Browning and His CenturyClarke, Helen A. (Helen Archibald)
Philosophy
Browning and His Century
Clarke, Helen A. (Helen Archibald)
Browning, Robert, 1812-1889; Nineteenth century; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Again, in "The Return of the Druses" there is a complicated clash between
the ideal of religious reverence for the incarnation of divinity in Djabal
and human love for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the end in the
destruction of the idea of Djabal's supernatural divinity, and his
reinstatement perceived by Anael as divine through the complete exaltation
of his human love for Anael.
These examples, however, while they illustrate Browning's attitude toward
human love, are far enough removed from nineteenth-century conditions in
England. In "Pippa," the social conditions of nineteenth-century Italy are
reflected; in "The Druses," the religious conditions of the Druse nation
in the fifteenth century.
In the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" a situation is developed which comes home
forcibly to the nineteenth-century Englishman despite the fact that the
scene is supposed to be laid in the eighteenth century. The poet's
treatment of the clash between the ideal, cherished by an old and honored
aristocratic family of its own immaculate purity, and the spontaneous,
complete and exalted love of the two young people who in their ecstasy
transcend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no other situation could,
his reverential attitude upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the older,
intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the young lover, are the only people in
the play to realize that purity may exist although the social enactments
upon which it is supposed to depend have not been complied with. Tresham
learns it only when he has wounded Mertoun unto death; Mildred never
learns it. The grip of conventional teaching has sunk so deeply into her
nature that she feels her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned for by
death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives expression to the essential purity and
truth of his nature in these words:
"Die along with me,
Dear Mildred! 'tis so easy, and you'll 'scape
So much unkindness! Can I lie at rest,
With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds
Done to you?--heartless men shall have my heart
And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm,
Aware, perhaps, of every blow--O God!--
Upon those lips--yet of no power to bear
The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave
Their honorable world to them! For God
We're good enough, though the world casts us out."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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