Robert Browning's Treatment of Love in Its Myriad Moods and Manifestations
Robert Browning’s Treatment of Love in its Myriad Moods and Manifestations
By- Dr. Santosh Shrivastava
Santoshshrivastav23@gmail.com
When we attempt a general assessment of Robert Browning’s poetic caliber and overall achievement, his multi-faceted genius and his rarer treatment of love and its myriad moods and manifestations, all this strike our mind and heart intensely. The most characteristic of Browning’s poetry is his love-lyrics which remains the first and foremost of his total bulk of creative-production. After having a glance over the greater portion of the poetry written by him, one can easily constitute the idea that his lyrics haunt the mind of the reader, his poems seem to be the beautiful gallery of men and women, and these men and women are as simple, or as complex as life has to offer or can offer. The sphere of his poetic creation is a world of specific men and women, that too the lovers of all temperaments, faithful, criminal, jealous, cheaters, rogues, and the true lovers of their beloved, the ardent lovers, who, want to accompany their beloveds in the other world of souls, the lovers who are thirsty of flesh of their beloved and the lovers who just want a place in the heart of their beloved in lieu of the whole they possess. “Here’s God’s Plenty” as Dryden said of Chaucer, which is also applicable to Browning. His love poems are the real pictures of life drawn on the canvass of all human impossible limits.
Robert Browning was born in the comparatively rural perish of Camberwell in London on May 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the Bank of England. In his Inner heart, he was an interesting combination of the scholar and the artist, possessing an skilled touch in both. His mother was the daughter of a German Ship-owner, who had settled at Scotland. She, Browning’s mother, was a women of sentiments, lover of music and full of artistic tastes. Her elevated personality exercised a great influence on him, and for his riped maturity in childhood. In his childhood he did not join any school, his real education was done at home. His father would recite from the Greek epics and other literatures, thus he picked up the origin of Greek poetry.
The first literary influence on Browning was that of Byron, but it did not live-longer. From latter, his guiding interest turned to Shelley whose excellent creation Queen Mab influenced him to a great extent. Keats was also a source of lasting influence and inspiration for him. In Pauline the influence of these two poets is clearly perceptible. He wrote Pauline at the early age of twenty. Next, he visited Russia and met a French who formed the subject of his next poetic-creation Paracelsus.
Browning visited Italy in 1838 and fell under the charm of Venice. The wonderful moments that he had spent here, were on his mind and heart all through his life. He read the poems of Elizabeth Barrett, a renowned contemporary poetess, and came to know that she knew his poems and even him and she liked his poems full of robust optimism and manliness. Gradually all these developed a friendship between them which ultimately assumed the form of love. Elizabeth’s father was a callous-hearted person, thus, he refused the permission of marriage, as a result, the lovers decided to marry despite paternal opposition. On September 12, 1846, they were secretly married at Marylebone Church and at once left for Italy, where they lived happily for many years. This span of time may be appreciated as the life’s golden phase of the Brownings. At this place their only child Robert Wiedman Barrett Browning was born in 1849. He found deep emotional satisfaction in his marriage with Elizabeth Barrett, as has been reflected in some of his personal love lyrics like By the Fireside, One Word More, and Prospice, in which Browning pours out his true sentiments for his wife.
After the death of his wife in 1861, He returned to England to edit her unpublished poems. At this period of his life, he became highly popular figure in London society. He was honoured by Oxford with a fellowship while Cambridge presented him an honorary degree. On December 12, 1889, Browning breathed his last, on the day his last poetic-volume Asolando was published. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
In 1832, Browning was twenty, and was writing Pauline an autobiographical poem in which, particularly Shelley’s influence is easily perceptible. His next work Paracelsus (1835) is like Pauline, the soul history. In this work, he considers love greater than knowledge.
Further, he tried his genius on dramatic form, Sordello was published in 1840, it is usually taken as the most controversial and obscure work by him. During the years 1840-46, he produced a number of poetic drama and poetry. Having suffered from the criticism of obscurity, he wrote a series of delightful poetical plays. The best of them are Pippa Passes (1841), King Victor and King Charles (1842), The Return of the Druses (1843), A Blot in the Scutcheon (1843), Colombe’s Birthday (1844), A Soul’s Tragedy (1846).
In the duration of these seven years (1840-46), the poet along with dramas, composed lyrics of first water. They all appeared together with plays under the title Bells and Pomegranates. After that he attempted to come out of the eclipse of Sordello, thus, he came in open air and sunlight, in the shorter poems of Dramatic Lyrics of 1842 and Dramatic Romances of 1845.
Browning continued writing poems of dramatic lyrics, and the result was Men and Women. It was published in two volumes in 1855. This volume brought him great name and fame which remained everlasting. After that, came Dramatis Personae, published in 1864, this volume was also a great achievement in the poetic art of his genius.
In the coming four years, he worked on his masterpiece production The Ring and the Book (1868-69), which is regarded as his crowning effort, both in thought and technique. Asolando (1889) was the last pearl from him to the ocean of literature. The volume was first published in London, which was whole-heartedly received. On the same date of the publication, Browning died on December 12, 1889.
Browning has written upon a variety of subjects. The subject-matter of poetic creation is the endless range of human experience and thought. It is evident that the subject of poetry is that, which appeals to or attracts the heart and mind of the poet, who pours out his creativity on the same subject, and thus, this subject becomes of perennial interest. Browning has portrayed God, Nature, artists, poets, painters, religious persons, and above all, lovers and their myriad moods in love, crime, philosophy and religion are the integral components of his poetry. In fact, his comprehension of life was very much profound. In his colourful art gallery of characters, we find the picture of not only normal human beings, but the abnormals and eccentrics as well.
Browning has presented his taste and interest of art and the artist. They always hold a very important place among his selection of the subject-matter. He does not bother much for the technical skill of the art of the artist as with its aesthetic culmination and the force of creation. Poems like, Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea Del Sarto are the perfect examples of it and even technically Andrea is quite flawless. He can even commit some correction in the lines wrongly drawn by the great Raphael. In the poem, Old Pictures in Florence, we have the idea of Browning’s in-depth knowledge, not only of the art of painting but also the artist hidden behind it.
Browning’s themes of God, Nature and Man as three inter-connected truths. In his poems, the description of natural scene, sights and landscapes, are not beyond man, rather they both seem closely-interconnected, which is not isolated from the man’s world. They are tremendous, realistic, brilliant and colourful. His choice falls on the spring season, sunrise and sunset. His world of natural-beauties is a very much part of the human world, which classifies almost all human sensations, emotions and feelings. In the poem, A Grammarian’s Funeral the high shooting of the meteors is in keeping with the loftiness of Grammarian’s aims and his learning-light. The poem Rabbi Ben Ezra represents, his whole religious conception and God, representing God and man relationship. According to Browning, God always compensates man’s each failure, and for the judgment of this compensation, he becomes the final authority of perfection. In his faith on religion, he believes that whatever man loses or misses in this mortal world, receives in the next world. This thought keeps him in line with Eastern culture and faith in rebirth.
Browning is also interested in abnormality or eccentricity. He shows his likeness in psychology of abnormal behaviour. In the poem Porphyria’s Lover, we face a lover, who strangles his own beloved to death with the string of her own hair. In The Laboratory, we come across a woman who wants to poison her opponent. His choice specially lies in the cases of abnormal mental process. In Bishop Blougram’s Apology, the behaviour of Bishop is also doubtful and demands analysis, for on the one hand he is mean and on the other, he is firm in faith for God. The same thing can be cited for Mr. Sludge in Sludge The Medium.
Browning’s a number of poems are abound in the Italian Renaissance spirit to the extent of exactness what he writes of Renaissance spirit or the Middle Ages. The Chief characteristics of the Renaissance are clearly visible in his poems, lust for materialism, beauty, possessiveness, praise of bravery, sex etc. are the chief components of his poems, about which he talks openly and boldly.
Above all, his writing upon the subject of love, including physical or spiritual, is par excellence. Through his love poems, he became the chief exponent of the love-lyricist in literature of any language. The most characteristic and the most original work of the poet is to be found in his love poems. While he deals with physical love, he seems to talk of purely sexual relationship between the opposite sexes, at higher level love becomes the pillar of morality and religion, without which no modesty or civilization can stand or possible. Love becomes the source of aesthetic-ecstasy for the poet.
Among the important aspects of love, the high nectar of force of life, drips only from love, as Browning speaks that the real love is its own award and the best fulfillment is itself. He glorifies failure, particularly failure in love, which is unique in the whole range of English literature. We do observe that many of his poems related to love intensely, have been written on unfulfilled love, after his wife’s death. According to his conception, such unsuccessful or isolated lovers have their complete compensation, by the grace of God, for they have its scope to reunite in the other world. The poet is always keeps himself with brave lovers, who, in order to achieve their love, break all the rules and regulations prescribed by society, facing all the thunders that come in the way of love. For him love means only love, the true and passionate. He is so positively optimistic that he believes a sincere and devoted lover, who has power to face all the vicissitudes on the way of love, ultimately wins the lovely hand of his beloved.
