pages or barely have begun to gather itself together at the end of an hour, and yet he did everything in this poem, struggling with it, to try to make it accessible. It isn't because people have reacted to Paracelsus, they had to some degree, and Pauline, with warnings, Browning could already see and know of himself by the time he wrote Sordello exactly what his so-called negative qualities were. Authenticity, I think, if I can remember a passage in this, is one of the most essential things for Browning. I'll risk this. Let's see if I can find... Let me come over again. But he had, then, the character that, it seems

[01:27]

to me, takes place in a poet between... If a poet had been writing, as Browning had, from adolescence, what I notice and what I look at is, what are they writing? What do they begin to write? What do they take hold of in the period between when they're 30 and 35? One of the things that had given me a little hint that maybe those ages change is, Gertrude Stein said that, in her day, no American knew what... She was not a modern writer in this sense. She used he. But, on the other hand, she had a very strong identification with he in her own mind. And I don't think any male measured up to her identification with he by the time she had her burr cut. She said, no writer knows what he really is doing until he's 28. No American, in the making, American. So, that's very early. She didn't

[02:29]

have her burr cut yet, 1967. But then, maybe they got younger. She didn't know. She saw people like Hemingway, who never did know what he was doing. And, in her mind, since he was imitating her sentences, she thought he certainly didn't know what she was doing. So, she gave him more credits at the point of his youth. It seems to me today, it is between 30 and 35, that something not quite... Knowing what you're doing is a little earlier. But, the point at which a work actually becomes engaged. And something is going on in Sardello. It becomes the first work in which Robert Browning is fully engaged. And he knew the risk of it. And he went all the way. He went further. And he himself did... His father's financing the production of the first three books. And his own immediate family, their admiration is beginning to, as at one point, be appalled.

[03:33]

There is a point in here where people are appalled at the situation, of the political situation, which frequently now, as I read this over and over and over again, it seems to me that lifting that picture is the history ornamental. No, it's illustrational throughout. And it, too, seems to tell us something of the impulsive and constantly switching back and forth voices. Switching sides from Guelph to Ghibelline is something like immediate occupying of any other identity that's handy in order to get a full sense of where you are. And that same full sense in the writer means that Robert Browning must have had a more and more intense sense, since he could write a dramatic monologue for anyone, of what the dramatic monologue would sound like of any reader. That's what Sardello practices

[04:36]

in this poem, is identifying first with the poppy and then with scenes in the forest and so forth, and identifying finally with almost any human being he sees in order to try it out, what it looks like over there, and come into a sense of who is Sardello, which remains the big question. And with this sense of the reader, Robert Browning didn't miss at all what his negative critics were going to say. And they're incorporated in Sardello by the fact that when, from Browning, risks in Sardello, it's a term our period greatly admires. It came up during the war period, I know what they were hoping, Second World War period. Risk began to be talked by critics who weren't in the front lines. And strategies, the partisan review, you'd thought they were the Pentagon. All of American literature turned into a whole series of strategies. And the language lasts. That plus the decoding, you know, the CIA,

[05:39]

the CIA influence in literary attitudes that still predominates in our criticism. In Browning's day, to come around, there was that the poem was to be serious, but they liked it to be serious like tennis in where it didn't greatly stretch, unless you wanted to do the stretch, your enjoyment. And Browning had only one way to be serious. Well, he still tried to make the poem accessible. In his first printing, it wasn't. He must have heard some of the stories. They were all very bright. Some of them went direct to him. He heard plenty of that. He then tried to, that had been the fourth writing, that very first printing. And evidently, in this printing then, 20 years ahead, the edition that has the preface, the one, for instance, that's used in here, in 1863, he prints his preface. And that's

[06:51]

the one, I'll read it again. We read it the first time. To Milsand, who had just come, who had just begun to be a reader of Browning and responsive, but again, no reader of Browning was happy about this poem. Dear friend, let the next poem be introduced by your name, therefore remembered along with one of the deepest of my affections, and so repay all the trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it 25 years ago for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about a subject than they really had. But we have right away in the poem, the passage I read to you last time, where Browning, still very much, very close to the man with the diorama with pointing pole in hand, pointing away as we go, says, so for once I face thee, friend, summoned together from the world's four ends, dropped down from heaven or cast up from hell, to hear the story I propose to tell. And those features

[07:57]

have dropped down from heaven, that kind of humor of who is gathered here, but it's not the humor alone of who's gathered here, because Browning is assembling his readers from all, from the audience of the totality, throughout history, throughout time. I'm predisposed to wonder about the references that come at times in this to the need for many lives. The important thing about reincarnation is not are there reincarnations, but why are human beings haunted by the idea of reincarnations? If you take the key concepts of reincarnation absolute death, all of them were haunted by. In a system of belief your form of being haunted is to argue against the others, but absolute death, which is of the individual soul, which is present in Judaism, for instance, and certainly argued by many Greeks, and a great puzzle

[09:05]

anyone would have even as a child, but how does my personality, or how do I possibly survive my physical death? I am a body, and the living body must be. Aristotle defines the soul as the body's feeling of its own lifetime, and the events of its lifetime. So all the time, since the body extends, Aristotle here is daringly, this is on the soul, and I'm not, it's maybe also pseudo-Aristotle, but since I thank you if it's pseudo-Aristotle, Aristotle should have gotten this good. We find we've got a body in that sense in the dimension of time as well as space, and essentially Aristotle is saying is that soul is space is being haunted, where you are right now being haunted by the time in which it exists, from its first coming into consciousness, and its apprehension of

[10:07]

the times and ways it will die, so it's like the plan of a poem, and so forth. And heaven and hell come in here to be some extension in him coming from beyond, his readers throughout time, coming from the other world, he has readers in the other world, so we have the atmosphere of a century that was deepened in spiritualism, you call up from heaven and hell but you talk with them too in seances, and in a sense, if you look at that early writing of Pound, Pound actually introduces an atmosphere of seance in the beginning of the cantos, illustrative of the fact that Ulysses in the final canto, so Ulysses has gone down into an actual seance pouring blood into the faucet to consult with the dead,

[11:10]

so the voices of the dead are coming back in the cantos, and this is, the cantos are written at one end of a long period, intensive period of spiritualism throughout the educated middle class of Europe, and America, European America, that began at the very end of the 18th century and intensifies it. So Browning, famous enough for his confrontations with home, also has in this imagination of the population that would read this one throughout time, but he has it for another reason, because when he thinks about his fellow Victorians, the ones who are alive to read, he feels less and less confidence by Sardello, or more and more daring, so he has in his confidence, would contemporaries read it at all. He has to become in a sense unreadable, or as Pound said to his father, when Pound wrote to his

