Chapter 4

The Lombard League also figures in the story, as the consequence of Salinguerra's and Palma's conspiracy against San Bonifacio; though it also appears as brought about by the historic course of events. Salinguerra, under cover of military reprisals, has entrapped the Count into Ferrara, and detained him there, at the moment when he was expected to meet his lady-love in his own city of Verona. Verona prepares to resent this outrage on its Prince, and with it, the other States which represent the Guelph cause; and when Palma--seizing her opportunity--summons Sordello thither in his character of her minstrel, and reveals to him her projects for him and for herself, their interview is woven into the historical picture of a great mediæval city suddenly called to arms. What Sordello sees when he goes with Palma to Ferrara, belongs to the history of all mediæval warfare; and his sudden and premature death revives the historical tradition though in a new form. The intermediate details of his minstrel's career are of course imaginary; but his struggle to increase the expressiveness of his mother tongue again records a fact.

I have mentioned such accessible authorities as Sismondi and the "Biographie Universelle," because they _are_ accessible: not from any idea that they give the measure of Mr. Browning's knowledge of his subject. He prepared himself for writing "Sordello" by studying all the chronicles of that period of Italian history which the British Museum supplied; and we may be sure that every event he alludes to as historical, is so in spirit, if not in the letter; while such details as come under the head of historical curiosities are absolutely true. He also supplemented his reading by a visit to the places in which the scenes of the story are laid.

_Its Dramatic Idea._

The dramatic idea of "Sordello" is that of an imaginative nature, nourished by its own creations, and also consumed by them; and breaking down in consequence under the first strain of real conflict and passion. The mysterious Italian poet,--scarcely known but as a voice, a mere phantom among living men--was well fitted to illustrate such an idea; he might also perhaps have suggested it. But we know that it was already growing in Mr. Browning's mind; for Sordello had been foreshadowed in Aprile, though the two are as different as their common poetic quality allows. Aprile is consumed by a creative passion, which is always akin to love; Sordello by an imaginative fever which has no love in it; and in this respect he presents a stronger contrast to Aprile than Paracelsus himself. As a poet he may be said to contain both the artist and the thinker, and therefore to transcend both; and his craving is for neither love nor knowledge, as the foregoing poem represents them, but for that magnitude of poetic existence, which means all love and all knowledge, as all beauty and all power in itself. But he makes the same mistake as Aprile, or at least as Paracelsus, and makes it in a greater degree; for he rejects all the human conditions of the poetic life: and strives to live it, not in experience or in sympathy, but by a pure act of imagination, or as he calls it, of _Will_; and he wears himself out body and soul by a mental strain which proves as barren as it is continuous. The true joy of living comes home to him at last, and with it the first challenge to self-sacrifice. Duty prevails; but he dies in the conflict, or rather of it.

The intended lesson of the story is distinctly enforced in its last scene, but is patent almost from the first--that the mind must not disclaim the body, nor imagination divorce itself from reality: that the spiritual is bound up with the material in our earthly life. All Mr. Browning's practical philosophy is summed up in this truth, and much of his religion; for it points to the necessity of a human manifestation of the Divine Being; and though Sordello's story contains no explicit reference to Christian doctrine, an unmistakeable Christian sentiment pervades its close. That restless and ambitious spirit had missed its only possible anchorage: the ideal of an intellectual existence at once guided and set free by love.

Mr. Browning has indeed prefaced the poem by saying that in writing it he has laid his chief stress _on the incidents in the development of a soul_. It must be read with reference to this idea; and I should be bound to give precedence to it over the poetic inspiration of the story if Mr. Browning had practically done so. This is not, however, the case. Sordello's poetic individuality overshadows the moral, and for a time conceals it altogether. The close of his story is distinctly the emerging of a soul from the mists of poetic egotism by which it has been obscured; and Mr. Browning has meant us from the first to see it struggling through them. But in so doing he has judged Sordello's poetic life as a blind aspiration after the spiritual, while the egotism which he represents as the keynote of his poetic being was in fact the negation of it. The idea was just: that the greatest poet must have in him the making of the largest man. His Sordello is imperial among men for the one moment in which his song is in sympathy with human life; and Mr. Browning would have made it more consistently so, had he worked out his idea at a later time. But the poem was written at a period in which his artistic judgment was yet inferior to his poetic powers, and the need of ordering his vast material from the reader's, as well as the writer's, point of view--though he states it by implication at the end of the third book--had not thoroughly penetrated his mind.

