Robert Browning: Commentaries and Study Guides to Individual Poems
Poems set for Study: (We will cover these in class but you do not need to prepare all of them for the assessment; you should select 3 or 4 for detailed study.)
"A Toccata of Galuppi’s"
"My Last Duchess"
"Porphyria’s Lover"
"Soliloquoy of the Spanish Cloister"
"Andrea del Sarto"
"Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came"
"Two in the Campagna"
"The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St Praxed’s"
Prologue to Asolando
The Dramatic Monologue
"…’poetry always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine.’ (Browning, 1867)
Though Browning was neither the first nor the only poet of his time to use this method, he more than any other English poet adopted it as his characteristic technique and brought it to great levels of power and sophistication. Perhaps his failure to write successful stage drama, and the catastrophic failure of his long narrative and historical poem Sordello eventually led him to discover that his talent lay in presenting, not character in action, but "action in character".
As Browning himself points out, the words of the poem are intended to be understood as those of the character rather than the poet. The reader is often placed in the position of someone who ‘overhears’ what is said – in other words the character’s words are frequently not meant for us – they are either private thoughts, or else directed to a specific audience. Thus the Duke speaks to the envoy of the Count of Tyrol, in the course of negotiations over his next wife’s dowry; the monk in his cloister, and Porphyria’s lover, are essentially talking to themselves; Andrea del Sarto is partly pleading with his wife and partly trying to justify himself (to himself); the Bishop is desperately trying to ensure his "sons" will create the tomb he desires; the speaker in "A Toccata of Galuppi’s" is privately reflecting.
In very few of the poems (there are some exceptions – but we will not be dealing with those) does the poet step in and comment. This means that it is left up to the reader to determine the context of the poem from the speaker’s words alone. It is also left entirely (well, not quite, because Browning gives us clues) up to the reader to form judgements about the speaker’s character and motives. Browning takes this apparent difficulty and makes an opportunity of it – indeed the much greater involvement of the reader could be regarded as the essential characteristic of the dramatic monologue as Browning developed it.
This involvement however consists of more than just working out the context, and forming an objective judgment of the speaker. As Browning developed his technique he was able to exploit the tension between the inevitable movement which takes us inside the poem and the mind of the character, and that which draws back to judge and criticise. We are therefore lured into the mind and perspective of the characters at the same time as we assess them. This double process is what gives the poems their real depth and power to disturb and challenge us, as we frequently find that the concerns of the characters as they speak are similar to our own, however we may regard them as morally or psychologically disturbed.
Browning presents a range of characters – some identifiable and real historical figures, some fictional characters who speak out of the past, some thinly disguised contemporary figures, and, for example, in the case of Browning’s lovers, some who directly speak from a point of view representing contemporary concerns of the mid 19th century (concerns which are not all that different from our own). But even the poems which do present historical figures do more than appeal to our curiosity. In them Browning is working out and exploring themes and issues of far more universal and general interest. "My Last Duchess" is therefore more interesting as a study of the corrupting effects of power, and a challenge to the "soft" liberal notion that there is some kind of moral value in developing one’s aesthetic sensibility – as the poem forces us to acknowledge a character in whom these things are totally unconnected. Browning provides some accurate historical details but this is not meant as a portrait of a typical Renaissance Duke. Ruskin’s effusive comment about the Bishop of St Praxed’s misses Browning’s point almost entirely. As Browning himself commented, as well as presenting a character "in period", he had contemporary religious controversies as much in mind. And for the modern reader, for whom those controversies are long forgotten, there are still the issues raised for the reader by that tension between condemnation and empathy which all of Browning’s dramatic monologues generate.
The technique of the dramatic monologue has proved appealing to many modern poets – probably for the same reasons as Browning found it so. As the Australian poet Bruce Dawe has put it, speaking with someone else’s voice allows you to "take off vertically" into difficult material and subject areas; it has great advantages of economy and compression. You are freed from the burden of narrative – yet within the scope of the poem you can use the reader’s imagination to take you back and forward in time. As a poet you are freed from the limitations of your own consciousness and experience and obtain some of the ability of the novelist to range extremely widely. (It’s no accident that Browning’s development of the dramatic monologue coincided with the rise to dominance of the novel in the 19th century.) You are able to work with suggestion, contrast, irony and tone. It is possible to attain clarity and realism by focussing the poem on a single point of view. Once you locate the poem within the character’s mind, you are able to use all that that mind could perceive and think to create the fabric and texture of the poem. The restriction of the form to one point of view in itself can be used to say something extremely important about a world which has to a large extent lost the universal values of morality and religion. (As Browning’s was in the process of doing). It becomes possible to reflect and imitate diversity and relativity of points of view, while at the same time capturing a universal desire each of us has, to go beyond the limits of ourselves to some wider perception. In each of Browning’s dramatic monologues we thus find characters who are reaching for something beyond their grasp – in some cases quite desparately.
One final advantage of the dramatic monologue is in terms of artistic or aesthetic unity. A lyric or sonnet or ode sets itself the incredibly difficult task of rounding out and completing its theme within the compass of the poem. As any poet will tell you, it’s easy enough to begin a poem, but "endings are hell" (I can’t remember who said that!). Where poetry is the expression of personal feelings or ideas it is necessary to give these feelings clear shape and coherence, or the poem will fail. Our sense of completeness with a dramatic monologue, however, mostly comes with our realisation that the occasion for the speaker’s words has ceased. Porphyria is dead – the Bishop’s sons depart leaving him with no-one to talk to; the monk exhausts his hatred in one last image, the "cousin’s" whistle summons Lucrezia and puts an end to Andrea del Sarto’s self-pity. Browning can thus safely leave many of the issues and concerns of the poems unresolved – to this extent they are "open-ended’, yet with a sense of competeness. This doesn’t mean that Browning simply breaks off – he uses great skill in leading us to a sense that the speaker has no more to say – notice the way he builds up tension and suspense in "Andrea del Sarto" – with the repetition of the "cousin’s whistle" (and Lucrezia’s implied indifference) gradually forcing Andrea to realise that he is wasting his time talking to her.
