Chapter VII

GENERAL COMPARISONS: BROWNING AND THE FINE ARTS OF ITALY.

I. POETIC FUNCTION AND METHOD.--About fifteen poems from Browning deal with the arts or artists of Italy as primary subject matter. The remainder of the entire number of forty-nine which refer to art at all, treat it as a secondary consideration. Taking the subject art as a whole, as Browning introduces it in poetry, it appears in the following forms: (1) main theme; (2) comparison of two or more artists working in the same art; (3) comparison of artists in one art with those in another, as painters with musicians, or with poets; (4) illustrative material when the main theme of the poem has no immediate bearing on art. _Abt Vogler_, in music, or _Fra Lippo Lippi_, in painting, are examples of the first. _Andrea del Sarto_, besides exemplifying the first form, contains numerous comparisons of its main character with other painters. _With Charles Avison_ has a musician as a theme, and he is compared with other artists, for example, Michael Angelo. _Fifine at the Fair_, whose main theme has no connection with art, names Raphael, Bazzi, and Angelo as illustrative material. Numerous instances of incidental art references, used in such ways as these, attest the fact that Browning had a large art consciousness, gained from past interest in the different fields, and of sufficient activity to cause almost constant references to the fine arts.

Where Wordsworth would have chosen English natural scenery for purposes of illustration, and Shelley nature in Italy, Browning chose art. Fifteen poems with nature as the main theme, besides numerous others with references to nature, would not seem unusual; but a group of fifteen poems, all moderately long, based on the fine arts, besides a very large number of comparisons to the arts in other poems, seems an exceptional product for a nineteenth century English poet.

Browning’s art monologue is of two kinds--the monologue of the artist who is the chief character in the poem, and the monologue of the poet addressing the artist directly. Nor are these forms confined entirely to Italian art poems. _My Last Duchess_, _The Bishop orders his Tomb_, _Pictor Ignotus_, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, _Andrea del Sarto_, _Abt Vogler_, are all in dramatic monologue, with either an artist or one interested in art, as the speaker. _A Toccata of Galuppi’s_, _Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha_, and _Old Pictures in Florence_, represent the poet addressing the artist. _Filippo Baldinucci_ is presented in the first person, in monologue form. In _The Guardian Angel_ the poet directly addressed the angel of the picture. _One Word More_ and _A Face_, in which the art element is strong, are written in the first person, the former addressed directly to Mrs. Browning with the poet speaking, and the second addressed to no particular person. This review establishes the fact that the monologue is Browning’s favorite form for poems about art, since the list just quoted includes all important poems of that kind. In every case he made some personality prominent, and in all serious poems on art, that personality is either speaking or spoken to, the very finest poems being of the former type.

II. AMOUNT OF MATERIAL USED FROM EACH OF THE FINE ARTS.--In the foregoing discussion of the five branches of Italian art in Browning,--sculpture, music, poetry, architecture, and painting--the order has been determined largely by a quantitative standard. In the Appendix are systematic lists showing the number of poems and the exact references in connection with each art. No extensive comparison of the different arts regarding frequency of introduction, therefore, is needed here; but a few generalizations concerning some of the reasons for the variation in emphasis seem not amiss.

Architecture is the art of a concrete bodily form, absolutely separated from any representation of humanity, unless one looks beyond it to the architect, or to the people for whom it is constructed. In contradistinction to the other fine arts discussed here, it is characterized by usefulness. While it should, and does, in its highest forms, surmount mere utility, and give an impression of harmony, beauty, and grandeur, it never directly portrays the finest feelings of which humanity is capable and never inspires one directly with a feeling of achievement or struggle in character. Utility is the chief interest guiding Browning’s treatment of architecture--not architectural utility, but the service to the poet in fixing the setting of his poems. Such service is clear in nearly every instance in all of the twenty-five poems in which some Italian building is mentioned, and in the case of nearly all the fifty-eight edifices named. The description of St. Peter’s in _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_ is practically the only exception, and there, as has already been stated, the poet passed from the grandeur of the structure itself to the builders. Lack of personality in architecture is, then, the reason for its very slight introduction as an actual art in Browning’s verse.

