Life of Robert Browning [49]
(ll. 1512-27): or those,
of the birth of her little one --
"A whole long fortnight; in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.
All women are not mothers of a boy. . . .
I never realised God's birth before --
How he grew likest God in being born.
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers."
When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triumph,
sighed out her last words --
"God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise ----"
who does not realise that to life's end he shall not forget
that plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that ineffable dying smile,
those wistful eyes with so much less of earth than heaven?
But the two succeeding "books" are more tiresome and more unnecessary
than the most inferior of the three opening sections -- the first of the two,
indeed, is intolerably wearisome, a desolate boulder-strewn gorge
after the sweet air and sunlit summits of "Caponsacchi" and "Pompilia".
In the next "book" Innocent XII. is revealed. All this section
has a lofty serenity, unsurpassed in its kind. It must be read
from first to last for its full effect, but I may excerpt one passage,
the high-water mark of modern blank-verse: --
"For the main criminal I have no hope
Except in such a suddenness of fate.
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze ----
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible:
There lay the city thick and plain with spires,
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved."
Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last "book" where the murderer
finds himself brought to bay and knows that all is lost.
Who can forget its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly,
in his supreme agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing cry --
"Abate, -- Cardinal, -- Christ, -- Maria, -- God, . . .
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale. But is this Epilogue necessary?
Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted?
It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to arrive
at a definite conviction. No individual or collective estimate of to-day
can be accepted as final. Those who come after us, perhaps not
the next generation, nor the next again, will see "The Ring and the Book"
free of all the manifold and complex considerations
which confuse our judgment. Meanwhile, each can only speak for himself.
To me it seems that "The Ring and the Book" is, regarded as an artistic whole,
the most magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry
which no other than our greatest could have written;
it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended.
Surely the poem must be judged by the balance of its success and failure?
It is in no presumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration
of this long-loved and often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one,
wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of Guido,
"Caponsacchi", "Pompilia", "The Pope", and Guido's last Defence.
I cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read
in the years to come. Thus circumscribed, it seems to me
to be rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the dross,
the mere debris which the true artist discards. But as it is,
in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging impulse, is it not, after all,
the true climacteric of Browning's genius?
"The Inn Album", a dramatic poem of extraordinary power,
has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be,
at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence.
This analogy of the
of the birth of her little one --
"A whole long fortnight; in a life like mine
A fortnight filled with bliss is long and much.
All women are not mothers of a boy. . . .
I never realised God's birth before --
How he grew likest God in being born.
This time I felt like Mary, had my babe
Lying a little on my breast like hers."
When she has weariedly, yet with surpassing triumph,
sighed out her last words --
"God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise ----"
who does not realise that to life's end he shall not forget
that plaintive voice, so poignantly sweet, that ineffable dying smile,
those wistful eyes with so much less of earth than heaven?
But the two succeeding "books" are more tiresome and more unnecessary
than the most inferior of the three opening sections -- the first of the two,
indeed, is intolerably wearisome, a desolate boulder-strewn gorge
after the sweet air and sunlit summits of "Caponsacchi" and "Pompilia".
In the next "book" Innocent XII. is revealed. All this section
has a lofty serenity, unsurpassed in its kind. It must be read
from first to last for its full effect, but I may excerpt one passage,
the high-water mark of modern blank-verse: --
"For the main criminal I have no hope
Except in such a suddenness of fate.
I stood at Naples once, a night so dark
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all:
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze ----
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore,
Through her whole length of mountain visible:
There lay the city thick and plain with spires,
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow,
And Guido see, one instant, and be saved."
Finally comes that throbbing, terrible last "book" where the murderer
finds himself brought to bay and knows that all is lost.
Who can forget its unparalleled close, when the wolf-like Guido suddenly,
in his supreme agony, transcends his lost manhood in one despairing cry --
"Abate, -- Cardinal, -- Christ, -- Maria, -- God, . . .
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
Lastly, the Epilogue rounds off the tale. But is this Epilogue necessary?
Surely the close should have come with the words just quoted?
It will not be after a first perusal that the reader will be able to arrive
at a definite conviction. No individual or collective estimate of to-day
can be accepted as final. Those who come after us, perhaps not
the next generation, nor the next again, will see "The Ring and the Book"
free of all the manifold and complex considerations
which confuse our judgment. Meanwhile, each can only speak for himself.
To me it seems that "The Ring and the Book" is, regarded as an artistic whole,
the most magnificent failure in our literature. It enshrines poetry
which no other than our greatest could have written;
it has depths to which many of far inferior power have not descended.
Surely the poem must be judged by the balance of its success and failure?
It is in no presumptuous spirit, but out of my profound admiration
of this long-loved and often-read, this superb poem, that I, for one,
wish it comprised but the Prologue, the Plea of Guido,
"Caponsacchi", "Pompilia", "The Pope", and Guido's last Defence.
I cannot help thinking that this is the form in which it will be read
in the years to come. Thus circumscribed, it seems to me
to be rounded and complete, a great work of art void of the dross,
the mere debris which the true artist discards. But as it is,
in all its lordly poetic strength and flagging impulse, is it not, after all,
the true climacteric of Browning's genius?
"The Inn Album", a dramatic poem of extraordinary power,
has so much more markedly the defects of his qualities that I take it to be,
at the utmost, the poise of the first gradual refluence.
This analogy of the