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ROBERT BROWNING
‘CHILD ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME’
( See Edgar’s song in Lear )
I
My first thought was, he lied in every word, That hoary cripple, with malicious eye Askance to watch the working of Ms lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that nursed and scored Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
II
What else should he be set for, with his staff? What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh Would break, what crutch ‘gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,
III
If at his counsel I should turn aside Into that ominous tract which, all agree Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly I did turn as he pointed : neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried, So much as gladness that some end might be.
IV
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering, What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring, I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring My heart made, finding failure in its scope.
V
As when a sick man very near to death Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside (‘since all is o’er’, he saith, ‘And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;’)
VI
While some discuss if near the other graves Be room enough for this, and when a day Suits best for carrying the coipse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves: And still the man hears all, and only craves He may not shame such tender love and stay.
VII
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest, Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ So many times among ‘The Band’ — to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search addressed Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now — should I be fit?
VIII
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hatefu cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.
IX
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O’er the safe road, ’twas gone; grey plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound. I might go on; nought else remained to do.
XV
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart: As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one drought of earlier, happier sights, Ere fifty I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards — the soldier’s art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
XVI
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace! Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
XVII
Giles then, the soul of honour — there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first. What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good — but the scene shifts — faugh! What hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own hands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
XVIII
Better this present than a past like that; Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howler or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
XIX
A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend’s glowing hoof— to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
XX
So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng : The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
XXI
Which, while I forded, — good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled hi his hair or beard! —It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! It sounded like a baby’ shriek.
XXII
Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—
XXIII
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned diem there, with all the plain to choose? No foot-print leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
XXIV
And more than dial — a furlong on — why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel — mat harrow fit to reel Men’s bodies out like silk? With all the air Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware, Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
XXX
Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! Those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight!
XXXI
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
XXXII
Not see? because of night perhaps? — why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand to see the game at bay,— ‘Now stab and end the creature — to the heft !’
XXXIII
Not hear? When noise was everywhere! It tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventures my peers,— How such a one was strong, and such was bold, Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
XXXIV
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! In a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew, ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Come’.
8.3 qqqqq ROBET BROWNIG: TWO POEMS
8.3.1 OBJECTIVES
After you have studied this part or unit you will be in a position to think and write on Browning’s poetic art as evident from these two mature and representative poems of Robert Browning. And these two poems are Andrea del Sarto and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. Your study of these would enable you to comment on selected excerpts from these two poems.
8.3.2 INTRODUCING BROWNING’S LIFE AND WORK:
ABRIEFOVER-V1EW
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were two great and kindred spirits or souls.
Robert Browning (1812-84) was privately educated. His first poem, Pauline, appeared in 1833. Paracelsus, which attracted the friendly notice of Carlyle, Wordsworth and other men of letters, appeared in 1835. He next published Stafford, a tragedy, which was played at Covent Garden in 1837. Sordello followed in 1840. In 1842, he published Dramatic Lyrics. In 1845 Dramatic Romances, as iii and vii of the series of Bell and Pomegranates. In 1846, he married Elizabeth Barrett and lived with her mainly in Italy, at Pisa, Florence and Rome, until her death in 1861, after which Browning settled in London, hi 1855, the published Men and Women, (the two poems in our discussion are part of it) — and in 1868-69, appeared the long poem, The Ring and the Book. His last volume of poems, Asolando was published on the day of his death.
When Browning was twenty, his reading of Shelley had determined his ambition — to be a poet and nothing but a poet. Throughout his life he cherished this or did not abandon the adolescent ambition to be a ‘seer-poet’, a Vates. He dedicated his life to achieve this inordinate desire- to rise to the occasion. From the early days of Pauline, when he praised Shelley as a ‘Sun-treader’. It is by no means accidental that Andrea del Sarto, the frustrated artist, is the most sensitively and poignantly realized of all Browning’s characters.
