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Mysticism, Meaning, and Structure in Browning's “Saul”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

D. Douglas Waters
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Extract

Controversies about the meaning and structure of “Saul” have largely ignored its mystical elements. Although there is still no general consensus on the poem's theological meaning, few critics can accept in toto the views of Roma A. King, Jr., in The Bow and the Lyre (1957) that Browning's artistic purpose is confused, his theological system vague, and thus the poetic structure a failure as a “lyrical-mystical communication….” The two most effective answers to King's criticism are by W. David Shaw in “The Analogical Argument of Browning's ‘Saul’” (1964) and Victor A. Neufeldt in “Browning's ‘Saul’ in the Context of the Age” (1974). Assuming that the poem's thought is self-consistent, intellectually respectable, and essentially didactic, they both correctly disagree with King as to the alleged offensiveness of its message. Yet, in partial agreement with King, they mistakenly, I think, find the structure of “Saul” to be flawed; they also slight its emphasis on mystical experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 5 , Spring 1977 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

NOTES

1. King, , The Bow and the Lyre (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press), p. 110Google Scholar; Shaw, , Victorian Poetry, 2, pp. 277–82Google Scholar, rptd. in The Dialectical Temper (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 222–33Google Scholar, esp. 229 and 230–31; and Neufeldt, , Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 73 (1974), 48–59, esp. 51.Google Scholar

2. Duckworth, (New York: Dutton), pp. 209, 172Google Scholar; Crowell, (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press), pp. 4, 179Google Scholar; and Duffin, (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1956Google Scholar; rptd. Arbor, Ann, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1970), pp. 199–200.Google Scholar

3. Preyer, Robert, “Victorian Wisdom Literature: Fragments and Maxims,” Victorian Studies, 6 (1963), 245–62, esp. 245, 250.Google Scholar

4. See Moore, Carlisle, “Faith, Doubt and Mystical Experience in In Memoriam,” Victorian Studies, 7 (1963), 155–69Google Scholar, and “Sartor Resartus and the Problem of Carlyle's Conversion,” Publications of the Modern Language Association, 70 (1955), 662–81, neither of which mentions “Saul”.Google Scholar

5. Shaw, , The Dialectical Temper, p. 231.Google Scholar

6. See Spencer, Sidney, Mysticism in World Religion (Baltimore: Penguin, 1963), pp. 170–88, 268, 274Google Scholaret passim; Collins, Joseph B., Christian Mysticism in The Elizabethan Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1940), pp. 80–81, 57, 64, 66, 132Google Scholaret passim; and Inge, William R., Christian Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1948; first edition, 1899)Google Scholar. Since writing this article, I have read the provocative argument by Dahl, Curtis and Brewer, Jennifer L. in “Browning's ‘Saul’ and the Fourfold Vision: A Neoplatonic-Hermetic Approach,” Browning Institute Studies, 3 (1975), 101–18, esp. 101–02CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that “Saul” was influenced by the “Platonic, Neoplatonic, or Hermetic tradition's concept of four hierarchial levels or stages of mystic vision….” This may be true, for there is ample evidence of the ubiquity of this tradition, flowing from ancient Egyptian times down through Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, early Christian heresies, Cabalism, Renaissance magical and alchemical writings of figures like Paracelsus, and entering into the writings of Boehme, Swedenborg, Blake, and other English Romantic poets, as well as the Spiritualism and Theosophy of Browning's day. But, as I have argued, the essence of Browning's mysticism—though perhaps influenced by the Hermetic tradition—is Christian, partaking of the Medieval and Renaissance characteristics of Theo-centric and Christo-centric methodology.

7. Robert Browning and Julia Wedgwood, ed. Curie, Richard (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1937), p. 7Google Scholar; Dearest Isa: Robert Browning's Letters to Isabella Bladgen, ed. McAleer, Edward C. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1970; first edition, 1951), p. 180Google Scholar; Raymond, William O., “Browning and Higher Criticism,” in The Infinite Moment, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1965)Google Scholar; and Badger, Kingsbury, “‘See the Christ Stand!’: Browning's Religion,” in Robert Browning: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Drew, Philip (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), esp. pp. 76–79.Google Scholar

8. Orr, , “The Religious Opinions of Robert Browning,” Contemporary Review, 60 (1891), 876–91, esp. 879Google Scholar; and Bernard, St., Cantica Canticorum, trans. Eales, Samuel J. (London: Elliot Stock, 1895), p. 113.Google Scholar

9. Browning's poems are quoted from The Works of Robert Browning, ed. Kenyon, F. G. (Centenary Edition), 10 vols. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966; 1st ed., 1912)Google Scholar; for my treatments of some non-mystical aspects in Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Browning, see Duessa as Theological Satire (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1970)Google Scholar; “Shakespeare and the ‘Mistress-Missa’ Tradition in King Henry VIII,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 24 (1973), 459–62Google Scholar; “Milton's Use of the Sorcerer-Rhetorician,” Milton Quarterly, 8 (1974), 113–16Google Scholar; and “Does Browning's ‘Great Text in Galatians’ Entail ‘Twenty-nine Distinct Damnations’?”, Modern Language Review, 55 (1960), 243–44.Google Scholar

10. Whitla, (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press), pp. 99–101, 46–51, esp. 15–17, 28–34Google Scholar; Litzinger, , 4 ((1964), 77Google Scholar; Honan, , 2 (1964), 215Google Scholar; Royce, , Boston Browning Society Papers (New York: Macmillan), pp. 25–26Google Scholaret passim; and Badger, , pp. 90, 94, n. 9.Google Scholar

11. Trans. Law, William et al. , and ed. Bernard Holland (New York: Unger, n.d.), p. 29.Google Scholar

12. Whitla, , pp. 99–101, 15–17, 28–34, 98, 46–51Google Scholar; Hellstrom, , “Time and Type in Browning's ‘Saul,’” English Literary History, 33 (1966), 370–89, esp. 370, 375, 380–81, 389CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, , The Dialectical Temper, pp. 224–25Google Scholar, quoting Priestley; and Bieman, , “The Ongoing Testament in Browning's ‘Saul,’” University of Toronto Quarterly, 43 (1974), 151–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Spencer, , p. 184.Google Scholar

14. See Miller, J. Hillis, The Disappearance of God (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963), pp. 93, 111Google Scholar, and Neufeldt, , pp. 57, 59.Google Scholar

15. See The Dialetical Temper, p. 230Google Scholar, n. 30, and Neufeldt, , p. 52.Google Scholar

16. Cantica Canticorum, p. 524.Google Scholar

17. Baumgardt, David, Great Western Mystics (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1961), p. 19, quoting and explaining Philo.Google Scholar