"Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows": Robert Browning's engagement with Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetics.

Martens, Britta

In 1845, WHEN ROBERT BROWNING BEGAN HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH Elizabeth Barrett (EBB), he was writing plays and dramatic monologues. He had at last developed his own, original style. However, the path he had taken was diametrically opposed to contemporary taste, which expected a lyrical poem to be the expression of the poet's personal emotions and thoughts. EBB wrote in this tradition, and in the preface to her critically acclaimed Poems of 1844, she had stressed her increasing commitment to the self-expressive mode. (1) It was to voice his admiration for this collection that Browning wrote his first letter to her.

While the courtship correspondence has long been recognized as the private locus for the couple's dialogue on their respective poetic styles, critics have failed to discern the pursuit by Browning of the same "dialogue" within a number of his own poems. The exception to this rule is his first publication after the marriage in 1846, Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), which is read as influenced by EBB's religious views. (2) Attention to this text has tended to eclipse the relation between her poetry and Browning's next publication, Men and Women (1855). The purpose of this article is to consider three poems from this collection which are informed by the confrontation between Browning's commitment to impersonal poetry and EBB's self-expressive lyric: "One Word More," which is dedicated to her, and two other poems in Browning's own voice, "The Guardian-Angel" and "Old Pictures in Florence." (3) By analyzing these poems in the light of exchanges from the correspondence, I will seek to show how Browning experiments with EBB's poetics, embedding indications for the alert reader of an ongoing review of his own poetic style and, ultimately, a refusal to adopt a mode that is uncongenial to his artistic genius. This refusal is paradoxically characterized by the effacement of the poet's self from the text even in poems in propria persona. (4) It is my contention that in these poems Browning displays a greater awareness than in the correspondence of the problems which the concept of self-expressive art poses for him.

As Daniel Karlin remarks, it is clear from Browning's very first letter, with its equation of poet and poem in the phrase "I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart--and I love you too," that he appreciated EBB's poems less as works of art than as pure expressions of personality. (5) In his second letter, he defined her in terms which anticipate his concept of the self-expressive "subjective poet" in the 1852 "Essay on Shelley," whereas he described himself as an inferior, dramatic "objective poet" eager to emulate her example:

For you do what I always wanted, hoped to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time-you speak out, you,--I only make men & women speak,-give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me: but I am going to try.

(January 13, 1845; Correspondence, 10:22)

Browning assumes here that poetry can, at least in EBB's case, act as a quasitransparent means of self-expression, while he considers himself as yet unable to reveal his self in his poetry:

What I have printed gives no knowledge of me--it evidences abilities of various kinds, if you will,--and a dramatic sympathy with certain modifications of passion ... that I think: but I never have begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end,--"R.B. a poem."

(February 11, 1845; Correspondence, 10:69)

He makes again the simplifying equation of poet and poem. This contrasts with the more complex notion of language as an obstacle to the articulation of ideas found in several poems. (6) It is expressed in such distinctly physical metaphors for language as the comparison of developing a new poetic discourse with welding armor in Sordello (2.568-601). (7)

Since Browning has made EBB's confident use of personal voice his ideal, dissatisfaction with his own impersonal style is a logical consequence:

My poetry is far from the "completest expression of my being"--I Hate to refer to it, or I could tell you why, wherefore, ... prove How imperfect (for a mild word), how unsatisfactory it must of Necessity be.

(May 24, 1846; Correspondence, 12:353)

The fact that he quotes here a phrase from the preface of EBB's 1844 Poems, thus incorporating her discourse within his own, underscores the readiness with which he adopts her aesthetic categories and his belief in the possibility of direct, comprehensive self-expression through poetry. He is again guilty of simplification, as EBB had in fact shown awareness of the difficulty of attaining self-expression in the fullest sense. Her entire phrase reads: "the completest expression of that being to which I could attain." That she did not share Browning's idealizing view of her expressive powers is also suggested by the doubts she voices in "The Soul's Expression" and no. XIII of the Sonnets from the Portuguese.

Nevertheless, EBB was all too willing to play the role of Browning's benign advisor on poetic issues with which she had been invested. She encouraged him in her reply to reconsider the subjective mode and to "teach what [he had] learnt, in the directest & most impressive way, the mask thrown off however moist with the breath" (May 25, 1846; Correspondence, 12:358-359). Browning promised to follow her advice, declaring: "I shall do all,--under your eyes and with your hand in mine,--all I was intended to do" (February 6, 1846, Correspondence, 12:45). The suggestion that he "was intended to" imitate her "complete" self-expression is at odds with the choices he made in his first published works, Pauline (1833) and Paracelsus (1835). Both the confessional fragment and the closet drama had been used by the Romantics as means of exploring their artistic identity. Yet Browning's recourse to the distancing device of a maze of paratexts surrounding the utterance of his supposed alter ego in Pauline and the dramatic form of Paracelsus are early indications of Browning's resistance to self-expression. (8) By this time, too, the casting of heroes as pontes maudits was much too conventional to sustain the pretense of self-portrayal.

It is therefore not surprising that, when he fulfilled his promise to EBB and ventured on a new engagement with the subjective lyric mode in some poems in Men and Women, the problem of his inability to conform to this ideal re-emerged. In "The Guardian-Angel," "Old Pictures in Florence," and "One Word More," he does speak in his own person as she had advised, but he signals his uneasiness about emulating her use of voice by likening these texts to the dramatic monologue. The author presents a dramatic utterance by the speaker "Browning," whose conceptualization of his self and world are exposed for the reader's scrutiny. The literary text thus becomes a medium for Browning's experiments with a mode which he cannot convincingly adopt. Although the speaker clearly represents aspects of his author, the latter is allowed to maintain a detached stance toward his fictional self and ultimately to avoid the more radical self-revelation to which EBB exhorted him. Despite their apparent breach of Browning's self-imposed rule of not speaking in his own person, these poems thus reaffirm his commitment to the dramatic monologue as stated in the title of the collection.

The dates of composition of the three poems I propose to analyze confirm that the engagement with EBB's poetics was a constant preoccupation for Browning. He worked on Men and Women over seven years. Written in the last week of July 1848, "The Guardian-Angel" is the only poem known to have been composed during the first three years of the Brownings' marriage; most of "Old Pictures in Florence" seems to have been written in 1853; and "One Word More" was written while the rest of the collection was already in the printer's hands and is dated "22 September 1855" on the manuscript. Using this clearly marked time frame, it will be possible to trace some development in Browning's response to EBB's poetic model over these crucial years of his career.

