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Updated: June 12, 2025
He would stand delighted on the loggia of La Mura, looking out over the plain and identifying the places of historical interest, some of which were connected with his own "Sordello."
But we must seek the kindness not only in this first, almost inevitable, assent to his son's becoming a writer, but in the subsequent unfailing readiness to support him in his literary career. 'Paracelsus', 'Sordello', and the whole of 'Bells and Pomegranates' were published at his father's expense, and, incredible as it appears, brought no return to him. This was vividly present to Mr.
Sordello was the most glorious compliment that has ever been paid to the average man. In the same manner, of course, outward obscurity is in a young author a mark of inward clarity. A man who is vague in his ideas does not speak obscurely, because his own dazed and drifting condition leads him to clutch at phrases like ropes and use the formulæ that every one understands.
The inspiration may have come through the study of Dante, and his testimony to the creative influence of Sordello on their mother-tongue. That period of Italian history must also have assumed, if it did not already possess, a great charm for Mr.
Many comparatively sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to write Sordello or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in obscurity.
Browning by Miss Martineau; and, being a great admirer of 'Paracelsus', had promised careful attention for 'Sordello'; but, when the time approached, he made conditions of early reading, &c., which Mr. Browning thought so unfair towards other magazines that he refused to fulfil them.
Browning says, in his introduction to "Sordello," "The culture of a soul, little else is of any value." If we are souls, and if the culture of a soul is of chiefest importance, then cursed beyond all words is the man who has deteriorated and become degraded and is content to have it so.
Non venir più per questa vile strada ad opere ancor più vili." "Let this suffice thee, Sordello. Come no more by this vile path to yet viler deeds." It was probably after this amour ended that Sordello sat out upon his travels, visiting most courts, and dwelling long in Provence, where he learned to poetize in the Provençal tongue, in which he thereafter chiefly wrote, and composed many songs.
All this applies to both Donne and Browning, and the comparison could be pushed further still. Both draw the knowledge which is the main cause of their obscurity from the same source, the bypaths of mediaevalism. Browning's Sordello is obscure because he knows too much about mediaeval Italian history; Donne's Anniversary because he is too deeply read in mediaeval scholasticism and speculation.
His first acted drama was, however, an interlude to the production of the important group of poems which was to be completed by 'Sordello'; and he alludes to this later work in an also discarded preface to 'Strafford', as one on which he had for some time been engaged.
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