|
[page 4, column 2:]
|
|
|
THE DRAMA OF
EXILE,
AND OTHER POEMS. By Elizabeth Barrett
Barrett,
Author of "The Seraphim," and other Poems. New York: Henry G. Langley.
"A well-bred man," says Sir James Puckle,
in his "Gray Cap for a Green Head," "will never give himself the
liberty
to speak ill of women." We emphasize the "man." Setting aside, for the
present, certain rare commentators and compilers of the species G—, —
creatures
neither precisely men, women, nor Mary Wollstonecraft's — setting
these
aside as unclassifiable, we may observe that the race of critics are
masculine — men. With the exception, perhaps, of Mrs. Anne Royal, we
can call to
mind no female who has occupied, even temporarily, the Zoilus throne.
And
this, the Salic law, is an evil; for the inherent chivalry of the
critical man renders
it not only an unpleasant task to him "to speak ill of a woman," (and a
woman and her [page 5:] book are identical,) but an almost
impossible task
not to laud her ad nauseam. In general, therefore, it is the
unhappy
lot of the authoress to be subjected, time after time, to the downright
degradation of mere puffery. On her own side of the Atlantic, Miss
Barrett
has indeed, in one instance at least, escaped the infliction of this
lamentable
contumely and wrong; but if she had been really solicitous of its
infliction
in America, she could not have adopted a more effectual plan than that
of saying a few words about "the great American people," in an American
edition of her work, published under the superintendence of an American
author.* Of the innumerable "native" notices of
"The Drama of Exile," which
have come under our observation, we can call to mind not one in
which there is any thing more remarkable than the critic's dogged
determination
to find nothing barren, from Beersheba to Dan. Another in the
"Democratic
Review" has proceeded so far, it is true, as to venture a very
delicate
insinuation to the effect that the poetess "will not fail to speak her
mind though it bring upon her a bad rhyme;" beyond this, nobody
has proceeded: and as for the elaborate paper in the new Whig Monthly,
all that any body can say or think, and all that Miss Barrett can feel
respecting it is, that it is an eulogy as well written as it is an
insult
well intended. Now of all the friends of the fair author, we doubt
whether
one exists, with more profound — with more enthusiastic reverence and
admiration of her genius, than the writer of these words. And it is for
this very reason, beyond all others, that he intends to speak of her the
truth. Our chief regret is, nevertheless, that the limits of this
"Journal"
will preclude the possibility of our speaking this truth so fully, and
so much in detail, as we could wish. By far the most valuable criticism
that we, or that any one could give, of the volumes now lying before
us,
would be the quotation of three fourths of their contents. But we have
this advantage — that the work has been long published, and almost
universally
read — and thus, in some measure, we may proceed, concisely, as if the
text of our context, were an understood thing.
In her preface to this, the "American edition" of her
late poems, Miss
Barrett, speaking of the Drama of Exile, says: — "I decided on
publishing
it, after considerable hesitation and doubt. Its subject rather
fastened
on me than was chosen; and the form, approaching the model of the Greek
tragedy, shaped itself under my hand rather by force of pleasure than
of
design. But when the compositional excitement had subsided, I felt
afraid
of my position. My own object was the new and strange experiment of the
fallen Humanity, as it went forth from Paradise into the Wilderness,
with
a peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering that
self-sacrifice
belonged to her womanhood, and the consciousness of being the organ of
the Fall to her offence, appeared to me imperfectly apprehended
hitherto,
and more expressible by a woman than by a man." In this abstract
announcement
of the theme, it is difficult to understand the ground of the poet's
hesitation
to publish; for the theme in itself seems admirably adapted to the
purposes [column 2:] of the closet dram. The poet,
nevertheless very properly,
conscious
of failure — a failure which occurs not in the general, but in the
particular
conception, and which must be placed to the account of "the model of
the
Greek tragedies." The Greek tragedies had and even hare high
merits; but we act wisely in now substituting for the external and
typified
human sympathy of the antique Chorus, a direct, internal, living and
moving
sympathy itself; and although AEschylus might have done service as "a
model,"
to either Euripides or Sophocles, yet were Sophocles and Euripides in
London
to-day, they would, perhaps, while granting a certain formless and
shadowy
grandeur, indulge a quiet smile at the shallowness and uncouthness of
that
Art, which, in the old amphitheatres, had beguiled them into applause
of
the OEdipus at Colonos.
