Читать книгу Browning's Heroines - Ethel Colburn Mayne - Страница 12

The whole of Pippa is emotion. She "passes" alone through the drama, except for one moment—only indirectly shown us—in which she speaks with some girls by the way. She does nothing, is nothing, but exquisite emotion uttering itself in song—quick lyrical outbursts from her joyous child's heart. The happiness-in-herself which this poor silk-winder possesses is something deeper than the gaiety of which I earlier spoke. Gay she can be, and is, but the spell that all unwittingly she exercises, derives from the profounder depth of which the Eastern poet thought when he said that "We ourselves are Heaven and Hell." … Innocent but not ignorant, patient, yet capable of a hearty little grumble at her lot, Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She can threaten fictively her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing rain to spoil her enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very spirit of confiding love, for her threat is that if rain does fall, she will be sorrowful and depressed, instead of joyous and exhilarated, for the rest of the year during which she will be bound to her "wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil." Such a possibility, thinks Pippa's trustful heart, must surely be enough to cajole the weather into beauty and serenity.

It is New Year's Day, and sole holiday in all the twelve-month for silk-winders in the mills of Asolo. An oddly chosen time, one thinks—the short, cold festival! And it is notable that Browning, though he acquiesces in the fictive date, yet conveys to us, so definitely that it must be with intention, the effect of summer weather. We find ourselves all through imagining mellow warmth and sunshine; nay, he puts into Pippa's mouth, as she anticipates the treasured outing, this lovely and assuredly not Janiverian forecast—

"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. … "

Is it not plain from this that his artist's soul rejected the paltry fact? For "blue" the hours of New Year's Day may be in Italy, but as "long blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain that, whatever it may be called, it is really Midsummer's Day on which Pippa passes from Asolo through Orcana and Possagno, and back to Asolo again.

We see her first as she springs out of bed with the dawn's earliest touch on her "large mean airy chamber" at Asolo[24:1]—the lovely little town of Northern Italy which Browning loved so well. In that chamber, made vivid to our imagination by virtue of three consummately placed adjectives (note the position of "mean"), Pippa prepares for her one external happiness in the year.

"Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,

A mite of my twelve hours' treasure,

The least of thy gazes or glances,

* * * * *

One of thy choices or one of thy chances,

* * * * *

—My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,

Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!"

I have omitted two lines from this eight-lined stanza, and omitted them because they illustrate all too forcibly Browning's chief fault as a lyric—and, in this case, as a dramatic—poet. Both of them are frankly parenthetic; both parentheses are superfluous; neither has any incidental beauty to redeem it; and, above all, we may be sure that Pippa did not think in parentheses. The agility and (it were to follow an indulgent fashion to add) the "subtlety" of Browning's mind too often led him into like excesses: I deny the subtlety here, for these clauses are so wholly uninteresting in thought that even as examples I shall not cite them. But their crowning distastefulness is in the certitude we feel that, whatever they had been, they never would have occurred to this lyrical child. The stanza without them is the stanza as Pippa felt it. … In the same way, the opening rhapsody on dawn which precedes her invocation to the holiday is out of character—impossible to regard its lavish and gorgeous images as those (however sub-conscious) of an unlettered girl.

But all carping is forgotten when we reach

"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing"—

a poet's phrase, it is true, yet in no way incongruous with what we can imagine Pippa to have thought, if not, certainly, in such lovely diction to have been able to express. Thenceforward, until the episodical lines on the Martagon lily, the child and her creator are one. There comes the darling menace to the holiday—

" … But thou must treat me not

As prosperous ones are treated …

For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest

Me, who am only Pippa—old year's sorrow,

Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow:

Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow

Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow.

All other men and women that this earth

Belongs to, who all days alike possess,

Make general plenty cure particular dearth,[26:1] Get more joy one way, if another less: Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven— Sole light that helps me through the year, thy sun's!"

Having made her threat and her invocation, she falls to thinking of those "other men and women," and tells her Day about them, like the child she is. They, she declares, are "Asolo's Four Happiest Ones." Each is, in the event, to be vitally influenced by her song, as she "passes" at Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night; but this she knows not at the time, nor ever knows.

