Sonnet 43 (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

“Sonnet 43” exemplifies the poet’s use of religious allusions throughout Sonnets from the Portuguese. John S. Phillipson, writing in the Victorian Newsletter in 1962, notes the echo of St. Paul, Ephesians III 17-19, where Paul prays that “Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” Philipson suggests that “Sonnet 43” adapts St. Paul’s thought into a new context, explaining that the “tone mingles suggestions of divine love with profane, implying a transformation of the latter by or into the former and an ultimate fusion of the two after death.” While other critics have not investigated the religious imagery in such detail, they generally acknowledge the importance of reverant language in the poem. In her book Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Radley states that “Students often find Elizabeth confusing on the subject of God, Love, and Robert Browning. For her, however, no confusion exists: God is Love; and Robert Browning’s love brought concrete form to the concept: in a Platonic sense, it gave form to the formless.” She concludes that, in Barrett Browning’s understanding, the “flame of love is divine in origin; it burns through lovers; its fire distills all lesser metal out; what remains is the pure essence.”