"The Guardian-Angel"

There are many indications in "The Guardian-Angel" that, now fully exposed to EBB's influence, Browning had indeed decided once more to tackle the Romantic subjective mode. From the apostrophe in the penultimate stanza to his friend Alfred Domett, who was living in New Zealand at the time, and the local references to Fano and Ancona, where the Brownings were staying in the summer of 1848, we can identify the speaker as "Browning." This makes "The Guardian-Angel" only the second instance of a poetic utterance in propria persona by Browning, the first being in Sordello (1840). Like the painting which it describes, L'Angelo Custode by the Bolognese artist Guercino (see Figure 1), the poem is, or seems, highly sentimental and has religious overtones, reflecting the Victorian taste for pathos in poetry. Compared to other poems more characteristic of Browning, the diction is strikingly unoriginal and conventional. Through intertextual allusions, such as the echo of the opening of Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" in the phrase "when eve / Shall find performed thy special ministry" (ll. 3-4), the speaker situates himself in the self-expressive tradition. Similarities to Keats's poetics and technique are even more obvious. The lines

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED] All is beauty: And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. What further may be sought for or declared? (ll. 33-35)

refer back to the enigmatic final line of the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." And like Keats, Browning makes the response to a work of art an occasion to express personal sensations and opinions. All of these Romantic echoes seem to classify the poem as poetry in the sense which John Stuart Mill defines, "feeling, confessing itself to itself in moments of solitude," "overheard" by the reader. (9) The purpose of the utterance is not an objective ekphrasis, which is deferred for more than half of the poem, until stanza vi; the painting seems to be merely a pretext for venting personal anxieties. Nevertheless, the self-conscious reference to his predecessors through the allusive incorporation of phrases from two major Romantic poems points to the inherent contradiction in Browning's pretense here to genuine, spontaneous self-expression.

Nor is the impression of a solitary effusion of the speaker's thoughts sustained throughout the poem. In more matter-of-fact language, the last three stanzas reveal a posteriori that the utterance is a defense of Guercino in the context of an aesthetic debate about the value of the seventeenth-century Bolognese school during the Gothic Revival. (10) The poem turns out to be intended as rhetorical persuasion, designed to convince an audience, and thus the very opposite of poetry if we follow Mill's contrasting definition of "eloquence," which is "heard ... feeling pouring itself out to other minds, courting their sympathy or endeavouring to influence their belief, or move them to passion or to action" (pp. 348-349). The avowal of its practical function reduces the importance of the personal response to the painting and further calls into question the central Romantic values of spontaneity and authenticity. The final stanza tries to resolve the clash between the involvement in a rhetorical argument and the subjective, lyrical opening. The speaker admits that his true motivation was not self-expression, but that the best way of promoting Guercino's art was to give an example of his own personal response to it in his poetic medium: "I took one thought his picture struck from me, / And spread it out, translating it to song" (ll. 52-53). If the poem is not a consistently subjective effusion and the speaker eventually takes a detached view of the first part of his own utterance, does Browning in the role of the author also distance himself from the speaker's self-conceptualization as he does in the dramatic monologue? To resolve this, it is first necessary to examine more closely how the speaker explicitly presents himself, and then to search for indications which point to a different evaluation on the author's part.

The speaker claims that he would like to be in the place of the praying child in the painting. The nostalgia for childhood is a common Romantic motif. Yet here the child is not valued for his unconscious visionary faculty, but appears as weak and dependent. Addressing the "Dear and great Angel" (l. 1) in ostensibly Wordsworthian diction, the speaker uses the submissive conditional mode of "wouldst thou only leave / That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!" (ll. 1-2). The same submissiveness is evident in the supplicating question seeking guidance in the right way of worship: And wilt thou bend me low Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together And lift them up to pray? (ll. 18-20)

The speaker's immobile stance "beneath" (l. 23) the angel, which is expressed by static verbs in the phrases "Let me sit all the day here" (l. 3) and "I gaze" (l. 9), by the passive construction "And suddenly my head is covered o'er" (l. 10), and by his role as a grammatical object (ll. 2, 3, 6, 13, 18, 19, 24), contrasts with the angel's mobility and activity: he bends the child, lays his hands together, and lifts them up to pray (ll. 18-20). The speaker asks the angel to step toward him, and to use his "healing hands" to press his brain, which too much thought expands, Back to its proper size again, and smoothing Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed. (ll. 25-28)

The speaker's desire to perceive the world "after [the angel's] healing, with such different eyes" (l. 32), (11) to rid himself of his own thoughts, and the metaphor of intellectualism as an illness implied in the (repeated) use of "healing," might refer to the supposedly too intellectual tendency in Browning's previous poetry. The painting represents the ideal of art associated with simplicity, emotion, and "soul" (l. 45). In poetry, this ideal is of course embodied for Browning by the perfect subjective poet EBB. In this sense, the speaker's self-abasement can be seen as an extreme version of Browning's stance in the courtship correspondence. Betty Miller might take this as corroboration of her thesis that, in consciously choosing a dominant wife, Browning was hoping for "a prolongation of the conditions of his childhood" with a dominant mother. (12) Although this is a line of interpretation which should not be pushed too far, it is certainly true that, while in her letters and poems EBB frequently assumes a pose of dependent passivity, the underlying relationship between the two remains characterized by her dominance.

The speaker seems perfectly reconciled to his passive role and anxious to abandon his individual identity in submission to the guardian angel. However, the very act of making an utterance here marks an assertion of selfhood and a break away from passivity. Whatever their content, the imperatives addressed to the angel remain grammatical commands and can be understood as orders imposing on the angel a behavior which suits the speaker. Despite the speaker's apparently eager embracing of the angel's control over him, the connotations of several words which he uses do not invite us to see this attitude as positive. The terms describing the angel's action, such as "Pressing" (l. 25), "bend me low" (l. 18), and "tether" (l. 20), immediately call up an association with violent constraint. The negative connotation of "suppressed" (l. 28) is emphasized by its position at the end of a line and the juxtaposition with two positive terms: "quiet, happy and suppressed." The impression of forced enclosure is supported by the rhyme scheme, which links the first and last line of each stanza. This rhyme is especially prominent since it occurs three times rather than twice in the stanza.