[12:14]

father, well you should read Browning's Sardello, take five or six times, read it, or also that's actually what Ford Mattox, Ford told Pound he should do to get into the long poem, the long Sardello, read it five or six times, six or seven times, get until you're very, very used to it and immersed in it, and then let it come forward. The opposite of what you do if you're in a course, because in a course you'd have to sort of crack the poem and be able to answer questions about it and have it in line, but immersing yourself in a poem, actually beginning with Sardello here, this is the second time I have been in this poem, neither time was it in a context of a course, but it was talking from the poem, so how was I going to qualify must always be in my mind, yet the real thing you do is sink more and more into it. Browning knew that in a sense it was to be a teaching, but a teaching that had no test to it and that you didn't in a sense pass. You feel

[13:22]

you're tested when you enter it, but it doesn't test you, it eludes you at every point when you think it would test you, and while Browning would say the one thing the Victorians were ready to take seriously would be history, and Browning is almost sure to be saying right away that's decoration, they were prepared to take philosophy, a poetic philosophy is a perfectly polite way, today it's a very convincing way of reading a poem, so some people waste their time making it uncomfortable for philosophers to read their texts, or for those who want to have a philosophical pleasure. Browning's not antagonistic in trying to make it uncomfortable, no sooner do I say that maybe he is, for the reader who's going to go at this poem with the purposes that they had in his period, but the other thing

[14:27]

about having readers throughout time I do know, because as Robert Duncan began coming into the sights of Robert Duncan, which would be along about my 30th year or so, before in origin, so there was only about a year or two in there, about the time when I realized I was going to, struggling with a couple of long poems in correspondence with Pound, but having lost all of my local audience practically, for various reasons over the Venice Poem, I thought, well maybe I don't have any readers, you'll find it in letters, where I picture I have a reader, but she happens to be 400 years before now, time doesn't have any sequence, so how in the world is she my reader when the book isn't even in her hands no matter what, so you'll have to hurry up and write it, she's not on hand, and I think that might

[15:30]

have been part of it, Browning has that address that comes in, this address to friends, and even in this it's contained, I wrote it for only a few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than they really had, my own faults of expression were many, but with care for a man or book such would be surmounted, and without it what avails the faultlessness of either, so at first that wonderful word care, that you care for someone actually involves caring, and it is staying by it, and searching out the quality, once you've found it, once you've found it and began to care you don't leave it, certainly there are a handful, a very large handful of, not poems, but poetries that I care about,

[16:38]

and as it pounds is one, my mind every time I turn to it, as it can address, caring as you care for a man or a father or something, but person is not it, you search out all of the work, its question is always on your mind, and you read it carefully, so the two things, caring means not only, is one of the most valuable words about love, and Browning by the way also uses love or lovers, I have many lovers, he says at the end, almost as if you were Whitman, I have many lovers, and Whitman is probably talking about readers when he talks about lovers too. And it's a wonderful thing, and I think it's hidden there as if there is a political grief in Sardello, not a grief Browning has or comes to, but remember Sardello discovers the people are the real basis that the poem is directed

[17:41]

to, and this I think is firm, because we get the language, that big thing you look at in the dictionary comes from the people, not from poets or from anything, it comes from the people. At a very busy Stanford party, I mean it was inhabited by some Stanford people, I'm thinking that birthday party, I found myself sitting next to a young lady who was, they were talking about computer poetry, and I said, well, but no matter what a computer does, it can't be, if it's coming up with words, machines don't make words, words are not just immediate human events, they happen to be already, no one adds to the meaning or anything, what we do is begin to appreciate and begin to feel what's in the word. And she said, well, what can you make out of A? And I said, well, it's very unfortunate for you, that we can make nothing out of A, but even that difference, if you were to feel

[18:46]

it in a word, and if you go to your O-E-D, my young lady, everything short of reaching forward and biting her in a non-friendly Dracula way, I mean a non-Dracula unfriendly way, I said, and she said, well, words don't mean anything in themselves. The language that Browning gets is the people, and in a way I think Browning himself comes to this, in the course of Sardello, he was very much minded at the exceptionalness of the poet, certainly felt it in that he himself was an oddball, and so it was sad that he was exceptional, that was the trouble his readers were having, and then he finds, but the language, and the one, by the way, where he loves to look for words that are obsolete, he loves to grab the word the last time it was used, and have it operating in the poem,

[19:48]

really odd, wild members of this people, the people have such members, yet they are the readers finally. If the language comes from them, and the basis is the language, if they cared enough, that's the political grief that's hidden in a poem like Sardello. It's also the despair, something deeper than grief that's in Finnegan, because although Finnegan's gone outside of the dictionaries, although it's brought everything together into a very strange language, indeed it knows too, if you cared, you would come, and it would be an accessible language, but it has a very bitter, very hostile attitude toward the fact that a book, Ulysses, written with remarkable clarity, in absolutely the people's language, was rejected by tons and tons of people, I mean, it was not language, so there was no way, the readers didn't care,

[20:48]

they didn't care how they talked on the streetcar, on the streets they didn't care, when their own words came back for them, they didn't care for them. Ulysses is filled with the speech of the people, and it was that speech of the people the professor said, well I don't think that disturbed Joyce, he had some very long jokes about his learned, but the book was already viewed, it still is viewed as something, educated at some other length, and reading had lost the care, or the language lost the care. The politics of it is the people don't care about the people, I think we face it today. The lack of care, no member of the people belongs to the people, and the concept of people, and so on and so on and so on it goes, but it's that, that in this letter, is that word care, I believe it's that word care,

[21:52]

and I blame, my own faults of expression were many, but with care for a man or a book. With care for any man, you would be searching this poem out to come to find this man, Sordello, not this man Browning, but Browning knows he's going to find himself when he finds Sordello, not because now he's identified with Sordello, so he has got one of the things we know about the people. What is it when somebody makes up a fictional person? One of the difficulties in the, and purely 18th century, Dorn himself identifies gunslinger, and now proposes more and more an 18th century attitude, but I'm talking about a 19th century attitude, with a 19th century city-centered idea of a democracy, and of what the people were, the kind that Dickens has, for instance, and that the readers of Dickens had. In gunslinger, which is remarkable

[22:54]

because you do have, it suddenly swings around to have a fictional person, like Sordello is in this poem, and at the same time, it keeps a great deal of distance in this fictional person, because gunslinger has to be absolutely Woody Woodpecker-sophisticated, all the way through the whole poem. He never really gets to be, he never gets to have more than the surplus that finally Dorn is convinced of. This is not a negative, this is our state compared with, that's why, in a sense, also it's available. Wits, can, wit is available throughout gunslinger. Yet, and I'm taking this poem because its scope of Edward Dorn's gunslinger is in every way, potentially, the scope of, temperamentally, he's not going

