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Browning's Men and women

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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First published January 1, 1855

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About the author

Robert Browning

2,726 books455 followers
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a British poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.

Browning began writing poetry at age 13. These poems were eventually collected, but were later destroyed by Browning himself. In 1833, Browning's "Pauline" was published and received a cool reception. Harold Bloom believes that John Stuart Mill's review of the poem pointed Browning in the direction of the dramatic monologue.

In 1845, Browning wrote a letter to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, professing that he loved her poetry and her. In 1846, the couple eloped to Europe, eventually settling in Florence in 1847. They had a son Pen.

Upon Elizabeth Barrett Browning's death in 1861, Browning returned to London with his son. While in London, he published Dramatis Personae (1864) and The Ring and the Book (1869), both of which gained him critical priase and respect. His last book Asolando was published in 1889 when the poet was 77.

In 1889, Browning traveled to Italy to visit friends. He died in Venice on December 12 while visiting his sister.

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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Profile Image for Maria.
227 reviews15 followers
August 24, 2016
I read this collection for a very specific poem, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." Unfortunately for me, the research I did showing that this collection included this poem was not correct. Maybe an original publication of this collection did, but this particular one did not. I was very disappointed.

Honestly, I had never heard of Robert Browning, and perhaps never would have if not for Stephen King's Dark Tower series, which he based on Browning's poem cited above. Despite my disappointment, I did enjoy this 19th century poetry.

The prose was beautiful. There is a lot here - it's not a surface read nor is it an easy read. I don't know that I'll stay with a 3-star rating (it could go higher), but after only one read, this was how I felt. Honestly, I missed a lot of the deeper things in the poetry for two reasons: my 19th century history is a bit off and the writing style was not always easy for me to decipher. I feel like this type of work requires rereading and effort to fully appreciate all the writer is trying to convey.

One very nice feature of this edition is that it has a "Notes" section after each poem explaining the meaning of the poem and specific references to certain lines. I wish the references to each line would have been footnotes instead, but I'm sure that would have messed with the rhythm of the poem. I think during my second read through that I might get more and I also might read the notes before hand (I know that's backwards).

His style reminds me more of Milton's Paradise Lost. The poems all seem to have a story and that type of feel. I prefer 20th century poetry still, but I'm glad to have introduced myself to Browning, even if I didn't get to read the poem that sparked Stephen King to write his magnum opus.
Profile Image for David.
403 reviews4 followers
August 25, 2024
(1855). "You speak out, you. I only make men & women speak—give you truth broken into prismatic hues..."--the poet in a letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I believe Browning began writing this collection with a New Year's resolution to stop being so lazy and compose one poem per day. It lasted until January 3rd.

For anyone feeling stupid for struggling over these poems, like me, here's John Ruskin the leading intellectual of Browning's own day writing to him about the volume and describing my experience so exactly it made me laugh:

"Being hard worked at present, & not being able to give the Cream of the day to poetry—when I take up these poems in the evening I find them absolutely and literally a set of the most amazing Conundrums that ever were proposed to me– I try at them for—say twenty minutes—in which time I make out about twenty lines; but not consecutive lines, always having to miss two, for every one that I make out. I enjoy the twenty, each separately, very much, but the puzzlement about the intermediate ones increases in comfortlessness till I get a headache, & give in...

"I cannot write in enthusiastic praise—because I look at you every day as a monkey does at a cocoanut—having great faith in the milk—hearing it rattle indeed—inside—but quite beside myself for the Fibres."

[Ruskin, by the way, does a number on the poem Popularity, and on Browning himself, at once recognizing his place second only to Shakespeare, while making an eloquent plea for him to "amend matters"--fix ellipses and other things to meet the reader (readers "who ought to admire you & learn from you, but can’t because you are so difficult") halfway--so that maybe he doesn't have to end up like the neglected genius in Popularity].

Nevertheless! Fra Lippo, Childe Roland, Memorabilia, Andrea del Sarto... How on earth was this book seen as a flop by the public? (Also Karshish is a new favorite). Glad to read Browning knew its worth. I read a selection of the original 51 poems, as follows:

"Love Among the Ruins"--expands on Ozymandias--the futility of grandeur--but adds love as a contrast.

