Religion in his poems.
des. 12th, 2010 by jobasfer
1. Saul by Robert Browning
the poem: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/296.html
The Victorian website presents Saul as the poem of religious extremes. This web emphasizes some lines at the end of the poem and it says that in the poem we can see the figure of David, one of the most famous figures from the Biblical passages.
Robert Browning’s “Saul” is a poem that speaks to religious extremes in the way of “Bishop Brougham’s Apology” and “The Bishop Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed’s”, (especially the former) in which something goes terribly wrong within the relationship between humility and vanity. “Saul” is an interesting poem in that, instead of using a high church official as the vehicle for this sort of moral-ridden exposition of religious hierarchy and values, he uses David, one of the figures in the Bible most-readily seen as a type of Christ.
What might be the implications of such a decision, from a literary standpoint: does this dilute or reinforce Browning’s argument, (if this poem should be thought of as having a clear message, or intended argument) in light of what else we know about David and Saul and the rest of their biblical story? How do you think this poem should be situated in its historical context? Should we take this poem seriously, or ironically?
I think the aspect of this poem that fits most easily under the category of the dramatic monologue begins at section XVII. Why do you think the beginning of the poem is included (i.e.: the songs, and the soldier’s introduction)? Can one make an argument both ways regarding the importance of these sections to the poem? Does the part of the poem before XVII conflict with, or give clues towards the later sections (or both)?
The last section, XIX, helps the reader to understand a possible reason for such heavy biblical typology in the beginning of the poem. The first few lines are as follows:
I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news —
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge; but I fainted not,
What important scene in the Bible is this reminiscent of? Is there a point being made throught this reference?
As I read most of the last section of the poem, I thought David has lost it. One way in which his insanity manifests itself is in the multiplicity of voices at various points in the poem. David seems to be talking to many people while in Saul’s presence: himself, Saul, God, and some other unspecified person or persons. Why might this section make one rethink any confusion about the objects of David’s speeches and songs, or carry it further?
2. The Bishop Orders his Tomb
the poem: http://faculty.stonehill.edu/geverett/rb/praxed.htm
In this website is noted some lines from the poem where there is a controversy with pagan and Christian images and I think that in this poem of Browning is a kind of discussion about what there is after the death?. In the Victorian website in other part of the works of Browning mentions the devil is reflected in the poem and the verses are :
Let us concede (gratuitously though)
Next life relieves the soul of body, yields
Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,
Why lose this life i’ the meantime, since its use
May be to make the next life more intense?
3. The Ring and the Book
the poem: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/browning/robert/ring/
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_and_the_Book
This is an extend poem where Browning show his beliefs and his religious position. In the Victorian website I found in this poem that Robert Browning presents a figure which contrast Devil with God. And this web presents verses of the poem about the figure of Adam and Eve and the tree of life. I think that this is a clear representation of the Devil’s side in the Christian religion and the God’s side.
The dying prelate in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” provides the most extreme example from Browning’s work of a character who can neither interpret nor apply types properly, but the preacher in “Christmas Eve” (1850), like many in The Ring and the Book (1868-9), embodies an equally effective use of this method of character definition. His long poems also depict characters by means both of these figures’s self-conscious distortion of types for dishonest ends and of their apparently unconscious citation of such biblical images. For example, in The Ring and the Book the villainous Count Guido Francheschini represents himself as an innocent, selfless man by dramatizing himself as Christlike. (7) But when he refers to “God’s decree,/ In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce” (4.1410-11), he reminds us that he is, in fact, far more like Satan than like Christ. Guido’s Satanic nature is recognized by other characters in the poem, including Caponsacchi, who, realizing his adversary’s dangerous scheming, had thought to himself: “No mother nor brother Viper of the [Francheschini] brood/ Shall scuttle off without the instructive bruise” (6.677-8). The authoritative statement of Guido’s nature in terms of this image is made, of course, by the old Pope, who sees Pompilia acting analogously to Christ when she treads this Satan-figure into hell and, the reader adds, is herself “bruised”. Browning uses the same typological allusions in The Inn Album (1875). When the evil nobleman mentions in passing that “Head and feet/ Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,/ Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise”, the reader might not perceive this as an allusion to Genesis 3:15. But when his former mistress describes him more elaborately, we cannot miss the allusion:
Let him slink hence till some subtler Eve
Than I, anticipate the snake — bruise head
Ere he bruise heel — or, warier than the first,
Some Adam purge earth’s garden of its pest
Before the slaver spoil the Tree of Life. (8)
Browning has his characters employ typological allusions to locate his villain for the reader, thus providing a means of authorial commentary even in the midst of forms modeled on dramatic monologue in which he cannot speak in his own person.
4. Prospice
It is a poem where Browning was sad and he feels bad because his wife was died, so in the poem he says that the only thing that he can have is God and he feels like a fighter who has many battles and God was who do the rest of him.
by: Robert Browning (1812-1889)
EAR death? — to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end,
And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
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Skipflyz2…
Fantastic blog post, saw on…