An Introduction to the Study of Browning Part 14

The blank verse of _Balaustion's Adventure_ is somewhat different from that of its predecessor, _The Ring and the Book_: to my own ear, at least, it is by no means so original or so fine. It is indeed more restrained, but Browning seems to be himself working under a sort of restraint, or perhaps upon a theory of the sort of versification appropriate to cla.s.sical themes. Something of frank vigour, something of flexibility and natural expressiveness, is lost, but, on the other hand, there is often a rich colour in the verse, a lingering perfume and sweetness in the melody, which has a new and delicate charm of its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: Note, for instance, the admirable exposition and defence of the famous and ill-famed altercation between Pheres and Admetos: one of the keenest bits of explanatory a.n.a.lysis in Mr. Browning's works. Or observe how beautifully human the dying Alkestis becomes as he interprets for her, and how splendid a humanity the jovial Herakles puts on.]

[Footnote 43: The two speeches of Eumelos, not without a note of pathos, are scarcely represented by--

"The children's tears ran fast Bidding their father note the eye-lids' stare, Hands'-droop, each dreadful circ.u.mstance of death."]

19. PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-SCHw.a.n.gAU, SAVIOUR OF SOCIETY.

[Published in December, 1871. (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp.

123-210).]

_Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau_[44] is a blank verse monologue, supposed to be spoken, in a musing day-dream, by Louis Napoleon, while Emperor of the French, and calling himself, to the delight of ironical echoes, the "Saviour of Society." The work is equally distant in spirit from the branding satire and righteous wrath of Victor Hugo's _Chatiments_ and _Napoleon le Pet.i.t_, and from Lord Beaconsfield's _couleur de rose_ portrait, in _Endymion_, of the nominally pseudonymous Prince Florestan.

It is neither a denunciation nor a eulogy, nor yet altogether an impartial delineation. It is an "apology," with much the same object as those of Bishop Blougram or Mr. Sludge, the Medium: "by no means to prove black white or white black, or to make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less of self-illusion reconcile itself to itself."[45]

The poem is very hard reading, perhaps as a whole the hardest intellectual exercise in Browning's work, but this arises not so much from the obscurity of its ideas and phrases as from the peculiar complexity of its structure. To apprehend it we must put ourselves at a certain standpoint, which is not easy to reach. The monologue as a whole represents, as we only learn at the end, not a direct speech to a real person in England, but a mere musing over a cigar in the palace in France. It is divided into two distinct sections, which need to be kept clearly apart in the mind. The first section, up to the line, more than half-way through, "Something like this the unwritten chapter reads," is a direct self-apology. Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau puts forward what he represents as his theory of practice. It is founded on the principle of _laisser-faire_, and resolves itself into conformity: concurrence with things as they are, with society as it is. He finds existing inst.i.tutions, not indeed perfect, but sufficiently good for practical purposes; and he conceives his mission to be that of a builder on existing foundations, that of a social conservator, not of a social reformer: "to do the best with the least change possible." On his own showing, he has had this single aim in view from first to last, and on this ground, that of expediency, he explains and defends every act of his tortuous and vacillating policy. He has had his ambitions and ideals of giving freedom to Italy, for example, but he has set them aside in the interests of his own people and for what he holds to be their more immediate needs. So far the direct apology. He next proceeds to show what he might have done, but did not, the ideal course as it is held; commenting the while, as "Sagacity," upon the imaginary new version of his career. His comments represent his real conduct, and they are such as he a.s.sumes would naturally be made on the "ideal" course by the very critics who have censured his actual temporising policy. The final pages contain an involuntary confession that, even in his own eyes, Prince Hohenstiel is not quite satisfied with either his conduct or his defence of it.

To separate the truth from the falsehood in this dramatic monologue has not been Browning's intention, and it need not be ours. It may be repeated that Browning is no apologist for Louis Napoleon: he simply calls him to the front, and, standing aside, allows him to speak for himself.[46] In his speech under these circ.u.mstances we find just as much truth entangled with just as much sophistry as we might reasonably expect. Here, we get what seems the genuine truth; there, in what appears to the speaker a satisfactory defence, we see that he is simply exposing his own moral defect; again, like Bishop Blougram, he "says true things, but calls them by wrong names." Pa.s.sages of the last kind are very frequent; are, indeed, to be found everywhere throughout the poem; and it is in these that Browning unites most cleverly the vicarious thinking due to his dramatic subject, and the good honest thought which we never fail to find dominant in his most exceptional work. The Prince gives utterance to a great deal of very true and very admirable good sense; we are at liberty to think him insincere in his application of it, but an axiom remains true, even if it be wrongly applied.

