STUDIES IN BROWNING
Robert Browning very much reminds us in some respects of the American
thinker, Emerson. The main doctrine of Emerson is Individualism;
and this happens also to be the main doctrine of Browning. By
Individualism, Emerson and Browning mean self-cultivation. Both
thought that the highest possible duty of every man was to develop the
best powers of his mind and body to the utmost possible degree. Make
yourself strong--that, is the teaching. You are only a man, not a god;
therefore it is very likely that you will do many things which are
very wrong or very foolish. But whatever you do, even if it be wrong,
do it well--do it with all your strength. Even a strong sin may be
better than a cowardly virtue. Weakness is of all things the worst.
When we do wrong, experience soon, teaches us our mistake. And the
stronger the mistake has been, the more quickly will the experience
come which corrects and purifies. Now you understand what I mean by
Individualism--the cultivation by untiring exercise of all our best
faculties, and especially of the force and courage to act.
This Individualism in Emerson was founded upon a vague Unitarian
pantheism. The same fact is true of Browning's system. According to
both thinkers, all of us are parts of one infinite life, and it is
by cultivating our powers that we can best serve the purpose of the
Infinite Mind. Leaving out the words "mind" and "purpose," which are
anthropomorphisms, this doctrine accords fairly well with evolutional
philosophy; and both writers were, to a certain degree, evolutionists.
But neither yielded much to the melancholy of nineteenth century doubt.
Both were optimists. We may say that Browning's philosophy is an
optimistic pantheism, inculcating effort as the very first and highest
duty of life. But Browning is not especially a philosophical poet. We
find his philosophy flashing out only at long intervals. Knowing this,
we know what he is likely to think under certain circumstances; but his
mission was of another special kind.
His message to the world was that of an interpreter of life. His art
is, from first to last, a faithful reflection of human nature, the
human nature of hundreds of different characters, good and bad, but
in a large proportion of case's, decidedly bad. Why? Because, as a
great artist, Browning understood very well that you can draw quite as
good a moral from bad actions as from good ones, and his unconscious
purpose is always moral. Such art of picturing character, to be really
great, must be dramatic; and all of Browning's work is dramatic. He
does not say to us, "This man has such and such a character"; he makes
the man himself act and speak so as to show his nature. The second
fact, therefore, to remember about Browning is that artistically he is
a dramatic poet, whose subject is human nature. No other English poet
so closely resembled Shakespeare in this kind of representation as
Browning.
There is one more remarkable fact about the poet. He always, or nearly
always, writes in the first person. Every one of his poems, with few
exceptions, is a soliloquy. It is not he who speaks, of course; it is
the "I" of some other person's soul. This kind of literary form is
called "monologue." Even the enormous poem of "The Ring and the Book"
is nothing but a gigantic collection of monologues, grouped and ordered
so as to produce one great dramatic effect.
In the case of Browning, I shall not attempt much illustration by way
of texts, because a great deal of Browning's form could be not only of
no use to you, but would even be mischievous in its influence upon your
use of language. In Browning every rule of rhetoric, of arrangement, is
likely to be broken. The adjective is separated by vast distances from
the noun; the preposition is tumbled after the word to which it refers;
the verb is found at the end of a sentence of which it should have been
the first word. When Carlyle first read the poem called "Sordello," he
said that he could not tell whether "Sordello" was a man or a town or
a book. And the obscurity of "Sordello" is in some places so atrocious
that I do not think anybody in the world can unravel it. Now, most
of Browning's long poems are written in this amazing style. The text
is, therefore, not a good subject for literary study. But it is an
admirable subject for psychological study, emotional study, dramatic
study, and sometimes for philosophic study. Instead of giving extracts,
therefore, from very long poems, I shall give only a summary of the
meaning of the poem itself. If such summary should tempt you to the
terrible labour of studying the original, I am sure that you would be
very tired, but after the weariness, you would be very much surprised
and pleased.
Providing, of course, that you would understand; and I very much
doubt whether you could understand. I doubt because I cannot always
understand it myself, no matter how hard I try.
One reason is the suppression of words. Browning leaves out all the
articles, prepositions, and verbs that he can. I met some years ago
a Japanese scholar who had mastered almost every difficulty of the
English language except the articles and prepositions; he had never
been abroad long enough to acquire the habit of using them properly.
But it was his business to write many letters upon technical subjects,
and these letters were always perfectly correct, except for the
extraordinary fact that they contained no articles and very few
prepositions. Much of Browning's poetry reads just in that way. You
cannot say that there is anything wrong; but too much is left to the
imagination. Therefore he has been spoken of as writing in telegraph
language.
Not to make Browning too formidable at first, let us begin with a few
of his lighter studies, in very simple verse. I will take as the first
example the poem called "A Light Woman." This is a polite word for
courtesan, "light" referring to the moral character. The story, told in
monologue, is the most ordinary story imaginable. It happens in every
great city of the world almost every day, among that class of young men
who play with fire. But there are two classes among these, the strong
and the weak. The strong take life as half a joke, a very pleasant
thing, and pass through many dangers unscathed simply because they
know that what they are doing is foolish; they never consider it in a
serious way. The other class of young men take life seriously. They are
foolish rather through affection and pity than through anything else.
They want a woman's love, and they foolishly ask it from women who
cannot love at all--not, at least, in ninety cases out of a hundred.
They get what seems to them affection, however, and this deludes them.
