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Saturday, December 15, 2012

Italy and the Brownings


How do I love Florence? Let me count the ways….
           
A few weeks ago, I took a short tour of Italy, stopping in Venice, Florence, and Pisa all within five days. It is true that you can’t see everything in that short amount of time, but what I did see convinced me that what novelists, painters, and poets have often said is valid—Italy is a one-of-a-kind place. Its balmy weather and ancient atmosphere inspires all kinds of creativity. It is no wonder why famous poets Elizabeth and Robert Browning moved to Florence as soon as they were married. And it was fortunate for me that their old apartments are still maintained by a museum open to the public.

Elizabeth was born in England in 1806. She was a very well educated child, studying Latin and Greek. As a very young girl, she was also exposed to Shakespeare and Milton. These studies certainly nurtured her creativity and supported her future literary pursuits. In fact, by age twelve she had already written four books of couplets, showing poetic potential before she was even a teenager.

However easily writing and scholastics came to Elizabeth, she was also destined to struggle throughout her life with a mysterious disease.
Doctors and literary scholars have since raked Elizabeth’s writing for clues of what this disease could have been, but no one is certain. Regardless, the disease made her tired and weak, and her doctor prescribed opium to deal with the symptoms. This prescription did little to soothe her. In fact, if it wasn’t for the tender attention of Robert Browning, Elizabeth might have succumbed to her mysterious disease much sooner. This attention sparked a love affair that inspired many of Elizabeth’s most famous poems and greatly impacted the literary world.

Elizabeth caught the eye of fellow poet Robert Browning after she published Poems in 1844. This work won her considerable fame and regard among her literary contemporaries, and Robert was so inspired by Elizabeth’s poetry that he wrote to her, expressing his admiration for her writing. This correspondence began a very famous and intriguing romance between the pair. Elizabeth, sickly and six years older than Robert, often wondered at his love for her.
           
In fact, she confessed her doubts of Robert’s affection in one of her works, Sonnets from the Portuguese, which she wrote after their courtship began. Eventually Elizabeth and Robert decided to marry, against the will of Elizabeth’s father, who disinherited her for getting married without his blessing. (In fact, Elizabeth’s father never approved of his children’s marriages, and disinherited each child who went against his wishes.) Nevertheless, Elizabeth and Robert sanctified their forbidden love and moved to Florence as soon as they were wed. Once moving there, Elizabeth published the second volume to her Poems. The love sonnets of this sequel won her even more regard and esteem in the public’s eye. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died of her mysterious illness in her husband’s arms in 1861.

I was fortunate enough to walk through the old Florentine rooms of this famous couple. I surveyed the massive shelves of Browning poetry and the quaint drawing room. In Florence the couple lived in simplicity. However, what the apartment lacked in style it made up for in literary significance. In one room, I poured over Elizabeth’s old letters and writings and held in my hand the famous writer’s pen.

Elizabeth Browning leaves behind a legacy of beautiful poetry. With Robert Browning, she had a love affair that greatly altered literature created at the time, and which still lives with us today.

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By Kelly  Young