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Apr. 30th, 2008 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt'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.
The other major player in the plot is Marian Erle, a Saintly Lower-Class Girl that Romney decides to marry in order to Tear Down Social Barriers. Despite the whole Saintly thing, Marian is awesome because she's the only girl in any Victorian novel I've ever read who is raped and neither blames herself nor finds relief in dying tragically - and the book lets her be justifiably furious when people do try and blame her, which seems natural to us, but is a big step for a Saintly Victorian Character. She doesn't recover magically and settles down to marriage and more babies with the first noble man who offers to legitimize her, either; At the thought/ the damps break out on me like leprosy/ although I'm clean she says, which may be the most open representation of post-rape trauma in Victorian literature (although, of course, I have obviously not read all of Victorian literature, so I can't say for sure.)
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'.
These parts, on reading, are some of my favorite bits in the poem. It comes early on, and even if she'd never written anything else, I would be counting Barrett Browning as among my favorite poets for these alone:
Or else I sate on in my chamber green,
And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed
My prayers without the vicar; read my books,
Without considering whether they were fit
To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good
By being ungenerous even to a book,
And calculating profits, - so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headling, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth -
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
This might seem over-soppy and sentimental about reading, until you reach the part it needs to be in conversation with, a few stanzas on:
Sublimest danger, over which none weeps,
When any young wayfaring soul goes forth
Alone, unconscious of the perilous road,
The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,
To thrust his own way, he an alien, through
The world of books! Ah, you! - you think it fine,
you clap hands - 'A fair day!' - you cheer him on,
As if the worst, could happen, were to rest
Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,
Behold! The world of books is still the world,
And worldlings in it are less merciful
And more puissant. For the wicked there
Are winged like angels; every knife that strikes
Is edged from elemental fire to assail
A spiritual life; the beautiful seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.
Read everything, the poem says, but don't forget that other people's thoughts can be dangerous; don't accept blindly. Books are powerful, and how you say things can sometimes be as important as what you're saying. This might not hit everyone as hard as it hit me, but I hardly ever see people who write about reading the way I read - and I especially don't expect to find it in a Victorian verse novel.
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!
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.
The other major player in the plot is Marian Erle, a Saintly Lower-Class Girl that Romney decides to marry in order to Tear Down Social Barriers. Despite the whole Saintly thing, Marian is awesome because she's the only girl in any Victorian novel I've ever read who is raped and neither blames herself nor finds relief in dying tragically - and the book lets her be justifiably furious when people do try and blame her, which seems natural to us, but is a big step for a Saintly Victorian Character. She doesn't recover magically and settles down to marriage and more babies with the first noble man who offers to legitimize her, either; At the thought/ the damps break out on me like leprosy/ although I'm clean she says, which may be the most open representation of post-rape trauma in Victorian literature (although, of course, I have obviously not read all of Victorian literature, so I can't say for sure.)
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'.
These parts, on reading, are some of my favorite bits in the poem. It comes early on, and even if she'd never written anything else, I would be counting Barrett Browning as among my favorite poets for these alone:
Or else I sate on in my chamber green,
And lived my life, and thought my thoughts, and prayed
My prayers without the vicar; read my books,
Without considering whether they were fit
To do me good. Mark, there. We get no good
By being ungenerous even to a book,
And calculating profits, - so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves and plunge
Soul-forward, headling, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth -
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
This might seem over-soppy and sentimental about reading, until you reach the part it needs to be in conversation with, a few stanzas on:
Sublimest danger, over which none weeps,
When any young wayfaring soul goes forth
Alone, unconscious of the perilous road,
The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes,
To thrust his own way, he an alien, through
The world of books! Ah, you! - you think it fine,
you clap hands - 'A fair day!' - you cheer him on,
As if the worst, could happen, were to rest
Too long beside a fountain. Yet, behold,
Behold! The world of books is still the world,
And worldlings in it are less merciful
And more puissant. For the wicked there
Are winged like angels; every knife that strikes
Is edged from elemental fire to assail
A spiritual life; the beautiful seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.
Read everything, the poem says, but don't forget that other people's thoughts can be dangerous; don't accept blindly. Books are powerful, and how you say things can sometimes be as important as what you're saying. This might not hit everyone as hard as it hit me, but I hardly ever see people who write about reading the way I read - and I especially don't expect to find it in a Victorian verse novel.
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!
