¹ Since Jung's latest theories about personality have not been arrived at according to the contemporary definition by psychologists of the scientific approach, this comparison of Browning's ideas with Jung's does not pretend to be a “scientific verification” of Browning's psycho-therapeutic theories. On the other hand, Jung has arrived at his ideas in the light of the concept of the unconscious and through experience with the relatively simple and hence clear-cut types of maladjustment found in the “insane.” That Browning discovered very similar formulations from a widely different background of knowledge is interesting. Both men use inferential terms and terms lacking in tangible referents—as do most writers and many scientists.

² C. G. Jung, Modem Man in Search of a Soul (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1933), p. 254. (Hereafter called Modern Man.)

³ Idem, p. 231.

⁴ Idem, pp. 230–231.

⁵ Idem, pp. 233–235.

⁶ Idem, p. 276.

⁷ Idem, p. 251.

⁸ Idem, pp. 277–278.

⁹ Idem, pp. 260–261.

¹⁰ Idem, pp. 129–130.

¹¹ Idem, p. 197.

¹² C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1924), p. 507.

¹³ Idem, pp. 507–508.

¹⁴ Sordello, v, 79, 80.

¹⁵ Idem, v, 454–456.

¹⁶ Idem, v, 474–476, 507, 568–573.

¹⁷ Perhaps a better description of the ideas in the teeming womb of the unconscious is to be found in Paracelsus (written during the composition of Sordello). Aprile, the poet, is describing to Paracelsus his subjective sensations.

In Pauline, written just before Sordello, the hero speaks of “the unshaped images which he/Within my mind's cave.” These dazzle him as do Aprile's.

¹⁸ In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Jung calls these two types of poets the “psychological” and the “visionary.” Cf. pp. 179–181.

¹⁹ Psychological Types, pp. 417, 418, 419.

²⁰ Robert Browning, An Essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, Shelley Society's Publications, ed. W. T. Barden; series 4, No. 8, 1888), p. 11. Hereafter referred to as Essay on Shelley.

²¹ Cf. also Sordello (I, 509–519), where Browning compares the two types of poets. One character

Compare this with Jung:

Sensation, in the extraverted attitude, is most definitely conditioned by the object... . Sensation has a preferential objective determination, and those objects which release the strongest sensation are decisive for the individual's psychology. The result of this is a pronounced sensuous hold to the object... . This is the extravert's danger; he becomes caught up in objects, wholly losing himself in their toils. Browning has again perceived the same ideas of the sensuous hold of the object (“Bury themselves, the whole heart wide and warm”), the conditioning by the object (“a need to blend with each external charm”), and the danger of losing himself in the toils of objects (“to submit/Nor ask ... /Whence grew the idol's empery).”

²² Psychological Types, p. 481.

²³ Essay on Shelley, p. 13.

²⁴ In the same passage in Sordello from which I previously quoted lines describing the objective poet, Browning turns to a description of the subjective poet.

²⁵ Essay on Shelley, pp. 18, 15.

²⁶ Sordello, iii, 984–985.

²⁷ Idem, iii, 803–826.

²⁸ Idem, ii, 589–595; vi, 484–486, 527–528.

²⁹ For example—Sartor Resartus (1834): “Think well, thou wilt find that space is but a mode of our human sense, so likewise Time, there is no space and no time.” Chapter viii.

“One after the other, its earthly hulls and garnitures have melted away, and now, to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Hohes lies disclosed.” Chapter vi.

³⁰ Modem Man, p. 270.

³¹ By psycho-neurosis I mean a departure from what is commonly regarded as “normal” in evaluational ability. Those who deviate slightly are regarded as “queer”; we put those in insane asylums who depart radically from our standards of psycho-physical behavior. Neurosis and psychosis are loose terms describing such abnormalities, neurosis being used for the lesser and psychosis for the greater degrees.

³² Cf. F. A. Pottle, Shelley and Browning: a Myth and Some Facts (Chicago: The Pembroke Press, 1923).—Shelley, we may recall, was the subject of the essay from which I quoted remarks earlier on the subjective poet.

³³ Pauline, 124–130.

³⁴ Idem, 268–270, 273–276.

³⁵ Psychological Types, p. 121.