"A Toccata of Galuppi’s"
Browning is a superb metricist. In his major dramatic monologues he handles the medium of blank verse with incredible flexibility to suggest the natural flow of speech and thought, without losing the "pulse" which distinguishes poetry from prose. In this poem he deliberately uses a forceful, rather awkward and ungainly rhythm – quite far removed from a normal speaking voice. He thus represents the metronomic rigidity and strict tempo of Galuppi’s music – yet at the same time the poem has a very colloquial and ‘contemporary" flavour – notice the rather sardonic and mocking tone, the use of colloquialisms, direct speech and exclamations – we have hear the voice of an educated and rather "trendy" Victorian – an intellectual and a "culture buff", with his interest in the sciences as well as music.
The speaker of the poem clearly is not intended to be Browning – as Browning had definitely been to Venice by the time the poem was written.
The speaker begins the poem as if speaking to Galuppi, but there is a sense of another internal audience in the poem, as is seen in stanza XIII – perhaps the speaker turns to address another listener:
’Yours, for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction – you’ll not die, it cannot be!
But perhaps the main "audience" in the poem is the speaker. The character is caught unawares by Galuppi’s music; in condemning it as dead and cold and no longer relevant ("extinct", in a sense), he realises that the same universal laws apply to his own world as applied to the composer’s. Thus everything in the poem has to do with endings: Galuppi’s toccata resolves all of its "suspensions" with the final octave; this signifies to the speaker that Venice’s greatness and wealth is finished with – but he cannot limit the meaning of the music to that and is forced to realise that his own world is also limited, finite and must end. Galuppi’s Venetian audience thought him a "master" (when they bothered to listen); the present speaker finds his music to be a historical relic without appeal ("how we’ve progressed!"). Yet Galuppi has the last laugh in reminding the speaker of his mortality, and the transience of his own age and its concerns.
There is a sense too, of loss in the poem – of "soul" – something the Venetians ignored in their search for pleasure, but which we can’t find – neither in the music, nor in ourselves, for all our superior knowledge.
Notes:
The poem was first published in 1855. This gives its clear references to the extinction of species contemporary relevance – though The Origin of Species was not published till 1858, anyone with any scientific knowledge would have realised the challenge to religious orthodoxy posed by the fossil record.
A toccata is a piece of music – usually for keyboard since percussive intruments best express its form – which is characterised by equal note values and fairly strict tempo. It can thus seem rather mechanical – and the skill of the composer lies in harmonic variation and melodic invention to sustain the listener’s interest. In its inception generally a "lighter" genre – (from Italian – "toccare" – to touch) but Bach made great use of the form as the introduction to some of his mightiest fugues.
Clavichord – like a harpsichord but smaller and more portable.
Doges – the rulers of Venice. The sea was the source of Venice’s power and the poem refers to the yearly ceremony where a ring was cast into the sea in a symbolic marriage.
Questions:
How does Browning’s use of
rhyme, rhythm and choice of vocabulary contribute to the poem?
Why does Browning make a point of
having the speaker say "I was never out of England – "?
What is the speaker’s attitude
to Galuppi’s music?
Why does the speaker quote comments
the Venetians might have made as they listened to the music?
What is his attitude to them?
What evidence is there that some
stanzas of the poem belong to a conversation?
Who might this conversation be
between?
Why does the speaker "feel
chilly and grown old"?
What images does Browning use in the
poem to reinforce ideas of death or impermanence?
What do other images in the poem
suggest?
Describe the tone and mood of the
poem. In what ways do they change in the course of the poem?
What is this poem saying (i.e. what
is its theme)?
"Porphyria’s Lover" .
This poem was first published (with another poem) in a pamphlet entitled ‘Madhouse Cells’.
It is thus tempting to regard it as a study in abnormal psychology. But there are many other interesting aspects to it. The rapid expansion of the print media and improvements in education meant there was a ready market for the lurid sensationalism of the press and rapid social change meant that the boundaries of class were weakened. (It is clear from the poem that Porphyria and her lover are of very different social backgrounds). In this poem Browning could hint strongly at sexual undertones which novelists like Dickens, for example, had to encode far more obscurely.
The difference between the subject matter of the poem and what was normally regarded as a properly ‘poetic’ subject could hardly be more striking. But Browning is not as innovative as you might think. In the previous century Wordsworth had claimed as legitimate territory for poets the language and lives of ordinary people, and hence was roundly criticised for his choice of subject. But Wordsworth never abandoned the voice of the poet as central. Here what is most shocking perhaps is Browning’s complete abandonment of any voice in the poem save the speaker’s own. We are left with the full force of the speaker’s delusion. His point of view is totally unmediated - whereas Wordsworth would reflect and moralise, Browning is silent – indeed the poem ends in silence.
There is a feeling right at the beginning of the poem that we are pitched headlong into the situation – the opening is bald and direct and the speaker’s apprehensive mood is established straight away. He clearly projects his feelings out onto the surroundings. The rhythms of the poem are nervous and the tight verse structure with its insistent rhyme creates a feeling of tension. From now on all that happens has an element of unpredictability and surprise which creates a feeling of dislocation – there is no lead-up or explanation of Porphyria’s sudden arrival, nor of her behaviour. We are left to conjecture about the nature of the relationship and its origins – might even consider the possibility that this is all a fantasy of the speaker’s. The shock of the poem is that far from relieving the speaker of his anxieties, Porphyria’s arrival has only added to them. There is no conventional happy outcome here, nor the poetic fiction that true love conquers social divides. For if we do not take the poem as fantasy there is no doubt that love of a kind exists here, and it is mutual. The key lies in the different forms that love takes – generous and giving, and sexually confident on the one hand, manipulatiive and obsessive and sexually passive, on the other. Hardly a picture of romantic love.
I think Browning in this poem sees violence and hatred – even murder – as the logical extension of sexual possessiveness, and of the stereotyping of sexual roles. The image of Porphyria’s "smiling rosy little head" reminds us of David Copperfield’s "doll wife" Dora, (who is, incidentally, killed off in the novel), yet this is the speaker’s perception of her, not at all the truth. She is the one who has exercised control and initiative, and the speaker is simply unable to handle this. In his mind his killing her has the desired effect of restoring the appropriate gender roles, with the male as dominant. So of course God will not say a word. Like the Duchess, Porphyria is not a real human being to the speaker but an extension of his fantasies. To the extent that she is real, she contradicts his fantasies and unhappily for her pays the price. Human beings will go to considerable lengths to maintain their fantasies in the face of the real.