"Evelyn Hope"--older man contemplates the fresh corpse of a teen girl whom he loved from afar. How did he get there? He's in her room, in near darkness, gazing on her young red mouth. He's slightly domineering. He talks about taking her in heaven. He thinks of the lands he will explore before then. And yet his passion is almost romantic, as he slips her a leaf by which she will remember him in the afterlife.

"Up at a Villa – Down in the City"--the subtitle ("as distinguished by an Italian person of quality") is funny and a reminder not to take the colorful narrators in this collection for Browning himself. [Note: For the longest time I've been trying to put words to a particular natural effect, when hills look gray and blurry in patches from the bare branches of trees, and I think Browning is taking a stab at this with his: "...hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees"].

"A Woman’s Last Word"--a wife endearingly asks to be loved and held rather than fight with her husband, even if it means swallowing her feelings or not uncovering truths.

"Fra Lippo Lippi"--one of Browning's best. Through the painter Lippo, the poet says much about his own art.

"A Toccata of Galuppi's"--music, Venice, death.

"By the Fire-Side"--ok the narrator of this swooning and sad love poem may be Browning.

"An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician"--rather chilling. Takes place in the 1st c. AD. An Arab doctor comes across Lazarus in later years and reports the case to his mentor. Karshish is wonderfully human, a muddle of ignorance and learning, and though he dismisses the case as silly, it haunts him. Beautiful.

"Mesmerism"--Gothic fun.

"Old Pictures in Florence"--Quotes:

"One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,
Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, -
A lion who dies of an ass's kick,
The wronged great soul of an ancient Master."

"What, not a word for Stefano there,
Of brow once prominent and starry,
Called Nature's Ape and the world's despair
For his peerless painting? (see Vasari)."

"What a man's work comes to!
So he plans it,
Performs it, perfects it, makes amends
For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit!"

"My Star"--short and pretty.

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"--the title is from Lear. I believe Browning gave birth to the modern fantasy setting here. This is a supernatural world that messes with your mind, where paths disappear the moment you turn from them. The landscape is finely detailed yet full of a surreal horror. Again, as in Good News from Ghent, it was a bold stroke by Browning to leave so much of the poem an enigma, trusting to his readers' imaginations to fill in the blanks. Browning later said of the poem: "I do not know what I meant... and I do not know now. But I am very fond of it."

"Respectability"--a Parisian walks with his lover outside. I didn't quite follow his train of thought.

"The Statue and the Bust"--most of the tale is straightforward but Browning draws an unusual moral from it, which again I'm not sure I followed. The final quotation is from Horace and would seem to accuse the reader of the same sin (of not acting on a sin?). The full quote goes: "Why are you laughing? Just change the name, and the story could be told of you."

"Love in a Life"--speaker runs around an apparently immeasurable house looking from room to room for the one he loves. She always manages to stay one room ahead.

"Life in a Love"--companion piece to above.

"How It Strikes a Contemporary"--portrait of the poet as conscience of the people.

"The Patriot"--quote:

"I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds."

"Bishop Blougram’s Apology"--long philosophical poem. Is the pragmatic bishop making an apologia for himself or is it in fact Browning's defense of him--of hypocrisy. Is this honesty or casuistry? The bishop says he is humbly making do with what he was given--a lack of faith--while the self-righteous magazine writer has his principles and nothing more. The poem discusses doubt, not just religious doubt but the atheist's, which I thought was a very astute point.

The topic is explored at length, from every angle, bringing in Napoleon and Shakespeare, the latter--the bishop reminds his dinner guest--giving up his higher pursuits as soon as he could afford to, so he could live a comfortable life much like the bishop's.

Out of nowhere, while discussing biblical times, Browning treats us to an awesome picture of life after the flood, after the waters have receded and left Noah's ark stranded on a mountain:

"When such a traveller told you his last news,
He saw the ark a-top of Ararat
But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk
And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!"

A lot to mull over. A lot I missed.

"Memorabilia"--Browning's unique genius concentrated into one short poem.

"Andrea del Sarto"--a favorite.

"Saul"--The beginning is creepy. We're back in biblical times, circa 1000 BC, and Israel's first king is possessed by a demon. David, still a boy, is summoned to his tent to play for him on his harp. There the king is standing against the tent pole as if hanging there, arms outstretched in a Christ-like pose straight out of The Exorcist. After the songs David sings the poem became confusing for me. Even so, the ending is atmospheric and effective. Not sure it's true but I read that Browning thought this was one of his best works, so I should give it another go later.