[23:57]

to be like Robert Brownlee, so we don't have to worry about it, but it's got a lot of the same features. A lot of the feature of having interior thought, of having, when you begin to sketch out who the characters are, while Dorn had much more Chaucer on mind, and a flashy pop Chaucer, since they have to do with being, even that becomes an almost, a little, again, there's a know-it-all about being throughout the poem. Being is central, we find over and over again, in Sardell itself, and being here is the depth of Brownlee having no answers. The one poem, I'm using gunslinger because I think it's typical of our time that we feel we've got answers, and alright, this is this general we, I don't know to what degree do I think this, but we are told, in a sense, we've got answers, and we can write, we're

[25:04]

tempted out to write a poem in which we know it all. A poem of, and especially, I guess, in an American attitude of it, and not then exploratory. Well, I would say then caring also means caring about the man of the book. To surmount the faults of expression, but then I pointed, and we already, a couple of times ago, two times, three times ago, pointed out that faults begins to be an important part of the expression for Brownlee. Not the faults of expression, but the expression of what fault is becomes almost essential in the poem, because by its not completing, it gets deeper and deeper and more entangled with his course. I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best

[26:07]

then and since, for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the many might instead of what the few must like. But after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I find it. But he still wanted to give some, then I'll read these summaries, because he was still reaching out to make it accessible, trying over and over again. And these, some of you will have in your editions, what comes, some of these summaries, in which at the top you've got Shelley departing, Verona appears, and that, then we know who thou spirit come not near now, and so forth. This is a summary, book one. His boyhood in the domain of echelon, how a poet's soul comes into play, what denotes such a soul's progress, how poets class at length for honor or shame, which may the gods avert from Sardello, now in childhood. The delights of his childish fancy, which could

[27:13]

blow out a great bubble, being secure a while from intrusion. Already his summary is getting into, I love summaries, they clear it all up by getting us into still another matter. But it comes, and newborn judgment decides that he needs sympathizers. He therefore creates such a company, each of which, leading its own life, has qualities impossible to avoid, so only to be appropriated in fancy, and practiced on till the real come. He means to be perfect, say Apollo, and Apollo must one day find Daphne, but when will this dream turn truth? For a time is ripe, and he is ready. And book two, this bubble of fancy, when greatest and brightest bursts. At a court of love, a minstrel sings. Sardello, before Palma, conquers him, receives the prize, and ruminates. How had he been superior to Eglemore? This

[28:15]

is answered by Eglemore himself, one who belonged to what he loved, loving his art and rewarded by it, ending with what had possessed him. Eglemore done with, Sardello begins. In the poem itself, Eglemore, in many of the commentaries, Eglemore is viewed as the poet who is supplanted by Sardello. Eglemore dies, by the way, right after Sardello sings this song better, and at the same time, Eglemore doesn't. He comes back full-fledged in the last book as Sardello dies, and Nadeau is viewed by almost all of them, or too frequently all the way through, as being almost a caricature of the critic. Most of them take a very negative take on Nadeau, but Nadeau in the poem, when he appears, seems again like one of those interior voices of a development in which Sardello has a Nadeau and has Eglemore. And

[29:22]

Palma is very clearly, in the poem, also something Sardello has. These become interior persons as well as exterior persons. They're not masks when they come in their own person, but since Palma is portrayed over and over again as the one star, the one thing that is above Sardello and will move him so that, in all his proliferation and his constant change, there will be a constancy. Not an inspiration in this. A real movie. She's the moon for one thing. She's starred only incidentally. She's the moon, and when she's the moon, he's a sea. And so, in that movement, he has depth, which is what the poem is about. Which he would know nothing of were they not moved by the moon. And in the absence

[30:27]

of Palma, his poetry goes thin. That's a good deal of the first book, and there's a collapse within the first book. And it's restored, it comes back when Palma comes in personally into the picture again, but even that's fugitive about where is she. She is hearing that song when he sings it. And then she does come in later. She comes in again to reveal to him that he is Salenguera's son, and to urge him into a political world. Palma stands, and that's why I wanted to begin, the beginnings are only half an hour off here, begin with the appearance of Sardello in Dante, because it's at the point of Sardello, which is in book seven and eight of the Purgatorio, that we get our first look across to the fact

[31:34]

that Sardello appears at the close of the ante-Purgatorio, and that's the beginning of the Purgatorio. Anti-rumor, anti-territory of the beginning, coming up to the beginning of the Purgatorio. And beyond, if I remember rightly, we see Beatrice. Let me see. Well, we'll open the book six and seven. It's book six and seven, that's my, over here. And remember, it's in relation to this poem that, with relation to his Italian studies, that Browning first heard of Sardello and got a lead toward, he was not, Sardello did not write in Italian, he wrote in Provençal, so Browning's accounts of his poetry would be in translation and

[32:40]

so forth, and his Italian-centeredness is because he's thinking of the Sardello that appears in the Divine Comedy. And at first, in the Divine Comedy, when they come upon Sardello, Virgil and, Dante does not recognize Sardello. It's getting dark, it's toward the end of the, coming toward evening. It is Sardello who takes them forward to where they rest that night before coming in the Purgatorio in the morning. And Sardello, it's so dark that Sardello, there are no longer shadows, and Sardello can't tell that Dante is alive. He can't tell the difference between Virgil and Dante. Virgil casts, I mean, Dante casts a shadow, sun shines in Purgatorio, and Dante casts a shadow, but we've come to the time of shadow. And so that Dante is taken to be a shade, and he's not, well, he's not

[33:42]

going to be recognized back and forth. There are exchanges then, too. And I, my lord, to Virgil, go we with greater haste, for already I grow not weary as before. And look, the hillside doth now a shadow cast. We with this day will onward go, answered he so far as yet we may, but the fact is other than thou deemest. Ere thou art above, he shalt thou see return that now is hidden by the slope, so that thou makest not his race to break. But see, there a soul which, placed alone, solitary, looketh toward us. It will point out to us the quickest way. We came to it, O Lombard soul, how wast thou haughty and disdainful, and in the movement of thine eyes, majestic and slow? Not, it said to us, but allowed us to go on, watching only after the fashion of a lion when he couches.