That there is an element of fantasy about Porphyria’s death adds another dimension to the poem. It hints at the shadow side of all of us – those aspects of our personality that we deny to others and even to ourselves – the anger, rage and even hatred we inevitably feel on occasions even towards those we claim to love. Far from being sensational (in which case you could dismiss it), I think this poem is quite disturbing.
Questions
How does Browning use imagery, rhythm
and rhyme to build tension in the poem’s opening?
What is your impression of Porphyria?
Comment on her behaviour towards the
speaker.
Comment on his initial response to
her.
What is your explanation of why he
kills her?
How effective is the ending of the
poem?
"My Last Duchess"
What follows is a recent poem by the modern American poet and writer of dramatic monologues, Richard Howard. Decide for yourself whether this is anything more than an amusing and derivative pastiche of the original – I think it’s very clever and very funny though it depends on you knowing your Browning – and probably trades on the fact that this is one of the most studied and written about poems in the language. EVERY American College freshman will have encountered it in their Liberal Arts courses, or whatever it is they call them…
Nikolaus Mardruz to His Master
Ferdinand, Count of Tyrol, 1565
My Lord recalls Ferrara? How walls
rise out of water yet appear to recede
identically
into it, as if
built in both directions: soaring and sinking ...
Such mirroring was my first dismay—
my next, having crossed
the moat, was making
out that, for all its grandeur, the great
pile, observed close to, is close to a ruin!
(Even My Lord's most
unstinting dowry
may not restore these wasted precincts to what
their deteriorating state demands.)
Queasy it made me,
glancing first down there
at swans in the moat apparently
feeding on their own doubled image, then up
at the citadel,
so high—or so deep,
and everywhere those carved effigies of
men and women, monsters among them
crowding the ramparts
and seeming at home
in the dingy water that somehow
held them up as if for our surveillance—ours?
anyone's who looked!
All that pretention
of marble display, the whole improbable
menagerie with but one purpose:
having to be seen.
Such was the matter
of Ferrara, and such the manner,
when at last we met, of the Duke in greeting
My Lordship's Envoy:
life in fallen stone!
Several hours were to elapse, in the keeping
of his lackeys, before the Envoy
of My Lord the Count
of Tyrol might see
or even be seen to by His Grace
the Duke of Ferrara, though from such neglect
no deliberate
slight need be inferred:
now that I have had an opportunity
—have had, indeed, the obligation—
to fix on His Grace
that perlustration
or power of scrutiny for which
(I believe) My Lord holds his Envoy's service
in some favor still,
I see that the Duke,
by his own lights or perhaps, more properly
said, by his own tenebrosity,
could offer some excuse
for such cunctation ...
Appraising a set of cameos
just brought from Cairo by a Jew in his trust,
His Grace had been rapt
in connoisseurship,
that study which alone can distract him
from his wonted courtesy; he was
affability
itself, once his mind
could be deflected from mere objects.
At last I presented (with those documents
which in some detail
describe and define
the duties of both signators) the portrait
of your daughter the Countess,
observing the while
his countenance. No
fault was found with our contract, of which
each article had been so correctly framed
(if I may say so)
as to ascertain
a pre-nuptial alliance which must persuade
and please the most punctilious (and
impecunious)
of future husbands.
Principally, or (if I may be
allowed the amendment) perhaps Ducally,
His Grace acknowledged
himself beguiled by
Cranach's portrait of our young Countess, praising
the design, the hues, the glaze—the frame!
and appeared averse,
for a while, even
to letting the panel leave his hands!
Examining those same hands, I was convinced
that no matter what
the result of our
(at this point, promising) negotiations,
your daughter's likeness must now remain
"for good," as we say,
among Ferrara's
treasures, already one more trophy
in His Grace's multifarious holdings,
like those marble busts
lining the drawbridge,
like those weed-stained statues grinning up at us
from the still moat, and—inside as well
as out—those grotesque
figures and faces
fastened to the walls. So be it!
Real
bother (after all, one painting, for Cranach
—and My Lord—need be
no great forfeiture)
commenced only when the Duke himself led me
out of the audience-chamber and
laboriously
(he is no longer
a young man) to a secret penthouse
high on the battlements where he can indulge
those despotic tastes
he denominates,
half smiling over the heartless words,
"the relative consolations of semblance."
"Sir, suppose you draw
that curtain," smiling
in earnest now, and so I sought—
but what appeared a piece of drapery proved
a painted deceit!
My embarrassment
afforded a cue for audible laughter,
and only then His Grace, visibly
relishing his trick,
turned the thing around,
whereupon appeared, on the reverse,
the late Duchess of Ferrara to the life!
Instanter the Duke
praised the portrait
so readily provided by one Pandolf—
a monk by some profane article
attached to the court,
hence answerable
for taking likenesses as required
in but a day's diligence, so it was claimed ...
Myself I find it
but a mountebank's
proficiency—another chicane, like that
illusive curtain, a waxwork sort
of nature called forth:
cold legerdemain!
Though extranea such as the hares
(copulating!), the doves, and a full-blown rose
were showily limned,
I could not discern
aught to be loved in that countenance itself,
likely to rival, much less to excel
the life illumined
in Cranach's image
of our Countess, which His Grace had set
beside the dead woman's presentment.... And took,
so evident was
the supremacy,
no further pains to assert Fra Pandolf's skill.
One last hard look, whereupon the Duke
resumed his discourse
in an altered tone,
now some unintelligible rant
of stooping—His Grace chooses "never to stoop"
when he makes reproof ...
My Lord will take this
as but a figure: not only is the Duke
no longer young, his body is so
queerly misshapen
that even to speak
of "not stooping" seems absurdity:
the creature is stooped, whether by cruel or
impartial cause—say
Time or the Tempter—
I shall not venture to hypothecate. Cause
or no cause, it would appear he marked
some motive for his
"reproof," a mortal
chastisement in fact inflicted on
his poor Duchess, put away (I take it so)
for smiling—at whom?