The speaker articulates the wish to undergo a sort of brainwashing in order to replace his distorted thoughts by the equation of beauty, love, and duty, which transforms Keats's aestheticism into Christian ethics. One might interpret this passage as evincing Browning's desire to escape the complicated issues of theodicy and mutability which preoccupied him throughout his life. Yet the two stanzas quoted above which put forward this idea are introduced by a conditional phrase which hints at the impossibility of recovering a simple paradisiacal "world, as God has made it" (l. 33) (13): "If this was ever granted, I would rest / My head beneath thine" (ll. 22-23).

The passive ideal is further called into question when, after a lengthy reflection on the unworldly attitude of the child, the speaker's attention suddenly shifts to the angel with his own head turned away Over the earth where so much lay before him Of work to do, though heaven was opening o'er him. (ll. 39-41)

The angel's anticipated engagement with the world is mediated through the echo of the closing lines of Paradise Lost (12.646), (14) in which Adam and Eve turn away from the protective realm of Paradise to face the challenges of the external world. Although the speaker's explicit identification is with the child, the shift of focus here appears to imply sympathy with the active charity of the angel. In assuming that the angel turns away from the child in search of the next mortal who may need his assistance, the speaker imposes an interpretation on the painting which does not necessarily suggest itself to the observer. This attitude is in keeping with Browning's concern for "suffering humanity" in Book 3 of Sordello. Moreover, it resonates with his declared motivation for writing the poem, which is to rehabilitate a maligned artist in Guercino.

The references to EBB and Browning's friend Domett toward the end of the poem summarize the conflict in the speaker's consciousness. EBB, who went with Browning to "sit and see [the angel] in his chapel" (1. 44) at Fano, shares his experience of the painting, giving it thus more reality and relevance. Immediately after having called his poem a "song" (l. 53), the speaker evokes EBB by saying "My love is here" (l. 54), confirming his association of lyricism with her. In calling her "My angel" (l. 46), the speaker now explicitly identifies her with the guardian angel, who is called upon to absorb his separate identity. Complete self-abnegation is, of course, considered a necessary step toward a mystic fulfillment in God. However, the choice of an implicitly negative vocabulary in the description of the angel does not make EBB's influence stand for more genuine self-fulfillment--as projected in the correspondence--but rather for self-cancellation through submission to her.

Unlike the relationship with EBB, that with Domett is one on equal terms. The apostrophe to the "dear old friend" (l. 54) helps to confirm the speaker's distinct identity since it emphasizes that the friendship goes back to the time before Browning fell under EBB's sway. It is easier for the speaker to define himself in terms of the intimate relationship with his lover who is physically present in Italy than to relate to the friend thousands of miles away in New Zealand. Nevertheless, the poem--which is, like any communication, an appeal to the addressee to acknowledge the speaker's existence--is not addressed to EBB but to the friend who allows the speaker to be himself. Again, the authorial decision to balance the self-effacement associated with EBB with an addressee who strengthens the speaker's sense of individuality suggests the author's revolt against an unconditional submission to her values. The conflict between the two different relationships as points of reference is most concisely expressed in the juxtaposition of deictics in the final line: "This is Ancona, yonder is the sea." The speaker defines himself as securely settled in the precise geographical location of Ancona near his lover, with whom he visits the enclosed space of the Fano church, but the fact that he ends on a view of the vast, indeterminate space of the open sea suggests an underlying desire for independence. Such a desire also appears on a stylistic level: the penultimate line "How rolls the Wairoa at your world's far end?" marks the return from the uncharacteristically sentimentalist diction used throughout most of the poem to the more factual, colloquial style so typical of Browning.

Consequently, this poem, which has been called "sentimental and flaccid" by Leonee Ormond (15) and has largely been ignored by modern commentators, derives its interest from the articulation of the conflict between Browning's desire to emulate EBB's self-expressive mode and his awareness that he cannot reach the ideal which he praises in the courtship correspondence. The poem initially purports to be a neutral medium for the poet's thoughts, but the speaker's use of conventional diction, his underlying reluctance to adopt EBB's passive stance, and the negative connotations in the description of the ideal to which he pretends to aspire hint that this is not an authentic utterance. It is only when the poem progresses from lyricism to a dramatic, rhetorical address that it begins to sound like a Browning poem. "The Guardian-Angel," then, exposes the problem which Browning ignores in the correspondence, when he suggests that he can simply follow EBB's advice to speak out and be himself in his poetry. Speaking in one's personal voice means writing subjective poetry, but since Browning's distinct personal mode is impersonal objective poetry, a subjective poem would not give expression to his genuine artistic character. He is thus in a double bind which makes it impossible for him ever to work in EBB's manner. His awareness of this impasse becomes more pronounced in "Old Pictures in Florence" and especially in "One Word More."

"Old Pictures in Florence"

In "Old Pictures in Florence," EBB's influence is manifest through the resemblances to the concrete textual model of her Casa Guidi Windows (published in two parts in 1848 and 1851), (16) whose authority Browning cites in line 260. EBB's long political poem expresses her passionate support for the Risorgimento, the Italian movement for national unification, in an intensely personal, and at time prophetic voice. Intertextual references in Browning's poem include verbal echoes, the aesthetic and political message, as well as structural similarities which appear mainly at the beginning and the end of the text. Like his wife's poem, Browning's is in his own voice, opens with a bird's eye view of Florence, links the poet's visits of churches to the interrelationship between generations of artists, and chooses Giotto di Bondone's unfinished campanile to the cathedral of Florence as a symbol of undaunted aspiration. Julia Markus sees "Old Pictures in Florence" as a jocular minor poem by a frustrated Browning trying to come to terms with his lack of popularity by mirroring his wife's serious and prophetic major poem. (17) I wish to argue on the contrary that Browning's response to EBB is more complex and less straightforwardly imitative than such a reading suggests.

