Browning and His Century

by Helen A. Clarke

One feels when considering “Sordello” as a whole as if gazing upon a picture in which the perspective and the high lights and the shadows are not well related to each other. As great an abundance of detail is expended upon the less important as upon the more important fact, and while the details may be interesting enough in themselves, they dislodge more important affairs from the center of consciousness. It is, not to be too flippant, something like Alice’s game of croquet in “Through the Looking Glass.” When the hedgehog ball is nicely rolled up ready to be struck, the flamingo mallet walks off somewhere else.

There, then, in “Sordello” is perhaps the most remarkable departure from the accepted in poetic art that an Englishman has ever attempted. In its elements of failure, however, it gave “a triumph’s evidence,” to use the poet’s own phrase, “of the fulness of the days.” In this poem he had thrown down the gauntlet. His subject matter was not to be like that of any other poet, nor was his form to be like that of any other poet. He discarded the flowing music of “Pauline” and of “Paracelsus.” His allusions were no longer to be classic, but to be directly related to whatever subject he had in hand; his style was also to be forth-right and related to his subject, strong, idiomatic, rugged, even jolting if need be, or noble, sweeping along in large rhythms or couched in rare forms of symbolism, but, whatever it was to be, always different from what had been.

All he required at the time when “Sordello” appeared was to find that form in which he could so unify his powers that his poems would gain the organic completeness necessary to a work of art. No matter what new regions an artist may push into he must discover the law of being of this new region. Unless he does, his art will not convince, but the moment he does, all that was not convincing falls into its right place. He becomes the master of his art, and relates the new elements in such a way that their rightness and their beauty, if not immediately recognized, are sure sooner or later to be recognized by the evolving appreciator, who is the necessary complement, by the way, of the evolving artist. Before “Sordello” Browning had tried three other forms; the subjective narrative in “Pauline,” the dramatic poem in “Paracelsus,” a regular drama in “Strafford,” which however runs partly parallel with “Sordello” in composition. He had also done two or three short dramatic monologues.

He evidently hoped that the regular drama would prove to be the form most congenial to him, for he kept on persistently in that form for nearly ten years, wrote much magnificent poetry in it and at times attained a grandeur of dramatic utterance hardly surpassed except in the master of all dramatists, Shakespeare. But while he has attained a very genuine success in this form, it is not the success of the popular acting drama. His dramas are to-day probably being left farther and farther aside every moment in the present exaggerated demands for characters in action, or perhaps it might be nearer the truth to say clothes horses in action. Besides, the drama of action in character, which is the type of drama introduced into English literature by Browning, has reached a more perfect development in other hands. Ibsen’s dramas are preëminently dramas of action in character, but the action moves with such rapidity that the audience is almost cheated into thinking they are the old thing over again—that is, dramas of characters in action.

Browning’s characters in his dramas are presented with a completeness of psychological analysis which makes them of paramount interest to those few who can and like to listen to people holding forth to any length on the stage, and with superb actors, who can give every subtlest change of mood, a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity for the utmost intensity of pleasure. Still, one cannot help but feel that the impressionistic psychology of Ibsen reaches a pinnacle of dramatic art not attained by Browning in his plays, delightful in character portrayal as they are, and not upon any account to have been missed from dramatic literature.

In the dramatic monologue Browning found just that form which would focus his forces, bringing them into the sort of relationship needed to reveal the true law of being for his new region of poetic art.

If we inquire just why this form was the true medium for the most perfect expression of his genius, I think we may answer that in it, as he has developed it, is given an opportunity for the legitimate exercise of his mental subtlety. Through the voice of one speaker he can portray not only the speaker but one or more other characters, and at the same time show the scene setting, and all without any direct description. On the other hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked when he is making a character reveal only his own personality, is held in check by the necessity of using just those words and turns of expression and dwelling upon just those details which will make each character stand out distinctly, and at the same time bring the scene before the reader.

The people in his dramatic monologues live before us by means of a psychology as impressionistic as that of Ibsen’s in his plays. The effect is the same as that in a really great impressionistic painting. Nature is revealed far more distinctly—the thing of lights and shadows, space and movement—than in pictures bent upon endless details of form. “My Last Duchess” is one among many fine examples of his method in monologue. In that short poem we are made to see what manner of man is the duke, what manner of woman the duchess. We see what has been the duke’s past, what is to be his future, also the present scene, as the duke stands in the hall of his palace talking to an ambassador from the count who has come to arrange a marriage with the duke for the count’s daughter. Besides all this a glimpse of the ambassador’s attitude of mind is given. This is done by an absolutely telling choice of words and by an organic relationing of the different elements. The law of his genius asserts itself.

Browning’s own ideal of the poet who makes others see was not completely realized until he had perfected a form which would lend itself most perfectly to the manner of thing which he desired to make others see—namely, the human soul in all its possible manifestations of feeling and mood, good, bad, and indifferent, from the uninspired organist who struggles with a mountainous fugue to the inspired improvisor whose soul ascends to God on the wings of his music, from the unknown sensitive painter who cannot bear to have his pictures the subject of criticism or commerce to the jolly life-loving Fra Lippo, from the jealous, vindictive woman of “The Laboratory” to the vision-seeing Pompilia, from Ned Bratts to Bishop Blougram, and so on—so many and wonderful that custom cannot state their infinite variety.

Consistent, so far, with his own theories we find the work of Browning to be. He also follows his ideal in the discarding of classical allusion and illustration. Part of his dictum that the form should express the thought is shown in his habitual fitting of his allusions to the subject he is treating. By this means he produces his atmosphere and brings the scene clearly before us; witness his constant references to Molinos and his influence in “The Ring and the Book,” an influence which was making itself felt in all classes of society at the time when the actual tragedy portrayed in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, brings into his poetry a far wider range of allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries than is to be found in other Victorian poets, and makes it necessary that these should be “looked up” before an adequate enjoyment of their fitness is possible. Hence the Browning societies, so often held up to ridicule by the critics, who blindly prefer to show their superior attitude of mind in regard to everything they do not know, and growl about his obscurity, to welcoming any movement which means an increase of general culture. The Browning societies have not only done much to make Browning’s unusual allusions common matters of knowledge, but they have helped to keep alive a taste for all poetry in an age when poetry has needed all the friendly support it could get.