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I. The “Donna Angelicata” in The Ring and the Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. E. Shaw
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Extract

It cannot be denied that the personages in Browning's great poem, The Ring and the Book, are of the poet's own making, and he himself would have been the first to acknowledge them as his own creatures. On the other hand, his repeated assertions that, in mingling his fancy with the material derived from the Old Yellow Book, he has not misinterpreted the facts contained in his source, and the insistence upon the poet's historical fidelity by the editor of the “Book” and other critics, have been regarded with suspicion. Indeed, the question has recently been raised whether The Ring and the Book is not a glorious misinterpretation of The Old Yellow Book.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1925 , March 1926 , pp. 55 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 In a recent article, “Gold and Alloy” (Studies in Philol., N. C., XXI, 467-479) Prof. Frances Theresa Russell, attacks Browning and the defenders of his historical fidelity, perhaps a little too fiercely. Among the alleged falsifications are: the wrong location of the house where the murders took place, but this seems to have been only a mistake of the poet's, cf. O. Y. B. note 292; the wrong date of the marriage and its secrecy, and the misstatement of Guido's age, but all these items were obtained from the O. Y. B. It must be admitted that Browning changed the date of the flight of Pompilia and Caponsacchi, and the writer succeeds in showing, more clearly than has been done before, that the “Ring” was made of far more “Alloy” than “Gold.”

2 The Old Yellow Book, etc., ed. C. W. Hodell, Washington, 1908, p. lxxxix.

3 Ibid., p. xc.

4 Ibid., p. lxxxv. The word “above” refers to her previous deposition. The language of all this testimony is that of the court recorder, a poorly educated scribe who puts grammatical mistakes into the mouths of both Caponsacchi and Pompilia.

5 Ibid., p. lxxxvi.

6 Pompilia, 1577-1584.

7 O. Y. B., p. clvi.

8 O. Y. B., p. lxxxvii. Bottini, prosecuting Guido, has no confidence in Pompilia's declaration that she had merely traced in ink the words penciled by Guido; apparently the examination of the letter did not support her statemente. Cf. pp. clxxii-clxxiii, and p. 142.

9 The same is true of the note acknowledging the present of a fan—O. Y. B., p. lxxxviii—which, as the contents show, was also inspired by Guido. Examples of learned expressions are: “senza veruna cagione,” “mi haveva richiesto dell'honore,” “hora che non hò chi mi sollevi la mente,” “e che seco me ne fuggissi,” “mi dispiace che li miei genitori lacerino la nostra casa” etc.

10 Ibid., p. clvi.

11 Ibid., p. lxxiii.

12 Ibid., pp. ccxiv and ccxix.

13 Ibid., pp. ccl-ccli.

14 Ibid., p. xc.

15 Ibid., p. xcviii.

16 Ibid., pp. lvi and lxxxv.

17 The translation of these letters in the edition of the Carnegie Institute, is spoiled by many errors, and errors are not infrequent in that of the other documents, both Italian and Latin.

18 O. Y. B., p. xcvi.

19 An Italian version in octaves by Angelo Albano di Orvieto, entitled Innamoramento di doi fidelissimi amanti, was published in Rome in 1626. Cf. Kaltenbacher—Der altfranzösische Roman Paris et Vienne. Romanische Forschungen, vol. XV, (1904), a reference which I owe to Prof. M. A. Buchanan of Toronto.

20 The context shows that “Fedone” is an error for Adone.

21 Cf. Belloni, Il Seicento, Milano, F. Vallardi, p. 378.

22 O. Y. B., p. xciv.

23 Ibid., p. xcii.

24 Ibid., p. lxxxiii.

25 Ibid., p. xciv. “Sovara” is the name of a village a few miles northeast of Arezzo, on the stream of the same name which, after joining with another mountain stream called Cerfone, runs into the Tiber near Città di Castello. Guido Franceschini may have owned property there, for in another letter Pompilia says: “the jealous man has gone to Sovara” (O. Y. B., p. xcvi). The sentence “whereas he is in love with the Sovara, and others ….” may mean that the doctor stays too much in the country to suit Pompilia, but if the words “and others” are really part of this sentence, and are not the beginning of another that is omitted in the document, Pompilia may be indicating some woman courted by the doctor, by the name of the place where that woman lives. I am inclined to this latter opinion.

26 Ibid., p. xcii.

27 Ibid., p. xcvi. “The villa” mentioned in this passage may be the villa at Vitiano mentioned by Guido in his deposition (O. Y. B., p. cxxviii: “my villa of Vittiano”). Vitiano is on the main road between Arezzo and Castiglione Fiorentino, a very short distance north of the latter.

28 Ibid., p. xcvi.

29 Ibid., p. xciii.

30 “Dal Latio centro” should be Dall'altro canto. I have omitted a part of the previous sentence, the text of which is hopelessly corrupt.

31 Ibid., p. xcv.

32 Even in the other letters, at rare intervals, occurs a precious expression of a similar kind, e. g. “as gold in fire so is love refined in suffering” O. Y. B., pp. xcv-xcvi.

33 The mother of Dante's Beatrice was a Caponsacchi.

34 Ibid., p. clvi.

35 “…. to the astonishment of all the bystanders who canonised her a saint.” O. Y.B., pp. lvii-lviii.

36 The Pope, 677-679.

37 Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 195-196.

38 The Pope, 1017-1018.

39 Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 701-707.