Then they become bewitched; and the result is much sorrow, perhaps
ruin, perhaps crime, perhaps suicide. In Browning's poem we have a
representative of each type. A strong man, strong in character, has a
young friend who has been fascinated by a woman of a dangerous class.
He says to himself, "My friend will be ruined; he is bewitched; it is
no use to talk to him. I will save him by taking that woman away from
him. I know the kind of man that she would like; she would like such a
man as I." And the rest of the cruel story is told in Browning's verses
too well to need further explanation.
So far as our story approaches the end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?--
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?
My friend was already too good to lose,
And seemed in the way of improvement yet,
When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose,
And over him drew her net.
When I saw him tangled in her toils,
A shame, said I, if she adds just him
To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,
The hundredth for a whim!
And before my friend be wholly hers,
How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagle's the game her pride prefers,
Though she snaps at a wren instead!
So I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,
My hand sought hers as in earnest need,
And round she turned for my noble sake,
And gave me herself indeed.
The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,
The wren is he, with his maiden face.
You look away, and your lip is curled?
Patience, a moment's space!
For see, my friend goes shaking and white;
He eyes me as the basilisk:
I have turned, it appears, his day to night,
Eclipsing his sun's disk.
And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief:
"Though I love her--that, he comprehends--
One should master one's passions (love, in chief),
And be loyal to one's friends!"
And she--she lies in my hand as tame
As a pear late basking over a wall;
Just a touch to try, and off it came;
'Tis mine,--can I let it fall?
With no mind to eat it, that's the worst!
Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist?
'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst
When I gave its stalk a twist.
And I,--what I seem to my friend, you see:
What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess:
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?
No hero, I confess.
'Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,
And matter enough to save one's own:
Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals
He played with for bits of stone!
One likes to show the truth for the truth;
That the woman was light is very true:
But suppose she says,--Never mind that youth!
What wrong have I done to you?
Well, anyhow, here the story stays,
So far at least as I understand;
And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here's a subject made to your hand!
Now let us see how much there is to study in this simple-seeming poem.
It will give us an easy and an excellent example of the way in which
Browning must be read; and it will require at least an hour's chat to
explain properly. For, really, Browning never writes simply.
Here we have a monologue. It is uttered to the poet by a young man with
whom he has been passing an hour in conversation. We can guess from
the story something about the young man; we can almost see him. We
know that he must be handsome, tall, graceful, and strong; and full of
that formidable coolness which the sense of great strength gives--great
strength of mind and will rather than of body, but probably both. Let
us hear him talk. "You see that friend of mine over there?" he says to
the poet. "He hates me now. When he looks at me his lips turn white. I
can't say that he is wrong to hate me, but really I wanted to do him a
service. He got fascinated by that woman of whom I was speaking; she
was playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse or with a bird before
killing it. Well, I thought to myself that my friend was in great
danger, and that it was better for me to try to save him. You see, he
is not the kind of man that a woman of that class could fancy; he is
too small, too feeble, too gentle; they like strong men only, men they
are afraid of. So, just for my friend's sake, I made love to her one
day, and she left him immediately and came to me. I have to take care
of her now, and I do not like the trouble at all. I never cared about
the woman herself; she is not the kind of woman that I admire; I did
all this only to save my friend. And my friend does not understand. He
thinks that I took the woman from him because I was in love with her;
he thinks it quite natural that I should love her (which I don't); but
he says that even in love a man ought to be true to his friends."
At this point of the story the young man sees that the poet is
disgusted by what he has heard, but this does not embarrass him; he
is too strong a character to be embarrassed at all, and he resumes:
"Don't be impatient--I want to tell you the whole thing. You see, I
have destroyed all the happiness of my friend merely through my desire
to do him a service. He hates me, and he does not understand. He thinks
that I was moved by lust; and everybody else thinks the same thing. Of
course it is not true. But now there is another trouble. The woman does
not understand. She thinks that I was really in love with her; and I
must get rid of her as soon as I can. If I tell her that I made love
to her only in order to save my friend, she will say, 'What had that
to do with your treatment of me? I did not do you any harm; why should
you have amused yourself by trying to injure and to deceive me?' If she
says that, I don't know how I shall be able to answer. So it seems that
I have made a serious mistake; I have lost my friend, I have wantonly
wronged a woman whose only fault toward me was to love me, and I have
made for myself a bad reputation in society. People cannot understand
the truth of the thing."
This is the language of the man, and he perhaps thinks that he is
telling the truth. But is he telling the truth? Does any man in this
world ever tell the exact truth about himself? Probably not. No man
really understands himself so well as to be able to tell the exact
truth about himself. It is possible that this man believes himself to
be speaking truthfully, but he is certainly telling a lie, a half-truth
only. We have his exact words, but the exact language of the speaker
in any one of Browning's monologues does not tell the truth; it only
suggests the truth. We must find out the real character of the person,
and the real facts of the case, from our own experience of human
nature. And to understand the real meaning behind this man's words,
you must ask yourselves whether you would believe such a story if it
were told to you in exactly the same way by some one whom you know. I
shall answer for you that you certainly would not.