[34:43]

Yet did Virgil draw on towards it, praying that it should show it to us the best descent, and that spirit answered not his demand, but of our country and of our life did ask us. And the sweet leader began, Mantua, and the shade all wrapped himself, leapt toward him from the place where at first it was, saying, O Mantuan, I am Sordello of thy city. And one embraced the other. No, O Mantuvano, io son Sordello della tua terra. And one embraced the other. Italy, thou slave. And then, what Dante seems himself to predict Robert Browning's broken sentences, we start out towards something and midway, we won't take up that where we left off. And one embraced the other, and then all of a sudden right there, and the

[35:48]

rest of the canto goes, Italy, thou slave, hostile of woe, vessel without pilot, and a mighty storm, no mistress of provinces, but a brother, and on and on and on we go against the emperor, against, and so forth. And that, and so it's not until Seth, until the next canto that we find ourselves back with Sordello. We go out into space, in a burst of outrage toward Italy, toward the city Florence, as ever, and this is the outrage of caring. If we go back to the protest poems of, let's say, at the time of the Vietnam War, there is a great difference between the poems of caring, or the element of caring, by the way, which I think probably is present. There are all sorts of stages in caring, knowing caring, and unknowing caring. Unknowing caring is the one in which you are envious or angry

[36:53]

because you care, but it takes the entire expression of hatred, and so forth, and streams forth. This is not what Dante is streaming forth, when he streams forth. He's streaming forth about the betrayal, as for instance, Whitman is when he writes the 18th Presidency, the betrayal of democracies by democracies becomes, for those who believe in democracy, I never got very excited about whether Mr. Hitler did or did not betray fascism, because it wasn't a betrayal of any idea I knew of, but the betrayal by the Soviet Union of Communism, which was, which in my mind is entirely a fundamental recognition that there are no private properties, but all belongs to the world and to creation. The betrayal of that by Communism was an outrage, as the betrayal of democracies in the United States is an outrage,

[37:56]

so that that as a source of rage. You rage because of a disappointment and a betrayal, a betrayal of what the thing is. So, it's a Dante who believes in Italy, he didn't believe in a mass of city-states, he believes in Italy, so he's enraged that Italy doesn't gather up, doesn't become something that city-states immediately have to recognize. He's enraged at, when he's enraged at Popes, they're all personal because they betrayed their manhood because he does not give much to the office of Pope, not in Dante's structure, he's centered in the emperor. And I'll, for, there's a poem of Sardello's that he was quite famous for that was very much on Dante's mind, and it gives him the model for why Sardello, who

[38:58]

is the other Mantuan, though born in Goito, it comes close enough for Dante to make him that. That's one aspect of it, but the other aspect of the Sardello in that canto is Sardello's own high sense of honor and his outrage that's expressed in this lament for the poem and for the poet and Blakats, but he is a warrior poet. This is a little hard for us, us Protestant types with very strong bias, pacifism, to countenance, but Dante still strongly belongs to that. The dual Apollonian character of the poet, one that songs second the sword and that one

[40:04]

proves the other in its field, and this is certainly where Sardello is. The troubadours have both questions, but it's not just jousting that Sardello's talking about. I would lament, Sir Blakats, in this simple melody with sad and sorry heart, and I have indeed reason for it, since in him have I lost a lord and good friend, and all worthy qualities have with his death disappeared. So mortal is the loss that I have not the faintest hope that it might ever be made good, unless in this way that his heart be cut out and the great nobles eat of it, who now live disheartened, then they'll have heart enough. Now that actually is the theme that enters in all that eating of the heart business at the beginning of the cantos. My question, more and more as I've begun it last time, my question in caring for the cantos deeply and profound, is what happened, and because

[41:05]

I think of them first in a dialectic sense, that is, we have nothing else we draw on at this level. But the other one is in a sense of another kind of mystery that would be coming back to the lives, as I said, I found in the expression of having a series of lives, it would take other lives to come to that, and so forth, that comes at times in Browningston, Sardello, a sense of a dream unfolding through time, of something having to happen. What was the extreme repression? Remember, Freudianism and so forth was also concerned with how widespread operations of repression were, that made Pound retract what he would have to know about eating of the heart meant. See, in the very theory of the cantos, they can be eating the heart, but you can't come across what it means, you can't come across that the heart is being eaten now, or that you are eating the heart to have the bravery of it. So, where in this poem it's clear what the heart means, that they'll have heart enough.

[42:08]

In the cantos, these themes, he was trying to drive, probably faced with the Freudian reading of symbols and dreams, by the way, that images were just images, more and more, and yet they're not, of course. I mean, eating the heart is not for the troubadour here at all, just an image that leads to something, a real demand. Let their first eat of it, because his need is great, the Emperor of Rome. If he wants to conquer the Melanese by force, for they deem him conquered, and he lives deprived of his heritage in spite of his Germans. And straight after him, let the French king eat of it, then he'll conquer Castile, which he's losing through his stupidity. But if it annoys his mother, he'll not eat of it at all, for it well appears from his repute that he does nothing that might annoy her. This is a troubadour, a poet in a state of outrage at the breakdown of feudal honor

[43:15]

and valor and keeping of the feudal order, which was done by the Zord. Of the English king I would that, since he is uncourageous, he eat a good deal of the heart, then he'll be fine and worthy, and he'll recover the land on account of which he lives without merit and of which the king of France robs him, since he knows it would be fainthearted. And it behooves the Castilian king to eat of twice over, since he has two kingdoms and he's not worthy by one. But if he would eat of it, it behooves him to eat of it in secret, for if his mother knew it, she'd beat him with sticks. I would that the king of Aragon would eat of the heart, for that will relieve him of the shame which he incurs here for Marseilles and Millau, since in no other way can he win honor through anything that he might do or say. And next I would have what that one gave of the heart to the king of Navarre, for he was more worthy as a count than now as a king, so I hear say. It's wrong

[44:19]

when God causes a man to rise to great eminence, then lack of heart makes him decline in merit. For the count of Toulouse, there's need to eat well of it if he remembers that which he used to possess and that which he now possesses, for if with another heart he doesn't make good his loss, it does not seem to me that he'll make it good with the one he has in him. And it behooves the provincial count that he eat of it, if he recalls that the man who lives deprived of his heritage is worth hardly anything, and even though with great striving he defends and maintains himself, there's need for him to eat of the heart for the great burden which he sustains. The great nobles will wish me ill for that which I say well, but let them know rightly that I prize them as little as they need. Fair recompense only provided that with you I could find mercy. I scorn each man who holds me not his friend. As I said last time, more than one scholar notices that while Bertrand

[45:28]

de Boer is in the inferno and blamed for causing schism and dissension, a poet whose work Dante greatly admired, but in whose Cervantes had an opposite role, he in no way is guilty of a major sin like setting people against each other, yet if this Cervantes had ever been carried out, if what underlay it, if they'd ever been given the heart, all of Europe would have been at war. I think you saw all of Europe would have been at war over their territories they hadn't claimed. After the greetings dignified and glad had been repeated three or four times, they have to be repeated three or four times because when last heard Dante was going on against Florence at the end of the last canto, he's still roaring against Florence. After the greetings dignified and glad had been repeated three or four times,

[46:30]