It would have been better for Miss Barrett if, throwing
herself independently
upon her own very extraordinary resources, and forgetting that a Greek
had ever lived, she had involved her Eve in a series of adventures
merely
natural, or if not this, of adventures preternatural within the limits
of at least a conceivable relation — a relation of matter to spirit
and
spirit to matter, that should have left room for something like
palpable
action and comprehensible emotion — that should not have utterly
precluded
the development of that womanly character which is admitted as the
principal
object of the poem. As the case actually stands, it is only in a few
snatches
of verbal intercommunication with Adam and Lucifer, that we behold her
as a woman at all. For the rest, she is a mystical something or
nothing,
enwrapped in a fog of rhapsody about Transfiguration, and the Seed, and
the Bruising of the Heel, and other talk of a nature that no man ever
pretended
to understand in plain prose, and which, when solar-microscoped into
poetry
"upon the model of the Greek drama," is about as convincing as the
Egyptian
Lectures of Mr. Silk Buckingham — about as much to any purpose under
the
sun as the hi presto! conjurations of Signor Blitz. What are
we
to make, for example, of dramatic colloquy such as this? — the words
are
those of a Chorus of Invisible Angels addressing Adam:
Live, work on, O Earthy!
By the Actual's tension
Speed the arrow worthy
Of a pure ascension.
From the low earth round you
Reach the heights above you;
From the stripes that wound you
Seek the loves that love you!
God's divines" burneth plain
Through the crystal diaphane
Of our loves that love you.
Now we do not mean to assert that, by excessive
"tension" of the intellect,
a reader accustomed to the cant of the transcendentalists (or of those
who degrade an ennobling philosophy by styling themselves such) may not
succeed in fitting from the passage quoted, and indeed from each of the
thousand similar ones throughout the book, something that shall bear
the
aspect of an absolute idea — but we do mean to say first, that, in
nine
cases out of ten, the thought when dug out will be found very poorly to
repay the labor of the digging; — for it is the nature of thought in
general,
as it is the nature of some ores in particular, to be richest when most
superficial. And we do mean to say, secondly, that, in nineteen cases
out
of twenty, the reader will suffer the most valuable ore to remain
unmined
to all eternity, before he will be put to the trouble of digging for it
one inch. And we do mean to assert, thirdly, that no reader is to be
condemned
for not putting himself to the trouble of digging even the one inch;
for
no writer has the right to impose any such necessity upon him. What is
worth thinking is distinctly thought: what is distinctly thought, can
and
should [page 6:] be distinctly expressed, or should not be
expressed at
all. Nevertheless, there is no more appropriate opportunity than the
present
for admitting and maintaining, at once, what has never before been
either
maintained or admitted — that there is a justifiable exception to the
rule
for which we contend. It is where the design is to convey the
fantastic — not
the obscure. To give the idea of the latter we need, as in general, the
most precise and definitive terms, and those who employ other terms but
confound obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity. The
fantastic in itself, however, — phantasm — may be materially
furthered in
its development by the quaint in phraseology: a proposition
which
any moralist may examine at his leisure for himself.
The "Drama of Exile" opens with a very palpable bull: — "Scene,
the outer side of the gate of Eden, shut fast with clouds" — [a scene
out
of sight!] — "from the depth of which revolves the sword of fire,
self-moved.
A watch of innumerable angels rank above rank, slopes up from around it
to the zenith: and the glare cast from their brightness and from the
sword,
extends many miles into the wilderness. Adam and Eve are seen in the
distance,
flying along the glare. The angel Gabriel and Lucifer are beside the
gate." — These
are the "stage directions" which greet us on the threshold of the book.