And now we come to the real meaning. The young man saw his friend
desperately in love with a woman who did not love that friend. The
woman was beautiful. Looking at her, he thought to himself, "How easily
I could take her away from my friend!" Then he thought to himself
that not only would this be a cause of enmity between himself and
his friend, but such an action would be severely judged by all his
acquaintances. Could he be justified? When a man wishes to do what is
wrong, he can nearly always invent a moral reason for doing it. So
this young man finds a moral reason. He says, "My friend is in danger;
therefore I will sacrifice myself for him. It will be quite gratifying
both to my pride and to my pleasure to take that woman from him; then I
shall tell everybody why I did it. My friend would like to kill me, of
course, but he is too weak to avenge himself." He follows this course,
and really tries to persuade himself that he is justified in following
it. When he says that he did not care for the woman, he only means that
he is now tired of her. He has indulged his lust and his vanity by the
most treacherous and brutal conduct; yet he tries to tell the world
that he is a moral man, a martyr, a calumniated person. Such is the
real meaning of his apology.
Nevertheless we cannot altogether dislike this young man. He is selfish
and proud and not quite truthful, but these are faults of youth. On
the other hand we can feel that he is very gifted, very intelligent,
and very brave, and, what is still better, that he is ashamed of
himself. He has done wrong, and the very fact that he lies about what
he has done shows us that he is ashamed. He is not all bad. If he
does not tell us the whole truth, he tells a great deal of it; and we
feel that as he becomes older he will become better. He has abused
his power, and he feels sorry for having abused it; some day he will
probably become a very fine man. We feel this; and, curiously, we
like him better than we like the man whom he has wronged. We like him
because of his force; we despise the other man because of his weakness.
It would be a mistake to do this if we did not feel that the man who
has done wrong is really the better man of the two. What he has done is
not at all to be excused, but we believe that he will redeem his fault
later on. This type is an English or American type--perhaps it might be
a German type. There is nothing Latin about it. Its faults are of the
Northern race.
But now let us take an unredeemable type, the purely bad, the
hopelessly wicked, a type not of the North this time, but purely
Latin. As the Latin races have been civilised for a very much longer
time than the Northern races, they have higher capacities in certain
directions. They are physically and emotionally much more attractive to
us. The beauty of an Italian or French or Spanish woman is incomparably
more delicate, more exquisite, than the beauty of the Northern women.
The social intelligence of the Italian or Spaniard or Frenchman is
something immeasurably superior to the same capacity in the Englishman,
the Scandinavian, or the German. The Latins have much less moral
stamina, but imaginatively, æsthetically, emotionally, they have
centuries of superiority. The Northern races were savages when these
were lords of the world. But the vices of civilisation are likely to
be developed in them to a degree impossible to the Northern character.
If their good qualities are older and finer than ours, so their bad
qualities will be older and stronger and deeper. At no time was the
worst side of man more terribly shown than during the Renaissance.
Here is an illustration. We know that for this man there is no hope;
the evil predominates in his nature to such an extent that we can see
nothing at all of the good except his fine sense of beauty. And even
this sense becomes a curse to him.
MY LAST DUCHESS
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus.
Let us paraphrase the above. It is a duke of Ferrara who speaks.
The person to whom he is speaking is a marriage-maker, a _nakodo_
employed by the prince of a neighbouring state. For the duke wishes
to marry the daughter of that prince. When the match-maker comes, the
duke draws a curtain from a part of the wall of the room in which the
two men meet, and shows him, painted upon the wall, the picture of a
wonderfully beautiful woman. Then the duke says to the messenger: "That
is a picture of my last wife. It is a beautiful picture, is it not?
Well, it was painted by that wonderful monk, Frà Pandolf. I mention his
name on purpose, because everybody who sees that picture for the first
time wants to know why it is so beautiful, and would ask me questions
if they were not afraid. I have shown it to several other people; but
nobody, except myself, dares draw the curtain that covers it. Yes, Frà
Pandolf painted it all in one day; and the expression of the smiling
face still makes everybody wonder. You wonder; you want to know why
that woman looks so charming, so bewitching in the picture."
Now listen to the explanation. It is worthy of the greatest of the
villains of Shakespeare:
Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or, "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace--all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good! but thanked
Somehow--I know not how--as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift.
The explanation at least shows us the sweet and childish character
of the woman, which the speaker tries to describe as folly: "It was
not her gladness at seeing me, her husband, that made her smile so
beautifully, that brought the rosy dimple to her cheek. Probably the
painter said something to flatter her, and she smiled at him. She was
ready to smile at anything, at anybody, she was altogether too easily
pleased; she liked everything and everybody that she saw, and she took
a pleasure in looking at everything and at everybody. Nothing made any
difference to her. She would smile at the jewel which I gave her, but
she would also smile at the sunset, at a bunch of cherries, at her
mule, at anything or anybody. Any matter would bring the dimple to her
cheek, or the blush of joy. I do not blame her for thanking people, but
she had a way of thanking people that seemed to show that she was just
as much pleased by what a stranger did for her, as by the fact that
she had become the wife of a man like myself, head of a family nine
hundred years old." Notice how the speaker calls the man who gave his
wife a bough with cherries upon it "an officious fool." We can begin to
perceive what was the matter. He was insanely jealous of her, without
any cause; and she, poor little soul! did not know anything about it.
She was too innocent to know. The duke does not want anybody else to
know, either; he is trying to give quite a different explanation of
what happened:
Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
--E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile?
