Art to Vondel was a revelation of the divine in man, and therefore the best promoter of virtue. Hence his passion for poetry, and his admiration for painting, music, and architecture. How fitting that he who sang the union of the arts:
"Blithe Poesy and Painting fair,Two sisters debonair,"
should be crowned "king of the feast" by a company of fellow artists!
Vondel was the painter's poet. He wrote numerous inscriptions for paintings. He praises Raphael, Veronese, Titian, Bassano, Giulo Romano, Lastman, Sandrart, Goltzius (the etcher), and Rubens. He apparently preferred the idealists of the Italian school, for he says but little about the realists of the day, Steen, Ostade, Brouwer, and Teniers; nor even concerning those who copied nature like Douw, De Hoogh, and Mutsu. The great Rembrandt he names but twice. In one place he speaks of the portrait of Cornelis Anslo, of which he tamely says, "The visible part is the least of him, and who would see Anslo must hear him." He seems to have been more impressed by the fine portrait of Anna Wymers, for he says: "Anna seems to be alive." Elsewhere, however, he speaks of "the night-owl, who hides himself from the day in his shadows of cobweb;" which is thought to be a covert reference to that magnificent study in chiaroscuro, Rembrandt's "Night Patrol." It is certain, however, that he did not realize the powerful genius of Holland's greatest artist.
Vondel, the admirer of the Italian classics, with their delicacy and regularity, probably could not appreciate the revolutionary splendors of this great magician. Nor is there any evidence to show that any friendship existed between these two men, each the undying glory of his country. And yet in some respects the poet and the painter were strikingly alike. Both were masters of style, and grandly daring and original. Both were in the highest sense creative, and dealt in tremendous effects, soaring from mountain-top of grandeur into the heaven of the sublime. Each was comprehensive and universal; each was a personified mood of his nation and the maker of an epoch. Each suffered poverty in old age.
Yet in one respect the painter had the advantage over the poet. He spoke the universal language of the eye, and thus his message has reached millions who were deaf to his tongue. The political obscurity, on the other hand, into which little Holland was plunged so soon after the meteoric blaze of her brief ascendancy, confined her language to her narrow territory; and Vondel, equally worthy with Rembrandt of the admiration of the world, became a sealed book save to his countrymen. The former, however, was the very life of his time, its recognized voice; the latter was in his life neglected, to become after his death the most illustrious of his race, a name to conjure an age out of obscurity.
Rubens, on the other hand, the poet fully appreciated. In the dedication of his drama, "The Brothers," 1639, he calls the great Fleming "the glory among the pencils of our age."
Music, we know, had a powerful fascination for our poet. He himself played the lute, while his poetry throbs with the very heart of melody. How lovingly he speaks of the divine art of song, that "charms the soul out of the body, filling it with rare delight—a foretaste of the bliss of the angels"!
How keen must have been his enjoyment when at Muiden he heard the lovely singers of that age—the gifted Tesselschade on her guitar, or the talented harpist, Christina van Erp; or when in his home in the Warmoesstraat he heard the patriotic chimes of his beloved city pealing the lingering hours into oblivion! How profoundly, too, must his deep, earnest soul have been stirred by the grandeur of the Psalms, rising on the wings of Zweling's noble melodies to the vaulted arches of the old cathedral where he was wont to worship!
The attitude of a poet toward nature is always of peculiar and absorbing interest. Is it because she is the perpetual fount of ideals, because of her voiceless sympathy with his ever-changing mood, or because her grandeur and loveliness have power to move the deeps of his soul? However it be, the poets have almost without exception found her the source of their inspiration.
Into her rude confessional they pour the unreserved tale of sorrows that no man can understand; and she gently whispers peace. At her feet they lay the guilty story of a soul; the love, the passions of a heart; the joys, the pains, the riotous thoughts of life; and she gently whispers peace. And here, too, Vondel opened his heart, and here he also obtained comfort for the vexing ills of life.
It has been said that man's appreciation of the beauties of nature is proportioned to the degree of his cultivation. In the ruder ages in Holland, as in Germany, the mysterious forces of the physical world and their various manifestations became personified in the good and bad genii of the Teutonic mythology. In proportion as the worship of these genii ceased, nature became appreciated for its own sake. It had first to be divested of the fear-inspiring supernatural. To this Christianity and the accumulating discoveries in science largely contributed.
Karel van Mander first introduced this feeling into painting; and Hendrik Spieghel, into literature. And then came Hooft and Vondel, who in this respect, as in all else, stood far above their contemporaries.
Vondel's enjoyment of nature is not so keen as that of Hooft, but it is far deeper and stronger, and grew steadily to the end of his life. Now and then his descriptions remind one of the brooding landscapes of the "melancholy Ruysdael;" at other times of the creations of Lingelbach and Pynacker, in those striking scenes where Dutch realism and Italian fancy are oddly combined.
Under the influence of Seneca and Du Bartas, according to the artificial fashion of the day, he at first employed high-sounding mythological names as symbols for the things themselves; but he soon outgrew this classical affectation. Already in his "Palamedes," especially in the chorus of "Eubeers," is this feeling for nature apparent. This charming bucolic is the picture of a Dutch landscape. Elsewhere we have mentioned its resemblance to the "L'Allegro" of Milton.
Like the bard of Avon, our poet saw but little of the world. Twice he made a business trip to Denmark, and shortly before his death he paid a visit to Cologne. In addition to this, he made several inland journeys—one to the Gooi:
"Where the grand oak so thickly growsBeyond rich fields, where buckwheat glows."
To Vondel truly "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." All of his poems, particularly the "Lucifer," are studded with figures of the stars.
The poet drew many of his figures, too, from animal life, as the beasts and the birds in the sustained Virgilian similes in the "Lucifer." What can be more exquisite, also, than his verses on the tame sparrow of the lovely Susanne Bartelot, in the style of the "Passer, deliciæ suæ puellæ" of Catullus?
The north wind he calls "a winter-bird, so cold and rough." The spring is his delight. He is glad when he sees men busy fishing, planting, and hunting, and engaged in all manner of bucolic occupations. In the Norway pines unloaded on the River Y, he sees a forest of masts from which the tricolor of his dear country will be unfurled in every clime.
Would you know his capacity for aesthetic symbolism? Read his superb ode to the Rhine.
Flowers were to him the beautiful symbols of equally beautiful moral truths. What a world of pathos in his voice where he says of Mary Queen of Scots:
"O! Roman Rose, cut from her bleeding stem!"
And where he speaks of the mournful rosemary in the death-wreath of his little daughter Saartje! For little Maria, his darling grand-child, he wishes "a winding sheet of flowers—of violets white and red and purple, blue and yellow." In the garlands of his fancy he ever weaves the blooms of his delight, lilies, violets, roses—white and red—and his national flower, the glorious tulip.
