Life of Robert Browning [21]
comprehensive, because his poems have
this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active minds,
is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with presentment
that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself.
If he cannot PRESENT poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet,
though he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence
is not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called
"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet."
It is the delight of the true artist that the product of his talent
should be wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain
and the dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy:
because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought --
"Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain
Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells,
Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight ----"
he strikes from the FUROR of words an electric flash
so transcendently illuminative that what is commonplace
becomes radiant with that light which dwells not in nature,
but only in the visionary eye of man. Form for the mere beauty of form,
is a playing with the wind, the acceptance of a shadow for the substance.
If nothing animate it, it may possibly be fair of aspect,
but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face.
We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834.
It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one
certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away.
He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist:
the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land
of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures:
what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of great dreamers!
In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University,
that of the world of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his,
when asked if he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge, --
"Italy was my University."
But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg,
attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested him,
but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention.
That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is manifest
from the remarkably picturesque and technically very interesting poem,
"Ivan Ivanovitch" (the fourth of the `Dramatic Idyls', 1879).
Of a truth, after his own race and country -- readers will at once
think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", or the thrilling lines
in "Home Thoughts from Abroad", beginning --
"Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there!" --
or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work --
"I cherish most
My love of England -- how, her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!"
-- it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South
that he oftenest thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried:
"O Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!"
As for Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her:
but who has worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love,
as Browning? One alone indeed may be mated with him here,
she who had his heart of hearts, and who lies at rest
in the old Florentine cemetery within sound of the loved waters of Arno.
Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus", "Open my heart and you will see,
graved inside of it, Italy."
It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present one
to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy,
Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia
and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty
above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled
gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria,
what a movement of intensest
this or that dynamic effect upon dormant or sluggish or other active minds,
is to be seriously and energetically deprecated. It is with presentment
that the artist has, fundamentally, to concern himself.
If he cannot PRESENT poetically then he is not, in effect, a poet,
though he may be a poetic thinker, or a great writer. Browning's eminence
is not because of his detachment from what some one has foolishly called
"the mere handiwork, the furnisher's business, of the poet."
It is the delight of the true artist that the product of his talent
should be wrought to a high technique equally by the shaping brain
and the dexterous hand. Browning is great because of his formative energy:
because, despite the excess of burning and compulsive thought --
"Thoughts swarming thro' the myriad-chambered brain
Like multitudes of bees i' the innumerous cells,
Each staggering 'neath the undelivered freight ----"
he strikes from the FUROR of words an electric flash
so transcendently illuminative that what is commonplace
becomes radiant with that light which dwells not in nature,
but only in the visionary eye of man. Form for the mere beauty of form,
is a playing with the wind, the acceptance of a shadow for the substance.
If nothing animate it, it may possibly be fair of aspect,
but only as the frozen smile upon a dead face.
We know little of Browning's inner or outer life in 1833 and 1834.
It was a secretive, not a productive period. One by one
certain pinnacles of his fair snow-mountain of Titanic aim melted away.
He began to realise the first disenchantment of the artist:
the sense of dreams never to be accomplished. That land
of the great unwritten poems, the great unpainted pictures:
what a heritance there for the enfranchised spirits of great dreamers!
In the autumn of 1833 he went forth to his University,
that of the world of men and women. It was ever a favourite answer of his,
when asked if he had been at either Oxford or Cambridge, --
"Italy was my University."
But first he went to Russia, and spent some time in St. Petersburg,
attracted thither by the invitation of a friend. The country interested him,
but does not seem to have deeply or permanently engaged his attention.
That, however, his Russian experiences were not fruitless is manifest
from the remarkably picturesque and technically very interesting poem,
"Ivan Ivanovitch" (the fourth of the `Dramatic Idyls', 1879).
Of a truth, after his own race and country -- readers will at once
think of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", or the thrilling lines
in "Home Thoughts from Abroad", beginning --
"Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there!" --
or perhaps, those lines in his earliest work --
"I cherish most
My love of England -- how, her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!"
-- it was of the mystic Orient or of the glowing South
that he oftenest thought and dreamed. With Heine he might have cried:
"O Firdusi! O Ischami! O Saadi! How do I long after the roses of Schiraz!"
As for Italy, who of all our truest poets has not loved her:
but who has worshipped her with so manly a passion, so loyal a love,
as Browning? One alone indeed may be mated with him here,
she who had his heart of hearts, and who lies at rest
in the old Florentine cemetery within sound of the loved waters of Arno.
Who can forget his lines in "De Gustibus", "Open my heart and you will see,
graved inside of it, Italy."
It would be no difficult task to devote a volume larger than the present one
to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy,
Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia
and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty
above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled
gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria,
what a movement of intensest