Browning has dealt with a variety of love. The love of man and woman has been presented in many shapes in his love-poems. He presents a lots of colours of love in his love poems, we do observe, rather closely feel, the fierce animal passion in Ottima, in Pippa Passes, which stands as quite contrast to the romantic love as presented in The Last Ride Together. Two in the Compagna signify the deep longing for the old assurance. At the same time Evenly Hope presents love, not only as a truth but presents it with an idealistic beauty. Whether personal or dramatic, his treatment of love is the ecstasy or the impulsive passion of youth. Love Among the Ruins, Two in the Campagna and Cristina, deal with not easily understood riped-love, and above all comes By the Fireside, the real experience and expression of love, which becomes the hall-mark of his depth of understanding for love and its treatment.
Wherever and whenever he deals with physical love, he tries to represent the passion of love with all its intensity and with all sensual appeals and other aspects. Physical love for him is so satisfactory, that he seeks all the truths and ideals of the universe in the burning kiss of a girl.
Truth, that’s brighter than gem,
Trust, that’s purer than pearl,
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, all were for me,
In the kiss of one girl.1
We do perceive, a tinge of sexual enjoyment, pleasure or fire of sex passions, whether quenched or unquenched, in almost all his love poems like, By the Fireside, Cristina, Pauline, The Last Ride together, Life in a Love, Love in a life, Now, Summum Bonum and the like poems are replete with physical aspect of love.
Browning shows his great skill in describing the love relationship between men and women, taking all the ranks and files into his astonishing scope. He beautifully expresses the love relationship between husband and wife after marriage. There are a number of poems in which he pours out the subtle and tickling experiences, not only from his own life but from the outer world also. The poems like One Word More, By the Fireside and Prospice and other poems are among the best poems of marital-love in the world of literature.
The poet shared an unrivalled historical love-relationship with Elizabeth Barrett. Undoubtedly she was the chief source of Browning’s spiritual and intellectual strength. Elizabeth was the real force behind his full riped genius. This union of the souls of the two poets unquestionably enriched each other’s poetic depth.
The story of the first indirect meeting of Browning and Elizabeth is very much interesting. One day, without any intention, he opened a book of poems by Elizabeth, which influenced deeply the mind as well as the heart of the poet. After going through a stanza, he found that the poetess knew his poetry and appreciated potential force of his manliness. Thus, he wrote to Elizabeth gratefully –
“I love your verses, with all my heart dear miss Barrett ......and I love you too.”2
He started enquiries about Miss Barrett and found out that she was a sickly; an invalid confined to a morbid house situated at Wimpole Street and was allowed to have the company of a very little group of friends. The reply of Miss Barrett to the poets letter was full of kindled enthusiasm. She was physically weak and made socially miserable by her ruthless father, therefore, she was naturally attracted to this bold and strongest contemporary poet. She answered:
“Sympathy is dear very dear to me, but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy.”3
Both the poetic souls made correspondences and received each-other’s love letters, and responded in the best manner of their heart’s reply. Their mutual exchange of thoughts grown day by day till they found each-other, forever. In letters they also praised each other’s poetic talent, personality, charm, concern for welfare and growing love.
At last, after considering all pros and cons, and all efforts, the couple was not allowed to get married because of parental objection from Elizabeth’s side, they eloped from the dungeon of Wimpole Street and decided to marry despite paternal oppositions and they got married in a simple ceremony at Marylebone Chruch on September 12, 1846.
The young couple went to Italy and there after moved to Florence. The charm of Italy remained on both the poetic hearts, and lasted to the last breath of Browning’s life.
The period that followed after his married life was the happiest phase of the poet’s life. The great love lyrics on the married love, are the product of this golden period of his life, as By the Fireside, One Word More, and so on, his genius blossomed under the happy love and Italian climate, and art. In Italy, he enjoyed all the bliss of life and poetic genius. Browning became father in 1849, a son was born named Robert Weidman Barrett Browning, the son was as the token of love from Elizabeth. The couple stayed in Italy till Mrs. Browning’s death in 1861. This was a great shock for the poet and he was severely shattered by this physical separation. At the end of sixteen perfect years, she died in his arms with a smile of eternal satisfaction on her face.
The husband, with lasting memories of his beloved wife, continued producing poetic-creations, and till then he had earned great name and fame in the high class society and reading world. At last, he developed bronchitis and his health broke down. He was taken to Venice after his desire. He breathed his last under the shadow of Italian sky in Venice on December 12, 1889, the day of the publication of his last volume Asolando, after a long journey of poetic production. He was buried at Westminister Abbey.
Browning brought a big change in conception of love, as it was prevalent in the Victorian Age. The age was full of frustration, anxiety, replete with skepticism, pessimism, and perplexion. It was mere a dream to talk of love, as the integral aspect of a successful human life. He found out optimistic and brighter aspects of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and sought its connection in the evolution of whole personality, which was impossible without life and love. This was a remarkable change towards the outlook of love, apart from the prevalent atmosphere of pessimism. Browning treated love as a powerful force for mankind, What was more striking, in opposition of the contemporary thought, he considered love as an inevitable condition for the moral up-liftment of the human soul, while the Victorian took love emotion as the most harmful weakness for human-civilization, thus, the poets importance lies for he sailed against the current, for him, a moment spent in pure love is of endless pleasure because:
The instant is made eternity 4
He considers love as a natural necessity to mankind, not a deliberate feeling to perform as he writes:
How is it under our control
To love or not to love.5
Browning has described the varied phases of love with full description. His love-gallery is full of different love-portraits. In his love poems we can easily trace the manifestations of all kinds of love, love for the sake of love, love that leads to sex and fleshy pleasures, in which, after satisfaction, no heart to heart relation continues, true love of pious souls, the passionate and observed love. His series of love poems like The Last Ride Together, Evelyn Hope, Cristina, Two in the Campagna, Porphyria’s Lover, The Statue and the Bust, By the Fireside, A Woman’s Last Word, A Lover’s Quarrel, Summum Bonum, Andrea Del Sarto, and the like, keep within almost all the kinds and phases of love in various shades. In these poems one can easily come to know how love begins, how it sprouts at the first sight, how it blooms, and what shape and beauty it keeps at the old age, how the love rests in spirituality, these lyrics can be viewed as the poet’s own-life experiences.
Browning’s first poetic production Pauline (1833), shows almost all the experience that the poet had in his early life of boyhood. This poem is full of his confessions of love-incidents. At one place, in the poem he wishes, heartily to make a home and be there with Pauline, perhaps this was the poets unfulfilled desire of having the close company of Eliza Flower. This poem also gives full expressions to the poet’s suspicious, doubts and frustrations. The confessional element is the leading element in the whole poem concerning Eliza Flower, who took a very small but a very significant place in the poet’s life. This poem not only throws light on the love-confessions of the poet but also highlights the other important aspects of his life. In the poem, he presents his chief doctrine of love- the attainment of total fulfillment in life, through the inter-relationship of spiritual and physical love.
The extract of all Browning’s love poem is the importance of love in human life. The poem Paracelsus (1835), expresses beautifully how the love is important in human life, and how without love a man is incomplete. In the poem, Paracelsus sets out to seek knowledge for he thinks that with knowledge only, he can serve mankind better. He blindly faiths, if he acquires knowledge, love and praise will automatically follow him. Then he chucks love off. But at last, Paracelsus has been rejected by the people for his untrue aspirations and temptuous life. After all, Paracelsus happens to meet Aprile, opposite of Parcelsus’ opinion who believe “to love infinitely and beloved”, thus, the former came to know his mistake and accepted love as the integral part of human life without which no mankind’s service is possible.
Browning was ever a truth explore, and this quest for truth shifts from within to soul- searching- to assembling the truth from innumerable “minute particulars” so that “the pure white light” may some how be reconstituted from the “broken prismatic hues” in as far as thought can reach. He now begins to appreciate, what his powers of observation and his interest in living vicariously through the lives of others best suited him to do.
Pippa Passes (1841), represents a baser kind of love, opposite of the unlawful, but moderately silent love of the Duke and his beloved. The kind of love, between these two persons, Ottima and Sebald is to be the most heinous kind of love and the worst form of love that is portrayed elsewhere by the poet. We observe the two opposite sexes without any moral, just indulged in their fleshy–play. Their love stands on the ruthless murder of the husband of Ottima, by herself and her lover’s hand, and such sin in love can never be forgiven.
Browning presents a variety of love-emotions, we do observe a number of kinds of love, covering all its scopes and shades, belonging to human life. If the love between Ottima and Sebald, is full of sexual-obsession, the love of the lover in the Last Ride Together is pure and of optimistic kind. This dramatic monologue is a study of character of mental states and moral crisis made from the inside. Thus, it is chiefly psychological, analytical, argumentative and meditative creation. In this poem we do study the character and the soul of the lover. The lover reckons all his past failures in love, the momentary success in the present and his hopes for the future; we can clearly peep into his soul. He is not discouraged a bit by his failure. He derives optimistic consolation from failure. He knows that he has been finally rejected but as a hopeful lover he asks for the last ride and this ride goes on, forever. He compares his present success better than the achievement of artists and soldiers. This poem successfully represents the poet’s optimistic height of love even in the darker circumstances.
