Oh, Henley! I volunteer at our local Oxfam bookshop, with the specific job of pricing and listing books for online shop – which is to say, pricing and listing *valuable* books for the online shop. Seeing that Agamemnon priced at £3.99 gives me physical pain. "Twenty times" is a bit toppy but not by much; Abebooks has a couple of copies at £75 or thereabouts. (Our rule of thumb is to undercut Abebooks, but by as little as possible.)
My father used to tell the story that the first line of Sordello was
"Who would shall hear Sordello's story sung"
and the last line
"Who would has heard Sordello's story sung"
and that everything in between was completely incomprehensible. Which made me more curious about it if anything. In the event I never read it at university, but I did get as far with the narrative poems as Mr Sludge the Medium (which is rather wonderful). Reading that much pentameter had an odd effect on my own writing; I found on reading Browning that I could/(without much effort – no, without much thought)/express myself in metre more or less/at will, should opportunity arise,/an unsuspected fluency unbraked/by sentence length conventions, common sense/or any other tenets or constraints/that might rein in this fluid, sprawling verse. There was a (brief) period when my career goal was being a Famous Poet, specifically through the medium of narrative poetry. (I was quite young. Coincidentally(?), it was around this time that I wrote a poem featuring the phrase "rocks old on a hillside scattered huge", in which (I'm sure you'll agree) it's perfectly clear that 'old' qualifies 'hillside'.)
"Sordello" is not as difficult as it is sometimes made out to be, but it switches back and forth so readily between Sordello's life and his extended romantic and poetic reveries that it is easy to lose track of what is "real" (within the story) and what is (doubly) imaginary. Perhaps this gives a fair impression of what being a young poet was like for Browning!
Tennyson said something similar about Sordello: that the only two lines in the whole poem he understood were the first line and the last line, and that they were both lies. Carlyle claimed to have read the whole poem without ever working out whether 'Sordello' was a person, a city or a book. I read it when I was doing my PhD (of course) and recently reread it. It's really not that difficult of comprehension! I talk about it a little here: https://profadamroberts.substack.com/p/on-rhyme
Great article. I've only recently explored Robert Browning, and picked up his complete works of poetry. It's not my normal form of interest (I love prose classic literature), but I'm really trying to broaden my horizons.
I was told that when Browning was asked to explain (I think) Sordello, he said When I wrote that, only God and Robert Browning understood it. And now only God does.
It's a great line, but (if you'll pardon me for my Browning nerdery) not actually Browning. It's from the stage-play "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1930) by Rudolf Besier, later made into a popular movie. Elizabeth asks for elucidation of some difficult line in RB's poetry.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: Well?
ROBERT BROWNING: Well, Miss Barrett, when that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now, only God understands it.
"Balaustion's Adventure" is great! It is impressive how much incident and drama Browning is able to squeeze from a handful of sentences in Plutarch's life of Nikias, and Balaustion herself is a lively and attractive character. It is strange, however, that the play that Balaustion describes to the Sicilians is the "Alkestis", for that was one of Euripides' earliest plays, hardly likely to be new to the islanders. A recent play like "Iphigenia in Tauris" or "Ion" would make more sense in context. Perhaps Browning felt that "Alkestis" was the most thematically appropriate, with its miraculous resurrection.
It's about EBB: the beloved wife who has died: the dream of her being resurrected, brought back to Browning, as Alkestis is to Admetus. It's also because RB had a particular interest in Herakles, as a figure: heroes and heroism.
Also, Plutarch is clear that what the Sicilians valued were the actual words of Euripides: they had Greeks teach them choral hymns and what the text describes as ᾄσμᾰτᾰ, ('songs, lyric odes, hymns'), not have some woman paraphrase a whole play for them. But Browning is allowed to extrapolate.
That ex libris is beautiful, and almost worth the price of admission in itself. I ran down a rabbit-hole and discovered more about Hugo Gellert than I probably need to know, but a print version of the same image was sold at auction a few years ago, and was dated "c. 1940". (I would have guessed twenty years earlier, but it could of course be deliberately retro or I might just be terrible at guessing art periods.) Regardless, Gellert wasn't active until the 1910s, which might suggest that Stender was not the original owner. Which in turn would mean that at least two people couldn't make it past page 9. Unless the volume itself is cursed, and a great calamity will befall anyone who cuts more than a page or two. (https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/hugo-gellert-hungarian-american-1892-1985-26-c-5104d90978)
That's fascinating. You're right, the likelihood is that Stellert was a young man in World War 1, and acquired this copy of Browning's Agamemnon afterwards: possibly (I'm wondering how a book belonging to a German national ended up in a Henley Oxfam) he stayed in the UK after the war, once released from his Prisoner of War camp. There are no other markings in or on the book, so I can't see who the original owner was.
Oh, Henley! I volunteer at our local Oxfam bookshop, with the specific job of pricing and listing books for online shop – which is to say, pricing and listing *valuable* books for the online shop. Seeing that Agamemnon priced at £3.99 gives me physical pain. "Twenty times" is a bit toppy but not by much; Abebooks has a couple of copies at £75 or thereabouts. (Our rule of thumb is to undercut Abebooks, but by as little as possible.)