I venture on this criticism, though it is no part of my task to criticize, because "Sordello" is the one of Mr. Browning's works which still remains to be read; and even a mistaken criticism may sometimes afford a clue. "Sordello" is not only harder to read than "Paracelsus," but harder than any other of Mr. Browning's works; its complications of structure being interwoven with difficulties of a deeper kind which again react upon them. Enough has been said to show that the conception of the character is very abstruse on the intellectual and poetic side; that it presents us with states of thought and feeling, remote from common experience, and which no language could make entirely clear; and unfortunately the style is sometimes in itself so obscure that we cannot judge whether it is the expression or the idea which we fail to grasp. The poem was written under the dread of diffuseness which had just then taken possession of Mr. Browning's mind, and we have sometimes to struggle through a group of sentences out of which he has so laboured to squeeze every unnecessary word, that their grammatical connection is broken up, and they present a compact mass of meaning which without previous knowledge it is almost impossible to construe. We are also puzzled by an abridged, interjectional, way of carrying on the historical part of the narrative; by the author's habit of alluding to imaginary or typical personages in the same tone as to real ones; and by misprints, including errors in punctuation, which will be easily corrected in a later edition, but which mar the present one.

It is only fair to add that he would deprecate the idea of any excessive labour as bestowed on this, to his mind, immature performance. It is for us, not for him, to do justice to it. With all its faults and obscurities, "Sordello" is a great work; full moreover of pregnant and beautiful passages which are not affected by them. When Mr. Browning re-edited "Sordello" in 1863, he considered the possibility of re-writing it in a more transparent manner; but he concluded that the labour would be disproportionate to the result, and contented himself with summarizing the contents of each "book" in a continuous heading, which represents the main thread of the story. It will be useful to read this carefully.

BOOK THE FIRST.

The story opens at Verona, at the moment of the formation of the Lombard League--a well-known union of Guelph cities against the Ghibellines in Northern Italy. Mr. Browning, addressing himself to an imaginary audience composed of living and dead, describes the city as it hastens to arms, and the chain of circumstances through which she has been called upon to do so; and draws a curious picture of two political ideals which he considers respectively those of Ghibelline and Guelph: the one symbolized by isolated heights, the other by a continuous level growth; those again suggesting the violent disruptions which create imperial power; these the peaceful organic processes of democratic life. The poet Shelley is desired to withdraw his "pure face" from among the spectators of this chequered scene; and Dante is invoked in the name of him whose fame preceded his, and has been absorbed by it. A secret chamber in Count Richard's palace shows Palma and Sordello in earnest conference with each other. Then the curtain falls; and we are carried back thirty years, and to Goito Castle.

Sordello is there: a refined and beautiful boy; framed for all spiritual delights. As his life is described, it has neither duties nor occupations; no concern with the outer world; no contact even with that of Adelaide, his supposed protectress. He is dreaming away his childhood in the silent gloom of the castle, or the sunny outdoor life of the hills and woods. He lives in imagination, blends the idea of his own being with everything he sees; and for years is happy in the bare fact of existence. But the germ of a fatal spiritual ambition is lurking within him; and as he grows into a youth, he hankers after something which he calls sympathy, but which is really applause. He therefore makes a human crowd for himself out of carved and tapestried figures, and the few names which penetrate into his solitude, and fancies himself always the greatest personage amongst them. He simulates all manner of heroic performances and of luxurious rest. He is Eccelino, the Emperor's vicar; he is the Emperor himself. He becomes more than this; for his fancy has soared upwards to the power which includes all empire in one--the spiritual power of song. Apollo is its representative. Sordello is he. He has had one glimpse of Palma; she becomes his Daphne; the dream life is at its height.

And now Sordello is a man. He begins to sicken for reality. Vanity and ambition are ripe in him. His egotisms are innocent, but they are absorbing. The soul is as yet dormant.[13]

BOOK THE SECOND.

The dream-life becomes a partial reality. Sordello's wanderings carry him one day to the walls of Mantua, outside which Palma is holding a "Court of Love." Eglamor sings. His song is incomplete. Sordello feels what is wanting; catches up the thread of the story; and sings it to its proper close.[14] His triumph is absolute. He is installed as Palma's minstrel in Eglamor's place. Eglamor accepts his defeat with touching gentleness, and lies down to die. This poet is meant to embody the limited art, which is an end in itself, and one with the artist's life. Sordello, on the other hand, represents the boundless aspirations which art may subserve, but which must always leave it behind. The parallel will be stated more distinctly later on.

Sordello's first wish is fulfilled. He has found a career which will reconcile his splendid dreams with his real obscurity, and set him, by right of imagination--the true Apolloship--apart from other men. But his true difficulties have yet to begin. It is not enough that he feels himself a transcendent personage. He must make others believe that he is so. Every act of imagination is with him an act of existence, or as Mr. Browning calls it of Will; but this self-asserting was much easier with the imaginary crowd than it can be with the real one. Sordello is soon at cross-purposes with his hearers: for when he sings of human passion, or human prowess, they never dream of identifying him with it; and when he sings of mere abstract modes of being, they do not understand.