Browning has depicted a very supreme kind of love in which the words loose its value. Such kind of love needs no expression, does not need even a single movement of tongue to express a single word, rather it is a kind of telepathy, that what is going on in the lovers heart, can be estimated or known to the beloved, even through his eyes and vice-versa. As Shakespeare in one of his plays, had found out that love begins form the contact of eyes and grows by watching more and more, this conception has been justified in the poem Cristina, in which he depicts that the real love does not need a single word rather, everything is expressed through the eyes of the lover or beloved.
She should never have looked at me,
If she meant I should not love her! 6
This poem can be regarded as the rarest specimen which presents the beginning of love in its most realistic and pure manner.
In some of his poems, the poet has rendered some amazing philosophy on love. One of them, is the love that remains unknown to the lover or beloved but, this hidden love, in its intensity and passion, is not less than the love told or known. This love produces more feeling of love for his love-mate because throughout the life it remains untold, and the lover or beloved has to undergo the same feelings, as that of the lovers who openly enjoy their love through word-expression. Such love make the lover more serious and passionate but he or she is so much sincere for this love that he or she may stake anything on the altar of sacrifice, for the welfare of the love partner. This poem Evelyn Hope throws light on his matured genius for he has treated successfully the typical kind of love. In the poem, a lover twice of her beloved’s age who is just of sixteen, remains a silent lover and never speaks of it, after her death, at the bud age, he sits beside and tells her of the intensity of his love for her. He puts a petal of flower in her palm as a testimony of his love and adoration to his beloved with a hope that, she in her next birth, will open her palm and see this token of love of the lover, and understand his love, thus, no further separation will be followed:
There, that is our secret: go to steep
You will wake and remember and understand.7
Browning is the great artist in portraying the ideal physical love between husband and wife or the two sincere lovers, he permits such pair of love makers to enjoy full physical- play in order to enjoy the real bliss of love.
Two in the Campagna, is the poem which expresses the full physical enjoyment of the lovers with “unashamed of soul”, because their love is true, sincere, and worth of enjoying the love upto the full satisfaction. In the poem, the lover convinces his beloved not to be shy in acts of full physical-openness in love, for their love is sincere and true:
Let as be unashamed of soul
As earth lies bare to heaven above !
How is it under our control,
To love or not to love?8
Browning always encourages dauntless love whether it is socially or traditionally approved. He always expects bold-hearted steps from the persons who are in love. He has no place or regard or remedy for the coward-lovers who put their knees before the storm of circumstances. He likes and goes with them who break all the hindrances in the way of achieving their love. The poem, Two in the Compagna, exemplifies this thought. Though the Duke and the beloved lady could not take bold steps but, anyhow, the poem represents the dauntless mode of love. Had they placed their courageous spirit without regarding the social values, there would have been an elopement, a pursuance, a bloodshed and finally the victory of the lovers. Anyhow, this poem represents a powerful force of love, if not universally, at least in the innermost recess of their hearts, afterall, their love is riped and entertained, through the sculptor of the lady and the states of the Duke, their love was immortalized.
Browning not only gives the ideal situation with ideal lovers, he has under his scope, the treatment of eccentric or mad-love, and mad-lovers. In such kind of love, the lover and
the beloved love each other so much deeply that they may touch the unexpected or impossible extent, in order to preserve their love. Porphyria’s lover represents such eccentricity in love, in which the lover, without thinking a bit of it, strangles his own beloved to death by the string of her own hair, The lover thinks that this is the most matured moment, when his beloved surrenders herself completely to him and in order to present her perishable beauty, virginity, and love he puts her to death. Though the lover has a perfect logic behind murdering his own beloved, yet, this all was merely an eccentric step which proves the lover mad.
In the later poems of the poet, in the poetic volume of Men and Women (1855) we do observe that he emphasizes on the married love, which demands more maturity in comparison of the bachelor love of care free young couples enjoying opposite sex. Here he seems serious in probing the love- relation between the married people. Like his earlier poems of love, he successfully treats the quintessence of love in relation ship of marriage. Men and Women in undoubtedly a treasure of poetic creation on the play of love emotion in married life. The poem beautifully exhibits the real married life experience of the poet and his best half Elizabeth Barrett. It declares their mutual love subdued the crisis in the life of the soul, a crisis to which all experience tends. Browning gives a passionate novel to the subtle reality of life and love. The tender sentiment expressed is genuine and justified to the beautiful wife with “Leoner” like beauty and calmness.
Andrea Del Sarto, represents successfully one-sided love which stands on selfishness on the woman’s’ part. Andrea is a successful and skilled painter, who does everything to please her wife, beloved Lucrezia, the woman who is completely unfaithful to her and tolerates the man Andrea only for the sake of money. The husband knows it well but due to having a deep lust for Lucrezia’s beauty, he deliberately accepts the, sensual-slavery for her. This becomes the flow of his character and ultimately his career of painting sinks down and thus, he could not achieve the place of Leonardo or Raphael.
Browning’s feats are excessive optimistic which is perceptible in almost all his poems. This optimism reaches to its peak in this creation, Prospice, at the old age, after the death of his wife the old husband lover firmly believes that after his own death he will have his wife in close embrace, in the next world and it is certain as in the following lines of the poem:
O thou soul of my soul
I shall clasp thee again.9
Browning, in each of his poems, presents a new variety, a new conception, a new idea and a new emotion of love with different love responses, as In a Year, in which the beloved pursues more her love, than her lover, while usually we see that the male-lover chases his love to have his beloved. In A Woman’s Last Word, the beloved, in order to save her love from argumentation and the exterior ill- effects, surrenders her whole passions to her lover and asks only love for him, keeping away all moral values. Any Wife to Any Husband presents a wondering prophetic picture of any husband and any wife. Another Way of Love is a form of compulsive love, for the lover orders his beloved either to continue her love with his art or leave him calmly, the lover is thirsty of constant love without a single word of grading on the beloved’s part, He has presented a very realistic picture that how the external components effect on love as in A Lover’s Quarrell.
The poet does not follow the beaten track in dealing the kinds of lovers who already been death, rather he is an experimenter of varieties with all possible frustrations, failures and dejections in love-life. The poems are exemplary like The Worst of It, Too Late, and Youth and Art.
Browning does not fall short in treatment of the women’s psychology in love. Rather for higher than the traditional poets in the realm. In the series of little but compact nine short lyrics named on James Lee’s Wife unfolds many undiscovered secrets of a woman’s heart. The pangs, sufferings, thirst for sex, thirsty for meeting with the lover, the emotional sympathy on the part of male lover has been genuinely expressed in these group of poems, which stand unique in the whole range of English literature.
Browning is not among the range of such poets who have to be prolix in describing something of importance or deep-logic, it means they cannot put forth a big logic in brevity. He is the skilled artist, who keeps the huge ideas into a small place, Now is a small poem of fourteen lines, but the importance of the poem lies in it, that it keeps within the seed of almost all the poems of love in any literature. It is the echo of almost all the love emotions that over resounded in human heart.
Among the poems that are the reminiscences of Browning’s love days with Elizabeth, Dubiety, is of eternal importance. In this, he unfolds the secret emotional feelings for his wife. This poem may be regarded as one of the most moving lyrics from the viewpoint of reminiscent of his happiness in company of Elizabeth Barrett.
If we study, we come to know that there is a slight change in the treatment of love emotion. At the earlier stage of poetic production, the poet likes to analyze the psychology of the lover, very skillfully and interestingly, while at later stage of his life, he is full of maturity or we may say, Browning grows spiritual and more spiritual as he advances in age, in life and in his poetic production, we do see Browning’s more propensity towards spirituality in love than the thirst of physical we or in its description.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69), marks the crowning effort of Browning’s genius and is worthy of full- throated admiration for the worthiness of its scope and for the poet’s grasp over human nature. It is the old Roman story of the murder of a young wife Pompilia by her good-for-nothing husband Count Guido but the heroine, at times of need, has been soothed by the merciful priest Caponssachi. Pompilia is the embodiment of, rather incarnation of sacrificial and proud less love. She is full of human-milk but as the reward of her goodness, she is brutally murdered for no sin. This raises her to be the most lovely lady in the world of literature, who finds equal place with that of Shakespeare’s great herous. In the long poem of twelve books, the character of Pompilia, appears as a love-idol, who sacrifices her each possession on the altar of love, at last, even her life.
