should his child sicken unto death, why look for scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, or suspension of his daily craft; while a word, gesture, or glance from that same child at play or laid asleep, will start him to an agony of fear, exasperation, just as like! The law of the life, it seems, to which he was temporarily admitted, has become to him the law of this earthly life; his heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. He appears to be perfectly submissive to the heavenly will, and awaits patiently for death to restore his being to equilibrium.
A Grammarian's Funeral.
-- * "Grammarian" mustn't be understood here in its restricted modern sense; it means rather one devoted to learning, or letters, in general. --
Shortly after the revival of learning in Europe.
The devoted disciples of a dead grammarian are bearing his body up a mountain-side for burial on its lofty summit, "where meteors shoot, clouds form, lightnings are loosened, stars come and go! Lofty designs must close in like effects: loftily lying, leave him, -- still loftier than the world suspects, living and dying".
This poem is INFORMED throughout with the poet's iterated doctrine in regard to earth life, -- to the relativity of that life. The grammarian, in his hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, thought not of time. "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." "Oh, if we draw a circle premature, heedless of far gain, greedy for quick returns of profit, sure bad is our bargain!"
The poem "exhibits something of the life of the Scaligers and the Casaubons, of many an early scholar, like Roger Bacon's friend, Pierre de Maricourt, working at some region of knowledge, and content to labor without fame so long as he mastered thoroughly whatever he undertook" (`Contemporary Rev.', iv., 135).
But the grammarian was true to one side only of Browning's philosophy of life. He disregarded the claims of the physical life, and became "soul-hydropic with a sacred thirst". *
-- * "Every lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink the more we shall thirst." -- Tillotson, quoted in `Webster'. --
The lyrico-dramatic verse of this monologue is especially noticeable. There is a march in it, exhibiting the spirit with which the bearers of the corpse are conveying it up the mountain-side.
An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician.
Karshish, the Arab physician, has been journeying in quest of knowledge pertaining to his art, and writes to his all-sagacious master, Abib, ostensibly about the specimens he has gathered of medicinal plants and minerals, and the observations he has made; but his real interest, which he endeavors to conceal by passing to matters of greater import to him, as he would have his sage at home believe, is in what he pronounces "a case of mania, subinduced by epilepsy". His last letter brought his journeyings to Jericho. He is now on his way to Jerusalem, and has reached Bethany, where he passes the night.
The case of mania which so interests him, -- far more than he is willing to admit, -- is that of Lazarus, whose firm conviction rests that he was dead (in fact they buried him) and then restored to life by a Nazarene physician of his tribe, who afterwards perished in a tumult. The man Lazarus is witless, he writes, of the relative value of all things. Vast armaments assembled to besiege his city, and the passing of a mule with gourds, are all one to him; while at some trifling fact, he'll gaze, rapt with stupor, as if it had for him prodigious import. Should his child sicken unto death, why look for scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, or suspension of his daily craft; while a word, gesture, or glance from that same child at play or laid asleep, will start him to an agony of fear, exasperation, just as like! The law of the life, it seems, to which he was temporarily admitted, has become to him the law of this earthly life; his heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. He appears to be perfectly submissive to the heavenly will, and awaits patiently for death to restore his being to equilibrium.