For a major part of their lives, the Browning’s lived in Italy, that is outside England and their poetry seems to be partially aloof from the mainstream of Victorian poetry. To some extent, they stood apart and reacted rather nostalgically in their poems: Home thoughts from abroad (the Gk. Word nostos means ‘home’). Browning knew his Italy, specially the Italian Renaissance through the eyes of painting,
8.3.5 ONTHETEXT: BROWNING’S VERSIONINTHE POEM:
ANDREA DELSARTO
Baldinucci directed and modified Browning’s original conception of Andrea, he gives ‘an emphasis to Andrea’s story, which tempers’ the idea of the Victorian poet.
Let us talk about Browning’s presentation of Andrea, following the eminent critic of the poet, Clyede de vane 1*:
Browning imagines on the evening when he (Andrea) conceived the picture of himself and his wife which hangs in the Sala di Giove of the Pitti Palace. It is indeed the autumn of Andrea’s life. The account from Vasari is too detailed to be referred, but in all essentials, the facts are as Browning gives them. He was born in 1486; in time, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and afterwards to several painters. He first won fame and the title of “II Pittore senza Errori” a faultless painter by his work of a hat-maker, who served as model for many of his pictures; notably for his Madonna del Sacco, his masterpiece. Yet from the day of his. marriage, Andrea’s fortunes were doomed. Concerning Andrea, Michael Angelo said to Rafael,’There is a little man in Florence who if he were employed upon such great works as have been given to you, would make you sweat’ 2*. In the poem there is a ‘runing comparison’ of Andrea with great artists, Leonardo, Michael Angelo and Raphael.
In 1518, Andrea went by invitation to the court of Francis I, king of France, he was summoned to Fontainebleau, which he helped to decorate for his new patron. The urgent appeals of his wife, however, brought him back to Florence, entrusted with money for the purchase of works of art for the king Francis. He was persuaded by Lucrezia to spend the money upon a house for himself and on lavish hospitality. In spite of this disgrace, his ‘rare accomplishments’ gained for him many commissions and he continued to paint; deserted by his wife and servents during his last illness. He died of the plague on January 22, 1531.
Robert Browning in the poem Andrea uses the words of Michael Angelo in a slightly modified way. Vasari’s delineation of Andrea’s wife, Lucrezia, is drawn from his personal knowledge. Vasari says:
At that time there was a most beautiful girl in the Via di SanGallo, who was married to a cap-maker and who,though born of a poor and vicious father, carried about her as much as pride and haughtiness as beauty and fascination 3*.
About Andrea, the opening words of Vasari’s life of Andrea sets the tone and temper of his character and work, (he refers to him as ‘truly excellent Andrea del Sarto’ in whom ‘art and nature combined to show all that may be done in painting’).
Had this master possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind ...he would beyond all doubt, have been without a equal. His figures are nevertheless well drawn, they are entirely free from errors and perfect in their proportions ‘...nay, it is truly divine’ 4*.
In Browning’s poem Andrea is the infatuated husband. He is the unfortunate painter who for his certain ‘timidity of mind’ and ‘want of force’ in his nature of ‘spiritless temperament’ is responsible for his moral and artistic failures.
As Browning represents the painter, Andrea seeks no liberation from these. The sense of pallid, fading beauty of twilight in an autumn evening in Florence, synchronizes with the ‘wistful fatalistic’ temperament of the man. His pictures lack the soul element (Pater’s term used in Appreciations in the essay on ‘Style’), in them. There is no hint of passionate energy or driving force, (this was also noticed by Vasari, in Ms introduction to the painter’s character). His moral and artistic degradation is caused by his wife’s influence and his voluntary enslavement to Lucrezia is ‘uniformly disastrous’ (Young). Browning is successful in working a sense of pity for the faultless painter. Vasari writes in this connection: ‘but although Andrea lived in the midst of all that torment, he yet accounted it a high pleasure’.
A spiritual defence of Andrea’s nature and art has been made by later critics and scholars who find in him, (with his great craftsmanship and harmonizing skill in colour), a most charming and pleasing painter. And we know for certain that Vasari supplied the raw materials from which Browning reworked his ‘Andrea’. And by common consensus Andrea del Sarto is one of the greatest monologues Browning ever wrote. And this is no sweeping generalization unsupported by facts.