The versification of the poem is everywhere vigorous, and often fine; perhaps the finest pa.s.sage it contains is that referring to Louis Napoleon's abortive dreams on behalf of Italy.

"Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught, Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine For ever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct, Alive with tremors in the s.h.a.ggy growth Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there Imparting exultation to the hills!

Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk And waft my words above the gra.s.sy sea Under the blinding blue that basks o'er Rome-- Hear ye not still--'Be Italy again?'

And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart?

Decrepit council-chambers,--where some lamp Drives the unbroken black three paces off From where the greybeards huddle in debate, Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt, And what they think is fear, and what suspends The breath in them is not the plaster-patch Time disengages from the painted wall Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu, Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry To dust, which a queen's finger traced of old; But some word, resonant, redoubtable, Of who once felt upon his head a hand Whereof the head now apprehends his foot."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: The name _Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau_ is formed from Hohen Schw.a.n.gau, one of the castles of the late king of Bavaria.]

[Footnote 45: James Thomson on _The Ring and the Book_.]

[Footnote 46: I find in a letter of Browning, which Mrs Orr has printed in her _Life and Letters of Browning_ (1891), a reference to "what the editor of the _Edinburgh_ calls my eulogium on the Second Empire--which it is not, any more than what another wiseacre affirms it to be--'a scandalous attack on the old constant friend of England'--it is just what I imagine the man might, if he pleased, say for himself."]

20. FIFINE AT THE FAIR.

[Published in 1872 (_Poetical Works_, Vol. XI. pp. 211-343).]

_Fifine at the Fair_ is a monologue at once dramatic and philosophical.

Its arguments, like those of _Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau_, are part truth, part sophistry. The poem is prefaced by a motto from Moliere's _Don Juan_, in which Donna Elvira suggests to her husband, with a bitter irony, the defence he ought to make for himself. Don Juan did not take the hint. Browning has done so. The genesis of the poem and the special form it has a.s.sumed are further explained by the following pa.s.sage from Mrs. Orr:--

"Mr. Browning was, with his family, at p.o.r.nic, many years ago, and there saw the gypsy who is the original of Fifine.

His fancy was evidently set roaming by her audacity, her strength--the contrast which she presented to the more spiritual types of womanhood; and this contrast eventually found expression in a poetic theory of life, in which these opposite types and their corresponding modes of attraction became the necessary complement of each other. As he laid down the theory, Mr. Browning would be speaking in his own person. But he would turn into someone else in the act of working it out--for it insensibly carried with it a plea for yielding to those opposite attractions, not only successively, but at the same time; and a modified Don Juan would grow up under his pen."[47]

This modified Don Juan is the spokesman of the poem: not the "splendid devil" of Tirso de Molina, but a modern gentleman, living at p.o.r.nic, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophical person, "of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will."

Strolling through the fair with his wife, he expatiates on the charm of a Bohemian existence, and, more particularly, on the charms of one Fifine, a rope-dancer, whose performance he has witnessed. Urged by the troubled look of his wife, he launches forth into an elaborate defence of inconstancy in love, and consequently of the character of his admiration for Fifine.

He starts by arguing:--

"That bodies show me minds, That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures, And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coa.r.s.est covertures,-- All by demonstrating the value of Fifine!"

He then applies his method to the whole of earthly life, finally resolving it into the principle:--

"All's change, but permanence as well.

Truth inside, and outside, truth also; and between Each, falsehood that is change, as truth is permanence.

The individual soul works through the shows of sense, (Which, ever proving false, still promise to be true) Up to an outer soul as individual too; And, through the fleeting, lives to die into the fixed, And reach at length 'G.o.d, man, or both together mixed.'"

Last of all, just as his speculations have come to an end in an earnest profession of entire love to his wife, and they pause for a moment on the threshold of the villa, he receives a note from Fifine.

