An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 5

"You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith BE."

And the good Pope in 'The Ring and the Book', alluding to the absence of true Christian soldiership, which is revealed by Pompilia's case, says: "Is it not this ign.o.ble CONFIDENCE, cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps, makes the old heroism impossible?

Unless. . .what whispers me of times to come? What if it be the mission of that age my death will usher into life, to SHAKE THIS TORPOR OF a.s.sURANCE FROM OUR CREED, reintroduce the DOUBT discarded, bring the formidable danger back we drove long ago to the distance and the dark?"

True healthy doubt means, in Browning, that the spiritual nature is sufficiently quickened not to submit to the conclusions of the insulated intellect. It WILL reach out beyond them, and a.s.sert itself, whatever be the resistance offered by the intellect.

Mere doubt, without any resistance from the intuitive, non-discursive side of our nature, is the dry-rot of the soul.

The spiritual functions are "smothered in surmise". Faith is not a matter of blind belief, of slavish a.s.sent and acceptance, as many no-faith people seem to regard it. It is what Wordsworth calls it, "a pa.s.sionate intuition", and springs out of quickened and refined sentiment, out of inborn instincts which are as cultivable as are any other elements of our complex nature, and which, too, may be blunted beyond a consciousness of their possession. And when one in this latter state denies the reality of faith, he is not unlike one born blind denying the reality of sight.

A reiterated lesson in Browning's poetry, and one that results from his spiritual theory, is, that the present life is a tabernacle-life, and that it can be truly lived only as a tabernacle-life; for only such a life is compatible with the ever-continued aspiration and endeavor which is a condition of, and inseparable from, spiritual vitality.

Domizia, in the tragedy of 'Luria', is made to say:--

"How inexhaustibly the spirit grows!

One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach With her whole energies and die content,-- So like a wall at the world's edge it stood, With naught beyond to live for,--is that reached?-- Already are new undream'd energies Outgrowing under, and extending farther To a new object;--there's another world!"

The dying John in 'A Death in the Desert', is made to say:--

"I say that man was made to grow, not stop; That help he needed once, and needs no more, Having grown up but an inch by, is withdrawn: For he hath new needs, and new helps to these.

This imports solely, man should mount on each New height in view; the help whereby he mounts, The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall, Since all things suffer change save G.o.d the Truth.

Man apprehends him newly at each stage Whereat earth's ladder drops, its service done; And nothing shall prove twice what once was proved."

And again:--

"Man knows partly but conceives beside, Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, And in this striving, this converting air Into a solid he may grasp and use, Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not G.o.d's, and not the beasts': G.o.d is, they are, Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.

Such progress could no more attend his soul Were all it struggles after found at first And guesses changed to knowledge absolute, Than motion wait his body, were all else Than it the solid earth on every side, Where now through s.p.a.ce he moves from rest to rest.

Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect He could not, what he knows now, know at first; What he considers that he knows to-day, Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown; Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns Because he lives, which is to be a man, Set to instruct himself by his past self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.

G.o.d's gift was that man should conceive of truth And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he reach fact indeed.

The statuary ere he mould a shape Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next The aspiration to produce the same; So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout, Cries ever, 'Now I have the thing I see': Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought, From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.

How were it had he cried, 'I see no face, No breast, no feet i' the ineffectual clay'?

Rather commend him that he clapped his hands, And laughed, 'It is my shape and lives again!'

Enjoyed the falsehood touched it on to truth, Until yourselves applaud the flesh indeed In what is still flesh-imitating clay.

Right in you, right in him, such way be man's!

G.o.d only makes the live shape at a jet.

Will ye renounce this fact of creatureship?

The pattern on the Mount subsists no more, Seemed awhile, then returned to nothingness, But copies, Moses strove to make thereby Serve still and are replaced as time requires: By these make newest vessels, reach the type!

If ye demur, this judgment on your head, Never to reach the ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."

Browning has given varied and beautiful expressions to these ideas throughout his poetry.

The soul must rest in nothing this side of the infinite.

If it does rest in anything, however relatively n.o.ble that thing may be, whether art, or literature, or science, or theology, even, it declines in vitality--it torpifies.

However great a conquest the combatant may achieve in any of these arenas, "striding away from the huge grat.i.tude, his club shouldered, lion-fleece round loin and flank", he must be "bound on the next new labour, height o'er height ever surmounting-- destiny's decree!" *

-- * 'Aristophanes' Apology', p. 31, English ed.

"Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled!" *

-- * 'James Lee's Wife', sect. 6.

