Literature

(b)
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
During his lifetime Browning was not considered as great a poet as Tennyson, but after that the opinion of the critics has changed in favour of Browning, who, on account of his depth and originality of thoughts, is ranked superior to Tennyson. Browning and Tennyson were contemporaries and their poetic careers ran almost parallel to each other, but as poets they presented a glaring contrast. Whereas Tennyson is first the artist and then the teacher, with Browning the message is always the important thing, and he is very careless of the form in which it is expressed. Tennyson always writes about subjects which are dainty and comely; Browning, on the other hand, deals with subjects which are rough and ugly, and he aims to show that truth lies hidden in both the evil and the good. In their respective messages the two poets differed widely. Tennysons message reflects the growing order of the age, and is summed up in the word law. He believes in disciplining the individual will and subordinating it to the universal law. There is a note of resignation struck in his poetry, which amounts to fatalism. Browning, on the other hand, advocates the triumph of the individual will over the obstacles. In his opinion self is not subordinate but supreme. There is a robust optimism reflected in all his poetry. It is in fact because of his invincible will and optimism that Browning is given preference over Tennyson whose poetry betrays weakness and helpless pessimism. Brownings boundless energy, his cheerful courage, his faith in life and in the development that awaits beyond the portals of death, give a strange vitality to his poetry. It is his firm belief in the immortality of the soul which forms the basis of his generous optimism, beautifully expressed in the following lines of Pippa Passes: The years at the spring, And days at the morn; Mornings at seven; The hill sides dew pearled; The larks on the wing; The snails on the thorn, Gods in his heaven Alls right with the world. Thus is an age when the minds of men were assailed by doubt, Browning spoke the strongest words of hope and faith: Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made. (Rabbi Ben Ezra) In another way also Browning presents a contrast to Tennyson. Whereas Tennysons genius is mainly lyrical. Brownings is predominantly dramatic, and his greatest poems are written in the form of the dramatic monologue. Being chiefly interested in the study of the human soul, he discusses in poem after poem, in the form of monologue or dialogue, the problems of life and conscience. And in all of them Browning himself is the central character, and he uses the hero as his own mouthpiece. His first poem Pauline (1833) which is a monologue addressed to Pauline, on the incidents in the development of a soul, is autobiographicala fragment of personal confession under a thin dramatic disguise. His Paracelsus (1835) which is in form a drama with four characters, is also a story of incidents in the development of a soul, of a Renaissance physician in whom true science and charlatanism were combined. Paracelsus has the ambition of attaining truth and transforming the life of man. For this purpose he discards emotion and love, and fails on account of this mistake. Browning in this poem also uses the hero as a mouthpiece of his own ideas and aspiration. Paracelsus was followed by Sordello, (1840) which is again the study of a soul. It narrates in heroic verse the life of a little-known Italian poet. On account of its involved expression its obscurity has become proverbial. In Pipa Passes (1841) Browning produced a drama partly lyrical and consisting of isolated scenes. Here he imagined the effect of the songs of a little working girl, strolling about during a holiday, on the destiny of the very different persons who hear them in turn. It was with the publication of a series of collections of disconnected studies, chiefly monologues, that Brownings reputation as a great poet was firmly established. These volumes wereDramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances
and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women (1855), Dramatis Personae (1864), Dramatic Idylls (1879-80). The dramatic lyrics in these collections were a poetry of a new kind inEngland. In them Browning brings the most varied personages to make their confessions to us. Some of them are historical, while others are the product of Brownings imagination, but all of them while unravelling the tangled web of their emotions and thoughts give expression to the optimistic philosophy of the poet. Some of the important dramatic lyrics are Bishop Blougrams Apology, Two in a Gondola, Porphyrias Lover, Fra Lippo Lippi, The last Ride Together, Childe Roland to a Dark Tower Came, A Grammarians Funeral, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Prospice and My Last Duchess. All of them have won for Browning the applause of readers who value thought in poetry. In (1868-69) Browning brought out four successive volumes of The Ring and the Book, which is his masterpiece. Here different persons concerned in a peculiarly brutal set of murders, and many witnesses give their own versions of the same events, varying them according to their different interests and prejudices. The lawyers also have their say, and at the end the Pope sums up the case. The ten long successive monologues contain the finest psychological studies of characters ever attempted by a poet. During the last twenty years of his life Browning wrote a number of poems. Though they do not have much poetic merit, yet they all give expression to his resolute courage and faith. In fact Browning is mainly remembered for the astonishing vigour and hope that characterise all his work. He is the poet of love, of life, and of the will to live, here and beyond the grave, as he says in the song of David in his poem Soul: How good is mans life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy. The chief fault of Brownings poetry is obscurity. This is mainly due to the fact that his thought is often so obscure or subtle that language cannot express it perfectly. Being interested in the study of the individual soul, never exactly alike in any two men, he seeks to express the hidden motives and principles which govern individual action. Thus in order to understand his poems, the reader has always to be mentally alret; otherwise he fails to understand his fine shades of psychological study. To a certain extent, Browning himself is to be blamed for his obscurity, because he is careless as an artist. But in spite of his obscurity, Browning is the most stimulating poet, in the English language. His influence on the reader who is prepared to sit up, and think and remain alert when he reads his poetry, is positive and tremendous. His strength, his joy of life, his robust faith and his invincible optimism enter into the life of a serious reader of his poetry, and make him a different man. That is why, after thirty years of continuous work, his merit was finally recognised, and he was placed beside Tennyson and even considered greater. In the opinion of some critics he is the greatest poet in English literature since Shakespeare.

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(b)

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

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