The Soul Of Robert Browning's Poetic Art

Robert Browning (1812-1889) of the Victorian Age is an extremely gifted one among the world's gifted poets. He is noted for his unique styles and diversified subjects. Men and Women is an important collection of his poetry discussing Browning's philosophy of life. Nowadays, the poems in his Men and Women are recognized as representing the highest level of Browning's poetic achievement.The fifty-one poems, with a few exceptions, fall into three principal groups. The first group includes those poems that interpret the passion of love. The poems in the second group deal with arts. The poems in the third group are connected with the meaning of life. The personas in these poems pursue love, arts and the meaning of life. But they cannot reach the perfect state. What he wants to show is his philosophy of the imperfect, which differs from the traditional philosophy. Browning thinks that life is imperfect, so there is always a belief running through his poems: everything in the world develops from the imperfect to the perfect.Browning's principle of the imperfect on love is different from the traditional love conception. The men and women in these poems pursue love, but their souls cannot be united perfectly because of human being's individuality, independence, limitation in communication and restriction of life. The artists in these poems climb the mountain of arts. But they can never reach the summit. That reflects Browning's view of art. He objects to Greek art, which presented mundane perfection and taught men to submit. Browning is convinced that where the imperfect ceases, stagnation must begin. Imperfection stimulates artists to struggle for perfection persistently. In the aspect of his view about success and failure, Browning sings praises of the imperfect nature of all living things from the angel of "success in failure".In a word, imperfection has its unique significance, which encourages people to seek perfection unceasingly. Browning aligns firmly himself with his philosophy of the imperfect both in his poetic art and his exploration of life. This paper intends to analyze Browning's philosophy of the imperfect reflected in his view of love, arts, success and failure through the poems in Men and Women to discover that his philosophy of the imperfect is the soul of his poetic art.