The opening vista of Florence from a villa in the hills repeats in a more radical way the move from initial subjectivity to objectivity already encountered in "The Guardian-Angel." The first two stanzas conjure a Romantic description of scenery, especially through the Wordsworthian image of a leaping eel as a symbol of spontaneous joy and the idealized view of the city in its morning splendor, which is reminiscent of "Composed upon Westminster Bridge." The framing of urban Florence by the "aloed arch" of the villa's gate and olive trees (l. 25) draws attention to this deliberately Romantic motif. The associative progression in the first two stanzas from an observation of the speaker's environment to an abstract reflection recalls the Romantic meditative lyric, but the generic expectations built up in this opening are disappointed by a brusque apostrophe to Giotto, which ushers in a very un-Romantic middle section. The first line of stanza iii reads indeed like the characteristic dramatic address at the opening of a dramatic monologue: Giotto, how, with that soul of yours, Could you play me false, who loved you so? (ll. 17-18)

Despite the speaker's assumption of the stance of a Romantic vates, who "By a gift God grants me now and then" (l. 30) has a vision of the spirits of the pre-1500 primitive painters (the so-called "old masters"), the tone of the utterance becomes increasingly discursive and conversational. When he addresses the Italian public in stanzas vii-xx, the inclusion of their direct speech (l. 81), colloquialisms like "what matters" (l. 152) or "heigh ho" (l. 184), and exhorting imperatives render the poem quasi-dialogic.

The main part of the poem consists of a defense of the old masters against the public's depreciation. This defense and the speaker's self-conscious admission of his communicative intention also recall the defense of Guercino in "The Guardian-Angel." However, the characterization of the Italian artists here carries more than a faint allusion to Browning's own aesthetics and reputation. The old masters are "self-acquainters, / And paint man man" (ll. 147-148). They not only attempt to replace unattainable ideals with realism, as Browning does, but they are also expressly praised for their self-consciousness, which made them turn their "eyes inwardly one fine day" (l. 114). Like Browning in the dramatic monologue, they shift the focus of attention from external matter to the perceiver's point of view and motives. Aesthetics and religion interweave as this approach allows the old masters to attain a deeper insight into the human psyche and thus "To bring the invisible full into play" (l. 151), that is, to portray the soul as opposed to Greek paganism and Renaissance worldliness. (18) The combination of spirituality and a style accused of being "rough-hewn, nowise polished" (l. 126) certainly corresponds to Browning's conception of his own poetry. He revises established standards by reinterpreting the ideal of classical perfection as sterility, inferior to the old masters whose imperfection he values in its potential for vital growth and future improvement. (19) Their technical imperfections are also excused by their difficult stance as innovating pioneers who prepare the ground for the accomplished High Renaissance masters, so that they should be treated with indulgence and imaginative sympathy. Similarly, as at the end of Sordello and in the "Epilogue" to Pacchiarotto, Browning frequently conceives of himself as the unacknowledged initiator of a new poetic tradition who will only be properly appreciated after his death.

While there is no indication in this discussion of the merits of the old masters that the author distances himself from the speaker's self-conceptualization, a later part of the poem which casts the speaker in the role of an art amateur (stanzas xxiii-xxxi) presents him in a critical light. (20) The speaker addresses several old masters, complaining that they permit their lost works to be rediscovered and bought not by him but by avaricious "dealers and stealers, Jews and the English" (l. 228). Of course, Browning as an Englishman and art collector fails into the latter category, but this paradox can be resolved by the author's conviction that he is a true art lover and distinct from the nouveau riche tourist or collector. Ironically, the catalogue of hypothetical paintings which the fictional Browning would like to discover includes works which the real Browning already owns, namely Taddeo Gaddi's "St. Jerome," Margheritone's "Crucifixion with Saints," and Pollaiuolo's "Christ at the Column." What can be the motivation for this divergence of fact and fiction? Out of collector's pride, Browning the man might be using the medium of his poem to point out what a fine connoisseur of pictorial art he is, while making a private joke for an intimate circle of readers who know his collection. (21)

For Browning the author, these paintings serve as raw material out of which he can develop a deliberate self-parody. The hyperbolical, melodramatic language in relation to various painters here exposes the speaker so obviously to ridicule that the author must be tongue-in-cheek. The speaker irreverently addresses Margheritone as "You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot" (l. 220), and he is indignant that someone other than he has been allowed to rediscover one of Giotto's long-lost works. He is so agitated that his syntax breaks down when he realizes that this work, "left for another than I to discover, / Turns up at last! and to whom?--to whom?" (ll. 239-240). His utterance becomes increasingly fragmented and breathless, with an abundance of exclamation marks and phrases without a predicate. His excitement is also manifest in his inability to remember which churches he visited in his hunt for forgotten treasures: I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe! (ll. 241-243)

The stylistic clash of the melodramatic diction of lines 241 and 243 with the confused aside in line 242 and the double rhyme "Spirito" / "weary toe" adds to the comic effect.

The way out of this ridiculously plaintive pose is an abrupt change of subject, when the speaker suddenly launches into a prophetic vision of a liberated Italy symbolized by the completion of Giotto's unfinished campanile. In three respects, the closing passage marks a circular return to the beginning of the text: it focuses on Giotto's campanile, reverts to the initial visionary mode of utterance, and is full of echoes of Casa Guidi Windows. In the middle section, Browning avoids the political animus which dominates EBB's poem. Instead, he develops a purely aesthetic minor detail--her defense of Cimabue's technical deficiencies (CGW, 1.351-361)--into the main point of his poem. Similarities persist as he transposes political elements from her poem onto an artistic plane, for instance by substituting her praise of the daring of dead patriots and national poets with his own praise of the creative innovations of the old masters. Significantly, his use of the word "revolution" (l. 157) is limited to an aesthetic meaning. Whereas EBB evokes Niobe as an analogy for Italy whose children are being killed in their struggle for freedom (CGW, 1.32), in Browning's poem she has a purely aesthetic function as a classical topos for works of art representing the basic emotion of grief (l. 102).

The sudden introduction of the political theme in the coda is an interpretative crux which is usually criticized as an incoherence. But the fact that Browning ends three other poems--"The Englishman in Italy," "'De Gustibus-'," and "Cenciaja"--in similar fashion suggests that the abrupt transition is no coincidence. It would in fact not have been discouraged by EBB, who praises this very move in "The Englishman in Italy," declaring that it "gives unity to the whole., just what the poem wanted" (October 21-22, 1845, Correspondence, 11:134). Two critics discern in this apparent disjunction an underlying unity. Julia Markus argues that the close relation between art and politics was so obvious to the Brownings and their Florentine circle that they forgot it was less so for the British public, and that Browning therefore did not see the need for a smooth transition (p. 50). This interpretation still implies that the poem is artistically flawed because it does not make the connection apparent in its structure. John Woolford tries to discover a unity by interpreting the discussion of architecture and painting not as an end in itself, but as an extended metaphor for Italian politics. He sees the poem as an instance of what he calls a "discursive" "displacement of political onto aesthetic discourses." (22) Though the stance on Italian politics is certainly a major concern, this reading would make "Old Pictures in Florence" a primarily political text and devalue the importance of Browning's aesthetic considerations. These considerations, which take up so much space and which relate so clearly to his self-definition, constitute in my view the central interest of the poem.

