In ‘Amphibian’, the prologue to Fifine at the Fair, Browning’s oscillation between
EBB’s and his own poetics approaches the opposite pole. In this new effort at self- definition twelve years after her death, the speaker’s spontaneous chain of associations leading from the butterfly via Psyche to the soul of EBB indicates how much she still dominates Browning’s th o ug h t.E ssen tially, both the prologue and the epilogue, ‘The Householder’, assert his reluctance to die and to be immediately reunited with his wife. However, in contrast to the truly personal epilogue, there lingers beneath the confrontation between life and death that is played out on the surface of the text the hidden issue of poetics: the portrayal of EBB as a soul in the heavenly sphere and Browning’s orientation towards real life on dry land characterise their respective kinds of idealist and realist poetry. Without denying the more obvious dimension of the text, I will focus my analysis on this latter aspect.
The superiority of EBB, who is ‘watching the uncouth play’ (26) of the swimmer from above, is never questioned. Now that she ‘has for [her] home the whole / Of heaven’ (35-6) and has further approached divine perfection, it becomes even more impossible for Browning to emulate her. His clear inferiority serves him as an excuse
for not adopting her as a model. We will see that in the opening of Sordello and in
‘Cenciaja’ he has recourse to the same conventional rhetorical strategy of praise and
humility vis-à-vis an awe-inspiring poet to justify his different mode (see Chapters
D espite the thematic link between prologue and epilogue and the main poem , the speaker of ‘A m phibian’, who is obviously a poet, seem s to be neither D on Juan nor an anonymous speaker as Ryals claim s {L ater P oetry 62). The im age of sw im m ing in the sea as a m eans o f self-definition rather suggests an utterance in pro p ria persona. Firstly, sea-bathing became one o f B row ning’s favourite holiday pastimes in the 1860s and 1870s. Secondly, it establishes an intertextual reference to the self portrayal o f Byron’s narrator person a at the end o f C hilde H arold (canto IV, stanza clxxxiv). Of course, sw im m ing appears as a metaphor in Don Juan’s m onologue (stanzas Ixiv-lxix), but stands for a slightly different idea.
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V.1.4 and VI. 1). So far, the stance is in line with the resolution expressed in ‘One W ord M ore’ to pursue his own style.
The speaker admits that poetry - probably specifically Browning’s kind of poetry with its realistic portrayal of men and women - is a substitute for ‘the finer element’ (59) of heaven, or for EBB’s comparatively idealist poetry. Yet the triple insistence that poetry is the domain of ‘passion and thought’ (47, 49, 53-4) emphasises that, though less pure, it is able to encompass such a dichotomy as heart / head. Browning as an amphibian may enjoy the broader experience of both heaven and earth, whereas EBB - ‘a creature which had the choice / Of the land once’ (31-2) - is limited
to one realm only. Aristophanes in Aristophanes’ Apology makes the same point about
Euripides, who sees the world through his lofty, but restricted, perspective of ‘High and Right’ (5119) and only ‘knows one phase of hfe’ (5134), while Aristophanes himself can adopt various perspectives.^^ Bearing in mind Browning’s ideal of the fusion within a single author of the subjective poet who sees ‘what God sees’ and the objective poet who ‘chooses to deal with the doings of men’ (‘Essay on Shelley’ 1002 and 1003), it is significant that in ‘Amphibian’ he claims to occupy this intermediary
position, which in R&B was still the preserve of the ‘half angel and half bird’ (1, 1391),
EBB. Here, however, he merely echoes EBB’s own evaluation of his poetry:
You have in your vision two worlds - or to use the language o f the schools o f the day, you are both subjective & objective in the habits o f your mind - You can deal both with abstract
thought, & with human passion in the most passionate sense. Thus, you have an im mense grasp in Art; & no one at all accustomed to consider the usual forms o f it, could help regarding with reverence & gladness the gradual expansion o f your powers. (15 January 1845,
Corr. 10: 26, my emphasis)^^
This self-conceptualisation as the reconciler of opposites is pursued in Aristophanes’
Apology, when Aristophanes takes up Socrates’ idea from the end of the Symposium of the superior ‘imaginary Third’ (5140) dramatist who combines comedy and tragedy. This man, who will be ‘bom - in the Tin-islands’ (5146), i.e. Britain, must be Shakespeare, with whom Browning so frequently identifies (see Chapter IV.4).^*
A ristophanes’ metaphor o f the gam e o f kottabos is a variation o f the colour w heel metaphor in R&B
(I, 1348-78).
