_Paracelsus_ was hard, but _Sordello_
was incomprehensible. Browning has denied that he was ever perversely
crabbed or obscure. Every great artist must be allowed to say things in
his own way, and obscurity has its artistic uses, as the Gothic builders
knew. But there are two kinds of obscurity in literature. One is
inseparable from the subtlety and difficulty of the thought or the
compression and pregnant indirectness of the phrase. Instances of this
occur in the clear deeps of Dante, Shakspere, and Goethe. The other
comes from a vice of style, a willfully enigmatic and unnatural way of
expressing thought. Both kinds of obscurity exist in Browning. He was a
deep and subtle thinker, but he was also a very eccentric writer;
abrupt, harsh, disjointed. It has been well said that the reader of
Browning learns a new dialect. But one need not grudge the labor that is
rewarded with an intellectual pleasure so peculiar and so stimulating.
The odd, grotesque impression made by his poetry arises, in part, from
his desire to use the artistic values of ugliness, as well as of
obscurity; to avoid the shallow prettiness that comes from blinking the
disagreeable truth: not to leave the saltness out of the sea. Whenever
he emerges into clearness, as he does in hundreds of places, he is a
poet of great qualities.
Pages:
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321