"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrotePeer Gynt. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) thatNo man can save his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt."
"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrotePeer Gynt. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) thatNo man can save his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt."
In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the quotation—
"No, nor woman, neither."
"No, nor woman, neither."
Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.
"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr. Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it to be one's self? Godmeant somethingwhen He made each one of us. For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out what Goddidmean when He made him? Why, then he mustfeelit. But how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil has no stancher ally thanwant of perception."
And its Solution.
This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices his Self generously for another's good, nor surrenders it to a decided course of action. Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer's perfect antithesis. When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to his hut in the forest. Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo. But though his own theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one. To find this he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted wife. There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the answer. "Where," he asks, "has Peer Gynt's true self been since we parted:—
"Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?Where was I with God's sigil upon my brow?"
And Solveig answers:—
"In my faith, in my hope, in my love."
"In my faith, in my hope, in my love."
In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer'sperceptionof the truth (videMr. Wicksteed's remarks quoted above) is the one necessary climax of the poem. We do not care a farthing—at least, I do not care a farthing—whether Peer escape the Button-Moulder or not. It may be too late for him, or there may be yet time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn't alter what Ibsen set out to prove. The problem which Ibsen shirks (if indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem—a rider, so to speak. Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt? Can the woman save the man's soul? Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his victim?
The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible. According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be impossible. He knows (none better) that "No man can save his brother's soul or pay his brother's debt." "No, nor women neither," adds Mr. Archer.
Is Peer's Redemption a romantic Fallacy?
But is this so?Peer Gyntwas published in 1867. I turn toA Doll's House, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer. I find in Mr. Archer's translation of that play the following page of dialogue:—
Mrs. Linden: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils; give me somebody and something to work for.Krogstad: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's romantic notion of self-sacrifice.Mrs. Linden: Have you ever found me romantic?Krogstad: Would you really—? Tell me, do you know my past?Mrs. Linden: Yes.Krogstad: And do you know what people say of me?Mrs. Linden: Didn't you say just now that with me you could have been another man?Krogstad: I am sure of it.Mrs. Linden: Is it too late?Krogstad: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage—?Mrs. Linden: I need someone to tend, and your children need a mother. You need me, and I—I need you. Nils, I believe in your better self. With you I fear nothing.
Mrs. Linden: There's no happiness in working for oneself, Nils; give me somebody and something to work for.
Krogstad: No, no; that can never be. It's simply a woman's romantic notion of self-sacrifice.
Mrs. Linden: Have you ever found me romantic?
Krogstad: Would you really—? Tell me, do you know my past?
Mrs. Linden: Yes.
Krogstad: And do you know what people say of me?
Mrs. Linden: Didn't you say just now that with me you could have been another man?
Krogstad: I am sure of it.
Mrs. Linden: Is it too late?
Krogstad: Christina, do you know what you are doing? Yes, you do; I see it in your face. Have you the courage—?
Mrs. Linden: I need someone to tend, and your children need a mother. You need me, and I—I need you. Nils, I believe in your better self. With you I fear nothing.
Ibsen's hopes of Enfranchised Women.
Again, we are not told if Mrs. Linden's experiment is successful; but Ibsen certainly gives no hint that she is likely to fail. This was in 1879. In 1885 Ibsen paid a visit to Norway and made a speech to some workingmen at Drontheim, in which this passage occurred:—
"Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will, of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this aristocracy I desire come to us—from our women and our workmen. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. On this I set all my hopes and expectations...."
"Democracy by itself cannot solve the social question. We must introduce an aristocratic element into our life. I am not referring, of course, to an aristocracy of birth, or of purse, or even of intellect. I mean an aristocracy of character, of will, of mind. That alone can make us free. From two classes will this aristocracy I desire come to us—from our women and our workmen. The social revolution, now preparing in Europe, is chiefly concerned with the future of the workers and the women. On this I set all my hopes and expectations...."
I think it would be easy to multiply instances showing that, though Ibsen may hold that no man can save his brother's soul, he does not extend this disability to women, but hopes and believes, on the contrary, that women will redeem mankind. On men he builds little hope. To speak roughly, men are all in Peer Gynt's case, or Torvald Helmer's. They are swathed in timid conventions, blindfolded with selfishness, so that they cannot perceive, and unable with their own hands to tear off these bandages. They are incapable of the highestrenunciation. "No man," says Torvald Helmer, "sacrifices his honor, even for one he loves." Those who heard Miss Achurch deliver Nora's reply will not easily forget it. "Millions of women have done so." The effect in the theatre was tremendous. This sentence clinched the whole play.
