Selections From The Poems And Plays Of Robert Browning Part 45

ONE WORD MORE

A poem directly addressed to Mrs. Browning. It was originally appended to the collection of Poems called _Men and Women_. For other tributes by great poets to their wives see Wordsworth's "She was a phantom of delight," and "O dearer far than life and light are dear;" and Tennyson's "Dear, near and true." Mrs. Browning's love for her husband had found pa.s.sionate expression in _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.

2. _Naming me._ Giving a name to the volume for me.

5-31. Raphael's "lady of the sonnets" was Margharita (La Fornarina), the baker's daughter, whose likeness appears in several of his most celebrated pictures. The Madonnas enumerated in ll. 22-25 are the Sistine Madonna, now in the Dresden Gallery; the Madonna di Foligno, so called because it had been painted as a votive offering for Sigismund Corti of Foligno; the Madonna del Granduca (Petti Palace, Florence) in which the Madonna is represented as appearing to a votary in a vision; and probably the Madonna called La Belle Jardiniere in the Louvre. There is no evidence that Raphael wrote more than one sonnet, or three at most. The "century of sonnets" attributed to him by Browning "is probably an example of poetical license." The volume Guido Reni treasured and left to his heir was a volume with a hundred designs by Raphael. (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 297)

32-57. Dante's chief work was his great poem, the _Inferno_, in which were caustic sketches of evil men of various sorts. The sketch in the lines 35-41 is made up from two descriptions (_Inferno_, Cantos 32, 33) of traitors, the one to his country, the other to a familiar friend. The second of these was still alive when Dante wrote (W. M. Rossetti, _Academy_, Jan. 10, 1891). Beatrice, or Bice, was the woman Dante loved.

It was on the first anniversary of her death that he began to draw the angel. Dante tells of this in the _Vita Nuovo_, x.x.xv, and there describes the interruption of the "people of importance."

63-4. To Raphael painting is an art that has become his nature; to Dante, poetry is an art that has become his nature. But this one time, for the woman of his love, each chooses the art in which he may have some natural skill but for which he has had no technical training.

73-108. The "artist's sorrow" as contrasted with the "man's joy" is ill.u.s.trated from the experiences of Moses in conducting the children of Israel out of Egypt (_Exodus_ xvii). His achievement savors of disrelish because of the grumbling unbelief of the people, and because of the ungracious irritation into which he has been betrayed even when taxing his G.o.d-given power to the utmost in their behalf. He must hold steadily to his majesty as a prophet or he cannot control and so serve the crowd, but he covets the man's joy of doing supreme service to the woman whom he loves.

97. _Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance._ _Exodus_ xix, 9, 16; x.x.xiv, 30.

101. _Jethro's daughter._ Zipporah, the wife of Moses. _Exodus_ ii, 16, 21.

121. _He who works in fresco._ The fresco painter uses large free strokes of the brush. But in order to give something distinctive to the lady of his love he will try painting tiny illuminations on the margins of her missal.

143. _Be how I speak._ That is, he usually writes dramatically, giving the experience and uttering the words of the characters he has created, such as the Arab physician, Kars.h.i.+sh; the Greek Cleon; Norbert, the man whom the Queen loved in "In a Balcony"; the painter, Fra Lippo Lippi; the heroic pilgrim, Childe Roland; the painter, Andrea del Sarto. But now, for once, he speaks in his own person, directly to the woman he loves.

144-156. In Florence they had seen the new moon, a mere crescent over the hill Fiesole, and had watched its growth till it hung, round and full, over the church of San Miniato. Now, in London, the moon is in its last quarter.

163. _Zoroaster._ Founder of the Irano-Persian religion, the chief G.o.d of which, Varuna, was the G.o.d of light and of the illuminated night-heaven.

164. _Galileo._ A celebrated Italian astronomer (1564-1642).

165. _Dumb to Homer._ Homer celebrated the moon in the "Hymn to Diana."

