“Not Death, but Love”

Tags

Elizabeth Barrett, Elizabeth Browning, Joy, Love, Poems, Robert Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese

In the fall the grass begins to fade, turns brown, and withers away with the wind.  Winter comes and covers the world in a blinding white frost.  All is cold and dead.  Life seems to be no more, and then in the shortest of days, the sky slowly transforms.  The murky gray void melts away and begins to reveal the gentle blue radiance of springtime.  Such was the life of Elizabeth Barrett.

In the Foreword to the book, The Love Poems of Elizabeth and Robert Browning (pgs. ix-xii), written by Louis Untermeyer, we read the following:

“The story of the Brownings is one of the strangest love stories of literature. Elizabeth Barrett was a thirty-nine-year-old invalid when Robert Browning, six years younger than she, stormed impetuously into her life. […]

Born in Durham, March 6, 1806, the eldest of eleven children, Elizabeth was extraordinarily precocious. […] At fifteen she injured her spine, either by a fall from a horse or by a strain caused by tightening the saddle girths.  A persistent cough kept her confined in London with occasional visits to the seashore.  The death of a beloved brother by drowning and her father’s jealous possessiveness plunged her into a half real, half-enforced melancholy.  Approaching her forties, she seemed destined for a life of shrouded invalidism. […]

Just [then] Robert Browning was brought to her home.  He was already in love with her, even before he saw her.  She had praised some of his lines in a poem, ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ and his first letter to her began, ‘I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett.’  Then, after a page or two of literary compliments, he added boyishly, ‘And I love you too.’  In spite of her father’s disapproval, the young poet practically forced his way into the forbidding house, courted Elizabeth swiftly and tempestuously, and challenged the very authority of her father.  To counteract Browning’s growing influence, Mr. Barrett made plans to move the entire family to the country.  Browning was now aroused to act; on September 12, 1846, he persuaded Elizabeth to slip from the house and marry him secretly in Marylebone Church.  A week later […], the married poets crossed the channel, passed to Paris, to Pisa, and finally to Florence where they began a new life.

In Italy Mrs. Browning made an almost miraculous recovery.  In spite of a frail body, she grew almost robust; at forty-three she gave birth to a son.  Husband and wife luxuriated in a climate which gave them energy as well as happiness.  Theirs was a long and industrious idyl.”

The hopes of spring blossom into the joys of summer.  Such were the lives of Elizabeth and Robert Browning.  Below are three of my favorite love poems by Elizabeth Browning from her short work entitled, Sonnets from the Portuguese:

I

I thought once how Theocritus had sung

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung

A shadow across me.  Straightaway I was ‘ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,–

“Guess now who holds thee?”—“Death,” I said. But, there,

The silver answer rang,–“Not Death, but Love.”

 

XVI

And yet, because thou overcomest so,

Because thou art more noble and like a king,

Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling

Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow

Too close against thine heart henceforth to know

How it shook when alone.  Why, conquering

May prove as lordly and complete a thing

In lifting upward, as in crushing low!

And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword

To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,

Even so, Beloved, I at last record,

Here ends my strife.  If thou invite me forth,

I rise above abasement at the word.

Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

 

XX

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think

That thou wast in the world a year ago,

What time I sat alone here in the snow

And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,

Went counting all my chains as if that so

They never could fall off at any blow

Struck by thy possible hand,–why, thus I drink

Of life’s great cup of wonder!  Wonderful,

Never to feel thee thrill the day or night

With personal act or speech,–nor ever cull

Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white

Thou sawest growing!  Atheists are as dull,

Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

Roses Are Red

Tags

Alone, Identity, Loneliness, Lonely, Pain, SAD, Single Awareness Day, Valentine's Day

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I hate Valentine’s Day because I’m…single?”

Today is Valentine’s Day or in the singles world: Single Awareness Day (SAD).  This is the day when all of the single people cry out in one mighty voice: “Nobody loves us!”  Well, it’s not quite like that…but close.

Several years ago a friend of mine, Christina, gave me a little note on Valentine’s Day.  On the front of the yellow note in big loopy handwriting was the word “LOVE.”  Flipping the note open I read: “STINKS, yeah, yeah (heart) Christina.”  I laughed, thanked her for the card, and asked, “Are you lonely?”  She hesitated and responded, “All the time.”

Loneliness is a strange and oftentimes a very painful experience.  To be single on Valentine’s Day is to be reminded that one is alone and perhaps unwanted.  Our experience of being alone is often a negative reminder that something or someone is missing.  There is an emptiness that has not been filled, and so many singles spend Valentine’s Day in a depressed and worried funk.

However, I think that we would be wise not to overlook the importance of loneliness in life.  If loneliness is often connected to aloneness, then aloneness is often connected to identity.  Loneliness is the cry of the heart seeking a full and complete identity.  As a woman in labor cries out in agony while giving birth to a new life, so the heart cries out in loneliness while giving birth to the shaping of the soul.  This is why we should be careful not to run away from the pain of loneliness and immediately seek comfort outside of ourselves.  We must go through the full pain of loneliness to be fully ourselves.  We must learn to be alone.

Almost fifty years ago, a Jesuit priest by the name of Barry McLaughlin wrote the following (emphasis mine) in his book, Nature, Grace and Religious Development (pgs. 46-47):

“Critics have also noted the American fear of loneliness.  Individual identity is sacrificed in an effort to stay close to the herd, to be no different from others in thought, feeling, or action.  To stand alone, to be alone, is to assert a personal identity which refuses to be submerged.  Society will not tolerate this.  Innumerable social features are designed to prevent it: stadiums to accommodate thousands at sport events, […] shared room in colleges, […] countless clubs, organizations, associations, societies, canned music (for silence is unbearable) […].

Yet one of the surest signs of the resolution of the identity crisis is an increased capacity for being alone, for being responsible for oneself.  The gradual process that will end in perfect identity involves an awareness of the fact that there are decisions in life and aspects of life’s struggle that a person must face alone.

For as a young person becomes clearer in his [or her] own mind of his role in society and of his personal identity, he is likely also to become more aware of how he differs from others.  Gradually he becomes conscious of his isolation from others, not because others are pulling away, but because the fullness of personal identity cannot be achieved without some degree of aloneness.  […]  But the unwritten code of our […] culture prohibits aloneness, and this is the second causative factor for a prolonged identity crisis: the obstacles our society imposes to prevent personal reflection.”

In order to love ourselves properly, we must go on a journey from loneliness (incompleteness) to solitude (fullness), but we must go on this journey alone.  So if you are suffering from loneliness on this SAD day, don’t run away from your loneliness!  Rather, find some time to be alone, quiet, and reflective.  If you find yourself in agony and pain from your loneliness, know that this is ok.  These are merely growing pains.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

“Roses are red.  Violets are blue.  I love Valentine’s Day because I am single!”

The Failure of Writing

Tags

Blog, Book, Writing

I quit my job at the end of December and decided to start my next job at the beginning of February.  The plan was to take off all of January in order to write a book.  I had an outline, lots of great thoughts, a new laptop, and nothing happened.  The creativity just stopped.  Oh well.

However, I did learn one thing.  I am a very random person who can’t stay on track for more than a limited time period.  Maybe if I can’t seem to fit into a book…I might just fit into a blog!