He loved the open heaven and the airy freedom of solitude. "The welkin wide is mine," he says, and like a wild bird adds, "and mine the open sky." He loved the woods, where his ears were caressed by "the blithe echoes of the careless birds."
Long before Shelley he sang of the lark, "wiens keeltje steiltjes steigert" ("whose throat so steeply soars"). Long before Keats he was thrilled by the deep-toned nightingale.
"The shrill-voiced nightingale,Who at thy casement bowerPours out his breathless tale,"
reminds him of the questioning soul at the window of eternity," peering through panes on darkness unconfined." Then, again, he likens himself to a nightingale, caged for days in the mournful cold, that bursts into a rapturous melody to see the warm sun melt away the gloom.
His soul communed with nature in her deepest and quietest moods. The peaceful meadow, the calm beauty of the woods, the forest-crowned mountains, the tumultuous sea were all the themes of his song.
Though his feeling for nature was not so fine nor so intense as that of some of the later poets, yet it was deeper and truer. In the world around him he saw but a reflection of the grander world beyond.
Nor was the pantheistic conception strange to him. See the first chorus of the "Lucifer," where he calls God "the soul of all we can conceive;" and the second act, where he speaks of:
"——the farthest roundsAnd endless circles of eternity,That, from the bounds of time and space set free,Revolve unceasingly around one God,Who is their centre and circumference.
How like the pantheism of Spinoza, first proclaimed some years later!
Would you know him as a patriot? Hear his splendid tones of jubilation over the victory of his countrymen—a victory where truth and freedom triumphed. Hear his fine odes celebrating the commerce and the progress of the growing commonwealth. Listen to his bursts of patriotism in his "Orange May Song," and where he calls the ancient Greek sea-galleys, "child's play beside ours."
Vondel was a representative Dutchman, and there was a strong national stamp on all that he did. He was a grand type of the burgher of the great Dutch middle class, which has ever been the glory of the Netherlands, and which has given to the world such an illustrious array of soldiers, painters, scholars, poets, and statesmen. In reading him we are continually reminded that we are in the land of dykes and windmills. Thus all of his heroes are invested with Holland dignities. We hear of burghers, burgomasters, and stadtholders; of the dunes, the sea, the dams, the strand, and the green, fertile meadows. Wherever the scene of the play, we always recognize the streets, the canals, the houses, the palaces, and the environs of Amsterdam. This was not due to a lack of historical information, as was the case with Shakespeare, but because the poet desired to bring the truth closer to the hearts of his hearers. The fact, too, that this made the scenic requirements of a play considerably less, thus reducing the expense of presentation, might also have had some influence.
Vondel, furthermore, when representing the past, never forgot the present. It was ever before his eyes. Hence many of his plays were political allegories, and were significant for their bearing upon the time.
The one universal characterization of all of his work, one that glows in every poem, is his love of freedom—the ruling passion of his countrymen. Already in the "Passover "—his first tragedy, written at the age of twenty-six—we hear his cry, "O! sweetest freedom." Soon afterwards, in his lyrics and in "Palamedes," he showed his strong sympathy with Oldenbarneveldt; and during the bitter persecution that followed, when he was forced to fly like a hunted beast from house to house, this spirit grew by the opposition that it fed upon into a fierce blaze, only quenched by death.
Like the Father of Tuscan literature, his thoughts were ever attuned to the spirit of his age. Like Dante, too, he was ever in the heart of the battle. Like him, also, he was not worldly wise, and was naturally of a rebellious temperament. He was himself in perpetual revolt. This was due, however, not to a saturnine disposition, but to a keen sense of justice, and to the idealism of a lofty, cultivated mind. To compel the age to conform to the measure of his own conceptions he often found procrustean methods necessary. Hence his stern aggressiveness against wrong.
He fain would have sat apart in silent contemplation, but he was destined to know neither the Olympic calm of Goethe, nor the sublime serenity of Shakespeare. "The life of the day, like an octopus, grasped him and would not let him go." He drank in the wine of freedom, and his soul was filled with the hunger of strife. His cry now became a battle-cry. Wherever he saw wrong and injustice—and his eyes were ever open—he donned his armor and dealt crushing blows for the cause of the oppressed. Earnest, still, and passionate, great of soul and impressionable of heart, the poet was a born fighter. His whole life was a polemic against tyranny.
His dear fatherland was the alpha and omega of his inspiration, and he was, perhaps, the first Dutchman who deeply felt the consciousness of national power. The next object of his soul's affection was his city, Amsterdam, whose glories he never grew tired of singing. His characterization:
"The town of commerce, Amsterdam,Known round the circle of the globe,"
might not improperly be reflected upon its new and yet more powerful namesake in the New World, of whose grandeur he might well be deemed the prophet, when, in his "Gysbrecht," with patriotic eloquence he pictures the Amsterdam of the coming centuries. What though the ruling trident has departed from the "Venice of the North," her peerless daughter, far across the seas, yet holds triumphant sway!
In his fiery patriotism Vondel much reminds us of Milton. He also was at heart a zealous republican, though he had a Christian's unshaken reverence for the anointed kings of earth, and for what he thought a God-constituted authority. Hence the "Lucifer," and his relentless opposition to the regicides of England and to Cromwell, "that murderer without God and shame, who dared to desecrate and to assault the Lord's anointed," as he says bitterly in one of his polemics.
Like the great Englishman, the Hollander was also a good hater; and he never spared what he hated. Though charitable, he was uncompromising, and forgave not easily; always, however, deprecating the excesses of the "root and branch" zealots of his own party. Just as Milton, after having joined the Presbyterians, forsook them when they in turn began to persecute the followers of other creeds, so, too, Vondel left the Remonstrants when they crossed the jealous line of freedom.
We are indeed inclined to believe that his strongest trait was his love of justice, which caused him to oppose tyranny under every guise, and to stigmatize the faults of his own church and party with expletives as crushing as those that he hurled against his enemies.
Thus his hatred of the Catholic Spaniards and of the Dutch Gomarists. The bloody persecution of the one was in his eyes no worse than the oppressive hypocrisy of the other. Even his beloved House of Orange drew from him the bitterest opposition when, in Prince Maurice and in William II., it threatened the liberty of his country and the privileges of his beloved Amsterdam. Of him it may truly be said that his eyes were never blinded by party prejudice.
Milton, in an immortal sonnet, blew a trumpet-blast of vengeance for the slaughtered Piedmontese. Why was that trumpet silent w hen his own party perpetrated a similar massacre at Drogheda? Vondel was, indeed, far more magnanimous than his great English contemporary. He had more of "the milk of human kindness."
How strong is our poet's admiration for the founders of the Republic, the fathers of the "golden age," and for that grand race of intrepid discoverers, pioneers, and explorers that pierced every corner of the globe! How, too, flames his soul with pride, when he recounts the brave deeds of those old sea-lions, Tromp and de Ruyter, and their fearless companions, in the fierce battle against the growing English supremacy! Not one of those heroes whom he did not crown with the wreath of an immortal eulogy!
