A Manx Minstrel
—October 20, 1900, The Speaker
Letters Of T. E. Brown*. Westminster: A. Constable and Co. Poems Of T. E. Brown. London: Macmillan.
The letters of T. E. Brown, author of Fo’c’s’le Yarns, letters that are in many ways singularly exuberant and entertaining, are further interesting because they raise in a new way the whole problem of the publication of private letters. Let no reader imagine, however, that there is anything lurid about them. Nothing worse is discovered against the morality of Mr. Brown than an admiration of Mr. Hall Caine. No skeleton in the family cupboard is revealed, except the one appalling figure of a father who was such a lover of style that he had a page of some English classic read to him before he answered an invitation. This latter anecdote we have a sort of terror in repeating, because it is so obviously the kind of story that may go the round of the newspapers and the French translation books, and Lord Roberts, Mr. Vanderbilt, Talleyrand and Henri Quatre be successively credited with the habit of giving to the phrase “has much pleasure in accepting” some concentrated flavour of Burke.
There is, we say, nothing moral or immoral about the correspondence: it is mostly full of uproarious levity, and yet, we will venture to say, not altogether in paradox, that it is somewhat too sacred for the light of day. It seems to us that frivolity is, in the secretive sense, far more sacred than seriousness; it is more fragile, more personal, more occult. Any one can see St. Paul’s Cathedral, but there may be only two people in the world who can see a particular joke. Biographers are sometimes accused of obtruding themselves: Mr. Irvine’s nobler error is rather that he forgets that he, who received most of these letters, was spiritually a collaborator in them. His friend, T. E. Brown, was playing upon his memories and purposes as on a piano: to us he is too often fingering on a dumb keyboard. We fear, as we say, that the rampant camaraderie of these communications will be misunderstood and undervalued: it is not possible, properly speaking, to laugh irreverently at time, death and judgment— for they laugh best who laugh last; but it is possible to laugh very irreverently at a joke.
T. E. Brown, a perfect Celt, has no restraint; his letters are full of “Ho! Ho’s!” and “Ha! Ha’s!” like the refrain of an Elizabethan lyric. With schoolboy abruptness he makes remarks like “Isn’t Browning a ripper?” Throughout the work one feels that Kingsley is a ripper, that Newman is a ripper, that Dr. George Macdonald is a ripper. Now a letter like this is a bond between two men, and when one of them is cut off it, it flaps dismally in the wind. We are quite sure the letter was splendid when Mr. Irvine received it; we wish we had been Mr. Irvine; but we were not, and therefore do not read what he read. The very essence of friendship is in this intermixture, in those great midnight conversations in which the primary colours of separate personalities are mingled into incredible greens and purples, as rich and unrecoverable as a sunset.
The author of Fo’c’s’le Yarns was a Manxman, and his poetry and letters are full of a somewhat new and original interpretation of the theory that the proper study of mankind is Man. He speaks of that island as if England and Ireland were dangerous rocks making its approach difficult for the Manx mariner. He was a typical Celt, and the hilarity to which we have alluded was only one side of this walking bundle of emotions, “I am a born sobber,” he said. But the most fascinating inconsistency of his character in this respect are the bursts of Chaucerian plainness of speech which give salt to his mystic piety. The born sobber exhibits himself at times with the greatest cheerfulness as a born swearer. There is nothing in him of that mournful wealth of mind and translucient delicacy which give to certain modern Celtophiles the appearance, in the eye of the Philistine, of having a head full of religions and no leg to stand on. Brown had plenty of legs to stand on, like the escutcheon of his own Isle of Man. In fact, the only imaginary portrait we have formed of Mr. Brown is founded on that famous hieroglyph; we are sure that he would stand on one leg and dance with the other two.
Even in the letters, frantic and random as they are, T. E. Brown gives innumerable instances of a genuine literary instinct. The delightful apologue of Matthew Arnold “in one of his raids” carrying away a Philistine maiden is worthy of that great man himself. The remark about his father’s literary taste, “to him style was an instinct of personal cleanliness,” hits the right nail on the head and is an excellent instance of the thing it describes.
In an appropriate manner we are in a position at the same time to consider the full and handsome edition of Brown’s poems which Messrs. Macmillan have published. Those poems are far too voluminous to be accorded a detailed criticism here, but they are also far too remarkable to be passed over without some attempt at a general estimate. They exhibit in a singular manner most of the same merits and defects as the letters, and this is a good sign, for it shows that Brown was that not too common figure, what may be called a unanimous man. On the failing side, for example, they show that buoyant garrulity, that tendency to say too much, that quaint confidence that masses of personal reminiscence will be interesting to a reader, which we have remarked in the letters, but without the excuse of letter-writing. In their exclusive Manx spirit they often show that breezy delusion, not uncommon in small sects and nations, that they have the monopoly of the most obvious things, the spirit which once led a friend of ours to tell us that it was one of the inner doctrines of his church that lying was wrong. One mysterious detail we cannot help thinking is an instance of this, the note on p. 99:- “Jackdaw, Manx pronunciation, jackdaw.” It is gratifying to us to learn that in this matter we have been talking the most exquisite Manx from our cradle. On the side of merit, again, they have a racial flavour in a far higher sense. Mr. Yeats himself might not be ashamed of the expression of the Celtic spirit in the lines about “an empty laugh”:-
”… God Who has within himself the secret springs Of all the lovely, causeless, unclaimed things, And loves them in his very heart of hearts.”
But again, as we have said, there is nothing pallid or frail about his Celticism. It is rather that spirit “brave and gay and faithful” which Stevenson, in his noble speech to the Samoan chiefs, attributed to his ancestor the Gael. The raw materials, at least, for one of the strongest poems that could be written are to be found in the verses called “Risus Dei.” The dialect poems, the actual Fo’c’s’le Yarns, we may seem to have unduly subordinated, but they are pre-eminently things to be read and not criticised. They suffer from the poet’s fluency, but their truth gradually tightens its grip:-
Now the beauty of the thing when children plays is The terrible wonderful length the days is
is a sentence from all our autobiographies. Altogether, Mr. T. E. Brown may be hailed as one of our recent lyric exponents of what Lord Salisbury called “the Celtic Fringe”—a fringe which is (to the credit of that statesman’s humour) considerably wider than the garment. He is smaller than Mr. W. B. Yeats, as Man is smaller than Ireland. But we confess to some personal relief in finding one of our bards of the Gael cocking his feather with full-blooded vanity, as a contrast to those Irish poets who, in dwelling on the memory and wisdom of the green island, have too often forgotten that green is also, throughout her unconquerable history, the colour of folly and of hope.
G. K. C.
How the Church Stands To-Day
—October 27, 1900
The Crisis In The English Church. By the Rev. W. E. Bowen. With an Introduction by the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies. London: Nisbet and Co.
Mr. Bowen’s book is a typical and almost symbolic publication. It is calculated to impress on the mind the irrevocable conviction that the Church crisis has reached a stage in which no alternative remains except that between disestablishment and a sudden and disturbing irruption of Christian charity. Between these two neither side is likely to hesitate and the Establishment is, we fear, doomed. We say we fear it because it is not without regret that we see any historic compromise which has long subsisted on common sense giving way under the assaults of logic. But, however much one may defend an anomaly so long as it is sympathetically and rationally interpreted, it is ridiculous to sound the praises of its practicality while a host of insane mathematicians are busily engaged in working it to a reductio ad absurdum. Mr. Llewelyn Davies, in an able introduction which he contributes to Mr. Bowen’s volume, says plausibly in reply to the charge of “persecution” brought against Protestants:-
“I have always thought that the comprehensiveness of our Church consisted not in its being a Liberty Hall in which every clergyman was free to deprave its doctrine and discipline as he pleased, but in the fact that its doctrine and discipline were themselves comprehensive.”
The distinction is sound and logical, but we doubt whether it is accurate or complete in the particular case. It is not true that the Anglican form is a lucid and systematic latitudinarian scheme marked out in wide but clear divisions. The problem chiefly arises from the complex mosaic of forms found in the Prayer-book. Upon the whole, the nobler and more popular parts of our Prayer-book are rather High Church than Low. But it is foolish to maintain (as is done by some ritualists) that the Prayer-book is entirely Tractarian when the greatest of the Tractarians defended their acceptation of certain Articles by interpretations which they did not pretend were natural or obvious. And the liberty of the Church has not, as a matter of fact, rested on a scientific scheme of comprehensiveness, but on a compromise founded on the impossibility either of altering or of pressing too hard an august and beautiful but archaic and perplexing system. All sections have felt their position anomalous in something and the proverbial pot and kettle have been our chief vessels of salvation. Now it is obvious that one of these English compromises of ours cannot exist an instant after two formidable sections set to work to argue about it. If a Judge were to insist on the bodily appearance of John Doe and Richard Roe, nothing would remain to be done except to explain to him the unique and delicate character of those gentlemen and to remove them from our legal system. If the Queen, in the exercise of her indisputable legal rights, were to pardon all the murderers and make them peers, nothing could be done except to abolish the Monarchy. It does not follow, however, that we should not regret having to do so; and we may all as Englishmen look back with pride at the great experiment of a tolerant National Church, even if it has failed at last.
Mr. Bowen’s book, which is written from the moderate Protestant standpoint, is a peculiar example of what we may be permitted without offence to call degeneration in the course of 300 pages. It opens with an estimate of the good and evil in the Oxford Movement, which is not only just and thoughtful, but genuinely original; its thesis that Tractarianism was in its highest function a somewhat austere moral movement, an almost Puritanic protest against slovenly and luxurious religion, is a ray of honest historic daylight. But instead of pursuing the high and fruitful work of disentangling the spiritual and essential from the irrelevant and malicious in this controversy, he turns the latter part of his book into the familiar Kensit catalogue of horrible revelations in high life, a mass of barren and bitter anecdotes which only serve to remind us, if they are untrue, that there are a great many liars in the world, if they are true, that there are a great many repulsive lunatics. There may be “Catholics” (we leave the matter to the police) who flog nuns almost to death, but that is no reason for flogging the subject to death also, as if it had anything to do with the two theories of ecclesiastical history. There may be “Catholics” who teach children that the Dissenters found “little sham churches” which the Holy Ghost never inspires, but we are prevented from admitting this into the Church controversy by our firm conviction that Canon Gore or Canon MacColl would regard the view of Dissenters with as much contempt as we do. Our own definite and even earnest opinion is that this discussion will never have either profit or solution until each party respectively abandons identifying Protestantism with Mr. Kensit or Catholicism with the idiots above mentioned, and, frankly, admits the really interesting historic fact that Catholicism and Protestantism are two moral and intellectual forces standing for tendencies that are as old as life and equally worth living. Catholicism stands for the instinct, for clothing the unutterable in noble systems, enduring images and worthy language, Protestantism for the recurrent necessity of rending the loveliest veils and refreshing human nature in the terrible simplicity of monotheism. But from this view one very obvious deduction follows, which has a very clear bearing on a book like that of Mr. Bowen. It is not common sense to suppose that the adherents of Protestantism, the glory of which is in a certain impatience of formulae, will be as good authorities upon rites and ceremonies as the people who regard them as of vast importance. A plain man is within his rights in expressing an indifference to heraldry, but if he begins to argue about it it is not improbable that he will put metal on metal and call a chevron a bend. Now the evil genius of most Protestants in this discussion has been ignorance: they do not understand the facts of the case as the party who are immersed in ecclesiastical history understands them. And this has given rise to the fault which hag-rides the work of Mr. Bowen and Mr. Llewelyn Davies, a fault that has dwarfed and vulgarised militant Protestantism to a degree inconceivable, and which we will venture to call the idolatrous tendency of Protestantism. The ignorant Protestants and the ignorant Catholics are the only people who worship stocks and stones, for the former think a dead stick diabolic and the latter holy. If the gods of the heathen are stone and brass the same must be said of the devils of Mr. Kensit. This extraordinary tendency to quote material objects as if they were sinful in themselves, to whisper in an awe-struck voice a rumour of the presence of certain candles or pictures as if the candles were stolen or the pictures pornographic is one of the worst results of the grotesque seriousness of which we speak. Mr. Llewelyn Davies, for example, says in his preface not that there is confession in the Church, but that there are “confessional-boxes,” and from the manner in which these objects are often spoken of, one would imagine that a confessional-box was something like a musical-box, an ingenious piece of clock-work which confessed and absolved a man by machinery, and without which it was impossible for a confessor to ply his trade. As a matter of fact, a confessional-box bears the same relation to confession that a bathing-machine bears to bathing; it makes it slightly safer and more decorous. As bathing would exist everywhere if there were no machines, so confession would, as things stand, exist if there were no boxes. The real trouble is that those who embark on the genuinely necessary work of attacking the evils of ritualism get no further than these material symbols, and never realise the real problem. The real problem of confession, for example, may be stated in three short sentences, and it has nothing to do with boxes. The Prayer-book leaves the matter entirely to the layman, saying that, if he is unable to quiet his conscience, he shall come to confession. This obviously does not contemplate, and by implication discourages, the idea of universal systematic confession. But, if there be a strong movement among the laity for such systematic confession, how can such systematic confession be stopped in a free country? No one has any right to say that every member of a vast crowd is not at a particular psychological crisis. If any Protestant writer can really solve this problem of the letter and the spirit, he will do more than we can.
Let us take another example from Mr. Bowen’s pages-the passage which he quotes from the letters of Pusey, in which that great man discusses self-flagellation, describes a scourge “of a very sacred character” with five lashes, discusses the parts of his anatomy, lungs, &c, on which it was safe to employ it, and goes into the matter of hair shirts like a man choosing waistcoats. The passage is, to a healthy man, somewhat emetic. But we think that Mr. Bowen is yielding again to Kensitite materialism in imagining that it is the mere use of a rod that seems unworthy of Pusey. His self-discipline was probably neither more voluntary nor more painful than that of an ordinary young man who nearly bursts a blood-vessel in his college boat. What disgusts us is the lower spirit of Catholicism, the spirit of mysteries and minutiae, the solemn treatment of inane details, the tendency of all doors to lead inwards and none outwards. Pusey discussing various expedients of bodily discomfort represents the ugly side of poetic and inexhaustible Catholicism, just as the ugly side of the simplicity and centrality of Protestantism is represented by the cant and monotony of the ecstatic bore who asks innumerable strangers if they have found Jesus. Nothing will ever come of this controversy until these two religious tendencies are recognised as things that are essential always, and which on the highest plane are not even inconsistent. When a voice from the Bible says, “Will God be pleased with the fat of rams … shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” in that voice speaks the highest spirit of Protestantism. When a voice says, “Shall I offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing?” in that voice speaks the highest spirit of Catholicism. And if Mr. Bowen and his friends grow impatient with such hymnal phraseology as “O, Sweet Sacrament!” just as his opponents grow impatient with, “Give us the blood of the Lamb!” can they not both remember that religion is a secret passion audaciously made public; it is not strange if its hymns have something of the splendid folly of love-letters? Can we not make one more effort to solve this riddle by the introduction of Christianity?
—G.K.C.
Our Reasonable Imperialist
—November 10, 1900, The Speaker
The Great Boer War. By A. Conan Doyle. London: Smith and Elder.
This occasionally mistaken, but always moderate and dignified work can only be properly appreciated if we consider who and what Mr. Conan Doyle is. He is something more than the only author since Dickens who has created a character of whom every one has heard. He is one of the embodiments of that tendency, sound and useful originally, towards the poetry of the Savage, otherwise called the Bachelor; the poetry of masculine sport and independence which was the really healthful and necessary work of the late Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
Mr. Conan Doyle’s defence of prize-fighting and Mr. Kipling’s defence of the war were, of course, only wild allegoric paradoxes, intended to emphasise by their very oddity a genuine tendency in the cultured as well as the uncultured, towards the masculine standpoint of the ethics of war and hunting, the idea that we, in praising the poetry of womanhood and the romantic relations, have, perhaps, neglected the dumb primeval poetry of our own friendships and feuds. Even Stevenson, in so long keeping the feminine excitement out of his stories, belongs to this movement; and “Sherlock Holmes” is, in lighter matters, the best type we have of cunning and self-reliance in civilization, of the romance of savagery in a city. No one expects that a writer like Mr. Doyle can have a hyper-ideal view of life, and it is not surprising if both he and Mr. Kipling tend in politics in a somewhat tribal and militant direction. But the difference in their two fates is quite startling. At a certain point of this river of average manhood it is crossed by the shallow and frothy stream of a temporary Jingoism. Mr. Kipling has been completely whirled away on the smaller stream, and is now somewhere making observations, dangerously fresh and brilliant, about the Boers reading the Bible and only shooting from behind rocks. Mr. Conan Doyle goes on down the main stream of his philosophy, such as it is, of an admiration for manliness, and therefore an admiration for the Boers. Mr. Kipling is an Imperialist, and he calls the last slaughter of Cronje’s forces at Paardeberg “a satisfactory big killing.” Mr. Doyle is also an Imperialist and he says of those forces, “Thus they passed out of their ten days of glorious history.”
Mr. Conan Doyle is a supporter of the war, and consequently on a large number of points his conclusions are not ours. But in the presence of the general ferocious triviality which confuses this question, we are far more inclined to congratulate Mr. Doyle upon the honourable reverence that he again and again expresses for the conquered than to argue with him about threadbare diplomatic points. It is curious, perhaps, to hear any man apply the adjectives “grave and measured” to Sir Alfred Milner’s remarks about the Outlanders being helots, a remark the only excuse for which is that Sir Alfred Milner is old enough to have forgotten what helots were. But we almost invariably find (what is not too common) that Mr. Doyle’s Imperialism is a matter of opinion, not a matter of moral colour-blindness. For example, he considers the Majuba Settlement unwise and expresses that view firmly, but he indulges in no childish goriness about “avenging Majuba.” Whether or no he is a Christian, he is at any rate a sportsman. He knows that the coarsest prize-fighter that came of our blood was expected to bear no malice for a fair beating.
In his description of the war itself Mr. Conan Doyle shows, as a pure artist, the same virile simplicity. He does not indulge in that extraordinary art of “wordpainting” which has poisoned the work of so many war-correspondents, the literary lunacy which hunts the wrong word as simple people hunt the right, and avoids the vulgarity of speaking of crafty generals and bursting shells by the simple expedient of speaking of crafty shells and bursting generals. Mr. Conan Doyle tells the tale of war simply and he has the reward of success for a very obvious reason. The essence of warlike poetry is rapidity. This dainty and elaborate movement of the diction is open to objection, even when the writer is engaged on the higher work of describing the profligacies of some neurotic of Upper Tooting; but when the whole force of the situation is in its instantaneousness and dazzling decision, a clever adjective is like a calthrop to a charge of cavalry. It interrupts and even unseats the warrior. Mr. Conan Doyle’s descriptions have the true military rush and simplicity like the line of an old war-ballad:-
“And dark with winter was the flow— Of Iser rolling rapidly.”
The “descriptive” correspondent would have written it:-
“And fat with frost-mud was the flow Of Iser tottering huskily.”
If guns “sneeze” at a man no doubt he is struck by the artistic comparison. If they shoot at him, they hit him.
We value profoundly, as we have said, the chivalrous tone of Mr. Doyle’s book, because he represents, since Mr. Kipling’s mysterious collapse, that muscular school which should take the Boers under its particular protection. A man like Cronje should have been and would have been, in Mr. Kipling’s best days, a delight to that author. He has all Mr. Kipling’s favourite virtues and, by a supreme touch of fascination, he has committed all Mr. Kipling’s favourite crimes. Mr. Doyle, however, stands forth to-day as the champion of the secrets of a strong race. The question is far deeper than mere negative morality. Cronje is not filled with moral delicacies, and he is by no means a favourable specimen of the Boer. But comparing, in the broadest human and anthropological spirit, the hero of the tremendous Thermopylae of Paarderberg with Mr. Beit or the late Mr. Barnato, what can any thinking person say of the transfer of influence in that country except the two lines of Goldsmith?—
“Ill fares the land to hastening woes a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”
Have we realised that these ragged folk are the real riches of the Transvaal? Can we work the mines of the human gold?
Buddha Versus Buddhism
—November 17, 1900, The Speaker
Buddha And Buddhism. By Arthur Lillie. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
Mr. Arthur Lillie calls his book Buddha and Buddhism, and much of it is devoted to explaining that they are very different things. His primary and most interesting thesis amounts to this: that so far from the great nihilistic philosophy which attracts European pessimists to Buddhism being, as is maintained, the pure metaphysic of Gautama himself since corrupted into a mere religion, it is this nihilism which is itself a vast decadent development of the words of a teacher who was as primal, ethical and direct as the Founder of Christianity. Mr. Lillie has a lively instinct for literature, and he opens his case with a telling and amusing apologue in which he describes some future historian proving conclusively that mediaeval Catholicism must have been a priestly corruption of the religion of Comte. Nightmare speculations on the essential non-existence of everything are the chief hobby of the Pyhrro-Buddhic pessimists-if, indeed, pessimism can be properly attributed to them, for it is difficult to believe in the worst of all possible worlds if you do not believe that any worlds are possible at all. But we think Mr. Lillie has done a great service in clearing the character of the great Gautama of this war upon Nature-this matricidal mysticism. The question affects not only Buddhism, but Christianity also, which is now constantly accused of nihilism by its enemies as Buddhism is accused by its friends.
Schopenhauer, with that brilliant futility which made him so striking considered merely as a literary man, maintains that Christianity is akin to his own pessimism because it rejects the vanities of the world. The remark is a good instance of that class of ingenious observations against which we can say nothing except that they are obviously not true. Any one can see that a man floating in visions of certain felicity is not in the same state of mind as a man who believes all felicity impossible: and the two are not made essentially any more similar by the accident that they both take the same attitude towards something else. Schopenhauer and the most maniacal ascetic of the middle ages are no more like each other than a man who does not take an omnibus because he cannot afford it and a man who does not take an omnibus because he prefers his landau. Buddhism might be called an intermediary link, for the Buddhist felicity was in a sense negative; but the monkish felicity was full of the fieriest human images, and if he scoffed at non-religious pleasures it was as a lover might scoff at the mass of women or a patriot at the mass of nations. We say this of the most evil forms of actual Christian asceticism. That the religion of Jesus was not Pyhrro-Buddhic (though it is sometimes called so) is clear from the somewhat obvious distinction that Pyhrro-Buddhism encourages poverty because it takes a man out of the natural order, whereas Jesus encouraged poverty avowedly because it united him with the natural order-with the birds and the lilies of the field. No mortal ingenuity can make an “Anti-Cosmic Nihilist” of a teacher who recommended a certain course on the express ground that it was the law of the animal and vegetable world. It is highly possible that ambition, commerce and much that civilisation values appeared to Jesus a huge and grotesque excrescence on the face of life. But to Pyhrro-Buddhism it is life itself that is the excrescence: being is a disease: the stars are a disfigurement to the purity of night, a kind of cosmic rash, and the eternal hills are mere protuberances, as shameful as the boils of Job. It is the iniquitous completeness of this imaginative conception that has really attracted men like Schopenhauer to metaphysical Buddhism, for the Indian pessimist holds it with an appalling sweetness and calm which the fretful German could only envy as he pursued the impossible paradox of using cosmic energy in defiance of the Cosmos and not so much cutting off his nose to spite his face as cutting the rest of himself off his nose that he might turn up his nose at it.
But though we can well believe, with Mr. Lillie, that the real Buddha was a noble elemental moralist and that his teachings were very different from the bewildering rhetoric of annihilation which fills later Indian metaphysics, we think that there is, perhaps, a more natural connection between them than he is inclined to allow. To us, at least, the Buddhist peoples, especially of India, seem to present the unfathomable spiritual tragedy of a people who have looked upon God and lived. They have stared at the white light too long and their intellects have suffered. The Jews, with their wonderful instinct for practical religion, swore that he who looked upon Jehovah died; but in a large number of transcendental schools and sages the sentence of death has been commuted to a doom of gibbering idiotcy. To the Buddhists was given a conception of God of extraordinary intellectual purity; but, in growling familiar with the featureless splendour, they have lost their heads: they babble; they say that everything is nothing and nothing is everything, that black is white because white is black. We fancy that the frightful universal negatives, at which, as we have seen, they have at last arrived, are really little more than the final mental collapse of men trying always to find an abstraction big enough for all things. “I have said what I understood not: things too great for me, that I knew not. I will put my hand upon my mouth.” Job was a wise man.
Perhaps the most unsatisfactory part of Mr. Lillie’s very satisfactory book is the chapter devoted to the parallels between Christ and Buddha, upon which are founded the theories that Christianity was borrowed from Buddhism. Historically we do not think this probable, if for no other reason than for the reason that the basic scheme of ideas on which Christ reared His Gospel may be found in Isaiah and the ancient Jews; but there can be no doubt that there are very interesting resemblances. Mr. Lillie, however, in the excitement of finding parallels, provides a list of which nine-tenths are parallels of no significance whatever. To say of two Eastern teachers that they were both concerned on one occasion with the washing of feet is not even a coincidence; we might as well call it a coincidence that they both had feet to wash. Sometimes Mr. Lillie’s parallels are not even parallel as far as they go. He tells us as a pendant to the text, “They parted my garments,” that “on the death of the Bokte’ Lama his garments are cut into little stripes and prized immensely.” This is the very reverse of a similarity; the parting of Christ’s garments was done by his enemies; it was an expression of contempt, and the garments were not “prized immensely,” except for what they would fetch in the rag-shops of Jerusalem. Mr. Lillie quotes the fact that in Buddhist scripture the divine voice speaks “out of the sky,” as if in any religion one would expect it to come out of the coal-cellar. He makes a more radical error in comparing the Gospel “house on the sand” with the Buddhist saying, “The seen world is like a city of sand.” Not only does the Christian parable not enunciate the latter sentiment, it enunciates something like the opposite. The man who built on the sand was the man who did not carry out his conceptions into the seen world. We can only refer Mr. Lillie to the passage.
Mr. Lillie speaks with just dissent of some distinctions made by Christians between the two creeds founded merely on doctrines, even such central doctrines as personal deity and immortality. But whereas Mr. Lillie seems to think the difference more or less imaginary, we fancy it is deeper than any doctrines. Both Christianity and Buddhism do indeed stand for simplicity, for the fact that it is in the primal part of us that we are nearest to the unseen. But Buddhism stands for a simplification of the mind and a reliance on the most indestructible ideas; Christianity stands for a simplification of the heart and a reliance on the most indestructible sentiments. The greater Christian insistance upon personal deity and immortality is not, we fancy, the cause so much as the effect of this essential trend towards an ancient passion and pathos as the power that most nearly rends the veil from the nature of things. Both creeds grope after the same secret sun, but Buddhism dreams of its light and Christianity of its heat. Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing Om; Christianity seeks for God with the most elementary passion it can find; the craving for a father, the hunger that is as old as the hills. It turns the whole cry of a lost universe into the cry of a lost child.
G. K. C.
Literature and Childhood
—November 24, 1900, The Speaker
The Junior Temple Reader. By Clara Linklater Thomson and E. E. Speight, B.A. London: Horace Marshall.
The compilers of this collection have laid down for themselves in the preface a genuine and seriously needed principle, and have from time to time observed it admirably, and with dramatic suddenness. They say, with perfect truth, that “such reading-books are too often written down to children, instead of being made the models by which their taste is formed.” Undoubtedly looking down and speaking down and writing down to the human soul have been the sterilising curses of education. That everything should look up to everything else may be a little bewildering as geometry, but like many other impossibilities, it is simple and successful in morals. But we cannot imagine that the compilers mean that all things are equally suitable in a book for children or that they would cheerfully bring out a sequel consisting of selections from The Amazing Marriage, interspersed with popular recitations from Mallarme. They have so far fulfilled their own excellent principle that they have collected in this volume a number of noble fragments of literary art which it is highly probable that the most adventurous child might not find in the family book-case. The pleasure of reading a manly English translation of the death of the great Paladin at Roncesvaux, for example, is sufficient to wipe out one’s annoyance at finding a piece of sentimental German romanticism, like Wieland’s Huon of Bordeaux, placed like an artificial rockery beside the morning mountain of the Song of Roland.
But the compilers of this educational work have violated their own principle in a more subtle and a more universal way. They have yielded to that singular delusion which dominates books with a far less logical intention, the delusion that the child as such is interesting to children. This is a mistake which any hack-journalist would despise. Every one is interested in the local colour of foreign travel, but a book entitled Strange Adventures among the Aborigines of Clapham would not gratify the inhabitants of that suburb. Yet the customs of Clapham are, to the true philosophic traveller, weird and even terrifying. So the eternal value of children to maturity is that they are a palpable scientific elfland, but the essence of elves is unconsciousness and utter solemnity. The books that should be set before children are books of play and ceremonial, and pomp and war: the whole gloria mundi, the whole pageant of history, full of blood and pride, may safely be told them-everything but the secret of their own incomparable influence. Children need to be taught primarily the grandeur of the whole world. It is merely the whole world that needs to be taught the grandeur of children.
Upon this error a great part of this collection, like most other collections, splits like a ship upon a rock. The compilers have honourably rejected bad literature, but they seem to have had the idea that they had only to find a piece of good literature referring to children and to submit it affectionately to the child. They might as well take a copy of Marshall on The Frog and affectionately throw it into a frog-pond. How grotesque it is, when once the mind is set seriously on the matter, to put before a child, as here, a poem like Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” or, for the matter of that, any poem of Blake’s. A child appreciates rhythm, and Blake hardly observes prosody; a child loves pomp and battle, and Blake was a worshipper of nudity and crudity and peace at any price; a child is censorious of detail, and Blake is often, to a censorious mind, mere doggerel. The splendours of his poetry are a clarity which is more unfathomable than darkness and a purity which is like the purity of white hair. He called some of his poems “Songs of Innocence,” but in truth all of them, and more especially the simplest, were “Songs of Experience.” There was not one rhyme that a boy could have written, except, perhaps, the gorgeous and swaggering tragedy of Edward III.
The same fault must be found with the insertion of the beautiful “Cradle Song” of Mr. W. B. Yeats, called here (for some dark educational reason) Mr. W. A. Yeats. It is the song of a mother, and any child should be sent to bed who pretended to understand it. The fallacy extends even to the illustrations. The compilers have been foolish enough to employ largely an artist who works in a style of pure line-illustration as pale as the silver point of Raphael and aspiring after the manner of Burne-Jones. Even where this is done excellently it is wholly unfitted for children, for it requires a technical luxuriousness to appreciate the billowing beauty of a single line; it is a perfect instance of the unfitness of simplicity for the simple. The most distressing example is a picture from that portentous Scandinavian fable about the travels of Thor-how he could not drink from a horn because the horn was the sea and could not lift a cat because the cat was the world-serpent. No mortal should dare to depict that story, for it belongs to that tremendous borderland where the shapes of things hang loosely on them like disguises, and life is a metaphysical masquerade. But when we are shown a pre-Raphaelite youth like an emaciated Galahad and asked to believe that it is Thor, our “Berserker blood-rage” makes one of its rare appearances. This insolent lucidity will not do for children. It is the glory of the child as the type of the celestial that his mind is a house of windows. To surround him with child poems and pictures is to paint the panes outside with silver and make his mind, like the mind of a maniac, a house of mirrors.
G.K.C.
Christmas Books for Children
December 8, 1900, The Speaker
Time should be turned tail foremost as we approach Christmas and all of us grow younger every day: even the educational reviewer like ourselves may suddenly become possessed of a sense of humour and perceive in his position as “mother’s adviser” an unsuspected source of mental delight. We may at least throw off that burden of incomparable conscientiousness which is the curse of all educationalists, since it prevents them from sympathising with those whom they have to educate. It is manifestly impossible to criticise children’s books, as we hope to prove in the course of doing so; it is bringing a dingy and artificial fastidiousness to bear on a point of view which is perfectly capable of taking care of itself, which has a power of extracting a certain nameless excitement from one material almost as much as another. There are, we can fully believe, educationalists who are capable of investigating sandcastles with a view to the strict principles of architecture and mud-pies with a view to the strict principles of cookery. But to us, we must confess, the two questions about a book for a child which would seem important would always be “Does it obviously give him imaginative pleasure?” and “Will it poison him when he licks the binding?”
Of all such books the easiest to criticise are the more or less frankly instructive, such as Mr. George Gomme’s The Princess’s Story Book (Constable). The idea is a bold and by no means a bad one: that of making a mosaic history of England, not from the chapters of historians (as it was done in the Greene series), but from the chapters of writers of fiction. The portrait of James I, for example, is from The Fortunes of Nigel, and assuredly there is no better portrait in the whole of Scott: the fight with the Armada is told in the words of Kingsley, and the defeat of Wallace in those of Miss Jane Porter. Modern historians are far too craven to adopt the manner of Herodotus, and report long fictitious conversations embodying the general spirit of what passed between two historical figures. But from the point of view of childhood they probably lose enormously by clinging to the oratio obliqua. We are not concerned to quarrel with the amount of error in such a narrative, for the lies of fiction convey truth and the lies of history convey nothing. But there is obviously a distinction between romances in this matter: all good romances convey truth, but not always about the period they describe. Esmond, which the compiler regrets he had to exclude, is a true romance: it is written by a man steeped in the literature and spirit of Queen Anne’s time. Miss Porter’s Scottish Chiefs does depict a period; but it is not the period of Wallace, but the period of Miss Porter: the period of sentimental sympathy with the heroes of liberty.
Mr. Thomas Cobb’s little book, The Bountiful Lady; or, How Mary was Changed from a Very Miserable Little Girl to a Very Happy One (Grant Richards) is amusing in its way and the morality is not obscenely prominent. Still, we are a little tired of the enormous number of books directed by grown people against sulky and unhappy children. Considering that two-thirds of the children of the world are courageously happy in the filthiest slums and corners and that quite one-third of the grown-up people are offensively discontented in first-class hotels, the claim of the adult to preach contentment to infancy appears to us a piece of indecent hypocritical impudence. Mr. Cobb, however, can put in the sound dramatic claim that he is only describing an individual, and the little fairy-tale of the boy who never liked anything when he got it is both humorous and profitable, if we remember always that it is vastly more applicable to men than to boys. If the adults are useful in their way (as we may generously admit) in order to teach children to work, children are quite as much specialists in teaching the adult to play.
Mr. John Ingold has a very genuine poetic instinct and one that should fit him to write fairy-tales (perhaps the highest form of art), but he has not quite sufficiently realised the nature of the literary form in question. His imagery and allegory are confused and unreliable, sometimes daring and sometimes trivial. The whole essence of the true fairy-tale is that it happens not at night, like a ghost story, but in broad daylight: that the most preposterous figures and incidents stand out clear, defiant and unconscious, the lawful denizens of a lawless planet. This clean-cutting workmanship, this simple grouping is absolutely essential to a good fairytale, and sometimes Mr. Ingold in his Glimpses from Wonderland (John Long) really achieves it. The following sentence is a piece of literary plain carpentry which hits the right nail on the head almost with the hammer of Stevenson:-
“On a throne, formed of twisted men turned to stone and in which thousands of sinister eyes gleamed like emeralds, rubies and sapphires, reclined the Necromancer.” This is a clear picture; but elsewhere we can form no picture of what occurs, creatures with Lewis Carroll names carrying widows’ tears, a man’s soul taken from his body as mere afterthought, these are futile misshapen incidents which prove there is a law in Elfland by breaking it. The story of The Necromancer seems one that might stop at any point; it lacks the simple architecture of the old stories with their chorus, little recurrences and triads of brothers. Mr. Ingold should remember that true miracles are most inscrutable standing in the glare of the sun. Some other stories in this book, which are not fairy-tales, show ability, but we advise Mr. Ingold strongly to go on writing about magicians. He has unquestionable imagination.
When we read the title of Mr. Chapman’s little book, Proverbs Improved (John Lane), we had a momentary hope that the proverbs really were improved, for there is ample room for improvement in what seems to be, with few exceptions, the crystallised wisdom of cowards. “Waste not, want not,” “A fool and his money are soon parted,” these and the majority of their like seem always texts from the Bible of Laodicaea, the maxims of the comfortable who never know either the joy of danger or the joy of joy. Mr. Chapman does indeed rebel, by a verse in praise of wandering against the maxim “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” and we fully agree with him. A stone which had the unwonted pleasure of a good roll would know better than to settle down as a botanical “collector.” It would leave that to gravestones. “All is not gold that glitters,” he accepts, however, in all its infamy-as if, to the healthy soul of youth, glittering were not infinitely better than being common gold. Mr. Chapman has, unfortunately, no really revolutionary design. Both his verses and Miss Grace May’s designs are graceful and appropriate and neither pretend to be anything more. A good specimen of both is on the page illustrating the proverb “Faint heart never won fair lady.” The existence of this saying, again, is a singular proof of the power of masculine concealment, for certainly if it had been true no fair lady would ever have been won in this world.
G.K.C.
“Puritan and Anglican”
—December 15, 1900, The Speaker
Puritan And Anglican. By Edward Dowden. London: Kegan Paul.
Professor Dowden’s new book, Puritan and Anglican, deals with the literary aspect of the two great movements of the seventeenth century, the political aspect of which was represented by the Civil War. The word “Anglican” is a little misleading, and even, in these days of Church crises, alarming. We cannot help thinking that Professor Dowden would have done better to have employed the loose, but familiar, phrase “Cavalier” for the loyalist section, despite the fact that it calls up rather humorous images of George Herbert swaggering in big top-boots, and Jeremy Taylor draining flagons and fighting watchmen.
The reader need go no further than the first page in order to convince himself that Dowden has a grip on the whole subject. Such a sentence as this on the Elizabethan age, “The literature of pleasure never attained to such seriousness,” has a fine and scornful edge for the present age, of which it may be truly said that the literature of pain never attained so garrulous a frivolity. Professor Dowden, as a great Shakesperian student has, in studying the Puritans and Cavaliers, the enormous advantage of thoroughly comprehending the fountain-head.
While Professor Dowden fully realises the broad and noble ideals of the school who may be called the Cavalier mystics, such as Vaughan and Sir Thomas Browne, he does full justice to the Puritans. We hardly think, however, that he quite realises one great point of difference between the Cavalier religious movement and the Puritan religious movement. They were not only different movements, they were movements in two different senses of the word. It is highly probable that the religious ideals of Oliver Cromwell were infinitely inferior to those of Sir Thomas Browne. But the point of Puritanism was this: that however Cromwell might stand alone in genius or policy, his religious ideals practically united him with the meanest drummer in his army. On the other hand, we should laugh at the mere idea of Browne’s archaeological emotions and mystical charity being shared by his butler or keeping his gardener awake at night. The footmen of the learned physician were not, we may be sure, interested in the smallest degree in the question of whether the soul was miraculously remade at the Resurrection, or whether the elephant slept standing upright. The Puritan movement, if it be judged side by side with the best types of Cavalier ethics, can only appear clumsy, bitter and offensive. If justice is to be done to it, we must remember that it was a movement in the sense that we speak of the movement that produced the Reform Bill; while the movement of Cavalier idealism was merely a movement in the sense that we speak of the movement that produced The Yellow Book. This element in the matter, the question of the numbers involved, is rather kept out of sight by Professor Dowden’s constant comparison of the two schools. It is, indeed, an element in history that we constantly forget, that we forget when we talk of the Athenians as democrats, instead of as aristocrats ruling crowds of slaves, or when we compare the morality of a mob of early Christians with the morality of a single pagan like Marcus Aurelius. It is not only important in any historic crisis whether the voting was black or white, it is also important whether there was, in election language, a heavy poll. Of the various movements whereby new masses of men have been brought on to the stage of serious action Puritanism was one of the most remarkable. It had the unique value of theology, that it brought a philosophical problem of some sort to knock at every man’s door. On the other hand, it had all the disadvantages of a revolution. Cavalier idealism had all the advantages of a fad.
In dealing with the Religio Medici Professor Dowden is just and sympathetic, but not frantic with admiration, as he ought to be. A man can always find fresh and noble principles of criticism in a work that he really loves, and Professor Dowden’s Sir Thomas Browne leaves us vaguely unsatisfied. He can see that Browne was an exalted mystic, but he does not give the peculiar flavour of his mysticism, a mysticism which, to our mind, owed much to his literary style. Style, in his sense, did not mean merely sound, but an attempt to give some twist of wit or symbolism to every clause or parenthesis: when he went over his work again he did not merely polish brass, he fitted in gold. This habit of working with a magnifying-glass, this turning and twisting of minor words, is the true parent of mysticism, for the mystic is not (as Professor Dowden, in this essay, seems to indicate) a man who reverences large things so much as a man who reverences small ones, who reduces himself to a point, without parts or magnitude, so that to him the grass is really a forest and the grasshopper a dragon. Little things please great minds.
Professor Dowden’s study of George Herbert is altogether admirable. Nothing in the book is better than the fine passage in which he points out that Herbert’s ideal of a priest, “amiably inquisitorial and benevolently despotic,” was suited to any other age rather than that crisis of strenuous individualism. But perhaps Professor Dowden takes Herbert’s political aspect too seriously. Herbert was a child in the best sense of the word. His Temple was built with a box of bricks. His charm and power lie not in his views on any subject, but in that infantile familiarity with celestial things which made him, with an almost irreverent lightheartedness, praise his Creator in rebuses and charades. We may leave him safely in a divine nursery. Sir Thomas Browne was a grown man, grey with learning and experience, but the two had this in common, that they both suggest the idea of shelter; to them the Church was a fortress and storehouse of learning, dignity and peace. And as we think of this image and seek to fairly appreciate the two schools, there cannot but rise before us the terrible scene in Grace Abounding in which Bunyan, cowering in the church, was struck down by a blinding fear that the church itself would fall down upon him, because his conscience was not clear.
