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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Visions and Revisions + A Book of Literary Devotions + +Author: John Cowper Powys + +Release Date: October 16, 2008 [EBook #26933] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VISIONS AND REVISIONS *** + + + + +Produced by Ruth Hart + + + + + +</pre> + +<p>[Note: I have made the following spelling changes: intransigeant +to intransigent, rythm of the secret to rhythm of the secret, accummulated to +accumulated, potentious and solemn to portentious and solemn, terrestial to +terrestrial, Light-cormer to Light-comer, Aldeboran to Aldebaran, enter +competely to enter completely, aplomb and nonchalence to aplomb and nonchalance, +Hyppolytus to Hippolytus, abyssmal to abysmal, appelations to appellations, +intellectual predominence to intellectual predominance, deilberately outraging +to deliberately outraging, pour vitrol to pour vitriol, Gethsamene to +Gethsemane, Sabacthani to Sabachthani, conscience-striken to +conscience-stricken, abssymal gulfs to abysmal gulfs, rhymmic incantations to +rhythmic incantations, perpetual insistance to perpetual insistence, and water-cariers +to water-carriers. Next, I have also incorporated the errata listed at the +end of the book into the text. Finally, I have standardized all the poetry +quotations with indentation and spacing which were not in the original text.]</p> + +<center> +<br> + +<p>VISIONS AND REVISIONS</p> + +<p>A BOOK OF LITERARY DEVOTIONS</p><br> + +<p>BY</p> + +<p>JOHN COWPER POWYS<br> + </p> + +<p><i>Ham.</i>—Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers—if the rest of my +fortunes turn Turk with me—<br> +with two Provincial roses on my ras'd shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of +players, sir?<br> +<i>Her</i>.—Half a share.</p> + +<p> <br> +1915<br> +G. ARNOLD SHAW<br> +NEW YORK</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Copyright, 1915, by G. Arnold Shaw<br> +Copyright in Great Britain and Colonies</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>First Printing, February, 1915<br> +Second Printing, March, 1915<br> +Third Printing, October, 1915<br> + </p> + +<p>BROOKLYN EAGLE PRESS</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>To Those who love<br> + Without understanding;<br> +To Those who understand<br> + Without loving;<br> + And to Those<br> +Who, neither loving or understanding,<br> + Are the Cause<br> + Why Books are written.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>CONTENTS</p><br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td><a href="#1">Preface</a></td> + +<td align="right">9</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#2">Rabelais</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 25</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#3">Dante</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 35</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#4">Shakespeare</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 55</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#5">El Greco</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 75</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#6">Milton</a></td> + +<td align="right">87</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#7">Charles Lamb</a></td> + +<td align="right">105</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#8">Dickens</a></td> + +<td align="right">119</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#9">Goethe</a></td> + +<td align="right">135</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#10">Matthew Arnold</a></td> + +<td align="right">153</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#11">Shelley</a></td> + +<td align="right">169</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#12">Keats</a></td> + +<td align="right">183</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#13">Nietzsche</a></td> + +<td align="right">197</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#14">Thomas Hardy</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 213</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#15">Walter Pater</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 227</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#16">Dostoievsky</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 241</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#17">Edgar Allen Poe</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 263</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#18">Walt Whitman</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 281</td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#19">Conclusion</a></td> + +<td align="right"> 293</td> +</tr> +</table> +</center><br> +<a name="1"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>PREFACE</p> + +<p>What I aim at in this book is little more than to give complete reflection to +those great figures in Literature which have so long obsessed me. This poor +reflection of them passes, as they pass, image by image, eidolon by eidolon, in +the flowing stream of my own consciousness.</p> + +<p>Most books of critical essays take upon themselves, in unpardonable +effrontery, to weigh and judge, from their own petty suburban pedestal, the +great Shadows they review. It is an insolence! How should Professor This, or +Doctor That, whose furthest experiences of "dangerous living" have been squalid +philanderings with their neighbours' wives, bring an Ethical Synthesis to bear +that shall put Shakespeare and Hardy, Milton and Rabelais, into appropriate +niches?</p> + +<p>Every critic has a right to his own Aesthetic Principles, to his own Ethical +Convictions; but when it comes to applying these, in tiresome, pedantic +agitation, to Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Lamb, we must beg leave to cry off! +What we want is not the formulating of new Critical Standards, and the dragging +in of the great masters before our last miserable Theory of Art. What we want is +an honest, downright and quite +<i>personal</i> articulation, as to how these great things in literature really +hit us when they find us for the moment natural and off our guard—when they find +us as men and women, and not as ethical gramaphones.</p> + +<p>My own object in these sketches is not to convert the reader to whatever +"opinions" I may have formulated in the course of my spiritual adventures; it is +to divest myself of such "opinions," and in pure, passionate humility to give +myself up, absolutely and completely, to the various visions and temperaments of +these great dead artists.</p> + +<p>There is an absurd notion going about, among those half-educated people who +frequent Ethical Platforms, that Literary Criticism must be "constructive." O +that word "constructive"! How, in the name of the mystery of genius, can +criticism be anything else than an idolatry, a worship, a metamorphosis, a love +affair! The pathetic mistake these people make is to fancy that the great +artists only lived and wrote in order to buttress up such poor wretches as these +are upon the particular little, thin, cardboard platform which is at present +their moral security and refuge.</p> + +<p>No one has a right to be a critic whose mind cannot, with Protean +receptivity, take first one form and then another, as the great Spells, one by +one, are thrown and withdrawn.</p> + +<p>Who wants to know what Professor So-and-so's view of Life may be? We want to +use Professor So-and-so as a Mirror, as a Medium, as a Go-Between, as a +Sensitive Plate, so that we may once more get the thrill of contact with this or +that dead Spirit. He must keep his temperament, our Critic; his peculiar angle +of receptivity, his capacity for personal reaction. But it is the reaction of +his own natural nerves that we require, not the pallid, second-hand reaction of +his tedious, formulated opinions. Why cannot he see that, as a natural man, +physiologically, nervously, temperamentally, pathologically +<i>different</i> from other men, he is an interesting spectacle, as he comes +under the influence first of one great artist and then another, while as a +silly, little, preaching school-master, he is only a blot upon the world-mirror!</p> + +<p>It is thus that I, moi qui vous parle, claim my humble and modest role. If, +in my reaction from Rabelais, for instance, I find myself responding to his huge +laughter at "love" and other things, and a moment later, in my reaction from +Thomas Hardy, feeling as if "love" and the rest were the only important matters +in the Universe; this psychological variability, itself of interest as a curious +human phenomenon, has made it possible to get the "reflections," each absolute +in its way, of the two great artists as they advance and recede.</p> + +<p>If I had tried to dilute and prune and "correct" the one, so as to make it +"fit in" with the other, in some stiff, ethical theory of my own, where would be +the interest for the reader? Besides, who am I to "improve" upon Rabelais?</p> + +<p>It is because so many of us are so limited in our capacity for "variable +reaction" that there are so few good critics. But we are all, I think, more +multiple-souled than we care to admit. It is our foolish pride of consistency, +our absurd desire to be "constructive," that makes us so dull. A critic need not +necessarily approach the world from the "pluralistic" angle; but there must be +something of such "pluralism" in his natural temper, or the writers he can +respond to will be very few!</p> + +<p>Let it be quite plainly understood. It is impossible to respond to a great +genius halfway. It is a case of all or nothing. If you lack the courage, or the +variability, to +<i>go all the way</i> with very different masters, and to let your constructive +consistency take care of itself, you may become, perhaps, an admirable moralist; +you will never be a clairvoyant critic. All this having been admitted, it still +remains that one has a right to draw out from the great writers one loves +certain universal aesthetic tests, with which to discriminate between modern +productions.</p> + +<p>But even such tests are personal and relative. They are not to be foisted on +one's readers as anything "ex cathedra." One such test is the test of what has +been called "the grand style"—that grand style against which, as Arnold says, +the peculiar vulgarity of our race beats in vain! I do not suppose I shall be +accused of perverting my devotion to the "grand style" into an academic "narrow +way," through which I would force every writer I approach. Some most winning and +irresistible artists never come near it.</p> + +<p>And yet—what a thing it is! And with what relief do we return to it, after +the "wallowings" and "rhapsodies," the agitations and prostitutions, of those +who have it not!</p> + +<p>It is—one must recognize that—the thing, and the only thing, that, in the +long run, <i>appeals.</i> It is because of the absence of it that one can read +so few modern writers <i>twice!</i> They have flexibility, originality, +cleverness, insight—but they lack <i>distinction</i>—they fatally lack +distinction.</p> + +<p>And what are the elements, the qualities, that go to make up this "grand +style"?</p> + +<p>Let me first approach the matter negatively. There are certain things that +<i>cannot</i>—because of something essentially ephemeral in them— be dealt with +in the grand style.</p> + +<p>Such are, for instance, our modern controversies about the problem of Sex. We +may be Feminists or Anti-Feminists—what you will—and we may be able to throw +interesting light on these complicated relations, but we cannot write of them, +either in prose or poetry, in the grand style, because the whole discussion is +ephemeral; because, with all its gravity, it is irrelevant to the things that +ultimately matter!</p> + +<p>Such, to take another example, are our elaborate arguments about the +interpretation, ethical or otherwise, of Christian Doctrine. We can be very +entertaining, very moral, very eloquent, very subtle, in this particular sphere; +but we cannot deal with it in the "great style," because the permanent issues +that really count lie out of reach of such discussion and remain unaffected by +it.</p> + +<p>Let me make myself quite clear. Hector and Andromache can talk to one another +of their love, of their eternal parting, of their child, and they can do this in +the great style; but if they fell into dispute over the particular sex +conventions that existed in their age, they might be attractive still, but they +would not be uttering words in the "great style."</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold may argue eloquently about the true modernistic interpretation +of the word "Elohim," and very cleverly and wittily give his reasons for +translating it "the Eternal" or "the Shining One"; but into what a different +atmosphere we are immediately transported when, in the midst of such discussion, +the actual words of the Psalmist return to our mind: "My soul is athirst for +God—yea! even for the living God! When shall I come to appear before the +presence of God?"</p> + +<p>The test is always that of Permanence, and of immemorial human association. +It is, at bottom, nothing but human association that makes the great style what +it is. Things that have, for centuries upon centuries, been associated with +human pleasures, human sorrows, and the great recurrent dramatic moments of our +lives, can be expressed in this style; and only such things. The great style is +a sort of organic, self-evolving work of art, to which the innumerable units of +the great human family have all put their hands. That is why so large a portion +of what is written in the great style is anonymous—like Homer and much of the +Bible and certain old ballads and songs. It is for this reason that Walter Pater +is right when he says that the important thing in Religion is the Ceremony, the +Litany, the Ritual, the Liturgical Chants, and not the Creeds or the +Commandments, or discussion upon Creed or Commandment. Creeds change, Morality +changes, Mysticism changes, Philosophy changes—but the Word of our God—the Word +of Humanity—in gesture, in ritual, in the heart's natural crying—abideth +forever!</p> + +<p>Why do the eloquent arguments of an ethical orator, explaining to us our +social duties, go a certain way and never go further, whereas we have only to +hear that long-drawn <i>Vox Humana,</i> old as the world—older certainly than +any creed—"Santa Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora +mortis nostrae"—and we are struck, disarmed, pierced to the marrow, smitten to +the bone, shot through, "Tutto tremente?" Because arguments and reasoning; +because morality and logic, are not of the nature of the "great style," while +the cry—"save us from eternal death!"—addressed by the passion and remorse and +despair of our human heart to the unhearing Universe, takes that great form as +naturally as a man breathes.</p> + +<p>Why, of all the religious books in the world, have "the Psalms of David," +whether in Hebrew or Latin or English, touched men's souls and melted and +consoled them? They are not philosophical. They are not logical. They are not +argumentative. They are not moral. And yet they break our hearts with their +beauty and their appeal!</p> + +<p>It is the same with certain well-known <i>words.</i> Is it understood, for +instance, why the word "Sword" is always poetical and in "the grand style," +while the word "Zeppelin" or "Submarine" or "Gatling gun" or "Howitzer" can only +be introduced by Free Versifiers, who let the "grand style" go to the Devil? The +word "Sword" like the word "Plough," has gathered about it the human +associations of innumerable centuries, and it is impossible to utter it without +feeling something of their pressure and their strain. The very existence of the +"grand style" is a protest against any false views of "progress" and +"evolution." Man may alleviate his lot in a thousand directions; he may build up +one Utopia after another; but the grand style will still remain; will remain as +the ultimate expression of those aspects of his life that <i>cannot change</i>—while +he remains Man.</p> + +<p>If there is any unity in these essays, it will be found in a blurred and +stammered attempt to indicate how far it may be possible, in spite of the +limitations of our ordinary nature, to live in the light of the "grand style." I +do not mean that we—the far-off worshippers of these great ones—can live <i>as +they thought and felt.</i> But I mean that we can live in the atmosphere, the +temper, the mood, the attitude towards things, which "the grand style" they use +evokes and sustains.</p> + +<p>I want to make this clear. There are a certain number of solitary spirits +moving among us who have a way of troubling us by their aloofness from our +controversies, our disputes, our arguments, our "great problems." We call them +Epicures, Pagans, Heathen, Egoists, Hedonists, and Virtuosos. And yet not one of +these words exactly fits them. What they are really doing is living in the +atmosphere and the temper of "the grand style"—and that is why they are so +irritating and provocative! To them the most important thing in the world is to +realize to the fullest limit of their consciousness what it means to be born a +Man. The actual drama of our mortal existence, reduced to the simplest terms, is +enough to occupy their consciousness and their passion. In this sphere—in the +sphere of the "inevitable things" of human life—everything becomes to them a +sacrament. Not a symbol—be it noted—but a Sacrament! The food they eat; the wine +they drink; their waking and sleeping; the hesitancies and reluctances of their +devotions; the swift anger of their recoils and retreats; their long loyalties; +their savage reversions; their sudden "lashings out"; their hate and their love +and their affection; the simplicities of these everlasting moods are in all of +us—become, every one of them, matters of sacramental efficiency. To regard each +day, as it dawns, as a "last day," and to make of its sunrise, of its noon, of +its sun-setting, a rhythmic antiphony to the eternal gods—this is to live in the +spirit of the "grand style." It has nothing to do with "right" or "wrong." +Saints may practise it, and sometimes do. Sinners often practise it. The whole +thing consists in growing vividly conscious of those moods and events which are +permanent and human, as compared with those other moods and events which are +transitory and unimportant.</p> + +<p>When a man or woman experiences desire, lust, hate, jealousy, devotion, +admiration, passion, they are victims of the eternal forces, that can speak, if +they will, in "the great style." When a man or woman "argues" or "explains" or +"moralizes" or "preaches," they are the victims of accidental dust-storms, which +rise from futility and return to vanity. That is why Rhetoric, as Rhetoric, can +never be in the great style. That is why certain great revolutionary Anarchists, +those who have the genius to express in words their heroic defiance of "the +something rotten in Denmark," move us more, and assume a grander outline, than +the equally admirable, and possibly more practical, arguments of the Scientific +Socialists. It is the eternal appeal we want, to what is basic and primitive and +undying in our tempestuous human nature!</p> + +<p>The grand style announces and commands. It weeps and it pleads. It utters +oracles and it wrestles with angels. It never apologizes; it never rationalizes; +and it never explains. That is why the great ineffable passages in the supreme +masters take us by the throat and strike us dumb. Deep calls unto deep in them, +and our heart listens and is silent. To do good scientific thinking in the cause +of humanity has its well-earned reward; but the gods throw incense on a +different temper. The "fine issues" that reach them, in their remoteness and +their disdain, are the "fine issues" of an antagonist worthy of their own swift +wrath, their own swift vengeance, and their own swift love.</p> + +<p>The ultimate drama of the world, a drama never-ending, lies between the +children of Zeus and the children of Prometheus; between the hosts of Jehovah +and the Sons of the Morning. God and Lucifer still divide the stage, and in +Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and Goethe the great style is never more the +great style than when it brings these eternal Antagonists face to face, and +compels them to cross swords. What matter if, in reality, they have their +kingdoms in the heart of man rather than the Empyrean or Tartarus? The heart of +man, in its unchangeable character, must ever remain the true Coliseum of the +world, where the only interesting, the only dramatic, the only beautiful, the +only classical things are born and turned into music.</p> + +<p>Beauty! That is what we all, even the grossest of us, in our heart of hearts +are seeking. Lust seeks it; Love creates it; the miracle of Faith finds it—but +nothing less, neither truth nor wisdom nor morality nor knowledge, neither +progress nor reaction, can quench the thirst we feel.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is Beauty we crave, and yet, how often, in the strain and stress of +life, it seems as though this strange impossible Presence, rising thus, like +that figure in the Picture, "beside the waters" of the fate that carries us, +were too remote, too high and translunar, to afford us the aid we need. Heine +tells us somewhere, how, driven by the roar of street-fighting, into the calm +cool galleries of the Louvre, sick and exhausted in mind and body, he fell down +at the feet of the Goddess of Beauty there, standing, as she still stands, at +the end of that corridor of mute witnesses, and as he looked to her for help, he +knew that she could never bend down to him, or lift him up out of his weariness, +for they had broken her long ago, and <i>she had no arms!</i></p> + +<p>Alas! It is true enough that there are moments, when, under the pressure of +the engines of fate, we can only salute her—the immortal one—afar off. But if we +have the courage, the obstinacy, the endurance, to wait—even a short while +longer—she will be near us again; and the old magical spell, transforming the +world, will thrill through us like the breath of spring!</p> + +<p>Why should we attempt to deceive ourselves? We cannot always live with those +liberating airs blowing upon our foreheads. We have to bear the burden of the +unillumined hours, even as our fathers before us, and our children after us. +Enough if we keep our souls so prepared that when the touch, the glimpse, the +word, the gesture, that carries with it the thrilling revelation of the "grand +manner", returns to us in its appointed hour, it shall find us not unworthy of +our inheritance.</p><a name="2"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>RABELAIS</p> + +<p>There are certain great writers who make their critics feel even as children, +who picking up stray wreckage and broken shells from the edge of the sea waves, +return home to show their companions "what the sea is like."</p> + +<p>The huge suggestiveness of this tremendous spirit is not easy to communicate +in the space of a little essay.</p> + +<p>But something can be done, if it only take the form of modest "advice to the +reader."</p> + +<p>Is it a pity, one asks oneself, or is it a profound advantage, that enjoyment +of Rabelais should be so limited? At least there are no false versions to +demolish here—no idealizations to unmask.</p> + +<p>The reading of Rabelais is not easy to everyone, and perhaps to those for +whom it is least easy, he would be most medicinal. What in this mad world, do we +lack, my dear friends? Is it possibly <i>courage?</i> Well, Rabelais is, of all +writers, the one best able to give us that courage. If only we had courage, how +the great tides of existence might sweep us along—and we not whine or wince at +all!</p> + +<p>To read Rabelais is to gather, as if from the earth-gods, spirit to endure +anything. Naturally he uses wine, and every kind of wanton liquor, to serve as +symbols of the intoxication he would produce. For we must be "rendered drunk" to +swallow Life at this rate—to swallow it as the gods swallow it. We must be drunk +but not mad. For in the spiritual drunkenness that Rabelais produces there is +not the remotest touch of insanity. He is the sanest of all the great writers; +perhaps the only sane one. What he has the power of communicating to us is a +renewal of that <i>physiological energy,</i> which alone makes it possible to +enjoy this monstrous world. Other writers interpret things, or warn us against +things. Rabelais takes us by the hand, shows us the cup of life, deep as +eternity, and bids us drink and be satisfied. What else could he use, if not <i> +wine,</i> +as a symbol for such quenching of such thirst. And after wine, sex. There is no +other who treats sex as Rabelais does; who treats it so completely as it <i> +ought</i> to be treated!</p> + +<p>Walt Whitman is too obsessed by it; too grave over it—Rabelais enjoys it, +fools with it, plunges into it, wallows in it; and then, with multitudinous +laughter, shakes himself free, and bids it go to the Devil!</p> + +<p>The world will have to come to this, sooner or later—to the confusion of the +vicious—and the virtuous!</p> + +<p>The virtuous and the vicious play indeed into each others hands; and neither +of them love laughter. Sexual dalliance is either too serious a matter to be +mocked by satyr-laughter; or it is too sad and deplorable to be laughed at at +all. In a few hundred years, surely, the human race will recognize its absolute +right to make mock at the grotesque elements in the sex comedy, and such +laughter will clear the air of much "virtue" and much "vice."</p> + +<p>Wine is his first symbol of the large, sane, generous mood he bequeaths to +us—the focusing of the poetry of life, and the glow and daring of it, and its +eternal youthfulness.</p> + +<p>But it is more than a symbol—it is a sacrament and an initiation. It is the +sap that rises in the world's recurrent spring. It is the ichor, the +quintessence of the creative mystery. It is the blood of the sons of the +morning. It is the dew upon the paradisic fields. It is the red-rose light, upon +the feet of those who dance upon graves. Wine is a sign to us how there is +required a certain generous and sane intoxication, a certain large and equable +friendliness in dealing with people and things and ideas. It is a sign that the +earth calls aloud for the passionate dreamer. It is a sign that the truth of +truth is not in labor and sorrow, but in joy and happiness. It is a sign that +gods and men have a right to satisfy their hearts desire, with joy and pleasure +and splendid freedom. And just as he uses wine, so he uses meat. Bread that +strengthened man's heart (and bologna-sausages, gammons of bacon, or what you +will, else) this also is a symbol and a sacrament. And it is indeed more, for +one must remember that Rabelais was a great doctor of medicine, as well as of +Utopian Theology—and the stomach, with the wise indulgence thereof, is the final +master of all arts! Let it be understood that in Rabelais sex is treated with +the same reverence, and the same humor, as meat and wine. Why not? Is not the +body of man the temple of the Holy Ghost? Is it not sacrosanct and holy within +and without; and yet, at the same time, is it not a huge and palpable absurdity?</p> + +<p>Those who suffer most from Rabelais' manner of treating sex are the incurably +vicious. The really evil libidinous people, that is to say the spiteful, the +mean, the base and inhuman, fly from his presence, and for the obvious reason +that he makes sex-pleasure so generous, so gay, so natural, so legitimate, that +their dark morbid perverted natures can get no more joy out of it. Their lust, +their lechery, is a cold dead Saurian thing, a thing with the gravity of a +slow-worm—and when this great laughing and generous sage comes forth into the +sunshine with his noble companies of amorous and happy people, these +Shadow-lovers, these Leut-lovers, these Fleshly Sentimentalists, writhe in +shame, and seek refuge in a deeper darkness. How strained and inhuman, too; and +one might add, how mad and irrelevant—that high, cold, disdainful translunar +scorn with which the "moral-immoralism" of Nietzsche scourges our poor flesh and +blood. One turns with relief to Zarathustra after associating with pious people. +But, after Rabelais, even that terrific psychologist seems contorted and <i> +thin.</i></p> + +<p>For after all it is generosity that we cry out for. Courage without +generosity hugs its knees in Hell.</p> + +<p>From the noble pleasures of meat and drink and sex, thus generously treated; +we must turn to another aspect of Rabelais' work—his predilection for excrement. +This also, though few would admit it, is a symbolic secret. This also is a path +of initiation. In this peculiarity Rabelais is completely alone among the +writers of the earth. Others have, for various reasons, dabbled in this sort of +thing—but none have ever piled it up—manure-heap upon manure-heap, until the +animal refuse of the whole earth seems to reek to the stars! There is not the +slightest reason to regret this thing or to expurgate it. Rabelais is not +Rabelais, just as life is not life, without it.</p> + +<p>It is indeed the way of "salvation" for certain neurotic natures. Has that +been properly understood? There are people who suffer frightfully—and they are +often rare natures, too, though they are sometimes very vicious—from their +loathing of the excremental side of life. Swift was one of these. The +"disgusting" in his writing is a pathological form, not at all unusual, of such +a loathing. But Rabelais is no Dean Swift—nor is there the remotest resemblance +between them. Rabelais may really save us from our loathing by the huge +all-embracing friendliness of his sense of humor.</p> + +<p>There are certain people, no doubt, who would prefer the grave enthusiasm of +Whitman in regard to this matter to the freer Rabelaisian touch. I cannot say +that my personal experience agrees with this view.</p> + +<p>I have found both great men invaluable; but I think as far as dealing with +the Cloaca Maxima side of things is concerned, Rabelais has been the braver in +inspiration. In these little matters one can only say, "some are born +Rabelaisian, and some require to have Rabelais thrust upon them!"</p> + +<p>Surely it is wisdom, in us terrestrial mortals, to make what imaginative use +we can of +<i>every phase</i> of our earthly condition?</p> + +<p>Imagination has a right to play with everything that exists; and humor has a +right to laugh at everything that exists. Everything in life is sacred and +everything is a huge jest.</p> + +<p>It is the association of this excremental aspect of life, with those high +sacraments of meat and drink and sex, which some find so hard to endure. Be not +afraid my little ones! The great and humorous gods have arranged for this also; +and have seen to it that no brave, generous, amorous "sunburnt" emotion shall +ever be hurt by such associations! If a person <i>is</i> hurt by them, that is +only an indication that they are in grievous need of the wholesome purgative +medicine of the great doctor! When one comes to speak of the actual contents of +these books criticism itself must borrow Gargantua's mouth.</p> + +<p>What characters! The three great royal giants, Graugousier, Gargantua and +Pantagruel—have there ever been such kings? And the noble servants of such noble +masters! The whole atmosphere is so large, so genial, so courteous, so +sweet-tempered, so entirely what the life of man upon earth should be.</p> + +<p>Even the military exploits of Friar John, even the knavish tricks of Panurge, +cannot spoil our tenderness for these dear bully-boys, these mellow and +magnanimous rogues! Certain paragraphs in Rabelais recur to one's mind daily. +That laudation of Socrates at the beginning, and the description of the "little +boxes called <i>Silent"</i> that outside have so grotesque an adornment, but +within are full of ambergris and myrrh and all manner of precious odours.</p> + +<p>And the picture of the banquet "when they fell to the chat of the afternoon's +collation and began great goblets to ring, great bowls to ting, great gammons to +trot; pour me out the fair Greek wine, the extravagant wine, the good wine, +Lacrima Christi, supernaculum!" And, above all, the most holy Abbey of Thelema, +over the gate of which was written the words that are never far from the hearts +of wise Utopian Christians, the profound words, the philosophical words, the +most shrewd Cabalistic words, and the words that "lovers" alone can +understand—"Fay que ce Vouldray!" Do as Thou Wilt!</p> + +<p>Little they know of Rabelais who call him a lewd buffoon—the profanest of +mountebanks. He was one of those rare spirits that redeem humanity. To open his +book—though the steam of the grossness of it rises to Heaven—is to touch the +divine fingers—the fingers that heal the world.</p> + +<p>How that "style" of his, that great oceanic avalanche of learning and piety +and obscenity and gigantic merriment, smells of the honest earth!</p> + +<p>How, with all his huge scholarship, he loves to depend for his richest, most +human effects, upon his own peasant-people of Touraine! The proverbs of the +country-side, the wisdom of tavern-wit, the shrewdness and fantasy of old wives +tales, the sly earthly humors of farmers and vine-tenders and goat-herds and +goose-girls—these are things out of which he distils his vision, his oracles, +his courage.</p> + +<p>There is also—who could help observing it?—a certain large and patriarchal +homeliness—a kind of royal domesticity—about much that he writes. Those touches, +as when Gargantua, his little dog in advance, enters the dining hall, when they +are discussing Panurge's marriage, and they all rise to do him honor; as when +Gargantua bids Pantagruel farewell and gives him a benediction so wise and +tender; remain in the mind like certain passages in the Bible. These are the +things that aesthetic fools "with varnished faces" easily overlook and +misunderstand; but good simple fellows—"honest cods" as Rabelais would say—are +struck to the heart by them. How proud the man might be, who in the turmoil of +this troublesome world and beneath the mystery of "le grand Peut-<font face="Times New Roman">ê</font>tre" +could answer to the ultimate question, "I am a Christian of the faith of +Rabelais!"</p> + +<p>Such a one, under the spell of such a master, might indeed be able to comfort +the sick and sorry, and to whisper in their ears that cosmic secret—"Bon Espoir +y gist au fond!" "Good Hope lies at the Bottom!" "Good Hope" for all; for the +best and the worst—for the whole miserable welter of this chaotic farce!</p> + +<p>Therefore, "with angels and archangels" let us bow our heads and hold our +tongues. Those who fancy Rabelais to be lacking in the kind of religious feeling +that great souls respect, let them read that passage in the voyage of Pantagruel +that speaks of the Death of Pan. Various accounts are given; various +explanations made; of the great cry, that the sailors, "coming from Paloda," +heard over land and sea. At the last Pantagruel himself speaks; and he tells +them that to him it refers to nothing less than the death of Him whom the +Scribes and Pharisees and Priests of Jerusalem slew. "And well is He called Pan, +which in the Greek means 'All'; for in Him is all we are or have or hope." And +having said this he fell into silence, and "tears large as ostrich-eggs rolled +down his cheeks."</p> + +<p>To all who read Rabelais and love him, one can offer no better wish than that +the mystic wine of his Holy Bottle may fulfil their heart's desire. Happy, +indeed, those who are not "unwillingly drawn" by the "Fate" we all must follow! +"Go now, my friends," says the strange Priestess, "and may that Circle whose +Centre is everywhere and its Circumference nowhere, keep you in His Almighty +protection!"</p><a name="3"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>DANTE</p> + +<p>The history of Dante's personal and literary appeal would be an extremely +interesting one. No great writer has managed to excite more opposite emotions.</p> + +<p>One thing may be especially noted as significant: Women have always been more +attracted to him than men. He is in a peculiar sense the Woman's great poet. +There is a type of masculine genius which has always opposed him. Goethe cared +little for him; Voltaire laughed at him; Nietzsche called him "an hyaena +poetizing among the tombs."</p> + +<p>The truth is, women love Dante for the precise reason that these men hate +him. He makes sex the centre of everything. One need not be deceived by the fact +that Dante worships "purity," while Voltaire, Goethe and Nietzsche are little +concerned with it. This very laudation of continence is itself an emphasis upon +sex. These others would play with amorous propensities; trifle with them in +their life, in their art, in their philosophy; and then, that dangerous +plaything laid aside would, as Machiavel puts it, "assume suitable attire, and +return to the company of their equals—the great sages of antiquity."</p> + +<p>Now it is quite clear that this pagan attitude towards sex, this tendency to +enjoy it in its place and leave it there, is one that, more than anything else, +is irritating to women. If, as a German thinker says, every woman is a courtezan +or a mother, it is obvious that the artists and thinkers who refuse alike the +beguilements of the one and the ironic tenderness of the other, are not people +to be "loved." Dante refuses neither; and he has, further, that peculiar mixture +of harsh strength and touching weakness, which is so especially appealing to +women. They are reluctantly overcome—not without pleasure—by his fierce +authority; and they can play the "little mother" to his weakness. The maternal +instinct is as ironical as it is tender. It smiles at the high ideals or the +eccentric child it pets, but it would not have him different. What a woman does +not like, whether she is mother or courtezan, is that other kind of irony, the +irony of the philosopher, which undermines both her maternal feeling and her +passionate caresses.</p> + +<p>Women, too, even quite good women, have the stress of the sexual difference +constantly before them. Indeed it may be said that the class of women who are +least sex-conscious are those who have habitually to sell themselves. It all +matters so little then!</p> + +<p>How fiercely is the interest of the most virtuous aroused, when any question +of a love affair is rumored. In this sense every woman is a born "go-between." +Sex is not with them a thing apart, an exciting volcanic thing, liable to mad +outbursts, to weird perversions, but often completely forgotten. It is never +completely forgotten. It is diffused. It is everywhere. It lurks in a thousand +innocent gestures and intimations. The savage purity of an Artemis is no real +exception. Sex is a thing too pressing to be dallied with. It is all or nothing.</p> + +<p>One cannot play with fire. When we make observations of this kind we do not +derogate from the charm or dignity of women. It is no aspersion upon them. They +did not ask to have it so. It is so.</p> + +<p>Domestic life as the European nations have evolved it is a queer compromise. +Its restraints weigh heavily, in alternate discord, upon both sexes.</p> + +<p>Masculine depravity rebels against it, and the whole modern feministic +movement shakes it to the base. It remains to be seen whether Nature will admit +of any satisfactory readjustment.</p> + +<p>Certainly, as far as overt acts are concerned, women are far "purer" than +men. It is only when we leave the sphere of outward acts and enter the sphere of +cerebral undercurrents, that all this is changed. There the Biblical story finds +its proof, and the daughters of Eve revert to their mother. This is the secret +of that mania for the personal which characterizes women's conversation. She can +say fine things and do fine work; but both in her wit and her art, one is +conscious of a mind that has voluptuously welcomed, or vindictively repulsed, +the approach of a particular invasion; never of a mind that, in its abstract +love for the beautiful, cannot even remember how it came to give birth to such +thoughts!