³⁶ Pauline, 607–608.

³⁷ Psychological Types, p. 482.

³⁸ Pauline, 601–603.

³⁹ Psychological Types, pp. 490–491.

⁴⁰ Idem, p. 491.

⁴¹ Pauline, 444, 447–450, 458–464, 469–474, 304–305.

⁴² Idem, 89–92.

⁴³ Psychological Types, pp. 326–327.

⁴⁴ Almost certainly Browning's state was not psychotic to the same degree as those states which we find in inmates of mental hospitals. The similarity is in kind, but not in degree. To some psychiatrists, few people are normal; most of us are averagely “unsane.” Browning was at this time more “unsane” than average, though not nearly so lacking in sanity as those who are confined.

⁴⁵ Pauline, 112–123.

⁴⁶ Idem, 497–499.

⁴⁷ Idem, 656–657, 658, 663–667.

Professor DeVane, in his Browning's Parleyings, the Autobiography of a Mind, points out the fact that at the beginning of Browning's creative life, in Pauline, and at the end, in the Parleyings (specifically, With Francis Furini), the poet uses the Andromeda myth to express something fundamental in his philosophy. Professor DeVane writes (p. 191), “Such is Browning's position as he defines it in Furini. It is the position of Andromeda on her rock as she awaits the sea-beast. A prince-charming, Perseus, or God, will appear in the nick of time. The outcome of the whole is the same as it was for Browning. God is in his heaven, all-good, all-wise, all-powerful; and evil in this earth is only illusion.”

⁴⁸ Idem, 291–292, 295, 300–301.

⁴⁹ Idem, 1–5, 28–31, 36–37.

⁵⁰ Psychological Types, p. 277.

⁵¹ Not alone has Pauline but half-saved him, but the invocation at the close to Shelley for his aid and love, and the absence of any mention of Pauline in the last fifty lines of the poem, show that Pauline was an early and not very potent expression of the symbol.

⁵² Not only does Browning speak directly to the reader but also to his chief characters, admonishing, warning them of what he intends to do with them, comforting Palma by having her weep on his bosom when she discovers that she is to be superseded.

⁵³ Cf. Pauline, 318–323.

⁵⁴ In Sordello Browning experimented with a new style—which has repelled readers ever since. He called it brothers' speech“ because it depended on an understanding between author and reader such as exists between members of a family—an understanding which could dispense with such nuisances as short, well-formed sentences, conjunctions, prepositions, relative pronouns.

⁵⁵ Sordello, ii, 900–906.

⁵⁶ Idem, iii, 167–168.

⁵⁷ Idem, iii, 193–198.

⁵⁸ Idem, iii, 214–217.

⁵⁹ Idem, 323–329.

⁶⁰ Professor DeVane first indicated the existence of this dilemma to me. See his “Sordello's Story Retold,” SP, xxvii (1930), 1–24.—It may be noted that, for one reason or another, in March, April, May, 1834, he was in Russia as secretary to a diplomatic mission. Sordello was then in progress, I believe.

⁶¹ H. Martineau, Autobiography, ed. M. Chapman (Boston, 1877), ii, 325.

⁶² Diaries of William Charles Macready, 1833–51, ed. William Toynbee (London: Chapman and Hall, 1912), i, 382 (March 29, 1837).

⁶³ Sordello, iii, 622–630, 643–647, 649.

⁶⁴ Idem, iii, 676–681.

⁶⁵ The same symbolism was in his mind when, on November 10, 1845, he wrote to Elizabeth Barrett, “Dearest, I believed in your glorious genius and knew it for a true star from the moment I saw it; long before I had the blessing of knowing it was my star, with my fortune and futurity in it... . Yet, if you can lift me with one hand while the other suffices to crown you—there is queenliness in that, too!” And on March 18, 1836 he wrote, “... is it not right that you should be my Lady, my Queen? and you are and ever must be, dear Ba.”

⁶⁶ Idem, iii, 681–684, 687–691.

⁶⁷ Idem, iii, 696–698.

Elizabeth Barrett was not particularly happy nor modish, incidentally.

⁶⁸ Idem, iii, 717–721.

⁶⁹ Idem, iii, 726–741.

⁷⁰ Idem, iii, 781–783.