Passing on from architecture to sculpture one finds that we have another art of concrete bodily form, with the added power of portraying the human form, face, and to a very slight degree, the soul. While the number of sculptors named is very small, then, Browning’s appreciation of this art surpasses his appreciation of architecture. Examples of this are _Old Pictures in Florence_, in which sculpture is treated at considerable length, by comparing its merits with the aspirations of the early painters, and _Pippa Passes_, in which Jules, the sculptor, is a prominent figure. _The Bishop orders his Tomb_ deals almost entirely with sculpture. Still sculpture was not Browning’s favorite art by any means. Bodily perfection he admired; but he wished to go beyond it to the soul in dramatic situations, to its struggle and endeavor. And for these values the powers of sculpture are limited. To portray successfully any very great struggle or intense feeling of the soul is beyond its nature.

A cause for the large amount of Italian poetry in the writings of Browning has already been suggested, in part.[179] But one must further consider the fact that he did not continue to deal with poets and their writings as subject matter. After the first eight years of his career, he ceased to deal with the causes connected with the failure of poets. Fundamentally, all arts are agencies of expression through the representation of nature and humanity. With the breadth of vision which Browning possessed concerning the possibilities of expression in all the arts, there was none of the five in which he did not, at some time or other, wish to express himself. In the beginning of his career, when he was formulating his ideas of a poet, he expressed his ideas of that art by writing about other poets. But with ideas and forms for his own art once fully established, the art became self-expressive. He no longer needed to write about other poets; for the poet in himself had found his own purpose and method.

It has already been suggested that Browning’s appreciation of music, as he expressed it in his poems, was qualitative, rather than quantitative, so far as Italian music is concerned. This art rivals poetry in expressing the highest yearnings and ideals of which the soul is capable, and is, therefore, in a very high degree, though in abstract form, the art of personality. And this art Browning expressed most perfectly, as to the aims and ideals of its artists, when he chose to do so. But with all his own feeling for music and with such ability as he expressed in performance, it, like poetry, was largely self-expressive for him. That is he played, instead of writing poetry about music. Browning’s evident preference for other music than that of the modern composers of Italy explains the lack of space accorded to them. Yet in spite of this preference the best of his musical poems were built about Italians--obscure ones though they may be.

Browning did no work in actual study of the technique of painting. The nearest he came to it was at the time of his thirteen days application to drawing.[180] Yet painting is in a very large degree expressive of the soul--its anguish, sorrow, failure, joy, ecstasy, or endeavor. Drawn to it by his interest in personality, Browning made it contribute largely to his poems. The Italian painting with which he dealt had little to do with landscape or other phases of nature. It portrayed persons; and stimulated by the pictures which he saw, or by records of personality in the biography of artists, he incorporated many references to painting in his poems, dealing more largely with it than with any other art. Since, too, Italy was the home of painting, his environment was very conducive to a development of his tendency to make painting an important element in his poems.

Browning, as poet and man, was able to forgive any sort of failure if the person whom he was judging had only made a thorough effort to accomplish something. He carried this doctrine so far as to make a lack of effort the cause of his censure of the Duke and the Lady in _The Statue and the Bust_, even though the fulfillment of their plan would have been a sin. This love for endeavor, which always accompanies his attitude toward any personality, along with his enthusiasm for personality itself explains his selection and emphasis in his treatment of the arts. Painting he decidedly preferred above sculpture for other reasons than its greater ability in portraying the soul. This preference is stated in _Old Pictures in Florence_, and is based on the fact that Greek art had run, and “reached the Goal.” Its effort, then, was over:

“They are perfect--how else? they shall never change:
We are faulty--why not? we have time in store.
The Artificer’s hand is not arrested
With us ...”

