A Grammarian's Funeral by Robert Browning (Dramatic Monologue, Style & Analysis)

 

A Grammarian's Funeral

by Robert Browning

(Dramatic Monologue, Style & Analysis) 

Dramatic Monologue

In the poem, ‘A Grammarian's Funeral’ the Dramatic Monologue is used by Robert Browning with amazing skill, insight and success. The Dramatic Monologue is, ‘dramatic’, because it is the utterance of imaginary characters and not of the poet himself and because in it character is developed not through any description on the part of the poet, but through a conflict between the opposite thoughts and emotions of the character himself. It is a, ‘monologue’, because it is the conversation of a single individual with himself (Mono’ means ‘one’, and ‘logue’ means, ‘conversation’). The form is also referred to as monodrama. This is a kind of comprehensive soliloquy, absorbing into its substance by the speaker’s keenly observant glance, the surrounding scenery and audience, bringing all that is pertinent to the chosen moment by the channels of memory, argument, curiosity and association; adding through the deep graven lines which habit has incised upon character much which the soul would fain conceal, and enriching the current of self-revealing speech with the product of any other emotion which may have been powerful enough to share in the fashioning of this critical moment.

The dramatic monologue was peculiarly suited to Browning’s genius. Despite all his appetency for Drama, Browning did better work in his dramatic monologues than in his plays. He did not achieve success immediately; his power and his technique evolved slowly but steadily till perfection was achieved. Though hints and traces of this form are to be seen even in such early poems as Pauline, Paracelsus, and Sordello, the form comes to full flowering in The Dramatic Lyrics, 1842.

In each monologue, the speaker is placed in the most momentous or critical situation of his life and the monologue embodies his reactions to this situation. Unlike a dramatist, Browning does not begin slowly with an action leading to the crisis, rather he plunges headlong into the crisis. For this reason, his monologues have an abrupt, but very arresting opening and, at the same time, what has gone before is suggested cleverly or brought out through retrospective meditation and reflection.

The monologues are ‘dramatic’, and as such they must be entirely objective. Browning is amazingly objective in some of them, but more often than not he betrays his own personal point of view. His philosophy of life, his view on God and the immortality of the soul, etc., can all be gathered from a study of his monologues, such subjectivity is unavoidable in a verse form which requires the poet, to lend his own mind to his characters to enable them to defend their actions.

Style

Browning’s style is a pictorial style; it is also rich in the use of imagery, similies, metaphors, etc. His images are usually startling in their originality and daring. Often, they are drawn from the grotesque in nature. Nature is constantly used to illustrate the facts of human life. Often the concrete is used to clarify and bring home to the readers the spiritual and the abstract. His images are clear cut and vivid, and more often than not they have a symbolic significance.

Beauty of form in poetry also depends on the style and diction of a poet. Browning was a highly original genius, his style is entirely individual, and so for want of a better name it is called Browning-style. He uses the smallest number of words that his meaning allows. In the very beginning of his career, he was once charged with verbosity, and since then, “he contended himself with the use of two words where he would rather have used ten.” This dread of being diffuse resulted in compression and condensation which made him often, if not actually obscure, at least difficult to understand.

Just as in his style, so also in his versification, Browning is often rugged and fantastic. Sometimes, this ruggedness is justified by the subject ; sometimes the use of a broken, varying, irregular verse is essential to convey the particular emotion or the impression which the poet wants to convey. Browning had a peculiarly keen ear for a particular kind of staccato music, for a kind of galloping rhythm. Often, he uses double or even triple rhymes to create grotesque effects. The real fault does not lie with such artistic use of the rugged and the fantastic; the real fault arises when such a use is not necessary, when it is not artistically justified. And Browning’s search for novelty frequently betrays him into using such clumsy and irritating meters, and this clouds his intrinsic merits as a metrical artist.

As a matter of fact, Browning was a great metrical artist and throughout his career he experimented with a variety of stanza-forms and other metrical devices. He is the greatest master in our language, in the use of rhyme, in the amazing variety of his versification and stanza-forms, and in the vitality both of his blank verse and rhymed verse. Browning is far indeed from paying no attention, or little, to metre and versification. Except in some of his late blank verse, and in a few other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master in our language; in single and double, in simple and grotesque alike, he succeeds in fitting rhyme to rhyme with a perfection. His lyrical poems contain more structural varieties of form than those of any other preceding English poet.

Analysis

The Grammarian’s Funeral is among the better-known poems of Browning. It was first published in the volume of poems called Men and Women, 1855. Later on, the poem was included in Dramatic Romances, 1868. Though the name of no particular scholar has been mentioned in the poem, critics are of the view that Browning had in mind the life and achievement of Jacobus Miliclius, a German scholar of the 15th century. However, it is preferable to regard the Grammarian in the poem as a symbolic figure, as typical of those Renaissance scholars, who devoted their lives to study and research and fell, “martyrs to learning.” The time is the early 15th century when the Renaissance was in full flowering and a number of scholars devoted themselves to classical studies and thus brought up a revival of ancient learning. They melted like a candle in pursuit of knowledge. Shunning all the pleasures of the world, denying themselves all the good things and comforts of life, they lived an austere life of exclusive devotion even to little known branches of learning. The dead scholar in the poem is a typical product of his age and environment, and through an account of his life and achievement, the poet has captured the very spirit of the Renaissance. The poem is an epitome of its age, as well as an epitome of Browning’s philosophy. It has been called a, “psalm of life, the optimistic song of a life lived in the life of eternity, rather than within the limits of time.”

It is rather a long poem in 148 lines cast in the mold of a dramatic monologue, the favorite poetic form of Browning. It is a mourning song, a funeral chant or dirge sung by one of the disciples of the dead grammarian, as they carry his body up a tall mountain to bury him there. As the funeral procession moves up, the speaker or the singer sings of the self-abnegation and passion for learning of their dead master, and contrasts him with the common, ignorant people who live in the plain below.

Thus, the monologue grows out of a critical situation. Their dear, honored master is dead and so, quite naturally, his disciples review his life and achievement. Quite naturally, they are reminded of his devotion to his books, and the way in which he martyred himself for the sake of knowledge. One of them speak for the whole groups of mourners.

The monologue is an epitome of Browning’s philosophy. It brings out his faith in God, his faith in the immortality of the human soul, his belief that failure in this life means success in the life to come. ‘Earth’s failure’, means, “Heaven’s success’, and man’s efforts are sure to be rewarded, if not here, then in the life to come. In this poem a life’s accomplishment is measured by two different standards ; accordingly, as we take into account or ignore the life hereafter.”

The Grammarian, never doubting that, “Man has Forever,” has been content to forgo everything else in the painful pursuit of the minutiae of Greek syntax. Born with the grace of Apollo, he has become shrunken, leaden-eyed, subject to torturing disease and premature death. If a man’s life, like that of, “dogs and apes,” has no endurance beyond death, then it is clear that this has been a paltry and grotesque existence. If on the other hand, the lofty belief, which he becomes a pageant of victory.