Thomas C ollins is o f the opinion that much o f the lexis o f the ‘Essay on S h elley’ is inspired by E B B ’s letters in the courtship correspondence (private com m unication to the author). Cf. another remark on B row ning’s double vision in her letter o f 19 August 1845 {Corr. 11: 37).
^^A very similar self-definition as a third term, this time on a religious level, appears in the ‘E pilogue’ to D ram atis Personae. Its third speaker who quite obviously voices B row ning’s position, offers his personal faith as a com prom ise between D avid’s belief in divine presence in the world and Renan’s
Even though the enounced acknowledges the superiority of heaven over the earthly state of writing poetry, the confident declaration
‘They fare Scarce better, they need not scorn Our sea, w ho live in the air!’ (50-2)
and the extended praise of the security of the firm land in the four last stanzas insinuate that the compromise of swimming may be of equal value to the heavenly s t a t e T h e only imperative of the poem, ‘(confess!)’ (70), which reveals belatedly that the utterance is dramatic, urges an addressee to accept the speaker’s view as a fact. The poem thus becomes Browning’s most explicit repudiation of EBB’s model. The use of pronouns confirms that he has reached his most independent stance: instead of being
addressed to his dead wife, which was possible in R&B, the utterance refers to her in
the (absent) third person. In stanzas ix-xii, the first person pronoun is replaced by the impersonal ‘one’, which effaces his direct relationship with her and suggests a detached self-observation. Stanza xiv switches to the first person plural, which gives the claims he makes a more general validity and widens the cleft between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Moreover, the situation in which she observes the speaker is presented not as a factual statement but in hypothetical ‘i f clauses.
Yet, as in the other poems. Browning cannot sustain his independence throughout the entire text. In the last stanza, the speaker’s own evaluation of his compromise is superseded by his wondering how it will be judged by EBB and whether she will care to watch him at all. The mere fact that he wants to know her opinion reveals that he still depends on her. This continuing dilemma is a result of his conflicting strategies for self-conceptualisation. In his analysis of the self-fashioning of the Renaissance authors, Stephen Greenblatt posits two opposed entities as necessary ‘governing conditions’: an ‘authority situated at least partially outside the self to which the self submits, and an ‘alien’ in relation to which the self-fashioning is achieved (9-
regretful disbelief. However, the value o f the third term is parodied by ‘Tertium Q uid’ in R&B, whose authority and m otivations are very doubtful.
The ‘Prologue’ to P acchiarotto (1876) contains an interesting rewriting o f ‘Am phibian’, which conveys E B B ’s superiority more convincingly: the speaker Browning is situated outside a house in which EBB is enclosed. Yet he paradoxically describes not her but h im self as a ‘prison-bird’ (19) fettered by earthly life, whereas EBB is portrayed as a creative subjective poet, as a soul singing to itself in its house - but without the negative, solipsistic connotations o f Tennyson’s ‘The Palace of Art’. Brow ning is not only literally surrounded by living men, but also lives am ong them in the sense that they are his subject material. Only his poetry - albeit rough ‘storm -notes’ (20) - allow s him to transcend his confinem ent and to ‘soar free’ (22).