40 O. Y. B., p. 281 and 296, n. 22.

41 Cf. the will of Pietro Comparing O. Y. B., clvii: “With the condition, however, that the said Francesca Pompilia return home and dwell in Rome her native city, etc. in which city I hope she will live chastely and properly and like a good Christian, and if she do not return, or if she return and live with brazen immodesty (which may God forbid) I desire that she be disqualified to enjoy the usufruct of my above-mentioned estate…..” Pietro is not accusing his foster-child of any impropriety, but he evidently estimates her potentialities in a way which would be altogether incongruous with the character of Browning's Pompilia.

42 The Pope, 1950-1951.

43 The Ring and the Book, 580-587.

44 C. H. Herford, Robert Browning, London, Blackford, 1915, pp. 170-171. Cf. also Mr. Hodell in O. Y. B., p. 181, where he quotes Mrs. Orr as expressing her conviction that “Mrs. Browning's spiritual presence” “entered largely into the conception of Pompilia.”

45 The Ring and the Book, 464.

46 Ibid., 830-831.

47 Cf. Dante, Vita Nuova, XIX, 13. Le opere di Dante, Testo critico, Firenze, 1921.

48 Griffin, W. H. and Minchin, H. C. The Life of Robert Browning, London, 1910, p. 229.

49 The Other Half-Rome, 5.

50 Vita Nuova, ed. cit. XXI, 4.

51 The Ring and the Book, 1409.

52 The Other Half-Rome, 2-3.

53 The Pope, 1042-1044.

54 The Ring and the Book, 1405-1414.

55 Vita Nuova, ed. cit., XXI (XLII) 10.

56 The Ring and the Booh, 1405-1409.

57 Vita Nuova, ed. cit., XXXI (XXXII) 16.

58 Ibid., XXXI (XXXII) 14.

59 Cf. Griffin and Minchin, op. cit., p. 297. The citation is from Dante's Convivio, ed. cit., II, VIII (IX) 16.

60 Cf. Hodell, O. Y. B., p. 237.

61 In Convivio, ed. cit., III, VII, 6-7, Dante proves on scientific grounds that there must be such creatures, since otherwise the hierarchy of denizens of the universe would be imperfect.

62 Vita -Nuova, ed. cit., XXVI, 6.

63 The Ring and the Book, 1391-1392.

64 Ibid., 1399-1400.

65 Guiseppe Caponsacchi, 118-119 and 919. '

66 Especially in the admirable work of Sir Henry Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, Glasgow, 1896.

67 Paradiso, XXIX, 13-18.

68 Ibid., XIII, 52-54.

69 Ibid., VII, 142-144.

70 Convivio, ed. cit., III, II, 4-9.

71 Ibid., ed, cit., IV, XII, 14.

72 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XXII, 4.

73 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XXII, 7.

74 Ibid. ed. cit., IV, XXIII, 3.

75 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XII, 15-16.

76 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XXI, 5.

77 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XXI, 13.

78 Notice that knowledge and love are united in the instinctive faculty that is being described.

79 Purgatorio, XVIII, 49-66.

80 Convivio, ed. cit., I, I, 1.

81 Ibid., ed. cit., IV, XVI, 7.

82 Op. cit., p. 150.

83 Paradiso, XXXIII, 144.

84 Cf. Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 1193-94: “You know this is not love, Sirs,—it is faith, The feeling that there's God, ….”

85 Juris Doctor Johannes Baptista Bottinius, 240-241.

86 Vita Nuova, ed. cit., XII, 3. Professor Herford, (op. cit., pp. 175-176), incidentally compares Caponsacchi to Dante, but he speaks of Dante's worldliness after the death of Beatrice, which is not appropriate to the comparison. He mentions appropriately, however, the saying of Caponsacchi (G. Capons. 457-58) : “I doubt much if Marino really be A better bard than Dante after all.”

87 The Ring and the Book, 1391-1400.

88 Cf. Bernard de Ventadorn, “Quant vey la lauzeta”; Bondie Dietaiuti in Rime antiche volgari ed. D'Ancona e Comparetti, II, 366; and Dante in Paradiso, XX, 73-75. In Sordello, VI, 866, Browning calls the lark “God's own poet.”

89 Cf. Vita Nuova, ed. cit., XXIV, 5. It may be a coincidence that just as Dante, in the Divine Comedy, introduces each of his “cantiche” with a prologue, consisting of an explanation of the contents of the whole poem, followed by an invocation, (a procedure which he justifies in his epistle to Can Grande (Epistole, ed. cit., XIII (X) 46-48) so Browning introduces his poem by a prologue—the first book— in which the description of the contents of the poem is followed by an invocation. Cf. E. H. Wilkins, The Prologue of the Divine Comedy in Annual Reports of the Dante Society. Cambridge, Mass., 1925.

90 Letter of May 3rd, 1845.

91 “…. una veritade ascosa sotto bella menzogna ….” Convivio, ed. cit., II, I, 3.

92 Cf. Plato's Tirnaeus, VII, transl. by Archer Hind; “But it is not possible for two things to be fairly united without a third for they need a bond between them which shall join them both.” Cicero's translation is: “Omnia duo ad cohaerendum tertium aliquid requirunt.”

93 Mr. George Willis Cooke in Browning's Theory of Romantic Love (The Boston Browning Society Papers, New York, 1897) notes resemblances between Browning's idea of love and those of Plato, Dante, and Petrarch, but does not estimate the influence of any of the latter three. He does not forget that Plato ignores sexual love, but he does not remind us that Plato's writings were unknown to Dante, except perhaps the Timaeus. Browning's view of love, like Dante's, is neoplatonic rather than Platonic, and nothing that is peculiar to Petrarch finds any echo in Browning. I have not seen Mr. Cooke's earlier essay: Browning's Intepretation of Romantic Love, etc. in Poet Love, VI (1894), p. 225 ff.