Yes, but, dear Mr. Browning, I want the spring according to the new
'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets.
To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow--it feels
as cold underfoot--and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the
turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart,
and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. _That_ is
my idea of what you call spring; mine, in the _new style_! A little
later comes my spring; and indeed after such severe weather, from
which I have just escaped with my life, I may thank it for coming at
all. How happy you are, to be able to listen to the 'birds' without
the commentary of the east wind, which, like other commentaries,
spoils the music. And how happy I am to listen to you, when you write
such kind open-hearted letters to me! I am delighted to hear all you
say to me of yourself, and 'Luria,' and the spider, and to do him no
dishonour in the association, of the great teacher of the age,
Carlyle, who is also yours and mine. He fills the office of a
poet--does he not?--by analysing humanity back into its elements, to
the destruction of the conventions of the hour. That is--strictly
speaking--the office of the poet, is it not?--and he discharges it
fully, and with a wider intelligibility perhaps as far as the
contemporary period is concerned, than if he did forthwith 'burst into
a song.'
But how I do wander!--I meant to say, and I will call myself back to
say, that spring will really come some day I hope and believe, and the
warm settled weather with it, and that then I shall be probably fitter
for certain pleasures than I can appear even to myself now.
And, in the meantime, I seem to see 'Luria' instead of you; I have
visions and dream dreams. And the 'Soul's Tragedy,' which sounds to me
like the step of a ghost of an old Drama! and you are not to think
that I blaspheme the Drama, dear Mr. Browning; or that I ever thought
of exhorting you to give up the 'solemn robes' and tread of the
buskin. It is the theatre which vulgarises these things; the modern
theatre in which we see no altar! where the thymelé is replaced by the
caprice of a popular actor. And also, I have a fancy that your great
dramatic power would work more clearly and audibly in the less
definite mould--but you ride your own faculty as Oceanus did his
sea-horse, 'directing it by your will'; and woe to the impertinence,
which would dare to say 'turn this way' or 'turn from that way'--it
should not be _my_ impertinence. Do not think I blaspheme the Drama. I
have gone through 'all such reading as should never be read' (that is,
by women!), through my love of it on the contrary. And the dramatic
faculty is strong in you--and therefore, as 'I speak unto a wise man,
judge what I say.'
For myself and my own doings, you shall hear directly what I have been
doing, and what I am about to do. Some years ago, as perhaps you may
have heard, (but I hope not, for the fewer who hear of it the
better)--some years ago, I translated or rather _undid_ into English,
the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. To speak of this production moderately
(not modestly), it is the most miserable of all miserable versions of
the class. It was completed (in the first place) in thirteen days--the
iambics thrown into blank verse, the lyrics into rhymed octosyllabics
and the like,--and the whole together as cold as Caucasus, and as flat
as the nearest plain. To account for this, the haste may be something;
but if my mind had been properly awakened at the time, I might have
made still more haste and done it better. Well,--the comfort is, that
the little book was unadvertised and unknown, and that most of the
copies (through my entreaty of my father) are shut up in the wardrobe
of his bedroom. If ever I get well I shall show my joy by making a
bonfire of them. In the meantime, the recollection of this sin of mine
has been my nightmare and daymare too, and the sin has been the 'Blot
on my escutcheon.' I could look in nobody's face, with a 'Thou canst
not say I did it'--I know, I did it. And so I resolved to wash away
the transgression, and translate the tragedy over again. It was an
honest straightforward proof of repentance--was it not? and I have
completed it, except the transcription and last polishing. If
Æschylus stands at the foot of my bed now, I shall have a little
breath to front him. I have done my duty by him, not indeed according
to his claims, but in proportion to my faculty. Whether I shall ever
publish or not (remember) remains to be considered--that is a
different side of the subject. If I do, it _may_ be in a
magazine--or--but this is another ground. And then, I have in my head
to associate with the version, a monodrama of my own,--not a long
poem, but a monologue of Æschylus as he sate a blind exile on the
flats of Sicily and recounted the past to his own soul, just before
the eagle cracked his great massy skull with a stone.
But my chief _intention_ just now is the writing of a sort of
novel-poem--a poem as completely modern as 'Geraldine's Courtship,'
running into the midst of our conventions, and rushing into
drawing-rooms and the like, 'where angels fear to tread'; and so,
meeting face to face and without mask the Humanity of the age, and
speaking the truth as I conceive of it out plainly. That is my
intention. It is not mature enough yet to be called a plan. I am
waiting for a story, and I won't take one, because I want to make one,
and I like to make my own stories, because then I can take liberties
with them in the treatment.
Who told me of your skulls and spiders? Why, couldn't I know it
without being told? Did Cornelius Agrippa know nothing without being
told? Mr. Horne never spoke it to my ears--(I never saw him face to
face in my life, although we have corresponded for long and long), and
he never wrote it to my eyes. Perhaps he does not know that I know it.
Well, then! if I were to say that _I heard it from you yourself_, how
would you answer? _And it was so._ Why, are you not aware that these
are the days of mesmerism and clairvoyance? Are you an infidel? I have
believed in your skulls for the last year, for my part.
And I have some sympathy in your habit of feeling for chairs and
tables. I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little
clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly
because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I
was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the
pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses
written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them,
but from pure gratitude. Other books I used to treat in a like
manner--and to talk to the trees and the flowers, was a natural
inclination--but between me and that time, the cypresses grow thick
and dark.
Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they _do_, are
they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them _un_fulfilled? Oh,
this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost
believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of
the window--at least, for me.
Of course you are _self-conscious_--How could you be a poet otherwise?
Tell me.
Ever faithfully yours,