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10). This is exactly Browning’s case, only he accords EBB a contradictory double function: on the one hand, she occupies a higher level of observation - stressed by the angel metaphor for her in three poems - which gives her the authority to judge him and forces him to base his self-conceptualisation on her observation of him. On the other hand, she is also the point of reference from which he needs to distinguish himself in order to define his distinctive identity. Situating her both on an equal level and in a
higher category traps him in an impasse, which he could only avoid if he chose two
different points of reference. As long as he does not relieve her o f one of her functions, he cannot achieve a stable self-definition. Through ‘Amphibian’, Browning does make a first effort to demote EBB from her superiority, but he cannot sustain it.
The epilogue to Fifine at the Fair, ‘The Householder’ is a surreal fictional
monologue with allusions to Browning’s private life, i.e. a distorted self-observation. It pursues the same aim as ‘Amphibian’ with a more effective strategy. The level of the enounced seems to agree with EBB insofar as it builds on her spiritualist premise that communication with the dead is possible, and expresses the speaker’s repentance and submission since the wife’s spirit has the last word."*® But this is only a façade because, as in the case of the false medium Mr Sludge, the level of the enunciation shows that Browning controls the dialogue with the dead by enclosing it in a narrative, and he invents the dream vision and her forgiving direct speech. In her rhetorical question “ ‘And was I so better off up there?”’ (24), he makes her deny the supremacy of her unworldly orientation. This reminds us that the inclusion of EBB in his poems always gives Browning the possibility to assert power over her, especially after her death. He can shape his fictional character EBB’ according to his wishes - including his favourite image of her as a dominant model - because there is no other voice in or outside the poem which would seriously contradict this construction. Nina Auerbach might be going too far when she claims that he only resuscitates her to have the satisfaction of making her one of his creatures (173), but the device certainly does reinforce his identity as a self-confident artist.
The dialogic structure is also a return to Brow ning’s initial inspiration for the dramatic m onologue through Walter Savage Landor’s Im aginary C onversations o f L iterary Men an d Statesmen.
II.6. ‘To Edward FitzGerald’
The emphasis on an insoluble opposition in Fifine at the Fair is not Browning’s last
word on their respective poetics. If there is no dialogue with EBB in ‘To Edward FitzGerald’, it is because FitzGerald has intruded on the couple’s dialogue, usurped the second person and forced her into the third person. The poem enacts the effort to recover the disturbed unison with EBB through a particularly strong subjectivity and identification with her.
Written on 8 July 1889, five months before his death, the poem is virtually Browning’s final word on his relationship with EBB; it is at the same time the most unguardedly personal of all his poems. It is so embedded in the biographical context
that critics - with the notable exception of Karlin {Hatreds 25-32) - usually disregard
the poem’s status as a literary text and prefer not to discuss it.'" Occasioned by his reading of FitzGerald’s remark: ‘Mrs Browning’s Death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God![...]’ (Wright 280), it was composed the next day as an immediate response to the - already deceased - FitzGerald. As with many occasional poems. Browning did not give the text the official status of a work of art by
including it in a collection, although the publication of Asolando was imminent. Instead,
he sent it as a public reply to the Athenaeum. In a letter to Emily Tennyson, he
defended the violent hatred in his poem as adapted to the mode of FitzGerald’s insult:‘[...] if the blow I received was thoughtlessly dealt, my counter-blow was quite as unpremeditated - ’ (21 July 1889, Ricks 464).