Browning’s Old Pictures in Florence gives evidence of the poet’s minute acquaintance with the galleries, his discerning eye for idiosyncrasy in technique and inspiration. His Fra Lippo Lippi is another study, which reveals his interest in painting and painters. Pictor Ignotus yet another example. In these poems, Browning entered into the artist’s point of view, showing how the artist feels like and how he works with his medium and material. His painters are always second rate or rather obscure like ‘Pictor Ignotus’. None has attained supreme stage of attainment. He is always tolerant and sympathetic to the artist’s sense of imperfection. It is part of his creed that is voiced in Andrea’s words:
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or, what’s heaven for? All is silver-grey Placid and perfect with my art — the worse!
Andrea realizes that Ms life is unhappy while his work is perfect, too prefect, foultily foultless. Browning penetrates deep into the psychology of faiure and the nature of happiness. He is fascinated by lucrezta’s beauty — “My serpentining beauty, round on rounds.” Lucrezia is not only reminiscent of the serpent who led to the Foil of Man; she is also the embodiment of the moon, whom she resembles in her incoustancy :
My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon. There is irony in the very perfection of her beauty : Her ‘perfect brows ‘perfect eyes’ and more than ‘perfect mouth’ are unfortunately uniformed by soul. This has made him a ‘perfect^1 but soulless paints. Andrea thinks in colour, and in lines 35 - 40 he sees his own life in the most subdred of colour:
A common greynes silvers everything, All in a twilight, you and I alike. The same colour cheracteizes Andreas painting and symbolises its limitations ; “All is silver grey.” Andrea lacks the elevation of soul that wonld enable him to aspise greatly. The fact that Lucrezia remanis ‘very dear’, is due not to magnanimity but to uxoriousness. The dull shades with which his own life and art are equated are contrasted with the other painters’ works. He feels that although he is the more perfect artist “there burns a fruer light of god in them”. The idea of ‘soul’, ‘heaven’ and ‘light’ recers constantly. He grows wistful at the remembrance of king Francis’s friendship and trust in him. He hints at Ms grievance against Lucrezia “Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul” “I night have done it for you”. With remarkable frankness he confesses “And thus we half-men stsuggle.” He remembers Ms golden days at Fortainellean. Called home urgently by Lucrezia, Andrea returns from France. The four walls of Ms house seem to have a claustrophosic effect upon Mm. Later he emriages them as illuminated with Francis’s gold. The pooerty of Andrea’s cMldhood has made a deep impression upon Ms mind. TMs is brought out in Ms constant allusions to money and payment. He begins the poem with a reference to paying Lucrezials ‘cousin’ and towards the end of the poem her smiles pay for her cousin’s gaming debets. The diction towards the end of the poem reveals Andrea’s consciousness of Ms being a half-man. His debility is more acute now :
I am grown peaceful as old age tonight ....... Finally he meekly to the cousin’s wMstle. It seems no woman ruined his soul, he had no soul to ruin.
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
A dramalic monologue is a type of poem that was perfected by Browning. In its most representative form, as represented in many poems of Browning, the dramatic monologue has the following features : i) A single person who is patently not the poet utter the entire poem in a specific situation at a critical moment 2) this person usually addersses and interacts with one or more people. But we know of the auditor’s presence and what he soys and does only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker. 3) The main principle controlling the poets choice and orgarization of what the speaker says is to reveal to the reader, in a way that enhances its intserest, the speaker’s temperment and character. A structurally perfect dramatic monologue like My Last Duchess or The Bishop Ordiss his Tomb at St Praxed’s has all the above features.
In Andea del Sarts Lucrezia’s presnce in the room, the turn of her head the brings her face but not her hert, the careless sweep of her gown against wet paint, her indiffsence to Andea’s reputation are suggested tactfully; but her interactions are not as clear as in other poems of Browning. In a sense Andrea speaks more to himself than directly to Lucrezia; and although we never forget that she is with him, we feel that she too is overhearing. The poem belongs somewhere between dramatic monologue and internal monologue. Andrea is not reasoning, he is reminiscing, justifying, excusing and accepting, lack of Structural formality often creates an impression of a lyric poem rather than a dramatic poem.
