La Saisiaz
La Saisiaz and The Two Poets of Croisic,two long poems by R. Browning , published 1878 , the third and final such pairing in his work.
La Saisiaz is a philosophical elegy prompted by the sudden death of a close friend of Browning's, with whom he had been holidaying in a chalet called ‘La Saisiaz’ (the sun) near Geneva. It deals with the central religious question ‘Does the soul survive the body? Is there God's self, no or yes?’, though the terms are equally applicable to the creative imagination; the poem, like In Memoriam , is as much a self-scrutiny as a tribute to the dead. The Two Poets of Croisic is much less solemn in tone than La Saisiaz: it tells the stories of two obscure poets associated with the small village of Croisic in Brittany, each of the stories illustrating, in comic and grotesque vein, the folly of human (and specifically poetic) aspiration. Coming immediately after...
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