Yet Vondel, even as Dante, was at heart a man of peace. Like his countrymen, he never sought the fray; but when battle was forced upon him, it meant a fight to the death. All his fighting was for peace. In one of his poems he speaks of peace as:
"A treasure—Ah! its worth unknown,Surpassing far a triumph in renown."
Elsewhere he says, "The olive more than laurel pleases me." He never forgot the high seriousness of his mission. He never lost sight of the dignity of Christian manhood.
Vondel was in a large sense also the poet of Christendom; a crusader, with his face ever towards the New Jerusalem, throned in ethereal splendors. He felt himself a member of that large Christian alliance that Henry IV. wished to found as a barrier against the encroachments of the Turk, the arch-foe of Christendom.
"He comes—the Turk! We stand with winged arms,"
he shouts in one of his poems. Yet he never forgot to pray, also, that the erring ones, both Jew and Gentile, might be brought into the fold of the "true Church."
Of particular interest are the views of so old and so profound a seer on life; for every poet has his scheme of life. What men call genius is, indeed, only the faculty of seeing life through the prism of a temperament, and the poets are preëminently the men of temperament. Vondel, with his earnest, sincere nature, out of the bewildering chaos of his environment soon evolved his own philosophy of existence. "Life, that sad tragedy," the youthful poet calls it in his "Passover." To him already life was a passing pageant, and man, an exile. His epitome of the world's history, moreover, is not unlike the celebrated epigram of Rhÿnvis Feith, another Dutch poet:
"Man, like a withered leaf, falls in oblivion's wave.We are, and fade away—the cradle and the grave;Between them flits a dream, a drama of the heart;Smart yields his place to Joy, and Joy again to Smart;The monarch mounts his throne; the slave bows to the floor;Death breathes upon the scene—the players are no more."
His gaze, like Milton's, was ever upward, through the prison-bars of time, into the unconfined vast of eternity. His tone, too, was most glorious when singing "celestial things."
How like the voice of a Hebrew prophet his note of warning, where he cries:
"Batavians, repent;Think of Tyre and Sidon.Repent as the Ninevites!O! mourn your sins!"
And after all this painful revelry of life, this lust of action, and the battle's roar, it is a "haven sweet and still" that his earth-tormented soul longs for. How softly he whispers after his fiery trumpet tones are done:
"O! help me, O my God, to give my life to thee,My fragile self, my will, my little all. Let me,O thou beyond compare! O source of everything!In praises rich and deep thy matchless glory sing!"
In the pensive twilight of old age, he grew more and more conscious of the true everlasting, and his patriotism became the all-embracing one of the "fatherland above." He now began to look forward with child-like faith to the revelations of the resurrection, though not forgetting that:
"The infant of eternityMust first be cradled in the tomb;"
but believing that from the cerements of mystery shall break a light to lead the soul to heaven.
Vondel, to an extraordinary degree, possessed that keen insight into human nature which is the first requisite of the great satirist. He was the Juvenal of his time. Though his wit is never delicate nor keen, it is, however, sweeping and irresistible. His was no gentle zephyr of irony to tickle the tender cuticle of a supersensitive age, but a very cyclone of mockery to laugh a thick-skinned generation out of folly.
His poetry is ever the instrument of exaltation; and though in its condemnation of evil it often by its directness and frankness gives some offense to the delicate edge of our modern refinement, it is never indecently coarse; it is never a pander to vice.
Indignation more intense, scorn more contemptuous, satire more powerful, invective more tremendous than that glowing in the polemics of this great satirist have never struck fear into the hardened hearts of the wicked. Few men have been so hated; few have been so loved.
Yet the sublime is the true field of this poet, and sublimer thoughts than his were surely never spoken. The grandeur of Job, the glory of the Psalms, and the splendor of the Apocalypse are all to be found in his magnificent Biblical tragedies, that noble series commencing with the "Jerusalem Desolate" of his untried youth, and ending with the "Noah" of his octogenarian ripeness.
The influence of the Bible on his art was prodigious. The Holy Writ was the inexhaustible quarry from which he hewed his master, pieces; throughout whose development may be traced the growth of a human soul. See his paraphrase of the Psalms, if you would know his enjoyment of the serene beauty of holiness.
The artistic truth of all his creations is seen in their elemental objectivity—the portrayal by vivid flashes of feeling and by artful representation of the ever-during and imperishable. In most of his dramas is the sublimity of Æschylus with the fine proportion and the directness of Sophocles. In others, as in the "Leeuwendalers," where he sings the triumph of peace, is the sweetness and the feminine strength of Euripides.
Of Vondel it has truly been said: "Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit;" for to beauty—
"God's handmaid, Beauty,Whose touch roundsA dew-drop or a world"—
he ever paid the incense of a passionate devotion.
"Æschylus does right without knowing it," said Sophocles; even so Vondel possessed an unerring instinct for the true; ever stringing the jewelled beads of fancy on the golden thread of truth.
Like Æschylus, too, he was at heart a lyric poet; yet who shall say that in his character delineation, in the sweeping energy of his action, and in the management of his plot, he was not almost equally as admirable?
Like Dryden, Vondel rose very slowly to the stature of his full power. All of his dramas preceding the "Lucifer" show this gradual development; all of those that come later maintain the same standard of excellence.
Like Goethe, the Dutch poet exerted an ennobling influence on the theatre of his country. Like Dante, he was fond of a strong, bold outline, and always chose a direct rather than a circuitous route. Like Shakespeare, he was a keen observer of affairs, a student of life. His works are the rimed chronicles of his age. His was a transcendent genius, not oppressed by excessive culture, and with the creative ever the ruling instinct. To him poetry was the divinest of the arts. It became the ritual of his soul's worship; duty, beauty, and religion were the three strings on his melodious lyre.
His works abound in little scholasticism. Pedantry and affectation were his abomination; pith and vigor, directness and comprehensiveness, the radical elements of his strength. In his works we find a harvest of such glorious themes as store the granary of poet minds; we see everywhere evidences of power. We are ever startled by:
"The lightning flash of an immortal thought,The rolling thunder of a mighty line."
Vondel's similes are more striking than his metaphors; there is a sustained glow in his imagery. In this respect, also, he shows the Oriental bent of his genius. This is furthermore seen in his personification of the elements of nature and of the stars and constellations, as in the "Lucifer," which gives a barbaric splendor to the play. Few poets, indeed, in any literature, contain such splendid and elevated images.
He, too, could woo discordant sounds to harmony, and wove the consonantal Dutch into mellow meshes of ensnaring sound. A nobleness not devoid of grace, a sublimity not austere, but warm with human sympathy; a manner more remarkable for chaste strength and a rugged symmetry of form than for delicacy or elegance—these are some of the characteristics of his style.
