Capacidad directiva

Let us return to Sordello to discover how exactly the narrator operates as an observer. He considers himself superior to his hero at all stages of his story. He can view the events from the distance of six centuries and has a higher state of consciousness than Sordello because he has reached a more advanced stage in his own development. This feeling of superiority is obvious in comments in the first books. For instance, the exclamation ‘As if the poppy felt with him!’ (I, 705) mocks the naïve identification of the child Sordello with nature. And the apostrophe to Sordello ‘Dear monarch, I beseech, / Notice how lamentably wide a breach / Is here! [...] ’ (II, 415-25) points out the short-sightedness of Sordello’s view that the public will admire a poet like him, who is on such a high level of abstraction that they cannot relate to him.

Later on in the poem, the narrator offers his explanations for Sordello’s failure at self-realisation. The much discussed analytical passage in VI, 588ff., which identifies Sordello’s deficiency as his lack of a mediating power between the infinite abstract and the finite concrete, and which in most critics’ view alludes to the concept of the Incarnation of Christ,* is less relevant in the context of my analysis than the diagnosis of Sordello’s problem in his speech to Taurello and Palma:

’ This attitude is foreshadowed by Eglam or’s generous reaction to Sordello’s victory at the court of love, after which he humbly accepts to sing his successor’s song (II, 247-57).

* See W hitla (14); Ryals (Becom ing 103-7); Grube (415ff.). For a survey o f alternative interpretations, see Tucker (Beginnings 231, n. 6).

Chapter V

Yet most Sordello’s argument dropped flat Through his accustom ed fault o f breaking yoke, Disjoining him who felt from him who spoke:

[...]

B e sure, in such delicious flattery steeped. His inmost se lf at the out-portion peeped Thus occupied; then stole a glance at those Appealed to, curious if her colour rose Or his lip m oved, w hile he discreetly urged The need o f Lombardy’s becom ing purged A t soonest o f her barons; the poor part Abandoned thus m issing the blood at heart. Spirit in brain, unseasonably o ff

Elsewhere! (V, 322-4 and 329-38)

Despite his altruistic devotion to the people’s cause, the self-centred subjective artist Sordello is so intent on observing the effect which his eloquence has on his audience, i.e. on observing their second order observation of him, that the purpose of the speech becomes less important. His political oration, which should concentrate on the content level, applies the self-referential aesthetic categories of artistic discourse. The narrator’s comment at the end of this speech, ‘My poor Sordello! what may we extort / By this, I wonder?’ (V, 646), reminds us once more that the hero’s too acute self-consciousness is responsible for his failure at political rhetoric.

Ironically, however, a too intense self-observation which makes him neglect Sordello’s story is also the reason why the narrator’s own utterance is so obscure that it baffles the reader. Similarly, the narrator’s dry remark about the effect which Sordello’s self-conscious harangue actually has on his listeners, ‘(For here the Chief [Taurello] immeasurably yawned)’ (V, 539), betokens a feeling of ascendancy, but the incident foreshadows the narrator’s own sleeping audience at the end of the poem (VI, 870).^ The narrator’s speech is obviously just as soporific as that of his hero. Another trait which the narrator criticises in Sordello but which they actually share is pointed out by Columbus and Kemper in their analysis of Sordello as a reflection of his creator (258- 9). The narrator disdains Sordello’s hope to shape the ideas of mankind, a criticism more forcibly expressed through the addition of an exclamation mark in the versions from 1863 onwards: ‘Impress his will on mankind, he (the fool!) / Had never even entertained the thought [...]’ (IV, 276-7, 1888 version). But the narrator is of course

^ ‘Suffering hum anity’ also falls asleep on the narrator’s shoulder (III, 758). It should be said in his defence, though, that he encourages her to do so and that he sees her as his m use and never as his audience. Cf. also the sleeping addressee Forth in ‘England and Italy’.

just as intent on imposing his will on his own audience. Columbus and Kemper see this as an outright failure:

Self-revelation without self-recognition marks the Speaker as the Speaker m ocks Sordello [...] He cannot apprehend the parallels between him self and his ‘hero’ although he draws the line. (259)

The narrator’s bhnd spot when it comes to applying the categories of hetero­ observation to his self-observation is so easy to notice for the reader that the author must be aware of it. Through the parallels with Sordello, the author helps the reader to ‘draw the line’ which the narrator himself cannot see.

Columbus and Kemper consider both Sordello and the narrator to be failures, since in both cases self-consciousness destroys the Romantic ideal of unselfconscious poetry or action (257). But from the point of view of Browning’s new ‘brother’s speech’ poetics which the poem develops, unselfconscious poetry does not appear as an ideal. The presentation of the epitome of the unselfconscious poet, the singing child in VI, 849-65, illustrates this. The child sings ‘Some unintelligible words’ (VI, 861), which means that he cannot communicate his poetry to men. What is more, the reference to him is preceded by the final summary comment on Sordello’s preference for dozing at home instead of ‘Singing or fighting elsewhere’ (VI, 836), so that the child is likened to the solipsistic poet aloof from humanity that was young Sordello. The child’s utter lack of a social impact and interest in an audience, which contrast with Pippa, Browning’s next singing child, whose song has an effect on the characters she passes, are vital flaws (Karlin ‘Figure of the Singer’ 122-3). In addition, Karlin points out an uneasy tension in the portrayal of the child as the supreme poet: he beats ‘The lark, G od’s poet’ (VI, 862), but his undesirable lack of consciousness and identity turns