In their readings of this poem, Markus and Woolford do not take into account the set-up of the text as a dramatic utterance. I wish to argue that this analogy to the form of the dramatic monologue invites the reader to observe critically the speaker's self-conceptualization and that the thematic break is a deliberate authorial strategy. The break is made so flagrant in order to dramatize within the consciousness of the speaker the practical impossibility of bridging the gap between the political poetry of Casa Guidi Windows and Browning's paramount concern with aesthetics. Throughout most of the poem, the speaker avoids imitating EBB's political discourse by "aestheticizing" it and speaking for his individual self rather than presuming--as she does--to be the voice of the people. However, the difference between Browning's focus on his personal thoughts about works of art and EBB's political agenda finally becomes so clear that he changes his approach in the coda. In an apparent effort to emulate her poetics more closely, he tries here to divert attention from himself by adopting EBB's prophetic mode in Casa Guidi Windows and forcing her political concern onto his utterance: he acknowledges his debt through the bracketed reference "(Ex: 'Casa Guidi,' quod videas ante)" (1. 260) and many verbal echoes of her poem, such as the civil guard shooting at the sky, the mention of the stone of Dante and Orcagna (11. 253, 258, 264; CGW, 2.154-156, 1.601-607, 1.328-329), and the playful reversal of her "the fair side of the Alps" (CGW, 1.1081) in his "the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard" (1. 251).

Nevertheless, the coda's reversal of the hierachy of politics and art shows that Browning continues to resist considering aesthetics as merely a means to a higher political end. "Pure Art" and the republic are of course associated in Casa Guidi Windows, but primacy is always given to politics, whereas in Browning's pairing of "art and history" (1. 266) art is named first. While EBB wants to use art to incite the people to a revolution, Browning speaks of the importance of democracy as providing favorable conditions for the flowering of art. In his view, the new government Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her. (11. 261-262)

Likewise, the "hated house" of Habsburg-Lorraine which reigns in Tuscany will be replaced not by another dynasty but by Orcagna, an artist (11. 263-264). (23)

The last two stanzas, which present a vision of the completed campanile, pose another problem. Although the tower's completion is a suitable metaphor for the construction of a unified Italy with the assistance of art in Casa Guidi Windows, its celebration of closure contradicts the advocacy of imperfection in the defense of the old masters at the heart of Browning's poem. The speaker appears here to make a final effort to emulate the discourse of his model, but it is improbable that the author with his higher consciousness is blind to this markedly inconsistent privileging of closure. On closer scrutiny, there are indeed elements which undercut this triumphant vision: Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While "God and the People" plain for its motto, Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky? At least to foresee that glory of Giotto And Florence together, the first am I! (11. 281-288)

The deferral of the tower's completion to an indefinite future, and the building's original function as a symbol of the sovereignty and civic unity of the fourteenth-century Florentine state, whose constitution was still far from democratic, hint that closure and a democratic Italy are indeed unattainable. (24) And even though the poem's final word is "I," the last stanza furnishes further indications that an enthusiastic personal involvement in EBB's manner is not wholeheartedly endorsed. As Woolford remarks in his comparison of the proof sheets and the first edition, the textual revisions make this stanza increasingly impersonal and less naively enthusiastic. (25) In the proofs, the speaker experiences the removal of the tower's scaffold in the company of Giotto and in the present tense, whereas in the published version the event is located in an indeterminate future and the doubting interrogative sentence "Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold / Is broken away?" (11. 281-282) cancels the speaker's presence. It seems therefore that the text was revised to emphasize the speaker's underlying uneasiness with the mode he has been seeking to adopt.

In sum, "Old Pictures in Florence" turns out to be even more marked by the confrontation of EBB's and Browning's poetics than "The Guardian-Angel." It oscillates between her lyrical and visionary modes, with a political animus inspired by Casa Guidi Windows, and Browning's own dramatic mode. The passage on aesthetics represents a move to self-expression in line with EBB's stance in the courtship correspondence, but even here self-reference is oblique since Browning chooses the old masters as an analogy for his own situation. Moreover, the intervention of the self-parodying address to the painters shows that this mode cannot be sustained. The highly individualized, rough diction which bursts the rigid stanza form also flouts EBB's advice when correcting his versification that Browning follow a more conventional ideal of smoothness. Despite the patched-up transitions, the poem achieves a certain unity through its circular structure and a compromise between EBB's and Browning's poetics in the transposition of her political concern onto an aesthetic level.

"One Word More"

"One Word More" is generally considered to be the one indisputable instance of Browning's disclosure of his private self. The immediate paratext surrounding the poem furnishes ample evidence of its personal nature: the dedication "To E.B.B." after the title, the date "1855"--a unique case among the shorter poems--and the addition of the signature "R.B." in the editions after EBB's death, which suggests that he has finally realized his ambition to write "'R.B. a poem'" (February 11, 1845; Correspondence, 10:69). As R. A. Forsyth remarks, the use of the initials as in the courtship correspondence and the title's echo of the letter in which EBB tries to discourage Browning's devotion to her, asking him to "leave it [his love] without one word more" (August 31, 1845; Correspondence, 11:54), make the poem appear as a continuation in the poetic medium of the lovers' private dialogue. (26) In her Sonnets from the Portuguese, EBB was the first to transfer their private discourse to poetry, albeit behind the fictional veil of a translation. Until 1849, the collection remained hidden from Browning, as he himself explains, "because I happened early to say something against putting one's love into verse." (27) It is all the more ironic then that Browning, who condemns the expression of private emotions in poetry, should pick EBB up on the only instance in which we find her forbidding him to voice his feelings. In contrast to the rest of their relationship, it would seem that for once he is the one to advocate the personal poem. This radical reversal of his habitual attitude raises the question of whether the poem's promise of self-revelation can be taken seriously. The poem's classification under the heading "Men, and Women" in the 1863 Poetical Works also invites us to read it like a dramatic monologue, that is, to observe critically how the speaker's argument develops and how it is motivated. (28) In my analysis, I will seek to establish how much, or more precisely how little, Browning actually discloses of his self, how he justifies this reticence and how he deals with the contradictions which arise from his decision to spell out why he is averse to speaking in his own voice.