The love of abstract conception is indeed the rock on which he splits. The feelings which are real to us are unreal to him, because they are accidental. What is real to him is the underlying consciousness which according to his view is permanent: the "intensest" self described in "Pauline"--the mind which is spoken of in the fifth "book" of "Sordello" (vol. i. page 236) as nearest to God when emptied of even thought; and his aim is to put forth all the _qualities_ which this absolute existence can assume, and yet be reflected in other men's minds as independent of them. This lands him in struggles not only with his hearers but with himself--for he is unused to expressing what he feels; and with a language which at best could convey "whole perceptions" like his, in a very meagre form, or a fragmentary one. He still retains the love of real life and adventure which inspired his boyish dreams. There is nothing, as I have said, that he does not wish to _be_; and now, amidst commonplace human beings, his human desires often take a more simple and natural form. But the poet in him pushes the man aside, and bids him, at all events, wait. He does not know that he is failing through the hopeless disunion of the two. He silences his better humanity, and retains the worst; for he is more and more determined to succeed at whatever cost. Yet failure meets him on every side. He is too large for his public, but he is also too small for it. Every question raised even in talk carries him into the infinite. Every man of his audience has a practical answer ready before he has. Naddo plies him with common sense. "He is to speak to the human heart--he is not to be so philosophical--he is not to seem so clever." Shallow judges pull him to pieces. Shallow rivals strive to sing him down.[15] He loses his grasp of the ideal. He cannot clutch the real. His imagination dries up.

Meanwhile Adelaide has died. Salinguerra, who had joined the Emperor at Naples, is brought back in hot haste by the news that Eccelino has retired to a monastery, has disclaimed the policy of his House; and is sealing his peace with the Guelph princes by the promised marriage of his sons Eccelino and Alberic with the sisters of Este; and of his daughter Palma with Count Richard of San Bonifacio himself. He is coming to Mantua. Sordello must greet him with his best art. But Sordello shrinks from the trial, and escapes back to Goito, whence Palma has just departed. What his Mantuan life has taught him is thus expressed (vol. i. page 130):--

"The Body, the Machine for Acting Will, Had been at the commencement proved unfit; That for Demonstrating, Reflecting it, Mankind--no fitter: was the Will Itself In fault?"

He is wiser than he was, but his objects remain the same. The sympathies--the moral sense--the soul--are still asleep.

BOOK THE THIRD.

Sordello buries himself once more in the contemplation of nature; but finds in it only a short-lived peace. The marshy country about Mantua is suddenly converted into water; and with the shock of this catastrophe comes also the feeling: Nature can do and undo; her opportunities are endless. With man

"...youth once gone is gone: Deeds let escape are never to be done." (vol. i. p. 135.)

He has dreamed of love, of revel, and of adventure; but he has let pass the time when such dreams could be realized; and worst of all, the sacrifice has been useless. He has sacrificed the man in him to the poet; and his poetic existence has been impoverished by the act. He has rejected experience that he might _be_ his fullest self before living it; and only _living_, in other words, experience, could have made that self complete. His later years have been paving the way for this discovery; it bursts on him all at once. He has been under a long strain. The reaction at length has come. He yearns helplessly for the "blisses strong and soft" which he has known he was passing by, but of which the full meaning never reached him until now. He must live yet. The question is, "in what way." And this is unexpectedly answered. Palma sends for him to Verona: tells him of her step-mother's death--of strange secrets revealed to herself--of the secret influence Sordello has exercised over her life--of a great future awaiting his own, and connecting it with the Emperor's cause. She summons him to accompany her to Ferrara, and hear from Salinguerra's lips what that future is to be.

Sordello has entered on a new phase of existence. He feels that henceforward he is not to _act men_, but to _make them act_; this is how his being is to be fulfilled. It is a first step in the direction of unselfishness, but not yet into it. The soul is not yet awake.

At this point of his narrative Mr. Browning makes a halt, and carries us off to Venice, where he muses on the various questions involved in Sordello's story. The very act of digression leads back to the comparison between Eglamor and Sordello: between the artist who is one with his work, and him who is outside and beyond it--between the completeness of execution which comes of a limited ideal, and the true greatness of those performances which "can never be more than dreamed." And the case of the true poet is farther illustrated by that of the weather-bound sailor, who seems to have settled down for life with the fruits of his adventures, but waits only the faintest sign of a favourable wind to cut his moorings and be off.

