Robert Browning: My Last Duchess, Childe Roland, Pied Piper, Ring and Book, more

[Extollager]

Browning (1812-1889), outstanding Victorian poet, appeared in one of the first releases in Ballantine's famous fantasy series edited by Lin Carter.


"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is an outstanding early effort in modern fantasy. It may have left traces on the work of Tolkien, Alan Garner (Elidor), and others. The knight is on a quest, but he is doomed. The feeling of the poem is a long way from that of the atmosphere of Sir Thomas Malory.

I intend to read Browning's The Ring and the Book soon. I anticipate that it will take a lot of effort. It is based, as I understand, on a real murder trial in late 17th-century Italy.

Browning's poetic process was started when he perused an "old yellow book" picked up serendipitously.

Here is a place for Chrons people to discuss Browning and his works, should anyone be so inclined.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I read a few of Browning's poems in English class when I was in High School. "My Last Duchess" was one of them; I didn't think much of it. The teacher told us what to look for—how it told more about the Duke than it did the Duchess—but failed to bring it to life.

"Porphyria's Lover" on the other hand, has stayed with me all these years. I attribute that to the shocking turn near the end.

I imagine if I read either poem now I would pick up a great deal that I missed the first time. I really should give it a try.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I love My Last Duchess, but find Andrea de Salto (sp?) to be such a moving, clever poem

 

[Extollager]

Somehow this sounds to me like something Robert Browning might have appreciated:

"An ancient Dean of Christ Church is said to have given three
reasons for the study of Greek: the first was that it enabled you to
read the words of the Saviour in the original tongue; the second, that
it gave you a proper contempt for those who were ignorant of it; and
the third was that it led to situations of emolument."

--A. C. Benson, in From a College Window

 

[The Judge]

I also love "My Last Duchess" particularly the way we're seeing the Duke's character so clearly through his words, yet it's not actually handed to us on a plate, we have to think about it.

I'd not read "Porphyria's Lover" before, but having had a quick look at it now, I don't think it's one I want to read again! I've come across "Andrea del Sarto" in the past but never got beyond the first dozen lines. I've had another attempt just now, and got up to about 50, but gave up again. Short attention span here!

 

[Extollager]

I've decided to commit a chunk of what's left of this summer to reading The Ring and the Book. This, as I understand it, is a kind of a novel of murder, set in Renaissance Italy, told, Rashomon-like, from multiple points of view. I expect to post comments here. It would be great if that could turn into a dialogue or even a conversation; does anyone else want to tackle this book?

I have a Penguin Classic edition that's been copiously marked up by a previous user, so I decided to order a clean copy today. The back cover copy of the Penguin contains a blurb from A. S. Byatt:

"The Ring and the Book is arguably greater than any British novel of the nineteenth century [!!], in the scope of its preoccupations, in the variety of its language, in the ferocity and tenacity and fearlessness of its examination of cruelty and evil and fear...Browning's poetic fiction foreshadows the twentieth century's sense that all language is fiction."

The Penguin back cover text continues:

"In June 1860 Browning picked up an old book off a stall in Florence. It contained documents relating to the trail of Count Guido Franceschini for the murder of his wife, whom he accused of adultery with a young priest. Franceschini had been executed, together with four accomplices, in 1698. The story became the basis of [Browning's] astonishing tour de force of dramatic verse."

I saw a letter from C. S. Lewis to his brother, written shortly before CSL's 30th birthday, with this passage:

----It sounds astonishing but English poetry is one of the things that you can come to the end of. I don't mean of course that I shall ever have read everything worth reading that was ever said in verse in the English language. But I do mean that there is no longer any chance of discovering a new long poem in English which will turn out to be just what I want and which can be added to [Spenser's] Faerie Queene, [Wordsworth's] The Prelude, [Milton's] Paradise Lost, [Browning's] The Ring and the Book, and [William Morris's] the Earthly Paradise, and a few others -- because there aren't any more.. I mean, in the case of poems one hasn't read, one knows now pretty well what they're lie, and knows to that tho' they may be worth reading, they will not become part of ones permanent stock.-----

 

[hitmouse]

If it is not digressing too far, what do we think are the most significant long poems since That Letter, which would have been around 1928?

 

[Extollager]

This thread has been a low traffic one for sure, so, yeah, let's leave it open for Hitmouse's inquiry -- but please, everyone, stick to truly long poems if you know of such. That means the poem in question should be as long as a full-length novel, not as long as a novella or short story. I'm afraid we'll bog down with comments about poems that are longer than a lyric but do not deserve to be considered long poems as Lewis's letter requires. The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, The Prelude etc. would all take most people several days to read (they sure took me days or even weeks). If a poem can be read in an evening, it's not long enough for inclusion here.

Offhand the only long poem I've read that was written since 1928 that comes to mind is Martyn Skinner's The Return of Arthur, which I liked.

“An ‘Easy to Read’ Modern Arthurian Epic” by Dale Nelson - A Pilgrim in Narnia

Two years after his Arthurian novel, That Hideous Strength, was published, and a year before he was discussing Arthur’s multiple “disqualifications” to be a “hero” with Dorothy L. Sayers, Lewis did not allow the complexities of his thoughts about King Arthur to prevent him heartily recommending...

apilgriminnarnia.com

In its completed one-volume form (1966), it is about 550 pages.

 

[J-Sun]

Striving to be as highbrow as this thread requires, I have to relate that I came across another poetic dramatic monologue years ago that seemed like a lost work of Browning, so copied it onto a piece of paper and stuck it in my Six Centuries of Great Poetry anthology next to "My Last Duchess" after giving it the title "The Duchess Before That."

I sat next to the Duchess at tea.
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were simply abominable,
And everyone thought it was me.

 

[hitmouse]

The only modern novel-length poem I can think of, off the top of my head, is The Golden Gate (1986) by Vikram Seth. I enjoyed it immensely when I first read it in my late teens. I think I probably surprised myself by reading it in the first place. It is essentially a novel written in sonnets. Unusual but very accessible.