"Oh, threaten no farewell! five minutes shall suffice To clear the matter up. I go, and in a trice Return; five minutes past, expect me! If in vain-- Why, slip from flesh and blood, and play the ghost again!"

He exceeds the allotted five minutes. Elvire takes him at his word; and, as we seem to be told in the epilogue, husband and wife are reconciled only in death.

Such is the barest outline of the structure and purport of the poem. But no outline can convey much notion of the wide range, profound significance and infinite ingenuity of the arguments; of the splendour and vigour of the poetry; or of the subtle consistency and exquisite truth of the character-painting. Small in amount as is this last in proportion to the philosophy, it is of very notable kind and quality.

Not only the speaker, but Fifine, and still more Elvire, are quickened into life by graphic and delicate touches. If we except Lucrezia in _Andrea del Sarto_, in no other monologue is the presence and personality of the silent or seldom-speaking listener so vividly felt.

We see the wronged wife Elvire, we know her, and we trace the very progress of her moods, the very changes in her face, as she listens to the fluent talk of her husband. Don Juan (if we may so call him) is a distinct addition to Browning's portrait-gallery. Let no one suppose him to be a mere mouthpiece for dialectical disquisitions. He is this certainly, but his utterances are tinged with individual colour. This fact which, from the artistic point of view, is an inestimable advantage, is apt to prove, as in the case of Prince Hohenstiel, somewhat of a practical difficulty. "The clearest way of showing where he uses (1) Truth, (2) Sophism, (3) a mixture of both--is to say that wherever he speaks of Fifine (whether as type or not) in relation to himself and his own desire for truth, or right living with his wife, he is sophistical: wherever he speaks directly of his wife's value to him he speaks truth with an alloy of sophism; and wherever he speaks impersonally he speaks the truth.[48]" Keeping this in mind, we can easily separate the grain from the chaff; and the grain is emphatically worth storing. Perhaps no poem of Browning's contains so much deep and acute comment on life and conduct: few, such superabounding wealth of thought and imagery. Browning is famed for his elaborate and original similes; but I doubt if he has conceived any with more originality, or worked them out with richer elaboration, than those of the Swimmer, of the Carnival, of the Druid Monument, of Fifine herself. Nor has he often written more original poetry than some of the more pa.s.sionate or imaginative pa.s.sages of the poem. The following lines, describing an imaginary face representing Horror, have all the vivid sharpness of an actual vision or revelation:--

"Observe how brow recedes, Head shudders back on spine, as if one haled the hair, Would have the full-face front what pin-point eye's sharp stare Announces; mouth agape to drink the flowing fate, While chin protrudes to meet the burst o' the wave; elate Almost, spurred on to brave necessity, expend All life left, in one flash, as fire does at its end."

Just as good in a different style, is this quaint and quiet landscape:--

"For, arm in arm, we two have reached, nay, pa.s.sed, you see, The village-precinct; sun sets mild on Saint-Marie-- We only catch the spire, and yet I seem to know What's hid i' the turn o' the hill: how all the graves must glow Soberly, as each warms its little iron cross, Flourished about with gold, and graced (if private loss Be fresh) with stiff rope-wreath of yellow, crisp bead-blooms Which tempt down birds to pay their supper, mid the tombs, With prattle good as song, amuse the dead awhile, If couched they hear beneath the matted camomile."

The poem is written in Alexandrine couplets, and is, I believe, the only English poem of any length written in this metre since Drayton's _Polyolbion_. Browning's metre has scarcely the flexibility of the best French verse, but he allows himself occasionally two licenses not used in French since the time of Marot: (1) the addition of an unaccented syllable at the end of the first half of the verse, as:--

"'Twas not for every Gawain to gaze upon the Grail!"--

(2) the addition of two syllables, making seven instead of six beats.

"What good were else i' the drum and fife? O pleasant land of France!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 47: _Handbook_, p. 148.]

[Footnote 48: J.T. Nettleship on "Fifine at the Fair" (_Browning Society's Papers_, Part II. p. 223). Mr. Nettleship's elaborate a.n.a.lysis of the poem is a most helpful and admirable piece of work.]

21. RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY; OR, TURF AND TOWERS.

[Published in 1873 (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol XII. pp.