This means, "A man like me cannot afford to degrade himself by showing
what he feels under such circumstances; a man like me cannot say to a
woman, 'I am greatly vexed and pained when I see you smile at any one
except myself.' If I were to speak to her about the matter at all, she
might think I was jealous. Of course she would insult me by making
excuses, by saying that she did not know, which would be nothing less
than daring to oppose her judgment to mine. To speak about my feelings
in any case would require a skill in the use of language such as only
poets or such vulgar people possess. I am a prince, not a poet, and I
shall never disgrace myself by telling anybody, especially a woman,
that I do not like this or I do not like that. So I said nothing.
Perhaps you think that she did not smile when she saw me. That would be
a mistake; she always smiled when I passed. But she smiled at everybody
else in exactly the same way." He found the smile unbearable at last,
and the poet lets him tell us the rest in a very few words:
This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
In other words, he caused her to be killed; told somebody to cut her
throat, probably, or to give her a drink of poison, all without having
ever allowed her to know how or why he had been displeased with her.
And he is not a bit sorry. No, looking at the dead woman's picture, in
company with the marriage-maker, he coolly expresses his admiration
for it as a word of realistic art--as much as to say, "You can see
for yourself how beautiful she was; but that did not prevent me from
killing her." Listen to his atrocious chatter:
There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? Well meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir.... Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Evidently both had seated themselves in front of the picture. The count
says, "Now she is as if alive; and we shall go downstairs together.
As for the matter of the new marriage, you can tell your master that
I am quite sure so generous a man will not make any objection to my
just demands for a dowry--though, of course, it is his daughter that
I principally want." Here the messenger bows, to allow the duke to go
first downstairs. He answers: "No, we can go down together this time."
On the way, probably at a turn of the grand staircase, the count points
to a fine bronze statue, representing the god of the sea, and asks the
man to admire it. That is all.
This is a Renaissance character, and a very terrible one. But it is
also very complicated. We must think a little before we can even guess
the whole range and depth of this man's wickedness. Even then we can
only guess, because he lets us know only so much about him as he wishes
us to know. Every word that he says is carefully measured in its pride,
in its falsehood, in its cruelty, in its cunning. Just this much he
tells us: "I had a beautiful wife, but you must not think that I can
be influenced by beauty. Look at the picture of her. You would worship
a woman like that. But I cut her throat. Why did I do it? Just because
I did not like her way of smiling; she was too tender-hearted to love.
And I would do the same thing to-morrow to any one who displeased me.
Some people will think that I am jealous; let them think so. But you
had better tell the girl who now expects to become my wife what kind of
person I am."
How much of this is the truth? Probably more than half. Undoubtedly
the man was jealous, and he wishes to deceive us in regard to the
whole extent of that jealousy. He has no shame or remorse for crime,
but he has shame of appearing to be weak. Jealousy is a weakness;
therefore he does not like to be suspected of being weak in that way.
He gives a strong suggestion, that he must not have future cause for
jealousy--nothing more. But the fact that he most wishes to have
understood is that his wife must be a wicked woman, a vulture among
vultures. He does not want a dove. And he hated his first wife much
more because she was good and gentle and loving, than because she
smiled at other people. You may ask, why should he hate a woman for
being good? The answer is simple. In the courts of such princes as the
Borgias, a good woman could only do mischief. She could not be used for
cunning and wicked purposes. She would have refused to poison a guest,
or to entice a man to make love to her only in order to get that man
killed; and as you will discover if you read the terrible history of
the Italian republics, all these things had to be done. Morality was
a hindrance to such men. Power remained only to cunning and strength;
all kind-heartedness was regarded as criminal weakness. When you have
become familiar with the real history of Ferrara, you will perceive the
terrible truth of this poem.
The most unpleasant fact still remains to-be noticed. The wickedness of
this man is not a wickedness of ignorance. It is a wickedness of highly
cultivated intelligence. The man is an artist, a judge of beauty, a
connoisseur. To suppose that cultivation makes a naturally wicked
man better is a great educational mistake, as Herbert Spencer showed
long ago. Education does not make a man more moral; it may give him
power to be more immoral. Italian history furnishes us with the most
extraordinary illustrations of this fact. Some of the wickedest of the
Italian princes were great poets, great artists, great scholars, and
great patrons of learning. Among the monsters, we have, for example,
the terrible Malatesta of Rimini, whose life was given to us some years
ago by the French antiquarian Yriarte. He wrote the most delicate and
tender poetry, and he committed crimes so terrible that they cannot be
named. When he laid his hand, however lightly, upon a horse, the animal
began to tremble from head to foot. Yet he could love, and be the most
devoted of gallants. Again, you know the case of Benvenuto Cellini, a
splendid artist and an atrocious murderer, who actually tells us the
pleasure that he felt in killing. And there were the Borgias, all of
them, father, daughter, and brothers, who committed every crime and
never knew remorse, yet who were beautiful and gifted lovers of art
and poetry. So in this case Browning is true to life when he shows us
the duke pointing out the beauty of pictures and statues, even in the
same moment that he is uttering horrors. There is a strange mixture
of the extremes of the bad and of the good in the higher types of the
Italian race--a mingling that gives us much to think about in regard to
moral problems. Probably that is why a very large number of Browning's
studies are of the dark side of Italian character.
Now we can take a lighter subject. It is not black, it is only gloomy,
and the interest of it will chiefly be found in the extraordinary moral
comment made by Browning. This is one of the few studies which is not
all written in the first person. It is called "The Statue and the
Bust." It is a tale or tradition of Florence.
