“Grow Old Along With Me”: Robert Browning’s Conception of Jewish Old Age

Abstract

Robert Browning often explored the concepts of old age and dying in his poems, and surprisingly enough, some of these most striking poems use Hebraic sources as intertexts. This article will explore Robert Browning’s idea of old age as it is conveyed in “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “Pisgah Sights,” and “Jochanan Hakkadosh,” three poems in which Browning turns to Hebrew sources to explore philosophical and mystical narratives of aging. Written against the emerging Victorian conception of the elderly subject, these poems merge two forms of Victorian Otherness—Judaism and old age—so as to create an alternative and celebratory vision of the last stage of life. These representations of old age also reflect Robert Browning’s biographical old age, which introduced long-awaited popularity and critical acclaim, and the evolution of his favorite form, the dramatic monologue.