An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 13

Language that goes as easy as a glove O'er good and evil, smoothens both to one"--

Bottini presents us with a full-blown speech, intended to prove Pompilia's innocence, though really in every word a confession of her utter depravity. His sole purpose is to show off his cleverness, and he brings forward objections on purpose to prove how well he can turn them off; a.s.sumes guilt for the purpose of arguing it into comparative innocence.

"Yet for the sacredness of argument, ...

Anything, anything to let the wheels Of argument run glibly to their goal!"

He pretends to "paint a saint," whom he can still speak of, in tones of earnest admiration, as "wily as an eel." His implied concessions and merely parenthetic denials, his abominable insinuations and suggestions, come, evidently enough, from the instincts of a grovelling mind, literally incapable of appreciating goodness, as well as from professional irritation at one who will

"Leave a lawyer nothing to excuse, Reason away and show his skill about."

The whole speech is a capital bit of satire and irony; it is comically clever and delightfully exasperating.

After the lawyers have spoken, we have the final judgment, the summing-up and laying bare of the whole matter, fact and motive, in the soliloquy of _The Pope_. Guido has been tried and found guilty, but, on appeal, the case had been referred to the Pope, Innocent XII. His decision is made; he has been studying the case from early morning, and now, at the

"Dim Droop of a sombre February day, In the plain closet where he does such work, With, from all Peter's treasury, one stool, One table and one lathen crucifix,"

he pa.s.ses the actors of the tragedy in one last review, nerving himself to p.r.o.nounce the condemnation which he feels, as judge, to be due, but which he shrinks from with the natural shrinking of an aged man about to send a strong man to death before him. Pompilia he p.r.o.nounces faultless and more,--

"My rose, I gather for the breast of G.o.d;"

Caponsacchi, not all without fault, yet a true soldier of G.o.d, prompt, for all his former seeming frivolousness, to spring forward and redress the wrong, victorious, too, over temptation:--

"Was the trial sore?

Temptation sharp? Thank G.o.d a second time!

Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestalled in triumph? Pray 'Lead us into no such temptation, Lord!'

Yea, but, O Thou, whose servants are the bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have praise!"

For Guido he can see no excuse, can find no loophole for mercy, and but little hope of penitence or salvation, and he signs the death-warrant.

"For the main criminal I have no hope Except in such a suddenness of fate.

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark, I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible: There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see; one instant, and be saved."

The whole monologue is of different order from all the others. Every one but this expresses a more or less partial and fragmentary view. _Tertium Quid_ alone makes any pretence at impartiality, and his is the result of indifference, not of justice. The Pope's speech is long, slow, discoursive, full of aged wisdom, dignity and n.o.bility. The latter part of it, containing some of Browning's most characteristic philosophy, is by no means out of place, but perfectly coherent and appropriate to the character of the speaker.

Last of all comes the second and final speech of _Guido_, "the same man, another voice," as he "speaks and despairs, the last night of his life," before the Cardinal Acciaiuoli and Abate Panciatichi, two old friends, who have come to obtain his confession, absolve him, and accompany him to the scaffold:--

"The tiger-cat screams now, that whined before, That pried and tried and trod so gingerly, Till in its silkiness the trap-teeth join; Then you know how the bristling fury foams.

They listen, this wrapped in his folds of red, While his feet fumble for the filth below; The other, as beseems a stouter heart, Working his best with beads and cross to ban The enemy that come in like a flood Spite of the standard set up, verily And in no trope at all, against him there: For at the prison-gate, just a few steps Outside, already, in the doubtful dawn, Thither, from this side and from that, slow sweep And settle down in silence solidly, Crow-wise, the frightful Brotherhood of Death."

We have here the completed portrait of Guido, a portrait perhaps unsurpa.s.sed as a whole by any of Browning's studies in the complexities of character. In his first speech he fought warily, and with delicate skill of fence, for life. Here, says Mr. Swinburne, "a close and dumb soul compelled into speech by mere struggle and stress of things, labours in literal translation and accurate agony at the lips of Guido."

Hopeless, but impelled by the biting frenzy of despair, he pours out on his awe-stricken listeners a wild flood of entreaty, defiance, ghastly and anguished humour, flattery, satire, raving blasphemy and foaming impenitence. His desperate venom and blasphemous raillery is part despair, part calculated horror. In his last revolt against death and all his foes, he s.n.a.t.c.hes at any weapon, even truth, that may serve his purpose and gain a reprieve:--

"I thought you would not slay impenitence, But teazed, from men you slew, contrition first,-- I thought you had a conscience ...

Would you send A soul straight to perdition, dying frank An atheist?"

How much of truth there is in it all we need not attempt to decide. It is not likely that Guido could pretend to be much worse than he really was, though he unquestionably heightens the key of his crime, working up to a pitch of splendid ferocity almost sublime, from a malevolence rather mean than manly. At the last, struck suddenly, as he sees death upon him, from his pretence of defiant courage, he hurls down at a blow the whole structure of lies, and lays bare at once his own malignant cowardice and the innocence of his murdered wife:--is it with a touch of remorse, of saving penitence?

"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,-- I use up my last strength to strike once more Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face, To trample underfoot the whine and wile Of beast Violante,--and I grow one gorge To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale Poison my hasty hunger took for food.

A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk, No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent, But sustenance at root, a bucketful.

How else lived that Athenian who died so, Drinking hot bull's blood, fit for men like me?

I lived and died a man, and take man's chance, Honest and bold: right will be done to such.

Who are these you have let descend my stair?

Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!

Is it 'Open' they dare bid you? Treachery!

Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while Out of the world of words I had to say?

Not one word! All was folly--I laughed and mocked!

Sirs, my first true word, all truth and no lie, Is--save me notwithstanding! Life is all!