We complain first of the bull: secondly, of the blue-fire melo-dramatic
aspect of the revolving sword; thirdly, of the duplicate nature of the
sword, which, if steel, and sufficiently enflamed to do service in
burning,
would, perhaps, have been m no temper to cut; and on the other hand, if
sufficiently cool to have an edge, would have accomplished little in
the
way of scorching a personage so well accustomed to fire and brimstone
and
all that, as we have very good reason to believe Lucifer was. We cannot
help objecting, too, to the "innumerable angels," as a force altogether
disproportioned to the one enemy to be kept out: — either the
self-moving
sword itself, we think, or the angel Gabriel alone, or five or six of
the
"innumerable" angels, would have sufficed to keep the devil (or is it
Adam?)
outside of the gate — which, after all, he might not have been able to
discover,
on account of the clouds.
Far be it from us, however, to dwell irreverently on
matters which have
venerability in the faith or in the fancy of Miss Barrett. We allude to
these niaiseries at all — found here in the very first
paragraph
of her poem, — simply by way of putting in the clearest light the mass
of inconsistency and antagonism in which her subject has
inextricably
involved her. She has made allusion to Milton, and no doubt felt secure
in her theme (as a theme merely) when she considered his "Paradise
Lost."
But even in Milton's own day, when men had the habit of believing all
things,
the more nonsensical the more readily, and of worshipping, in blind
acquiescence,
the most preposterous of impossibilities — even then. there were
not
wanting individuals who would have read the great epic with more: — ,
could it have been explained to their satisfaction, how ind why it was,
not only that a snake quoted Aristotle's ethics, and behaved otherwise
pretty much as he pleased, but that bloody battles were continually
being
fought between bloodless "innumerable angels," that found no
inconvenience
m losing a wing one minute and a head the next, and if pounded up into
puff-paste late in the afternoon, were as good "innumerable angels" as
new the next morning, in time to be at reveille roll-call: And
now — at
the present epoch — there are few people who do not occasionally think.
This
is emphatically the thinking age; — indeed it may very well be
questioned
whether mankind ever substantially thought before. The fact is, if the
"Paradise Lost" were written to-day (assuming that it had never been
written [column 2:] when it was), not even its eminent,
although over-estimated
merits, would counterbalance, either in the public view, or in the
opinion
of any critic at once intelligent and honest, the multitudinous
incongruities
which are part and parcel of its plot.
But in the plot of the drama of Miss Barrett it is
something even worse
than incongruity which affronts: — a continuous mystical strain of
ill-fitting
and exaggerated allegory — if, indeed, allegory is not much too
respectable
a term for it. We are called upon, for example, to sympathise in the
whimsical
woes of two Spirits, who, upspringing from the bowels of the earth, set
immediately to bewailing their miseries in jargon such as this:
I am the spirit of the harmless earth;
God spake me softly out among the stars,
As softly as a blessing of much worth —
And then his smile did follow unawares,
That all things, fashioned, so, for use and duty,
Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty —
Yet I wail!
I crave on with the worlds exultingly,
Obliquely down the Godlight's gradual fall —
Individual aspect and complexity
Of gyratory orb and interval,
Lost in the fluent motion of delight
Toward the high ends of Being, beyond Sight —
Yet I wail!
Innumerable other spirits discourse successively after
the same fashion,
each ending every stanza of his lamentation with the "yet I wail!" When
at length they have fairly made an end, Eve touches Adam upon the
elbow,
and hazards, also, the profound and pathetic observation — "Lo, Adam,
they
wail!" — which is nothing more than the simple truth — for they do
— and
God deliver us from any such wailing again!
It is not our purpose, however, to demonstrate what
every reader of
these volumes will have readily seen self-demonstrated — the utter
indefensibility
of "The Drama of Exile," considered uniquely, as a work of art. We have
none of us to be told that a medley of metaphysical recitatives sung
out
of tune, at Adam and Eve, by all manner of inconceivable abstractions,
is not exactly the best material for a poem. Still it may very well
happen
that among this material there shall be individual passages of great
beauty.