Nevertheless, the text is too artistic for a spontaneous outburst crammed into verse. Karlin argues here an ironic displacement of pathos onto hatred through the resonance with the situation in Milton’s ‘Methought I saw my late espoused sain t...’ and Browning’s own repeated reference to the dead wife’s return in the Alcestis myth
following EBB’s death {Hatreds 31). The enunciation is structured in such a way that
the reader can observe the speaker’s motivations, and it therefore justifies the drastic position taken on the level of the enounced. The first sestet contains a dramatic narrative of Browning’s discovery. Detailing all stages o f the experience, it gives the reader time to sympathise with the state of mind of the unsuspecting speaker. Suspense is increased by parentheses which delay the cause of his exasperation until the very last
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word of the sestet (‘“thanked God my wife was dead’” ). After this shock, the tone in the second sestet becomes gradually more aggressive. It progresses from initial irony in ‘good Fitz’ - an allusion to Tennyson’s complimentary poem ‘To E. FitzGerald’ (1885) - and ‘return your thanks’ to outright hatred, culminating in a paradoxical conceit which turns spitting - an extremely contemptuous physical assault - into a glorification. This hate is excused by the strong emotion, which is conveyed in the alliteration of harsh consonants ( ‘A^icking...common...curs’, 9, ‘greeting...grace’, 10) or in the onomatopoeic ‘spit...Spitting’ (11-12). Moreover, the central position of the word ‘dead’ at the end of the first and the beginning of the second sestet as well as the mouth’s double function - kissing and spitting - emphasise that grief for the beloved is the cause of Browning’s hatred.
The carefully created impression of authentic spontaneity is not just a move to forestall criticism; it also reveals Browning’s effort to fulfil EBB’s ideal of the personal subjective utterance, and this is obviously how he wanted the text to be perceived by the Tennysons. Both the speaker’s interpretation of FitzGerald’s remark and the poem’s form follow this poetic principle. As the sonnet form was conventionally expected to express the poet-speaker’s feelings. Browning usually avoided the sonnet form (see Chapter IV.3); but this twelve-line poem may be termed a curtailed sonnet with the octave shortened to another sestet, since it shares the sonnet’s characteristically surprising closure, its formal elaboration and the personal mode. When the speaker interprets FitzGerald’s comment, which is obviously meant to refer to poetry by women in general and not to EBB’s private personality - lines 5 and 6 stress that FitzGerald did not know her - , he voices her idea that private self and poetry are one.
The speaker is all the more outraged at Fitzgerald’s insult because he sees his own and EBB’s identity as fused. How strongly the real Browning identified with his wife is suggested by the inadvertent slippage from the feminine gender form ‘herself to the masculine ‘his’ in his letter about the incident to his son, which is pointed out by
Karlin {Hatreds 27):
[...] all I know is that the fellow insulted one unable to defend herself - who yet is able to express his loathing for such a scamp. (13 July 1889, Hood 312)
In the enunciation of the poem, tokens of this fusion of identities abound. The text itself acts as a link connecting the first and the last words, I’ and ‘Hers’. Besides, as lovers
they are fused into one through the kiss as the emblem of the perfect moment of the lovers’ union. The general principle behind Browning’s defence of his wife is not a traditional paternalistic code of honour which considers husband and wife as one because marriage has made her his property and insulting her thus equals insulting the husband’s honour. On the contrary, Browning presents himself again in an unequal centre-periphery relationship, highlighted by the capitalisation of ‘H er’. He is her extension, since he derives his authority to punish FitzGerald from the act o f touching her sanctifying lips. Another indication of this is that despite the change of focus from himself in the first sestet to ‘Her’ in the second - in which the first person pronoun does not even appear any more - the speaker’s emotional involvement increases in the second half. Once more the letter to Lady Tennyson complements the poem. Browning writes that, when opening the book,
I had fully expected to be amused [...] - to be amused by the customary treatment of Browning, “the unintelligible”, “unreadable”, “unindurable” and so forth: and seeing that such skits have, in a way, diverted me for half a century, they can but little discom pose me now-a-days. (Ricks 464)
Browning can read about his own public reputation as a poet with amused detachment but feels extremely hurt when EBB is attacked.
Taken together, the impression which Browning gives of a very self-confident speaker on the level of the enounced jars with his implicit self-definition as an adjunct to EBB as it appears in the enunciation. The speaker can only be so emphatically assertive and personal because the poem is actually not about Browning’s separate