Robert Browning

(7 Mai 1812 12 Decembrie 1889)

ROBERT BROWNING
Robert Browning (7 May 1812 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright
whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the
foremost Victorian poets.
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, England, and his education mostly took place
among his fathers 6,000-book library. As a writer, Browning was regarded as a failure
for many years, living in the shadow of his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However,
late in life Brownings brilliant use of dramatic monologue made him a literary icon.
Today, his most widely read work is Men and Women, a collection of dramatic
monologues dedicated to his wife.
Brownings fame today rests mainly on his dramatic monologues, in which the words not
only convey setting and action but also reveal the speakers character. Unlike a soliloquy,
the meaning in a Browning dramatic monologue is not what the speaker directly reveals
but what he inadvertently "gives away" about himself in the process of rationalizing past
actions, or "special-pleading" his case to a silent auditor in the poem. Rather than
thinking out loud, the character composes a self-defence which the reader, as "juror," is
challenged to see through. Browning chooses some of the most debased, extreme and
even criminally psychotic characters, no doubt for the challenge of building a
sympathetic case for a character who doesn't deserve one and to cause the reader to
squirm at the temptation to acquit a character who may be a homicidal psychopath. One
of his more sensational dramatic monologues is Porphyria's Lover.

Portraits of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.

Yet it is by carefully reading the far more sophisticated and cultivated rhetoric of the
aristocratic and civilized Duke of My Last Duchess, perhaps the most frequently cited
example of the poet's dramatic monologue form, that the attentive reader discovers the
most horrific example of a mind totally mad despite its eloquence in expressing itself. In
other monologues, such as Fra Lippo Lippi, Browning takes an ostensibly unsavory or
immoral character and challenges us to discover the goodness, or life-affirming qualities,
that often put the speaker's contemporaneous judges to shame. In The Ring and the Book
Browning writes an epic-length poem in which he justifies the ways of God to humanity
through twelve extended blank verse monologues spoken by the principals in a trial about
a murder. These monologues greatly influenced many later poets, including T. S. Eliot
and Ezra Pound, the latter singling out in his Cantos Browning's convoluted
psychological poem Sordello about a frustrated 13-century troubadour, as the poem he
must work to distance himself from.
Ironically, Brownings style, which seemed modern and experimental to Victorian
readers, owes much to his love of the seventeenth century poems of John Donne with
their abrupt openings, colloquial phrasing and irregular rhythms. But he remains too
much the prophet-poet and descendant of Percy Shelley to settle for the conceits, puns,
and verbal play of the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century. His is a modern
sensibility, all too aware of the arguments against the vulnerable position of one of his
simple characters, who recites: "God's in His Heaven; All's right with the world."
Browning endorses such a position because he sees an immanent deity that, far from
remaining in a transcendent heaven, is indivisible from temporal process, assuring that in
the fullness of theological time there is ample cause for celebrating life.

The Pied Piper leads the children out of Hamelin.

Illustration by Kate Greenaway to the Robert Browning version of the tale.

A Face
If one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pale gold,
Such as the Tuscans early art prefers!
No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft
Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staffs
Burthen of honey-coloured buds to kiss
And capture twixt the lips apart for this.
Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,
How it should waver on the pale gold ground,
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb:
But these are only massed there, I should think,
Waiting to see some wonder momently
Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky
(Thats the pale ground youd see this sweet face by),
All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

A Serenade at the Villa

That was I, you heard last night,

Light last on the evening slopes,

When there rose no moon at all,

Nor, to pierce the strained and tight

"One friend in that path shall be,

Tent of heaven, a planet small:

To secure my step from wrong;

Life was dead and so was light.

One to count night day for me,

Patient through the watches long,

Not a twinkle from the fly,

Serving most with none to see."

Not a glimmer from the worm;

When the crickets stopped their cry,

Never say - as something bodes -

When the owls forbore a term,

"So, the worst has yet a worse!

You heard music; that was I.

When life halts 'neath double loads,

Better the taskmaster's curse

Earth turned in her sleep with pain,

Than such music on the roads!

Sultrily suspired for proof:

In at heaven and out again,

"When no moon succeeds the sun,

Lightning! - where it broke the roof,

Nor can pierce the midnight's tent

Bloodlike, some few drops of rain.

Any star, the smallest one,

While some drops, where lightning rent,

What they could my words expressed,

Show the final storm begun -

O my love, my all, my one!

Singing helped the verses best,

"When the fire-fly hides its spot,

And when singing's best was done,

When the garden-voices fail

To my lute I left the rest.

In the darkness thick and hot, Shall another voice avail,

So wore night; the East was gray,

That shape be where these are not?

White the broad-faced hemlock-flowers:

There would be another day;

"Has some plague a longer lease,

Ere its first of heavy hours

Proffering its help uncouth?

Found me, I had passed away.

Can't one even die in peace?

As one shuts one's eyes on youth,

What became of all the hopes,

Is that face the last one sees?"

Words and song and lute as well?

Say, this struck you - "When life gropes
Feebly for the path where fell

Oh how dark your villa was,

Windows fast and obdurate!

How the garden grudged me grass

Ground its teeth to let me pass!

Where I stood - the iron gate

Love in a Life
I
Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her
Next time, herself!not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch's perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew:
Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather.
II
Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,who cares?
But 'tis twilight, you see,with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

The Lost Mistress

Alls over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, tis the sparrows good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, today;
One day more bursts them open fully
You know the red turns grey.
Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we, well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with hearts endeavor,
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!
Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

Ultimul cuvant al unei femei

S-ncetm, Iubire,
Lupta, chinul Ca-n trecut, Iubire,
Somnul, linul...

Fii un zeu i ia-m,

Ia-m cu o vraj Fii un om i pune-mi
Braele, drept straj.

Ce nebuni cuvnt?
Eu i tu.
Psri ce se-nfrunt,
oimi, pustiu.

Dascl fi-mi, Iubire!

Cnd va trebui,
Graiul tu gri-voi,
Gndu-i voi gndi.

Uite, totu-i via,

Pe cnd noi - vorbim.
Fa lng fa,
Vorba s topim.

Dorurilor tale
S le ies n cale,
Trup punnd i suflet
n minile tale.

Adevrul minte?
Minte te rnete.
Unde-a-nfipt un dinte
arpele - ferete!

Mine va fi asta,
Ast-noapte nu!
Jalea se cuvine
n adnc s-o iu.

Unde-i rou mrul

Nu pndi, nu-i bine Astfel pierdem raiul
Eva i cu mine.

Plng puin, Iubire O, nesbuit!

i adorm, Iubire,
De tine iubit