On March 12, 1845, the poet wrote to Elizabeth Barrett, “I don't even care about reading now—the world, and the pictures of it, rather than writings about the world! But you must read books in order to get words and forms for ‘the public’ if you write, and that you needs must do if you fear God.

⁷¹ Idem, iii, 749–756.

⁷² Idem, iii, 763–768.

⁷³ Idem, iii, 768–771.

⁷⁴ Idem, iii, 934–939.

⁷⁵ Idem, iv, 224–229, 249–254.

⁷⁶ Idem, iv, 948–952.

⁷⁷ Idem, v, 81–89.

⁷⁸ Psychological Types, pp. 620–621.

⁷⁹ Idem, iii, 786–794, 800–802.

⁸⁰ By “relativity” I refer to the fact that our knowledge of what is observed is always based on the relation between the observer and that which is observed, as Einstein and Korzybski have shown brilliantly.

⁸¹ Cf. Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (New York: Harpers, 1935), pp. 140–141, 147, for a physician's opinion of the pathology of “geniuses,” particularly those in the “mystic” category.

⁸² Psychological Types, p. 159.

⁸³ Idem, p. 293.

⁸⁴ Modern Man, p. 235.

⁸⁵ Sordello, iii, 719–721.

⁸⁶ Idem, iii, 802–803.

This question concerning the meaning and origin of evil is one which a psychiatrist is very frequently asked. Browning has included his answer in his “psychiatric” poem.

⁸⁷ Jung says specifically: “Thus the voice revealed itself during the course of many hundred carefully recorded dreams as an important and even decisive representation of the unconscious. ... I have to admit the fact that the unconscious mind is capable at times of assuming an intelligence and purposiveness which are superior to actual conscious insight.” C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), p. 46.

⁸⁸ Sordello, v, 81, 85–89.

⁸⁹ Idem, vi, 115–118, 77–85.

The following passage from William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience (pp. 175–176) parallels this passage and also the various stages Sordello attained before reaching the final and successful stage. “But to find religion is only one out of many ways of reaching unity; and the process of remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process, which may take place with any sort of mental material, and need not necessarily assume the religious form ... or it may be produced by the eruption into the individual's life of some new stimulus or passion, such as love, ambition, ... In all these instances we have precisely the same psychological form of event,—a firmness, stability, and equilibrium succeeding a period of storm and stress and inconsistency. ...”

⁹⁰ Idem, vi, 573–585.

Cf. above pp. 789–90, where I quote Palma's words to this same effect.

⁹¹ Modem Man, p. 77; p. 264.

Cf. Psychology and Religion, by Jung: “Religion, it might be said, is the term that designates the attitude peculiar to a consciousness which has been altered by an experience of the numinosum.”

⁹² Idem, p. 260.

⁹³ Sordello, iii, 822–825.

The beggar-maid passes the Mass in Venice to come to Browning for aid.

⁹⁴ This applies mostly to Protestants.

⁹⁵ Sordello, v, 615–621.

⁹⁶ Psychological Types, p. 261.

⁹⁷ Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 1845–46 (New York: Harper, 1899), i, 193.

⁹⁸ Idem, i, 247.

⁹⁹ Idem, i, 454.

¹⁰⁰ Psychological Types, p. 402.—That this was not true of Browning's later life I should ascribe to two factors (two among others, doubtless). First, according to the testimony quoted above from The Ring and the Book, he became more careful of his mode of expression as time went on. Second, having in Sordello balanced his early extreme introversion, it was natural that in later years he should have had the pleasure of being popular and of not having to wait for posthumous fame.

¹⁰¹ Idem, pp. 402, 405–406. Cf. House, Shop, Sordello, iii.

¹⁰² Cf. Browning's Works (Cambridge edition), p. 128.

¹⁰³ The style of his letters to Miss Barrett, as well as of Sordello, illustrates this description admirably.

¹⁰⁴ Psychological Types, p. 487.—E.B.B., in a letter from Italy, described her husband at work as “beating his dear head against a wall.”

¹⁰⁵ Idem, p. 486.

¹⁰⁶ Cf. Macready's Diaries, Vol. 1 passim; especially April-July, 1837.

¹⁰⁷ Psychological Types, pp. 511–512.