Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (38 page)

How It Strikes a Contemporary

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The title adapts that of a story by Jane Taylor (1783–1824), ‘How It Strikes a Stranger’, on which Browning drew much later for ‘Rephan’ (
Asolando
, 1889; not in this edition). Browning clearly used his own ideas, beliefs, and habits in the description of the poet here, but it is not simply a self-portrait. The real poet of the piece, after all, is the narrator who denies being one. 3.
Valladolid
A city in north-west Spain, about 160 km from Madrid. Browning had not visited it. 90.
Corregidor
Chief magistrate; the speaker goes on to identify him with the town crier, the point being that they metaphorically represent two kinds of poetry, one serious and authoritative (‘The town’s true master’, I.40), the other frivolous and gaudy. 96.
memorized
Memorialized. 115.
Prado
Fashionable promenade.

The Patriot

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The poem is associated with the Risorgimento, the struggle for Italian liberation from Austrian rule, with which Browning strongly sympathized, but the action, as the subtitle indicates, is universal and recurrent, not local and specific. L.26 originally read ‘Thus I entered Brescia’; the revision removes any allusion to the twelfth-century revolutionary Arnold of Brescia. 19.
Shambles’ Gate
The place of execution.

Memorabilia

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The poem is founded on an incident which took place when Browning was a boy, soon after his first passionate discovery of Shelley’s poetry (recorded in
Pauline
, where Shelley is called ‘sun-treader’ – note the image of the eagle in the last two lines).

Andrea del Sarto

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. Said to have been written in response to a request by a friend for a copy of a painting in the Pitti Palace in Florence, believed at the time to be a self-portrait of Andrea (1486–1531) and his wife Lucrezia, and an expression of their unhappy relationship. The poem is set in 1525 (see
l.105
). As with Fra Lippo Lippi, Vasari was Browning’s main historical source for details of Andrea’s life and work: his marriage to the faithless and cold-hearted Lucrezia, who served as the model for many of his paintings, his return in 1519 at her instigation from the court of King Francis I
where he had done some of his best work, his subsequent embezzlement of the King’s commission money in order to build a house for himself and Lucrezia, his neglect of his parents, his supreme technical skill, his falling short of the highest genius. He was called ‘del Sarto’ because his father was a tailor, and ‘II Pittore senza Errori’ because of his draughtsmanship. Vasari’s accuracy is disputed by modern scholarship; however, his biography gave Browning materials not for another biography, but for a poem. 15.
Fiesole
A town in the hills north-east of Florence. 76.
Someone
Michelangelo (1475–1574); see
ll.183–93
. 93.
Morelk
Mountain to the north of Florence. 105. Raphael, born at Urbino in 1483, died at Rome in 1520 (hence ‘The Roman’, l. 178). Contrary to l. 136, he did marry. 210.
cue-owls
Anglicizing the Italian ‘ciu’, the call of the scops owl. 263.
Leonard
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519).

In a Year

Published
Men and Women
, 1855.

Cleon

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. Set in the first century, during the apostleship of Paul, with whom Cleon, like Karshish in ‘An Epistle’, is implicitly compared, and who is mentioned by name at the end of the poem. The epigraph refers to a saying by the Greek poet Aratus (fourth century
B.C.
) quoted by St Paul in his address to the Athenians: ‘as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his [God’s] offspring’ (Acts 17:28). Cleon and Protus are imaginary figures. 1.
the sprinkled isles
The Sporades in the Aegean. 16.
sea-wools
Dyed with purple from the murex. 41–2. Zeus, in Greek mythology king of the Gods; the ‘element of calm’ is the Olympian detachment from human concerns enjoyed by the gods, but (since Cleon does not believe in an afterlife) also a euphemism for oblivion. 47. Cleon’s epic poem has been engraved on gold tablets. 51.
phare
Lighthouse. 53.
Poecile
Since Cleon is an invented figure, the reference is not to the historical ‘stoa poikile’, the painted colonnade at Athens, but to a similar (imagined) building. 60.
moods
Modes (in ancient Greek music, scales differing in the sequence of intervals). 132.
drupe
Stone-fruit; here, the wild plum. 140.
Terpander
Musician and poet of seventh century B.C., credited with the invention of the seven-stringed lyre. 141.
Phidias and his friend
Phidias, Athenian sculptor of fifth century B.C.; ‘friend’ in this context means ‘fellow-artist’, and may refer to the Athenian painter Polygnotus, roughly contemporary with Phidias, or to Apelles, who lived about a century later. 252.
Naiad
Water-nymph. 258.
what boots
‘How does it help’. 288.
Phoebus
Apollo, god of the sun and of poetry, and the type of male beauty. 341.
one with him
The same person; Cleon’s notion of Christianity, like that of Karshish, is vague and confused. (In another sense, of which Cleon is unaware, Paul is indeed ‘one with’ Christ: e.g., Galatians 2:20: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’.) 343.
barbarian Jew
Cleon is mistaken as well as prejudiced; besides being a Jew, Paul was a Roman citizen, a fact he knew how to turn to his advantage (Acts 22:24–9).