The legend is that a certain duke of Florence, by name Ferdinand,
attempted to captivate the young bride of a Florentine nobleman named
Riccardi. But Riccardi, a very keen man, observed what was going on;
and he said to his wife very quietly and firmly, "This is your room
in my house; you shall stay in this room and never leave it during
the rest of your life, never leave it until you are carried to the
graveyard." So she had to live in that room. But the duke, who was a
very handsome man, got a splendid bronze statue of himself on horseback
erected in the public street opposite the window of the lady's room,
so that she could always look at him. Then she had a bust of herself
made and placed above the window, so that the duke could see the bust
whenever he rode by. That is all the story--but not all the story as
Browning tells it. Browning tells us the secret thoughts and feelings
of the imprisoned wife and of the duke. At first the two intended to
run away together. It would have been an easy matter. The woman would
only have had to dress herself like a boy, and drop from the window,
and get help from the duke to reach his palace. The duke thought to
himself, "I can get this woman whenever I wish; but it will be better
to wait a little while; then we can manage to live as we please without
making too much trouble." So they both waited till they became old.
Then the woman called an artist and said:
"Make me a face on the window there,
Waiting as ever, mute the while,
My love pass below in the square!
"And let me think that it may beguile
Dreary days which the dead must spend
Down in their darkness under the aisle,
"To say, 'What matters it at the end?
I did no more while my heart was warm
Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'"
She thinks to console herself a moment by saying, "What is life worth?
When I was young and beautiful and impulsive, I did no more harm or
good, no more right or wrong, than the bust that resembles me. It is a
comfort to think that I did nothing wrong." But is that enough?
"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm--
"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?
A lady of clay is as good, I trow."
Somehow or other she feels that it is no consolation not to have done
wrong. She wonders what was the use of being so beautiful, if she could
not make use of that beauty. The bust itself lived just as much as she
did. And all this is true; but she is nearer to living than the duke.
What does he say?
"Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,
"In the very square I have crossed so oft:
That men may admire, when future suns
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,
"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze--
Admire and say, 'When he was alive
How he would take his pleasure once!'"
Nothing else; he only wants to be admired after his death, to have
people say, looking at his statue, "What a splendid looking man he must
have been, how the women must have loved him!" And they both died, and
were buried in the church near where they lived; and the English poet
Browning went to that church, and heard the story, and thought about
it, and gives us the moral of it. It is a startling moral and needs
explanation. I think you will be shocked when you first hear it, but
you will not be shocked if you think about it. The following verses are
the poet's own reflections:
So! While these wait the trump of doom,
How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?
Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.
Only they see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of his,
The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss--
He condemns them. Why? Because they did not do anything. Anything? You
do not mean to say that they ought to have committed adultery?
I hear you reproach--"But delay was best,
For their end was a crime,"--Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test,
As a virtue golden through and through,
Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment's view!
Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?
. . . . . . . .
The true has no value beyond the sham:
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table's a hat, and your prize, a dram.
Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as warily, use the same skill,
Do your best, whether winning or losing it,
If you choose to play!--is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin;
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
In order to understand the full force of this strange ethical
philosophy, you must remember that the word "counter" is here a
gambling term; it is used for the round buttons or disks of bone or
ivory, not in themselves money, but representing money to be eventually
received or paid. Remembering this, we can simplify Browning; this is
what he says:
"These people were the most contemptible of sinners; they deliberately
threw their lives away. They were afraid to commit a sin. To wish
to commit a sin and to be afraid to commit it, is much worse than
committing it. All their lives those two dreamed and purposed and
desired a sin; they wanted to commit adultery. If they had committed
the crime, there would have been some hope for them; there is always
hope for the persons who are not afraid. When a young man begins to
doubt what his parents and teachers tell him about virtue, it is
sometimes a good thing for him to test this teaching by disobeying it.
Human experience has proclaimed in all ages that theft and murder and
adultery and a few other things can never give good results. It is not
easy to explain the whole why and wherefore to a young person who is
both self-willed and ignorant. But let him try for himself what murder
means, or theft means, or adultery means, and after he has experienced
the consequences, he will begin to perceive what moral teaching
signifies. If he is not killed, or imprisoned for life, he will very
possibly become wise and good at a later time. Now in regard to those
two lovers, they wanted to have an experience; and the experience might
have been so valuable to them that it would have given them a new
soul--but they were afraid; they were criminals without profit; and
their great sin was that of being too cowardly to commit sin. Never
will God forgive such weakness as that!" Of course all great religions
teach that the man who wishes to do wrong does the wrong in wishing
as truly as if he did it with his body; there is only a difference
of degree. Now Browning goes a little further than such religious
teaching; he tells us that only wishing under certain circumstances may
be incomparably worse than doing, because the doing brings about its
punishment in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and the punishment
becomes a moral lesson, forcing the sufferer to think about the moral
aspect of what he has done. That is why Browning says, "A sin will do
to serve for a test." But only to wish to do, and not do, leaves a
person in a state of inexperience. There is an old proverb, which is
quite true: "Any man can become rich who is willing to pay the price."
With equal truth it might be said, "You can do anything that you please
in this world, if you are willing to pay the price, but the price of
acts and thoughts is fixed by the Eternal Powers, and you must not try
to cheat them."