But this tabernacle-life, which should ever look ahead, has its claims which must not be ignored, and its standards which must not be too much above present conditions. Man must "fit to the finite his infinity" ('Sordello'). Life may be over-spiritual as well as over-worldly. "Let us cry, 'All good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'" *

The figure the poet employs in 'The Ring and the Book'

to ill.u.s.trate the art process, may be as aptly applied to life itself-- the greatest of all arts. The life-artist must know how to secure the proper degree of malleability in this mixture of flesh and soul.

He must mingle gold with gold's alloy, and duly tempering both effect a manageable ma.s.s. There may be too little of alloy in earth-life as well as too much--too little to work the gold and fashion it, not into a ring, but ring-ward. "On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round" ('Abt Vogler'). "Oh, if we draw a circle premature, heedless of far gain, greedy for quick returns of profit, sure, bad is our bargain" ('A Grammarian's Funeral').

-- * 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'.

'An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experiences of Karshish, the Arab Physician', is one of Browning's most remarkable psychological studies. It may be said to polarize the idea, so often presented in his poetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith. In this poem, the poet has treated a supposed case of a spiritual knowledge "increased beyond the fleshly faculty--heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven", a spiritual state, less desirable and far less favorable to the true fulfilment of the purposes of earth-life, than that expressed in the following lines from 'Easter Day':--

"A world of spirit as of sense Was plain to him, yet not TOO plain, Which he could traverse, not remain A GUEST IN:--else were permanent Heaven on earth, which its gleams were meant To sting with hunger for full light", etc.

The Epistle is a subtle representation of a soul conceived with absolute spiritual standards, while obliged to live in a world where all standards are relative and determined by the circ.u.mstances and limitations of its situation.

The spiritual life has been too distinctly revealed for fulfilling aright the purposes of earth-life, purposes which the soul, while in the flesh, must not ignore, since, in the words of Rabbi Ben Ezra, "all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul." The poem may also be said to represent what is, or should be, the true spirit of the man of science. In spite of what Karshish writes, apologetically, he betrays his real att.i.tude throughout, towards the wonderful spiritual problem involved.

It is, as many of Browning's Monologues are, a double picture-- one direct, the other reflected, and the reflected one is as distinct as the direct. The composition also bears testimony to Browning's own soul-healthfulness. Though the spiritual bearing of things is the all-in-all, in his poetry, the robustness of his nature, the fulness and splendid equilibrium of his life, protect him against an inarticulate mysticism. Browning is, in the widest and deepest sense of the word, the healthiest of all living poets; and in general const.i.tution the most Shakespearian.

What he makes Shakespeare say, in the Monologue ent.i.tled 'At the Mermaid', he could say, with perhaps greater truth, in his own person, than Shakespeare could have said it:--

"Have you found your life distasteful?

My life did and does smack sweet.

Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?

Mine I save and hold complete.

Do your joys with age diminish?

When mine fail me, I'll complain.

Must in death your daylight finish?

My sun sets to rise again.

I find earth not gray but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue.

Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.

Do I stand and stare? All's blue."

It is the spirit expressed in these lines which has made his poetry so entirely CONSTRUCTIVE. With the destructive spirit he has no affinities. The poetry of despair and poets with the dumps he cannot away with.

Perhaps the most comprehensive pa.s.sage in Browning's poetry, expressive of his ideal of a complete man under the conditions of earth-life, is found in 'Colombe's Birthday', Act IV.

Valence says of Prince Berthold:--

"He gathers earth's WHOLE GOOD into his arms, standing, as man, now, stately, strong and wise--marching to fortune, not surprised by her: one great aim, like a guiding star above--which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift his manhood to the height that takes the prize; a prize not near--lest overlooking earth, he rashly spring to seize it--nor remote, so that he rests upon his path content: but day by day, while shimmering grows shine, and the faint circlet prophesies the orb, he sees so much as, just evolving these, the stateliness, the wisdom, and the strength to due completion, will suffice this life, and lead him at his grandest to the grave."

Browning fully recognizes, to use an expression in his 'Fra Lippo Lippi', fully recognizes "the value and significance of flesh." A healthy and well-toned spiritual life is with him the furthest removed from asceticism. To the pa.s.sage from his 'Rabbi Ben Ezra' already quoted, "all good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul", should be added what David sings to Saul, in the poem ent.i.tled 'Saul'.

Was the full physical life ever more beautifully sung?

"Oh! our manhood's prime vigour! no spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew unbraced.

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.

And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!"