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It was perhaps best expressed by Carlyle, who wrote to say that his wife had read Sordello with great interest, and wished to know whether Sordello was a man, or a city, or a book. Better known, of course, is the story of Tennyson, who said that the first line of the poem "Who will, may hear Sordello's story told," and the last line "Who would, has heard Sordello's story told,"
"I don't believe any one has ever made head or tail out of 'Sordello. There once was a man who said there were only two intelligible lines in the poem the first and the last and that both were lies. 'Who will, may hear Sordello's story told, and 'Who would, has heard Sordello's story told. Don't worry about not understanding it." "Don't you?" "Not a bit," said I.
And the conclusion of the whole matter can be briefly stated: the primary need of such a nature as Sordello's and we can hardly doubt that Browning would have assigned himself a place in the class to which the poet of his imagination belongs is that of a Power above himself, which shall deliver him from egoism, and whose loyal service shall concentrate and direct his various faculties, and this a Power not unknown or remote, but one brought near and made manifest; or, in other words, it is the need of that which old religion has set forth as God in Christ.
Sordello's overweening spiritual pride "gate-vein of this heart's blood of Lombardy" appealed to Van Kuyp. The stress of souls, the welter of cross-purposes which begirt the youthful dreamer, his love for Palma, and his swift death when all the world thrust upon him its joys here were motives, indeed, for any musician of lofty aim and sympathetic imagination.
Then Walther relates his dream, meeting Sachs's request for a master-song by casting it as he goes, with the light ease of genius, into verse and melody, his second astonishing improvisation, joyous as the first, but not agitated reflective, as if he filled Sordello's account of himself: "I' mi son un che quando Amore spira, noto, e quel che detta dentro vo significando."
Thus the hero of Pauline comes to no triumphant issue, though he maintains, I have always had one lode-star; now As I look back, I see that I have halted Or hastened as I looked towards that star, A need, a trust, a yearning after God. The same bafflement is Sordello's, over whom the author muses,
Sordello's story does exhibit the development of a soul; or rather, the sudden awakening of a self-regarding nature to the claims of other men the sudden, though slowly prepared, expansion of the narrower into the larger self, the selfish into the sympathetic existence; and this takes place in accordance with Mr.
Verci, from whose "History of the Eccelini" we have drawn the account of Sordello's intrigue with Cunizza, says: "The writers represent this Sordello as the most polite, the most gentle, the most generous man of his time, of middle stature, of beautiful aspect and fine person, of lofty bearing, agile and dexterous, instructed in letters, and a good poet, as his Provençal poems manifest.
Such an insane chase after a rabbit! Yes, she said the word to herself and found her lips carved into a hard smile, which she saw reflected as in a trick mirror upon the face of Elvard Rentgen. He understood. Of little avail Sordello's frantic impotencies.
I am not deeply concerned about the minor characters in "Sordello," and have long reconciled myself to the conviction that I must pass through this pilgrimage without hearing Sordello's story told in an intelligible manner. Your letter, however, set me a-voyaging about my bookshelves, taking up a volume of poetry here and there.
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