his speech, pre-occupied, all the while he "wheezes out law and
whiffles Latin forth," with a birthday-feast in preparation for his
eight-year-old son, little Giacinto, the pride of his heart. The effect
is very comic, though the alternation or intermixture of lawyer's-Latin
and domestic arrangements produces something which is certainly, and
perhaps happily, without parallel in poetry. His defence is, and is
intended to be, mere quibbling. _Causâ honoris_ is the whole pith and
point of his plea: Pompilia's guilt he simply takes for granted.
Bottini, the exact opposite in every way of his adversary,--
"A man of ready smile and facile tear,
Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck,
And language--ah, the gift of eloquence!
Language that goes as easy as a glove
O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one"--
Bottini presents us with a full-blown speech, intended to prove
Pompilia's innocence, though really in every word a confession of her
utter depravity. His sole purpose is to show off his cleverness, and he
brings forward objections on purpose to prove how well he can turn them
off; assumes guilt for the purpose of arguing it into comparative
innocence.
"Yet for the sacredness of argument, ...
Anything, anything to let the wheels
Of argument run glibly to their goal!"
He pretends to "paint a saint," whom he can still speak of, in tones of
earnest admiration, as "wily as an eel." His implied concessions and
merely parenthetic denials, his abominable insinuations and suggestions,
come, evidently enough, from the instincts of a grovelling mind,
literally incapable of appreciating goodness, as well as from
professional irritation at one who will
"Leave a lawyer nothing to excuse,
Reason away and show his skill about."
The whole speech is a capital bit of satire and irony; it is comically
clever and delightfully exasperating.
After the lawyers have spoken, we have the final judgment, the
summing-up and laying bare of the whole matter, fact and motive, in the
soliloquy of _The Pope_. Guido has been tried and found guilty, but, on
appeal, the case had been referred to the Pope, Innocent XII. His
decision is made; he has been studying the case from early morning, and
now, at the
"Dim
Droop of a sombre February day,
In the plain closet where he does such work,
With, from all Peter's treasury, one stool,
One table and one lathen crucifix,"
he passes the actors of the tragedy in one last review, nerving himself
to pronounce the condemnation which he feels, as judge, to be due, but
which he shrinks from with the natural shrinking of an aged man about to
send a strong man to death before him. Pompilia he pronounces faultless
and more,--
"My rose, I gather for the breast of God;"
Caponsacchi, not all without fault, yet a true soldier of God, prompt,
for all his former seeming frivolousness, to spring forward and redress
the wrong, victorious, too, over temptation:--
"Was the trial sore?
Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time!
Why comes temptation but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray
'Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!'
Yea, but, O Thou, whose servants are the bold,
Lead such temptations by the head and hair,
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight,
That so he may do battle and have praise!"
For Guido he can see no excuse, can find no loophole for mercy, and but
little hope of penitence or salvation, and he signs the death-warrant.
"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."
The whole monologue is of different order from all the others. Every one
but this expresses a more or less partial and fragmentary view. _Tertium
Quid_ alone makes any pretence at impartiality, and his is the result of
indifference, not of justice. The Pope's speech is long, slow,
discoursive, full of aged wisdom, dignity and nobility. The latter part
of it, containing some of Browning's most characteristic philosophy, is
by no means out of place, but perfectly coherent and appropriate to the
character of the speaker.
Last of all comes the second and final speech of _Guido_, "the same
man, another voice," as he "speaks and despairs, the last night of his
life," before the Cardinal Acciaiuoli and Abate Panciatichi, two old
friends, who have come to obtain his confession, absolve him, and
accompany him to the scaffold:--
"The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before,
That pried and tried and trod so gingerly,
Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth join;
Then you know how the bristling fury foams.
They listen, this wrapped in his folds of red,
While his feet fumble for the filth below;
The other, as beseems a stouter heart,
Working his best with beads and cross to ban
The enemy that come in like a flood
Spite of the standard set up, verily
And in no trope at all, against him there:
For at the prison-gate, just a few steps
Outside, already, in the doubtful dawn,
Thither, from this side and from that, slow sweep
And settle down in silence solidly,
Crow-wise, the frightful Brotherhood of Death."
We have here the completed portrait of Guido, a portrait perhaps
unsurpassed as a whole by any of Browning's studies in the complexities
of character. In his first speech he fought warily, and with delicate
skill of fence, for life. Here, says Mr. Swinburne, "a close and dumb
soul compelled into speech by mere struggle and stress of things,
labours in literal translation and accurate agony at the lips of Guido."