Not for him the sweet felicities of the mincing phraser or the dreamy languors of the riming troubadour. Not for him the gaysome zephyr or the dim, romantic moon. He is ever on the serene altitude of lofty contemplation, or in the valley, battling like a god. He is always deeply serious. He is everywhere sincere. His is the whirlwind and the storm; the noonday glare and the midnight gloom. His is the eagle's bold, epic flight and the lark's wild, lyric soar. No nightingale of sentiment trills her dulcet serenade amid the forest of his song. And yet who can be more tender and affecting, who more truly, softly sweet? All is virile; nothing is effeminate. All is manly, healthful, pure. There is no morbid fever of a brain diseased and foul. There is no pale, misleading will-o'-the-wisp of a heart decayed and bad. There is freshness, there is beauty, there is truth. "Magnificent" is the one word for his manner, "the grand style" of the Netherlands.
His was the sombre Occidental imagination fired with the splendor of the Orient. His poetry is a Gothic cathedral, grand, towering, and impressive, typical at once of the massive ruggedness of the oak and the severe sublimity of the Alp; a Teutonic temple, in whose cloistered corridors we hear the majestic sweep of unseen angels' wings, while the glorious symphony of harps and psalteries, played by countless cherubim, mingling with the rich bass of the organ and the ethereal tenor of invisible choristers, rolls like a flood of celestial harmony through all the deep diapason from heaven to hell.
The word "vondel" in the Brabantian dialect means a "little bridge," which suggests a not inapt analogy; for it was Vondel who bridged the chasm between the crude Mystery and Miracle Plays of the Chambers of Rhetoric, and the "Lucifer," a drama unequalled in the history of Dutch literature. Between the dead abstractions of the Chambers and the warm, concrete life of the sublime Vondelian drama, even as between "Gorboduc" and "Hamlet," lay the experience of one soul.
Hooft, like Heiberg in Denmark and Lessing in Germany, instituted a revolution in the world of taste. But Vondel, even more than Hooft, developed the latent powers of the tongue, enlarged its resources, and fixed its form. His is still the noblest of Dutch diction, possessing that strange virility that defies time.
At the beginning of the century the language was hardly fit for literary use. The school of Vondel in one generation—the first half of the seventeenth century—did for Holland what the thirteenth century had done for Italy and the sixteenth for England. Vondel, no less than Shakespeare, was the creator of an epoch. His influence on his own language was equally as wonderful, his impress on his country's literature almost as great.
To him the poets of the following generations, even the great Bilderdÿk, looked for inspiration. To him also they have ever paid homage.
Like Homer, he also found his Zoilus, but the greatest intellects of his country and his age—and surely few epochs have seen greater—Grotius, Hooft, Vossius, Huyghens, and scores of others of almost equal fame thought him not inferior to the noblest poets of antiquity.
Vondel lived in a memorable epoch and was its personification. It was the Augustan Era of Holland, the Dutch Age of Pericles. Amsterdam, like another Athens, had become the centre of the world's civilization. Nowhere in that age were the arts so sedulously cultivated; nowhere had their cultivation been rewarded by such high attainment.
Science, the world puzzler, opened his toy-box, the universe, and showed its countless wonders. Philosophy, with guessive hand, played at the riddle Destiny, and mild Religion, at the game of War. Literature, the sum of all the arts and all the sciences, shone like the dazzling Arctic sun in its brief midnight noon—one hour of glory in a day of gloom. When the poet died, the epoch died with him. A night of mediocrity now brooded over the marshy fens of Holland. A swarm of poetasters succeeded the race of poets. Originality was banished. Affectation, with his sycophantic wiles, had won the heart of a degenerate generation. Art, like a flower suddenly deprived of the warm kisses of day, pined away in the sterile cold. Genius was dead.
Vondel is preëminently the poet of freedom. The principles sanctified by the blood of his countrymen, and won by nearly a century of the most noble daring and heroic endurance, he, as the voice of his nation, glorified in his beautiful pastoral, the "Leeuwendalers." These same principles also became the rallying shout of the English Revolution of 1688. That same war-cry, reechoing at Lexington and Alamance, swept the American Colonies from Bunker Hill to Guilford Court House like a whirlwind of flame; and tyranny, with shuddering dread, fled to its native lair.
The shibboleth of liberty, first blown with stirring trumpet tones across the watery moors of Holland by the patriot-poet Vondel, was now repeated in deathless prose at Mecklenburg and Philadelphia. A new United States arose like a glorious phoenix from the ashes of the old.
For the American Constitution was but the grand conclusion of that lingering bloody syllogism of freedom, of which the Treaty of Munster was the major premise. And Vondel, inspired logician of the true, unravelling the tangled skein of his country's destiny, also uncoiled the golden thread of our great fate.
Of his magnificent works, the natural heritage of the American people, we here present this choice fragment, the "Lucifer," aglow with the eternal spirit of revolt.
And now we leave our poet. A spotless name, the record of a noble, sacrificing life, a message of beauty, and a treasury of immortal truths—this was Vondel's legacy to his countrymen.
L.C.v.N.
"Away, away, into the shadow-land,Where Myth and Mystery walk hand in hand;Where Legend cons her half-forgotten lore,And Sphinx and Gorgon throng the silent shore."
The Paradise history, as solving the problem of the origin of man and the origin of evil, and as foreshadowing the goal of human destiny, has always been a subject of universal concern; one full of fascination for the imagination of the poet. Few subjects, indeed, have aroused such widely diffused and long sustained interest.
Beginning with the "Creation" of the Spanish monk Dracontius, the Biblical paraphrases of the old English poet Cædmon, and the Latin poem of Avitus, Bishop of Vienna, we see, at different periods, various studies of this absorbing theme, especially in Italy, where a score or more poets and essayists made it the source of their inspiration.
Perhaps the most noted of these was Andrieni (1578-1652), who wrote the "Adamo," a tragedy in five acts, whose subject is the fall of man. This drama, however, is a rather crude affair, such allegorical abstractions as Death, Sin, and Despair being the chief characters.
About the same period, strange to say, the Netherland imagination, not long awakened from its medieval torpor, also became fired with this theme. The youthful Grotius was the first to attempt it in his "Adamus Exul," a Latin drama of considerable merit. This was in 1601, several years before the "Adamo" of Andrieni. Two other Dutchmen of the same generation, both far greater poets than Grotius, were also attracted by this subject. One was the distinguished Father Cats in his idyll, "The First Marriage;" the other was Justus van den Vondel in his "Lucifer."
We would, in passing, call attention to the curious coincidence that so many poets of so many different nations, most of them doubtless without knowledge of the others, should about the same time have chosen this subject of such historical and symbolical importance. For besides the poets mentioned were many others: the Scotchman Ramsay, the Spaniard de Azevedo, the Portuguese Camoens, the Frenchman Du Bartas, and two Englishmen, Phineas Fletcher and John Milton. A more remarkable instance of telepathy is not, we believe, on record.
