Interpretation

"And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,
Seem nigh on bursting,--if you nearly see
The real world through the false,--what do you see?
Is the old so ruined? You find you're in a flock
O' the youthful, earnest, passionate--genius, beauty,
Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:
And all depose their natural rights, hail you,
(That's me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,
Participate in Sludgehood--nay, grow mine,
I veritably possess them--...

And all this might be, may be, and with good help
Of a little lying shall be: so Sludge lies!
Why, he's at worst your poet who sings how Greeks
That never were, in Troy that never was,
Did this or the other impossible great thing!...

But why do I mount to poets? Take plain prose--
Dealers in common sense, set these at work,
What can they do without their helpful lies?
Each states the law and fact and face o' the thing
Just as he'd have them, finds what he thinks fit,
Is blind to what missuits him, just records
What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest.
It's a History, of the World, the Lizard Age,
The Early Indians, the Old Country War,
Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please.
All as the author wants it. Such a scribe
You pay and praise for putting life in stones,
Fire into fog, making the past your world.
There's plenty of 'How did you contrive to grasp
The thread which led you through this labyrinth?
How build such solid fabric out of air?
How on so slight a foundation found this tale,
Biography, narrative?' or, in other words,
'How many lies did it require to make
The portly truth you here present us with?'"
-- Robert Browning from "Mr. Sludge, 'the Medium'"

This poem is on the page immediately preceding the title page of Possession. Its struck me for some reason. Combined with the quote from Mark Twain in an earlier post about Fiction having to make sense but Truth not similarly shackled. How much do you have to leave out and justify in order for something to make sense? Does everything have to make sense? What constitutes Truth and why do we need to know? Can we settle with not knowing? Is our view of Life seen through a thin bubble and poetry, prose, musings, just a way for us to try to see the bubble or the world as we see it through our bubble? If that's the case, and I suspect that our individual experiences do create out own bubbles, what can we get from reading about other people's bubbles? Maybe finding out about other people's bubbles gives us some insight into what our bubble might look like or what our bubble might be distorting. Maybe such insight will let us see past our bubble and at the Truth. That said we have to be looking for it to recognize it.