Many have failed to understand this poem, because they think that
Browning himself is constantly guilty of the sin specifically
condemned here. Browning has indeed often been called a thinker, a
philosopher: but a moment's serious reflection will prove that of all
English poetry outside of the drama, Browning's is the least
abstract and the most concrete. Poetry is not condemned because it
arouses thought, but only when it is abstract in method. Browning
often deals with profound ideas, but always by concrete illustrations.
For example, he discusses the doctrine of predestination by giving
us the individual figure of Johannes-Agricola in meditation: the
royalist point of view in the seventeenth century by cavaliers
singing three songs: the damnation of indecision by two Laodicaean
lovers in _The Statue and the Bust_. When Browning is interested in
any doctrine, idea, or system of thought, he creates a person to
illustrate it.
Browning's theory of poetry is further reenforced by his poem
_How It Strikes a Contemporary_, which, in the final rearrangement
of his works, he placed directly after _Transcendentalism_, as though
to drive his doctrine home.
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