But should any one doubt the possibility, let him be satisfied by a
single
extract such as follows:
On a mountain peak
Half sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine, at that hour
A lion couched, — part raised upon his paws,
With his calm massive face turned full on shine,
And his mane listening. When the ended curse
Left silence in the world, right suddenly
He sprang up rampant, and stood straight and stiff,
As if the new reality of death
Were dashed against his eyes, — and roared
so
fierce,
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
—
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
To distant silence, — that the forest beasts,
One after one, did mutter a response
In savage and in sorrowful complaint
Which trailed along the gorges.
There is an Homeric force here — a vivid picturesqueness
in all men will
appreciate and admire. It is, however, the longest quotable passage in
the drama, not disfigured with blemishes of importance; — although
there
are many — very many passages of a far loftier order of excellence, so
disfigured,
and which, therefore, it would not suit our immediate e to extract. The
truth is, — and it may be as well mentioned at this point as
elsewhere — that
we are not to look in Miss Barrett's works for any examples of what has
been occasionally termed "sustained effort;" for neither are there, in
any of her poems, any long commendable paragraphs, nor are there any
individual
compositions which will bear the slightest examination as consistent
Art-products.
Her wild and magnificent genius seems to have contented [page 7:]
itself
with points — to have exhausted itself in flashes; — but it is the
profusion — the
unparalleled number and close propinquity of these points and flashes
which
render her book one flame, and justify us in calling her,
unhesitatingly,
the greatest — the most glorious of her sex.
The "Drama of Exile" calls for little more, in the way
of comment, than
what we have generally said. Its finest particular feature is, perhaps,
the rapture of Eve — rapture bursting through despair — upon
discovering
that she still possesses, in the unwavering love of Adam, an
undreamed-of
and priceless treasure. The poem ends, as it commences, with a bull.
The
last sentence gives us to understand that "there is a sound through the
silence, as of the falling tears of an angel." How there can be sound
during
silence, and how an audience are to distinguish, by such sound, angel
tears
from any other species of tears, it may be as well, perhaps, not too
particularly
to inquire.
Next, in length, to the Drama, is "The Vision of Poets."
We object to
the didacticism of its design, which the poetess thus states: `'I have
attempted to express here my view of the mission of the veritable
poet — of
the self-abnegation implied in it, of the uses of sorrow suffered in
it,
of the great work accomplished in it through suffering, and of the duty
and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called 'la
patience
angelique du genie.''' This "view" may be correct, but neither its
correctness nor its falsity has anything to do with a poem. If a thesis
is to be demonstrated, we need prose for its demonstration. In
this
instance, so far as the allegorical instruction and argumentation are
lost
sight of, in the upper current — so far as the main admitted intention
of
the work is kept out of view — so far only is the work a poem, and so
far
only is the poem worth notice, or worthy of its author. Apart from its
poetical character, the composition is thoughtful, vivid, epigrammatic,
and abundant in just observation — although the critical opinions
introduced
are not always our own. A reviewer in "Blackwood's Magazine," quoting
many
of these critical portraits, takes occasion to find fault with the
grammar
of this tristich:
Here AEschylus — the women swooned
To see so awful when he frowned
As the Gods did — he standeth crowned.
"What on earth," says the critic, "are we to make of the
words 'the
women swooned to see so awful' ? .... The syntax will punish future
commentators
as much as some of his own corrupt choruses." In general, we are happy
to agree with this reviewer, whose decisions respecting the book are,
upon
the whole, so nearly coincident with ours, that we hesitated, through
fear
of repetition, to undertake a critique at all, until we
considered
that we might say a very great deal in simply supplying his omissions;
but he frequently errs through mere hurry, and never did he err more
singularly
than at the point now in question. He evidently supposes that "awful"
has
been misused as an adverb and made referrible to " women." But not so;
and although the construction of the passage is unjustifiably involute,
its grammar is intact. Disentangling the construction, we make this
evident
at once: "Here AEschylus (he) standeth crowned, (whom) the women
swooned
to see so awful, when he frowned as the Gods did." The "he" is
excessive,
and the "whom" is understood. Respecting the lines,
Euripides, with close and mild
Scholastic lips, that could be wild,
And laugh or sob out like a child
Right in the classes,
the critic observes: — " 'Right in the classes' throws
our intellect
completely upon its beam-ends." But, if so, the fault [column 2:]
possibly
lies in the crankness of the intellect; for the words themselves mean
merely
that Sophocles laughed or cried like a school-boy — like a child right
(or
just) in his classes — one who had not yet left school. The phrase is
affected,
we grant, but quite intelligible. A still more remarkable
misapprehension
occurs in regard to the triplet,
And Goethe, with that reaching eye
His soul reached out from, far and high,
And fell from inner entity.