Hopeless, but impelled by the biting frenzy of despair, he pours out on
his awe-stricken listeners a wild flood of entreaty, defiance, ghastly
and anguished humour, flattery, satire, raving blasphemy and foaming
impenitence. His desperate venom and blasphemous raillery is part
despair, part calculated horror. In his last revolt against death and
all his foes, he snatches at any weapon, even truth, that may serve his
purpose and gain a reprieve:--
"I thought you would not slay impenitence,
But teazed, from men you slew, contrition first,--
I thought you had a conscience ...
Would you send
A soul straight to perdition, dying frank
An atheist?"
How much of truth there is in it all we need not attempt to decide. It
is not likely that Guido could pretend to be much worse than he really
was, though he unquestionably heightens the key of his crime, working up
to a pitch of splendid ferocity almost sublime, from a malevolence
rather mean than manly. At the last, struck suddenly, as he sees death
upon him, from his pretence of defiant courage, he hurls down at a blow
the whole structure of lies, and lays bare at once his own malignant
cowardice and the innocence of his murdered wife:--is it with a touch of
remorse, of saving penitence?
"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,--
I use up my last strength to strike once more
Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,
To trample underfoot the whine and wile
Of beast Violante,--and I grow one gorge
To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale
Poison my hasty hunger took for food.
A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,
No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent,
But sustenance at root, a bucketful.
How else lived that Athenian who died so,
Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me?
I lived and died a man, and take man's chance,
Honest and bold: right will be done to such.
Who are these you have let descend my stair?
Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!
Is it 'Open' they dare bid you? Treachery!
Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while
Out of the world of words I had to say?
Not one word! All was folly--I laughed and mocked!
Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie,
Is--save me notwithstanding! Life is all!
I was just stark mad,--let the madman live
Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!
Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours,
I am the Granduke's,--no, I am the Pope's!
Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God, ...
Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
The coward's agony of the fear of death has never been rendered in words
so truthful or so terrible.
Last of all comes the Epilogue, entitled _The Book and the Ring_, giving
an account of Count Guido's execution, in the form of contemporary
letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian's
sermon on Pompilia, and other documents needed to wind off the threads
of the story.
_The Ring and the Book_ was the first important work which Browning
wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double
shrine: at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication. I quote
the invocation: the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of
them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living.
"O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,--
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,--
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart--
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory--to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,--
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand--
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:
--Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,--so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 40: _Handbook_, p. 93.]
[Footnote 41: Swinburne, _Essays and Studies_, p. 220.]
18. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE: including a Transcript from Euripides.
[Published in August, 1871. Dedication: "To the Countess
Cowper.--If I mention the simple truth: that this poem
absolutely owes its existence to you,--who not only
suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the
most delightful of May-month amusements--I shall seem honest,
indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought
such a poem to be!--Euripides might fear little; but I, also,
have an interest in the performance: and what wonder if I beg
you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense,
its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of
goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your
feet?--R. B., London, July 23, 1871." (_Poetical Works_,
1889, Vol. XI. pp. 1-122).]
The episode which supplies the title of _Balaustion's Adventure_ was
suggested by the familiar story told by Plutarch in his life of Nicias:
that after the ruin of the Sicilian expedition, those of the Athenian
captives who could repeat any poetry of Euripides were set at liberty,
or treated with consideration, by the Syracusans. In Browning's poem,
Balaustion tells her four girl-friends the story of her "adventure" at
Syracuse, where, shortly before, she had saved her own life and the
lives of a ship's-company of her friends by reciting the play of
_Alkestis_ to the Euripides-loving townsfolk. After a brief reminiscence
of the adventure, which has gained her (besides life, and much fame, and
the regard of Euripides) a lover whom she is shortly to marry, she
repeats, for her friends, the whole play, adding, as she speaks the
words of Euripides, such other words of her own as may serve to explain
or help to realise the conception of the poet. In other words, we have a
transcript or re-telling in monologue of the whole play, interspersed
with illustrative comments; and after this is completed Balaustion again
takes up the tale, presents us with a new version of the story of
Alkestis, refers by anticipation to a poem of Mrs. Browning and a
picture of Sir Frederick Leighton, and ends exultantly:--
"And all came--glory of the golden verse,
And passion of the picture, and that fine
Frank outgush of the human gratitude
Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,--
Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps
Away from you, friends, while I told my tale,
--It all came of the play which gained no prize!
Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"
It will thus be seen that the "Transcript from Euripides" is the real
occasion of the poem, Balaustion's adventure, though graphically
described, and even Balaustion herself, though beautifully and vividly
brought before us, being of secondary importance. The "adventure," as it
has been said, is the amber in which Browning has embalmed the
_Alkestis_. The play itself is rendered in what is rather an
interpretation than a translation; an interpretation conceived in the
spirit of the motto taken from Mrs. Browning's _Wine of Cyprus_:--
"Our Euripides, the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres."
Browning has no sympathy with those who impute to Euripides a sophistic
rather than a pathetic intention; and it is conceivable that the "task"
which Lady Cowper imposed upon him was to show, by some such method of
translation and interpretation, the warm humanity, deep pathos, right
construction and genuine truth to nature of the drama. With this end in
view, Browning has woven the thread of the play into a sort of connected
narrative, translating, with almost uniform literalness of language, the
whole of the play as it was written by Euripides, but connecting it by
comments, explanations, hints and suggestions; analyzing whatever may
seem not easily to be apprehended, or not unlikely to be misapprehended;
bringing out by a touch or a word some delicate shade of meaning, some
subtle fineness of idea or intention.[42] A more creative piece of
criticism can hardly be found, not merely in poetry, but even in prose.
Perhaps it shares in some degree the splendid fault of creative
criticism by occasionally lending, not finding, the noble qualities
which we are certainly made to see in the work itself.
The translation, though not literal in form, is literal in substance,
and it is rendered into careful and expressive blank verse. Owing to the
scheme on which it is constructed, the choruses could not be rendered
into lyrical verse; while, for the same reason, a few passages here and
there are omitted, or only indicated by a word or so in passing. The
omitted passages are very few in number; but it is not always easy to
see why they should have been omitted.[43] Browning's canon of
translation is "to be literal at every cost save that of absolute
violence to our language," and here, certainly, he has observed his
rule. Notwithstanding the greater difficulty of the metrical form, and
the far greater temptation to "brighten up" a version by the use of
paraphrastic but sonorous effects, it is improbable that any prose
translation could be more faithful. And not merely is Browning literal
in the sense of following the original word for word, he gives the exact
root-meaning of words which a literal translator would consider himself
justified in taking in their general sense. Occasionally a literality
of this sort is less easily intelligible to the general reader than the
more obvious word would have been; but, except in a very few instances,
the whole translation is not less clear and forcible than it is exact.
Whether or not the _Alkestis_ of Browning is quite the _Alkestis_ of
Euripides, there is no doubt that this literal, yet glorified and
vivified translation of a Greek play has added a new poem to English
literature.
The blank verse of _Balaustion's Adventure_ is somewhat different from
that of its predecessor, _The Ring and the Book_: to my own ear, at
least, it is by no means so original or so fine. It is indeed more
restrained, but Browning seems to be himself working under a sort of
restraint, or perhaps upon a theory of the sort of versification
appropriate to classical themes. Something of frank vigour, something of
flexibility and natural expressiveness, is lost, but, on the other hand,
there is often a rich colour in the verse, a lingering perfume and
sweetness in the melody, which has a new and delicate charm of its own.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 42: Note, for instance, the admirable exposition and defence
of the famous and ill-famed altercation between Pheres and Admetos: one
of the keenest bits of explanatory analysis in Mr. Browning's works. Or
observe how beautifully human the dying Alkestis becomes as he
interprets for her, and how splendid a humanity the jovial Herakles puts
on.]
[Footnote 43: The two speeches of Eumelos, not without a note of pathos,
are scarcely represented by--
"The children's tears ran fast
Bidding their father note the eye-lids' stare,
Hands'-droop, each dreadful circumstance of death."]
19. PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHWANGAU, SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY.
[Published in December, 1871. (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp.
123-210).]
_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_[44] is a blank verse monologue, supposed
to be spoken, in a musing day-dream, by Louis Napoleon, while Emperor of
the French, and calling himself, to the delight of ironical echoes, the
"Saviour of Society." The work is equally distant in spirit from the
branding satire and righteous wrath of Victor Hugo's _Châtiments_ and
_Napoléon le Petit_, and from Lord Beaconsfield's _couleur de rose_
portrait, in _Endymion_, of the nominally pseudonymous Prince Florestan.