</p> + +<p>It is the close psychological association between the emotion of religion and +the emotion of sex which has always made women more religious than men.</p> + +<p>This is perhaps only to say that women are nearer the secret of the universe +than men. It may well be so. Man's rationalizing tendency to divorce his +intelligence from his intuition—may not be the precise key which opens those +magic doors! <i>Sanctity</i> +itself—that most exquisite flower of the art of character—is a profoundly +feminine thing. The most saintly saints, that is to say those who wear the +indescribable distinction of their Master, are always possessed of a certain +feminine quality.</p> + +<p>Sanctity is woman's ideal—morality is man's. The one is based upon passion, +and by means of love lifts us above law. The other is based upon vice and the +recoil from vice; and has no horizons of any sort.</p> + +<p>That is why the countries where the imagination is profoundly feminine like +Russia and France have sanctity as their ideal. Whereas England has its Puritan +morality, and Germany its scientific efficiency. These latter races ought to sit +at Dante's feet, to learn the secret of the "Beatific Vision" that is as far +beyond morality as it is outside science. There are, it is true, certain moments +when the Italian poet leads us up into the cold rarified air of that +"Intellectual Love of God" which leaves sex, as it leaves other human feelings, +infinitely behind. But this Spinozistic mood is not the natural climate of his +soul. He is always ready to revert, always anxious to "drag Beatrice in." +Wagner's "Parsifal" is perhaps the most flagrant example of this ambiguous +association between religion and sex. The sentimental blasphemy of that +feet-washing scene is an evidence of the depths of sexual morbidity into which +this voluptuous religion of pity can lead us. O that figure in the white +nightgown, blessing his reformed harlot!</p> + +<p>It is a pity Wagner ever touched the Celtic Legend—German sentimentality and +Celtic romance need a Heine to deal with them!</p> + +<p>It is indeed a difficult task to write of the relations between romantic love +and devotional religion and to do it in the grand style. That is where Dante is +so supremely great. And that is why, for all his greatness, his influence upon +modern art has been so morbid and evil. The odious sensuality of the so-called +"Pre-Raphaelite School"—a sensuality drenched with holy water and perfumed with +incense—has a smell of corruption about it that ought never to be associated +with Dante's name.</p> + +<p>The worst of modern poets, the most affected and the most meticulous, are all +anxious to seal themselves of the tribe of Dante. But they are no more like that +divine poet than the flies that feed on a dead Caesar are like the hero they +cause to stink!</p> + +<p>Our brave Oscar understood him. Some of the most exquisite passages in +"Intentions" refer to his poetry. Was the "Divine Comedy" too clear-cut and +trenchant for Walter Pater? It is strange how Dante has been left to second-rate +interpreters! His illustrators, too! O these sentimentalists, with their +Beatrices crossing the Ponte Vecchio, and their sad youths looking on! All this +is an insult—a sacrilege—to the proudest, most aristocratic spirit who ever +dwelt on earth! Why did not Aubrey Beardsley stop that beautiful boy on the +threshold? He who was the model of his "Ave atque vale!" might have well served +for Casella, singing among the cold reeds, in the white dawn.</p> + +<p>For there are scenes in Dante which have the strange, remote, perverted, +<i>archaic</i> loveliness of certain figures on the walls of Egyptian temples or +on the earliest Greek vases. Here the real artist in him forgets God and +Beatrice and the whole hierarchy of the saints. And it is because of things of +this kind that many curious people are found to be his worshipers who will never +themselves pass forth "to re-behold the stars." They are unwise who find Dante +so bitter and theological, so Platonic and devoted, that they cannot open his +books. They little know what ambiguous planets, what dark heathen meteors move +on the fringe of his great star-lit road. His Earthly Lady, as well as his +Heavenly Lady, may have the moon beneath her feet.</p> + +<p>But neither of them know, as does their worshiper and lover, <i>what lies on +the other side of the moon.</i></p> + +<p>What Dante leaves to us as his ultimate gift is his pride and his humility. +The one answers the other. And both put us to shame. He, alone of great artists, +holds in his hand the true sword of the Spirit for the dividing asunder of men +and things. There is no necessity to lay all the stress upon the division +between the Lower and the Higher Love, between Hell and Heaven. There are other <i> +distinctions</i> in life than these. And between all distinctions, between all +those differences which separate the "fine" from the "base," the noble from the +ignoble, the beautiful from the hideous, the generous from the mean; Dante draws +the pitiless sword-stroke of that "eternal separation" which is the most tragic +thing in the world. In the truest sense tragic! For so many things, and so many +people, that must be thus "cut off," are among those who harrow our hearts with +the deadliest attraction and are so wistful in their weakness. Through the mists +and mephitic smoke of our confused age—our age that cries out to be beyond the +good, when it is beneath the beautiful—through the thick air of indolence +masquerading as toleration and indifference posing as sympathy, flashes the +scorching sword of the Florentine's Disdain, dividing the just from the unjust, +the true from the false, and the heroic from the commonplace. What matter if his +"division" is not our "division," his "formula" our "formula"? It is good for us +to be confronted with such Disdain. It brings us back once more to "Values"; and +whether our "Values" are values of taste or values of devotion what matter? Life +becomes once more arresting. The everlasting Drama recovers its "Tone"; and the +high Liturgy of the last Illusion rolls forward to its own Music!</p> + +<p>That Angel of God, who when their hearts were shaken with fear before the +flame-lit walls of Dis, came, so straight across the waters, and quelled the +insolence of Hell; with what Disdain he turns away his face, even from those he +has come to save!</p> + +<p>These "messengers" of God, who have so superb a contempt for all created +things, does one not meet them, sometimes, even in this life, as they pass us by +upon their secret errands?</p> + +<p>The beginning of the Inferno contains the cruellest judgment upon our +generation ever uttered. It is so exactly adapted to the spirit of this age +that, hearing it, one staggers as if from a stab. Are we not this very tribe of +caitiffs who have committed the "Great Refusal?" Are we not these very wretches +whose blind life is so base that they envy every other Fate? Are we not those +who are neither for God or for his Enemies but are "for themselves"; those who +may not even take refuge in Hell, lest the one damned get glory of them! The +very terror of this clear-cutting sword-sweep, dividing us, bone from bone, may, +nay! probably will, send us back to our gentle "lovers of humanity" who, +"knowing everything pardon everything." But one sometimes wonders whether a life +all "irony," all "pity," all urbane "interest," would not lose the savor of its +taste! There is a danger, not only to our moral sense, but to our immoral sense, +in that genial air of universal acceptance which has become the fashion.</p> + +<p>What if, after all—even though this universe be so poor a farce—the mad +lovers and haters, the terrible prophets and artists, <i>were right?</i></p> + +<p>Suppose the farce had a climax, a catastrophe! One loves to repeat "all is +possible;" but <i>that</i> particular possibility has little attraction. It +would be indeed an anti-climax if the queer Comedy we have so daintily been +patronizing turned out to be a Divine Comedy—and ourselves the point of the +jest! Not that this is very likely to occur. It is more in accordance with what +we know of the terrestrial stage that in this wager of faith with un-faith +neither will ever discover who really won!</p> + +<p>But Dante's "Disdain" is not confined to the winners in the cosmic dicing +match. There are heroic hearts in hell who, for all their despair, still yield +not, nor abate a jot of their courage. Such a one was that great Ghibelline +Chief who was lost for "denying immortality." "If my people fled from thy +people—<i>that</i> more torments me than this flame." In one respect Dante is, +beyond doubt, the greatest poet of the world. I mean in his power of heightening +the glory and the terribleness of the human race. Across the three-fold kingdom +of his "Terza Rima" passes, in tragic array, the whole procession of human +history—and each figure there, each solitary person, whether of the Blessed or +the Purged, or the Condemned, wears, like a garment of fire, the dreadful +dignity of having been a man! The moving sword-point that flashes, first upon +one and then upon another, amid our dim transactions, is nothing but the angry +arm of human imagination, moulding life to grander issues; <i>creating,</i> if +not discovering, sublimer laws.</p> + +<p>In conveying that thrilling sense of the momentousness of human destiny which +beyond anything else certain historic names evoke, none can surpass him. The +brief, branding lines, with which the enemies of God are engraved upon their +monuments "more lasting than brass," seem to add a glory to damnation. Who can +forget how that "Simonist" and "Son of Sodom" lifts his hands up out of the +deepest Pit, and makes "the fig" at God? "Take it, God, for at Thee I aim it!" +There is a sting of furious blasphemy in this; <i>personal outrage</i> that goes +beyond all limits.</p> + +<p>Yet who is there, but does not feel <i>glad</i> that the "Pistoian" uttered +what he uttered—out of his Hell—to his Maker?</p> + +<p>Is not Newman right when he says that the heart of man does not naturally +"love God?"</p> + +<p>But perhaps in the whole poem nothing is more beautiful than that great roll +of honor of the unchristened Dead, who make up the company of the noble Heathen. +Sad, but not unhappy, they walk to and fro in their Pagan Hades, and occupy +themselves, as of old, in discoursing upon philosophy and poetry and the Mystery +of Life.</p> + +<p>Those single lines, devoted to such names, are unlike anything else in +literature. That "Caesar, in armour, with Ger-Falcon eyes," challenges one's +obeisance as a great shout of his own legionaries, while that "Alone, by +himself, the Soldan" bows to the dust our Christian pride, as the Turbaned +Commander of the Faithful, with his ghostly crescent blade, strides past, +dreaming of the Desert.</p> + +<p>It is in touches like these, surely, rather than in the Beatrice scenes or +the devil scenes, that the poet is most himself.</p> + +<p>It needs, perhaps, a certain smouldering dramatic passion, in regard to the +whole spectacle of human life, to do justice to such lines. It needs also that +mixture of disdain and humility which is his own paramount attribute.</p> + +<p>And the same smouldering furnace of "reverence" characterizes Dante's use of +the older literatures. No writer who has ever lived has such a dramatic sense of +the "great effects" in style, and the ritual of words.</p> + +<p>That passage, <i>"Thou</i> art my master and my author. It is from <i>thee</i> +I learnt the beautiful style that has done me so much honour," with its +reiteration of the rhythmic syllables of "honour," opens up a salutary field of +aesthetic contemplation. His quotations, too, from the Psalms, and from the +Roman Liturgy, become, by their imaginative inclusion, part of his own creative +genius. That "Vexilla regis prodeunt Inferni!" Who can hear it without the same +thrill, as when Napoleonic trumpets heralded the Emperor! In the presence of +such moments the whole elaboration of the Beatrice Cult falls away. That +romantic perversion of the sex instinct is but the psychic motive force. Once +started on his splendid and terrible road, the poet forgets everything except +the "Principle of Beauty" and the "Memory of Great Men." Parallel with these +things is Dante's passion of reverence for the old historic places—provinces, +cities, rivers and valleys of his native Italy. Even when he lifts up his voice +to curse them, as he curses his own Firenze, it is but an inversion of the same +mood. The cities where men dwelt then took to themselves living personalities; +and Dante, who in love and hate was Italian of the Italians, was left +indifferent by none of these. How strange to modern ears this thrill of +recognition, when one exile, even among the dead, meets another, of their common +citizenship of "no mean city!" Of this classic "patriotism" the world requires a +Renaissance, that we may be saved from the shallowness of artificial commercial +Empires. The new "inter-nationalism" is the sinister product of a generation +that has grown "deracinated," that has lost its roots in the soil. It is an +Anglo-Germanic thing and opposed to it the proud tenacity of the Latin race +turns, even today, to what Barres calls the "worship of one's Dead."</p> + +<p>Anglo-Saxon Industrialism, Teutonic Organization, have their world place; but +it is to the Latin, and, it may be, to the Slav also, that the human spirit must +turn in those subtler hours when it cannot "live by bread alone."</p> + +<p>The modern international empires may obliterate local boundaries and trample +on local altars. In spite of them, and in defiance of them, the soul of an +ancient race lives on, its saints and its artists forging the urn of its +Phoenix-ashes!</p> + +<p>Dante himself, dreaming over the high Virgilian Prophecy of a World-State, +under a Spiritual Caesar, yearned to restore the Pax Romana to a chaotic world. +Such a vision, such an Orbis Terrarum at the feet of Christ, has no element in +common with the material dominance of modern commercial empires. It much more +closely resembles certain Utopias of the modern Revolutionary. In its spirit it +is not less Latin than the traditional customs of the City-States it would +include. Its real implication may be found in the assimilative genius of the +Catholic Church, consecrating but not effacing local altars; transforming, but +not destroying, local pieties. Who can deny that this formidable vision answers +the deepest need of the modern world?</p> + +<p>The discovery of some Planetary Synthesis within the circle of which all the +passionate race cults may flourish; growing not less intense but more intense, +under the new World-City—this is nothing else than what the soul of the earth, +"dreaming on things to come" may actually be evolving.</p> + +<p>Who knows if the new prominence given by the war to Russian thought may not +incredibly hasten such a Vita Nuova? We know that the Pan-Slavic dream, even +from the days of Ivan the Terrible, has been of this spiritual unity, and it may +be remembered that it was always from "beyond the Alps" that Dante looked for +the Liberator. Who knows? The great surging antipodal tides of life lash one +another into foam. Out of chaos stars are born. And it may be the madness of a +dream even so much as to speak of "unity" while creation seethes and hisses in +its terrible vortex. Mockingly laugh the imps of irony, while the Saints keep +their vigil. Man is a surprising animal; by no means always bent on his own +redemption; sometimes bent on his own destruction!</p> + +<p>And meanwhile the demons of life dance on. Dante may build up his great +triple universe in his great triple rhyme, and encase it in walls of brass. But +still they dance on. We may tremble at the supreme poet's pride and wonder at +the passion of his humility—but "the damned grotesques make arabesques, like the +wind upon the sand!"</p><a name="4"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>SHAKESPEARE</p> + +<p>There is something pathetic about the blind devotion of humanity to its +famous names. But how indiscriminate it is; how lacking in discernment!</p> + +<p>This is, above all, true of Shakespeare, whose peculiar and quite personal +genius has almost been buried under the weight of popular idolatry. No wonder +such critics as Voltaire, Tolstoi, and Mr. Bernard Shaw have taken upon +themselves to intervene. The Frenchman's protest was an aesthetic one. The more +recent objectors have adopted moral and philosophic grounds. But it is the +unreasoning adoration of the mob which led to both attacks.</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to estimate the elements which have gone to make up this +Shakespeare-God. The voices of the priests behind the Idol are only too clearly +distinguishable. We hear the academic voice, the showman's voice, and the voice +of the ethical preacher. They are all absurd, but their different absurdities +have managed to flow together into one powerful and unified convention. Our +popular orators gesticulate and clamour; our professors "talk Greek;" our +ethical Brutuses "explain;" and the mob "throw up their sweaty night-caps;" +while our poor Caesar of Poetry sinks down out of sight, helpless among them +all.</p> + +<p>Charles Lamb, who understood him better than anyone—and who loved Plays—does +not hesitate to accuse our Stage-Actors of being the worst of all in their +misrepresentation. He doubts whether even Garrick understood the subtlety of the +roles he played, and the few exceptions he allows in his own age make us wonder +what he would say of ours.</p> + +<p>Finally there is the "Philosophical Shakespeare" of the German appreciation, +and this we feel instinctively to be the least like the original of all!</p> + +<p>The irony of it is that the author of Hamlet and the Tempest does not only +live in a different world from that of these motley exponents. He lives in an +antagonistic one. Shakespeare was as profoundly the enemy of scholastic pedantry +as he was the enemy of puritan squeamishness. He was almost unkindly averse to +the breath of the profane crowd. And his melancholy scepticism, with its +half-humorous assent to the traditional pieties, is at the extremest opposite +pole from the "truths" of metaphysical reason. The Shakespeare of the Popular +Revivals is a fantastic caricature. The Shakespeare of the College Text-Books is +a lean scarecrow. But the Shakespeare of the philosophical moralists is an +Hob-goblin from whom one flees in dismay.</p> + +<p>Enjoying the plays themselves—the interpreters forgotten—a normally +intelligent reader cannot fail to respond to a recognisable Personality there, a +Personality with apathies and antipathies, with prejudices and predilections. +Very quickly he will discern the absurd unreality of that monstrous Idol, that +ubiquitous Hegelian God. Very soon he will recognize that in trying to make +their poet everything they have made him nothing.</p> + +<p>No one can read Shakespeare with direct and simple enjoyment without +discovering in his plays a quite definite and personal attitude towards life. +Shakespeare is no Absolute Divinity, reconciling all oppositions and +transcending all limitations. He is not that "cloud-capped mountain," too lofty +to be scanned, of Matthew Arnold's Sonnet. He is a sad and passionate artist, +using his bitter experiences to intensify his insight, and playing with his +humours and his dreams to soften the sting of that brutish reality which he was +doomed to unmask. The best way of indicating the personal mood which emerges as +his final attitude is to describe it as that of the perfectly natural man +confronting the universe. Of course, there is no such "perfectly natural man," +but he is a legitimate lay-figure, and we all approximate to him at times. The +natural man, in his unsophisticated hours, takes the Universe at its surface +value, neither rejecting the delicate compensations, nor mitigating the cruelty +of the grotesque farce. The natural man accepts <i>what is given.</i> He +swallows the chaotic surprises, the extravagant accidents, the whole fantastic +"pell-mell." He accepts, too, the traditional pieties of his race, their "hope +against hope," their gracious ceremonial, their consecration of birth and death. +He accepts these, not because he is confident of their "truth" but because <i> +they are there;</i> because they have been there so long, and have interwoven +themselves with the chances and changes of the whole dramatic spectacle.</p> + +<p>He accepts them spontaneously, humorously, affectionately; not anxious to +improve them—what would be the object of that?—and certainly not seeking to +controvert them. He reverences this Religion of his Race not only because it has +its own sad, pathetic beauty, but because it has got itself involved in the +common burden; lightening such a burden here, making it, perhaps, a little +heavier there, but lending it a richer tone, a subtler colour, a more +significant shape. It does not trouble the natural man that Religion should deal +with "the Impossible." Where, in such a world as this, does <i>that</i> begin? +He has no agitating desire to reconcile it with reason.</p> + +<p>At the bottom of his soul he has a shrewd suspicion that it rather grew out +of the earth than fell from the sky, but that does not concern him. It may be +based upon no eternal verity. It may lead to no certain issue. It may be neither +very "useful" or very "moral." But it is, at any rate, a beautiful work of +imaginative art, and it lends life a certain dignity that nothing can quite +replace. As a matter of fact, the natural man's attitude to these things does +not differ much from the attitude of the great artists. It is only that a +certain lust for creation, and a certain demonic curiosity, scourge these latter +on to something beyond passive resignation.</p> + +<p>A Da Vinci or a Goethe accepts religion and uses it, but between it and the +depths of his own mind remains forever an inviolable film of sceptical "white +light." This "qualified assent" is precisely what excites the fury of such +individualistic thinkers as Tolstoi and Bernard Shaw. It were amusing to note +the difference between the "humour" of this latter and the "humour" of +Shakespeare. Shaw's humour consists in emphasizing the absurdity of human +Custom, compared with the good sense of the philosopher. Shakespeare's humour +consists in emphasizing the absurdity of philosophers, compared with the good +sense of Custom. The one is the humour of the Puritan, directed against the +ordinary man, on behalf of the Universe. The other is the humour of the Artist, +directed against the Universe, on behalf of the ordinary man.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare is, at bottom, the most extreme of Pessimists. He has no faith in +"progress," no belief in "eternal values," no transcendental "intuitions," no +zeal for reform. The universe to him, for all its loveliness, remains an +outrageous jest. The cosmic is the comic. Anything may be expected of this +"pendant world," except what we expect; and when it is a question of "falling +back," we can only fall back on human-made custom. We live by Illusions, and +when the last Illusion fails us, we die. After reading Shakespeare, the final +impression left upon the mind is that the world can only be justified as an +aesthetic spectacle. To appreciate a Show at once so sublime and so ridiculous, +one needs to be very brave, very tender, and very humorous. Nothing else is +needed. "Man must abide his going hence, even as his coming hither. Ripeness is +all." When Courage fails us, it is—"as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. +They kill us for their sport." When tenderness fails us, it is—"Tomorrow and +tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last +syllable of recorded time." When humour fails us, it is—"How weary, stale, flat +and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world!"</p> + +<p>So much for Life! And when we come to Death, how true it is, as Charles Lamb +says, that none has spoken of Death like Shakespeare! And he has spoken of it +so—with such an absolute grasp of our mortal feeling about it—because his mood +in regard to it is the mood of the natural man; of the natural man, +unsophisticated by false hopes, undated by vain assurance. His attitude towards +death neither sweetens "the unpalatable draught of mortality" nor permits us to +let go the balm of its "eternal peace." How frightful "to lie in cold +obstruction and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod!" and +yet, "after life's fitful fever," how blessed to "sleep well!"</p> + +<p>What we note about this mood—the mood of Shakespeare and the natural man—is +that it never for a moment dallies with philosophic fancies or mystic visions. +It "thinks highly of the soul," but in the natural, not the metaphysical, sense. +It is the attitude of Rabelais and Montaigne, not the attitude of Wordsworth or +Browning. It is the tone we know so well in the Homeric poems. It is the tone of +the Psalms of David. We hear its voice in "Ecclesiastes," and the wisdom of +"Solomon the King" is full of it. In more recent times, it is the feeling of +those who veer between our race's traditional hope and the dark gulf of eternal +silence. It is the "Aut Christus aut Nihil" of those who "by means of +metaphysic" have dug a pit, into which metaphysic has disappeared!</p> + +<p>The gaiety and childlike animal spirits of Shakespeare's Comedies need not +deceive us. Why should we not forget the whips and scorns for a while, and fleet +the time carelessly, "as they did in the golden age?" Such simple fooling goes +better with the irresponsibility of our fate than the more pungent wit of the +moral comedians. The tragic laughter which the confused issues of life excite in +subtler souls is not lacking, but the sweet obliquities of honest clowns carry +us just as far. Shakespeare loves fools as few have loved them, and it is often +his humour to put into their mouth the ultimate wisdom.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that these plays should commence with a "Midsummer Night's +Dream" and end with a "Tempest." In the interval the great sombre passions of +our race are sounded and dismissed; but as he began with Titania, so he ends +with Ariel. From the fairy forest to the enchanted island; from a dream to a +dream. With Shakespeare there is no Wagnerian, Euripidean "apologia." There is +no "Parsifal" or "Bacchanals." From the meaningless tumult of mortal passions he +returns, with a certain ironic weariness, to the magic of Nature and the wonder +of youth. Prospero, dismissing his spirits "into thin air," has the last word; +and the last word is as the first: "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and +our little life is rounded with a sleep." The easy-going persons who reluct at +the idea of a pessimistic Shakespeare should turn the pages of Troilus and +Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens. What we guessed as we read +Hamlet and Lear grows a certainty as we read these plays.</p> + +<p>Here the "gentle Shakespeare" does the three things that are most +unpardonable. He unmasks virtue; he betrays Woman; and he curses the gods. The +most intransigent of modern revolutionaries might learn a trick or two from this +sacred poet. In Lear he puts the very voice of Anarchy into the mouth of the +King—"Die for adultery? No!" "Handy-dandy, which is the Magistrate and which is +the Thief?" "A dog's obeyed in office."</p> + +<p>Have I succeeded in making clear what I feel about the Shakespearean +attitude? At bottom, it is absolutely sceptical. Deep yawns below Deep; and if +we cannot read "the writing upon the wall," the reason may be that there is no +writing there. Having lifted a corner of the Veil of Isis, having glanced once +into that Death-Kingdom where grope the roots of the Ash-Tree whose name is +Fear, we return to the surface, from Nadir to Zenith, and become +"superficial"—"out of profundity."</p> + +<p>The infinite spaces, as Pascal said, are "frightful." That way madness lies. +And those who would be sane upon earth must drug themselves with the experience, +or with the spectacle of the experience, of human passion. Within this charmed +circle, and here alone, they may be permitted to forget the Outer Terror.</p> + +<p>The noble spirit is not the spirit that condescends to pamper in itself those +inflated moods of false optimistic hope, which, springing from mere +physiological well-being, send us leaping and bounding, with such boisterous +assurance, along the sunny road. Such pragmatic self-deception is an +impertinence in the presence of a world like this.</p> + +<p>It is a sign of what one might call a philosophically ill-bred nature. It is +the indecent "gratitude" of the pig over his trough. It is the little yellow eye +of sanctified bliss turned up to the God who <i>"must</i> be in His Heaven" if <i> +we</i> are so privileged. This "never doubting good will triumph" is really, +when one examines it, nothing but the inverted prostration of the helot-slave, +glad to have been allowed to get so totally drunk! It blusters and swaggers, but +at heart it is base and ignoble. For it is not sensitive enough to feel that the +Universe <i>cannot be pardoned</i> for the cry of one tortured creature, and +that all "the worlds we shall traverse" cannot make up for the despair of one +human child.</p> + +<p>To be "cheerful" about the Universe in the manner of these people is to +insult the Christ who died. It is to outrage the "little ones" over whose bodies +the Wheel has passed. When Nietzsche, the martyr of his own murdered pity, calls +upon us to "love Fate," he does not shout so lustily. His laughter is the +laughter of one watching his darling stripped for the rods. He who would be "in +harmony with Nature." with those "murderous ministers" who, in their blind +abyss, throw dice with Chance, must be in harmony with the giants of Jotunheim, +as well as with the lords of Valhalla. He must be able to look on grimly while +Asgard totters; he must welcome "the Twilight of the Gods." To have a mind +inured to such conceptions, a mind capable of remaining on such a verge, is, +alone, to be, intellectually speaking, what we call "aristocratic." When, even +with eyes like poor Gloucester's in the play, we can see "how this world wags," +it is slavish and "plebeian" to swear that it all "means intensely, and means +well." It is also to lie in one's throat!</p> + +<p>No wonder Shakespeare treats reverently every "superstition," every anodyne +and nepenthe offered to the inmates of this House of the Incurable. Such +"sprinkling with holy water," such "rendering ourselves stupid," is the only +alternative. Anything else is the insight of the hero, or the hypocrisy of the +preacher!</p> + +<p>Has it been realized how curiously the interpreters of Shakespeare omit the +principal thing? They revel in his Grammar, his History, his Biology, his +Botany, his Geography, his Psychology and his Ethics. They never speak of his +Poetry. Now Shakespeare is, above everything, a poet. To poetry, over and over +again, as our Puritans know well, he sacrifices Truth, Morality, Probability, +nay! the very principles of Art itself.</p> + +<p>As Dramas, many of his plays are scandalously bad; many of his characters +fantastic. One can put one's finger in almost every case upon the persons and +situations that interested him and upon those that did not. And how carelessly +he "sketches in" the latter! So far from being "the Objective God of Art" they +seek to make him, he is the most wayward and subjective of all wandering souls.</p> + +<p>No natural person can read him without feeling the pulse of extreme personal +passion behind everything he writes.</p> + +<p>And this pulse of personal passion is always expressing itself in Poetry. He +will let the probabilities of a character vanish into air, or dwindle into a +wistful note of attenuated convention, when once such a one has served his +purpose as a reed to pipe his strange tunes through. He will whistle the most +important personage down the wind, lost to interest and identity, when once he +has put into his mouth his own melancholy brooding upon life—his own imaginative +reaction.</p> + +<p>And so it happens that, in spite of all academic opinion, those who +understand Shakespeare best tease themselves least over his dramatic lapses. For +let it be whispered at once, without further scruple. As far as <i>the art of +the drama</i> is concerned, Shakespeare is <i>shameless.</i> The poetic +instinct—one might call it "epical" or "lyrical," for it is both these—is far +more dominant in our "greatest dramatist" than any dramatic conscience. That is +precisely why those among us who love "poetry," but find "drama," especially +"drama since Ibsen," intolerably tiresome, revert again and again to +Shakespeare. Only absurd groups of Culture-Philistines can read these "powerful +modern productions" more than once! One knows not whether their impertinent +preaching, or their exasperating technical cleverness is the more annoying.</p> + +<p>They may well congratulate themselves on being different from Shakespeare. +They are extremely different. They are, indeed, nothing but his old enemies, the +Puritans, "translated," like poor Bottom, and wearing the donkey's head of "art +for art's sake" in place of their own simple foreheads.</p> + +<p>Art for art's sake! The thing has become a Decalogue of forbidding +commandments, as devastating as <i>those Ten.</i> It is the new avatar of the +"moral sense" carrying categorical insolence into the sphere of our one Alsatian +sanctuary!</p> + +<p>I am afraid Shakespeare was a very "immoral" artist. I am afraid he wrote as +one of the profane.</p> + +<p>But what of the Greeks? The Greeks never let themselves go! No! And for a +sufficient reason. Greek Drama was Religion. It was Ritual. And we know how +"responsible" ritual must be. The gods must have their incense from the right +kind of censer.</p> + +<p>But you cannot evoke Religion "in vacuo." You cannot, simply by assuming +grave airs about your personal "taste," or even about the "taste" of your age, +give it <i>that consecration.</i></p> + +<p>Beauty? God knows what beauty is. But I can tell you what it is not. It is +not the sectarian anxiety of any pompous little clique to get "saved" in the +artistic "narrow path." It is much rather what Stendhal called it. But he spoke +so frivolously that I dare not quote him.</p> + +<p>Has it occurred to you, gentle reader, to note how "Protestant" this New +Artistic Movement is? Shakespeare, in his aesthetic method, as well as in his +piety, had a Catholic soul. In truth, the hour has arrived when a "Renaissance" +of the free spirit of Poetry in Drama is required. Why must this monstrous +shadow of the Hyperborean Ibsen go on darkening the play-instinct in us, like +some ugly, domineering John Knox? I suspect that there are many generous +Rabelaisian souls who could lift our mortal burden with oceanic merriment, only +the New Movement frightens them. They are afraid they would not be "Greek" +enough—or "Scandinavian" enough. Meanwhile the miserable populace have to choose +between Babylonian Pantomimes and Gaelic Mythology, if they are not driven, out +of a kind of spite, into the region of wholesome "domestic sunshine."</p> + +<p>What, in our hearts, we natural men desire is to be delivered at one blow +from the fairies with weird names (so different from poor Titania!), and from +the three-thousand "Unities!" What "poetry" we do get is so vague and dim and +wistful and forlorn that it makes us want to go out and "buy clothes" for +someone. We veer between the abomination of city-reform and the desolation of +Ultima Thule.</p> + +<p>But Shakespeare is Shakespeare still. O those broken and gasped-out human +cries, full of the old poignancy, full of the old enchantment! Shakespeare's +poetry is the extreme opposite of any "cult." It is the ineffable expression, in +music that makes the heart stop, of the feelings which have stirred every Jack +and Jill among us, from the beginning of the world! It has the effect of those +old "songs" of the countryside that hit the heart in us so shrewdly that one +feels as though the wind had made them or the rain or the wayside grass; for +they know too much of what we tell to none! It is the "one touch of Nature." And +how they break the rules, these surpassing lines, in which the emotions of his +motley company gasp themselves away!</p> + +<p>It is not so much in the great speeches, noble as these are, as in the brief, +tragic cries and broken stammerings, that his unapproachable felicity is found. +"Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense." Thick +and fast they crowd upon our memory, these little sentences, these aching +rhythms! It is with the flesh and blood of the daily Sacrifice of our common +endurance that he celebrates his strange Mass. Hands that "smell of mortality," +lips that "so sweetly were forsworn," eyes that "look their last" on all they +love, these are the touches that make us bow down before the final terrible +absolution. And it is the same with Nature. Not to Shakespeare do we go for +those pseudo-scientific, pseudo-ethical interpretations, so crafty in their +word-painting, so cunning in their rational analysis, which we find in the rest. +A few fierce-flung words, from the hot heart of an amorist's lust, and all the +smouldering magic of the noon-day woods takes your breath. A sobbing death-dirge +from the bosom of a love-lorn child, and the perfume of all the "enclosed +gardens" in the world shudders through your veins.</p> + +<p>And what about the ancient antagonist of the Earth? What about the Great +Deep? Has anyone, anywhere else, gathered into words the human tremor and the +human recoil that are excited universally when we go down "upon the beached +verge of the salt flood, who once a day with his embossed froth the turbulent +surge doth cover?" John Keats was haunted day and night by the simple refrain in +Lear, "Canst thou not hear the Sea?"</p> + +<p>Charming Idyllists may count the petals of the cuckoo-buds in the +river-pastures; and untouched, we admire. But let old Falstaff, as he lies a' +dying, "babble o' green fields," and all the long, long thoughts of youth steal +over us, like a summer wind.</p> + +<p>The modern critic, with a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel with the +obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What is the <i>use</i> of +this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When we are born we cry that we +are come to this great stage of fools?"</p> + +<p>No use, my friend! No earthly use! And yet it is not a premeditated +reflection, put in "for art's sake." It is the poetry of the pinch of Fate; it +is the human revenge we take upon the insulting irony of our lot.</p> + +<p>But Shakespeare does not always strike back at the gods with bitter blows. In +this queer world, where we have "nor youth, nor age, but, as it were, an +after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both," there come moments when the spirit is +too sore wounded even to rise in revolt. Then, in a sort of "cheerful despair," +we can only wait the event. And Shakespeare has his word for this also.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the worst of all "the slings and arrows" are the intolerable partings +we have to submit to, from the darlings of our soul. And here, while he offers +us no false hope, his tone loses its bitterness, and grows gentle and solemn.</p> + +<p>It is—"Forever and forever, farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again, why then +'tis well; if not, this parting was well made." And for the Future:</p> + +<p> "O that we knew<br> + The end of this day's business ere it comes!<br> + But it suffices that the day will end;<br> + And then the end is known."