Philosophers will tell you that our moral laws are not always perfect,
that man cannot make a perfect code invariably applicable to all times
and circumstances. This is true. But it is also true that there is a
higher morality than human codes, and when human law fails to give
justice, a larger law occasionally steps in to correct the failure.
Browning delights in giving us examples of this kind, extraordinary
moral situations, wrong by legal opinion, right by the larger law of
nature, which is sometimes divine. A startling story which he tells us,
entitled "Ivàn Ivànovitch," will show us how he treats such themes.
Ivàn, the hero of the story, is a wood-cutter, who works all day in
his native village, to support a large family. He is the most highly
respected of the young peasants, the strong man of the community, a
good father and a good husband. One day, while he is working out of
doors in the bitter cold, a sledge drawn by a maddened and dying horse
enters the village, with a half dead woman on it. The woman is the
wife of Ivàn's best friend, and she has come back alone, although she
had taken her three children with her on the homeward journey. Ivàn
helps her into the house, gives her something warm to drink, caresses
her, comforts her, and asks at last for her story. The sledge had been
pursued by wolves, and the wolves had eaten the three children, one
after another. Ivàn listens very carefully to the mother's relation of
how the three children were snatched out of the sledge by the wolves.
As soon as she has told every one in her own way, Ivàn takes his sharp
axe, and with one blow cuts the woman's head off. To the other peasants
he simply observes, "God told me to do that; I could not help it." Of
course Ivàn knew that the woman had lied. The wolves had not taken the
children away from her: she had dropped one child after another out of
the sledge in order to save her own miserable life.
At the news of the murder, the authorities of the village all hurry
to the scene. There is the dead body without its head, and the blood
flowing, or rather crawling like a great red snake over the floor. The
lord of the village declares that Ivàn must be executed for this crime.
The Stàrosta, or head man, takes the same view of the situation. But,
just as Ivàn is about to be arrested, the old priest of the village,
the Pope as the peasants call him, a man more than a hundred years of
age, comes into the assembly and speaks. He is the only man who has a
word to say on behalf of Ivàn, but what he says is extraordinary in its
force and primitive wisdom. All of it would be too long to quote. I
give you only the conclusion, which immediately results in Ivàn's being
acquitted both by law and by public opinion.
"A mother bears a child: perfection is complete
So far in such a birth. Enabled to repeat
The miracle of life,--herself was born so just
A type of womankind, that God sees fit to trust
Her with the holy task of giving life in turn.
. . . . . . . . .
How say you, should the hand God trusted with life's
torch
Kindled to light the word--aware of sparks that scorch,
Let fall the same? Forsooth, her flesh a fire-flake stings:
The mother drops the child! Among what monstrous
things
Shall she be classed?"
Of course the old Pope is speaking from the Christian point of view
when he says that perfection is complete in a birth; he refers to the
orthodox belief that the soul of man is created a perfect thing of
its kind, a perfect spiritual entity, to be further made or marred by
its own acts and thoughts. The mother does not give birth only to a
body, but to a soul also, expressly made by God to fit that body. She
is allowed to repeat the miracle of creation thus far; as mother she
is creator, but only in trust. She has made the vessel of the soul;
her most sacred duty is to guard that little body from all harm. A
mother who would even let her child fall to escape pain herself would
be incomparably more ignoble than the most savage of animals. The rule
is that during motherhood even the animal-mother for the time being
becomes the ruling power; the male animal then allows her to have her
own way in all things.
"Because of motherhood, each male
Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:
His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--
fear,
Beside the female proved male's mistress--only here.
The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire
Who dares assault her whelp: the beaver, stretched on fire,
Will die without a groan: no pang avails to wrest
Her young from where they hide--her sanctuary breast.
What's here then? Answer me, thou dead one, as, I trow,
Standing at God's own bar, he bids thee answer now!
Thrice crowned wast thou--each crown of pride, a child--
thy charge!
Where are they? Lost? Enough: no need that thou
enlarge
On how or why the loss: life left to utter 'lost'
Condemns itself beyond appeal. The soldier's post
Guards from the foe's attack the camp he sentinels:
That he no traitor proved, this and this only tells--
Over the corpse of him trod foe to foe's success.
Yet--one by one thy crowns torn from thee--thou no less
To scare the world, shame God,--livedst! I hold he saw
The unexampled sin, ordained the novel law,
Whereof first instrument was first intelligence
Found loyal here. I hold that, failing human sense,
The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface
Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace.
Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt was found
A man and man enough, head-sober and heart-sound,
Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey.
. . . . . . . . .
I proclaim
Ivàn Ivànovitch God's servant!"
On hearing this speech the peasantry are at once convinced; the Russian
lord orders the proclamation to be made that the murderer is forgiven,
and the head man of the village goes to Ivàn's house to bring the good
news. He expects to find Ivàn on his knees at prayer, very much afraid
of the police and coming punishment. But on opening the door the head
man finds Ivàn playing with his five children, and making for them a
toy-church out of little bits of wood. It has not even entered into the
mind of Ivàn that he did anything wrong. And when they tell him, "You
are free, you will not be punished," he answers them in surprise, "Why
should I not be free? Why should you talk of my not being punished?" To
this simple mind there is nothing to argue about. He has only done what
God told him to do, punished a crime against Nature.
