"A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S" is a fantastic little vision of bygone Venice,
evoked by the music of an old Venetian master, and filling us with the
sense of a joyous ephemeral existence, in which the glow of life is
already struck by the shuddering chill of annihilation. This sense is
created by the sounds, as Mr. Browning describes them: and their
directly expressive power must stand for what it is worth. Still, the
supposed effect is mainly that of association; and the listener's fancy
the medium through which it acts.
"A FACE" describes a beautiful head and throat in its pictorial
details--those which painting might reproduce.
"THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL" and "EURYDICE TO ORPHEUS" describe each an actual
picture in the emotions it expresses or conveys.
The former represents an angel, standing with outstretched wings by a
little child. The child is half kneeling on a kind of pedestal, while
the angel joins its hands in prayer: its gaze directed upward towards
the sky, from which cherubs are looking down. The picture was painted by
Guercino, and is now in the church of St. Augustine, at Fano, on the
Italian coast. Mr. Browning relates to an absent friend (who appears in
the "Dramatic Romances" as Waring) how he saw it in the company of his
own "angel;" and how it occurred to him to develop into a poem one of
the thoughts which the picture had "struck out." The thought resolves
itself into a feeling: the yearning for guidance and protection. The
poet dreams himself in the place of that praying child. The angel wings
cover his head: the angel hands upon his eyes press back the excess of
thought which has made his brain too big. He feels how thankfully those
eyes would rest on the "gracious face" instead of looking to the opening
sky beyond it; and how purely beautiful the world would seem when that
healing touch had been upon them.
The second was painted by F. Leighton. It represents Orpheus leading
Eurydice away from the infernal regions, but with an implied variation
on the story of her subsequent return to them. She was restored to
Orpheus on the condition of his not looking at her till they had reached
the upper world; and, as the legend goes, the condition proved too hard
for him to fulfil. But the face of Leighton's Eurydice wears an
intensity of longing which seems to challenge the forbidden look, and
make her responsible for it. The poem thus interprets the expression,
and translates it into words.
"ANDREA DEL SARTO" ("Men and Women," 1855) lays down the principle,
asserted by Mr. Browning as far back as in "Sordello," that the soul of
the true artist must exceed his technical powers; that in art, as in all
else, "a man's reach should exceed his grasp." And on this ground the
poem might be classed as critical. But it is still more an expression of
feeling; the lament of an artist who has fallen short of his ideal--of a
man who feels himself the slave of circumstance--of a lover who is
sacrificing his moral, and in some degree his artistic, conscience to a
woman who does not return his love. It is the harmonious utterance of a
many-sided sadness which has become identified with even the pleasures
of the man's life; and is hopeless, because he is resigned to it.
Andrea del Sarto was called the "faultless painter." His execution was
as easy as it was perfect; and Michael Angelo is reported to have said
to Raphael, of the insignificant little personage Andrea then was: that
he would bring the sweat to his (Raphael's) brow, if urged on in like
manner by popes and kings. But he lacked strength and loftiness of
purpose; and as Mr. Browning depicts him, is painfully conscious of
these deficiencies. He feels that even an ill-drawn picture of
Raphael's--and he has such a one before him--has qualities of strength
and inspiration which he cannot attain. His wife might have incited him
to nobler work; but Lucrezia is not the woman from whom such incentives
proceed; she values her husband's art for what it brings her. Remorse
has added itself in his soul to the sense of artistic failure. He has
not only abandoned the French Court, and, for Lucrezia's sake, broken
his promise to return to it; he has cheated his kind friend and patron,
Francis I., of the money with which he was entrusted by him for the
purchase of works of art. He has allowed his parents to die of want. All
this, and more, reflects itself in the monologue he is addressing to his
wife, but no conscious reproach is conveyed by it. She has consented to
sit by him at their window, with her hand in his, while he drinks in her
beauty, and finds in it rest and inspiration at the same time. She will
leave him presently for one she cares for more; but the spell is
deepening upon him. The Fiesole hills are melting away in the twilight;
the evening stillness is invading his whole soul. He scarcely even
desires to fight against the inevitable. Yet there might be despair in
his concluding words: "another chance may be given to him in heaven,
with Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. But he will still have
Lucrezia, and therefore they will still conquer him."
The facts adduced are all matter of history; though a later chronicle
than that which Mr. Browning has used, is more favourable in its verdict
on Andrea's wife.
The fiercer emotions also play a part, though seldom an exclusive one,
in Mr. Browning's work. Jealousy forms the subject of
"THE LABORATORY." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Dramatic
Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[77]
"MY LAST DUCHESS." ("Dramatic Romances." Published as "Italy"
in "Dramatic Lyrics." 1842.)
The first of these shows the passion as distorted love: the frenzy of a
woman who has been supplanted. The jealous wife (if wife she is) has
come to the laboratory to obtain a dose of poison, which she means to
administer to her rival; and she watches its preparation with an eager,
ferocious joy, dashed only by the fear of its being inadequate. The
quantity is minute; and it is (as we guess) the "magnificent" strength
of that other one which has won _him_ away.
