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An elab­o­rate gloss with a smat­ter­ing of argu­ment near the end.

Robert Brown­ing is laud­ed for his pen­e­trat­ing dra­mat­ic mono­logues, char­ac­ter-dri­ven vers­es that viti­ate our affec­ta­tions, plumb the yawn­ing chasms of our self-delu­sion, and expose our inse­cu­ri­ty to the glare of day­light. “Solil­o­quy of the Span­ish Clois­ter,” Browning’s vir­u­lent rev­e­la­tion of a monk’s hypocrisy, reaf­firms the peren­ni­al wis­dom of Jerome, that “the charges we bring against oth­ers often come home to our­selves; we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our elo­quence ends by telling against our­selves” (597). Even as Broth­er Lawrence unwit­ting­ly bears the name­less monk’s accu­sa­tions of moral turpi­tude, aber­rant heresy, and licen­tious debauch­ery, Brown­ing exer­cis­es deft­ness in draw­ing the reader’s atten­tion away from his own fault, the real­iza­tion of which is — in my opin­ion — the sub­lim­i­nal motive of the poem.

The read­er is inclined to inveigh against the faults of the speak­er, there­by rein­forc­ing a con­dem­na­to­ry extro­spec­tion, despite Browning’s almost play­ful, sub­tle prod­ding toward intro­spec­tive self-aware­ness. A pro­gres­sive­ly indig­nant tone, fevered pace, spas­mod­ic syn­tax, and sopho­moric dic­tion rapid­ly bank­rupts the speaker’s integri­ty reveal­ing his self-right­eous dis­sim­u­la­tion, while, a fan­ci­ful use of those same poet­ic forms fuel the reader’s sym­pa­thy by imag­i­na­tive­ly sug­gest­ing the irra­tional jeal­ousy to which most of us at least occa­sion­al­ly suc­cumb and how war­rant­less is our own moral indignation.

Set­ting the tone with an almost child­ish­ly ono­matopoe­ic “G‑r-r‑r,” Brown­ing imme­di­ate­ly divests the speak­er of ratio­nal judg­ment by declar­ing the pass­ing Broth­er Lawrence, “my heart’s abhor­rence,” sug­gest­ing the onset of an emo­tion­al tantrum (1). The tetra­met­ric lines induce a hur­ried, mad­dened pace con­sis­tent with this, while the alter­na­tion between iambs and trochees facil­i­tate a vari­ety of tonal accen­tu­a­tions that effect a sense of the speaker’s slip­ping in and out of near hys­te­ria. This hys­ter­i­cal indig­na­tion is imme­di­ate­ly evi­dent in the speaker’s mock­ing of Lawrence’s oth­er­wise innocu­ous gar­den­ing, which as an avowed reli­gious allu­sive­ly indi­cates his dili­gence to the calm, rhyth­mic, and duti­ful cul­ti­va­tion of the soul.

The ref­er­ences to gar­den­ing are replete through­out, from spe­cif­ic plants ± a myr­tle-bush, a rose in a “lead­en vase,” cork, oak galls, pars­ley, a lily, fig­wort, green­gages, and the metaphor­i­cal “blast­ed rose-aca­cia” to the con­di­tions, process­es, and tools of hus­bandry (7, 69). There is a great deal of resent­ment boil­ing up in the speak­er, who can­not abide the sim­ple, but reward­ing work of Lawrence. That the speak­er finds fault in gar­den­ing is the first indi­ca­tion of his cant, for as a monk he should take issue nei­ther with man­u­al labor in gen­er­al nor with gar­den­ing in par­tic­u­lar, an hum­ble atten­tion to that which promis­es beau­ty and sus­te­nance, “for what­so­ev­er a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (King James Ver­sion, Gal. 6.7).

The speak­er would be aware of the sym­bol­ic role that gar­den­ing and plant­i­ng have in scrip­ture. His sanc­ti­mo­nious the­o­log­i­cal ref­er­ences are enough to demon­strate his the­o­log­i­cal knowl­edge, even if he delib­er­ate­ly cor­rupts their mean­ing or strips them to their shal­low­est expres­sion. The reli­gious tones are quite damn­ing, espe­cial­ly since the poem begins with with the vain invo­ca­tion of “God’s bloo” and the imme­di­ate con­sign­ment of Broth­er Lawrence to death and damna­tion (4). After which, when Lawrence and the speak­er sit in refec­tion, the speak­er is phar­i­saical­ly dis­gust­ed by Lawrence’s lax table man­ners and vul­gar con­ver­sa­tion. He speaks of low­ly, earth­ly mat­ters like crop yields and the weath­er, rather than the lofty, celes­tial con­sid­er­a­tions appro­pri­ate to monks who, as the speak­er shows, must incor­po­rate the tran­scen­dence of divin­i­ty into even the most menial gesture.