Browning, in his own married life enjoyed all the love emotions to a human limit after his married life. In the pleasure-giving company and devotional love of Elizabeth Barrett, he spent the golden years of his married life. He, with his wife, went here and visited that, and did all the best as the happiest pair of any place or profession could do. There love was not limited only to the emotional love, rather they both were drowned in each other’s physical charms. Both were quite sufficient to quench all sorts of human instinct, for each other’s sake, thus there was no place for the third. They both were the best half of each other in all respects, and as a result of the commingling of body and spirit, a son was born the couple, as the evidence of the perfect and fruitful physical love The poem By the Fireside, stands as the pulsating record of the happy life that may lived together, at the same time this poem becomes the super most in describing the happy married life. This poem is based on full satisfaction of his male desire that moves around Elizabeth’s beauty.
Browning never discourages the basic human instinct of sex. For him sex is an unavoidable reality and need of human life, on one hand it satisfies human thirst, on the other, it is significant for the process of generation. Thus, marriage is the important and the golden-period of a man’s life, for it keeps within the lawful love of all sorts. Marriage is special, for the both man and woman marriage is the perfect and socially permitted for fulfilling the desire of sex of the two opposite-sexes. Thus; sex is the strong and the mild, fresh, fruitful tree of marriage. He has written a number of poems which gives the full play of sexual pleasure and thirst, Summum Bonum, A Pearl, A Girl, Speculative, One Word More, Cristina, By the Fireside, A Woman’s Last Word and above all Prospice, in which the old lover wishes to “clasp” his beloved in the other world. Actually, he has shown justification for the claims of body’s role in the married life. In the Victorians view, body and flesh are the basic human instinct for it was an obstacle on the way of spiritual progress and emancipation, on the contrary, he writes with due importance of the claims of body and sex. He believed that the physical satisfaction was equally important for a successful, happy and contented married life in this world, as for heavenly progress and steps to the next world. Only this conception of Browning’s philosophy dares to talk of love and God simultaneously.
Almost all the love poems by Browning have little or more of flesh or physical love, but some are exemplary in presenting a man and a woman’s relationship in an open manner and among this range his description of married love is without an equal. Pauline, represents innocent physical love, when the lover in the opening lines of the poem says to his beloved:
Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me – thy soft breast
Shall pant to mine- bend o’er me – thy sweet eyes.10
The speaker in the poem has ever remained a sufferer, he looks at life as vanity, a hollow reality but Pauline’s love and physical charm brings him book to the truth and spirit of life.
The love of Ottima and Sebald, represent the sensual passion of the couple who love each-other knowing well that the beloved of the lover Sebald is a married woman. But the women, Ottima, blind in sexual thirst, keeps away all the social and moral values and enjoys open and free sexual pleasure with her paramour Sebald. That’s not all, she murders her husband ruthlessly to make clear the way of fulfilling her lustful sexual desires. Such love represents the immoral kind of love, which the poet, if not encourages, at least, does not hesitate to talk of.
The poem Two in the Campagna stands equal to that of, minute pleasure giving feelings and experiences of married life as in By the Fireside. The poem describes the poet’s happiness and contentment in his married life. He remembers the multiple gifts of happiness that has been brought by his wife Elizabeth. This poem fully portrays the flesh-bond between the poet and his wife, depicts the unfathomable and uncontrollable enjoyment in its full manner providing each satisfaction to his or her love partner. This poem also throws light on the art of loving that if once love making has been started it can’t be stopped till the exhausting consummation is achieved.
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?11
We find full play of romance and high sex in James Lee’s Wife in which the deserted woman’s cry for physical satisfaction and tireless waiting for the physical commingling is are praiseworthy for Browning’s amazing command over the woman’s sensual-psychology. At the same time Summum Bonum speaks clearly that all the truth’s of the world lies in the burning kiss of a girl.
The poem, In a Gandola, represent the beloved’s secret feelings of love for her lover as she demands for the sexual satisfaction and soul’s contentment from her lover. The realistic thoughts and lyrical lines give excessive beauty and make this poem, of eternal significance in comprehension of love-emotion.
Browning’s lover poetic journey saw success after success and placed him among the worlds greatest poet’s, securing an honourable place in Westminster Abbey. His each, big and small poetic creation throws light on the full-bloomed poetic personality and career of the poet, and this great poet pioneers his own way and follows no one’s track. He played brilliantly and wonderfully upon his own flute of poetry with quite unheard melody. The poetic treasure of the poet is a kind of original growth in its value and worth. In his career, he has made ever a forward march throwing away from its root, whatever came on the way of advancement, keeping with him the poetic beauty and open through from 1833 to 1889.
Browning was fairly and squarely a great optimistic poet and he sought inter-connection of this optimistic approach to almost all life’s aspects, especially in love, which was asked to consider the other name of failure, frustration and dejection. The poet’s optimism was not of Victorian cult, no other Victorian poet shown such bravery in facing the problems of life boldly. His philosophy of life was eminently- manly and brought cheer to many gloomed souls. He believed in the goodness and brighter aspect, as in the following lines, he looks at the world in an optimistic manner, in which the whole world is happy under God’s kind care,
God’s in his heaven
All’s right with the world.12
Browning is undoubtedly are of the greatest poets in English literature so far as the depiction of intensity and various aspects of love experiences, feelings and emotions are concerned. He is a singer of love covering all the aspects with presentation of various colours. The various kinds of glooms in love, peak of pleasures in love, the pangs of unfulfilled love, the ecstatic moments of the union of lovers whether brief or fleeting, optimistic hopes of eternal love, find a befitting expression in his love-lyrics. No doubt most characteristic of Browning’s poetic production is his love poems, in which he goes to the amazing scope. For him love is the foundation of man’s real worth and value. Perhaps, his own success in love and life made him hold this opinion. Any how he celebrates and enjoys the earthly and spiritual love upto the brim. He is not at all one with the Victorian, voracious for materialistic achievement, keeping away all the feelings of humanity and welfare and specially love of mankind. He never considered fleshy enjoyment as an obstacle in the way of the development of the human soul.
Almost all the poems by Browning are replete with the passionate of force emotion of love let his intellectual study of the emotion of love is also amazing, at times, he is more engaged in the psychology of the lover than the intensity of the love passion. In his love treatment, the beauty lies in the fact that the love raises a lover to a lofty level and fills his or her heart with untouched feelings and fresh spirits.
Browning’s greatness lies in the fact that, he sailed against the current, in openly talking of sexual-relationship between a man and a woman. In Victorian age, talking of open physical-love was likely to be committing a sin. But he has dealt with love in its different shades, covering the various aspects of sex-relationship between man and woman, and also in the married life. His love-heroes succeed and fail, as it really happens in this world. If the lovers succeed, they celebrate their success, however, if they fail, they don’t get dejected, they gathering all their courage, they store the food for future by immortalizing the present moment of happiness.
Undoubtedly, Browning influenced the subsequent course of English poetry. he was a creed in himself. His wonderful and fresh ideas, and his remarkable philosophy has ever been and even now, and unmistakable reality. he opened a new vista of knowledge, that provided a quite untouched and new study of the relationship of man and woman. In many respects, his poetry reflects contemporary trends, and for this reason, he has been hailed as the great fore-runner of the great moderns. Thus, it can be finally remarked that Browning, not only introduced many new things into English poetry, but also proved his genius as a successful pioneer for the later writers. The modern group of the writers owe much to him for his perfection in expressing the woman sensibilities, feeling, passions and thoughts. His ardent-ness for manifesting the hidden-recesses of the mind of his character, the study of psychology was flourished into the school of stream of consciousness, and pioneered the way for the writers of human psychology like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Dorothy. In modern poems related to the theme of love, sex and marital-love written by the great moderns like W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and others clearly exhibit the influence of Browning on their mind. The writers like G.M. Hopkins and Thomas Hardy seems to owe much to his treatment of sensual passion of love. Some Indo-Anglian writers like Kamala Das, Pradeep Sen, Anilbaran, K.D. Sethna, and Tirtha seems to be influenced by him in matters of secret aspects of sexual love. Thus, Browning always remain a source of inspiration for his coming generations of writers and poets and this has been influenced the subsequent course of English poetry especially in the aspects of love, including sex and the relationship of a married man and woman.
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Citations:-
1. Summum Bonum, The Works of Robert Browning, (Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1894), L 5-8.
2. Quoted in H.C. Duffin, Amphibian: A Reconsideration of Browning (London, Bowes and Bowes, 1962), P. 3.
3. Quoted in E.M. Tappan, An Introduction to English Literature, (New Delhi, Atlantic Publications, 1994), P. 260.
4. The Last Ride Together, L. 108.
5. Two in the Campagna, LL. 34-35.
6. Cristina, LL. 1-2.
7. Evelyn Hope, LL. 55-56.
8. Two in the Campagna, L. 31-35.
9. Prospice, L. 27.
10. Pauline, LL. 1-2.
11. Two in the Campagna, L. 31-35.
12. Pippa Passes, LL. 251-252.
By-
Dr. Santosh Shrivastava
Head, Dept. of English,
J.C. Mill Girls P.G. College, Gwalior
Santoshshrivastav23@gmail.com
Citations: 2. Quoted in H.C. Duffin, Amphibian: A Reconsideration of Browning (London, Bowes and Bowes, 1962), P. 3. 3. Quoted in E.M. Tappan, An Introduction to English Literature, (New Delhi, Atlantic Publications, 1994), P. 260.