Of all of the works of the many authors who have treated this theme, only two, however, have withstood the critical test of time; only two have been awarded the palm of immortality. These two are Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Vondel's "Lucifer": the former, the grandest of English epics; the latter, the noblest of Dutch dramas. It is the "Lucifer" that we have been asked to discuss.
The "Lucifer" was published thirteen years before "Paradise Lost." The scheme of the English poem had, however, already been crystallized in the mind of its author for fifteen years. This scheme originally contemplated a drama, which the poet's powerful imagination gradually developed into an epic.
To whom Vondel was indebted for the foundation of his tremendous drama is easily ascertained. He himself mentions his authorities in his admirable and learned preface. Among these were, besides the Holy Writ, the various Church Fathers, the "Adamus Exul" of Grotius, the work of Du Bartas, and a treatise on the fallen angels, by the English Protestant, Richard Baker. His own imagination, however, soared far above the fundamental hints that he received from any of these works on the subject, so that the "Lucifer" is rightly considered one of the most original and comprehensive poems in literature.
To whom Milton was indebted for the idea of his great epic is, on the other hand, not so easy to discover, although generation after generation of critics have thrown upon this problem the searchlight of innumerable essays.
That the "Paradise Lost" is scintillant with many of the brightest gems in the crown of the Greek and Latin classics is apparent even at a cursory reading. That it is also studded with poetic paraphrases of many modern authors has often been asserted.
However, the opportunity for originality was colossal, and Milton's imagination proved equal to the task. The conception of "Paradise Lost" alone makes it the grandest work of the imagination of modern times.
That the English poet occasionally borrowed a thought or a sentence can not be doubted. Besides, he had a wonderful memory, long and tenacious, which involuntarily emptied its gatherings into the flow of his thought and into the stream of his discourse. That this was not always done unconsciously is known from Milton's own confession, where he says: "To borrow and to better in the borrowing is no plagiarie." And that he bettered in the borrowing who can doubt? All that he touched turned to gold; all that he thought came out transfigured. In the alembic of his genius truth became beauty; the mortal, the immortal.
As the "Lucifer" and the "Paradise Lost" are both concerning the same subject, and as they are both founded upon the Biblical account of the creation, it is but natural that they should have much in common. A comparison of the two poems, therefore, we feel sure would bring to light some striking and curious resemblances and many equally strong and remarkable contrasts.
As such comparison would expand this article beyond the prescribed limits, we must leave it to the reader himself. Nor should he, for one instant, forget the fundamental difference between the drama and the epic.
The epic may wander through the dales of Arcady, along description's slow, meandering way, to pluck the roses of beauty and the lilies of sentiment there growing in so sweet abundance. The drama, with vigorous step and bold, unerring eye, pursues a straight path to the mountain-top of its climax, whence, with increasing momentum, it plunges down to its awful catastrophe. It is the difference between narration and action.
We shall have to content ourselves, therefore, by a brief reference to those who have already given this matter their attention.
That Milton was under great obligations to Vondel's drama has been maintained by Dutch men of letters for generations. It has also become the contention of several distinguished English critics. Even as far back as 1825 the poet Beddoes, in a review of "Hayley's Life and Letters" (Quarterly Review, vol. xxxi.), says: "An effect which has hitherto not been noticed was then produced by the Dutch poets. In their school Joshua Sylvester (who lived amongst them) learnt some of the peculiarities of his versification; and if Milton was incited by the perusal of any poem upon the same subject to compose his 'Paradise Lost,' it was by studying the 'Lucifer' and 'Adam in Ballingschap' of Vondel, for he tried his strength with the same great poet in the 'Samson Agonistes;' Vondel being, indeed, the only contemporary with whom he would not have felt it a degradation to vie."
Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, in a brilliant essay entitled "Milton and Vondel," was, we believe, the first Englishman who gave the subject conscientious study.
For this, on account of his knowledge of the difficult Dutch language, he was peculiarly fitted. Mr. Gosse, in his own interesting manner, tells how, during the seventeenth century, the Dutch, then one of the most vigorous languages of Europe, was much more studied than it is to-day; how the patriot Puritan, Roger Williams, having learned the language in Holland during his exile there, taught it to John Milton, then Cromwell's Latin secretary; how Milton also must have heard of the great fame of the "Lucifer," and of the storm of fanatical opposition that greeted its publication, from some of the Dutch diplomats whom it was his place to entertain; how, too, he could hardly have been ignorant of the name of the distinguished author of the drama, since it is known that he was well acquainted with Hugo Grotius, who was a warm admirer and the bosom friend of Vondel.
In addition to these and other reasons, Mr. Gosse then brings forward a plausible array of internal evidence, showing many points of similarity in the construction and in the treatment of the two poems, summing up with the conclusion that Milton was undoubtedly under considerable obligation to his great Dutch contemporary.
Rev. George Edmundson, M.A., of Middlesex, England, a graduate of Oxford, in a scholarly and painstaking work of two hundred pages, entitled "Milton and Vondel—a Literary Curiosity," next took up the subject, carrying the comparison not only into these two poems, but into all the works of Milton and into several others of Vondel.
Mr. Edmundson also discovered many wonderful coincidences and innumerable parallelisms in phrase and in imagery. Inspired with the motto,Suum cuique honorem, he has woven a tissue of most ingenious arguments to prove that Milton borrowed assiduously from the "Lucifer," the "Adam," the "Samson," and other works of Vondel.
Mr. Vance Thompson, in the New YorkMusical Courierof December 15, 1897, has also added some interesting data to the subject.
With all the conclusions of these gentlemen we are not yet, however, prepared to agree. It is true we have not given the matter the comparative study that they have given it. We would wait, therefore, until we had thought more deeply about it before expressing our final opinion. However, we believe that a critical and impartial comparison of the two masterpieces will neither detract from the glory of Milton nor dim the grandeur of Vondel.
"Lucifer" is not the story "of man's first disobedience," though this is the outcome of the catastrophe. It is the drama of the fall of the angels. Yet man is the one subject of contention. Our first parents are, therefore, kept in the logical background of cause and effect. The creation of Adam, his bliss and his growing eminence, were the prime cause of the angelic conspiracy. The two-fold effect of the revolt was to the rebellious angels loss of Heaven, and to Adam loss of Eden.
Vondel, moreover, follows the doctrines of certain theologians that Christ would have become man even had Adam not sinned. Like Milton, he measures the scene of his heroic action with "the endless radius of infinitude," and by the artful use of terrestrial analogies conveys to the reader that idea of incomprehensible vastness that the transcendent nature of the subject demands. Vondel is, indeed, even more vague; the drama not giving opportunity for detailed description. Both are a wonderful contrast to the minute visual exactness of Dante.
The attempt to reconcile the spiritual qualities of the divine world with the physical properties of this, necessarily introduces some unavoidable incongruities. How can a material conception of the immaterial be given save through the symbols of the real! How else can the unknown be ascertained save through the equation of the known! How else, save by visual and sensuous images, express such impalpable thought!