It is neither a denunciation nor a eulogy, nor yet altogether an
impartial delineation. It is an "apology," with much the same object as
those of Bishop Blougram or Mr. Sludge, the Medium: "by no means to
prove black white or white black, or to make the worse appear the better
reason, but to bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the
common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and
how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to
itself."[45]
The poem is very hard reading, perhaps as a whole the hardest
intellectual exercise in Browning's work, but this arises not so much
from the obscurity of its ideas and phrases as from the peculiar
complexity of its structure. To apprehend it we must put ourselves at a
certain standpoint, which is not easy to reach. The monologue as a whole
represents, as we only learn at the end, not a direct speech to a real
person in England, but a mere musing over a cigar in the palace in
France. It is divided into two distinct sections, which need to be kept
clearly apart in the mind. The first section, up to the line, more than
half-way through, "Something like this the unwritten chapter reads," is
a direct self-apology. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau puts forward what he
represents as his theory of practice. It is founded on the principle of
_laisser-faire_, and resolves itself into conformity: concurrence with
things as they are, with society as it is. He finds existing
institutions, not indeed perfect, but sufficiently good for practical
purposes; and he conceives his mission to be that of a builder on
existing foundations, that of a social conservator, not of a social
reformer: "to do the best with the least change possible." On his own
showing, he has had this single aim in view from first to last, and on
this ground, that of expediency, he explains and defends every act of
his tortuous and vacillating policy. He has had his ambitions and ideals
of giving freedom to Italy, for example, but he has set them aside in
the interests of his own people and for what he holds to be their more
immediate needs. So far the direct apology. He next proceeds to show
what he might have done, but did not, the ideal course as it is held;
commenting the while, as "Sagacity," upon the imaginary new version of
his career. His comments represent his real conduct, and they are such
as he assumes would naturally be made on the "ideal" course by the very
critics who have censured his actual temporising policy. The final pages
contain an involuntary confession that, even in his own eyes, Prince
Hohenstiel is not quite satisfied with either his conduct or his defence
of it.
To separate the truth from the falsehood in this dramatic monologue has
not been Browning's intention, and it need not be ours. It may be
repeated that Browning is no apologist for Louis Napoleon: he simply
calls him to the front, and, standing aside, allows him to speak for
himself.[46] In his speech under these circumstances we find just as
much truth entangled with just as much sophistry as we might reasonably
expect. Here, we get what seems the genuine truth; there, in what
appears to the speaker a satisfactory defence, we see that he is simply
exposing his own moral defect; again, like Bishop Blougram, he "says
true things, but calls them by wrong names." Passages of the last kind
are very frequent; are, indeed, to be found everywhere throughout the
poem; and it is in these that Browning unites most cleverly the
vicarious thinking due to his dramatic subject, and the good honest
thought which we never fail to find dominant in his most exceptional
work. The Prince gives utterance to a great deal of very true and very
admirable good sense; we are at liberty to think him insincere in his
application of it, but an axiom remains true, even if it be wrongly
applied.
The versification of the poem is everywhere vigorous, and often fine;
perhaps the finest passage it contains is that referring to Louis
Napoleon's abortive dreams on behalf of Italy.
"Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,
Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine
For ever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct,
Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth
Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there
Imparting exultation to the hills!
Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk
And waft my words above the grassy sea
Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome--
Hear ye not still--'Be Italy again?'
And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart?
Decrepit council-chambers,--where some lamp
Drives the unbroken black three paces off
From where the greybeards huddle in debate,
Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one
Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt,
And what they think is fear, and what suspends
The breath in them is not the plaster-patch
Time disengages from the painted wall
Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu,
Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry
To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old;
But some word, resonant, redoubtable,
Of who once felt upon his head a hand
Whereof the head now apprehends his foot."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 44: The name _Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is formed from Hohen
Schwangau, one of the castles of the late king of Bavaria.]
[Footnote 45: James Thomson on _The Ring and the Book_.]
[Footnote 46: I find in a letter of Browning, which Mrs Orr has printed
in her _Life and Letters of Browning_ (1891), a reference to "what the
editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire--which
it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be--'a
scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England'--it is just
what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."]
20. FIFINE AT THE FAIR.
[Published in 1872 (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp. 211-343).]
_Fifine at the Fair_ is a monologue at once dramatic and philosophical.
Its arguments, like those of _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_, are part
truth, part sophistry. The poem is prefaced by a motto from Molière's
_Don Juan_, in which Donna Elvira suggests to her husband, with a bitter
irony, the defence he ought to make for himself. Don Juan did not take
the hint. Browning has done so. The genesis of the poem and the special
form it has assumed are further explained by the following passage from
Mrs. Orr:--