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Browning: Semantic Stutterer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Stewart W. Holmes
Stewart W. Holmes*
Affiliation:
Newton Centre, Mass
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Extract

While investigating the significance of Sordello in Browning's life, I recently traced certain resemblances between that poet's ideas and experiences as revealed in Sordello and Jung's psycho-therapeutic theories concerning the leaders of a culture. In one section of my article I detailed Jung's comments on the inarticulateness of “prophet poets,” such as Browning early aspired to be. Jung's explanations, however, are not entirely satisfactory, for their premises will not bear submitting to present-day laboratory and operational technique. I should like, therefore, to adopt another line of approach to the problem of Browning's inability to express himself clearly about what we may call metaphysical matters.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 1: Number 1 Part 1 , March 1945 , pp. 231 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

1 See the paper in the PMLA of September, 1941, entitled “Browning's Sordello and Jung.”

2 Cf. Sordello, iii, 826, 827, where Browning prophesied one hundred years ago that he was destined to “have Satan claim his carcass, and / Figure as Metaphysic Poet.” Sic semper crilicus.

3 The Diaries of William Macready: 1833–1851, ed. Wm. Toynbee (London, 1912), i, 64, 76.

Browning should have taken to heart what he said of Sordello in Sordello (v):

E'en he must stoop contented to express
No tithe of what's to say—the vehicle
Never sufficient …

4 Harriett Martineau, Autobiography, ed. M. W. Chapman (Boston, 1877), 2 vols., i, 314, 315.

5 Sordello, iii, 621–628.

6 The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett: 1845–1846, 2 vols., London (1899). Hereafter referred to as Letters: R.B. and E.B.B., i, 41, 76.

7 Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood, A Broken Friendship as Revealed by Their Letters, ed. Richard Curie (New York: F, A, Stokes Cp., 1937), p, 79.

8 In his autobiographic poem, Sordello, he remarks, “Souls like Sordello … must ever live before a crowd.”

9 Letters: Robert Browning—Julia Wedgwood, pp. 33, 34.

9a Browning Society's Papers 1889–1890, Browning's Notes and Queries, pp. 116–117.

10 S. Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning (Cambridge, 1891). Hereafter referred to as Orr, Life.

10a W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, Life of Robert Browning (London, 1910), p. 286.

11 Sordello, vi, 572–585.

12 Sordello, iv, 855–857, 860–861.

13 Sordello, iv, 366–367, 370–371.

14 Sordello, v, 229–230.

15 From Browning's Essay on Shelley.

16 The Complete Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning (Cambridge Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 1895), p. 853 (from La Saisiaz).

17 Sordello, v. 436–437, 441–445.

18 Idem, ii.

19 Idem, i.

20 Idem, ii, 589–598.

21 W. C. De Vane, Jr. Browning's Parleyings: The Autobiography of a Mind. Hereafter referred to as De Vane: Browning's Parleyings, p. 275.

22 Idem, ii, circ. 400.

23 Idem, ii, circ. 670.

24 Idem, ii, circ. 560.

25 Idem, ii, circ. 650.

26 Idem, vi, circ. 490.

27 Idem, vi, circ. 40.

28 Idem, i, circ. 560.

29 Sordello, v, 568–578.

30 Parleying with Charles Avison, vi.

31 Cf. Wendell Johnson, Language and Speech Hygiene; An Application of General Semantics, Institute of General Semantics (Chicago, 1939).

32 By “extensional” is meant this: If we use language extensionally, we make it apply to actual individuals, as “John Smith,” “Richard Smith,” “James Smith,” etc. When we use language intentionally, we make it symbolize generalizations and definitions and we say (in the same situation) “men.” Or as C. I. Lewis, author of A Survey of Symbolic Logic, says, “Intentional relations are relations of ‘concepts’; extensional relations are relations of denoted facts.” By “extensional approach to life” I refer to an attempt to deal denotatively with actual events, processes, objects, (e.g. Jones, Smith) rather than to deal more than is necessary with generalized concepts, high order abstractions (“men”) that exist as definitions in one's brain rather than as living phenomena. To extensionalize means to find the meanings of words primarily outside one's head, in the world of things; to intensionalize means to find the meanings of words primarily inside one's head, in definitions and “logical” processes.

33 De Vane, Browning's Parleyings, pp. 106, 107.

34 Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (New York, 1935), pp. 313, 118.

35 Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (New York: Harper & Bros., 1939), pp. 182, 183, 184, 189.

36 W. H. Griffin and H. C. Minchin, Life of Robert Browning (London, 1910), p. 297. Hereafter referred to as Life.

37 A. Korzybski, Science and Sanity (Lancaster, 1933), p. 4. Hereafter referred to as Science and Sanity.

38 Serge Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses, Alliance Book Corp. (New York, 1940), p. 284.

39 Science and Sanity, p. 18.

40 Science and Sanity, pp. 531, 532.

41 Two people with “delirium tremens” who both see pink snakes on the wall will agree that each is right (i.e., that each makes sense) when he says, “I see pink snakes on the wall.” Doubtless there are many people who believe they know exactly what Browning means when he dons the robes of metaphysician and starts talking about “soul” and “mind” and “body,” about “Power,” and “power,” etc.

42 Man the Unknown, p. 121.

43 Letters: R.B. and E.B.B., i, 353–356; i, 193.

44 Man the Unknown, 157–158.

45 Letters: Robert Browning—Julia Wedgwood, p. 160.

46 F. A. Pottle, Shelley and Browning: A Myth and Some Facts (Chicago, 1923).

47 ETC, i, #2, pp. 69, 76.

48 ETC, ii, #2, 77.