A Reading of La Saisiaz

A Reading of La Saisiaz - F. E. L. Priestley For readers of Browning 's poetry, La Saisiaz must always hold a special interest as one of the poet's most extensive personal utterances. It is seldom, even in lyrics, that he writes a poem so directly occasional, and so inunediate in form. Here his more usual techniques of indirection, of speaking through a persona, of substituting for the personal situation a devised dramatic one, are abandoned; the reticence suggested by the separation of "House" and "Shop" is here pushed aside by the urgent compulsion of the poet's emotion. The occasion of the poem, the sudden and shockingly unexpected death of his dear friend Anne Egerton Smith, is close in time to the composition; the poet's emotion is fresh and near to him; it is neither recollected in tranquillity nor distanced by his normal aesthetic devices. There is consequently behind the poem a sense of private urgency, a sense of emotional excitement straining against Browning's habit of control. The dualism so well described by F. G. R. Duckworth, the tension between "speaking out" and preserving privacy, here takes on what is perhaps its most complex form. In its general pattern, the poem moves towards a tightening of control ; that is, towards reticence. It moves from direct expression of emotion towards a suppression of it, from the personal to the impersonal, and one gets the impression that the real theme is contained precisely in this movement, that the poem records Browning's katharsis, his successful emergence from shock. The first section (lines 1- 139) presents, as if by way of introduction, the direct experience in which the poem originates. The poet has climbed alone to the summit of Mt. Saleve, overlooking the village of Collonge where Miss Smith is buried. It is only five days since her death. On that morning they were to have climbed Saleve together, when Browning, looking for her to start the ascent, learned to his horror that she was unconscious and dying. As he now completes the climb alone, it becomes for him a symbolic act: the movement upward, each part of which reveals new scenes, new vistas, new perspectives, suggests the 47 48 F. E. L. PRIESTLEY journey of life; the poet at the summit has "dared and done," as his companion has "dared and done" with life. The abyss between the summit and Collonge suggests the barrier separating living and dead: Dh the barrier! yon Profound Shrinks beside it, proves a pin":point: barrier this, without a bound! Boundless though it be, I reach you: somehow seem to have you here -Who are there.... , .. Howe'er disjoints Past from present, no less certain you are here, not there: have dared, _Done the feat of mountain-climbing, ... The recollection of the gay planning of the climb together, of the casual, affectionate goodnight, of the dreadful morning discovery, forms a narrative counterpointed by descriptions of the mountain scenes. A final recollection of Miss Smith's shy, diffident, affectionate nature completes the introduction by modulating to the main theme: Y Oll supposed that few .or none had known and loved you in the world: May be! flower that's full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower , that's furled. But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand Bud to ben and outspread flower-shape at the least warm touch of. hand -Maybe, throb,of heart, beneath which,-quickening farther than it knew,Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue. Disembosomed, re-embosomed,-must one memory suffice, Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside named Edelweiss? Her rich and charming spirit, known truly to few, can hope for no long survival in living' memories; can it hope for other survival? Dared and done to-day Climbing,-here I stand: but you-where? The elaboration of this question fonus the second movement of the poem (lines 140-217): "Does the soul survive the body? Is there God's self, no or yes?" In shaping the question, the poet begins with two provisos : he will not shrink from the truth, "come in whatsoe'er uncouth Shape it should, nay...