英美文学选读学习笔记 Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812-1889) is another great Victorian poet. A contemporary of Alfred Tennyson, he is as the most original poet of the time acknowledged by many.

Born in a well-off family, Browning received his education mainly from his private tutor, and from his father, who gave him the freedom to follow his own interest. In his father's library he read widely and voraciously and was fond of the most profound, obtuse and mystic. The wealth of the Browning family and the generosity of some of his relatives made it possible for him to pursue the writing of poetry all his life without having to worry about his sustenance. In 1833, young Browning published his first poetic work Pauline. The apparent modeling on Shelley's personal style and an easily detectable intense self-consciousness of the author brought about great embarrassment upon Browning. But in his second attempt Sordello (1840), he went too far in self-correction that the poem became so obscure as to be hard]y readable.

Encouraged by an actor friend, Browning tried play-writing. However, too many subtle analyses and too few actions ruined his plays. None of them was successful on the stage.

All these frustrating experiences were really a fortune in disguise. They forced the poet to develop a literary form that suited him best and actually gave full swing to his genius, i.e. the dramatic monologue. Its success led to the publication of his great works one after another: Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Bells and Pomegranates (1846), Men and Women (1855), Dramatic Personae (1864), The Ring and the Book (1868-1869) and Dramatic Idylls (1880).

In 1846, Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, a famous poetess who was a semi-invalid and had been strictly confined home by her domineering father. During the 15 years after their elopement to Italy, the couple enjoyed remarkable happiness. The wife produced her best-known book of love poetry -- Sonnets from the Portuguese while the husband sented to the world some of his best poems. After Elizabeth's death in 1861, the widower brought their son back to England and went on writing. His productivity and originality still remained powerful. In 1869 The Ring and the Book, his masterpiece, came out. The poem is inspired by an old book of legal documents that records a trial in Rome in 1698 of Count Guido Franceschini, who brutally murdered his wife Pompilia. Pompilia is accused of having an affair with a young priest, who has tried to help her in her flight from the sadistic husband. In this long poem, the same story is told by nine persons, all participants and spectators, from their different points of view. Like Browning's other characters in their monologues, these people unconsciously reveal their own characters in telling the story. The , The Ring and the Book, too, has its symbolic meaning. It can be explained by the goldsmith's technique of alloying gold in making rings. The "Book" is the pure gold of objective facts, the hard truth. Yet pure gold is not workable in making rings unless it is alloyed with other materials. A poet's fancy and imagination are just the alloying ingredients. They brought the dead truth to life.

The publication of The Ring and the Book finally established Browning's position as one of the greatest English poets. But in the last years of his life, Browning's poetic power showed a decline and his old defects of obscurity and mannerism became obvious. Only some shorter poems are still worth reading. Browning died in 1889 and was buried in the Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, beside Tennyson.

The name of Browning is often associated with the term: "dramatic monologue." Although it is not his invention, it is in his hands that this poetic form reaches its maturity and perfection. "Pippa Passes," "My Last Duchess," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "Porphyria's Lover," "A Grammarian's Funeral," and The Ring and the Book are but some of his best-known monologues. In these poems, Browning chooses a dramatic moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives, and about their minds and hearts. In "listening" to those one-sided talks, readers can form their own opinions and judgments about the speaker's personality and about what has really happened. For example, in "My Last Duchess," the Duke, as he talks about the portrait of his last Duchess, reveals bit by bit his cruelty and possessiveness. We gather the truth about the death of the unfortunate wife. It is ironical that the Duke's own defensive words should betray and condemn himself. To Browning, the dramatic monologue is an ingenious means to exploit his literary gift without getting too personal. In fact, he keeps a good distance from his characters. They always belong to the remote history, or just the fantastic world. They are either the early Christians, the medieval knights, the family tyrants, the Arab horsemen, or the Italian bishops. They share nothing with him both in personality and in attitudes toward life. Nonetheless, Browning's spirit, his vigor and energy are put into these characters. This can't be done successfully unless the poet possesses powerful imagination and creativity as well as a good knowledge about man's psychology and nature.

But Browning's poetry is not easy to read. His rhythms are often too fast, too rough and unmusical. The syntax is usually clipped and highly comssed. The similes and illustrations appear too profusely. The allusions and implications are sometimes odd and farfetched. All this makes up his obscurity. Perhaps it is his illusion that everybody should know and understand what he says.

On the whole, Browning's style is very different from that of any other Victorian poets. If we compare him with Tennyson, his ideosyncrasy may be more clearly seen. Tennyson, like a professional sculptor, works on his marble most diligently and patiently. His accomplishment is almost perfect. On the contrary, Browning is like a weather-beaten pioneer, bravely and vigorously trying to beat a track through the jungle. His poetic style belongs to the twentieth century rather than to the Victorian age. The rough, grotesque and disproportionate appearance, the non-poetic jarring diction and the clumsy rhythms fit marvelously a life that is just as imperfect and incongruous. In general, Browning's poems are not meant to entertain the readers with the usual acoustic and visual pleasures: they are supposed to keep them alert, thoughtful and enlightened.