Robert Browning - Optimism

Browning is an optimist, and as an optimist, he is a moralist and a religious teacher. He holds a very distinct place among the writers of the Victorian Age. He is an uncompromising foe of “Scientific Materialism”. He preaches God and universality as the central truth of his philosophy of life.

Victorian Age is a watershed age in English literature. As there is the influence of Classicism, Italian Renaissance, British Renaissance, Individualism, Socialism, Utilitarianism, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Modernism and Scepticism.

Therefore, there are a lot of confusions and conflicts in this age. There are the conflicts between art and life, art and morality, content and form, man and woman, classic education and progressive education, flesh and spirit, body and soul and what not.

In this entire prevailed situation, Browning remains unaffected by these confusions and conflicts. He is at heart an optimist. His optimism is clear even in his style of writing a poem that he always picks up his central character in crisis or in some critical situation, then this crisis reaches the climax and ultimately resolved and he ends his poem with optimism. As in his poem “Patriot into Traitor”, he says:

’Tis God shall repay one, I am safer so.

As in “Fra Lippo Lippi”, he says:

Don’t fear me! There is the grey beginning. Zooks!

Browning is a very consistent thinker of optimistic philosophy of life. His poetry has immense variety, but his unchanging philosophical view of human destiny gives unity to it. He does not challenge the old dogmas. He accepts the conventional view of God, the immortality of the soul, and the Christian belief in incarnation.

Browning’s optimism is founded on the realities of life. It is not ‘blind’ as he does not shut his eyes to the evil prevailing in daily life routine. He knows that human life is a mixture of good and evil, of love and the ugliness, of despair and hopefulness, but he derives hope from this very imperfection of life. His optimism “is founded on imperfections of man”. In the famous lines of “Pippa Passes”, he says:

God is in his Heaven –
All is right with the world!

Browning believes that experience leads to enrichment. His attitude towards evil, pain and misery is not merely abstract. He does not accept evil merely as a practical instrument of human advancement. His approach is pragmatic as it is based on the actual experience of life. He tests every theory on the touchstone of pragmatism. Browning believes that it is not achievement, but it is struggle that empowers man in life.

His optimism is based on his theory of evolution that life is constantly progressing to higher and higher levels. Man progresses in the moral and spiritual sense through persistent struggle against evil. He says that evil is our foe, and no victory is possible over the foe. Evil is the opportunity offered to us by the divine power to advance spirituality.

Evil is, therefore, a way of man’s moral progress.

Browning believes that this life is a preparation for the life to come. In “Evelyn Hope”, the lover does not despair as he derives consolation from the optimistic faith that “God creates the love to reward the love”. True love is sure to be rewarded in the life after death, if not in this life.

Browning’s optimism is firmly based on his faith in the immortality of the soul. The body may die but the soul lives on in the Infinite. Life, in the other world, is far more valuable than life in this finite world. This ideal which is attainable here is worthless, for by attaining it here, we shall not deserve to attain it there in the next world.

Browning believes in the futility of this worldly life. He thinks that failure serves as a source of inspiration for progress as in “Andrea Del Sarto”:

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s heaven for?

Browning’s firm faith in God is beyond any doubt. He is never sceptical about the existence of God controlling the world. Even his knaves have firm faith in God, and rely upon His mercy. They constantly talk of their relation with God, and are sure of their ultimate union with Him. It is love which harmonizes all living beings. It is on love that all Browning’s characters build their faith saying:

God, Thou art Love I build my faith on that

Life in this world is worth living because both life and the world are the expressions of Divine Love. The world is beautiful as God created it out of the fullness of His love.

… …This world’s no blot for us,
Not blank; it means intensely, and means good:

Browning’s optimism finds the passion of joy no one has sung more fervently than Browning of the delight of life. David in “Saul”, Pippa in “Pippa Passes”, Lippo in “Fra Lippo Lippi” and a host of other poems are keenly alive to the pleasure of living. The Rabbi in “Rabbi Ben Ezra” condemns the aesthetic negation of the flesh, and asserts the necessity and moral usefulness of the flesh and the soul:

As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry ‘All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul’

So, we can safely conclude the Browning speaks out the strongest words of optimistic faith in his Victorian Age of scepticism and pessimism. Of all English poets, no other is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of man as is Browning. However, according to modern criticism, in certain cases, Browning’s optimism can be interpreted as false or hollow optimism. Sometimes, it seems a justification of failure than optimism; it seems a hope against hope or a hope for the impossible.

As in “Andrea Del Sarto”, he says:

… … … What would one have?
In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance–

As in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb”, he says:

Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion–stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!

As in “The Last Ride Together”, he says:

So, one day more am I deified.
Who knows but the world may end to–night?

On another place, he says:

I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

Again at the end of this very poem he says:

The instant made eternity, –
And heaven just prove that in and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

Despite, all this we call him as an optimist because of his firm faith in God.

His poems are full of courage and inspiration, telling people that there are no difficulties if they have self-dependence and self-control. It was a good omen for English literature that the two leaders in Poetry, Tennyson and Browning differed from on another. Tennyson was at heart a pessimist. But Browning was at heart a strong optimist.

The decision has been, at last, taken by the VC and the Dean and grace marks have been granted in all of the five papers. I have passed in all and the numbers have increased from 208 to 233. Congratulations to you too.