Two in the Campagna

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The ‘Campagna’ (‘champaign’, I.21) is the idyllic countryside around Rome, where the Brownings spent ‘some exquisite hours’ (with friends) in May 1854. The poem is not in any simple sense confessional, but the dramatic projection of a state of mind.

A Grammarian’s Funeral

Published
Men and Women
, 1855. The ‘grammarian’ is a historical type; the ‘revival of learning in Europe’ (the Renaissance) began in the mid-fourteenth century in Italy. The grammarian’s students are carrying his body from the rural lowlands to a cemetery in a mountaintop town, and the poem represents their funeral dirge. 86.
Calculus
Stone (gall- or kidney-). 88.
Tussis
Cough. 95.
soul-hydroptic
Spiritually athirst (for knowledge). 124. Matthew 7:7. 129–31.
Hoti, Oun, enclitic De
The first two are Greek particles (‘that’, ‘then’); the third a suffix meaning ‘towards’: ‘That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated
De
meaning
but
, was the ‘doctrine’ which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it’ (Browning’s gloss).

James Lee’s Wife

Published
Dramatis Personae
, 1864, with the title ‘James Lee’. Section VI, II. 1–30, had been published May 1836 in the
Monthly Repository
(see above, note to ‘Porphyria’s Lover’). In
Poetical Works
(1868) the poem was given its final title. Section VIII was greatly expanded, with sixty-one new lines after 1.26. Browning described the couple as ‘people newly-married, trying to realize a dream of being sufficient to each other, in a foreign land (where you can try such an experiment) and finding it break up, – the man being tired first, – and tired precisely of the love’. The form and tone of the poem may owe something to Meredith’s
Modern Love
(1862). Grief at his wife’s death in 1861 may also have influenced Browning’s tone and treatment, but once again it must be stressed that the poem is not directly autobiographical. The setting is Brittany, where Browning spent the summer in 1862 and 1863. III, 72.
bent
Stalk of coarse grass. IV, 106.
the Book
The Bible. The allusion is to the Promised Land, as in this passage from Deuteronomy 9:7–8: ‘For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths … A land of wheat and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil, olive and honey.’ The phrase ‘rivers of oil and wine’ is not used in the Bible, but oil and wine are frequently linked, and the phrase ‘rivers of oil’ occurs in Job 29:6. V, 137.
barded and chanfroned
Armoured; bard = breastplate; chamfron (the usual form) = frontlet. 138.
quixote-mage
Whimsical magician. IX, 339.
mutual flame
‘Here the anthem doth commence: / Love and constancy is dead; / Phoenix and the turtle fled / In a mutual flame from hence. // So they lov’d as love in twain / Had the essence but in one … ’ (Shakespeare, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, ll.21–6).

