A Handbook to the Works of Browning Part 23

EMOTIONAL POEMS (CONTINUED).

RELIGIOUS, ARTISTIC, AND EXPRESSIVE OF THE FIERCER EMOTIONS.

The emotions which, after that of love, are most strongly represented in Mr. Browning's works are the RELIGIOUS and the ARTISTIC: emotions closely allied in every nature in which they happen to co-exist, and which are so in their proper degree in Mr. Browning's; the proof of this being that two poems which I have placed in the Artistic group almost equally fit into the Religious. But the religious poems impress us more by their beauty than by their number, if we limit it to those which are directly inspired by this particular emotion. Religious questions have occupied, as we have seen, some of Mr. Browning's most important reflective poems. Religious belief forms the undercurrent of many of the emotional poems. And it was natural therefore, that religious feeling should not often lay hold of him in a more exclusive form. It does so only in three cases; those of

"Saul." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in part in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," 1845; wholly, in "Men and Women,"

1855.)

"Epilogue." ("Dramatis Personae." 1864.)

"Fears and Scruples." ("Pacchiarotto and other Poems." 1876.)

The religious sentiment in "SAUL" antic.i.p.ates Christianity. It begins with the expression of an exalted human tenderness, and ends in a prophetic vision of Divine Love, as manifested in Christ. The speaker is David. He has been sent into the presence of Saul to sing and play to him; for Saul is in the agony of that recurring spiritual conflict from which only David's song can deliver him; and when the boy-shepherd has crept his way into the darkness of the tent, he sees the monarch with arms outstretched against its poles, dumb, sightless, and stark, like the serpent in the solitude of the forest awaiting its transformation.

David tells his story, re-enacting the scene which it describes, in strong, simple, picturesque words which rise naturally into the language of prophecy. He tells how first he tried the influence of pastoral tunes: those which call the sheep back to the pen, and stir the sense of insect and bird; how he pa.s.sed to the song of the reapers--their challenge to mutual help and fellows.h.i.+p; to the warrior's march; the burial and marriage chants; the chorus of the Levites advancing towards the altar; and how at this moment Saul sent forth a groan, though the lights which leapt from the jewels of his turban were his only sign of motion. Then--the tale continues--David changes his theme. He sings of the goodness of human life, as attested by the joyousness of youth, the grat.i.tude of old age. He sings of labour and success, of hope and fulfilment, of high ambitions and of great deeds; of the great king in whom are centred all the gifts and the powers of human nature--of Saul himself. And at these words the tense body relaxes, the arms cross themselves on the breast. But the eyes of Saul still gaze vacantly before him, without consciousness of life, without desire for it.

David's song has poured forth the full cup of material existence; he has yet to infuse into it that draught of "Soul Wine" which shall make it desirable. In a fresh burst of inspiration, he challenges his hearer to follow him beyond the grave. "The tree is known by its fruits; life by its results. Life, like the palm fruit, must be crushed before its wine can flow. Saul will die. But his pa.s.sion and his power will thrill the generations to come. His achievements will live in the hearts of his people; for whom their record, though covering the whole face of a rock, will still seem incomplete." And as the "Soul Wine" works, as the vision of this earthly immortality unfolds itself before the sufferer's sight, he becomes a king again. The old att.i.tude and expression a.s.sert themselves. The hand is gently laid on the young singer's forehead; the eyes fix themselves in grave scrutiny upon him.

Then the heart of David goes out to the suffering monarch in filial, pitying tenderness; and he yearns to give him more than this present life--a new life equal to it in goodness, and which shall be everlasting.

And the yearning converts itself into prophecy. What he, as man, can desire for his fellow-man, G.o.d will surely give. What he would suffer for those he loves, surely G.o.d would suffer. Human nature in its power of love would otherwise outstrip the Divine. He cries for the weakness to be engrafted upon strength, the human to be manifested in the Divine.

And exulting in the consciousness that his cry is answered, he hails the advent of Christ. He bids Saul "see" that a Face like his who now speaks to him awaits him at the threshold of an eternal life; that a Hand like his hand opens to him its gates.