By- Dr. Santosh Shrivastava
Santoshshrivastav23@gmail.com
When we attempt a general assessment of Robert Browning’s poetic caliber and overall achievement, his multi-faceted genius and his rarer treatment of love and its myriad moods and manifestations, all this strike our mind and heart intensely. The most characteristic of Browning’s poetry is his love-lyrics which remains the first and foremost of his total bulk of creative-production. After having a glance over the greater portion of the poetry written by him, one can easily constitute the idea that his lyrics haunt the mind of the reader, his poems seem to be the beautiful gallery of men and women, and these men and women are as simple, or as complex as life has to offer or can offer. The sphere of his poetic creation is a world of specific men and women, that too the lovers of all temperaments, faithful, criminal, jealous, cheaters, rogues, and the true lovers of their beloved, the ardent lovers, who, want to accompany their beloveds in the other world of souls, the lovers who are thirsty of flesh of their beloved and the lovers who just want a place in the heart of their beloved in lieu of the whole they possess. “Here’s God’s Plenty” as Dryden said of Chaucer, which is also applicable to Browning. His love poems are the real pictures of life drawn on the canvass of all human impossible limits.
Robert Browning was born in the comparatively rural perish of Camberwell in London on May 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in the Bank of England. In his Inner heart, he was an interesting combination of the scholar and the artist, possessing an skilled touch in both. His mother was the daughter of a German Ship-owner, who had settled at Scotland. She, Browning’s mother, was a women of sentiments, lover of music and full of artistic tastes. Her elevated personality exercised a great influence on him, and for his riped maturity in childhood. In his childhood he did not join any school, his real education was done at home. His father would recite from the Greek epics and other literatures, thus he picked up the origin of Greek poetry.
The first literary influence on Browning was that of Byron, but it did not live-longer. From latter, his guiding interest turned to Shelley whose excellent creation Queen Mab influenced him to a great extent. Keats was also a source of lasting influence and inspiration for him. In Pauline the influence of these two poets is clearly perceptible. He wrote Pauline at the early age of twenty. Next, he visited Russia and met a French who formed the subject of his next poetic-creation Paracelsus.
Browning visited Italy in 1838 and fell under the charm of Venice. The wonderful moments that he had spent here, were on his mind and heart all through his life. He read the poems of Elizabeth Barrett, a renowned contemporary poetess, and came to know that she knew his poems and even him and she liked his poems full of robust optimism and manliness. Gradually all these developed a friendship between them which ultimately assumed the form of love. Elizabeth’s father was a callous-hearted person, thus, he refused the permission of marriage, as a result, the lovers decided to marry despite paternal opposition. On September 12, 1846, they were secretly married at Marylebone Church and at once left for Italy, where they lived happily for many years. This span of time may be appreciated as the life’s golden phase of the Brownings. At this place their only child Robert Wiedman Barrett Browning was born in 1849. He found deep emotional satisfaction in his marriage with Elizabeth Barrett, as has been reflected in some of his personal love lyrics like By the Fireside, One Word More, and Prospice, in which Browning pours out his true sentiments for his wife.
After the death of his wife in 1861, He returned to England to edit her unpublished poems. At this period of his life, he became highly popular figure in London society. He was honoured by Oxford with a fellowship while Cambridge presented him an honorary degree. On December 12, 1889, Browning breathed his last, on the day his last poetic-volume Asolando was published. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
In 1832, Browning was twenty, and was writing Pauline an autobiographical poem in which, particularly Shelley’s influence is easily perceptible. His next work Paracelsus (1835) is like Pauline, the soul history. In this work, he considers love greater than knowledge.
Further, he tried his genius on dramatic form, Sordello was published in 1840, it is usually taken as the most controversial and obscure work by him. During the years 1840-46, he produced a number of poetic drama and poetry. Having suffered from the criticism of obscurity, he wrote a series of delightful poetical plays. The best of them are Pippa Passes (1841), King Victor and King Charles (1842), The Return of the Druses (1843), A Blot in the Scutcheon (1843), Colombe’s Birthday (1844), A Soul’s Tragedy (1846).
In the duration of these seven years (1840-46), the poet along with dramas, composed lyrics of first water. They all appeared together with plays under the title Bells and Pomegranates. After that he attempted to come out of the eclipse of Sordello, thus, he came in open air and sunlight, in the shorter poems of Dramatic Lyrics of 1842 and Dramatic Romances of 1845.
Browning continued writing poems of dramatic lyrics, and the result was Men and Women. It was published in two volumes in 1855. This volume brought him great name and fame which remained everlasting. After that, came Dramatis Personae, published in 1864, this volume was also a great achievement in the poetic art of his genius.
In the coming four years, he worked on his masterpiece production The Ring and the Book (1868-69), which is regarded as his crowning effort, both in thought and technique. Asolando (1889) was the last pearl from him to the ocean of literature. The volume was first published in London, which was whole-heartedly received. On the same date of the publication, Browning died on December 12, 1889.
Browning has written upon a variety of subjects. The subject-matter of poetic creation is the endless range of human experience and thought. It is evident that the subject of poetry is that, which appeals to or attracts the heart and mind of the poet, who pours out his creativity on the same subject, and thus, this subject becomes of perennial interest. Browning has portrayed God, Nature, artists, poets, painters, religious persons, and above all, lovers and their myriad moods in love, crime, philosophy and religion are the integral components of his poetry. In fact, his comprehension of life was very much profound. In his colourful art gallery of characters, we find the picture of not only normal human beings, but the abnormals and eccentrics as well.
Browning has presented his taste and interest of art and the artist. They always hold a very important place among his selection of the subject-matter. He does not bother much for the technical skill of the art of the artist as with its aesthetic culmination and the force of creation. Poems like, Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea Del Sarto are the perfect examples of it and even technically Andrea is quite flawless. He can even commit some correction in the lines wrongly drawn by the great Raphael. In the poem, Old Pictures in Florence, we have the idea of Browning’s in-depth knowledge, not only of the art of painting but also the artist hidden behind it.
Browning’s themes of God, Nature and Man as three inter-connected truths. In his poems, the description of natural scene, sights and landscapes, are not beyond man, rather they both seem closely-interconnected, which is not isolated from the man’s world. They are tremendous, realistic, brilliant and colourful. His choice falls on the spring season, sunrise and sunset. His world of natural-beauties is a very much part of the human world, which classifies almost all human sensations, emotions and feelings. In the poem, A Grammarian’s Funeral the high shooting of the meteors is in keeping with the loftiness of Grammarian’s aims and his learning-light. The poem Rabbi Ben Ezra represents, his whole religious conception and God, representing God and man relationship. According to Browning, God always compensates man’s each failure, and for the judgment of this compensation, he becomes the final authority of perfection. In his faith on religion, he believes that whatever man loses or misses in this mortal world, receives in the next world. This thought keeps him in line with Eastern culture and faith in rebirth.
Browning is also interested in abnormality or eccentricity. He shows his likeness in psychology of abnormal behaviour. In the poem Porphyria’s Lover, we face a lover, who strangles his own beloved to death with the string of her own hair. In The Laboratory, we come across a woman who wants to poison her opponent. His choice specially lies in the cases of abnormal mental process. In Bishop Blougram’s Apology, the behaviour of Bishop is also doubtful and demands analysis, for on the one hand he is mean and on the other, he is firm in faith for God. The same thing can be cited for Mr. Sludge in Sludge The Medium.
Browning’s a number of poems are abound in the Italian Renaissance spirit to the extent of exactness what he writes of Renaissance spirit or the Middle Ages. The Chief characteristics of the Renaissance are clearly visible in his poems, lust for materialism, beauty, possessiveness, praise of bravery, sex etc. are the chief components of his poems, about which he talks openly and boldly.
Above all, his writing upon the subject of love, including physical or spiritual, is par excellence. Through his love poems, he became the chief exponent of the love-lyricist in literature of any language. The most characteristic and the most original work of the poet is to be found in his love poems. While he deals with physical love, he seems to talk of purely sexual relationship between the opposite sexes, at higher level love becomes the pillar of morality and religion, without which no modesty or civilization can stand or possible. Love becomes the source of aesthetic-ecstasy for the poet.
Among the important aspects of love, the high nectar of force of life, drips only from love, as Browning speaks that the real love is its own award and the best fulfillment is itself. He glorifies failure, particularly failure in love, which is unique in the whole range of English literature. We do observe that many of his poems related to love intensely, have been written on unfulfilled love, after his wife’s death. According to his conception, such unsuccessful or isolated lovers have their complete compensation, by the grace of God, for they have its scope to reunite in the other world. The poet is always keeps himself with brave lovers, who, in order to achieve their love, break all the rules and regulations prescribed by society, facing all the thunders that come in the way of love. For him love means only love, the true and passionate. He is so positively optimistic that he believes a sincere and devoted lover, who has power to face all the vicissitudes on the way of love, ultimately wins the lovely hand of his beloved.
