(1812-89)

Life.- Robert Browning was born at Camberwell, May 7, 1812, and was privately educated. His first published poem, Pauline, appeared in 1833.In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett, then more widely known as a poet than himself. Their happy married life was spent almost entirely in Florence. After Mrs Browning’s death in 1861, Browning settled in London, though he still made long visits to the Continent. In November 1889 he joined his son in Venice, and there he died on 12th December of that year. Works.- Pauline (1833) Strafford (1837) (1840) Bells and Pomegranates (8 parts, 1841-6) Christmas Eve and Easter Day (1850) Men and Women (1855) Dramatis Personae (1864) (1868-9) Balaustion’s Adventure (1871) Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau (1871) Fifine at the Fair (1872) Red Cotton Night-Cap County (1873) Aristophanes’s Apology (1875) The Inn Album (1875) Pacchiarotto (1876) La Saisiaz (1878) The Two Poets of Croisic (1878) Dramatic Idylls 1879-80) Jacoseria (1883) Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884) Parleying with Certain People (1887) Asolando (1889)

Character.- Browning was a man of intense and vigorous personality, his consciousness of health was vivid and had a boundless capacity for enjoyment. He loved life and was a familiar figure in society and a regular diner-out. Sound in body and mind, he was altogether unaffected by the melancholy which accompanied the spiritual upheaval of his age. His robust optimism, though stated in terms of the religious philosophy by which it was reinforced, had its roots in his healthy and happy nature.

Views on religion and Ethics. – Browning takes his stand upon two absolute truths – a spiritual faculty in man which enables him to know spiritual reality, and a spiritual reality that is to be known. These truths are transcendent to the intellect and are axiomatic:

Call this – God, then, call that – soul, and both – the only facts for me. Prove them facts? That they o’erpass my power of proving, proves them such. (La Saisias) God may be conceived under three aspects – as Power, as Wisdom, and as Love. But the soul craves divine love, and this it finds mainly through its own God-given faculty of love:

Consider well! Were knowledge all the faculty then God Must be ignored: Love gains Him by first leap. (Ferishtah’s Fancies: A Pillar at Sebsevar)

This thought of God of love and the correlative principle of the soul’s eternal destiny (or personal immortality) provide the philosophical grounds of Browning’s optimism. There is no secular solution to the mystery of life, but such solution is furnished by the hereafter: “ on earth the broken arcs, in the heaven, a perfect round” (Abt Vogler). The present world is merely a gymnasium or training school:

Life is probation and the earth no goal, But starting-point of man. (Ring and the Book)

Yet this probationary view of life does not lead Browning to asceticism. We best prepare for the hereafter by making the fullest use of what now is. There is no conflict between the natural and the divine: the natural is itself divine.

This world’s no blot nor blank For us; it means intensely and means good. ()

Browning’s ethical teaching is, therefore, strenuous and militant. Life is to be met boldly, not evaded; all expewrience is to be made subservient to individuality and growth; whatever stirs the soul out of its self-contentment and apathy is beneficial:

Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go. ()