</p><a name="5"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>EL GRECO</p> + +<p>The emerging of a great genius into long retarded pre-eminence is always +attended by certain critical misunderstandings. To a cynical observer, on the +lookout for characteristic temperamental lapses, two recent interpretations of +El Greco may be especially commended. I mean the <i>Secret of Toledo,</i> by +Maurice Barres, and an article in the "Contemporary" of April, 1914, by Mr. +Aubrey Bell.</p> + +<p>Barres—Frenchman of Frenchmen—sets off, with captivating and plausible logic, +to generalize into reasonable harmlessness this formidable madman. He interprets +Toledo, appreciates Spain, and patronizes Domenico Theotocopoulos.</p> + +<p>The <i>Secret of Toledo</i> is a charming book, with illuminating passages, +but it is too logical, too plausible, too full of the preciosity of dainty +generalization, to reach the dark and arbitrary soul, either of Spain or of +Spain's great painter.</p> + +<p>Mr. Bell, on the contrary, far from turning El Greco into an epicurean cult, +drags him with a somewhat heavy hand before the footlights of English Idealism.</p> + +<p>He makes of him an excuse for disparaging Velasquez, and launches into a +discourse upon the Higher Reality and the Inner Truth which leaves one with a +very dreary feeling, and, by some ponderous application of spiritual ropes and +pulleys, seems to jerk into empty space all that is most personal and arresting +in the artist.</p> + +<p>If it is insulting to the ghostly Toledoan to smooth him out into picturesque +harmony with Castillian dances, Gothic cloisters and Moorish songs, it is still +worse to transform him into a rampant Idealist of the conventional kind. He +belongs neither to the Aesthetics nor to the Idealists. He belongs to every +individual soul whose taste is sufficiently purged, sufficiently perverse and +sufficiently passionate, to enter the enchanted circle of his tyrannical spell.</p> + +<p>When, in that dark Toledo Church, one presses one's face against the iron +bars that separate one from the Burial of Count Orguz, it is neither as a +Dilettante nor an Idealist that one holds one's breath. Those youthful +pontifical saints, so richly arrayed, offering with slender royal hands that +beautiful body to the dust—is their mysterious gesture only the rhythm of the +secret of Death?</p> + +<p>Those chastened and winnowed spectators, with their withdrawn, remote +detachment—not sadness—are they the initiated sentinels of the House of +Corruption?</p> + +<p>At what figured symbol points that epicene child?</p> + +<p>Sumptuous is the raiment of the dead; and the droop of his limbs has a regal +finality; but look up! Stark naked, and in abandoned weakness, the liberated +soul shudders itself into the presence of God!</p> + +<p>The El Greco House and Museum in Toledo contains amazing things. Every one of +those Apostles that gaze out from the wall upon our casual devotion has his own +furtive madness, his own impossible dream! The St. John is a thing one can never +forget. El Greco has painted his hair as if it were literally live flame and the +exotic tints of his flesh have an emphasis laid upon them that makes one think +of the texture of certain wood orchids.</p> + +<p>How irrelevant seem Monsieur Barres' water-colour sketches of prancing Moors +and learned Jews and picturesque Visi-Goths, as soon as one gets a direct +glimpse into these unique perversions! And why cannot one go a step with this +dreamer of dreams without dragging in the Higher Reality? To regard work as mad +and beautiful as this as anything but individual Imagination, is to insult the +mystery of personality.</p> + +<p>El Greco re-creates the world, in pure, lonely, fantastic arbitrariness.</p> + +<p>His art does not represent the secret Truth of the Universe, or the +Everlasting Movement; it represents the humour of El Greco.</p> + +<p>Every artist mesmerizes us into his personal vision.</p> + +<p>A traveller, drinking wine in one of those cafes in the crowded Zocodover, +his head full of these amazing fantasies, might well let the greater fantasy of +the world slip by—a dream within a dream!</p> + +<p>With El Greco for a companion, the gaunt waiter at the table takes the form +of some incarcerated Don Quixote and the beggars at the window appear like gods +in disguise.</p> + +<p>This great painter, like the Russian Dostoivsky, has a mania for abandoned +weakness. The nearer to God his heroic Degenerates get, the more feverishly +enfeebled becomes their human will.</p> + +<p>Their very faces—with those retreating chins, retroussé noses, loose lips, +quivering nostrils and sloping brows—seem to express the abandonment of all +human resolution or restraint, in the presence of the Beatific Vision. Like the +creatures of Dostoievsky, they seem to plunge into the ocean of the Foolishness +of God, so much wiser than the wisdom of men!—as divers plunge into a bath.</p> + +<p>There is not much attempt among these ecstatics to hold on to the dignity of +their reason or the reticence of their self-respect. Naked, they fling +themselves into the arms of Nothingness.</p> + +<p>This passionate "Movement of Life," of which Mr. Bell, quoting Pater's famous +quotation from Heraclitus, makes so much, is, after all, only the rush of the +wind through the garments of the World—Denier, as he plunges into Eternity.</p> + +<p>Like St. John of the Cross, El Greco's visionaries pass from the Night of the +Reason to the Night of the Senses; from the Night of the Senses to the Night of +Soul; and if this final Night is nothing less than God Himself, the divine +submersion does not bring back any mortal daylight.</p> + +<p>Domenico's portraits have a character somewhat different from his visions. +Here, into these elongated, bearded hermits, into these grave, intellectual +maniacs, whose look is like the look of Workers in some unlit Mine, he puts what +he knows and feels of his own identity.</p> + +<p>They are diverse masks and mirrors, these portraits, surfaces of deep water +in various lonely valleys, but from the depths of them rises up the shadow of +the same lost soul, and they are all ruffled by the breath of the same midnight.</p> + +<p>The Crucifixion in the Prado, and that other, which, by some freak of +Providence, has found its way to Philadelphia, have backgrounds which carry our +imagination very far. Is this primordial ice, with its livid steel-blue shadows, +the stuff out of which the gods make other planets than ours—dead planets, +without either sun or star? Are these the sheer precipices of Chaos, against +which the Redeemer hangs, or the frozen edges of the grave of all life?</p> + +<p>El Greco's magnificent contempt for material truth is a lesson to all +artists. We are reminded of William Blake and Aubrey Beardsley. He seems to +regard the human-frame as so much soft clay, upon which he can trace his +ecstatic hieroglyphs, in defiance both of anatomy and nature.</p> + +<p>El Greco is the true precursor of our present-day Matissists and Futurists. +He, as they, has the courage to strip his imagination of all mechanical +restrictions and let it go free to mould the world at its fancy.</p> + +<p>What stray visitor to Madrid would guess the vastness of the intellectual +sensation awaiting him in that quiet, rose-coloured building?</p> + +<p>As you enter the Museum and pass those magnificent Titians crowded so close +together—large and mellow spaces, from a more opulent world than ours; greener +branches, bluer skies and a more luminous air; a world through which, naturally +and at ease, the divine Christ may move, grand, majestic, health-giving, a +veritable god; a world from whose grapes the blood of satyrs may be quickened, +from whose corn the hearts of heroes may be made strong—and come bolt upon El +Greco's glacial northern lights, you feel that no fixed objective Truth and no +traditional Ideal has a right to put boundaries to the imagination of man.</p> + +<p>Not less striking than any of these is the extraordinary portrait of "Le Roi +Ferdinand" in the great gallery at the Louvre.</p> + +<p>The artist has painted the king as one grown weary of his difference from +other men. His moon-white armour and silvery crown show like the ornaments of +the dead. Misty and wavering, the long shadows upon the high, strange brow seem +thrown there by the passing of all mortal Illusions.</p> + +<p>Phantom-like in his gleaming ornaments, a king of Lost Atlantis, he waits the +hour of his release.</p> + +<p>And not only is he the king of Shadows; he is also the king of Players, the +Player-King.</p> + +<p>El Greco has painted him holding two sceptres, one of which, resembling a +Fool's Bauble, is tipped with the image of a naked hand—a dead, false +hand—symbol of the illusion of Power. The very crown he wears, shimmering and +unnaturally heavy, is like the crown a child might have made in play, out of +shells and sea-weed.</p> + +<p>The disenchanted irony upon the face of this figure; that look as of one +who—as Plato would have us do with kings—has been dragged back from +Contemplation to the vulgarity of ruling men; has been deliberately blent by a +most delicate art with a queer sort of fantastic whimsicality.</p> + +<p>"Le Roi Ferdinand" might almost be an enlarged reproduction of some little +girl's Doll-King, dressed up in silver tinsel and left out of doors, by mistake, +some rainy evening.</p> + +<p>Something about him, one fancies, would make an English child think of the +"White Knight" in <i>Alice Through the Looking Glass,</i> so helpless and simple +he looks, this poor "Revenant," propped up by Youthful Imagination, and with the +dews of night upon his armour.</p> + +<p>You may leave these pictures far behind you as you re-cross the Channel, but +you can never quite forget El Greco.</p> + +<p>In the dreams of night the people of his queer realm will return and surround +you, ebbing and flowing, these passionate shadows, stretching out vain arms +after the infinite and crying aloud for the rest they cannot win.</p> + +<p>Yes, in the land of dreams we know him, this proud despiser of earth!</p> + +<p>From our safe inland retreat we watch the passing of his Dance of Death, and +we know that what they seek, these wanderers upon the wind, is not our Ideal nor +our Real, not our Earth or our Heaven, but a strange, fairy-like Nirvana, where, +around the pools of Nothingness, the children of twilight gambol and play.</p> + +<p>The suggestive power of genius plays us, indeed, strange tricks. I have +sometimes fancied that the famished craving in the eyes and nostrils of El +Greco's saints was a queer survival of that tragic look which that earlier +Greek, Scopas the Sculptor, took such pains to throw upon the eyelids of his +half-human amphibiums.</p> + +<p>It might even seem to us, dreaming over these pictures as the gusts of an +English autumn blow the fir branches against the window, as though all that +weird population of Domenico's brain were tossing their wild, white arms out +there and emitting thin, bat-like cries under the drifting moon.</p> + +<p>The moon—one must admit that, at least—rather than the sun, was ever the +mistress of El Greco's genius. He will come more and more to represent for us +those vague uneasy feelings that certain inanimate and elemental objects have +the power of rousing. It is of him that one must think, when this or that +rock-chasm cries aloud for its Demon, or this or that deserted roadway mutters +of its unreturning dead.</p> + +<p>There will always be certain great artists, and they are the most original of +all who refuse to submit to any of our logical categories, whether scientific or +ideal.</p> + +<p>To give one's self up to them is to be led by the hand into the country of +Pure Imagination, into the Ultima Thule of impossible dreams.</p> + +<p>Like Edgar Allan Poe, this great painter can make splendid use of the human +probabilities of Religion and Science; but it is none of these things that one +finally thinks, as one comes to follow him, but of things more subtle, more +remote, more translunar, and far more imaginative.</p> + +<p>One may walk the streets of Toledo to seek the impress of El Greco's going +and coming; but the soul of Domenico Theotocopoulos is not there.</p> + +<p>It is with Faust, in the cave of the abysmal "Mothers."</p><a name="6"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>MILTON</p> + +<p>It is outrageous, the way we modern world-children play with words. How we +are betrayed by words! How we betray with words! We steal from one another and +from the spirit of the hour; and with our phrases and formulas and talismans we +obliterate all distinction. One sees the modern god as one who perpetually +apologises and explains; and the modern devil as one who perpetually apologises +and explains. Everything has its word-symbol, its word-mask, its word-garment, +its word-disgrace. Nothing comes out clear into the open, unspeakable and +inexplicable, and strikes us dumb!</p> + +<p>That is what the great artists do—who laugh at our word-play. That is what +Milton does, who, in the science and art of handling words, has never been +equalled. Milton, indeed, remains, by a curious fate, the only one of the very +great poets who has never been "interpreted" or "appreciated" or "re-created" by +any critical modern. And they have left him alone; have been frightened of him; +have not dared to slime their "words" over him, for the very reason that he is +the supreme artist in words! He is so great an artist that his creations detach +themselves from all dimness—from all such dimness as modern "appreciation" +loves—and stand out clear and cold and "unsympathetic"; to be bowed down before +and worshipped, or left unapproached.</p> + +<p>Milton is a man's poet. It would be a strange thing if women loved him. +Modern criticism is a half-tipsy Hermaphrodite, in love only with what is on the +point of turning into something else. Milton is always himself. His works of art +are always themselves. He and they are made of the same marble, of the same +metal. They are never likely to change into anything else! Milton is, like all +the greatest artists, a man of action. He, so learned in words, in their +history, in their weight, in their origin, in their evocations; he, the scholar +of scholars, is a man, not of words, but of deeds. That is why the style of +Milton is a thing that you can touch with your outstretched fingers. It has been +hammered into shape by a hand that could grasp a sword; it has been moulded into +form by a brain that could dominate a council-chamber. No wonder we word-maniacs +fear to approach him. He repels us; he holds us back; he hides his work-shop +from us; and his art smites us into silent hatred.</p> + +<p>For Milton himself, though he is the artist of artists, art is not the first +thing. It is only the first thing with us because we are life's slaves, and not +its masters. Art is what we protect ourselves with—from life. For us it is a +religion and a drug. To Milton it was a weapon and a plaything.</p> + +<p>Milton was more interested in the struggle of ideas, in the struggle of +races, in the struggle of immortal principles, in the struggle of gods, in the +great creative struggle of life and death, than he was interested in the +exquisite cadences of words or their laborious arrangement. A modern artist's +heart's desire is to escape from the world to some "happy valley" and there, +sitting cross-legged, like a Chinese Idol, between the myrtle-bushes and the +Lotus, to make beautiful things in detachment forever, one by one, with no pause +or pain. Milton's desire was to take the whole round world between his hands, +with all the races and nations who dwell upon it, and mould <i>that,</i> and +nothing less, into the likeness of what he believed. And in what did he believe, +this Lord of Time and Space, this accomplice of Jehovah? He believed in Himself. +He had the unquestioning, unphilosophical belief in himself which great men of +action have; which the Caesars, Alexanders and Napoleons have, and which +Shakespeare seems to have lacked.</p> + +<p>Milton, though people have been misled into thinking of him as very different +from that, was, in reality, the incarnation of the Nietzschean ideal. He was +hard, he was cold, he was contemptuous, he was "magnanimous," he "remembered his +whip" when he went with women, he loved war for its own sake, and he dwelt alone +on the top of the mountains. To Milton the world presented itself as a place +where the dominant power, and the dominant interest, was the wrestling of will +with will. Why need we always fuss ourselves about logical <i>names</i>? Milton, +in reality—in his temperament and his mood—was just as convinced of <i>Will</i> +being the ultimate secret as Schopenhauer or Nietzsche or Bergson or the modern +Pragmatist. Nothing seemed to him noble, or dramatic, or "true," that did not +imply the struggle to the death of opposing +<i>wills</i>.</p> + +<p>Milton, in reality, is less of a Christian than any European writer, since +the Gospel appeared. In his heart, like Nietzsche, he regarded the binding into +one volume of those "Two Testaments" an insult to "the great style." He does, +indeed, in a manner find a place for Christ, but it is the place of one demigod +among many other demi-gods; the conqueror's place possibly, but still the place +of one in a hierarchy, not of one alone. It is absurd to quarrel with Milton's +deification of the Judaic Jehovah. Every man has his own God. The God he <i>has +a right to</i>. And the Jewish Jehovah, after all, is no mean figure. He, like +Milton, was a God of War. He, like Milton, found Will—human and divine Will—the +central cosmic fact. He, like Milton, regarded Good and Evil, not as universal +principles, but as arbitrary <i>commands</i>, issued by eternal personal +antagonists! It is one of the absurd mistakes into which our conceptual and +categorical minds so easily fall—this tendency to eliminate Milton's Theology as +mere Puritanical convention, dull and uninteresting. Milton's Theology was the +most +<i>personal creation</i> that any great poet has ever dared to launch upon—more +personal even than the Theology of Milton's favourite Greek poet, Euripides.</p> + +<p>Milton's feeling for the more personal, more concrete aspects of "God" goes +entirely well with the rest of his philosophy. At heart he was a savage Dualist, +who lapsed occasionally into Pluralism. He was, above all, an Individualist of +the most extreme kind—an Individualist so hard, so positive, so inflexible, that +for him nothing in the world really mattered except the clash of definite, +clear-cut Wills, contending against one another.</p> + +<p>Milton is the least mystical, the least pantheistic, the least monistic, of +all writers. That magical sense of the brooding Over-Soul which thrills us so in +Goethe's poetry never touches his pages. The Wordsworthian intimations of +"something far more deeply interfused" never crossed his sensibility; and, as +far as he is concerned, Plato might never have existed.</p> + +<p>One feels, as one reads Milton, that his ultimate view of the universe is a +great chaotic battlefield, amid the confused elements of which rise up the +portentous figures of "Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, and Powers," and in +the struggle between these, the most arbitrary, the most tyrannical, the most +despotic, conquers the rest, and, planting his creative Gonfalon further in the +Abyss than any, becomes "God"; the God whose personal and unrestrained Caprice +creates the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, out of Chaos; and Man out of the dust +of the Earth. Thus it is brought about that what this God +<i>wills</i> is "Good," and what his strongest and most formidable antagonist +wills is "Evil." Between Good and Evil there is no eternal difference, except in +the eternal difference between the conquering Personality of Jehovah and the +conquered Personality of Lucifer. So, far from it being true that Milton is the +dull transcriber of mere traditional Protestantism, a very little investigation +reveals the astounding fact that the current popular Evangelical view of the +origin of things and the drama of things is based, not upon the Bible at all, +but upon Milton's poem. In this respect he is a true Classic Poet—a Maker of +Mythology—a Delphic Demiurge.</p> + +<p>One of the most difficult questions in the world to answer would be the +question how far Milton "believed" simply and directly, in the God he thus +half-created. Probably he did "believe" more than his daring, arbitrary +"creations" would lead us to suppose. His nature demanded positive and concrete +facts. Scepticism and mysticism were both abhorrent to him; and it is more +likely than not that, in the depths of his strange cold, unapproachable heart, a +terrible and passionate prayer went up, day and night, to the God of Isaac and +Jacob that the Lord should not forget his Servant.</p> + +<p>The grandeur and granite-like weight of Milton's learning was fed by the high +traditions of Greece and Rome; but, in his heart of hearts, far deeper than +anything that moved him in Aeschylus or Virgil, was the devotion he had for the +religion of Israel, and the Fear of Him who "sitteth between the Cherubims." It +is often forgotten, amid the welter of modern ethical ideals and modern mystical +theosophies, how grand and unique a thing is this Religion of Israel—a religion +whose God is at once Personal and Invisible. After all, what do we know? A +Prince of Righteousness, a King of Sion, a Shepherd of his People—such a "Living +God" as David cries out upon, with those dramatic cries that remain until today +the most human and tragic of all our race's wrestling with the Unknown—is this +not a Faith quite as "possible" and far more moving, than all the "Over-Souls" +and "Immanent All's Fathers" and "Streams of Tendency" which have been +substituted for it by unimaginative modern "breadth of mind"? It is time that it +was made clear that the alternative at present for all noble souls is between +the reign of "crass Casuality" and the reign of Him "who maketh the clouds His +chariot and walketh upon the wings of the wind." Those who, "with Democritus, +set the world upon Chance" have a right to worship their Jesus of Nazareth, and, +in him, the Eternal Protest against the Cruelty of Life. But if Life is to be +deified, if Life is to be "accepted," if Life is to be worshipped; if Courage, +not Love, be the secret of the cosmic system, then let us call aloud upon it, +under personal and palpable symbols, in the old imaginative, <i>poetic</i> way, +rather than fool ourselves with thin mysticities, vague intuitions, and the +"sounding brass" of "ethical ideals"!</p> + +<p>The earlier poems of Milton are among the most lovely in the English +language. Lycidas is, for those who understand what poetry means, the most +lovely of all. There is nothing, anywhere, quite like this poem. The lingering, +elaborate harmonies, interrupted in pause after pause, by lines of reverberating +finality; and yet, sweetly, slowly leading on to a climax of such airy, lucid +calm—it is one's "hope beyond hope" of what a poem should be.</p> + +<p>The absence of vulgar sentiment, the classic reserve, the gentle melancholy, +the delicate gaiety, the subtle interweaving of divine, rhythmic cadences, the +ineffable lightness of touch, as of cunning fingers upon reluctant clay; is +there anything in poetry to equal these things? One does not even regret the +sudden devastating apparition of that "two-handed engine at the door." For one +remembers how wickedly, how mercilessly, the beauty of life is even now being +spoiled by these accursed "hirelings"—and now, as then, "nothing said."</p> + +<p>The Nativity Hymn owes half the charm of its easy, natural grace to the fact +that the victory of Mary's infant son over the rest is treated as if it were the +victory of one pagan god over another—the final triumph being to him who is the +most "gentle" and "beautiful" of all the gods. In the famous argument between +the Lady and her Tempter, in Comus, we have an exquisite example of the sweet, +grave refinement of virginal taste which shuns grossness as "a false note." The +doctrine of Comus—if so airy a thing can be supposed to have a doctrine—is not +very different from the doctrine of Marius the Epicurean. One were foolish to +follow the bestial enchanter; not so much because it is "wrong" to do so, as +because, then, one would lose the finer edge of that heavenly music which turns +the outward shape "to the soul's essence."</p> + +<p>Milton's Sonnets occupy a place by themselves in English Literature, and they +may well be pondered upon by those who think that the relinquishing of the "old +forms" makes it easier to express one's personality. It makes it, as a matter of +fact, much harder, just as the stripping from human beings of their +characteristic "outer garments" makes them so dreadfully, so devastatingly, +alike! Nothing could be more personal than a Miltonic Sonnet. The rigid +principles of form, adhered to so scrupulously in the medium used, intensify, +rather than detract from, his individualistic character. That Miltonic wit, so +granite-like and mordant, how well it goes with the magical whispers that +"syllable men's names"!</p> + +<p>All Milton's personal prejudices may be found in the Sonnets, from his hatred +of those frightful Scotch appellations that would "make Quintlian gasp" to his +longing for Classic companionship and "Attic wine" and "immortal notes" and +"Tuscan airs"! As one reads on, laughing gently at the folly of those who have +so misunderstood him, one is conscious more and more of that high, cold, clear, +lonely tenderness, which found so little satisfaction in the sentiment of the +rabble and still less in the endearments of women! As in the case of "sad +Electra's poet," his own favorite, it is easy to grow angry about his "Misogyny" +and take Christian exception to his preference for mistresses over wives. It is +true that Milton's view of marriage is more than "heathen." But one has to +remember that in these matters of purely personal taste no public opinion has +right to intervene. When the well-married Brownings of our age succeed in +writing poetry in the "grand style," it will be time—and, perhaps, not even +then—to let the dogs of democratic domesticity loose upon this austere lover of +the classic way.</p> + +<p>What a retort was "Paradise Lost" to the lewd revellers who would have +profaned his aristocratic isolation with howlings and brutalities and philistine +uproar! Milton despised "priests and kings" from the heights of a pride loftier +than their own—and he did not love the vulgar mob much better. In Paradise Lost +he can "feel himself" into the sublime tyranny of God, as well as into the +sublime revolt of Lucifer. Neither the one or other stoops to solicit "popular +voices." The thing to avoid, as one reads this great poem, are the paraphrases +from the book of Genesis. Here some odd scrupulousness of scholarly conscience +seems to prevent him launching out into his native originality. But, putting +this aside, what majestic Pandemoniums of terrific Imagination he has the power +to call up! The opening Books are as sublime as the book of Job, and more +arresting than Aeschylus. The basic secrets of his blank verse can never be +revealed, but one is struck dumb with wonder in the presence of this Eagle of +Poetry as we attempt to follow him, flight beyond flight, hovering beyond +hovering, as he gets nearer and nearer to the Sun.</p> + +<p>It is by single paragraphs, all the same, and by single lines, that I would +myself prefer to see him judged. Long poems have been written before and will be +written again, but no one will ever write—no one but Dante has ever written—such +single lines as one reads in Milton. Curiously enough, some of the most +staggering of these superb passages are interludes and allusions, rather than +integral episodes in the story, and not only interludes, but interludes in the +"pagan manner." Second only to those Luciferan defiances, which seem able to +inspire even us poor worms with the right attitude towards Fate, I am tempted to +place certain references to Astarte, Ashtoreth and Adonis.</p> + +<p> "Astarte, queen of Heaven, with crescent horns,<br> + To whose bright Image nightly, by the moon,<br> + Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs."</p> + +<p>Or of Adonis:</p> + +<p> "Whose annual wound, in Lebanon, allured<br> + The Syrian damsels to lament his fate<br> + In amorous ditties all a Summer's day—"</p> + +<p>That single line, "Whose annual wound, in Lebanon, allured," seems to me +better than any other that could be quoted, to evoke the awe and the thrill and +the seduction of all true poetry.</p> + +<p>Then those great mysterious allusions to the planetary orbits and the fixed +stars and the primeval spaces of land and sea; what a power they have of +spreading wide before us the huge horizons of the world's edge! Who can forget +"the fleecy star that bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas"? Or that phrase +about the sailors "stemming mightly to the pole"? Or the sudden terror of that +guarded Paradisic Gate—"with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms"? The same +extraordinary beauty of single passages may be found in "Paradise Regained," a +poem which is much finer than many guess. The descriptions there of the +world-cities, Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, have the same classic thrill of reserved +awe and infinite reverence that some of Dante's lines possess—only, with Milton, +the thing is longer drawn out and more grandiloquent. Satan's speech about his +own implacable fatality, "his harbour, and his ultimate repose," and that +allusion to Our Lord's gentleness, like "the cool intermission of a summer's +cloud" are both in the manner we love.</p> + +<p>It is only, however, when one comes to Samson Agonistes that the full power +of Milton's genius is felt. Written in a style which the devotees of "free +verse" in our time would do well to analyse, it is the most complete expression +of his own individual character that he ever attained. Here the Captain of +Jehovah, here the champion of Light against Darkness, of Pride against Humility, +of Man against Woman, finds his opportunity and his hour. Out of his blindness, +out of his loneliness, out of the welter of hedonists and amorists and feminists +and fantasists who crowded upon him, the great, terrible egoist strikes his last +blow! No one can read Samson Agonistes without being moved, and those who look +deepest into our present age may well be moved the most! One almost feels as if +some great overpowering tide of all the brutalities and crudities and false +sentiments and cunning hypocrisies, and evil voluptuousness, of all the +Philistias that have ever been, is actually rushing to overwhelm us! Gath and +Askalon in gross triumph—must this thing be? Will the Lord of Hosts lift no +finger to help his own? And then the end comes; and the Euripidean "messenger" +brings the great news! He is dead, our Champion; but in his death he slew more +than in his life. "Nothing is here" for unworthy sorrow; "nothing" that need +make us "knock the breast;"—"No weakness, no contempt, dispraise or +blame—nothing but well and fair, and what may quiet us in a death so noble."</p> + +<p>And the end of Samson Agonistes is as the end of Milton's own life. Awaited +in calm dignity, as a Roman soldier might wait for Caesar's word, Death has +claimed its own. But let not the "daughters of the uncircumsized" triumph! +Grandeur and nobility, beauty and heroism, live still; and while these live, +what matter though our bravest and our fairest perish? It only remains to let +the thunderbolt, when it does fall, find us prepared; find us in calm of mind, +"all passion spent."</p><a name="7"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>CHARLES LAMB</p> + +<p>Charles Lamb occupies a very curious position in English literature and a +very enviable one. He is, perhaps, the most widely known, and widely spoken of, +of any stylist we possess, and the least understood. It was his humour, while +living, to create misunderstanding, and he creates it still. And yet he is +recognized on all sides as a Classic of the unapproachable breed. Charles Lamb +has among his admirers more uninteresting people than any great artist has ever +had except Thackeray. He has more academic people in his train than anyone has +ever had except Shakespeare. And more severe, elderly, pedantic persons profess +to love him than love any other mortal writer.</p> + +<p>These people all read Lamb, talk Lamb, quote Lamb, but they do not <i>suggest</i> +Lamb; they do not "smack," as our ancestors used to say, of the true Elia vein.</p> + +<p>But the immense humour of the situation does not stop here. Not only has this +evasive City Clerk succeeded in fooling the "good people;" he has fooled the +"wicked ones." I have myself in the circle of my acquaintance more than half a +dozen charming people, of the type who enjoy Aubrey Beardsley, and have a mania +for Oscar Wilde, and sometimes dip into Remy de Gourmont, and not one of them +"can read" Charles Lamb. He has succeeded in fooling them; in making them +suppose he is something quite different from what he is. He used to tell his +friends that every day he felt himself growing more "official" and "moral." He +even swore he had been taken for a Verger or a Church warden. Well, our friends +of the "enclosed gardens" still take him for a Verger. But he is a more +remarkable Verger than they dream. As a matter of fact, there were some +extremely daring and modern spirits in Elia's "entourage," spirits who went +further in an antinomian direction than—I devoutly pray—my friends are ever +likely to go, and these scandalous ones adored him. And for his part, he seems +to have liked them—more than he ought.</p> + +<p>It is, indeed, very curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles +Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for +anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to +speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely +nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! With +regard to the devotion to him which certain gentle and old-fashioned ladies +have—one's great-aunts, for instance—I am inclined to think that much more might +be said. There is a quality, a super-refined, exquisite quality, and one with a +pinch of true ironic salt in it, which the more thick-skinned among us +sensationalists may easily miss.</p> + +<p>It is all very well for us to talk of "burning with a hard gem-like flame," +when, as a matter of fact, we move along, dull as cave-men, to some of the +finest aesthetic effects in the world. Not to appreciate the humour of that +rarest and sweetest of all human types, the mischievous-tongued Great-Aunt, is +to be nothing short of a profane fool.</p> + +<p>But Charles Lamb is a very different person from our Goldsmiths and Cowpers +and Austens, and their modern representatives. It needs something else in a +Great-Aunt than old-fashioned irony to appreciate <i>him.</i> It needs an +imagination that is very nearly "Shakespearean" and it needs a passion for +beautiful style of which a Flaubert or an Anatole France might be proud.</p> + +<p>So here we have the old sly Elia, fooling people now as he fooled them in his +lifetime, and a riddle both to the godly and the ungodly. The great Goethe, +whose Walpurgis Night "He-Apes" made Elia put out his tongue, read, we learn, +with no little pleasure some fantastic skit of this incorrigible one. Did he +discern—the sublime Olympian—what a cunning flute player lurked under the queer +mask? "Something between a Jew, a Gentleman and an Angel" he liked to fancy he +looked; and one must confess that in the subtlest of all senses of that word, a +gentleman he was.</p> + +<p>Lamb's "essays" were written at off hours, when he could escape from his +office. Once completely freed from the necessity of office work, his writing +lost its magic. His genius was of that peculiarly delicate texture which +requires the stimulus of reaction. One cannot be too grateful that the +incomparable Pater, after Lamb himself, perhaps, the greatest master of English +prose, found it necessary to utter his appreciation. Pater, as usual, hits the +mark with an infallible hand when he speaks of that overhanging Sophoclean +tragedy which darkened Lamb's earlier days and never quite left him.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, this, the sense of one living always on the edge of a +precipice, that gives such piquancy and charm to Elia's mania for "little +things." Well might he turn to "little things," when great things—his Sun and +his Moon—had been turned for him to Blood! But, as Pater suggests, there is +"Philosophy" in all this, and more Philosophy than many suppose. It is +unfortunate that the unworldly Coleridge and the worldly Thackeray should have +both pitched upon Lamb's "saintliness" to make copy of. Nothing infuriated him +more than such a tone towards himself. And he was right to be infuriated. His +"unselfishness," his "sweetness," of which these good men make so much, were +only one aspect of the Philosophy of his whole life. Lamb was, in his life, a +great epicurean philosopher, as, in all probability, many other "saints" have +been. The things in him that fretted Carlyle, his fits of intoxication, his +outbursts of capricious impishness, his perversity and his irony, were just as +much part of the whole scheme as were his celibacy and his relation to his +sister.</p> + +<p>What one can really gather from Lamb is nothing less than a very wise and +very subtle "way of life," a way that, amid many outrageous experiences, will be +found singularly lucky.</p> + +<p>In the first place, let it be noted, Lamb deliberately cultivates the art of +"transforming the commonplace." It is as absurd to deny the existence of this +element—from which we all suffer—as it is to maintain that it cannot be changed. +It <i>can</i> be changed. That is precisely what this kind of rare genius does. +It is a miracle, of course, but everything in art is a miracle.</p> + +<p>Nature tosses out indiscriminately her motley productions, and if you are +born for such "universalism," you may swallow them wholesale. The danger of such +a downright manner of going to work is that it blunts one's critical sense. If +you swallow everything just as it is, you <i>taste</i> very little. But Charles +Lamb is nothing if not "critical," nothing if not an Epicure, and his manner of +dealing with the "commonplace" sharpens rather than blunts the edge of one's +taste.</p> + +<p>And what is this manner? It is nothing less than an indescribable blending of +Christianity and Paganism. Heine, another of Carlyle's "blackguards," achieves +the same synthesis. It is this spiritual achievement—at once a religious and an +aesthetic triumph—that makes Elia, for all his weaknesses, such a really great +man. The Wordsworths and Coleridges who patronized him were too self-opiniated +and individualistic to be able to enter into either tradition.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth is neither a Christian or a Pagan. He is a moral philosopher. Elia +is an artist, who understands the <i>importance of ritual</i> in life—but of +naturalness in ritual.</p> + +<p>How difficult, whether as a thinker or a man, is it to be natural in one's +loves and hates! How many quite authoritative Philistines never really let the +world know how Bohemian at heart they are! And how much of our modern "artistic +feeling" is a pure affectation! Now, whatever Elia was not, he was wantonly, +wickedly, whimsically natural.</p> + +<p>He never concealed his religious feelings, his superstitious feelings. He +never concealed his fancies, his fads, his manias, his vices. He never concealed +his emotion when he felt a thrill of passionate faith. He never concealed it +when he felt a thrill of blasphemous doubt.