With Professor Dowden’s forcible study of Bunyan no fault can be found, but in his long and able treatment of Milton we do not by any means always find ourselves in agreement with him. Especially we fail to follow his attempt to prove the spirit and theories of Paradise Lost to be mainly Hebraic and Scriptural. To our mind Lecky’s European Morals and Dante’s Divine Comedy are vastly more similar than the beauty of the Old Testament and the beauty of Paradise Lost. There are no theories in the Old Testament. The conception that gives a grand artistic unity to the Hebrew books, the conception of a great and mysterious protagonist toiling amid cloud and darkness towards an end of which only fragments are revealed to his agents, has no counterpart in Milton. The “With whom hath he taken counsel?” of the prophet is not there: the God of the Old Testament never explains himself intellectually; the God of Milton never does anything else. The much-quoted object “to justify the ways of God to men” would have appeared mere ridiculous blasphemy to Isaiah. This sublime Jewish sentiment of the loneliness of God (“I have trodden the wine-press alone and of the peoples there was no man with me”) is perpetually violated in Milton, whose Deity is always clearing Himself from charges as if He were at the Old Bailey. The least superstitious of us can feel the thrill of the elemental faith of the Jews, can imagine a voice thundering out of the sky in mysterious wrath or more mysterious benediction. But who can help laughing at the idea of a voice out of the midnight sky suddenly beginning to explain itself and set right an unfortunate misunderstanding?
We wish that Professor Dowden had given the large space which he has devoted to defending the frigid and repellent Miltonic religion to a more exhaustive study of the towering and intoxicating Miltonic style. Poets commonly say something with their style vastly different and vastly superior to what they say with their mere meaning. And whenever Professor Dowden treats Milton in this aspect he would be a bold man who would seek to add anything to the judgment.
Perhaps the finest article in the whole book is that on Butler, the author of Hudibras. In him we see the gradual chilling of the national heart by the ice-fiends of judgment and prudence, which went on until the nation which had once produced the two great schools of faith and valour to which Professor Dowden’s work is devoted, reached in the rationalism of the earlier eighteenth century that impartiality which is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
G. K. C.
The Christmas Story
—December 29, 1900, The Speaker
The Beloved Son. By Mrs. Francis Rye. London: Heineniann.
The success which Mrs. Rye achieves in delivering a suggestive narrative of the life of Jesus for children is all the more creditable as she has to steer her way with immeasurable cunning between the two most dominant and serious factors of the age-the profound unspirituality of the spiritualist and the astonishing irrationality of the rationalist. On the one hand she contrives to avoid dogma without the error of dogmatising against dogma. If we may venture to guess, we fancy that Mrs. Rye has already suffered many things from the everlasting doctors of theology, who never fail to propound to all expositors of Jesus the same class of idiotic riddles which they once propounded to Jesus Himself. But she has successfully eluded the pack of pursuing scribes, and in this work we are no more troubled about the origin and nature of Christ than we were about the origin and nature of our own mothers. There are some people who require no letters of introduction. On the other hand, again, she has been equally successful in eluding the bigotry which is in mortal fear of bigotry, the pompous orthodoxy of the agnostic. Wherever a frankly theological or supernatural story obviously assisted the portraiture of the Divine Figure, she has employed it fearlessly and with incomparable common sense. The terror in which many excellent educationalists stand of the supernatural in religious narrative certainly finds no welcome in Mrs. Rye, or in us. These worthy persons (when they are not quite mad) have no hesitation in teaching those axioms of education, the old fairy-tales. They inform children with the gravest face that a beanstalk grew up into the sky, that a giant turned into a mouse, that a pumpkin turned into a state-coach. But the imaginative and merciful wonders told in the book which has made our literature, the stories which no one can ignore who wishes to understand three sentences of our plainest prose-writers, are the wonders which are, by a unique and ludicrous timidity, excluded from education by these blameless but amusing men. Mrs. Rye has pursued the wise course of the old nurses; she has realised that a beanstalk growing up to heaven is not more surprising than a beanstalk growing at all; that water being turned into wine is not, upon the whole, so incredible as a cloud being turned into water.
The best element in Mrs. Rye’s work lies probably in the mere names of the chapters. This cannot be dismissed as a small matter, if only because Christianity itself conquered not by its miracles nor its doctrines, but by its names. “The Son of Man”—“The Kingdom of Heaven”— humanity will have exhausted a thousand theologies and philosophies before it has exhausted these. And in this faculty of naming, which is itself a kind of poetic definition, Mrs. Rye shows her best inspiration. We were fully convinced that the book was in some degree a good one, from the mere fact that the first chapter was called “Christmas Day.” These two words express better than any religious periphrasis the peculiar richness and intensity which clings round the story of Bethlehem. They express that hilarious and obvious reconciliation which destroys the utterly fanciful opposition between Paganism and Christianity, the reconciliation under which Christianity drops its affectation of rigour and Paganism its affectation of frivolity. Above all, it expresses that quality of instantaneousness, of urgency and excitement, which distinguishes Christmas from so many of the earth’s festivals: the sentiment that it does not celebrate some event a thousand years back, but some event that has just happened, some event that happens every year.
Again, Mrs. Rye is fortunate in her title for the chapter on the parables, “The Wonderful Stories He Told.” By a magnificent and justifiable contempt, the word “parable,” dear to the Sunday-school teacher, is entirely omitted. We are not told that it is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, nor provoked, like the little boy in the anecdote, to assert that it is a heavenly story with no earthly meaning. The earthly meaning is primarily narrated and emphasised and this is profoundly right, for it is the whole point of the parabolic method that if the earthly meaning fail to touch the heart and head the spiritual meaning is useless and worthless. If a woman were really indifferent to the loss of sixpence, if shepherds were diverted humorously with the thought of a lost sheep in the snow, if sowers, instead of scattering the seed, laid it delicately with a pair of tweazers in the right spot, if fathers were really in the habit of serving up to their sons an elegantly grilled stone, preceded by a fish-course of boiled serpent, the parables would be empty and immoral. It is as stories that they are primarily valuable, as pictures of the truths of human life, and as stories they touch that profound need for stories that has flowed everlastingly out of the East. It seems to remind us that Christ sat down to teach. The one connecting link between the Book of Job and the Arabian Nights lies in the fact that the Oriental author must have sat down to tell them both.
The title of the last chapter, “How in the End He Won,” strikes the true note of Mrs. Rye’s story. She largely succeeds in giving to Jesus His neglected place at the head of the heroes of mankind. She has told the story as if it were new in all men’s ears: the only possible justification for telling it at all. Thus the noble but familiar figure is gilded with a colour of dawn which is not common in devotional works. It is the deepest of our tragedies that we do not feel the great revolution which founded modern civilisation as a revolution at all. There was more compliment in those who crucified Christ as a novelty than in those who worship Him as a commonplace.
The passage which Mrs. Rye writes about “Darkness” shows that she has a fine literary instinct. Yet the chief fault we have to find with her lies in the fact that she scarcely reports enough of the actual diction of Jesus. That diction is not to be distorted or neglected on the supposition that it exists solely for the furtherance of truths. The words of Christ were like the lilies of which He spoke. They were doubtless not produced by any conscious artistic process, but they have unfathomable artistic value. They toiled not, neither did they spin. But Epipsychidion in all its glory is not arrayed like one of these.
G. K. C.
Ad Astra—January 5, 1901, The Speaker
Ad Astra. By Charles Whitworth Wynne. London: Grant Richards.
“Let not his arrogance go unreproved.”—Ad Astra.
Of the novel methods by which this work has been brought to the public notice we will say little. Suffice it to say that until lately we have been under the impression that “Ad Astra” was a kind of soap. It is, however, a poem, though soap would probably be more poetical. With every allowance for difference of taste and the strongest natural leaning towards lenience in criticism, we cannot understand why this work should have gone into several editions. It is a long, rambling poem which starts from the subject of natural landscape, wanders through love, theology, and Imperial politics, and seems unable to fix itself firmly even upon a prejudice, not to speak of an idea. A poem may be written about everything, but not about things in general. To a poet who sings of the universe, the universe must be for the moment one thing-as much one thing as a daisy or a butterfly. Thus Lucretius had a vision of the universe; Dante had a vision of the universe. Mr. Wynne simply has a stroll through the universe, picking up odds and ends for no conceivable reason. If we ourselves wrote a poem which opened with a discussion on tobacco, went on to describe the death of Julius Caesar, and ended with a comparison between fighting duels and learning Hindustani the whole work would be something like Ad Astra. Mr. Wynne should either write on some detail that interests him or wait till he has the vision of everything. We may warn him, however, that the vision of everything is a rather curious thing, and a man who has it generally either dies of terror or is happy for the rest of his days.
Chaos in the scheme, however, could be easily forgiven if there were merit in the parts. But we must confess that reading these long metrical meditations reminds us of nothing so much as drinking innumerable gallons of luke-warm water. The cold water of reason is good and the boiling water of religious passion is good; but this is not fully and sincerely either logical or religious. It is made up of the reflections of one of those gentlemen who occupy their very numerous spare hours by having spiritual doubts with which no reasonable person ought to be troubled and crushing them with replies with which no reasonable person ought to be satisfied.
Of the diction very few examples will suffice. Mr. Wynne in the opening verses discusses in his vague way the question of Nature and her sympathetic or unsympathetic attitude towards man. He describes what happens when “we look behind her lustrous eyes,” which would seem a delicate surgical proceeding:-
“But when we look behind her lustrous eyes We find scant echo to our deepening sighs.”
It would surely be a little unreasonable of us to expect to find echoes behind a person’s eyes. We have heard of “cavernous eyes,” but not so cavernous as all that.
Later on, he writes:-
“Though factory smoke and noise of whirring looms Obscure his perfect vision for a while.”
We do not quite understand why noise should obscure his vision, but we can understand it, of course, if the echoes get into his eyes. He is evidently constructed on the same physiological principle as Bottom the Weaver, who went to see a noise that he heard.
This extraordinary confusion of mind runs riot in the diction. In a simple-minded passage about British Imperialism being the refuge of the Jews, which we fear may “produce in the sinful a smile,” Mr. Wynne says—
“For if we be not of the lost Ten Tribes At least we have procured them harbourage”
If the “Tribes” are still lost it is a little difficult to tell whether we have procured them harbourage or not.
Lastly, to complete our examples in technique, we should be pleased to offer the customary sewing-machine for the explanation of the following:-
“O Father give me back my childhood’s Faith, That faith that saw Thee in the brightening cloud And deemed it but the mirror of thy breath.”
This would certainly seem to be faith of a very high and difficult order.
If these were mere verbal errors or mixed metaphors, they would matter little. The trouble is that they are produced not by a number of images jostling each other, but by the entire absence of any image at all. What picture in the mind either of writer or reader can possibly be made up of echoes behind eyes, of clouds that are like mirrors, of mirrors that reflect breath? If we spoke of finding an echo in a bag of flour or a cloud that was like a single eyeglass, the image would not be more shapeless and devoid of suggestion.
The truth is that we should have the greatest respect for Mr. Wynne’s work, with all its crudities, if it bore the impress even of the vulgarest fanaticism. If he had one thing which could be called an opinion we could forgive him everything. But he seems to dawdle round all sides of a question, like a drunkard going continually round a house because he cannot find the door. For example, he enunciates, as we have said, a rather innocently complimentary view of the Jews, and declares that “God still loveth them,” because “whate’er they touch turns golden in their hands”—a somewhat poor and snobbish reason for doing justice to the countrymen of Isaiah. But while in this passage he seems as Semitic as a South African Imperialist, we find him a few verses back offering in a confused way an insult to Israel of which M. Drumont would be ashamed. He says they have a “shifty trace” in their eyes and that they are—
“Wanderers upon the face of God’s fair earth, And cursed, like Cain, with murder from their birth.”
Whether this means that a Jew is from his birth continually murdering, or continually being murdered, we cannot tell; but in either case it seems a trifle indecent.
This is only one instance, but it is typical of Mr. Wynne’s attitude on all subjects. It is not that he does not say anything, but that he does not think anything—that is the outrage.
It would be difficult to say which is the most unpoetical line in the poem. In a work which contains such lines as “We judge from our own standpoint—that of sin,” “Consider too, the progress man has made I” and “The atheist argues that the Christian Creed,” the difficulty will be easily understood. But, upon the whole, we think the palm must be given to the couplet:-
“The natural order of development Is from the unit to the family.”
There are some lines, indeed, which might lay Mr. Wynne open to a severer charge than that of being prosaic. We do not believe him to be guilty of deliberate plagiarism. But certainly a great deal of carelessness and vagueness of mind is required to excuse such lines as “The paths of pleasure flower but to the grave”—“For God reveals himself in many ways” and the almost precise repetition of one of Mr. William Watson’s phrases in the line “lights to the lily, reddens to the rose.”
We wish to say as little as possible on the subject of the long, loose, and wearisome argument on the subject of religion which takes up so many pages of Ad Astra. We will only remark that we sincerely hope that the time will come when preachers, hymn-writers, and pious poets will realise that there is a very deep and menacing truth at the bottom of the commandment, “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” That a man shall not use the strongest words so as to make them weak is emphatically one of the ten commandments of literature. The law against taking the Name in vain is, for some strange reason, generally understood as dealing with jokes upon serious subjects. But a joke is not necessarily vain, it is generally highly significant. Job and Elijah jest constantly on serious subjects. But to use the greatest names in our language, the words that are, as it were, too great for the mouth, again and again like a worn-out stamp, in trivial arguments, in cocksure explanations, in mere rhetorical padding; this, which resounds from hundreds of pulpits and sacred lyres, is indeed, to our minds, the sin against the Name, and it is this that Mr. Wynne never ceases from committing.
Since the appearance, or appearances, of Ad Astra, Mr. Wynne has published a volume of lyrics. Of these we will quite only one poem, and that a short one:-
“Home returning in a shower Found that I was smiling, Just the very time and hour Most men would be riling. Thus, though Nature prove unkind, Only a poetic mind Can laugh without reviling.”
That is all. It will be noticed that Mr. Wynne is not ill satisfied with himself, despite the strange modesty which leads him to deprive the second line of a nominative personal pronoun. It is, indeed, this astonishing haughtiness of his which has led us to consider his claims at such length. Posters and sky-signs are, we are told, to be seen all over London stating that Ad Astra is the “Book of the Year,” and even, as one dark humourist (perhaps Mr. Max Beerbohm) is reported to have said “the finest religious poem of the century.” To permit this gentleman to dance upon the graves of Browning and Tennyson was a feat beyond our tolerably tough clemency. Nevertheless, we do not wish to take the matter too solemnly, and we have endeavoured to prove that we possess a “poetic mind” by a fixed endeavour to “laugh without reviling.”
G. K. C.
Mark Rutherford—January 12, 1901, The Speaker
Pages From A Journal. By Mark Rutherford. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
If there are faults to be found with Pages from a Journal they are all summed up in the title. Fragmentary, incomplete, and sometimes positively inept, they certainly have the appearance of being genuine excerpts from a diary. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether the public has much to do with diaries. The public has its own diary, the daily press, and that certainly is healthily idiotic enough to be the diary of the most romantic schoolgirl. But when an author of the genuine type of Mark Rutherford publishes such fragments they demand consideration.
In all the subjects, however, upon which these notes are written there is, unquestionably, the trace of the disadvantages of this form of composition. An idea is pursued up to a certain point and then, for no apparent reason, the pursuit is abandoned. As a trait of the diary we can perfectly understand this: the philosophical inquiry ceased because the dinner-bell rang. But if we regard these fragments as things definitely suited for publication, we are reduced to the statement that hardly one of them genuinely works out its idea. We are reduced, indeed, to the yet gloomier conviction that we ourselves can see very clearly the point around which Mark Rutherford seems blundering in comparative blindness. Let us take an instance. The author devotes one chapter to a very interesting defence of the morality of Byron, all the more striking and serious because it proceeds from a mind of the typically Puritan education and character. He maintains, with admirable truth (if we understand him rightly), that all great prophets have been largely concerned with the substitution of a “divine scale” of morals, culminating in a general magnanimity, for the trivial scale of mere negative ethics. But by a confusion natural enough from a superficial point of view, he joins on to this a claim that Byron was “sincere”—that is to say, that he was not affected or self-deceiving. Now we are perfectly ready to maintain that if Byron was sincere in this sense he was one of the most despicable curs born. His heroes certainly boast of being blase and there is nothing in the least magnanimous about being blase. Men’s souls do not expand in the cold any more than water-pipes. If we are to take Byron on his own estimate, if his heart was really withered and his power of joy gone, he cannot possibly be called a teacher of magnanimity. We might have infinite pity for his loss of freshness as we might have infinite pity for his club foot. But to ask mankind to bow down to an aristocracy of club feet would be a little unreasonable.
We believe, however, that the author’s literary and ethical instinct does not mislead him in telling him that Byron was a teacher of magnanimity. The real explanation, as it appears to us, does not seem to have struck him. Byron was magnanimous because he was self-deceptive. While he imagined that he was feeling and preaching a desolate creed of premature old age, he was really feeling and preaching the fierce joy of youth in dark and lonely and elemental things. It is the joyful spirit that loves the wilderness and the tempest: the man who is really forlorn and bitter generally takes refuge in the nearest restaurant. Byron dressed up his profound poetic pleasure in a vile dress, the funeral trappings of a vulgar stage conspirator, but the real power and charm in his work lies in the splendid affectation of a boy, which is merely the expression of that primal “delight of the eyes” to which the fiercest flames are golden and darkness itself is only too dense a purple.
Mark Rutherford leaves his defence of Byron defective and almost immoral by this hurried and misleading defence of the “sincerity” of his despair. Byron wept his way through romance after romance; but until he reached Don Juan we do not feel that he was really miserable. Then he began to laugh.
We have treated at some length this one instance of the incomplete nature of these reflections, for the sake of better explaining our meaning, but many other instances might be taken. There is, for example, an able and interesting paper on “Judas Iscariot,” but in this again the writer has not time to get to the root of the matter, and the problem is rather stated than solved. Mark Rutherford points out truly enough the mystery of the presence among Christ’s chosen of a wretch capable of betraying for a few pence and the inconsistency between the trivial dirtiness of the murder and the almost noble agony of the suicide. The explanation occurs to us as very simple. It was necessary in the dawn of the Church to put all the lieutenants of Christ into halos and describe them as living in idyllic accord. But in the New Testament we read that they contended who should be greatest, and the smallest acquaintance with small sects inspired with great ideas would tell us that there would be disagreements and rivalries bringing the body to the verge of disruption. There was, doubtless, a conservative section and an “anti-clerical” section. In some dramatic collision Judas seceded in a fury and became the deadly enemy of the whole movement. The money payment was either a distorted rumour or a mere form, a paying of “party expenses.” It is unfortunate that the tendency of all the piety of centuries should be to make the work of Christ seem to have been easier instead of more difficult. We shall never know with how much He had to strive. But we must confess that we should like to know how many times St. Peter was persuaded to rejoin the society.
Among other items in the book is “A Supplementary Note on the Devil.” The previous article is on “Spinoza,” and at first sight the conjunction seems a little severe. In his argument on the former question, the writer hardly sufficiently distingushes believing in devils from believing in the Devil. Here the part is certainly greater than the whole. To believe in devils is simply to believe in unclean souls and wills loose in the universe. To believe in the Devil is to believe in an infinite evil, a well of wickedness as deep as the tower of holiness is high. To us personally, we admit, it seems a healthier and more religious doctrine that goodness is the only unfathomable thing, and that he that hides himself in the well of evil will not fall eternally through homeless abysses, but will be fished out in proper season, damp, and looking very much of a fool.
G.K.C.
Woman and the Philosophers
—January 26, 1901, The Speaker
Woman: A Scientific Study And Defence. Adapted from the French of M. Alfred Fouillee by Rev. T. A. Seed. Greening and Co.
The title of the work before us is Woman: a Scientific Study and Defence. It never occurred to us before that woman stood in need of a defence of any kind; and what the women of our acquaintance would think of being made the subject of a “scientific defence” we shudder to conceive. The work which Mr. Seed has adapted from M. Fouillee contains a considerable amount of sound and suggestive argument against the scientific theories of the inferiority of woman; but the plan of the book is a mistake. Instead of attempting to base the equality of the sexes on the domestic habits of some wretched amoeba in the primeval twilight, the author should have turned on the men of science and told them, with all possible respect, that they have nothing whatever to do with questions of superiority and inferiority. Obviously they have not. Whether woman is structurally different to man is a matter of physical science, whether she is superior or inferior or equal is not a matter of physical science; it is a question of what you happen to want. Science does its duty in saying that monkeys have tails and men have not; but as for saying that it is better not to have tails, that is a matter of taste and imagination, and by no means certain even at that.
The author himself quotes incidentally a remarkable instance of this in a citation from Herbert Spencer, but he does not seem to see the full fallacy that he is trying to expose. Herbert Spencer says, truly enough, that the interest of women is generally directed rather to persons than to ideas, and gives this as showing their inferiority, since the last products of human evolution are “abstract reasoning and the abstract emotion of justice.” Here we have in full operation that strange religious dogma which crept into the minds of so many evolutionists-the notion that the last thing must be the highest. In this case it is clearly untrue. To understand a man (as many women do) is to understand one of the most complex and untranslatable cryptograms conceivable, to understand a “cause” is to understand the clumsiest thing created, a mere alphabet of thought. What is “abstract justice”? Personally we know nothing about it, except that in proportion as it becomes abstract it generally becomes unjust. If a preference for personal over abstract criticism be a mark of inferiority, the great novelist must be inferior to the political wirepuller. But all this staring common sense is swept away by the philosopher who wishes to make biology prove what it can never prove and the sole test he applies is to ask what is the last product of human evolution. By that argument playing on the typewriter would be superior to playing on the organ.
In any discussion of philosophic strictures upon women it was inevitable that Schopenhauer should be involved, though we fancy most women and most believers in womanhood would be much more annoyed by Schopenhauer’s approval than by his denunciation. When a gentleman wishes for the destruction of the human race, and may therefore, presumably, reserve his affections for such things as assassination and typhoid fever, to be regarded by him with a loving smile would be rather disquieting than complimentary. But the particular passage quoted in this book is so remarkable an instance of Schopenhauer’s astonishing literary ingenuity and still more astonishing unreality of experience and outlook, that it is worth a moment’s consideration. Women, says Schopenhauer, in effect, are the best guardians of children, because they are themselves children, “puerile, futile, limited.” Now we know what women do for children; they nearly kill themselves over them with work and anxiety; the simple and obvious way, therefore, of testing the truth of Schopenhauer’s comparison is to ask what children do for children. If the “futility” and “limitation” of a little boy of seven lead him naturally to martyr himself for another little boy of seven, then the comparison is sound. But as we all know that they lead him to kick his shins and run away with his toys, the comparison is nonsense. It is surely strange that the name of philosopher should ever have been given to a literary man, however brilliant, who was capable of basing an argument upon the amazing notion that people love what is like themselves. In fact, the whole of Schopenhauer’s theory of the childishness of women is capable of the shortest and simplest answer. If women are childish because they love children, it follows that men are womanish because they love women.
The author speaks with just contempt of these efforts to discredit women by biological parallels. If it be true that certain baboons have a large amount of the maternal instinct, rational ethics have nothing to say to it except, “So much the better for the baboons.” They may be inferior to us in other respects; so are the birds of the air. But a mortal with the wings of a bird is an angel, and a mortal with the maternal instinct is a mother.
We think this book would have been better if it had been purely scientific or purely poetic and moral. Its biological thesis, that from the earliest dawn of life the two sexes have certain types and functions which may still be traced in their moral and mental attitudes, may be true and is very probable. The scope of the book and its dallyings with other matters, however, leave no space for the serious scientific demonstration of this. But while we suspend our judgment on the truth of the biological contention we are heartily in agreement with the moral contention, and cannot see that it requires any biological machinery at all. The divinity of woman is to be decided by what she is, not by how she was made. It has always seemed to us truly extraordinary that Christians should have raised such a shriek of disgust at the “degrading” notion that man was made out of the lower animals, when the very Bible they defended described him, with splendid common sense, as made out of red mud. But it is stranger still that philosophers who have accepted in a healthier spirit the genial fact of our kinship with the other creatures, should try to revive the silly and vulgar prejudice against the animal world in order to throw discredit on the moral dignity of man or woman. To refuse to judge of souls, laws, creeds or tendencies on their own merits is the perfection of cosmic snobbery. To inquire whether a man’s father did not keep a shop is far less snobbish than to inquire whether his ancestor did not keep a tail.
The question is far too large a one to be treated here, but we have a strong conviction that the world will gradually, by a beneficent revolution, turn this idea upside down. Hitherto it seems to have been thought that in proportion as a phenomenon detached itself from the background, ceased to be serene, inevitable and obvious and became strange, diverse and audacious, an interesting development, it became less sacred and more profane. We venture to prophecy that the tendency now in progress to show everything, no matter how fundamental, as a growth, an experiment, a choice among alternatives, will at length result in a religious sense of wonder passing all the religions of the earth. The age of miracles will have returned; for a man come from the womb will be as strange as a man risen from the dead and the sun rising in its season as startling as the sun standing still upon Gibeon.
This is at least the true light in which to regard woman. If it were proved to us ten thousand times over (it has not yet been proved once) that woman laboured under eternal mental as well as physical disadvantages, it would not make us think less but rather more of that brilliant instinct of chivalry which saw in her peculiar possibilities and put her to higher uses. The whole romance of life and all the romances of poetry lie in this motion of the utterly weak suddenly developing advantages over the strong. It is the curse of the modern philosophy of strength that it is ridden with the fallacy that there is only one kind of strength and one kind of weakness. It forgets that size is a weakness as well as littleness; that the camel is just as weak for the purpose of going through the eye of a needle as the microbe for carrying a load of hay.
As to what form this peculiar dignity of woman is to take at the present day, a question to which many pages of this book are devoted, we think it a matter for much more serious consideration than it has yet received. We do not mean that we are out of sympathy with the modern movements. We believe firmly in the equality of the sexes, and we agree, moreover, that to use woman merely as a wooden idol is as bad as to use her as a wooden broom. But, in the interests of equality, we must say that we doubt whether the mere equalisation of sports and employments will bring us much further. There is nothing so certain to lead to inequality as identity. A mere struggle between the sexes as to who will make the best tinkers, tailors, or soldiers, is very likely indeed to result in a subordination of women infinitely more gross and heartless than that which disgraced the world up to now. What we really require is a revised and improved division of labour. Whatever solution may be best (we do not pretend for a moment to have decided) it must emphatically not be based upon any idea so paltry and small-minded as the idea that there is anything noble in professional work or anything degrading in domestic. Woman must not be elevated as the worst type of working man is elevated, merely (to use the silly phrase) “to a better kind of work,” to choke the memory of his own class in a stick-up collar. If this is the only end of the noble promise of female emancipation, the intellectual woman’s lot will certainly be an ironic one, for she will have toiled to reach the haughtiest eminence from which she can look down upon the housemaid, only to discover that world has become sane and discovered that the housemaid is as good as she.
G. K. C.
Science and Patriotism
—February 2, 1901
National Life From The Standpoint Of Science. By Karl Pearson, F.R.S. London: Adam and Charles Black.
Professor Pearson, in his view of national life, is a well-meaning and vigorous upholder of the great principle of the survival of the nastiest. His remarks on the danger of allowing a physically “bad stock” to multiply, though not very precisely expressed, seem certainly to tend towards the idea of conducting the lives and loves of mankind on strict cattle-breeding principles. To our own simple minds it appears rather to depend on whether we wish to produce the same tone of thought and degree of culture in men and in cattle. The virtues which we demand from cows are at present few and simple, and, therefore, we pursue a certain physical regime: if ever we should particularly wish to see cows writing poetry, cows building hotels, and cows speaking in Parliament, we should probably adopt another regime. A random example of the unsuitability of a biological test of so intellectual a matter as civilization springs at once to the mind. There was born early in this century a man who scarcely had a day’s complete health in his life, a perfect example of the “unfit” creature whom some sages would strangle in pure compassion. That man was Charles Darwin, on whose discovery the sages base their action. Their principle would never have been heard of if it had not been the custom to violate it. If this is not a reductio ad absurdum, we do not know what is.
But the error of Professor Pearson’s philosophy lies deeper. In one sense, indeed, the fight is always to the strong; but strength is exhibited by sticking like a limpet to our own claims, selfish or unselfish, not by trying to alter our claims in order to curry favour with nature. The mammoth would not have been more efficient in the primal competition, but less, if he had suddenly put his head on one side and reflected whether mammoths were on the down grade. The varieties of biology have been produced by animals asserting with blind bravery their ideals of self or family, not by their following the cosmic fashion-plates. The Elk did not go about saying, “Horns are very much worn now,” or “All the best people have a divided hoof;” he simply perfected his own weapons for his own defence. The first element in conquering nature is to be natural, and it is not natural to us to become a race of placid scientific murderers. We have, as a race, developed our own set of ideas, one of which is that to a mind of large range the weak are often as valuable as the strong. A sparrow-hawk would not hesitate to eat a thrush, for the simple reason that a sparrow-hawk (having no ear for music) is ignorant of its vocal power, and the only possible use to which he can put a thrush is to eat it. But there is no more biological reason for a poet eating a thrush than there is for his eating Paderewski.
It is the same with Professor Pearson’s view of international politics, in which, of course, he approves of crushing and driving out weaker or more barbarous nations. The real objection to the great biological morality of kicking a man when he is down is not merely that it is cruel or insolent, but that it is timid. It is doing something which we none of us like doing or respect ourselves for doing, merely because our hearts are alive with a bestial fear of Nature. Generations of human cattle-breeding will not give a grain of courage to a people who have no moral independence, whose knees knock under them at the sight of a stronger race. We shall be foolish indeed if we think that Nature will be deceived-that, because we have a lion on our crest, she will not know that the heart is a hunted hare. That is the damning and destructive weakness of the modern struggle of nations. The great Empires advance resplendently with their banners and their engines of war, all coming forward at a sublime gallop, to take possession of the world. But, though it seems as if nothing could withstand such an onset of human valour, it is only a moment after that we realise the truth that this magnificent rush of nations is not a charge at all, but a rout; and through the sound of all the trumpets we can hear roaring in the rear the great devil who is to catch the hindmost.
We warmly sympathise with Professor Pearson in saying that patriotic feeling is “not a thing to be ashamed of;” but we cannot agree with him that it is a protest especially required just now. The trouble at present is not that people think patriotism a thing to be ashamed of, but that they have developed a certain brand of patriotism which is a thing to be ashamed of. But when Professor Pearson says that his attitude is not repellent or immoral, because he desires to see peace and amity between fellow citizens, he falls into one of the oldest errors of rationalism, the notion that the soul is in watertight compartments. He says that we are to oppress and exterminate smaller peoples, but to cultivate the greatest generosity and sympathy towards our countrymen. He might as well say that a father should cut the throat of every other child born to him, but cultivate the greatest generosity and sympathy towards the rest. The common sense of the thing is that if a father were really bullied by any philosophy into pursuing such a course, so sickening would be the humiliation of the process, so dark the conflict between an unbearable shame and a debasing fear, that he could only keep on the right side of a lunatic asylum by hardening himself against every genial sentiment. So it is with the national conscience. If ever we do arrive at such an emotional condition that we hear with perfect indifference or frigid pleasure of a race of brave barbarians dying with pitiful heroism around their rude ensigns, we may be practically certain that a freezing process has set in and that we shall end by hearing with equal coolness of brave Englishmen dying around the Union Jack.
It is true that in old times men could kill their enemies without moral collapse; but that was because they had no intellectual comprehension of what they did. As long as men really believed Frenchmen to be devils it is obvious that they could wipe French blood from their hands like so much mire. But now that they know that Frenchmen are nothing of the sort, that which was once natural becomes unnatural. It was perfectly natural for the mediaeval Catholics to harry the Albigenses as the detestable deceivers of mankind, but surely it would be ludicrous to infer that if English Churchmen were suddenly to commence burning and torturing the Wesleyan Methodists, they would suffer no ethical degeneration from so doing. If they did it at all, it would not be from faith, but from fear, from the oppressive philosophy of Professor Pearson. This ethical terrorism is an atmosphere in which health and strength are impossible. We ourselves believe in a sentimental basis of moral action for one very simple reason, that it is the basis most favourable to sanity and fulness of life. A man who is continent, for example, from a contemplation of the Virgin Mary, is in a vastly better condition of moral hygiene than a man who is continent from reading Ibsen’s Ghosts, for the very obvious reason that the first man’s attention is turned to beauty, strength, and the obvious good, and the second man’s attention to deformity, impotence, and diseased perversity. Here, as is generally the case, sentiment is found to be vastly more practical than “practicality.” The Terrorist, whether he be the realist teaching us chastity by terror, or the sociological professor, teaching us virility by terror, or the common bomb-throwing anarchist teaching us humanity and benevolence by terror, is the same man in spirit everywhere. He will never succeed, because he begins by drawing out the backbone like a linch-pin.
And just as what produces health in a man is enthusiasm for something healthy, so what produces courage in a nation is enthusiasm for something honourable. Napoleon uttered the fundamental principle of Professor Pearson’s school of thought when he said that God was on the side of the big battalions. But the reason why Napoleon fell even before so ordinary a man as Wellington is simply that by inevitable reason the man of principle tends to outlast the man of destiny. Wellington was the type of national strength because he held fast by something beyond the reach of circumstance, even if it were nothing more than a somewhat poker-backed conception of.a gentleman. Men in the old times could often be cruel to their enemies without moral collapse, because their minds being limited, their desires were cruel. But nothing except moral collapse can come of actions being cruel when desires are humane. Here, then, is the weakness in practice of Professor Pearson’s theory of national life. It is in the people of principle that the bull-dog quality is bred, not in the people who are always, consciously or unconsciously, watching to see which way the cosmic cat jumps. There is a shrewd secular truth hidden under a theological language in the old saying that man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. For it is only on those in the struggle for existence who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. A man who loves his country for her power will always be as weak an adorer as a man who loves a woman for her money. A great appearance of national or imperial strength may be founded on this fair-weather philosophy, but the crown of ultimate triumph and the real respect of Nature will always be reserved for the man for whom the fight is never finished, who disregards the omens and disdains the stars.
G. K. C.
The War of the Ghosts and Gods
—February 9, 1901, The Speaker
The Making Of Religion. By Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D. London : Longmans Green.
Supreme among the lost arts of mankind, larger and more completely lost than those connected with pottery or stained glass, is the lost art of mythology. Races in early times invented cosmic systems with the fancy and independence of a set of architects submitting to the Deity the plans of a prospective universe. One thought the world could be best arranged in the form of a huge tree; another that it could be placed on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. Great as is our gain from science, we have lost something in losing this gigantesque scope of the human fancy; there must have been no little education in audacity and magnanimity in thus juggling with the stars. We have lost something in being tied to the solar system like a treadmill. It is especially hard upon those, like ourselves, whose peculiar talents, entirely useless in a civilised age, would have been, we are convinced, a great success in a time of impenetrable ignorance. In early childhood we manufactured many excellent mythologies. The best, from a savage point of view, was one in which the whole world was a giant with the sun for one eye and the moon for the other, which he opened alternately in an everlasting wink. This prose idyll would have made us head medicine man in a happier age. But we fear that the Royal Society, even if informed of the hypothesis, would remain cold.
There is, we fancy, too much tendency among able students of mythology to overlook the vagueness and aesthetic impalpability of these savage ideas, and this fault is almost the only fault we can find with Mr. Andrew Lang’s admirable book which now lies before us. Mr. Andrew Lang and any one of his opponents—such, for example, as Mr. Grant Allen-in the endless retorts and repetitions of controversy, tend more and more to speak in a hard, fixed way of what savages really believe; whereas the truth is, we imagine, that they do not believe anything in the sense that Mr. Grant Allen believed in Evolution or Mr. Andrew Lang in Homeric Unity. It is not so much that an old Scandinavian peasant believed in the tree Ygdrasil as that he never doubted it. He had never brought the thing into that clear intellectual presentment in which doubt or denial are conceived or required. This, as we say, is the only point in which we think Mr. Lang’s argument demands a continuous check or allowance. The great part of Mr. Lang’s book is devoted to an attack, and, as it seems to us, a rather successful attack, on the latest theory of savage deities, that they are all derived from the worship of ancestors, from ghosts rather than from gods. Mr. Lang maintains that this leaves wholly unexplained a vast mass of barbaric beliefs, which point to the idea of a general creator, a being who made the world. Against Mr. Allen’s and Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory, Mr. Andrew Lang sets a number of facts, which are certainly very striking, in favour of the theory that ancestor-worship was a half-civilized development, a kind of fashionable craze, which more or less obliterated a more primitive and obvious worship of creative deities whose existence explained the existence of things. To take one example at random, from Mr. Lang’s stores, there is a tribe of polytheistic savages one of whose gods, “an old serpent,” is described as having made everything, and as being, apparently, exceedingly sulky because he is not paid a proper degreee of attention. It is very hard, he thinks, when he put himself to the trouble of making the sun and stars, that the people desert their old friend for a race of new and dandified deities. This certainly looks like the traces of a monotheism choked by a polytheism. Another more familiar instance is the case of the Jews. If Jehovah was originally an ancestral deity, why were the Jews, who were more obsessed than any other nation with the idea of their deity, more indifferent than any other nation to the fate of the dead? If, as Professor Huxley maintained, the Jews borrowed their religious idealism from Egypt, why were they entirely without the one dominant and picturesque Egyptian conception, the conception of the judgments of another world?
But we ourselves, as we have said, conceive that the question is somewhat too genuinely savage to be settled by black and white civilised definitions. To express something deeper and older than language itself in mere language is a thing to be attempted humbly and tentatively; it is, on the whole, rather like trying to convey the text of “Hamlet” by a code of naval signals. As far as we can see, the chances are that a savage’s religion existed long before the oldest ancestor-worship or the simplest teleology. Long before he said that the thing which plagued him and blessed him and drove him before it was either his great grandfather or the First Cause, he probably said it was “Bonk” or “Chunk,” a “circumstance over which he had no control.” Probably he began by feeling the eternal fact that it rained whether he liked it or not; then this benignant insolence in the rain extended to the whole creation, and then, for all we know, it may have been attributed to the spirit of some one dead. But at the beginning the savage stood face to face with the fact that the very mercies which sustained his own being came by a kind of scornful miracle quite unexplained to him; he stood at the beginning face to face with the fact that he could not make a tree grow, and that, when all is said and done, is pretty much where we stand at the end.
This, for example, is very much what we think of the problem, discussed at some length by Mr. Lang, about the origin of Jehovah, the highest of all historic deities. We think it improbable that Moses thought Jehovah was a philosophical First Cause and still more improbable that he thought Jehovah was his great-uncle. But suppose that Moses said (or rather felt), not “Jehovah is the ultimate cause of all things” or “Jehovah is my family god,” but simply “Jehovah is with me: there was one who drove down the great lions so that I could slay them and who smote me with the evil pain when I ate the unlawful berries.” At the beginning and at the end of all life, learned and ignorant, there is the abiding truth, that in the inmost theatre of the soul of man, with a scenery of bottomless infinities and appalling abstractions, there is always going forward one ancient mystery-play, in which there are only two characters.
There is one aspect of the thesis of gods against ghosts which we should be inclined to suggest to Mr. Andrew Lang rather as a query than a divergence of opinion. Both Mr. Lang and his opponents seem to assume that the terminology of ancestor-worship must indicate a lower spiritual condition than the terminology of theistic creation. The case of Mr. Andrew Lang is, we imagine, that men in pursuing a race of mere tribal heroes forgot the humble Deity who, in creating all things, had become the servant of all. The case of Mr. Spencer and the rest of Mr. Lang’s opponents is, we imagine, that the title of “Creator of all Things” was ultimately bestowed on some ancestral hero somewhat as the title of “Brother of the Sun and Moon” might be bestowed on the Emperor of Japan. In both cases terms of paternity and procreation are assumed to represent a tribal superstition. But surely it is not impossible that the title of “father” or “procreator” might be a higher title for a cosmic creator, instead of “creator” being a higher title for a father. This is at least supported by the case of the noblest of religious reformers. Jesus of Nazareth found a conception of an universal creator and deliberately bestowed on him the title of an ancestor-he called him “Our Father,” which any old Campbell would have called Diarmid or any old Jew called Abraham. This was surely not a degradation: it was one of the three or four dazzling strokes of religious genius which made Jesus what he was. By thus raising before all men the vast and generous conception, not of a Creator, but of a Begetter of all things, he touched with one hand the oldest and with the other the newest philosophy. He embraced ancestor-worship by propounding a Deity with a touch of kinship. He reached out to evolution by announcing a creation by natural causes. Surely, even in dealing with the unquestionable superiority of the idea of a Creator to the idea of a mere ancestor, one ought not to forget that at one stage of religious evolution the two positions are reversed; and the name taken from any common father of four babies becomes the loftiest of all the crowns of God.