Keats wrote much about the moon and the hero of his poem "Endymion" was represented as in love with the moon.

172-179. See _Exodus_ xxiv.

ABT VOGLER

Abbe (or Abt) Vogler (1749-1814) was a Catholic priest well known a century ago as an organist and a composer. He founded three schools of music, one at Mannheim, one at Stockholm, and one at Darmstadt. He was especially noted for his organ recitals, as many as 7000 tickets having been sold for a single recital in Amsterdam. In 1798 it was said that he had then given over a thousand organ concerts. His knowledge of acoustics and his consequent skill in combining the stops enabled him to bring much power and variety from organs with fewer pipes than were generally considered necessary. The remodeling and simplification of organs was one of his most eagerly pursued activities. He not only rearranged the pipes, but he introduced free reeds. Through some skillful Swedish organ-builders he was at last enabled to have an organ small enough to be portable and constructed according to his ideas. This he called an "orchestrion." Of Vogler's power as an organist Rinck says, "His organ playing was grand, effective in the utmost degree." It was, however, when he was improvising that his power was most astonis.h.i.+ng.

Once at a musical soiree Vogler and Beethoven extemporized alternately, each giving the other a theme, and Gansbacher records the pitch of enthusiasm to which he was roused by Vogler's masterly playing. Three of Voglers most famous pupils at Darmstadt were Meyerbeer, Gansbacher, and Carl Maria von Weber. The last of these gives an attractive picture of the musician extemporizing in the old church at Darmstadt. "Never," says Weber, "did Vogler in his extemporization drink more deeply at the source of all beauty, than when before his three dear boys, as he liked to call us, he drew from the organ angelic voices and word of thunder."

Browning's poem records the experiences of the musician in one of these moods of rapturous creation.

The argument of the poem is thus given by Mr. Stopford Brooke in _The Poetry of Robert Browning_, page 149:

"When Solomon p.r.o.nounced the Name of G.o.d, all the spirits, good and bad, a.s.sembled to do His will and build His palace. And when I, Abt Vogler, touched the keys, I called the Spirits of Sound to me, and they have built my palace of music; and to inhabit it all the Great Dead came back till in the vision I made a perfect music. Nay, for a moment, I touched in it the infinite perfection; but now it is gone; I cannot bring it back. Had I painted it, had I written it, I might have explained it. But in music out of the sounds something emerges which is above the sounds, and that ineffable thing I touched and lost. I took the well-known sounds of earth, and out of them came a fourth sound, nay not a sound--but a star. This was a flash of G.o.d's will which opened the Eternal to me for a moment; and I shall find it again in the eternal life. Therefore, from the achievement of earth and the failure of it, I turn to G.o.d, and in Him I see that every image, thought, impulse, and dream of knowledge or beauty--which, coming whence we know not, flit before us in human life, breathe for a moment, and then depart; which, like my music, build a sudden palace in imagination; which abide for an instant and dissolve, but which memory and hope retain as a ground of aspiration--are not lost to us though they seem to die in their immediate pa.s.sage. Their music has its home in the Will of G.o.d and we shall find them completed there."

3. _Solomon._ In Jewish legend it is said that Solomon had power over angels and demons through a seal on which "the most great name of G.o.d was engraved."

13. _And one would bury his brow._ This description of the foundations of the palace is not unlike Milton's account of the work of the fallen angels in building the palace in h.e.l.l. (_Paradise Lost_, I, 170.) That "fabric huge" was as magical in its construction as the palace of Abt Vogler, for, though it was not built by music, it

"Rose like an exhalation with the sound Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet."

16. _Nether Springs._ Remotest origins.