Browning opens by dedicating the volume to EBB, declaring that "the book" is inseparable from his self: There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished! Take them, Love, the book and me together: Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. (11. 1-4)

If we leave aside the genre of the poems in the collection, we might believe that Browning has at last attained the identification of poetry and personality for which he admired EBB in the courtship correspondence. Yet knowing that almost all the poems in Men and Women are dramatic monologues, we have to understand his meaning to be that the collection is an expression of his self in an artistic sense and is not an unmediated private self-expression.

In the public text, Browning must assume his public role of the poet. The explanation as to why he can only be himself in dramatic poems begins--appropriately enough for an impersonal poet--through avoiding self-reference. The speaker recounts the legends according to which Raphael wrote sonnets for his beloved and Dante drew an angel for his Beatrice. In order to express their love, both artists abandoned the medium in which they excelled in public. What distinguishes artistic from "normal" referential discourse is that the work of art self-consciously draws attention to its quality as a medium. The exceptional use of an alien medium which is proposed here is essentially a strategy to avoid self-consciousness. In one's own art, one reflects on the work's formal aspect, whereas in a new medium, one can "be the man and leave the artist" (1. 71). One is too busily engaged in constituting the work to reflect on how one does this. Browning takes up here an idea upon which he has twice touched already. In an early letter, he names poetry as his medium but adds that when "real and strong feeling called for utterance, either Drawing or Music seemed a much fitter vehicle than 'verses:' and for a long time I resorted to them, chiefly to music" (August 9, 1837; Correspondence, 3:264). Similarly, the sculptor Jules in Pippa Passes (1841) decides to try out painting after he has fallen in love.

Having fervidly advocated the need to change one's medium (11. 50-72), the speaker surprises us by not quite practicing what he preaches. Although the real Browning is an amateur sculptor and boasts to EBB that he has learned musical composition (June 14, 1845, Correspondence; 10:264), the speaker here declares: Verse and nothing else have I to give you. Yet a semblance of resource avails us-- Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time. (11. 114-120)

He claims that it is enough for him to choose an unusual variant of his own art, by writing his only poem in unrhymed trochaic pentameter (11. 117-120). However, instead of proceeding to the anticipated self-revelation, he continues with the declaration: Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving. (11. 133-134)

His identity is so determined by his impersonal poetry that he restricts himself to the following statement: Let me speak this once in my true person, Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea, Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: Pray you, look on these my men and women, Take and keep my fifty poems finished; Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! (11. 137-142)

All Browning can say in his own voice is that he speaks in it. Despite his metrical originality, he cannot verbalize any emotions or thoughts. He merely reiterates the statement with which the poem began.

This lack of a personal poetic voice must not be confounded with J. Hillis Miller's claim that "Browning has no separate life of his own because he lives his life in poetry" and that "his 'selfhood' must be defined as the failure to have any one definite self." (29) On the contrary, in the repetition of the dedication "Where the/my heart lies, there let the/my brain lie also" (11. 4 and 142), Browning insists upon his private identity. He pleads with EBB to accept his impersonal poetry as it is and still to consider it a token of his private love. He thus tries to attenuate the split of his identity into public poet and private lover by giving the impression that he achieves a certain unity of self and poetry, although he concedes: "Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things" (1. 143).

A passage about Moses at the center of the poem (11. 73-108) is the closest Browning comes to self-revelation and at the same time offers some explanation as to why he cannot make self-expression the purpose of his poetry. He recounts Moses' miracle of Meribah during the flight from Egypt, when the Israelites in the desert doubt Moses' divine authorization, which he then proves by striking a rock from which water flows. (30) By reminding us that Moses, who is clearly an alter ego of the poet, was twice married, Browning casts in sharper relief the conflict between the poet's public and private roles. The poet, as presented by Browning, must inevitably be frustrated in his wish to enjoy a fulfilled private identity ("man's joy," 1. 72) and to be relieved of the artist's burdening self-consciousness and dependence on the public's appreciation ("the artist's sorrow," 1. 72). As Karlin remarks, Browning deviates from the biblical sources by heightening the Israelites' ingratitude toward their prophet. (31) Moses' acute concern over their depreciation of his miracles suggests how essential the public's view is to the artist's self-conceptualization. Moses is trapped in a paradoxical relationship with the people: by means of his divinely sanctioned powers, he can command them ("Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him," 1. 75), but his authority only exists as long as they acknowledge him as their prophet. In stating that Moses is one minute immortal and the next mortal (11. 76-77), Browning parallels EBB's discussion of the double nature of the poet in Aurora Leigh, published the year after Men and Women: O sorrowful great gift Conferred on poets, of a twofold life, When one life has been found enough for pain! We, staggering 'neath our burden as mere men, Being called to stand up straight as demi-gods. (5.380-384)

In Browning's poem, the people refuse to conceive of the poet as touching both the human and the divine realms. They either doubt that he can perform miracles or they compel him to assume the public role of the prophet unconditionally, without any space for a private identity. Since Moses' self-conceptualization as the people's savior is so utterly dependent on their acknowledgement, he plays the prophet's role to perfection: Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. Never dares the man put off the prophet. (11. 96-99)

He performs a miracle which is an Old Testament prefiguration of Christ's martyrdom. Browning thus justifies his resolve not to show his private self without letting this appear as a deficiency: he is obliged to sacrifice his private interest to and for the benefit of the community. And his lover must understand and approve of this heroic humanitarianism. (32)

Despite the resolution evident in the Moses passage, the speaker engages toward the end of the poem in a comparison of himself with the moon, which seems to be a final gesture towards some self-revelation. Again though, he does not go beyond the statement that he, like the moon, has a side which is always hidden from the public's view. There is no hint as to the different nature of his hidden, private self: "What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know" (1. 180). Browning here avoids self-revelation by effecting a surreptitious change of role from that of the moon to that of a minor character lovingly observing the moon EBB, who becomes the center of interest. Although he only admits at the end of the passage "This I say of me, but think of you, Love!" (1. 187), the feminine gender of the moon and Browning's frequent use of moon imagery for EBB immediately suggest that not he but EBB is the true focus of this passage. (33)

