A tocatta of Gallupis (Browning) Flashcards
Context
The speaker, likely a Victorian listener unfamiliar with Galuppi’s world, imagines the Venetian society for whom the music was written. He envisions elegant salons, flirtations, masked balls, and a city thriving on surface-level pleasures. But beneath the gaiety, he senses an undercurrent of loss and inevitability—the decay of Venice and the mortality of its people. As the music plays, he reflects on his own mortality, realising that the frivolous beauty he imagines was accompanied by real human emotion, fear, and eventual death. Browning contrasts the ephemeral pleasures of life with the haunting permanence of art, suggesting that music, though fleeting, captures a truth that outlasts time.
Comparison and contrast with A little red cap
Themes of coming of age, and awareness of mortality. Both convey a journey from innocence to knowledge
Contrast with little red cap, little red cap is a triumphant coming of age narrative, while tocatta ends in dissilusionment and decay “dust and ashes, dead and done with”
Comparison and contrast with Pygmalion’s bride
Both deal with themes of artificiality vs authentic experience and constructed beauty
Pygmalions bride ends with the statue reclaiming power, Tocatta end with a passive realisation of the fragility of life
Comparison and contrast with Mrs Sisyphus
Both explore the futility of certain human endeavours (sisyphus with his endless task, and venitians with empty pleasures)
Duffys poem is domestic and embodied, while Brownings is philosophical and imagined. One lives the futility daily, the other ponders it from afar
Comparison and contrast with Mrs Midas
themes of transience and mortality; both consider fleeting nature of human experience
Mrs midas explores a personal loss while collective human vanity and loss through imagined lives in AToG
Key quotes
“Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned”
“Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day”
“Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.”
“Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—”Must we die?”
“Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned”
The end of the poem also has ‘dust and ashes’
alliteration and biblical imagery, brownings speaker comes to a chilling realisation of the glittering pleasures in venice which have long since faded, only leaving music behind
Beauty and pleasure have been destroyed by human folly (Pygmalions bride, mrs sisyphus, mrs midas)
“Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day”
Rhetoric promotes reflection on past joys. Imagery creates a vivid picture of what once was, and the joys which are long past, and which he will never be able to reclaim. Sense of regret
Similar to Mrs midas; memories of past happiness to reflect fleeting hapiness of life due to husbands curse
“Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.”
Apostrophe, he addresses the dead, creating a temporal collapse. This furthers the sense of regret and loss presented in this poem, reflecting the fleeting nature of happiness, and the human condition (mortality)
Comparison with little red cap, the move from innocence to knowledge is stark and depressing
“Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—”Must we die?”
The terms “suspensions” and “solutions” evoke a cold, clinical environment, dehumanising whatever process is being described. The sibilance adds a sinister tone, while the rhetorical question “Must we die?” introduces a stark contrast — a desperate, emotional plea breaking through sterile detachment. This juxtaposition highlights the tension between scientific experimentation and human suffering, possibly suggesting a critique of how progress or power can overlook the value of individual lives.
