BROWNING'S ITALY (2 page)

In the "De Vulgari Eloquentia," Dante declares that Sordello excelled in all kinds of composition and that he helped to form the Tuscan tongue by some happy attempts which he made in the dialects of Cremona,

Brescia, and Verona — cities not far re-moved from Mantua.

From such meager material as this Browning evolves a being who comprises in his own soul all the complex possibilities of the Coming quickening of the human mind and spirit which was so remarkable a feature of the intellectual and artistic life of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which, taking its rise in Italy, made Italy the beacon light for the rest of Europe.

Dante's feeling for Sordello is intensified tenfold in the modern poet's attitude, who thus shows forth the relation of Sordello to Dante, as he conceives it and as he develops it in his poem.

u For he — for he, Gate-vein of this hearts* blood of Lombardy, (If I should falter now) —for he is thine! Sordello, thy forerunner, Florentine! A herald-star I know thou didst absorb Relentless into the consummate orb That scared it from its right to roll along A sempiternal path with dance and song FulfiUing its allotted period, Serenest of the progeny of God — Who yet resigns it not! His darling stoops With no quenched lights, desponds with no blank troops Of disenfranchised brilliances, for, blent Utterly with thee, its shy element Like thine upburaeth prosperous and clear.

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Still, what if I approach the august sphere

Named now with only one name, disentwine

That under-current soft and argentine

From its fierce mate in the majestic mass

Leavened as the sea whose fire was mixt with glass

In John's transcendent vision, — launch once more

That lustre ? Dante, pacer of the shore

Where glutted hell disgorgeth filthiest gloom,

Unbitten by its whirring sulphur-spume —

Or whence the grieved and obscure waters slope

Into a darkness quieted by hope;

Plucker of amaranths grown beneath God's eye

In gracious twilights where his chosen lie, —

I would do this! If I should falter now!"

The Sordello of Browning has the latent power to be a creator in poetry and a leader in the cause of patriotism, but so many con-flicting forces contend for mastery within him that his life is spent mostly in unraveling the problems of his soul. The tangled Strands of Sordello's psychology, as Browning has made him, have been the despair of many readers and the joy of the few who have had the patience to untangle the Strands and receive the reward of a füll revelation of the soul-struggles of this sensitive, vacillating and tortured being. For both classes of readers he has thus attained an immortality more lasting than any bestowed upon him by Aliprandi, or other verbose Chroniclers.

To add to the complexities of the poem, Sordello has been placed by Browning in the historical setting of a period distinguished for its chaotic political conditions. Guelf and Ghibelline are names with which we become familiär at school, but they seldom are more than names, and when we pick up a poem wherein these names and the political struggles they stand for are talked of with the familiarity with which we might discuss the last dog show, the effect is be-wildering indeed.

Yet, in spite of all this, there are clear, sharp-cut pictures scattered throughout the poem, and one may gain through the poet's eyes many a vivid glimpse of the life and social conditions of thirteenth Century Italy.

The birthplace of Sordello is introduced to us in the following beautiful description:

"In Mantua territory half is slough, Half pine-tree forest; maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 'tis morass In winter up to Mantua walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito; just a Castle built amid A few low mountains; firs and larches hid Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound

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The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, Secure beside in its own loveliness, So peered with airy head, below, above, The castle at its toils, the lapwings love To glean among at grape-time."

The poet then proceeds to the inside of the castle where he represents Sordello as having passed his boyhood.

"Pass within. A maze of corridors contrived for sin, Dusk winding-stairs, dim galleries got past, You gain the inmost Chambers, gain at last A maple-panelled room; that haze which seems Floating about the panel, if there gleams A sunbeam over it, will turn to gold And in light-graven characters unfold The Arab's wisdom everywhere; what shade Marred them a moment, those slim pillars made, Cut like a Company of palms to prop The roof, each kissing top entwined with top, Leaning together; in the carver's mind Some knot of bacchanals, flushed cheek combined With straining forehead, Shoulders purpled, hair Diffused between, who in a goat-skin bear A vintage; graceful sister-palms! But quick To the main wonder, now. A vault, see; thick Black shade about the ceiling, though fine slits Across the buttress suffer light by fits Upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop — A dullish gray-streaked cumbrous fönt, a group Round it, — each side of it, where'er one sees, —

Upholds it; shrinking Caryatides

Of just-tinged marble like Eve's lilied flesh

Beneath her maker's finger when the fresh

First pulse of life shot brightening the snow.

The font's edge burthens every Shoulder, so

They muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed;

Some, with meek arms behind their backs disposed,

Some, crossed above their bosoms, some, to veil

Their eyes, some, propping chin and cheek so pale,

Some, hanging slack an utter helpless length

Dead as a buried vestal whose whole strength

Goes when the grate above shuts heavily.

So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see,

like priestesses because of sin impure

Penanced forever, who resigned endure,

Having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs.

And every eve, Sordello's visit begs

Pardon for them: constant as eve he came

To sit beside each in her turn, the same

As one of them, a certain space: and awe

Made a great indistinctness tili he saw

Sunset slant cheerful through the buttress-chinks,

Gold seven times globed; surely our maiden shrinks

And a smile stirs her as if one faint grain

Her load were lightened, one shade less the strain

Obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipt

From off the rosary whereby the crypt

Keeps count of the contritions of its charge ?

