Paper. 6,- “Comparative study of writing style of Tennyson and Browning”

Paper-6

·       Victorian Literature

·       “Comparative study of writing style of Tennyson and Browning”

 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809-92)

Ø His Life

Alfred Tennyson, the son of a clergyman, was born at his father's living at Somersby in Lincolnshire. After some schooling at Louth, this was not agreeable to him; he proceeded to Cambridge (1828). At the university he was a wholly conventional person", and the only mark he made was to win the Chancellor's Medal for a poem on ‘Timbuctoo’. He left Cambridge without taking a degree; but before doing "so he published a small volume of mediocre verse. During the next twenty years he passed a tranquil existence, living chiefly with his parents, and writing much poetry Pleasant jaunts--to the Lake District, to Stratford-on-Avon. And other places - varied his peaceful life, and all the while his fame as a poet was making headway. In 1844 he lost most of his small means in an unlucky speculation, but in the nick of time (1845) he received a Government pension. He was appointed Poet Laureate (1850) in succession to Wordsworth, married, and removed (1853) to Freshwater, in the Isle of Wight, which was his home for the next twenty years. In his later years recognition and applause came increasingly upon him, and he was regarded as the greatest poet of his day. In 1884 he was created a baron, sat in the House of Lords, and for a time took himself rather seriously as a politician, falling out with Gladstone over the Irish question. He died at Aldworth, near Haslemere, in Surrey, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Ø His Poetry

When he was seventeen years old Tennyson collaborated with his elder brother Charles in Poems by Two Brothers (1827): The volume is a slight one, but in the light of his later work we can already discern a little of the Tennysonian metrical aptitude and descriptive power. His prize poem of Timbuctoo (1829) is not much better than the usual prize poem. His Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), published while he was an undergraduate, are yet immature, but in pieces like Isabel and Madeline the pictorial effect and the sumptuous imagery of his mature style are already conspicuous.

The later stages of his career are marked chiefly by much longer poems. The Princess (1847) is a serio-comic attempt to handle the theme that was then known as 'the new woman.' For the sake of his

story Tennyson imagines a ladies' academy with a mutinously intellectual princess at the head of it. For a space a tragedy seems imminent, but in the end all is well, for the Princess is married to the blameless hero. The poem is in blank verse, but interspersed are several singularly beautiful lyrics. The humour is heavy, but many of the descriptions are as rich and wonderful as any Tennyson ever attempted.

In Memoriam (1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. Tennyson brooded over the subject for years; and upon this elegiac theme he imposed numerous meditations on life and death, showing how these subjects were affected by the new theories of the day. For the first, and probably the only, time,

Tennyson's feelings were stirred and troubled. The result was the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest, poetry he ever produced. The poem is adorned with many beautiful sketches of English scenery; -and the metre--now called the In Memoriam metre--which is quite rare, is deftly managed. Maud and Other Poems (1855) were received with amazement by the public. The chief poem is called a 'monodrama'; it consists of a series of lyrics which reflect the love and hatred, the hope and despair, of a lover who says his mistress's brother, and then flies broken to France. The whole tone of the work is forced and fevered, auu of war and bloodshed. It does not add to Tennyson's fame. In 1859, 1869, and 1889 Tennyson issued a series of Idylls of the King, which had considered and attempted a great theme that Milton abandoned--that of King Arthur and the Round Table. Many doting admirers saw in the Idylls an allegory of the soul of man; but in effect Tennyson drew largely upon the simple tales of Malory, stripping them of their "bold bawdry" to please his public, and covering them with a thick coating of his delicate and detailed ornamentation. It is doubtful if this unnatural compound of Malory-Tennyson is quite a happy one, but we do obtain much blank verse of noble and sustained power.

The only other poem of any length is Enoch Arden (1864), which became the most popular of all, and found its way in translation into foreign languages. The plot is cheap enough, dealing with a seaman, supposedly drowned, who returns and, finding his wife happily married to another man, regretfully retires without making him known. The tale, as ever, is rich with Tennysonian adornment. In particular there is a description of the tropical island where Enoch is wrecked that is among the highest flights of the poet:

“The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns

And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,

The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes.”

Among the shorter poems, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886) and The Death of

CEnone (1892) are sad echoes of the sumptuous imaginings of the years preceding 1842.