Brother Pandolf? or
some visitor to court during the sitting?
—too generally, if I construe
the Duke's clue rightly,
to survive the terms
of his ... severe protocol. My Lord,
at the time it was delivered to me thus,
the admonition
if indeed it was
any such thing, seemed no more of a menace
than the rest of his rodomontade;
item, he pointed,
as we toiled downstairs,
to that bronze Neptune by our old Claus
(there must be at least six of them cluttering
the Summer Palace
at Innsbruck), claiming
it was "cast in bronze for me." Nonsense, of course.
But upon reflexion, I suppose
we had better take
the old reprobate
at his unspeakable word ... Why, even
assuming his boasts should be as plausible
as his avarice,
no "cause" for dismay:
once ensconced here as the Duchess, your daughter
need no more apprehend the Duke's
murderous temper
than his matchless taste.
For I have devised a means whereby
the dowry so flagrantly pursued by our
insolvent Duke ("no
just pretence of mine
be disallowed" indeed!), instead of being
paid as he pleads in one globose sum,
should drip into his
coffers by degrees—
say, one fifth each year—then after five
such years, the dowry itself to be doubled,
always assuming
that Her Grace enjoys
her usual smiling health. The years are her
ally in such an arbitrament,
and with confidence
My Lord can assure
the new Duchess (assuming her Duke
abides by these stipulations and his own
propensity for
accumulating
"semblances") the long devotion (so long as
he lasts) of her last Duke ... Or more likely,
if I guess aright
your daughter's intent,
of that young lordling I might make so
bold as to designate her next Duke, as well ...
Ever determined in
My Lordship's service,
I remain his Envoy
to Ferrara as to the world.
Nikolaus Mardruz.
The usual way this poem is read is to tick off the Duke’s bad points, and enumerate the Duchess’s good ones. He’s a monster of egotism and vanity; she on the other hand was refreshingly vital and alive – a real person of flesh and blood, whose life-force transcends even death. Hence his need to make sure that this time his vanity will be gratified in the person of the new Duchess, who had better behave herself a bit better or she will meet the same fate. We are told that the poem is a study in how absolute power corrupts – this man can get away with murder and feel no remorse or guilt. People are there simply to be used. It is shocking to think that a developed sense of taste in art can go along with a complete absence of morality; Browning’s poem challenges conventional assumptions about the humanising influences of art and culture. You could even begin to feel a bit sorry for the Duke – trapped within his own consciousness forever unaware of the real sources of love and vitality in the world. A monster is always, in some sense, a pitiable figure, unless you are one of his victims.
All this is true. But if critics like Langbaum are right, where is the tension in this poem (and Porphyria’s Lover) between condemnation and distance, and identification? Are there respects in which the Duke is more like us than we care to think?
We can get some sense of this if we ask ourselves, not why the Duke shows the painting, but why he conceals it. From whom is the painting being concealed – since it is behind a curtain – but himself? Why does he speak of her and show her portrait now? It is hardly a necessary negotiating tactic, since he has the power to enforce his demands. He has had her killed, but she will not die. His speech to the envoy is nothing less than an attempt to kill her all over again, and has little to do with the next Duchess. This poem is all about desire – which as Lacan points out, has nothing to do with having your wants and needs satisfied. Indeed, it is the very opposite. When all your wants and needs are satisfied, there is still desire. According to Lacan, desire is structured around lack, absence. For desire itself to be satisfied, the something would have to be, at the same time, the nothing which is in the space forever occupied by absence – clearly impossible. We can’t simultaneously have, and not have, something – just as we can’t enjoy both the anticipation of the meal, and the meal itself. The Duke’s desire is for the last Duchess’s simultaneous presence AND absence. It is the Duke’s desire which forces the disclosure of the painting, where the Duchess is both present and absent, forces speech, forces the confession of the murder, compels him to acquire yet more works of art, and Duchesses, in a perpetual cycle from which there is no escape. Desire cannot be satisfied by another’s death, and their replacement. As another of Browning’s poems makes clear, it is as potent a force at the very moment of one’s own death as at any other moment in life. It just literally never leaves us and can never be satisifed. At the height of his power, the Duke has had to face the fact that when you are confronted with your own desire, you are simply powerless. (As the Bishop finds that, when you are powerless, you are still confronted with your desire). Perhaps Richard Howard has caught something in the poem by making the Duke. practically senile. We could be tempted to say that our identification with the Duke comes from crude envy of his power and wealth – the freedom to do whatever you want. I think we are more struck by his lack of power, in the face of the tyrrany of desire itself – something we can all identify with. Where the poem is really shocking, I think, is that once again there is no moral judgement: this is merely one strategy for dealing with desire, compared with which our own strategies are equally unsatisfactory. Seen this way, I think the poem does more than present us with an example of ruthless greed and acquisitiveness, but goes some way towards explaining them.
Robert Browning – Commentary and Study Guide
"The Bishop Orders his Tomb…"
Browning announced this poem in a letter as "just the thing for the times…" referring to the religious controversy of the 1840’s sparked by the ‘Oxford Movement’. A number of Anglican churchmen expressed the view, in a series of articles, books and pamphlets, that the Protestant break with Catholicism meant that essential aspects of Christianity had been lost. It began as a movement to recover these elements within the context of Anglicanism; it ended with some of the leading figures of the movement (John Henry Newman being the most famous example), converting to Catholicism. It is worth remembering that the England of the mid-ninetheenth century discriminated against you in various ways if you were not a member of the Church of England; you could not sit in Parliament; you were barred from Oxford or Cambridge, for example. So the conversion to Catholicism of significant figures in society like Newman was bound to arouse controversy.
Having said this, and despite Browning’s comment, you would be hard put to find in the poem any specific references to the controversy. What then, is the relevance of contemporary Victorian religious debate, to Browning’s portrayal of a character so far removed from it, historically?