The story is a strange one; but not stranger than many to be found in
Browning. None of his moral teachings are at discord with any form
of true religion, yet they are mostly larger than the teachings of
any creed. Perhaps this is why he has never offended the religious
element even while preaching doctrines over its head. The higher
doctrines thus proclaimed might be anywhere accepted; they might be
also questioned; but no one would deny their beauty and power. We may
assume that Browning usually considers all incidents in their relation
to eternal law, not to one place or time, but to all places and to all
times, because the results of every act and thought are infinite. This
doctrine especially is quite in harmony with Oriental philosophy, even
when given such a Christian shape as it takes in the beautiful verses
of "Abt Vogler."
Abt Vogler was a great musician, a great improviser. Here let me
explain the words "improvise" and "improvisation," as to some of
you they are likely to be unfamiliar, at least in the special sense
given to them in this connection. An improvisation in poetry means a
composition made instantly, without preparation, at request or upon
a sudden impulse. In Japanese literary history, I am told, there are
some very interesting examples of improvisation. For example, the
story of that poetess who, on being asked to compose a poem including
the mention of something square, something round, and something
triangular, wrote those celebrated lines about unfastening one corner
of a mosquito-curtain in order to look at the moon. Among Europeans
improvisation is now almost a lost art in poetry, except among the
Italians. Some Italian families still exist in which the art of
poetical improvisation has been cultivated for hundreds of years. But
in music it is otherwise. Improvisation in music is greatly cultivated
and esteemed. Most of our celebrated musicians have been great
improvisers. Those who heard such music would regret that it could not
be reproduced, not even by the musician himself. It was a beautiful
creation, forgotten as soon as made, because never written down.
Now you know what Browning means by improvisation in his poem "Abt
Vogler." The musician has been improvising, and the music, made only
to be forgotten, is so beautiful that he himself bitterly regrets the
evanescence of it. We may quote a few of the verses in which this
regret is expressed; they are very fine and very strange, written in a
measure which I think you have never seen before.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when
Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep
removed,--
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable
Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess
he loved!
The musician is comparing the music that he makes to magical
architecture; he refers to the Mohammedan legends of Solomon. Solomon
knew all magic; and all men, animals, angels, and demons obeyed him.
God has ninety-nine names by which the faithful may speak of him, but
the hundredth name is secret, the Name ineffable. He who knows it can
do all things by the utterance of it. When Solomon pronounced it,
all the spirits of the air and of heaven and of hell would rush to
obey him. And if he wanted a palace or a city built, he had only to
order the spirits to build it, and they would build it immediately,
finishing everything between the rising and the setting of the sun.
That is the story which the musician refers to. He has the power of the
master-musician over sounds; but the sounds will not stay.
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of
mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned
to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and
now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his
praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to
hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace
well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.
The musician wishes that his architecture of sound could remain, as
remained the magical palace that Solomon made the spirits build to
please Queen Balkis. He remembers how beautiful his music was; he
remembers how the different classes of notes combined to make it, just
as the different classes of spirits combined to make the palace of
Solomon. There the deep notes, the bass chords, sank down thundering
like demon-spirits working to make the foundation in the very heart
of the earth. And the treble notes seemed to soar up like angels to
make the roof of gold, and to tip all the points of the building with
glorious fires of illumination. Truly the palace of sounds was built,
but it has vanished away like a mirage; the builder cannot reproduce
it. Why not? Well, because great composition of any kind is not merely
the work of man; it is an inspiration from God, and the mystery of such
inspired composition is manifested in music as it is manifested in no
other art. For the harmonies, the combinations of tones, are mysteries,
and must remain mysterious even for the musician himself. Who can
explain them?
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they
are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to
man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound,
but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:
It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow
the head!
But for the same reason that they are mysteries and cannot be
understood because they relate to the infinite, they are eternal.
That is the consolation. The musician need not regret that the music
composed in a moment of divine inspiration cannot be remembered; he
need not regret that it has been forgotten. Forgotten it is by the man
who made it; forgotten it is by the people who heard it; forgotten it
is therefore by all mankind. Nevertheless it is eternal, because the
Universal Soul that inspired it never forgets anything. I think that
the verse in which this beautiful thought is expressed--the verse that
contains the whole of Browning's religion, is the most beautiful thing
in all his work. But you must judge for yourselves:
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor
power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the
melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too
hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.
By the phrase "when eternity affirms the conception of an hour," the
poet means when we ourselves, in a future and higher state of being,
shall see the worth of our good acts and thoughts proved by the fact
that they survive along with us. Eternity affirms them--that is,
recognises them as worthy of immortality by suffering them to exist.
This line gives us the key to the philosophy of the rest. It is quite
in harmony with Buddhist philosophy. Browning holds that all good acts
and thoughts are eternal, whether men in this world remember them or
not. But what of the bad acts and thoughts? Are they also eternal? Not
in the same sense. Evil acts and thoughts do indeed exert an influence
reaching enormously into the future, but it is an influence that must
gradually wane, it is a Karma that must become exhausted. As for
regretting that nobody sees or knows the good that we do, that is very
foolish. The good will never die; it will be seen again--perhaps only
in millions of years, yet this should make no difference. To the dead
the time of a million years and the time of a moment may be quite the
same thing.
