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Updated: June 12, 2025
He planned, Mr Gosse tells us, "a series of monodramatic epics, narratives of the life of typical souls." In a modification of this vast scheme Paracelsus, which includes more speakers than one, and Sordello, which is not dramatic in form, find their places.
Putting aside for the moment the literary qualities which are to be found in the poem, when it becomes intelligible, there is one question very relevant to the fame and character of Browning which is raised by Sordello when it is considered, as most people consider it, as hopelessly unintelligible. It really throws some light upon the reason of Browning's obscurity.
In the chronological order of Browning's poems, by virtue of the date of origin, it lies close to the earlier companion piece; in the logical order it is the completion of a group of poems Pauline, Paracelsus, Sordello which treat of the perplexities, the trials, the failures, the ultimate recovery of men endowed with extraordinary powers; it is one more study of the conduct of genius amid the dangers and temptations of life.
The innocence of Wordsworth, and of the young Sordello, were fostered by like circumstances. Arnold conceives of Clough in this way, isolating him in Oxford instead of Arcadia, and represents him as dying from the shock of awakening to conditions as they are.
Richard was writing his new tone-poem, which the Société Harmonique accepted provisionally for the season following. Sordello had set the town agog because of the exhaustive articles by Rentgen it brought in its wake.
Coming into actual acquaintance with the people for the first time, the sight of their multiform miseries, their sorrows, even their baseness lays hold of Sordello; it seems as if it were they who were about to make him their instrument, the voice through which their inarticulate griefs should find expression; he is captured by those whom he thought to capture.
My father was two men, one sympathetic and intuitional, the other critical and logical; together they formed a combination which could not be thrown off its feet. We had already met the Brownings in London; but at this period they belonged in Italy more than anywhere else, and Florence formed the best setting for the authors both of Aurora Leigh and of Sordello.
Yet it is true that when once the right connections in these perplexing sentences have been established, the sense is flashed upon the mind with singular vividness; then the difficulty has ceased to exist. And thus, in two successive stages of study, the same reader may justly censure Sordello for its obscurity of style, and justly applaud it for a remarkable lucidity in swiftness.
He enjoyed the friendship of Wordsworth, of Southey, of Landor, and, in later days, was intimate with most of my contemporaries of eminence. It was at Mr. Kenyon's house that the poet saw most of Wordsworth, who always stayed there when he came to town. In 1840 'Sordello' appeared. It was, relatively to its length, by far the slowest in preparation of Mr. Browning's poems.
Born so near to Titian, though a little before him, that these two companion pupils of the aged Giovanni Bellini may almost be called contemporaries, Giorgione stands to Titian in something like the relationship of Sordello to Dante, in Mr. Browning's poem.
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