This poem,
while it deals ostensibly with the lives of only two monks, gives us
a glimpse into the whole monastic system. When a number of men
retired into a monastery and shut out the world forever, certain
sins and ambitions were annihilated, while others were enormously
magnified. All outside interests vanished; but sin remained, for it
circulates in the human heart as naturally as blood in the body. The
cloister was simply a little world, with the nobleness and meanness
of human nature exceedingly conspicuous. When the men were once
enclosed in the cloister walls, they knew that they must live in
that circumscribed spot till the separation of death. Naturally
therefore political ambitions, affections, envies, jealousies, would
be writ large; human nature would display itself in a manner most
interesting to a student, if only he could live there in a detached
way. This is just what Browning tries to do; he tries to live
imaginatively with the monks, and to practise his profession as the
Chronicler of Life.
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