There is only one other fault of Mr. Lang’s work, besides this common tendency to take too scientifically the floating fancies of the barbarian. This latter indeed is equally typical of his opponents: Mr. Herbert Spencer, in particular, is an admirable writer, but it must be candidly said of him that he is a very poor savage. He has not in him the eternal savage who is in every poet: and this is what throws him out when he comes to deal with elementary and poetic things. But the other fault in Mr. Lang’s book is that it is really two books. He joins on to the first thesis that aboriginal religion came from creative and not ancestral gods, the totally distinct thesis, also very interesting in itself, that the savage legends of shades and spirits might be much better understood if we took them in conjunction with recent psychical research. We should not complain if Mr. Andrew Lang wrote two books: indeed we should rejoice if he wrote twenty. But we cannot see sufficient organic connection between the thesis that ghosts might be explained by modern philosophy and the thesis that original savage philosophy had nothing to do with ghosts at all. We must admit, however, that we think Mr. Andrew Lang’s protest against the tone of many scientists towards psychical inquiry very reasonable. Spiritualism in itself may be a very poor religion: no really religious person would think a dead stockbroker any more convincing than a live one. But no sort of reason can be rationally alleged against spiritualism as a form of psychological inquiry. Sufficiently large discoveries have been made in the field of mentality to justify any one who likes a dull science in considering it an entirely genuine one. Huxley was surely amazingly illogical when he declined to hear messages from the dead on the ground of their general futility, saying that he would take no trouble “to hear the conversation of curates and old women in the nearest cathedral town.” The answer is almost staringly obvious. However low may be the mental level of a cathedral town, it can hardly be lower than that of the animal world, which Huxley spent his life in studying: even a curate is probably wittier than a jelly-fish; and an old woman would probably be more fertile in information than an aged amoeba. The reason why Huxley studied these brainless creatures was because they were things to be studied, and, like a true man of science, he neither knew nor cared to what the inquiry would ultimately lead him. Why the same process should not be applied to psychical phenomena we cannot conceive. It is true that, for all we ourselves know (or care), no evidences of purely spectral influences have yet been found in this department. But no honest man can deny that the old, common-sense hypothesis has been as much upset by hypnotism and suggestion as it could be by a thousand spectres. If any rationalist of the dawn of the century had been asked to believe that a hypnotist, by thinking hard at another man, could produce a blister on his leg, he would have said immediately that he would as soon believe in the ghost of Banquo at once.
We do not feel any disrespect towards this book because it contains two distinct ideas. It is a sufficiently sensational event in the life of a reviewer to find a book which contains even one. But we think it an unfortunate thing that two purely scientific conceptions should be mixed together, and we think it an inexpressibly unfortunate thing that any purely scientific conception should be treated (as sometimes seems the case with Mr. Lang) as if its assertion or negation could possibly affect spirituality. We think spiritualistic inquiry legitimate and interesting, but there is nothing particularly spiritual about spiritualism. If a human soul on earth does not strike us as a thing of splendour, it will not be made more splendid by such a trifle as death. We think Mr. Andrew Lang’s theory that monotheism preceded polytheism perfectly tenable; but it does not matter one rap to religion which came first. The idea of a forgotten omnipotence is certainly a thrilling one. But, surely, there would be as sublime a thrill for the man who, having long worshipped the tree as one god and the river as another, suddenly realised, with a shock fit for a detective story, that, under a hundred disguises, they were all the same person.
G. K. C.
“What We All Mean”
February 16, 1901, The Speaker
The Meaning Of Good. By G. Lowes Dickinson. Glasgow James Maclehose and Sons.
In this striking Platonic dialogue Mr. Lowes Dickinson presents, in his own personality, quite apart from all logical fencing, a deep and curious problem as to the uses and limits of philosophy. He discusses the idea of good and shows that this fundamental idea may be defined variously as an instinct, a compromise, a discipline, an indulgence, a truth, an illusion, a science or an art. At first sight this would seem like speaking of an object in front of our eyes and discussing, with some heat, whether it was a tree, a dog, a hat, a cloud, a problem of Euclid, a cathedral, a broomstick or a Conservative M.P. If a discussion about this latter point really occurred, there would undoubtedly arise a reasonable doubt as to the existence of the object and the personal sobriety of the philosopher. But the remarkable fact is, and it goes to the roots of the nature of verbal philosophy, that any one who reads between the lines can see that Mr. Lowes Dickinson never has at any moment any shadow of real doubt as to the existence of good in the most supreme and spiritual sense. He answers and inquires calmly and fearlessly, he canvasses the most heaven-shaking hypotheses with the bland toleration of a sceptic; but all the time we have an abiding consciousness that he believes in a supreme good for the same reason that we do-i.e., that he could not by any effort of his being do anything else.
This is no mere personality, it is a most interesting question. Mr. Lowes Dickinson is certainly neither a mystic nor a sentimentalist; he has none of that cheap contempt for logic and philosophy-that kind of contempt, as some one wittily said, which is not bred by familiarity. He treats all the wildest doubts of his interlocutors with sincere respect. But when all is said and done he suggests and, in fact, almost confesses, the truth of the conclusion of which we speak-that he is a man perfectly willing to discuss the possibility of tobacco if he may smoke all the while.
In a philosopher so acute and stringent as Mr. Dickinson this apparent contradiction must go down into the deeps of philosophy. And we must admit that to our mind there runs through the whole of the discussion in this book one initial and most simple difficulty, the difficulty of human language. Human language has been wrought by centuries of poets and orators into so fluid and searching a medium that we are apt to forget that it is only a code of signs and a crude one at that. That a man can give no reason for the faith that is in him is not necessarily the fault of the faith; it may be the fault of the tongue he speaks. We talk of our language, but we forget that we have many languages in various stages of advance. For example, railway signals constitute a language; but it is a language at so primitive a stage that it has not yet got beyond the two primal ideas-good and evil, yes and no, safe and unsafe. Any one who chooses may imagine the language of railway signals developed into delicacy and variety as the language of the tongue has developed. A particular tint of peacock green in the night signals might mean “The chairman of the board is recovering from influenza,” a certain tinge of purple in the red light might convey “An old gentleman wearing white spats has just fallen out of the train.” But to whatever extent the language of signals might be amplified, it is obvious, from their nature, that sooner or later a crisis might arise, an unprecedented event might happen, such, let us say, as the engine-driver going mad and thinking he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the symbols for which were not down in the code, and which, therefore, however obvious it might be, it would be impossible to signal down the line. Now it is surely equally possible that something might happen in the human soul which was simply not down in the old code of language: to ask a man to tell you what had happened would simply be absurd; to ask him to think it had not happened, much more so. Unless we are very much mistaken, Mr. Lowes Dickinson and every other man has precisely such a dumb certainty in his soul and the only name we can give to it is “the universal good.”
Whether Mr. Dickinson agrees with our view of language or no, it is very remarkable that he acts in this philosophic drama of his in strict accordance with it. If logical language be abandoned as an ancient and clumsy machinery, the one thing left to check it by is practical action. If a man acts persistently and cheerfully in defiance of his philosophic summary of life, it is not unreasonable to infer that some alien and contrary force has arisen in him somehow; if a train, when everything signals it as stopped, still runs on at full speed, it is not unreasonable to trace in it the individuality of some such person as our engine-driver, engaged at the moment in discharging archiepiscopal functions. It is precisely this test of action that Mr. Lowes Dickinson applies with that polished and quiet shrewdness which marks all his progress through this intricate maze of cobwebs. He says (if we may associate him with the first person in the narrative) to the debater who denies altogether any validity in our individual conceptions of good, “But do you not yourself act systematically on the assumption that your good is really good?” The man cannot deny that he does. To the man who admits individual ideas of good, but denies that there is any common or general good, he says, “But do not you in speaking, voting, supporting charities, in fact act on the assumption that there is a general good?” The man cannot deny that he does. To some this may seem a mere argumentum ad hominem; to us it appears, properly considered, exceedingly to the point. The truth is that there is a force in all of them, either below or above language, which is vaguely expressed by the general drift of action. The entertaining young men who discuss this matter with Mr. Dickinson deal with all these points lightly, demur and quibble and elude pursuit in a very charming way. But if one of them had suddenly spoken out exactly what he really felt and knew, we fancy they would have all started at the strange and new voice. He might have said suddenly—“It is no good. Something has happened inside me: something has happened, I think, inside all of us. We do believe in a general good, only that is a silly name. I cannot tell you why I believe in good, because the signals all say the wrong things: they say old things and this is a new thing-perhaps only eighteen hundred years old. But we have emerged into an air and world where we cannot be solitary or selfish. All laws apart, I should no more torment or oppress another man than I should dye my beard blue or do anything else that I knew in my soul to be silly. No, there is something inside me. We cannot be utterly evil, even if we try. The kingdom of heaven is within us.”
If this view be correct and the universal good be essentially a new and nameless thing, we can easily explain the diverse and contradictory definitions of good which Mr. Dickinson’s friends give in turn. One man finds good in science, and says therefore that goodness is a science; another finds it in instincts, and says therefore that goodness is an instinct. If a man could possibly remember nothing at all except a tame elephant that had saved his life, he would say that goodness was an elephant. So it is, among other things.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson states all the various points of view with conspicuous eloquence and justice. If there is one point that we should be inclined to criticise it is his stricture upon Walt Whitman, when he quotes him as an example of the untenable optimism which equalises all things. Walt Whitman has been singularly misunderstood on this point. Surely no one imagines that he really thought that all distinctions were unmeaning, that he drank coffee and arsenic in idle alternation, and went to bed on the kitchen fire as a change from his bedstead. What he did say and mean was that there was one plane on which all things were equal, one point from which everything was the same, the point of view of unfathomable wonder at the energy of Being, the power of God. There is no inconsistency in ranking things in ascending order on the practical plane and equalising them on the religious plane.
We may take a familiar parallel. There is nothing inconsistent in saying, “For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful,” and then complaining that the champagne is corked or the mutton raw. There is such a thing as a bad dinner and such a thing as a good one, and criticism is quite justified in comparing one with the other: but it remains true that both become good the moment we compare them with the hypothesis of no dinner at all. So it was with Whitman, good and bad lives became equal to him in relation to the hypothesis of no life at all. A man, let us say a soldier of the Southern Confederacy, was considered as a man, a miracle that swallowed up all moral distinctions, in the realm of religion. But in the realm of criticism, otherwise called the Battle of Gettysburg, Whitman would strain every nerve to blow the man into a thousand pieces.
We hope we shall hear more from the author of The Greek View of Life. We think the present volume a singularly good one, and, as we have explained above, we have an arrogant conviction that we know the Meaning of Good.
G.K.C.
Our English Goblins
—February 23, 1901, The Speaker
Ballads Of Ghostly Shires. By George Bartram. London: Greening.
In a remote and secluded corner of the British Empire, much neglected by the Imperial student, there is a little island, or rather peninsula, which has in its way contributed something even to the greatness of colonial expansion, and to which, in spite of its insignificance, its own inhabitants are deeply and mysteriously attached. This little outpost (which is called by its denizens England) has been almost incredibly neglected in the matter of poetical study. One section of modern poets, under the leadership of Mr. W. B. Yeats, revives the poetry of the small and unhappy peoples, such as the Irish and the Bretons, and swaggers about their misfortunes and enslavement until any one who has a vote or an income begins to feel quite degraded. The other section, under the leadership of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, seems to find English life only tolerable in remote and curious continents, exults in their flora and fauna and would appear almost to credit the British Empire with the humorous exploit of creating the kangaroo. Between these two extremes English legend and local colour would seem to be entirely neglected, and it is for this reason that we hail with the greatest pleasure Mr. George Bartram’s Ballads of Ghostly Shires, in which he makes a manly and spirited attempt to build again on the old foundations of English ballad and country tale, more especially those connected with the supernatural. This is not the first form in which Mr. George Bartram has attempted this wise and much-needed work of genuine patriotism: we have a pleasant remembrance of that quaint and vigorous tale of old rustic life, The People of Clopton. But it is in connection with fable rather than truth that the chief need exists, for error seems closer to the earth and the blood of nationality than any facts. Nations may safely import whole philosophies and constitutions, like so much tea or tobacco; but it goes ill with a people that has to import its superstition. The justly exultant discoverers of Celtic lore say that the English have no fine folk-lore. It may be our own English partiality, but we fancy that this only means they have no folk-lore at all like the Celtic. At the back of the Irish poetry and mythology there is an infinite hunger after beauty and rest: the Irish spirit is for ever working to disentangle from the rope of life the one blue thread, like the thread in the Jewish priest’s garment, which represents the eternal and the fulfilled. This is a great moral truth, and it has produced the noble folk-lore of the Secret Rose and the Country of the Young. But it is not the only splendid and eternal strand in the rope of life; through that rope there runs everlastingly a strand of the grotesque, the fierce and humorous energy in things, the defiant and wholesome ugliness of courage and experience. It is this exuberant twist or gnarl in the wood that is our English speciality, and it gives as much of a definite philosophic character to “Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham” as the thirst for perfection gives to the legends of the Gael. It is this spirit, the spirit of Robin Goodfellow, that Mr. George Bartram finely embodies in these ballads. “How the Youth was cured of his Mazedness” is a genial human interlude. With a certain coarse universalism which smacks of old England to the bone, he accepts the grotesqueness of the world, even in its tragedies, gibbets, cudgels, broken skulls, and men hanging are swallowed with the appetite of a giant: but the feeling is not a love of death, but a love of life; it is not cruel, it is rather a sort of daredevil kindness. Stevenson had this amicable bloodymindedness and the neurotics have never understood it. It is very significant that Mr. Bartram approaches the supernatural world in a very different tone and spirit from that in which it is approached by the average mystic. In a faulty but spirited poem which might be called an introduction to his whole work he describes himself as taking the kingdom of mystery, like the Kingdom of Heaven, by storm:-
“They have shunned the naked steel; we have scattered wide their picket: There is light athwart the track; see the gate is close at hand. In a struggle brief and stern we have broken from the thicket To a flood of roseate sheen by an arch of cypress spanned We have forced the golden wicket: we are lords of Glamourland.”
The idea of colonising Fairyland may seem to some to be marked with some of the more foolish of the English traits. But we confess that we have much sympathy with the idea that there is, upon the whole, no likelihood of there being any district of the material or spiritual world in which a man will get on any the better for discarding his natural strength and his national virtues. Some of the more mystical decadents have tended at times to exhibit Fairyland as a kind of Botany Bay, in which the moral refuse of humanity would stand the best chance. Mr. Bartram’s verse may be too crude and bellicose, but we thank him for suggesting, consciously or unconsciously, that it is at least tenable that the entrance to the world of wonder is not a keyhole that only the thinnest can get through, but a wall that only the strongest can vault. At any rate, we hope that Mr. Bartram’s enthusiasm for English ghosts may be infectious. It is not that we care one rap for the supernatural element: but we know that in history, and especially in literature, it is only the supernatural life which will induce men to study and value the natural. We do not desire to create a general awe and reverence for turnip-ghosts, but we do desire to create a general awe and reverence for turnips.
—G.K.C.
“The Morality of the Hat” March 2, 1901, The Speaker
There was a time when we (like most ill-dressed people) were reformers of dress: we had indeed several proposals for which little can be urged but their originality. We thought that the waistcoat in morning dress might be constructed with a kind of flap which should fall down in the form of a tray to support the cup at afternoon tea. We thought that at private views and other such uproariously public occasions, the man of fashion might wear round his neck a simple and not ungraceful label inscribed “I beg your pardon. It is a fine day,” to save him the trouble of addressing all the valued acquaintances upon whose toes he trod. But as both these young ideals were accepted somewhat coldly (by the aristocrats among whom we move) we have fallen back rather upon the historic and conservative contemplation of things as they have actually developed. And here, as in every other department that we have studied, we have found that Radicals like ourselves are the only people left who have any reverence for the past.
We have concentrated our souls upon the hat: the loftiest, the most holy of questions: for was not swearing by the head in numberless countries almost a religious oath? But the particular ceremonial function which the hat fulfils in Western countries is somewhat peculiar.
Of course this use of the hat as a salute has, in modern life, an obvious practical convenience. There is no other part of dress that could be used as a sword or bayonet is used in military saluting. The French, with their genius for a natural ritual, have precisely expressed the matter in speaking of a coup de chapeau. The human mind cannot seriously contemplate a gentleman taking off his cuffs to a lady, or stopping in the middle of the street to detach his necktie and wave it respectfully in the air. Even the French would not wish any one to salute a neighbour with “a blow of the waistcoat.” But all this concentration of courtesy in the hat is merely a local accident of dress: other races of men have really expressed respect by the removal of other appendages. In the East, for example, the shoes are removed as an expression of reverence: and this is really quite as strange to our conceptions as those we have mentioned. We have only to imagine the condition of Bond Street if every time a gentleman met a lady he sat down on the pavement and began to unlace his boots.
The East and West seem condemned to be topsyturveydoms to each other, and it is but one of the thousand symbols of the fact that in one case the headgear is immovable and the foot-gear constantly shifted, and in the other the head-gear is constantly shifted and the footgear immovable. But the whole matter goes much deeper than this. The Eastern custom of removing the shoes on entering a house or temple has an obvious practical meaning. The Western custom of removing the hat can only, to our mind, have a meaning entirely philosophic, abstract and religious.
The meaning of the removal of shoes is clear: it is to preserve the house from the defilements of the street. But no one can suppose that a visitor can defile anything with his hat. It is unusual to see a gentleman rubbing his head on the road before entering a house or rubbing his hat on the carpet after entering it. If these customs are known, they are at least very recent developments of the fashion of “familiarity.” It seems to us that the whole question of the hat belongs (we use the phrase with no base intention) to a higher level.
It is not only true that many Eastern civilizations do not remove the hat as a sign of respect. One of the greatest, for example, the Jewish civilisation, assumes the hat as a sign of respect. And this, when we come to think of it, is a very natural and a very fine idea. To hide the face, to cover oneself from the terror of perfection, seems the natural movement of self-subordination. And if the actual appearance presented by a synagogue, where all the worshippers wear the black silk “stovepipe” is not poetic, this is certainly not the fault of the Semitic idea, but of the Aryan hat. At any rate, it is sufficient for the purpose of our argument to point out that this great people do connect worship with the wearing of the hat: some individuals, indeed, push the matter so far as to wear several hats; which may be taken as an expression of almost exaggerated reverence for the universe.
If, by the operation of other causes, it has become natural to us to uncover ourselves to anything or any one that we respect, the causes of this difference in the instinct of courtesy cannot be uninteresting to consider, though it would probably be hopeless to finally explore them. But it is at least to be suggested that reverence is in all cases compounded of the two elements of fear and trust. The old Hebrews had the element of fear just tinged and made dramatic by a touch of trust. The modern world has had, through Christianity, the element of trust just tinged and made dramatic by a touch of fear. The great danger of the life of our age is that in losing that one touch of fear in all its pleasures, it may lose the whole structure of happiness, like a palace in the Arabian Nights. But this new or Christian element of confidence in the beauty of things, rather than fear of it, is bound to have a suitable ritual. It is its nature, in its highest form, to love the beauty of the thunderbolt as much as the ancients feared the beauty of the flowers. It is possible then that this general instinct in modern civilization to uncover in the presence of the holy thing is an instinct towards simplicity and self-exposure, a modified form as it were of being “naked and not ashamed.” The modern black hat is instinct with the sense of shelter, protection, and privilege; it is itself a kind of portable roof. If it is true that the Englishman’s house is his castle, it is at least equally true that the Englishman’s hat is his house. Not in vain is it called a “chimney-pot” hat; the same beautiful object which lifts itself to the stars on the top of the middle-class house is carried in its lighter and more symbolic form on the top of the middle-class head. It seems to us at least possible that when an Englishman takes his hat off to a lady he is essentially coming out of his house; that impenetrable house of privacy, and self-approval, and consuming fear of humanity. He is believing, if for a single moment, that he may be crowned with the stars.
G. K. C.
Jews Old and New
—March 2, 1901, The Speaker
The Ancient Scriptures And The Modern Jew. By David Baron. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
It is certainly a singular fact that the more mysterious a matter is the more popular it is with the mass of humanity: this fact is perhaps the root of religions and is at any rate a very gratifying thing. Pure matters of fact which any one could find out who took the trouble, such as the number of Lord Roberts’s proclamations or the number of lamp-posts in the Borough Road, are treated with a semi-mystical terror and respect, as the prerogatives of a priesthood of specialists. But the things which are inscrutable and immeasurable in themselves-as enigmatic in a hard-boiled egg as in an Eocene rock, in a Star poster as in a row of Egyptian hieroglyphics-in these everybody feels at home. The cheapest, the most numerous, the most personal and frivolous class of books are probably those dealing with the Bible, the most tremendous of works on the most tremendous of subjects. The greater the book the more the average man feels himself capable of editing it. The man who turns out a little tract on Daniel or Saul every month would be worried if asked to interpret Spenser, completely embarrassed if asked to interpret Maeterlinck, and struck with mere grovelling terror if asked to interpret Mr. Stephen Phillips. Thus Mr. David Baron has written an interesting book called The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew, in the whole course of which it never seems to strike him for a moment that he is dealing with a riddle of ethics and history compared with which squaring the circle would be trivial; that if there is one thing that is more dark and remote to us than even the Ancient Scriptures, that thing is the Modern Jew.
He never seems to realise, even for one dazzling instant, the idea that a bland, black-coated Aryan gentleman sitting in his arm-chair with a creed formulated at the Reformation and a political system diluted from the ideas of 1740, may possibly not be in complete possession of all the abysmal spiritual divisions and eternal spiritual energies which alone could finally throw light on the destiny of an immemorial people, whose strange discoveries in the world of the soul, discoveries embedded whole and often undeciphered in our later systems, were made under strange stars and lost temples, as alien as the landscapes of another planet.
The first part of Mr. Baron’s work deals with the ancient writings, on which he argues ingeniously enough, but about which he ignores two small points-first, that they are ancient, and, secondly, that they are writings. A man cannot comprehend even the form and language of the Psalms without a literary sense. For what are the essential facts? A great though rude and wandering people lived thousands of years ago who had, by what, from any point of view, may truly be called an inspiration, a sudden and startling glimpse of an enormous philosophic truth. These bloodthirsty Bedouins realised the last word of scientific thought, the unity of creation. Opulent empires and brilliant republics all round them were still in the nets of polytheism; but this band of outlaws knew better. This is the immortality of the Jews. Them we can never dethrone: they discovered the one central thing no modern man can help believing: whatever we think, or do, or say we are all bound to the wheel of the stars which can only have a single centre.
This awful simplification of things they discovered, as it has since been discovered by innumerable sages. But their unique historic interest lies in this: that by a strange circumstance, that has every resemblance to a miracle, they discovered it in the morning of the world, in an age when men had and needed no philosophic language. Hence they threw it into poetical language. They spoke of this startling speculative theory with the same bold, brisk, plain-coloured imagery with which primitive ballads commonly speak of war and hunting, women and gold. If we imagine Spinoza’s philosophy written with enormous vividness in the literary style of “Chevy Chace,” we shall have some idea of that confounding marvel which is called the Old Testament. But Mr. Baron, in attempting an estimate of the relation of the Jews to the Old Testament, is merely interested in the theological and dogmatic side of the matter. He does not seem to be aware that the Bible is rather a fine book. He deals with the central interest of the whole matter, the gradual emergence (in Job and the Prophets) of this sublime monism out of a tribal creed and still under the literary forms of a tribal poem: but he does not seem to see it. He thinks, like all conventional dogmatists, that a sentence or two in the style of the Daily Telegraph will “elucidate” the style of Scripture, which is as straightforward as a nursery rhyme. He really supposes that to say that God is not “under obligation” for an “animal sacrifice” contains all that is contained in such a daring, simple, and unfathomable sentence as “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee.”
Another curious example of facile argument on an insufficient comprehension of the spirit of the matter under discussion lies in Mr. Baron’s arguments for a second Advent vitally different from the first. This is not the place, nor are we the arbiters, for the decision of such a matter in its religious aspect. But Mr. Baron’s own particular arguments show, in the literary aspect, a singular failure to grasp the nature of Jewish expression. He argues that, because there are prophecies which refer to a deliverer coming “in glory,” as well as those referring to a deliverer coming in simplicity, there must be another appearance of the Divine besides the historic appearance of Jesus. Never was there so irrational or, we may add, so common a misinterpretation of the tone of Christ’s utterances. The idea that Christ did not invariably act and speak “in glory” is simply a mark of being unable to read. He walked always with the full glory of heroic life; His habits were happy and liberal; His spirit was high and eloquent; His very literary imagery was (though no one seems to see it) large and impetuous, full of devils falling from heaven and mountains cast into the sea. Does Mr. Baron really think He would have been more “glorious” if He had sat on a hill and waved a sceptre? There was never anything ignominious about the Son of Man. He died upon the Cross; but He was not born on it, as some theologians would seem to imply.
The second part of Mr. Baron’s work, that which deals with the modern Jew, is infinitely more satisfactory. It would be quite unfair to Mr. Baron to say that this was because it contains two very interesting articles contributed by other people, for his own remarks on the Semitic problem of to-day are genuinely good in themselves. But he has certainly elucidated the problem in no small degree by including two chapters in quotation marks, one by a distinguished Jew, and another by a distinguished Christian. The modern Jew is unpopular in Europe, but chiefly, we fear, for his virtues. No one has the pleasure of the friendship of any Jews who has not noticed that almost weird domesticity, that terrible contentment which makes the life of parlour and nursery quite satisfactory to a Jew of the calibre of spirit and intellect which, if he were a Gentile, would make it a devouring necessity to him to “see life.”
It is this fomidable normality that constitutes the real power of the Jew. It is the survival of the blinding simplification of existence of which we have spoken. It is no mere accident that the most brilliant Jew of this age is Dr. Max Nordau; a man with whom, to speak paradoxically, sanity has become a madness. He spares nothing in his application of the religion of commonsense, the law that is written in men’s bones. Neither the hardness of Tolstoi nor the fragility of Maeterlinck; neither the bitter simplicity of Ibsen nor the drunken glory of Whitman can lure this old Hebrew from the strait path of judgment. Dr. Max Nordau, in the passage which Mr. Baron quotes, speaks with splendid scorn of decadents even of his own race-and the decadents of his own race are, in his opinion, the Jewish millionaires. No Gentile certainly would dare to speak of them as they are spoken of by a Jew
“These money-pols who despise what we honour and honour what we despise. Many of them forsake Judaism and we wish them God-speed, only regretting that they are at all of Jewish blood, though but of the dregs.”
In connection with this matter of the awful and indestructible sanity in the Jewish people, which strikes us chiefly, we must protest against some of the remarks of Mr. Baron’s Christian witness, Mr. C. A. Schonberger, as to the spirit of the Jewish Law. For the sake of backing up a particular Evangelical doctrine (with which, of course, we have nothing to do) Mr. Schonberger says:-
“It (the Law) was not given for life, but for death, to bring people to despair about the depravity of their moral nature. In one word it was given that the heart should be broken and not that it should become proud.”
We can only say that is not the impression left on any rational man by the Old Testament. “The law of the Lord is right, rejoicing the heart!”—“My delight is in Thy statutes;” we believe we could overwhelm Mr. Schonberger with quotations merely from memory. The truth is that the very soul of the Jewish Scriptures is in this idea of the rapture of cleanliness and obedience; the idea that if a man once gets into the right path he may dance down it all the way.
There is one lesson that remains to be drawn, more especially from the case of those Semitic plutocrats of whom Dr. Max Nordau speaks so disdainfully:-
“In an ordinary independent Jewish community,” … . he says with sharp, but just sarcasm, “they would not receive titles of honour such as those by which they are decorated by Christian societies.”
But the real lesson of the Jewish plutocratic problem seems to us a simple one, and one very much needed at present. It is the lesson of the utter futility of attempting to crush a fine race. In science men know that no force is ever destroyed; but the fact has yet to be learnt in politics. There are a thousand things that a wronged people may become-a rival, like America; a clog, like Ireland; an internal disease, like Jewish commerce; but it always becomes something. We forbade to the Jews all natural callings except commerce, and to-day commerce is what might be expected from being eternally recruited with all the most intellectual sons of a most intellectual people. We pray that the error may not be repeated in certain corners of the earth. To avoid a repetition of it would be far worthier than that frivolous Continental anti-Semitism which can find no answer to Jewish triumphs, except to flourish tauntingly the image of a martyred Jew upon an Aryan gibbet.
G.K.C.
A Denunciation of Parents
—March 9, 1901, The Speaker
Concerning Children. By Mrs. Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman is a good example of a good class, the women whose ethical enthusiasm and readiness to remake heaven and earth constitute one of the few symptoms of that youth of the world which luxury and levity always miss and only moral severity can give. She has ideas, controversial ability, literary liveliness and hope. But she has also all the besetting faults of the school. She has, like her sisters in arms, a wholly insufficient sense of the complexity of life: it seems never to strike her that as it is almost impossible to say that any single man is wholly bad, it is even more difficult to say that any institution, the aggregate of a million varying men, is wholly bad. She has, again, that queer faith in the “expert” which is the mark of the complete amateur. She is very anxious that we should hire educational experts to tend our children. We might do so: we might hire distinguished prose writers to write our love-letters. No doubt they would be done better: but there are some things that should be done by an individual for himself, or not at all. Lastly, and it is the most important point, Mrs. Stetson Gilman is at one with the intellectual women of her type in attaching an enormous importance to the domain of “science” in ethics and politics and in manifestly not having the most remote or glimmering notion of what “science” means.
This ignorance as to the meaning of science most particularly vitiates Mrs. Stetson Gilman’s latest book, Concerning Children. The case rests almost entirely upon one statement which she makes with even more than her usual courage and clearness, and which is almost bewilderingly untrue. “Ethics,” she says, “is as plain a science as physics, and as easy of application.” As we should be sorry to think that Mrs. Gilman knows nothing about ethics, we take refuge in the assumption that she knows nothing about physics. But the remark itself is as wild as saying that Brighton is as big as the moon. Physics is a science: it has fixed methods, and final and demonstrated conclusions. Ethics is not a science at all in that sense; it is universally admitted and discussed, like literature or politeness, but no single iota of it has ever been demonstrated as the circulation of the blood has been demonstrated. Mrs. Stetson Gilman goes on to speak of explaining to children the value of truth. Can she prove to any opponent, small or big, by actual experiment, that truth-telling, with all its toils and troubles, is advantageous in the sense that she could prove, by actual experiment, the principle of the lever? A child can, and does, become convinced of the value of truth, as he becomes convinced of the kindness of a particular uncle, or the beauty of a particular meadow. These conclusions are quite as sure, or more sure, than the conclusions of science; but to call them science is to juggle with words and, in enlarging the realm of science, to dilute with sentiment and degrade with obscurities its own peculiar glory of certitude and calm. Talking wildly about the similarity of physics and ethics can only result in two exceedingly vile things, a sentimental science and a cold morality.
Hence comes the very peculiar quality of this book. Mrs. Gilman offers a number of suggestions which considered as suggestions are not only able and original, but sympathetic and true. Nothing could be better, for example, than the righteous eloquence with which she pleads for courtesy to children. But her unfortunate notion that she is dealing with fixed quantities leads her into that maniacal dance which is called “following a thing to its legitimate conclusion.” This peculiar pastime leads, in the case of the question of courtesy, to a cut-and-dried theory that people should never laugh at children. In discussing this she uses the words “laugh” and “jeer” as interchangeable: an admirable example of the blundering of exact ethics. Laughing and jeering are as different as throwing snowballs and firing Lyddite shells. To jeer at a child is contemptible; but not much more so than to jeer at a man. But to laugh at a child is simply the natural thing to do and a great compliment. Whence came this extraordinary idea that laughing at a thing is hostile? Friends laugh at each other; lovers laugh at each other; all people who love each other laugh at each other. And if Mrs. Stetson Gilman can by any possibility help laughing at a child the moment he puts his preposterous face into the door, she has a different sense of humour from ourselves. Does not Mrs. Gilman see that to suppress so essential a sentiment, to treat a baby painting his nose blue with portentous silence and solemnity is to create an atmosphere far more false, a cloud of lies a hundred times thicker than all the conventions against which she protests? The lovable grotesqueness of children is a part of their essential poetry, it symbolises the foolish freshness of life itself, it goes down to the mysterious heart of man; the heart out of which came elves and fairies and gnomes. So far from wishing that children should be treated with the ridiculous and pompous gravity with which civilised men treat each other, we ourselves wish that civilised men were treated as children are, that their blundering utterances were always laughed at in kindness, that their futile amusements were relished as quaint and graceful instead of vulgar and eccentric, that their sins were punished without morbid exaggeration, and their whole life frankly admitted to be a stumbling and groping and stammering after better things. If a stockbroker were gaily patted on the head when he had made a million, perhaps he would think less of his triumph; if a poet only had his hair pulled affectionately when he cursed God, it is probable that he would not do it again.
The same profoundly unnatural rationalism marks the author’s observations on the virtue of Obedience, of which she profoundly disapproves. And yet the substitute that she offers for obedience is a hundred times more cowardly and fictitious. “The child can be far better protected by removing all danger: which our present civilization is quite competent to do.” Let us take the case of fire. The child is not to be told, what is an eternal and typical truth, “This is the most beautiful thing in the world: but you must not touch it. It is the thing which warms if you obey it, but bites if you disobey.” But the child is to be told, in effect, what is a silly lie, “There is no such thing as fire: you have never seen it in your nursery.” Mrs. Gilman complains that obedience discourages will and personality and then proposes to encourage those qualities by removing all danger and difficulty! Mrs. Gilman does not really understand what is meant by obedience. She always uses the word as identical with slavery, whereas it is inconsistent with it. A slave cannot be obedient; we might as well speak of a tree being taciturn or an oyster being good-tempered. A thing which cannot disobey is not obedient: obedience is a choice: and it is a choice involved in civilization. Mrs. Gilman is singularly out in her bearings in saying that the upholders of obedience have to fall back on the case of soldiers and sailors and that “they do not speak of it as particularly desirable among farmers and merchants.” Whether they do or not, it certainly is. Without some compromise of obedience in the matter, the farmer and merchant would both be bankrupt in a month. Every train that Mrs. Gilman travels in would be smashed up, every bank in which she put her money would ruin her, every house she lived in would fall down, if there were no established principle of one man promptly acting on the signals of another man. And this is all obedience is.
Obedience is simply a division of labour; and we do not know why it should be so impossible to let an intelligent child see that you really do know something that he does not. Mrs. Gilman takes the case of teaching a child arithmetic and not explaining the reason for a certain process. But will Mrs. Gilman tell us what she would do if a child chose to deny that a curly figure meant eight and a straight figure meant one?
We are warmly in sympathy with those parts of Mrs. Gilman’s book in which she protests against the foolish restrictions under which children are placed; the idiotic idea, for example, that it is disgraceful to be sandy in playing in a sand-pit or muddy in making mud pies. We might as well think it dirty to be all over soap when we are washing. But we think these follies are the faults of individuals and periods, not of the institution of the family. We see no conceivable reason for supposing that State educational officials would not be as shallow, as hasty, as self-important and as childish as any parents; and with this horrible further touch, that in them there would be nothing to appeal to, no basic morality of blood and bone which might survive insult and division. So that we come back to Mrs. Stetson Gilman’s fundamental error, that she tries to preserve the salutary coldness of science in the midst of a subject which is simply not to be comprehended except in the furnaces of primal passion. Morality is not merely a matter of what is done; it is a matter of the heat and altitude with which it is done. No person can talk about children (unless he is merely talking about whooping-cough) if he has not clearly in mind the huge mass of tribal love and tragedy under which this globe has groaned from the beginning. If ever mothers like Mrs. Stetson become educationalists primarily, then, in rising to that height of moral cultivation, they will have sunk lower than the pole-cat or the wolf. In the vast sea of living humanity, upon which the whole of our educated class is a mere flake of foam, the family instinct is the indestructible mimimum of morality; the one germ of social seriousness. To kick down the ladder by which we have climbed is ungrateful, but to kick down the ladder when we are half-way up it is something else as well. If Mrs. Stetson Gilman carries too far her trust in education as a science in a great State temple of knowledge, she will indeed kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The builder of that cold temple shall see his folly in the gradual dehumanization of his own children before his own eyes. Upon the builder of that temple shall descend the literal fulfilment of that ancient and mysterious curse which was pronounced upon the rebuilder of Jericho: “He shall lay the foundation on his first-born; and on his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”
G.K.C.
The Literature of Death
—March 16, 1901, The Speaker
Flowers Of The Cave. Edited by Laurie Magnus and Cecil Headlam. Blackwood.
The book which appears under the somewhat mystical and allusive title of Flowers Of the Cave has not, as might be supposed at the first glance, any connection either with geology or botany.
It is a collection of extracts upon death, very ably and thoughtfully compiled by Mr. Laurie Magnus and Mr. Cecil Headlam. But it is almost too comprehensive a project to publish an anthology on death. It is rather like publishing an anthology on Man, in which should be included “The Man for wisdom’s various arts renowned;” “There was a little man and he had a little gun;” “Man wants but little here below;” “He was a man, take him for all in all;” “There was a man in our town and he was wondrous wise;” “What is man, that thou carest for him?” and the whole text of “The Descent of Man.” Death is about as universal in literature as in human existence, and is infinitely more respectfully treated. If we tore the cover off The Golden Treasury, and substituted the title Flowers of the Cave, we should hardly find seven poems, we suspect, which did not contain some allusion to the subject of the mortal end. Death is involved in the discussion of any conceivable human subject. It is merely the full stop at the end of the word “life.”
In an unpretentious, but singularly able preface, the editors demur to the notion that the treatment of such a subject is necessarily very depressing; as they point out, the loftiest, and, we may add, the most lighthearted men of genius have faced it without a thought of it prostrating them. But though we fully applaud the editors for including all the various points of view from which this tremendous subject has been considered, no one could expect the poems and passages which they print to be uniformly or even generally of a character to elevate either the spirits or the soul. Death has called forth in literature not only much cheerfulness and dignity, much chivalrous hope and more chivalrous hopelessness, but also much panic, much paltry philosophy, much of dismal asceticism and more dismal frivolity, much of the self-indulgence of gloom and much of the gloom of self-indulgence.
On the one hand, the scheme of the work admits all the great poems which gather round the conception of eternal life, such as Wordsworth’s “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” which is, by the way, a magnificent example of the right way to sing about a common subject. Many realists, Wordsworth himself included, fell often into that futile realistic spirit which merely shows that a common thing is common. The higher realism shows that a common thing is uncommonly uncommon, and that all the trumpets of poetic style are not too sublime for its celebration. The case of idealism or truth to the soul, against realism, or truth to the tongue, might be tried on the issue of Wordsworth alone. He wrote two poems upon the idea of a child’s conviction of a life beyond death. When he was writing what, in his view, the child actually said, he wrote “We are Seven.” When he was writing in his own language what the child meant, he wrote the “Ode on the Intimations.”
But just as there is the white side of the philosophy of death, as shown in Wordsworth’s Ode, so there is the dark side also. There are poems rightly included in this volume, and adorning any volume in the literary sense, of which we should say without hesitation that they are baser than the foulest epigram of Catullus.
Most people know Bacon’s vigorous pessimistic poem in this volume, which begins:-
“The world’s a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.”
and which concludes:-
“What then remains but that we still should cry For being born; or being born, to die.”
The poem is expressed in terms common enough in philosophy and religion, and to many its Vanitas Vanitatum will have a dignified and pious sound. To us, we must confess, this poem is the only one of the literary works of Bacon in which we see the Bacon of history, the Bacon who betrayed Essex, the Bacon who cringed to Buckingham, the shuffler, the coward and the snob.
In order to see how misleading are titles and philosophical descriptions in dealing with moral atmosphere, we need only compare Bacon’s poem with the exquisite and even more famous lyric of Shirley, beginning “The glories of our blood and state,” which is also in this book. Here there is, in a sense, a Vanitas Vanitatum attitude, but as different from the querulous cleverness of Bacon as a rich twilight from a yellow fog. Shirley’s melancholy is not for the ugliness of things, but for their beauty; it is that delicate and golden melancholy which is only possible to men with a great power of enjoyment. And because his sadness is a fullblooded and generous sadness, because it is a sadness over the goodness of things, he escapes in the last lines, like Thackeray, out of satire into a healthy and humble claim for happiness, in two of the most perfect lines in the language:-
“Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”
The poem might be a motto for The Newcomes.
These two forms of melancholy pretty well cover the mass of extracts on the melancholy view of death. Melancholy, in the sound old Miltonic sense, had nothing to do with pessimism. Sorrow, indeed, is always the opposite of pessimism; for sorrow is based on the value of something, pessimism on the value of nothing. Men have never believed genuinely in that idle and fluent philosophy (a theme for the devil’s copybooks) which declares that earthly things are worthless because they are fleeting. Men do not fling their cigars into the fire at the thought that they will only last fifteen minutes, or shoot their favourite aunts through the head on the reflection that they can only live fifteen years. Nor is it from such thankless railing at this world that men have gained the best hopes for another. It is strange that sages and saints should have sought so often to prove the splendour of the house from the darkness of its porch. If we could really believe in the meanness of the meanest dust-bin, there would be no reason for not believing in the utter meanness of the stars. Surely it is far more credible that death is precisely the breakdown of our mortal powers of praise: that when we cease to wonder we die; that we have to be dipped once more in darkness, before we can see the sun once more.
