In accounts like this, we readers are repeatedly invited to an imaginary table where we sit with Saeed but not with Naghmeh. If writers allowed for the possibility that the reality behind the allegations is that serious, thereby at least withholding judgment until more is known, would they tell this story the same way? Would they continue to tell a story of asterisked heroism, or would it become asterisked spousal abuse?

The Plight of Pompilia

If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, Anthony Esolen’s (characteristically) outstanding book, Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature (ISI Books, 2007), should rush to the top of your reading list. I often recommend the opening essay, “To Be Pompilia, Not the Fisc: Browning and the Irony of Humility,” to ministerial and theological students. It is a meditation on Robert Browning’s long poem The Ring and the Book, a stunning, unnerving lesson in the ethics of reading — texts, persons, situations, anything. Esolen’s essay on Browning’s poem is on my mind today as I reflect on another recent story about Saeed and Naghmeh Abedini. More on that shortly.

As Esolen masterfully explains, Browning’s poem exposes a great and chronic human weakness: our laughably tragic inability to read others accurately. In this strange tale we discover that this inability is seldom due to a lack of sufficient information, as we all would wish, but to something more sinister: pride.

Set in seventeenth-century Italy, the poem weaves together the lives and (mis)fortunes of figures both religious and comical. Pompilia, purchased in secret as a baby by Violente, the childless wife of Pietro, is pushed to marry young and well in order to secure financial stability for the house and prevent discovery of the family secret. Guido–as Esolen says, “no priest but enough of a cleric to claim ecclesiastical privilege”–proves suitable enough in the eyes of Violente and Pietro, despite a wide rage of physical and moral deficiencies. Taking Pompilia as his own, the greedily ambitious Guido thinks he has married up. In fact he has been tricked, Pompilia’s family’s wealth proving far more mirage than reality. The sting of bitter disappointment leads him to torment Violente and Pietro, driving them to Rome, leaving young Pompilia alone to suffer at the hands of the monster, Guido.

In time her parents return, seeking revenge on Guido in the only form available to them: they tell him Pompilia is not in fact their daughter, and therefore he has no claim to her dowry. Furious, Guido falsely accuses Pompilia of being an adulteress, and takes steps to lure her into questionable relations with other men, including a local priest, Giuseppe Caponsacchi. But Caponsacchi, having only seen lovely Pompilia once and from a distance, resists the ploy and Guido is foiled.

What, then, of Pompilia? She pleads for help, first with the governor, then with the archbishop, but to no avail. Finally she turns to her only remaining hope: Caponsacchi, and sees in him, finally, a true man. He rescues her, hiding her away in Rome where he looks after her, but Guido finds them. The coward Guido is met by valiant Caponsacchi, sword in hand, ready to protect Pompilia. But Guido’s men pin down Caponsacchi’s arms, and it is Pompilia who grabs the sword and moves toward Guido. Guido flees from the girl and to the courts, where the verdict is the non-verdict of the stalemate, and justice is delayed.

Guido learns soon after this that Pompilia has borne his child but named him after a recently canonized saint, providing no link to Guido. Insulted and outraged, Guido, ironically assuming the name “Caponsacchi” to gain entry to the family home, murders Pompilia’s parents and injures her with a dozen stabs. Now the real trial in the story takes place, and Browning’s message becomes clear. Esolen writes,

The priest and Guido testify; and Browning provides us with the ‘opinions’ of the half of Rome that is for Guido, and of the half of Rome that is for Pompilia, and also of what he calls ‘Tertium Quid,’ the sophisticates who see more keenly, so they think, than does either side of the rabble. We are likewise presented with the trial preparations of the prosecutor (the grandly titled Fisc) and the defense attorney–worldly men, not exactly bad and not exactly good, full of themselves, and cutting a partly comic figure in their pretending to know everything.

These words recall Esolen’s description of the governor and archbishop, whom Pompilia had earlier entreated without effect: “But they are worldly men and cronies of her husband. They know better. They wink at the wickedness and tell her to go home. They have no ears to hear.”

Read More