David's prophecy has rung through the universe; and as he seeks his home in the darkness, unseen "cohorts" press everywhere upon him. A tumultuous expectation is filling earth and h.e.l.l and heaven. The Hand guides him through the tumult. He sees it die out in the birth of the young day. But the hushed voices of nature attest the new dispensation.

The seal of the new promise is on the face of the earth.

The EPILOGUE is spoken by three different persons, and embodies as many phases of the religious life. The "FIRST SPEAKER, _as David_,"

represents the old Testament Theism, with its solemn celebrations, its pompous wors.h.i.+p, and the strong material faith which bowed down the thousands as one man, before the visible glory of the Lord.

The "SECOND SPEAKER, _as Renan_" represents nineteenth-century scepticism, and the longing of the heart for the old belief which scientific reason has dispelled. This belief is symbolized by a "Face"

which once looked down from heights of glory upon men; by a star which shone down upon them in responsive life and love. The face has vanished into darkness. The star, gradually receding, has lost itself in the mult.i.tude of the lesser lights of heaven. And centuries roll past while the forsaken watchers vainly question the heavenly vault for the sign of love no longer visible there.

This lament a.s.sumes that Theism, having grown into Christianity, must disappear with it; and the pathetic sense of bereavement gives way to shuddering awe, as the farther significance of the sceptical position reveals itself. _Man_ becomes the summit of creation; the sole successor to the vacant throne of G.o.d.

The "THIRD SPEAKER," Mr. Browning himself, corrects both the material faith of the Old Testament, and the scientific doubt of the nineteenth century, by the idea of a more mystical and individual intercourse between G.o.d and man. Observers have noted in the Arctic Seas that the whole field of waters seem constantly hastening towards some central point of rock, to envelope it in their playfulness and their force; in the blackness they have borrowed from the nether world, or the radiance they have caught from heaven; then tearing it up by the roots, to sweep onwards towards another peak, and make _it_ their centre for the time being. So do the forces of life and nature circle round the individual man, doing in each the work of experience, reproducing for each the Divine Face which is inspired by the spirit of creation. And, as the speaker declares, he needs no "Temple," because the world is that. Nor, as he implies, needs he look beyond the range of his own being for the lost Divinity.

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows!" (vol. vii. p. 255.)

"FEARS AND SCRUPLES" ill.u.s.trates this personal religion in an opposite manner. It is the expression of a tender and very simple religious feeling, saddened by the obscurity which surrounds its object, and still more by the impossibility of proving to other minds that this object is a real one. It is described as the devotion to an unseen friend, known only by his letters and reported deeds, but whom one loves as by instinct, believes in without testimony, and trusts to as accepting the allegiance of the smaller being, and sure sooner or later to acknowledge it In the present case the days are going by. No sign of acknowledgment has been given. Sceptics a.s.sure the believer that his faith rests on letters which were forged, on actions which others equally have performed; he can only yearn for some word or token which would enable him to shut their mouth. But when some one hints that the friend is only concealing himself to test his power of vision, and will punish him if he does not see; and another objects that this would prove the friend a monster; he crushes the objector with a word: "and what if the friend be G.o.d?"

The next group is fuller and still more characteristic: for it displays the love of Art in its special conditions, and, at the same time, in its union with all the general human instincts in which artistic emotion can be merged. We find it in its relation to the general love of life in

"Fra Lippo Lippi." ("Men and Women." 1855.)

In its relation to the spiritual sense of existence in

"Abt Vogler." ("Dramatis Personae." 1864.)

As a transformation of human tenderness in

"Pictor Ignotus." ("Men and Women." Published in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)

In its directly sensuous effects in

"The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church." ("Men and Women." Published as "The Tomb at Saint Praxed's" in "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics." 1845.)[72]

In its a.s.sociative power in

"A Toccata of Galuppi's." ("Dramatic Lyrics." Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

In its representative power in

"The Guardian-Angel: a Picture at Fano." ("Dramatic Lyrics."

Published in "Men and Women." 1855.)

"Eurydice to Orpheus: a Picture by Leighton." ("Dramatis Personae." 1864.)

"A Face." ("Dramatis Personae." 1864.)