G. K. C.
How Not To Do It
March 23, 1901, The Speaker
How To Write Fiction. (“How to” Series.) London: Grant Richards.
It is a very extraordinary circumstance that humanity appears to entertain an everlasting resentment against the fact that certain things cannot be reduced to a science. The most remarkable instance is the literary faculty and instinct. It is perfectly clear to any one who can think for a moment of the proper meaning of the word literature and the proper meaning of the word science, that we do not know the psychological nature of literary pleasure or the rules which will with certainty govern it. But yet the whole course of history is strewn with the ruins of the false sciences of literature, from the fixed canons of Aristotle to those of the eighteenth century. Each elaborate and classical edifice only existed until some natural man of letters trampled it into fragments without seeing it. But the “Art is Unmoral” school has arisen in our own time to define the indefinable once more. Such is the strange enmity of men towards the mysterious element in man-as if it were not, in truth, what makes life worth living.
Another school has also arisen to-day with the same idea in a much grosser form. It is the school which believes that everything can be learnt: that success in art and commerce is equally an ingenious trick. A series is issued entitled the “How To” series. It teaches in one volume “How to Choose Your Banker,” in another “How to Dine in Paris,” and in a third, which now lies before us, “How to Write a Novel.” It never seems to strike the writers of this school that there is some difference between the psychological profundity and delicacy of choosing your banker and that of choosing your idea. An idea is a nameless thing; it melts into all other ideas, whereas a banker is detachable and does not melt into any one. The same is true, though in a lesser degree, of the comparison which the author makes in his first chapter. He says, with some apparent reason, that as painting and sculpture require training on fixed lines there is no reason why such training should not be given in fiction. Surely the answer is distinct. Fiction is more dark and chaotic than painting because, though both arts symbolise spiritual conditions, painting employs as its symbol the bodily form, which has been measured, while fiction employs as its symbol the thoughts and actions which have never been measured. Painting deals with what a man looks like, which we can all know; fiction deals with what he means, which he generally does not know himself. It is not possible to know how many thoughts a man has; it is possible to know, with reasonable industry, how many legs he has.
Painting has an intellectual object also; and may modify physical facts to attain it, but only within limits. By giving a figure unusually long legs a painter may suggest heroic stature; but in no painting are a gentleman’s legs depicted as endless legs; whereas his thoughts and aspirations, the matter of fiction, are endless. It is this uncounted and eternal element in men that cheats all the sciences of letters, which destroys and survives all its own definitions. We have dwelt on this first thesis of the author because it is very vital to the matter. The author exhibits no reverence in approaching literature. He does not seem to realise that so divine has the art of writing always appeared, that the very word “scripture” has come to mean a sacred scripture. No man, as we say, can define literature at any time; but no man can even understand it unless he approaches it as a little child. It does not belong to the class of things that can be gained by mere experience, such as “How to Dine in Paris.” We understand the next volumes of this series are to be called “How to Become a Saint,” “How to Fall in Love,” “How to Die for One’s Country,” and “How to Reconcile the More Inspiring Claims of Ethical Citizenship with the Subtler Phases of the Inner Life.”
But if the didactics of literature would be enough to bewilder anybody, the didactics of fiction are peculiarly shadowy. For there is no such form of art as the novel; not, at least, in the sense that there are such forms of art as the lyric, the epic and the tragedy. We call any prose narrative of a certain length a novel, quite apart from the real nature of its structure. There is really less artistic kinship between Pickwick and The Scarlet Letter than there is between AEdipus Tyrannus and The Ode to the West Wind. And in this matter divisions made by the author of How to Write Fiction by no means satisfy us. His account of the “Realistic Novel” is that it is “life in action, without comment or philosophy, and minus the pre-eminent factor of art.” If it is really this (which we cannot think) a writer on the novel has simply no more concern with it than he has with a furniture catalogue or a Bradshaw, which is really life in action without comment or philosophy, and minus the pre-eminent factor of art. The next section he recognizes is the novel of manners, on which his remarks are unobjectionable, and the section after that, the novel of incident or romance. But romance is not, to our mind, mere incident. This is the error which is responsible for the flood of conventional historic romances in which the hero is never for an instant out of prison or a duel, in which swords and swordthrusts are innumerable, and in which the whole clatter of steel is as commonplace as a cutler’s shop. Romance is a condition of the soul, like all other phases of literature: a broker on a Putney omnibus might possibly be bursting with romance. But the exact note of place and time which tingles with romance in a novel is quite as recondite and hard to strike as the note of fear in Maeterlinck or vitality in Balzac. We hear much, for example, of the fights in Dumas, but really there are far fewer fights in The Three Musketeers than one fancies. Dumas did not employ to enliven his story one half of the combats which make dull those of his imitators. What there is in Dumas always is not fighting, but the sense of the sword at the hip; the sense of self-reliance and of the possibilities of life. His heroes pass their time in other matters, the greater part of it, perhaps, in eating, but in one man of Dumas sitting blandly on an innbench there is more romance, more sense of the inexhaustibility of existence, than in all the breathless obstacle-race of battles common in later stories. If the reader wishes for another instance of the same brooding spirit of romance, the disembodied soul, as it were, of incident, resting on a humdrum scene, we may refer him to the scene at the Colonel’s house in Guy Mannering. where the supper-party are awaiting the strange carriage that is to bring the chosen of Meg Merrilies. The conversation is almost entirely about ducks and peas, and is conducted between a fantastic old lawyer and a frivolous girl, and yet we know no scene in fiction where the cord of romantic excitement is stretched so tight.
Thus the author of How to Write Fiction is in reality wrong at the very start. He treats a novel as if it was based on its plot. There are some novels which are so based: The Moonstone, for example. But he does not realise that the real germ of a novel may be any kind of matter-a man, a society, a curse, a landscape, a vision, a school of thought, a joke. When Thackeray called Vanity Fair a novel without a hero, he spoke the strict truth, for the protagonist in Vanity Fair is not a man, but a crowd, jostling, noisy, and monstrous. The hero of Notre Dame is a stone church, the hero of The Wrong Box is a wooden barrel, the hero of Peleas and Melisandre is an atmosphere. The author of this book seems to us very much beside the mark when he says of Maeterlinck that his atmosphere, “put into bald language, means that he has succeeded in creating an artistic environment for his weird characters,” and proceeds to compare it with the darkness and strangeness of the first scene in Hamlet. In Hamlet the sombre background symbolises the human figure: in Maeterlinck the human figures themselves merely symbolise the sombre background. He does not “create an artistic environment for his characters:” the environment creates the characters and then kills them-no very difficult task, for they are a small and frightened race, like men created by a man and not by God. And this contradiction is merely typical of the thousand contradictions which render a science of fiction impossible. The fact is that every novelist begins to draw his figure at a different extremity. There can be no biology of these strange creatures of the brain in one of which the centre of life is in the tail, in another in the horns, in another in the stomach, in another in the wings.
Consequently we have nothing to say to Wilkie Collins and Sir Walter Besant and other authorities from whom explanations of artistic method are quoted here, except that, with the deepest faith in their talents and veracity, we do not believe a word they say. We do not believe that they wrote their books as they say and think they did; we know that the power to write a good story is one thing, the power to analyse one’s own thoughts quite another, and we simply find evidence in the books themselves that they had their origin in infinitely higher and more mysterious forces than the simple rule of thumb to which their authors ascribe them. We should not believe that St. Paul’s Cathedral was built especially for a stable even if Sir Christopher Wren said it was, nor do we believe that The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins because he had invented a certain plot which required a villain, and that villain must be a foreigner. A villain is a dull person both in fiction and in real life: Count Fosco was an inspiration from on high.
Sir Walter Besant gives an outline of an imaginary story about a jewel robbery, and lays down a series of rules, by violating each of which consistently admirable stories could be written. This is the sort of thing which clever men write when they conceive it to be their duty to bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion. “You will perceive the robbery must be a big and important thing; no little shop-lifting business. Next, the person robbed must not be a mere diamond merchant, but a person whose loss will interest the reader.” Why must the robbery be big and important? We can imagine Balzac or Stevenson making an incomparable story about the robbery of something that had no value at all. Why should not the reader be interested in a diamond-merchant if he was well presented, as much as in anybody else? These rules impress us as mere solemn gibberish. We feel as we should if someone said that every hero who was a Romanist must have red hair, that three successive scenes must not take place in Yorkshire, that a heroine may have either a dog or a mother, but not both, that every fifth chapter must end with the word “hat,” and that no Scotch accountant must be introduced into a forest scene. The best that could be said for these rules of ours would be that it might be possible to write a good novel while observing them. And that is certainly the best that can be said for Sir Walter Besant’s rules.
We do not wish to convey the idea that this book is without merit. Many of its remarks, especially towards the end, are useful and almost valuable. But in the author’s idea of a school of fiction we cannot concur. We think it would lead to nothing but a pseudo-science, like alchemy or astrology, to deceive the world for the hundredth time. The power of the man with the latest news and the best trick is increasing around us in many things. It must be resolutely proclaimed that into the world of wonder there is no gate but the low gate of humility, through the arch of which the earth shines like elfland.
G.K.C.
The Problem of Minor Poetry
—March 30, 1901, The Speaker
At The Gates Of Song. By Lloyd Mifflin. Deirdre Wed. By Mr. Trench.
The difficulty of dealing with the poetry which is produced yearly and daily is seriously increasing. The problem of minor poetry does not arise from the fact that the mass of it is bad; it arises from the dark, bewildering and sinister fact that the mass of it is good. The fact is, as it appears to us, that writing in verse is becoming as universal an accomplishment as writing at all. Moliere makes the ignorant man exult in the discovery that he has been speaking prose all his life; the ignorant man of a future satirist will probably exult in the fact that he has been speaking poetry. We see no reason why the power of expressing all our wants in rhyme and rhythm should not be attained by any one in the future. There is no reason why a man wishing his neighbour to pass the potatoes should not say quite naturally:-
“Pass me those goblins, in the earth that grew, Those hells whose heaven is a blossom blue,”
whereupon the most prosaic of his companions would pass the potatoes immediately. A man who suspected another of having stolen his umbrella would exclaim with righteous indignation—
“Methinks thou cowerest in that dusky dome Wherein I also dared the floods to come:”
whereupon a person of the most impervious moral nature would immediately return the umbrella.
Such is the general impression produced on the mind by the horrible facility which a large number of modern men exhibit in the matter of verse. Owing to some inexperience of critical effects we are unable to say whether it would be considered a tribute to any class of poets to say that they express in language which no one can impugn sentiments which no one can help having. But this is assuredly the case with an enormous number of modern minor writers of verse. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the matter is somewhat simpler. One poet among those whose books lie before us at present exclaims in opening an address to the ocean—
My feeble powers, O mighty sea, I cannot strain to sing to thee,
which seems an excellent, manly and lucid excuse for not writing a poem to the sea, but not a very good excuse for writing one. The majority of modern poets, however, are not so conveniently disposed of. They have, in spite of generalisations, protests and criticisms, a decidedly indefensible habit of writing very good poetry, poetry at least adorned with a degree of style, dignity and judgment which would not have been possible in every age. We can only explain it as we say, by the theory that talking in rhyme is becoming an universal accomplishment, like signing one’s own name. We have no doubt that when language first existed, those persons who could emit certain screams and grunts expressive of the most simple necessities went about with long curled hair and a hyper-elegant demeanour to celebrate their poetic superiority.
An example of how well the thing can be done may be found in the book called At the Gates of Song, by Mr. Lloyd Miffln. Mr. Lloyd Mifflin is, we conceive, an American. His very name is a poem. And his sonnets are decidedly good sonnets; yet, such is the perversity of human judgment, we feel that after the first five every good sonnet decreases our opinion of the poet. About things turned out with such multiplicity and precision there is a strange smell of the factory. One of Mr. Lloyd Mifflin’s sonnets, if we found it alone, we should feel to possess all the pallid severity of the Parthenon. But twenty Parthenons in a row would be as commonplace as twenty Brixton villas.
If we may take Mr. Lloyd Mifflin as the type of the thoroughly polished and dignified craftsman, the author of Amor Amoris may be said to represent the opposite type, the type of the man with a personality, slight or recondite perhaps, but of delicate and individual colour. The poet is a sentimentalist, perhaps: indeed, Amor Amoris, the love of love, is surely the very definition of sentimentalism. But he has escaped the real hell of sentimentalism, the hell of least resistance, the hell of an unfathomable softness. He is not doomed, like so many aesthetes, to go mad in the merciless comfort of a padded cell. He knows how to show beauty bright against a black background.
Her hair is clustered bloom Makes fair this borderland of death
is a fine phrase, illuminating like an aureole suddenly lighted round a woman’s head. The author is always at his best when he brings the soft and the severe into this sudden and ringing contact, like two knights at a tournament.
Mr. Trench, in his volume Deirdre Wed follows the most mysterious section of the Celtic School. We are not ungrateful for the information conveyed in the title, for it is as well to know, at least, on sound external evidence, that whatever else happened to Deirdre she was really wed at some stage of her affairs. The poem, though dim and strange, or rather, because dim and strange, is genuinely fine. Yet we cannot help vaguely resenting the excessive gloom which hangs over all the poems of the renaissance of Celtic mythology. Ireland may have been as melancholy as this in the far-off days when she was a centre of civilisation; but she has certainly improved in spirits under her misfortunes. Amid all the Regency bombast of Tom Moore, there was far more sound analysis of the spirit that has kept his country alive:-
“Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow To sully a heart so gallant and light.”
In this connection we may mention another book of poems-The Love Letters of a Fenian-which is a continuation of the more romantic tradition of Ireland. Extravagant and pompous as it is, its gloom is more young and generous than the light of Deirdre Wed. It is said that there is an Irish legend in which a woman was turned into a harp. We prefer her when the transformation is not quite complete.
G.K.C.
Patriotism and Ethics
—May 18, 1901, The Speaker [Reprinted in The Living Age, volume 230, July-September 1901]
Every kind of moral and personal credit is due to Mr. Godard for his courage and conscientiousness in publishing this interesting book at this time. I cannot pretend to accept his theory; which is a proposal for the dethronement of the whole virtue of patriotism. But the shock of a logical challenge can do nothing but good to a virtue like patriotism, especially when that virtue is almost trampled to death, as at present, by inanities disguised in its costume. We hear much of saying “the right thing at the right time;” but there is a considerable value in the man who says even the wrong thing at the right time.
But there is, before I proceed to any details, one error which spoils much of Mr. Godard’s book from a philosophic point of view. It is that he, like His Majesty’s Ministers, appears to think the present Transvaal war a great war. Judging from the enormous amount of space occupied in his pages by this silly and disastrous adventure, one would think that there never had been a national enterprise in the world before. Patriotism can be tested by the Transvaal war just about as much as Christianity could be tested by Mr. Baxter’s prophecies of the end of the world. Mr. Godard had undertaken to study the whole nature of patriotism, and it was necessary for him to take some great theory of patriotism and systematically examine it. Some of the greatest men the world has seen have written upon patriotism-Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Milton, Victor Hugo, Herbert Spencer, John Ruskin. And Mr. Godard calmly selects for detailed study a lecture given by Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain does not pretend to be a philosopher; his opinion on patriotism has no more special value than his opinion on the Royal Academy. It need hardly be said that I entirely agree with Mr. Godard’s spirited denunciation of the present war, of Jingo intolerance, of the brutality of the idiots who wrecked Peace meetings. But what have these things to do with patriotism? What has Imperialism to do with patriotism? What have sky-larking crowds to do with patriotism? Above all, what particular connection is there between Mr. Chamberlain and patriotism?
This is the primary and superficial objection to Mr. Godard, that he has meekly accepted the theory of the Government that the war is a great trial of English patriotism, instead of being, as it is, a vulgar and dirty experiment in a corner, different in no way from other frontier experiments except in the arrogance of its terms and the magnifying-glass of morbidity through which it is regarded. Mr. Godard, if he wished to study patriotism, should not have taken one paltry colonial squabble out of history, as one takes lots out of a hat; he should have reviewed the great wars of history in something like their proper proportion. But one thing is at least certain. If Mr. Godard does not think patriotism is a precious virtue, his sympathy with Boer resistance is inexplicable. He passionately, and most justly exclaims, “Does ‘justice’ decimate a nation because it refuses unconditionally to submit to a foreign yoke?” But if patriotism has no value a foreign yoke has no injustice. “Can we contemplate,” he continues, “the absolute annexation of the territory of two foreign States, ‘a penalty so extreme as to be without parallel in the history of modern nations since the partition of Poland?’” It is the opinion of many, including myself, that annexation is far too great a penalty. But if patriotism has no sanctity, it is not a penalty at all. If the lines between nations are really as needless and arbitrary as Mr. Godard represents, it is no more cruel to take over a Boer farm from the Republic to the Empire than to transfer a particular street from Fulham to Hammersmith. If there were a passionate patriotic feeling in Hammersmith; if the inhabitants delighted in boasting that the flag of Hammersmith had never fallen in war, that the women of Hammersmith were the most beautiful and the wines of Hammersmith the most rejoicing in the world, then I myself should thoroughly sympathize with Hammersmith, entertaining, as I probably should, similar convictions about South Kensington. But presumably Mr. Godard would not. He considers any peculiar attachment to a nation narrow and immoral. He must, therefore, I infer, consider the present resistance of the Boers a hideous and ghastly thing, the deluging of a whole country with blood by madmen fighting for a detestable prejudice. I do not.
I am very little terrified by Mr. Godard’s catalogue of the wars and woes wrought by patriotism. Of all methods of testing a great idea this method seems to me the worst. Mankind have always been ready to pay a great price for anything they really thought necessary; catalogues of dead and wounded only show how necessary they thought it. Mr. Godard declares that patriotism is, on account of its cruelties and its pride, inconsistent with Christianity. But if peace is the test, how will Christianity itself stand it? Again, he declares patriotism to be inimical to liberty and democracy. But if peace is the test, how will liberty and democracy stand it? The French Revolution has led to at least as much bloodshed as any national sentiment in the world. Rosseau is at one with a greater, in that he assuredly did not bring peace but a sword.
Mr. Godard wishes us to dethrone patriotism and substitute love of all mankind, because patriotism, he says, is only “reflex egoism.” I cannot comprehend this definition. In what sense is patriotism reflex egoism in which the love of humanity is not reflex egoism? If patriotism is exclusive, so is the love of humanity; it stops at the first ape. If patriotism includes pride in being an Englishman, does not the worship of humanity include pride in being a man? If the pride of being an Englishman makes a merit of something not in our control, does not the pride of being a man do the same? If patriotism asserts the interests of the nation, often cruelly, against other nations, does not the service of man assert his interests, often cruelly, against the animal world?
And does Mr. Godard really suppose that if the love of humanity became an universal popular virtue, its expression would not be as vulgar, as heated, as unscrupulous in many cases as that of patriotism? Mr. Godard quotes a list of silly and brutal remarks about President Kruger “singing psalms on the wrong side of his mouth.” and puts them to the account of patriotism. They belong, not to the ethics of patriotism, but to the psychology of cads. Does Mr. Godard suppose that if the love for humanity were made the basis of national thought, the fool who had just been saying, “One in the eye for Kruger,” would immediately begin to talk in the language of sublime liberality? He would merely change the cant. It would be as easy to represent Kruger as the enemy of mankind as to represent him as the enemy of England. It would be as easy for a ring of financiers with their eyes on a gold mine to pity Outlanders as men as to pity them as Englishmen. It would be as easy to break up the meetings of your political opponents because they were enemies of their kind as because they were enemies of their country. The old cosmopolitan Romans boiled Christians in oil because they were the foes of mankind. The French Revolutionists burnt priests in straw because they were the foes of mankind. These things do not arise either from the love of country or the love of men, but simply from folly, intemperance, vagueness and the heart of man deceitful above all things. Let Mr. Godard look abroad on Europe at this moment. There exists a school who hold, doubtless with entire sincerity, the pure love of humanity which he recommends, to the exclusion of all national preferences. The form it takes is to blow to pieces with dynamite hundreds of harmless people whom they have never seen. “Let patriotism be subdued,” says Mr. Godard. “Let it be removed from the pinnacle of a virtue and be replaced by humanitarianism, and there shall dawn the day of peace on earth and goodwill to men.” And of this cosmopolitan philosophy the first fruits are the Dynamiters.
Of some of Mr. Godard’s arguments I will not speak at length, for we think he must have employed them in some haste. We cannot see the philosophical bearing of such a remark as that “patriotism fights against the best interests of the patria.” It seems to us like saying that we dislike total abstainers because we find they all drink. In that case it would not be total abstinence that we disliked, but drinking. If certain so-called “patriots” work against the patria the case against them does not lie in the charge that they are patriotic, but in the charge that they are not.
The fact is that Mr. Godard has erred by confusing two things. Christianity is a symbol, the dim and shifting symbol, of a certain love of all things, a certain loyalty to the universe to which we all rise in our higher moments. It is not the love of humanity, it goes out to cats and tadpoles. It is an inspiration far too mysterious to be bridled or counted upon; far too certain to be demonstrated; far too perfect to be praised. It has nothing to do with practical politics or material privileges; it extends itself with a calm conscience to the creatures we burden for transport and slay for food. It is a moment in which we realize our kinship with the stars and the stones in the road; in which our sensitiveness runs like a maze of nerves over the whole Cosmos until a falling star or a stricken tree is like a wound upon our bodies. But this gigantic self is a thing that even the greatest and purest only realize at certain seasons. It does not and cannot have anything to do with those working loyalties which we have to preserve in order to preserve our mode of life. That terrible truce in which the lion lies down with the lamb is a vision, not a daily rule. For natural purposes, we assert our family against our fellow-countrymen, our country against humanity, humanity against nature.
Mr. Godard never seems to realize that he does belong to a country. Great Britain is no more a geographical area than the Order of the Jesuits or the Cocoa Tree Club. Like them, it is a centre of power, numbering certain persons within its rules and responsibilities. It is not humanity which prevents Mr. Godard from being knocked down with a bludgeon; it is his country and his country alone. It is not humanity that makes Mr. Godard pay for a dog-license, it is his country and his country alone. The only real error of Mr. Godard is that he calls upon a mere abstract sentiment, however natural and beautiful, to take the place of what is a necessary working sentiment designed for certain definite relations of life. It is like saying, “Let a soldier’s obedience to his officers be removed from the pinnacle of a virtue and replaced by a love of all living things.” Patriotism is obviously a virtue so long as there is a patria. Mr. Godard seems to think that a nation will remain strong and independent automatically, without any assistance from patriotism. I should be inclined to ask what is keeping the Boer nation in existence at this moment.
The bill which Mr. Godard counts up against modern Jingoism is long and heavy. But of all the crimes it has committed, none is so black and ruinous as this; that it has made good and able men like Mr. Godard turn against patriotism itself. About patriotism itself I will say one thing only, on behalf of those like myself who are Nationalists at home and abroad. We also have had to breathe in a stifling vulgarity; to see a thousand faces fixed in one fatuous sneer. We also have had all the temptations possible to intellectual rebellion or to intellectual pride. If we have remained steadfast in a monotonous candor, we cannot claim that we were strengthened by ethical subtlety or new-fangled emancipation. We have remained steadfast because voices older than the hills called us to this spot; here in this island was to be our glory or failure. We have eaten its bread and been made wise with all its works. And if we are indeed near the end, and the madness of cosmopolitan materialism, the spirit of the present war, be indeed dragging our country to destruction, we can only say that at the end we must be with her, to claim our portion in the wrath of God.
G. K. C
- “Patriotism and Ethics,” By John Godard. London: Grant Richards. 5s.
Mr. William Watson’s Poems
—The Speaker, January 14, 1905
The Poems Of William Watson. Edited and arranged, with an introduction, by J. A. Spender. Two volumes. With portrait and many new poems. London: John Lane. Crown 8vo, 9s. net.
Any re-issue of Mr. Watson’s work is not only a pleasure in itself but is critically important and desirable, since he is eminently a man who not only deserves re-consideration but in some sense demands it. It may or may not be possible to decide that a literary work will not last, but it is generally possible to decide when it is not even meant to last. And this was true of much of the minor poetry (excellent in itself) which was springing up on all sides at the time when Mr. Watson first wrote. Not only was most of that work fugitive, but we may say that it was one of its merits to be fugitive, just as we may say that it is one of the merits of a bird to be fugitive, or one of the merits of an arrow to be fugitive. Some of the best of the minor poets were something better than poets; they were young men; they were comrades and lovers, so full of life as to be able to be superior to mere immortality. Others were idiots, but idiots so unique as to be valuable at least for a moment, for folly is too sacred a thing for man to enjoy it long. But of all of them it may be said that their poetry would not have been so good if it had been more great. Their work was full of wild and childish experiments, sometimes successful, sometimes a ruinous failure; but in all of them the failure was almost as interesting as the success, and in all of them the success was quite as absurd as the failure. In this sense extravagance is more modest than moderation, for extravagance does not claim to endure. Mr. William Watson does claim to endure. They piled their towers sky high, but they made them openly of earth and sand. He works more quietly than they, yet he is the most arrogant of all of them, for his material is a lump of that marble which was the mother of all the gods.
A certain amount of the literary importance of Mr. Watson can no doubt be traced to the bewildering eccentricity of everybody else. It is possible for originality to be so popular that it becomes vulgar. It is possible that the whole ground of obvious invention may be rapidly covered; that every kind of new thing should be brought sharply to the attention of everybody. The last man of science has declared not only that the moon is made of green cheese, but that he has eaten it. The last poet has declared, on the authority of a vision, that devils have halos and angels horns. It seems that there is nothing further that anyone can say that will make anyone else jump. The extravagance of what has gone before has made all extravagance tame. People are not merely at ease in Zion; they are at ease in limbo. Blood and thunder is so victorious that it cannot succeed; men are too blinded with blood to see blood. Men are too deafened with thunder to hear the thunder. It seems as if the universe had shown to men its most startling, and they are not startled. It seems that nothing will startle them.
But there is something which will startle them. Sanity will startle them, quietness will startle them, classical moderation will startle them. Any man walking easily and coolly in the conventional paths will touch with an explosion the deep conventions of the unconventional. Any contented man will seem to these discontented ones a sort of Anarchist. And this is one of the fundamental fascinations of the position of Mr. William Watson, both as a poet and as a philosopher. In a time when everyone was original, the only truly original thing left to do was not to be original at all. The still small voice of sanity came with a sort of hissing stab to remind us that the Lord was not in the thunder. The world caught its breath for a moment at the one genuine novelty of a man who did not try to be new.
This element in Mr. Watson, of what may be called the arrestingly ordinary, owes much of its impressiveness, of course, to his own perfectly placid courage and consistency in maintaining the attitude. He meets the disdain of the decadents with a disdain equal to their own; he is fully as proud of being conventional as they can be of being unconventional. Some of his finest work has been written in defence of himself and his method, and under the impulse of this passionate and pugnacious decency. Nothing in recent rhetoric has been finer than the whole of the poem called “Apologia,” and especially the passage in which in the middle of a grave and formal defence of classicism he turns dramatically upon the decadents:
“For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught of frail in me To stain my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness as a gift.”
This haughty and warlike note is more important in Mr. Watson’s work than has, I think, been commonly allowed. He is a classicist, but, like many other classicists, from Pope to Matthew Arnold, he is a hard hitter when he deals with certain matters. On certain things he is, indeed, a doubter, but his very confession of doubt on these has that quality of clearness and severity which characterises the man who knows when he has a conviction and when he has not. A great many soothing writers give us the impression of never having experienced doubt when the quiet unity of their work really proceeds from their never having experienced belief. Mr. Watson in stating his uncertainties implies his certainties, and these latter are never very absent from his mind. Built into his very bones is that old English last-century thing which the flimsy moderns cannot endure or understand— the didactic spirit, the spirit which tells the great man to tell other men simply and fully the whole of his mind. As in the great English agnostics of the Huxley period, even ignorance itself has a responsibility. Even if he has nothing to say it is his duty to say so.
The main matter of Mr. Watson’s doubt or uncertainty is religion. The main matter of his faith or certitude is patriotism. He is absolutely convinced that he is standing, and rightly standing, for the whole great historic tradition of English letters and English landscape. He is defending it against a host of foreign influences, against the influence, against the turgidity and obscurity which we have copied from the literature of Germany, against the cheapness and over emphasis which we have borrowed from the literature of America, against the mistiness and melancholy which we have borrowed from the literature of Norway, against the fastidiousness and cruelty which we have borrowed from the literature of France. In fighting for the wholesome and massive qualities of great English poetry he feels, rightly, that he is fighting for something which is, like all precious things, in perpetual and incurable peril. His objection to Imperialism is, of course, wholly of this kind; he realises what all other serious people will realise very soon, that if the Imperialist movement goes on for another twenty years (which, fortunately, it will not do) it is doubtful whether there will be any English people left at all. Purely literary as Mr. Watson is, he has in his heart a certain still vigilance which is as military as that of a sentinel. His very traditionalism partakes of the nature of warlike obedience. He follows Milton and Wordsworth as he would follow a volunteer colonel or an impromptu captain if a foreign army were pouring through the gate of Dover.
G. K. Chesterton.
Leviathan and the Hook
—The Speaker, September 9, 1905 [Reprinted in The Living Age, volume CCXLVII, October, November, December 1905]
Because man is a spirit and unfathomable the past is really as startling and incalculable as the future. The dead men are as active and dramatic as the men unborn; we know decisively that the men unborn will be men; and we cannot decisively know anything more about the dead. It is not merely true that Nero may have been misunderstood; he must have been misunderstood, for no man can understand another. Hence to dive into any very ancient human work is to dive into a bottomless sea, and the man who seeks old things will be always finding new things. Centuries hence the world will be still seeking for the secret of Job, which is, indeed, in a sense the secret of everything. It is no disrespect to such able and interesting works as Professor Dillon’s to say that they are only stages in an essentially endless process, the proper appreciation of one of the inexhaustible religious classics. None of them says the last word on Job, for the last word could only be said on the Last Day. For a great poem like Job is in this respect like life itself. The explanations are popular for a month or popular for a century. But they all fall. The unexplained thing is popular for ever. There are weaknesses in the Higher Criticism, as a general phenomenon, which are only gradually unfolding themselves. There are more defects or difficulties than would at first appear in the scientific treatment of Scripture. But after all the greatest defect in the scientific treatment of Scripture is simply that it is scientific. The professor of the Higher Criticism is never tired of declaring that he is detached, that he is disinterested, that he is concerned only with the facts, that he is applying to religious books the unbending methods which are employed by men of science towards the physical order. If what he says of himself is true, he must be totally unfitted to criticize any books whatever.
Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book. In literature to be dispassionate is simply to be illiterate. To be disinterested is simply to be uninterested. The object of a book on comets, of course, is not to make us all feel like comets; but the object of a poem about warriors is to make us all feel like warriors. It is not merely true that the right method for one may be the wrong method for the other; it must be the wrong method for the other. A critic who takes a scientific view of the Book of Job is exactly like a surgeon who should take a poetical view of appendicitis: he is simply an old muddler.
It is said, of course, that this scientific quality is only applied to the actual facts, which are the department of science. But what are the actual facts? There are very few facts in connection with a work of literature which are really wholly apart from literary tact and grasp. That certain words are on a piece of parchment in a certain order science can say. Whether in that order they make sense or nonsense only literature can say. That in another place (say on a brick) the same words are in another order science can say. Whether it is a more likely order only literature can say. That on two bricks there is the same sentence science can say. Whether it is the sort of sentence one man would write on two bricks, or two men happen to write on their own respective bricks, only literature can say. Let me take an example from Professor Dillon’s own interesting introduction. Referring to a controversy among scholars about the possible indebtedness of the unknown Hebrew poet to other Hebrew writers, he says: “On the one hand it is doubtless possible that the words:
“Art thou the first man born? Or wast thou brought forth before the hills?
“were suggested by the verses in Proverbs, ‘Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth.’” Of course it is possible, but I cannot see (as a matter of literary common sense) why it is in the smallest degree likely. Surely two independent people or two hundred independent people might use so natural a phrase as that a thing was older than the hills. We might as well bind together in chains of plagiarism all the people who ever said that a thing shone like the sun or bloomed and faded like a flower. Outside the use of hills (those rare objects) and of being brought forth (that unusual and pathological process), the two passages are not in spirit or inspiration in the least similar, for the passage in Proverbs (if I remember it aright) is an abstract, mystical excursus of which the point is that a Logos or idea, preceded all physical phenomena, whereas the passage in Job is simply a sharp, savage joke, of which the point is that a man is an uncommonly unimportant fungus on the face of the earth. No poet would naturally take a thing from one to use it in the other: but then to feel this is simply a matter of poetic sentiment and science is no more use in the matter than gardening. Science can only say that the same Hebrew word is used; but whether the word is common, or natural, or forced, or affected, or inevitable is a question of pure literature; and it is the whole question at issue. The Higher Critic, as such, can only see that the words are the same; that is, he can only see what a child could see.
Let it not be supposed that Professor Dillon’s work is thus weak; he makes many wise suggestions and emendations. But when they are entirely wise they are also literary and entirely undemonstrable. To take one instance out of many, at the end of that noble Nihilist chapter three, in which Job curses his day, which is indeed the sublimest point of suicide, the very crest and imperial crown of cowardice, Job says in the authorized version: “For my sighing cometh before I eat and my roarings are poured out like the waters.” This is evidently an extremely literary and ingenious rendering by the original translators of a passage of which they could not make head or tail. According to the later version the meaning is simpler and stronger and more in the manner of good primitive poetry. In Professor Dillon’s book it runs “For sighing is become my bread, and my crying is unto me as water.” This has all the elemental energy of the primeval phrase; it would be difficult to express with more directness what is the worst part of pain or calamity, the fact of the abnormal thing becoming the normal, disaster becoming a routine. We can all endure catastrophe as long as it is catastrophic; it is maddening the moment it is orderly.
In a sense this small matter expresses the whole of Job. Professor Dillon analyzes very well the main and obvious idea that it is a protest against that paltry optimism which sees in suffering a mark of sin. But he does not, I think, quite pierce to the further and ultimate point of “Job,” which is that the true secret and hope of human life is something much more dark and beautiful than it would be if suffering were a mark of sin. A mere scheme of rewards and punishments would be something much meaner and more mechanical than this exasperating and inspiring life of ours. An automatic scheme of Karma, or “reaping what we sow,” would be just as gross and material as sowing beans or reaping barley. It might satisfy mechanicians or modern monists, or theosophists, or cautious financiers, but not brave men. It is no paradox to say that the one thing which would make suffering intolerable would be the thought that it was systematically inflicted upon sinners. The one thing which would make our agony infamous would be the idea that it was deserved. On the other hand, the doctrine which makes it most endurable is exactly the opposite doctrine, that life is a battle in which the best put their bodies in the front, in which God sends only His holiest into the hail of the arrows of hell. In the book of Job is foreshadowed that better doctrine full of a dark chivalry that he that bore the worst that men can suffer was the best that bore the form of man.
There is one central conception of the book of Job, which literally makes it immortal, which will make it survive our modern time and our modern philosophies as it has survived many better times and many better philosophies. That is the conception that the universe, if it is to be admired, is to be admired for its strangeness and not for its rationality, for its splendid unreason and not for its reason. Job’s friends attempt to comfort him with philosophical optimism, like the intellectuals of the eighteenth century. Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. Eliphaz gives one answer, Job gives another answer, and the question still remains an open wound. God simply refuses to answer, and somehow the question is answered. Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums. For the grand and enduring idea in the poem, as suggested above, is that if we are to be reconciled to this great cosmic experience it must be as something divinely strange and divinely violent, a quest, or a conspiracy, or some sacred joke. The last chapters of the colossal monologue of the Almighty are devoted in a style superficially queer enough to the detailed description of two monsters. Behemoth and Leviathan may, or may not be, the hippopotamus and the crocodile. But, whatever they are, they are evidently embodiments of the enormous absurdity of nature. They typify that cosmic trait which anyone may see in the Zoological Gardens, the folly of the Lord, which is wisdom. And in connection with one of them, God is made to utter a splendid satire upon the prim and orderly piety of the vulgar optimist. “Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?” That is the main message of the book of Job. Whatever this cosmic monster may be, a good animal or a bad animal, he is at least a wild animal and not a tame animal; it is a wild world and not a tame world.
G. K. Chesterton.
- “The Original Poem of Job.” Translated from the Restored Text by E. T. Dillon. London: Fisher Unwin, 5s.
A Manx Minstrel
—October 20, 1900, The Speaker
Letters Of T. E. Brown*. Westminster: A. Constable and Co. Poems Of T. E. Brown. London: Macmillan.
The letters of T. E. Brown, author of Fo’c’s’le Yarns, letters that are in many ways singularly exuberant and entertaining, are further interesting because they raise in a new way the whole problem of the publication of private letters. Let no reader imagine, however, that there is anything lurid about them. Nothing worse is discovered against the morality of Mr. Brown than an admiration of Mr. Hall Caine. No skeleton in the family cupboard is revealed, except the one appalling figure of a father who was such a lover of style that he had a page of some English classic read to him before he answered an invitation. This latter anecdote we have a sort of terror in repeating, because it is so obviously the kind of story that may go the round of the newspapers and the French translation books, and Lord Roberts, Mr. Vanderbilt, Talleyrand and Henri Quatre be successively credited with the habit of giving to the phrase “has much pleasure in accepting” some concentrated flavour of Burke.
There is, we say, nothing moral or immoral about the correspondence: it is mostly full of uproarious levity, and yet, we will venture to say, not altogether in paradox, that it is somewhat too sacred for the light of day. It seems to us that frivolity is, in the secretive sense, far more sacred than seriousness; it is more fragile, more personal, more occult. Any one can see St. Paul’s Cathedral, but there may be only two people in the world who can see a particular joke. Biographers are sometimes accused of obtruding themselves: Mr. Irvine’s nobler error is rather that he forgets that he, who received most of these letters, was spiritually a collaborator in them. His friend, T. E. Brown, was playing upon his memories and purposes as on a piano: to us he is too often fingering on a dumb keyboard. We fear, as we say, that the rampant camaraderie of these communications will be misunderstood and undervalued: it is not possible, properly speaking, to laugh irreverently at time, death and judgment— for they laugh best who laugh last; but it is possible to laugh very irreverently at a joke.
T. E. Brown, a perfect Celt, has no restraint; his letters are full of “Ho! Ho’s!” and “Ha! Ha’s!” like the refrain of an Elizabethan lyric. With schoolboy abruptness he makes remarks like “Isn’t Browning a ripper?” Throughout the work one feels that Kingsley is a ripper, that Newman is a ripper, that Dr. George Macdonald is a ripper. Now a letter like this is a bond between two men, and when one of them is cut off it, it flaps dismally in the wind. We are quite sure the letter was splendid when Mr. Irvine received it; we wish we had been Mr. Irvine; but we were not, and therefore do not read what he read. The very essence of friendship is in this intermixture, in those great midnight conversations in which the primary colours of separate personalities are mingled into incredible greens and purples, as rich and unrecoverable as a sunset.
The author of Fo’c’s’le Yarns was a Manxman, and his poetry and letters are full of a somewhat new and original interpretation of the theory that the proper study of mankind is Man. He speaks of that island as if England and Ireland were dangerous rocks making its approach difficult for the Manx mariner. He was a typical Celt, and the hilarity to which we have alluded was only one side of this walking bundle of emotions, “I am a born sobber,” he said. But the most fascinating inconsistency of his character in this respect are the bursts of Chaucerian plainness of speech which give salt to his mystic piety. The born sobber exhibits himself at times with the greatest cheerfulness as a born swearer. There is nothing in him of that mournful wealth of mind and translucient delicacy which give to certain modern Celtophiles the appearance, in the eye of the Philistine, of having a head full of religions and no leg to stand on. Brown had plenty of legs to stand on, like the escutcheon of his own Isle of Man. In fact, the only imaginary portrait we have formed of Mr. Brown is founded on that famous hieroglyph; we are sure that he would stand on one leg and dance with the other two.
Even in the letters, frantic and random as they are, T. E. Brown gives innumerable instances of a genuine literary instinct. The delightful apologue of Matthew Arnold “in one of his raids” carrying away a Philistine maiden is worthy of that great man himself. The remark about his father’s literary taste, “to him style was an instinct of personal cleanliness,” hits the right nail on the head and is an excellent instance of the thing it describes.
In an appropriate manner we are in a position at the same time to consider the full and handsome edition of Brown’s poems which Messrs. Macmillan have published. Those poems are far too voluminous to be accorded a detailed criticism here, but they are also far too remarkable to be passed over without some attempt at a general estimate. They exhibit in a singular manner most of the same merits and defects as the letters, and this is a good sign, for it shows that Brown was that not too common figure, what may be called a unanimous man. On the failing side, for example, they show that buoyant garrulity, that tendency to say too much, that quaint confidence that masses of personal reminiscence will be interesting to a reader, which we have remarked in the letters, but without the excuse of letter-writing. In their exclusive Manx spirit they often show that breezy delusion, not uncommon in small sects and nations, that they have the monopoly of the most obvious things, the spirit which once led a friend of ours to tell us that it was one of the inner doctrines of his church that lying was wrong. One mysterious detail we cannot help thinking is an instance of this, the note on p. 99:- “Jackdaw, Manx pronunciation, jackdaw.” It is gratifying to us to learn that in this matter we have been talking the most exquisite Manx from our cradle. On the side of merit, again, they have a racial flavour in a far higher sense. Mr. Yeats himself might not be ashamed of the expression of the Celtic spirit in the lines about “an empty laugh”:-
Un menestrello mannese
—20 ottobre 1900, The Speaker
Lettere di T. E. Brown*. Westminster: A. Constable and Co. Poesie di T. E. Brown. Londra: Macmillan.