Millions of women are, like Solveig, capable of renouncing all for love, of surrendering self altogether; and, as I read Ibsen, it is precisely on this power of renunciation that he builds his hope of man's redemption. So that, unless I err greatly, the scene inPeer Gyntwhich Mr. Archer calls a shirking of the ethical problem, is just the solution which Ibsen has been persistent in presenting to the world.
Let it be understood, of course, that it is only your Solveigs and Mrs. Lindens who can thus save a brother's soul: women who have made their own way in the world, thinking for themselves, working for themselves, freed from the conventions which man would impose on them. I know Mr. Archer will not retort on me with Nora, who leaves her husband and children, and claims that her firstduty is to herself. Nora is just the woman who cannot redeem a man. Her Doll's House training is the very opposite of Solveig's and Mrs. Linden's. She is a silly girl brought up amid conventions, and awakened, by one blow, to the responsibilities of life. That she should at once know the right course to take would be incredible in real life, and impossible in a play the action of which has been evolved as inevitably as real life. Many critics have supposed Ibsen to commend Nora's conduct in the last act of the play. He neither sanctions nor condemns. But he does contrast her in the play with Mrs. Linden, and I do not think that contrast can be too carefully studied.
May 5, 1894. Aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's Muse.
There was a time—let us say, in the early seventies—when many young men tried to write like Mr. Swinburne. Remarkably small success waited on their efforts. Still their numbers and their youth and (for a while also) their persistency seemed to promise a new school of poesy, with Mr. Swinburne for its head and great exemplar: exemplar rather than head, for Mr. Swinburne's attitude amid all this devotion was rather that of the god than of the priest. He sang, and left the worshippers to work up their own enthusiasm. And to this attitude he has been constant. Unstinting, and occasionally unmeasured, in praise and dispraise of other men, he has allowed his own reputation the noble liberty to look after itself. Nothing, for instance, could have been finer than the careless, almost disdainful, dignity of his bearing in the months that followedTennyson's death. The cats were out upon the tiles, then, and his was the luminous, expressive silence of a sphere. One felt, "whether he received it or no, here is the man who can wear the crown."
And Her Tendency towards Abstractions.
It was not, however, the aloofness of Mr. Swinburne's bearing that checked the formation of a Swinburnian school of poetry. The cause lay deeper, and has come more and more into the light in the course of Mr. Swinburne's poetic development—let me say, his thoroughly normal development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in "Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later poems and throughout them—flower and leaf and stem. It was hardly more natural in 1870 to confess the magic of the great chorus, "Before the beginning of years," or of "Dolores," than to embark upon the vain adventure of imitating them. I cannot imagine a youth in all Great Britain so green or unknowing as to attempt an imitationof "A Nympholept," perhaps the finest poem in the volume before me.
I say "in Great Britain;" because peculiar as Mr. Swinburne's genius would be in any country, it is doubly peculiar as the endowment of an English poet. If there be one quality beloved above others by the inhabitants of this island, it is concreteness; and I suppose there never was a poet in the world who used less concreteness of speech than Mr. Swinburne. Mr. Palgrave once noted that the landscape of Keats falls short of the landscape of Shelley in its comparative lack of the larger features of sky and earth; Keats's was "foreground work" for the most part. But what shall be said of Shelley's universe after the immense vague regions inhabited by Mr. Swinburne's muse? She sings of the sea; but we never behold a sail, never a harbor: she sings of passion—among the stars. We seem never to touch earth; page after page is full of thought—for, vast as the strain may be, it is never empty—but we cannot apply it. And all this is extremely distressing to the Briton, who loves practice as his birthright. He comes on a Jacobite song. "Now, at any rate," he tellshimself, "we arrive at something definite: some allusion, however small, to Bonny Prince Charlie." He reads—
"Faith speaks when hope dissembles;Faith lives when hope lies dead:If death as life dissembles,And all that night assemblesOf stars at dawn lie dead,Faint hope that smiles and tremblesMay tell not well for dread:But faith has heard it said."
"Very beautiful," says the Briton; "but why call this a 'Jacobite Song'?" Some thorough-going admirer of Mr. Swinburne will ask, no doubt, if I prefer gush about Bonny Prince Charlie. Most decidedly I do not. I am merely pointing out that the poet cares so little for the common human prejudice in favor of concreteness of speech as to give us a Jacobite song which, for all its indebtedness to the historical facts of the Jacobite Risings, might just as well have been put in the mouth of Judas Maccabæus.