Art and Poetry.- Browning’s views of poetry and art correspond completely with these ethical principles. Here again, as in his whole attitude towards life, he combines high spirituality with the frankest acceptance of the natural world (Old Pictures in Florence: Fra Lippo Lippi); and here again he proclaims that the final standard of values is to be found, not in achievement, but in effort and aspiration: “’Tis not what man Does that exalts him, but what man Would do “ (Saul, XVIII.). Such a conception precludes dilettantism, virtuosity, and the worship of mere technique, and is fatal to any theory of art for art’s sake. Browning, indeed, considers art as a subordinate to life, and only valuable in so far as it expresses it. The artist, whether painter or poet, is seer and interpreter; he perceives, as the ordinary man does not, the beauty and divine meaning of life, and he makes the ordinary man partaker of his vision (Fra Lippo Lippi). Browning’s views as to the superiority of the subjective to the objective poet are expounded, not very lucidly, in the preface which he wrote for a collection of Shelley’s letters (afterwards found to be forgeries). Politics.- With his deeply-rooted faith in freedom as the essential condition for spiritual growth, Browning was in general terms a Liberal (See his sonnet Why I am a Liberal), but his Liberalism was profoundly individualistic, and he was hostile to every form of Socialism. His interest in contemporary social and political questions was, however, very slight, and in the enormous mass of his work there is scarcely anything which bears upon them. Poems.- Early Poems.- Pauline: a Fragment of a Confession is a study of autobiographical form of the growth of a soul through many experiences and failures to final peace. The poem is difficult because, while the mental states are exhaustively analysed, their causes are unexplained. : an imaginative reconstruction of the life of the famous 16th century physicist. It is composed of five scenes, each representing a spiritual crisis; its underlying motive is the need of both love and knowledge (or a balance of the emotional and intellectual natures) for the attainment of perfect life. Sordello is the tale of an obscure Mantuan troubadour mentioned by Dante. The machinery of the action is furnished by the struggles of Guelphs and Ghibellines, Emperor and Pope; but “the historical decoration,” Browning afterwards declared, “was purposely of no more importance than a background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study (Dedication, 1863). Each of these early poems is in its different way the study of a human spirit, too ambitious to submit to the limits of human existence, and which learns humility in its unsuccessful conflict with them. Dramas.- Strafford, a tragedy on the impeachment and condemnation of Charles I’s evil counsellor, was written at the request of Macready, who produced is at Covent Garden, May 1, 1837. is a dramatic fantasy based on the idea of unconscious influence. In the four detached sxcenes which form the body of the work, Pippa passes by, singing, and life is changed for those who accidentally overhear her songs. King Victor and King Charles is an historical tragedy dramatizing and episode in the annals of the House of Savoy, 1830-1. In The Return of the Druses, a five-act tragedy, the central character is the young enthusiast Djabal, who, in order to accomplish the deliverance of his people from the tyranny of the Knights of Rhodes, proclaims himself a reincarnation of Hakeem, the founder of the sect. The plot is fictitious; the date assigned, 14-. A Blot i' the Scutcheon is a Powerful domestic drama. The construction shows that Browning had been studying stage technique; but from this point of view action is still overweighed with narrative. Colombe’s Birthday is a simple and touching exhibition of the triumph of true love over worldly ambition, and Soul’s Tragedy, a study in two acts, of moral collapse under the influence of sudden success. Despite the title, the treatment is humorous. In Luria, an imaginary episode in the struggle between Florence and Pisa in the 15th century, Browning has thrown of the trammels of the stage and follows his own instincts, the drama being an elaborate study of character in which action is entirely subordinated to psychological interest. , a dramatic fragment, traces the entanglements of love and self-sacrifice. The characters are two women and a man. , Dramatic Romances, Men and Women, Dramatis Personae, are collections of shorter poems containing much of Browning’s very best work. Whether in the form of lyric or monologue, “they are all dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine” (Prefatory Note to Dramatic Lyrics). Christmas Eve and Easter Day, companion poems, deal, the one with evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, and rationalism; the other with the essential of Christian faith and practice. With these may be joined the later La Saisiaz, inspired by the poet’s friend Miss A. E. Smith, and setting forth his faith in God and immortality. The Ring and the Book is a gigantic poem in upwards of 20,000 lines, based on an Italian murder case of the 16th century. Book I contains an account of the origin of the poem and an outline of the sordid story; Book XII. is Browning’s summary and conclusion; the intervening ten books are monologues of the chief actors, three representative outsiders (giving various points of view), the two lawyers, and the Pope, to whom the fate of the murderers was finally referred. The poem is remarkable for a sustained psychological insight which has perhaps never been equalled in poetry. Later Poems.- Balaustion’s Adventure is founded on an incident recorded by Plutarch, and incorporates a transcript of Euripides’ Alcestis. Aristophanes’ Apology, a sequel to the foregoing, introduces another transcript from Euripides, viz. Heracles. The Apology is a defence from the point of view of its great master of the principles of old Greek comedy. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is a study, in the form of a , of the character and career of Napoleon III.; Fifine at the Fair, an inquiry into the relations of men and women and inconstancy in love, in which truth and casuistry are mixed to the point of bewilderment. Red Cotton Night-cap Country and The Inn Album are melodramatic tales of modern life. In Pacchiarotto, etc., the title piece reads like a parody of Browning at his worst, and the poet’s attack in it on his critics is not very dignified or effective. But some of the minor poems (At the Mermaid, Hervé Riel, etc.) suffice to redeem the collection. The Two Poets of Croisie is a narrative poem: at the conclusion Browning proposes happiness as the final test of poetic merit. Dramatic Idylls and Jocoseria return to the admirable method of Men and Women and Dramatic Romances. Ferishtah’s Fancies, a dozen fables ascribed to the dervish Ferishtah, express Browning’s views on various religious and moral questions treated elsewhere in his works. Each fable is followed by a lyric, translating its lesson into more emotional terms. In Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day, a series of character studies, instead of merging himself in the persons introduced, Browning stands apart and criticizes them. Asolando, a final miscellany, is noteworthy for the superb Epilogue. It contains an appropriate summing up of the poem’s optimistic faith. Characteristics.- The range of Browning’s work is enormous and his catholicity astonishing, yet he worked within a circle of ideas, and his philosophy of life was compounded of a few great truths which, from Pauline to Asolando, he repeated again and again in all sorts of different forms. He had been called the poet of man. It would be more correct to describe him as the poet of men, for his interest in humanity was at bottom an interest in individuality, and in individuality as far as possible removed from the common type.His genius was essentially dramatic; but his attention was always fixed, not on action but on the forces and conflicts of the inner life, he felt himself encumbered by the machinery of the regular drama, and found his chief channel of expression in the dramatic monologue. Many of his poems in this characteristic form are masterpieces of psychological insight and analytical power. Yet even in the most perfect of them Browning is seldom completely dramatic; his men and women all speak with his peculiar accent, and they are made whether directly (e.g. Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler) or as unwilling witnesses ( e.g. Karshish, Cleon, The Bishop orders his Tomb) to afford confirmation of his personal views. Of the matter, tone, and bearing of his work enough has been said; from the beginning to the end of his long career, he proclaimed God, immortality, and the goodness of things; and if, at first seems curious, he dwelt persistently upon the ugliness and evil of the world, he did so that he might prove that even when life is taken at its worst the grounds of faith remain unshaken. His style has been the subject of endless controversy, in regard to which it is necessary only to say that he is in fact often difficult and at times obscure, and that while he has many mannierisms-verbal tricks and antics, cacophonies of expression, and outrageous rhymes- he often shows himself an artist of supreme excellence and a singer of rare grace and charm. After a long period of uncritical neglect, Browning became the subject of a cult equally uncritical, and as a result impartial judgement was for a time almost impossible. The shifting process is, however, already at work, and it now seems clear that, while much of his voluminous writings will be allowed to fall into oblivion, what remaions will take its place among the permanent treasures of literature. His form is the true expression of a character which, though rugged and impetuous is marked by an extraordinary intensity and sincerity both of feeling and thought. While life is a fight and a carnival Browning will always be in it sublimating passion and creating truth.