But you must not suppose that Browning lives much in the regions of
abstract philosophy. He is human in the warmest way, and very much
alive to impressions of sense. Not even Swinburne is at times more
voluptuous, but the voluptuous in Browning is always natural and
healthy as well as artistic. I must quote to you some passages from the
wonderful little dramatic poem entitled "In a Gondola." You know that a
gondola is a peculiar kind of boat which in Venice takes the place of
carriages or vehicles of any kind. In the city of Venice there are no
streets to speak of, but canals only, so that people go from one place
to another only by boat. These boats or gondolas of Venice are not
altogether unlike some of the old-fashioned Japanese pleasure-boats;
they have a roof and windows and rooms, and it is possible to travel
in them without being seen by anybody. In the old days of Venice, many
secret meetings between lovers and many secret meetings of conspirators
were held in such boats. The poet is telling us of the secret meeting
of two lovers, at the risk of death, for if the man is seen he will
certainly be killed. At the end of the poem he actually is killed; the
moment he steps on shore he is stabbed, because he has been watched by
the spies of a political faction that hates him. But this is not the
essential part of the poem at all. The essential part of the poem is
the description, of the feelings and thoughts of these two people,
loving in the shadow of death; this is very beautiful and almost
painfully true to nature. We get also not a few glimpses of the old
life and luxury of Venice in the course of the narrative. As the boat
glides down the long canals, between the high ranges of marble palaces
rising from the water, the two watch the windows of the houses that
they know, and talk about what is going on inside.
Past we glide, and past, and past!
What's that poor Agnese doing
Where they make the shutters fast?
Grey Zanobi's just a-wooing
To his couch the purchased bride:
Past we glide!
Past we glide, and past, and past!
Why's the Pucci Palace flaring
Like a beacon to the blast?
Guests by hundreds, not one caring
If the dear host's neck were wried:
Past we glide!
It is the man who is here looking and talking and criticising. The
woman is less curious; she is thinking only of love, and what she says
in reply has become famous in English literature; we might say that
this is the very best we have in what might be called the "literature
of kissing."
The moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.
The bee's kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.
Of course you know all about the relation of insects to flowers--how
moths, beetles, butterflies, and other little creatures, by entering
flowers in order to suck the honey, really act as fertilisers, carrying
the pollen from the male flower to the female flower. It is the use of
this fact from natural history that makes these verses so exquisite.
The woman's mouth is the flower; the lips of the man, the visiting
insect. "Moth" is the name which we give to night butterflies, that
visit flowers in the dark. What the woman says is this in substance:
"Kiss me with my mouth shut first, like a night moth coming to a
flower all shut up, and not knowing where the opening is." The second
comparison of the bee suggests another interesting fact in the relation
between insects and flowers. A bee or wasp, on finding it difficult
to enter a flower from the top, so as to get at the honey, will cut
open the side of the flower, and break its way in. The woman is asking
simply, "Now give me a rough kiss after the gentle one." All this is
mere play, of course, but by reason of the language used it rises far
above the merely trifling into the zones of supreme literary art.
Later on, we have another comparison, made by the man, which I think
very beautiful. The thought, the comparison itself, is not new; from
very ancient times it has been the custom of lovers to call the woman
they loved an angel. I fancy this custom is reflected in the amatory
literature of all countries; it exists even in Japanese poetry. But
really it does not matter whether a comparison be new or old; its value
depends upon the way that a poet utters it. Browning's lover says:
Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?
From this shoulder let there spring
A wing; from this, another wing;
Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!
Snow-white must they spring, to blend
With your flesh, but I intend
They shall deepen to the end,
Broader, into burning gold,
Till both wings crescent-wise enfold
Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet
To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet
As if a million sword-blades hurled
Defiance from you to the world!
This is a picture painted after the manner of the Venetian school; we
seem to be looking at something created, by the brush of Titian or
Tintoretto. I am not sure that it will seem to you as beautiful as it
really is, for it is intended to appeal to the imagination of persons
who have actually seen the paintings of the Italian masters, or at
least engravings of them. Angels were frequently represented by those
great artists as clothed with their own wings, the wings, white below,
gold above, meeting over the head like two new moons joining their
shining tips. What the poet means by "sword-blades" are the long narrow
flashing feathers of the angel-wings, which, joined all together, look
like a cluster of sword-blades. But one must have seen the pictures of
the Italian masters to appreciate the skill of this drawing in words.
Here I may remind you that Dante, in his vision of Paradise, uses
colours of a very similar sort--blinding white and dazzling gold appear
in the wings of his angels also.
The above examples of the merely artistic power of Browning will
suffice for the moment; great as he always is when he descends to
earth, he is most noteworthy in those other directions which I have
already pointed out, and which are chiefly psychological. I want to
give you more examples from the poems of the psychological kind, partly
because they are of universally recognised value in themselves, and
partly because it is these that make the distinction between Browning
and his great contemporaries. One of these pieces, now quoted through
the whole English-speaking world, is "A Grammarian's Funeral." This
poem is intended to give us the enthusiasm which the students of the
later Middle Ages felt for scholarship, the delight in learning which
revived shortly before the Renaissance. I suppose that many of you
recollect the first enthusiasm for Western studies in Japan; people
then studied too hard, tried to do even more than they could do. So
it was in Europe at the time of the revival of learning; men killed
themselves by overstudy. In this poem Browning makes us listen to the
song sung by a company of university students burying their dead
teacher; they are carrying him up to the top of a high mountain above
the mediæval city, there to let him sleep forever above the clouds and
above the vulgarities of mankind. The philosophy in it is very noble
and strong, though it be only the philosophy of young men.
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels,
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit.
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights;
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous, calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.