The poem has a relevance to religious debate and controversy, though in a far wider and more universal sense. All of us have a sense of what it is to lead a religious life, as distinct from a "worldly" one. We tend to think that "a priest is always a priest" – that is, every minute of his (or her) waking life is spent "being religious". If we think about this a little more we can see that it is clearly nonsense. Clergymen and Bishops, for that matter, are human beings like the rest of us, with human desires and interests, some of which have nothing to do with their vocation and may even conflict with it. That is just human fact. Browning is vey fond as we have seen, of refocussing us on the "human facts" which frequently contradict our illusions about how people think or behave. But the curious thing about "The Bishop Orders his Tomb" is that, in a way, it relies on us keeping our illusions till the end, for the poem to work its full effect on us.
Thus Browning obviously maximises the element of surprise by presenting his Bishop as outrageously materialistic and unrepentant, widening the dramatic gap between the Bishop’s actual words and what we expect him to behave like on his deathbed. This gap is pushed as wide as possible: we keep expecting him to start behaving and speaking like a churchman, so that there is a constant sense, almost, of speech itself being violated. The Bishop is someone who is powerless in this world, yet quite scandalously unready for the next one, but an equal part of the "shock value" is to do with our automatic assumption that true religious feeling and piety somehow just go with the circumstances. Browning plays on this so that the language we think a Bishop on his deathbed ought to speak exists as a largely silent counter-text to the poem, which the poem itself reminds us of from time to time,"Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!"; "Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years:/Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?"; "Evil and brief hath been my pilgimmage." Often, as with the last quotation, the two "texts" are violently juxtaposed, producing an effect of comic absurdity: "All Lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope/My villas!"
A priest who has, not just moments of worldliness, but seemingly no awareness of the religious life and what it means at all, is of course a scandal. And of course, he is grasping, manipulative, envious (Gandolf), a criminal (he burnt down the Church in order to steal the lump of lapis lazuli), a self-indulgent sensualist, a womaniser, in short, guilty of every one of the Seven Deadly Sins – and repents none of it. And he tries to offer worldy bribes to his sons so that they will ensure for him one final piece of worldly glory. But if you read this poem simply as the expose of a corrupt and worldy individual, you are missing most of the real interest of the poem as well as a good deal of its humour. As with "My Last Duchess" this is not just about ticking off the character’s "bad points". Really the poem is about the opposition (and confusion) of two kinds of language, signifying two worlds of experience – which are themselves mixed up together, quite comically in this case. It is easy for us, for example, to feel superior to the Bishop, as he confuses the life after death with this one, imagining himself turning to stone and remaining conscious (in a very sensuous way). But what are we to make of the "afterlife"? How is it possible for us to imagine it, or death itself, in any other way than through our experience? The only way to speak about the next world is through the language of this one – for now! And since death means the cessation of our experience, our attempts to imagine it involve us in contradictions and absurdity – such as fantasising about being present at our own funerals, or after our own death. (Something we all have done from time to time.) Perhaps the absurdity of the Bishop’s fantasies – their pathetic inadequacy - touch us in a quite moving way because they remind us of our own. It’s tempting to take a line of moral superiority, but this isn’t really how we feel at the end of the poem. The energy of the Bishop’s desires even on his death-bed, his evident satisfaction at the life he has lived, his reluctance to let go of it, make him all too human.
Note: Another 19th century version of death and the aftelife which might prove a useful comparison to this one (though by no means as fine a poem) is Cardinal Newman’ Gerontius. (Newman was the most famous of the Tractarian converts to Catholicism).
Questions:
What mood and tone does the Bishop
convey in lines 1-14?
What does he reveal about his past?
Why does he describe his sons
euphemistically as "nephews"?
What qualities does the Bishop reveal
in lines 15-33?
Comment on the rhythm and language of
the poetry in these lines. How do they support the tone and mood of the poem in this
passage?
What is the religious significance of
the image of the wine? Why is this image ironical?
Comment on the Bishop’s
confession of the theft, and his directions to his sons to recover the stolen lapis
lazuli. Why is this so outrageous? How does Browning use language and imagery to make this
episode live in the reader’s mind?
Explain in as much detail as you can
what the Bishop imagines his tomb will look like.
Comment on the appropriateness or
otherwise of this tomb.
The sons are clearly going to reject
their "father"’s request. What point does this make?
Comment on the Bishop’s attitude
to his sons in the course of the poem. How does it change? How is it one more violation of
what we would expect from a priest?
How does the mood alter in lines
80-98? What poetic resources does Browning employ to create this change of mood, and how
is it sustained?
What is the Bishop’s state of
mind as he makes his final request for details on his tomb?
What is the effect of the image in
lines 116 & 117? What important thematic element does it add to the poem?
How effective is the poem’s
ending?
"Two in the Campagna"
This poem shows that Browning was equally a master of the short lyric, as of the extended dramatic monologue. But though the speaker is anonymous, and not characterised in any but the most general way, the poem has many dramatic features: the speaker addresses an audience (his lover) in a particular setting, which is vividly created in wonderful imagery; the speaker’s mood and tone are constantly changing, and the emotions and thoughts of the poem are immediate and direct. The language of the poem is similarly direct and conversational, with the use of parenthesis, sudden shifts of thought marked by dashes in the text, questions and exclamations directed at the listener, as well as simple and concrete vocabulary.
Another feature of the poem is Browning’s ability to hold all this within the formal structure of a lyric, with its five-line stanzas and rhyme scheme (ababa). Browning uses this "tightness" in the verse to build up and release tension; there is a sense of effort as the speaker tries to come to terms with the conflicting emotions of the situation, and a feeling of release as he uses the final stanza to bring the poem to an effective conclusion, though without resolving all of the issues it raises.
The poem deals directly with a serious and "difficult" theme – that no human relationship can reach the ideal of perfect communication; that the flow of emotion between two people in love is unpredictable. Part of every relationship is a desire for a kind of ultimate union, but in the real world we only ever have glimpses or inklings of this. It is as vague and difficult to capture as the spider’s floating thread, in the beautiful and delicate imagery of stanzas II to IV. What seems like a moment of perfect togetherness is followed almost instantly by a sense of estrangement and separation; no two people can be "all" to each other. It is impossible to merge two consciousnesses. We seem to make contact, and then lose it.
I think this poem is marvellous in its focus on immediate states of mind and feeling – how suddenly they shift, how they can be tied up with a particular moment and a particular setting:
Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still, like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
how they can shift suddenly from intensely focussed perception to general reflection and thought – how thought and perception are so intertwined.