Somebody—I forget for the moment who it was—compared Poetry with Antæus, who was strong when his feet touched Earth, his mother;weaker when held aloft in air. The justice of this criticism I have no space here to discuss; but the difference is patent enough between poetry such as this of Herrick—
"When as in silks my Julia goes,Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flowsThe liquefaction of her clothes."
Or this, of Burns—
"The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,The boat rides by the Berwick-law,And I maun leave my bonny Mary."
Or this, of Shakespeare—
"When daisies pied, and violets blue,And lady smocks all silver-white,And cuckoo-buds of yellow hueDo paint the meadows with delight."
Or this, of Milton—
"the broad circumferenceHung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb,Through optic glass the Tuscan artist viewsAt evening from the top of Fesolé,Or in Valdarno...."
And such lines as these by Mr. Swinburne—
"The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world's lifeImbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.No service of bended knee or of humbled headMay soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:And life with death is as morning with evening wed."
Take Burns's song, "It was a' for our right-fu' King," and set it beside the Jacobite song quoted above, and it is clear at once that with Mr. Swinburne we pass from the particular and concrete to the general and abstract. And in this direction Mr. Swinburne's muse has steadily marched. In his "Erechtheus" he tells how the gods gave Pallas the lordship of Athens—
"The lordship and love of the lovely land,The grace of the town that hath on it for crownBut a headband to wearOf violets one-hued with her hair."
Here at least we were allowed a picture of Athens: the violet crown was something definite. But now, when Mr. Swinburne sings of England, we have to precipitate our impressions from lines fluid as these:—
"Things of night at her glance took flight: thestrengths of darkness recoiled and sank:Sank the fires of the murderous pyres whereon wildagony writhed and shrank:Rose the light of the reign of right from gulfs ofyears that the darkness drank."
Or—
"Change darkens and lightens around her, alternatein hope and in fear to be:Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whetherhope be not blind as she:But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal,and girdled with life by the sea."
I suspect, then, that a hundred years hence, when criticism speaks calm judgment upon all Mr. Swinburne's writings, she will find that his earlier and more definite poems are the edge of his blade, and such volumes as "Astrophel" the heavy metal behind it. The former penetrated the affections of his countrymen with ease: the latter followed more difficultly through the outer tissues of a people notoriously pachydermatous to abstract speech. And criticism will then know if Mr. Swinburne brought sufficient impact to drive the whole mass of metal deep.
A Voice chanting in the Void.
At present in these later volumes his must seem to us a godlike voice chanting in the void.For, fit or unfit as we may be to grasp the elusive substance of his strains, all must confess the voice of the singer to be divine. At once in the range and suppleness of his music he is not merely the first of our living poets, but incomparable. In learning he has Robert Bridges for a rival, and no other. But no amount of learning could give us 228 pages of music that from first to last has not a flaw. Rather, his marvellous ear has taken him safely through metres set by his learning as so many traps. There is one metre, for instance, that recurs again and again in this volume. Here is a specimen of it:—
"Music bright as the soul of light, for wings an eagle,for notes a dove,Leaps and shines from the lustrous lines wherethroughthy soul from afar aboveShone and sang till the darkness rang with light whosefire is the fount of love."
These lines are written of Sir Philip Sidney. Could another man have written them they had stood even better for Mr. Swinburne. But we are considering the metre, not the meaning. Now the metre may have great merits. I am disposed to say that, having fascinated Mr. Swinburne, it must have great merits. That Idislike it is, no doubt, my fault, or rather my misfortune. But undoubtedly it is a metre that no man but Mr. Swinburne could handle without producing a monotony varied only by discords.
April 29, 1893. Hazlitt's Stipulation.
"Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present ask—theUltima Thuleof my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for—a friend in your retreatWhom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are strengthened by distance."
"Food, warmth, sleep, and a book; these are all I at present ask—theUltima Thuleof my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for—
a friend in your retreatWhom you may whisper, 'Solitude is sweet'?
Expected, well enough: gone, still better. Such attractions are strengthened by distance."
So Hazlitt wrote in hisFarewell to Essay Writing. There never was such an epicure of his moods as Hazlitt. Others might add Omar's stipulation—
"—and ThouBeside me singing in the wilderness."
But this addition would have spoiled Hazlitt's enjoyment. Let us remember that his love affairs had been unprosperous. "Such attractions," he would object, "are strengthened by distance." In any case, the book and singer go ill together, and most of us will declare for a spell of each in turn.
What are "The Best Books"?