The reviewer's remarks upon this are too preposterous
not to be quoted
in full; — we doubt if any commentator of equal dignity ever so
egregiously
committed himself before. "Goethe," he says, "is a perfect enigma, what
does the word 'fell' mean? Xxxxxx [[greek text]] we suppose — that is,
'not
to be trifled with.' But surely it sounds very strange, although it may
be true enough, to say that his 'fellness' is occasioned by 'inner
entity.'
But perhaps the line has some deeper meaning which we are unable to
fathom."
Perhaps it has: and this is the criticism — the British criticism —
the
Blackwood
criticism — to which we have so long implicitly bowed down! As before,
Miss
Barrett's verses are needlessly involved, but their meaning requires no
OEdipus. Their construction is thus intended: — "And Goethe, with that
reaching
eye from which his soul reached out, far and high, and (in so reaching)
fell from inner entity." The plain prose is this: — Goethe, (the poet
would
say), in involving himself too far and too profoundly in external
speculations — speculations
concerning the world without him — neglected, or made miscalculations
concerning
his inner entity, or being, — concerning the world within This idea is
involved
in the metaphor of a person leaning from a window so far that finally
he
falls from it — the person being the soul, the window the eye.
Of the twenty-eight "Sonnets," which immediately succeed
the "Drama
of Exile," and which receive the especial commendation of Blackwood, we
have no very enthusiastic opinion. The best sonnet is
objectionable
from its extreme artificiality; and, to be effective, this species of
composition,
requires a minute management — a well-controlled dexterity of
touch — compatible
neither with Miss Barrett's deficient constructiveness, nor with the
fervid
rush and whirl of her genius. Of the particular instances here given,
we
prefer "the Prisoner," of which the conclusion is particularly
beautiful
In general, the themes are obtrusively metaphysical, or didactic.
"The Romaunt of the Page," an imitation of the old
English ballad, is
neither very original in subject, nor very skilfully put together. We
speak
comparatively, of course: — It is not very good — for Miss Barrett: —
and
what we have said of this poem will apply equally to a very similar
production,
"The Rhyme of the Dutchess May." The "Poet and the Bird" — "A Child
Asleep" — "Crowned
and Wedded" — "Crowned and Buried" — "To Flush my Dog" — "The
Four fold
Aspect" — "A
Flower in a Letter" — "A Lay of the early Rose" — "That Day" — "L.
E. L's
Last Questio" — "Catarina to Camoens" — "Wine of Cyprus" — "The Dead
Pan" —
"Sleeping and Watching" — "A Portrait" — "The Mournful Mother" — and
"A
Valediction" — although
all burning with divine fire, manifested only in scintillations, have
nothing
in them idiosyncratic. "The House of Clouds" and "The Last Bower" are
superlatively
lovely, and show the vast powers of the poet in the field best adapted
to their legitimate display: — the themes, here, could not be
improved.
The former poem is purely imaginative; the latter is unobjectionably be
cause unobtrusively suggestive of a moral, and is, perhaps, upon the
whole,
the most admirable composition [page 8:] in the two volumes: —
or, if it
is not, then "The Lay of the Brown Rosarie" is. In this last
the
ballad-character is elevated — the realized — and thus made to
afford
scope
for an ideality at once the richest and most vigorous in the world. The
peculiar foibles of the author are here too, dropped bodily, as a
mantle,
in the tumultuous movement and excitement of the narrative.
|
|
|
|
|
|