Then with a step more light, a heart more large,

He may depart, leave her and every one

To linger out the penance in mute stone."

I am told by an authority in Italian art that such a fountain could not have existed

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in Italy in Sordello's time since caiyatid figures were not introduced from Greece until the fifteenth Century. The poet refers to this fountain again later on as a Messina Marble,

"Lake those Messina marbles Constance took Delight in, or Taurello's seif conveyed To Mantua for his mistress, Adelaide, — A certain fönt with caryatides Since cloistered at Goito."

However that may be, their use by Browning as a subtly suggestive force in the education of the mind of the young Sordello is much more effective than if he had taken him through a University course such as he might have had even in those early days.

The rest of his education was derived from nature.

"... beyond the glades On the fir-forest border, and the rim Of the low ränge of mountain, was for him No other world: but this appeared his own To wander through at pleasure and alone. The Castle, too, seemed empty; far and wide Might he disport; only the northern side Lay under a mysterions interdict — Slight, just enough remembered to restrict His roaming to the corridors, the vault Where those font-bearers expiate their fault, The maple-chamber, and the little nooks And nests, and breezy parapet that looks

Over the woods to Mantua: there he strolled. Some foreign women-servants, very old, Tended and crept about him — all his clue To the world's business and embroiled ado Distant a dozen hill-tops at the most."

Passing from the particular individual life described here we may next get a view of Sordello upon his first contact with the social life of the time when, wandering one day beyond his usual ränge, he comes upon a Court of Love where Palma, the girl he has caught a glimpse of in the castle, is to choose her minstrel. A vision of her draws him on until he chances upon a "startling spectacle."

«

Mantua, this time! Under the walls — a crowd Indeed, real men and women, gay and loud Round a pavilion. How he stood!"

"What next? The curtains see Di vidi ng! She is there; and presently He will be there — the proper You, at length — In your own cherished dress of grace and strength:

It was a showy man advanced; but though A glad cry welcomed him, then every sound Sank and the crowd disposed themselves around, — 'This is not he! Sordello feit; while, 'Place For the best Troubadour of Boniface!' Hollaed the Jongleurs, — 'Eglamor, whose lay Concludes his patron's Court of Love to-day!'

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• • •

Has he ceased And, lo, the people's frank applause half done, Sordello was beside him, had begun (Spite of indignant twitchings from his friend The Trouvere) the true lay with the true end, Taking the other's names and time and place For his. On flew the song, a giddy race, After the flying story; word made leap Out word, rhyme — rhyme; the lay could barely keep Pace with the action visibly rushing past: Both ended. Back feil Naddo more aghast Than some Egyptian from the harassed bull That wheeled abrupt and, bellowing, fronted füll His plague, who spied a scarab 'neath the tongue, And found 'twas Apis' flank his hasty prong Insulted. But the people — but the cries, The crowding round, and proffering the prize! — For he had gained some prize. He seemed to shrink Into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink One sight withheld him. There sat Adelaide, Silent; but at her knees the very maid Of the North Chamber, her red lips as rieh, The same pure fleecy hair; one weft of which, Golden and great, quite touched his cheek as o'er She leant, speaking some six words and no more. He answered something, anything; and she Unbound a scarf and laid it heavily Upon him, her neck's warmth and all. Again Moved the arrested magic; in his brain Noises grew, and a light that turned to glare, And greater glare, until the intense flare Engulfed him, shut the whole scene from his sense. And when he woke 'twas many a furlong thence, At home; the sun shining his ruddy wont;

The customary birds'-chirp; but his front

Was crowned — was crowned! Her scented scarf around

His neck! Whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground?

A prize ? He turaed, and peeringly on him

Brooded the women-faces, kind and dim,

Ready to talk — 'The Jongleurs in a troop

Had brought him back, Naddo, and Squarcialupe

And Tagliafer; how stränge! a childhood spent

In taking, well for him, so brave a bent!

Since Eglamor,' they heard, 'was dead with spite,'

And Palma chose him for her minstrel."

In calling this poetical contest in which Sordello engaged a Court of Love, Browning has adopted a term which should properly be applied to a court where difficult questions in the rigid etiquette of chivalric love were decided. Though we read of such Courts in literature recent investigators of the sub-ject declare that no such Courts existed, the first mention of them occurring in a book by Martial of Auvergne three hundred years later than they were said to have flourished.

Justin H. Smith in a note to his "Troubadours at Home," points out that the silence of the troubadours is especially convincing against the alleged Courts, because we often see them feeling the need of such a tribunal and finding themselves compelled to choose their own arbiters. Further, these arbiters were men rather oftener than women, whereas

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the Courts were supposed to have consisted of women only.

Browning really has in mind the poetical tournaments of the Middle Ages, held at a Court where a presiding lady acted as judge, awarding the laurel crown and other prizes, usually rieh raiment, as the poet intimates, to the poet who sang best — all the con-testants taking the same theme.

Palma, who figures here, is Brownings Substitution for the Cunizza of the biogra-phies. She is the betrothed of Count Richard, but loves Sordello who turns out to be the son of Taurello, head of the Ghibelline party, aecording to our poet. As we shall see later, she determines to marry Sordello but his death prevents it.

A stirring historical picture is brought be-f ore us in this description of a scene in Verona, later in the life of Sordello, where he reaches the turning point in his career.