Suppose we choose the book. What kind of book shall it be? Shall it be an old book which we have forgotten just sufficiently to taste surprise as its felicities come back to us, and remember just sufficiently to escape the attentive strain of a first reading? Or shall it be a new book by an author we love, to be glanced through with no critical purpose (this may be deferred to the second reading), but merely for the lazy pleasure of recognizing the familiar brain at work, and feeling happy, perhaps, at the success of a friend? There is no doubt which Hazlitt would have chosen; he has told us in his essayOn Reading Old Books. But after a recent experience I am not sure that I agree with him.
That your taste should approve only the best thoughts of the best minds is a pretty counsel, but one of perfection, and is found in practice to breed prigs. It sets a man sailing round in a vicious circle. What is the best thought of the best minds? That approved by the man of highest culture. Who is the man of highest culture? He whose taste approves the best thoughts of the best minds. To escape from this foolish whirlpool, some of our stoutest bottoms run for that discredited harbor of refuge—Popular Acceptance: a harbor full of shoals, of which nobody has provided even the sketch of a chart.
Some years ago, when thePall Mall Gazettesent round to all sorts and conditions of eminent men, inviting lists of "The Hundred Best Books"—the first serious attempt to introduce a decimal system into Great Britain—I remember that these eminent men's replies disclosed nothing so wonderful as their unanimity. We were prepared for Sir John Lubbock, but not, I think, for the host of celebrities who followed his hygienic example, and made a habit of taking the Rig Vedas to bed with them. Altogether their replies afforded plenty of material for a theory that to have every other body's taste in literature is the first condition of eminence in every branch of the public service. But in one of the lists—I think it was Sir Monier Williams's—the unexpected really happened. Sir Monier thought that Mr. T.E. Brown'sThe Doctorwas one of the best books in the world.
Now, the poems of Mr. T.E. Brown are notknown to the million. But, like Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Brown has always had a band of readers to whom his name is more than that of many an acknowledged classic. I fancy it is a case of liking deeply or scarce at all. Those of us who are not celebrities may be allowed to have favorites who are not the favorites of others, writers who (fortuitously, perhaps) have helped us at some crisis of our life, have spoken to us the appropriate word at the moment of need, and for that reason sit cathedrally enthroned in our affections. To explain why the author ofBetsy Lee,Tommy Big-EyesandThe Doctoris more to me than most poets—why to open a new book of his is one of the most exciting literary events that can befall me in now my twenty-ninth year—would take some time, and the explanation might poorly satisfy the reader after all.
My Morning with a Book.
But I set out to describe a morning with a book. The book was Mr. Brown'sOld John, and other Poems, published but a few days back by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had enjoyed enough food and sleepto last me for some little time: few people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks: and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name—Henrik Ibsen! I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves, gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the bark were softening to beauty in the distance—for, to tell the truth, she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft—as I opened my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem,The Schooner.
"Just mark that schooner westward far at sea—'Tis but an hour agoWhen she was lying hoggish at the quay,And men ran to and froAnd tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore.And ever an anon, with crapulous glee,Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore."So to the jetty gradual she was hauled:Then one the tiller took,And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled;And one the canvas shookForth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nodsAnd smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and calledAnd cursed the Harbour-master by his gods."And rotten from the gunwale to the keel,Rat riddled, bilge bestank,Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reelAnd drag her oozy flank,And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughedAnd leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheelAs she thumped onward with her lumbering draught."And now, behold! a shadow of reposeUpon a line of grayShe sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose,She sleeps and dreams away,Soft blended in a unity of restAll jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes'Neath the broad benediction of the West—"Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps,And dies, and is a spirit pure;Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keepsHis lonely watch secure;And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waitsTill from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leapsAnd that strong hand within unbars the gates."
It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not the noble humanity ofCatherine Kinrade—and if this be not a great poem I know nothing about poetry—nor the rapture ofJessie, nor the awful pathos ofMater Dolorosa, nor the gentle pathos ofAber Stations, nor the fine religious feeling ofPlantingandDisguises. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked for them. One has not often such luck in reading—"Never the time and the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume.
Now, having carefully read the opinions ofsome half-a-dozen reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my reader, warning him by no means to missMater DalorosaandCatherine Kinrade. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I shall still preserve my own opinion.
April 7, 1894. His Plays.
For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound—and (which is worse) bleaching them unevenly. I have tried (let the miserable truth be confessed) turning the book daily, as one turns a piece oftoast—But this is not criticism of Mr. Davidson's "Plays."
His Style full of Imagination and Wit.
