Two in the Campagna

Robert Browning’s “Two in the Campagna” places the Italian countryside as a location of connection for two meandering minds. The two figures of the text, the narrator and a lover, hold hands and mentally roam the landscape, the speaker claiming this kind of travel—the travel of the spirit—“better” than a physical tour. Italy here seems to figure as a location that is better understood through mind or spirit than body, becoming a signifier for a higher communion of lovers. The speaker searches for a way to verbalize a recurring thought, and though this is an unsuccessful task, Italy seems to be a comforting setting for the speaker’s impossible desire to achieve an infinite comprehension of both this thought he has but cannot pin down and of his partner. Italy seems to be a space where the finite and infinite can meet, but where the friction between them remains unresolved, though ameliorated. This reading seems to find support in the speaker’s mentioning of temporal states: “today,” “since,” “morn,” “May,” “many times,” “everlasting,” “lengths of hours,” “the good minute goes.” The speaker laments, “Already how am I so far/ Out of that minute?” The poem stages Italy as the setting for the tension between the finite and infinite, the body and the soul, earth and heaven, person and person. Italy most clearly exhibits this friction, but also serves as the closest place the speaker can get to experiencing a better relationship between “infinite passion” and “finite hearts that yearn.”