Le lettere di T. E. Brown, autore di Fo’c’s’le Yarns, lettere che sono per molti versi singolarmente esuberanti e divertenti, sono inoltre interessanti perché sollevano in modo nuovo l’intero problema della pubblicazione delle lettere private. Non immagini tuttavia il lettore che vi sia in esse alcunché di scabroso. Nulla di peggio si scopre contro la moralità del signor Brown che un’ammirazione per il signor Hall Caine. Nessuno scheletro nell’armadio di famiglia viene rivelato, salvo l’unica spaventosa figura di un padre che era tanto amante dello stile da farsi leggere una pagina di qualche classico inglese prima di rispondere a un invito. Questo secondo aneddoto proviamo una sorta di terrore a ripeterlo, perché è così palesemente il genere di storia che può fare il giro dei giornali e dei manuali francesi di traduzione, e Lord Roberts, il signor Vanderbilt, Talleyrand ed Enrico Quarto essere via via accreditati dell’abitudine di conferire alla frase «prova molto piacere ad accettare» qualche sapore concentrato di Burke.
Non v’è, diciamo, nulla di morale o immorale in questa corrispondenza: è per lo più piena di una chiassosa leggerezza, eppure, ci arrischieremo a dire, non del tutto per paradosso, che essa è alquanto troppo sacra per la luce del giorno. Ci sembra che la frivolezza sia, nel senso segreto, assai più sacra della serietà; è più fragile, più personale, più occulta. Chiunque può vedere la Cattedrale di San Paolo, ma potrebbero esserci solo due persone al mondo capaci di cogliere una data facezia. I biografi sono talvolta accusati di mettersi in mostra: l’errore più nobile del signor Irvine è piuttosto che egli dimentica che lui, il quale ricevette la maggior parte di queste lettere, ne fu spiritualmente un collaboratore. Il suo amico, T. E. Brown, suonava sui suoi ricordi e sui suoi intenti come su un pianoforte: per noi egli troppo spesso tasteggia su una tastiera muta. Temiamo, come diciamo, che il dilagante cameratismo di queste comunicazioni sarà frainteso e sottovalutato: non è possibile, propriamente parlando, ridere irriverentemente del tempo, della morte e del giudizio— poiché ride bene chi ride ultimo; ma è possibile ridere assai irriverentemente di una facezia.
T. E. Brown, un perfetto celta, non ha alcun ritegno; le sue lettere sono piene di “Ho! Ho!” e “Ha! Ha!” come il ritornello di una lirica elisabettiana. Con bruschezza da scolaro fa osservazioni del tipo «Non è un portento, Browning?» Per tutta l’opera si avverte che Kingsley è un portento, che Newman è un portento, che il dottor George Macdonald è un portento. Ora, una lettera come questa è un vincolo tra due uomini, e quando uno di essi ne è reciso, essa sventola tristemente al vento. Siamo ben certi che la lettera fosse splendida quando il signor Irvine la ricevette; vorremmo essere stati il signor Irvine; ma non lo eravamo, e perciò non leggiamo ciò che egli lesse. La vera essenza dell’amicizia sta in questa commistione, in quelle grandi conversazioni di mezzanotte in cui i colori primari di personalità distinte si fondono in incredibili verdi e violetti, ricchi e irrecuperabili come un tramonto.
L’autore di Fo’c’s’le Yarns era un uomo dell’Isola di Man, e la sua poesia e le sue lettere sono piene di un’interpretazione alquanto nuova e originale della teoria secondo cui il vero studio dell’umanità è l’Uomo. Egli parla di quell’isola come se l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda fossero scogli pericolosi che ne rendono difficile l’approdo al marinaio mannese. Era un celta tipico, e l’ilarità a cui abbiamo alluso era solo un lato di questo ambulante fascio di emozioni: «Sono un piagnucolone nato», diceva. Ma la più affascinante incoerenza del suo carattere a questo riguardo sono gli scoppi di chauceriana schiettezza di parola che danno sale alla sua mistica pietà. Il piagnucolone nato si mostra a volte con la massima allegria come un bestemmiatore nato. Non v’è in lui nulla di quella malinconica ricchezza di mente e translucida delicatezza che danno a certi moderni celtofili l’apparenza, all’occhio del Filisteo, di avere il capo pieno di religioni e nessuna gamba su cui reggersi. Brown aveva gambe in abbondanza su cui reggersi, come lo stemma della sua stessa Isola di Man. Di fatto, l’unico ritratto immaginario che ci siamo formati del signor Brown è fondato su quel famoso geroglifico; siamo certi che egli starebbe su una gamba e danzerebbe con le altre due.
Persino nelle lettere, per quanto frenetiche e casuali, T. E. Brown offre innumerevoli esempi di un genuino istinto letterario. Il delizioso apologo di Matthew Arnold che «in una delle sue incursioni» rapisce una fanciulla filistea è degno di quel grande uomo stesso. L’osservazione sul gusto letterario di suo padre, «per lui lo stile era un istinto di pulizia personale», coglie nel segno ed è un eccellente esempio della cosa stessa che descrive.
In modo appropriato siamo in grado, al tempo stesso, di considerare la piena e bella edizione delle poesie di Brown che i signori Macmillan hanno pubblicato. Quelle poesie sono di gran lunga troppo voluminose perché sia loro accordata qui una critica dettagliata, ma sono anche di gran lunga troppo notevoli per essere trascurate senza qualche tentativo di una stima generale. Esse mostrano in modo singolare la maggior parte degli stessi pregi e difetti delle lettere, e questo è un buon segno, poiché dimostra che Brown era quella figura non troppo comune che si può chiamare un uomo unanime. Sul versante dei difetti, per esempio, esse mostrano quella galleggiante loquacità, quella tendenza a dire troppo, quella bizzarra fiducia che masse di reminiscenze personali riusciranno interessanti a un lettore, che abbiamo rilevato nelle lettere, ma senza la scusa dell’epistolografia. Nel loro esclusivo spirito mannese esse mostrano spesso quella spensierata illusione, non insolita in piccole sette e nazioni, di avere il monopolio delle cose più ovvie, lo spirito che una volta indusse un nostro amico a dirci che era una delle dottrine interne della sua chiesa che mentire fosse male. Un misterioso particolare non possiamo fare a meno di pensare sia un esempio di ciò, la nota a p. 99:- «Jackdaw, pronuncia mannese, jackdaw.» Ci è gradito apprendere che in questa materia abbiamo parlato il più squisito mannese fin dalla culla. Sul versante del merito, di nuovo, esse hanno un sapore razziale in un senso assai più alto. Il signor Yeats stesso potrebbe non vergognarsi dell’espressione dello spirito celtico nei versi su «un vuoto riso»:-
”… God Who has within himself the secret springs Of all the lovely, causeless, unclaimed things, And loves them in his very heart of hearts.”
But again, as we have said, there is nothing pallid or frail about his Celticism. It is rather that spirit “brave and gay and faithful” which Stevenson, in his noble speech to the Samoan chiefs, attributed to his ancestor the Gael. The raw materials, at least, for one of the strongest poems that could be written are to be found in the verses called “Risus Dei.” The dialect poems, the actual Fo’c’s’le Yarns, we may seem to have unduly subordinated, but they are pre-eminently things to be read and not criticised. They suffer from the poet’s fluency, but their truth gradually tightens its grip:-
Now the beauty of the thing when children plays is The terrible wonderful length the days is
is a sentence from all our autobiographies. Altogether, Mr. T. E. Brown may be hailed as one of our recent lyric exponents of what Lord Salisbury called “the Celtic Fringe”—a fringe which is (to the credit of that statesman’s humour) considerably wider than the garment. He is smaller than Mr. W. B. Yeats, as Man is smaller than Ireland. But we confess to some personal relief in finding one of our bards of the Gael cocking his feather with full-blooded vanity, as a contrast to those Irish poets who, in dwelling on the memory and wisdom of the green island, have too often forgotten that green is also, throughout her unconquerable history, the colour of folly and of hope.
G. K. C.
How the Church Stands To-Day
—October 27, 1900
The Crisis In The English Church. By the Rev. W. E. Bowen. With an Introduction by the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies. London: Nisbet and Co.
Mr. Bowen’s book is a typical and almost symbolic publication. It is calculated to impress on the mind the irrevocable conviction that the Church crisis has reached a stage in which no alternative remains except that between disestablishment and a sudden and disturbing irruption of Christian charity. Between these two neither side is likely to hesitate and the Establishment is, we fear, doomed. We say we fear it because it is not without regret that we see any historic compromise which has long subsisted on common sense giving way under the assaults of logic. But, however much one may defend an anomaly so long as it is sympathetically and rationally interpreted, it is ridiculous to sound the praises of its practicality while a host of insane mathematicians are busily engaged in working it to a reductio ad absurdum. Mr. Llewelyn Davies, in an able introduction which he contributes to Mr. Bowen’s volume, says plausibly in reply to the charge of “persecution” brought against Protestants:-
“I have always thought that the comprehensiveness of our Church consisted not in its being a Liberty Hall in which every clergyman was free to deprave its doctrine and discipline as he pleased, but in the fact that its doctrine and discipline were themselves comprehensive.”
The distinction is sound and logical, but we doubt whether it is accurate or complete in the particular case. It is not true that the Anglican form is a lucid and systematic latitudinarian scheme marked out in wide but clear divisions. The problem chiefly arises from the complex mosaic of forms found in the Prayer-book. Upon the whole, the nobler and more popular parts of our Prayer-book are rather High Church than Low. But it is foolish to maintain (as is done by some ritualists) that the Prayer-book is entirely Tractarian when the greatest of the Tractarians defended their acceptation of certain Articles by interpretations which they did not pretend were natural or obvious. And the liberty of the Church has not, as a matter of fact, rested on a scientific scheme of comprehensiveness, but on a compromise founded on the impossibility either of altering or of pressing too hard an august and beautiful but archaic and perplexing system. All sections have felt their position anomalous in something and the proverbial pot and kettle have been our chief vessels of salvation. Now it is obvious that one of these English compromises of ours cannot exist an instant after two formidable sections set to work to argue about it. If a Judge were to insist on the bodily appearance of John Doe and Richard Roe, nothing would remain to be done except to explain to him the unique and delicate character of those gentlemen and to remove them from our legal system. If the Queen, in the exercise of her indisputable legal rights, were to pardon all the murderers and make them peers, nothing could be done except to abolish the Monarchy. It does not follow, however, that we should not regret having to do so; and we may all as Englishmen look back with pride at the great experiment of a tolerant National Church, even if it has failed at last.
Mr. Bowen’s book, which is written from the moderate Protestant standpoint, is a peculiar example of what we may be permitted without offence to call degeneration in the course of 300 pages. It opens with an estimate of the good and evil in the Oxford Movement, which is not only just and thoughtful, but genuinely original; its thesis that Tractarianism was in its highest function a somewhat austere moral movement, an almost Puritanic protest against slovenly and luxurious religion, is a ray of honest historic daylight. But instead of pursuing the high and fruitful work of disentangling the spiritual and essential from the irrelevant and malicious in this controversy, he turns the latter part of his book into the familiar Kensit catalogue of horrible revelations in high life, a mass of barren and bitter anecdotes which only serve to remind us, if they are untrue, that there are a great many liars in the world, if they are true, that there are a great many repulsive lunatics. There may be “Catholics” (we leave the matter to the police) who flog nuns almost to death, but that is no reason for flogging the subject to death also, as if it had anything to do with the two theories of ecclesiastical history. There may be “Catholics” who teach children that the Dissenters found “little sham churches” which the Holy Ghost never inspires, but we are prevented from admitting this into the Church controversy by our firm conviction that Canon Gore or Canon MacColl would regard the view of Dissenters with as much contempt as we do. Our own definite and even earnest opinion is that this discussion will never have either profit or solution until each party respectively abandons identifying Protestantism with Mr. Kensit or Catholicism with the idiots above mentioned, and, frankly, admits the really interesting historic fact that Catholicism and Protestantism are two moral and intellectual forces standing for tendencies that are as old as life and equally worth living. Catholicism stands for the instinct, for clothing the unutterable in noble systems, enduring images and worthy language, Protestantism for the recurrent necessity of rending the loveliest veils and refreshing human nature in the terrible simplicity of monotheism. But from this view one very obvious deduction follows, which has a very clear bearing on a book like that of Mr. Bowen. It is not common sense to suppose that the adherents of Protestantism, the glory of which is in a certain impatience of formulae, will be as good authorities upon rites and ceremonies as the people who regard them as of vast importance. A plain man is within his rights in expressing an indifference to heraldry, but if he begins to argue about it it is not improbable that he will put metal on metal and call a chevron a bend. Now the evil genius of most Protestants in this discussion has been ignorance: they do not understand the facts of the case as the party who are immersed in ecclesiastical history understands them. And this has given rise to the fault which hag-rides the work of Mr. Bowen and Mr. Llewelyn Davies, a fault that has dwarfed and vulgarised militant Protestantism to a degree inconceivable, and which we will venture to call the idolatrous tendency of Protestantism. The ignorant Protestants and the ignorant Catholics are the only people who worship stocks and stones, for the former think a dead stick diabolic and the latter holy. If the gods of the heathen are stone and brass the same must be said of the devils of Mr. Kensit. This extraordinary tendency to quote material objects as if they were sinful in themselves, to whisper in an awe-struck voice a rumour of the presence of certain candles or pictures as if the candles were stolen or the pictures pornographic is one of the worst results of the grotesque seriousness of which we speak. Mr. Llewelyn Davies, for example, says in his preface not that there is confession in the Church, but that there are “confessional-boxes,” and from the manner in which these objects are often spoken of, one would imagine that a confessional-box was something like a musical-box, an ingenious piece of clock-work which confessed and absolved a man by machinery, and without which it was impossible for a confessor to ply his trade. As a matter of fact, a confessional-box bears the same relation to confession that a bathing-machine bears to bathing; it makes it slightly safer and more decorous. As bathing would exist everywhere if there were no machines, so confession would, as things stand, exist if there were no boxes. The real trouble is that those who embark on the genuinely necessary work of attacking the evils of ritualism get no further than these material symbols, and never realise the real problem. The real problem of confession, for example, may be stated in three short sentences, and it has nothing to do with boxes. The Prayer-book leaves the matter entirely to the layman, saying that, if he is unable to quiet his conscience, he shall come to confession. This obviously does not contemplate, and by implication discourages, the idea of universal systematic confession. But, if there be a strong movement among the laity for such systematic confession, how can such systematic confession be stopped in a free country? No one has any right to say that every member of a vast crowd is not at a particular psychological crisis. If any Protestant writer can really solve this problem of the letter and the spirit, he will do more than we can.
«… Dio Che racchiude in sé le segrete sorgenti Di tutte le cose amabili, senza causa, non reclamate, E le ama nel più profondo del suo cuore.»
Ma di nuovo, come abbiamo detto, non v’è nulla di pallido o di fragile nel suo celtismo. È piuttosto quello spirito «coraggioso e gaio e fedele» che Stevenson, nel suo nobile discorso ai capi samoani, attribuiva al suo antenato, il Gaelico. La materia grezza, almeno, per una delle più vigorose poesie che si potessero scrivere si trova nei versi intitolati «Risus Dei». Le poesie dialettali, i veri e propri Fo’c’s’le Yarns, potremo sembrare aver indebitamente subordinato, ma esse sono per eccellenza cose da leggere e non da criticare. Soffrono della facilità del poeta, ma la loro verità a poco a poco stringe la sua presa:-
Ora la bellezza della cosa quando i bambini gioca è La terribile meravigliosa lunghezza i giorni è
è una frase tratta da tutte le nostre autobiografie. Nell’insieme, il signor T. E. Brown può essere salutato come uno dei nostri recenti esponenti lirici di ciò che Lord Salisbury chiamò «la Frangia Celtica»—una frangia che è (a merito dell’umorismo di quello statista) considerevolmente più ampia della veste. Egli è più piccolo del signor W. B. Yeats, come l’Uomo è più piccolo dell’Irlanda. Ma confessiamo un certo personale sollievo nel trovare uno dei nostri bardi del Gaelico che rizza la sua penna con piena vanità sanguigna, in contrasto con quei poeti irlandesi che, indugiando sulla memoria e sulla saggezza dell’isola verde, hanno troppo spesso dimenticato che il verde è anche, per tutta la sua inconquistabile storia, il colore della follia e della speranza.
G. K. C.
Come sta oggi la Chiesa
—27 ottobre 1900
La crisi nella Chiesa inglese. Del Rev. W. E. Bowen. Con un’introduzione del Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies. Londra: Nisbet and Co.
Il libro del signor Bowen è una pubblicazione tipica e quasi simbolica. È fatto per imprimere nella mente l’irrevocabile convinzione che la crisi della Chiesa abbia raggiunto uno stadio in cui non rimane altra alternativa che quella fra la separazione dallo Stato e una improvvisa e sconvolgente irruzione di carità cristiana. Fra queste due nessuna delle parti è probabile che esiti, e la Chiesa di Stato è, temiamo, condannata. Diciamo che lo temiamo perché non è senza rammarico che vediamo un qualsiasi compromesso storico, a lungo sopravvissuto grazie al buon senso, cedere sotto gli assalti della logica. Ma, per quanto si possa difendere un’anomalia finché venga interpretata con simpatia e ragionevolezza, è ridicolo cantare le lodi della sua praticità mentre una schiera di matematici insensati è indaffarata a spingerla fino a una reductio ad absurdum. Il signor Llewelyn Davies, in un’abile introduzione che aggiunge al volume del signor Bowen, dice plausibilmente, in risposta all’accusa di «persecuzione» mossa ai protestanti:-
«Ho sempre pensato che la comprensività della nostra Chiesa consistesse non nell’essere una Liberty Hall in cui ogni ecclesiastico fosse libero di corrompere la sua dottrina e disciplina a suo piacimento, ma nel fatto che la sua dottrina e disciplina fossero esse stesse comprensive.»
La distinzione è valida e logica, ma dubitiamo che sia esatta o completa nel caso particolare. Non è vero che la forma anglicana sia un lucido e sistematico schema latitudinario tracciato in divisioni ampie ma chiare. Il problema sorge principalmente dal complesso mosaico di forme che si trova nel libro di preghiere. Nel complesso, le parti più nobili e più popolari del nostro libro di preghiere sono piuttosto di High Church che di Low. Ma è sciocco sostenere (come fanno alcuni ritualisti) che il libro di preghiere sia interamente trattariano, quando il più grande dei trattariani difese la propria accettazione di certi Articoli mediante interpretazioni che essi non pretendevano fossero naturali od ovvie. E la libertà della Chiesa non ha, in realtà, poggiato su uno schema scientifico di comprensività, bensì su un compromesso fondato sull’impossibilità sia di alterare sia di forzare troppo un sistema augusto e bello ma arcaico e sconcertante. Tutte le fazioni hanno sentito la loro posizione anomala in qualcosa, e il proverbiale bue che dice cornuto all’asino sono stati i nostri principali vasi di salvezza. Ora è evidente che uno di questi nostri compromessi inglesi non può esistere un istante dopo che due formidabili fazioni si mettano ad argomentare su di esso. Se un giudice insistesse per la comparizione in carne e ossa di John Doe e Richard Roe, non rimarrebbe altro da fare che spiegargli il carattere unico e delicato di quei signori e rimuoverli dal nostro sistema legale. Se la Regina, nell’esercizio dei suoi indiscutibili diritti legali, perdonasse tutti gli assassini e li facesse pari del regno, nulla si potrebbe fare tranne abolire la Monarchia. Non ne segue, tuttavia, che non dovremmo rammaricarci di farlo; e tutti noi, come inglesi, possiamo guardare con orgoglio al grande esperimento di una tollerante Chiesa Nazionale, anche se alla fine è fallito.
Il libro del signor Bowen, che è scritto dal punto di vista del protestantesimo moderato, è un singolare esempio di ciò che ci sia lecito, senza offesa, chiamare degenerazione nel corso di 300 pagine. Si apre con una valutazione del bene e del male nel Movimento di Oxford, che non è soltanto giusta e ponderata, ma genuinamente originale; la sua tesi, che il trattarianesimo fu nella sua più alta funzione un movimento morale alquanto austero, una protesta quasi puritana contro una religione trascurata e lussuosa, è un raggio di onesta luce storica. Ma invece di perseguire l’alto e fecondo compito di districare lo spirituale e l’essenziale dall’irrilevante e dal malizioso in questa controversia, egli trasforma l’ultima parte del suo libro nel consueto catalogo alla Kensit di orribili rivelazioni sull’alta società, una massa di sterili e amari aneddoti che servono soltanto a ricordarci, se sono falsi, che vi sono moltissimi bugiardi al mondo, se sono veri, che vi sono moltissimi ripugnanti lunatici. Vi possono essere «cattolici» (lasciamo la questione alla polizia) che flagellano le monache quasi a morte, ma questa non è ragione per flagellare a morte anche l’argomento, come se avesse qualcosa a che fare con le due teorie della storia ecclesiastica. Vi possono essere «cattolici» che insegnano ai bambini che i Dissidenti fondarono «piccole chiese fasulle» che lo Spirito Santo non ispira mai, ma ci è impedito di ammettere ciò nella controversia ecclesiastica dalla nostra ferma convinzione che il Canonico Gore o il Canonico MacColl guarderebbero all’opinione dei Dissidenti con altrettanto disprezzo di noi. La nostra netta e persino appassionata opinione è che questa discussione non avrà mai né profitto né soluzione finché ciascuna parte, rispettivamente, non rinuncerà a identificare il protestantesimo con il signor Kensit o il cattolicesimo con gli idioti sopra menzionati e, francamente, non ammetterà il fatto storico davvero interessante che il cattolicesimo e il protestantesimo sono due forze morali e intellettuali che rappresentano tendenze antiche quanto la vita e ugualmente degne di essere vissute. Il cattolicesimo rappresenta l’istinto di rivestire l’indicibile in nobili sistemi, immagini durature e degno linguaggio; il protestantesimo la ricorrente necessità di lacerare i veli più amabili e di rinfrescare la natura umana nella terribile semplicità del monoteismo. Ma da questa concezione discende una deduzione assai evidente, che ha un rapporto assai chiaro con un libro come quello del signor Bowen. Non è buon senso supporre che i seguaci del protestantesimo, la cui gloria sta in una certa insofferenza per le formule, saranno buone autorità in fatto di riti e cerimonie quanto la gente che li considera di vasta importanza. Un uomo comune è nel suo diritto nell’esprimere indifferenza per l’araldica, ma se si mette a discuterne non è improbabile che ponga metallo su metallo e chiami un capriolo una banda. Ora il genio malvagio della maggior parte dei protestanti in questa discussione è stato l’ignoranza: essi non comprendono i fatti del caso come li comprende la parte che è immersa nella storia ecclesiastica. E ciò ha dato origine al difetto che opprime come un incubo l’opera del signor Bowen e del signor Llewelyn Davies, un difetto che ha rimpicciolito e volgarizzato il protestantesimo militante a un grado inconcepibile, e che oseremo chiamare la tendenza idolatra del protestantesimo. I protestanti ignoranti e i cattolici ignoranti sono i soli che adorino ceppi e pietre, giacché i primi credono un bastone morto diabolico e i secondi santo. Se gli dèi dei pagani sono pietra e bronzo, altrettanto va detto dei diavoli del signor Kensit. Questa straordinaria tendenza a citare oggetti materiali come se fossero peccaminosi in sé stessi, a sussurrare con voce reverente e atterrita la voce della presenza di certe candele o quadri come se le candele fossero rubate o i quadri pornografici, è uno dei peggiori risultati della grottesca serietà di cui parliamo. Il signor Llewelyn Davies, per esempio, dice nella sua prefazione non che vi è la confessione nella Chiesa, ma che vi sono «confessionali», e dal modo in cui si parla spesso di questi oggetti, si potrebbe immaginare che un confessionale fosse qualcosa come un carillon, un ingegnoso meccanismo a orologeria che confessava e assolveva un uomo per mezzo di macchinari, e senza il quale fosse impossibile per un confessore esercitare il suo mestiere. In realtà, un confessionale sta alla confessione nella stessa relazione in cui una cabina da bagno sta al bagnarsi; la rende leggermente più sicura e più decorosa. Come il bagnarsi esisterebbe dovunque anche se non vi fossero cabine, così la confessione, stando le cose come stanno, esisterebbe anche se non vi fossero confessionali. Il vero guaio è che coloro i quali intraprendono l’opera genuinamente necessaria di attaccare i mali del ritualismo non vanno oltre questi simboli materiali, e non colgono mai il vero problema. Il vero problema della confessione, per esempio, può essere enunciato in tre brevi frasi, e non ha nulla a che vedere con i confessionali. Il libro di preghiere lascia la questione interamente al laico, dicendo che, se egli non riesce a quietare la sua coscienza, venga alla confessione. Ciò evidentemente non contempla, e implicitamente scoraggia, l’idea di una confessione universale e sistematica. Ma, se vi è un forte movimento fra i laici a favore di tale confessione sistematica, come si può fermare una simile confessione sistematica in un paese libero? Nessuno ha il diritto di dire che ogni membro di una vasta folla non si trovi in una particolare crisi psicologica. Se un qualsiasi scrittore protestante sa davvero risolvere questo problema della lettera e dello spirito, farà più di quanto possiamo fare noi.
Let us take another example from Mr. Bowen’s pages-the passage which he quotes from the letters of Pusey, in which that great man discusses self-flagellation, describes a scourge “of a very sacred character” with five lashes, discusses the parts of his anatomy, lungs, &c, on which it was safe to employ it, and goes into the matter of hair shirts like a man choosing waistcoats. The passage is, to a healthy man, somewhat emetic. But we think that Mr. Bowen is yielding again to Kensitite materialism in imagining that it is the mere use of a rod that seems unworthy of Pusey. His self-discipline was probably neither more voluntary nor more painful than that of an ordinary young man who nearly bursts a blood-vessel in his college boat. What disgusts us is the lower spirit of Catholicism, the spirit of mysteries and minutiae, the solemn treatment of inane details, the tendency of all doors to lead inwards and none outwards. Pusey discussing various expedients of bodily discomfort represents the ugly side of poetic and inexhaustible Catholicism, just as the ugly side of the simplicity and centrality of Protestantism is represented by the cant and monotony of the ecstatic bore who asks innumerable strangers if they have found Jesus. Nothing will ever come of this controversy until these two religious tendencies are recognised as things that are essential always, and which on the highest plane are not even inconsistent. When a voice from the Bible says, “Will God be pleased with the fat of rams … shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” in that voice speaks the highest spirit of Protestantism. When a voice says, “Shall I offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing?” in that voice speaks the highest spirit of Catholicism. And if Mr. Bowen and his friends grow impatient with such hymnal phraseology as “O, Sweet Sacrament!” just as his opponents grow impatient with, “Give us the blood of the Lamb!” can they not both remember that religion is a secret passion audaciously made public; it is not strange if its hymns have something of the splendid folly of love-letters? Can we not make one more effort to solve this riddle by the introduction of Christianity?
—G.K.C.
Our Reasonable Imperialist
—November 10, 1900, The Speaker
The Great Boer War. By A. Conan Doyle. London: Smith and Elder.
This occasionally mistaken, but always moderate and dignified work can only be properly appreciated if we consider who and what Mr. Conan Doyle is. He is something more than the only author since Dickens who has created a character of whom every one has heard. He is one of the embodiments of that tendency, sound and useful originally, towards the poetry of the Savage, otherwise called the Bachelor; the poetry of masculine sport and independence which was the really healthful and necessary work of the late Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
Mr. Conan Doyle’s defence of prize-fighting and Mr. Kipling’s defence of the war were, of course, only wild allegoric paradoxes, intended to emphasise by their very oddity a genuine tendency in the cultured as well as the uncultured, towards the masculine standpoint of the ethics of war and hunting, the idea that we, in praising the poetry of womanhood and the romantic relations, have, perhaps, neglected the dumb primeval poetry of our own friendships and feuds. Even Stevenson, in so long keeping the feminine excitement out of his stories, belongs to this movement; and “Sherlock Holmes” is, in lighter matters, the best type we have of cunning and self-reliance in civilization, of the romance of savagery in a city. No one expects that a writer like Mr. Doyle can have a hyper-ideal view of life, and it is not surprising if both he and Mr. Kipling tend in politics in a somewhat tribal and militant direction. But the difference in their two fates is quite startling. At a certain point of this river of average manhood it is crossed by the shallow and frothy stream of a temporary Jingoism. Mr. Kipling has been completely whirled away on the smaller stream, and is now somewhere making observations, dangerously fresh and brilliant, about the Boers reading the Bible and only shooting from behind rocks. Mr. Conan Doyle goes on down the main stream of his philosophy, such as it is, of an admiration for manliness, and therefore an admiration for the Boers. Mr. Kipling is an Imperialist, and he calls the last slaughter of Cronje’s forces at Paardeberg “a satisfactory big killing.” Mr. Doyle is also an Imperialist and he says of those forces, “Thus they passed out of their ten days of glorious history.”
Mr. Conan Doyle is a supporter of the war, and consequently on a large number of points his conclusions are not ours. But in the presence of the general ferocious triviality which confuses this question, we are far more inclined to congratulate Mr. Doyle upon the honourable reverence that he again and again expresses for the conquered than to argue with him about threadbare diplomatic points. It is curious, perhaps, to hear any man apply the adjectives “grave and measured” to Sir Alfred Milner’s remarks about the Outlanders being helots, a remark the only excuse for which is that Sir Alfred Milner is old enough to have forgotten what helots were. But we almost invariably find (what is not too common) that Mr. Doyle’s Imperialism is a matter of opinion, not a matter of moral colour-blindness. For example, he considers the Majuba Settlement unwise and expresses that view firmly, but he indulges in no childish goriness about “avenging Majuba.” Whether or no he is a Christian, he is at any rate a sportsman. He knows that the coarsest prize-fighter that came of our blood was expected to bear no malice for a fair beating.
In his description of the war itself Mr. Conan Doyle shows, as a pure artist, the same virile simplicity. He does not indulge in that extraordinary art of “wordpainting” which has poisoned the work of so many war-correspondents, the literary lunacy which hunts the wrong word as simple people hunt the right, and avoids the vulgarity of speaking of crafty generals and bursting shells by the simple expedient of speaking of crafty shells and bursting generals. Mr. Conan Doyle tells the tale of war simply and he has the reward of success for a very obvious reason. The essence of warlike poetry is rapidity. This dainty and elaborate movement of the diction is open to objection, even when the writer is engaged on the higher work of describing the profligacies of some neurotic of Upper Tooting; but when the whole force of the situation is in its instantaneousness and dazzling decision, a clever adjective is like a calthrop to a charge of cavalry. It interrupts and even unseats the warrior. Mr. Conan Doyle’s descriptions have the true military rush and simplicity like the line of an old war-ballad:-
Prendiamo un altro esempio dalle pagine del signor Bowen: il passo che egli cita dalle lettere di Pusey, in cui quel grand’uomo discute l’auto-flagellazione, descrive uno scudiscio «di carattere assai sacro» con cinque frustate, discute le parti della sua anatomia, i polmoni, ecc., su cui era sicuro impiegarlo, ed entra nella questione dei cilici come un uomo che scelga i panciotti. Il passo è, per un uomo sano, alquanto emetico. Ma pensiamo che il signor Bowen ceda ancora una volta al materialismo kensitiano nell’immaginare che sia il mero uso di una verga a sembrare indegno di Pusey. La sua auto-disciplina non era probabilmente né più volontaria né più dolorosa di quella di un comune giovanotto che quasi si rompe un vaso sanguigno nella barca del suo collegio. Ciò che ci disgusta è lo spirito inferiore del cattolicesimo, lo spirito dei misteri e delle minuzie, il solenne trattamento di dettagli insulsi, la tendenza di tutte le porte a condurre all’interno e nessuna all’esterno. Pusey che discute vari espedienti di disagio corporeo rappresenta il lato brutto del cattolicesimo poetico e inesauribile, così come il lato brutto della semplicità e centralità del protestantesimo è rappresentato dalla cantilena e dalla monotonia dello scocciatore estatico che chiede a innumerevoli sconosciuti se abbiano trovato Gesù. Nulla verrà mai da questa controversia finché queste due tendenze religiose non saranno riconosciute come cose sempre essenziali, e che sul piano più alto non sono neppure incoerenti fra loro. Quando una voce dalla Bibbia dice: «Si compiacerà Dio del grasso degli arieti … darò io il mio primogenito per la mia trasgressione, il frutto del mio corpo per il peccato della mia anima?», in quella voce parla il più alto spirito del protestantesimo. Quando una voce dice: «Offrirò al Signore ciò che non mi costa nulla?», in quella voce parla il più alto spirito del cattolicesimo. E se il signor Bowen e i suoi amici si spazientiscono per una fraseologia innodica come «O, Dolce Sacramento!», così come i suoi avversari si spazientiscono per «Dacci il Sangue dell’Agnello!», non possono entrambi ricordare che la religione è una passione segreta audacemente resa pubblica; non è strano se i suoi inni hanno qualcosa della splendida follia delle lettere d’amore? Non possiamo fare un ultimo sforzo per risolvere questo enigma con l’introduzione del Cristianesimo?
—G.K.C.
Il nostro ragionevole imperialista
—10 novembre 1900, The Speaker
La grande guerra boera. Di A. Conan Doyle. Londra: Smith and Elder.
Quest’opera occasionalmente errata, ma sempre moderata e dignitosa, può essere debitamente apprezzata solo se consideriamo chi e che cosa sia il signor Conan Doyle. Egli è qualcosa di più del solo autore, dopo Dickens, che abbia creato un personaggio di cui tutti hanno sentito parlare. Egli è una delle incarnazioni di quella tendenza, in origine sana e utile, verso la poesia del Selvaggio, altrimenti detto lo Scapolo; la poesia dello sport virile e dell’indipendenza che fu l’opera davvero salubre e necessaria del compianto signor Rudyard Kipling.
La difesa del pugilato del signor Conan Doyle e la difesa della guerra del signor Kipling erano, naturalmente, soltanto sfrenati paradossi allegorici, intesi a sottolineare con la loro stessa stranezza una genuina tendenza, tanto nei colti quanto pure negli incolti, verso il punto di vista virile dell’etica della guerra e della caccia, l’idea che noi, nel lodare la poesia della femminilità e delle relazioni romantiche, abbiamo forse trascurato la muta poesia primordiale delle nostre stesse amicizie e faide. Perfino Stevenson, tenendo così a lungo l’eccitazione femminile fuori dalle sue storie, appartiene a questo movimento; e «Sherlock Holmes» è, in materie più leggere, il miglior tipo che abbiamo di astuzia e autosufficienza nella civiltà, del romanzesco della selvatichezza in una città. Nessuno si aspetta che uno scrittore come il signor Doyle possa avere una visione iper-ideale della vita, e non sorprende se tanto lui quanto il signor Kipling tendano in politica in una direzione alquanto tribale e militante. Ma la differenza fra i loro due destini è davvero sorprendente. A un certo punto questo fiume di virilità media è attraversato dal basso e schiumoso corso di un temporaneo jingoismo. Il signor Kipling è stato completamente trascinato via sul corso minore, e ora se ne sta da qualche parte a fare osservazioni, pericolosamente fresche e brillanti, sui boeri che leggono la Bibbia e sparano solo da dietro le rocce. Il signor Conan Doyle prosegue lungo il corso principale della sua filosofia, per quel che vale, di un’ammirazione per la virilità, e perciò di un’ammirazione per i boeri. Il signor Kipling è un imperialista, e chiama l’ultimo massacro delle forze di Cronje a Paardeberg «una soddisfacente grossa mattanza». Il signor Doyle è anch’egli un imperialista, e dice di quelle forze: «Così uscirono dai loro dieci giorni di gloriosa storia».
Il signor Conan Doyle è un sostenitore della guerra, e di conseguenza su un gran numero di punti le sue conclusioni non sono le nostre. Ma dinanzi alla generale, feroce trivialità che confonde questa questione, siamo assai più inclini a congratularci con il signor Doyle per l’onorevole riverenza che egli esprime più e più volte verso i vinti che a discutere con lui di logori punti diplomatici. È curioso, forse, udire un uomo qualsiasi applicare gli aggettivi «grave e misurato» alle osservazioni di Sir Alfred Milner sugli Outlander definiti iloti, osservazione la cui sola scusa è che Sir Alfred Milner è abbastanza vecchio da aver dimenticato che cosa fossero gli iloti. Ma troviamo quasi invariabilmente (cosa non troppo comune) che l’imperialismo del signor Doyle è questione di opinione, non questione di daltonismo morale. Per esempio, egli considera imprudente il Trattato di Majuba ed esprime quella veduta con fermezza, ma non si abbandona a nessuna puerile sanguinolenza sul «vendicare Majuba». Che sia o no un cristiano, è in ogni caso un uomo di sport. Egli sa che al più rozzo pugile uscito dal nostro sangue non si chiedeva di serbare rancore per una leale batosta.
Nella descrizione della guerra stessa il signor Conan Doyle mostra, da puro artista, la medesima virile semplicità. Non si abbandona a quella straordinaria arte del «dipingere con le parole» che ha avvelenato l’opera di tanti corrispondenti di guerra, la follia letteraria che dà la caccia alla parola sbagliata come la gente semplice dà la caccia a quella giusta, ed evita la volgarità di parlare di generali astuti e di proiettili che scoppiano col semplice espediente di parlare di proiettili astuti e di generali che scoppiano. Il signor Conan Doyle narra la vicenda della guerra con semplicità e ottiene la ricompensa del successo per una ragione assai ovvia. L’essenza della poesia guerresca è la rapidità. Questo delicato ed elaborato movimento della dizione è passibile di obiezione, anche quando lo scrittore è impegnato nell’opera più alta di descrivere le dissolutezze di qualche nevrotico di Upper Tooting; ma quando l’intera forza della situazione sta nella sua istantaneità e nella sua abbagliante decisione, un aggettivo ingegnoso è come una tribolo lanciato contro una carica di cavalleria. Interrompe e persino disarciona il guerriero. Le descrizioni del signor Conan Doyle hanno il vero slancio e la vera semplicità militaresca, come il verso di un’antica ballata di guerra:-
“And dark with winter was the flow— Of Iser rolling rapidly.”
The “descriptive” correspondent would have written it:-
“And fat with frost-mud was the flow Of Iser tottering huskily.”
If guns “sneeze” at a man no doubt he is struck by the artistic comparison. If they shoot at him, they hit him.
We value profoundly, as we have said, the chivalrous tone of Mr. Doyle’s book, because he represents, since Mr. Kipling’s mysterious collapse, that muscular school which should take the Boers under its particular protection. A man like Cronje should have been and would have been, in Mr. Kipling’s best days, a delight to that author. He has all Mr. Kipling’s favourite virtues and, by a supreme touch of fascination, he has committed all Mr. Kipling’s favourite crimes. Mr. Doyle, however, stands forth to-day as the champion of the secrets of a strong race. The question is far deeper than mere negative morality. Cronje is not filled with moral delicacies, and he is by no means a favourable specimen of the Boer. But comparing, in the broadest human and anthropological spirit, the hero of the tremendous Thermopylae of Paarderberg with Mr. Beit or the late Mr. Barnato, what can any thinking person say of the transfer of influence in that country except the two lines of Goldsmith?—
“Ill fares the land to hastening woes a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”
Have we realised that these ragged folk are the real riches of the Transvaal? Can we work the mines of the human gold?
Buddha Versus Buddhism
—November 17, 1900, The Speaker
Buddha And Buddhism. By Arthur Lillie. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.
Mr. Arthur Lillie calls his book Buddha and Buddhism, and much of it is devoted to explaining that they are very different things. His primary and most interesting thesis amounts to this: that so far from the great nihilistic philosophy which attracts European pessimists to Buddhism being, as is maintained, the pure metaphysic of Gautama himself since corrupted into a mere religion, it is this nihilism which is itself a vast decadent development of the words of a teacher who was as primal, ethical and direct as the Founder of Christianity. Mr. Lillie has a lively instinct for literature, and he opens his case with a telling and amusing apologue in which he describes some future historian proving conclusively that mediaeval Catholicism must have been a priestly corruption of the religion of Comte. Nightmare speculations on the essential non-existence of everything are the chief hobby of the Pyhrro-Buddhic pessimists-if, indeed, pessimism can be properly attributed to them, for it is difficult to believe in the worst of all possible worlds if you do not believe that any worlds are possible at all. But we think Mr. Lillie has done a great service in clearing the character of the great Gautama of this war upon Nature-this matricidal mysticism. The question affects not only Buddhism, but Christianity also, which is now constantly accused of nihilism by its enemies as Buddhism is accused by its friends.