"Thus measuring things in Heaven by things on earth,"
the poet gives us a finite picture of the infinite; a picture which yet, by means of shadowy outlines and an artistic vagueness, impresses us with the awful sublimity of the illimitable and eternal. The physical immensity of the poem is unsurpassed.
Humanized gods and Titanic passions shadowed by fate upon the immaculate canvas of sacred legend—this is the play. The personality of the author is never seen; yet when we know the man and his life, we cannot but see therein the reflex of his own experience. The scene is in Heaven and never leaves it. When actions occur elsewhere, they are described.
Infinities above the scene of contention, far beyond "Heaven's blazing archipelagoes," where no imagination dares to soar, reigns He
"Before whose faceThe universe with its eternityIs but a mote, a moment poised in space."
There
"Stand the hidden springs of life revealed,The wondrous mechanism from earth concealed.There Nature's primal premises appearIn simple grandeur, deep and crystal clear,Flowing from out the heart of boundless oceanOf the eternal Now. With rapt devotionA myriad ministering forces there awaitThe summons of His awful eyes of fate,The mandates of His all-compelling voice."
Far, far below those empyrean vaults is Earth, with its pristine inhabitants. God and man—the Creator and the thing created, the First Cause and the last effect—are both judiciously only introduced into the drama by hearsay.
Deep in the vague immensity lies Chaos, the uninhabited, through which the vanquished rebels are to be hurled to their endless doom.
But the poet also takes us
"Where meteors glare and stormy glooms invest;"
as, leaving Elysium's fields of light, he views
"Hell's punishments and horrors dire,Its gulfs of woe and lakes of rayless fire,Where demons laugh and fiends and furies rageRound writhing victims whose parched tongues assuageNo cooling drops of hope."
Such is the grand perspective from the scene of this stupendous drama.
The play opens as softly as the opening strains of some grand oratorio. The first act is largely descriptive, a picture of the beautiful serenity of Heaven and of the joys of Paradise.
Belzebub, the second devil, first comes on the scene, and, as he stands upon those "heights flushed in creation's morn," by means of a few words, vibrant with suggestion and of far-reaching import, he at once gives us the key to the opening situation, indicating the relative positions of the two chief personages of the drama—the antithesis of Lucifer and Adam.
Apollion has been sent below to gain some tidings of the new race of earth. With speedy wings he soars back through the blue crystalline and past the wondering spheres, bearing a golden bough laden with choice fruit, that apple sweet whose juice is wine of destiny. He is brimming with enthusiasm over the wonders that he has just witnessed.
Belzebub, who has been anxiously awaiting his return, listens intently to his glowing description of the beauty of Eden and its primal innocence, occasionally interrupting with exclamations of wonder. Question after question suggests itself to his excited imagination. At first he is aflame with curiosity, then jealousy begins to tincture his ardor, and his admiration soon changes into mockery.
Apollion then describes the primeval pair and their unalloyed bliss, and confesses that in the delightful blaze of Eve's charms his snowy wings were singed. Indeed, to curb his increasing desire, he covered his eyes with both hands and wings. Even when godlike resolution had impelled him to return on high, he thrice turned back a lingering gaze towards the more than seraphic beauty of the first woman. Far sweeter than even the music of the spheres, those nightingales of space, is this most beautiful note in the song of creation!
Indescribably delicate is his account of the joys of that first marriage:
"And then he kissedHis bride and she her bridegroom—thus on joyTheir nuptials fed, on feasts of fiery love,Better imagined far than told—a blissDivine beyond all angel ken;"
adding, with exquisite pathos,
"How poorOur loneliness; for us no union sweetOf two-fold sex—of maiden and of man—Alas! how much of good we miss; we knowNo mate or happy marriage in a HeavenDevoid of woman."
With Belzebub, that mighty spirit severely masculine, it is the growing power of the new race that furnishes food for thought and ground for an ulterior motive. The prospect of human rivalry impresses him far more than the description of a happiness to which the sexless angels must ever be strangers. His soul is keyed in a grander, more passionless mood. Apollion, however, cannot forget this charming vision of idyllic joy. He repeats the same enchanting strain again and again. He even forgets to answer his chief's questions, and returns to the same fascinating theme in:
"Their life consistsAlone in loving and in being loved—One sweet, one mutual joy, by them indulgedPerpetually, yet e'er unquenchable."
In this masterly manner the two controlling motives of the play, the envy of man's power, and the jealousy of human happiness, are seen to originate. The latter, however, is soon merged into the former, for Apollion, failing to elicit sympathy with his tenderer emotions, begins to sympathize with the more heroic mood of Belzebub, and even attempts to inflame it by artful suggestion.
The Archangel Gabriel, "The Herald from the towering Throne of Thrones," now approaches, with all the choristers of Heaven, to unfold the last divine decree.
From the mouth of his golden trumpet fall the silvery tones of peace. With jubilant tongue he praises the glorious attributes of the Deity and the boundless beneficence of the Godhead. In yet grander strain he prophesies the ascent of man,
"Who shall mount up by the stairway of the world,The firmament of beatific lightWithin, into the ne'er-created glow:"
and foretells the future incarnation of the Son of God, who, "on his high seat in his unshadowed Realm," shall judge both men and angels.
Here the chorus, after the manner of the antique drama, bursts into a line of pious affirmation. Gabriel then continues his address in a sterner tone. Obedience to the divine command, and honor to the new race is henceforth the bounden duty of the angelic hosts. Then follows a description of the three hierarchies of Heaven, founded upon the doctrine of the Church Fathers, ending with an eloquent iteration of the divine command. As yet all is serene. Even those spirits who soon shall unfurl the black banner of rebellion in that "virgin realm of peace" are yet unaware that within their breasts slumbers a passion that, awaking, will fill those holy courts with the tumultuous discord of revolt.
The ringing echoes of Gabriel's clarion trumpet have scarcely died away, when, throughout the clear hyaline, millions of angelic choristers burst into that sublime hymn of praise—that "anthem sung to harps of gold "—the grandest ever penned:
"Who is it on His Throne, high-seated?"
Triumphant songs and glad hosannahs now float down those "arching voids of empyrean stair." "All that pleaseth God is well" is the devout conclusion of this splendid outburst of celestial praise. Harmony reechoes harmony; and with this glorious ode of jubilation the act comes to an end.
In the second act, the protagonist first comes on the scene, like a god,
"With thunder shod,Crowned with the stars, and with the morning stoled."
He has until now been artfully kept in the background. Drawn by fire-winged cherubim, he sweeps into view, and voices, in no uncertain tone, his dissatisfaction with the divine decree.
Gabriel, the angel of revelation, is with admirable art now placed over against the Stadtholder. Lucifer would argue—would know the exact nature of Heaven's last decree. Gabriel, however, merely replies to his eager questioning with a dignified affirmation of God's command, and departs, leaving the divine injunction behind.
