Browning, Robert, 1812-1889; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
"To undergo experience for our sake,
Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them,
In us might temper to the due degree
Joy's else-excessive largess,"--
instead of admitting a like appeal to the same human assurance, he falls
back upon the unfathomable ways of Omnipotence. If the rifts in the
argument are in any sense supplied, it is by the brief snatches of song
which intervene between the _Fancies_, as the cicada-note filled the
pauses of the broken string. These exquisite lyrics are much more
adequate expressions of Browning's faith than the dialogues which
professedly embody it. They transfer the discussion from the jangle of
the schools and the cavils of the market-place to the passionate
persuasions of the heart and the intimate experiences of love, in which
all Browning's mysticism had its root. Thus Ferishtah's pragmatic,
almost philistine, doctrine of "Plot-culture," by which human life is
peremptorily walled in within its narrow round of tasks, "minuteness
severed from immensity," is followed by the lyric which tells how Love
transcends those limits, making an eternity of time and a universe of
solitude. Finally, the burden of these wayward intermittent strains of
love-music is caught up, with an added intensity drawn from the poet's
personal love and sorrow, in the noble Epilogue. As he listens to the
call of Love, the world becomes an enchanted place, resounding with the
triumph of good and the exultant battle-joy of heroes. But a "chill
wind" suddenly disencharms the enchantment, a doubt that buoyant faith
might be a mirage conjured up by Love itself:--
"What if all be error,
If the halo irised round my head were--Love, thine arms?"
He disdains to answer; for the last words glow with a fire which of
itself dispels the chill wind. A faith founded upon love had for
Browning a surer guarantee than any founded upon reason; it was secured
by that which most nearly emancipated men from the illusions of
mortality, and enabled them to see things as they are seen by God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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