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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In 1835 Robert Browning, in search of a publisher for Paracelsus, wrote to the Reverend William Johnson Fox, “I have another affair on hand rather of a more popular nature, I conceive; but not so decisive and explicit on a point or two, so I decide on trying the question with this.” Since the “affair on hand” was Sordello, whose reputation for tortured syntax and obscure allusions still persists, one may well wonder what Browning meant by “popular.” The public found nothing difficult or strange in Paracelsus; although it did not appeal to the taste of the times, the praise of a few perceptive critics and readers showed that it was not totally ignored. Sordello, in contrast, struck a new note in the literature of the forties, a harsh dissonance which cut through the turgid harmonies of a decadent romanticism. Browning's poem, like Richard Wagner's music, sent the critics scurrying for shelter with their hands clapped over their ears. The notoriety of Sordello, which he conceived to be of “a more popular nature” than Paracelsus, haunted Browning for the rest of his life like that pungent, musky “after-gust” which he promised his readers in its concluding lines.
1 W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, The Life of Robert Browning, 3rd ed. (London, 1938), p. 89.
2 F. G. Kenyon, ed., Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello, The Works of Robert Browning (London, 1912), i, ix-x.
3 Preface to 1867 edition, ibid., i, xxi.
4 Ibid., i, ix-x.
5 Ibid., i, 179–180. All references to Sordello in my text are taken from this edition.
6 Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre (Cleveland and New York, 1956), pp. 43–44.
7 xvii, 306.
8 A. M. Nagler, A Source Book in Theatrical History (New York, 1959), p. 486.
9 Reprinted in The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning (Boston, 1895), p. 1008.
10 R. W. Church, “ ‘Sordello’,” Dante and Other Essays, p. 222.
11 J. G. Southworth, Vauxhall Gardens (New York, 1941), p. 64; Daguerre, p. 179.
12 Martin Quigley, Jr, Magic Shadows (Washington, D. C., 1948), pp. 77–78.
13 E. M. Butler, ed., A Regency Visitor (London, 1957), p. 111.
14 Poetic and Dramatic Works, p. 49. See also W. C. DeVane's analysis of the genesis, composition, and sources of Sordello in A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York, 1955), pp. 72–85.
15 “Some Account of an Extraordinary Traveller,” Household Words, i (1850), 77.
16 Practical Criticism (New York, n.d.), p. 175.
17 Prefatory letter to J. Milsand, Kenyon ed., i, 178.
18 Dante, p. 232.
19 “Moving (Dioramic) Experiences,” pp. 306–307.
20 “Browning: Semantic Stutterer,” PMLA, lx (1945), 231–255.
21 Kenyon ed., i, 178.
22 Poetic and Dramatic Works, p. 1009.
23 Ibid., p. 1014.
24 Ibid., p. 1009.
25 Ibid., pp. 1013, 1014.
26 “The Last Ride Together.”
27 Poetic and Dramatic Works, p. 1009.