Apr. 30th, 2008

skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (teach me to hear mermaids)
It's still April, yes? Which means I am just under the wire to get in an extended gushing post on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh.

I am ashamed to admit that, while I have for a long time been a fan of Robert Browning's (his poetry is all full of murderers and psychopaths! It's awesome) I had never read much of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work before we were assigned Aurora Leigh in class. O foolish self! Aurora Leigh is a huge novel-length poem, and while epic-length poems are not usually my thing, I am now IN LOVE with Elizabeth Barrett Browning on account of it.

The plot centers around a couple of main questions, of which the most important (or at least most interesting to me) is probably: is devoting your life to creating art a valid choice when the world is majorly screwed up and in need of help? The title character and poet-narrator thinks yes, and that poetry is important; her cousin/love interest Romney, a social reformer, thinks no, that poetry is frivolous and that she'd be much better off doing something practical with her life, like devoting herself to his work. (Romney, by the way, is basically what would happen if you mated Edward Rochester and St. John Rivers and then fed the baby on nothing but bread and proto-Marxist theory.) The plot centers in large part around the dynamic between them, as Aurora grows as an artist but feels more and more cut off from the world, and Romney becomes increasingly obsessed with saving the world single-handed and makes some pretty serious mistakes as a result.

ExpandSpoilers! )

One of the reasons I love the poem, I have to say, is how hilariously Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows Aurora Leigh deluding herself about the ongoing (star-crossed, of course)romance. The narrative is full of bits like this:

I will not let thy hideous secret out
To agonise the man I love - I mean
The friend I love . . . as friends love.


SURE, AURORA. One can practically see the eyedarts! (I do not think I am a bad person to crack up at this! I think we are supposed to!)

I am also greatly amused by the bits where EBB gives a shout-out to Robert Browning:

'There's nothing great
Nor small,' has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell:
And truly, I reiterate, nothing's small!


I like this passage for many reasons - it goes into a long discussion of the relative awesomeness of everything in the world, of which I greatly approve - but it also just makes me go 'awww, Brownings!' and revel in my dorky dead poets OTP.

However, all of this is just icing on the cake. The real meat of the poem, and the real reason it has a place in my heart forever, are the places where Aurora Leigh talks about art, and reading and writing - and though there are plenty of times when I don't agree with what she says, there other places where I just sit there going 'YES'.

ExpandQuotes on reading below the cut; consider this my contribution to National Poetry Month. )

I could go on to put in quotes about writing, and probably should, but I've babbled on long enough, so instead I'll stop, and just say that - though I know it certainly wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, and most sane people would balk at a three-hundred-page verse novel; though I don't much like the end, and I don't know if I can resolve the conclusions Browning comes to with the ideals in the book; though there are parts that are very, very Victorian - the poem talked to me, and I think it would have something to say to most people who consider themselves producers of creative work.

Happy End of Poetry Month, everyone!

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