Browning’s Faith Beneath the Cynicism: “Christmas-Eve” and “The Bishop Orders His Tomb”

Introduction

Robert Browning stands as an archetype of the intelligent, passionate, and spiritually sensitive poet. His work is marked by a conflict between reason and faith, and between materialism and true enlightenment. In Browning’s poetry, worlds are always colliding. Intellect and sentiment, normal drudgery and high aspirations of the soul, and modernity and classical traditions all seem to have been at war within the poet. Browning’s verse reflects these conflicts he experienced as an aware, educated, and emotional man and artist. In the poetry, the poet is revealed.

Perhaps more fundamentally than with any other influence, it seems that Browning struggles with Christianity. His mind questions a great deal of the processes and traditions of it, yet he is deeply attracted to the beauty of its core spirituality. His verses allude to Christian ethics, even as he seeks in nature a foundation for spirituality removed from them. Ultimately, however, Browning never departs from an innate belief in Christianity, one likely reinforced by his skeptical probing into the faith. This may be seen by examining two poems. Directly in “Christmas-Eve” and obliquely in “The Bishop Orders His Tomb”, Robert Browning asserts the deep spiritual Christianity within him beneath an unforgiving, cynical exterior.

Contrasts in Approaches and Styles

The differences between “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” and “Christmas-Eve”, fully apart from matters of substance, are striking. They are, in a sense, as dissimilar as two verses from the same poet can be, merely in terms of style, length, and form as either lyric verse or dramatic poem. As will be seen, however, even these differences serve to bring the poet and the reader to the same destination.

“Christmas-Eve” is epic in scale and artistic ambition, as it is both lengthy and deeply introspective. Beginning as a simple, first-person narrative, it enables the reader to accompany Browning on something of a spiritual quest. The night – and it is, based on the title, a Christmas Eve – is stormy and the poet seeks shelter in a Calvinist chapel. The structure of the poem is both visual and episodic, as Browning relates everything his senses encounter in the course of the visit. The initial section reveals his keen observation, along with a dawning sense of the wonder felt by the ordinary people he is joining. As elsewhere in the long and segmented verse, what is central in the form is an interior monologue. Everything the narrator comes into contact with stirs his reflections on Christ, man, and spirituality.

Conversely, the title character of “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” has no time or patience for speculation. It is, in fact, a verse in the form of an oration by a fictional character. The bishop is dying and it is imperative to him that his orders for his final burial be exactly fulfilled. In terms of structure, pace, and approach, this is all that is occurring in the verse. This is poetry that uses a single, dramatic device of an invented church official to present a single desire. The poem is not especially brief, but the length seems to be in keeping with the speaker’s agenda; Browning captures throughout a kind of desperation, or even hysteria: “Life, how and what is it?” (Browning, line 10), the Bishop blurts out, and early on the reader understands that a fear, or doubt, of the afterlife is urging the dying man on.

The essential structural differences between the two poems is, not unexpectedly, dictated by their content. In “Christmas-Eve”, expansion is the direction; the poet is moving, literally from a cramped chapel vestibule, into the figurative horizon of the spirit of Christianity. The Bishop, on the other hand, is in a diminishing world. He is facing his end and the poem’s form actually seems to close in upon him, as well. He is, after all, going into detail about the small space that will soon hold him forever, and it seems that Browning is ironically using the dimensions of a tomb to illustrate the smallness of the bishop’s soul.

Similarities in Meaning and Intent

Comparing and contrasting two such diverse poems provides an extraordinary insight into how Browning perceives the life of the spirit itself and man’s interpretations of it. In a very real sense, he offers in these two verses diametrically opposed views, which serves to point to the great effort he himself gave to resolving the issue of faith in his own mind. “Christmas-Eve”, as noted, is a poem that “opens up”; it expands in space as a reflection of the expansion occurring within the narrator, who goes from a cramped vestibule into the grandeur of the Roman Basilica and beyond. It is not, however, a perfectly golden or hopeful journey. From the start, there is a concentration on the mundane: “In came the flock: the fat weary woman/ Panting and bewildered, down-clapping/ Her umbrella with a might report” (Browning, part II, lines 2-4). No physical detail escapes the poet’s notice, and a sense of oppression, and even despair, is created. He is in a chapel, but the venue then has no spiritual grace for him, as man’s herding and seeming mindless behavior predominates. He stays, he witnesses, but he is disgusted: “I very soon had enough of it/ The hot smell and the human noises” (Browning, part III, lines 1-2).

From there, the narrator moves on in ways both temporal and spiritual. Browning flies, figuratively; as his mind and his soul demand a better understanding of faith, his scenes shift as if magically. For some time, he is stunned to be in the Basilica of Rome. Not long after, he struggles to identify new surroundings as a German school. No matter what he confronts in these realms, however, the essence of the journey remains internal. In no uncertain terms, the narrator is searching for God, or at least a distinct manifestation of him. These places he flies to, by means unknown, seem only to exist as counterpoint. They are all structures wherein God is sought, but the lesson waiting for the narrator is that the arenas are meaningless, even when as grand as ancient as in Rome, or as calculating and intellectual as in German school of theology.

In contrast, the bishop obsessed with ordering his funeral arrangements is utterly unconcerned with anything but outward show, and how posterity will view his tomb. In a startling and seemingly intentionally ironic opening, the bishop cries out, “Vanity!”, as though in response to a charge made against himself. The poem, as noted, has one ambition, or at least its central figure does. There is a single-minded desperation to ensure that both his tomb’s placement and grandeur suit his status. Most importantly, it must surpass that of an old rival, Gandolf, who is mentioned by the bishop throughout the oration. As “Christmas-Eve” unabashedly sets out to explore the depths of Christian awareness and feeling, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb” could read as a sardonic condemnation of the form “Christianity” takes in the real world, since it concerns itself with one prelate’s greed. It is no accident that Browning employs a bishop, who is a very high-ranking member of the clergy. It reinforces his point that earthly status has nothing to do with inner glory, given the harsh and materialistic demands of this bishop. Interestingly, it could be said that the glories of the Roman church encountered by the “Christmas-Eve” narrator perform the same role; all are ultimately nothing, if real salvation is the goal.

As vastly different as they are, there are powerful similarities between these two poems, as noted in the example above. There is a long, episodic search for meaning and Christ, and there is a shorter, nearly angry determination that proper form be observed. Browning, however, is too subtle to draw anything completely in a one-dimensional manner. As both a poet and playwright, Browning understands the inherent complexity in human beings. Both his “Christmas-Eve” narrator and his bishop, while fixated on a single thing, bring the reader to the same destination, which is an innate awe of God. With the bishop, far more of this must be actually done by the reader. The narrator traveling the world on Christmas eve is blatantly on a journey of exploration into his own soul and the universe surrounding it. Even the bishop, however, reveals a gap of wonder or unease in his commands. Reflecting on his dying state, he says, “Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask/ Do I live, am I dead? Peace, peace seems all” (Browning, lines 12-13). This is actually disturbing on a level beyond that of the bishop’s greed or vanity, for it defies the assumption that so lofty an officer of the church would be sanguine and calm at the end of his life. The “peace” he refers to seems more like a frightening emptiness to him. In this irony is the core of the poem, for how can a bishop feel uncertainty or fear about dying? Browning seems to be asserting that, as with physical spaces, status and worldly trappings mean nothing if God is not within.