But it is also very perceptive in the way it presents the relationship from the man’s point of view. His desire for perfect union and total communication is not necessarily what the other person in the relationship wants at that time, if at all. The sense of what she might say – though we can never know it, undercuts the man’s urgency and passion. It is possible to read the speaker’s words ironically – to see him as trying to control and shape the relationship according to his desires – to direct her thoughts and feelings. This is an added source of tension and interest in the poem, which the last stanza resolves as the speaker finally accepts that the kind of perfect communion he wants is impossible. The notion of catching, holding and letting go – spider thread, emotion, thought itself, is a constantly reiterated motif of the poem’s imagery which the last stanza recapitulates beautifully. The poem does not resolve the speaker’s dilemma – but there is a dramatic resolution in the sad acceptance of this as an inevitable fact of life. Unlike many of the dramatic monologues, the speaker in this poem is capable of letting go of his desires before they become obsessions.
Questions:
Robert Browning - Commentaries and Study Guide:
'�ndrea del Sarto'
'Andrea del Sarto' is one of the richest and most satisfying of the dramatic monologues, and in the very human portrait of "the faultless painter" Browning gives us a character whose failings and aspirations, unlike those of the Bishop or Duke of Ferrara, the reader can understand and relate to. It is a superbly evocative poem and makes us realise that the qualities of dramatic speech need not be violent or energetic for the poem to succeed. This poem builds its mood slowly and surely - in a way reminding us of an artist quietly at work. Browning uses the full range of linguistic and poetic techniques, but very unobtrusively. The blank verse is supple and fluid, yielding to the flow of speech and thought while never losing the pulse. Browning employs, as always, run-on lines, hesitations, varied rhythms and syntax, but adds layers of meaning to the subtext through subtle use of imagery, irony and symbolism. Seemingly without effort, and all contained in the speaker's point of view, the poem deals with some highly complex and challenging issues around the nature of art and the true character of the artist; it also raises some universal and serious moral issues, which deserve consideration in their own right.
In his ethical writings Immanuel Kant argues that a person's failure to make the fullest possible use of their talents and abilities - assuming they were not prevented from doing so - is as much a failure of ethical duty as cheating, lying or otherwise taking advantage of others. (Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Ethics, (Second Section; see points 1.- 4.)
It is our plain moral obligation to use our talents to the maximum we can, for we owe the same duty of respect to ourselves as persons, as we do to anyone else. This obligation, Kant makes clear, is in the nature of a universal law binding on us all - as all moral obligations are, and has nothing to do with any benefit that we or others might gain.
Something similar to this notion underlies Andrea's sense of his own failure as an artist: even though his actual artistic achievement is greater than many of his contemporaries, his crucial failure is moral not artistic, even though it is as an artist that his moral failure is significant. It is a failure of the crucial element underpinning ethical or moral action - the will. As Kant puts it, the only thing which can be unconditionally "good" (in a moral sense, not just "agreeable" or even "useful") is the will. Human willpower combines with our talents and opportunities to produce actions, which we either praise or blame. Kant also argues that for us to have any concept or understanding of moral goodness,, it is absolutely essential to regard the will as free.
I believe that the whole of 'Andrea del Sarto' can be read as an attempt to evade the full weight of Kant's arguments about duty, freedom of the will and respect for oneself. Andrea shows regret it is true, but little remorse, and consistently tries to lay the blame for his failures on others especially his wife. The subtlety of the poem comes from how it shows his unhappiness being due, not to his worldly circumstances, but to the moral failure he tries to avoid acknowledging. As the poem proceeds we become aware that this is, if not the worst kind of suffering in degree, nevertheless perhaps the hardest to bear: to know deep down and in spite of all your lies and evasions, that it is all your own fault - or the crucial part of it is. You could have done better, and you didn't; you could still, and you don't.
This is not just a poem in which a man reviews the failure of his life. It's dramatic immediacy comes from the fact that he is not just reviewing, but renewing that failure. Every half-truth and evasion is itself a continuation of the past pattern and a reinforcement of it. Yet at the same time the reader cannot help but sympathise with the degree of pain the poem expresses. None of us would like to live our lives in such a space as this:
142 'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,
143 That I am something underrated here,
144 Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.
145 I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
146 For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
147 The best is when they pass and look aside;
148 But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.
AS the poem begins, Andrea is pleading with his wife to stay, and putting the responsibility on to her for his happiness. He tries to capture her and manipulate her into the unwilling and silent listener, and as a manipulator he is quite skilful and successful, mixing entreaties with reproaches in the classic manipulative style, casting aspersions on her greed and selfishness at the same time as promises to be "good" for her; upbraiding her lack of affection at the same time as he begs for it:
3 Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
4 You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
5 I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,
6 Treat his own subject after his own way,
7 Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
8 And shut the money into this small
hand
When next it takes mine. Will it?
tenderly?
The opening of the poem is
unobtrusive but brilliant. The moment unfolds with Andrea's words. The mood is peaceful
but by no means contented - as you read aloud you will notice that the voice drops at the
end of each line and sentence. There is a deliberate avoidance of climax, with
monosyllabic words and loose sentence structures - the language perfectly conveys Andrea's
passivity and submissiveness. He is giving in after a "quarrel", but at the same
time trying to even the score. In line 10 ff. We notice how Andrea phrases his request
carefully, this time building up the to the point with the long sentence beginning:
"I often am much wearier than you think,…" and continuing until he states
the pay-off: "I might get up to-morrow to my work/Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us
try."
We have some sympathy for Andrea however as a less than flattering portrait emerges of his wife. She "serves" as a model for his paintings because they are too poor to pay for one, and so in one sense hers is a face "Which everybody looks on and calls his", but this is clearly true in another sense as well. Her beauty is "serpentining" - suggesting evil - in another image he describes her voice as "the low voice my soul hears, as a bird/The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare --". These and other metaphors sum up their relationship - he, captured by her beauty, in a reversal of the usual relation of the artist to nature, and so powerless to deal with her unfaithfulness, she, contemptuous of him (and not understanding or appreciating him), and able to use his feelings for her against him. Andrea's endearments, and her smile in response are loaded with ambiguity. The smile is strange. It translates itself to the canvas in Andrea's words and the reader's mind and so signifies not affection but a kind of transaction as Andrea realises the only value it has for him lies in how he can use it for his art.