Now it would be easy and pleasant to express my great admiration of Mr. Davidson's Muse, and justify it by a score of extracts and so make an end: and nobody (except perhaps Mr. Davidson himself) would know my dishonesty. For indeed and out of doubt he is in some respects the most richly-endowed of all our younger poets. Of wit and of imagination he has almost a plethora: they crowd this book, and all his books, from end to end. And his frequent felicity of phrase is hardly less remarkable. You may turn page after page, and with each page the truth of this will become more obvious. Let me add his quick eye for natural beauty, his penetrating instinct for the principles that lie beneath its phenomena, his sympathy with all men's more generous emotions—and still I have a store of satisfactory illustrations at hand for the mere trouble of turning the leaves. Consider, for instance, the imagery in his description of the fight by Bannockburn—
Now are they hand to hand!How short a front! How close!They're sewn togetherwith steel cross-stitches, halbert over sword,Spear across lance and death the purfled seam!I never saw so fierce, so lock'd a fight.That tireless brand that like a pliant flailThreshes the lives from sheaves of Englishmen—Know you who wields it? Douglas, who but he!A noble meets him now. Clifford it is!No bitterer foes seek out each other there.Parried! That told! And that! Clifford, good night!And Douglas shouts to Randolf; Edward BruceCheers on the Steward; while the King's voice ringsIn every Scotch ear: such a narrow straitConfines this firth of war!Young Friar: "God gives me strengthAgain to gaze with eyes unseared.Jewels!These must be jewels peering in the grass.Cloven from helms, or on them: dead men's eyesScarce shine so bright. The banners dip and mountLike masts at sea...."
Or consider the fanciful melody of the Fairies' song inAn Unhistorical Pastoral—
"Weave the dance and sing the song;Subterranean depths prolongThe rainy patter of our feet;Heights of air are rendered sweetBy our singing. Let us sing,Breathing softly, fairily,Swelling sweetly, airily,Till earth and sky our echo ring.Rustling leaves chime with our song:Fairy bells its close prolongDing-dong, ding-dong."
—Or the closely-packed wit in such passages as these—
Brown: "This world,This oyster with its valves of toil and play,Would round his corners for its own good ease,And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in.* * * * * *Jones: And in this matter we may all be pearls.Smith: Be worldlings, truly. I would rather beA shred of glass that sparkles in the sun,And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own,Than one of these so trim and patent pearlsWith hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and downThe stiff brocade society affects."
I have opened the book at random for these quotations. Its pages are stuffed with scores as good. Nor will any but the least intelligent reviewer upbraid Mr. Davidson for deriving so much of his inspiration directly from Shakespeare. Mr. Davidson is still a young man; but the first of these plays,An Unhistorical Pastoral, was first printed so long ago as 1877; and the last,Scaramouch in Naxos; a Pantomime, in 1888. They are the work therefore of a very young man, who must use models while feeling his way to a style and method of his own.
Lack of "Architectonic" Quality.
But—there is a "but"; and I am coming at length to my difficulty with Mr. Davidson's work. Oddly enough, this difficulty may be referred to the circumstance that Mr. Davidson's poetry touches Shakespeare's great circle at a second point. Wordsworth, it will be remembered, once said that Shakespearecouldnot have written an Epic (Wordsworth, by the way, was rather fond of pointing out the things that Shakespeare could not have done). "Shakespearecouldnot have written an Epic; he would have died of plethora of thought." Substitute "wit" for "thought," and you have my difficulty with Mr. Davidson. It is given to few men to have great wit: it is given to fewer to carry a great wit lightly. In Mr. Davidson's case it luxuriates over the page and seems persistently to choke his sense of form. One image suggests another, one phrase springs under the very shadow of another until the fabric of his poem is completely hidden beneath luxuriant flowers of speech. Either they hide it from the author himself; or, conscious of his lack of architectonic skill, he deliberately trails these creepers over his ill-constructed walls. I think the former is the true explanation, but am not sure.
Let me be cautious here, or some remarks I made the other day upon another poet—Mr. Hosken, author ofPhaon and Sappho, andVerses by the Way—will be brought up against me. Defending Mr. Hosken against certain critics who had complained of the lack of dramatic power in his tragedies, I said, "Be it allowed that he has little dramatic power, and that (since the poem professed to be a tragedy) dramatic power was what you reasonably looked for. But an alert critic, considering the work of a beginner, will have an eye for the bye-strokes as well as the main ones: and if the author, while missing the main, prove effective with the bye—if Mr. Hosken, while failing to construct a satisfactory drama, gave evidence of strength in many fine meditative passages—then at the worst he stands convicted of a youthful error in choosing a literary form unsuited to convey his thought."
