Apparent Failure

What do we know about this poem?What does the title tell us?

Context: The Paris Morgue1804-1864: The Paris Morgue was located close to the River Seine, on the site of an old slaughter-house. The bodies of those who were found dead in the river or on the streets were placed in a room to await identification.

This room was a major tourist attraction. The Brownings lived in Paris in 1855-6, and would have visited the morgue.

Have you ever taken a CPR course?

In the 1880s, the body of a woman was pulled from the Seine. The body showed no signs of violence, and suicide was suspected. A pathologist at the Paris morgue was so taken by her beauty that he had a plaster cast death mask taken. In the following years, numerous copies were produced. The copies quickly became a fashionable morbid fixture in Parisian Bohemian society. She was compared to the Mona Lisa, inviting numerous speculations as to what clues the eerily happy expression in her face could offer about her life, her death, and her place in society.

L'Inconnue de la Seine (as she was known) was photographed, reproduced in works of art, and referred to in literature from around the world. Girls modelled their looks on her.

And ‘Rescue Annie’, the CPR doll, was given her face, making it “the most kissed face of all time”.

"We shall soon lose a celebrated building.” -- Paris Newspaper

The speaker in the poem (likely Browning himself) responds to a newspaper article reporting the intended demolition of the morgue building. He states he will “save it” by writing about it. The focus of the poem he writes is his walk along the Seine and visit to the morgue, where he sees three bodies laid out for identification. The men have committed suicide and he reads in each of their faces their struggles and disappointments.

He uses the poem to explore his philosophy of the imperfect: that life has only been fully lived if one has tried to achieve something beyond one’s powers and so is destined to fail: “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp” (Andrea del Sarto). The failed attempt at impossible perfection becomes in itself an achievement as one is tested and extended beyond one’s limitations. Through this exploration, he concludes that the men only appear to have failed in life. Their doom is not final as what God has blessed cannot be cursed.

Language and Imagery

No, for I'll save it! Seven years sinceI passed through Paris, stopped a dayTo see the baptism of your Prince, Saw, made my bow, and went my way:Walking the heat and headache off, 5I took the Seine-side, you surmise,Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies, So sauntered till--what met my eyes?

Only the Doric little Morgue! 10The dead-house where you show your drowned:Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.One pays one's debt in such a case; I plucked up heart and entered,--stalked, 15Keeping a tolerable faceCompared with some whose cheeks were chalked:Let them! No Briton's to be balked!

Previous visit (7 years ago)

Reason for the previous visit: the baptism of Napoleon’s son (Napoleon was one of Elizabeth’s heroes) (1856)

Congress: Congress of Paris, meeting to agree terms of peace following Crimean war: 1856

Gortschakoff: Russia’s representative at the congress

Cavour: representative for Piedmont (region of Italy) at the congress – wanted to unite Italy

Buol: representative for Austria at the congress – ruled Italian peninsula

Style of Greek architecture

Vaucluse in SE France was home to Petrarch (Italian poet c14th)

Sorgue: river in Vaucluse

“The Sorgue is made famous by the home of Petrarch. The Seine is made famous by the morgue.”

The obligation to visit a famous place

First came the silent gazers; next,A screen of glass, we're thankful for; 20Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text,The three men who did most abhorTheir life in Paris yesterday,So killed themselves: and now, enthronedEach on his copper couch, they lay 25Fronting me, waiting to be owned.I thought, and think, their sin's atoned.

Poor men, God made, and all for that!The reverence struck me; o'er each headReligiously was hung its hat, 30Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,Sacred from touch: each had his berth,His bounds, his proper place of rest,Who last night tenanted on earthSome arch, where twelve such slept abreast,-- 35Unless the plain asphalt seemed best.

Metal table on which the dead are laid out

Safely out of the clutches of those who would defile it (as is the man)

How did it happen, my poor boy?You wanted to be BuonaparteAnd have the Tuileries for toy, And could not, so it broke your heart? 40You, old one by his side, I judge,Were, red as blood, a socialist,A leveller! Does the Empire grudgeYou've gained what no Republic missed?Be quiet, and unclench your fist! 45

And this--why, he was red in vain,Or black,--poor fellow that is blue ! What fancy was it, turned your brain?Oh, women were the prize for you!Money gets women, cards and dice 50Get money, and ill-luck gets justThe copper couch and one clear niceCool squirt of water o'er your bust,The right thing to extinguish lust!

Napoleon: military and political leader of France whose actions shaped c19th Europe

Imperial palace in Paris

Belonged to political movement demanding equality and religious tolerance

It's wiser being good than bad; 55It's safer being meek than fierce:It's fitter being sane than mad.My own hope is, a sun will pierceThe thickest cloud earth ever stretched;That, after Last, returns the First, 60Tho' a wide compass round be fetched;That what began best, can't end worst,Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.

On Elizabeth’s death:

“O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again / And with God be the rest!”

“...from this life I pass into a better, there / Where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul.”

Reference to a long journey/ distance travelled / area covered (not necessarily physical)

Form

• Dramatic monologue• Is the speaker Browning? • At first glance, the title appears to relate to

the building of the morgue but, in fact, it was not demolished; the ‘apparent failure’ then, appears to be the men and their suicide

• Nature of failure/success/death is explored as the poem goes on

Structure

• 7 x stanzas; 9 lines per stanza – extra line represents the outsider nature of the poem’s subjects

• Rhyme scheme: ababcdcdd• Final rhyming couplet in each stanza stresses

the finality of definitiveness of death