Gold Hair: A Story of Pornic

Published
Dramatis Personae
, 1864. The story is founded on a real event which took place in the eighteenth century. The girl’s ‘boasted name’ (I.4) is known, but I.5 asks for it not to be given. 16.
flix
Fur of an animal; here implying softness and fleeciness. 84.
pelf
Money, reward. 86–7.
O cor / Humanum, pectora caeca
Lucretius,
De Rerum Natura
II 14 (‘O human heart, and blind affections!’). 91–2.
heard, / Marked, inwardly digested
Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Second Sunday in Advent: ‘hear them [holy Scriptures], read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them’. 99.
for the nonce
For the purpose. 100. The three following stanzas were added in the second edition of
Dramatis Personae
(also 1864) at the instigation of George Eliot, in order to clarify the girl’s motive. 116.
six times five
The precise figure is Browning’s invention, allowing the allusion in stanza XXVI to the thirty pieces of silver for which Judas betrayed Christ. When Judas returned the money to the chief priests before hanging himself, they decided that since it was the ‘price of blood’ it could not be put in the Temple treasury; it was used to buy ‘the potter’s field, to bury strangers in’ (Matthew 27:3–7). 124–5. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven … for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (Matthew 6:19–21). 132.
Watch and pray!
Christ’s injunction to the disciples, Matthew 26:41 (in the garden at Gethsemane), Mark 13:33 (for the Second Coming). 141.
The candid
Impartial judges. 143–5.
Essays and Reviews
, a Broad Church collection edited by H. B. Wilson, and including Jowett’s ‘The interpretation of Scripture’, was published in 1860, denounced for its liberalism by the Bishops in 1861, condemned in synod in 1864. John William Colenso (1814–83), Bishop of Natal, published commentaries on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1861) and the Pentateuch (vol. I, 1862) disputing the orthodox theology and historical authenticity of the Bible. 149–50.
Original Sin, / The Corruption of Man’s Heart
‘Original Sin … is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is ingendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation’ (Article 9 of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England); ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked’ (Jeremiah 17:9).

Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de Nos Jours

Published
Dramatis Personae
, 1864. The Latin is a tag from Virgil,
Aeneid
ii 428, ‘The gods thought otherwise’, meaning that they intervened to frustrate human hopes; but the implication of the poem is that human beings themselves are responsible for the failure of their lives’ fulfilment. The French means ‘The Byron of our days’: the man evoked in the poem is a poet who is lame (I.56) and ‘Famous … for verse and worse’ (1–57); like the Latin it is ironic, since the poet is old and, the poem suggests, a reduced version of his predecessor.
The setting is once again Brittany. When the poem opens, the man has just told the woman that he came near to proposing marriage to her ten years ago. The poem is her bitter response to this information. Much of it consists of her guesswork as to what was going through the man’s mind on that occasion. She imagines him hesitating as to what to do, speculating about their respective thoughts if they were to marry, and deciding in the end not to take the risk. In II.82–5 the woman ‘quotes’ the man ‘quoting’ her ‘quoting’ him, the most complex example in Browning’s work of the nesting of voices within a dramatic monologue. 36. Franz Schumann (1810–56). 38. Jean-Marie Ingres (1780–1867), famous for his paintings of nudes. 40. Heinrich Heine (1797–1856); translations of six of his love lyrics appeared in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
Last Poems
(1862), which Browning edited. 42.
votive frigate
Carved model hung from the beam of the church as an offering to the Virgin Mary from local fishermen. 58. Sure of election to a vacant seat in the French Academy, which has forty members. 64.
Three per Cents
Government stock yielding a low but safe income.

