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Browning, Grammar and Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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A Grammarians Funeral is possibly one of Browning’s best known poems, and one which provides a useful introduction to his work as a whole. To begin with, the subject is typical; the grammarian is a man of intense energy and determination who has devoted his life to the pursuit of an unattainable goal. As such he is a figure who affords Browning an opportunity for doing what he can do well. Time and again Browning chooses themes which allow him to exercise his skill in describing violent emotion and strenuous activity. Not that his range can be entirely restricted to any simple formula: one has only to recall Andrea del Sarto, ‘the weak-eyed bat’, and the deft strokes with which his mood of fatalistic apathy is evoked. Nevertheless, the fierce exultation of the Epilogue to ‘Asolando’ and Prospice, the grimly amusing pent- up fury of the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the searing jealousy of The Laboratory, the bitter hatred of The Confessional, the boisterous enthusiasm of Fra Lippo Lippi and the desperate exhilaration of How they brought the Good News are sufficient indication how well grounded is the common association of Browning with strong feelings and vigorous effort. The poem is rich, moreover, in examples of those technical devices which he employs to express themes of this kind. The distorted syntax, which wrenches words from their normal order, frequently with the aid of parenthesis, produces a broken, abrupt, breathless rhythm which is characteristic of his style;
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- Copyright © 1961 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 New Bearings in English Poetry (New Ed. 1950), p.20. Dr Leavis devotes little more than one page to Browning, but his brief comments constitute a juster estimate of the poet than any other I know of, save Santayana's.
2 I have not read Mr John Atkin's study of Graham Greene, but I am told that Greene emerges from this book as the Browning of the novel. The resemblances, however, are superficial. Both writers may be said to be fascinated by the paradox of the successful failure; but in very different senses. For Greene, the nature of what a man believes in is so important that he is willing to deprive his heroes of precisely those qualities which Browning idealizes. For Browning, the power and the glory belong to man and his daundess pursuit and unwavering fidelity, regardless of the end. It is amusing to note that, thanks to the imagery, the grammarian is not in fact, as so many readers seem to think, a failure by the world's standards. Missing his million by a unit, he scores 999,999 to the low man's 100. A successful failure indeed.
3 My debt to Santayana's invaluable essay on Browning in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion will be obvious to readers familiar with this book, now available in a paperback edition (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1957).
4 See George Orwell's chapter on Dickens in Inside the Whale and Other Essays; also ray article on Dickens in blackfriars, Nov., 1957.
5 Princeton University Press, 1952.
6 See Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, especially chapter IV, iii.
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