</p> + +<p>He accepted life's little pleasures as they appeared, and did not hesitate to +make "cults" of the ones that appeared most appealing. If he had Philistine +feelings, he indulged them without shame. If he had recondite and "artistic" +feelings, he indulged them also without shame. He is one of the few great men +not afraid to be un-original, and hence he is the most original of all. "I +cannot," says he, "sit and think. Books think for me." Well, books did "think +for him," for he managed to press the books of the great poets into his service, +as no mortal writer has ever dared to do before. And he could do it without +impairing his originality, because he was as original as the great poets he +used. We say deliberately "poets," for, as Pater points out, to find Lamb's +rivals in sheer imaginative genius, we have to leave the company of those who +write prose.</p> + +<p>Do the humorous ecclesiastics and scholarly tutors who profess to understand +Elia ever peep into that Essay called "Witches," or that other Essay called "A +Child-Angel"? There are things here that are written for a very different +circle. Certain sentences in "Dream-children," too, have a beauty that takes a +natural man's breath completely away. Touches of far-off romance, terrible and +wistful as "anonymous ballads," alternate with gestures of Rabelaisian humour, +such as generous souls love. Elia's style is the only thing in English prose +that can be called absolutely perfect. Compared with the rich, capricious, +wilful, lingering by the way of Lamb's manner, Pater's is precise, demure and +over-grave, Wilde's fantastic and over-provocative, Ruskin's intolerably +rhetorical.</p> + +<p>Into what other prose style could the magic of Shakespeare's "little touches" +be drawn, or the high melancholy of Milton's imagery be led, without producing a +frightful sense of the incongruous? He can quote them both—or any other great +old master—and if it were not for the "inverted commas" we should not be aware +of the insertion.</p> + +<p>Elia cannot say anything, not the simplest thing, without giving it a turn, a +twist, a lift, a lightness, a grace, that would redeem the very grease-spots on +a scullion's apron!</p> + +<p>There is no style in the world like it. Germany, France, Italy, Russia have +no Charles Lamb. Their Flauberts and D'Annunzios belong to a different tribe. +Even Turgenieff, just because he has to "get on with his story" cannot do +precisely this.</p> + +<p>Every single one of the "essays" and most of the "letters" can be read over +and over again, and their cadences caressed as if they were living people's +features. And they are living. They are as living as those Japanese Prints so +maddening to some among us, or as the drawings of Lionardo. They also—in their +place—are "pure line" to use the ardent modern slang, and unpolluted +"imaginative suggestion."</p> + +<p>The mistake our "aesthetes" made, these lovers of Egyptian dancers and +Babylonian masks, is that they suppose the simplicity of Lamb's subjects debar +him from the rare effects. Ah! They little know! He can take the wistfulness of +children, and the quaint gestures of dead Comedians, and the fantasies of old +worm-eated folios, and the shadows of sundials upon cloistered lawns, and the +heartbreaking evasions of such as "can never know love" and out of these things +he can make a music as piteous and lovely as Ophelia's songs. It is a curious +indication of the lack of real poetic feeling in the feverish art-neophytes of +our age that they should miss these things in Elia. One wonders if they have +ever felt the remote translunar beauty that common faces and old, dim, pitiful +things can wear sometimes. It would seem not. Like Herod the Tetrarch, they must +have "Peacocks whose crying calls the rain, and the spreading of their tails +brings down the Moon;" they must have "opals that burn with flame as cold as +ice" and onyxes and amber and the tapestries of Tyre, The pansies that "are for +thoughts" touch them not and the voices of the street-singers leave them cold.</p> + +<p>It is precisely the lack of natural kindly humour in these people, who must +always be clutching "cameos from Syracuse" between their fingers, which leads +them, when the tension of the "gem-like flame" can be borne no more, into sheer +garishness and brutality. One knows it so well, that particular tone; the tone +of the jaded amorist, for whom "the unspeakable rural solitudes" and "the sweet +security of streets" mean, both of them, boredom and desolation.</p> + +<p>It is not their subtlety that makes them thus suffer; it is their lack of it. +What? Is the poignant world-old play of poor mortal men and women, with their +absurdities and excesses, their grotesque reserves and fantastic confessions, +their advances and withdrawals, not <i>interesting</i> enough to serve? It +serves sufficiently; it serves well enough, when genius takes it in hand. +Perhaps, after all, it is <i>that</i> which is lacking.</p> + +<p>Charles Lamb went through the world with many avoidances, but one thing he +did not avoid—the innocence of unmitigated foolishness! He was able to give to +the Simple Simons of this life that Rabelaisian touch of magnanimous +understanding which makes even the leanest wits among us glow. He went through +the world with strange timidities and no daring stride. He loitered in its +by-alleys. He drifted through its Bazaars. He sat with the crowd in its +Circuses. He lingered outside its churches. He ate his "pot of honey" among its +graves. And as he went his way, irritable and freakish, wayward and arbitrary, +he came, by chance, upon just those side-lights and intimations, those rumours +and whispers, those figures traced on sand and dust and water, which, more than +all the Law and the Prophets, draw near to the unuttered word.</p><a name="8"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>DICKENS</p> + +<p>It is absurd, of course, to think that it is necessary to "hold a brief" for +Dickens. But sometimes, when one comes across charming and exquisite people who +"cannot read him," one is tempted to give one's personal appreciation that kind +of form.</p> + +<p>Dickens is one of the great artists of the world, and he is so, in spite of +the fact that in certain spheres, in the sphere of Sex, for instance, or the +sphere of Philosophy, he is such a hopeless conventionalist. It is because we +are at this hour so preoccupied with Sex, in our desire to readjust the +conventions of Society and Morality towards it, that a great artist, who simply +leaves it out altogether, or treats it with a mixture of the conventionality of +the preacher and the worst foolishness of the crowd, is an artist whose appeal +is seriously handicapped.</p> + +<p>Yet, given this "lacuna," this amazing "gap" in his work, a deprivation much +more serious than his want of "philosophy," Dickens is a writer of colossal +genius, whose originality and vision puts all our modern "literateurs" to shame. +One feels this directly one opens any volume of his. Only a great creative +genius could so dominate, for instance, his mere "illustrators," as to mesmerize +them completely into his manner. And certainly his illustrators are <i>drugged</i> +with the Dickens atmosphere. Those hideous-lovely persons, whose legs and arms +are so thin that it is impossible to suppose they ever removed their clothes; do +they not strut and leer and ogle and grin and stagger and weep, in the very +style of their author?</p> + +<p>Remembering my "brief" and the sort of jury, among my friends, I have to +persuade, I am not inclined in this sketch to launch out into panegyrics upon +Mr. Micawber and Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff and Betsy Trotwood and Bill Sikes +and Dick Swiveller and Bob Sawyer and Sam Weller and Mark Tapley and Old +Scrooge. The mere mention of these names, which, to some, would suggest the +music of the spheres, to others would suggest forced merriment, horrible Early +Victorian sentiment, and that sort of hackneyed "unction" of sly moral elders, +which is youth's especial Hell. Much wiser were it, as it seems to me, to +indicate what in Dickens—in his style, his method, his vision, his art—actually +appeals to one particular mind. I think it is to be found in his childlike +Imagination. Now, the modern cult for children has reached such fantastic limits +that one has to be very careful when one uses that word. But Dickens is +childlike, not as Oscar Wilde—that Uranian Baby—or as Paul Verlaine—that little +"pet lamb" of God—felt themselves to be childlike, or as the artificial-minded +Robert Louis Stevenson fooled his followers into thinking him. He is really and +truly childlike. His imagination and vision are literally the imagination and +vision of children. We have not all played at Pirates and Buccaneers. We have +not all dreamed of Treasure-Islands and Marooned sailors. We have not all +"believed in Fairies." These rather tiresome and over-rung-upon aspects of +children's fancies are, after all, very often nothing more than middle-aged +people's damned affectations. The children's cult at the present day plays +strange tricks.</p> + +<p>But Dickens, from beginning to end, has the real touch, the authentic +reaction. How should actual and living children, persecuted by "New Educational +Methods," glutted with toys, depraved by "understanding sympathy," and worn out +by performances of "Peter Pan," believe—really and truly—in fairies any more? +But, in spite of sentimental Child-worshippers, let us not hesitate to whisper: +"It doesn't matter in the least if they don't!" The "enlightened" and cultivated +mothers, who grow unhappy when they find their darlings cold to Titania and +Oberon and to the more "poetic" modern fairies, with the funny names, may rest +in peace. If the house they inhabit and the street they inhabit be not +sanitarized and art-decorated beyond all human interest, they may let their +little ones alone. They will dream their dreams. They will invent their games. +They will talk to their shadows. They will blow kisses to the Moon. And all will +go well with "the Child in the House," even if he has not so much as even heard +of "the Blue Bird"!</p> + +<p>If these uncomfortably "childlike" people read Dickens, they would know how a +child really does regard life, and perhaps they would be a little shocked. For +it is by no means only the "romantic" and "aesthetic" side of things that +appeals to children. They have their nightmares, poor imps, and such devils +follow them as older people never dream of. Dickens knew all that, and in his +books the thrill of the supernatural, as it hovers over chairs and tables and +pots and pans, is never far away. It lurks, that repelling-alluring Terror, in a +thousand simple places. It moves in the darkness of very modern cupboards. It +hides in the recesses of very modern cellars. It pounces out from the eaves of +quite modern attics. It is there, halfway up the Staircase. It is there, halfway +down the Passage. And God knows whither it comes or where it goes!</p> + +<p>To endow the little every-day objects that surround us—a certain picture in a +certain light, a certain clock or stove in a certain shadow, a certain corner of +the curtain when the wind moves it—with the fetish-magic of natural "animism"; +that is the real childlike trick, and that is what Dickens does. It is, of +course, something not confined to people who are children in years. It is the +old, sweet Witch-Hag, Mystery, that, sooner or later, has us all by the throat!</p> + +<p>And that is why, to me, Dickens is so great a writer. Since men have come to +live so much in cities; since houses and streets and rooms and passages and +windows and basements have come to mean more to them than fields and woods, it +is essential that "the Old Man covered with a Mantle," the Ancient of Ancients, +the Disturber of Rational Dreams, should move into the town, too, and mutter and +murmur in its shadows!</p> + +<p>How hard a thing is it, to put into words the strange attraction and the +strange terror which the dwellings of mortal men have the power of exciting! To +drift at nightfall into an unknown town, and wander through its less frequented +ways, and peep into its dark, empty churches, and listen to the wind in the +stunted trees that grow by its Prison, and watch some flickering particular +light high up in some tall house—the light of a harlot, a priest, an artist, a +murderer—surely there is no imaginative experience equal to this! Then, the +things one sees, by chance, by accident, through half-open doors and +shutter-chinks and behind lifted curtains! Verily the ways of men upon earth are +past finding out, and their madness beyond interpretation!</p> + +<p>It is not only children—and yet it is children most of all—who get the sense, +in a weird, sudden flash, of the demonic life of inanimate things. Why are our +houses so full of things that one had better not look at, things that, like the +face of Salome, had better be seen in mirrors, and things that must be forbidden +to look at us? The houses of mortal men are strange places. They are sepulchres +and cemeteries. Dungeons are they, and prison cells. Not one of them but have +murderous feet going up and down. Not one of them but have lavisher's hands, +fumbling, back and forth, along the walls. For the secret wishes, and starved +desires, and mad cravings, and furious revolts, of the hearts of men and women, +living together decently in their "homes," grow by degrees palpable and real and +gather to themselves strange shapes.</p> + +<p>No writer who has ever lived can touch Dickens in indicating this sort of +familiar sorcery and the secret of its terror. For it is children, more than +any, who are conscious how "haunted" all manner of places and things are. And +people themselves! The searching psychologists are led singularly astray. They +peer and pry and repine, and all the while the real essence of the figure lies +in its momentary expression—in its most superficial gesture.</p> + +<p>Dickens' world is a world of gnomes and hob-goblins, of ghouls and of +laughing angels. The realist of the Thackeray School finds nothing but monstrous +exaggeration here—and fantastic mummery. If he were right, par-dieu! If his +sleek "reality" were all that there was—"alarum!" We were indeed "betrayed"! But +no; the children are right. Dickens is right. Neither "realist" or +"psychologist" hits the mark, when it comes to the true diablerie of living +people. There is something more whimsical, more capricious, more <i>unreal,</i> +than philosophers suppose about this human pantomime. People are actually—as +every child knows—much worse and much better than they "ought" to be. And, as +every child knows, too, they tune their souls up to the pitch of their "masks." +The surface of things is the heart of things; and the protruded goblin-tongue, +the wagged head, the groping fingers, the shuffling step, are just as +significant of the mad play-motif as any hidden thoughts. People <i>think</i> +with their bodies, and their looks and gestures; nay! their very garments are +words, tones, whispers, in their general Confession.</p> + +<p>The world of Dickens' fantastic creations is all the nearer to the truth of +our life because it is so arbitrary and "impossible." He seems to go backwards +and forwards with a torch, throwing knobs, jags, wrinkles, corrugations, +protuberancies, cavities, horns, and snouts into terrifying illumination. But we +are like that! That is what we actually are. That is how the Pillar of Fire sees +us. Then, again, are we to limit our interest, as these modern writers do, to +the beautiful people or the interesting people or the gross, emphatic people. +Dickens is never more childlike than when he draws us, wonderingly and +confidingly, to the stark knees of a Mrs. Pipchin, or when he drives us away, in +unaccountable panic-terror, from the rattling jet-beads of a Miss Murdstone.</p> + +<p>Think of the vast, queer, dim-lighted world wherein live and move all those +funny, dusty, attenuated, heart-breaking figures, of such as wear the form of +women—and yet may never know "love"! It is wonderful—when you think of it—how +much of absorbing interest is left in life, when you have eliminated "sex," +suppressed "psychology," and left philosophy out! Then appear all those queer +attractions and repulsions which are purely superficial, and even material, and +yet which are so dominant. Mother of God! How unnecessary to bring in Fairies +and Blue Birds, when the solemnity of some little seamstress and her sorceress +hands, and the quaint knotting of her poor wisp of hair, would be enough to keep +a child staring and dreaming for hours upon hours!</p> + +<p>Life in a great city is like life in an enchanted forest. One never knows +what hideous ogre or what exquisite hamadryad one may encounter. And the little +ways of all one's scrabbling and burrowing and chuckling and nodding and winking +house-mates! To go through the world expecting adventures is to find them sooner +or later. But one need only cross one's threshold to find one adventure—the +adventure of a new, unknown fellow-creature, full of suspicion, full of cloudy +malice, full of secretive dreams, and yet ready to respond—poor devil—to a +certain kind of signal!</p> + +<p>Long reading of Dickens' books, like long living with children, gives one a +wholesome dread of cynicism and flippancy. Children's games are more serious +than young men's love-affairs, and they must be treated so. It is not exactly +that life is to be "taken seriously." It is to be taken for what it is—an +extraordinary Pantomime. The people who will not laugh with Pierrot because his +jokes are so silly, and the people who will not cry with Columbine because her +legs are so thin, may be shrewd psychologists and fastidious artists—but, God +help them! they are not in the game.</p> + +<p>The romance of city-life is one thing. The romance of a particular city leads +us further. Dickens has managed to get the inner identity of London; what is +permanent in it; what can be found nowhere else; as not even Balzac got hold of +Paris. London is terrible and ghastly. One knows that; but the wretchedest of +its "gamins" knows that it is something else also. More than any place on earth +it seems to have that weight, that mass, that depth, that foursquare solidity, +which reassures and comforts, in the midst of the illusions of life. It descends +so far, with its huge human foundations, that it gives one the impression of a +monstrous concrete Base, sunk into eternity, upon which, for all its accumulated +litter and debris, man will be able to build, perhaps has begun already, to +build, his Urbs Beata. And Dickens entered with dramatic clairvoyance into every +secret of this Titanic mystery. He knew its wharfs, its bridges, its viaducts, +its alleys, its dens, its parks, its squares, its churches, its morgues, its +circuses, its prisons, its hospitals, and its mad-houses. And as the human atoms +of that fantastic, gesticulating, weeping, grinning crowd of his dance their +crazy "Carmagnole," we cannot but feel that somehow we <i>must</i> gather +strength and friendliness enough to applaud such a tremendous Performance.</p> + +<p>Dickens was too great a genius to confine his demonic touch to the town +alone. There are <i>suggestions</i> of his, relating to country roads and +country Inns and country solitudes, like nothing else, except, perhaps, the +Vignettes of Bewick. He carries the same "animism" into this also. And he notes +and records sensations of the most evasive kind. The peculiar terror we feel, +for instance, mixed with a sort of mad pity, when by chance we light upon some +twisted root-trunk, to which the shadows have given outstretched arms. The vague +feelings, too, so absolutely unaccountable, that the sight of a lonely gate, or +weir, or park-railing, or sign-post, or ruined shed, or tumble-down sheep-fold, +may suddenly arouse, when we feel that in some weird manner we are the +accomplices of the Thing's tragedy, are feelings that Dickens alone among +writers seems to understand. A road with no people upon it, and the wind alone +sobbing there; with blind eyes and wrinkled forehead; a pool by the edge of a +wide marsh-land—like the marsh-land in "Great Expectations"—with I know not what +reflected in it, and waiting, always waiting, for something that does not come; +a low, bent, knotted pine-tree, over which the ravens fly, one by one, +shrieking; these are the things that to some people—to children, for +instance—remain in the mind when all else of their country journey is forgotten.</p> + +<p>There is no one but Dickens who has a style that can drag these things into +light. His style shrieks sometimes like a ghoul tugging at the roots of a +mandrake. At other times it wails like a lost soul. At other times it mutters, +and whimpers, and pipes in its throat, like an old man blinking at the moon. At +other times it roars and thunders like ten thousand drunken devils. At other +times it breaks into wistful, tender, little-girl sobs—and catches the rhythm of +poetry—as in the death of Nell. Sometimes a character in Dickens will say +something so humorously pregnant, so directly from what we hear in street and +tavern, that art itself "gives up," and applauds, speechless.</p> + +<p>After all, it is meet and right that there should be one great author, +undistracted by psychology—unseduced by eroticism. There remain a few quite +important things to deal with, when these are removed! Birth, for instance—the +mystery of birth—and the mystery of death. One never forgets death in reading +Dickens. He has a thought, a pity, for those things that once were men and +women, lying, with their six feet of earth upon them, in our English +Churchyards, so horribly still, while the mask of their sorrow yields to the yet +more terrible grin of our mortality's last jest.</p> + +<p>And to the last he is—like all children—the lover of Players. Every poor dog +of Public Entertainer, from the Barrel-Organ man to him who pulls the ropes for +Punch and Judy, has his unqualified devotion. The modern Stage may see strange +revolutions, some of them by no means suitable to children—but we need not be +alarmed. There will always remain the larger Stage, the stage of man's own Exits +and Entrances; and there, at any rate, while Dickens is their "Manager," Pierrot +may weep and dance, and Pierrette dance and weep, knowing that they will not be +long without their audience, or long without their applause!</p> + +<p>He was a vulgar writer. Why not? England would not be England—and what would +London be?—if we didn't have a touch, a smack, a sprinkling of that ingredient!</p> + +<p>He was a shameless sentimentalist. Why not? It is better to cry than to comb +one's hair all day with an ivory comb.</p> + +<p>He was a monstrous melodramatist. Why not? To be born is a melodrama. To play +"hide-and-seek" with Death is a melodrama. And some have found melodramatic +satisfaction in letting themselves be caught. All the World's a Puppet-Show, and +if the Big Showman jerks his wires so extravagantly, why should not the Little +Showman do the same?</p><a name="9"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>GOETHE</p> + +<p>As the enigmatic wisdom of Goethe been exhausted—after these years—and after +the sudden transits across our sky of more flashing meteors? Ah! I deem not yet. +Still he holds the entrance to the mysterious Gate, over the portals of which is +written, not "Lasciate ogni speranza!" but "Think of Living!" A thunder-rifted +heart he bears, but victory, not defeat, looks forth from his wide, +outward-gazing eyes! One hand holds the skull, engraved with all the secret +symbols of man's ascent out of the bosom of Nature; engraved, yes!—by all the +cunningest tools of Science and her unwearied research; but the other, raised +aloft, noble and welcoming, carries the laurel crown of the triumph of +Imagination!</p> + +<p>So, between Truth and Poetry—"im ganzen guten, schonen,"—stands our Lord of +Life!</p> + +<p>Exhausted, the wisdom of Goethe? Ah, no!—hardly fathomed yet, in its +uppermost levels! If it were really possible to put into words the whole complex +world of impressions and visions, of secrets and methods, which that name +suggests, one would be a wiser disciple than Eckermann. Fragment by fragment, +morsel by morsel, the great Figure limns itself against the shadow of the years.</p> + +<p>Is it too presumptuous a task to seek to evoke—taking first one impression of +him and then another, first one reaction and then another—what this mysterious +Name has come to mean for us? One hears the word "cosmic" whispered. It is +whispered too often in these days. But "cosmic," with its Whitmanesque, modern +connotation, does not exactly fit Goethe. Goethe did not often abandon himself +in Dionysian fury to the ultimate Elements. When he did—in his earlier +youth—before the hardening process of his Italian Journey had sealed his +protection from such romantic lapses—it was not quite in the strained, +desperate, modern manner. One feels certain, thinking of what he was, at +Frankfurt, at Leipsig, at Strassburg, at Weimar, that he always kept a clear, +cool, Apollonian head, mad and amorous though his escapades may seem!</p> + +<p>I do not fancy that ever once did Goethe really "give himself away," or lose +the foursquare solidity of his balance in any wild staggering to left or right. +No; the Goethean temper, the Goethean attitude, cannot be described as "cosmic," +while that word implies a certain complete yielding to a vague earth-worship. +There was nothing vague about Goethe's <i>intimacy,</i> if I may put it so, with +the Earth. He and It seemed destined to understand one another most <i>serenely,</i> +in a shrewd and deliberate conspiracy!</p> + +<p>The Goethean attitude to the Universe is too self-poised and self-centered to +be adequately rendered by any word that suggests complete abandonment. It is +too—what shall I say?—too sly and <i>demonic</i>—too much <i>inside</i> the +little secrets of the great Mother—to be summed up in a word that suggests a +sort of Titanic whirlwind of embraces. And yet, on the other hand, it is quite +as easy to exaggerate the Olympian aspect of Goethe. When this is carried too +far, something in him, something extraordinarily characteristic, evaporates, +like a thin stream of Parnassian smoke.</p> + +<p>How shall I express what this is? Perhaps it is the <i>German</i> in him. +For, in spite of all Nietzsche's Mediterraneanizing of this Superman, Goethe was +profoundly and inveterately German. The Rhine-Maidens rocked him in his cradle +and, though he might journey to Rome or Troy or Carthage, it was to the +Rhine-Maidens that he returned. Yes, I do not think that those understand him +best who keep bowing to the ground and muttering "Olympian"!</p> + +<p>Am I carrying this particular taper-light of discrimination too far when I +say that there is, to the Celtic mind at least, something humorously naive and +childlike in Goethe, mixed in, queerly enough, with all his rich, mellow, and +even worldly, wisdom? One overtakes him, now and then, and catches him, as it +were, off his guard, in little pathetic lapses into a curious simplicity—a +simplicity grave-eyed, portentious and solemn—almost like that of some great +Infant-Faun, trying very seriously to learn the difficult syllables of our human +"Categorical Imperative"! World-child, as he was, the magic of the universe +pouring through him, one sometimes feels a strange, dim hope with regard to that +dubious general Issue, when we find him so confident about the presence of the +mysterious Being he worshipped; and so transparently certain of his personal +survival after Death!</p> + +<p>There is no one, except Leonardo Da Vinci, in the whole history of our +Planet, who gives us quite that sense of a person possessed of some secret +illumination not granted to the rest of the world. There is much reassurance in +this. More than has been, perhaps, realized. For it is probable that "in his +caves of ice," Leonardo also felt himself indestructible by the Arch-Enemy. One +thinks of those Cabalistic words of old Glanville, "Man does not yield himself +to Death—save by the weakness of his mortal Will."</p> + +<p>Goethe collecting fossils and crystals and specimens of rock-strata; Goethe +visiting Botanical Gardens and pondering on the Metamorphosis of Plants; Goethe +climbing Strassburg Cathedral-Spire; Goethe meeting the Phantom of Himself as he +returned from the arms of Frederika; Goethe "experiencing the sensation" of +crossing the "Firing-Line"; Goethe "announcing" to Eckermann that that worthy +man had better avoid undertaking any "great" literary work; Goethe sending Frau +von Stein sausages from his breakfast-table; Goethe consoling himself in the +Storm by observing his birth-star Lucifer, and thinking of the Lake of Galilee, +are pictures of noble and humorous memory which reconcile one to the Comedy of +Living!</p> + +<p>How vividly returns to me—your pardon, reader!—the first time I read "The +Sorrows of Werter" in that little "Three-penny" edition published by Messrs. +Cassell! It was in a Barge, towed by three Horses, on the River, between +Langport and Bridgewater, in the County of Somerset! The majority of the company +were as rowdy a set of good-humored Bean-Feasters as ever drank thin beer in a +ramshackle tavern. But there was one of them—this is twenty-five years ago, +reader!—a girl as fragile as a peeled Willow-wand—and teased by the rude +badinage of our companions we sheltered—as the friendly mists rose—under a great +Tarpaulin at the barge's stern. Where is that girl now, I wonder? Is she alive? +Will she ever blush with anger at being thus gently lifted up, from beneath the +kind Somersetshire mists, into an hour's publicity? Who can tell? We are all +passing one another, in mist-darkened barges, swift or slow. She is a wraith, a +shadow, a receding phantom; but I wave my hand to her over the years! I shall +always associate her with Lotte; and I never smell the peculiar smell of +Tarpaulin without thinking of "the Sorrows of Werter."</p> + +<p>"Werter" has certainly the very droop and bewilderment of youth's first +passion. It is good to plunge one's hands, when one has grown cynical and old, +into that innocent, if somewhat turbid, fountain. When we pass to "Wilhelm +Meister," we are in quite a different world. The earlier part of this book has +the very stamp of the Goethean "truth and poetry." One can read it side by side +with the great "Autobiography" and find the shrewd insight and oracular wisdom +quite equally convincing in the invention and the reality. What an unmistakable +and unique character all these imaginary persons of Goethe's stories have! They +are so different from any other persons in fiction! Wherein does the difference +lie? It is hard to say. In a sense, they are more life-like and real. In another +sense, they are more fantastic. Sometimes they seem mere dolls—like the figures +in his own puppet-show—and we can literally "see the puppets dallying."</p> + +<p>Jarno is a queer companion for a man to have. And what of the lady who, when +she was asked whether she had ever loved, answered, "never or always"? Phillina +is a very loving and an extremely vivacious wench. Goethe's sublime +unconsciousness of ordinary moral qualms is never better observed than in the +story of this extravagant young minx. Then, in the midst of it all, the +arresting, ambiguous little figure of poor Mignon! What does she do—a child of +pure lyrical poetry—a thing out of the old ballads—in this queer, grave, +indecent company? That elaborate description of Mignon's funeral so carefully +arranged by the Aesthetic "Uncle," has it not all the curious qualities of the +Goethean vein—its clairvoyant insight into the under-truth of Nature—its +cold-blooded pre-occupation with "Art"—its gentle irony—its mania for exact +detail? The "gentle irony" of which I speak has its opportunity in the account +of the "Beautiful Soul" or "Fair Saint." It reads, in places, like the tender +dissection of a lovely corpse by a genial, elderly Doctor.</p> + +<p>But the passage which, for me, is most precious is that Apprentice's +"Indenture." I suppose in no other single paragraph of human prose is there so +much concentrated wisdom. "To act is easy—to think is hard!" How extraordinarily +true that is! But it is not the precise tune of the strenuous preachers of our +time! The whole idea of the "Pedagogic Province," ruled over by that admirable +Abbé, is so exquisitely in Goethe's most wise and yet most simple manner! The +passage about the "Three Reverences" and the "Creed" is as good an instance of +that sublime Spinozistic way of dealing with the current religion as that +amazing remark he made once to Eckerman about his own faith: "When I want +scientific unity, I am a Pantheist. When I desire poetical multifariousness, I +am a Polytheist. And when my moral nature requires a Personal God—<i>there is +room for That also?"</i></p> + +<p>When one comes to speak of Faust, it is necessary for us to remember the +words the great man himself used to his follower in speaking of this +masterpiece. Eckermann teased him for interpretations. "What," said he to +Goethe, "is the leading Idea in the Poem?" "Do you suppose," answered the Sage, +"that a thing into which I have put the Life-Blood of all my days is able to be +summoned up in anything so narrow and limited as an Idea?"</p> + +<p>Personally, I do not hesitate to say that I think Faust is the most +permanently +<i>interesting</i> of all the works that have proceeded from the human brain.</p> + +<p>Its attitude to life is one which ultimately has more to strengthen and +sustain and put courage—if not the Devil—into us than anything I know. When I +meet a man who shall tell me that the Philosophy of his life is the Philosophy +of Faust, I bow down humbly before him. I did meet such a man once. I think he +was a Commercial Traveller from Buffalo.</p> + +<p>How wisely Goethe deals in Faust with the problem—if it be a problem—of Evil! +His suggestion seems to be that the spirit of Evil in the world—"part of that +Nothing out of which came the All"—plays an absolutely essential role. "By means +of it God fulfils his most cherished purposes." Had Faust not seduced poor +little Gretchen, he would never have passed as far as he did along the road of +Initiation, and the spirit of his Victim—in her translunar Apotheosis—would not +have been <i>there</i> +to lift him Heavenwards at the last. And yet no one could say that Goethe +disparages the enormity of Faust's crime. That ineffable retort of +Mephistopheles, when, on those "black horses," they are whirled through the +night to her dungeon, "She is not the first," has the essence of all pity and +wrath in its cruel sting. Mephistopheles himself is the most interesting of all +Devils. And he is so because, although he knows perfectly well—queer Son of +Chaos as he is—that he is bound to be defeated, he yet goes on upon his evil +way, and continues to resist the great stream of Life which, according to his +view, had better never have broken loose from primeval Nothingness.</p> + +<p>That is ultimately Goethe's contribution to the disputes about what we call +"God." The name does not matter. "Feeling is all in all. The name is sound and +smoke." "God," or "the Good," is to Goethe simply the eternal stream of life, +working slowly upwards, onwards, to unknown goals. All that opposes itself to +this Life-stream is evil. Morality, a man-made local convention, is our present +blundering method of assisting this great Force, and preventing its sterility, +or dissipation. In his conception of the nature of this Life-stream Goethe is +more Catholic and more subtle than Nietzsche.</p> + +<p><i>Self-realization?</i> Certainly! That is an aspect of it which was not +likely to be forgotten by the great Egoist whose sole object, as he confessed, +was to "build up the Pyramid of his Existence" from the broadest possible base. +But not only self-realization. The "dying to live" of the Christian, as well as +"the rising above one's body" of the Platonist, have their part there. Ascetism +itself, with all its degrees of passionate or philosophical purity, is as much +an evocation of the world-spirit—of the essential nature of the System of +Things—as is the other.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, ultimately, quite a mad hope to desire to <i>convert</i> +"the Spirit that Denies." He, too, under the Lord, is an accomplice of the +Life-stream. He helps it forward, even while he opposes himself to it, just as a +bulwark of submerged rocks make the tide leap landward with more foaming fury!</p> + +<p>Goethe's idea of the "Eternal Feminine" leading us "upward and on" is not at +all the sentimental nonsense which Nietzsche fancied it. In a profound sense it +is absolutely true. Nor need the more anti-feminist among us be troubled by such +a Truth. We have just seen that the Devil himself is a means, and a very +essential means, for leading us "upward and on."</p> + +<p>Goethe is perfectly right. The "love of women," though a destructive force, +and a frightful force as far as certain kinds of "art" and "philosophy" are +concerned, cannot be looked upon as anything but "a provocation to creation," +when the whole large scheme of existence is taken into account.</p> + +<p>I think myself that it is easy to make too much of Goethe's Pantheism. The +Being he worshipped was simply "Whatever Mystery" lies behind the ocean of Life. +And if no "mystery" lies behind the ocean of life,—very well! A Goethean +disciple is able, then, to worship Life, with no mystery behind it! It is rather +the custom among clever, tiresome people to disparage that <i>second part of +Faust,</i> with its world-panoramic procession of all the gods and demi-gods and +angels and demons that have ever visited this earth. I do not disparage it. I +have never found it dull. Dull would he be, as "the fat weed that rots itself in +case on Lethe's wharf," who found nothing curious and provocative about these +Sirens and Centaurs and Lemures and Larvae and Cabiri and Phorkyads! I can +myself endure very pleasantly even the society of those "Blessed Boys" which +some have found so distressing. As for the Devil, in the end, making "indecent +overtures" to the little Heavenly Butterflies, who pelt him with roses—even that +does not confuse my mind or distract my senses. It is the "other side of the +Moon"—the under-mask of the world-comedy, and the incidental "saving" of Dr. +Faust is not more essential in the great mad game!</p> + +<p>Read Faust, both portions of it, dear reader, and see if you do not feel, +with me, that, in the last resort, one leaves this rich, strange poem with a +nobler courage to endure life, and a larger view of its amazing possibilities!</p> + +<p>I wonder if that curious novel of Goethe's called the "Elective Affinities" +is perused as widely as it deserves? That extraordinary company of people! And +the patient, portentious interest Goethe compels us to take in the laying out of +gardens and the beautifying of church-yards! "The Captain," "the Architect"—not +to speak of the two bewildering women—do they not suggest fantastic figures out +of one's memories of remotest childhood? I suppose to a world-child like Goethe, +watching, with grave super-human interest, all our little pre-occupations, we +have all of us something of the sweet pedantry of these people—we are all of us +"Captains" and "Architects" with some odd twist in our quiet heads.</p> + +<p>The solemn immorality, amounting to outrageous indecency, of those scenes +between the assorted lovers when they make "double" love, and behind the mask of +their legitimate attachments follow their "elective affinities," is a thing that +may well stagger the puritan reader. The puritan reader will, indeed, like old +Carlyle, be tempted more than once to fling these grave, unblushing chronicles, +with their deep, oracular wisdom and their shameless details, into the +dust-heap. But it were wiser to refrain. After all, one cannot conceal from +one's self that things are <i>like that</i>—and if the hyaena's howl, from the +filthy marshes of earth's weird edge and the thick saliva on his oozing jaws, +nauseates our preciosity, and besmirches our self-esteem, we must remember that +this is the way the Lord of "the Prologue in Heaven" has willed that the +scavengers of life's cesspools go about their work!</p> + +<p>Probably it will not be the "indecency" of certain things in Goethe that will +most offend our modern taste; it will be that curious, grave pre-occupation of +his, so objective and stiff, with artistic details, and architectural details, +and theatrical details!