Schopenhauer, with that brilliant futility which made him so striking considered merely as a literary man, maintains that Christianity is akin to his own pessimism because it rejects the vanities of the world. The remark is a good instance of that class of ingenious observations against which we can say nothing except that they are obviously not true. Any one can see that a man floating in visions of certain felicity is not in the same state of mind as a man who believes all felicity impossible: and the two are not made essentially any more similar by the accident that they both take the same attitude towards something else. Schopenhauer and the most maniacal ascetic of the middle ages are no more like each other than a man who does not take an omnibus because he cannot afford it and a man who does not take an omnibus because he prefers his landau. Buddhism might be called an intermediary link, for the Buddhist felicity was in a sense negative; but the monkish felicity was full of the fieriest human images, and if he scoffed at non-religious pleasures it was as a lover might scoff at the mass of women or a patriot at the mass of nations. We say this of the most evil forms of actual Christian asceticism. That the religion of Jesus was not Pyhrro-Buddhic (though it is sometimes called so) is clear from the somewhat obvious distinction that Pyhrro-Buddhism encourages poverty because it takes a man out of the natural order, whereas Jesus encouraged poverty avowedly because it united him with the natural order-with the birds and the lilies of the field. No mortal ingenuity can make an “Anti-Cosmic Nihilist” of a teacher who recommended a certain course on the express ground that it was the law of the animal and vegetable world. It is highly possible that ambition, commerce and much that civilisation values appeared to Jesus a huge and grotesque excrescence on the face of life. But to Pyhrro-Buddhism it is life itself that is the excrescence: being is a disease: the stars are a disfigurement to the purity of night, a kind of cosmic rash, and the eternal hills are mere protuberances, as shameful as the boils of Job. It is the iniquitous completeness of this imaginative conception that has really attracted men like Schopenhauer to metaphysical Buddhism, for the Indian pessimist holds it with an appalling sweetness and calm which the fretful German could only envy as he pursued the impossible paradox of using cosmic energy in defiance of the Cosmos and not so much cutting off his nose to spite his face as cutting the rest of himself off his nose that he might turn up his nose at it.
But though we can well believe, with Mr. Lillie, that the real Buddha was a noble elemental moralist and that his teachings were very different from the bewildering rhetoric of annihilation which fills later Indian metaphysics, we think that there is, perhaps, a more natural connection between them than he is inclined to allow. To us, at least, the Buddhist peoples, especially of India, seem to present the unfathomable spiritual tragedy of a people who have looked upon God and lived. They have stared at the white light too long and their intellects have suffered. The Jews, with their wonderful instinct for practical religion, swore that he who looked upon Jehovah died; but in a large number of transcendental schools and sages the sentence of death has been commuted to a doom of gibbering idiotcy. To the Buddhists was given a conception of God of extraordinary intellectual purity; but, in growling familiar with the featureless splendour, they have lost their heads: they babble; they say that everything is nothing and nothing is everything, that black is white because white is black. We fancy that the frightful universal negatives, at which, as we have seen, they have at last arrived, are really little more than the final mental collapse of men trying always to find an abstraction big enough for all things. “I have said what I understood not: things too great for me, that I knew not. I will put my hand upon my mouth.” Job was a wise man.
«E scuro d’inverno era il fluire— dell’Iser che scorreva rapido.»
Il corrispondente «descrittivo» l’avrebbe scritto così:-
«E grasso di fango e di gelo era il fluire dell’Iser che vacillava con voce rauca.»
Se i cannoni «starnutiscono» contro un uomo, senza dubbio costui resta colpito dal paragone artistico. Se gli sparano, lo colpiscono.
Apprezziamo profondamente, come abbiamo detto, il tono cavalleresco del libro del signor Doyle, perché egli rappresenta, dopo il misterioso crollo del signor Kipling, quella scuola muscolare che dovrebbe prendere i Boeri sotto la sua speciale protezione. Un uomo come Cronje sarebbe stato, e sarebbe dovuto essere, nei giorni migliori del signor Kipling, una delizia per quell’autore. Possiede tutte le virtù predilette del signor Kipling e, per un supremo tocco di fascino, ha commesso tutti i delitti prediletti del signor Kipling. Il signor Doyle, tuttavia, si erge oggi a campione dei segreti di una razza forte. La questione è assai più profonda di una mera moralità negativa. Cronje non è colmo di delicatezze morali, e non è affatto un esemplare favorevole del Boero. Ma paragonando, nel più ampio spirito umano e antropologico, l’eroe delle tremende Termopili di Paardeberg con il signor Beit o col defunto signor Barnato, che cosa può dire una persona pensante del trasferimento di influenza in quel paese, se non i due versi di Goldsmith?—
«Mal se la passa la terra, preda di mali incalzanti, dove la ricchezza si accumula e gli uomini deperiscono.»
Ci siamo resi conto che questa gente cenciosa è la vera ricchezza del Transvaal? Sappiamo sfruttare le miniere dell’oro umano?
Buddha contro il Buddismo
—17 novembre 1900, The Speaker
Buddha And Buddhism. Di Arthur Lillie. Edimburgo: T. and T. Clark.
Il signor Arthur Lillie intitola il suo libro Buddha and Buddhism, e gran parte di esso è dedicata a spiegare che si tratta di due cose assai diverse. La sua tesi principale e più interessante si riduce a questo: che, lungi dall’essere la grande filosofia nichilistica che attira i pessimisti europei verso il Buddismo, come si sostiene, la pura metafisica dello stesso Gautama poi corrotta in una mera religione, è proprio questo nichilismo a essere esso stesso un vasto sviluppo decadente delle parole di un maestro tanto primigenio, etico e diretto quanto il Fondatore del Cristianesimo. Il signor Lillie ha un vivo istinto per la letteratura, e apre la sua argomentazione con un apologo efficace e divertente in cui descrive un futuro storico che dimostra in modo conclusivo come il cattolicesimo medievale dovette essere una corruzione sacerdotale della religione di Comte. Le speculazioni da incubo sull’essenziale non-esistenza di ogni cosa sono l’occupazione prediletta dei pessimisti pirro-buddisti — se pure il pessimismo possa loro attribuirsi propriamente, poiché è difficile credere nel peggiore di tutti i mondi possibili se non si crede affatto che alcun mondo sia possibile. Ma riteniamo che il signor Lillie abbia reso un grande servigio nel prosciogliere il carattere del grande Gautama da questa guerra contro la Natura — questo misticismo matricida. La questione non riguarda soltanto il Buddismo, ma anche il Cristianesimo, che ora viene costantemente accusato di nichilismo dai suoi nemici come il Buddismo è accusato dai suoi amici.
Schopenhauer, con quella brillante futilità che lo rendeva tanto notevole se considerato meramente come uomo di lettere, sostiene che il Cristianesimo è affine al proprio pessimismo perché rifiuta le vanità del mondo. L’osservazione è un buon esempio di quella classe di considerazioni ingegnose contro le quali nulla possiamo dire se non che sono evidentemente false. Chiunque può vedere che un uomo che fluttua in visioni di sicura felicità non si trova nel medesimo stato d’animo di un uomo che crede impossibile ogni felicità: e i due non diventano essenzialmente più simili per l’accidente di assumere entrambi il medesimo atteggiamento verso qualcos’altro. Schopenhauer e il più maniacale asceta del medioevo non si somigliano più di quanto si somiglino un uomo che non prende l’omnibus perché non può permetterselo e un uomo che non prende l’omnibus perché preferisce il suo landò. Il Buddismo potrebbe dirsi un anello intermedio, poiché la felicità buddista era in un certo senso negativa; ma la felicità monastica era colma delle più ardenti immagini umane, e se il monaco derideva i piaceri non religiosi lo faceva come un amante potrebbe deridere la massa delle donne o un patriota la massa delle nazioni. Diciamo questo delle forme più perverse dell’ascetismo cristiano reale. Che la religione di Gesù non fosse pirro-buddista (per quanto talvolta la si dica tale) è chiaro dalla distinzione piuttosto ovvia che il pirro-buddismo incoraggia la povertà perché sottrae l’uomo all’ordine naturale, mentre Gesù incoraggiava la povertà dichiaratamente perché lo univa all’ordine naturale — con gli uccelli e i gigli del campo. Nessuna ingegnosità mortale può fare un «Nichilista Anti-Cosmico» di un maestro che raccomandava una certa condotta proprio sul fondamento espresso che essa era la legge del mondo animale e vegetale. È altamente possibile che l’ambizione, il commercio e molto di ciò che la civiltà apprezza apparissero a Gesù un’enorme e grottesca escrescenza sul volto della vita. Ma per il pirro-buddismo è la vita stessa a essere l’escrescenza: l’essere è una malattia: le stelle sono uno sfregio alla purezza della notte, una sorta di eruzione cosmica, e le colline eterne sono meri rigonfiamenti, vergognosi quanto i foruncoli di Giobbe. È l’iniqua completezza di questa concezione immaginativa ad aver realmente attratto uomini come Schopenhauer verso il Buddismo metafisico, poiché il pessimista indiano lo abbraccia con una dolcezza e una calma spaventose che l’irritabile tedesco poteva solo invidiare mentre inseguiva l’impossibile paradosso di usare l’energia cosmica in sfida al Cosmo, e non tanto tagliandosi il naso per far dispetto alla propria faccia quanto tagliando via il resto di sé dal proprio naso per poterlo poi arricciare con disprezzo.
Ma per quanto possiamo ben credere, col signor Lillie, che il vero Buddha fosse un nobile moralista elementare e che i suoi insegnamenti fossero assai diversi dalla sconcertante retorica dell’annientamento che riempie la più tarda metafisica indiana, riteniamo che vi sia, forse, un legame più naturale tra loro di quanto egli sia disposto a concedere. A noi, almeno, i popoli buddisti, specialmente dell’India, sembrano presentare l’insondabile tragedia spirituale di un popolo che ha guardato Dio ed è vissuto. Hanno fissato troppo a lungo la luce bianca e i loro intelletti ne hanno sofferto. Gli Ebrei, con il loro meraviglioso istinto per la religione pratica, giurarono che chi guardava Geova moriva; ma in un gran numero di scuole e di saggi trascendentali la condanna a morte è stata commutata in una dannazione di farneticante idiozia. Ai Buddisti fu data una concezione di Dio di straordinaria purezza intellettuale; ma, prendendo ringhiosa dimestichezza con quello splendore senza tratti, hanno perduto la testa: farfugliano; dicono che tutto è nulla e il nulla è tutto, che il nero è bianco perché il bianco è nero. Ci immaginiamo che le spaventose negazioni universali, alle quali, come abbiamo visto, sono infine giunti, non siano in realtà molto più del crollo mentale definitivo di uomini che cercano sempre di trovare un’astrazione abbastanza grande per tutte le cose. «Ho detto ciò che non comprendevo: cose troppo grandi per me, che io non sapevo. Porrò la mia mano sulla mia bocca.» Giobbe era un uomo saggio.
Perhaps the most unsatisfactory part of Mr. Lillie’s very satisfactory book is the chapter devoted to the parallels between Christ and Buddha, upon which are founded the theories that Christianity was borrowed from Buddhism. Historically we do not think this probable, if for no other reason than for the reason that the basic scheme of ideas on which Christ reared His Gospel may be found in Isaiah and the ancient Jews; but there can be no doubt that there are very interesting resemblances. Mr. Lillie, however, in the excitement of finding parallels, provides a list of which nine-tenths are parallels of no significance whatever. To say of two Eastern teachers that they were both concerned on one occasion with the washing of feet is not even a coincidence; we might as well call it a coincidence that they both had feet to wash. Sometimes Mr. Lillie’s parallels are not even parallel as far as they go. He tells us as a pendant to the text, “They parted my garments,” that “on the death of the Bokte’ Lama his garments are cut into little stripes and prized immensely.” This is the very reverse of a similarity; the parting of Christ’s garments was done by his enemies; it was an expression of contempt, and the garments were not “prized immensely,” except for what they would fetch in the rag-shops of Jerusalem. Mr. Lillie quotes the fact that in Buddhist scripture the divine voice speaks “out of the sky,” as if in any religion one would expect it to come out of the coal-cellar. He makes a more radical error in comparing the Gospel “house on the sand” with the Buddhist saying, “The seen world is like a city of sand.” Not only does the Christian parable not enunciate the latter sentiment, it enunciates something like the opposite. The man who built on the sand was the man who did not carry out his conceptions into the seen world. We can only refer Mr. Lillie to the passage.
Mr. Lillie speaks with just dissent of some distinctions made by Christians between the two creeds founded merely on doctrines, even such central doctrines as personal deity and immortality. But whereas Mr. Lillie seems to think the difference more or less imaginary, we fancy it is deeper than any doctrines. Both Christianity and Buddhism do indeed stand for simplicity, for the fact that it is in the primal part of us that we are nearest to the unseen. But Buddhism stands for a simplification of the mind and a reliance on the most indestructible ideas; Christianity stands for a simplification of the heart and a reliance on the most indestructible sentiments. The greater Christian insistance upon personal deity and immortality is not, we fancy, the cause so much as the effect of this essential trend towards an ancient passion and pathos as the power that most nearly rends the veil from the nature of things. Both creeds grope after the same secret sun, but Buddhism dreams of its light and Christianity of its heat. Buddhism seeks after God with the largest conception it can find, the all-producing and all-absorbing Om; Christianity seeks for God with the most elementary passion it can find; the craving for a father, the hunger that is as old as the hills. It turns the whole cry of a lost universe into the cry of a lost child.
G. K. C.
Literature and Childhood
—November 24, 1900, The Speaker
The Junior Temple Reader. By Clara Linklater Thomson and E. E. Speight, B.A. London: Horace Marshall.
The compilers of this collection have laid down for themselves in the preface a genuine and seriously needed principle, and have from time to time observed it admirably, and with dramatic suddenness. They say, with perfect truth, that “such reading-books are too often written down to children, instead of being made the models by which their taste is formed.” Undoubtedly looking down and speaking down and writing down to the human soul have been the sterilising curses of education. That everything should look up to everything else may be a little bewildering as geometry, but like many other impossibilities, it is simple and successful in morals. But we cannot imagine that the compilers mean that all things are equally suitable in a book for children or that they would cheerfully bring out a sequel consisting of selections from The Amazing Marriage, interspersed with popular recitations from Mallarme. They have so far fulfilled their own excellent principle that they have collected in this volume a number of noble fragments of literary art which it is highly probable that the most adventurous child might not find in the family book-case. The pleasure of reading a manly English translation of the death of the great Paladin at Roncesvaux, for example, is sufficient to wipe out one’s annoyance at finding a piece of sentimental German romanticism, like Wieland’s Huon of Bordeaux, placed like an artificial rockery beside the morning mountain of the Song of Roland.
But the compilers of this educational work have violated their own principle in a more subtle and a more universal way. They have yielded to that singular delusion which dominates books with a far less logical intention, the delusion that the child as such is interesting to children. This is a mistake which any hack-journalist would despise. Every one is interested in the local colour of foreign travel, but a book entitled Strange Adventures among the Aborigines of Clapham would not gratify the inhabitants of that suburb. Yet the customs of Clapham are, to the true philosophic traveller, weird and even terrifying. So the eternal value of children to maturity is that they are a palpable scientific elfland, but the essence of elves is unconsciousness and utter solemnity. The books that should be set before children are books of play and ceremonial, and pomp and war: the whole gloria mundi, the whole pageant of history, full of blood and pride, may safely be told them-everything but the secret of their own incomparable influence. Children need to be taught primarily the grandeur of the whole world. It is merely the whole world that needs to be taught the grandeur of children.
Forse la parte meno soddisfacente del libro molto soddisfacente di Mr. Lillie è il capitolo dedicato ai paralleli tra Cristo e Buddha, su cui si fondano le teorie che cristianesimo sia stato preso in prestito dal buddismo. Storicamente non pensiamo che ciò sia probabile, se per nessun’altra ragione, almeno perché lo schema di base delle idee su cui Cristo ha costruito il Suo Vangelo si può trovare in Isaia e negli antichi Ebrei; ma non ci possono essere dubbi che esistano somiglianze molto interessanti. Mr. Lillie, tuttavia, nell’entusiasmo di trovare paralleli, fornisce un elenco del quale nove decimi sono paralleli senza alcuna importanza. Dire di due maestri orientali che si occuparono entrambi in una certa occasione della lavanda dei piedi non è neppure una coincidenza; potremmo altrettanto bene chiamare coincidenza il fatto che avevano entrambi i piedi da lavare. A volte i paralleli di Mr. Lillie non sono nemmeno paralleli fino a quel punto. Ci dice come pendant al testo “Hanno diviso le mie vesti” che “alla morte del Bokte’ Lama, le sue vesti vengono tagliate in piccole strisce e tenute in grande considerazione”. Questo è l’esatto contrario di una somiglianza; la divisione delle vesti di Cristo fu fatta dai suoi nemici; era un’espressione di disprezzo, e le vesti non erano “tenute in grande considerazione”, se non per quanto avrebbero fruttato nei negozi di stracci di Gerusalemme. Mr. Lillie cita il fatto che nella scrittura buddista la voce divina parla “dal cielo”, come se in qualsiasi religione ci si aspettasse che venga fuori dal ripostiglio del carbone. Commette un errore più radicale nel confrontare il Vangelo “casa sulla sabbia” con il detto buddista, “Il mondo visibile è come una città di sabbia”. Non solo la parabola cristiana non enuncia quest’ultimo sentimento, ma ne enuncia qualcosa di opposto. L’uomo che costruì sulla sabbia fu l’uomo che non portò a compimento le sue concezioni nel mondo visibile. Possiamo solo rimandare Mr. Lillie al passo.
Il signor Lillie parla con giusto dissenso di alcune distinzioni fatte dai cristiani tra i due credi fondate semplicemente su dottrine, anche su dottrine così centrali come la divinità personale e l’immortalità. Ma mentre il signor Lillie sembra pensare che la differenza sia più o meno immaginaria, noi crediamo che essa sia più profonda di qualsiasi dottrina. Sia cristianesimo che buddhismo rappresentano infatti la semplicità, il fatto che è nella parte primordiale di noi stessi che siamo più vicini all’invisibile. Ma il buddhismo rappresenta una semplificazione della mente e un affidamento sulle idee più indestruttibili; cristianesimo rappresenta una semplificazione del cuore e un affidamento sui sentimenti più indestruttibili. La maggiore insistenza cristiana sulla divinità personale e sull’immortalità non è, crediamo, la causa tanto quanto l’effetto di questa tendenza essenziale verso una passione antica e un pathos come la potenza che più da vicino squarcia il velo dalla natura delle cose. Entrambi i credi cercano lo stesso sole segreto, ma il buddhismo sogna della sua luce e il cristianesimo del suo calore. Il buddhismo cerca Dio con la concezione più ampia che può trovare, l’Om tutto-produttivo e tutto-assorbente; il cristianesimo cerca Dio con la passione più elementare che può trovare: il desiderio di un padre, la fame che è antica come le colline. Trasforma l’intero grido di un universo perduto nel grido di un bambino smarrito.
G. K. C.
Letteratura e infanzia
#24 novembre 1900, The Speaker
Il lettore del tempio per giovani. Di Clara Linklater Thomson e E. E. Speight, B.A. Londra: Horace Marshall.
I compilatori di questa raccolta hanno stabilito per sé stessi nella prefazione un principio genuino e seriamente necessario, e lo hanno osservato ammirevolmente, e con drammatica improvvisità, di tempo in tempo. Dicono, con perfetta verità, che “tali libri di lettura sono troppo spesso scritti al ribasso per i bambini, invece di essere fatti modelli con cui formare il loro gusto.” Indubbiamente guardare dall’alto e parlare dall’alto e scrivere dall’alto verso l’anima umana anima sono state le maledizioni sterilizzanti dell’educazione. Che tutto dovrebbe guardare su a tutto il resto può essere un po’ sconcertante come geometria, ma come molte altre impossibilità, è semplice e riuscita in morale. Ma non possiamo immaginare che i compilatori intendano dire che tutte le cose sono ugualmente adatte in un libro per bambini o che porterebbero allegramente fuori una continuazione costituita da selezioni dallo Sposalizio straordinario, intervallate con recitazioni popolari di Mallarmé. Hanno finora attuato il loro eccellente principio in modo tale da aver raccolto in questo volume un certo numero di nobili frammenti d’arte letteraria che è altamente probabile che anche il più avventuroso bambino non troverebbe nella libreria di famiglia. Il piacere di leggere una virile traduzione inglese della morte del grande Paladino a Roncisvalle, per esempio, è sufficiente ad eliminare il proprio fastidio nel trovare un pezzo di sentimentalismo romantico tedesco, come l’Ugone di Bordeaux di Wieland, collocato come una rocceria artificiale accanto alla montagna mattutina del Canto di Rolando.
Ma i compilatori di questa opera educativa hanno violato il loro stesso principio in modo più sottile e universale. Hanno ceduto a quella singolare illusione che domina libri con un’intenzione molto meno logica, l’illusione che il bambino come tale sia interessante ai bambini. Questo è uno sbaglio che qualsiasi giornalista da strapazzo disprezzerebbe. Tutti sono interessati al colore locale dei viaggi all’estero, ma un libro intitolato Strane avventure tra gli aborigeni di Clapham non gratificherebbe gli abitanti di quel sobborgo. Eppure le usanze di Clapham sono, per il vero viaggiatore filosofico, strane e persino terrificanti. Così l’eterno valore dei bambini per la maturità è che essi sono un tangibile elfland scientifico, ma l’essenza degli elfi è l’inconsapevolezza e la massima solennità. I libri da mettere davanti ai bambini sono libri di gioco e cerimoniale, e pompa e guerra: tutta la gloria del mondo, tutto il corteo della storia, piena di sangue e orgoglio, può essere loro raccontato tranquillamente-tutto tranne il segreto della loro incomparabile influenza. I bambini devono essere istruiti principalmente sulla grandezza del mondo intero. È semplicemente tutto il mondo che ha bisogno di imparare la grandezza dei bambini.
Upon this error a great part of this collection, like most other collections, splits like a ship upon a rock. The compilers have honourably rejected bad literature, but they seem to have had the idea that they had only to find a piece of good literature referring to children and to submit it affectionately to the child. They might as well take a copy of Marshall on The Frog and affectionately throw it into a frog-pond. How grotesque it is, when once the mind is set seriously on the matter, to put before a child, as here, a poem like Blake’s “Little Black Boy,” or, for the matter of that, any poem of Blake’s. A child appreciates rhythm, and Blake hardly observes prosody; a child loves pomp and battle, and Blake was a worshipper of nudity and crudity and peace at any price; a child is censorious of detail, and Blake is often, to a censorious mind, mere doggerel. The splendours of his poetry are a clarity which is more unfathomable than darkness and a purity which is like the purity of white hair. He called some of his poems “Songs of Innocence,” but in truth all of them, and more especially the simplest, were “Songs of Experience.” There was not one rhyme that a boy could have written, except, perhaps, the gorgeous and swaggering tragedy of Edward III.
The same fault must be found with the insertion of the beautiful “Cradle Song” of Mr. W. B. Yeats, called here (for some dark educational reason) Mr. W. A. Yeats. It is the song of a mother, and any child should be sent to bed who pretended to understand it. The fallacy extends even to the illustrations. The compilers have been foolish enough to employ largely an artist who works in a style of pure line-illustration as pale as the silver point of Raphael and aspiring after the manner of Burne-Jones. Even where this is done excellently it is wholly unfitted for children, for it requires a technical luxuriousness to appreciate the billowing beauty of a single line; it is a perfect instance of the unfitness of simplicity for the simple. The most distressing example is a picture from that portentous Scandinavian fable about the travels of Thor-how he could not drink from a horn because the horn was the sea and could not lift a cat because the cat was the world-serpent. No mortal should dare to depict that story, for it belongs to that tremendous borderland where the shapes of things hang loosely on them like disguises, and life is a metaphysical masquerade. But when we are shown a pre-Raphaelite youth like an emaciated Galahad and asked to believe that it is Thor, our “Berserker blood-rage” makes one of its rare appearances. This insolent lucidity will not do for children. It is the glory of the child as the type of the celestial that his mind is a house of windows. To surround him with child poems and pictures is to paint the panes outside with silver and make his mind, like the mind of a maniac, a house of mirrors.
G.K.C.
Christmas Books for Children
December 8, 1900, The Speaker
Time should be turned tail foremost as we approach Christmas and all of us grow younger every day: even the educational reviewer like ourselves may suddenly become possessed of a sense of humour and perceive in his position as “mother’s adviser” an unsuspected source of mental delight. We may at least throw off that burden of incomparable conscientiousness which is the curse of all educationalists, since it prevents them from sympathising with those whom they have to educate. It is manifestly impossible to criticise children’s books, as we hope to prove in the course of doing so; it is bringing a dingy and artificial fastidiousness to bear on a point of view which is perfectly capable of taking care of itself, which has a power of extracting a certain nameless excitement from one material almost as much as another. There are, we can fully believe, educationalists who are capable of investigating sandcastles with a view to the strict principles of architecture and mud-pies with a view to the strict principles of cookery. But to us, we must confess, the two questions about a book for a child which would seem important would always be “Does it obviously give him imaginative pleasure?” and “Will it poison him when he licks the binding?”
Of all such books the easiest to criticise are the more or less frankly instructive, such as Mr. George Gomme’s The Princess’s Story Book (Constable). The idea is a bold and by no means a bad one: that of making a mosaic history of England, not from the chapters of historians (as it was done in the Greene series), but from the chapters of writers of fiction. The portrait of James I, for example, is from The Fortunes of Nigel, and assuredly there is no better portrait in the whole of Scott: the fight with the Armada is told in the words of Kingsley, and the defeat of Wallace in those of Miss Jane Porter. Modern historians are far too craven to adopt the manner of Herodotus, and report long fictitious conversations embodying the general spirit of what passed between two historical figures. But from the point of view of childhood they probably lose enormously by clinging to the oratio obliqua. We are not concerned to quarrel with the amount of error in such a narrative, for the lies of fiction convey truth and the lies of history convey nothing. But there is obviously a distinction between romances in this matter: all good romances convey truth, but not always about the period they describe. Esmond, which the compiler regrets he had to exclude, is a true romance: it is written by a man steeped in the literature and spirit of Queen Anne’s time. Miss Porter’s Scottish Chiefs does depict a period; but it is not the period of Wallace, but the period of Miss Porter: the period of sentimental sympathy with the heroes of liberty.
Su questo errore gran parte di questa raccolta, come la maggior parte delle altre raccolte, si sfracella come una nave su uno scoglio. I compilatori hanno onorevolmente respinto la cattiva letteratura, ma sembrano aver avuto l’idea che bastasse trovare un pezzo di buona letteratura riferita ai bambini e sottoporlo con affetto al bambino. Tanto varrebbe prendere una copia del Marshall su La rana e gettarla con affetto in uno stagno di rane. Quanto è grottesco, una volta che la mente si sofferma seriamente sulla cosa, mettere davanti a un bambino, come qui, una poesia come «Little Black Boy» di Blake, o, se è per questo, una qualsiasi poesia di Blake. Un bambino apprezza il ritmo, e Blake quasi non osserva la prosodia; un bambino ama la pompa e la battaglia, e Blake era un adoratore della nudità e della crudezza e della pace a ogni costo; un bambino è censorio del dettaglio, e Blake è spesso, per una mente censoria, mera filastrocca sciatta. Gli splendori della sua poesia sono una chiarezza più insondabile delle tenebre e una purezza simile alla purezza dei capelli bianchi. Egli chiamò alcune delle sue poesie «Canti dell’Innocenza», ma in verità tutte quante, e in special modo le più semplici, erano «Canti dell’Esperienza». Non v’era una sola rima che un fanciullo avrebbe potuto scrivere, tranne, forse, la sontuosa e spavalda tragedia di Edward III.
Il medesimo difetto va rilevato nell’inserimento della bella «Ninna nanna» del signor W. B. Yeats, qui chiamato (per qualche oscura ragione pedagogica) signor W. A. Yeats. È il canto di una madre, e andrebbe mandato a letto ogni bambino che pretendesse di capirlo. La fallacia si estende persino alle illustrazioni. I compilatori sono stati tanto sciocchi da impiegare in gran parte un artista che lavora in uno stile di pura illustrazione a linea pallida come la punta d’argento di Raffaello e ambiziosa alla maniera di Burne-Jones. Anche là dove ciò è fatto eccellentemente, è del tutto inadatto ai bambini, poiché richiede una raffinatezza tecnica apprezzare la ondeggiante bellezza di una singola linea; è un perfetto esempio dell’inadeguatezza della semplicità per i semplici. L’esempio più penoso è un’immagine tratta da quella portentosa favola scandinava sui viaggi di Thor: come egli non poté bere da un corno perché il corno era il mare e non poté sollevare un gatto perché il gatto era il serpente del mondo. Nessun mortale dovrebbe osare raffigurare quella storia, poiché essa appartiene a quella tremenda terra di confine dove le forme delle cose pendono lente su di esse come travestimenti, e la vita è una mascherata metafisica. Ma quando ci viene mostrato un giovane preraffaellita simile a un Galahad emaciato e ci si chiede di credere che sia Thor, la nostra «furia sanguinaria da berserker» fa una delle sue rare apparizioni. Questa insolente lucidità non va bene per i bambini. È gloria del bambino, come tipo del celeste, che la sua mente sia una casa di finestre. Circondarlo di poesie e di immagini per bambini è dipingere i vetri all’esterno d’argento e fare della sua mente, come la mente di un maniaco, una casa di specchi.
G.K.C.
Libri di Natale per bambini
8 dicembre 1900, The Speaker
Il Tempo dovrebbe procedere a ritroso man mano che ci avviciniamo al Natale, e tutti noi ringiovaniamo ogni giorno: perfino il recensore pedagogico come noi può d’un tratto trovarsi in possesso di un senso dell’umorismo e scorgere nella sua posizione di «consigliere della mamma» un’insospettata fonte di diletto mentale. Possiamo almeno gettar via quel fardello di incomparabile scrupolosità che è la maledizione di tutti i pedagoghi, poiché impedisce loro di simpatizzare con coloro che devono educare. È manifestamente impossibile criticare i libri per bambini, come speriamo di dimostrare nel corso di questo stesso criticare; è portare una squallida e artificiosa schizzinosità a gravare su un punto di vista che è perfettamente capace di badare a sé stesso, che ha il potere di estrarre una certa senza-nome eccitazione da un materiale quasi tanto quanto da un altro. Vi sono, possiamo ben crederlo, pedagoghi capaci di indagare i castelli di sabbia in vista dei rigorosi principi dell’architettura e i pasticci di fango in vista dei rigorosi principi della cucina. Ma per noi, dobbiamo confessarlo, le due domande su un libro per un bambino che ci parrebbero importanti sarebbero sempre: «Gli dà esso manifestamente piacere immaginativo?» e «Lo avvelenerà quando ne lecca la rilegatura?»
Di tutti questi libri i più facili da criticare sono quelli più o meno francamente istruttivi, come The Princess’s Story Book del signor George Gomme (Constable). L’idea è ardita e per nulla cattiva: quella di comporre una storia a mosaico dell’Inghilterra, non dai capitoli degli storici (come si fece nella serie di Greene), ma dai capitoli degli scrittori di narrativa. Il ritratto di Giacomo I, per esempio, è tratto da The Fortunes of Nigel, e certamente non v’è ritratto migliore in tutto Scott: la battaglia contro l’Invincibile Armata è narrata con le parole di Kingsley, e la sconfitta di Wallace con quelle di Miss Jane Porter. Gli storici moderni sono di gran lunga troppo codardi per adottare la maniera di Erodoto e riferire lunghe conversazioni fittizie che incarnino lo spirito generale di ciò che passò fra due figure storiche. Ma dal punto di vista dell’infanzia essi probabilmente perdono enormemente aggrappandosi all’oratio obliqua. Non ci preme litigare sulla quantità di errore in una simile narrazione, poiché le menzogne della narrativa trasmettono verità e le menzogne della storia non trasmettono nulla. Ma vi è ovviamente una distinzione fra i romanzi in questa faccenda: tutti i buoni romanzi trasmettono verità, ma non sempre riguardo al periodo che descrivono. Esmond, che il compilatore si rammarica di aver dovuto escludere, è un vero romanzo: è scritto da un uomo impregnato della letteratura e dello spirito del tempo della Regina Anna. Gli Scottish Chiefs di Miss Porter raffigurano effettivamente un periodo; ma non è il periodo di Wallace, bensì il periodo di Miss Porter: il periodo della simpatia sentimentale per gli eroi della libertà.
Mr. Thomas Cobb’s little book, The Bountiful Lady; or, How Mary was Changed from a Very Miserable Little Girl to a Very Happy One (Grant Richards) is amusing in its way and the morality is not obscenely prominent. Still, we are a little tired of the enormous number of books directed by grown people against sulky and unhappy children. Considering that two-thirds of the children of the world are courageously happy in the filthiest slums and corners and that quite one-third of the grown-up people are offensively discontented in first-class hotels, the claim of the adult to preach contentment to infancy appears to us a piece of indecent hypocritical impudence. Mr. Cobb, however, can put in the sound dramatic claim that he is only describing an individual, and the little fairy-tale of the boy who never liked anything when he got it is both humorous and profitable, if we remember always that it is vastly more applicable to men than to boys. If the adults are useful in their way (as we may generously admit) in order to teach children to work, children are quite as much specialists in teaching the adult to play.
Mr. John Ingold has a very genuine poetic instinct and one that should fit him to write fairy-tales (perhaps the highest form of art), but he has not quite sufficiently realised the nature of the literary form in question. His imagery and allegory are confused and unreliable, sometimes daring and sometimes trivial. The whole essence of the true fairy-tale is that it happens not at night, like a ghost story, but in broad daylight: that the most preposterous figures and incidents stand out clear, defiant and unconscious, the lawful denizens of a lawless planet. This clean-cutting workmanship, this simple grouping is absolutely essential to a good fairytale, and sometimes Mr. Ingold in his Glimpses from Wonderland (John Long) really achieves it. The following sentence is a piece of literary plain carpentry which hits the right nail on the head almost with the hammer of Stevenson:-
“On a throne, formed of twisted men turned to stone and in which thousands of sinister eyes gleamed like emeralds, rubies and sapphires, reclined the Necromancer.” This is a clear picture; but elsewhere we can form no picture of what occurs, creatures with Lewis Carroll names carrying widows’ tears, a man’s soul taken from his body as mere afterthought, these are futile misshapen incidents which prove there is a law in Elfland by breaking it. The story of The Necromancer seems one that might stop at any point; it lacks the simple architecture of the old stories with their chorus, little recurrences and triads of brothers. Mr. Ingold should remember that true miracles are most inscrutable standing in the glare of the sun. Some other stories in this book, which are not fairy-tales, show ability, but we advise Mr. Ingold strongly to go on writing about magicians. He has unquestionable imagination.
When we read the title of Mr. Chapman’s little book, Proverbs Improved (John Lane), we had a momentary hope that the proverbs really were improved, for there is ample room for improvement in what seems to be, with few exceptions, the crystallised wisdom of cowards. “Waste not, want not,” “A fool and his money are soon parted,” these and the majority of their like seem always texts from the Bible of Laodicaea, the maxims of the comfortable who never know either the joy of danger or the joy of joy. Mr. Chapman does indeed rebel, by a verse in praise of wandering against the maxim “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” and we fully agree with him. A stone which had the unwonted pleasure of a good roll would know better than to settle down as a botanical “collector.” It would leave that to gravestones. “All is not gold that glitters,” he accepts, however, in all its infamy-as if, to the healthy soul of youth, glittering were not infinitely better than being common gold. Mr. Chapman has, unfortunately, no really revolutionary design. Both his verses and Miss Grace May’s designs are graceful and appropriate and neither pretend to be anything more. A good specimen of both is on the page illustrating the proverb “Faint heart never won fair lady.” The existence of this saying, again, is a singular proof of the power of masculine concealment, for certainly if it had been true no fair lady would ever have been won in this world.
G.K.C.
“Puritan and Anglican”
—December 15, 1900, The Speaker
Puritan And Anglican. By Edward Dowden. London: Kegan Paul.
Professor Dowden’s new book, Puritan and Anglican, deals with the literary aspect of the two great movements of the seventeenth century, the political aspect of which was represented by the Civil War. The word “Anglican” is a little misleading, and even, in these days of Church crises, alarming. We cannot help thinking that Professor Dowden would have done better to have employed the loose, but familiar, phrase “Cavalier” for the loyalist section, despite the fact that it calls up rather humorous images of George Herbert swaggering in big top-boots, and Jeremy Taylor draining flagons and fighting watchmen.
The reader need go no further than the first page in order to convince himself that Dowden has a grip on the whole subject. Such a sentence as this on the Elizabethan age, “The literature of pleasure never attained to such seriousness,” has a fine and scornful edge for the present age, of which it may be truly said that the literature of pain never attained so garrulous a frivolity. Professor Dowden, as a great Shakesperian student has, in studying the Puritans and Cavaliers, the enormous advantage of thoroughly comprehending the fountain-head.
While Professor Dowden fully realises the broad and noble ideals of the school who may be called the Cavalier mystics, such as Vaughan and Sir Thomas Browne, he does full justice to the Puritans. We hardly think, however, that he quite realises one great point of difference between the Cavalier religious movement and the Puritan religious movement. They were not only different movements, they were movements in two different senses of the word. It is highly probable that the religious ideals of Oliver Cromwell were infinitely inferior to those of Sir Thomas Browne. But the point of Puritanism was this: that however Cromwell might stand alone in genius or policy, his religious ideals practically united him with the meanest drummer in his army. On the other hand, we should laugh at the mere idea of Browne’s archaeological emotions and mystical charity being shared by his butler or keeping his gardener awake at night. The footmen of the learned physician were not, we may be sure, interested in the smallest degree in the question of whether the soul was miraculously remade at the Resurrection, or whether the elephant slept standing upright. The Puritan movement, if it be judged side by side with the best types of Cavalier ethics, can only appear clumsy, bitter and offensive. If justice is to be done to it, we must remember that it was a movement in the sense that we speak of the movement that produced the Reform Bill; while the movement of Cavalier idealism was merely a movement in the sense that we speak of the movement that produced The Yellow Book. This element in the matter, the question of the numbers involved, is rather kept out of sight by Professor Dowden’s constant comparison of the two schools. It is, indeed, an element in history that we constantly forget, that we forget when we talk of the Athenians as democrats, instead of as aristocrats ruling crowds of slaves, or when we compare the morality of a mob of early Christians with the morality of a single pagan like Marcus Aurelius. It is not only important in any historic crisis whether the voting was black or white, it is also important whether there was, in election language, a heavy poll. Of the various movements whereby new masses of men have been brought on to the stage of serious action Puritanism was one of the most remarkable. It had the unique value of theology, that it brought a philosophical problem of some sort to knock at every man’s door. On the other hand, it had all the disadvantages of a revolution. Cavalier idealism had all the advantages of a fad.
Il libretto del signor Thomas Cobb, The Bountiful Lady; o, Come Mary fu Mutata da Bambina assai Infelice in una assai Felice (Grant Richards) è divertente a suo modo e la moralità non vi è oscenamente in vista. Tuttavia, siamo un po’ stanchi dell’enorme quantità di libri diretti dagli adulti contro i bambini imbronciati e infelici. Considerando che due terzi dei bambini del mondo sono coraggiosamente felici nei più luridi bassifondi e cantucci e che ben un terzo degli adulti è offensivamente scontento negli alberghi di prima classe, la pretesa dell’adulto di predicare la contentezza all’infanzia ci appare un pezzo di indecente, ipocrita impudenza. Il signor Cobb, tuttavia, può addurre la solida pretesa drammatica di star soltanto descrivendo un individuo, e la piccola fiaba del bambino a cui non piaceva mai nulla una volta ottenuto è insieme spassosa e proficua, se ricordiamo sempre che è assai più applicabile agli uomini che ai bambini. Se gli adulti sono utili a modo loro (come possiamo generosamente ammettere) per insegnare ai bambini a lavorare, i bambini sono altrettanto specialisti nell’insegnare all’adulto a giocare.
Il signor John Ingold ha un istinto poetico assai genuino e tale da renderlo adatto a scrivere fiabe (forse la forma d’arte più alta), ma non ha compreso in modo del tutto sufficiente la natura della forma letteraria in questione. Le sue immagini e la sua allegoria sono confuse e malsicure, ora audaci e ora insignificanti. L’intera essenza della vera fiaba è che essa accade non di notte, come una storia di fantasmi, ma in pieno giorno: che le figure e gli episodi più assurdi risaltino chiari, spavaldi e inconsapevoli, i legittimi abitanti di un pianeta senza legge. Questa nitida fattura, questo semplice raggruppamento è assolutamente essenziale a una buona fiaba, e talvolta il signor Ingold nei suoi Glimpses from Wonderland (John Long) davvero lo consegue. La frase seguente è un pezzo di schietta carpenteria letteraria che coglie in pieno il chiodo giusto quasi col martello di Stevenson:-
«Su un trono, formato di uomini contorti mutati in pietra e in cui migliaia di occhi sinistri brillavano come smeraldi, rubini e zaffiri, giaceva il Negromante.» Questa è un’immagine chiara; ma altrove non possiamo formarci alcuna immagine di ciò che accade, creature dai nomi alla Lewis Carroll che recano lacrime di vedove, l’anima di un uomo tolta dal suo corpo come mero ripensamento: questi sono episodi futili e malformati che provano l’esistenza di una legge nel Paese degli Elfi infrangendola. La storia del Negromante sembra una di quelle che potrebbero fermarsi in qualsiasi punto; le manca la semplice architettura delle vecchie storie con il loro coro, le piccole ricorrenze e le triadi di fratelli. Il signor Ingold dovrebbe ricordare che i veri miracoli sono più imperscrutabili quando stanno nel bagliore del sole. Alcune altre storie in questo libro, che non sono fiabe, mostrano abilità, ma consigliamo caldamente al signor Ingold di continuare a scrivere di maghi. Egli possiede un’immaginazione indiscutibile.