8.3.6 ESSENTIAL ANNOTATION
- But do not let us quarrel anymore — dramatically effective abrupt beginning.
- My Lucrezia — Lucrezia de Fede, the wife of a hatmaker in Browning’s poem, she is beautiful but soulless and sensual. Vasari wrote about this woman’s infidelity rather indirectly.
- Fiesole - A small town near Florence, situated on a hill-top.
- Serpentining— In his primitive garden he finds Eve. She is at once his virgin and Eve.
- which everbody looks on, ‘which’ here stands for the moon; Lucrezia is like the mo’on — beautiful, visible to all but she is rather cold to the individual admirer.
- harmony — a fitting together of parts as to form a connected whole.
- we are in God’s hand — a sense of surrender to the will of God. Andrea’s weak fatalism.
8. (a) Notes
1* W.T Young (ed.) Browning’s Poems (1929), p.
1* Clyde de Vane — A Browning Handbook (1955)
2* Vasari, ed. and translated by Blashfield and Hopkins, New York, 1896, III.p.
3* Idem III, 251-2, quoted in C. de Vane’s A Browning Handbook.
4* Vasari, Lives, p. 234.
8.(b) Recommended Reading :
- PMLA 62 (1947) “The Dramatic Monologue” by Ina Beth Sessions
- B. W. Fuson, Browning and his Predecessor in the Dramatic Monologue
- B. Melcliiori. The Poetry of Reticence
- Roma king, The Bow and the Lyre
- P. Honan, Browning’s Charactes
“CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME” To some, (Ms long lyric is a vivid vision, to others this is a late legacy of the chivalric romance. The minimal source of the poem’s title is from Edgar’s song in King Lear (HI,iv, 193); in that sense it is a fantastic expression and expansion of the single line in the play. It is also a romance but with a difference— without any glowing ideal or a ‘fantasy’; i.e. connecting Childe Roland with the operations of a dream mind. Still it is strewn with many problems and psychological complexity. Browning synthesized (rather unconsciously) it collecting from different sources and psychological associations of early reading or childhood memories. Thus the fusion of diverse elements in his mind was mysterious and poetic. No amount of scholarship could dissociate these without oversimplifying the case in point. The threads of association are too intricate to be disentangled. It existed in Browning’s mind prior to the creation of the poem itself — for the link is rather subconscious— the two layers of motif and meaning interact and enrich each other, leaving little scope for the analytical critic. It is based on Browning’s ‘deepest romances’ and represent a ‘vivid dream, a fantasy that might be called a nightmare and possibly a reminiscence.]*
3. THE TEXT OF THE POEM
As suggested earlier, the minimal source of the title of the poem is from Edgar’s song in King Lear (III, iv, 193) consisting of thirty-four stanzas of six iambic pentameter lines each. The poem was first published in the volume called Men and Women. (It consisted of two sixty-six lines of blank verse). Since the first publication in 1855, a few word hi the text have been changed; accordingly there have been quite a few changes in the punctuation and the present line 96 has been added later. In 1863, the poem was also included in the Dramatic Romances
The stazaic form of the poem is rather unusual. It is abba ba; it begins with a pentameter line, but two lines are tagged ‘a’ matching with ‘a’ and ‘b’ rhymes. The end is curious in its effect, whereby one is impelled to turn back and then to advance. Te strange hesitancy is strictly in keeping with the meaning of the poem.
4. THE OCCASION OF THE POEM
According to the version supplied by the poet, Childe Roland was written on January 2, 1852. At that Browning resolved that he would write one poem a day the day before. The three poems were written consecutively — Women and Roses was
Mrs. Orr observes that Browning was reluctant to explain what the dream signified here and hence it would be unwise to accept the poet’s avowed intention (viz, to read it as a poem). It is at best a record of the introspection of a mid Victorian poet in the middle of his carrer. The knight rides alone in the dusk or a ghastly plain of weeds and stunted grass, where natureseems to bewaiting, possibly ofr the fire of Judgement, he seeks to cheer himself up thinking about his old companions on this mysterious journey or quest, and remembering their disasters. He reaches another plain, even grimmer than the first, where the ground is strangely churned by the marks of the battle.