"De Gustibus—" title is from the Latin phrase for "There's no disputing taste," then goes on to juxtapose two different yet equally romantic locales. Browning seems torn between homey England and fantastic Italy, which I can relate to. Some nice lines here. As often happens with him, though, he can't resist adding one too many conceits, which, inserted surgically into his poetic structure, disrupt the syntax and threaten the overall sense of the poem, so that I had to go online to make sure I was reading this right.

"Women and Roses"--sensual poem, full of frustrated longing. "Oh, to possess and be possessed!"

"Holy-Cross Day"--bitterly mocking poem on behalf of the Jews subjugated in Christian lands.

"Cleon"--the setup is funny. A Greek poet named Cleon holds forth in an address to the king, who wants to know how it feels to achieve immortality from his art. Of course the joke is that the king and poet are both long forgotten. And yet the poem is about no less than the human condition.

It's a difficult one but becomes clearer towards the end. Why did God make us so that we know we will die? It's the soul, Cleon says, that allows us to glimpse higher things, but to glimpse and no more is almost a punishment. Cleon is not a complete fool.

At the postscript the poem becomes another Christian poem (it takes place in the 1st c. AD). Cleon is on the brink of imagining an afterlife, heaven, but knows Zeus has provided no such thing. Then he goes on to disparage the early Christians, such as the "barbarian Jew" St Paul, on whom the king wishes to give a gift. Harold Bloom, incidentally, dictating his last book on his death bed, wished Browning had omitted this last part. But that's the whole point of the poem!

"Popularity"--tribute to the genius unappreciated in his time, in this case Keats. Makes an excellent comparison to the fisherman whose murex (mollusks) are seen as rubbish, though future generations will value them highly for their purple dye.

"Two in the Campagna"--bursting love poem.

"A Grammarian’s Funeral"--Italy, 14th c. But the setting is quite fantastic.

An ambivalent cautionary tale about a scholar who lived as if he had all the time to study life instead of living it. It would seem he frittered it away on the niceties of antique grammar, and yet niceties matter and his cause ("the revival of learning in Europe") was great. The verse is his burial song.

"Bury this man there?
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go!"

Another very pressing poem, especially for one whose time on earth is dwindling rapidly while he pores over abstruse Browning lines instead of swimming in the ocean in this perfect weather.

"Transcendentalism - A Poem in Twelve Volumes"--poet scolds another poet for trying to act mature and writing "naked thoughts" and "dry words" instead of "draping them in sights and sounds," which is how poetry allows adults to recapture the magic of youth. May be aimed at Wordsworth's The Prelude, although the poem itself is somewhat guilty of it too.

"One Word More"--"Let me speak this once in my true person/Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea..."

----------------------------
The ones not included in my selection that I didn't seek out elsewhere:

"A Lover's Quarrel"
"Any Wife to Any Husband"
"A Serenade at the Villa"
"Instans Tyrannus"
"A Pretty Woman"
"A Light Woman"
"The Last Ride Together"
"Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha"
"Before"
"After"
"In Three Days"
"In a Year"
"In a Balcony"
"Protus"
"The Guardian-Angel"
"The Twins"
"The Heretic’s Tragedy"
"One Way of Love"
"Another Way of Love"
"Misconceptions"
Profile Image for Cheryl Walsh.
Author 2 books5 followers
July 11, 2020
Decided to revisit old favorites "An Epistle" and "Andrea del Sarto" in the context of their original publication. Most of the other poems didn't speak to me, but I did come away with a much greater appreciation for "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Bishop Blougram's Apology" and "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." "An Epistle" is still my favorite of the bunch, however, Browning at the height of his genius, and at his narrative best.
Profile Image for Nathan McAllister.
18 reviews
April 28, 2022
What I love about Browning is the subtle humor that pervades the poems in this collection. Equally fascinating is the uniquely panoramic view of the different speakers found in his dramatic monologues. Through this panoramic view, we get a complete picture of the human condition through the eyes of Browning. My only complaint is that some of poems were very challenging and befuddled my brain. Although, this may just my own ignorance!
Profile Image for Perry Whitford.
1,952 reviews79 followers
April 16, 2017
Five years worth of collected love poetry, dramatic monologues, and all things Renaissance from Browning. Oh, and Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

The monologues are revealing and masterful.
The love poems are strangely obscure.
Childe Roland is dark and majestic.

(full review to follow)


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