him into a static image instead of an individualised poet {ibid.). The narrator says he

would like to see the child as a better alternative to Sordello’s hfe of action, but this is stated through a hardly convincing question: ‘[...] cannot I say / He lived for some one better thing?’ (VI, 847-8) The child is therefore at best the reminiscence of Browning’s earlier abandoned poetic ideal but not his model at the moment of utterance, after his conversion to humanitarian poetics.

Columbus and Kemper spend much of their analysis arguing that the narrator’s self-conscious digressions hamper the flow of the narrative, claiming that his ego and

Chapter V

failing powers of communication prevent him from a clear exposition of his plot (259). Of course there are several indications that the narrator is afraid of not being up to his task, such as the repetition of the phrase ‘If I should falter now’, which frames the reference to Dante (I, 347 and 373). His question ‘How shall I phrase it?’ (II, 355) seems to betoken an insecurity, but might also be a sly way of drawing attention to his mediating agency. Columbus and Kemper assume that the narrator is incapable of comprehending the complexity of Sordello’s character (261) and therefore interpret the opening line, ‘Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told’, as an anxious appeal to be believed, which at the same time betrays the narrator’s doubts whether he understands the story (263). This line can on the contrary be read as a self-confident reminder of his

narrative mediation: ‘Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told' (my emphasis),

reinforced by its echoes in I, 604 and at the ends o f Books III and VI. On both textual levels, there are many other assertive indications of the narrator’s creative power which

are typical of the transcendental buffoonery of Romantic Irony and which contradict

Columbus and Kemper’s view of the speaker as insecure.

Let us consider the enounced first. The opening stresses the poet’s power of choosing his subject:

I single out Sordello [...]

Letting o f all men this one man em erge B ecause it pleased m e [ ...] (I, 7-8 and 20-1)

Similarly, Tucker reads the parenthesis about the renaming of Cunizza as Palma (V, 970-6), a highly conscious creative act, as another assertion of the narrator’s authorial

choice {Beginnings 108). The narrator stresses the originality of his creation:

And therefore have I m oulded, made anew A Man, delivered to be turned and tried. B e angry with or pleased at. (Ill, 908-10)

At the end of a narrative movement, he emphasises that he structures the narrative:

For thus Bring I Sordello to the rapturous

Exclaim at the crow d’s cry, because one round O f life was quite accom plished [ ...] (Ill, 545-8)

Finally, the self-reference ‘My own month came’ (II, 296) draws attention to the narrator in the middle o f a long passage which is free from interventions.

In the enunciation, a subtle hint is encoded in the use of quotation marks in the 1840 version. They are, as Michael Mason observes, only used ‘to indicate quotations of the written word by the poet - either from another part of the text, or from some contemporary writing, imaginary or otherwise’ (137-8). An example is the reprise of I, 881-3 in III, 577-9, where it appears in quotation marks in 1840, but not in 1863-88 after Browning’s change of policy. For Mason this draws ‘attention to distinctions that are nearer to the actual writing of the poem’ (138). The absence of quotation marks for normal direct speech thus underscores that all direct speech is created by the narrator.

The text also contains two hidden celebrations of creativity which are not spelled out in the enounced: first, the reference to the monk who writes a secular history and deletes the regulation forbidding this from his monastery’s charter (I, 299- 308). His stifled creativity parallels that of the narrator who is obliged to fulfil the audience’s expectations; second, the canon’s narrative about the discovery of Alberic’s skeleton (VI, 785-9), which is followed by an apparently unrelated, enthusiastic reference to the local silk-worms, and leads to the narrator’s comment: ‘Nor he nor I could tell the worthier. Choose!’ (VI, 792) This states that the resuscitation of history represented by the disinterment of Alberic is not more important than the narrator’s creativity, symbolised by the silkworm which produces a thread out of its own substance, which can be woven into a text(ure).

There is no need to resolve the conflict between the narrator’s insecurity about his ability to narrate and the self-confident emphasis on his creativity. They can coexist, since the author’s aim is not to present the narrator as a consistent, reliable voice that merely has the function of a transparent mediator. The main purpose of the objective poet who is the author o f the poem is to draw a realistic portrait of the character of the narrator as he tells Sordello’s story, so that the reader can engage in a critical second order observation of the workings of the consciousness of this fictional version of Browning. This includes the proto-modernist depiction of the fragmentation of the

Chapter V

narrator’s perception and consciousness. Columbus and Kemper come up with such a negative evaluation of the narrator because they make mistakes in their emphasis. Although they imply that the author deliberately designs a flawed speaker, they give a lot more space to the narrator’s weaknesses than to the author’s successful objective poetry which exposes these deficiencies.

