Robert Browning

7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889. English poet during Queen [Victoria]’s reign.

Life

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, England, in 1812 to Robert Browning Sr., employed as a clerk in the Bank of England, and Sarah Anna Woedemann Browning, who was part Scotch and part German. He had one younger sister, Sarianna, who was born in 1814. By the age of five Browning was sent to a local dame school but as he was being superior to his class mates (he could already read and write) he had to leave the school after a short time. He then studied at home until he was sent to the lower school at Peckham by the age of seven. When he was ten he began studying writing, arithmetic, English, history, Latin and Greek. Between the age of fourteen to sixteen he was educated at home, mainly in musid, drawing, dancing and horsemanship. As he was not a mamber of the Church of England he could not attend Oxford or Cambridge so he attended the University of London for about a year until he departed in 1829. In December 1840 Browning and his familiy moved from Camberwell to New Cross Hatcham in Surrey. In 1846 Browning was introduced to Elizabeth Barrett whom he married in the same year gaianst the wishes of her father and with whom he spent sixteen years in marriage until she died in 1861. In March 1849 their only son Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, also known as “Pen”, was born. Most of the time Browning and his wife lived in Florence but they also made trips to France, Italy and England. Browning did not only have to experience the loss of his wife but as well the loss of his mother, his father and his sister-in-law Arabella Barrett. In 1862 Browning bought a house in London in which he lived until 1887 when he bought a new house because he was told that a railroad was going to run in front of the house, which actually was a false information. In 1868 Browning received an honorary M.A. from Oxford as well as an honorary fellowhip at Balliol College. In 1881 the Browning Society was founded which he sympathized but did not cooperate with as he was afraid of ridicule. After 1883 his physical strenght began to decline. A few years later a series of attacks of bronchitis culminated in pneuminia which led to his death in December 1889 in his son’s house in Venice. He was buried on 31 December in Westminster Abbey int the Poet’s Corner.

Browning as a poet

It is believed that Browning was already a competent reader and writer when he was five years old and that he was encourageed to read because his father had library with over 6000 books, including works in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish. Brownings sudden departure of London University could indicate his decision to totally turn his attention to poetry. Browning already wrote Incondita, a volume of Byronic verse, by the age of twelve. Between the ages of thirteen and twenty he seems to have written no poetry nut in 1832 he composed the poem Pauline, his first major published work which was anonymously published in 1833. The poem is over 1,000 lines long and consists of three parts. In the first and last part the speaker addresses the imaginary Pauline and complains that he is unable to be productive poetically since he is in a stat of deep depression and sadness. In the second part of the poem the speaker tries to understand the course of this development. With his next published work, the poem Paracelsus, Browning turned to more dramatic forms. The poem consists of over 4,000 lines and is divided into five sections which seem to function as scenes, each of them provided with a specific time, cast of characters and dialogue. While the ideas in Pauline are unclear, irresolute and incomplete because the reader does not know whether or not the personal problems of the speaker have been solved, Paracelsus offers clear, certain and complete ideas and even solutions in Canto V because Paracelsus understands that imperfection is the law of live. Browning’s next work was Strafford, a historical play which was first performed in 1837. But the play could not engage its audience because “while Browning was able to deal skillfully with the internal conflicts of human beings, he was unable to represent on the stage the public, external drama of men acting and conflicting in the world of politics and business” (Fredeman, 73). In Browning’s next published work, the poem Sordello, the poet Sordello recognizes “that poets must always temper their idealism with an understanding of reality” (Fredeman, 73) and that language can never appropriately express the poet’s vision. After having moved to Surrey with his family, Browning set the focus on the publication of a series of pamphlets named Bells and Pomegranates, which contained Pippa Passes (1841), Luria (1846), A Soul’s Tragedy (1846) – which are closet dramas -, King Victor and King Charles (1842), The Return of the Druses (1843), A Blot in the ‘Scutcheon (1843), Colombe’s Birthday (1844) – which are plays written expressely for the stage – Dramatic Lyrics (1842) and Romances and Lyrics (1845). The poem collection Dramatic Lyrics contained Browning’s poem My Last Duchess which “has been much discussed as an example of Browning’s ability to concentrate and distill experience in the brief dramatic-lyric form” (Fredeman, 76). The Duke of Ferrar, the speaker of the poem, is explaining the subject of a painting which is his recently deceased wife whom he had ordered to be executed as she did not recignize his superiority in even the most trivling matters. The poem represents an important aspect of Browning’s technique for writing a dramatic monologue, namely the effect that the reader is able to judge the duke’s odious bahavior while at the same time having a feeling of sympathy for the duke which allows the reader to understand the duke’s behaviour. The poem also represents other aspects of the dramatic monologue such as the fact that it has a single speaker who is not the poet and who is addressing an unspeaking audience or the fact that there is a psychological interplay between speaker and audience which influences the progression of the speaker’s thought patterns. Between 1845 and 1852 Browning seems to have been writning no short poems. In 1855 Men and Women was published which is a collection of short poems and is one of his most highly regarded works although it had little impact at the time. In 1868 The Ring and the Book was published which according to most critics represents the climax of his career. It “combines the most im portant of Browning’s thematic concerns – the nature of truth, the value and validity of human perception, the nature of poetry and poetic expression – with his greatest technical achievement in the extended monologue form” (Fredeman, 84). In 1871 Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society was published, which is a long, complex interior monologue. The speaker is modeled on Napoleon III and the characterization is precise and complex and the style of the monologue is elliptical – which makes it difficult to understand and led to a negative public reaction which was characteristic for most of Browning’s writing during that period. All in all, Browning’s career can roughly be divided into three parts. Until 1845 his poetry reflects his growing awareness of his ability as a poet, from 1845 onwards he wrote many poems for whom he still known today and "the last part of his career involved a falling off poetically and was a time of much less personal satsisfaction than the years of his marriage" (Fredeman, 86).

References

Fredeman, William E. / Nadel, Ira B.: Victorian Poets Before 1850. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1984. 68 – 88.

Kunitz, Stanley J.: British Authors of the Nineteenth Century. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1964. 86 – 89.