Browning has dealt with a variety of love. The love of man and woman has been presented in many shapes in his love-poems. He presents a lots of colours of love in his love poems, we do observe, rather closely feel, the fierce animal passion in Ottima, in Pippa Passes, which stands as quite contrast to the romantic love as presented in The Last Ride Together. Two in the Compagna signify the deep longing for the old assurance. At the same time Evenly Hope presents love, not only as a truth but presents it with an idealistic beauty. Whether personal or dramatic, his treatment of love is the ecstasy or the impulsive passion of youth. Love Among the Ruins, Two in the Campagna and Cristina, deal with not easily understood riped-love, and above all comes By the Fireside, the real experience and expression of love, which becomes the hall-mark of his depth of understanding for love and its treatment.
Wherever and whenever he deals with physical love, he tries to represent the passion of love with all its intensity and with all sensual appeals and other aspects. Physical love for him is so satisfactory, that he seeks all the truths and ideals of the universe in the burning kiss of a girl.
Truth, that’s brighter than gem,
Trust, that’s purer than pearl,
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, all were for me,
In the kiss of one girl.1
We do perceive, a tinge of sexual enjoyment, pleasure or fire of sex passions, whether quenched or unquenched, in almost all his love poems like, By the Fireside, Cristina, Pauline, The Last Ride together, Life in a Love, Love in a life, Now, Summum Bonum and the like poems are replete with physical aspect of love.
Browning shows his great skill in describing the love relationship between men and women, taking all the ranks and files into his astonishing scope. He beautifully expresses the love relationship between husband and wife after marriage. There are a number of poems in which he pours out the subtle and tickling experiences, not only from his own life but from the outer world also. The poems like One Word More, By the Fireside and Prospice and other poems are among the best poems of marital-love in the world of literature.
The poet shared an unrivalled historical love-relationship with Elizabeth Barrett. Undoubtedly she was the chief source of Browning’s spiritual and intellectual strength. Elizabeth was the real force behind his full riped genius. This union of the souls of the two poets unquestionably enriched each other’s poetic depth.
The story of the first indirect meeting of Browning and Elizabeth is very much interesting. One day, without any intention, he opened a book of poems by Elizabeth, which influenced deeply the mind as well as the heart of the poet. After going through a stanza, he found that the poetess knew his poetry and appreciated potential force of his manliness. Thus, he wrote to Elizabeth gratefully –
“I love your verses, with all my heart dear miss Barrett ......and I love you too.”2
He started enquiries about Miss Barrett and found out that she was a sickly; an invalid confined to a morbid house situated at Wimpole Street and was allowed to have the company of a very little group of friends. The reply of Miss Barrett to the poets letter was full of kindled enthusiasm. She was physically weak and made socially miserable by her ruthless father, therefore, she was naturally attracted to this bold and strongest contemporary poet. She answered:
“Sympathy is dear very dear to me, but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy.”3
Both the poetic souls made correspondences and received each-other’s love letters, and responded in the best manner of their heart’s reply. Their mutual exchange of thoughts grown day by day till they found each-other, forever. In letters they also praised each other’s poetic talent, personality, charm, concern for welfare and growing love.
At last, after considering all pros and cons, and all efforts, the couple was not allowed to get married because of parental objection from Elizabeth’s side, they eloped from the dungeon of Wimpole Street and decided to marry despite paternal oppositions and they got married in a simple ceremony at Marylebone Chruch on September 12, 1846.
The young couple went to Italy and there after moved to Florence. The charm of Italy remained on both the poetic hearts, and lasted to the last breath of Browning’s life.
The period that followed after his married life was the happiest phase of the poet’s life. The great love lyrics on the married love, are the product of this golden period of his life, as By the Fireside, One Word More, and so on, his genius blossomed under the happy love and Italian climate, and art. In Italy, he enjoyed all the bliss of life and poetic genius. Browning became father in 1849, a son was born named Robert Weidman Barrett Browning, the son was as the token of love from Elizabeth. The couple stayed in Italy till Mrs. Browning’s death in 1861. This was a great shock for the poet and he was severely shattered by this physical separation. At the end of sixteen perfect years, she died in his arms with a smile of eternal satisfaction on her face.
The husband, with lasting memories of his beloved wife, continued producing poetic-creations, and till then he had earned great name and fame in the high class society and reading world. At last, he developed bronchitis and his health broke down. He was taken to Venice after his desire. He breathed his last under the shadow of Italian sky in Venice on December 12, 1889, the day of the publication of his last volume Asolando, after a long journey of poetic production. He was buried at Westminister Abbey.
Browning brought a big change in conception of love, as it was prevalent in the Victorian Age. The age was full of frustration, anxiety, replete with skepticism, pessimism, and perplexion. It was mere a dream to talk of love, as the integral aspect of a successful human life. He found out optimistic and brighter aspects of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and sought its connection in the evolution of whole personality, which was impossible without life and love. This was a remarkable change towards the outlook of love, apart from the prevalent atmosphere of pessimism. Browning treated love as a powerful force for mankind, What was more striking, in opposition of the contemporary thought, he considered love as an inevitable condition for the moral up-liftment of the human soul, while the Victorian took love emotion as the most harmful weakness for human-civilization, thus, the poets importance lies for he sailed against the current, for him, a moment spent in pure love is of endless pleasure because:
The instant is made eternity 4
He considers love as a natural necessity to mankind, not a deliberate feeling to perform as he writes:
How is it under our control
To love or not to love.5
Browning has described the varied phases of love with full description. His love-gallery is full of different love-portraits. In his love poems we can easily trace the manifestations of all kinds of love, love for the sake of love, love that leads to sex and fleshy pleasures, in which, after satisfaction, no heart to heart relation continues, true love of pious souls, the passionate and observed love. His series of love poems like The Last Ride Together, Evelyn Hope, Cristina, Two in the Campagna, Porphyria’s Lover, The Statue and the Bust, By the Fireside, A Woman’s Last Word, A Lover’s Quarrel, Summum Bonum, Andrea Del Sarto, and the like, keep within almost all the kinds and phases of love in various shades. In these poems one can easily come to know how love begins, how it sprouts at the first sight, how it blooms, and what shape and beauty it keeps at the old age, how the love rests in spirituality, these lyrics can be viewed as the poet’s own-life experiences.
Browning’s first poetic production Pauline (1833), shows almost all the experience that the poet had in his early life of boyhood. This poem is full of his confessions of love-incidents. At one place, in the poem he wishes, heartily to make a home and be there with Pauline, perhaps this was the poets unfulfilled desire of having the close company of Eliza Flower. This poem also gives full expressions to the poet’s suspicious, doubts and frustrations. The confessional element is the leading element in the whole poem concerning Eliza Flower, who took a very small but a very significant place in the poet’s life. This poem not only throws light on the love-confessions of the poet but also highlights the other important aspects of his life. In the poem, he presents his chief doctrine of love- the attainment of total fulfillment in life, through the inter-relationship of spiritual and physical love.
The extract of all Browning’s love poem is the importance of love in human life. The poem Paracelsus (1835), expresses beautifully how the love is important in human life, and how without love a man is incomplete. In the poem, Paracelsus sets out to seek knowledge for he thinks that with knowledge only, he can serve mankind better. He blindly faiths, if he acquires knowledge, love and praise will automatically follow him. Then he chucks love off. But at last, Paracelsus has been rejected by the people for his untrue aspirations and temptuous life. After all, Paracelsus happens to meet Aprile, opposite of Parcelsus’ opinion who believe “to love infinitely and beloved”, thus, the former came to know his mistake and accepted love as the integral part of human life without which no mankind’s service is possible.
Browning was ever a truth explore, and this quest for truth shifts from within to soul- searching- to assembling the truth from innumerable “minute particulars” so that “the pure white light” may some how be reconstituted from the “broken prismatic hues” in as far as thought can reach. He now begins to appreciate, what his powers of observation and his interest in living vicariously through the lives of others best suited him to do.
Pippa Passes (1841), represents a baser kind of love, opposite of the unlawful, but moderately silent love of the Duke and his beloved. The kind of love, between these two persons, Ottima and Sebald is to be the most heinous kind of love and the worst form of love that is portrayed elsewhere by the poet. We observe the two opposite sexes without any moral, just indulged in their fleshy–play. Their love stands on the ruthless murder of the husband of Ottima, by herself and her lover’s hand, and such sin in love can never be forgiven.
Browning presents a variety of love-emotions, we do observe a number of kinds of love, covering all its scopes and shades, belonging to human life. If the love between Ottima and Sebald, is full of sexual-obsession, the love of the lover in the Last Ride Together is pure and of optimistic kind. This dramatic monologue is a study of character of mental states and moral crisis made from the inside. Thus, it is chiefly psychological, analytical, argumentative and meditative creation. In this poem we do study the character and the soul of the lover. The lover reckons all his past failures in love, the momentary success in the present and his hopes for the future; we can clearly peep into his soul. He is not discouraged a bit by his failure. He derives optimistic consolation from failure. He knows that he has been finally rejected but as a hopeful lover he asks for the last ride and this ride goes on, forever. He compares his present success better than the achievement of artists and soldiers. This poem successfully represents the poet’s optimistic height of love even in the darker circumstances.
