Strange_Love_-_Robert_Browning

Strange Love “Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself' / Do I live in a house you would like to see'” (l 1-2), croons Robert Browning in his poem, “House.” Robert Browning, who “grew up in a comfortable suburban home,” quickly lost his Christian faith, and grew into “the poetic psychologist who would care less what people believed than how.” Over the course of his lifetime, it is evident through reading his poetry that “his creativity would be most fully engaged by case studies of extremity or compromise, failure or inconclusiveness in the experiments of life” (Dorothy Mermin 542). While Browning cared more about how people believed, he was not believed as a great poet of the Victorian genre because his poetry “failed to win the kind of attention readers were paying to poets like Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett” (Mermin 542). Henry James declared (about Browning), “that none of the great had ever been so strange, none of the strange so great” (Mermin 543). Robert Browning’s beliefs of how rather than what people believed led him to compose thought-provoking poetry laced with sexual innuendos, including revelation, temptation, and self-fulfillment, all which are encompassed in a relationship between art (poetry) and sexual love. Upon in-depth evaluation of many of Browning’s poems, it is evident that he felt strongly about these topics, and although they were strange in the eyes of the Victorian critics, he was able to “sonnet-sing” sexual or erotic love in his poetry in a manner that did not jeopardize the high morals of the Victorian genre. The act of revealing something to view, making it known, or enlightenment of the subject matter is one topic Robert Browning has mastered. In “Andrea del Sarto,” Browning relates a story of a painter, a faultless painter, who over the years has come to the realization that his wife, Lucrezia, is not in love with him, although she stays married to him. “You turn your face, but does it bring your heart'” (l 4), questions Andrea del Sarto of Lucrezia (as well as himself) in the beginning of the poem. He further enlightens the reader, proclaiming to Lucrezia, “You don’t understand / Nor care to understand about my art” (l 54-55), as if struck by the sudden revelation that they do not view his profession as a painter in the same light. Throughout the dramatic monologue, he asks more and more questions of himself and his ever-so-silent wife, in an attempt to uncover why she stays with him, as well as why he keeps her around. He blames her for his failure of not being a well-known, distinguished painter, such as the likes of Leonard (Leonardo da Vinci), Raphael and Agnolo (Michaelangelo), by stating: Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel’s reed, For Leonard, Raphael, Agnolo and me To cover—the three first without a wife, While I have mine! So—still they overcome Because there’s still Lucrezia,--as I choose (l 261-266). Without a doubt, he lays the blame solely on her, as he cries out “had you not grown restless” (l 166), and “called me, and I came home to your heart” (l 172), his situation would have been different, but he also begrudgingly realizes that it is partially his own fault, because he chose her for his own selfish sexual reasons, and because of this, chose to submit to her wishes. As Andrea’s monologue nears the end, he makes clear to Lucrezia that he has made a compromise within himself and accepted their existence as a way of life telling her, “I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. / I regret little, I would change still less. / Since there my past life lies, why alter it'” (l 244-246). The revelations made by Andrea del Sarto towards his life and his predicament with Lucrezia pale in comparison to the revelation of temptation that is felt by Browning’s other painter, Fra Lippo Lippi. Fra Lippo Lippi, the painter-monk in Browning’s poem with the same name, is continually tempted by the power of the flesh. The first instance of this temptation is seen when Lippi is apprehended by the night watchman while he is in the alley. He explains to the watchman that he has been tempted out of the Carmelite Monastery, where he has “been three weeks shut within [his] mew, / A-painting for the great man, saints and saints / And saints again” (l 47-49), by the “hurry of feet and little feet, / A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song” (l 51-52). His sexual desire draws him out of his painter’s trance enticing him to escape the Monastery. In desperation to be “where the sportive ladies leave their doors ajar (l 6) and be among the “flesh and blood” (l 59-60) of the “little feet,” he hastily created a ladder from the bed-furniture and, “Down I let myself, / Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped, / And after them” (l 64-66) he went. Fra Lippo Lippi is commissioned by the church (that took him in as a young boy of eight) to paint the blank walls, so he paints what he sees. He is tempted to paint the flesh as he sees it, the “face, arms, legs and bodies” (l 177), but is scolded by the Prior who states: Your business is not to catch men with show, With homage to the perishable clay, But lift them over it, ignore it all Make them forget there’s such a thing as flesh. Your business is to paint the souls of men— (l 179-183). The Prior leaves Lippo with orders to “give us no more of body than shows soul!” (l 188), which to Lippo does not make sense, and he is dumbfounded by the request to only “paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms” (l 193)! Lippo struggles with temptation and expresses it the only way he knows how, through his paintings. He confesses that “you should not take a fellow eight years old / And make him swear to never kiss the girls. / I am my own master, paint now as I please—(l 224-226). He continues to silently oppose the church and God’s way, but renounces his temptations, “I swallow my rage, / Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint / To please them” (l 242-244), and is able to finish his painting for the church; “And so all’s saved for me, and the church / A pretty picture gained” (l 388-389). A pretty picture lasts