"FRA LIPPO LIPPI" is a lively monologue, supposed to be uttered by that friar himself, on the occasion of a night frolic in which he has been surprised. Cosmo dei Medici had locked him up in one room of the palace till some pictures he was painting for him should be finished;[73] and on this particular night he has found the confinement intolerable. He has whipped his bed clothes into a rope, scrambled down from his window, and run after a girlish face which laughingly invited him from the street; and was about to return from the equivocal neighbourhood into which the fun had led him, when his monkish dress caught the attention of the guard, and he was captured and called to account. He proceeds to give a sketch of his life and opinions, which supplies a fair excuse for the escapade. The facts he relates are, including this one, historical.

Fra Lippo Lippi had no vocation for the priesthood. He was enticed into a Carmelite convent when a half-starved orphan of eight years old, ready to subscribe to any arrangement which promised him enough to eat. There he developed an extraordinary talent for drawing; and the Prior, glad to turn it to account, gave him the cloisters and the church to paint. But the rising artist had received his earliest inspirations in the streets.

His first practice had been gained in scrawling faces in his copybooks, and expanding the notes of his musical texts into figures with arms and legs. His conceptions were not sufficiently spiritual to satisfy the Prior's ideal of Christian art. The men and women he painted were all true to life. The simpler brethren were delighted as they recognized each familar type. But the authorities looked grave at so much obtruding of the flesh; and the Prior clearly laid down his theory that painting was meant to inspire religious thoughts, and not to stifle them; and must therefore show no more of the human body than was needed to image forth the soul.

Fra Lippo Lippi comments freely and quaintly on the absurdity of showing soul by means of bodies so ill-painted that no one can bear to dwell upon them, as on the fallacy involved in all contempt for the earthly life. "He will never believe that the world, with all its life and beauty, is an unmeaning blank. He is sure, 'it means intensely and means good.' He is sure, too, that to reproduce what is beautiful in it is the mission of Art. If anyone objects, that the world being G.o.d's work, Art cannot improve on it, and the painter will best leave it alone: he answers that some things are the better for being painted; because, as we are made, we love them best when we see them so. The artist has lent his mind for us to see with. That is what Art means; what G.o.d wills in giving it to us."

Nevertheless (he continues) he rubbed out his men and women; and though now, with a Medici for his patron, he may paint as he likes, the old schooling sticks to him.[74] And he works away at his saints, till something comes to remind him that life is not a dream, and he kicks the traces, as he has done now. He ends with a half-joking promise to make the Church a gainer through his misconduct (supposing that the secret has been kept from her), by a beautiful picture which he will paint by way of atonement.

This picture, which he describes very humorously, is that of the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the "Belle Arti" at Florence.[75]

ABT VOGLER is depicted at the moment when this composer of the last century has "been extemporizing on the musical instrument of his invention." His emotion has not yet subsided; and it is that of the inspired musician, to whom harmonized sound is as the opening of a heavenly world. His touch upon the keys has been as potent to charm, as the utterance of that NAME which summoned into Solomon's presence the creatures of Earth, Heaven, and h.e.l.l, and made them subservient to his will. And the "slaves of the sound," whom he has conjured up, have built him a palace more evanescent than Solomon's, but, as he describes it, far more beautiful. They have laid its foundations below the earth.

They have carried its transparent walls up to the sky. They have tipped each summit with meteoric fire. As earth strove upwards towards Heaven, Heaven, in this enchanted structure, has yearned downwards towards the earth. The great Dead came back; and those conceived for a happier future walked before their time. New births of life and splendour united far and near; the past, the present, and the to-come.

The vision has disappeared with the sounds which called it forth, and the musician feels sorrowfully that it cannot be recalled: for the effect was incommensurate with the cause; they had nothing in common with each other. We can trace the processes of painting and verse; we can explain their results. Art, however triumphant, is subject to natural laws. But that which frames out of three notes of music "not a fourth sound, but a star" is the Will, which is above law.

And, therefore, so Abt Vogler consoles himself, the music persists, though it has pa.s.sed from the sense of him who called it forth: for it is an echo of the eternal life; a pledge of the reality of every imagined good--of the continuance of whatever good has existed. Human pa.s.sion and aspiration are music sent up to Heaven, to be continued and completed there. The secret of the scheme of creation is in the musician's hands.

Having recognized this, Abt Vogler can subside, proudly and patiently, on the common chord--the commonplace realities, of life.