Quando leggemmo il titolo del libretto del signor Chapman, Proverbs Improved (John Lane), avemmo una momentanea speranza che i proverbi fossero davvero migliorati, poiché v’è ampio spazio di miglioramento in quella che sembra essere, con poche eccezioni, la saggezza cristallizzata dei codardi. «Chi non spreca non manca», «Uno sciocco e il suo denaro presto si separano»: queste e la maggior parte delle loro simili sembrano sempre testi tratti dalla Bibbia di Laodicea, le massime dei benestanti che non conoscono mai né la gioia del pericolo né la gioia della gioia. Il signor Chapman effettivamente si ribella, con un verso in lode del vagabondare contro la massima «Pietra che rotola non fa muschio», e siamo pienamente d’accordo con lui. Una pietra che avesse l’inconsueto piacere di una bella rotolata saprebbe far di meglio che sistemarsi come «collezionista» botanico. Lascerebbe ciò alle pietre tombali. «Non è tutto oro quel che luccica» egli accetta, tuttavia, in tutta la sua infamia, come se, per la sana anima della giovinezza, il luccicare non fosse infinitamente meglio dell’essere comune oro. Il signor Chapman non ha, purtroppo, alcun disegno davvero rivoluzionario. Tanto i suoi versi quanto i disegni di Miss Grace May sono graziosi e appropriati e nessuno dei due pretende di essere qualcosa di più. Un buon esemplare di entrambi è nella pagina che illustra il proverbio «Cuore timido non conquistò mai bella dama». L’esistenza di questo detto, ancora una volta, è una singolare prova del potere della dissimulazione maschile, poiché certamente, se fosse stato vero, nessuna bella dama sarebbe mai stata conquistata in questo mondo.
G.K.C.
«Puritano e anglicano»
—15 dicembre 1900, The Speaker
Puritano e anglicano. Di Edward Dowden. Londra: Kegan Paul.
Il nuovo libro del professor Dowden, Puritano e anglicano, tratta dell’aspetto letterario dei due grandi movimenti del Seicento, il cui aspetto politico fu rappresentato dalla Guerra Civile. La parola «anglicano» è un po’ fuorviante e persino, in questi giorni di crisi ecclesiastiche, allarmante. Non possiamo fare a meno di pensare che il professor Dowden avrebbe fatto meglio a impiegare la vaga, ma familiare, espressione «Cavaliere» per la fazione lealista, malgrado il fatto che essa evochi immagini piuttosto comiche di George Herbert che si pavoneggia in grandi stivaloni, e di Jeremy Taylor che scola boccali e fa a botte con le guardie notturne.
Il lettore non ha bisogno di andare oltre la prima pagina per convincersi che Dowden ha una salda presa sull’intero argomento. Una frase come questa sull’età elisabettiana, «La letteratura del piacere non raggiunse mai una tale serietà», ha un taglio fine e sprezzante per l’età presente, della quale si può dire con verità che la letteratura del dolore non raggiunse mai una così garrula frivolezza. Il professor Dowden, da grande studioso di Shakespeare, ha, nello studiare i puritani e i cavalieri, l’enorme vantaggio di comprendere a fondo la sorgente originaria.
Mentre il professor Dowden coglie pienamente gli ampi e nobili ideali della scuola che si può chiamare dei mistici cavalieri, come Vaughan e Sir Thomas Browne, egli rende piena giustizia ai puritani. Difficilmente pensiamo, tuttavia, che egli colga del tutto un grande punto di differenza fra il movimento religioso cavaliere e il movimento religioso puritano. Non erano soltanto movimenti diversi, erano movimenti in due diversi sensi della parola. È altamente probabile che gli ideali religiosi di Oliver Cromwell fossero infinitamente inferiori a quelli di Sir Thomas Browne. Ma il punto del puritanesimo era questo: che per quanto Cromwell potesse stare solo quanto a genio o a politica, i suoi ideali religiosi lo univano in pratica al più umile tamburino del suo esercito. D’altro canto, rideremmo alla sola idea che le emozioni archeologiche e la mistica carità di Browne fossero condivise dal suo maggiordomo o tenessero sveglio il suo giardiniere di notte. I valletti del dotto medico non erano, possiamo esserne certi, interessati nel più piccolo grado alla questione se l’anima fosse miracolosamente rifatta alla Resurrezione, o se l’elefante dormisse in piedi. Il movimento puritano, se giudicato fianco a fianco con i migliori tipi dell’etica cavaliera, non può che apparire goffo, amaro e offensivo. Se gli si deve rendere giustizia, dobbiamo ricordare che fu un movimento nel senso in cui parliamo del movimento che produsse la legge di Riforma; mentre il movimento dell’idealismo cavaliere fu soltanto un movimento nel senso in cui parliamo del movimento che produsse The Yellow Book. Questo elemento della faccenda, la questione dei numeri implicati, è piuttosto tenuto fuori vista dal costante paragone che il professor Dowden fa fra le due scuole. È, in verità, un elemento della storia che dimentichiamo di continuo, che dimentichiamo quando parliamo degli ateniesi come democratici, invece che come aristocratici che governavano folle di schiavi, o quando paragoniamo la moralità di una massa di primi cristiani con la moralità di un singolo pagano come Marco Aurelio. Non è importante soltanto, in ogni crisi storica, se il voto fu bianco o nero, è importante anche se vi fu, in linguaggio elettorale, un’alta affluenza alle urne. Fra i vari movimenti mediante i quali nuove masse di uomini sono state portate sulla scena dell’azione seria, il puritanesimo fu uno dei più notevoli. Ebbe il valore unico della teologia, di portare un problema filosofico di qualche sorta a bussare alla porta di ogni uomo. D’altro canto, ebbe tutti gli svantaggi di una rivoluzione. L’idealismo cavaliere ebbe tutti i vantaggi di una moda passeggera.
In dealing with the Religio Medici Professor Dowden is just and sympathetic, but not frantic with admiration, as he ought to be. A man can always find fresh and noble principles of criticism in a work that he really loves, and Professor Dowden’s Sir Thomas Browne leaves us vaguely unsatisfied. He can see that Browne was an exalted mystic, but he does not give the peculiar flavour of his mysticism, a mysticism which, to our mind, owed much to his literary style. Style, in his sense, did not mean merely sound, but an attempt to give some twist of wit or symbolism to every clause or parenthesis: when he went over his work again he did not merely polish brass, he fitted in gold. This habit of working with a magnifying-glass, this turning and twisting of minor words, is the true parent of mysticism, for the mystic is not (as Professor Dowden, in this essay, seems to indicate) a man who reverences large things so much as a man who reverences small ones, who reduces himself to a point, without parts or magnitude, so that to him the grass is really a forest and the grasshopper a dragon. Little things please great minds.
Professor Dowden’s study of George Herbert is altogether admirable. Nothing in the book is better than the fine passage in which he points out that Herbert’s ideal of a priest, “amiably inquisitorial and benevolently despotic,” was suited to any other age rather than that crisis of strenuous individualism. But perhaps Professor Dowden takes Herbert’s political aspect too seriously. Herbert was a child in the best sense of the word. His Temple was built with a box of bricks. His charm and power lie not in his views on any subject, but in that infantile familiarity with celestial things which made him, with an almost irreverent lightheartedness, praise his Creator in rebuses and charades. We may leave him safely in a divine nursery. Sir Thomas Browne was a grown man, grey with learning and experience, but the two had this in common, that they both suggest the idea of shelter; to them the Church was a fortress and storehouse of learning, dignity and peace. And as we think of this image and seek to fairly appreciate the two schools, there cannot but rise before us the terrible scene in Grace Abounding in which Bunyan, cowering in the church, was struck down by a blinding fear that the church itself would fall down upon him, because his conscience was not clear.
With Professor Dowden’s forcible study of Bunyan no fault can be found, but in his long and able treatment of Milton we do not by any means always find ourselves in agreement with him. Especially we fail to follow his attempt to prove the spirit and theories of Paradise Lost to be mainly Hebraic and Scriptural. To our mind Lecky’s European Morals and Dante’s Divine Comedy are vastly more similar than the beauty of the Old Testament and the beauty of Paradise Lost. There are no theories in the Old Testament. The conception that gives a grand artistic unity to the Hebrew books, the conception of a great and mysterious protagonist toiling amid cloud and darkness towards an end of which only fragments are revealed to his agents, has no counterpart in Milton. The “With whom hath he taken counsel?” of the prophet is not there: the God of the Old Testament never explains himself intellectually; the God of Milton never does anything else. The much-quoted object “to justify the ways of God to men” would have appeared mere ridiculous blasphemy to Isaiah. This sublime Jewish sentiment of the loneliness of God (“I have trodden the wine-press alone and of the peoples there was no man with me”) is perpetually violated in Milton, whose Deity is always clearing Himself from charges as if He were at the Old Bailey. The least superstitious of us can feel the thrill of the elemental faith of the Jews, can imagine a voice thundering out of the sky in mysterious wrath or more mysterious benediction. But who can help laughing at the idea of a voice out of the midnight sky suddenly beginning to explain itself and set right an unfortunate misunderstanding?
We wish that Professor Dowden had given the large space which he has devoted to defending the frigid and repellent Miltonic religion to a more exhaustive study of the towering and intoxicating Miltonic style. Poets commonly say something with their style vastly different and vastly superior to what they say with their mere meaning. And whenever Professor Dowden treats Milton in this aspect he would be a bold man who would seek to add anything to the judgment.
Perhaps the finest article in the whole book is that on Butler, the author of Hudibras. In him we see the gradual chilling of the national heart by the ice-fiends of judgment and prudence, which went on until the nation which had once produced the two great schools of faith and valour to which Professor Dowden’s work is devoted, reached in the rationalism of the earlier eighteenth century that impartiality which is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
G. K. C.
The Christmas Story
—December 29, 1900, The Speaker
The Beloved Son. By Mrs. Francis Rye. London: Heineniann.
The success which Mrs. Rye achieves in delivering a suggestive narrative of the life of Jesus for children is all the more creditable as she has to steer her way with immeasurable cunning between the two most dominant and serious factors of the age-the profound unspirituality of the spiritualist and the astonishing irrationality of the rationalist. On the one hand she contrives to avoid dogma without the error of dogmatising against dogma. If we may venture to guess, we fancy that Mrs. Rye has already suffered many things from the everlasting doctors of theology, who never fail to propound to all expositors of Jesus the same class of idiotic riddles which they once propounded to Jesus Himself. But she has successfully eluded the pack of pursuing scribes, and in this work we are no more troubled about the origin and nature of Christ than we were about the origin and nature of our own mothers. There are some people who require no letters of introduction. On the other hand, again, she has been equally successful in eluding the bigotry which is in mortal fear of bigotry, the pompous orthodoxy of the agnostic. Wherever a frankly theological or supernatural story obviously assisted the portraiture of the Divine Figure, she has employed it fearlessly and with incomparable common sense. The terror in which many excellent educationalists stand of the supernatural in religious narrative certainly finds no welcome in Mrs. Rye, or in us. These worthy persons (when they are not quite mad) have no hesitation in teaching those axioms of education, the old fairy-tales. They inform children with the gravest face that a beanstalk grew up into the sky, that a giant turned into a mouse, that a pumpkin turned into a state-coach. But the imaginative and merciful wonders told in the book which has made our literature, the stories which no one can ignore who wishes to understand three sentences of our plainest prose-writers, are the wonders which are, by a unique and ludicrous timidity, excluded from education by these blameless but amusing men. Mrs. Rye has pursued the wise course of the old nurses; she has realised that a beanstalk growing up to heaven is not more surprising than a beanstalk growing at all; that water being turned into wine is not, upon the whole, so incredible as a cloud being turned into water.
Nel trattare la Religio Medici il professor Dowden è giusto e comprensivo, ma non frenetico d’ammirazione, come dovrebbe essere. Un uomo può sempre trovare freschi e nobili principi di critica in un’opera che ama davvero, e il Sir Thomas Browne del professor Dowden ci lascia vagamente insoddisfatti. Egli vede bene che Browne era un mistico esaltato, ma non ne rende il sapore peculiare del suo misticismo, un misticismo che, a nostro avviso, doveva molto al suo stile letterario. Lo stile, nel senso che egli gli dava, non significava semplicemente suono, ma il tentativo di conferire qualche guizzo d’arguzia o di simbolismo a ogni proposizione o parentesi: quando riprendeva in mano la sua opera non lucidava semplicemente l’ottone, vi incastonava l’oro. Questa abitudine di lavorare con la lente d’ingrandimento, questo rigirare e attorcigliare le parole minori, è il vero genitore del misticismo, poiché il mistico non è (come il professor Dowden, in questo saggio, pare indicare) tanto un uomo che venera le cose grandi quanto un uomo che venera le piccole, che si riduce a un punto, senza parti né grandezza, sicché per lui l’erba è realmente una foresta e la cavalletta un drago. Le piccole cose piacciono alle grandi menti.
Lo studio del professor Dowden su George Herbert è del tutto ammirevole. Nulla nel libro è migliore del bel passo in cui egli fa notare che l’ideale di sacerdote di Herbert, «amabilmente inquisitorio e benevolmente dispotico», si addiceva a qualunque altra epoca piuttosto che a quella crisi di strenuo individualismo. Ma forse il professor Dowden prende troppo sul serio l’aspetto politico di Herbert. Herbert era un fanciullo nel senso migliore della parola. Il suo Temple fu costruito con una scatola di mattoncini. Il suo fascino e la sua forza non stanno nelle sue vedute su alcun argomento, ma in quella infantile familiarità con le cose celesti che lo portava, con una spensieratezza quasi irriverente, a lodare il suo Creatore in rebus e sciarade. Possiamo lasciarlo tranquillamente in una divina stanza dei bambini. Sir Thomas Browne era un uomo adulto, canuto di dottrina e d’esperienza, ma i due avevano questo in comune, che entrambi suggeriscono l’idea del riparo; per loro la Chiesa era una fortezza e un magazzino di dottrina, dignità e pace. E mentre pensiamo a questa immagine e cerchiamo di apprezzare equamente le due scuole, non può non levarsi davanti a noi la terribile scena in Grace Abounding in cui Bunyan, rannicchiato nella chiesa, fu abbattuto da un accecante timore che la chiesa stessa gli crollasse addosso, perché la sua coscienza non era pulita.
Allo studio vigoroso del professor Dowden su Bunyan non si può trovare difetto, ma nella sua lunga e abile trattazione di Milton non ci troviamo affatto sempre d’accordo con lui. In particolare, non riusciamo a seguire il suo tentativo di dimostrare che lo spirito e le teorie del Paradiso Perduto siano principalmente ebraici e scritturali. A nostro avviso, gli European Morals di Lecky e la Divina Commedia di Dante sono assai più simili tra loro di quanto lo siano la bellezza dell’Antico Testamento e la bellezza del Paradiso Perduto. Non ci sono teorie nell’Antico Testamento. La concezione che conferisce una grande unità artistica ai libri ebraici, la concezione di un grande e misterioso protagonista che si affatica tra nube e tenebra verso un fine di cui solo frammenti sono rivelati ai suoi agenti, non ha alcun corrispettivo in Milton. Il «Con chi si è egli consigliato?» del profeta non c’è: il Dio dell’Antico Testamento non si spiega mai intellettualmente; il Dio di Milton non fa mai altro. Il tanto citato proposito «di giustificare le vie di Dio agli uomini» sarebbe apparso a Isaia mera e ridicola bestemmia. Questo sublime sentimento ebraico della solitudine di Dio («Ho pigiato il tino da solo e dei popoli non vi era alcuno con me») è perpetuamente violato in Milton, la cui Divinità è sempre a discolparsi dalle accuse come se si trovasse all’Old Bailey. Anche il meno superstizioso tra noi può avvertire il brivido dell’elementare fede degli Ebrei, può immaginare una voce che tuona giù dal cielo in misteriosa ira o in più misteriosa benedizione. Ma chi può trattenersi dal ridere all’idea di una voce dal cielo di mezzanotte che d’improvviso si mette a spiegarsi e a raddrizzare uno sfortunato malinteso?
Vorremmo che il professor Dowden avesse dedicato l’ampio spazio che ha consacrato a difendere la fredda e repellente religione miltoniana a uno studio più esauriente del torreggiante e inebriante stile miltoniano. I poeti dicono comunemente, con il loro stile, qualcosa di enormemente diverso e di enormemente superiore a ciò che dicono con il mero significato. E ogni volta che il professor Dowden tratta Milton sotto questo aspetto, sarebbe un uomo temerario chi cercasse di aggiungere alcunché al suo giudizio.
Forse l’articolo migliore di tutto il libro è quello su Butler, l’autore dell’Hudibras. In lui vediamo il graduale raffreddarsi del cuore nazionale a opera dei demoni di ghiaccio del giudizio e della prudenza, che proseguì finché la nazione che un tempo aveva prodotto le due grandi scuole della fede e del valore alle quali è dedicata l’opera del professor Dowden raggiunse, nel razionalismo del primo Settecento, quell’imparzialità che è un nome pomposo per l’indifferenza, la quale è un nome elegante per l’ignoranza.
G. K. C.
Il Racconto di Natale
—29 dicembre 1900, The Speaker
The Beloved Son. Della signora Francis Rye. Londra: Heineniann.
Il successo che la signora Rye consegue nell’offrire ai bambini un suggestivo racconto della vita di Gesù è tanto più meritorio in quanto ella deve dirigere la propria rotta con incommensurabile astuzia tra i due fattori più dominanti e più gravi dell’epoca: la profonda inspiritualità dello spiritualista e la stupefacente irrazionalità del razionalista. Da un lato ella riesce a evitare il dogma senza cadere nell’errore di dogmatizzare contro il dogma. Se ci è lecito azzardare un’ipotesi, immaginiamo che la signora Rye abbia già patito molte cose dagli eterni dottori della teologia, i quali non mancano mai di proporre a tutti gli espositori di Gesù la stessa categoria di idioti indovinelli che un tempo proposero a Gesù stesso. Ma ella ha eluso con successo il branco degli scribi inseguitori, e in quest’opera non ci angustiamo più intorno all’origine e alla natura di Cristo di quanto ci angustiassimo intorno all’origine e alla natura delle nostre stesse madri. Vi sono persone che non abbisognano di lettere di presentazione. D’altra parte, ancora, ella è riuscita ugualmente a eludere il bigottismo che ha un mortale timore del bigottismo, la pomposa ortodossia dell’agnostico. Ovunque un racconto francamente teologico o soprannaturale giovasse manifestamente al ritratto della Figura Divina, ella l’ha impiegato senza timore e con incomparabile buon senso. Il terrore in cui molti eccellenti pedagogisti tengono il soprannaturale nel racconto religioso non trova certo alcuna accoglienza nella signora Rye, né in noi. Queste degne persone (quando non sono del tutto pazze) non esitano a insegnare quegli assiomi dell’educazione, le vecchie fiabe. Informano i bambini con la faccia più grave che un fagiolo crebbe fino al cielo, che un gigante si trasformò in un topo, che una zucca si trasformò in una carrozza di stato. Ma i prodigi immaginosi e misericordiosi narrati nel libro che ha fatto la nostra letteratura, le storie che nessuno può ignorare se vuole comprendere tre frasi dei nostri più semplici prosatori, sono i prodigi che, per un’unica e ridicola timidezza, questi irreprensibili ma divertenti uomini escludono dall’educazione. La signora Rye ha seguito la saggia via delle vecchie balie; ha compreso che un fagiolo che cresce fino al cielo non è più sorprendente di un fagiolo che cresce affatto; che l’acqua mutata in vino non è, tutto sommato, così incredibile quanto una nube mutata in acqua.
The best element in Mrs. Rye’s work lies probably in the mere names of the chapters. This cannot be dismissed as a small matter, if only because Christianity itself conquered not by its miracles nor its doctrines, but by its names. “The Son of Man”—“The Kingdom of Heaven”— humanity will have exhausted a thousand theologies and philosophies before it has exhausted these. And in this faculty of naming, which is itself a kind of poetic definition, Mrs. Rye shows her best inspiration. We were fully convinced that the book was in some degree a good one, from the mere fact that the first chapter was called “Christmas Day.” These two words express better than any religious periphrasis the peculiar richness and intensity which clings round the story of Bethlehem. They express that hilarious and obvious reconciliation which destroys the utterly fanciful opposition between Paganism and Christianity, the reconciliation under which Christianity drops its affectation of rigour and Paganism its affectation of frivolity. Above all, it expresses that quality of instantaneousness, of urgency and excitement, which distinguishes Christmas from so many of the earth’s festivals: the sentiment that it does not celebrate some event a thousand years back, but some event that has just happened, some event that happens every year.
Again, Mrs. Rye is fortunate in her title for the chapter on the parables, “The Wonderful Stories He Told.” By a magnificent and justifiable contempt, the word “parable,” dear to the Sunday-school teacher, is entirely omitted. We are not told that it is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, nor provoked, like the little boy in the anecdote, to assert that it is a heavenly story with no earthly meaning. The earthly meaning is primarily narrated and emphasised and this is profoundly right, for it is the whole point of the parabolic method that if the earthly meaning fail to touch the heart and head the spiritual meaning is useless and worthless. If a woman were really indifferent to the loss of sixpence, if shepherds were diverted humorously with the thought of a lost sheep in the snow, if sowers, instead of scattering the seed, laid it delicately with a pair of tweazers in the right spot, if fathers were really in the habit of serving up to their sons an elegantly grilled stone, preceded by a fish-course of boiled serpent, the parables would be empty and immoral. It is as stories that they are primarily valuable, as pictures of the truths of human life, and as stories they touch that profound need for stories that has flowed everlastingly out of the East. It seems to remind us that Christ sat down to teach. The one connecting link between the Book of Job and the Arabian Nights lies in the fact that the Oriental author must have sat down to tell them both.
The title of the last chapter, “How in the End He Won,” strikes the true note of Mrs. Rye’s story. She largely succeeds in giving to Jesus His neglected place at the head of the heroes of mankind. She has told the story as if it were new in all men’s ears: the only possible justification for telling it at all. Thus the noble but familiar figure is gilded with a colour of dawn which is not common in devotional works. It is the deepest of our tragedies that we do not feel the great revolution which founded modern civilisation as a revolution at all. There was more compliment in those who crucified Christ as a novelty than in those who worship Him as a commonplace.
The passage which Mrs. Rye writes about “Darkness” shows that she has a fine literary instinct. Yet the chief fault we have to find with her lies in the fact that she scarcely reports enough of the actual diction of Jesus. That diction is not to be distorted or neglected on the supposition that it exists solely for the furtherance of truths. The words of Christ were like the lilies of which He spoke. They were doubtless not produced by any conscious artistic process, but they have unfathomable artistic value. They toiled not, neither did they spin. But Epipsychidion in all its glory is not arrayed like one of these.
G. K. C.
Ad Astra—January 5, 1901, The Speaker
Ad Astra. By Charles Whitworth Wynne. London: Grant Richards.
“Let not his arrogance go unreproved.”—Ad Astra.
Of the novel methods by which this work has been brought to the public notice we will say little. Suffice it to say that until lately we have been under the impression that “Ad Astra” was a kind of soap. It is, however, a poem, though soap would probably be more poetical. With every allowance for difference of taste and the strongest natural leaning towards lenience in criticism, we cannot understand why this work should have gone into several editions. It is a long, rambling poem which starts from the subject of natural landscape, wanders through love, theology, and Imperial politics, and seems unable to fix itself firmly even upon a prejudice, not to speak of an idea. A poem may be written about everything, but not about things in general. To a poet who sings of the universe, the universe must be for the moment one thing-as much one thing as a daisy or a butterfly. Thus Lucretius had a vision of the universe; Dante had a vision of the universe. Mr. Wynne simply has a stroll through the universe, picking up odds and ends for no conceivable reason. If we ourselves wrote a poem which opened with a discussion on tobacco, went on to describe the death of Julius Caesar, and ended with a comparison between fighting duels and learning Hindustani the whole work would be something like Ad Astra. Mr. Wynne should either write on some detail that interests him or wait till he has the vision of everything. We may warn him, however, that the vision of everything is a rather curious thing, and a man who has it generally either dies of terror or is happy for the rest of his days.
L’elemento migliore nell’opera della signora Rye risiede probabilmente nei semplici titoli dei capitoli. Ciò non può essere liquidato come cosa da poco, non foss’altro perché il Cristianesimo stesso vinse non con i suoi miracoli né con le sue dottrine, ma con i suoi nomi. «Il Figlio dell’Uomo», «Il Regno dei Cieli»: l’umanità avrà esaurito mille teologie e filosofie prima di aver esaurito questi. E in questa facoltà di dare nomi, che è essa stessa una sorta di definizione poetica, la signora Rye mostra la sua migliore ispirazione. Fummo pienamente convinti che il libro fosse in qualche misura un buon libro, dal solo fatto che il primo capitolo era intitolato «Il giorno di Natale». Queste due parole esprimono meglio di ogni perifrasi religiosa la peculiare ricchezza e intensità che si stringe attorno alla storia di Betlemme. Esse esprimono quella ilare e ovvia riconciliazione che distrugge la del tutto fantasiosa opposizione fra il paganesimo e il Cristianesimo, la riconciliazione sotto la quale il Cristianesimo depone la sua affettazione di rigore e il paganesimo la sua affettazione di frivolezza. Soprattutto, essa esprime quella qualità di istantaneità, di urgenza e di eccitazione, che distingue il Natale da tante feste della terra: il sentimento che esso non celebra un evento di mille anni fa, ma un evento appena accaduto, un evento che accade ogni anno.
Di nuovo, la signora Rye è felice nel titolo per il capitolo sulle parabole, «Le meravigliose storie che Egli raccontò». Per un magnifico e giustificabile disprezzo, la parola «parabola», cara al maestro della scuola domenicale, è interamente omessa. Non ci si dice che è una storia terrena con un significato celeste, né siamo indotti, come il fanciullo dell’aneddoto, ad affermare che è una storia celeste senza alcun significato terreno. Il significato terreno è narrato e sottolineato in primo luogo, e ciò è profondamente giusto, poiché è tutto il senso del metodo parabolico che, se il significato terreno non riesce a toccare il cuore e la testa, il significato spirituale è inutile e privo di valore. Se una donna fosse davvero indifferente alla perdita di sei pence, se i pastori si divertissero con umorismo al pensiero di una pecora smarrita nella neve, se i seminatori, invece di spargere il seme, lo deponessero delicatamente con un paio di pinzette nel punto giusto, se i padri avessero davvero l’abitudine di servire ai loro figli una pietra elegantemente grigliata, preceduta da un piatto di pesce a base di serpente bollito, le parabole sarebbero vuote e immorali. È come storie che esse sono anzitutto preziose, come immagini delle verità della vita umana, e come storie toccano quel profondo bisogno di storie che è sgorgato eternamente dall’Oriente. Sembra ricordarci che il Cristo si sedette a insegnare. L’unico anello di congiunzione fra il Libro di Giobbe e Le mille e una notte sta nel fatto che l’autore orientale deve essersi seduto a raccontarli entrambi.
Il titolo dell’ultimo capitolo, «Come alla fine Egli vinse», coglie la vera nota della storia della signora Rye. Ella riesce in gran parte a dare a Gesù il Suo trascurato posto a capo degli eroi dell’umanità. Ha raccontato la storia come se fosse nuova alle orecchie di tutti gli uomini: la sola giustificazione possibile per raccontarla affatto. Così la nobile ma familiare figura è dorata di un colore d’Alba che non è comune nelle opere devozionali. È la più profonda delle nostre tragedie che non sentiamo affatto come rivoluzione la grande rivoluzione che fondò la civiltà moderna. Vi fu più omaggio in coloro che crocifissero il Cristo come una novità che in coloro che Lo adorano come un luogo comune.
Il passo che la signora Rye scrive sulle «Tenebre» mostra che ella ha un fine istinto letterario. Eppure il principale difetto che dobbiamo rimproverarle sta nel fatto che ella riporta a malapena abbastanza dell’effettiva dizione di Gesù. Quella dizione non va distorta né trascurata nella supposizione che essa esista unicamente per il progresso di verità. Le parole del Cristo erano come i gigli di cui Egli parlò. Non furono senza dubbio prodotte da alcun conscio processo artistico, ma hanno un insondabile valore artistico. Non faticavano, né filavano. Ma Epipsychidion in tutta la sua gloria non è vestito come uno di questi.
G. K. C.
Ad Astra—5 gennaio 1901, The Speaker
Ad Astra. Di Charles Whitworth Wynne. Londra: Grant Richards.
«Che la sua arroganza non resti senza rimprovero.»—Ad Astra.
Dei nuovi metodi con cui quest’opera è stata portata all’attenzione del pubblico diremo poco. Basti dire che fino a poco tempo fa eravamo sotto l’impressione che «Ad Astra» fosse una sorta di sapone. Si tratta, tuttavia, di un poema, benché il sapone sarebbe probabilmente più poetico. Con ogni concessione alla differenza di gusto e con la più forte inclinazione naturale all’indulgenza nella critica, non riusciamo a capire perché quest’opera sia dovuta andare in diverse edizioni. È un poema lungo e sconclusionato che parte dal soggetto del paesaggio naturale, vagabonda attraverso l’amore, la teologia e la politica imperiale, e sembra incapace di fissarsi saldamente persino su un pregiudizio, per non dire su un’idea. Un poema può essere scritto su qualsiasi cosa, ma non sulle cose in generale. Per un poeta che canta l’universo, l’universo deve essere per il momento una cosa sola, tanto una cosa sola quanto una margherita o una farfalla. Così Lucrezio ebbe una visione dell’universo; Dante ebbe una visione dell’universo. Il signor Wynne fa semplicemente una passeggiata attraverso l’universo, raccattando cianfrusaglie senza alcuna ragione concepibile. Se noi stessi scrivessimo un poema che si aprisse con una discussione sul tabacco, proseguisse a descrivere la morte di Giulio Cesare, e terminasse con un paragone fra il battersi in duello e l’imparare l’indostano, l’intera opera sarebbe qualcosa di simile ad Ad Astra. Il signor Wynne dovrebbe o scrivere su qualche dettaglio che lo interessa o attendere finché non abbia la visione di ogni cosa. Possiamo avvertirlo, tuttavia, che la visione di ogni cosa è una cosa assai curiosa, e un uomo che la possiede generalmente o muore di terrore o è felice per il resto dei suoi giorni.
Chaos in the scheme, however, could be easily forgiven if there were merit in the parts. But we must confess that reading these long metrical meditations reminds us of nothing so much as drinking innumerable gallons of luke-warm water. The cold water of reason is good and the boiling water of religious passion is good; but this is not fully and sincerely either logical or religious. It is made up of the reflections of one of those gentlemen who occupy their very numerous spare hours by having spiritual doubts with which no reasonable person ought to be troubled and crushing them with replies with which no reasonable person ought to be satisfied.
Of the diction very few examples will suffice. Mr. Wynne in the opening verses discusses in his vague way the question of Nature and her sympathetic or unsympathetic attitude towards man. He describes what happens when “we look behind her lustrous eyes,” which would seem a delicate surgical proceeding:-
“But when we look behind her lustrous eyes We find scant echo to our deepening sighs.”
It would surely be a little unreasonable of us to expect to find echoes behind a person’s eyes. We have heard of “cavernous eyes,” but not so cavernous as all that.
Later on, he writes:-
“Though factory smoke and noise of whirring looms Obscure his perfect vision for a while.”
We do not quite understand why noise should obscure his vision, but we can understand it, of course, if the echoes get into his eyes. He is evidently constructed on the same physiological principle as Bottom the Weaver, who went to see a noise that he heard.
This extraordinary confusion of mind runs riot in the diction. In a simple-minded passage about British Imperialism being the refuge of the Jews, which we fear may “produce in the sinful a smile,” Mr. Wynne says—
“For if we be not of the lost Ten Tribes At least we have procured them harbourage”
If the “Tribes” are still lost it is a little difficult to tell whether we have procured them harbourage or not.
Lastly, to complete our examples in technique, we should be pleased to offer the customary sewing-machine for the explanation of the following:-
“O Father give me back my childhood’s Faith, That faith that saw Thee in the brightening cloud And deemed it but the mirror of thy breath.”
This would certainly seem to be faith of a very high and difficult order.
If these were mere verbal errors or mixed metaphors, they would matter little. The trouble is that they are produced not by a number of images jostling each other, but by the entire absence of any image at all. What picture in the mind either of writer or reader can possibly be made up of echoes behind eyes, of clouds that are like mirrors, of mirrors that reflect breath? If we spoke of finding an echo in a bag of flour or a cloud that was like a single eyeglass, the image would not be more shapeless and devoid of suggestion.
The truth is that we should have the greatest respect for Mr. Wynne’s work, with all its crudities, if it bore the impress even of the vulgarest fanaticism. If he had one thing which could be called an opinion we could forgive him everything. But he seems to dawdle round all sides of a question, like a drunkard going continually round a house because he cannot find the door. For example, he enunciates, as we have said, a rather innocently complimentary view of the Jews, and declares that “God still loveth them,” because “whate’er they touch turns golden in their hands”—a somewhat poor and snobbish reason for doing justice to the countrymen of Isaiah. But while in this passage he seems as Semitic as a South African Imperialist, we find him a few verses back offering in a confused way an insult to Israel of which M. Drumont would be ashamed. He says they have a “shifty trace” in their eyes and that they are—
“Wanderers upon the face of God’s fair earth, And cursed, like Cain, with murder from their birth.”
Whether this means that a Jew is from his birth continually murdering, or continually being murdered, we cannot tell; but in either case it seems a trifle indecent.
This is only one instance, but it is typical of Mr. Wynne’s attitude on all subjects. It is not that he does not say anything, but that he does not think anything—that is the outrage.
It would be difficult to say which is the most unpoetical line in the poem. In a work which contains such lines as “We judge from our own standpoint—that of sin,” “Consider too, the progress man has made I” and “The atheist argues that the Christian Creed,” the difficulty will be easily understood. But, upon the whole, we think the palm must be given to the couplet:-
“The natural order of development Is from the unit to the family.”
There are some lines, indeed, which might lay Mr. Wynne open to a severer charge than that of being prosaic. We do not believe him to be guilty of deliberate plagiarism. But certainly a great deal of carelessness and vagueness of mind is required to excuse such lines as “The paths of pleasure flower but to the grave”—“For God reveals himself in many ways” and the almost precise repetition of one of Mr. William Watson’s phrases in the line “lights to the lily, reddens to the rose.”
We wish to say as little as possible on the subject of the long, loose, and wearisome argument on the subject of religion which takes up so many pages of Ad Astra. We will only remark that we sincerely hope that the time will come when preachers, hymn-writers, and pious poets will realise that there is a very deep and menacing truth at the bottom of the commandment, “Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” That a man shall not use the strongest words so as to make them weak is emphatically one of the ten commandments of literature. The law against taking the Name in vain is, for some strange reason, generally understood as dealing with jokes upon serious subjects. But a joke is not necessarily vain, it is generally highly significant. Job and Elijah jest constantly on serious subjects. But to use the greatest names in our language, the words that are, as it were, too great for the mouth, again and again like a worn-out stamp, in trivial arguments, in cocksure explanations, in mere rhetorical padding; this, which resounds from hundreds of pulpits and sacred lyres, is indeed, to our minds, the sin against the Name, and it is this that Mr. Wynne never ceases from committing.
Il caos nell’impianto, tuttavia, si potrebbe facilmente perdonare se vi fosse merito nelle parti. Ma dobbiamo confessare che leggere queste lunghe meditazioni in versi non ci ricorda nulla tanto quanto il bere innumerevoli galloni di acqua tiepida. L’acqua fredda della ragione è buona e l’acqua bollente della passione religiosa è buona; ma questa non è pienamente e sinceramente né logica né religiosa. È fatta delle riflessioni di uno di quei signori che occupano le loro numerosissime ore d’ozio nutrendo dubbi spirituali di cui nessuna persona ragionevole dovrebbe darsi pena e schiacciandoli con risposte di cui nessuna persona ragionevole dovrebbe accontentarsi.
Della dizione basteranno pochissimi esempi. Il signor Wynne, nei versi d’apertura, discute a modo suo, in maniera vaga, la questione della Natura e del suo atteggiamento benevolo o malevolo verso l’uomo. Descrive ciò che accade quando «guardiamo dietro i suoi occhi lucenti», il che parrebbe una delicata operazione chirurgica:-
«Ma quando guardiamo dietro i suoi occhi lucenti scarsa eco troviamo ai nostri sospiri sempre più profondi.»
Sarebbe certo un po’ irragionevole da parte nostra aspettarci di trovare echi dietro gli occhi di una persona. Abbiamo sentito parlare di «occhi cavernosi», ma non tanto cavernosi a tal punto.
Più avanti, egli scrive:-
«Benché il fumo delle fabbriche e il rumore dei telai ronzanti offuschino per un poco la sua visione perfetta.»
Non comprendiamo bene perché il rumore debba offuscargli la vista, ma possiamo capirlo, s’intende, se gli echi gli entrano negli occhi. È evidentemente costruito secondo lo stesso principio fisiologico di Bottom il Tessitore, che andò a vedere un rumore che aveva udito.
Questa straordinaria confusione mentale imperversa nella dizione. In un passo ingenuo sull’Imperialismo britannico come rifugio degli Ebrei, che temiamo possa «suscitare nei peccatori un sorriso», il signor Wynne dice—
«Poiché se anche non siamo delle perdute Dieci Tribù, almeno abbiamo procurato loro un ricovero»
Se le «Tribù» sono ancora perdute, è un po’ difficile dire se abbiamo procurato loro un ricovero oppure no.
Infine, per completare i nostri esempi di tecnica, saremmo lieti di offrire la consueta macchina da cucire a chi sappia spiegare quanto segue:-
«O Padre, rendimi la Fede della mia fanciullezza, quella fede che Ti scorgeva nella nube che si rischiara e la riteneva null’altro che lo specchio del tuo respiro.»
Questa parrebbe certamente una fede di ordine assai elevato e difficile.
Se questi fossero meri errori verbali o metafore ibride, importerebbero poco. Il guaio è che sono prodotti non da una folla di immagini che si urtano tra loro, ma dall’assenza totale di qualsiasi immagine. Quale quadro nella mente dello scrittore o del lettore può mai formarsi di echi dietro gli occhi, di nubi che sono come specchi, di specchi che riflettono il respiro? Se parlassimo di trovare un’eco in un sacco di farina o di una nube simile a un monocolo, l’immagine non sarebbe più informe e priva di suggestione.
La verità è che avremmo il massimo rispetto per l’opera del signor Wynne, con tutte le sue crudezze, se recasse l’impronta anche del più volgare fanatismo. Se possedesse una sola cosa che si potesse chiamare un’opinione, potremmo perdonargli tutto. Ma pare che gironzoli intorno a ogni lato di una questione, come un ubriaco che gira di continuo attorno a una casa perché non riesce a trovarne la porta. Per esempio, egli enuncia, come abbiamo detto, una veduta piuttosto ingenuamente lusinghiera sugli Ebrei, e dichiara che «Dio li ama ancora», perché «tutto ciò che toccano diventa oro nelle loro mani» — una ragione alquanto meschina e snob per rendere giustizia ai compatrioti di Isaia. Ma mentre in questo passo appare semitico quanto un Imperialista sudafricano, lo troviamo pochi versi prima a rivolgere in modo confuso a Israele un insulto di cui il signor Drumont si vergognerebbe. Dice che hanno una «traccia sfuggente» negli occhi e che sono—
«Erranti sulla faccia della bella terra di Dio, e maledetti, come Caino, col delitto fin dalla nascita.»
Se ciò significhi che l’Ebreo, dalla nascita, di continuo uccide, oppure di continuo viene ucciso, non sappiamo dire; ma in entrambi i casi pare un tantino indecente.
Questo è solo un esempio, ma è tipico dell’atteggiamento del signor Wynne su ogni argomento. Non è che non dica nulla, ma che non pensa nulla — è questo lo scandalo.
Sarebbe difficile dire quale sia il verso meno poetico del poema. In un’opera che contiene versi come «Giudichiamo dal nostro punto di vista — quello del peccato», «Considera pure il progresso che l’uomo ha compiuto!» e «L’ateo sostiene che il Credo cristiano», la difficoltà si comprenderà facilmente. Ma, tutto sommato, crediamo che la palma debba andare al distico:-
«L’ordine naturale dello sviluppo va dall’unità alla famiglia.»