Sardello drew him back and said, who art thou? Heir to this mount, return those spirits worthy to ascend to God, my bones by Octavian had been buried, I am Virgil, and for no other sin did I lose heaven than for not having faith. Thus answered then my leader, as one who seeth suddenly a thing before him whereat he marvels, who believes and believes not, saying, it is, it is not. Such seemed he, and forthwith bent his brow and humbly turned back toward my leader and embraced him where the inferior clasps opened. That's marvelous, where the inferior clasps, the notes that have gone on ever since Dante's little lead there are, where does the inferior clasp and who is the inferior leads to wonderful, wonderful fantasies. All the way from the feet, yea man, to the hips, to just under the arm, which seems to be less compromising than clasping hips. Oh, Gloria the Latin said he by whom our tongue showed forth all its power, oh, eternal praise to the place whence I sprang,

[47:35]

what merit or what favor showeth thee to me? If I am worthy to hear thy words, tell me if thou comest from hell, and from what cloister? Through all the circles of the woeful realm answered he him, came I here, a virtue from heaven moved me, and with it I come. And it's this crux, when coming up from hell and a virtue from heaven moved me and we begin to get announcements. From there on we get announcements of Beatrice. And Sardallus comes in the poem as a pivot. He's not on the end of the anti-purgatorial, but it's the pivot at the point where very soon Virgil cannot go beyond the anti-purgatorial and Beatrice will lead Dante in the ascent. Well, I wanted to pick up the references to Palma. This was to give you a lead to what

[48:38]

Palma is in this text when she appears. One of the early things I said, and I think rather, although it is curious that he changed the name from Canizza to Palma, and it enabled him, for instance, to have a reminder of Palma in the scene where the font with its Cariotides is presented. That font in the poem, and we're still in the first one, and if you took his boyhood in the domain of Etchelon and sort of looked on the other page, you might come across the essential things. We read last time the entrance, as I remember an entrance into this area. Well, this would begin with Pass Within, after the description of Goito.

[49:46]

Every time we come across it, though, what evokes it is, I'll move back to in Mantua Territory, half as slough, which is the beginning of a paragraph, and that's on the preceding page at Count Richard's Palace of Verona, but we're not, we're at the beginning of the, we're just after the passage where Dante appears. In Mantua Territory, half as slough, half pine tree forest, maple, scarlet, oaks breed o'er the riverbeds. Even Menchio chokes with sand the summer through. So, moving in through the Mantua Territory, Menchio is always, the river Menchio, is one of the announcements, through and through and through, dramatic as, for instance, the fact that believe, or once the word conceive follows close upon, I will, you will hear this tale of Sardello told theme. Who will may hear Sardello's story told. But

[50:48]

Menchio, this sequence of Menchio and then the appearance of Goito, the castle, choked with sand the summer through, but tis morass in winter up to Mantua walls. There was some thirty years before this evening's coil, one spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito. Just a castle built amid a few low mountains, firs and larches hid their main defiles and rings of vineyard bound the rest. Some captured creature in a pound whose artless wonder still precludes distress, secure beside in its own loveliness, so peered with airy head below above the castle at its toils. The lapwings love to glean among at great time. Pass within a maze of corridors contrived for sin. And one of, we had that little passage where we do see Sardello first appearing up from a time when Palma seems to have discovered him,

[51:48]

but the whole passage is such a dream of fantasy that we don't know about what is an erotic dream of Sardello's himself. Well, we do know because, finally, because in book three, thank God I'm not taking tests in it, Palma does finally tell us her own account of that room. She remembers that room. So, yes, she must have strayed through the room, seen Sardello in his near-sleeping fantasy, and leaned over him and passed through in that gloom. And so sin, there are difficult times, and yet, where pass within and sin is a rhyme, yet sin

[52:50]

seems to run through this thing, actually, because this is the soft core of the Victorian period. In its greatest moments, the one place where Victorians could see wild orgies was to open their Milton, illustrated by Doré, or to open their Bible, illustrated by Doré, and little children could see wonders beyond belief. I mean, all of the good wonders that I, I want to go to one of those big parties down there among all those flames where all those people are riding around, and do you think that mom and daddy and the rest of them look like that? If they were not clothed in truth and virtue, I mean. Dusk winding stairs, dim galleries got past. You gain the inmost chambers, gain at last a maple-paneled room. That haze which seems floated about the panel, if there gleams a sunbeam over it, will turn to gold, and in light graven

[53:51]

characters unfold the Arab's wisdom everywhere. What shade marred them a moment, those slim pillars made, cut like a company of palms to prop the roof, each kissing top entwined with top leaning together. I think we're in a reverie and truth almost to, I mean, unless we believe that Mr. Freud made up Freudian slips and so forth, rather than noticing them, the palms is palma, I mean, and it's a presence here throughout of something. So we're again in one of those erotic reveries in which, in which did, did Sardello, did Sardello go that far in dream? At one point Sardello says, yes, only in dreams did he go that far. And yet the poem won't let us settle with that for one thing. He does run off with, he does rape, one of the meanings of rape

[54:58]

is, is, is, rape and rapture, by the way, remember are the same word, being a rapture. And, and, and he does run off with Bonifacio, Richard's wife, Palma, and, and Palma's haunting the scene. Cut like a roof, company of palms to prop the roof, each kissing top entwined with top leaning together. In the carver's mind, some knot of bacchanals, flush cheek combined with straining forehead, shoulders purple, hair diffused between, who in a goat's skin bear a vintage, graceful sister palms. So we've got Palma and sister Palma. But quick to the main wonder now. A vault see, thick black shadow about the ceiling, though fine slits across the buttress suffer light by fits upon a marvel in the midst. Nay, stoop,

[56:04]

a dullish gray streak, cumbrous font, a group round it, each side of it where one sees upholds shrinking chariotides of just tinged marble, like eve's lily flesh. Now our theme of sin is going through and through and through. Beneath her maker's finger where the fresh first pulse of life shot bright in the snow. The font's edge burdens every shoulder, so they muse upon the ground, eyelids half closed, some with meek arms behind their backs disposed, some crossed above their bosoms, some to veil their eyes, some propping chin and cheeks so pale, some hanging slack and utter helpless length dead as a buried festal whose whole strength goes when the great above shuts heavily. So dwell these noiseless girls, patient to see, like priestesses because of sin, impure, penanced forever, who resigned, endure, having that once drunk sweetness to the dregs, and every eve, again now eve is eve, every eve Sordello's visit begs pardon for them,

[57:14]

constant as eve he came to sit beside each in her turn. Now it's suggested that that Palma, as well as Nado and Eglemore, where it's more apparent, is not only a person of the poem herself, but also in appearances like this, or on these Cariotides, each, because we see this young man moving through an erotic reverie in which sin is essential to the erotic fantasy itself, and the begging pardon for them, in which he sits beside each in her turn, sculptured nude figures of these Greek young girls surrounding the font. The font, by the way, for those who have not grabbed all out of this poem, the font is not only this font,