</p> + +<p>One must remember his noble saying, "Earnestness alone makes life Eternity" +and that other "saying" about Art having, as its main purpose, the turning of +the "Transitory" into the "Permanent"! If the Transitory is really to be turned +into the Permanent, we must take ourselves and our work very seriously indeed!</p> + +<p>And such "seriousness," such high, patient, unwearied seriousness, is, after +all, Goethe's bequest to our flippant and fanciful generation. He knows well +enough our deepest doubt, our most harrowing scepticism. He has long ago "been +through all that." But he has "returned"—not exactly like Nietzsche, with a +fierce, scornful, dramatic cry, to a contemptuous "superficiality"—he has +returned to the actual possibilities that the world offers, "superficial" and +otherwise, of turning the whole strange business into a solid, four-square "work +of art." We must reject "evil," quietly and ironically; not because it is +condemned by human morality, but because "we have our work to do"! We must live +in "the good" and "the true," not because it is our "duty" so to do, but because +only along this particular line does the "energy without agitation" of the +"abysmal mothers" communicate itself to our labour.</p> + +<p>And so we come back, like the grief-stricken children over Mignon's grave, to +Life and Life's toil. There only, in the inflexible development of what taste, +of what discernment, of what power, of what method, of what demonic genius, we +may have been granted by the gods, lies "the cosmic secret." That is all we have +in our human hands, that malleable stuff out of which Fate made us—and only in +the shrewd, unwearied use of that shall we prove our love to the Being "who +cannot love us in return" and make our illusion of Free-Will part of his +universal Purpose!</p><a name="10"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>MATTHEW ARNOLD</p> + +<p>It is easy to miss the especial grandeur of Matthew Arnold's work. The airy +persiflage of his prose—its reiterated lucidities—pleasing to some, irritating +to others, will have a place, but not a very important place, in English +Literature. Even those magical and penetrating "aphorisms" with which he has +held the door open to so many religious and moral vistas tease us a little now, +and—suggestive enough in their hour—do not deepen and deepen upon the intellect +with the weight of "aphorisms" from Epictetus or Goethe.</p> + +<p>The "stream of tendency that makes for righteousness" runs a little shallow, +and it has so many pebbles under its clear wave! That word of his, "the Secret +of Jesus," wears best of all. It was a happy thought to use the word "secret"—a +thought upon which those whose religious creed binds them to "the method" rather +than "the secret," may well ponder!</p> + +<p>As a critic, too, though illuminating and reassuring, he is far from +clairvoyant. A quaint vein of pure, good-tempered, ethical <i>Philistinism</i> +prevents his really entering the evasive souls of Shelley or Keats or Heine. +With Wordsworth or Byron he is more at home. But he misses many subtleties, even +in their simple temperaments. He is no Proteus, no Wizard of critical +metempsychosis. For all his airy wit, he is "a plain, blunt man, who loves his +friend." In fact, when one compares him, as a sheer illuminator of psychological +twilights, to Walter Pater, one realizes at once how easily a quite great man +may "render himself stupid" by sprinkling himself with the holy water of Fixed +Principles!</p> + +<p>No, it is neither of Arnold, the Theological Free-Lance, or of Arnold, the +Critic of Literature, that I want to speak, but of Arnold, the Poet.</p> + +<p>Personally I hold the opinion that he was a greater poet than either Tennyson +or Browning. His philosophy is a far nobler, truer, and more permanent thing +than theirs, and there are passages and single lines in his poetry which +over-top, by enormous distances, anything that they achieved.</p> + +<p>You ask me what the Philosophy of Matthew Arnold was? It is easy to answer +that. It was the philosophy of all the very greatest among mortal men! In his +poetry he passes completely out of the region of Theological argument, and his +attitude to life is the attitude of Sophocles and Virgil and Montaigne and +Cervantes and Shakespeare and Goethe. Those who read Matthew Arnold, and love +him, know that his intellectual tone is the tone of those great classical +writers, and his conclusions their conclusions.</p> + +<p>He never mocks our pain with foolish, unfounded hopes and he never permits +mad despair to paralyse him. He takes life as it is, and, as we all have to do, +makes the best of its confusions. If we are here "as on a darkling plain, swept +by confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by +night," we can at least be "true to one another."</p> + +<p>One wonders sometimes if it be properly understood by energetic teachers of +youth that there is only one intellectual attitude towards life, only one +philosophy, only one ultimate mood. This is that mood of "resignation," which, +from Homer to Matthew Arnold, is alone adapted, in the long run, to the taste of +our days upon earth.</p> + +<p>The real elements of our situation have not altered in the remotest degree +since Achilles dragged Hector round the walls of Troy.</p> + +<p>Men and women still love and hate; still "enjoy the sun" and "live light in +the Spring"; still "advance true friends and beat back dangerous foes"—and upon +them the same Constellations look down; and upon them the same winds blow; and +upon them the same Sphinx glides through the obscurity, with the same insoluble +Question.</p> + +<p>Nothing has really changed. The "river of time" may pass through various +landscapes, but it is the same river, and, at the last, it brings to us, as "the +banks fade dimmer away" and "the stars come out" "murmurs and scents" of the +same infinite Sea. Yes, there is only one Philosophy, as Disraeli said, jesting; +and Matthew Arnold, among the moderns, is the one who has been allowed to put it +into his poetry. For though, before the "Flamantia Moenia" of the world's triple +brass, we are fain to bow our heads inconsolably, there come those moments when, +a hand laid in ours, we think we know "the hills whence our life flows"!</p> + +<p>The flowing of the river of life—the washing of the waves of life—how well +one recalls, from Arnold's broken and not always musical stanzas, references to +that sound—to the sound so like the sound of those real sea-tides that +"Sophocles, long ago, heard in the Aegaean," and listened, thinking of many +things, as we listen and think of many things today!</p> + +<p> "For we are all like swimmers in the Sea,<br> + Poised on the top of a huge wave of Fate,<br> + And whether it will lift us to the land<br> + Or whether it will bear us out to Sea,<br> + Back out to Sea, to the dark gulfs of Death,<br> + We know not—<br> + Only the event will teach us, in its hour."</p> + +<p>I sometimes think that a certain wonderful blending of realism and magic in +Matthew Arnold's poetry has received but scant justice.</p> + +<p>In "The Forsaken Merman" for instance, there are many stanzas that make you +smell the salt-foam and imagine all that lies, hidden and strange, down there +upon the glittering sand. That line,</p> + +<p> "Where great whales go sailing by<br> + Round the world for ever and aye,"</p> + +<p>has a liberating power that may often recur, when one is, God knows, far +enough from the spouting of any whale! And the whole poem has a wistful, +haunting beauty that never grows tedious.</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold is a true classical poet. It is strictly in accordance with +the authentic tradition to introduce those touches of light, quaint, playful, +airy realism into the most solemn poetry. It is what Virgil, Catullus, +Theocritus, Milton, Landor, all did. Some persons grow angry with him for a +certain tone of half-gay, half-sad, allusive tenderness, when he speaks of +Oxford and the country round Oxford. I do not think there is anything unpleasing +in this. So did Catullus talk of Sirmio; Horace of his Farm; Milton of "Deva's +wizard-stream"; Landor of Sorrento and Amalfi.</p> + +<p>It is all of a piece with the "resignation" of a philosophy which does not +expect that this or that change of dwelling will ease our pain; of a philosophy +that naturally loves to linger over familiar well-sides and roadways and +meadow-paths and hillsides, over the places where we went together, when we +"still had Thyrsis."</p> + +<p>The direct Nature-poetry of Matthew Arnold, touching us with the true classic +touch, and yet with something, I know not what, of more wistful tenderness +added, is a great refreshment after the pseudo-magic, so vague and unsatisfying, +of so much modern verse.</p> + +<p> "It matters not. Light-comer he has flown!<br> + But we shall have him in the sweet spring days,<br> + With whitening hedges and uncrumpling fern,<br> + And blue-bells trembling by the forest ways,<br> + And scent of hay new-mown—"</p> + +<p>Or that description of the later season:</p> + +<p> "Too quick despairer! Wherefore wilt thou go?<br> + Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,<br> + Soon shall we have gold-dusted Snapdragon,<br> + Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,<br> + And Stocks, in fragrant blow.<br> + Roses that down the alleys shine afar,<br> + And open Jasmin-muffled lattices,<br> + And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,<br> + And the pale Moon and the white Evening-Star."</p> + +<p>True to the "only philosophy," Matthew Arnold is content to indicate how for +each one of us the real drama of life goes on with a certain quite natural, +quite homely, quite quiet background of the strip of earth where we first loved +and dreamed, and were happy, and were sad, and knew loss and regret, and the +limits of man's power to change his fate.</p> + +<p>There is a large and noble calm about the poetry of this writer which has the +effect upon one of the falling of cool water into a dark, fern-fringed cave. He +strips away lightly, delicately, gently, all the trappings of our feverish +worldliness, our vanity and ambition, and lifts open, at one touch, the great +moon-bathed windows that look out upon the line of white foam—and the patient +sands.</p> + +<p>And never is this calm deeper than when he refers to Death. "For there" he +says, speaking of that Cemetery at Firenze where his Thyrsis lies;</p> + +<p> "For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep<br> + The morningless and unawakening sleep,<br> + Under the flowery Oleanders pale—"</p> + +<p>Sometimes, as in his "Tristram and Iseult," he is permitted little touches of +a startling and penetrating beauty; such as, returning to one's memory and lips, +in very dusty and arid places, bring all the tears of half-forgotten romance +back again to us and restore to us the despair that is dearer than hope!</p> + +<p>Those lines, for instance, when Tristram, dying in his fire-lit, tapestried +room, tended by the pale Iseult of Brittany, knows that his death-longing is +fulfilled, and that she, his "other" Iseult, has come to him at last—have they +not the very echo in them of what such weariness feels when, only not too late, +the impossible happens? Little he cares for the rain beating on the roof, or the +moan of the wind in the chimney, or the shadows on that tapestried wall! He +listens—his heart almost stops.</p> + +<p> "What voices are those in the still night air?<br> + What lights in the court? What steps on the stair?"</p> + +<p>One wonders if the reader, too, knows and loves, that strange fragmentary +unrhymed poem, called "the Strayed Reveller," with its vision of Circe and the +sleeping boy-faun, and the wave-tossed Wanderer, and its background of "fitful +earth-murmurs" and "dreaming woods"—Strangely down, upon the weary child, smiles +the great enchantress, seeing the wine stains on his white skin, and the berries +in his hair. The thing is slight enough; but in its coolness, and calmness, and +sad delicate beauty, it makes one pause and grow silent, as in the long hushed +galleries of the Vatican one pauses and grows silent before some little known, +scarcely-catalogued Greek Vase. The spirit of life and youth is there—immortal +and tender—yet there too is the shadow of that pitiful "in vain," with which the +brevity of such beauty, arrested only in chilly marble, mocks us as we pass!</p> + +<p>It is life—but life at a distance—Life refined, winnowed, sifted, purged. +"Yet, O Prince, what labour! O Prince, what pain!" The world is perhaps tired of +hearing from the mouths of its great lonely exiles the warning to youth "to sink +unto its own soul," and let the mad throngs clamour by, with their beckoning +idols, and treacherous pleading. But never has this unregarded hand been laid so +gently upon us as in the poem called "Self-Dependence."</p> + +<p>Heaven forgive us—we cannot follow its high teaching—and yet we too, we all, +have felt that sort of thing, when standing at the prow of a great ship we have +watched the reflection of the stars in the fast-divided water.</p> + +<p> "Unaffrightened by the silence round them<br> + Undistracted by the sights they see<br> + These demand not that the world about them<br> + Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.<br> + But with joy the stars perform their shining<br> + And the sea its long, moon-silvered roll;<br> + For self-poised they live; nor pine with noting<br> + All the fever of some differing soul."</p> + +<p>The "one philosophy" is, as Matthew Arnold himself puts it, "utrumque +paratus," prepared for either event. Yet it leans, and how should it not lean, +in a world like this, to the sadder and the more final. That vision of a godless +universe, "rocking its obscure body to and fro," in ghastly space, is a vision +that refuses to pass away. "To the children of chance," as my Catholic +philosopher says, "chance would seem intelligible."</p> + +<p>But even if it be—if the whole confluent ocean of its experiences +be—unintelligible and without meaning; it remains that mortal men must endure +it, and comfort themselves with their "little pleasures." The immoral cruelty of +Fate has been well expressed by Matthew Arnold in that poem called "Mycerinus," +where the virtuous king <i>does not</i> receive his reward. He, for his part +will revel and care not. There may be nobler, there may be happier, ways of +awaiting the end—but whether "revelling" or "refraining," we are all waiting the +end. Waiting and listening, half-bitterly, half-eagerly, seems the lot of man +upon earth! And meanwhile that</p> + +<p> —"Power, too great and +strong<br> + Even for the gods to conquer or beguile,<br> + Sweeps earth and heaven and men and gods along<br> + Like the broad volume of the insurgent Nile<br> + And the great powers we serve, themselves must be<br> + Slaves of a tyrannous Necessity—"</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold had—and it is a rare gift—in spite of his peaceful domestic +life and in spite of that "interlude" of the "Marguerite" poems—a noble and a +chaste soul. "Give me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me!" +prayed the Psalmist. Well! this friend of Thyrsis had "a clean heart" and "a +right spirit"; and these things, in this turbulent age, have their appeal! It +was the purging of this "hyssop" that made it possible for him even in the +"Marguerite" poems, to write as only those can write whose passion is more than +the craving of the flesh.</p> + +<p> "Come to me in my dreams and then<br> + In sleep I shall be well again—<br> + For then the night will more than pay<br> + The hopeless longing of the day!"</p> + +<p>It was the same chastity of the senses that made it possible for him to write +those verses upon a young girl's death, which are so much more beautiful—though +<i>those</i> are lovely too—than the ones Oscar Wilde wrote on the same subject.</p> + +<p> "Strew on her, roses, roses,<br> + But never a spray of yew;<br> + For in silence she reposes—<br> + Ah! would that I did too!<br> + Her cabined ample spirit<br> + It fluttered and failed for breath.<br> + Tonight it doth inherit<br> + The vasty halls of death."</p> + +<p>Matthew Arnold is one of the poets who have what might be called "the power +of Liberation." He liberates us from the hot fevers of our lusts. He liberates +us from our worldliness, our perversions, our mad preoccupations. He reduces +things to their simple elements and gives us back air and water and land and +sea. And he does this without demanding from us any unusual strain. We have no +need to plunge into Dionysian ecstacies, or cry aloud after "cosmic emotion."</p> + +<p>We have no need to relinquish our common sense; or to dress or eat or talk or +dream, in any strange manner. It is enough if we remember the fields where we +were born. It is enough if we do not altogether forget out of what quarter of +the sky Orion rises; and where the lord-star Jupiter has his place. It is enough +if we are not quite oblivious of the return of the Spring and the sprouting of +the first leaves.</p> + +<p>From the poetry of Matthew Arnold it is possible to derive an art of life +which carries us back to the beginnings of the world's history. He, the +civilized Oxonian; he, domestic moralist; he, the airily playful scholar, has +yet the power of giving that +<i>Epic solemnity</i> to our sleep and our waking; to our "going forth to our +work arid our labour until the evening"; to the passing of the seasons over us; +which is the ground and substance of all poetic imagination, and which no change +or progress, or discovery, can invade or spoil.</p> + +<p>For it is the nature of poetry to heighten and to throw into relief those +eternal things in our common destiny which too soon get overlaid—And some things +only poetry can reach—Religion may have small comfort for us when in the secret +depths of our hearts we endure a craving of which we may not speak, a sickening +aching longing for "the lips so sweetly forsworn." But poetry is waiting for us, +there also, with her Rosemary and her Rue. Not one human heart but has its +hidden shrine before which the professional ministrants are fain to hold their +peace. But even there, under the veiled Figure itself, some poor poetic +"Jongleur de Notre Dame" is permitted to drop his monk's robe, and dance the +dance that makes time and space nothing!</p><a name="11"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>SHELLEY</p> + +<p>One of the reasons why we find it hard to read the great poets is that they +sadden us with their troubling beauty. Sadden us—and put us to shame! They +compel us to remember the days of our youth; and that is more than most of us +are able to bear! What memories! Ye gods, what memories!</p> + +<p>And this is true, above all, of Shelley. His verses, when we return to them +again, seem to have the very "perfume and suppliance" of the Spring; of the +Spring of our frost-bitten age. Their sweetness has a poignancy and a pang; the +sweetness of things too dear; of things whose beauty brings aching and a sense +of bitter loss. It is the sudden uncovering of dead violets, with the memory of +the soil they were plucked from. It is the strain of music over wide waters—and +over wider years.</p> + +<p>These verses always had something about them that went further than their +actual meaning. They were always a little like planetary melodies, to which +earthly words had been fitted. And now they carry us, not only beyond words, but +beyond thought,—"as doth Eternity." There is, indeed, a sadness such as one +cannot bear long "and live" about Shelley's poetry.</p> + +<p>It troubles our peace. It passes over the sterility of our poor comfort like +a lost child's cry. It beats upon the door. It rattles the shut casement. It +sobs with the rain upon the roof. This is partly because Shelley, more than any +poet, has entered into the loneliness of the elements, and given up his heart to +the wind, and his soul to the outer darkness. The other poets can <i>describe</i> +these things, but he <i>becomes</i> what they are. Listening to him, we listen +to them. And who can bear to listen to them? Who, in cold blood, can receive the +sorrows of the "many waters"? Who can endure while the heavens, that are +"themselves so old," bend down with the burden of their secret?</p> + +<p>Not to "describe," but to share the life, or the death-in-life, of the thing +you write of, that is the true poetic way. The "arrowy odours" of those first +white violets he makes us feel, darting forth from among the dead leaves, do +they leave us content with the art of their description? They provoke us with +their fine essence. They trouble us with a fatality we have to share. The +passing from its "caverns of rain" of the newborn cloud—we do not only follow +it, obedient to the spell of rhetoric; we are whirled forward with it, laughing +at its "cenotaph" and our own, into unimagined aerial spaces. One feels all this +and more under Shelley's influence—but alas! as soon as one has felt it, the old +cynical, realistic mood descends again, "heavy as frost," and the vision of +ourselves, poor, straggling, forked animals, caught up into such regions, shows +but as a pantomimic farce; and we awake, shamed and clothed, and in our "right +mind!"</p> + +<p>With some poets, with Milton and Matthew Arnold, for example, there is always +a kind of implicit sub-reference, accompanying the heroic gesture or the magical +touch, to our poor normal humanity. With others, with Tennyson or Browning, for +instance, one is often rather absurdly aware of the worthy Victorian Person, +behind the poetic mask, "singing" his ethical ditty—like a great, self-conscious +speckled thrush upon a prominent bough.</p> + +<p>But with Shelley everything is forgotten. It is the authentic fury, the +divine madness; and we pass out of ourselves, and "suffer a sea-change into +something rich and strange." Into something "strange," perhaps, rather than +something "rich"; for the temperament of Shelley, like that of Corot, leads him +to suppress the more glowing threads of Nature's woof; leads him to dissolve +everything in filmy white light; in the light of an impossible dawn. Has it been +noticed how all material objects dissolve at his touch, and float away, as mists +and vapours? He has, it seems, an almost insane predilection for <i>white</i> +things. White violets, white pansies, white wind-flowers, white ghosts, white +daisies and white moons thrill us, as we read, with an almost unearthly awe. +White Death, too; the shadow of white Corruption, has her place there, and the +appalling whiteness of lepers and corpses. The liturgy he chants is the liturgy +of the White Mass, and the "white radiance" of Eternity is his Real Presence.</p> + +<p>Weird and fantastic though Shelley's dreams may appear, it is more than +likely that some of them will be realized before we expect it. His passionate +advocacy of what now is called "Feminism," his sublime revolutionary hopes for +the proletariat, his denunciation of war, his arraignment of so-called "Law" and +"Order," his indictment of conventional Morality, his onslaughts on outworn +Institutions, his invectives against Hypocrisy and Stupidity, are not by any +means the blind Utopian rhetoric that some have called them. That crafty slur +upon brave new thought which we know so well—that +"how-can-you-take-him-seriously" attitude of the "status-quo" rascals—must not +mislead us with regard to Shelley's philosophy.</p> + +<p>He is a genuine philosopher, as well as a dreamer. Or shall we say he is the +only kind of philosopher who <i>must</i> be taken seriously—the philosopher who +creates the dreams of the young?</p> + +<p>Shelley is, indeed, a most rare and invaluable thinker, as well as a most +exquisite poet. His thought and his poetry can no more be separated than could +the thought and poetry of the Book of Job. His poetry is the embodiment of his +thought, its swift and splendid incarnation.</p> + +<p>Strange though it may seem, there are not very many poets who have the +particular kind of <i>ice-cold intellect</i> necessary if one is to detach one's +self completely from the idols of the market-place. Indeed, the poetic +temperament is only too apt, out of the very warmth of its sensitive humanity, +to idealize the old traditions and throw a glamour around them. That is why, +both in politics and religion, there have been, ever since Aristophanes, so many +great reactionary poets. Their warmth of human sympathy, their "nihil alienum" +attitude; nay! their very sense of humour, have made this inevitable. There is +so often, too, something chilly and "unhomely," something pitiless and cruel, +about quite rational reform, which alienates the poetic mind. It must be +remembered that the very thing that makes so many objects poetical—I mean their <i> +traditional association</i> with normal human life—is the thing that <i>has to +be destroyed</i> +if the new birth is to take place. The ice-cold austerity of mind, indicated in +the superb contempt of the Nietzschean phrase, "human, too human," is a mood +essential, if the world is to cast off its "weeds outworn." Change and growth, +when they are living and organic, imply the element of destruction. It is easy +enough to talk smoothly about natural "evolution." What Nature herself does, as +we are beginning to realize at last, is to advance by leaps and bounds. One of +these mad leaps having produced the human brain, it is for us to follow her +example and slough off another Past. Man is <i>that which has to be left behind!</i> +We thus begin to see what I must be allowed to call the essential inhumanity of +the true prophet. The false prophet is known by nothing so easily as by his +crying "peace"—his crying, "hands off! enough!"</p> + +<p>It is tragic to think how little the world has changed since Shelley's time, +and how horribly relevant to the present hour are his outcries against +militarism, capitalism and privilege. If evidence were wanted of the profound +moral value of Shelley's revolutionary thought, one has only to read the +proclamations of any international school of socialistic propaganda, and find +how they are fighting now what he fought then. His ideas have never been more +necessary than they are today. Tolstoi has preached some of them, Bernard Shaw +others, and Mr. Wells yet others. But none of our modern rebels have managed to +give to their new thought quite the comprehensiveness and daring which we find +in him.</p> + +<p>And he has achieved this by the intensity of his devotion. Modern literary +anarchists are so inclined to fall into jocularity, and irony, and "human, too +human" humour. Their Hamlet-like consciousness of the "many mansions" of truth +tends to paralyse the impetus of their challenge. They are so often, too, +dramatists and novelists rather than prophets, and their work, while it gains in +sympathy and subtlety, loses in directness. The immense encouragement given to +really drastic, original thought by Nietzsche's writings is an evidence of the +importance of what might be called <i>cruel positivity</i> +in human thinking. Shelley has, however, an advantage over Nietzsche in his +recognition of the transformative power of love. In this respect, iconoclast +though he is, he is rather with the Buddha and the Christ than with the modern +antinomians.</p> + +<p>His <i>mania</i> for "love"—one can call it nothing else—frees his +revolutionary thought from that arbitrary isolation, that savage subjectivity, +which one notes in many philosophical anarchists. His Platonic insistence, too, +on the more spiritual aspects of love separates his anti-Christian "immorality" +from the easy-going, pleasant hedonism of such a bold individualist as Remy de +Gourmont.</p> + +<p>Shelley's individualism is always a thing with open doors; a thing with +corridors into Eternity. It never conveys that sad, cynical, pessimistic sense +of "eating and drinking" before we die, which one is so familiar with just now.</p> + +<p>It is precisely this fact that those who reprobate Shelley's "immorality" +should remember. With him "love" was truly a mystical initiation, a religious +sacrament, a means of getting into touch with the cosmic secret, a path—and +perhaps the only path—to the Beatific Vision.</p> + +<p>It is not wise to turn away from Shelley because of his lack of "humour," of +his lack of a "sense of proportion." The mystery of the world, whatever it may +be, shows itself sometimes quite as indifferent as Shelley to these little +nuances. We hear it crying aloud in the night with no humorous cry; and it is +too often to stop our ears to what we hear, that we jest so lightly! It is +doubtful whether Nature cares greatly for our "sense of proportion."</p> + +<p>To return to his poetry, as poetry. The remarkable thing about Shelley's +verse is the manner in which his whole physical and psychic temperament has +passed into it. This is so in a measure with all poets, but it is so especially +with him. His beautiful epicene face, his boyish figure, his unearthly +sensitiveness, haunt us as we read his lines. They allure and baffle us, as the +smile on the lips of the Mona Lisa. One has the impression of listening to a +being who has really traversed the ways of the sea and returned with its secret. +How else could those indescribable pearly shimmerings, those opal tints and rosy +shadows, be communicated to our poor language? The very purity of his nature, +that ethereal quality in it that strikes a chill into the heart of "normal +humanity," lends a magic, like the reflection of moonlight upon ice, to these +inter-lunar melodies. The same ethereal transparency of passion which excites, +by reason of its sublime "immorality," the gross fury of the cynical and the +base, gives an immortal beauty, cold and distant and beyond "the shadow of our +night," to his planetary melodies. It is, indeed, the old Pythagorean "music of +the spheres" audible at last again. Such sounds has the +<i>silence</i> that descends upon us when we look up, above the roofs of the +city, at Arcturus or Aldebaran! To return to Shelley from the turmoil of our +gross excitements and cramped domesticities is to bathe our foreheads in the +"dew of the morning" and cool our hands in the ultimate Sea. Whatever in us +transcends the vicious circle of personal desire; whatever in us belongs to that +Life which lasts while we and our individual cravings perish; whatever in us +underlies and overlooks this mad procession of "births and forgettings;" +whatever in us "beacons from the abode where the Eternal are" rises to meet this +celestial harmony, and sloughs off the "muddy vesture" that would "grossly close +it in." What separates Shelley from all other poets is that with them "art" is +the paramount concern, and, after "art," morality.</p> + +<p>With him one thinks little of art, little of the substance of any material +"teaching;" one is simply transported into the high, cold regions where the +creative gods build, like children, domes of "many-coloured glass," wherewith to +"stain the white radiance of eternity." And after such a plunge into the +antenatal reservoirs of life, we may, if we can, go on spitting venom and raking +in the gutter with the old too-human zest, and let the "ineffectual" madman pass +and be forgotten!</p> + +<p>I said that the effect of his writing is to trouble and sadden us. It was as +a man I spoke. That in us which responds to Shelley's verse is precisely what +dreams of the transmutation of "man" into "beyond-man." That which saddens +humanity beyond words is the daily food of the immortals.</p> + +<p>And yet, even in the circle of our natural moods, there is something, +sometimes, that responds to such strains as "When the lamp is shattered" and +"One word is too often profaned." Perhaps only those who have known what it is +to love as children love, and to lose hope with the absoluteness wherewith +children lose it, can enter completely into this delicate despair. It is, +indeed, the long, pitiful, sobbing cry of bewildered disenchantment that breaks +the heart of youth when it first learns of what gross clay earth and men are +made.</p> + +<p>And the artless simplicity of Shelley's technique—much more really simple +than the conscious "childishness" exquisite though that is, of a Blake or +Verlaine—lends itself so wonderfully to the expression of youth's eternal +sorrow. His best lyrics use words that fall into their places with the "dying +fall" of an actual fit of sobbing. And they are so naturally chosen, his images +and metaphors! Even when they seem most remote, they are such as frail young +hearts cannot help happening upon, as they soothe their "love-laden souls" in +"secret hour."</p> + +<p>The infallible test of genuine poetry is that it forces us to recall emotions +that we ourselves have had, with the very form and circumstance of their +passion. And who can read the verses of Shelley without recalling such? That +peculiar poignancy of memory, like a sharp spear, which arrests us at the smell +of certain plants or mosses, or nameless earth-mould, or "growths by the margins +of pond-waters;" that poignancy which brings back the indescribable balm of +Spring and the bitter-sweetness of irremediable loss; who can communicate it +like Shelley?</p> + +<p>There are lovely touches of foreign scenery in his poems, particularly of the +vineyards and olive gardens and clear-cut hill towns of Italy; but for English +readers it will always be the rosemary "that is for remembrance" and the pansies +that "are for thoughts" that give their perfume to the feelings he excites.</p> + +<p>Other poets may be remembered at other times, but it is when the sun-warmed +woods smell of the first primroses, and the daffodils, coming "before the +swallow dares," lift up their heads above the grass, that the sting of this +sweetness, too exquisite to last beyond a moment, brings its intolerable hope +and its intolerable regret.</p><a name= +"12"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>KEATS</p> + +<p>It is well that there should be at least one poet of Beauty—of Beauty +alone—of Beauty and naught else. It is well that one should dare to follow that +terrible goddess even to the bitter end. That pitiless marble altar has its +victims, as the other Altars. The "white implacable Aphrodite" cries aloud for +blood—for the blood of our dearest affections; for the blood of our most +cherished hopes; for the blood of our integrity and faith; for the blood of our +reason. She drugs us, blinds us, tortures us, maddens us, and slays us—yet we +follow her—to the bitter end!</p> + +<p>Beauty hath her Martyrs, as the rest; and of these Keats is the Protagonist; +the youngest and the fairest; the most enamoured victim. From those +extraordinary letters of his, to his friends and to his love, we gather that +this fierce amorist of Beauty was not without his Philosophy. The Philosophy of +Keats, as we gather up the threads of it, one by one, in those fleeting +confessions, is nothing but the old polytheistic paganism, reduced to terms of +modern life. He was a born "Pluralist" to use the modern phrase; and for him, in +this congeries of separate and unique miracles, which we call the World, there +was neither Unity, nor Progress, nor Purpose, nor Over-soul—nothing but the +mystery of Beauty, and the Memory of great men!</p> + +<p>His way of approaching Nature, his way of approaching every event in life, +was "pluralistic." He did not ask that things should come in upon him in logical +order or in rational coherence. He only asked that each unique person who +appeared; each unique hill-side or meadow or hedgerow or vineyard or flower or +tree; should be for him a new incarnation of Beauty, a new avatar of the +merciless One he followed.</p> + +<p>Never has there been a poet less <i>mystical</i>—never a poet less <i>moral.</i> +The ground and soil, and sub-soil, of his nature, was Sensuality—a rich, +quivering, tormented Sensuality!</p> + +<p>If you will, you may use, for what he was, the word "materialistic"; but such +a word gives an absurdly wrong impression. The physical nerves of his abnormally +troubled senses, were too exquisitely, too passionately stirred, to let their +vibrations die away in material bondage. They quiver off into remotest psychic +waves, these shaken strings; and a touch will send them shuddering into the high +regions of the Spirit. For a nature like this, with the fever of consumption +wasting his tissues, and the fever of his thirst for Beauty ravaging his soul, +it was nothing less than the cruellest tragedy that he should have been driven +by the phantom-flame of sex-illusion to find all the magic and wonder of the +Mystery he worshiped, caught, imprisoned, enclosed, <i>blighted,</i> in the +poisonous loveliness of one capricious girl. An anarchist at heart—as so many +great artists are—Keats hated, with a furious hatred, any bastard claims and +privileges that insolently intruded themselves between the godlike senses of Man +and the divine madness of their quest. Society? the Public? Moral Opinion? +Intellectual Fashion? The manners and customs of the Upper Classes? What were +all these but vain impertinences, interrupting his desperate Pursuit? "Every +gentleman" he cried "is my natural enemy!"</p> + +<p>The feverish fanaticism of his devotion knew absolutely no limits. His cry +day and night was for "new sensations"; and such "sensation," a mere epicurean +indulgence to others, was a lust, a madness, a frenzy, a fury, a rushing upon +death, to him.</p> + +<p>How young he was, how pitifully young, when the Foam-born, jealous of him as +she was jealous of Hippolytus, hurled him bleeding to the ground!</p> + +<p>But what Poetry he has left behind him! There is nothing like it in the +world. Nothing like it, for sheer, deadly, draining, maddening, drowsing +witchery of beauty. It is the very cup of Circe—the very philtre of Sun-poison. +"A thing of Beauty is a Joy forever"! A Joy? Yes—but a Joy <i>drugged</i> from +its first pouring forth. We follow. We have to follow. But, O the weariness of +the way!</p> + +<p>What an exultant hymn that is,—the one in honour of Pan, which comes so soon +in Endymion! The dim rich depths of the dark forests are stirred by it, and its +murmurs die away, over the wailing spaces of the marshes. Obscure growths, and +drowsy weeds overhanging moon-lit paths, where fungoid things fumble for light +and air, hear that cry in their voluptuous dreams and move uneasily. The dumb +vegetable <i>expectancy</i> of young tree-trunks is roused by it into sensual +terror. For this is the sound of the hoof of Pan, stamping on the moist earth, +as he rages for Syrinx. No one has ever understood the torment of the Wood-god +and his mad joy, as the author of Endymion understood them. The tumultuous +ground-swell of this poet's insane craving for Beauty must in the end have +driven him on the rocks; but there came sometimes softer, gentler, less +"vermeil-tinctured" moods, which might have prolonged his days, had he never met +"that girl."</p> + +<p>"The Pot of Basil" expresses one of these. Wistful and heart-breaking, it has +a tender yearning <i>pity</i> in it, a gentle melancholy brooding, over the +irremediable pain of love-loss, which haunts one like the sound of drowned +Angelus-bells, under a hushed sea. The description of the appearance of the +ghost of the dead boy and his vague troubled speech, is like nothing else that +has ever been written.</p> + +<p>St. Agnes Eve too, in its more elaborate, more premeditated art, has a beauty +so poignant, so <i>sensuously unearthly,</i> that one dare not quote a line of +it, in a mere "critical essay," for fear of breaking such a spell!</p> + +<p>The long-drawn solemn harmonies of "Hyperion"—Miltonian, and yet troubled by +a thrilling sorcery that Milton never knew—madden the reader with anger that he +never finished it; an anger which is only increased when in that other +"Version," the influence of Dante becomes evident. "La Belle Dame Sans Merci!" +Ah, there we find him—there we await him—the poet of <i>the tragedy of bodily +craving,</i> transferred, with all its aching, famished nerves, on to the +psychic plane!