His Plays

Tennyson's dramas occupied his later years. He wrote three historical plays- Quern Mary (1875), Harold (1876). Becket (1884). The last, owing chiefly to the exertions of Sir Henry Irving, the actor-manager, was quite a stage success. None, however, rank high as real dramatic efforts, though they show much care and skill. The Falcon (1879) is a comedy based on a story from Boccaccio; The Cup (1881) is based on a story from Plutarch, and scored a success, also through the skill of Irving. The Foresters (1892), dealing with the familiar Robin Hood theme, was produced in America.

His Poetical Characteristics

(a) His Choice of Subject. Tennyson's earliest instincts, as seen in the volumes 'of1830, 1833, and 1842, led him to the lyric and legendary narrative as his principal themes, and these he handled with a skill and artistry which he rarely surpassed.

Already, however, in the 1842 volume, there are signs of the ethical interest which was to be the mainspring of his later work. As a thinker, Tennyson lacked depth and originality. He was content to mirror the feelings and-aspirations of his time, and his didactic work lacks the burning fire which alone can transform the didactic into truly great art. The requirements of his office as Poet Laureate led to the production of a number of occasional poems which have caused him to be. Described contemptuously as the newspaper of his age Of them, all that need be said here is that it is surprising that they are as good as they are. For the rest, with notable exceptions such as Ulysses and In Memoriam, Tennyson's poems are best when he reverts to the lyric or narrative themes which were his original inspiration.

(b) His Craftsmanship. No one can deny the great care and skill shown in Tennyson work. His method of producing poetry was slowly to evolve the lines in his mind, commit them to paper, and to revise them till they were as near perfection as he could make them. Consequently we have a high level of poetical artistry. No one excels Tennyson in the deft application of sound to sense and in the subtle and pervading employment of alliteration and vowel music. Such passages as this abound in his work:

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,

The moan of doves in immemorial elms,

And murmuring of innumerable bees.

The Princess

This is perhaps not the highest poetry, but shows only a kind of manual, or rather aural, dexterity; yet as Tennyson employs it it is effective to a degree. His excellent craftsmanship is also apparent in his handling of English metres, in which he is a tireless experimenter. In blank verse he is not as varied and powerful as Shakespeare, nor so majestically as Milton, but in the skill of his workmanship and in his wealth of diction he falls but little short of these great masters.

c) Tennyson's lyrical quality is somewhat uneven. The slightest of his pieces, like The Splendour Falls, are musical and attractive; but on the whole his nature was too self-conscious and perhaps his life too regular and prosperous, to provide a background for the true lyrical intensity of emotion. Once or twice, as in the wonderful Break, break, break and Crossing the Bar, he touches real greatness:

Break, break, break -

“And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still I

Break, break, break,”

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-89)

His Life

Browning was born at Camberwell, his father being connected with the Bank of England. The future poet was educated semi-privately, and from an early age he was free to follow his inclination toward studying unusual subjects. As a child he was precocious, and began to write poetry at the age of twelve. Of his predecessors Shelley in particular influenced his mind, which was unformed and turbulent at this time with the growing power within. After a brief course at University College

Browning for a short period travelled in Russia (1833); then he lived in London, where he became acquainted with some of the leaders of the literary and theatrical worlds. In 1834 he paid his first visit to Italy, a country which was for him a fitful kind of home. In 1845 he visited Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, whose works had strongly attracted him. A mutual liking ensured, and then, after a private marriage, a sort of elopement followed, to escape the anger of the wife's stern parent. The remainder of Browning's life was occupied with journeys between England and France and Italy, and with much poetical activity. His wife died at Florence in 1861, leaving one son. Browning thereupon left the city for good and returned to

England, though in 1878 he went back once more to Italy. His works, after suffering much neglect, were now being appreciated, and in 1882 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. He died in Italy, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

His Poems and Plays

His first work of any importance is Pauline(1833), an introspective poem, which shows very strongly the influence of Shelley, whom, at this period, Browning held in great reverence. Paracelsus (1835), the story of the hero's unquenchable thirst for that breadth of knowledge which is beyond the grasp of one man, brings to the for Browning's predominant ideas that a life without love must be a failure, and that

God is working all things to an end beyond human divining. The style of the poem is diffuse, but the blank verse contains many passages of great beauty and is interspersed with one or two charming lyrics:

Thus the Mayne glideth

Where my love abideth.