He begins his account of his life with a summary of where he stands now. Notice the repeated use of art as a metaphor; here he sees his life as "toned down" - "a common greyness silvers everything" - "that's what we painters call our 'harmony'" - "… all that I was born to be and do/A twilight piece." Andrea fatalistically sees his life as part of a work of art and the vision is deadening, entrapping. It is an art and life drained of energy and colour and vitality, lived amidst seclusion and retreat, as the monks and trees of the convent he describes take shelter from the world. Andrea's seeming acceptance "Love, we are in God's hands" is in fact the kind of fatalism which denies one's own freedom and responsibility, laying the blame for failure on others, or external circumstances: "So free we seem, so fettered fast we are."
Thus he begins by blaming Lucrezia for her indifference to him and ignorance of his art. "You don't understand/Nor care to understand about my art,";
…you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
In subsequent lines his excessive praise of her beauty is laden with the accusation that she is responsible for his failure, and he ends by accusing her of being stupid as well as indifferent:
120 Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think--
121 More than I merit, yes, by many times.
122 But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,
123 And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
124 And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
125 The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare --
126 Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
127 Some women do so.
He attempts to explain to her the dilemma of the artist gifted with great technical ability - a perfect craftsman who has been unable to lift himself beyond competence to greatness:
78 Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
79 There burns a truer light of God in them,
80 In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
81 Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
82 This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
83 Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
84 Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,
85 Enter and take their place there sure enough,
86 Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
87 My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
88 The sudden blood of these men! at a word--
89 Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
90 I, painting from myself and to myself,
91 Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame
92 Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
93 Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,
94 His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
95 Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
96 Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
97 Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
98 Or what's a heaven for? All is
silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art: the
worse!
It has been common to regard this
passage and others like it in the poem as summing up Browning's own artistic philosophy,
but if taken along with the rest of the poem, into which they fit quite seamlessly, they
are something more. The focus is on the broad question of each person's responsibility to
themselves, and the poem also shows how to fail in this responsibility leads you to make
still further moral compromises. It is because Andrea does not value himself enough that
he broke his contract with Francis - not because of his wife's pleadings. Now, he dares
not leave the house. The contempt of the Paris lords whom he is trying to avoid is for
Andrea as a man, not an artist.
I think what Browning's poem says is more subtle than the simplistic notion that to be a good artist you have to be a good man. In Andrea's case the failure to be the best artist that he could have been has led to the other failures. This question of the relation between art and the artist is one Browning also tackled in his essay on Shelley, and he answered it in much the same way there, that we judge the artist's relationship with his work and his calling, and can quite legitimately find a moral dimension in that relationship. If that crucial relationship is a true and genuine one (irrespective of anything else the artist might have done in his life) it can affect the quality of the work. When we experience it we will feel a sense of total commitment which is inspiring and uplifting, and though this cannot be done without technical accomplishment, we sense that we are in a different league from those who are merely technicians.
Browning's poem then, is a quite complex and sophisticated account of what greatness in art consists of. It is not necessarily the right view - but it is at least arguable. Much more na�ve versions have been seriously put forward by critics of art and literature - some of them Browning's contemporaries (Ruskin, for example). And in saying what that greatness does not consist of, the poem makes its rhetorical point very strongly, no more so than when Andrea realises that it is not fate or Lucrezia but his own crucial failure of will that condemns him to relative obscurity as an artist:
132 I might have done it for you. So it seems:
133 Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
134 Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;
135 The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
136 What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
137 In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
138 And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
139 Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--
140 And thus we half-men struggle.
. . .
266 Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.
267 Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.
Questions
What is the nature of the
relationship between Andrea and Lucrezia and how does Browning convey this to us in the
poem?
Explain how the poem shows and
develops Andrea’s internal conflicts.
Discuss how the poem establishes its
context and setting.
What resources of language does
Browning employ to present and develop aspects of Andrea’s character. Choose an
extended passage to analyse.
What are the major issues of this
poem? How does the poem establish and develop these issues?
Comment on Browning’s use of
art, and artistic processes, as key images and motifs in the poem.
Robert Browning Commentaries and Study Guide
"Soliloquoy of the Spanish Cloister"
The term "soliloquoy" is doubly appropriate for this poem, firstly as the speaker does not communicate with a listener "inside the frame", and secondly perhaps because the sheer energy of his seemingly motiveless hatred, its impact on the reader, reminds us of Shakespeare’s use of the soliloquoy, especially with such villains as Edmund (King Lear), Richard III, or even Iago (Othello).
The soliloquoy was and is a dramatic convention whereby a character speaks, alone on stage, and the words are meant to represent the character’s thoughts. Inevitably though, they are directed out towards the audience, as the actor projects the character. A soliloquoy is seldom quite like thinking – the actor must draw a response from the audience and this necessarily involves a degree of collusion on our part. No actor playing a Shakespearean villain can avoid the opportunities given by the script for manipulating the audience’s reactions. Part of the complexity and fascination of Shakespeare’s evil characters comes from this sense that, at least some of the time, we are drawn in on the villain’s side – sharing his particular perspective, forced for the time being to adopt his world-view, his distorted morality, and frequently to admire his qualities of ruthlessness and cunning. The truly disturbing thing about many of these characters – even the villains in Shakespeare’s comedies – is the sense we get from them of the power of evil – to distort and manipulate and destroy other’s lives. In their soliloquoys, they demonstrate that power by their ability to challenge and, for the moment, disturb and distort our own thinking.
In a similar way, Browning’s monk throws you, the reader, off balance, and manages to hold you there for the duration of the poem – or soliloquoy. The difference is that unlike an Iago or an Edmund, the speaker is powerless to enforce his hatred; Brother Lawrence remains in blissful ignorance of it, and none of his attempts to cause harm seem to succeed. The figure of Brother Lawrence hovers at the edges of the speaker’s frame – we seem to catch glimpses of him going about his activities, but he remains untouched by the speaker’s malice. The garden is still flourishing; it’s extremely unlikely that Brother Lawrence would succumb to the temptations of the "scrofulous French novel", or that he would understand the theological minefields of the "text in Galatians" enough to be led into heresy and hence damnation. The speaker’s final threat can be dismissed as pure fantasy – we know by the end of the poem that he will do nothing, and can do nothing – " ‘St, there’s Vespers!".