My father used to tell the story that the first line of Sordello was
"Who would shall hear Sordello's story sung"
and the last line
"Who would has heard Sordello's story sung"
and that everything in between was completely incomprehensible. Which made me more curious about it if anything. In the event I never read it at university, but I did get as far with the narrative poems as Mr Sludge the Medium (which is rather wonderful). Reading that much pentameter had an odd effect on my own writing; I found on reading Browning that I could/(without much effort – no, without much thought)/express myself in metre more or less/at will, should opportunity arise,/an unsuspected fluency unbraked/by sentence length conventions, common sense/or any other tenets or constraints/that might rein in this fluid, sprawling verse. There was a (brief) period when my career goal was being a Famous Poet, specifically through the medium of narrative poetry. (I was quite young. Coincidentally(?), it was around this time that I wrote a poem featuring the phrase "rocks old on a hillside scattered huge", in which (I'm sure you'll agree) it's perfectly clear that 'old' qualifies 'hillside'.)
"Sordello" is not as difficult as it is sometimes made out to be, but it switches back and forth so readily between Sordello's life and his extended romantic and poetic reveries that it is easy to lose track of what is "real" (within the story) and what is (doubly) imaginary. Perhaps this gives a fair impression of what being a young poet was like for Browning!
The homophonic shadow-line "rock, sold on a hillside" is clearly also part of your effect.
Tennyson said something similar about Sordello: that the only two lines in the whole poem he understood were the first line and the last line, and that they were both lies. Carlyle claimed to have read the whole poem without ever working out whether 'Sordello' was a person, a city or a book. I read it when I was doing my PhD (of course) and recently reread it. It's really not that difficult of comprehension! I talk about it a little here: https://profadamroberts.substack.com/p/on-rhyme
Great article. I've only recently explored Robert Browning, and picked up his complete works of poetry. It's not my normal form of interest (I love prose classic literature), but I'm really trying to broaden my horizons.
Wow: so extraordinary: I had no idea altho a fan of RB and his EBB. Thank you very mch indeed.
I was told that when Browning was asked to explain (I think) Sordello, he said When I wrote that, only God and Robert Browning understood it. And now only God does.
It's a great line, but (if you'll pardon me for my Browning nerdery) not actually Browning. It's from the stage-play "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1930) by Rudolf Besier, later made into a popular movie. Elizabeth asks for elucidation of some difficult line in RB's poetry.
ELIZABETH BARRETT: Well?
ROBERT BROWNING: Well, Miss Barrett, when that passage was written only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now, only God understands it.
Thank you! It always seemed a little too neat..
"Balaustion's Adventure" is great! It is impressive how much incident and drama Browning is able to squeeze from a handful of sentences in Plutarch's life of Nikias, and Balaustion herself is a lively and attractive character. It is strange, however, that the play that Balaustion describes to the Sicilians is the "Alkestis", for that was one of Euripides' earliest plays, hardly likely to be new to the islanders. A recent play like "Iphigenia in Tauris" or "Ion" would make more sense in context. Perhaps Browning felt that "Alkestis" was the most thematically appropriate, with its miraculous resurrection.
It's about EBB: the beloved wife who has died: the dream of her being resurrected, brought back to Browning, as Alkestis is to Admetus. It's also because RB had a particular interest in Herakles, as a figure: heroes and heroism.
Also, Plutarch is clear that what the Sicilians valued were the actual words of Euripides: they had Greeks teach them choral hymns and what the text describes as ᾄσμᾰτᾰ, ('songs, lyric odes, hymns'), not have some woman paraphrase a whole play for them. But Browning is allowed to extrapolate.
That ex libris is beautiful, and almost worth the price of admission in itself. I ran down a rabbit-hole and discovered more about Hugo Gellert than I probably need to know, but a print version of the same image was sold at auction a few years ago, and was dated "c. 1940". (I would have guessed twenty years earlier, but it could of course be deliberately retro or I might just be terrible at guessing art periods.) Regardless, Gellert wasn't active until the 1910s, which might suggest that Stender was not the original owner. Which in turn would mean that at least two people couldn't make it past page 9. Unless the volume itself is cursed, and a great calamity will befall anyone who cuts more than a page or two. (https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/hugo-gellert-hungarian-american-1892-1985-26-c-5104d90978)
That's fascinating. You're right, the likelihood is that Stellert was a young man in World War 1, and acquired this copy of Browning's Agamemnon afterwards: possibly (I'm wondering how a book belonging to a German national ended up in a Henley Oxfam) he stayed in the UK after the war, once released from his Prisoner of War camp. There are no other markings in or on the book, so I can't see who the original owner was.
PS "What need? What new? What having heard or seen,/By what announcement's tidings" etc is surely in the background of Housman's
"wherefore seeking whom/Whence by what way how purposed art thou come"
Housman is likely getting this from the source, though.