His next work was the play Strafford (1837), which was produced by the actor Macready, and which achieves real pathos toward the close. Sordello (1840), an attempt to decide the relationship between art and life, is Browning's most obscure work. The story of the hero, a Mantuan troubadour, is cumbered with a mass of detailed historical allusion, and the style, in spite of occasional passages of descriptive beauty, is too compressed.

It is convenient next to deal with the entire group of eight volumes, which, published separately from 1841 onward, were collected in one volume as Bells and Pomegranates in 1846.  Luria and a Soul's Tragedy (1846), none of these is without its moments of drama, and they all show considerable spirit in their style. Pippa Passes, which was not intended for the stage, has an idyllic charm, and it contains fine songs. His amazingly subtle analysis of character and motive is not adequate for true drama because he cannot reveal character in action. His method is to take a character at a moment of crisis and, by allowing him to talk, to reveal not only his present thoughts and feelings but his past history.

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) show this faculty being directed into the channel in which it was to achieve perfection--that of the dramatic monologue. In the latter volume appeared The Italian in England, the Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint

Praxed's, and Pictor Ignotus among many others.1 Dramatic Lyrics consists mainly of lyrics, such as Cavalier Tunes, and, most striking of all, those-love lyrics which, though impersonal, were really the fruit of his happy marriage with Elizabeth Barrett. Of the love lyrics of this period Meeting at Night is typical:

“The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,”

Now at the height of his powers, Browning produced some of his best work in Men and Women (1855), which, with the exception of the dedicatory One Word More, addressed to his wife, consists entirely of dramatic monologues. Here are to be found the famous Fra Lippo Lippi, An Epistle containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, Andrea Del Sarto, Cleon. Most of them are written in blank verse. The year 1864 saw the publication of his last really great volume, Dramatis Persona, again a collection of dramatic monologues. To illustrate their quality mention need be made of only such works as Caliban upon Setebos, A Death in the Desert, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and Abt Vogler. In style the poems have much of the rugged, elliptical quality which was on occasion the poet's downfall, but here it is used with a skill and a power which show him at the very pinnacle of his achievement.

The remaining years of Browning's long life saw the production of numerous further volumes of verse, few of which add greatly to his fame. To-day they are read by none but his most confirmed admirers. Balaustion's Adventure (1871), Prince Hohenstiel- Schwangau, Saviour of Society (1871).

In too many of them the style betrays a wilful exaggeration of the eccentricities which he had once turned to such great account, but always the reader is liable to stumble across

passages which, in striking lanscape of lovely lyric, show that the true poetic gift is not completely absent.

His long life's work has a powerful close in Asolando. (1889), which, along with much of the tired disillusion of the old man, has, in places, the firmness and enthusiasm of his prime. The last verses he ever wrote describe him in the character he most loved to adopt:

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry, "Speed,--fight on, fare ever There as here!"

Features of his Work

(a) His Choice of Subject. Browning's themes divide themselves broadly into three groups as in The Pied Piper of Hamelin. His philosophical poems, on which his reputation rested in his own day, all bear on his central beliefs that life must ever be a striving for something beyond our reach, and that it is "God's task to make the heavenly period perfect the earthen." The obvious optimism of What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me. has been resented by more modern critics as a facile shirking of life's complexities. His love poems are, perhaps, his greatest achievement. They have a calm authenticity of tone.

Always, his first concern was with the human soul. He was particularly interested in abnormal people, and was able to project himself into their minds and to lay bare their feelings and motives. Yet his characters are not often completely objective. because so many of them are mouthpieces for his own philosophy.

He shows a fondness, too, for out-of-the-way historical settings and for foreign scenes, which, at his best, as in The Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's and Karshish, are recreated with a vivid accuracy. Along with this interest in the unusual goes an obvious relish for the grotesque and macabre, which is seen at its most striking in Childe Roland to the Dark Tower.

b) His Descriptive Power. In this respect Browning differs widely from Tennyson, who slowly creates a lovely image by careful massing of detail. Browning cares less for beauty of description for its own sake. In most of his work it is found only in flashes, where he paints the background of his story in a few dashing strokes, or crystallizes his meaning in an image whose beauty staggers us. He is fond of striking primary colours which startle by their very vividness, and as a painter of movement he has few equals. The passages which follow show two very different examples of his descriptive skill:

“Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;

Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,

That floats and feeds; a certain badger brow”