So the final effect of the speaker’s hatred here is absurd and comic – we have no need to fear the tragic outcome that will result from the machinations of an Iago or an Edmund, with the opportunity as well as the malice to damage others’ lives. Nevertheless, the only way we can challenge the speaker’s view of Brother Lawrence (or the Duke’s view of his last Duchess, or the lover’s version of Porphyria) is through our reading of the poem. And the speaker’s perspective has to be sustainable, in the face of that "oppositional" reading, for the poem to work its full effect. This doesn’t mean for a moment that we would ever regard the speaker’s emotions as morally justified. But I think we have to allow them their reality – that is, to realise that malice like this really does exist in the world – it can’t just be dismissed because in this instance it has no power to act.
Browning’s poem, then, has many of the same moral and ethical dimensions as a Shakespearean tragedy – only in miniature. It is, in effect, a miniature study in evil. The comic effect is a kind of shrinking effect – as if we see Iago reduced to puppet-size and impotent – we can laugh at him then – we are safe. Our terror of Shakespeare’s evil characters comes from our knowledge of the the harm they can and will do – so when they speak to us, the audience, we have a sense of their power, their scope, their largeness on the stage they act upon. For a moment, it seems they can threaten and control us, as well as get inside our heads. In the restricted world of Browning’s Spanish cloister – further restricted to the "head space" of one individual in it - we can dismiss this character as harmful only to himself. But the moral dimension remains the same. The potential for evil is there – all that is different is the scale of opportunity.
Questions
How does Browning demonstrate the
speaker’s hatred?
What else can we infer about the
speaker and his situation, besides his hatred of Brother Lawrence?
What picture of Brother Lawrence
emerges from the poem?
How effectively does the poem create
its setting?
What is the significance of the
religious imagery of the poem? How does the poem use this ironically?
What resources of language and
imagery does Browning use to enable an "oppositional" reading of the text?
Explain the poem’s relevance beyond
its time and setting? (i.e. what themes and issues raised in the poem are relevant for
today?)
Robert Browning Commentaries and Study Guide
Prologue to Asolando
Asolando was Browning’s last published collection of poetry – this poem dates from 1889. This, and the title of the collection itself, spring from a return visit to Asolo (about 30 miles from Venice) after an initial visit in 1838, and a subsequent one in 1878. (See Robert Browning, The Poems, Vol. 2, ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins, Penguin (1981), pp. 1120-1121). It is a strange, beautiful and in some ways quite difficult poem. The theme is one dealt with earlier by Wordsworth and Coleridge ("Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"; "Dejection: An Ode") and later by Thomas Hardy, and most notably Yeats ("The Circus Animals’ Desertion") – the loss to the poet, as he grows older, of that early sense of the immanence of the divine in creation, the loss of the transcendent vision. The speakers of this poem (for it is in the form of a dialogue) lament the fact that they no longer see the world as they once did – where every perception seemed to be heightened with an intensity that amounted almost to a religious experience. Perhaps, too, for a poet who had passed through most of the changes which characterised the Victorian period, who had seen the passing of the Romantic movement, with most of its major figures dying or fading away in the course of his own poetic development, there was a sense that there had been a shift generally in the way we perceived the world – that the passionate intensity of that earlier time had given way to a sense of praticality and commerce – prosperity and empire-building was the business of the world now, and what place did poetry have? The opening line of the poem ("The poet’s age is sad: for why?") could then have an added meaning – is it perhaps poetry itself that has aged, and struggles to find its original vision and relevance?
At times, then, the tone of the poem suggests bitterness and resignation. If the Romantic vision cannot be sustained into old age, then surely it is a failure?
And now a flower is just a flower:
Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man -
Simply themselves,…
………
Hill, tree, vale, flower, Italia’s rare
O’er-running beauty crowds the eye –
But flame? The bush is bare.
Hill, vale, tree, flower – they stand distinct,
Nature to know and name. What then?
All the speaker can do, it seems, is repetitively name the objects – he cannot create or invoke them. These words express in their monosyllabic heaviness how the transforming power of the poet’s imagination has been withdrawn from the world.
But the poem’s imagery works to counter this bitterness, in the power of the images it still gives to the transcendent visions of youth – even as their loss is recollected their power is re-enacted in images of light and fire like these:
"…his eye
At once involved with alien glow
His own soul’s iris bow";
"Of dyes which, when life’s day began,
Round each in glory ran".
What do we make of this opposition? What is the poem saying? A clue to the way the whole poem balances and resolves these conflicts, lies I think in the following stanzas:
How many a year, my Asolo,
Since, one step just from sea to land –
I found you, loved yet feared you so –
For natural objects seemed to stand
Palpably fire-clothed! No-
No mastery of mine o’er these!
That is, the very presence of the poet’s visionary power had its cost – the poet was struck dumb:
"Language? Tush!
Silence ‘tis awe decrees."
In brief, when young, you lack the language to match the vision – in age you lack the vision to match the language. But loss of sight is compensated for by a sharpening of that other sense, hearing – and the poem turns to that sense in its last two stanzas, picking up the earlier allusion to the story of the burning bush – "A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked/Fancy from fact…" Our loss of the immediacy of vision is compensated by understanding –in place of "the eye late dazed", "the purged ear apprehends/Earth’s import". And the fact that the poet can still hear, and more importantly speak even though the eye is dimmed, as he does through his persona in this poem, is possibly the strongest justification for the poem’s final line. The world’s beauty is still there – sustained and created by God, not the poet’s visionary power. This we understand, rather than perceive. In a sense the "unlinking" of the vision from the reality is the really crucial thing – in itself, the greatest compensation. For the loss of immanence is what forces us to go beyond appearances. We would have no need of any faith if we "saw" directly. And in order to have a language with which we can understand and communicate, we need to lose that total coherence of vision – to separate the world into objects we can name and so deal with objectively. The deeper knowledge is in fact the less immediate, more roundabout, more "difficult" way – a comment which could be applied, really, to Browning’s poetry as a whole….