Browning has depicted a very supreme kind of love in which the words loose its value. Such kind of love needs no expression, does not need even a single movement of tongue to express a single word, rather it is a kind of telepathy, that what is going on in the lovers heart, can be estimated or known to the beloved, even through his eyes and vice-versa. As Shakespeare in one of his plays, had found out that love begins form the contact of eyes and grows by watching more and more, this conception has been justified in the poem Cristina, in which he depicts that the real love does not need a single word rather, everything is expressed through the eyes of the lover or beloved.
She should never have looked at me,
If she meant I should not love her! 6
This poem can be regarded as the rarest specimen which presents the beginning of love in its most realistic and pure manner.
In some of his poems, the poet has rendered some amazing philosophy on love. One of them, is the love that remains unknown to the lover or beloved but, this hidden love, in its intensity and passion, is not less than the love told or known. This love produces more feeling of love for his love-mate because throughout the life it remains untold, and the lover or beloved has to undergo the same feelings, as that of the lovers who openly enjoy their love through word-expression. Such love make the lover more serious and passionate but he or she is so much sincere for this love that he or she may stake anything on the altar of sacrifice, for the welfare of the love partner. This poem Evelyn Hope throws light on his matured genius for he has treated successfully the typical kind of love. In the poem, a lover twice of her beloved’s age who is just of sixteen, remains a silent lover and never speaks of it, after her death, at the bud age, he sits beside and tells her of the intensity of his love for her. He puts a petal of flower in her palm as a testimony of his love and adoration to his beloved with a hope that, she in her next birth, will open her palm and see this token of love of the lover, and understand his love, thus, no further separation will be followed:
There, that is our secret: go to steep
You will wake and remember and understand.7
Browning is the great artist in portraying the ideal physical love between husband and wife or the two sincere lovers, he permits such pair of love makers to enjoy full physical- play in order to enjoy the real bliss of love.
Two in the Campagna, is the poem which expresses the full physical enjoyment of the lovers with “unashamed of soul”, because their love is true, sincere, and worth of enjoying the love upto the full satisfaction. In the poem, the lover convinces his beloved not to be shy in acts of full physical-openness in love, for their love is sincere and true:
Let as be unashamed of soul
As earth lies bare to heaven above !
How is it under our control,
To love or not to love?8
Browning always encourages dauntless love whether it is socially or traditionally approved. He always expects bold-hearted steps from the persons who are in love. He has no place or regard or remedy for the coward-lovers who put their knees before the storm of circumstances. He likes and goes with them who break all the hindrances in the way of achieving their love. The poem, Two in the Compagna, exemplifies this thought. Though the Duke and the beloved lady could not take bold steps but, anyhow, the poem represents the dauntless mode of love. Had they placed their courageous spirit without regarding the social values, there would have been an elopement, a pursuance, a bloodshed and finally the victory of the lovers. Anyhow, this poem represents a powerful force of love, if not universally, at least in the innermost recess of their hearts, afterall, their love is riped and entertained, through the sculptor of the lady and the states of the Duke, their love was immortalized.
Browning not only gives the ideal situation with ideal lovers, he has under his scope, the treatment of eccentric or mad-love, and mad-lovers. In such kind of love, the lover and
the beloved love each other so much deeply that they may touch the unexpected or impossible extent, in order to preserve their love. Porphyria’s lover represents such eccentricity in love, in which the lover, without thinking a bit of it, strangles his own beloved to death by the string of her own hair, The lover thinks that this is the most matured moment, when his beloved surrenders herself completely to him and in order to present her perishable beauty, virginity, and love he puts her to death. Though the lover has a perfect logic behind murdering his own beloved, yet, this all was merely an eccentric step which proves the lover mad.
In the later poems of the poet, in the poetic volume of Men and Women (1855) we do observe that he emphasizes on the married love, which demands more maturity in comparison of the bachelor love of care free young couples enjoying opposite sex. Here he seems serious in probing the love- relation between the married people. Like his earlier poems of love, he successfully treats the quintessence of love in relation ship of marriage. Men and Women in undoubtedly a treasure of poetic creation on the play of love emotion in married life. The poem beautifully exhibits the real married life experience of the poet and his best half Elizabeth Barrett. It declares their mutual love subdued the crisis in the life of the soul, a crisis to which all experience tends. Browning gives a passionate novel to the subtle reality of life and love. The tender sentiment expressed is genuine and justified to the beautiful wife with “Leoner” like beauty and calmness.
Andrea Del Sarto, represents successfully one-sided love which stands on selfishness on the woman’s’ part. Andrea is a successful and skilled painter, who does everything to please her wife, beloved Lucrezia, the woman who is completely unfaithful to her and tolerates the man Andrea only for the sake of money. The husband knows it well but due to having a deep lust for Lucrezia’s beauty, he deliberately accepts the, sensual-slavery for her. This becomes the flow of his character and ultimately his career of painting sinks down and thus, he could not achieve the place of Leonardo or Raphael.
Browning’s feats are excessive optimistic which is perceptible in almost all his poems. This optimism reaches to its peak in this creation, Prospice, at the old age, after the death of his wife the old husband lover firmly believes that after his own death he will have his wife in close embrace, in the next world and it is certain as in the following lines of the poem:
O thou soul of my soul
I shall clasp thee again.9
Browning, in each of his poems, presents a new variety, a new conception, a new idea and a new emotion of love with different love responses, as In a Year, in which the beloved pursues more her love, than her lover, while usually we see that the male-lover chases his love to have his beloved. In A Woman’s Last Word, the beloved, in order to save her love from argumentation and the exterior ill- effects, surrenders her whole passions to her lover and asks only love for him, keeping away all moral values. Any Wife to Any Husband presents a wondering prophetic picture of any husband and any wife. Another Way of Love is a form of compulsive love, for the lover orders his beloved either to continue her love with his art or leave him calmly, the lover is thirsty of constant love without a single word of grading on the beloved’s part, He has presented a very realistic picture that how the external components effect on love as in A Lover’s Quarrell.
The poet does not follow the beaten track in dealing the kinds of lovers who already been death, rather he is an experimenter of varieties with all possible frustrations, failures and dejections in love-life. The poems are exemplary like The Worst of It, Too Late, and Youth and Art.
Browning does not fall short in treatment of the women’s psychology in love. Rather for higher than the traditional poets in the realm. In the series of little but compact nine short lyrics named on James Lee’s Wife unfolds many undiscovered secrets of a woman’s heart. The pangs, sufferings, thirst for sex, thirsty for meeting with the lover, the emotional sympathy on the part of male lover has been genuinely expressed in these group of poems, which stand unique in the whole range of English literature.
Browning is not among the range of such poets who have to be prolix in describing something of importance or deep-logic, it means they cannot put forth a big logic in brevity. He is the skilled artist, who keeps the huge ideas into a small place, Now is a small poem of fourteen lines, but the importance of the poem lies in it, that it keeps within the seed of almost all the poems of love in any literature. It is the echo of almost all the love emotions that over resounded in human heart.
Among the poems that are the reminiscences of Browning’s love days with Elizabeth, Dubiety, is of eternal importance. In this, he unfolds the secret emotional feelings for his wife. This poem may be regarded as one of the most moving lyrics from the viewpoint of reminiscent of his happiness in company of Elizabeth Barrett.
If we study, we come to know that there is a slight change in the treatment of love emotion. At the earlier stage of poetic production, the poet likes to analyze the psychology of the lover, very skillfully and interestingly, while at later stage of his life, he is full of maturity or we may say, Browning grows spiritual and more spiritual as he advances in age, in life and in his poetic production, we do see Browning’s more propensity towards spirituality in love than the thirst of physical we or in its description.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69), marks the crowning effort of Browning’s genius and is worthy of full- throated admiration for the worthiness of its scope and for the poet’s grasp over human nature. It is the old Roman story of the murder of a young wife Pompilia by her good-for-nothing husband Count Guido but the heroine, at times of need, has been soothed by the merciful priest Caponssachi. Pompilia is the embodiment of, rather incarnation of sacrificial and proud less love. She is full of human-milk but as the reward of her goodness, she is brutally murdered for no sin. This raises her to be the most lovely lady in the world of literature, who finds equal place with that of Shakespeare’s great herous. In the long poem of twelve books, the character of Pompilia, appears as a love-idol, who sacrifices her each possession on the altar of love, at last, even her life.
Browning, in his own married life enjoyed all the love emotions to a human limit after his married life. In the pleasure-giving company and devotional love of Elizabeth Barrett, he spent the golden years of his married life. He, with his wife, went here and visited that, and did all the best as the happiest pair of any place or profession could do. There love was not limited only to the emotional love, rather they both were drowned in each other’s physical charms. Both were quite sufficient to quench all sorts of human instinct, for each other’s sake, thus there was no place for the third. They both were the best half of each other in all respects, and as a result of the commingling of body and spirit, a son was born the couple, as the evidence of the perfect and fruitful physical love The poem By the Fireside, stands as the pulsating record of the happy life that may lived together, at the same time this poem becomes the super most in describing the happy married life. This poem is based on full satisfaction of his male desire that moves around Elizabeth’s beauty.