longer than a pretty corpse, but for Porphyria’s Lover, the temptation to keep Porphyria “perfectly pure and good” (l 37) takes on a deviant form of sexual love. On a rainy, windy evening Porphyria glides into the cottage, tends to the fire and innocently tempts her lover. She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread, o’er all, her yellow hair (l 16-20). From these sexual advances by Porphyria, he affirmed, Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do (l 32-35). Porphyria’s lover is tempted by the idea of the possibility to keep her in this form forever. His sexual desire for her and the knowledge that she loved and worshipped him was enough to compel him to commit murder in an attempt to keep her “perfect.” Now instead of resting his head on her shoulder, He propped her head up as before, Only, this time my shoulder bore Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head (l 49-52). He was tempted by her and in the midst of the love and sexual confusion he felt for her, he followed through with an unspeakable act, but as they sat together all night, not stirring, “God has not said a word” (l 60)! Browning shows, in this poem, how temptation, sexual or otherwise, can lead someone down the wrong path, in an attempt to achieve self-fulfillment. Porphyria’s lover falls prey to temptation, but along the way realizes he can use it to his advantage to fulfill his selfish desires without any regards as to how it will affect Porphyria. She professes her undying love and devotion to him; Murmuring how she loved me—she Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavor, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me forever (l 21-25). After hearing this, he debated what to do. She had “made [his]…heart swell” (l 34), and out of sheer selfishness and self-fulfillment of his sexual desires he wanted to make sure she was his forever. He fails to realize that she will not stay this way forever, but for the time he has fulfilled his sexual desires in attempting to keep her preserved in the form that he cherished the most. Robert Browning alludes to another form of self-fulfillment in “My Last Duchess.” The Duke of the poem fulfills his desires by collecting expensive items. He goes to great lengths to let it be known to those who visit that they are expensive by dropping names such as “Claus of Innsbruck,” who “cast in bronze” (l 56) “Neptune…taming a sea-horse” (l 54-55) for him, and “Fra Pandolf,” the painter who “worked busily a day” (l 4) to create the masterpiece upon the wall commemorating his (the Duke’s) last Duchess. He elucidates how the Duchess was “too soon made glad, / Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er / She looked on, and her looks went everywhere” (l 22-24). Her infidelity angered him; she disobeyed his commands and did not value his “gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” (l 33). The Duke, picturing his idea of self-fulfillment, immortalized her in paint upon his wall. He now had complete control of who could see her, who she could see, and when these viewings would occur; he controlled the curtain her portrait lay behind. He created a lasting impression of her that would fit into his world; she had become one of his collector’s items. Collecting divine things as a way of fulfilling one’s desires sometimes goes beyond living, and follows one into death. In “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church,” the vain Bishop fights “with tooth and nail to save…[his]…niche” (l 16), not just any ordinary niche, but one that “is not so cramped” (l 20). The Bishop describes his niche: I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And ‘neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse (l 25-30). He lies on his death bed, not thinking about he people he will leave behind, but of his own selfishness and desires to have an impressive and striking tomb; a tomb which would leave Old Gandolf, his rival, envying him long after he has passed. Robert Browning exposes the Bishop as a greedy, selfish individual, who throughout his life into his last days, and even into death, wants to “out-do” Old Gandolf, but Browning also demonstrates how the Bishop confuses the look of stone with the look of human flesh. Browning represents this as a relationship between art and sexual love. The Bishops tomb, indisputably, will be a magnificent work of art, consisting of: “lapis lazuli,” “antique black,” bronze,” and “marble.” As the Bishop relishes in the though of his magnificent tomb, he becomes confused, comparing “mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs” (l 75), to that of the “peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe” (l 29) of which the stone of his tomb is comprised. He also imagines the “lapis lazuli” to be as “blue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast” (l 44). These images allude to a relationship between art (his tomb) and sexual love; a sexual desire that he is fantasizing about while explaining his wishes for his tomb. The relationship of art and sexual love is seen in numerous of Robert Browning’s poems, interlaced amongst innocent passages, but as the reader unravels the hidden implications behind his poetry, it is easy to see how he accomplishes the task without making it deliberately obvious. The poetry included in the discussions of revelation, temptation, and self-fulfillment, not only embraces these topics on a singular level, but have elements of each topic loosely or heavily laced within all of them. Browning had an uncanny sense and ability to bring to the reader’s awareness the comparison between art and sexual love. Being a poet in the Victorian genre, an erotic or sexual investigation into how people believed instead of what people believed was scrutinized because it did not fit into the high moral fiber that Victorians believed was the essence of art for their period of time. Thus, it is easy to see how Browning was considered strange in the eyes of his critics. His ideas of such an erotic relationship and the way he intertwined those ideas within his poetry, made Browning a great poet of his time; a poet able to artistically explore and express his ideas of how people believed.