A Death in the Desert

Published
Dramatis Personae
, 1864. Browning’s account of the deathbed testament of St John responds to the ‘Higher Criticism’ of the Bible, specifically to attacks on the historicity of the Gospels, the divinity of Jesus, and the authenticity of miracles in Renan’s
Vie de Jésus
(1863) and Strauss’s
Das Leben Jesu
(first publ. 1835–6; transl. George Eliot 1846; revised and re-issued 1864). Browning may also have drawn on Feuerbach’s
Das Wesen des Christentums
(also transl. George Eliot,
The Essence of Religion
, 1854). St John, Browning’s favourite Gospel, concludes with an assertion of historical accuracy: ‘This is the disciple which testified! of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true’ (21:24). The poem accepts the traditional identification (challenged by the ‘Higher Criticism’) of the disciple John with the author of the Gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation, the final apocalyptic book of the New Testament (all these texts are extensively quoted in the poem). Browning was especially attracted by John’s emphasis on love as the primary Christian value. According to tradition John died in extreme old age
c
. A.D. 100 near Ephesus in Asia Minor; however, no exact indications of place or time are given in the poem, and all the circumstances and characters (apart from those mentioned in the Bible, and the heretic Cerinthus) are imaginary. 1–12. The sections in square brackets at the beginning and end of the poem, and at 11.82–104, contain the comments of the owner of the manuscript, who is presumably making a copy of it for someone else or for posterity. 1.
Antiochene
There were two Antiochs, one in Syria and one in Asia Minor; it is not clear which Pamphylax was from. The manuscript is supposed to be ‘of’ Pamphylax but not ‘by’ him, since, as we learn later (11.651–3), the actual scribe was not Pamphylax himself, but Phoebas, to whom Pamphylax related the story before his martyrdom. 4. The Greek letters, the fifth and twelfth in the alphabet, stand for the writer’s name (see
l.9
), and are
also numbers, here indicating sections of the manuscript (from 5 to 40); since the poem opens in the midst of the story, the first four sections are presumably missing. 5.
Chosen Chest
A chest in which the writer keeps documents relating to the ‘chosen’ (i.e., the elect, the members of the early Christian sect to which he belongs). 6.
juice of terebinth
Turpentine. 7.
Xi
Fourteenth Greek letter. 14.
plantain-leaf
Mentioned (comically) as a restorative in
Romeo and Juliet
I ii 51–2. The plantain is a low herb with broad flat leaves. 18.
a brother Not
literal; ‘comrade’. 23.
the decree
A decree of persecution against the Christians by Trajan (Roman Emperor A.D. 98–117). 36.
Bactrian
Bactria was an ancient country of central Asia, lying between the Hindu-Kush and the Oxus. 39.
quitch
A coarse grass. 50.
nard
Spikenard, an aromatic balsam or ointment. Mary Magdalene anoints the feet of Jesus with ‘ointment of spikenard’, John 12:3. 64. John 11:25. 69. F. B. Pinion, in his edition of
Dramatis Personae
(London and Glasgow: Collins, 1969) suggests that this is the griffon falcon, ‘which has a distinctive white ruff of projecting feathers’. 73.
James and Peter
Fellow disciples of John (see
ll.114–15
). 82–104. Adapting and expanding two passages, one from John 1:13, which speaks of believers ‘born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ and the other from I John 5:7: ‘there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one’. 104.
glossa
Gloss, explanation. 114–15.
it is long … death
James was martyred
c
. A.D. 43 (Acts 12:2); Peter was crucified
c
. A.D. 67 in Rome (foretold in John 21:18–19). 121.
He
Christ; the following two lines allude to John’s vision of him in Revelation 11:14–16. 131–2. I John 1:1. 140.
Patmos
In the Aegean; scene of John’s vision in Revelation. 141.
take a book and write
Revelation 1:11. 148–51. Note (among many other passages in St John’s Gospel and Epistles) I John 4:7–8: ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God … He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.’ 158. ‘And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world’ (I John 4:3). 163–5. Jesus rebukes James and John for suggesting ‘that we command fire to come down from heaven’ and destroy their enemies (Luke 9:51–6); he gives his followers ‘power to tread on serpents and scorpions’ (Luke 10:19; see also Mark 16:18). 177. ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ II Peter 3:4, attributed not, as here, to the impatient young, but to ‘scoffers’ in the ‘last days’. 186–7. ‘And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life’ (I John 5:19–20).
212. Following this line, in the first and second editions of
Dramatis Personae