* * * * *

“’Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven--
The better! What’s come to perfection perishes.”

These quotations from _Old Pictures in Florence_, in which the poet, by using the first person in his references to the early masters of Italy places himself in their group and refers to Greek art in the third person, are indications of the spirit of the poem and of Browning’s entire attitude toward endeavor in art.

To summarize, then: few persons have as great an interest in expressing themselves through all the arts as did Robert Browning. Architecture and sculpture he appreciated least; therefore he expressed least concerning their spirit and feeling. Music was a fundamental part of his life; but he was able to embody his feelings about it in music itself, not merely in poetry about it. Yet because of his perfect understanding of it, he has embodied its spirit in a few choice poems, making permanent, by his treatment of its evanescent quality, the ideas that could not be left to the world by his playing. Painting he deeply appreciated from childhood; but beyond a few amateur efforts for diversion, he could not express his appreciation of it by means of that art itself. Consequently, in an unusually large number of his poems, he gave us his view of that art, his portraits of its followers, historical or imaginary.

III. PERSONALITY AND THE ARTS.--Through his presentation of artists, Browning has given the world many different types of character. Prominent among them are the following: The non-altruistic, impractical poet--Sordello; the sensualist--Bocafoli; the superficial character--Plara; the regretful but optimistic idealist--Abt Vogler; the coarse realist, who yet possessed a really fine appreciation of God’s world--Fra Lippo Lippi; the weak, ambitionless man--Andrea del Sarto; the keenly sensitive mind--Pictor Ignotus; and the reformer--Pacchiarotto.

Art is also connected with Browning’s character portrayal in a secondary sort of way, of which _The Ring and the Book_ furnishes excellent illustrations. In that poem people are characterized by their likeness to some work of art--_e. g._, Pompilia is compared to Raphael’s Madonna; or by their fondness for some particular work of art--_e. g._, the Pope chuckling over the _Merry Tales_.

While Browning mentioned the great masters in many different poems, it is noticeable that he never used one of them as the main subject of a poem. There are Andrea, Lippo, and Furini, but there is no Angelo and no Raphael. This is due to the one element of interest on Browning’s part that has already been emphasized in this chapter and previous ones--personality. Browning was interested in the artist he selected, not merely as an artist, not as a distinguished figure, but as a human being, whose attempts, partial failure, or development, the poet wished us to study with him.

Very often the characters whom Browning chose to present either in connection with the arts or otherwise, were such as we do not approve of--but neither did Browning approve of them. His theory of art was no mere aesthetic one of art for art’s sake, no mere dogma of didacticism. It was rather, art for the sake of human nature, of personality. Of all the characters he has drawn for us, the one whose expression of art best gives Browning’s own sentiments is Fra Lippo Lippi, the painter and realist, enthusiastic for

“The beauty and the wonder and the power,
The shapes of things, their colors, lights, and shades,
Changes, surprises--and God made it all!

* * * * *

“But why not do as well as say,--paint these
Just as they are, careless what comes of it?”

Numerous instances might be cited as a proof of this--Guido, the Duke, the Bishop, and many others. All his human beings, then, Browning chose because their personality appealed to him, as a study, rather than because they compelled his admiration, whether he selected them from the world of art or elsewhere.

IV. BROWNING AS THE POET OF HUMANITY.--By consideration of Browning’s general attitude towards the arts, of his fondness for the struggle of the human soul as a poetic theme, and by a discussion of his relative emphasis on each art and the method in which he chose to treat it, the fact has been established that Browning was primarily the poet of the human soul, and a poet of the arts as seen through the medium of personality.

When he was once asked if he liked nature, he replied, “Yes but I love men and women better.” The arts--architecture, music, poetry, sculpture, and painting--he loved also; but he loved them most because they recorded human experience, and best when they most fully expressed the struggles of the soul, and thus became the direct embodiment of personality.