Robert Browning in 1858. Image: Corbis
Browning described the composition of "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" in terms that attest to its deep source in his own psyche. "I was conscious of no allegorical intention of writing it ... Childe Roland came upon me as a kind of dream. I had to write it then and there, and I finished it the same day, I believe. I do not know what I meant beyond that, and I do not know now. But I am very fond of it."
This doesn't mean, of course, that the tale was entirely Browning's invention. The poem's epigraph ("See Edgar's Sing in Lear") alludes to an old Scottish ballad which Edgar, disguised as Mad Tom, quotes in Shakespeare's play, mixing it up with lines from the folk-tale, "Jack the Giant-Killer": "Child Rowland to the dark tower came,/ His word was still 'Fie, foh and fum,/ I smell the blood of a British man." But Browning's poem bears little relation to the ballad.
It triumphantly avoids any sort of period pastiche. As in the best horror stories and movies, a naturalistic setting and narrative style allow terror and dismay to emerge all the more convincingly. The leisurely build-up is another effective device. The first three stanzas simply show Roland debating with himself whether or not to follow the directions of the sinister, "hoary cripple" he has met on the road.
The poem's very formality, with its regular and Roman-numbered stanzas marching on with a consistent, dignified, iambic tread, emphasises the seriousness of Browning's project. But is his intention mainly to tell a chillingly good story? Though he denied writing conscious allegory, it is tempting to read the poem as an exploration of an inner state of mind, or even an account of "the battle with depression".
Many critics have read it that way, for instance the poet Thomas Blackburn. In an excellent introductory book, Robert Browning: A Study of His Poetry (The Woburn Press, 1967), Blackburn also wrote that Browning was "more aware of evil, the shadow side of human nature, than any other poet of his age". I would go further and suggest that Browning was exceptionally aware of all human psychology.
His genius lay in his ability to contain so many unaccommodating aspects of the self in verse, and to give them fresh forms of expression (for example, the dramatic monologue), as well as old forms revitalised. He could be didactic, hearty, clumsy: he wasn't immune to the faults of Victorianism. But his major poems are lit by a blazing intelligence, openness and courage. His range of subjects and ideas is thrilling. He asks the big questions, while keeping close to the daily experience of men and women. As an unusually astute love-poet, as a master of the colloquial voice, and in his unshocked willingness to explore the "shadow side", he is still highly relevant to the practice of poets today.
"Childe Roland" is one of darkest and greatest poems. It's a little long for the blog, so, to whet your appetite for the whole poem, I've culled two narrative segments: stanzas 10-14, and the concluding stanzas 30-34. In the first, the young knight has just looked back towards the "safe road" behind him, only to find that it has disappeared and there is nothing but "grey plain" around him and in front of him. He decides to continue, since "naught else remained to do".
X So, on I went. I think I never saw Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe, You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove. XI No! Penury, inertness and grimace, In some strange sort were the land's portion. 'See Or shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly, 'It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: 'Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this place, Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.' XII If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV Alive? He might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty main; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
XII If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to balk All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV Alive? He might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty main; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
XIV Alive? He might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And shut eyes underneath the rusty main; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain.
Only Dante, perhaps, has created such a sense of the immanence of evil in a landscape. But Roland meets no villains, fights no demons. The horror is stronger because of the absence of a living antagonist. He continues his desolate journey. There is a river he imagines is full of dead bodies, a ghastly machine ("That harrow fit to reel/ Men's bodies out like silk") and an oak whose cleft is "Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim/ Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils." The narrative moves into its final stages with a nightmarish dawning of recognition ...