23. _Rome's dome._ The illumination of St. Peter's was formerly one of the customary spectacles on the evening of Easter Sunday. "At Ave-Maria we drove to Piazza of St. Peter's. The lighting of the lanternoni, or large paper lanterns, each of which looks like a globe of ethereal fire, had been going on for an hour, and by the time we arrived there was nearly completed.... The whole of this immense church--its columns, capitals, cornices, and pediments--the beautiful swell of the lofty dome ... all were designed in lines of fire, and the vast sweep of the circling colonnades ... was resplendent with the same beautiful light."

(C. A. Eaton, _Rome in the Nineteenth Century_, II, 208.)

23. _s.p.a.ce to spire._ From the wide opening between the colonnades to the cross on the top of the lantern surmounting the dome.

34. _Protoplast._ Used apparently for protoplasm, a substance const.i.tuting the physical basis of life in all plants and animals.

39. Into his musical palace came the wonderful Dead in a glorified form, and also Presences fresh from the Protoplast, while, for the moment, he himself in the ardor of musical creation felt himself raised to the level of these exalted ones.

53. _Consider it well._ On the mystery of musical creation and on its permanence see Cardinal Newman's sermon on "The Theory of Development in Christian Doctrine." (Quoted in part, in Berdoe's _Browning Cyclopaedia_.)

57. _Palace of music._ Cf. the description of the glowing banquet-room in Keats's "Lamia":

"A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might perish."

The damsel with the dulcimer in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" sings of Mount Abora, and the poet says:

"Could I revive within me Her sympathy and song To such a deep delight 'twould win me That with music loud and long I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome, those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there."

In Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette" (l. 270), Merlin says to Gareth in describing Camelot,

"For and ye heard a music, like enow They are building still, seeing the city is built To music, therefore never built at all, And therefore built forever."

There are also more ancient accounts of this union of music and architecture. Amphion, King of Thebes, played on his lyre till the stones moved of their own accord into the wall he was building. When King Laomedan built the walls of Troy, Apollo's lyre did similar service to that of Amphion in Thebes. For an interesting account of "Voice Figures" see _The Century Magazine_, May 1891.

64. _What was, shall be._ For this faith in the actual permanence of what seemed so evanescent, compare Adelaide Procter's "Lost Chord."

69. _There shall never be one lost good._ Whatever of good has existed must always exist. Evil, being self-destructive, finally "is null, is naught." This is the Hegelian doctrine. Walt Whitman said on reading Hegel, "Roaming in thought over the Universe I saw the little that is Good steadily hastening towards immortality. And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."

(Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, page 40.)

81. _A triumph's evidence._ Failure in high heroic attempts seems to point forward to some more favorable future where n.o.ble effort is crowned with due success. Cf. "Cleon," lines 186-7:

"Imperfection means perfection hid, Reserved in part to grace the after time."

96. _The C Major of this life._ The musical terms in this pa.s.sage are fully explained by Mrs. Turnbull and Miss Omerod in _Browning Society Papers_. Symbolically this line describes the musician as he comes back to everyday life, proud because of the vision that has been granted him, but with a consciousness that experiences so exalted are not for "human nature's daily food," and that their true function is to send one back to ordinary pains and pleasures with a new acquiescence.

(In _The Browning Society Papers_ are Mrs. Turnbull's "Abt Vogler," and three papers by Miss Helen Omerod: (1) "Abt Vogler the Man." (2) "Some Notes on Browning's Poems relating to Music." (3) "Andrea del Sarto and Abt Vogler.")

RABBI BEN EZRA

Ben Ezra was an eminent Jewish Rabbi of the Middle Ages. His _Commentaries_ on the books of the Old Testament are of great value. Mr.

A. J. Campbell, who has studied Browning's poem in connection with the writings of the real Rabbi Ben Ezra, thinks that the distinctive features of the Rabbi of the poem, and the philosophy ascribed to him, were drawn from the works of the historical Rabbi, the keynote of whose teaching was that the essential life of man is the life of the soul, and that age is more important than youth. (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_.

Cf. also Berdoe, _Browning's Message to His Times_, pp. 157-172.)