I’ve been enjoying poetry quite a bit recently, so when I happened on a reference to Robert Browning in Angela Thirkell’s Summer Half, I followed my usual method of pursuing a reference: I hopped over to the Kindle Store and found a free volume of his poems—and on a whim, because I like books of letters, I also picked up the first volume of his correspondence with Elizabeth Barrett (later, of course, Barrett Browning). I’m finding it absolutely delightful so far. It’s intriguing to trace the growth of their friendship and become acquainted with their personalities through the letters. Robert writes in long, eager, running-out-of-breath sentences and seems to forget that he set out to say something else several pages ago, and Elizabeth has a most charming sense of humor. But an additional delight is their frequent conversations about writing. They talk of handwriting, critics, inspiration, and life as a writer in general. I’ve been highlighting my favorite passages as I go, and I thought I’d share a few:

From Elizabeth:

The most frequent general criticism I receive, is, I think, upon the style,—’if I would but change my style’! But that is an objection (isn’t it?) to the writer bodily? Buffon says, and every sincere writer must feel, that ‘Le style c’est l’homme’; a fact, however, scarcely calculated to lessen the objection with certain critics.

On another occasion:

What no mere critic sees, but what you, an artist, know, is the difference between the thing desired and the thing attained, between the idea in the writer’s mind and the ειδωλον [translation] cast off in his work. All the effort—the quick’ning of the breath and beating of the heart in pursuit, which is ruffling and injurious to the general effect of a composition; all which you call ‘insistency,’ and which many would call superfluity, and which is superfluous in a sense—you can pardon, because you understand. The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

And again:

One may be laborious as a writer, without copying twelve times over. I believe there are people who will tell you in a moment what three times six is, without ‘doing it’ on their fingers; and in the same way one may work one’s verses in one’s head quite as laboriously as on paper—I maintain it. I consider myself a very patient, laborious writer—though dear Mr. Kenyon laughs me to scorn when I say so. And just see how it could be otherwise. If I were netting a purse I might be thinking of something else and drop my stitches; or even if I were writing verses to please a popular taste, I might be careless in it. But the pursuit of an Ideal acknowledged by the mind, will draw and concentrate the powers of the mind—and Art, you know, is a jealous god and demands the whole man—or woman. I cannot conceive of a sincere artist who is also a careless one—though one may have a quicker hand than another, in general,—and though all are liable to vicissitudes in the degree of facility—and to entanglements in the machinery, notwithstanding every degree of facility. You may write twenty lines one day—or even three like Euripides in three days—and a hundred lines in one more day—and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.

And then, not forgetting the practical side, some very sensible advice to Robert:

Thinking, dreaming, creating people like yourself, have two lives to bear instead of one, and therefore ought to sleep more than others.