In the second we find a jealousy which has no love in it; which means
the exactingness of self-love, and the tyranny of possession. A widowed
Duke of Ferrara is exhibiting the portrait of his former wife, to the
envoy of some nobleman whose daughter he proposes to marry; and his
comments on the countenance of his last Duchess plainly state what he
will expect of her successor. "That earnest, impassioned, and yet
smiling glance went alike to everyone. She who sent it, knew no
distinction of things or persons. Everything pleased her: everyone could
arouse her gratitude. And it seemed to her husband, from her manner of
showing it, that she ranked his gift, the 'gift of a
nine-hundred-years-old name,' with that of everyone else. It was below
his dignity to complain of this state of things, so he put an end to it.
He: 'gave commands;' and the smiles, too evenly dispensed, stopped all
together." He does not fear to admit, as he does parenthetically, that
there may have been some right on her side. This was below his concern.
The Duke touches, in conclusion, on the dowry which he will expect with
his second wife; and, with a suggestive carelessness, bids his guest
remark--as they are about to descend the staircase--a rare work in
bronze, which a noted sculptor has cast for him.
Hatred, born of jealousy, has its fullest expression in the "SOLILOQUY
OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER" ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Bells and
Pomegranates." 1842 to 1845): a venomous outbreak of jealous hatred,
directed by one monk against another whom he is watching at some
innocent occupation. The speaker has no ground of complaint against
Brother Lawrence, except that his life _is_ innocent: that he is orderly
and clean, that he loves his garden, is free from debasing
superstitions, and keeps his passions, if he has any, in check. But
that, precisely, is a rebuke and an exasperation to the fierce, coarse
nature of this other man; and he declares to himself, that if hate could
kill, Brother Lawrence would not live long. Meanwhile, as we also hear,
he spites him when he can, and fondly dreams of tripping him up
somewhere, or somehow, on his way to the better world. He is turning
over some pithy expedients, when the vesper bell cuts short his
meditations.
WRATH, as inspired by a desperate sense of wrong, finds utterance in
"THE CONFESSIONAL." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Bells and
Pomegranates." 1842 to 1845.) A loved and loving girl has been made the
instrument of her lover's destruction. He held a treasonable secret,
which the Church was anxious to possess; and her priest has assured her
that if this is fully revealed to him, he will, by prayer and fasting,
purge its guilt from the young man's soul. She obtains the desired
knowledge, reveals it, and joyfully anticipates the result. When next
she sees her lover, he is on the scaffold. They have stifled her
denunciations in a prison-cell. Her body is wrenched with torture, as
her soul with anguish. She is scarcely human any more. But she hurls at
them unceasingly a cry which will yet reach the world. "Their Pope and
their saints, their heaven and their hell, their--everything they teach,
and everything they say, is lies, and again lies."
"A FORGIVENESS" ("Pacchiarotto, and other Poems," 1876) might serve
equally as a study for jealousy, self-reproach, contempt, and revenge;
the love which is made to underlie these feelings, and the forgiveness
with which it will be crowned.
It is a story told in confession. He who tells it had once a wife, who
was dearer to him than anything else in the world. He had also public
duties, which he discharged with diligence and with success; but it was
the thought of the wife's love which nerved him to the fulfilment of
these duties, and which rewarded it.
One day he discovered that she was unfaithful to him. A man (whose face
was but imperfectly concealed) was stealing away from his house as he
returned to it; and the wife, confronting him at the same moment, bade
him kill her, but spare the man she loved. He did not kill her--then:
for she had turned his love into contempt. He despised her too much to
inflict even a lesser punishment, which should compromise the dignity,
or disturb the outward calmness, of his life. But from that moment their
union was a form; and while he worked as those do who have something to
forget, and she shared the position which his labours procured for him,
an impassable, if unseen, gulf lay between them.
Three years had passed, when suddenly, one night, the wife begged to
speak with her husband alone. Her request was granted; and then the
truth broke forth. She loved--had loved--no one but him; but she was
jealous of his devotion to the State. She imagined herself second to it
in his affections; and it was the jealousy in her which had made her
strive to arouse it in him. That other man had been nothing to her but a
tool. Her secret, she now knew, was killing her. Conscience forbade her
to elude her punishment by death. She therefore spoke.
"Would she write this?" he asked; and he dictated to her the confession
she had just made, in the terms most humiliating to him who was intended
to hear it.
"Could she but write it in her blood!" This, too, was possible. He put
into her hand a dainty Eastern weapon, one prick of which, he said,
would draw so much blood as was required. It did more than this, for it
was poisoned. But, before she died, she knew that her explanation had
raised her husband's contempt into hatred, and that the revenge of which
she was now found worthy had quenched the hatred in forgiveness.
"She lies as erst beloved" (the narrative concludes) "in the church of
him who hears this confession; whom his grate conceals as little as that
cloak once did--whom vengeance overtakes at last."
The poisoned dagger, which was the instrument of revenge--the pledge of
forgiveness--is spoken of as part of a collection preserved in the
so-called study, which was the scene of the interview; and the speaker
dwells at some length on the impression of deadly purpose combined with
loving artistic care, which their varied form and fantastic richness
convey. This collection is actually in Mr. Browning's possession; and he
values it, perhaps, for the reason he imputes to its imagined owner:
that those who are accustomed to the slower processes of thought, like
to play with the suggestions of prompt (if murderous) action; as the
soldier, tired of wielding the sword, will play with paper and pen.