I suspect that Columbus and Kemper also come to their conclusion because they underestimate one more dimension which adds to the complexity of the narrator’s self: his development throughout the poem, which is, of course, more significant than the personal development which a real person would undergo in the course of the narration within a realistic time-frame. The following section will explore how the poem manages to portray this transitional stage which leads from subjective towards objective poetics and which is the crucial phase in Browning’s development.

V .l.3. The Observation of the Narrator’s Self in Process

The narrator’s development can be traced on both levels of the text. In the enounced, it appears in the three key passages on poetics: Book I, 462-566 only discusses the negative aspects of objective (and subjective) poetry; Book III, 840-89 opts for objective poetry, but modestly admits that it cannot be achieved during the poet’s

earthly existence; and if we read the famous ‘Why, he writes SordelloV (V, 620, 1888

version) as the narrator’s self-reference, this is finally his assertion that he can create objective poetry.

In the enunciation, we can note changes in the narrator’s technique of presenting the story. Throughout the first half of the poem, he lives up to his promise from the opening passage of providing a guiding authorial voice for the audience, and his many interventions display a concern with his own identity which bears witness to his commitment to subjective poetry. The second half of the text offers a more straightforward narrative and contains a higher proportion of direct speeches by characters, which foreshadow Browning’s later use of the dramatic monologue. This self-effacement signals that the narrator has solved the dilemma of his self-definition and now tries to put his new objective ideal, which he discovered in Venice in Book III,

into practice. There are still some intrusions which show that he has not reached his ideal yet, but they are fewer and have a clearer function in the logic of the narrative.

There is a general agreement among critics that the poem’s progression towards a more straightforward narrative reflects a development from subjective to more objective poetics. These changes are usually taken to document not the narrator’s but the author’s development, a logical consequence of the long period of composition of the text.'® The most concrete hypothesis in this line is DeVane’s elaboration of Griffin and Minchin (Chapter 6), which postulates the existence of four different draft versions

{Handbook 72-85): the first one, a Shelleyan introspective psychological study, was

made redundant by the intervening composition of Paracelsus', the second one, a

romance about war and love, was pre-empted by the publication of Mrs Busk’s

Sordello in 1837; the conception of the third, historical version was revised after Browning’s conversion experience in Venice; the fourth version adds Sordello’s devotion to humanity, makes him the son of Taurello and turns Taurello into the central character of the latter part. DeVane argues that in the published text the first three versions are preserved in the progression from Sordello’s solipsistic youth in Goito, via Sordello as troubadour and lover in Mantua, to the political idealist in Ferrara

{Handbook 84).

This neat but highly speculative theory cannot be backed up by any evidence, since no manuscripts survive which could document the stages of the textual genesis. DeVane builds his argument on the development of Sordello in the published text and on some of Browning’s references to the work in the paratext, whose reliability Woolford and Karlin call into question in their discussion of DeVane’s hypothesis

{Poems 1: 352). Due to its internal inconsistencies, it is easy to refute DeVane’s theory of the developing author. It is generally true that the heavy use of romance and fairy

tale motifs in the first part - such as the love plot based on love at first sight, the

foundling motif, the princess Palma and the witch and wicked stepmother Adelaide -

recedes in favour of the political theme in the second half. The narrator finally even refuses to confront the issue of the unresolved love plot, when he remarks: ‘Never ask /

'® A ccording to a letter o f 5-7 Decem ber 1834 {Corr. 3: 109), Browning had started com position in the summer o f that year at the latest. Proofreading was probably finished on 23 February 1840 (Woolford and Karlin Poem s 1:352).

Chapter V

Of Palma more!’ (V, 973-4) However, some elements which DeVane attributes to the fourth version disrupt his pattern. The invention of the father - son relation is a clear return to the fairy tale, which, according to DeVane, was discarded with the first version. Conversely, the political framework does not emerge towards the end of the poem but is established at the very beginning, when the romance tableau of the Veronese crowd, which would conventionally be used to evoke an atmosphere of excitement, is soon superseded by rational, discursive political analysis. As Woolford

and Karlin point out, the reference to the different historical settings of Strajford and

Sordello in the 1837 preface to the former is another sign that the historical background had always been of great importance in the conception of the poem, which constructs the Guelf - Ghibelline conflict as an analogy for the political situation in

both nineteenth-century Italy and Britain {Poems 1: 352 and 376).

Of course, my alternative theory cannot rely on manuscript evidence either, but I think that the textual evidence is convincing enough to suggest that the development sketched out above is only that of the narrator. I believe that the progression is deliberately planned by the author, whose objective poetic identity remains stable throughout the text, whereas the narrator continually develops. Even at the end of the text the narrator does not quite attain the author’s objectivity, so that the relationship between author and narrator parallels on a higher level the distance between the narrator and Sordello. Browning’s development can thus be observed in two different dimensions in addition to Sordello’s story: through the dynamic development of the narrator throughout the text and through the ongoing contrast between the narrator’s consciousness in the enounced and the author’s superior consciousness in the enunciation. The next section, which focuses on the opening of the poem, will show that, although the narrator appears as a subjective poet and seems to utter an undemanding popular narrative, the author is already at this point an objective poet, who presents his main character, the narrator, dramatically in a way which incites the