ABSTRACT
One word on the obscurity of Sordello. It arises not so much from peculiarities of style, and the involved structure of occasional sentences (too much has been said on this; as a rule the style of Sordello is vigorously straightforward), as from the unrelaxing demand which is made throughout upon the intellectual and imaginative energy and alertness of the reader. This constant demand exhausts the power of attention in a short time, and the mind is unable to sustain its watchfulness and sureness of action, so that if we read much at a sitting we often find the first few pages clear and admirable, while the last three or four over which the eye passes before we close the book leave us bewildered and jaded; and we say, ‘Sordello is so dreadfully obscure.’ The truth is, Mr. Browning has given too much in his couple of hundred pages; there is not a line of the poem which is not as full of matter as a line can be; so that if the ten syllables sometimes seem to start and give way under the strain, we need not wonder. We come to no places in Sordello where we can rest and dream or look up at the sky. Ideas, emotions, images, analyses, descriptions, still come crowding on. There is too much of everything; we cannot see the wood for the trees. Towards the end of the third book Mr. Browning interrupts the story that he may ‘pause and breathe.’ That is an apt expression; but Mr. Browning seems unable to slacken the motion of his mind, and during this breathing-space heart and brain, perceptive and reflective powers, are almost more busily at work than ever.