[58:19]

a font that was moved when Retrude, when Zanguera built the Goethe for Retrude, but when she died she was buried in the font, and what Palma eventually discloses to to Sordello, I see no difficulty for here, for instance, that this history would seem to be an ornament, since there's absolutely no evidence that Zanguera was the father of Sordello, but we're in a realm not of that, but also in a realm of fantasies, and the Palma who may have revealed to Sordello that his father was Zanguera, and his mother was Retrude, comes dangerously close to being the Palma who, at other times in the poem, is one of these four

[59:21]

persons of the convicts, who the Pope, and so it is at his mother's tomb, unknown to him, that he comes, and to the young girl that Retrude wants was he gives her pardon for a sin she's committed when she passed from her virginity into her pregnancy and his birth. Constant as Eve, he came to sit beside each in her turn, the same as one of them a certain space, and awe made, I mean, the syntax, the same as one of them, comma, a certain space, the bewilderment produces a reverie in which all of a sudden, is it saying that he was the same as one of them? This is the kind of thing only possible by Browning's entering into a place where the sentence and the syntax become confusing and confused, so things fuse,

[60:25]

and our mistaken readings enter in along with our readings. We read it again, we gradually make out what it surely is, but what it was before remains. The principle I can remember very well from time a little back, the great discovery about is it there or not, I think must have been, since it's in a nursery that I, until I was three, or I think they moved me out when I was five, what age would they move you away from when you were in the same room as your sister and you would get a room all of your own? In that room with my sister, I can remember the lights would be turned out, and then I would sort of know that that was actually a bunch of clothes on a chair, but it was clearly a gorilla, and I would get up very courageously and get a light on and see it was a bunch of clothes on a chair and turn the light off and go back, and there it was clearly a gorilla again. Between these two possible domains, there was very little, and in a way, this is clearly a gorilla land, I mean, and one that's

[61:31]

valuable in a poem, by the way, this is almost preachy, but those of you who are into poems, get way into them until, because you don't have to practice deliberate confusions, but if you get in there, they will appear in the right way. Browning isn't loading this, he kept trying to clear it up. And awe made a great indistinctness, and awe made a great indistinctness till he saw sunset slant cheerful through the buttress chinks, gold seven times globed. Surely our maiden shrinks, and a smile stirs her as if one faint grain her load were lightened, one shade less the stain obscured her forehead, yet one more bead slipped from off the rosary whereby the grip keeps count of the contritions of its charge. Then with a step more light, a heart more large, he made it part, leave her and every one to linger out the penance in mute stone. Ah, but Sordello, tis the tale I mean to tell you. And then he appears out of that, out of this, is coming in here at that font, he appears for the

[62:42]

first time, and we're close with the poems, too, that these were other poems, there were sister poems, and then you moved on to Caryatides, so Caryatides remain, and the mother Retrude remains, as if they belonged to a company, the Caryatides are a company anyway, and then they're identified in Sordello's mind with his Delians as he comes to want to be more and more like Apollo, they're Apollo's followers of women, and those listening to the poem will be women. Let's get to where Palma talks and tells a scene Well, here, this is, in book second, opens with a return

[63:47]

after his, we'll go back and pick up the, pick up the appearance of, and trace through Eglemore, and, and, and, but I want right now to get the, the, the, I see, I have, last time did I pick up where Natto first appears? Oh my, I mean, it isn't, I, I think I better, since Natto appears in here, I want to prepare you for, for how, when Eglemore, when Eglemore appears first, with him is Natto, and, and, and it's, and Natto is almost, almost the professionalism of, of, of, of the troubadour that Sordello enters at that point by winning. I think I've got him in voice, in the one where I was following voice through last time.

[65:08]

Bear with me a moment. Looking around would probably be better. So, 209. So, I'll, I'll do it the other way around with these, the guides for when, for when he's caught. Right, awesome, hold on. Mostly again, because Natto's appearance in the form is abrupt, and seems to have just descended and come into

[66:16]

being almost when he starts to sing, when, when Sordello comes forward with courage to sing. well, my trouble is, is that I shouldn't read it and worry about whether it's a before and after, and pick up, uh, the one I want is where he has his contest with, with, uh, Aguilamore. Mm-hmm. Are you talking about the very beginning of book two? Yeah, I guess I'm, I guess go, uh,

[67:17]

I guess at line 10, there's a reference to Natto, the very first, I don't know if that's the first. Well, I, yeah, this goes right into the contest, doesn't it? Because her appearance, I just started and gone darted. All right, the opening, opening of book two brings Natto in, is that Natto's, that is Natto's first appearance. I've got one for 209, and I was pretty, again, all right, let's take, but suppose on, on newborn judgment wrecks sympathy, uh, wreaks, wrecks, reckons, wrecks sympathy. And a, and a paragraph that begins, this world of ours by tacit pact is pledged, on the opposite page of that, to laying such a spangled fabric low, this, this is in book one, and it's, and it, and it's around line 6, 670,

[68:27]

if you've got, if you've got, um, 672, if you've got numbers. Whether by gradual brush or gallant blow, but its abundant will was bought here. Doubt wrote stardly in one so fenced about from most that nurtures judgment, care, and pain. Judgment, that dull expedient, we are feigned less favor to adopt, be dined and forced, that is, diverted from our natural course of joys. Judgment, poetic judgment, it, it, it is Natto. Judgment, the whole situation is Natto, and, and, and in that line of, Eglemore is, is, is, is the one who is completely in the song, something browning, never is, um, and, and actually forms a theory of not being, and yet the complete song is there, um, obviously haunting him as he struggles throughout. Natto is judgment, and, [...] and is announced by the theme of judgment when, when it appears here. I guess, I guess we really are about where it comes, because it's that, this is the kind of way in which we're both prepared and unprepared to get it.