I was just stark mad,--let the madman live Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!

Don't open! Hold me from them! I am yours, I am the Granduke's,--no, I am the Pope's!

Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--G.o.d, ...

Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"

The coward's agony of the fear of death has never been rendered in words so truthful or so terrible.

Last of all comes the Epilogue, ent.i.tled _The Book and the Ring_, giving an account of Count Guido's execution, in the form of contemporary letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian's sermon on Pompilia, and other doc.u.ments needed to wind off the threads of the story.

_The Ring and the Book_ was the first important work which Browning wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double shrine: at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication. I quote the invocation: the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living.

"O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird And all a wonder and a wild desire,-- Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun, Took sanctuary within the holier blue, And sang a kindred soul out to his face,-- Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart-- When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory--to drop down, To toil for man, to suffer or to die,-- This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?

Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

Never may I commence my song, my due To G.o.d who best taught song by gift of thee, Except with bent head and beseeching hand-- That still, despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be; some interchange Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, Some benediction anciently thy smile: --Never conclude, but raising hand and head Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, Their utmost up and on,--so blessing back In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: _Handbook_, p. 93.]

[Footnote 41: Swinburne, _Essays and Studies_, p. 220.]

18. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE: including a Transcript from Euripides.

[Published in August, 1871. Dedication: "To the Countess Cowper.--If I mention the simple truth: that this poem absolutely owes its existence to you,--who not only suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the most delightful of May-month amus.e.m.e.nts--I shall seem honest, indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought such a poem to be!--Euripides might fear little; but I, also, have an interest in the performance: and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your feet?--R. B., London, July 23, 1871." (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. XI. pp. 1-122).]

The episode which supplies the t.i.tle of _Balaustion's Adventure_ was suggested by the familiar story told by Plutarch in his life of Nicias: that after the ruin of the Sicilian expedition, those of the Athenian captives who could repeat any poetry of Euripides were set at liberty, or treated with consideration, by the Syracusans. In Browning's poem, Balaustion tells her four girl-friends the story of her "adventure" at Syracuse, where, shortly before, she had saved her own life and the lives of a ship's-company of her friends by reciting the play of _Alkestis_ to the Euripides-loving townsfolk. After a brief reminiscence of the adventure, which has gained her (besides life, and much fame, and the regard of Euripides) a lover whom she is shortly to marry, she repeats, for her friends, the whole play, adding, as she speaks the words of Euripides, such other words of her own as may serve to explain or help to realise the conception of the poet. In other words, we have a transcript or re-telling in monologue of the whole play, interspersed with ill.u.s.trative comments; and after this is completed Balaustion again takes up the tale, presents us with a new version of the story of Alkestis, refers by antic.i.p.ation to a poem of Mrs. Browning and a picture of Sir Frederick Leighton, and ends exultantly:--

"And all came--glory of the golden verse, And pa.s.sion of the picture, and that fine Frank outgush of the human grat.i.tude Which saved our ship and me, in Syracuse,-- Ay, and the tear or two which slipt perhaps Away from you, friends, while I told my tale, --It all came of the play which gained no prize!

Why crown whom Zeus has crowned in soul before?"

It will thus be seen that the "Transcript from Euripides" is the real occasion of the poem, Balaustion's adventure, though graphically described, and even Balaustion herself, though beautifully and vividly brought before us, being of secondary importance. The "adventure," as it has been said, is the amber in which Browning has embalmed the _Alkestis_. The play itself is rendered in what is rather an interpretation than a translation; an interpretation conceived in the spirit of the motto taken from Mrs. Browning's _Wine of Cyprus_:--

"Our Euripides, the human, With his droppings of warm tears, And his touches of things common Till they rose to touch the spheres."

Browning has no sympathy with those who impute to Euripides a sophistic rather than a pathetic intention; and it is conceivable that the "task"

which Lady Cowper imposed upon him was to show, by some such method of translation and interpretation, the warm humanity, deep pathos, right construction and genuine truth to nature of the drama. With this end in view, Browning has woven the thread of the play into a sort of connected narrative, translating, with almost uniform literalness of language, the whole of the play as it was written by Euripides, but connecting it by comments, explanations, hints and suggestions; a.n.a.lyzing whatever may seem not easily to be apprehended, or not unlikely to be misapprehended; bringing out by a touch or a word some delicate shade of meaning, some subtle fineness of idea or intention.[42] A more creative piece of criticism can hardly be found, not merely in poetry, but even in prose.

Perhaps it shares in some degree the splendid fault of creative criticism by occasionally lending, not finding, the n.o.ble qualities which we are certainly made to see in the work itself.

The translation, though not literal in form, is literal in substance, and it is rendered into careful and expressive blank verse. Owing to the scheme on which it is constructed, the choruses could not be rendered into lyrical verse; while, for the same reason, a few pa.s.sages here and there are omitted, or only indicated by a word or so in pa.s.sing. The omitted pa.s.sages are very few in number; but it is not always easy to see why they should have been omitted.[43] Browning's canon of translation is "to be literal at every cost save that of absolute violence to our language," and here, certainly, he has observed his rule. Notwithstanding the greater difficulty of the metrical form, and the far greater temptation to "brighten up" a version by the use of paraphrastic but sonorous effects, it is improbable that any prose translation could be more faithful. And not merely is Browning literal in the sense of following the original word for word, he gives the exact root-meaning of words which a literal translator would consider himself justified in taking in their general sense. Occasionally a literality of this sort is less easily intelligible to the general reader than the more obvious word would have been; but, except in a very few instances, the whole translation is not less clear and forcible than it is exact.

Whether or not the _Alkestis_ of Browning is quite the _Alkestis_ of Euripides, there is no doubt that this literal, yet glorified and vivified translation of a Greek play has added a new poem to English literature.