sonnets from the portuguese by elizabeth barrett browning

Her tranquillity is preserved in fact, the serenity she attaches to the gesture of raising her hand “in the sunshine” may be guaranteed by the memory of the lover’s touch on her palm – though memory seems a feeble word for this re-enactment.

It’s simply that her consciousness is in a state of double occupancy: she will still possess the imaginative presence. At first, the sight of the solitary poet at her “door / Of individual life” suggests stasis, as if she will be unable to step outside and act as an independent being, but as we pursue the sentence, despite that theatrically doom-ridden “Nevermore”, we realise the figure has not been frozen by the lover’s absence. “Yet I feel that I shall stand / Henceforward in thy shadow.”įortunately, there’s rather more to the poet’s position than is suggested by the image of a woman standing in a man’s shadow. There will be no consciousness for her of the beloved’s absence. Already, the speaker’s response is clear. The qualifier opening the next sentence in the first line, “Yet”, begins demolishing the possibility of separation. Absence defied by imagination is a subject that fits aptly with the Petrarchan tradition, but Barrett Browning makes the form into an instrument for building certainty rather than inviting internal argument. In the most convincing reading, Barrett Browning is evoking an imagined worst-case scenario, physical separation from her beloved, and illustrating her defiance. However, this interpretation depends on reading “Go from me” as a command, or at least as the response to a threat from the lover to leave. It raises an expectation of a lovers’ quarrel, one appearing at an ominously early stage of the narrative. Sonnet six has the most surprising of beginnings. Having discussed on a previous occasion the most famous of the 44 sonnets, number 43, I decided to turn this week to one of the lesser known, number six. Apparently, his first idea was that they should be called Sonnets from the Bosnian. He insisted on their publication, and suggested the title as a means of disguising them as translation. His response was not perhaps entirely impartial: he considered them to be the best work in sonnet form since Shakespeare.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was already an accomplished poet when she dedicated the Sonnets from the Portuguese, written between 18, to her future husband, Robert Browning.

Sonnets from the portuguese by elizabeth barrett browning