Not in the "Plays" only.
These observations I believe to be just, and having entered thecaveatin Mr. Hosken's case, I should observe it in Mr. Davidson's also, did these five youthful plays stand alone. But Mr. Davidson has published much since these plays first appeared—works both in proseand verse—Fleet Street Eclogues,Ninian Jamieson,A Practical Novelist,A Random Itinerary,Baptist Lake: and because I have followed his writings (I think from his first coming to London) with the greatest interest, I may possibly be excused for speaking a word of warning. I am quite certain that Mr. Davidson will never bore me: but I wish I could be half so certain that he will in time produce something in true perspective; a fabric duly proportioned, each line of which from the beginning shall guide the reader to an end which the author has in view; something which
"Servetur ad imumQualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet."
Sibi constet, be it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he is true to his fantasy.
But Mr. Davidson's wit is so brilliant within the circles of its temporary coruscation as to leave the outline of his work in a constant penumbra. Indeed, when he wishes to unburden his mind of an idea, he seems to haveless capacity than many men of half his ability to determine the form best suited for conveying it. If anything can be certain which has not been tried, it is that his storyA Practical Novelistshould have been cast in dramatic form. His vastly cleverPerfervid: orthe Career of Ninian Jamiesonis cast in two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic that hisRandom Itinerary—that fresh and agreeable narrative of suburban travel—should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to theCompleat Angler, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog Mr. Davidson even into his illustrations.A Random Itineraryand this book ofPlays(both published by Messrs. Mathews and Lane) have each a conspicuously clever frontispiece. But the illustrator ofA Random Itineraryhas chosen as his subject the very poem which I have mentioned as out of harmony with the book; and I must protest that the vilely sensual faces in Mr. Beardsley'sfrontispiece to thesePlaysare hopelessly out of keeping with the sunny paganism ofScaramouch in Naxos. There is nothing Greek about Mr. Beardsley's figures: their only relationship with the Olympians is derived through the goddess Aselgeia.
With all this I have to repeat that Mr. Davidson is in some respects the most richly endowed of all the younger poets. The grand manner comes more easily to him than to any other: and if he can cultivate a sense of form and use this sense as a curb upon his wit, he has all the qualities that take a poet far.
Nov. 24, 1984. "Ballads and Songs."
At last there is no mistake about it: Mr. John Davidson has come by his own. And by "his own" I do not mean popularity—though I hope that in time he will have enough of this and to spare—but mastery of his poetic method. This new volume of "Ballads and Songs" (London: John Lane) justifies our hopes and removes our chief fear. You remember Mr. T.E. Brown's fine verses on "Poets and Poets"?—
He fishes in the night of deep sea pools:For him the nets hang long and low,Cork-buoyed and strong; the silver-gleaming schoolsCome with the ebb and flowOf universal tides, and all the channels glow.Or holding with his hand the weighted lineHe sounds the languor of the neaps,Or feels what current of the springing brineThe cord divergent sweeps,The throb of what great heart bestirs the middle deeps.Thou also weavest meshes, fine and thin,And leaguer'st all the forest ways;But of that sea and the great heart thereinThou knowest nought; whole daysThou toil'st, and hast thy end—good store of pies and jays.
Mr. Davidson has never allowed us to doubt to which of these two classes he belongs. "For him the nets hang long and low." But though it may satisfy the Pumblechook within us to recall our pleasant prophesyings, we shall find it more salutary to remember our fears. We watched Mr. Davidson struggling in the thicket of his own fancies, and saw him too often break his shins over his own wit. We asked: Will he in the end overcome the defect of his qualities? Will he remain unable to see the wood for the trees? Or will he some day be givingus poems of which the whole conception and structure shall be as beautiful as the casual fragment or the single line? For this architectonic quality is just that "invidious distinction" which the fabled undergraduate declined to draw between the major and minor prophets.
The "Ballad of a Nun."
Since its appearance, a few weeks back, all the critics have spoken of "A Ballad of a Nun," and admitted its surprising strength and beauty. They have left me in the plight of that belated fiddle in "Rejected Addresses," or of the gentleman who had to be content with saying "ditto" to Mr. Burke. For once they seem unanimous, and for once they are right. The poem is beautiful indeed in detail:
"The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm;Clouds scattered largesses of rain;The sounding cities, rich and warm,Smouldered and glittered in the plain."
Dickens, reading for the first time Tennyson's "Dream of Fair Women," laid down the book, saying, "What a treat it is to come across a fellow who canwrite!" The verse that moved him to exclaim it was this—
"Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates;And hushed seraglios."