In lay­ing his knife and fork cross-wise and sip­ping his drink thrice, super­fi­cial­ly sig­ni­fy­ing the cru­ci­fix­ion and the trin­i­ty, the speak­er unjust­ly denounces Lawrence, who nev­er­the­less, while lack­ing these affec­ta­tions, is the more sin­cere of the two. The ref­er­ence to Gala­tians in line 49 is all the more inter­est­ing for there being no such pas­sage in Gala­tians. There are no “twen­ty-nine dis­tinct damna­tions” list­ed there, which implies that the speak­er is a will­ful eisegetic, read­ing his own pre­con­cep­tions and prej­u­dices into the scrip­tur­al texts, that is, proof-tex­ting his way to right­eous­ness (50). His mal­ice is made man­i­fest when he con­sid­ers catch­ing Lawrence in one of these “dis­tinct damna­tions” and trip­ping him up, that he might suf­fer a fatal fall and die unab­solved of his sin. The con­clu­so­ry descent into unhinged con­tempt occurs when the speak­er, an oath-bound reli­gious monk, invokes the devil’s assistance,

Or, there’s Satan! — one might venture
Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he’d miss till, past retrieve…
(64 – 67, Mal­bone 218)

This marks the cross­ing of a dan­ger­ous thresh­old in the speaker’s hatred for Lawrence, as he is will­ing to con­sid­er risk­ing his own soul to undo his mild, flower-tend­ing broth­er. He must be aware of the para­dox, that mak­ing a deal with Satan — despite cre­at­ing a loop­hole that would save his soul — is itself a mor­tal sin (Mal­bone 220).

More telling than the sanc­ti­mo­ny and self-right­eous­ness of the speak­er are the sub­tle rev­e­la­tions of his own actu­al sin, overt­ly sex­u­al sins in par­tic­u­lar. Even as he accus­es Lawrence of voyeurism, spy­ing on the naked nuns Dolores and Sanchicha as they bathe, it is clear from the col­or­ful descrip­tion of their tress­es, “blue-black, lus­trous, thick like horsehairs,” that it is the speak­er who is the voyeur (29). “Deadeye”and “Bar­bary cor­sair,” are both nau­ti­cal allu­sions (30 – 31). The first refers to an ele­ment of a ship’s rig­ging, a round disk usu­al­ly with three-holes arranged so as to look like a wide-eyed face with a lolling open mouth. The sec­ond refer­ring to the ruth­less, avari­cious, pil­lag­ing, lech­er­ous char­ac­ter of pirates. It is not unimag­in­able that the speak­er is pro­ject­ing his own appetites and mien on the unsus­pect­ing Lawrence. The speaker’s per­son­al sex­u­al devian­cies — at least by peri­od monas­tic stan­dards — are fur­ther­more allud­ed to when he con­sid­ers slip­ping his own “scro­fu­lous French nov­el /​On grey paper with blunt type” into Lawrence’s sieve while he col­lects green­gages (57 – 58).

This is a reveal­ing dou­ble enten­dre, for scro­fu­lous both has the mod­ern mean­ing of “porno­graph­ic” — although this was a nov­el mean­ing in Browning’s day — and also refers more direct­ly to a well-known plant genus scro­phu­lar­ia. For Brown­ing, the spe­cif­ic asso­ci­a­tion with scro­phu­lar­ia nodosa, also known as “fig­wort,” would sug­gest that Lawrence was a sodomite. For fig­wort was used to treat piles, the clus­ters of which were said to look like “figs,” and which were pop­u­lar­ly believed to be the result of homo­sex­u­al anal inter­course. Fur­ther­more, the “woe­ful six­teenth print,” while delib­er­ate­ly vague, might sug­gest a porno­graph­ic depic­tion, on the six­teenth illus­trat­ed plate, of a homo­sex­u­al act. That the speak­er pos­sess­es a so-called “scro­fu­lous” nov­el, pre­sum­ably depict­ing and describ­ing homo­sex­u­al acts, sug­gests that the accu­sa­tions lev­eled against Lawrence are in fact the guilt-rid­den predilec­tions of the speak­er (Gwara and Nel­son 30).

Alas, if the speaker’s phar­i­saical hypocrisy were the last and final word, this poem could hard­ly be con­sid­ered pro­found. His false pietism is writ large from the first line through the last and even a shal­low, cur­so­ry scan reveals the mali­cious jeal­ousy and dis­sim­u­la­tion of the speak­er. It is my opin­ion, how­ev­er, that this sur­face mean­ing, while cer­tain­ly pos­sess­ing sub­tleties, con­scious­ly obscures the most valu­able mes­sage in the poem, the reader’s own hyp­o­crit­i­cal incli­na­tions. Brown­ing is set­ting us up, he wants us to dis­sect the self-evi­dent­ly wicked and whit­ed sep­ul­cher that is the speak­er and expose his sin­ful­ness to dis­tract us from the psy­cho­log­i­cal scalpel with which he intends to bare our egos. Fine­spun and incon­spic­u­ous cues redi­rect the reader’s fin­ger back at the him­self, a self-judg­ment of his own rash judg­ment. The for­mer analy­sis shows only that when “we inveigh against faults which are as much ours as theirs … our elo­quence ends by telling against ourselves.”

