Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 20

The _Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_ differs from most of the Dramatic Monologues in not being addressed to a listener; but the difference is more apparent than real; for the other person is in plain view all the time, and the Soliloquy would have no point were it not for the peaceful activities of Friar Lawrence. This poem, while it deals ostensibly with the lives of only two monks, gives us a glimpse into the whole monastic system. When a number of men retired into a monastery and shut out the world forever, certain sins and ambitions were annihilated, while others were enormously magnified. All outside interests vanished; but sin remained, for it circulates in the human heart as naturally as blood in the body. The cloister was simply a little world, with the n.o.bleness and meanness of human nature exceedingly conspicuous. When the men were once enclosed in the cloister walls, they knew that they must live in that circ.u.mscribed spot till the separation of death. Naturally therefore political ambitions, affections, envies, jealousies, would be writ large; human nature would display itself in a manner most interesting to a student, if only he could live there in a detached way. This is just what Browning tries to do; he tries to live imaginatively with the monks, and to practise his profession as the Chronicler of Life.

The only way to realise what the monastic life really meant would be to imagine a small modern college situated in the country, and the pa.s.sage of a decree that not a single student should leave the college grounds until his body was committed to the tomb. The outside interests of the world would quickly grow dim and eventually vanish; and everything would be concentrated within the community. I suppose that the pa.s.sions of friends.h.i.+p, hatred, and jealousy would be prodigiously magnified. There must have been friends.h.i.+ps among the monks of the middle ages compared to which our boasted college friends.h.i.+ps are thin and pale; and there must have been frightful hatreds and jealousies. In all communities there are certain persons that get on the nerves of certain others; the only way to avoid this acute suffering is to avoid meeting the person who causes it. But imagine a cloister where dwells a. man you simply can not endure: every word he says, every motion he makes, every single mannerism of walk and speech is intolerable. Now you must live with this man until one of you dies: you must sit opposite to him at meals, you can not escape constant contact. Your only resource is profane soliloquies: but if you have a sufficiently ugly disposition, you can revenge yourself upon him in a thousand secret ways.

Friar Lawrence unconsciously and innocently fans the flames of hatred in our speaker's heart, simply because he does not dream of the effect he produces. Every time he talks at table about the weather, the cork-crop, Latin names, and other trivialities, the man sitting opposite to him would like to dash his plate in his face: every time Friar Lawrence potters around among his roses, the other looking down from his window, with a face distorted with hate, would like to kill him with a glance. Poor Lawrence drives our soliloquist mad with his deliberate table manners, with his deliberate method of speech, with his care about his own goblet and spoon. And all the time Lawrence believes that his enemy loves him!

From another point of view, this poem resembles _My Last d.u.c.h.ess_ in that it is a revelation of the speaker's heart. We know nothing about Friar Lawrence except what his deadly enemy tells us; but it is quite clear that Lawrence is a dear old man, innocent as a child; while the speaker, simply in giving his testimony against him, reveals a heart jealous, malicious, l.u.s.tful; he is like a thoroughly bad boy at school, with a p.o.r.nographic book carefully concealed.

Just at the moment when his rage and hatred reach a climax, the vesper bell sounds; and the speaker, who is an intensely strict formalist and ritualist, presents to us an amusing spectacle; for out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing.

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER

1842

I

Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!

Water your d.a.m.ned flower-pots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, G.o.d's blood, would not mine kill you!

What? your myrtle-bush wants tr.i.m.m.i.n.g?

Oh, that rose has prior claims-- Needs its leaden vase filled br.i.m.m.i.n.g?

h.e.l.l dry you up with its flames!

II

At the meal we sit together: _Salve tibi_! I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: _Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely Dare me hope oak-galls, I doubt: What's the Latin name for "parsley_?"

What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

III

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we're furnished, And a goblet for ourself, Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps-- Marked with L. for our initial!

(He-he! There his lily snaps!)

IV

_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the Convent bank With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, l.u.s.trous, thick like horsehairs, --Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

(That is, if he'd let it show!)

V

When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise.

I the Trinity ill.u.s.trate, Drinking watered orange-pulp-- In three sips the Arian frustrate; While he drains his at one gulp.

VI

Oh, those melons? If he's able We're to have a feast! so nice!

One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice.

How go on your flowers? None double Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

VII

There's a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct d.a.m.nations, One sure, if another fails:

If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to h.e.l.l, a Manichee?

VIII

Or, my scrofulous French novel On grey paper with blunt type!

Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

IX

Or, there's Satan!--one might venture Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he'd miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Him_ ...

'St, there's Vespers! _Plena gratia Ave, Virgo_! Gr-r-r--you swine!

Everybody loves Browning's _Ghent to Aix_ poem. Even those who can not abide the poet make an exception here; and your thorough-going Browningite never outgrows this piece. It is the greatest horseback poem in the literature of the world: compared to this, _Paul Revere's Ride_ is the amble of a splayfooted nag. It sounds as though it had been written in the saddle: but it was really composed during a hot day on the deck of a vessel in the Mediterranean, and written off on the flyleaf of a printed book that the poet held in his hand. Poets are always most present with the distant, as Mrs.

Browning said; and Browning, while at sea, thought with irresistible longing of his good horse eating his head off in the stable at home.

Everything about this poem is imaginary; there never had been any such good news brought, and it is probable that no horse could cover the distance in that time.

But the magnificent gallop of the verse: the change from moonset to sunrise: the scenery rus.h.i.+ng by: the splendid spirit of horse and man: and the almost insane joy of the rider as he enters Aix--these are more true than history itself. Browning is one of our greatest poets of motion--whether it be the glide of a gondola, the swift running of the Marathon professional Pheidippides, the steady advance of the galleys over the sea in _Paracelsus_, the sharp staccato strokes of the horse's hoofs through the Metidja, or the swinging stride of the students as they carry the dead grammarian up the mountain. Not only do the words themselves express the sound of movement; but the thought, in all these great poems of motion, travels steadily and naturally with the advance. It is interesting to compare a madly-rus.h.i.+ng poem like _Ghent to Aix_ with the absolute calm of _Andrea del Sarto_. It gives one an appreciation of Browning's purely technical skill.

No one has ever, so far as I know, criticised _Ghent to Aix_ adversely except Owen Wister's Virginian; and his strictures are hypercritical. As Roland threw his head back fiercely to scatter the spume-flakes, it would be easy enough for the rider to see the eye-sockets and the bloodfull nostrils. Every one has noticed how a horse will do the ear-s.h.i.+ft, putting one ear forward and one back at the same moment. Browning has an imaginative reason for it. One ear is pushed forward to listen for danger ahead; the other bent back, to catch his master's voice. Was there ever a greater study in pa.s.sionate cooperation between man and beast than this splendid poem?

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX"

1845

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren, the c.o.c.ks crew and twilight dawned clear; At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; At Duffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cattle stood black every one, To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, With resolute shoulders, each b.u.t.ting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other p.r.i.c.ked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.