Then comes a vision of humanity, also in harmony with the purpose of the poem. It takes the form of some frail and suffering woman, and is addressed by the author with a tenderness in which we recognize one of his constant ideals of love: the impulse not to worship or to enjoy, but to comfort and to protect. He next considers the problem of human sorrow and sin, and deprecates the absolute condemnation of the sinner, in language which anticipates that of "Fifine at the Fair." "Every life has its own law. The 'losel,' the moral outcast, keeps his own conceit of truth though through a maze of lies. Good labours to exist through evil, by means of the very ignorance which sets each man to tackle it for himself, believing that he alone can."[16] Mr. Browning rejects at least the _show_ of knowledge which gives you a name for what you die of; and that deepening of ignorance which comes of the perpetual insisting that fountains of knowledge spring everywhere for those who choose to dispense it. "What science teaches is made useless by the shortness of human existence; it absorbs all our energy in building up a machine which we shall have no time to work. All direct truth comes to us from the poet: whether he be of the smaller kind who only see, or the greater, who can tell what they have seen, or the greatest who can make others see it." Corresponding instances follow.[17]

Mr. Browning is aware that one is a poet at his own risk; and that the poetic chaplet may also prove a sacrificial one. He will still wear it, however, because in his case it means the suffrage of a "patron friend"[18]

"Whose great verse blares unintermittent on Like your own trumpeter at Marathon,--" (vol. i. p. 169.)

He recalls his readers to the "business" of the poem:

"the fate of such As find our common nature--overmuch Despised because restricted and unfit To bear the burthen they impose on it-- Cling when they would discard it; craving strength To leap from the allotted world, at length They do leap,--flounder on without a term, Each a god's germ, doomed to remain a germ In unexpanded infancy, unless...." (pp. 170, 171.)

admits that the story sounds dull; but suggests the possibility of its containing an agreeable surprise. An amusing anecdote to this effect concludes the chapter.[19]

BOOK THE FOURTH.

We are now introduced to Taurello Salinguerra: a fine soldier-like figure; the type of elastic strength in both body and mind. We are told that he possesses the courage of the fighter, the astuteness of the politician, the knowledge and graces of the man of leisure. He has shown himself capable of controlling an Emperor, and of giving precedence to a woman. He is young at sixty, while the son who is half his age, is "lean, outworn and really old." And the crowning difference between him and Sordello is this: that while Sordello only draws out other men as a means of displaying himself, he only displays himself sufficiently to draw out other men. "His choicest instruments" have "surmised him shallow."

He is in his palace at Ferrara, musing over the past--that past which held the turning-point of his career; which began the feud between himself and the now Guelph princes, and which naturally merged him in the Ghibelline cause. He remembers how the fathers of the present Este and San Bonifacio combined to cheat him out of the Modenese heiress who was to be his bride--how he retired to Sicily, to return with a wife of the Emperor's own house--how his enemies surprised him at Vicenza. He sees his old comrade Eccelino, so passive now, so brave and vigorous then. He sees the town as they fire it together: the rush for the gates: the slashing, the hewing, the blood hissing and frying on the iron gloves. His spirit leaps in the returning frenzy of that struggle and flight. It sinks again as he thinks of Elcorte--Adelaide's escape--her rescued child; his own doom in the wife and child who were not rescued.

"And now! he has effaced himself in the interests of the Romano house. Its life has grafted itself on his own; and to what end? The Emperor is coming. His badge and seal, already in Salinguerra's hands, bestow the title of Imperial Prefect on whosoever assumes the headship of the Ghibellines in the north of Italy; and Eccelino, its proper chief, recoils; withdraws even his name from the cause. Who shall wear the badge? None so fitly as himself, who holds San Bonifacio captive--who has dislocated if not yet broken the Guelph right arm. Yet, is it worth his while? Shall he fret his remaining years? Shall he rob his old comrade's son?" He laughs the idea to scorn....

Sordello has come with Palma to Ferrara. He came to find the men who were to be the body to his spirit, the instrument to his will. But he came, expecting that these would be great. And now he discovers that very few are great; while behind and beneath, and among them, extends something which has never yet entered his field of thought: the mass of mankind. The more he looks the more it grows upon him: this people with the

"... mouths and eyes, Petty enjoyments and huge miseries,--" (vol. i. p. 181.)

and the more he feels that the few are great because the many are in them--because they are types and representatives of these. Hitherto he has striven to impose himself on mankind. He now awakes to the joy and duty of serving it. It is the magnified body which his spirit needs. And in the new-found knowledge, the new-found sympathy, his soul springs full-grown into life.