The first indi­ca­tion that judg­ment of speak­er is rash is the time­frame. Much of the poem refers to refec­tion, bounc­ing back from oth­er scenes always to the table, end­ing final­ly with a call to ves­pers — prayer made at sun­set in the monas­tic tra­di­tion. The time­frame of the speaker’s vicious litany of com­plaint there­fore seems to tran­spire dur­ing one evening meal, the oth­er inter­spersed set­tings being prod­ucts of his imag­i­na­tion. I might argue from the churl­ish non­ver­bal sounds, the chop­py syn­tax, and the fre­net­ic tem­po, that these are the speaker’s swift and fleet­ing stream-of-con­scious­ness — tak­ing place over a mat­ter of min­utes as the meal con­cludes. In Roman Catholic moral the­ol­o­gy, mor­tal sin is prop­er­ly under­stood as that which is mate­ri­al­ly grave, inten­tion­al­ly act­ed, with full and suf­fi­cient reflec­tion. There is no indi­ca­tion then that this is the typ­i­cal dis­po­si­tion and com­port­ment of the speak­er, his mal­ice may very well be the mal­ice of the moment. We can reimag­ine Lawrence as a coarse, sim­ple­mind­ed broth­er with dirt under his nails and whose con­ver­sa­tion is tedious and banal.

The speak­er may not even hate Lawrence, but he — as is quite com­mon with all of us — begins to imag­ine offens­es that would make Lawrence’s oth­er­wise blasé pres­ence more inter­est­ing and even tol­er­a­ble. The speaker’s hatred is almost so pet­ty that it could not be more than a pass­ing fan­cy, the cru­el imag­in­ings of bore­dom. Lawrence becomes the momen­tary sub­ject of the speaker’s inter­nal cathar­sis, just as we so often think irra­tional and mali­cious thoughts with­out ever real­ly intend­ing them to influ­ence our actions and cer­tain­ly with­out ful­ly and suf­fi­cient­ly reflect­ing upon their verac­i­ty. The image con­jured is of the venial sin of an unjust but unspo­ken thought, a cas­cade of increas­ing­ly inane ideas burst­ing into our con­scious­ness like white-waters break­ing in a phan­tas­magor­i­cal del­uge abrupt­ly dammed when our atten­tion is divert­ed away by the real, tan­gi­ble, out­side world. Browning’s poem could almost be con­strued as the reader’s men­tal effort to calum­ni­ate the innocu­ous behav­ior of the speak­er in the same way that the speak­er is calum­ni­at­ing the innocu­ous behav­ior of Lawrence.

In its con­clu­sion, we are sud­den­ly awok­en to the sound of the vesper’s bell, “Hy, Zy, Hine,” and we growl at the now faint ves­tiges of our for­mer mal­con­tent­ed thoughts, utter­ing a final anti­cli­mac­tic epi­thet, “swine.” Then we return to our nor­mal, unas­sum­ing, inof­fen­sive inter­ac­tion with our fel­lows and the tasks to which we set our­selves. The para­dox of Jerome’s adage is that to inveigh against an inveigh­ment of fault is itself a fault. Judg­ment is a vicious cycle that iden­ti­fies fault in anoth­er with­out acknowl­edg­ing the very fault of judg­ment. We can crit­i­cize the mate­r­i­al grav­i­ty of an action, but we can­not judge the inten­tion­al­i­ty or impul­siv­i­ty of the actor. Our assess­ment of the speak­er is as base­less as the speaker’s assess­ment of Broth­er Lawrence, and for that rev­e­la­tion we should be glad and per­haps a lit­tle less zeal­ous in our knee-jerk effort to destroy the char­ac­ter of anoth­er, their assumed thought, mis­ap­pre­hend­ed word, or soli­tary deed — espe­cial­ly when they are the sheer prod­uct of our own imagination.

Brown­ing, Robert. “Solil­o­quy of the Span­ish Clois­ter.” 1842. An Intro­duc­tion to Poet­ry. By X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 13th ed. Boston: Long­man, 2010. 403 – 05. Print.

Gwara, Scott, and John Nel­son. “Botan­i­cal Tax­on­o­my and Bug­gery in Browning’s ‘Solil­o­quy of the Span­ish Clois­ter.’” Amer­i­can Notes and Queries 10.4 (1997): 30. Lit­er­a­ture Resource Cen­ter. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.

Jerome, St. “To Rus­ti­cus.” Ed. Philip Schaff. Trans. The Hon. W.H. Free­man­tle, M.A. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 6. 597. Print. II.

Mal­bone, Ray­mond Gates. “That Blast­ed Rose-aca­cia: A Note on Browning’s ‘Solil­o­quy of the Span­ish Clois­ter.’” Vic­to­ri­an Poet­ry 4.3 (1996): 218 – 21. JSTOR. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.