</p> + +<p>For "La Belle Dame" is the Litany of the Beauty-Maniac—his death-in-life +Requiem, his eternal Dirge! Those who have ever met Her, this "Lady in the mead, +full-beautiful, a fairy-child," whose foot "was light" and whose hair "was long" +and whose eyes "were wild," will know—and only they—the meaning of "the starved +lips, through the gloom, with horrid warning, gaping wide"! And has the secret +of the gasping pause of that broken half-line, "where no birds sing," borrowed +originally from poor Ophelia's despair, and echoed wonderfully by Mr. Hardy in +certain of his incomparable lyrics, been conveyed to my reader?</p> + +<p>But it is, of course, in his five great Odes, that Keats is most supreme, +most entirely, without question, the unapproachable artist. Heaven forbid that I +should shatter the sacred silence that such things produce, by any profane +repetition! They leave behind them, every one of them, an echo, a vibration, a +dying fall, leaving us enchanted and trembling; as when we have been touched, +before the twittering of the birds at dawn, by the very fingers of Our Lady of +sweet Pain!</p> + +<p>Is it possible that words, mere words, can work such miracles? Or are they +not words at all, but chalices and Holy graals, of human passion, full of the +life-blood, staining the lips that approach them scarlet, of heart-drained +pulse-wearied ravishment?</p> + +<p>Certainly he has the touch, ineffable, final, absolute, of the supreme +Beauty. And over it all, over the ardours and ecstasies, hangs the shadow of +Death; and in the heart of it, an adder in the deep drugged cup, coiled and +waiting, the poisonous bite of incurable anguish! We may stand mesmerized, +spell-bound, amid "the hushed cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed" watching +Psyche sleep. We may open those "charmed magic casements" towards "the perilous +foam." We may linger with Ruth "sick for home amid the alien corn." We may gaze, +awed and hushed, at the dead, cold, little, mountain-built town, "emptied of its +folks"—We may "glut our sorrow on the morning rose, or on the wealth of globed +Peonies." We may "imprison our mistress's soft hand, and gaze, deep, deep, +within her peerless eyes." We may brood, quieted and sweetly-sad, upon the last +melancholy "oozings" of the rich year's vintage. But across all these things +lies, like a streak of red, breath-catching, spilled heart's blood, the +knowledge of <i>what it means</i> to have been able to turn all this into +poetry!</p> + +<p>It means Torment. It means Despair. It means <i>that cry,</i> out of the dust +of the cemetery at Rome, "O God! O God! has there ever been such pain as my +pain?"</p> + +<p>I suppose Keats suffered more in his brief life than any mortal child of the +Muses. These ultimate creations of supreme Beauty are evoked in no other way. +Everything has to be sacrificed—everything—if we are to be—like the gods, <i> +creators of Life.</i> For Life is a thing that can only be born in <i>that soil</i>—only +planted where the wound goes deepest—only watered when we strike where that +fountain flows! He wrote for himself. The crowd, the verdict of his friends—what +did all that matter? He wrote for himself; and for those who dare to risk the +taste of that wine, which turns the taste of all else to a weary irrelevance!</p> + +<p>One is unwilling to leave our Adonais, whose "annual wound in Lebanon +allures" us thus fatally, with nothing but such a bitter cry. One has a pathetic +human longing to think of him <i>as he was,</i> in those few moments of +unalloyed pleasure the gods allowed him before "consumption," and "that girl," +poisoned the springs of his life! And those moments, how they have passed into +his poetry like the breath of the Spring!</p> + +<p>When "the grand obsession" was not upon him, who, like Keats, can make us +feel the cool, sweet, wholesome touch of our great Mother, the Earth? That +sleep, "full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing," which the breast +that suckled Persephone alone can give may heal us also for a brief while.</p> + +<p>We, too, on this very morning—listen reader!—may wreath "a flowery band to +bind us to the Earth, spite of despondence." Some "shape of beauty may yet move +away the pall from our dark spirits." Even with old Saturn under his weight of +grief, we may drink in the loveliness of those "green-robed senators of mighty +woods, tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars." And in the worst of our +moods we can still call aloud to the things of beauty that pass not away. We can +even call out to them from her very side who is "the cause," "the cause, my +soul," of what we suffer.</p> + +<p> "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art!<br> + Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,<br> + And watching, with eternal lids apart,<br> + Like Nature's patient, sleepless eremite,<br> + The moving waters at their priest-like task<br> + Of pure ablution round earth's human shores—"</p> + +<p>This desperate, sensuous pain which makes us cry out to the "midnight" that +we might "cease upon it," need not harden our hearts before we pass hence. The +"gathering swallows twittering in the sky" of our little interludes of peace may +still attune us to some strange, sad thankfulness that we have been born into +life, even though life turned out to mean <i>this!</i></p> + +<p>And the vibrating, stricken nerves of our too great devotion may have at +least the balm of feeling that they have not languished untouched by the fingers +that thrill while they slay. After all, "we have lived"; we also; and we would +not "change places" with those "happy innocents" who have never known the +madness of what it may be to have been born a son of man!</p> + +<p>But let none be deluded. The tragic life upon earth is not the life of the +spirit, but the life of the senses. The senses are the aching doors to the +greatest mystery of all, the mystery of our tyranny over one another. Does +anyone think that that love is greater, more real, more poignant, which can +stand over the dead body of its One-of-all, and dream of encounters and +reconciliations, in other worlds? It is not so! What we have loved is cold, cold +and dead, and has become <i>that thing</i> we scarcely recognise. Can any vague, +spiritual reunion make up for the loss of the little gestures, the little +touches, +<i>the little ways,</i> we shall never through all eternity know again? Ah! +those reluctances and hesitations, over now, quite over now! Ah! those fretful +pleadings, those strange withdrawals, those unheeded protests; nothing, less +than nothing, and mere memories! When the life of the senses invades the +affections of the heart—then, then, mon enfant, comes the pinch and the sting!</p> + +<p>And this is what happens with such doomed sensualists as Keats was. What +tortured him in death was the thought that he must leave his darling—and the +actual look, touch, air, ways and presence of her, forever. "Vain," as that +inspired Lover, Emily Bronte, cries, "vain, unutterably vain, are 'all the +creeds' that would console!" Tired of hearing "simple truth miscalled +simplicity"; tired of all the weariness of life—from these we "would +begone"—"save that to die we leave our love alone"!</p> + +<p>But it is not only in the fatal danger of eternal separation from the flesh +that has become to us more necessary than sun or moon, that <i>the tragedy of +the senses lies.</i> +It lies in the very intensity with which we have sifted, winnowed, tormented and +refined these panthers of holy lust. Those who understand the poetry of Keats +recognise that in the passion which burns him for the "heavenly quintessence" as +Marlowe calls it, there is also the ghastly danger of reaction. The pitiless +hands of Joy "are ever at his lips, bidding adieu" and "veiled melancholy has +her 'sovran shrine' in the heart of all delight."</p> + +<p>This is the curse upon those who follow the <i>supreme Beauty</i>—that is to +say, the Beauty that belongs, not to ideas and ideals, but to living forms. They +are driven by the gross pressure of circumstance to forsake her, to leave her, +to turn aside and eat husks with the swine!</p> + +<p>It is the same with that supreme mystery of <i>words</i> themselves, put of +which such an artist as this one was creates his spells and his sorcery. How, +after tasting, drop by drop, that draught of "lingered sweetness long drawn-out" +of his unequalled style, can we bear to fall back upon the jabbering and +screeching, the howling and hissing, of the voices we have to listen to in +common resort? Ah, child, child! Think carefully before you turn your +candid-innocent eyes to the fatal entrance to these mysteries! It is better +never to have known what the high, terrible loveliness of Her of Melos is than, +<i>having seen her,</i> to pass the rest of our days with these copies, and +prostitutions, and profanations, and parodies, "which mimic humanity so +abominably"!</p> + +<p>That is the worst of it. That is the sting of it. All the <i>great quests</i> +in this world tempt us and destroy us, for, though they may touch our famished +lips once and again before we perish, one thing they cannot do—one thing Beauty +herself, the most sacred of all such quests, cannot do—and that is to make the +arid intervals of our ordinary life tolerable, when we have to return to the +common world, and the people and things that stand gaping in that world, like +stupid, staring idols!</p> + +<p>But what matter? Let us pay the penalty. Let us pay the price. <i>Is it not +worth it?</i> Beauty! O divine, O cruel Mistress! Thee, thee we must worship +still, and with thee the acolytes who bear thy censers! For the secret of life +is to take every risk without fear; even the risk of finding one's self an +exile, with "no shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat of pale-mouthed prophet +dreaming" in the land without memories, without altars, without Thee!</p><a name="13"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>NIETZSCHE</p> + +<p>It is not the hour in which to say much about Nietzsche. The dissentient +voices are silent. The crowd has stopped howling. But a worse thing is happening +to him, the thing of all others he dreaded most;—he is becoming "accepted"—The +preachers are quoting him and the theologians are explaining him.</p> + +<p>What he would himself pray for now are Enemies—fierce irreconcilable +Enemies—but our age cannot produce such. It can only produce sneering +disparagement; or frightened conventional approbation.</p> + +<p>What one would like to say, at this particular juncture, is that <i>here,</i> +or again +<i>there,</i> this deadly antagonist of God missed his aim. But who can say +that? He aimed too surely. No, he did not miss his aim. He smote whom he went +out to smite. But one thing he could not smite; he could neither smite it, or +unmask it, or "transvalue" it. I mean the Earth itself—the great, shrewd, wise, +all-enduring Mother of us all—who knows so much, and remains so silent!</p> + +<p>And sometimes one feels, walking some country road, with the smell of +upturned sods and heavy leaf-mould in one's nostrils, that even Lucifer himself +is not as deep or strong or wise as is patient furrowed earth and her blundering +children. A rough earth-hint, a Rabelaisian ditty, a gross amazing jest, a +chuckle of deep Satyric humour;—and the monstrous "thickness" of Life, its +friendly aplomb and nonchalance, its grotesque irreverence, its shy shrewd +common-sense, its tough fibres, and portentous indifference to "distinction"; +tumbles us over in the mud—for all our "aloofness"—and roars over us, like a +romping bull-calf!</p> + +<p>The antidote to Nietzsche is not to be found in the company of the Saints. He +was too much of a Saint himself for that. It is to be found in the company of +Shakespearean clodhoppers, and Rabelaisian topers, and Cervantian +serving-wenches. In fact, it is to be found, as with the antidotes for other +noble excesses, in burying your face in rough moist earth; and grubbing for +pig-nuts under the beech-trees. A summer's day in the woods with Audrey will put +"Fatality" into its place and remove "the Recurrence of all things" to a very +modest remoteness. And this is not a relinquishing of the secret of life. This +is not a giving up of the supreme quest. It is an opening of another door; a +letting in of a different air; a reversion to a more primitive level of the +mystery.</p> + +<p>The way to reduce the tyranny of this proud spirit to its proper proportion +is not to talk about "Love" or "Morality" or "Orthodoxy," or "the strength of +the vulgar herd"—it is simply to call up in one's mind the motley procession of +gross, simple, quaint, <i>bulbous,</i> irrepressible objects—human and +otherwise—whose mere existence makes it as impossible for Nietzsche to deal with +the <i>massiveness</i> of Life, as it is impossible for anyone else to deal with +it.</p> + +<p>No, we shall not free ourselves from his intellectual predominance by taking +refuge with the Saints. We shall not do this because he himself was essentially +a Saint. A Saint and a Martyr! Is it for me now to prove that?</p> + +<p>It is realized, I suppose, what the history of his spiritual contest actually +was? It was a deliberate self-inflicted Crucifixion of the Christ in him, as an +offering to the Apollo in him. Nietzsche was—that cannot be denied—an +Intellectual Sadist; and his Intellectual Sadism took the form—as it can (he has +himself taught us so) take many curious forms—of deliberately outraging his own +most sensitive nerves. This is really what broke his reason, in the end. By a +process of spiritual vivisection—the suffering of which one dare not conceive—he +took his natural "sanctity," and carved it, as a dish fit for the gods, until it +assumed an Apollonian shape. We must visualize Nietzsche not only as the +Philosopher with the Hammer; but as the Philosopher with the Chisel.</p> + +<p>We must visualize him, with such a sculptor's tool, standing in the presence +of the crucified figure of himself; and altering one by one, its natural +lineaments! Nietzsche's own lacerated "intellectual nerves" were the +vantage-ground of his spiritual vision. He could write "the Antichrist" because +he had "killed." in his own nature, "the thing he loved" It was for this reason +that he had such a supernatural insight into the Christian temperament. It was +for this reason that he could pour vitriol upon its "little secrets"; and hunt +it to its last retreats.</p> + +<p>Let none think he did not understand the grandeur, and the terrible +intoxicating appeal, of the thing he fought. He understood these only too well. +What vibrating sympathy—as for a kindred spirit—may be read between the lines of +his attack on Pascal—Pascal, the supreme type of the Christian Philosopher!</p> + +<p>It must be further realized—for after all what are words and phrases?—that it +was really nothing but the "Christian conscience" in him that forced him on so +desperately to kick against the pricks. It was the "Christian conscience" in +him—has he not himself analysed the voluptuous cruelty of that?—which drove him +to seek something—if possible—nobler, austerer, gayer, more innocently wicked, +than Christianity!</p> + +<p>It was not in the interests of Truth that he fought it. True Christian, as he +was, at heart, he never cared greatly for Truth as Truth. It was in the interest +of a Higher Ideal, a more exacting, less human Ideal, that he crushed it down. +The Christian spirit, in him set him upon strangling the Christian spirit—and +all in the interest of a madness of nobility, itself perforated with Christian +conscience!</p> + +<p>Was Nietzsche really Greek, compared with—Goethe, let us say? Not for a +moment. It was in the desperation of his attempt to be so, that he seized upon +Greek tragedy and made it dance to Christian cymbals! This is, let it be clearly +understood, the hidden secret of his mania for Dionysus—Dionysus gave him his +opportunity. In the worship of this god—also a wounded god, be it remarked;—he +was able to satisfy his perverted craving for "ecstasy of laceration" under the +shadow of another Name.</p> + +<p>But after all—as Goethe says—"feeling is all in all; the name is sound and +smoke." What he felt were Christian feelings, the feelings of a Mystic, a +Visionary, a Flagellant. What matter by what name you call them? Christ? +Dionysus? It is the secret creative passion of the human heart that sends them +Both forth upon their warfaring.</p> + +<p>Is any one simple enough to think that whatever Secret Cosmic Power melts +into human ecstasy, it waits to be summoned by certain particular syllables? +That this arbitrary strangling of the Christ in him never altogether ended, is +proved by the words of those tragic messages he sent to Cosima Wagner from "the +aristocratic city of Turin" when his tormented brain broke like a taut +bow-string. Those messages resembled arrows of fire, shot into space; and on one +was written the words "The Crucified" and on the other the word "Dionysus."</p> + +<p>The grand and heart-breaking appeal of this lonely Victim of his own +merciless scourge, does not depend, for its effect upon us, upon any of the +particular "ideas" he announced. The idea of the "Eternal Recurrence of all +things"—to take the most terrible—is clearly but another instance of his +intellectual Sadism.</p> + +<p>The worst thing that could happen to those innumerable Victims of Life, for +whom he sought to kill his Pity, was that they should have to go through the +same punishment again—not once or twice, but for an infinity of times—and it was +just that that he, whose immense Pity for them took so long a killing, suddenly +felt must be what +<i>had</i> to happen—had to happen for no other reason than that it was +<i>intolerable</i> that it should happen. Again, we may note, it was not "Truth" +he sought, but ecstasy, and, in this case, the ecstasy of "accepting" the very +worst kind of issue he could possibly imagine.</p> + +<p>The idea of the Superman, too, is an idea that could only have entered the +brain of one, pushed on to think, at the spear-head of his own cruelty. It is a +great and terrible idea, sublime and devastating, this idea of the human race +yielding place to <i>another race,</i> stronger, wiser, fairer, sterner, gayer, +and more godlike! Especially noble and compelling is Nietzsche's constant +insistence that the moment has come for men to take their Destiny out of the +blind power of Evolution, and to guide it themselves, with a strong hand and a +clear will, towards a <i>definite goal.</i></p> + +<p>The fact that this driving force, of cruelty to himself and, through himself, +to humanity, scourged him on to so formidable an illumination of our path, is a +proof how unwise it is to suppress any grand perversion. Such motive-forces +should be used, as Nietzsche used his, for purposes of intellectual insight—not +simply trampled upon as "evil."</p> + +<p>Whether our poor human race ever will surpass itself, as he demands, and rise +to something psychologically different, "may admit a wide solution." It is not +an unscientific idea. It is not an irreligious idea. It has all the dreams of +the Prophets behind it. But—who can tell? It is quite as possible that the +spirit of destruction in us will wantonly ruin this great Chance as that we +shall seize upon it. Man has many other impulses besides the impulse of +creation. Perhaps he will never be seduced into even <i>desiring</i> such a +goal, far less "willing" it over long spaces of time.</p> + +<p>The curious "optimism" of Nietzsche, by means of which he sought to force +himself into a mood of such Dionysian ecstasy as to be able not only to endure +Fate, but to "love" it, is yet another example of the subterranean "conscience" +of Christianity working in him. In the presence of such a mood, and, indeed, in +the presence of nearly all his great dramatic Passions, it is Nietzsche, and not +his humorous critic, who is "with Our Lord" in Gethsemane. One does not drink of +the cup of Fate "lovingly"—without bloody sweat!</p> + +<p>The interesting thing to observe about Nietzsche's ideas is that the wider +they depart from what was essentially Christian in him, the less convincing they +grow. One cannot help feeling he recognised this himself—and, infuriated by it, +strode further and further into the Jungle.</p> + +<p>For instance, one cannot suppose that the cult of "the Blonde Beast," and the +cult of Caesar Borgia, were anything but mad reprisals, directed towards +himself, in savage revenge; blind blows struck at random against the lofty and +penetrating spirituality in which he had indulged when writing Zarathustra.</p> + +<p>But there is a point here of some curious psychological interest, to which we +are attracted by a certain treacherous red glow upon his words when he speaks of +this sultry, crouching, spotted, tail-lashing mood. Why is it precisely this +Borgian type, this Renaissance type, among the world's various Lust-Darlings +that he chooses to select?</p> + +<p>Why does he not oppose, to the Christian Ideal, <i>its true opposite</i>—the +naive, artless, faun-like, pagan "child of Nature," who has never known +"remorse"?</p> + +<p>The answer is clear. He chooses the Borgian type—the type which is <i>not</i> +free from "superstition," which is always wrestling with "superstition"—the type +that sprinkles holy water upon its dagger—because such a type is the inevitable +<i>product</i> of the presence among us of the Christian Ideal. The Christian +Ideal has made a certain complication of "wickedness" possible, which were +impossible without it.</p> + +<p>If Nietzsche had not been obsessed by Christianity he would have selected as +his "Ideal Blond Beast" that perfectly naive, "unfallen" man, of imperturbable +nerves, of classic nerves, such as Life abounded in <i>before Christ came.</i> +He makes, indeed, a pathetic struggle to idealize this type, rather than the +"conscience-stricken" Renaissance one. He lets his fingers stray more than once +over the red-stained limbs of real sun-burnt "Pompeian" heathenism. He turns +feverishly the wanton pages of Petronius to reach this unsullied, "imperial" +Animal. But he cannot reach him. He never could reach him. The "consecrated" +dagger of the Borgia gleams and scintillates between. Even, therefore, in the +sort of "wickedness" he evokes, Nietzsche remains Christ-ridden and +Christ-mastered. The matter is made still more certain when one steals up +silently, so to speak, behind the passages where he speaks of Napoleon.</p> + +<p>If a reader has the remotest psychological clairvoyance, he will be aware of +a certain strain and tug, a certain mental jerk and contortion, whenever +Napoleon is introduced.</p> + +<p>Yes, he could engrave that fatal "N" over his mantlepiece at Weimar—to do so +was the last solace of his wounded brain. But he was never really at ease with +the great Emperor. Never did he—in pure, direct, classic recognition—greet him +as "the Demonic Master of Destiny," with the Goethean salutation! Had Goethe and +Napoleon, in their notorious encounter, wherein they recognized one another as +"Men," been interrupted by the entrance of Nietzsche, do you suppose they would +not have both stiffened and recoiled, recognizing their natural Enemy, the +Cross-bearer, the Christ-obsessed one, +<i>"Il Santo"?</i></p> + +<p>The difference between the two types can best be felt by recalling the way in +which Napoleon and Goethe treated the Christ-Legend, compared with Nietzsche's +desperate wrestling.</p> + +<p>Napoleon uses "Religion" calmly and deliberately for his High Policy and +Worldly Statecraft.</p> + +<p>Goethe uses "Religion" calmly and deliberately for his aesthetic culture and +his mystic symbolism. Neither of them are, for one moment, touched by it +themselves.</p> + +<p>They are born Pagans; and when this noble, tortured soul flings himself at +their feet in feverish worship, one feels that, out of their Homeric Hades, they +look wonderingly, +<i>unintelligently,</i> at him.</p> + +<p>One of the most laughable things in the world is the attempt some simple +critics make to turn Nietzsche into an ordinary "Honest Infidel," a kind of +poetic Bradlaugh-Ingersoll, offering to humanity the profound discovery that +there is no God, and that when we die, we die! The absurdity is made complete +when this naive, revivified "Pagan" is made to assure us—us, "the average +sensual men"—that the path of wisdom lies, not in resisting, but in yielding to <i> +temptation;</i> not in spiritual wrestling to "transform" ourselves, but in the +brute courage "to be ourselves," and "live out our type"!</p> + +<p>The good folk who play with such a childish illusion would do well to scan +over again their "pagan" hero's branding and flaying of the philosopher Strauss. +Strauss was precisely what they try to turn Nietzsche into—a rancorous, +insensitive, bullying, materialistic Heathen, making sport of "the Cross" and +drinking Laager Beer. Nietzsche loathed Laager Beer, and "the Cross" <i>burnt</i> +day and night in his tormented, Dionysian soul.</p> + +<p>It occurs to me sometimes that if there had been no "German Reformation" and +no overrunning of the world by vulgar evangelical Protestantism, it would be +still possible to bring into the circle of the Church's development the lofty +and desperate Passion of this "saintly" Antichrist. After all, why should we +concede that those agitated, voluptuous, secret devices to get "saved," those +super-subtle, subliminal tricks of the weak and the perverted to be <i>revenged</i> +on the beautiful and the brave, which Nietzsche laments were ever "bound up" in +the same cover as the "Old Testament." must remain forever the dominant "note" +in the Faith of Christendom? While the Successor of Caesar, while the Pontifex +Maximus of our "Spiritual Rome," still represents the Infallible Element in the +world's nobler religious Taste, there is yet, perhaps, a remote chance that this +vulgarizing of "the mountain summits" this degrading of our Planet's +Passion-Play, may be cauterized and eliminated.</p> + +<p>And yet it is not likely! Much more likely is it that the real "secret" of +Jesus, together with the real "secret" of Nietzsche—and they do not differ in +essence, for all his Borgias!—will remain the sweet and deadly "fatalities" they +have always been—for the few, the few, the few who understand them!</p> + +<p>For the final impression one carries away, after reading Nietzsche, is the +impression of "distinction," of remoteness from "vulgar brutality," from +"sensual baseness," from the clumsy compromises of the world. It may not last, +this Zarathustrian mood. It lasts with some of us an hour; with some of us a +day—with a few of us a handful of years! But while it lasts, it is a rare and +high experience. As from an ice-bound promontory stretching out over the abysmal +gulfs, we dare to look Creation and Annihilation, for once, full in the face.</p> + +<p>Liberated from our own lusts, or using them, contemptuously and +indifferently, as engines of vision, we see the life and death of worlds, the +slow, long-drawn, moon-lit wave of Universe-drowning Nothingness.</p> + +<p>We see the races of men, falling, rising, stumbling, advancing and +receding—and we see the <i>new race</i>—in the hours of the "Great +Noon-tide"—fulfilling its Prophet's hope—and we see <i>the end of that also!</i> +And seeing all this, because the air of our watch-tower is so ice-cold and keen, +we neither tremble or blench. The world is deep, and deep is pain, and deeper +than pain is joy. We have seen Creation, and have exulted in it. We have seen +Destruction, and have exulted in it. We have watched the long, quivering Shadow +of Life shudder across our glacial promontory, and we have watched that drowning +tide receive it. It is enough. It is well. We have had our Vision. We know now +what gives to the gods "that look" their faces wear.</p> + +<p>It now only remains for us to return to the familiar human Stage; to the +"Gala-Night, within the lonesome latter years," and be gay, and "hard," and +"superficial"!</p> + +<p>That ice-bound Promontory into the Truth of Things has only known one +Explorer whose "Eloi, Eloi Lama Sabachthani" was not the death-cry of his Pity. +And that Explorer—did we only dream of his Return?</p><a name="14"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>THOMAS HARDY</p> + +<p>With a name suggestive of the purest English origin, Mr. Hardy has become +identified with that portion of England where the various race-deposits in our +national "strata" are most dear and defined. In Wessex, the traditions of Saxon +and Celt, Norman and Dane, Roman and Iberian, have grown side by side into the +soil, and all the villages and towns, all the hills and streams, of this country +have preserved the rumour of what they have seen.</p> + +<p>In Celtic legend the country of the West Saxons is marvellously rich. Camelot +and the Island of Avalon greet one another across the Somersetshire vale. And +Dorsetshire, Hardy's immediate home, adds the Roman traditions of Casterbridge +to tragic memories of King Lear. Tribe by tribe, race by race, as they come and +go, leaving their monuments and their names behind, Mr. Hardy broods over them, +noting their survivals, their lingering footprints, their long decline.</p> + +<p>In his well-loved Dorchester we find him pondering, like one of his own +spirits of Pity and Irony, while the moonlight shines on the haunted +amphitheatre where the Romans held their games. He devotes much care to noting +all those little "omens by the way" that make a journey along the great highways +of Wessex so full of imaginative suggestion.</p> + +<p>It is the history of the human race itself that holds him with a mesmeric +spell, as century after century it unrolls its acts and scenes, under the +indifferent stars. The continuity of life! The long, piteous "ascent of man," +from those queer fossils in the Portland Quarries—to what we see today, so +palpable, so real! And yet for all his tragic pity, Mr. Hardy is a sly and +whimsical chronicler. He does not allow one point of the little jest the gods +play on us—the little long-drawn-out jest—to lose its sting. With something of a +goblin-like alertness he skips here and there, watching those strange scene +shifters at their work. The dual stops of Mr. Hardy's country pipe are cut from +the same reed. With the one he challenges the Immortals on behalf of humanity; +with the other he plays such a shrewd Priapian tune that all the Satyrs dance.</p> + +<p>I sometimes think that only those born and bred in the country can do justice +to this great writer. That dual pipe of his is bewildering to city people. They +over emphasize the "magnanimity" of his art, or they over emphasize its +"miching-mallecho." They do not catch the secret of that mingled strain. The +same type of cultured "foreigner" is puzzled by Mr. Hardy's self-possession. He +ought to commit himself more completely, or he ought not to have committed +himself at all! There is something that looks to them—so they are tempted to +express it—like the cloven hoof of a most Satyrish cunning, about his attitude +to certain things. That little caustic by-play, for instance, with which he +girds at the established order, never denouncing it wholesale like Shelley, or +accepting it wholesale like Wordsworth—and always with a tang, a dash of gall +and wormwood, an impish malice.</p> + +<p>The truth is, there are two spirits in Mr. Hardy, one infinitely sorrowful +and tender, the other whimsical, elfish and malign.</p> + +<p>The first spirit rises up in stern Promethean revolt against the decrees of +Fate. The second spirit deliberately allies itself in wanton, bitter glee, with +the humorous provocation of humanity, by the cruel Powers of the Air. The +psychology of all this is not hard to unravel. The same abnormal sensitiveness +that makes him pity the victims of destiny makes him also not unaware of what +may be sweet to the palate of the gods in such "merry jests." These two +tendencies seem to have grown upon him as years went on and to have become more +and more pronounced. Often, with artists, the reverse thing happens. Every human +being has his own secretive reaction, his own furtive recoil, from the queer +trap we are all in,—his little private method of retaliation. But many writers +are most unscrupulously themselves when they are young. The changes and chances +of this mortal life mellow them into a more neutral tint. Their revenge upon +life grows less personal and more objective as they get older. They become +balanced and resigned. They attain "the wisdom of Sophocles."</p> + +<p>The opposite of this has been the history of Mr. Hardy's progression. He +began with quite harmless rustic realism, fanciful and quaint. Then came his +masterpieces wherein the power and grandeur of a great artist's inspiration +fused everything into harmony. At the last, in his third period, we have the +exaggeration of all that is most personal in his emotion intensified to the +extreme limit.</p> + +<p>It is absurd to turn away from these books, books like Jude the Obscure and +the Well-Beloved. If Mr. Hardy had not had such sardonic emotions, such desire +to "hit back" at the great "opposeless wills," and such Goblin-like glee at the +tricks they play us, he would never have been able to write "Tess." Against the +ways of God to this sweet girl he raises a hand of terrible revolt, but it is +with more than human "pity" that he lays her down on the Altar of Sacrifice.</p> + +<p>But, after all, it is in the supreme passages of pure imaginative grandeur +that Mr. Hardy is greatest. Here he is "with Shakespeare" and we forget both +Titan and Goblin. How hard it is exactly to put into words what this +"imaginative grandeur" consists of! It is, at any rate, an intensification of +our general consciousness of the Life-Drama as a whole, but this, under a +poetic, rather than a scientific, light, and yet with the scientific facts,—they +also not without their dramatic significance—indicated and allowed for. It is a +clarifying of our mental vision and a heightening of our sensual apprehension. +It is a certain withdrawing from the mere personal pull of our own fate into a +more rarified air, where the tragic beauty of life falls into perspective, and, +beholding the world in a clear mirror, we escape for a moment from "the will to +live."</p> + +<p>At such times it is as though, "taken up upon a high mountain, we see, +without desire and without despair, the kingdoms of the world and the glories of +them." Then it is that we feel the very wind of the earth's revolution, and the +circling hours touch us with a palpable hand.</p> + +<p>And the turmoil of the world grown so distant, it is then that we feel at +once the greatness of humanity and the littleness of what it strives for. We are +seized with a shuddering tenderness for Man. This bewildered animal—wrestling in +darkness with he knows not what.</p> + +<p>And gazing long and long into this mirror, the poignancy of what we behold is +strangely softened. After all, it is something, whatever becomes of us, to have +been conscious of all this. It is something to have outwatched Arcturus, and +felt "the sweet influences" of the Pleiades. Congruous with such a mood is the +manner in which, while Mr. Hardy opposes himself to Christianity, he cannot +forget it. He cannot "cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff which +weighs upon the heart." It troubles and vexes him. It haunts him. And his work +both gains and suffers. He flings gibe after gibe at "God," but across his anger +falls the shadow of the Cross. How should it not be so? "All may be permitted," +but one must not add a feather's weight to the wheel that breaks our "little +ones."</p> + +<p>It is this that separates Mr. Hardy's work from so much modern fiction that +is clever and "philosophical" but does not satisfy one's imagination. All things +with Mr. Hardy—even the facts of geology and chemistry—are treated with that +imaginative clairvoyance that gives them their place in the human comedy. And is +not Christianity itself one of these facts? How amazing that such a thing should +have appeared at all upon the earth! When one reads Meredith, with his brilliant +intellectual cleverness, one finds Christianity "taken for granted," and +dismissed as hardly relevant to modern topics.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Hardy is too pagan, in the true sense, too fascinated by the poetry +of life and the essential ritual of life, to dismiss any great religion in this +way. The thing is always with him, just as the Gothic Tower of St. Peter's +Church in Casterbridge is always with him. He may burst into impish fury with +its doctrines, but, like one of those queer demons who peep out from such +consecrated places, yet never leave them, his imagination requires that +atmosphere. For the same reason, in spite of his intellectual realization of the +mechanical processes of Fate, their engine-like dumbness and blindness, he is +always being driven to <i>personify</i> these ultimate powers; to personify +them, or +<i>it,</i> as something that takes infernal satisfaction in fooling its luckless +creations; in provoking them and scourging them to madness.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hardy's ultimate thought is that the universe is blind and unconscious; +that it knows not what it does. But, standing among the graves of those Wessex +churchyards, or watching the twisted threads of perverse destiny that plague +those hapless hearts under a thousand village roofs, it is impossible for him +not to long to "strike back" at this damned System of Things that alone is +responsible. And how can one "strike back" unless one converts unconscious +machinery into a wanton Providence? Where Mr. Hardy is so incomparably greater +than Meredith and all his modern followers is that in these Wessex novels there +is none of that intolerable "ethical discussion" which obscures "the old +essential candours" of the human situation.</p> + +<p>The reaction of men and women upon one another, in the presence of the solemn +and the mocking elements; this will outlast all social readjustments and all +ethical reforms.</p> + +<p>While the sun shines and the moon draws the tides, men and women will ache +from jealousy, and the lover will not be the beloved! Long after a quite new set +of "interesting modern ideas" have replaced the present, children will break the +hearts of their parents, and parents will break the hearts of their children. +Mr. Hardy is indignant enough over the ridiculous conventions of Society, but he +knows that, at the bottom, what we suffer from is "the dust out of which we are +made;" the eternal illusion and disillusion which must drive us on and "take us +off" until the planet's last hour.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hardy's style, at its best, has an imaginative suggestiveness which +approaches, though it may not quite reach, the indescribable touch of the +Shakespearean tragedies. There is also a quality in it peculiar to +himself—threatening and silencing; a thunderous suppression, a formidable +reserve, an iron tenacity. Sometimes, again, one is reminded of the ancient +Roman poets, and not unfrequently, too, of the rhythmic incantations of Sir +Thomas Browne, that majestic and perverted Latinist.</p> + +<p>The description, for instance, of Egdon Heath, at the beginning of the Return +of the Native, has a dusky architectural grandeur that is like the Portico of an +Egyptian Temple. The same thing may be noted of that sudden apparition of +Stonehenge, as Tess and Angel stumble upon it in their flight through the +darkness.</p> + +<p>One thinks of the words of William Blake: "He who does not love Form more +than Colour is a coward." For it is, above all, Form that appeals to Mr. Hardy. +The iron plough of his implacable style drives pitilessly through the soft flesh +of the earth until it reaches the architectural sub-structure. Whoever tries to +visualize any scene out of the Wessex Novels will be forced to see the figures +of the persons concerned "silhouetted" against a formidable skyline. One sees +them, these poor impassioned ones, moving in tragic procession along the edge of +the world, and, when the procession is over, darkness re-establishes itself. The +quality that makes Mr. Hardy's manner such a refuge from the levities and +gravities of the "reforming writers" is a quality that springs from the soil. +The soil has a gift of "proportion" like nothing else. Things fall into due +perspective on Egdon Heath, and among the water-meadows of Blackmoor life is +felt as the tribes of men have felt it since the beginning.