It is not necessary to compare these two stanzas. Tennyson's depicts a confused and moving dream; Mr. Davidson's a wide earthly prospect. The point to notice in each is the superlative skill with which the poet chooses the essential points of the picture and presents them so as to convey their full meaning, appealing at once to the senses and the intelligence. Tennyson, who is handling a mental condition in which the sensations are less sharply and logically separated than in a waking vision, can enforce this second appeal—this appeal to the intelligence—by introducing the indefinite "divers woes" between the definite "sheets of water" and the definite "ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates": just as Wordsworth, to convey the vague unanalyzed charm of singing, combines the indefinite "old unhappy far-off things" with the definite "battles long ago." Mr. Davidson, on the other hand, is describing what the eye sees, and conveying what the mind suspects, in their waking hours, and is therefore restricted in his use of the abstract and indefinite. Notice, therefore, how he qualifies that which can be seen—the sun, the clouds, the plain, the cities that "smoulder" and "glitter"—with the epithets "sounding," "rich," and "warm," each an inference rather than a direct sensation: for nobody imagines that the sound of the cities actually rang in the ear of the Nun who watched them from the mountain-side. The whole picture has the effect of one of those wide conventional landscapes which old painters delighted to spread beyond the court-yard of Nazareth, or behind the pillars of the temple at Jerusalem. My attempt to analyze it is something of a folly; to understand it is impossible:
"butifI could understandWhat you are, root and all, and all in all,"—
I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of song.
The "Ballad of the Making of a Poet."
But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson's work. They are thoroughly considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round atthe back. In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson's philosophy of life. In his "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" Mr. Davidson lets us know his conception of the poet's proper function.
"I am a man apart:A mouthpiece for the creeds of all the world;A soulless life that angels may possessOr demons haunt, wherein the foulest thingsMay loll at ease beside the loveliest;A martyr for all mundane moods to tear;The slave of every passion; and the slaveOf heat and cold, of darkness and of light;A trembling lyre for every wind to sound.* * * * * *Within my heartI'll gather all the universe, and singAs sweetly as the spheres; and I shall beThe first of men to understand himself...."
Making, of course, full concessions to the demands of poetical treatment, we may assume pretty confidently that Mr. Davidson intended this "Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet" for a soul's autobiography, of a kind. If so, I trust he will forgive me for doubting if he is at all likely to fulfil the poet's officeas he conceives it here, or even to approach within measurable distance of his ideal—
"A trembling lyre for every wind to sound."
That it is one way in which a poet may attain, I am not just now denying. But luckily men attain in many ways: and the man who sits himself down of fixed purpose to be an Æolian harp for the winds of the world, is of all men the least likely to be merely Æolian. For the first demand of Æolian sound is that the instrument should have no theories of its own; and explicitly to proclaim yourself Æolian is implicitly to proclaim yourself didactic. As a matter of fact, both the "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" and the "Ballad of a Nun" contain sharply pointed morals very stoutly driven home. In each the poet has made up his mind; he has a theory of life, and presents that theory to us under cover of a parable. The beauty of the "Ballad of a Nun"—or so much of it as stands beyond and above mere beauty of language—consists in this, that it is informed, and consciously informed, by a spirit of tolerance so exceedingly wide that to match it I can find one poem and one only among those of recent years: I mean"Catherine Kinrade." In Mr. Brown's poem the Bishop is welcomed into Heaven by the half-wilted harlot he had once condemned to painful and public punishment. In Mr. Davidson's poem, Mary, the Mother of Heaven, herself takes the form and place of the wandering nun and fills it until the penitent returns. Take either poem: take Mr. Brown's—
"Awe-stricken, he was 'wareHow on the Emerald stairA woman sat divinely clothed in white,And at her knees four cherubs bright.That laidTheir heads within their lap. Then, trembling, he essayedTo speak—'Christ's mother, pity me!'Then answered she—'Sir, I am Catherine Kinrade.'"
Or take Mr. Davidson's—in a way, its converse—
"The wandress raised her tenderly;She touched her wet and fast-shut eyes;'Look, sister; sister, look at me;Look; can you see through my disguise?'She looked and saw her own sad face,And trembled, wondering, 'Who art thou?''God sent me down to fill your place;I am the Virgin Mary now.'And with the word, God's mother shone;The wanderer whispered 'Mary, hail!'The vision helped her to put onBracelet and fillet, ring and veil.'You are sister to the mountains now,And sister to the day and night;Sister to God.' And on her browShe kissed her thrice and left her sight."