, Browning wrote: ‘Closed with and cast and conquered, crucified’. Whether by accident or design, the deletion of this line in
Poetical Works
(1868) and subsequent editions removed a numerological pun from 1.666 (see below). 216.
the right hand of the throne
After the Resurrection and his appearance to his disciples, Jesus ‘was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God’ (Mark 16:19). 222.
Resume
Regain, re-assume control
of. 226.
the children
John in his first epistle calls his readers ‘little children’. 231–2.
insubordinate … once
Objects too close to the eye resist its ordering glance and require the assistance of the artificer’s ‘optic glass’. 241.
dispart, dispread
Part asunder and spread out. 254.
emprise
Enterprise. 283.
sophist
Philosopher (implying a modern, sophisticated sceptic). 284–6. The Prometheus trilogy attributed to Aeschylus tells of the Titan Prometheus’s theft of fire from Olympus and gift of it to mankind, and of his punishment and eventual release by Zeus (Jove or Jupiter). Only the second play of the trilogy,
Prometheus Bound
, survives today; the ‘satyrs’ come from a fragment assigned to the lost first play,
Prometheus Firebearer
, which Browning represents as still extant in John’s time. There is a further allusion to this play in II.530–33. 304–10. John, James and Peter see Jesus transfigured, Luke 9:28–36; Jesus walks on the sea of Galilee, John 6:15–21, and raises Lazarus from the dead, John 11; John and the other disciples forsake Jesus at his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, Mark 14:50.329.
Ebion
Apocryphal founder of the Ebionites, an early Christian sect who denied the divinity of Jesus.
Cerinthus
A theologian of the first century, said to have lived in Ephesus at the same time as John; like the Ebionites he denied the divinity of Jesus, and introduced elements of Gnosticism and Judaism into his teaching. See also below. 355–65. This vision of future doubt is influenced by doubts recorded in the Gospels themselves, e.g., (noting ‘portico’, I.357) John 10:22–4: ‘And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.’ 364.
any of His lives
Any of the Gospel stories. 365. Corresponding to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 368.
it cannot pass
‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’ (Jesus in Matthew 24:35). 372.
Wonders
Miracles. 390.
Certes
Certainly (archaic). 405.
stood still As
in Joshua 10:12–14. 439.
virtues
Qualities (what the herb is good for). 532.
ephemerals’
Mortals, i.e, mankind. 533. In the legend, Prometheus carries a live coal from Olympus inside a stalk of giant fennel. 565.
Atlas
The Atlas mountains are in north-west Africa; the name derives from one of the Titans who in legend held up the sky on his shoulders. 577.
that
That which. 608.
statuary
Sculptor. 623.
at a jet
In a single act (of will and execution combined); from French ‘d’un seul jet’. 625.
The pattern on the Mount
The original stone tables on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed, given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 32:15–16). 652.
fight the beasts
Pamphylax is to be martyred; cf. St Paul, I Corinthians 15:32: ‘If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die’. 657–8. When the risen Jesus appears to die disciples at die end of St John’s Gospel, Peter asks him what ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ (i.e., John himself) is to do: ‘Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ (21:22–3). John is denying that Jesus promised him that he would be alive to witness the Second
Coming (see above, I.11, and below, II.677–8). 659.
this speech
The deathbed speech recorded in the poem. 664.
breast to breast with God
John leans on Jesus’s breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23–5). 665–87. The owner of the document resumes here, transcribing a comment addressed to Cerinthus (see I.329 above) by an unnamed person who holds the orthodox doctrine that Christ was, indeed, the son of God. For the doctrine of incorporation, see John 17:20–23; for the metaphor of Christ as the bridegroom, see (among others) John 3:29 and II Corinthians 11:2: ‘I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ’. Cerinthus had apparently studied the manuscript without altering his opinion that Jesus was ‘Mere man’, going against John’s specific injunction that the ‘acknowledgment of God in Christ’ was the way of salvation (II.474–81). The owner of the manuscript, in the last words of the poem, pronounces on Cerinthus the judgement of spiritual death which John described (II.482–513). In the first and second editions of the poem, which have an extra line (see above,
I.212
), Cerinthus is named at 1.666, not 665; ‘Six Hundred threescore and six’ is the ‘number of the beast’ in Revelation 13:18.