</p> + +<p>The modern tendency is to mock at sexual passion and grow grave over social +and artistic problems. Mr. Hardy eliminates social and artistic problems and +"takes nothing seriously"—not even "God"—except the love and the hate of men and +women, and the natural elements that are their accomplices. It is for this lack +in them, this uneasy levity over the one thing that really counts, that it is so +hard to read many humorous and arresting modern writers, except in railway +trains and cafes. They have thought it clever to dispossess the passion of our +poor heart of its essential poetry. They have not understood that man would +sooner suffer the bitterness of death than be deprived of his +<i>right</i> to suffer the bitterness of love.</p> + +<p>It must be, I suppose, that these flippant triflers are so optimistic about +their reforms and their ethical ideals and their sanitary projects that to them +such things as how the sun rises over Shaston and sinks over Budmouth; such +things as what Eustacia felt when she walked, "talking to herself," across the +blasted heath; such things as the mood of Henchard when he cursed the day of his +birth, are mere accidents and irrelevancies, by no means germane to the matter.</p> + +<p>Well, perhaps they are wise to be so hopeful. But for the rest of us, for +whom the world does not seem likely to "improve" so fast, it is an unspeakable +relief that there should be at least one writer left interested in the things +that interested Sophocles and Shakespeare, and possessed of a style that does +not, remembering the work of such hands, put our generation altogether to shame.</p><a name="15"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>WALTER PATER</p> + +<p>What are the qualities that make this shy and furtive Recluse, this Wanderer +in the shadow, the greatest of critics? Imagination, in the first place, and +then that rare, unusual, divine gift of limitless Reverence for the Human +Senses. Imagination has a two-fold power. It visualizes and it creates. With +clairvoyant ubiquity it floats and flows into the most recondite recesses, the +most reluctant sanctuaries, of other men's souls. With clear-cut, architectural +volition it builds up its own Byzantium, out of the quarried debris of all the +centuries.</p> + +<p>One loves to think of Pater leaving that Olney country, where he "hated" to +hear anything more about "the Poet Cowper," and nursing his weird boy-fancies in +the security of the Canterbury cloisters. The most passionate and dedicated +spirit he—to sulk, and dream, and hide, and love, and "watch the others +playing," in that quiet retreat—since the great soul of Christopher Marlowe +flamed up there into consciousness!</p> + +<p>And then Oxford. And it is meet and right, at such a point as this, to lay +our offering, modest, secret, shy—a shadow, a nothing—at the feet of this +gracious Alma Mater; "who needs not June for Beauty's heightening!" One revolts +against her sometimes. The charm is too exclusive, too withdrawn. And +something—what shall I say?—of ironic, supercilious disillusion makes her +forehead weary, and her eyelids heavy. But after all, to what exquisite +children, like rare, exotic flowers, she has the power to give birth! But did +you know, you for whom the syllables "Oxford" are an Incantation, that to the +yet more subtle, yet more withdrawn, and yet more elaborate soul of Walter +Pater, Oxford Herself appeared, as time went on, a little vulgar and silly?</p> + +<p>Indeed, he fled from her, and took refuge-sometimes with his sisters, for, +like Charles Lamb, Pater was "Conventual" in his taste—and sometimes with the +"original" of Marius the Epicurean. But what matter where he fled—he who always +followed the "shady side" of the road? He has not only managed to escape, +himself, with all his "Boxes of Alabaster," into the sanctuary of the Ivory +Tower, that even Oxford cannot reach, but he has carried us thither with him.</p> + +<p>And there, from the opal-clouded windows of that high place, he shows us +still the secret kingdoms of art and philosophy and life, and the remotest +glories of them. We see them all—from those windows—a little lovelier, a little +rarer, a little more "selective," than, perchance, they really are. But what +matter? What does one expect when one looks through opal-clouded windows? And, +after all, those are the kinds of windows from which it is best to look at the +dazzling limbs of the immortal gods!</p> + +<p>Not but what, sometimes, he permits us to throw those "magic casements" wide +open. And then, in how lucid an air, in how clean and fresh a morning of +reality, those pure forms and godlike figures stand out, their naked feet in the +cold, clear dew!</p> + +<p>For one must note two things about Walter Pater. He is able to throw the +glimmering mantle of his own elaborate <i>sophistry of the senses</i> over +comparatively fleeting, unarresting objects. And he is able to compel us to +follow, line by line, curve by curve, contour by contour, the very palpable body +and presence of the Beauty that passeth not away.</p> + +<p>In plainer words, he is a great and exact scholar—laborious, patient, +indefatigable, reserved; and, at the same time, a Protean Wizard, breathing +forbidden life into the Tyrian-stained writhings of many an enchanted Lamia! At +a thousand points he is the only modern literary figure who draws us towards him +with the old Leonardian, Goethean spell. For, like Goethe and Da Vinci, he is +never far from those eternal "Partings of the Ways." which alone make life +interesting.</p> + +<p>He is, for instance, more profoundly drenched, dyed, and endued in "Christian +Mythology" than any mortal writer, short of the Saints themselves. He is more +native to the pure Hellenic air than any since Walter Savage Landor. And he is +more subtle, in his understanding of "German Philosophy" as opposed to "Celtic +Romance," than all—outside the most inner circles—since Hegel—or Heine! The +greedy, capricious "Uranian Babyishness" of his pupil Oscar, with its peevish +clutching at all soft and provocative and glimmering things, is mere child's +play, compared with the deep, dark Vampirism with which this furtive Hermit +drains the scarlet blood of the Vestals of every Sanctuary.</p> + +<p>How little the conventional critics have understood this master of their own +craft! What hopeless people have "rushed in" to interpret this super-subtle +Interpreter! Mr. Gosse has, however, done one thing for us. Somewhere, somehow, +he once drew a picture of Walter Pater "gambolling," in the moonlight, on the +velvet lawn of his own secluded Oxford garden, like a satin-pawed Wombat! I +always think of that picture. It is a pleasanter one than that of Mark Pattison, +running round his Gooseberry bushes, after great screaming girls. But they are +both touching sketches, and, no doubt, very indicative of Life beneath the +shadow of the Bodleian.</p> + +<p>Why have the professional philosophers—ever since that Master of Baliol who +used to spend his time boring holes in the Ship that carried him—"fought shy" of +Pater's Philosophy? For a sufficient reason! Because, like Protagoras the +Sophist, and like Aristippus the Cyrenean, he has undermined Metaphysic, <i>by +means of Metaphysic.</i></p> + +<p>For Walter Pater—is that clearly understood?—was an adept, long before +Nietzsche's campaign began, at showing the human desire, the human craving, the +human ferocity, the human spite, hidden behind the mask of "Pure Reason."</p> + +<p>He treats every great System of Metaphysic as a great work of Art—with a very +human, often a too human, artizan behind it—a work of Art which we have a +perfect right to appropriate, to enjoy, to look at the world through, and then <i> +to pass on!</i></p> + +<p>Every Philosophy has its "secret," according to Pater, its "formula," its +lost Atlantis. Well! It is for us to search it out; to take colour from its +dim-lit under-world; to feed upon its wavering Sea-Lotus—and then, returning to +the surface, to swim away, in search of other diving-grounds!</p> + +<p>No Philosopher except Pater has dared to carry Esoteric Eclecticism quite as +far as this. And, be it understood, he is no frivolous Dilettante. This draining +the secret wine of the great embalmed Sarcophagi of Thought is his Life-Lure, +his secret madness, his grand obsession. Walter Pater approaches a System of +Metaphysical Thought as a somewhat furtive amorist might approach a sleeping +Nymph. On light-stepping, crafty feet he approaches—and the hand with which he +twitches the sleeve of the sleeper is as soft as the flutter of a moth's wing. +"I do not like," he said once, "to be called a Hedonist. It gives such a queer +impression to people who don't know Greek."</p> + +<p>Ardent young people sometimes come to me, when in the wayfaring of my patient +academic duties, I speak about Pater, and ask me point-blank to tell them what +his "view-point"—so they are pleased to express it—"really and truly" was. Sweet +reader, do you know the pain of these "really and truly" questions? I try to +answer in some blundering manner like this. I try to explain how, for him, +nothing in this world was certain or fixed; how everything "flowed away"; how +all that we touch or taste or see, vanished, changed its nature, became +something else, even as we vanish, as the years go on, and change our nature and +become something else. I try to explain how, for him, we are ourselves but the +meeting-places of strange forces, journeying at large and by chance through a +shifting world; how we, too, these very meeting-places of such forces, waver and +flicker and shift and are transformed, like dreams within dreams!</p> + +<p>I try to explain how, this being so, and nothing being "written in the sky" +it is our right to test every single experience that life can offer, short of +those which would make things bitterer, harder, narrower, less easy, for "the +other person."</p> + +<p>And if my Innocents ask—as they do sometimes—Innocents are like that!—"Why +must we consider the other person?" I answer—for no <i>reason,</i> +and under no threat or danger or categorical imperative; but simply because we +have grown to be the sort of animal, the sort of queer fish, who <i>cannot</i> +do the things "that he would"! It is not, I try to indicate, a case of +conscience; it is a matter of taste; and there are certain things, when it comes +to that point, which an animal possessed of such taste <i>cannot do,</i> even +though he desire to do them. And one of these things is to hurt the other +trapped creatures who happen to have been caught in the same "gin" as ourself.</p> + +<p>With regard to Art and Literature, Pater has the same method as with regard +to Philosophy. Everything in a world so fluid is obviously relative. It is +ridiculous to dream that there is any absolute standard—even of beauty itself. +Those high and immutable Principles of The Good and True are as much an illusion +as any other human dream. There are no such principles. Beauty is a Daughter of +Life, and is forever changing as Life changes, and as we change who have to +live. The lonely, tragic faith of certain great souls in that high, cold +"Mathematic" of the Universe, the rhythm of whose ordered Harmony is the Music +of the Spheres, is a Faith that may well inspire and solemnize us; it cannot +persuade or convince us.</p> + +<p>Beauty is not Mathematical; it is—if one may say so—physiological and +psychological, and though that austere severity of pure line and pure color, the +impersonal technique of art, has a seemingly pre-ordained power of appeal, in +reality it is far less immutable than it appears, and has far more in it of the +arbitrariness of life and growth and change than we sometimes would care to +allow.</p> + +<p>Walter Pater's magnetic spell is never more wonder-working than when he deals +with the +<i>materials</i> which artists use. And most of all, with <i>words,</i> that +material which is so stained and corrupted and outraged—and yet which is the +richest of all. But how tenderly he always speaks of materials! What a limitless +reverence he has for the subtle reciprocity and correspondence between the human +senses and what—so thrillingly, so dangerously, sometimes!—they apprehend. Wood +and clay and marble and bronze and gold and silver; these—and the fabrics of +cunning looms and deft, insatiable fingers—he handles with the reverence of a +priest touching consecrated elements.</p> + +<p>Not only the great main rivers of art's tradition, but the little streams and +tributaries, he loves. Perhaps he loves some of these best of all, for the +pathways to their exquisite margins are less trodden than the others, and one is +more apt to find one's self alone there.</p> + +<p>Perhaps of all his essays, three might be selected as most characteristic of +certain recurrent moods. That one on Denys L'Auxerrois, where the sweet, +perilous legend of the exiled god—has he really been ever far from us, that +treacherous Son of scorched white Flesh?—leads us so far, so strangely far. That +one on Watteau, the Prince of Court Painters, where his passion for things faded +and withdrawn reaches its climax. For Pater, like Antoine, is one of those +always ready to turn a little wearily from the pressure of their own too vivid +days, and seek a wistful escape in some fantastic valley of dreams. Watteau's +"happy valley" is, indeed, sadder than our most crowded hours—how should it not +be, when it is no "valley" at all, but the melancholy cypress-alleys of +Versailles?—but, though sadder, it is so fine; so fine and rare and gay!</p> + +<p>And along the borders of it and under its clipped trees, by its fountains and +ghostly lawns, still, still can one catch in the twilight the shimmer of the +dancing feet of the Phantom-Pierrot, and the despair in his smile! For him, +too—for Gilles the Mummer—as for Antoine Watteau and Walter Pater, the +wistfulness of such places is not inconsistent with their levity. Soon the music +must stop. Soon it must be only a garden, "only a garden of Lenotre, correct, +ridiculous and charming." For the lips of the Despair of Pierrot cannot always +touch the lips of the Mockery of Columbine; in the end, the Ultimate Futility +must turn them both to stone!</p> + +<p>And, finally, that Essay upon Leonardo, with the lines "we say to our friend" +about Her who is "older than the rocks on which she sits."</p> + +<p>What really makes Pater so great, so wise, so salutary a writer is his +perpetual insistence on the criminal, mad foolishness of letting slip, in silly +chatter and vapid preaching, the unreturning days of our youth! "Carry, O Youths +and Maidens," he seems to say. "Carry with infinite devotion that vase of many +odours which is your Life on Earth. Spill as little as may be of its unvalued +wine; let no rain-drops or bryony-dew, or floating gossamer-seed, fall into it +and spoil its taste. For it is all you have, and it cannot last long!"</p> + +<p>He is a great writer, because from him we may learn the difficult and subtle +art of drinking the cup of life <i>so as to taste every drop.</i></p> + +<p>One could expatiate long upon his attitude to Christianity—his final desire +to be "ordained Priest"—his alternating pieties and incredulities. His +deliberate clinging to what "experience" brought him, as the final test of +"truth," made it quite easy for him to dip his arms deep into the Holy Well. He +might not find the Graal; he might see nothing there but his own shadow! What +matter? The Well itself was so cool and chaste and dark and cavern-like, that it +was worth long summer days spent dreaming over it—dreaming over it in the +cloistered garden, out of the dust and the folly and the grossness of the brutal +World, that knows neither Apollo or Christ!</p><a name= +"16"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>DOSTOIEVSKY</p> + +<p>The first discovery of Dostoievsky is, for a spiritual adventurer, such a +shock as is not likely to occur again. One is staggered, bewildered, insulted. +It is like a hit in the face, at the end of a dark passage; a hit in the face, +followed by the fumbling of strange hands at one's throat. Everything that has +been <i>forbidden,</i> by discretion, by caution, by self-respect, by atavistic +inhibition, seems suddenly to leap up out of the darkness and seize upon one +with fierce, indescribable caresses.</p> + +<p>All that one has <i>felt,</i> but has not dared to think; all that one has +<i>thought,</i> but has not dared to say; all the terrible whispers from the +unspeakable margins; all the horrible wreckage and silt from the unsounded +depths, float in upon us and overpower us.</p> + +<p>There is so much that the other writers, even the realists among them, +cannot, +<i>will</i> not, say. There is so much that the normal self-preservative +instincts in ourselves do not <i>want</i> said. But this Russian has no mercy. +Such exposures humiliate and disgrace? What matter? It is well that we should be +so laid bare. Such revelations provoke and embarrass? What matter? We <i>require</i> +embarrassment. The quicksilver of human consciousness must have no closed +chinks, no blind alleys. It must be compelled to reform its microcosmic +reflections, even <i>down there,</i> where it has to be driven by force. It is +extraordinary how superficial even the great writers are; how lacking in the +Mole's claws, in the Woodpecker's beak! They seem labouring beneath some +pathetic vow, exacted by the Demons of our Fate, under terrible threats, only to +reveal what will serve <i>their</i> purpose! This applies as much to the +Realists, with their traditional animal chemistry, as to the Idealists, with +their traditional ethical dynamics. It applies, above all, to the interpreters +of Sex, who, in their conventional grossness, as well as in their conventional +discretion, bury such Ostrich heads in the sand!</p> + +<p>The lucky-unlucky individual whose path this formidable writer crosses, +quickly begins, as he reads page by page, to cry out in startled wonder, in +terrified protest. This rending Night Hawk reveals just what one hugged most +closely of all—just what one did <i>not</i> confess! Such a person, reading this +desperate "clairvoyant," finds himself laughing and chuckling, under his breath, +and <i>against his willy</i> over the little things there betrayed. It is not +any more a case of enjoying with distant aesthetic amusement the general human +spectacle. He himself is the one scratched and pricked. He himself is the one so +abominably tickled. That is why women—who have so mad a craving for the personal +in everything—are especially caught by Dostoievsky. He knows them so fatally +well. Those startling, contradictory feelings that make their capricious bosoms +rise and fall, those feelings that they find so difficult themselves to +understand, he drags them all into the light. The kind of delicate cruelty, that +in others becomes something worse, refines itself in his magnetic genius into a +cruelty of insight that knows no scruple. Nor is the reluctance of these gentle +beings, so thrillingly betrayed, to yield their passionate secrets, +unaccompanied by pleasure. They suffer to feel themselves so exposed, but it is +an exquisite suffering. It may, indeed, be said that the strange throb of +satisfaction with which we human beings feel ourselves +<i>at the bottom,</i> where we cannot fall lower, or be further unmasked, is +never more frequent than when we read Dostoievsky. And that is largely because +he alone understands +<i>the depravity</i> <i>of the spirit,</i> as well as of the flesh, and the +amazing wantonness, whereby the human will does not always seek its own +realization and well-being, but quite as often its own laceration and +destruction.</p> + +<p>Dostoievsky has, indeed, a demonic power of revelation in regard to that +twilight of the human brain, where lurk the phantoms of unsatisfied desire, and +where unspoken lusts stretch forth pitiable hands. There are certain human +experiences which the conventional machinery of ordinary novel-writing lacks all +language to express. He expresses these, not in tedious analysis, but in the +living cries, and gasps, and gestures, and fumblings and silences of his +characters themselves. Who, like Dostoievsky, has shown the tragic association +of passionate love with passionate hate, which is so frequent a human +experience?</p> + +<p>This monstrous <i>hate-love,</i> caressing the bruises itself has made, and +shooting forth a forked viper-tongue of cruelty from between the lips that +kiss—has anyone but he held it fast, through all its Protean changes? I suppose, +when one really thinks of it, at the bottom of every one of us lurk two <i> +primary emotions</i>—vanity and fear. It is in their knowledge of the +aberrations of these, of the mad contortions that these lead to, that the other +writers seem so especially simple-minded. Over and over again, in reading +Dostoievsky, one is positively seized by the throat with astonishment at the +man's insight into the labyrinthian retreats of our secret pride—and of our +secret fear. His characters, at certain moments, seem actually to spit gall and +wormwood, as they tug at the quivering roots of one another's self-esteem. But +this fermenting venom, this seething scum, is only the expression of what goes +on below the surface every day, in every country.</p> + +<p>Dostoievsky's Russians are cruelly voluble, but their volubility taps the +evil humour of the universal human disease. Their thoughts are <i>our</i> +thoughts, their obsessions, +<i>our</i> obsessions. Let no one think, in his vain security, that he has a +right to say: "I have no part in this morbidity. I am different from these poor +madmen."</p> + +<p>The curious nervous relief we experience as we read these books is alone a +sufficient vindication. They relieve us, as well as trouble us, because in these +pages we all confess what we have never confessed to anyone. Our self-love is +outraged, but outraged with that strange accompaniment of thrilling pleasure +that means an expiation paid, a burden lightened. Use the word "degenerate" if +you will. But in this sense we are all "degenerates" for thus and not otherwise +is woven the stuff whereof men are made.</p> + +<p>Certainly the Russian soul has its peculiarities, and these peculiarities we +feel in Dostoievsky as nowhere else. He, not Tolstoi or Turgenieff, is the +typical Slav writer. But the chief peculiarity of the Russian soul is that it is +not ashamed to express what all men feel. And this is why Dostoievsky is not +only a Russian writer but a universal writer. From the French point of view he +may seem wanting in lucidity and irony; from the English point of view he may +seem antinomian and non-moral. But he has one advantage over both. He approaches +the ultimate mystery as no Western writer, except, perhaps, Shakespeare and +Goethe, has ever approached it. He writes with human nerves upon parchment made +of human tissue, and "abyssum evocat abyssum," from the darkness wherein he +moves.</p> + +<p>Among other things, Dostoievsky's insight is proved by the profound +separation he indicates between "morality" and "religion." To many of us it +comes with something of a shock to find harlots and murderers and robbers and +drunkards and seducers and idiots expressing genuine and passionate religious +faith, and discussing with desperate interest religious questions. But it is <i> +our</i> psychology that is shallow and inhuman, not his, and the presence of +real religious feeling in a nature obsessed with the maddest lusts is a +phenomenon of universal experience. It may, indeed, be said that what is most +characteristically Russian in his point of view—he has told us so himself—is the +substitution of what might be called "sanctity" for what is usually termed +"morality," as an ideal of life. The "Christianity" of which Dostoievsky has the +key is nothing if not an ecstatic invasion of regions where ordinary moral laws, +based upon prudence and self-preservation, disappear, and give place to +something else. The secret of it, beyond repentance and remorse, lies in the +transforming power of "love;" lies, in fact, in "vision" purged by pity and +terror; but its precise nature is rather to be felt than described.</p> + +<p>It is in connection with this Christianity of his, a Christianity completely +different from what we are accustomed to, that we find the explanation of his +extraordinary interest in the "weak" as opposed to the "strong." The association +between Christianity and a certain masterful, moral, self-assertive energy, such +as we feel the presence of in England and America, might well tend to make it +difficult for us to understand his meaning. It is precisely this sort of thing +that makes it difficult for us to understand Russia and the Russian religion.</p> + +<p>But as one reads Dostoievsky it is impossible to escape a suspicion that we +Western nations have as yet only touched the fringe of what the Christian Faith +is capable of, whether considered as a cosmic secret or as a Nepenthe for human +suffering.</p> + +<p>He saw, with clairvoyant distinctness, how large a part of the impetus of +life's movement proceeds from the mad struggle, always going on, between the +strong and the weak. It was his emphasis upon this struggle that helped +Nietzsche to those withering exposures of "the tyranny of the weak" which +cleared the path for his terrific transvaluations. It was Dostoievsky's demonic +insight into the pathological sub-soil of the Religion of Pity which helped +Nietzsche to forge his flashing counterblasts, but though their vision of the +"general situation" thus coincided, their conclusions were diametrically +different. For Nietzsche the hope of humanity is found in the strong; for +Dostoievsky it is found in the weak. Their only ground of agreement is that they +both refute the insolent claims of mediocrity and normality.</p> + +<p>One of the most arresting "truths" that emerge, like silvery fish, at the end +of the line of this Fisher in the abysses is the "truth" that any kind of +departure from the Normal may become a means of mystic illumination. The same +perversion or contortion of mind which may, in one direction, lead to crime may, +in another direction, lead to extraordinary spiritual clairvoyance. And this +applies to <i>all</i> deviations from the normal type, and to all moods and +inclinations in normal persons under unusual excitement or strain. The theory +is, as a matter of fact, as old as the oldest races. In Egypt and India, as well +as in Rome and Athens, the gods were always regarded as in some especial way +manifesting their will, and revealing their secrets, to those thus stricken. The +view that wisdom is attained along the path of normal health and rational sanity +has always been a "philosophical" and never a "religious" view. Dostoievsky's +dominant idea has, indeed, many affinities with the Pauline one, and is +certainly a quite justifiable derivation from the Evangelical doctrine. It is, +however, none the less startling to our Western mind.</p> + +<p>In Dostoievsky's books, madmen, idiots, drunkards, consumptives, degenerates, +visionaries, reactionaries, anarchists, nympholepts, criminals and saints jostle +one another in a sort of "Danse Macabre," but not one of them but has his moment +of ecstasy. The very worst of them, that little band of fantastic super-men of +lust, whose extravagant manias and excesses of remorse suggest attitudes and +gestures that would need an Aubrey Beardsley for illustration, have, at moments, +moods of divine sublimity. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin, in "the +Possessed;" Svridigilaiof Dounia's would-be seducer, in "Crime and Punishment," +and Ivan, in "the Brothers Karamazov," though all inspired by ten thousand +demons, cannot be called devoid of a certain mysterious spiritual greatness. +Perhaps the interesting thing about them is that their elaborate wickedness is +itself a <i>spiritual</i> rather than a <i>sensual</i> quality, or, to put it in +another way, there are abysmal depths of spiritual subtlety in their most +sensual obsession. The only entirely <i>base</i> criminal I can recall in +Dostoievsky is Stavrogin's admirer, Peter Stepanovitch, and he is transformed +and transfigured at times by the sheer intensity of his worship for his friend. +It would be overpowering the reader with names, themselves like ritualistic +incantations, to enumerate all the perverts and abnormalists whose various +lapses and diseases become, in these books, mediums of spiritual insight. Though +dealing continually with every form of tragedy and misery, Dostoievsky cannot be +called a Pessimist. He is so profoundly affected by the spirit of the +Evangelical "Beatitudes" that for him "poverty" and "meekness" and "hungering +and thirsting" and "weeping and mourning" are always in the true sense +"blessed"—that is to say, they are the path of initiation, the sorrowful gates +to the unspeakable joy.</p> + +<p>The most beautiful characters he has drawn are, perhaps, Alyosha Karamazov +and Prince Myshkin; both of these being young men, and both of them so +Christ-like, that in reading about them one is compelled to acknowledge that +something in the temper of that Figure, hitherto concealed from His followers, +has been communicated to this Russian. The naive, and yet ironical, artlessness +of their retorts to the aggressive Philistines who surround them remind one over +and over again of those Divine "bon-mots" with which, to use Oscar Wilde's +allusion, the Redeemer bewildered His assailants. Stephan Trophinovitch reading +the Miracle of the Swine with his female Colporteur; Raskolnikoff reading the +Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus with his prostitute Sonia, are scenes that +might strike an English mind as mere melodramatic sentiment, but those who have +entered into the Dostoievsky secret know how much more than that there is in +them, and how deep into the mystery of things and the irony of things they go. +One is continually coming upon passages in Dostoievsky the strange and ambiguous +nature of which leads one's thought far enough from Evangelical simplicities; +passages that are, indeed, at once so beautiful and so sinister that they make +one think of certain demonic sayings of Goethe or Spinoza; and yet even these +passages do no more than throw new and formidable light upon the "old +situations," the old "cross-roads." Dostoievsky is not content with indicating +how weakness and disease and suffering can become organs of vision; he goes very +far—further than anyone—in his recognition of the secret and perverted cruelty +that drives certain persons on to lacerate themselves with all manner of +spiritual flagellation.</p> + +<p>He understands, better than anyone else, how absurd the philosophical +utilitarians are with their axiom that everyone pursues his own happiness. He +exposes over and over again, with nerve-rending subtlety, how intoxicating to +the human spirit is the mad lust of self-immolation, of self-destruction. It is +really from him that Nietzsche learnt that wanton Dionysic talisman which opens +the door to such singular spiritual orgies.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more characteristic of Dostoievsky's method than his perpetual +insistence upon the mania which certain curious human types display for "making +fools of themselves." The more sacred aspects of this deliberate +self-humiliation require no comment. It is obviously good for our spirit's +salvation to be made Fools in Christ. What one has to observe further, under his +guidance, is the strange passion that certain derelicts in the human vortex have +for being trampled upon and flouted. These queer people—but there are more of +them than one would suppose—derive an almost sensual pleasure from being +abominably treated. They positively lick the dust before their persecutors. They +run to "kiss the rod." It is this type of person who, like the hero in that +story in "L'Esprit Souterrain," deliberately rushes into embarrassing +situations; into situations and among people where he will look a fool—in order +to avenge himself upon the spectators of his "folly" by going deeper and deeper +into it.</p> + +<p>If Dostoievsky astounds us by his insight into the abnormalities of "normal" +men, he is still more startling when he deals with women. There are certain +scenes—the scene between Aglaia and Nastasya in "The Idiot;" the scene between +Sonia and the mother and sister of Raskolnikoff in "Crime and Punishment;" the +scene in "The Possessed" where Liza leaves Stavrogin on the morning after the +fire; and the scene where the woman, loved by the mad Karamazov brothers, tears +her nerves and theirs to pieces, in outrageous obliquity—which brand +themselves upon the mind as reaching the uttermost limit of devasting vision.</p> + +<p>In reviewing the final impression left upon one by the reading of Dostoievsky +one must confess to many curious reactions. He certainly has the power of making +all other novelists seem dull in comparison; dull—or artistic and rhetorical. +Perhaps the most marked effect he has is to leave one with the feeling of a +universe <i>with many doors;</i> with many doors, and not a few terrifyingly +dark passages; but a universe the opposite of "closed" or "explained." Though +not a single one of his books ends "happily," the final impression is the +reverse of hopeless. His very mania for tragedy, his Dionysic embracing of it, +precludes any premature despair. Perhaps a profound deepening of one's sense of +the mysterious <i>perversity</i> of all human fate is the thing that lingers, a +perversity which is itself a kind of redemption, for it implies arbitrariness +and waywardness, and these things mean power and pleasure, even in the midst of +suffering.</p> + +<p>He is the best possible antidote for the peculiar and paralysing fatalism of +our time, a fatalism which makes so much of "environment" and so little of +"character," and which tends to endow mere worldly and material success with a +sort of divine prerogative. A generation that allows itself to be even <i> +interested</i> in such types as the "strong," efficient craftsmen of modern +industry and finance is a generation that can well afford a few moral shocks at +the hands of Dostoievsky's "degenerates." The world he reveals is, after all, in +spite of the Russian names, the world of ordinary human obliquity. The thing for +which we have to thank him is that it is made so rich and deep, so full of +fathomless pits and unending vistas.</p> + +<p>Every great writer brings his own gift, and if others satisfy our craving for +destruction and beauty, and yet others our longing for simplification and +rational form, the suggestions he brings of mystery and passion, of secret +despairs and occult ecstasies, of strange renunciations and stranger triumphs, +are such as must quicken our sense of the whole weird game. Looking back over +these astonishing books, it is curious to note the impression left of +Dostoievsky's feeling for "Nature." No writer one has met with has less of that +tendency to "describe scenery," which is so tedious an aspect of most modern +work. And yet Russian scenery, and Russian weather, too, seem somehow, without +our being aware of it, to have got installed in our brains. Dostoievsky does it +incidentally, by innumerable little side-touches and passing allusions, but the +general effect remains in one's mind with extraordinary intimacy. The great +Russian cities in Summer and Winter, their bridges, rivers, squares, and crowded +tenements; the quaint Provincial towns and wayside villages; the desolate +outskirts of half-deserted suburbs; and, beyond them all, the feeling of the +vast, melancholy plains, crossed by lonely roads; such things, associated in +detail after detail with the passions or sorrows of the persons involved, recur +as inveterately to the memory as the scenes and weather of our own personal +adventures. It is not the self-conscious <i>art</i> of a Loti or a D'Annunzio; +it is that much more penetrating and imaginative <i>suggestiveness</i> which +arrests us by its vague beauty and terror in Lear or Macbeth. This subtle +inter-penetration between humanity and the familiar Stage of its "exits and +entrances" is only one portion of the weight of "cosmic" destiny—one can use no +other word—which bears so heavily upon us as we read these books. In other +writers one feels that when one has gone "full circle" with the principal +characters, and has noted the "descriptive setting" all has been done. Here, as +in Aeschylus and Euripides, as in Shakespeare and Goethe, one is left with an +intimation of the clash of forces beyond and below humanity, beyond and below +nature. One stands at the brink of things unspoken and unspeakable. One "sees +the children sport upon the shore, and hears the mighty waters rolling +evermore."</p> + +<p>In ordinary life we are led, and rightly led—what else can we do?—this way +and that by personal feeling and taste and experience. We fight for Religion or +fight against Religion. We fight for Morality or fight against Morality. We are +Traditionalists or Rebels, Reactionaries or Revolutionaries. Only sometimes, in +the fury of our Faith and our Un-Faith, there come, blown across the +world-margins, whispers and hints of undreamed of secrets, of unformulated +hopes. Then it is that the faces of the people and things we know grow strange +and distant, or yield their place to faces we know not and things "lighter than +air." Then it is that the most real seems the most dream-like, and the most +impossible the most true, for the flowing of the waters of Life have fallen into +a new rhythm, and even the children of Saturn may lift up their hearts!</p> + +<p>It is too fatally easy, in these days, when machinery—that "Star called +Wormwood"—dominates the world, to fall into a state of hard and flippant +cynicism, or into a yet more hopeless and weary irony. The unintelligent +cheerfulness of the crowd so sickens one; the disingenuous sophistry of its +hired preachers fills one with such blank depression that it seems sometimes as +though the only mood worthy of normal intelligence were the mood of callous +indifference and universal mockery.</p> + +<p>All men are liars, and "the Ultimate Futility" grins horribly from its mask. +Well! It is precisely at these hours, at the hours when the little pincers of +the gods especially nip and squeeze, that it is good to turn the pages of Fyodor +Dostoievsky. He brings us his "Balm of Gilead" between the hands of strange +people, but it is a true "alabaster box of precious ointment," and though the +flowers it contains are snatched from the House of the Dead, one knows at whose +feet it was once poured forth, and for whose sake it was broken!</p> + +<p>The books that are the most valuable in this world are not the books that +pretend to solve life's mystery with a system. They are the books which create a +certain mood, a certain temper—the mood, in fact, which is prepared for +incredible surprises—the temper which no surprise can overpower. These books of +Dostoievsky must always take their place in this great roll, because, though he +arrives at no conclusion and utters no oracle, the atmosphere he throws round us +is the atmosphere in which Life and Death are "equal;" the gestures his people +make, in their great darkness, are the gestures of <i>that which goes upon its +way,</i> beyond Good and beyond Evil!</p> + +<p>Dostoievsky is more than an artist. He is, perhaps—who can tell?—the founder +of a new religion. And yet the religion he "founds" is a religion which has been +about us for more years than human history can count. He, more than anyone, +makes palpable and near—too palpable—O Christ! The terror of it!