Browning's “Saul” and the Fourfold Vision: A Neoplatonic-Hermetic Approach

Abstract

Over the years Browning's poem “Saul,” which he himself chose as one of his finest lyrics, has received much critical attention. It has been analyzed as showing the development of Browning's religious beliefs between 1845 and 1855, as an inductive approach to religious experience, as a typological account of man's growth in history toward Christianity, as an expression of Browning's Evangelical faith in the Incarnation, as an example of his use of the past to comment on the present, and as a dynamic statement of his emotional mysticism. Its rising structure and sequence of ideas have been related to Christopher Smart's “Song to David” and “Ode to Musick on St. Cecilia's Day,” to Wyatt's “Seven Penitential Psalms,” and to various minor eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works on Saul. Without contradicting this earlier criticism, we should like to suggest another possible source of idea, structure, and image. To read “Saul” in the light of the Platonic, Neoplatonic, or Hermetic tradition's concept of four hierarchical levels or stages of mystic vision can add, we believe, a new and intriguing dimension to the interpretation and appreciation of the poem's structure and significance.