ISSN:
1060-1503
Source:
Cambridge Journals Digital Archives
Topics:
English, American Studies
,
History
Notes:
The poet – speaker of Book 1 of The Ring and the Book believed that the first two monologues of his grand poem balanced one another. In his preview of the monologues, he writes that Half-Rome and Other Half-Rome are equally unsuccessful in their efforts to find the truth of the murder story. The speakers possess an “opposite feel” for the truth, but each achieves a “like swerve, like unsuccess” (I.883–84). Although Other Half-Rome succeeds in being on the right side of the issue, Browning as poet-speaker considers his defense of Pompilia to be the result only of luck or a “fancy-fit.” This “fancy-fit” is a mood which inclines the speaker to choose Pompilia as it might incline him to choose between two runners in a race according to the colors of their scarves (1.885–92). Browning sets this speech by a Bernini fountain, one where Triton blows water through a conch: “Puffs up steel sleet which breaks to diamond dust” (1.900). The poet may have intended this setting to suggest the way in which he views the language and imagery that Other Half-Rome uses to tell his story. The speaker's mixture of Christian and classical mythology and his concern for the painterly qualities of Pompilia's deathbed scene do suggest an aesthetic temperament. The poet may have considered the speech of such a man to be “diamond dust” signifying nothing. In any case, the poet-speaker of Book 1 concludes his description of Other Half-Rome by saying, with apparent sarcasm, that to this speaker Pompilia “seemed a saint and martyr both” (1.909). This assessment of Other Half-Rome has been the subject of disagreement among commentators on the poem.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0092472500001486
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