The description of the "moon" EBB here is as ambiguous as the portrayal of the "angel" EBB in "The Guardian-Angel." The speaker's apparent veneration of the moon is undermined by negative implications in the similes which he chooses to evoke the nature of her hidden side. The first comparison which comes to his mind is "like some portent of an iceberg / Swimming full upon the ship it founders, / Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?" (11. 169-171). The iceberg, so treacherously dangerous because most of it is hidden under water, is an odd simile for disclosure and seems to imply that even the private self cannot reveal itself completely. This simile alone is apparently not forceful enough and has to be compounded by the metaphor of a wild animal devouring its prey. As in "The Guardian-Angel," this can be translated as a fear of the dominant EBB absorbing Browning's identity. However, these spontaneous first associations are carefully superseded by a strikingly positive simile from Exodus 24.9-11. After the comparison with the pagan moon-goddess Diana, EBB is now associated with the Christian God as seen by Moses through a relation of contiguity: she is the sapphire pavement on which He stands when He meets Moses and the seventy elders (11. 172-179). Browning's repeated identification with the prophet Moses here recalls his self-definition in the correspondence as a minor artist who is granted a privileged view of both the artistic and the private side of the superior, divine genius, EBB.

Yet when it comes to communicating his view of her hidden self, "I hush and bless myself with silence" (1. 197). The closure of this penultimate verse paragraph on "silence," which was amended from the manuscript reading "beauty," emphasizes that an account of her private self cannot or should not be verbalized in public. (34) This may imply that the lovers' intimate verbal communication is only possible outside the boundaries of the public literary text. Or it can mean that language is generally insufficient for this purpose, so that the private self can only be expressed in the non-verbal union of souls described in "By the Fire-Side" (11. 126-140) or in sexual contact, the emblem of which is the fusion of selves in the kiss as described in "Love Among the Ruins" or "Now."

All three poems analyzed here have shown Browning experimenting with the personal mode, making the literary text an arena for playing out the oppositions between EBB's and his own irreconcilable poetics. In the two earlier poems, which proclaim themselves to be primarily in defense of other artists, the conflict is mainly visible in the ambiguous status of the speaker's voice. Both poems adopt EBB's subjective lyrical mode and appear to represent efforts at genuine self-expression, but they also resemble Browning's dramatic monologue in that they are presented as dramatic utterances by a speaker with a clear communicative intention. The author takes a detached view of his speaker and exposes, at times undermines, the speaker's conceptualization of himself and the world. In "One Word More," the disclosure of the poet's private self becomes the explicit subject of the text, but Browning contrives to discuss this issue without making any intimate revelations. (35) His exploration of the contradictions which submission to EBB's poetic dominance entail for him as an objective poet finally leads to an explicit admission of what the other two poems only express indirectly through their disjointed structure: Browning cannot and will not reveal his private self in public poetry. The strength of the poem lies in the fact not only that he openly declares his objectivity in his first direct address to EBB, but that he can now also justify it. Yet, although he does not explicitly verbalize it, he manages to articulate his love through hints, the intimate address to EBB, and the suggestion of a communication beyond the realm of the text.

This profession of his objectivity is situated at the height of Browning's dramatic monologue period, "One Word More" being the last poem written for the first of his two major monologue collections, Men and Women and Dramatis Personae (1864). It had taken him seven years finally to assert his independence from EBB's poetic model. A clear indication of his change of attitude is provided by the textual revisions for his 1849 Poems as compared to the 1863 Poetical Works. The revisions for the 1849 edition were begun in 1847, in the first year of the marriage when EBB's influence was strongest. They responded to some of her intellectual and religious concerns, and evened out and clarified diction as she had advised. The 1863 edition retracted many of these revisions and returned to the original reading. (36)

"One Word More" shows nevertheless that Browning continued to be dependent on EBB for his private self-conceptualization and still considered her the incarnation of the highest poetic ideal. Accordingly, the poetry written throughout the following years pursued the objective mode without further questioning it, while in the paratext--especially after EBB's death in 1861--Browning continued the cult of her artistic superiority. Statements like "she was the poet, and I the clever person, by comparison" or "The true creative power is hers, not mine," and the quasi-religious capitalization of "Her" in letters to Isa Blagden, indicate the degree of veneration for his wife. (37) Following "One Word More," Browning avoided another poetic confrontation until after her death. However, the tensions in his attitude toward her would persist and would find renewed expression in a number of poems which refer to the deceased EBB and in which Browning's self-definition in relation to her would become further complicated by the issues of death and transcendence.

Notes

(1) For similar statements, see the letters of July 21, July 31, and August 7, 1844, in The Brownings' Correspondence, ed. Philip Kelley et al., 14 vols. (Winfield, Kansas: Wedgestone Press, 1984), 9:57, 66, 81.

(2) See, for instance, Mrs. [Alexandra] Sutherland Orr, A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning (London: Bell and Sons, 1902), p. 177; William Clyde DeVane, A Browning Handbook, 2nd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), pp. 194-205; Ian Jack and Rowena Fowler in their edition of Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 4:322n.

(3) Another poem in the collection in which Browning conceptualizes his artistic self in relation to another poet who represents the subjective mode is "Memorabilia," which reflects his change in attitude toward Shelley.

(4) See Herbert F. Tucker, "Browning as Escape Artist: Avoidance and Intimacy," Robert Browning in Contexts, ed. John Woolford (Winfield, Kansas: Wedgestone Press, 1998), pp. 1-25.

(5) Letter of January 10, 1845, Correspondence, 10:17. Daniel Karlin, The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 182-184.

(6) Compare John Woolford, "'The Mesmeric Effort': Picture, Language and Silence in Browning's Theory of Representation," BSN 27 (December 2000): 5-20.

(7) All line references to Browning's poetry are to The Poems, ed. John Pettigrew and Thomas J. Collins, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1981). See, however, the later claim in The Ring and the Book that in poetry, in contrast to everyday discourse, language can mediate truth (12.854-863).

(8) For a reading of Pauline as "not the exception but the paradigm" for Browning's elusiveness as a poet, see Tucker, "Browning as Escape Artist," pp. 5-12.

(9) John Stuart Mill, "Thoughts on Poetry and Its Varieties," Autobiography and Literary Essays by John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson and Jack Stillinger (London: Routledge, 1981), p. 348.

