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RADIANCE AND THE TRAGIC on author Elizabeth Barrett Browning


  • RonPrice
    Apr 3 12:25 AM 2006
    Reply
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning(1806-1861) was the most successful woman poet of the Victorian period. In 1840, when her brother Edward died, she became a recluse and spent nearly all her time in her room on the third floor of her father’s house. Here she wrote her famous book of poetry entitled Poems published in 1844. She was seriously considered as a successor to Wordsworth as England’s poet laureate when Wordsworth died in 1850. Another poet, Robert Browning, became attracted to her poetry, especially the poetry in Poems and in 1945 he became attracted to her. They were married in 1846.

    That same year Emily Bronte put her Gondal poems, which she had been working on for some years, into a separate collection. The following prose-poem is an expression of my appreciation both Bronte’s and Browning’s poetry and of what I see as a remarkable coincidence between the origins of their poetry and the origins of the Babi-Baha’i Faiths in that year 1844, mirabile dictu. I also include some personal autobiographical comments. -Ron Price, “Elizabeth Browning Internet Sites,” Pioneering Over Four Epochs, April 2nd 2006.

    12 months after He said
    I am, I am, I am and your
    secret epistolary romance,
    turned into a meeting--at last
    and you found a husband to be,1
    your poems made you famous,
    the greatest female poet ever,
    most inspired in history: some said.

    That same year Emily put her
    Gondalsaga poems into a book,
    her imaginary world that came,
    invaded, dominated & destroyed
    her real one--became her real one
    and she called it Wuthering Heights
    and it told of a radiant, a mystical
    oneness in the world of existence
    with its misery, its insanity, its agony.

    And so it was---tragic and mystical.
    That same year signaled the start,
    the opening of the most glorious
    epoch in the greatest cycle which
    the spiritual history of humankind
    had yet witnessed: the most tragic,
    the most spectacular, eventful in
    the first century of the Baha’i Era.

    1 Elizabeth met Robert Browning in May 1845.

    Ron Price
    April 2nd 2006


  • rufina caraid
    April 3, 2006 ↑
    Reply
    Ron thank you once again for giving us another insight into this famous ladys' life.

    Von

  • pankaja
    April 11, 2007 ↑
    Reply

    Elizabeth Barret Browning

    The constellation of famous poets during that period makes me wish I was also there-one among.
    The way Elizabeth fought her illness,defyed her dominating father is inspiring! The Barret-Browning romance has been immortalized by all poetry-lovers.Yea,the union helped their potentials to blossom-otherwise English literature would have sufferred.
    Nuggehalli Pankaja

  • mermaid7
    April 11, 2007 ↑
    Reply
    This is a very interesting insight. Thanks for sharing it. I believe in order to appreciate the works, it is a good idea to learn something about the writers. Your submission proves my theory.
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