Belzebub, with untiring malignity, now prods the wounded pride of the fiery Stadtholder, and Lucifer again and again blazes into the most intense and bitter defiance. Listen to this speech, seething with the soul of rebellion:
"Now swear I by my crown upon this chanceTo venture all, to raise my seat amidThe firmament, the spheres, the splendor ofThe stars above. The Heaven of Heavens shall thenMy palace be; the rainbow be my throne;The starry vast, my court; while down beneath,The Earth shall be my foot-stool and support;I shall, then swiftly drawn through air and light,High-seated on a chariot of cloud,With lightning-stroke and thunder grind to dustWhate'er above, around, below doth usOppose, were it God's Marshal grand himself;Yea, e'er we yield, these empyrean vaults,Proud in their towering masonry, shall burst,With all their airy arches, and dissolveBefore our eyes; this huge and joint-racked earthLike a misshapen monster lifeless lie;This wondrous universe to chaos fall,And to its primal desolation change.Who dares, who dares defy great Lucifer?"
Surely the spirit of revolt never found fiercer and more poetical expression! Surely more eloquent and stupendous daring was never uttered than the blasting fulminations of this celestial rebel, who now stands, like a colossus of evil in the realm of good!
The leaders of the conspiracy then meet together and hatch their deep, nefarious plot. Lucifer towers magnificent, the controlling spirit in every plan, full of impelling thought and of tremendous action. Apollion, that "master wit with craftiness the spirits to seduce," and Belial, whose "countenance, smooth-varnished with dissimulation's hue," knows no superior in deception, at Lucifer's command now sow the seeds of dissension broadcast throughout the Heavens. The dialogue between these two celestial rogues shows great dramatic skill, and abounds in subtleties worthy of the chief himself. Their whole plan seems to be:
"Through something specious, 'neath some seeming guised,"
to win first the various chiefs and then the bravest warriors to the standard of the Morning-star; and then with these
"For all eternityMankind to lock without the gate of Heaven."
A high-sounding resolve,
"That tinkles well in the angelic ear,And flashes like a flame from choir to choir."
The chorus of good angels again comes on the stage, and with antiphonal harmonies reveals the growing discontent. How eloquently it pictures the serene beauties of Heaven, now tarnished with "mournful mists from darkness driven!" A beautiful and poetic synthesis of the preceding act!
In the third act, the Heavens are in a blaze of uproar. The rebellion is now widespread; and revolution is imminent. The whole act is one grand antithesis of the loyal and the seditious angels, or Luciferians, as the latter are called. It is strophe and anti-strophe nearly all the way through. It is argument and counter-argument from beginning to end.
With wonderful art, our sympathy for the rank and file of the rebellious spirits is first awakened. One is made to feel that their disaffection is genuine and that their sorrow is unaffected. They represent the dissatisfied people, brought to the verge of frenzy by the wily arts of the demagogue; the howling mob, wanting only the kindling spark to flash into the flame of revolt; the maddened rabble, waiting for the master-spirit to spur them into open revolution.
And the master-spirit appears. Belzebub, by his colossal hypocrisy and diabolical cunning, succeeds in drawing them into an incriminating attitude. Michael, austere and magnificent, approaches at this crisis, and these two chiefs are then thrown into admirable juxtaposition. Michael's grandeur has already been foreshadowed, and his character in every way equals the conception of him that we were led to form.
Like Lucifer, he is preëminently the incarnation of action. He will not argue. He does not appeal. He is a god of battle; not a divinity of words. He is stern and powerful. He is terse and terribly severe; and after a few words full of scathing scorn and ominous with threat, he commands the virtuous angels to part at once from the rebellious horde. He then leaves to learn the will of the Most High.
The disappearance of Michael is the signal for the advent of the head of the rebellion himself. Lucifer now comes opportunely to the front. With great art the meeting of the Field-marshal and the Stadtholder has been avoided. Such a meeting would have brought about a premature crisis. The Luciferians, in a splendid burst of appeal, beg the Stadtholder's protection. To this appeal Lucifer replies in a speech that is sublime in its hypocrisy. He professes blind attachment to God, and proceeds to test their sincerity by skillfully opposing questions of prudence and arguments of peace, while at the same time he admits, apparently with great reluctance, that their grievances are well founded. He hopes, too, that their displeasure will not be accounted as a stain on high, and that God will forgive their righteous resentment.
When, however, he discovers that they are firm in their determination to obtain their rights by force of arms, that they sincerely desire him as their chief, and that at least one-third of all the spirits are already numbered among the rebels, he throws off his mask, and quickly changes front:
"Then shall we venture all, our favor lostTo the oppressors of your lawful right."
He now again appears as the imperious prince of revolt, and at Belzebub's solicitation mounts the throne which the latter has meanwhile prepared for him. Belzebub enjoins the hosts to swear allegiance to Lucifer and to his morning-star, which oath is given with a will, and the act is at an end.
The chorus of Luciferians then extol their leader in an ode breathing defiance and blazing with the flame of rebellion. The clanging tread of a mailed warrior resounds in every line. The note of triumph rings out boldly; and with professions of fealty to their chief, and kindling with adoration for his morning-star, they march off the stage. This ode is a curious medley of antique metres, trochees, dactyls, and spondees, attuned to tumultuous emotion. Boldly regular in its classic irregularity, it echoes and re-echoes with the clamor of battle and the shout of revelry. It is a pæan keyed in the strident chord of Hell.
Scarcely have these fiercely jubilant tones died away, when the good angels follow with a plaintive ode of sorrow that is a striking antithesis to the passionate outburst of hate with which the air is yet reverberating.
Strophe and antistrophe proceed in the same mournful iambic measure, in verses sweetly musical with curious rimes, when suddenly in the epode they break into a livelier strain, and in tripping trochaics give voice to an entirely different mood—a fiery indignation mingled with a deep sense of the grave crisis that threatens the autonomy of Heaven.
Here, too, is a foreshadowing of the transcendent power that shall quell this treason. Nothing can be more original and artistic than these lyrics themselves. Nothing can be more harmonious than their blending with the action. Vondel is never more admirable than here.
In the fourth act the rebellion has become a conflagration:
"The whole of Heaven glows with the fierce blazeOf tumult and of treachery."
Gabriel, winged with command, comes on the scene, and orders Michael, in the name of God,
"To burn out with a glow of fire and zealThese dark, polluting stains."
Michael is astounded to learn of the treachery of Lucifer, and, in reply to his inquiries, Gabriel gives a beautiful and pathetic account of the progress of the revolt, and tells how the radiant joy of God became overshadowed with mournfulness. Michael now summons Uriel, his armor-bearer, to his side, and at once proceeds to put on his armor, at the same time shouting his orders to his myriad legions around him. In the twinkling of an eye the celestial host stands in marching array and is rapidly hurried forward.