The first Happy One is "that superb great haughty Ottima," wife of the old magnate, Luca, who owns the silk-mills. The New Year's morning may be wet—

" … Can rain disturb

Her Sebald's homage? all the while thy rain

Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane,

He will but press the closer, breathe more warm

Against her cheek: how should she mind the storm?"

Here we learn what later we are very fully to be shown—that Ottima's "happiness" is not in her husband.

The second Happy One is Phene, the bride that very day of Jules, the young French sculptor. They are to come home at noon, and though noon, like morning, should be wet—

" … what care bride and groom

Save for their dear selves? 'Tis their marriage day;

* * * * *

Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be

Sunbeams and pleasant weather, spite of thee."

The third Happy One—or Happy Ones, for these two Pippa cannot separate—are Luigi, the young aristocrat-patriot, and his mother. Evening is their time, for it is in the dusk that they "commune inside our turret"—

"The lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth,

She in her age, as Luigi in his youth,

For true content … "

Aye—though the evening should be obscured with mist, they will not grieve—

" … The cheerful town, warm, close,

And safe, the sooner that thou art morose

Receives them … "

That is all the difference bad weather can make to such a pair.

The Fourth Happy One is Monsignor, "that holy and beloved priest," who is expected this night from Rome,

"To visit Asolo, his brother's home,

And say here masses proper to release

A soul from pain—what storm dares hurt his peace?

Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward

Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard."

And now the great Day knows all that the Four Happy Ones possess, besides its own "blue solemn hours serenely flowing"—for not rain at morning can hurt Ottima with her Sebald, nor at noon the bridal pair, nor in the evening Luigi and his mother, nor at night "that holy and beloved" Bishop …

"But Pippa—just one such mischance would spoil

Her day that lightens the next twelvemonth's toil

At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil."

All at once she realises that in thus lingering over her toilet, she is letting some of her precious time slip by for naught, and betakes herself to washing her face and hands—

"Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught

With a single splash from my ewer!

You that would mock the best pursuer,

Was my basin over-deep?

One splash of water ruins you asleep,

And up, up, fleet your brilliant bits.

* * * * *

Now grow together on the ceiling!

That will task your wits."

Here we light on a trait in Browning of which Mr. Chesterton most happily speaks—his use of "homely and practical images … allusions, bordering on what many would call the commonplace," in which he "is indeed true to the actual and abiding spirit of love," and by which he "awakens in every man the memories of that immortal instant when common and dead things had a meaning beyond the power of any dictionary to utter." Mr. Chesterton, it is true, speaks of this "astonishing realism" in relation to Browning's love-poetry, and Pippa Passes is not a love-poem; but the insight of the comment is no less admirable when we use it to enhance a passage such as this. Who has not caught the sunbeam asleep in the mere washhand basin as water was poured out for the mere daily toilet—and felt that heartening gratitude for the symbol of captured joy, which made the instant typic and immortal? For these are the things that all may have, as Pippa had. The ambushing of that beam and the ordering it, in her sweet wayward imperiousness, to

" … grow together on the ceiling.

That will task your wits!"

—is one of the most enchanting moments in this lovely poem. The sunbeam settles by degrees (I wish that she had not been made to term it, with all too Browningesque agility, "the radiant cripple"), and finally lights on her Martagon lily, which is a lily with purple flowers. … Here again, for a moment, she ceases to be the lyrical child, and turns into the Browning (to cite Mr. Chesterton again) to whom Nature really meant such things as the basket of jelly-fish in The Englishman in Italy, or the stomach-cyst in Mr. Sludge the Medium—"the monstrosities and living mysteries of the sea." To me, these lines on the purple lily are not only ugly and grotesque—in that kind of ugliness which "was to Browning not in the least a necessary evil, but a quite unnecessary luxury, to be enjoyed for its own sake"—but are monstrously (more than any other instance I can recall) unsuited to the mind from which they are supposed to come.

"New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple,

Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk-bird's poll!"

One such example is enough. We have once more been deprived of Pippa, and got nothing really worth the possession in exchange.

But Pippa is quickly retrieved, with her gleeful claim that she is the queen of this glowing blossom, for is it not she who has guarded it from harm? So it may laugh through her window at the tantalised bee (are there travelling bees in Italy on New-Year's Day? But this is Midsummer Day!), may tease him as much as it likes, but must

" … in midst of thy glee,

Love thy Queen, worship me!"