[69:32]

The negative judgment of Natto is that he must be a bad critic, and, and, and, and that Natto was like very, all of them saw Natto as having been like their schoolmaster, and, and be like one of the wrong readers of the poem, and that's, and, and that is not at all, when, when, when, Sardello is moving in the world of poetry at all, Natto is there, and Eglemore is there, and Palma is there, in a very special sense. Judgment, that dull expedient we are feigned less favored to adopt, be dimes and forced status, diverted from our natural course of joys, contrive some yet amid the dirt, bury and render them it may be worth most we forgo. Suppose Sardello hence selfish enough, without a moral sense however feeble, what informed the boy others desired a portion in his joy? Or say a rueful chance broke woof and warp, a heron's nest beat down by march, wind sharp, a fawn breathless beneath the precipice, a bird with unsoiled breast and unfilmed eyes, warm in the break,

[70:35]

could these undo the trance, laughing Sardello? Others desired a portion in his joy, this is the beginning of caring, it's the desire, the end of the desire, caring, the circulation of care between writer and reader in which the, in which the joy, once you're writing the joy is out and given. Not a circumstance it makes for you, friend Natto, eat fern seed and peer beside us and report indeed if your word genius dawned with throes and stings in the whole fiery catalogue, while springs, summers and winters quietly came and went. Time put at length that period to content by right the world should have imposed, bereft of its good offices Sardello left to study his companions, managed, ripped their fringe off, learned and then it goes on into his drawing upon the people around him. And then we, so then in the opening of book second we come to the court and and the, and Eglemore and the figure of the poet as the troubadour,

[71:41]

something that Browning does not let Sardello go on to be. The woods were long, austere with snow, at last pink leaflets budded in the beach and fast larches scattered through pine trees, solitude brightened, as in the slumberous heart of the woods our buried year, a witch grew young again to placid incantations, and that stain about where from her cauldron green smoke blent were those black pines, so Eglemore gave bent to a chance fancy. But over and over again, Browning in this, as I said, advances not the word imagination but the word fancy, fancy and judgment. And yet both Eglemore and, and Notto in and of themselves appear a negative aspect of the thought. Whence a just rebuke from his companion, brother Notto shook the solemnist to brows, beware, he said, of setting up conceits in nature's stead. But this is brother in a, in a order of poetry.

[72:46]

Notto and Eglemore and Notto then will attach himself to Sordello as long as Sordello is poet and Notto will inform Sordello on the, on the proprieties of the poem, but also he'll inform him on the story, he will, he will back his knowing the story. We'll return to that role. Whence a just rebuke from his companion, brother Notto shook the solemnist to brows, beware, he said, of setting up conceits in nature's stead. Forth wandered our Sordello, not so sure as that today's adventure will secure Palma, the visioned lady. Throughout this there are figures of a hag, a witch that also occur, and it occurs here within this, is this verse being made fun of? I mean, is it a conceit? As we always move into an important part of the nature that Sordello, the poet, comes from, because it was when he discovered that he

[73:53]

was the woods that he went in, and that he, I mean, he was the land around Guido, and that when he returned to it, his magic returned. He had no magic in himself, that wasn't this, the woods were long as dear old snow, and, and then we have, as in the slumber's heart of the woods, our buried year, a witch grew young again to placid incantations, and that stain, remember the stain on the brow of the, of the carotid, about, were from her cauldron, but this is the stain of the leaves, and so forth, green smoke blend with those black pines. So Aglamore gave vent to a chance fancy. Forth wandered our Sordello, none so sure that, as that today's adventure will secure Palma, the visioned lady, only past or yon damp mound and it exhausted grass, under that break where sun dawn feeds the stalks of withered fern with gold into those walks of pine and taker.

[74:58]

Buoyantly he went, again his stooping forehead was besprent with dew drops from the skirting ferns, then wide open the great morass, shot every side with flashing water through and through, a shine thick steaming all alive, whose shape divine quivered in the farthest rainbow vapor, glanced to thwart the flying herons, he advanced but warily, though Mintio, Mintio leaped no more, each footfall burst up in the marished floor a diamond jet, and if he stopped to pick rose lichen or molest the leeches quick, and circling bloodworms, minnow, newt, or loach, a sudden pond would silently encroach this way and that. On Palma passed, the verge, on Palma passed, the verge of a new wood was gained, she will emerge flushed now and panting, crowds to see will own she loves him, Boniface to hear, to groan, to leave his suit, one screen of pine trees still opposes but the startling spectacle matua this time,

[76:04]

under the walls a crowd indeed, real men and women, gay and loud round a pavilion, how he stood, in truth no prophecy had come to pass, his youth and his prime now, and where was homage poured upon Sardello, born to be adored, and suddenly discovered weak, scarce made to cope with any, cast into the shade by this and this, yet something seemed to prick and tingle in his blood, a slight, a trick, and much would be explained, it went for naught, the best of their endowments were ill bought with his identity, nay the conceit that this day's roving led to Palma's feet was not so vain, list the word Palma, steal aside and die Sardello, this is real and this abjure, what next, the curtains see dividing, she is there and presently he will be there, the proper you at length, in your own cherished dress of grace and strength, most like the very Boniface, not so, it was a showy man advanced, but though a glad cry welcomed him,

[77:08]

then every sound sank and the crowd disposed themselves round, this is not he, Sardello felt, then placed for the best troubadour of Boniface, Pollard, the juggler's, Eglemore, whose lay concludes his patron's court of love today, obsequious Noddo strung the master's lute with the new lute string, Ellis named to suit the song, he stealthily at watch, Ellis gets to be in another part, another name of not only the song, but of the lady, another name of Palma, and one's left unsure, Ellis is the song, and since Ellis is the lady in the song, the song that's sung, that he wins the prize by, it floods out and takes over, and comes to the next surface up, in which it is as if it were

[78:12]

a secret name of Palma, named to suit the song, he stealthily at watch, the while biting his lip to keep down a great smile of pride, then up he struck, Sardello's brain swam, for he knew a sometime deed it can, so could supply each foolish gap and chasm the minstrel left in his enthusiasm, mistaking his true version was the tale not of Apollo, only what a veil luring her down, that Ellis, and he pleased, if the man dared no further, has he ceased, and lo! the people's frank applause, half done, Sardello was beside him, had begun, spite of indignant twitching from his friend the true there, the true lay, with the true end, taking the other's names, and time, and place for his, this is just back to what, these are moments of a kind of discovery, and coming, and coming first, I'm sure, remember this, Robert Browning has not met Elizabeth Brown at the time

[79:17]

of the writing of this poem, so the you, the expectation and the you that comes to be Palma is still in this realm of dream and of, of a felt promise, or a demanded promise, I don't know which one one would call it, well, a haunting promise be the right one, but promise which haunts it, the reality of everything that's going on, promise of something not yet arrived that entirely changes the nature of, so it's, if we put hope, it wouldn't stand for it, because you don't, in that sense, hope, but, but, that, let's get that again, he's about to sing us, the song is there, he's also about to be, for a second, a singing of Apollo himself, Apollo, which is the other role, only what a

[80:21]

veil luring her down that Ellis Annie pleased, if the man dared no further, has he ceased, and then the true, the true lay in the true end, taking the other's names, and time, and place for his, on flew the song, a giddy race, after the flying story, word may leap outward, rhyme, rhyme, the lay could barely keep pace with the action, visibly rushing past, both ended, back fell not a more aghast than some Egyptian, from the harassed bull that wheeled abrupt, and bellowing confronted, full his play, who spied a scarab neath the dung, and found, t'was at his flank, his hasty prong insulted, but the people, but the cries, the crowding round, and proffering the prize, where he'd gained some prize, he seemed to shrink into a sleepy cloud, just at whose brink one sight withheld him, there sat Adelaide, silent, but at her knees, the very maid of the