—that shadowy, +monstrous weight of oppressive darkness, through which we signal to each other +from our separate Hells. <i>It</i> sways and wavers, it gathers and re-gathers, +it thickens and deepens, it lifts and sinks, and we know all the while that it +is the Thing we ourselves have made, and the intolerable whispers whereof it is +full are the children of our own thoughts, of our lusts, of our fears, of our +terrible creative dreams.</p> + +<p>Dostoievsky's books seem, as one handles them, to flow mysteriously together +into one book, and this book is the book of the Last Judgment. The great obscure +Land he leads us over, so full of desolate marshes, and forlorn spaces, and +hemlock-roots, and drowned tree-trunks, and Golgothas of broken shards and +unutterable refuse, is the Land of those visions which are our inmost selves, +and for which we are <i>answerable</i> and none else.</p> + +<p>Across this Land we wander, feeling for some fingers, cold and dead as our +own, to share that terror with, and, it may be, finding none, for as we have +groped forward we have been pitiless in the darkness, and, half-dead ourselves, +have trodden the dead down, and the dead are those who cannot forgive; for +murdered "love" has no heart wherewith it should forgive:—<i>Will the Christ +never come?</i></p><a name="17"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>EDGAR ALLEN POE</p> + +<p>One does not feel, by any means, that the last word has been uttered upon +this great artist. Has attention been called, for instance, to the sardonic +cynicism which underlies his most thrilling effects? Poe's cynicism is itself a +very fascinating pathological subject. It is an elaborate thing, compounded of +many strange elements. There is a certain dark, wilful melancholy in it that +turns with loathing from all human comfort. There is also contempt in it, and +savage derision. There is also in it a quality of mood that I prefer to call <i> +Saturnian</i>—the mood of those born under the planet Saturn. There is cruelty +in it, too, and voluptuous cruelty, though cold, reserved, and evasive. It is +this "cynicism" of his which makes it possible for him to introduce into his +poetry—it is of his poetry that I wish to speak—a certain colloquial salt, +pungent and acrid, and with the smell of the tomb about it. It is colloquialism; +but it is such colloquialism as ghosts or vampires would use.</p> + +<p>Poe remains—that has been already said, has it not?—absolutely cold while he +produces his effects. There is a frozen contempt indicated in every line he +writes for the poor facile artists "who speak with tears." Yet the moods through +which his Annabels and Ligeias and Ulalumes lead us are moods he must surely +himself have known. Yes, he knew them; but they were, so to speak, so completely +the atmosphere he lived in that there was no need for him to be carried out of +himself when he wrote of them; no need for anything but icy, pitiless +transcription. Has it been noticed how inhumanly immoral this great poet is? Not +because he drank wine or took drugs. All that has been exaggerated, and, anyway, +what does it matter now? But in a much deeper and more deadly sense. It is +strange! The world makes such odd blunders. It seems possessed of the idea that +absurd amorous scamps like Casanova reach the bottom of wickedness. They do not +even approach it. Intrinsically they are quite stupidly "good." Then, again, +Byron is supposed to have been a wicked man. He himself aspired to be nothing +less. But he was everything less. He was a great, greedy, selfish, swaggering, +magnanimous infant! Oscar Wilde is generally regarded as something short of "the +just man made perfect," but his simple, babyish passion for touching pretty +things, toying with pretty people, wearing pretty clothes, and drinking +absinthe, is far too naive a thing to be, at bottom, <i>evil.</i> No really +wicked person could have written "The Importance of Being Earnest," with those +delicious, paradoxical children rallying one another, and "Aunt Augusta" calling +aloud for cucumber-sandwiches! Salome itself—that Scarlet Litany—which brings to +us, as in a box of alabaster, all the perfumes and odours of amorous lust, is +not really a "wicked" play; not wicked, that is to say, unless all mad passion +is wicked. Certainly the lust in "Salome" smoulders and glows with a sort of +under-furnace of concentration, but, after all, it is the old, universal +obsession. Why is it more wicked to say, "Suffer me to kiss thy mouth, +Jokanaan!" than to say, "Her lips suck forth my soul—see where it flies!"? Why +is it more wicked to say, "Thine eyes are like black holes, burnt by torches in +Tyrian tapestry!" than to cry out, as Antony cries out, for the hot kisses of +Egypt? Obviously the madness of physical desire is a thing that can hardly be +tempered down to the quiet stanzas of Gray's Elegy. But it is not in itself a +wicked thing; or the world would never have consecrated it in the great +Love-Legends. One may admit that the entrance of the Nubian Executioner changes +the situation; but, after all, the frenzy of the girl's request—the terror of +that Head upon the silver charger—were implicit in her passion from the +beginning; and are, God knows! never very far from passion of that kind.</p> + +<p>But all this is changed when we come to Edgar Allen Poe. Here we are no +longer in Troy or Antioch or Canopus or Rimini. Here it is not any more a +question of ungovernable passion carried to the limit of madness. Here it is no +more the human, too human, tradition of each man "killing" the "thing he loves." +Here we are in a world where the human element, in passion, has altogether +departed, and left something else in its place; something which is really, in +the true sense, "inhumanly immoral." In the first place, it is a thing devoid of +any physical emotion. It is sterile, immaterial, unearthly, ice-cold. In the +second place, it is, in a ghastly sense, self-centered! It feeds upon itself. It +subdues everything to itself. Finally, let it be said, it is a thing with a +mania for Corruption. The Charnel-House is its bridal-couch, and the midnight +stars whisper to one another of its perversion. There is no need for it "to kill +the thing it loves," for it loves only what is already dead. <i>Favete linguis!</i> +There must be no profane misinterpretation of this subtle and delicate +difference. In analysing the evasive chemistry of a great poet's mood, one moves +warily, reverently, among a thousand betrayals. The mind of such a being is as +the sand-strewn floor of a deep sea. In this sea we poor divers for pearls, and <i> +stranger things,</i> must hold our breath long and long, as we watch the great +glittering fish go sailing by, and touch the trailing, rose-coloured weeds, and +cross the buried coral. It may be that no one will believe us, when we return, +about what we have seen! About those carcanets of rubies round drowned throats +and those opals that shimmered and gleamed in dead men's skulls!</p> + +<p>At any rate, the most superficial critic of Poe's poetry must admit that +every single one of his great verses, except the little one "to Helen," is +pre-occupied with Death. Even in that Helen one, perhaps the loveliest, though, +I do not think, the most +<i>characteristic,</i> of all, the poet's desire is to make of the girl he +celebrates a sort of Classic Odalisque, round whose palpable contours and lines +he may hang the solemn ornaments of the Dead—of the Dead to whom his soul turns, +even while embracing the living! Far, far off, from where the real Helen waits, +so "statue-like"—the "agate lamp" in her hands—wavers the face of that other +Helen, the face "that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of +Ilium."</p> + +<p>The longer poem under the same title, and apparently addressed to the same +sorceress, is more entirely "in his mood." Those shadowy, moon-lit "parterres," +those living roses—Beardsley has planted them since in another "enchanted +garden"—and those "eyes," that grow so luminously, so impossibly large, until it +is almost pain to be "saved" by them—these things are in Poe's true manner; for +it is not "Helen" that he has ever loved, but her body, her corpse, her ghost, +her memory, her sepulchre, her look of dead reproach! And these things none can +take from him. The maniacal egoism of a love of this kind—its frozen +inhumanity—can be seen even in those poems which stretch yearning hands towards +Heaven. In "Annabel Lee," for instance, in that sea-kingdom where the maiden +lived who had no thought—who <i>must</i> have no thought—"but to love and be +loved by me"—what madness of implacable possession, in that "so all the +night-tide I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my +bride, in her sepulchre there by the sea, in her tomb by the sounding sea!"</p> + +<p>The same remorseless "laying on of hands" upon what God himself cannot save +from us may be discerned in that exquisite little poem which begins:</p> + +<p> "Thou wast all to me, love,<br> + For which my soul did +pine;<br> + A green isle in the Sea, love,<br> + A Fountain and a Shrine<br> + All wreathed with Fairy fruits and flowers;<br> + And all the flowers were +mine!" </p> + +<p>That "dim-gulf" o'er which "the spirit lies, mute, motionless, aghast"—how +well, in Poe's world, we know that! For still, in those days of his which are +"trances," and in those "nightly dreams" which are all he lives for, he is with +her; with her still, with her always;</p> + +<p> "In what ethereal dances,<br> + By what eternal streams!"</p> + +<p>The essence of "immorality" does not lie in mad Byronic passion, or in +terrible Herodian lust. It lies in a certain deliberate "petrifaction" of the +human soul in us; a certain glacial detachment from all interests save one; a +certain frigid insanity of preoccupation with our own emotion. And this emotion, +for the sake of which every earthly feeling turns to ice, is our Death-hunger, +our eternal craving to make <i>what has been</i> be again, and again, forever!</p> + +<p>The essence of immorality lies not in the hot flame of natural, or even +unnatural, desire. It lies in that inhuman and forbidden wish to arrest <i>the +processes of life</i>—to lay a freezing hand—a dead hand—upon what we love, so +that it <i>shall always be the same.</i> The really immoral thing is to isolate, +from among the affections and passions and attractions of this human world, one +particular lure; and then, having endowed this with the living body of "eternal +death," to bend before it, like the satyr before the dead nymph in Aubrey's +drawing, and murmur and mutter and shudder over it, through the eternal +recurrence of all things!</p> + +<p>Is it any longer concealed from us wherein the "immorality" of this lies? It +lies in the fact that what we worship, what we <i>will not,</i> through +eternity, let go, is not a living person, but the "body" of a person; a person +who has so far been "drugged," as not only to die for us—that is nothing!—but to +remain dead for us, through all the years!</p> + +<p>In his own life—with that lovely consumptive Child-bride dying by his +side—Edgar Allen Poe lived as "morally," as rigidly, as any Monk. The popular +talk about his being a "Drug-Fiend" is ridiculous nonsense. He was a laborious +artist, chiselling and refining his "artificial" poems, day in and day out. +Where his "immorality" lies is much deeper. It is in the mind—the mind, Master +Shallow!—for he is nothing if not an absolute "Cerebralist." Certainly Poe's +verses are "artificial." They are the most artificial of all poems ever written. +And this is natural, because they were the premeditated expression of a +premeditated cult. But to say they are artificial does not derogate from their +genius. Would that there were more such "artificial" verses in the world!</p> + +<p>One wonders if it is clearly understood how the "unearthly" element in Poe +differs from the "unearthly" element in Shelley. It differs from it precisely as +Death differs from Life.</p> + +<p>Shelley's ethereal spiritualism—though, God knows, such gross animals are we, +it seems inhuman enough—is a passionate white flame. It is the thin, wavering +fire-point of all our struggles after purity and eternity. It is a centrifugal +emotion, not, as was the other's, a centripedal one. It is the noble Platonic +rising from the love of one beautiful person to the love of many beautiful +persons; and from that onward, through translunar gradations, to the love of the +supreme Beauty itself. Shelley's "spirituality" is a living, growing, creative +thing. In its intrinsic nature it is not egoistic at all, but profoundly +altruistic. It uses Sex to leave Sex behind. In its higher levels it is +absolutely Sexless. It may transcend humanity, but it springs from humanity. It +is, in fact, humanity's dream of its own transmutation. For all its ethereality +and remoteness, it yearns, "like a God in pain," over the sorrows of the world. +With infinite planetary pity, it would heal those sorrows.</p> + +<p>Edgar Allen's "spirituality" has not the least flicker of a longing to "leave +Sex behind." It is bound to Sex, as the insatiable Ghoul is bound to the Corpse +he devours. It is not concerned with the physical ecstasies of Sex. It has no +interest in such human matters. But deprive it of the fact of Sex-difference, +and it drifts away whimpering like a dead leaf, an empty husk, a wisp of chaff, +a skeleton gossamer. The poor, actual, warm lips, "so sweetly forsworn," may +have had small interest for this "spiritual" lover, but now that she is dead and +buried, and a ghost, they must remain a woman's lips forever! Nor have Edgar +Allen's "faithful ones" the remotest interest in what goes on around them. +Occupied with their Dead, their feeling towards common flesh and blood is the +feeling of Caligula. "What have I done to thee?" that proud, reserved face seems +to say, as it looks out on us from its dusty title-page; "what have I done to +thee, that I should despise thee so?"</p> + +<p>Shelley's clear, erotic passion is always a "cosmic" thing. It is the +rhythmic expression of the power that creates the world. But there is nothing +"cosmic" about the enclosed gardens of Edgar Allen Poe; and the spirits that +walk among those Moon-dials and dim Parterres are not of the kind who go +streaming up, from land and ocean, shouting with joy that Prometheus has +conquered! But what a master he is—what a master! In the suggestiveness of <i> +names</i>—to mention only one thing—can anyone touch him? That word +"Porphyrogene"—the name of the Ruler of, God knows what, Kingdom of the +Dead—does it not linger about one—and follow one—like the smell of incense?</p> + +<p>But the poem of all poems in which the very genius Edgar Allen is embodied +is, of course, "Ulalume." Like this, there is nothing; in Literature—nothing in +the whole field of human art. Here he is, from beginning to end, a supreme +artist; dealing with the subject for which he was born! That undertone of +sardonic, cynical +<i>humour</i>—for it can be called nothing else—which grins at us in the +background like the grin of a Skull; how extraordinarily characteristic it is! +And the touches of "infernal colloquialism," so deliberately fitted in, and +making us remember—many things!—is there anything in the world like them?</p> + +<p> "And now as the night was senescent,<br> + And the star-dials hinted +of morn,<br> + At the end of our path a liquescent<br> + And nebulous lustre was +born,<br> + Out of which a miraculous crescent<br> + Arose with a duplicate +horn—<br> + Astarte's be-diamonded crescent,<br> + Distinct with its +duplicate horn!"</p> + +<p>"And I said"—but let us pass to his Companion. The cruelty of this +conversation with "Psyche" is a thing that may well make us shudder. The +implication is, of course, double. Psyche is his own soul; the soul in him which +would live, and grow, and change, and know the "Vita Nuova." She is also "the +Companion," to whom he has turned for consolation. She is the Second One, the +Other One, in whose living caresses he would forget, if it might be, that which +lies down there in the darkness!</p> + +<p> "Then Psyche, uplifting her finger,<br> + Said, 'sadly this star I mistrust,<br> + Its pallor I strangely mistrust.<br> + O hasten! O let us not linger!<br> + O fly! Let us fly! for we must!'"</p> + +<p>Thus the Companion; thus the Comrade; thus the "Vita Nuova"!</p> + +<p>Now mark what follows:</p> + +<p> "Then I pacified Psyche and kissed her,<br> + And tempted her out of her gloom.<br> + And conquered her scruples and gloom.<br> + And we passed to the end of a Vista,<br> + But were stopped by the door of a Tomb.<br> + By the door of a Legended Tomb,<br> + And I said: 'What is written, sweet sister,<br> + On the door of this legended Tomb?'<br> + She replied, Ulalume—Ulalume—<br> + Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"</p> + +<p>The end of the poem is like the beginning, and who can utter the feelings it +excites? That "dark tarn of Auber," those "Ghoul-haunted woodlands of Weir" +convey, more thrillingly than a thousand words of description, what we have +actually felt, long ago, far off, in that strange country of our forbidden +dreams.</p> + +<p>What a master he is! And if you ask about his "philosophy of life," let the +Conqueror Worm make answer:</p> + +<p> "Lo! Tis a Gala-Night<br> + Within the lonesome latter years—"</p> + +<p>Is not that an arresting commencement? The word "Gala-Night"—has it not the +very malice of the truth of things?</p> + +<p>Like Heine, it gave this poet pleasure not only to love the Dead, but to love +feeling himself dead. That strange poem about "Annie." with its sickeningly +sentimental conclusion, where the poet lies prostrate, drugged with all the +drowsy syrops in the world, and celebrates his euthanasia, has a quality of its +own. It is the "inverse" of life's "Danse Macabre." It is the way we poor +dancers long to sleep. "For to sleep you must slumber in just such a bed!" The +old madness is over now; the old thirst quenched. It was quenched in a water +that "does not flow so far underground." And luxuriously, peacefully, we can +rest at last, with the odour of "puritan pansies" about us, and somewhere, not +far off, rosemary and rue!</p> + +<p>Edgar Allen Poe's philosophy of Life? It may be summed up in the lines from +that little poem, where he leaves her side who has, for a moment, turned his +heart from the Tomb. The reader will remember the way it begins: "Take this kiss +upon thy brow." And the conclusion is the confusion of the whole matter:</p> + +<p> "All that we see or seem<br> + Is but a dream within a dream."</p> + +<p>Strangely—in forlorn silence—passes before us, as we close his pages, that +procession of "dead, cold Maids." Ligeia follows Ulalume; and Lenore follows +Ligeia; and after them Eulalie and Annabel; and the moaning of the sea-tides +that wash their feet is the moaning of eternity. I suppose it needs a certain +kindred perversion, in the reader, to know the shudder of the loss, more dear +than life, of such as these! The more normal memory of man will still continue +repeating the liturgical syllables of a very different requiem:</p> + +<p> "O daughters of dreams and of stories,<br> + That Life is not wearied of yet—<br> + Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,<br> + Felise, and Yolande and Julette!"</p> + +<p>Yes, Life and the Life-Lovers are enamoured still of these exquisite witches, +these philtre-bearers, these Sirens, these children of Circe. But a few among +us—those who understand the poetry of Edgar Allen—turn away from them, to that +rarer, colder, more virginal Figure; to Her who has been born and has died, so +many times; to Her who was Ligeia and Ulalume and Helen and Lenore—for are not +all these One?—to Her we have loved in vain and shall love in vain until the +end—to Her who wears, even in the triumph of her Immortality, the +close-clinging, heavily-scented cerements of the Dead!</p> + +<p> "The old bards shall cease and their memory that +lingers<br> + Of frail brides and faithless shall be shrivelled as +with fire,<br> + For they loved us not nor knew us and our lips were +dumb, our fingers<br> + Could wake not the secret of the lyre.<br> + Else, else, O God, the Singer,<br> + I had sung, amid their rages,<br> + The long tale of Man,<br> + And his deeds for good and ill.<br> + But the Old World knoweth—'tis the speech of all his +ages—<br> + Man's wrong and ours; he knoweth and is still."</p><a name= +"18"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>WALT WHITMAN</p> + +<p>I want to approach this great Soothsayer from the angle least of all profaned +by popular verdicts. I mean from the angle of his poetry. We all know what a +splendid heroic Anarchist he was. We all know with what rude zest he gave +himself up to that "Cosmic Emotion," to which in these days the world does +respectful, if distant, reverence. We know his mania for the word "en masse," +for the words "ensemble," "democracy" and "libertad." We know his defiant +celebrations of Sex, of amorousness, of maternity; of that Love of Comrades +which "passeth the love of women." We know the world-shaking effort he made—and +to have made it at all, quite apart from its success, marks him a unique +genius!—to write poetry about every mortal thing that exists, and to bring the +whole breathing palpable world into his Gargantuan Catalogues. It is absurd to +grumble at these Inventories of the Round Earth. They may not all move to Dorian +flutes, but they form a background—like the lists of the Kings in the Bible and +the lists of the Ships in Homer—against which, as against the great blank spaces +of Life itself, "the writing upon the wall" may make itself visible.</p> + +<p>What seems much less universally realized is the extraordinary genius for +sheer "poetry" which this Prophet of Optimism possessed. I agree that Walt +Whitman's Optimism is the only kind, of that sort of thing, that one can submit +to without a blush. At least it is not indecent, bourgeois, and ill-bred, like +the fourth-hand Protestantism that Browning dishes up, for the delectation of +Ethical Societies. It is the optimism of a person who has seen the American +Civil War. It is the optimism of a man who knows "the Bowery" and "the road," +and has had queer friends in his mortal pilgrimage.</p> + +<p>It is an interesting psychological point, this difference between the +"marching breast-forward" of Mrs. Browning's energetic husband, and the "taking +to the open road" of Whitman. In some curious way the former gets upon one's +nerves where the latter does not. Perhaps it is that the boisterous +animal-spirits which one appreciates in the open air become vulgar and +irritating when they are practised within the walls of a house. A Satyr who +stretches his hairy shanks in the open forest is a pleasant thing to see; but a +gentleman, with lavender-colored gloves, putting his feet on the chimney-piece +is not so appealing. No doubt it is precisely for these Domestic Exercises that +Mr. Chesterton, let us say, would have us love Browning. Well! It is a matter of +taste.</p> + +<p>But it is not of Walt Whitman's Optimism that I want to speak; it is of his +poetry.</p> + +<p>To grasp the full importance of what this great man did in this sphere one +has only to read modern "libre vers." After Walt Whitman, Paul Fort, for +instance, seems simply an eloquent prose writer. And none of them can get the +trick of it. None of them! Somewhere, once, I heard a voice that approached it; +a voice murmuring of</p> + +<p> "Those that sleep upon the wind,<br> + And those that lie along in the rain,<br> + Cursing Egypt—"</p> + +<p>But that voice went its way; and for the rest—what banalities! What +ineptitudes! They make the mistake, our modern free-versifiers, of thinking that +Art can be founded on the Negation of Form. Art can be founded on every other +Negation. But not on that one—never on that one! Certainly they have a right to +experiment; to invent—if they can—new forms. But they must invent them. They +must not just arrange their lines <i>to look like poetry,</i> and leave it at +that.</p> + +<p>Walt Whitman's New Form of Verse was, as all such things must be, as Mr. +Hardy's strange poetry, for instance, is, a deliberate and laborious +struggle—ending in what is a struggle no more—to express his own personality in +a unique and recognisable manner. This is the secret of all "style" in poetry. +And it is the absence of this labour, of this premeditated concentration, which +leads to the curious result we see on all sides of us, the fact, namely, that +all young modern poets <i>write alike.</i> +They write alike, and they <i>are</i> alike—just as all men are like all other +men, and all women like all other women, when, without the "art" of clothing, or +the "art" of flesh and blood, they lie down side by side in the free cemetery. +The old poetic forms will always have their place. They can never grow +old-fashioned; any more than Pisanello, or El Greco, or Botticelli, or Scopas, +or any ancient Chinese Painter, can grow old-fashioned. But when a modern artist +or poet sets to work to create a new form, let him remember what he is doing! It +is not the pastime of an hour, this. It is not the casual gesture of a mad +iconoclast breaking Classic Statues into mud, out of which to make goblins. It +is the fierce, tenacious, patient, constructive work of a lifetime, based upon a +tremendous and overpowering Vision! Such a vision Walt Whitman had, and to such +constant inspired labour he gave his life—notwithstanding his talk about +"loafing and inviting his soul"!</p> + +<p>The "free" poetry of Walt Whitman obeys inflexible, occult laws, the laws +commanded unto it by his own creative instinct. We need, as Nietzsche says, to +learn the art of "commands" of this kind! Transvaluers of old values do not +spend all their time sipping absinthe. Is it a secret still, then, the magical +unity of rhythm, which Walt Whitman has conveyed to the words he uses? Those +long, plangent, wailing lines, broken by little gurgling gasps and sobs; those +sudden thrilling apostrophes and recognitions; those far-drawn flute-notes; +those resounding sea-trumpets; all such effects have their place in the great +orchestral symphony he conducts!</p> + +<p>Take that little poem—quite spoiled before the end by a horrible bit of +democratic vulgarity—which begins:</p> + +<p> "Come, I will build a Continent indissoluble;<br> + I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone +upon—"</p> + +<p>Is it possible to miss the hidden spheric law which governs such a challenge? +Take the poem which begins:</p> + +<p> "In the growths, by the margins of pond-waters—"</p> + +<p>Do you not divine, delicate reader, the peculiar subtlety of that reference +to the rank, rain-drenched <i>anonymous weeds,</i> which every day we pass in +our walks inland? A botanical name would have driven the magic of it quite away.</p> + +<p>Walt Whitman, more than anyone, is able to convey to us that sense of the +unclassified pell-mell, of weeds and stones and rubble and wreckage, of vast, +desolate spaces, and spaces full of debris and litter, which is most of all +characteristic of your melancholy American landscape, but which those who love +England know where to find, even among our trim gardens! No one like Walt +Whitman can convey to us the magical <i>ugliness</i> of certain aspects of +Nature—the bleak, stunted, God-forsaken things; the murky pools where the grey +leaves fall; the dead reeds where the wind whistles no sweet fairy tunes; the +unspeakable margins of murderous floods; the tangled sea-drift, scurfed with +scum; the black sea-winrow of broken shells and dead fishes' scales; the roots +of willow trees in moonlit places crying out for demon-lovers; the long, moaning +grass that grows outside the walls of prisons; the leprous mosses that cover +paupers' graves; the mountainous wastes and blighted marshlands which only +unknown wild-birds ever touch with their flying wings, and of which madmen +dream—these are the things, the ugly, terrible things, that this great optimist +turns into poetry. "Yo honk!" cries the wild goose, as it crosses the midnight +sky. Others may miss that mad-tossed shadow, that heartbreaking defiance—but +from amid the drift of leaves by the roadside, this bearded Fakir of Outcasts +has caught its meaning; has heard, and given it its answer.</p> + +<p>Ah, gentle and tender reader; thou whose heart, it may be has never cried all +night for what it must not name, did you think Swinburne or Byron were the poets +of "love"? Perhaps you do not know that the only "short story" on the title-page +of which Guy de Maupassant found it in him to write <i>that word</i> is a story +about the wild things we go out to kill?</p> + +<p>Walt Whitman, too, does not confine his notions of love to normal human +coquetries. The most devastating love-cry ever uttered, except that of King +David over his friend, is the cry this American poet dares to put into the heart +of "a wild-bird from Alabama" that has lost its mate. I wonder if critics have +done justice to the incredible genius of this man who can find words for that +aching of the soul we do not confess even to our dearest? The sudden words he +makes use of, in certain connections, awe us, hush us, confound us, take our +breath,—as some of Shakespeare's do—with their mysterious congruity. Has my +reader ever read the little poem called "Tears"? And what <i>purity</i> in the +truest, deepest sense, lies behind his pity for such tragic craving; his +understanding of what love-stricken, banished ones feel. I do not speak now of +his happily amorous verses. They have their place. I speak of those desperate +lines that come, here and there, throughout his work, where, with his huge, +Titanic back set against the world-wall, and his wild-tossed beard streaming in +the wind, he seems <i>to hold open</i> by main, gigantic force that door of hope +which Fate and God and Man and the Laws of Nature are all endeavoring to close! <i> +And he holds it open!</i> And it is open still. It is for this reason—let the +profane hold their peace!—that I do not hesitate to understand very clearly why +he addresses a certain poem to the Lord Christ! Whether it be true or not that +the Pure in Heart see God, it is certainly true that they have a power of saving +us from God's Law of Cause and Effect! According to this Law, we all "have our +reward" and reap what we have sown. But sometimes, like a deep-sea murmur, there +rises from the poetry of Walt Whitman a Protest that <i>must</i> be heard! Then +it is that the Tetrarchs of Science forbid in vain "that one should raise the +Dead." For the Dead are raised up, and come forth, even in the likeness wherein +we loved them! If words, my friends; if the use of words in poetry can convey +such intimations as these to such a generation as ours, can anyone deny that +Walt Whitman is a great poet?</p> + +<p>Deny it, who may or will. There will always gather round him—as he +predicted—out of City-Tenements and Artist-Studios and Factory-Shops and +Ware-Houses and Bordelloes—aye! and, it may be, out of the purlieus of Palaces +themselves—a strange, mad, heart-broken company of life-defeated derelicts, who +come, not for Cosmic Emotion or Democracy or Anarchy or Amorousness, or even +"Comradeship," but for that touch, that whisper, that word, that hand +outstretched in the darkness, which makes them <i>know</i>—against reason and +argument and all evidence—that they may hope still—<i>for the Impossible is +true!</i></p><a name="19"></a><br> +<br> + +<p>CONCLUSION</p> + +<p>We have been together, you who read this—and to you, whoever you are, whether +pleased or angry, I make a comrade's signal. Who knows? We might be the very +ones to understand each other, if we met! We have been together, in the shadow +of the presences that make life tolerable; and now we must draw our conclusion +and go our way.</p> + +<p>Our conclusion? Ah! that is a hard matter. The world we live in lends itself +better to beginnings than conclusions. Or does anything, in this terrible +flowing tide, even +<i>begin</i>? End or beginning, we find ourselves floating upon it—this great +tide—and we must do what we can to get a clear glimpse of the high stars before +we sink. I wonder if, in the midst of the stammered and blurted incoherences, +the lapses and levities, of this quaint book, a sort of "orientation," as the +theologians say now, has emerged at all? I feel, myself, as though it had, +though it is hard enough to put it into words. I seem to feel that a point of +view, not altogether irrelevant in our time, has projected a certain light upon +us, as we advanced together.</p> + +<p>Let me try to catch some few filmy threads of this before it vanishes, even +though, like a dream in the waking, its outlines waver and recede and fade, +until it is lost in space. We gather, then, I fancy, from this kind of hurried +passing through enchanted gardens, a sort of curious unwillingness to let our +"fixed convictions" deprive us any more of the spiritual adventures to which we +have a right. We begin to understand the danger of such convictions, of such +opinions, of such "constructive consistency." We grow prepared to "give +ourselves up" to "yield ourselves willingly," to whatever new Revelation of the +Evasive One chance may throw in our way. It is in such yieldings, such surprises +by the road, such new vistas and perspectives, that life loves to embody itself. +To refuse them is to turn away from Life and dwell in the kingdom of the shadow.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" the Demon who has presided over our wanderings together seems to +whisper—"why not for a little while try the experiment of having no 'fixed +ideas,' no 'inflexible principles,' no 'concentrated aim'? Why not simply react +to one mysterious visitor after another, as they approach us, and caress or hurt +us, and go their way? Why not, for an interlude, be Life's children, instead of +her slaves or her masters, and let Her lead us, the great crafty Mother, whither +she will?"</p> + +<p>There will be much less harm done by such an embracing of Fate, and such a +cessation of foolish agitations, than many might suppose. And more than anything +else, this is what our generation requires! We are over-ridden by theorists and +preachers and ethical water-carriers; we need a little rest—a little yawning and +stretching and "being ourselves"; a little quiet sitting at the feet of the +Immortal Gods. We need to forget to be troubled, for a brief interval, if the +Immortal Gods speak in strange and variable tongues, and offer us diverse-shaped +chalices. Let us drink, dear friends, let us drink, as the most noble prophetess +Bacbuc used to say! There are many vintages in the kingdom of Beauty; and yet +others—God knows! even outside that. Let us drink, and ask no troublesome +questions. The modern puritan seeks to change the nature of our natural longing. +He tells us that what we need is not less labor but more labor, not less +"concentrated effort," but more "concentrated effort"; not "Heaven," in fact, +but "Hell."</p> + +<p>I do not know. There is much affectation abroad, and some hypocrisy. Puritans +were ever addicted to hypocrisy. But because of these "virtuous" prophets of +"action," are we to give up our Beatific Vision? Why not be honest for once, and +confess that what Man, born of Woman, craves for in his heart is a little joy, a +little happiness, a little pleasure, before "he goes hence and is no more seen"? +We know that we know nothing. Why, then, pretend that we know the importance of +being "up and doing"? There may be no such importance. The common burden of life +we have, indeed, all to bear—and they are not very gracious or lovely souls who +seek to put it off on others—but for this additional burden, this burden of +"being consistent" and having a "strong character," does it seem very wise, in +so brief an interval, to put the stress just there?</p> + +<p>Somehow I think a constant dwelling in the company of the "great masters" +leads us to take with a certain "pinch of salt" the strenuous "duties" which the +World's voices make so clamorous! It may be that our sense of their greatness +and remoteness produces a certain "humility" in us, and a certain mood of +"waiting on the Spirit," not altogether encouraging to what this age, in its +fussy worship of energy, calls "our creative work." Well! There is a place +doubtless for these energetic people, and their strenuous characters, and their +"creative work." But I think there is a place also for those who cannot rush +about the market-place, or climb high Alps, or make engines spin, or race, with +girded loins, after "Truth." I think there is a place still left for harmless +spectators in this Little Theatre of the Universe, And such spectators will do +well if they see to it that nothing of the fine or the rare or the exquisite +escapes them. Somebody must have the discrimination and the detachment necessary +to do justice to our "creative minds." The worst of it is, everybody in these +days rushes off to "create," and pauses not a moment to look round to see +whether what is being created is worth creating!</p> + +<p>We must return to the great masters; we must return to the things in life +that really matter; and then we shall acquire, perhaps, in our little way the +art of keeping the creators of ugliness at a distance!</p> + +<p>Let us at least be honest. The world is a grim game, and we need sometimes +the very courage of Lucifer to hold our enemies back. But in the chaos of it +all, and the madness and frenzy, let us at least hold fast to that noble +daughter of the gods men name +<i>Imagination.</i> With that to aid us, we can console ourselves for many +losses, for many defeats. For the life of the Imagination flows deep and swift, +and in its flowing it can bear us to undreamed-of coasts, where the children of +fantasy and the children of irony dance on—heedless of theory and argument.</p> + +<p>The world is deep, as Zarathustra says, and deep is pain; and deeper than +pain is joy. I do not think that they have reached the final clue, even with +their talk of "experience" and "struggle" and the "storming of the heights." +Sometimes it is not from "experience," but from beyond experience, that the +rumour comes. Sometimes it is not from the "struggle," but from the "rest" after +the struggle, that the whisper is given. Sometimes the voice comes to us, not +from the "heights," but from the depths.</p> + +<p>The truth seems to be that if the clue is to be caught at all, it will be +caught where we least expect it; and, for the catching of it, what we have to do +is not to let our theories, our principles, our convictions, our opinions, +impede our vision—but now and then to lay them aside; but whether with them or +without them, to be +<i>prepared</i>—for the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and we cannot tell +whence it cometh, or whither it goeth!</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>ERRATA</p> + +<p>For Edgar Allen Poe read Edgar Allan Poe.</p> + +<p>Page 33, line 1, for "and goose-girls. These are the things" read "and +goose-girls—these are the things."</p> + +<p>Page 33, line 19, for "Penetre" read "Peut-etre."</p> + +<p>Page 50, line 10, for "iron" read "urn."</p> + +<p>Page 59, line 16, for "De Vinci" read "Da Vinci."</p> + +<p>Page 129, line 8, for "Berwick" read "Bewick."</p> + +<p>Page 138, line 25, for "Cabbalistic" read "Cabalistic."</p> + +<p>Page 268/269, line 30, and line 1, for "dim-gulf," etc, read "That dim-gulf +o'er which The spirit lies, mute, motionless, aghast—how well, in Poe's world, +we know that! For still, in those days," etc.</p> + +<p>Page 270, line 20, for Celebralist read Cerebralist.</p> + +<p>Page 285, line 12, for "long-drawn" read "far-drawn."</p><br> +<br> +<br> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Visions and Revisions, by John Cowper Powys + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VISIONS AND REVISIONS *** + +***** This file should be named 26933-h.htm or 26933-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/9/3/26933/ + +Produced by Ruth Hart + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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