Life of Robert Browning [43]
their hands,
demanding what they thought of it. He watched them intently while they read.
When at last Mrs. Jerrold remarked, "I don't understand what this man means;
it is gibberish," her delighted husband gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed,
"Thank God, I am NOT an idiot!"
Many friends of Browning will remember his recounting this incident
almost in these very words, and his enjoyment therein:
though he would never admit justification for such puzzlement.
But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jerrold were puzzled by the poem.
Lord Tennyson manfully tackled it, but he is reported to have admitted
in bitterness of spirit: "There were only two lines in it that I understood,
and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing lines,
`Who will may hear Sordello's story told,' and `Who would has heard
Sordello's story told!'" Carlyle was equally candid: "My wife," he writes,
"has read through `Sordello' without being able to make out
whether `Sordello' was a man, or a city, or a book."
In an article on this poem, in a French magazine, M. Odysse Barot
quotes a passage where the poet says "God gave man two faculties" --
and adds, "I wish while He was about it (`pendant qu'il etait en train')
God had supplied another -- viz., the power of understanding Mr. Browning."
And who does not remember the sad experience of generous and delightful
Gilead P. Beck, in "The Golden Butterfly": how, after "Fifine at the Fair",
frightful symptoms set in, till in despair he took up
"Red Cotton Nightcap Country", and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery.
"His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head,
his cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face
were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning.
And then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully
in the fireplace, set light to them. `I wish,' he said,
`that I could put the poet there too.'" One other anecdote of the kind
was often, with evident humorous appreciation, recounted by the poet.
On his introduction to the Chinese Ambassador, as a "brother-poet",
he asked that dignitary what kind of poetic expression
he particularly affected. The great man deliberated,
and then replied that his poetry might be defined as "enigmatic".
Browning at once admitted his fraternal kinship.
That he was himself aware of the shortcomings of "Sordello" as a work of art
is not disputable. In 1863, Mrs. Orr says, he considered the advisability
of "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but concluded that the labour
would be disproportionate to the result, and contented himself
with summarising the contents of each `book' in a continuous heading,
which represents the main thread of the story."
The essential manliness of Browning is evident in the famous dedication
to the French critic Milsand, who was among his early admirers.
"My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such
would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either?
I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since."
Whatever be the fate of "Sordello", one thing pertinent to it shall survive:
the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface -- "My stress lay on
the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study."
The poem has disastrous faults, but is a magnificent failure.
"Vast as night," to borrow a simile from Victor Hugo, but, like night,
innumerously starred.
Chapter 6.
"Pippa Passes", "The Ring and the Book", "The Inn Album", these are Browning's
three great dramatic poems, as distinct from his poetic plays.
All are dramas in the exact sense, though the three I have named
are dramas for mental and not for positive presentation.
Each reader must embody for himself the images projected on his brain by
the electric quality of the poet's genius: within the ken of his imagination
he may perceive scenes not less moving, incidents not less thrilling,
complexities
demanding what they thought of it. He watched them intently while they read.
When at last Mrs. Jerrold remarked, "I don't understand what this man means;
it is gibberish," her delighted husband gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed,
"Thank God, I am NOT an idiot!"
Many friends of Browning will remember his recounting this incident
almost in these very words, and his enjoyment therein:
though he would never admit justification for such puzzlement.
But more illustrious personages than Douglas Jerrold were puzzled by the poem.
Lord Tennyson manfully tackled it, but he is reported to have admitted
in bitterness of spirit: "There were only two lines in it that I understood,
and they were both lies; they were the opening and closing lines,
`Who will may hear Sordello's story told,' and `Who would has heard
Sordello's story told!'" Carlyle was equally candid: "My wife," he writes,
"has read through `Sordello' without being able to make out
whether `Sordello' was a man, or a city, or a book."
In an article on this poem, in a French magazine, M. Odysse Barot
quotes a passage where the poet says "God gave man two faculties" --
and adds, "I wish while He was about it (`pendant qu'il etait en train')
God had supplied another -- viz., the power of understanding Mr. Browning."
And who does not remember the sad experience of generous and delightful
Gilead P. Beck, in "The Golden Butterfly": how, after "Fifine at the Fair",
frightful symptoms set in, till in despair he took up
"Red Cotton Nightcap Country", and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery.
"His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head,
his cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face
were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning.
And then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully
in the fireplace, set light to them. `I wish,' he said,
`that I could put the poet there too.'" One other anecdote of the kind
was often, with evident humorous appreciation, recounted by the poet.
On his introduction to the Chinese Ambassador, as a "brother-poet",
he asked that dignitary what kind of poetic expression
he particularly affected. The great man deliberated,
and then replied that his poetry might be defined as "enigmatic".
Browning at once admitted his fraternal kinship.
That he was himself aware of the shortcomings of "Sordello" as a work of art
is not disputable. In 1863, Mrs. Orr says, he considered the advisability
of "rewriting it in a more transparent manner, but concluded that the labour
would be disproportionate to the result, and contented himself
with summarising the contents of each `book' in a continuous heading,
which represents the main thread of the story."
The essential manliness of Browning is evident in the famous dedication
to the French critic Milsand, who was among his early admirers.
"My own faults of expression were many; but with care for a man or book such
would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either?
I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and since."
Whatever be the fate of "Sordello", one thing pertinent to it shall survive:
the memorable sentence in the dedicatory preface -- "My stress lay on
the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study."
The poem has disastrous faults, but is a magnificent failure.
"Vast as night," to borrow a simile from Victor Hugo, but, like night,
innumerously starred.
Chapter 6.
"Pippa Passes", "The Ring and the Book", "The Inn Album", these are Browning's
three great dramatic poems, as distinct from his poetic plays.
All are dramas in the exact sense, though the three I have named
are dramas for mental and not for positive presentation.
Each reader must embody for himself the images projected on his brain by
the electric quality of the poet's genius: within the ken of his imagination
he may perceive scenes not less moving, incidents not less thrilling,
complexities