Browning never discourages the basic human instinct of sex. For him sex is an unavoidable reality and need of human life, on one hand it satisfies human thirst, on the other, it is significant for the process of generation. Thus, marriage is the important and the golden-period of a man’s life, for it keeps within the lawful love of all sorts. Marriage is special, for the both man and woman marriage is the perfect and socially permitted for fulfilling the desire of sex of the two opposite-sexes. Thus; sex is the strong and the mild, fresh, fruitful tree of marriage. He has written a number of poems which gives the full play of sexual pleasure and thirst, Summum Bonum, A Pearl, A Girl, Speculative, One Word More, Cristina, By the Fireside, A Woman’s Last Word and above all Prospice, in which the old lover wishes to “clasp” his beloved in the other world. Actually, he has shown justification for the claims of body’s role in the married life. In the Victorians view, body and flesh are the basic human instinct for it was an obstacle on the way of spiritual progress and emancipation, on the contrary, he writes with due importance of the claims of body and sex. He believed that the physical satisfaction was equally important for a successful, happy and contented married life in this world, as for heavenly progress and steps to the next world. Only this conception of Browning’s philosophy dares to talk of love and God simultaneously.
Almost all the love poems by Browning have little or more of flesh or physical love, but some are exemplary in presenting a man and a woman’s relationship in an open manner and among this range his description of married love is without an equal. Pauline, represents innocent physical love, when the lover in the opening lines of the poem says to his beloved:
Pauline, mine own, bend o’er me – thy soft breast
Shall pant to mine- bend o’er me – thy sweet eyes.10
The speaker in the poem has ever remained a sufferer, he looks at life as vanity, a hollow reality but Pauline’s love and physical charm brings him book to the truth and spirit of life.
The love of Ottima and Sebald, represent the sensual passion of the couple who love each-other knowing well that the beloved of the lover Sebald is a married woman. But the women, Ottima, blind in sexual thirst, keeps away all the social and moral values and enjoys open and free sexual pleasure with her paramour Sebald. That’s not all, she murders her husband ruthlessly to make clear the way of fulfilling her lustful sexual desires. Such love represents the immoral kind of love, which the poet, if not encourages, at least, does not hesitate to talk of.
The poem Two in the Campagna stands equal to that of, minute pleasure giving feelings and experiences of married life as in By the Fireside. The poem describes the poet’s happiness and contentment in his married life. He remembers the multiple gifts of happiness that has been brought by his wife Elizabeth. This poem fully portrays the flesh-bond between the poet and his wife, depicts the unfathomable and uncontrollable enjoyment in its full manner providing each satisfaction to his or her love partner. This poem also throws light on the art of loving that if once love making has been started it can’t be stopped till the exhausting consummation is achieved.
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?11
We find full play of romance and high sex in James Lee’s Wife in which the deserted woman’s cry for physical satisfaction and tireless waiting for the physical commingling is are praiseworthy for Browning’s amazing command over the woman’s sensual-psychology. At the same time Summum Bonum speaks clearly that all the truth’s of the world lies in the burning kiss of a girl.
The poem, In a Gandola, represent the beloved’s secret feelings of love for her lover as she demands for the sexual satisfaction and soul’s contentment from her lover. The realistic thoughts and lyrical lines give excessive beauty and make this poem, of eternal significance in comprehension of love-emotion.
Browning’s lover poetic journey saw success after success and placed him among the worlds greatest poet’s, securing an honourable place in Westminster Abbey. His each, big and small poetic creation throws light on the full-bloomed poetic personality and career of the poet, and this great poet pioneers his own way and follows no one’s track. He played brilliantly and wonderfully upon his own flute of poetry with quite unheard melody. The poetic treasure of the poet is a kind of original growth in its value and worth. In his career, he has made ever a forward march throwing away from its root, whatever came on the way of advancement, keeping with him the poetic beauty and open through from 1833 to 1889.
Browning was fairly and squarely a great optimistic poet and he sought inter-connection of this optimistic approach to almost all life’s aspects, especially in love, which was asked to consider the other name of failure, frustration and dejection. The poet’s optimism was not of Victorian cult, no other Victorian poet shown such bravery in facing the problems of life boldly. His philosophy of life was eminently- manly and brought cheer to many gloomed souls. He believed in the goodness and brighter aspect, as in the following lines, he looks at the world in an optimistic manner, in which the whole world is happy under God’s kind care,
God’s in his heaven
All’s right with the world.12
Browning is undoubtedly are of the greatest poets in English literature so far as the depiction of intensity and various aspects of love experiences, feelings and emotions are concerned. He is a singer of love covering all the aspects with presentation of various colours. The various kinds of glooms in love, peak of pleasures in love, the pangs of unfulfilled love, the ecstatic moments of the union of lovers whether brief or fleeting, optimistic hopes of eternal love, find a befitting expression in his love-lyrics. No doubt most characteristic of Browning’s poetic production is his love poems, in which he goes to the amazing scope. For him love is the foundation of man’s real worth and value. Perhaps, his own success in love and life made him hold this opinion. Any how he celebrates and enjoys the earthly and spiritual love upto the brim. He is not at all one with the Victorian, voracious for materialistic achievement, keeping away all the feelings of humanity and welfare and specially love of mankind. He never considered fleshy enjoyment as an obstacle in the way of the development of the human soul.
Almost all the poems by Browning are replete with the passionate of force emotion of love let his intellectual study of the emotion of love is also amazing, at times, he is more engaged in the psychology of the lover than the intensity of the love passion. In his love treatment, the beauty lies in the fact that the love raises a lover to a lofty level and fills his or her heart with untouched feelings and fresh spirits.
Browning’s greatness lies in the fact that, he sailed against the current, in openly talking of sexual-relationship between a man and a woman. In Victorian age, talking of open physical-love was likely to be committing a sin. But he has dealt with love in its different shades, covering the various aspects of sex-relationship between man and woman, and also in the married life. His love-heroes succeed and fail, as it really happens in this world. If the lovers succeed, they celebrate their success, however, if they fail, they don’t get dejected, they gathering all their courage, they store the food for future by immortalizing the present moment of happiness.
Undoubtedly, Browning influenced the subsequent course of English poetry. he was a creed in himself. His wonderful and fresh ideas, and his remarkable philosophy has ever been and even now, and unmistakable reality. he opened a new vista of knowledge, that provided a quite untouched and new study of the relationship of man and woman. In many respects, his poetry reflects contemporary trends, and for this reason, he has been hailed as the great fore-runner of the great moderns. Thus, it can be finally remarked that Browning, not only introduced many new things into English poetry, but also proved his genius as a successful pioneer for the later writers. The modern group of the writers owe much to him for his perfection in expressing the woman sensibilities, feeling, passions and thoughts. His ardent-ness for manifesting the hidden-recesses of the mind of his character, the study of psychology was flourished into the school of stream of consciousness, and pioneered the way for the writers of human psychology like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Dorothy. In modern poems related to the theme of love, sex and marital-love written by the great moderns like W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and others clearly exhibit the influence of Browning on their mind. The writers like G.M. Hopkins and Thomas Hardy seems to owe much to his treatment of sensual passion of love. Some Indo-Anglian writers like Kamala Das, Pradeep Sen, Anilbaran, K.D. Sethna, and Tirtha seems to be influenced by him in matters of secret aspects of sexual love. Thus, Browning always remain a source of inspiration for his coming generations of writers and poets and this has been influenced the subsequent course of English poetry especially in the aspects of love, including sex and the relationship of a married man and woman.
**********************
Citations:-
1. Summum Bonum, The Works of Robert Browning, (Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1894), L 5-8.
2. Quoted in H.C. Duffin, Amphibian: A Reconsideration of Browning (London, Bowes and Bowes, 1962), P. 3.
3. Quoted in E.M. Tappan, An Introduction to English Literature, (New Delhi, Atlantic Publications, 1994), P. 260.
4. The Last Ride Together, L. 108.
5. Two in the Campagna, LL. 34-35.
6. Cristina, LL. 1-2.
7. Evelyn Hope, LL. 55-56.
8. Two in the Campagna, L. 31-35.
9. Prospice, L. 27.
10. Pauline, LL. 1-2.
11. Two in the Campagna, L. 31-35.
12. Pippa Passes, LL. 251-252.
By-
Dr. Santosh Shrivastava
Head, Dept. of English,
J.C. Mill Girls P.G. College, Gwalior
Santoshshrivastav23@gmail.com
Citations: 2. Quoted in H.C. Duffin, Amphibian: A Reconsideration of Browning (London, Bowes and Bowes, 1962), P. 3. 3. Quoted in E.M. Tappan, An Introduction to English Literature, (New Delhi, Atlantic Publications, 1994), P. 260.
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