[81:27]

north country, her red lips as rich, the same pure fleecy hair, one weft of which golden and great, quite touched his cheek, as o'er she lent, speaking some six words, and no more, he answered something, anything, and she unbound, were back at that room, where sleepily he came to, in the gloom, and she unwound a scarf, and laid it heavily upon him, her neck's warmth and all, again moved the arrested magic, in his brain noises grew, and a light that turned to glare, and greater glare, until the intense flare engulfed him, shot the whole scene from his sense, and when he walked, was many a furlong fence at home, the sun shining his ruddy want, the customary birch chirp, but his front was crowned, her scented scarf around his neck, whose gorgeous vesture heaps the ground, a prize, he turned, and peeringly on him, brooded the women faces, kind and dim, ready to talk,

[82:31]

the jonglers and a troop had brought him back, Nadeau, and Squartieloup, and Taliaferre, how strange, a childhood spent in taking, well for him, so brave a vent, since Eglemore, they heard, was dead with spite, and Palma chose him for her minstrel, to report inside the choir, light Sordello rose, to think now, hitherto he had perceived, to think now, hitherto he had perceived, I have not yet got clear in my mind what the distinction that some, does somebody, does anybody have some ideas about this, between knowing and perceiving, Browning's own term for, he thinks now, and before he had perceived, but for the poetic state, Browning's term is to perceive, not to think. And yet, I don't find, I haven't found digging

[83:36]

around a theory of perception, I'm not going to dig around the scholars who, where they probably tell me chapter and verse, but among the things one looks for in this dream is, what, oh yeah, but my trouble here is not about perceiving and thinking, my trouble here is about Browning's idea of thinking and perceiving, I mean, of thinking and perceiving, when I said I'm not going to go to the scholars that meant the Browning scholars, to give me chapter and verse about where, because since he keeps making propositions about thinking and perceiving, and many other things are carried through here, I'm not yet clear about what, about how they operate within the poem. I probably should talk about thinking and perceiving, since I'm a little puzzled about do I perceive at all, and I'm not sure if I think. Ah, I perceive. I remember once when we got into a fierce literary talk, this is Warren Talman, he had been drinking

[84:43]

anyway, so people drinking can often think up reasons to get into terrible arguments, and Al and I sat around aghast as he said, well, but Creeley was very perceptive. I said, with one eye, you can only see half the room, all sorts of terribly nasty things, but it seemed to me in a flash, my God, I didn't know any other major poet who was as little perceptive as him. Creeley went entirely in the dark, it seemed to me, stumbling, and I mean, the figures throughout Creeley's poems are of how gorgeous it is when you do not perceive, when you proceed without perceiving in the least, and I never noticed, I cannot, not quite as nearsighted as Zukofsky, you better be on page. Well, you get the change right in this passage about, this whole passage is rich with this, because we go on to get the change of Ellis. Light sordella rose to think now hitherto he had perceived. Sure a discovery grew out of it all.

[85:47]

Best live from first to last the transport o'er again. A week he passed, sucking the sweet out of each circumstance, from the bard's outbreak to the luscious trance, bounding his own achievement. So the whole experience that we're given as the major time when Sordello experienced his poetry, his real time of experiencing himself as a poet in this poem, it, the poem is still in this reverie dream and trance state, where I think Browning's own poetic mind very much must have been, and the previous, just previous to that, it would be simple, and I guess the simplest thing to take was that perception would be the stage in which nature is present for Sordello. Remember, he moves from the perception of ferns and so forth into his realm of trance and then thinking, to think now, or so he begins thinking. Well,

[87:01]

that means he just comes to his argument. Strange, a man recounted an adventure, but began imperfectly. His own task was to fill the framework up, sing well what he sung ill, supply the necessary points, let loose as many incidents of little use, more imbecile the other not to see their relative importance clear as he. But for a special pleasure in the act of singing, had he ever turned in fact from Ellis to sing Ellis? From each fit of rapture to contrive a song of it? True, this snatch or the other seemed to wind into a treasure, helped himself to find a beauty in himself. For, see, he soared by means of that mere snatch to many a hoard of fancies, as one sun-falling cone bears soft the eye along the fir-tree spire, aloft to a dove's nest. Then how divine the cause why such performances, what such performance should exact applause from men, if they, at fancies too, did fate decree they found a beauty separate in the poor snatch

[88:08]

itself? Take Ellis there, her head that's sharp and perfect like a pear, so close and smooth are laid the few fine locks, colored like honey oozed from topmost rocks, sun-blanched the live-long summer. And they heard just those two rhymes assented at my word, and loved them as I loved them, who have run these fingers through those pale locks, let the sun into the white cool skin, who first could clutch, then praise, I needs must be a god to such. Oh, what did some above themselves, and yet beneath me, like their eclamore, had set an impress on our gift? So men believe and worship what they know not, nor receive delight from. Have they fancies slow perchance, not at their beck, which indistinctly glance, until by song each floating part be linked to each, and all grow palpable, distinct? He pondered this. And then, and then, and then eclamore appears, that I think I see reading through that,

[89:19]

and reflecting as I go, that we move from perception, but the thinking that's proposed, to think, to think now, doesn't mean it should think or whatever, but to think now, means he moves into a kind of think poem, and immediately appears as eclamore's rival, and he's almost arguing that the way of, it is certainly, if we thought of thinking as being an operation of the mentality, more imbecile the other, and so forth, and the whole set of comparisons goes in like a caricature of our intelligence tests of our period. Well, but we remember Browning, as people around him talked about, or experienced him as a superior mind, or a superior intelligence, and this must have left him feeling very much out of it. I mean, he could, must have been aware one of the ways not to care about him was to experience him as

[90:19]

a superior mind. Oh, but you have superior ideas, young man. Because for him, it goes right back, well, let me give the appearance of eclamore and Nardo's transference to him, because I'm thinking of them as something happening within the book, big poets, because after this he comes, he really turns away from poetry, comes into a collapse of the poem, along the line after the singing of that song of the prize. Meanwhile, sounds low and drear stole on him, and a noise of footsteps nearer and nearer, while the underwood was pushed aside, the larches grazed, the dead leaves crushed at the approach of men. The wind seemed laid, only the trees shrunk slightly, and a shade came o'er the sky, although t'was midday yet.

[91:21]

You saw each half-shut downcast floweret flutter. A Roman bride, when they dispart her unbound dresses with the sabine dart, holding that famous wraith in memory still, felt creep into her curls the iron chill, and looked thus, eclamore would say. Indeed, tis eclamore, no other these precede, home hither in the woods. T'was

[91:48]

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