Browning and Dogma Part 4

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe.

There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception--which is truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without.[28]

See this soul of ours!

How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled By age and waste, set free at last by death.[29]

In S. John's reflections in _A Death in the Desert_, a similar suggestion of mysticism is modified by the medium through which it has pa.s.sed. The Christian teacher who wrote that "G.o.d is Love," and that in the knowledge of this truth immortality itself consists, propounds for himself a question similar to that which has so hopeless a ring when issuing from the mouth of the Greek.

Is it for nothing we grow old and weak?

A suggestion of the character of the answer is found in the conclusion of the question, "We whom G.o.d loves."

Can they share --They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength About each spirit, that needs must bide its time, Living and learning still as years a.s.sist Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see-- With me who hardly am withheld at all, But shudderingly, scarce a shred between, Lie bare to the universal p.r.i.c.k of light?[30]

True is the lament of the reply to Protus.

We struggle, fain to enlarge Our bounded physical recipiency, Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life, Repair the waste of age and sickness. (ll. 244-247.)

All too true. But if, as we are a.s.sured, there is no waste in Nature, whence comes the apparent destruction wrought by age and sickness? What the design of which it is the evidence? In the words of the Christian mystic, but to admit "the universal p.r.i.c.k of light," to effect the union of the individual soul with that central fire of which it is an emanation; when the training and development inseparable from suffering shall have done their work, since "when pain ends, gain ends too."

Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?[31]

The decay, it must be, of its temporal habitation which shall bring to the soul eternal freedom. To the Greek, on the other hand, with the decay of the body, pa.s.sed not only all that made life worth living, but the life itself. The keener the appreciation of life, the harder, therefore, the parting of soul from body. He, indeed,

Sees the wider but to sigh the more.

"Most progress is most failure." Failure absolute if death is the end of life; failure relative and indicative of higher, vaster potentialities of being, if that dream of a moment's yearning might be true, if death prove itself but "the throbbing impulse" to a fuller life; if, freed by it, man bursts "as the worm into the fly," becoming a creature of that future state

Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy.

But to the Greek the door of actuality remains fast closed.

Before concluding an examination of this section of the poem which has suggested, as was inevitable, a comparison between the pagan and the Christian conception of life; between an estimate into which physical and intellectual considerations alone enter, and that in which spiritual also find place, it may not be unprofitable to recall the method by which Browning has treated the same subject elsewhere, in a different connection. _Old Pictures in Florence_, published originally in the volume of the _Men and Women Series_, which likewise contained _Cleon_, is one of the few poems in which the author may be a.s.sumed to speak in his own person. The contrast there drawn is that between the products of Greek Art which "ran and reached its goal," and the works of the mediaeval Italian artists. Having pointed to the Greek statuary, to the figures of Theseus, of Apollo, of Niobe, and Alexander, the speaker recognizes therein a re-utterance of

The Truth of Man, as by G.o.d first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, ... Soul (which Limbs betoken) And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.[32]

Here all is perfection, man sees himself as he wishes he were, as he "might have been," as he "cannot be." In such finished work no room is left for "man's distinctive mark," progress,--growth. When, then, according to Browning, did growth once more begin? When was the depression of Cleon's day out-lived? Vitality, he a.s.serts, once more became apparent when the eye of the artist was turned from externals to that which externals may denote or conceal, not outwards but inwards, from the form betokening the existence of Soul to Soul itself. The mediaeval painters started on a new and endless path of progress when in answer to the cry of

Greek Art, and what more wish you?

they replied,

To become now self-acquainters, And paint man man, whatever the issue!

Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: To bring the invisible full into play!

Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?[33]

Browning's estimate of Art, as of all departments of work, was necessarily one which would lead him to sympathize with that form which strives, however imperfectly, to bring "the invisible full into play," though the achievement must be effected, not by neglect of, but rather by the fullest treatment of the visible. The avowed function of Art, in the most comprehensive acceptation of the term, was with him to achieve "no mere imagery on the wall," but to present something, whether in Music, Poetry, or Painting, which should

Mean beyond the facts, Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.[34]

The more distinctive artistic function (commonly so accepted) of gratifying the senses is not to be neglected, although it may not--as with the Greek--be cultivated to the exclusion, whole or partial, of that which is in its essence more enduring. The monkish painter (1412-69), whilst defending his realistic methods, yet perceives in vision the immensity of possible achievement if he "drew higher things with the same truth." To work thus were "to take the Prior's pulpit-place, interpret G.o.d to all of you."[35] In so far, then, as he strives towards this realization of the spiritual, the early Italian painter holds, according to Browning, higher place in the ranks of the artistic hierarchy than the Greek who had attained already to perfection in his particular department, feeling that "where he had reached who could do more than reach?" No such perfection of attainment was possible to him who would "bring the invisible full into play." His glory lay rather "in daring so much before he well did it."

Thus

The first of the new, in our race's story, Beats the last of the old.[36]

As with the artist, so with the spectator, growth had only begun when

Looking [his] last on them all, [He] turned [his] eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start--What if we so small Be greater and grander the while than they?

Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?

In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs--ours, for eternity.[37]

They are perfect--how else? they shall never change: We are faulty--why not? we have time in store.

The Artificer's hand is not arrested With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished.[38]

Bitter as is to Cleon the realization that "What's come to perfection perishes," to the Christian artist the same axiom serves but as incentive to more strenuous effort. In imperfection he recognizes the germ of future progress.

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_.[39]

As imperfection suggests progress, so to "the heir of immortality" is failure but a step towards ultimate attainment. With confidence he may inquire

What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence[40]

For the fulness of the days?

The Greek, with his bounded horizon, realizes but the first aspect of the truth: that

In man there's failure, only since he left The lower and inconscious forms of life.

That

Most progress is most failure.

The horizon being bounded by the grave, progress cut short by the approach of death, failure may become failure absolute, irremediable. What wonder, then, that the horror should "quicken still from year to year"; until the very terror itself demands relief in the imaginative creation of a future state. But for this there is no warrant; for the Greek all attainable satisfaction must be sought through the present phase of existence alone.

IV. Cleon's answer to the question of Protus with regard to Death's aspect to the man of thought, whose works outlast his personal existence (ll.

274-335), is but an utterance of the cry of human nature in all times and in all places. Individuality must be preserved! In a moment of artistic fervour the poet may acquiesce in the fate by which his friend has become "a portion of the loveliness which once he made more lovely,"[41] but such acquiescence can only hold good where poetic imagination has overborne human affection. The soul of the man first, the poet afterwards, demands that

Eternal form shall still divide Eternal soul from all beside,

and that

I shall _know_ him when we meet.[42]

And what he claims for his friend, man requires also for himself. The individual soul, as at present const.i.tuted, cannot conceive of divesting itself of its own individuality, of becoming "merged in the general whole." As easy almost is it to conceive of annihilation. In hours of abstract thought such theories may be evolved, and in accordance with the mental const.i.tution of the thinker, be rejected or honestly accepted; but when brought face to face with the issues of Life and Death, the heart, freeing itself from the trammels of intellectual sophistries, cries out, "I have felt"; and yearns for a creed which shall allow acceptance of a tenet involving future recognition and reunion, hence, by implication, preservation of individuality, and ident.i.ty. Whatever his nominal creed, experience teaches us that man at supreme moments of life craves for some such satisfaction as this.