Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
Page 31
Apparent Failure
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. The morgue was not in fact demolished, and still stands, but is closed to the public. 1–8. The Brownings were in Paris from October 1855 to June 1856. The two events referred to – the ‘baptism’ and the ‘Congress’ – did not take place at the same time. The Imperial Congress to end the Crimean War opened in Paris on 25 February 1856 and peace was concluded a month later. At this Congress Count Camillo Benso Cavour successfully pleaded for the recognition of Piedmont as an independent state after its aid to the British and French in the war; Prince Alexander Gortschakoff and Count Karl Ferdinand Buol-Schauenstein represented Russia and Austria respectively. Prince Louis Napoleon, the only son of the Emperor Napoleon III, was baptized in June 1856. 10. Doric Originally the earliest of the three ‘orders’ of Greek architecture; here meaning a plain, strong style of building. 12. The Italian poet and humanist Petrarch (1304–74) lived for much of his life in Provence; Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, near Avignon, source of the river Sorgue, was a favourite retreat. The Brownings visited it on their journey to Italy after their marriage in 1846. 39. Tuileries The palace where French sovereigns resided. 43–4. Does the Empire … missed? Napoleon III made himself Emperor in 1852, ending the Second Republic. 46–7. red in vain / Or black Socialist or reactionary; with a pun on the gambling game ‘rouge et noir’ (see next lines). 58–63. Browning’s opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment is re-stated in several other poems, notably ‘Ixion’ (Jocoseria, 1883). 60. Revelation 1:11: ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last’.
Epilogue [to Dramatis Personae]
Published Dramatis Personae, 1864. In the first edition the first and second speakers were not identified. King David, ancestor and highest type of Christ in the Old Testament, represents the certainties of traditional religion; Ernest Renan (1823–92), author of the controversial Vie de Jésus (1863), represents contemporary scepticism about the authenticity of the Gospel narratives and despair at the loss of faith in the central Christian truth of the Incarnation. The third speaker, unnamed in all editions, voices Browning’s view that faith is not dependent on a particular doctrine or mode of worship, and that the Incarnation takes place not in the historical figure of Jesus, but in the universe whose shifting play of circumstances defines each human being’s unique identity, and which reciprocally manifests the full range of human experience (‘feels and knows’). 1–21. The source is II Chronicles 5:11–14, describing the dedication of the Temple at Jerusalem, when Solomon brought the Ark of the Covenant into the sanctuary: ‘And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place ( … also the Levites, which were the singers … being arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:) it came even to pass, as the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and instruments of musick, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: that then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord; so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.’ 11. lift Past tense, ‘lifted’ (an allowed form). 24–5. that star / Which came, stood, opened once The star which guided the Magi to Bethlehem, and ‘came and stood over where the young child was’ (Matthew 2:9): an emblem of the Incarnation of God in Man. 36–7. When a first shadow … motion When the first doubts arose about the authenticity of the Gospels and therefore the truth of the Incarnation. 46. lesser lights The moon and stars (Genesis 1:16); the ‘greater light’ the sun (‘son’, Jesus) is gone. The speaker goes on to say that each star may be, as science suggests, a sun to its own world, but that is no comfort to us. 57. serene Serene brightness.