Burningly it came on me all at once This the place!....... Dauntless he bows, there stands his Dark Tower. “Childe, Roland was the youngest brother of Helen. Under the guidance of Merlin he undrtook to bring back his sister from the elfland, whither the faeries had carried her and he succeeded in his perilows exploit. “ (Baldade of Burd Helen). Some readers look upon Childe Roland as a modem version of the medieval ballad. Others have read it as crypto-autobiography; Browning’s worry over his father’s affair with Mrs Von Muller contributes something to the pervasive anxiety of the poem. (Maisie Word) Another biographer Betty Miller attributes the anxiety to Brewing’s feeling of guilt for having failed to fully express his great poetic gifts. Others again think that Childe Roland is a truth seeker; life destroys the man who will try to understand it. Modern readers have tried to explain the poem as Browning’s contribution to an evolving portrait of a spiritual wastealand which found expnession in Tennyson’s Holy Grail (1869), Thomson’s City of Dreadful Night (1874) and Eliot’s Waste Land (stzo 9-14) The poem is best read as a gloomy hieroglyphic, a poem whose symbolic style is in almost complete contrast to the psychological realism of Broaning’s dramatic monologues.
6. BROWING’S OPINION ABOUT THE POEM IN 1887
When Browning was asked about any allegorical intent of Childe Roland, by a stranger in 1887, He answer thus 5*
“Oh, no, not at all. Understand, I don’t repudiate it, either, I only mean I was conscious of no allegorical intention in writing it. Twas like. this ; one year in Florence, I had been very lazy, I resolved that I would write something everyday. Well, the first day I wrote about some roses, suggested by a magnificent basket that someone had sent to my wife. The next day Childe Roland came upon me as a kind of dream. I had to write then and there, and I finished it the same day, I
believe. But it was simply that I had to do it. I did not know then what I meat beyond that, and I’m sure I don’t know now. But I am very fond of it.
The story comes out naturally— out of staccato narrative method. For a knight or a childe to ‘come to’ a tower, he is perhaps seeking it. Thus Roland is one of a band of trainded knight and sworn to find and attack a certain Dark Tower. But others before him have failed. Childe Roland sets out and enquires the way to the Tower of a crippled and sinister-looking person who directs him off the road, up the valley. He suspects, but he remembers that the. Tower is indeed said to stand somewhere in this valley, he turns as directed, by the cripple guide.
The path is dreary and depressing, leading amidst mountains. He can visualize no way through, but realizes no way through is needed—for the Dark Tower is before him. He sounds his slug-horn and challenges the Tower. Thus Browning ends his poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. Thus far he came,and no futher. And Browning also went no further. Louis Macneice elaborated the theme of the poem into a full-fledged play in The Dark Tower, where he has undrelined and developed a band of devotees trained for the quest, (this being made a family affair), with a ‘possessive mother’ as an additional point.
7. ESSENTIAL ANNOTATION
See Edgar’s song in Lear —the song in King Lear is a cue to the poem and its origin and genesis. But it only enhances the mystery of the text.
‘Childe’ in the title of the poem refers to youth of rank ; later it was applied to an knight, the final e is a reminder of the old form and its usage in chivalric poetry.
- That hoary cripple—Refer to Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, (II, 710-65) 8. Askance—sidewise, archaic expression
- As when a sick man—this idea maybe referred to Denne’s Valediction ‘As virtuous men pass mildly away’
- Estray (Here) — a stray animal
- The bents—the stiff-flower stalks of grasses
- Pashing—treading violently upon watery ground
- One stiff blind horse — ‘the figure of a horse in his own drawing room’, Mrs. Orr’s suggestion in this connection. The tower, the painting and the image of a horse — are all woven together from the poet’s earlier memories.
- Colloped — archaic use, in its participle form, from the expression ‘collops of flesh’ (Wanley),