We are now transported into the hostile camp, where Lucifer is seen questioning his generals as to the number and the disposition of his forces. Belzebub replies with a lucid and highly colored report, saying that the deserters sweep onward with
"A rush and roar from every firmament,Like a vast sea aglow with radiant lights."
Lucifer is much pleased to learn this, and from his throne addresses his flaming squadrons in a speech bristling with warlike reason and full of indomitable courage.
He fully apprehends the enormity of his offense, and cunningly makes his hearers equal sharers in his guilt. Retreat is now impossible. The celestial Rubicon is crossed. They have already burnt all bridges behind them. "Necessity, therefore," he says, "must be our law." If defeated, God himself cannot wholly annihilate them; while if they chance to win, "the hated tyranny of Heaven" shall then be changed into a state of freedom; nor shall the angels then be forced
"To pant beneath the yoke of servitude forever."
Once more he demands the oath of allegiance, and is about to give the command, "Forward!" when Belzebub espies the beautiful figure of Rafael winging his golden way trough the crystal empyrean on a mission of mercy.
Even Belzebub is touched at this unlooked-for sign of angelic affection, and his tone, usually so sarcastic and so severely deliberate, as he announces his advent, is softened to a transient tenderness. For once he has forgotten his usual mocking air, and this exquisite touch does much to relieve the sombre impression of his tremendous malignity.
Rafael, a celestial St. John, melting with love for the Stadtholder, falls in a paroxysm of grief and tenderness upon his neck. We intuitively feel that some secret bond of sympathy must bind these two angels, so dissimilar in spirit and in character, together.
Lucifer, overwhelming in passion, gigantic in intellect, resistless in will—magnificent in his whole personality; Rafael, sublime in devotion, infinite in pity, immaculate in holiness—the apotheosis of all that is beautiful! Lucifer, whose eyes flash ambition and whose heart flames hate; Rafael, whose gaze is aspiration and whose soul is love! The genius of evil and the spirit of virtue; the proudly wicked and the meekly good! The infernal masculine stands confronted by the heavenly feminine; harsh violence is caressed by loving gentleness, and pride and humility embrace! Truly a masterly antithesis!
In a strain of glorious appeal, Rafael begs Lucifer to desist, and first aims at the weakest point in his armor—his pride. How splendid his description of Lucifer's glory! His former pomp is here artistically pictured to heighten the contrast with his fall.
He next proceeds to threaten, and gives an equally vivid picture of the horrible punishments—"the worm, endless remorse, and ever-during pain"—reserved for him. He then offers his olive branch as a token of divine mercy, and urges immediate acceptance before it is forever too late. Truth offers hope to error on the high-road to despair; peace pours her golden offering at the iron feet of war!
Lucifer, proud in his consciousness of strength, as the chosen head of millions of angelic warriors, one-third of the entire spirit world, is, however, unmoved. He asseverates that he merely wishes to uphold the ancient charter. The standard of revolt is also the banner of right. Duty has called; justice commanded; friendship inspired him to take this step for the protection of the celestial Fatherland. He, too, then,
"With necessity,The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds."
Hear his own words:
"I shall maintain the holy right, compelledBy high necessity, thus urged at length,Though much against my will, by the complaintsAnd mournful groans of myriad tongues."
Rafael stands aghast at the picture of such hardened wickedness. His hairs rise with fear to hear the Archangel's shameless confession, and he promptly accuses him of ambition and of gross deceit.
Lucifer, however, indignantly denies this, and proudly asserts that he has always done his full duty. Rafael then reads aloud his evil purpose as it is written in lurid letters on his heart. The astonished chief no longer denies his lust for power, but claims the prerogative of his position as the Stadtholder of God. At last he is brought to the acknowledgment that the ascent of man is the stone upon which his "battle-axe shall whet its edge."
Rafael, like an angel of light, then pleads with this spirit of darkness in tones of sweetest tenderness. He stands here like a personified conscience. He would be the guardian angel of the great Stadtholder. Not a harsh word escapes the stern lips of the flaming Archangel. His own vast knowledge and his deep heart testify how good are the intentions of his friend. What visions are here called up of the happy days of their friendship, when they basked in the untarnished splendors of Heaven, before a thought of evil had tolled the funeral knell of peace!
Argument after argument, in cumulative progression, falls from the pleader's mellifluous tongue. Lucifer is stern and unyielding. Still Rafael pleads on. For an instant Lucifer falters. Rafael sees his advantage; and not only again offers him his olive branch, but appoints himself as Lucifer's hostage with God —so sure is he of obtaining mercy.
Lucifer is almost overcome; but the thought of his morning-star setting in shame and darkness, and a vision of his enemies defiant on the throne, still steels his heart in its obstinate resolve.
Rafael next pictures for him, in lurid colors, the lake of brimstone down below, whose mouth yawns for his destruction. Once more, for the third time, he offers the Archrebel the branch of peace, and promises full grace.
Lucifer then gives voice to that grand soliloquy, beginning:
"What creature else so wretched is as I?On the one side flicker feeble rays of hope,While on the other yawns a flaming horror."
Here he reveals for the first time his inmost heart. This is the crisis of his career—the climax of the whole play. Nowhere is the suspense so keen. One wonders how the Archangel will decide in this critical moment:
"This brevity twixt bliss and endless doom."
His pride of will has in one stroke become a chaos of indecision. We are made to sympathize with his terrible anguish, as the logic of his remorse-throbbing conscience leads him to the bitter adversative:
"But 'tis too late—all hope is past."
The ominous sound of Michael's battle trumpet rudely awakes him from his revery, and forces him to the stern realization of the impending strife. Just at this moment, also, Apollion soars into his presence with the news of the near approach of God's Field-marshal.
Lucifer, however, is as yet too agitated, so soon after his sudden apprehension of the enormity of his crime and of the terrible punishment reserved for him in the probable event of his defeat, to respond with alacrity to the summons. It is with great difficulty that he rouses himself from his soliloquizing mood. He must think; but although he feels far more than his followers that
"The heavy bolt of war should not be weighedToo lightly,"
and although he well knows that the odds are against him, he has, by the time that his other chieftains approach, quite recovered himself, and at once gives the quick, sharp command of the soldier. The time for action has come. Behind their towering leader, amid the blare of bugles and the trumpet's stirring tones, his serried battalions march with waving banners off the stage.
Of this busy scene Rafael, meanwhile, has been a silent but interested spectator. Now alone in his sorrow, he melts into a compassionate monologue; and, joined by the chorus, gives utterance to that beautiful lyric of grief, that tender prayer so full of the sweet melody of appeal, at the end of the fourth act. Amid the jarring clamor and the frenzied shout of the departing squadrons, this anthem of mercy rises to God like a benediction. Over the passion waves of the tumultuous hell of rebellion around them, their voices tremble like the echoes of a heaven forever lost.
Surely, the emotion of forgiving compassion was never combined with a more musical sorrow. Here, as in all of Vondel's lyrics, there is a perfect harmony between the form and the thought.