The voice in each case is that of a prophet rather than that of a reed shaken by the wind, or an Æolian harp played upon by the same.
March, 1895. Second Thoughts.
I have to add that, apart from the beautiful language in which they are presented, Mr. Davidson's doctrines do not appeal to me. I cannot accept his picture of the poet's as "a soulless life ... wherein the foulest things may loll at ease beside the loveliest." It seems to me at least as obligatory on a poet as on other men to keep his garden weeded and his conscience active. Indeed, I believe some asceticism of soul to be a condition of all really great poetry. Also Mr. Davidson appears to be confusing charity with an approbation of things in the strict sense damnable when he makes the Mother of Christ abet a Nun whose wanderings have no nobler excusethan a carnal desire—savoir enfin ce que c'est un homme. Between forgiving a lapsed man or woman and abetting the lapse I now, in a cooler hour, see an immense, an essential, moral difference. But I confess that the foregoing paper was written while my sense of this difference was temporarily blinded under the spell of Mr. Davidson's beautiful verse.
It may still be that his Nun had some nobler motive than I am able, after two or three readings of the ballad, to discover. In that case I can only ask pardon for my obtuseness.
June 1, 1895. Björnson's First Manner.
I see that the stories promised in Mr. Heinemann's new series of translations of Björnson areSynnövé Solbakken,Arne,A Happy Boy,The Fisher Maiden,The Bridal March,Magnhild, andCaptain Mansana. The first,Synnövé Solbakken, appeared in 1857. The others are dated thus:—Arnein 1858,A Happy Boyin 1860,The Fisher Maidenin 1868,The Bridal Marchin 1873,Magnhildin 1877, andCaptain Mansanain 1879. There are some very significant gaps here, the most important being the eight years' gap betweenA Happy BoyandThe Fisher Maiden. Again, after 1879 Björnson ceased to write novels for a while, returning to the charge in 1884 withFlags are Flying in Town and Haven, and following up withIn God's Way, 1889. Translations of these two novels have also been published by Mr. Heinemann (the former under an altered title,The Heritage ofthe Kurts) and, to use Mr. Gosse's words, are the works, by which Björnson is best known to the present generation of Englishmen. "They possess elements which have proved excessively attractive to certain sections of our public; indeed, in the case ofIn God's Way, a novel which was by no means successful in its own country at its original publication, has enjoyed an aftermath of popularity in Scandinavia, founded on reflected warmth from its English admirers."
Taking, then, Björnson's fiction apart from his other writings (with which I confess myself unacquainted), we find that it falls into three periods, pretty sharply divided. The earliest is the idyllic period, pure and simple, and includesSynnövé,Arne, andA Happy Boy. Then withThe Fisher Maidenwe enter on a stage of transition. It is still the idyll; but it grows self-conscious, elaborate, confused by the realism that was coming into fashion all over Europe; and the trouble and confusion grow until we reachMagnhild. WithFlags are FlyingandIn God's Waywe reach a third stage—the stage of realism, some readers would say. I should not agree. But these tales certainly differ remarkably from their predecessors. They are much longer, to begin with; in them, too, realism at length preponderates; and they are probably as near to pure realism as Björnson will ever get.
If asked to label these three periods, I should call them the periods of (1) Simplicity, (2) Confusion, (3) Dire Confusion.
I speak, of course, as a foreigner, obliged to read Björnson in translations. But perhaps the disability is not so important as it seems at first sight. Translations cannot hide Björnson's genius; nor obscure the truth that his genius is essentially idyllic. Now if one form of literary expression suffers more than another by translation it is the idyll. Its bloom is peculiarly delicate; its freshness peculiarly quick to disappear under much handling of any kind. But all the translations leaveArnea masterpiece, andSynnövéandThe Happy Boy.
How many artists have been twisted from their natural bent by the long vogue of "naturalism" we shall never know. We must makethe best of the great works which have been produced under its influence, and be content with that. But we may say with some confidence that Björnson's genius was unfortunate in the date of its maturity. He was born on the 8th of December, 1832, in a lonely farmhouse among the mountains, at the head of the long valley called Osterdalen; his father being priest of Kvikne parish, one of the most savage in all Norway. After six years the family removed to Naesset, in the Romsdal, "a spot as enchanting and as genial as Kvikne is the reverse." Mr. Gosse, who prefaces Mr. Heinemann's new series with a study of Björnson's writings, quotes a curious passage in which Björnson records the impression of physical beauty made upon his childish mind by the physical beauty of Naesset:—