"there stood the strength, Happy as always; something grave, perhaps; The yellow hair o' the hero! his big frame A-quiver with each muscle sinking back As the words followed the saluting hand." It is not so much the glory of flesh which Euripides represents in Herakles, as the indulgence of appetite, at a time, too, when that indulgence is made to appear the more culpable and gross. This idea of "the value and significance of flesh," it is important to note, along with the predominant spiritual bearing of Browning's poetry. It articulates everywhere the spiritual, so to speak - makes it healthy and robust, and protects it against volatility and from running into mysticism. 2. THE IDEA OF PERSONALITY AS EMBODIED IN BROWNING'S POETRY. A cardinal idea in Browning's poetry is the regeneration of men through a personality who brings fresh stuff for them to mould, interpret, and prove right, -new feeling fresh from God whose life re-teaches them what life should be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness, all once revealed, but taught them so long since that they have but mere tradition of the fact, truth copied falteringly from copies faint, the early traits all dropped away. ('Luria.') The intellect plays a secondary part. Its place is behind the instinctive, spiritual antennæ which conduct along their trembling lines, fresh stuff for the intellect to stamp and keep — fresh instinct for it to translate into law. "A people is but the attempt of many to rise to the completer life of one." ('A Soul's Tragedy.') Only the man who supplies new feeling fresh from God, quickens and regenerates the race, and sets it on the King's highway from which it has wandered into by-ways- not the man of mere intellect, of unkindled soul, that supplies only stark-naked thought. Through the former, "God stooping shows sufficient of His light for those i' the dark to rise by." (R. and B., Pompilia.') In him men discern "the dawn of the next nature, the new man whose will they venture in the place of theirs, and whom they trust to find them out new ways to the new heights which yet he only sees." (Luria.') It is by reaching towards, and doing fealty to, the greater spirit which attracts and absorbs their own, that, "trace by trace old memories reappear, old truth returns, their slow thought does its work, and all's re-known." ('Luria.') "Some existence like a pact All in degree, no way diverse in kind From minds above it, minds which, more or less Lofty or low, move seeking to impress Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed Step after step, by just ascent sublimed. Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage, Is soul from body still to disengage, As tending to a freedom which rejects The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, Mind of e'en Thought, and, lo, God's unexpressed 66 A dangerous tendency of civilization is that towards crystallization towards hardened, inflexible conventionalisms which refuse the soul its way." Such crystallization, such conventionalisms, yield only to the dissolving power of the spiritual warmth of life-full personalities. The quickening, regenerating power of personality is everywhere exhibited in Browning's poetry. It is emphasized in Luria,' and in the Monologues of the Canon Caponsacchi and Pompilia, in the Ring and the Book'; it shines out, or glints forth, in 'Colombe's Birthday,' in 'Saul,' in 'Sordello,' and in all the Love poems. I would say, en passant, that Love is always treated by Browning as a spiritual claim; while duty may be only a worldly one. See especially the poem entitled 'Bifurcation.' In 'Balaustion's Adventure: including a transcript from Euripides,' the regenerating power of personality may be said to be the leavening idea, which the poet has introduced into the Greek play. It is entirely absent in the original. It baptizes, so to speak, the Greek play, and converts it into a Christian poem. It is the " truth" of the poet's After the mourning friends have spoken their words of consolation to the bereaved husband, the last word being, "Dead, thy wife - living, the love she left," Admetos "turned on the comfort, with no tears, this time. He was beginning to be like his wife. I told you of that pressure to the point, word slow pursuing word in monotone, Alkestis spoke with; so Admetos, now, solemnly bore the burden of the truth. And as the voice of him grew, gathered strength, and groaned on, and persisted to the end, we felt how deep had been descent in grief, and with what change he came up now to light, and left behind such littleness as tears.” Christmas Eve.' new And when Alkestis was brought back by Herakles, "the hero twitched the veil off: and there stood, with such fixed eyes and such slow smile, Alkestis' silent self! It was the crowning grace of that great heart to keep back joy: procrastinate the truth until the wife, who had made proof and found the husband wanting, might essay once more, hear, see, and feel him renovated now— able to do, now, all herself had done, risen to the height of her: so, hand in hand, the two might go together, live and die." (Compare with this the restoration of Hermione to her husband, in 'The Winter's Tale,' Act V.) A good intellect has been characterized as the chorus of Divinity. Substitute for "good intellect," an exalted magnetic personality, and the thought is deepened. An exalted magnetic personality is the chorus of Divinity, which, in the great Drama of Humanity, guides and interprets the feelings and sympathies of other souls and thus adjusts their attitudes towards the Divine. It is not the highest function of such a personality to teach, but rather to inform, in the earlier and deeper sense of the word. Whatever mere doctrine he may promulgate, is of inferior importance to the spontaneous action of his concrete life, in which the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, breathe and live. What is born in the brain dies there, it may be; at best, it does not, and cannot of itself, lead up to the full concrete life. It is only through the spontaneous and unconscious fealty which an inferior does to a superior soul (a fealty resulting from the responsiveness of spirit to spirit), that the former is slowly and silently transformed into a more or less approximate image of the latter. The stronger personality leads the weaker on by paths which the weaker knows not, upward he leads him, though his steps be slow and vacillating. Humility, in the Christian sense, means this fealty to the higher. It doesn't mean self-abasement, self-depreciation, as it has been understood to mean, by both the Romish and the Protestant Church. Pride, in the Christian sense, is the closing of the doors of the soul to a great magnetic guest. Browning beautifully expresses the transmission of personality in his 'Saul.' But according to Browning's idea, personality cannot strictly be said to be transmitted. Personality rather evokes its like from other souls, which are "all in degree, no way diverse in kind." (Sordello.') David has reached an advanced stage in his symbolic song to Saul. He thinks now what next he shall urge "to sustain him Song filled to the verge his cup where song had restored him? with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye and bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?" So once more the string of the harp makes response to his spirit, and he sings: "In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit. Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst turn Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall staunch Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine. Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun efface, Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace |