Poem of the week: Two in the Campagna by Robert Browning



HYPERLINK "" Two in the Campagna Edit 0 0 3… First Published 1855, in Men and Women.- The speaker is a man in search of the ‘moment, one and infinite’. The poem has, therefore, been described as a quest by critic, Stefan Hawlin.- The dramatic persona seeks an intensity of physical and spiritual ‘togetherness’.- A poem in which love is fulfilled and where its effects are rich and transforming.- The Brownings had been married nine years by the time this poem was published, so it considers relationships with the benefit of hindsight and experience.Points for consideration- Does the dramatic persona have unrealistic expectations of love or do they realise it will never be perfect.- Is the idealised, countryside setting an apt location in which to think about the value of love?- Does the poem suggest that consistent happiness is possible/desirable?Poems for comparison- Up at a Villa, Down in the City - depiction of Italy, forceful use of rhythm- Love Among the Ruins – being a couple- Dubiety – reflecting on life with the benefit of hindsight- The Lost Leader - Alienation "TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA." The sentiment of this poem can only be renderedin its concluding words: "Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn." (vol. vi. p. 153.)For its pain is that of a heart both restless and weary: ever seeking tograsp the Infinite in the finite, and ever eluded by it. The sufferer isa man. He longs to rest in the affection of a woman who loves him, andwhom he also loves; but whenever their union seems complete, his soul isspirited away, and he is adrift again. He asks the meaning of itall--where the fault lies, if fault there be; he begs her to help him todiscover it. The Campagna is around them, with its "endless fleece offeathery grasses," its "everlasting wash of air;" its wide suggestionsof passion and of peace. The clue to the enigma seems to glance acrosshim, in the form of a gossamer thread. He traces it from point to point,by the objects on which it rests. But just as he calls his love to helphim to hold it fast, it breaks off, and floats into the invisible. Hisdoom is endless change. The tired, tantalized spirit must accept it.SummaryThis represents one of Browning’s more abstract poems. Returning to some of the themes developed in “Porphyria’s Lover,” albeit in a very different context, “Two in the Campagna” explores the fleeting nature of love and ideas. The speaker regrets that, just as he cannot ever perfectly capture an idea, he cannot achieve total communion with his lover, despite the helpful erotic suggestions of nature. Though our hearts be finite, we yearn infinitely; the resulting pain serves as a reminder of human limitations. Form“Two in the Campagna” divides into five-line stanzas, the first four lines in tetrameter and the final line in trimeter. The stanzas rhyme ABABA, although, because the lines are enjambed (sentence breaks do not necessarily coincide with line breaks), the rhyme undergoes a certain weakening. Sections of the poem come in fairly regular iambs, but this often breaks down: just as the poet can’t quite capture either his ideas or his lover, he can’t quite conquer language mentaryThe “Campagna” refers to the countryside around Rome. Until the middle of the twentieth century it grew fairly wild and unclaimed. Because its swampy areas nurtured mosquitoes carrying malaria, the conventional English tourist largely avoided the Campagna, leaving it to the Italian peasants, who farmed sections of it. However, in nineteenth-century literature the Campagna also symbolized a sort of alternative space, where rules of society did not apply and anything could happen; we see this notion expressed in such works as Henry James’s Italian-set novels and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun. In this poem, the Campagna seems to suggest to the speaker that he can in fact transcend his human limitations to put his subtle ideas into poetry or see the world through his lover’s eyes. However, in suggesting this the wild space merely plays a cruel trick; teased and disappointed, the speaker is left more melancholy than ever. The comparison between love and art comments on the difficulty of interpersonal communication. Just as the speaker can never really see through his lover’s eyes, so too can he never communicate the subtle shadings of his thoughts through his poetry. Experience lies beyond the grasp of language. Yet—as the existence of this poem itself attests—we can approximate experience, however inaccurately, and these approximations are not without their significance and value. Indeed, it is perhaps our awareness that poetry, like love, is necessarily imperfect that lends it its beauty. Irony, too—one of the most sophisticated forms of communication—results from our human failings, as the poem’s conclusion shows; “The old trick” both thwarts and enables poetry.Poem of the week: Two in the Campagna by Robert BrowningPublished a few years before The Origin of Species, Browning's paradoxical love poem seems to anticipate the Darwinian outlookShare 86 Email The Italian countryside Photograph: Files/EPARobert Browning's "Two in the Campagna" is a study in paradox. It's a love poem that deconstructs love, a pastoral that has seen not only death but bio-diversity. Conversational, daringly sexual, it remains a soliloquy. There may be two in this campagna but two are not one, and the poet has no hesitation in admitting it.By 1854, Browning had been married long enough to admit it, of course. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, according to an early biographer, regarded the poem highly, and a sense of complicity is sustained. The speaker frequently turns to his companion for verification. If he is more interested in thought than sensation, he never gives up on the desire for transcendent union. The burning question with which the poem begins, and which will be re-examined thoroughly in its later stanzas, is about shared experience: "... do you feel today / as I have felt ...?"The first paradox is that the pair of lovers sits down in order "to stray / In spirit better through the land". "This morn of Rome and May", the spacious, sunlit fields with their "endless fleece / Of feathery grasses" are to be thought about, rather than luxuriantly enjoyed.But the train of thought is immediately elusive, "like turns of thread the spiders throw". It can only be temporarily pinned down by the poet's mastery of rhyme, not permanently secured. The second stanza evokes the tentative initial process of composition. Rhymes can't always be found, or can't always be trusted with ideas, and the poem seems to fear that the ideas it wants to explore will somehow escape.The speaker is something of a naturalist, intently observing not only his own thoughts but the wandering gossamer of an actual web. It leads his eye from the fennel to the ruined tomb to the minutiae of the flower whose "orange cup" contains five small beetles. The beetles provoke a new thought about perception: "blind and green, they grope" and, by implication, the poet in his world is blind and groping, too.Although Darwin's The Origin of Species was not published until 1859, four years after Men and Women, the collection in which "Two in the Campagna" appears, new biological findings were certainly in the mid-Victorian air. "Such life here, through such lengths of hours" expresses awe not only of time, but of diversity. The ensuing four lines seem to attempt a Darwinian reconciliation of the universe, apparently free to get on with its own evolutionary processes, and the designer who watches the plans unfold: "Such miracles perfumed in play, / Such primal naked forms of flowers, / Such letting nature have her way / While heaven looks from its towers!"At this point, the speaker remembers his companion and again the questions of union and separation begin to tease. The desire for sensuous hedonism is expressed with a touch of defiance, but the poet knows that this is not the whole answer. "Unashamed of soul" though these unconventional English lovers may manage to be, a perfect union is impossible; they cannot fuse into one self.The problem of space turns into a problem with time. There is the almost-captured "good minute" and, then, the question, "Already, how am I so far / out of that minute" – perfectly timed to occur, if not exactly a minute later, after the single beat of the stanza break. To be in the moment, purely present to experience, is only fleetingly possible. Its achievement would mean an existence outside time, and that, as the poem recognises, is beyond possibility."Two in the Campagna" is one of the most sombrely honest of love poems, but its doubts and questions are so scrupulously recorded and so beautifully, coherently woven together that it reassures us. For most of the scientists of Browning's day, the designer of the universe was still "in his Heaven", and the poet, by analogy, still at the centre of his twisting, turning, but reassuringly symmetrical web of a poem. Random, meaningless and incoherent modernity is still many decades in the future.'s a beautiful poem. It reminded me of the poem by David Holbrook - "Fingers in the Door" - about a father accidentally catching his daughter's fingers in the door jamb. I hope it is ok to quote a couple of lines:-"She clung to me, and it crowded in to me how she and I were Light-years from any mutual help or comfort... nothing can restore. She, I mother, sister, dwell dispersed among dead bright stars: We are there in our hundred thousand pieces!"Perhaps, in some way, both poets are trying to breach with words, the distance that lies between each individual, eventually acknowledging that all they can really do is point to its existence, I wonder how common/universal the feeling is, and why it seems (at least to some) to be so important? - as though it were an obstacle which we are hard wired to constantly try to overcome - almost as if it were an un-natural state of being. Perhaps, in the end, music is better than words at communicating across the gap.I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more,It's a very healthy confession, that in the second line (the wish in the first line would be most unhealthy, if he really meant it, but I get the sense that he doesn't, or at least not for longer than a moment). He's a lot more realistic, and less soppy, about Lerve than most poets of his time, or even of later times. The only thing I find really clunky in this poem is the rhyme-word "dove", which you just know is not what he'd normally call this companion but is there because it's leading up to "love" in another two lines... he usually handles rhyme better than that. Great title though, given the poem's theme.It's a pleasant weaving of words but the requirements of the rhyme makes it interesting only as a patterning of sound but hardly any sort of representation of the of the sadness of the ullage of love. It's not surpring that last week's happy poem's form was a couragous breaking loose for making more sense and getting away from the subtleties of the courtly traditions and forms of earlier times. it so strives for rhyme that it says nothing prettily. "...endless fleece/of feathery grasses everywhere..." shows up the need for the redundancies 'endless and everywhere - either is redundant. 'fleece' seems like cliche and so does 'feathery' but not sure it was in the 1850s.There may be two in this campagna but two are not one, and the poet has no hesitation in admitting it.I love the middle clause, especially! The mathematical rigour. Those canny Greeks again (Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes; dem's der fellas fur me, Mrs) I'm reminded of Merlin Stone's The Paradise Papers aka When God was a Woman her contention dat one plus one only ever equals one when 'the better half' (almost invariably female) of the pair counts fer noughtBy 1854, Browning had been married long enough to admit it, of course.Any earlier and he'd have been lynched as a bold philandering protestantThe speaker frequently turns to his companion for verification. If he is more interested in thought than sensation, he never gives up on the desire for transcendent unionThis was long before Karl Popper, remember!The first paradox is that the pair of lovers sits downor, more precisely, "sits down in order" Which anybody knows is never der way fur courting couples to go about any ting The speaker is something of a naturalist....and, by implication, the poet in his world is blind and groping, too. Well, I wouldn't argue with that, or with thisAlthough Darwin's The Origin of Species was not published until 1859, four years after Men and Women, the collection in which "Two in the Campagna" appears, new biological findings were certainly in the mid-Victorian air. "Such life here, through such lengths of hours" expresses awe not only of time, but of diversityI don't see what Darwin has to do with it, or new biological findings (even in the air). Did nobody beforehand ever express awe "not only of time, but of diversity"? Why would such monkey (as distinct from monkish) business be more in the mid-Victorian air than the Book of Job say?a Darwinian reconciliation of the universe, apparently free to get on with its own evolutionary processes, and the designer who watches the plans unfoldcould not be further removed from (or any more irrelevant to) this poem (imho) The Darwinian connection seems to me such a silly one that nothing even I could attempt would be sillier. Even "daringly sexual" doesn't come close (Mr Browning 'daringly sexual'!?) Perhaps it all boils down to the fact that (for me - and who would know better about the following adjectives?)Random, meaningless and incoherent modernitywas already millennia in the past. Almost passé I would I could adopt your will, See with your eyes, and set my heart Beating by yours, and drink my fill At your soul's springs, - your part my part In life, for good or ill. What I find interesting is the subject. The subject of the poem. The thinker and doer. How that differs from EBB as subject. * * * Who I do know from a few poems, perhaps even on this blog, and on masterful one about her dog where she is clearly talking about her husband. You can see it once you transpose the names (CAPITALS): To Robert Browning, My Husband Yet, my pretty sportive friend, Little is't to such an end That I praise thy rareness! Other MEN may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears, And this glossy fairness. But of thee it shall be said, This MAN watched beside a bed Day and night unweary Watched within a curtained room, Where no sunbeam brake the gloom Round the sick and dreary. Roses, gathered for a vase, In that chamber died apace, Beam and breeze resigning. This MAN only, waited on, Knowing that when light is gone Love remains for shining. Other MEN in thymy dew Tracked the hares, and followed through Sunny moor or meadow. This MAN only, crept and crept Next a languid cheek that slept, Sharing in the shadow. Other MEN of loyal cheer Bounded at the whistle clear, Up the woodside hieing. This MAN only, watched in reach Of a faintly uttered speech, Or a louder sighing. And if one or two quick tears Dropped upon his glossy ears, Or a sigh came double Up he sprang in eager haste, Fawning, fondling, breathing fast, In a tender trouble. And this MAN was satisfied If a pale thin hand would glide Down his dewlaps sloping Which he pushed his nose within, After—platforming his chin On the palm left open. Elizabeth Barrett Browning TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA The Campagna, a plain around the city of Rome, was in ancient times the seat of many cities; it is now dotted with ruins. "There is a solemnity and beauty about the Campagna entirely its own. To the reflective mind, this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion; its vast, almost limitless extent as it seems to the traveler; its abundant herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilization, fill the mind with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in the poem." (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 553.) A. _I touched a thought._ The elusive thought which he fancifully pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (_Life of Browning_, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment."I am going to analyse and set in time one of the most famous works by Robert Browning, called Two in the Campagna. I am going to start with a short explanation of the life of the author at the time the poem was published, and then the poem will be analysed and chronologically set in context.?Robert Browning was born in 1812 in London. Most of Browning’s education was build up at home. When he was fourteen, he was able to speak French, Italian, Latin and Greek. He was so well read that he didn’t realise how abstract his poems were to understand. He met Elisabeth Barrett in 1845 and the next year they got married and eloped to Florence, where Browning wrote his best works, including Men and Women (published on 1855), where we can read this Two in the Campagna. In 1881 the Browning Society was created, and finally he died in 1889 because of bronchitis. [Glenn Everet, Robert Browning – Biography. The Victorian Web, January 2006. ()]?Nowadays Tennyson and himself are considered the most representative poets of the Victorian age. According to the Norton Anthology, Robert Browning belongs to the Mid and Late Victorian period.?This poem is divided into twelve stanzas with five lines each one. The rhyme is ababa. The fifth line of each stanza is shorter than the previous lines, and what I think it means is the feeling of shortening of the life that the author wants to show the reader. The lines are enjambed. Life passes quickly and isn’t long enough to love the person who is at our side. The campagna was a big countryside in Rome, and in the nineteenth-century literature the Campagna symbolized an alternative space, “where rules of society did not apply and anything could happen”, [SparkNotes summary (anonymous). Robert Browning’s Poetry. January 2006. ()]. Who speaks in the poem is the poet himself, and the addressee is his wife, so the reader is excluded from the action. ?The poem also symbolises the limitations of human persons to love, as we can read in the two final verses: “Infinite passion, and the pain; Of finite hearts that yearn”. Another example of these limitations is in lines 36 and 37, where the poem says: “I would that you were all to me; You that are just so much, no more.”?This poem was written and published in 1855, in the book Men and Women, and at this time Robert Browning was living in Florence with his wife, Elisabeth Barrett Browning. They were living in Italy since 1846. They lived there until the death of Elisabeth in 1861. In this work two great poems by this author are also included: Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto.?To sum up, we can say that this poem shows Browning’s opinion of the ideal love, but at the same time the love that cannot be totally conquered because of society bounds, as well as we can read one of the poems dedicated to his wife during the most happy days lived by the author in Italy.?"Two In The Campagna" is essentially a love poem, written by Browning to capture the tragic and dark aspects of a relationship. The poem commences with romantic images of the couple sitting in the fields of Rome in spring. The first line, starting with 'I wonder' sets the contemplative tone of the piece, and the poet follows one particular trail of thought for several stanzas. Clearly, the poet is trying to capture what cannot be easily confined; he is attempting to articulate a sentiment of fleeting love that perhaps can only be felt. Browning describes the thought floating away over the picturesque scenery: ?Help me to hold it! First it left The yellowing fennel, run to seed There, branching from the brickwork?s cleft?? The flowing lines and use of enjambment represent his thoughts spilling over, almost frolicking through the fields of Rome. This style of poetry is used by Browning regularly: for example in ?Love Among The Ruins? his thoughts flow over from one line to the next ?the complexities of human passion, and does this effectively from many points of view on love. However, it does seem that Browning usually has a slightly subdued, possibly even warped view of love and romance ? and this could be because his own love life was publicly perceived to be ultimately perfect but retrospectively it appears his marriage with Elizabeth Browning was full of doubt and possessiveness, as seen in ?Any Wife To Any Husband? which most critics believe to be based on the troubled relationship between the Browning?s.onday, September 12, 2011 HYPERLINK "" Robert Browning’s treatment of human psychology and attitude to life reflected in : Two in the Campagna and The Laboratory “Through out my life I have learned to love. Love is the Summum bonum of my life”. – says Robert Browning in a letter to his friend. And what he says here constitutes the philosophy he wishes to advocate in all his poems. Browning’s philosophy is optimistic, heartening and cheering. He is a poet of hope, joy faith, and immortality of soul, invincibility of good and supremacy of God. The best of his poems: The Last Ride Together, A Grammarian’s Funeral, Fralippo Lippi, Pophyria’s Lover etc. been ample evidence of his philosophic outlook. As a dramatic monologue, Browning’s? poem Two In The Campagna sheds light on another facts of his philosophy of life, namely ‘an instant cannot be made eternal’, while poems like Porphyria’s Lover and Andrea Del Sarto strongly uphold the poet’s apposite point of view that instant can be made eternal. In Two In the Campagna, Browning holds just the opposite view, stressing the ever fluctuating nature of human thoughts and feeling including the moment of consummation. In fact, Browning was fully aware of the wide and varied phases of passions and thoughts. He gives an expression almost all of them in his poetry. He can point the fierce passion (Pippa Passes), the romantic love (The Last Red Together), the abnormal love (Porphyria’s Lover), married love (Meeting at Night), and so on.??? The essentials of Browning’s dramatic monologues are the central speaker, a critical moment of dramatic situation, fervent spiritual experience, a silent listener, lyricism, images from nature and rugged diction. in Two In The Campagna the lover is the speaker, in presence of his beloved who remains silent throughout the poem, the setting is in Roman Campagna and the critical thought, that arises in the Lover’s mind is the fleeting and transitory nature of love, even if profound in whatever degree, can never be made permanent. The speaker passionately declares his lover for the ladylove and wishes this attachment to transform something permanent and eternal. But love is paradoxical in nature and it prompts such question in lover’s thought: “Is it under our control/ to love or not to love?” surprisingly every lover of beloved is destined to experience a sense of frustration in not being able to make the instant eternal. The fleeting nature of ecstatic moments (consummation) in the scheme of love is eloquently, rather movingly expressed by the lover:?“ I pluck the rose?And love it more than tongue can speak – ?Then the good minutes goes”. The idea of man’s inherent helplessness in his attempt to make the instant eternal acquires a lofty philosophical height fostering a psychological realism. An answer to this paradox is given at last by the lover that the human passion is really infinite, while the possibility of having fulfillment of all the desires is limited: “Only I discern?Infinite passion and the pain?Of finite hearts that yearn”. ??????????? If the chief interest of Two in the Campagna lies in exploration of the inadequacy of every human situation, the poem The Laboratory points to Browning’s conscious attempt to study in jealousy in another human situation. The Laboratory unmistakably unfolds Browning’s skill in analyzing the psychology of a jilted woman. The entire poem serves as mirror to reflect the complex and cruel nature of that prevented woman who coolly watched the alchemist grinding poison which she would administer to her rival. What makes the lady so much desperate is her ingrained jealousy, her sense of being defeated by the lover, a sort of adjunct inferiority complex. The complex compounded with enormous jealousy prompts the lady to take recourse to such a dangerous step like killing her rival and would be victor by poisoning. ??????????? Thus, Browning’s poems are characterized by a remarkable insight into the subtleties of human nature which Browning studies by an analysis of individual characters. The conflict in his monologues is not situational but psychical. Browning is thus a forerunner of psycho-analysis and the stream of consciousness technique. And the characters portrayed by Browning – be it he a lover in Two in the Campagna or be it she the jilted lady in The Laboratory have become so vivid and life like that they always seem to belong to down to the earth reality.? ? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download