There will be warrant for the worship—

" … For am I not, this day,

Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day?

* * * * *

I may fancy all day—and it shall be so—

That I taste of the pleasures, am called by the names,

Of the Happiest Four in our Asolo!"

So, as she winds up her hair (we may fancy), Pippa plays the not yet relinquished baby-game of Let's-pretend; but is grown-up in this—that she begins and ends with love, which children give and take unconsciously.

"Some one shall love me, as the world calls love:

I am no less than Ottima, take warning!

The gardens and the great stone house above,

And other house for shrubs, all glass in front,

Are mine; where Sebald steals, as he is wont,

To court me, while old Luca yet reposes … "

But this earliest pretending breaks down quickly. What, after all, is the sum of those doings in the shrub-house? What would Pippa gain, were she in truth great haughty Ottima? She would but "give abundant cause for prate." Ottima, bold, confident, and not fully aware, can face that out, but Pippa knows, more closely than the woman rich and proud can know,

"How we talk in the little town below."

So the first dream is over.

"Love, love, love—there's better love, I know!"

—and the next pretending shall "defy the scoffer"; it shall be the love of Jules and Phene—

"Why should I not be the bride as soon

As Ottima?"

Moreover, last night she had seen the stranger-girl arrive—"if you call it seeing her," for it had been the merest momentary glimpse—

" … one flash

Of the pale snow-pure cheek and black bright tresses,

Blacker than all except the black eyelash;

I wonder she contrives those lids no dresses,

So strict was she the veil

Should cover close her pale

Pure cheeks—a bride to look at and scarce touch,

Scarce touch, remember, Jules! For are not such

Used to be tended, flower-like, every feature,

As if one's breath would fray the lily of a creature?

* * * * *

How will she ever grant her Jules a bliss

So startling as her real first infant kiss?

Oh, no—not envy, this!"

For, recalling the virgin dimness of that apparition, the slender gamut of that exquisite reserve, the little work-girl has a moment's pang of pity for herself, who has to trip along the streets "all but naked to the knee."

"Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed,"

she cries, who is pure gold if not pure whiteness, and in an instant shows herself to be at any rate pure innocence. It could not be envy, she argues, which pierced her as she thought of that immaculate girlhood—

" … for if you gave me

Leave to take or to refuse,

In earnest, do you think I'd choose

That sort of new love to enslave me?

Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;

As little fear of losing it as winning:

Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,

And only parents' love can last our lives."

And she turns, thus rejecting the new love, to the "Son and Mother, gentle pair," who commune at evening in the turret: what prevents her being Luigi?

"Let me be Luigi! If I only knew

What was my mother's face—my father, too!"

For Pippa has never seen either, knows not who either was, nor whence each came. And just because, thus ignorant, she cannot truly figure to herself such love, she now rejects in turn this third pretending—

"Nay, if you come to that, best love of all

Is God's;"

—and she will be Monsignor! To-night he will bless the home of his dead brother, and God will bless in turn

"That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn

With love for all men! I, to-night at least,

Would be that holy and beloved priest."

Now all the weighing of love with love is over; she has chosen, and already has the proof of having chosen rightly, already seems to share in God's love, for there comes back to memory an ancient New-Year's hymn—

"All service ranks the same with God."

No one can work on this earth except as God wills—

" … God's puppets, best and worst,

Are we; there is no last or first."

And we must not talk of "small events": none exceeds another in greatness. …

The revelation has come to her. Not Ottima nor Phene, not Luigi and his mother, not even the holy and beloved priest, ranks higher in God's eyes than she, the little work-girl—

"I will pass each, and see their happiness,

And envy none—being just as great, no doubt,

Useful to men, and dear to God, as they!"

* * * * *

And so, laughing at herself once more because she cares "so mightily" for her one day, but still insistent that the sun shall shine, she sketches her outing—

"Down the grass path grey with dew,

Under the pine-wood, blind with boughs,

Where the swallow never flew,

Nor yet cicala dared carouse,

No, dared carouse—"

But breaks off, breathless, in the singing for which through the whole region she is famed, leaves the "large mean airy chamber," enters the little street of Asolo—and begins her Day.