(10) See Heidrun-Edda Weikert's analysis of the poem as a reflection of the contemporary taste in art (Robert Brownings kunstthematische Dichtung: Ihr Epochenkontext zwischen Spatgotik und Viktorianismus [Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989], pp. 109-113).

(11) Compare Browning's intention, as quoted above, of "seeing all things ... thro'" EBB when writing in his new style in the letter of February 13, 1846 (Correspondence, 12:70).

(12) See Robert Browning: A Portrait (London: Murray, 1952), p. 168. In her discussion of the poem, Miller does not link the angel to EBB, but attributes Browning's passive mood here to the effect of influenza and his frustration at having not been able to implement his plans for a new poetry set out in the courtship correspondence (pp. 145-147).

(13) Compare the optimistic interpretations of Pippa's "God's in his heaven--/All's right with the world!" (Pippa Passes, 1.227-228), which do not take into consideration the ironic context in which this is uttered, e.g., DeVane, p. 95.

(14) John Milton, Poetical Works, ed. Douglas Bush (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966).

(15) Leonee Ormond, "Browning and Painting," Robert Browning, ed. Isobel Armstrong (London: Bell, 1974), p. 189.

(16) Hereafter CGW. All references to EBB's poetry are to The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ed. Frederick G. Kenyon (London, 1897).

(17) Julia Markus, "'Old Pictures in Florence' Through Casa Guidi Windows," BIS 6 (1978): 43-61.

(18) For the influence on Browning of Alexis Francois Rio's emphasis on the spiritual and moral dimension of paintings, see David J. DeLaura, "The Context of Browning's Painter Poems: Aesthetics, Polemics, Historics," PMLA 95 (1980): 367-388. Compare also "With Gerard de Lairesse" in Browning's Parleyings With Certain People of Importance in Their Day: "You saw the body, 'tis the soul we see" (1. 173). Their strong faith without regard to technical perfection in their paintings caused the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to choose the early Renaissance painters as their models. See Jacob Korg, Browning and Italy (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1983), p. 102.

(19) This attitude must be seen in the contemporary context of the Gothic revival, which paradoxically associated Attic classical art with political conservatism and feudal Gothic art with liberalism.

(20) The change in tone might be due to a temporal gap in the composition, which Heidrun-Edda Weikert assumes when she speculates about a composition in two stages in 1850 and 1853 (p. 134).

(21) Ormond (p. 199) and Weikert (pp. 130-131) point out that, according to the catalogue which accompanied the auction of the Brownings' possessions in 1913, most of these paintings, such as the Gaddi and the Margheritone, were falsely attributed. Browning's claim to be an art expert is thus undermined.

(22) John Woolford and Daniel Karlin, Robert Browning (London: Longman, 1996), pp. 181-182.

(23) Browning's liberalism has the same motivation as his fascination with the imperfect. EBB chooses political commitment for moral motives, whereas Browning's love of liberty is rather aesthetically motivated. Similarly, Ruskin explains his appreciation of Gothic imperfection in terms of moral categories, while Browning seems more attracted by its aesthetic appeal. Compare Roma A. King, The Focusing Artifice: The Poetry of Robert Browning (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1968), p. 101.

(24) See the comment by Jack and Inglesfield in their edition of Men and Women (The Poetical Works of Robert Browning [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995], 5:292), quoting Glenn Andres, John M. Hunisak and A. Richard Turner, The Art of Florence, 2 vols. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 1:98.

(25) Woolford and Karlin, Robert Browning, p. 29.

(26) "One Sincere Word More from Robert Browning," Durham University Journal 56 (1995): 293.

(27) Undated letter of 1864 to Julia Wedgwood, Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood: A Broken Friendship as Revealed in their Letters, ed. Richard Curie (London: John Murray and Cape, 1937), p. 114.

(28) On the problematic generic classification of the poem, see Mary Ellis Gibson, "One Word More on Browning's 'One Word More,'" SBHC 12 (1984): 76-86.

(29) J. Hillis Miller, The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 102, 105.

(30) See Exodus 17.1-7 and Numbers 20.1-13. Browning's identification with Moses, the biblical prototype of the divinely inspired prophet, is, of course, a poetic commonplace in the period. For a definition of the poet through the same biblical episode, see Sordello, 3.816-832. On Browning's references to this theme, see Eleanor Cook, Browning's Lyrics: An Exploration (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 229-238, and Linda H. Peterson, "Biblical Typology and the Self-Portrait of the Poet in Robert Browning," Approaches to Victorian Autobiography, ed. George P. Landow (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 235-268.

(31) Daniel Karlin, Browning's Hatreds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 95. The public's ingratitude is a recurrent concern in Browning's poetry and letters. See Karlin, chap.5; also Browning's "Popularity" and the "Epilogue" to Pacchiarotto.

(32) To these reasons given by the speaker another motive can be added. If "One Word More" valued the author's private voice above the dramatic voices of his speakers, this would reduce the value of the collection to which it serves as epilogue.

(33) See Browning's and EBB's letters of September 16, 1845 (Correspondence, 11:79-81) and the poems inspired by EBB ("Numpholeptos," the "Epilogue" to Ferishtah's Fancies, and the Parleying "With Daniel Bartoli") as well as Sordello (6.42-56), "In Three Days," "Pan and Luna," and "Andrea del Sarto" (11. 29-32). Only in the late poem "Poetics" (1889), which functions as a retrospective reflection on his use of this conventional metaphor, does Browning take an overtly critical view of the moon as one of the stereotypical natural metaphors for the loved one and repudiate it in favor of a non-metaphoric praise of "Her human self" (1. 8).

(34) Browning here echoes EBB's argument in no. XIII of the Sonnets from the Portuguese that she cannot put her love into verse and can only offer "the silence of [her] womanhood" (l. 9).

(35) Compare Tucker, "Browning as Escape Artist," p. 14.

(36) See the note by Woolford and Karlin in their edition of The Poems of Browning (London: Longman, 1991), 1:102.

(37) Letter of August 19, 1871, in Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella Blagden, ed. Edward C. McAleer (Austin: Texas Univ. Press, 1951), p. 365; remark quoted in Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning, 2nd ed., rev. Frederick G. Kenyon (London: Smith, Elder, 1908), p. 235; letters of November 19 and December 19, 1862, in McAleer, pp. 133, 142.