Vi sono, in verità, alcuni versi che potrebbero esporre il signor Wynne a un’accusa più grave di quella di essere prosaico. Non lo crediamo colpevole di plagio deliberato. Ma certo occorre una gran dose di trascuratezza e di vaghezza mentale per scusare versi come «I sentieri del piacere non fioriscono che verso la tomba» — «Poiché Dio si rivela in molti modi» e la ripetizione quasi esatta di una frase del signor William Watson nel verso «dà luce al giglio, arrossa la rosa».
Desideriamo dire il meno possibile sulla lunga, slegata e stucchevole argomentazione in materia di religione che occupa tante pagine di Ad Astra. Osserveremo soltanto che speriamo sinceramente venga il tempo in cui i predicatori, gli autori di inni e i poeti devoti si accorgeranno che c’è una verità assai profonda e minacciosa in fondo al comandamento: «Non nominare il nome del Signore Dio tuo invano». Che un uomo non debba usare le parole più forti fino a renderle deboli è, con ogni enfasi, uno dei dieci comandamenti della letteratura. La legge contro il nominare il Nome invano viene, per qualche strana ragione, generalmente intesa come riferita agli scherzi su argomenti seri. Ma uno scherzo non è necessariamente vano, è di solito assai significativo. Giobbe ed Elia scherzano di continuo su argomenti seri. Ma usare i nomi più grandi della nostra lingua, le parole che sono, per così dire, troppo grandi per la bocca, ancora e ancora come un timbro consunto, in argomentazioni banali, in spiegazioni presuntuose, in mero riempitivo retorico; questo, che risuona da centinaia di pulpiti e di lire sacre, è davvero, a nostro parere, il peccato contro il Nome, ed è questo che il signor Wynne non cessa mai di commettere.
Since the appearance, or appearances, of Ad Astra, Mr. Wynne has published a volume of lyrics. Of these we will quite only one poem, and that a short one:-
“Home returning in a shower Found that I was smiling, Just the very time and hour Most men would be riling. Thus, though Nature prove unkind, Only a poetic mind Can laugh without reviling.”
That is all. It will be noticed that Mr. Wynne is not ill satisfied with himself, despite the strange modesty which leads him to deprive the second line of a nominative personal pronoun. It is, indeed, this astonishing haughtiness of his which has led us to consider his claims at such length. Posters and sky-signs are, we are told, to be seen all over London stating that Ad Astra is the “Book of the Year,” and even, as one dark humourist (perhaps Mr. Max Beerbohm) is reported to have said “the finest religious poem of the century.” To permit this gentleman to dance upon the graves of Browning and Tennyson was a feat beyond our tolerably tough clemency. Nevertheless, we do not wish to take the matter too solemnly, and we have endeavoured to prove that we possess a “poetic mind” by a fixed endeavour to “laugh without reviling.”
G. K. C.
Mark Rutherford—January 12, 1901, The Speaker
Pages From A Journal. By Mark Rutherford. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
If there are faults to be found with Pages from a Journal they are all summed up in the title. Fragmentary, incomplete, and sometimes positively inept, they certainly have the appearance of being genuine excerpts from a diary. It may be doubted, perhaps, whether the public has much to do with diaries. The public has its own diary, the daily press, and that certainly is healthily idiotic enough to be the diary of the most romantic schoolgirl. But when an author of the genuine type of Mark Rutherford publishes such fragments they demand consideration.
In all the subjects, however, upon which these notes are written there is, unquestionably, the trace of the disadvantages of this form of composition. An idea is pursued up to a certain point and then, for no apparent reason, the pursuit is abandoned. As a trait of the diary we can perfectly understand this: the philosophical inquiry ceased because the dinner-bell rang. But if we regard these fragments as things definitely suited for publication, we are reduced to the statement that hardly one of them genuinely works out its idea. We are reduced, indeed, to the yet gloomier conviction that we ourselves can see very clearly the point around which Mark Rutherford seems blundering in comparative blindness. Let us take an instance. The author devotes one chapter to a very interesting defence of the morality of Byron, all the more striking and serious because it proceeds from a mind of the typically Puritan education and character. He maintains, with admirable truth (if we understand him rightly), that all great prophets have been largely concerned with the substitution of a “divine scale” of morals, culminating in a general magnanimity, for the trivial scale of mere negative ethics. But by a confusion natural enough from a superficial point of view, he joins on to this a claim that Byron was “sincere”—that is to say, that he was not affected or self-deceiving. Now we are perfectly ready to maintain that if Byron was sincere in this sense he was one of the most despicable curs born. His heroes certainly boast of being blase and there is nothing in the least magnanimous about being blase. Men’s souls do not expand in the cold any more than water-pipes. If we are to take Byron on his own estimate, if his heart was really withered and his power of joy gone, he cannot possibly be called a teacher of magnanimity. We might have infinite pity for his loss of freshness as we might have infinite pity for his club foot. But to ask mankind to bow down to an aristocracy of club feet would be a little unreasonable.
We believe, however, that the author’s literary and ethical instinct does not mislead him in telling him that Byron was a teacher of magnanimity. The real explanation, as it appears to us, does not seem to have struck him. Byron was magnanimous because he was self-deceptive. While he imagined that he was feeling and preaching a desolate creed of premature old age, he was really feeling and preaching the fierce joy of youth in dark and lonely and elemental things. It is the joyful spirit that loves the wilderness and the tempest: the man who is really forlorn and bitter generally takes refuge in the nearest restaurant. Byron dressed up his profound poetic pleasure in a vile dress, the funeral trappings of a vulgar stage conspirator, but the real power and charm in his work lies in the splendid affectation of a boy, which is merely the expression of that primal “delight of the eyes” to which the fiercest flames are golden and darkness itself is only too dense a purple.
Mark Rutherford leaves his defence of Byron defective and almost immoral by this hurried and misleading defence of the “sincerity” of his despair. Byron wept his way through romance after romance; but until he reached Don Juan we do not feel that he was really miserable. Then he began to laugh.
We have treated at some length this one instance of the incomplete nature of these reflections, for the sake of better explaining our meaning, but many other instances might be taken. There is, for example, an able and interesting paper on “Judas Iscariot,” but in this again the writer has not time to get to the root of the matter, and the problem is rather stated than solved. Mark Rutherford points out truly enough the mystery of the presence among Christ’s chosen of a wretch capable of betraying for a few pence and the inconsistency between the trivial dirtiness of the murder and the almost noble agony of the suicide. The explanation occurs to us as very simple. It was necessary in the dawn of the Church to put all the lieutenants of Christ into halos and describe them as living in idyllic accord. But in the New Testament we read that they contended who should be greatest, and the smallest acquaintance with small sects inspired with great ideas would tell us that there would be disagreements and rivalries bringing the body to the verge of disruption. There was, doubtless, a conservative section and an “anti-clerical” section. In some dramatic collision Judas seceded in a fury and became the deadly enemy of the whole movement. The money payment was either a distorted rumour or a mere form, a paying of “party expenses.” It is unfortunate that the tendency of all the piety of centuries should be to make the work of Christ seem to have been easier instead of more difficult. We shall never know with how much He had to strive. But we must confess that we should like to know how many times St. Peter was persuaded to rejoin the society.
Dopo l’apparizione, o le apparizioni, di Ad Astra, il signor Wynne ha pubblicato un volume di liriche. Di queste citeremo soltanto una poesia, e per giunta breve:-
«Tornando a casa sotto un acquazzone M’accorsi che stavo sorridendo, Proprio nel momento e nell’ora In cui i più s’adirerebbero. Così, benché la Natura si mostri scortese, Solo una mente poetica Può ridere senza inveire.»
Questo è tutto. Si noterà che il signor Wynne non è affatto malcontento di sé, malgrado la strana modestia che lo porta a privare il secondo verso di un pronome personale nominativo. È, in verità, questa sua stupefacente altezzosità che ci ha indotti a considerare così a lungo le sue pretese. Manifesti e insegne luminose, ci si dice, sono da vedersi per tutta Londra a proclamare che Ad Astra è il «Libro dell’Anno», e persino, come un tetro umorista (forse il signor Max Beerbohm) si racconta abbia detto, «il più bel poema religioso del secolo». Permettere a questo signore di danzare sulle tombe di Browning e Tennyson era un’impresa al di là della nostra pur discretamente robusta clemenza. Nondimeno, non desideriamo prendere la cosa troppo solennemente, e ci siamo sforzati di provare di possedere una «mente poetica» mediante un fermo tentativo di «ridere senza inveire».
G. K. C.
Mark Rutherford—12 gennaio 1901, The Speaker
Pages From A Journal. Di Mark Rutherford. Londra: T. Fisher Unwin.
Se vi sono difetti da rilevare in Pages from a Journal, essi sono tutti riassunti nel titolo. Frammentarie, incomplete e talora addirittura inette, esse hanno certamente l’aria di essere genuini estratti da un diario. Si può forse dubitare che il pubblico abbia molto a che fare con i diari. Il pubblico ha il proprio diario, la stampa quotidiana, e quella è certamente abbastanza sanamente idiota da essere il diario della più romantica delle collegiali. Ma quando un autore del genuino tipo di Mark Rutherford pubblica simili frammenti, essi esigono considerazione.
In tutti i soggetti, tuttavia, su cui queste note sono scritte vi è, indiscutibilmente, la traccia degli svantaggi di questa forma di composizione. Un’idea è perseguita fino a un certo punto e poi, senza alcuna ragione apparente, l’inseguimento è abbandonato. Come tratto del diario possiamo comprenderlo perfettamente: l’indagine filosofica cessò perché suonò la campana del pranzo. Ma se consideriamo questi frammenti come cose decisamente adatte alla pubblicazione, siamo ridotti a constatare che a stento uno di essi sviluppa genuinamente la propria idea. Siamo ridotti, anzi, alla convinzione ancor più cupa che noi stessi riusciamo a vedere assai chiaramente il punto attorno al quale Mark Rutherford sembra brancolare in relativa cecità. Prendiamo un esempio. L’autore dedica un capitolo a una difesa assai interessante della moralità di Byron, tanto più notevole e seria in quanto procede da una mente di educazione e carattere tipicamente puritani. Egli sostiene, con ammirevole verità (se lo comprendiamo rettamente), che tutti i grandi profeti si sono in gran parte occupati della sostituzione di una «scala divina» di valori morali, culminante in una generale magnanimità, alla triviale scala della mera etica negativa. Ma per una confusione abbastanza naturale da un punto di vista superficiale, egli congiunge a ciò l’affermazione che Byron era «sincero», vale a dire che non era affettato né auto-illuso. Ora, siamo perfettamente pronti a sostenere che se Byron era sincero in questo senso egli fu uno dei più spregevoli cani mai nati. I suoi eroi si vantano certamente di essere blasé e non v’è nulla di men che magnanimo nell’essere blasé. Le anime degli uomini non si dilatano al freddo più di quanto facciano i tubi dell’acqua. Se dobbiamo prendere Byron secondo la sua propria stima, se il suo cuore era davvero avvizzito e il suo potere di gioia svanito, egli non può in alcun modo essere chiamato maestro di magnanimità. Potremmo avere infinita pietà per la sua perdita di freschezza come potremmo avere infinita pietà per il suo piede equino. Ma chiedere all’umanità di inchinarsi a un’aristocrazia di piedi equini sarebbe un po’ irragionevole.
Crediamo, tuttavia, che l’istinto letterario ed etico dell’autore non lo inganni nel dirgli che Byron fu un maestro di magnanimità. La vera spiegazione, come ci appare, non sembra averlo colpito. Byron fu magnanimo perché era auto-ingannevole. Mentre immaginava di sentire e predicare un desolato credo di senilità precoce, in realtà sentiva e predicava la feroce gioia della giovinezza per le cose oscure, solitarie ed elementari. È lo spirito gioioso che ama la landa selvaggia e la tempesta: l’uomo che è davvero derelitto e amaro generalmente si rifugia nel ristorante più vicino. Byron abbigliò il suo profondo piacere poetico di una veste vile, i funerei orpelli di un volgare cospiratore da palcoscenico, ma il vero potere e fascino della sua opera sta nella splendida affettazione di un fanciullo, che è meramente l’espressione di quel primordiale «diletto degli occhi» per cui le fiamme più fiere sono dorate e le tenebre stesse non sono che un porpora troppo denso.
Mark Rutherford lascia la sua difesa di Byron difettosa e quasi immorale con questa frettolosa e fuorviante difesa della «sincerità» della sua disperazione. Byron pianse lungo tutto il suo cammino di storia dopo storia d’amore; ma finché non raggiunse il Don Giovanni non sentiamo che egli fosse davvero infelice. Allora cominciò a ridere.
Abbiamo trattato con una certa ampiezza questo singolo esempio della natura incompleta di queste riflessioni, per meglio spiegare il nostro pensiero, ma si potrebbero prendere molti altri esempi. Vi è, per esempio, un abile e interessante saggio su «Giuda Iscariota», ma anche in questo lo scrittore non ha il tempo di giungere alla radice della faccenda, e il problema è più enunciato che risolto. Mark Rutherford rileva assai giustamente il mistero della presenza, fra gli eletti del Cristo, di un miserabile capace di tradire per pochi soldi e l’incoerenza fra la triviale sordidezza dell’assassinio e l’agonia quasi nobile del suicidio. La spiegazione ci si presenta come assai semplice. Era necessario, all’alba della Chiesa, mettere tutti i luogotenenti del Cristo in aureole e descriverli come viventi in idilliaco accordo. Ma nel Nuovo Testamento leggiamo che essi contesero su chi dovesse essere il più grande, e la minima dimestichezza con le piccole sette animate da grandi idee ci direbbe che vi sarebbero stati dissensi e rivalità tali da portare il corpo sull’orlo della disgregazione. Vi era, senza dubbio, una fazione conservatrice e una fazione «anticlericale». In qualche drammatico scontro Giuda si separò in un impeto di furia e divenne il mortale nemico dell’intero movimento. Il pagamento in denaro fu o una voce distorta o una mera formalità, un pagare le «spese di partito». È increscioso che la tendenza di tutta la pietà dei secoli sia stata quella di far sembrare l’opera del Cristo più facile invece che più difficile. Non sapremo mai con quanto Egli dovette lottare. Ma dobbiamo confessare che ci piacerebbe sapere quante volte San Pietro fu persuaso a rientrare nella società.
Among other items in the book is “A Supplementary Note on the Devil.” The previous article is on “Spinoza,” and at first sight the conjunction seems a little severe. In his argument on the former question, the writer hardly sufficiently distingushes believing in devils from believing in the Devil. Here the part is certainly greater than the whole. To believe in devils is simply to believe in unclean souls and wills loose in the universe. To believe in the Devil is to believe in an infinite evil, a well of wickedness as deep as the tower of holiness is high. To us personally, we admit, it seems a healthier and more religious doctrine that goodness is the only unfathomable thing, and that he that hides himself in the well of evil will not fall eternally through homeless abysses, but will be fished out in proper season, damp, and looking very much of a fool.
G.K.C.
Woman and the Philosophers
—January 26, 1901, The Speaker
Woman: A Scientific Study And Defence. Adapted from the French of M. Alfred Fouillee by Rev. T. A. Seed. Greening and Co.
The title of the work before us is Woman: a Scientific Study and Defence. It never occurred to us before that woman stood in need of a defence of any kind; and what the women of our acquaintance would think of being made the subject of a “scientific defence” we shudder to conceive. The work which Mr. Seed has adapted from M. Fouillee contains a considerable amount of sound and suggestive argument against the scientific theories of the inferiority of woman; but the plan of the book is a mistake. Instead of attempting to base the equality of the sexes on the domestic habits of some wretched amoeba in the primeval twilight, the author should have turned on the men of science and told them, with all possible respect, that they have nothing whatever to do with questions of superiority and inferiority. Obviously they have not. Whether woman is structurally different to man is a matter of physical science, whether she is superior or inferior or equal is not a matter of physical science; it is a question of what you happen to want. Science does its duty in saying that monkeys have tails and men have not; but as for saying that it is better not to have tails, that is a matter of taste and imagination, and by no means certain even at that.
The author himself quotes incidentally a remarkable instance of this in a citation from Herbert Spencer, but he does not seem to see the full fallacy that he is trying to expose. Herbert Spencer says, truly enough, that the interest of women is generally directed rather to persons than to ideas, and gives this as showing their inferiority, since the last products of human evolution are “abstract reasoning and the abstract emotion of justice.” Here we have in full operation that strange religious dogma which crept into the minds of so many evolutionists-the notion that the last thing must be the highest. In this case it is clearly untrue. To understand a man (as many women do) is to understand one of the most complex and untranslatable cryptograms conceivable, to understand a “cause” is to understand the clumsiest thing created, a mere alphabet of thought. What is “abstract justice”? Personally we know nothing about it, except that in proportion as it becomes abstract it generally becomes unjust. If a preference for personal over abstract criticism be a mark of inferiority, the great novelist must be inferior to the political wirepuller. But all this staring common sense is swept away by the philosopher who wishes to make biology prove what it can never prove and the sole test he applies is to ask what is the last product of human evolution. By that argument playing on the typewriter would be superior to playing on the organ.
In any discussion of philosophic strictures upon women it was inevitable that Schopenhauer should be involved, though we fancy most women and most believers in womanhood would be much more annoyed by Schopenhauer’s approval than by his denunciation. When a gentleman wishes for the destruction of the human race, and may therefore, presumably, reserve his affections for such things as assassination and typhoid fever, to be regarded by him with a loving smile would be rather disquieting than complimentary. But the particular passage quoted in this book is so remarkable an instance of Schopenhauer’s astonishing literary ingenuity and still more astonishing unreality of experience and outlook, that it is worth a moment’s consideration. Women, says Schopenhauer, in effect, are the best guardians of children, because they are themselves children, “puerile, futile, limited.” Now we know what women do for children; they nearly kill themselves over them with work and anxiety; the simple and obvious way, therefore, of testing the truth of Schopenhauer’s comparison is to ask what children do for children. If the “futility” and “limitation” of a little boy of seven lead him naturally to martyr himself for another little boy of seven, then the comparison is sound. But as we all know that they lead him to kick his shins and run away with his toys, the comparison is nonsense. It is surely strange that the name of philosopher should ever have been given to a literary man, however brilliant, who was capable of basing an argument upon the amazing notion that people love what is like themselves. In fact, the whole of Schopenhauer’s theory of the childishness of women is capable of the shortest and simplest answer. If women are childish because they love children, it follows that men are womanish because they love women.
The author speaks with just contempt of these efforts to discredit women by biological parallels. If it be true that certain baboons have a large amount of the maternal instinct, rational ethics have nothing to say to it except, “So much the better for the baboons.” They may be inferior to us in other respects; so are the birds of the air. But a mortal with the wings of a bird is an angel, and a mortal with the maternal instinct is a mother.
Fra gli altri contenuti del libro vi è «Una nota supplementare sul Diavolo». L’articolo precedente è su «Spinoza», e a prima vista l’accostamento sembra un po’ severo. Nella sua argomentazione sulla prima questione, lo scrittore a stento distingue sufficientemente il credere nei diavoli dal credere nel Diavolo. Qui la parte è certamente più grande del tutto. Credere nei diavoli è semplicemente credere in anime e volontà immonde vaganti libere nell’universo. Credere nel Diavolo è credere in un male infinito, un pozzo di malvagità profondo quanto è alta la torre della santità. A noi personalmente, lo ammettiamo, sembra dottrina più sana e più religiosa che la bontà sia la sola cosa insondabile, e che colui il quale si nasconde nel pozzo del male non cadrà eternamente attraverso abissi senza dimora, ma sarà ripescato a tempo debito, fradicio, e con tutta l’aria di uno sciocco.
G.K.C.
La donna e i filosofi
—26 gennaio 1901, The Speaker
La donna: uno studio e una difesa scientifica. Adattato dal francese di M. Alfred Fouillée dal Rev. T. A. Seed. Greening and Co.
Il titolo dell’opera che abbiamo dinanzi è La donna: uno studio e una difesa scientifica. Non ci era mai venuto in mente prima che la donna avesse bisogno di una difesa di alcun genere; e che cosa penserebbero le donne di nostra conoscenza dell’essere fatte oggetto di una «difesa scientifica» rabbrividiamo a concepirlo. L’opera che il signor Seed ha adattato da M. Fouillée contiene una considerevole quantità di argomenti solidi e suggestivi contro le teorie scientifiche dell’inferiorità della donna; ma l’impianto del libro è un errore. Invece di tentare di fondare l’uguaglianza dei sessi sulle abitudini domestiche di qualche misera ameba nel crepuscolo primevo, l’autore avrebbe dovuto rivolgersi agli uomini di scienza e dir loro, con tutto il rispetto possibile, che essi non hanno nulla di nulla a che fare con le questioni di superiorità e inferiorità. Ovviamente non ne hanno. Se la donna sia strutturalmente diversa dall’uomo è materia di scienza fisica, se sia superiore o inferiore o uguale non è materia di scienza fisica; è questione di ciò che per caso si desidera. La scienza compie il suo dovere dicendo che le scimmie hanno la coda e gli uomini no; ma quanto a dire che è meglio non avere la coda, ciò è materia di gusto e di immaginazione, e per nulla certa neppure a quel riguardo.
L’autore stesso cita per inciso un esempio notevole di ciò in una citazione da Herbert Spencer, ma non sembra vedere l’intera fallacia che sta cercando di smascherare. Herbert Spencer dice, abbastanza giustamente, che l’interesse delle donne è generalmente diretto piuttosto alle persone che alle idee, e adduce questo come prova della loro inferiorità, giacché gli ultimi prodotti dell’evoluzione umana sono «il ragionamento astratto e l’astratta emozione della giustizia». Qui abbiamo in piena azione quello strano dogma religioso che si insinuò nelle menti di tanti evoluzionisti: l’idea che l’ultima cosa debba essere la più alta. In questo caso è chiaramente falso. Comprendere un uomo (come fanno molte donne) è comprendere uno dei più complessi e intraducibili crittogrammi concepibili; comprendere una «causa» è comprendere la cosa più goffa che sia stata creata, un mero alfabeto del pensiero. Che cos’è la «giustizia astratta»? Personalmente non ne sappiamo nulla, se non che nella misura in cui diventa astratta generalmente diventa ingiusta. Se una preferenza per la critica personale rispetto a quella astratta fosse un marchio d’inferiorità, il grande romanziere dovrebbe essere inferiore al manovratore politico. Ma tutto questo lampante buon senso è spazzato via dal filosofo che vuole far provare alla biologia ciò che essa non potrà mai provare, e l’unico criterio che egli applica è chiedere qual è l’ultimo prodotto dell’evoluzione umana. Con quel ragionamento suonare la macchina da scrivere sarebbe superiore al suonare l’organo.
In ogni discussione delle censure filosofiche contro le donne era inevitabile che vi fosse coinvolto Schopenhauer, benché immaginiamo che la maggior parte delle donne e la maggior parte di coloro che credono nella femminilità sarebbero assai più irritate dall’approvazione di Schopenhauer che dalla sua denuncia. Quando un gentiluomo desidera la distruzione del genere umano, e può quindi, presumibilmente, riservare i suoi affetti a cose come l’assassinio e la febbre tifoide, essere guardati da lui con un sorriso amorevole sarebbe piuttosto inquietante che lusinghiero. Ma il particolare passo citato in questo libro è un esempio così notevole della stupefacente ingegnosità letteraria di Schopenhauer e della sua ancor più stupefacente irrealtà di esperienza e di veduta, che merita un momento di considerazione. Le donne, dice Schopenhauer, in sostanza, sono le migliori custodi dei bambini, perché sono esse stesse bambine, «puerili, futili, limitate». Ora, noi sappiamo che cosa fanno le donne per i bambini; quasi si ammazzano per loro di lavoro e di ansia; il modo semplice e ovvio, dunque, di saggiare la verità del paragone di Schopenhauer è chiedere che cosa fanno i bambini per i bambini. Se la «futilità» e la «limitazione» di un bambino di sette anni lo portano naturalmente a martirizzarsi per un altro bambino di sette anni, allora il paragone è valido. Ma poiché tutti sappiamo che lo portano a prenderlo a calci negli stinchi e a scappare con i suoi giocattoli, il paragone è un’assurdità. È sicuramente strano che il nome di filosofo sia mai stato dato a un uomo di lettere, per quanto brillante, capace di fondare un ragionamento sulla stupefacente idea che le persone amino ciò che è simile a loro. In effetti, l’intera teoria di Schopenhauer sulla puerilità delle donne è passibile della più breve e semplice delle risposte. Se le donne sono puerili perché amano i bambini, ne segue che gli uomini sono effeminati perché amano le donne.
L’autore parla con giusto disprezzo di questi sforzi di screditare le donne mediante paralleli biologici. Se è vero che certi babbuini hanno una grande dose di istinto materno, l’etica razionale non ha nulla da obiettare se non: «Tanto meglio per i babbuini». Possono esserci inferiori sotto altri aspetti; così sono gli uccelli dell’aria. Ma un mortale con le ali di un uccello è un angelo, e un mortale con l’istinto materno è una madre.
We think this book would have been better if it had been purely scientific or purely poetic and moral. Its biological thesis, that from the earliest dawn of life the two sexes have certain types and functions which may still be traced in their moral and mental attitudes, may be true and is very probable. The scope of the book and its dallyings with other matters, however, leave no space for the serious scientific demonstration of this. But while we suspend our judgment on the truth of the biological contention we are heartily in agreement with the moral contention, and cannot see that it requires any biological machinery at all. The divinity of woman is to be decided by what she is, not by how she was made. It has always seemed to us truly extraordinary that Christians should have raised such a shriek of disgust at the “degrading” notion that man was made out of the lower animals, when the very Bible they defended described him, with splendid common sense, as made out of red mud. But it is stranger still that philosophers who have accepted in a healthier spirit the genial fact of our kinship with the other creatures, should try to revive the silly and vulgar prejudice against the animal world in order to throw discredit on the moral dignity of man or woman. To refuse to judge of souls, laws, creeds or tendencies on their own merits is the perfection of cosmic snobbery. To inquire whether a man’s father did not keep a shop is far less snobbish than to inquire whether his ancestor did not keep a tail.
The question is far too large a one to be treated here, but we have a strong conviction that the world will gradually, by a beneficent revolution, turn this idea upside down. Hitherto it seems to have been thought that in proportion as a phenomenon detached itself from the background, ceased to be serene, inevitable and obvious and became strange, diverse and audacious, an interesting development, it became less sacred and more profane. We venture to prophecy that the tendency now in progress to show everything, no matter how fundamental, as a growth, an experiment, a choice among alternatives, will at length result in a religious sense of wonder passing all the religions of the earth. The age of miracles will have returned; for a man come from the womb will be as strange as a man risen from the dead and the sun rising in its season as startling as the sun standing still upon Gibeon.
This is at least the true light in which to regard woman. If it were proved to us ten thousand times over (it has not yet been proved once) that woman laboured under eternal mental as well as physical disadvantages, it would not make us think less but rather more of that brilliant instinct of chivalry which saw in her peculiar possibilities and put her to higher uses. The whole romance of life and all the romances of poetry lie in this motion of the utterly weak suddenly developing advantages over the strong. It is the curse of the modern philosophy of strength that it is ridden with the fallacy that there is only one kind of strength and one kind of weakness. It forgets that size is a weakness as well as littleness; that the camel is just as weak for the purpose of going through the eye of a needle as the microbe for carrying a load of hay.
As to what form this peculiar dignity of woman is to take at the present day, a question to which many pages of this book are devoted, we think it a matter for much more serious consideration than it has yet received. We do not mean that we are out of sympathy with the modern movements. We believe firmly in the equality of the sexes, and we agree, moreover, that to use woman merely as a wooden idol is as bad as to use her as a wooden broom. But, in the interests of equality, we must say that we doubt whether the mere equalisation of sports and employments will bring us much further. There is nothing so certain to lead to inequality as identity. A mere struggle between the sexes as to who will make the best tinkers, tailors, or soldiers, is very likely indeed to result in a subordination of women infinitely more gross and heartless than that which disgraced the world up to now. What we really require is a revised and improved division of labour. Whatever solution may be best (we do not pretend for a moment to have decided) it must emphatically not be based upon any idea so paltry and small-minded as the idea that there is anything noble in professional work or anything degrading in domestic. Woman must not be elevated as the worst type of working man is elevated, merely (to use the silly phrase) “to a better kind of work,” to choke the memory of his own class in a stick-up collar. If this is the only end of the noble promise of female emancipation, the intellectual woman’s lot will certainly be an ironic one, for she will have toiled to reach the haughtiest eminence from which she can look down upon the housemaid, only to discover that world has become sane and discovered that the housemaid is as good as she.
G. K. C.
Science and Patriotism
—February 2, 1901
National Life From The Standpoint Of Science. By Karl Pearson, F.R.S. London: Adam and Charles Black.
Professor Pearson, in his view of national life, is a well-meaning and vigorous upholder of the great principle of the survival of the nastiest. His remarks on the danger of allowing a physically “bad stock” to multiply, though not very precisely expressed, seem certainly to tend towards the idea of conducting the lives and loves of mankind on strict cattle-breeding principles. To our own simple minds it appears rather to depend on whether we wish to produce the same tone of thought and degree of culture in men and in cattle. The virtues which we demand from cows are at present few and simple, and, therefore, we pursue a certain physical regime: if ever we should particularly wish to see cows writing poetry, cows building hotels, and cows speaking in Parliament, we should probably adopt another regime. A random example of the unsuitability of a biological test of so intellectual a matter as civilization springs at once to the mind. There was born early in this century a man who scarcely had a day’s complete health in his life, a perfect example of the “unfit” creature whom some sages would strangle in pure compassion. That man was Charles Darwin, on whose discovery the sages base their action. Their principle would never have been heard of if it had not been the custom to violate it. If this is not a reductio ad absurdum, we do not know what is.
Riteniamo che questo libro sarebbe stato migliore se fosse stato puramente scientifico oppure puramente poetico e morale. La sua tesi biologica, secondo cui fin dalla prima alba della vita i due sessi possiedono certi tipi e certe funzioni che possono ancora rintracciarsi nei loro atteggiamenti morali e mentali, può essere vera ed è assai probabile. La portata del libro e i suoi indugi su altre materie, tuttavia, non lasciano spazio a una seria dimostrazione scientifica di ciò. Ma, pur sospendendo il nostro giudizio sulla verità dell’assunto biologico, concordiamo di tutto cuore con l’assunto morale, e non vediamo come esso richieda alcun apparato biologico. La divinità della donna va decisa in base a ciò che ella è, non in base a come fu fatta. Ci è sempre parso davvero straordinario che i cristiani abbiano levato un simile grido di disgusto contro la nozione «degradante» che l’uomo fosse stato tratto dagli animali inferiori, quando la Bibbia stessa che difendevano lo descriveva, con splendido buon senso, come fatto di fango rosso. Ma è ancor più strano che filosofi i quali hanno accolto con spirito più sano il gioviale fatto della nostra parentela con le altre creature cerchino di far rivivere lo sciocco e volgare pregiudizio contro il mondo animale allo scopo di gettare discredito sulla dignità morale dell’uomo o della donna. Rifiutarsi di giudicare anime, leggi, credi o tendenze secondo i loro meriti propri è la perfezione dello snobismo cosmico. Domandare se il padre di un uomo non tenesse bottega è assai meno snobistico che domandare se il suo antenato non tenesse una coda.
La questione è troppo vasta per essere trattata qui, ma abbiamo la ferma convinzione che il mondo, gradualmente, per una benefica rivoluzione, capovolgerà quest’idea. Finora sembra essersi pensato che, nella misura in cui un fenomeno si staccava dallo sfondo, cessava di essere sereno, inevitabile e ovvio e diveniva strano, vario e audace, uno sviluppo interessante, esso diveniva meno sacro e più profano. Osiamo profetizzare che la tendenza ora in atto a mostrare ogni cosa, per quanto fondamentale, come una crescita, un esperimento, una scelta tra alternative, sfocerà infine in un religioso senso di meraviglia che supererà tutte le religioni della terra. L’età dei miracoli sarà tornata; ché un uomo venuto dal grembo materno sarà strano quanto un uomo risorto dai morti, e il sole che sorge nella sua stagione sbalorditivo quanto il sole fermatosi su Gabaon.
Questa è almeno la vera luce in cui considerare la donna. Se ci fosse provato diecimila volte (non è ancora stato provato una sola volta) che la donna soffra di eterni svantaggi mentali oltre che fisici, ciò non ci farebbe pensare di meno, ma piuttosto di più, a quel brillante istinto cavalleresco che scorse in lei possibilità peculiari e la destinò a usi più alti. Tutto il romanzesco della vita e tutte le romanze della poesia stanno in questo moto del debolissimo che d’un tratto sviluppa vantaggi sul forte. È la maledizione della moderna filosofia della forza l’essere dominata dalla fallacia che vi sia un solo genere di forza e un solo genere di debolezza. Essa dimentica che la grandezza è una debolezza non meno della piccolezza; che il cammello è debole per attraversare la cruna dell’ago tanto quanto il microbo per portare un carico di fieno.
Quanto alla forma che questa peculiare dignità della donna dovrà assumere ai giorni nostri, questione cui molte pagine di questo libro sono dedicate, la riteniamo materia meritevole di ben più seria considerazione di quanta ne abbia finora ricevuto. Non intendiamo con ciò dire di essere in disaccordo con i movimenti moderni. Crediamo fermamente nell’eguaglianza dei sessi e conveniamo, inoltre, che usare la donna semplicemente come un idolo di legno è male quanto usarla come una scopa di legno. Ma, nell’interesse dell’eguaglianza, dobbiamo dire che dubitiamo che la mera equiparazione di sport e mestieri ci porterà molto oltre. Nulla conduce all’ineguaglianza con altrettanta certezza quanto l’identità. Una semplice contesa tra i sessi su chi farà i migliori stagnini, sarti o soldati è per l’appunto assai probabile che sfoci in una subordinazione delle donne infinitamente più grossolana e spietata di quella che ha disonorato il mondo fino a oggi. Ciò di cui abbiamo veramente bisogno è una riveduta e migliorata divisione del lavoro. Qualunque sia la soluzione migliore (non pretendiamo per un istante di averla decisa), essa non dovrà assolutamente fondarsi su un’idea tanto meschina e gretta quale l’idea che vi sia alcunché di nobile nel lavoro professionale o alcunché di degradante nel lavoro domestico. La donna non deve essere elevata come vien elevato il peggior tipo di operaio, unicamente (per usare la sciocca frase) «a un genere migliore di lavoro», a soffocare la memoria della propria classe entro un colletto inamidato. Se questo è l’unico fine della nobile promessa dell’emancipazione femminile, la sorte della donna intellettuale sarà certo ironica, poiché ella si sarà affaticata per raggiungere la più altera eminenza dalla quale poter guardare dall’alto la domestica, solo per scoprire che il mondo è rinsavito e ha scoperto che la domestica vale quanto lei.
G. K. C.
Scienza e patriottismo
—2 febbraio 1901
La vita nazionale dal punto di vista della scienza. Di Karl Pearson, F.R.S. Londra: Adam and Charles Black.
Il professor Pearson, nella sua visione della vita nazionale, è un ben intenzionato e vigoroso sostenitore del grande principio della sopravvivenza del più abietto. Le sue osservazioni sul pericolo di permettere a una «cattiva razza» fisicamente tale di moltiplicarsi, per quanto non espresse con grande precisione, paiono di certo tendere all’idea di condurre le vite e gli amori dell’umanità secondo rigidi princìpi di allevamento del bestiame. Alle nostre semplici menti pare piuttosto che tutto dipenda dal se desideriamo produrre negli uomini e nel bestiame il medesimo tono di pensiero e grado di cultura. Le virtù che esigiamo dalle mucche sono al presente poche e semplici, e perciò seguiamo un certo regime fisico: se mai desiderassimo in particolare vedere mucche scrivere poesie, mucche edificare alberghi e mucche parlare in Parlamento, adotteremmo probabilmente un altro regime. Un esempio qualsiasi dell’inadeguatezza di un criterio biologico applicato a una materia tanto intellettuale quanto la civiltà si affaccia subito alla mente. Nacque, al principio di questo secolo, un uomo che a stento ebbe in vita un solo giorno di piena salute, perfetto esempio di quella creatura «inadatta» che certi savi strangolerebbero per pura compassione. Quell’uomo era Charles Darwin, sulla cui scoperta i savi fondano il loro operato. Del loro principio non si sarebbe mai sentito parlare se non fosse stato costume violarlo. Se questa non è una reductio ad absurdum, non sappiamo cosa lo sia.
But the error of Professor Pearson’s philosophy lies deeper. In one sense, indeed, the fight is always to the strong; but strength is exhibited by sticking like a limpet to our own claims, selfish or unselfish, not by trying to alter our claims in order to curry favour with nature. The mammoth would not have been more efficient in the primal competition, but less, if he had suddenly put his head on one side and reflected whether mammoths were on the down grade. The varieties of biology have been produced by animals asserting with blind bravery their ideals of self or family, not by their following the cosmic fashion-plates. The Elk did not go about saying, “Horns are very much worn now,” or “All the best people have a divided hoof;” he simply perfected his own weapons for his own defence. The first element in conquering nature is to be natural, and it is not natural to us to become a race of placid scientific murderers. We have, as a race, developed our own set of ideas, one of which is that to a mind of large range the weak are often as valuable as the strong. A sparrow-hawk would not hesitate to eat a thrush, for the simple reason that a sparrow-hawk (having no ear for music) is ignorant of its vocal power, and the only possible use to which he can put a thrush is to eat it. But there is no more biological reason for a poet eating a thrush than there is for his eating Paderewski.
It is the same with Professor Pearson’s view of international politics, in which, of course, he approves of crushing and driving out weaker or more barbarous nations. The real objection to the great biological morality of kicking a man when he is down is not merely that it is cruel or insolent, but that it is timid. It is doing something which we none of us like doing or respect ourselves for doing, merely because our hearts are alive with a bestial fear of Nature. Generations of human cattle-breeding will not give a grain of courage to a people who have no moral independence, whose knees knock under them at the sight of a stronger race. We shall be foolish indeed if we think that Nature will be deceived-that, because we have a lion on our crest, she will not know that the heart is a hunted hare. That is the damning and destructive weakness of the modern struggle of nations. The great Empires advance resplendently with their banners and their engines of war, all coming forward at a sublime gallop, to take possession of the world. But, though it seems as if nothing could withstand such an onset of human valour, it is only a moment after that we realise the truth that this magnificent rush of nations is not a charge at all, but a rout; and through the sound of all the trumpets we can hear roaring in the rear the great devil who is to catch the hindmost.
We warmly sympathise with Professor Pearson in saying that patriotic feeling is “not a thing to be ashamed of;” but we cannot agree with him that it is a protest especially required just now. The trouble at present is not that people think patriotism a thing to be ashamed of, but that they have developed a certain brand of patriotism which is a thing to be ashamed of. But when Professor Pearson says that his attitude is not repellent or immoral, because he desires to see peace and amity between fellow citizens, he falls into one of the oldest errors of rationalism, the notion that the soul is in watertight compartments. He says that we are to oppress and exterminate smaller peoples, but to cultivate the greatest generosity and sympathy towards our countrymen. He might as well say that a father should cut the throat of every other child born to him, but cultivate the greatest generosity and sympathy towards the rest. The common sense of the thing is that if a father were really bullied by any philosophy into pursuing such a course, so sickening would be the humiliation of the process, so dark the conflict between an unbearable shame and a debasing fear, that he could only keep on the right side of a lunatic asylum by hardening himself against every genial sentiment. So it is with the national conscience. If ever we do arrive at such an emotional condition that we hear with perfect indifference or frigid pleasure of a race of brave barbarians dying with pitiful heroism around their rude ensigns, we may be practically certain that a freezing process has set in and that we shall end by hearing with equal coolness of brave Englishmen dying around the Union Jack.
It is true that in old times men could kill their enemies without moral collapse; but that was because they had no intellectual comprehension of what they did. As long as men really believed Frenchmen to be devils it is obvious that they could wipe French blood from their hands like so much mire. But now that they know that Frenchmen are nothing of the sort, that which was once natural becomes unnatural. It was perfectly natural for the mediaeval Catholics to harry the Albigenses as the detestable deceivers of mankind, but surely it would be ludicrous to infer that if English Churchmen were suddenly to commence burning and torturing the Wesleyan Methodists, they would suffer no ethical degeneration from so doing. If they did it at all, it would not be from faith, but from fear, from the oppressive philosophy of Professor Pearson. This ethical terrorism is an atmosphere in which health and strength are impossible. We ourselves believe in a sentimental basis of moral action for one very simple reason, that it is the basis most favourable to sanity and fulness of life. A man who is continent, for example, from a contemplation of the Virgin Mary, is in a vastly better condition of moral hygiene than a man who is continent from reading Ibsen’s Ghosts, for the very obvious reason that the first man’s attention is turned to beauty, strength, and the obvious good, and the second man’s attention to deformity, impotence, and diseased perversity. Here, as is generally the case, sentiment is found to be vastly more practical than “practicality.” The Terrorist, whether he be the realist teaching us chastity by terror, or the sociological professor, teaching us virility by terror, or the common bomb-throwing anarchist teaching us humanity and benevolence by terror, is the same man in spirit everywhere. He will never succeed, because he begins by drawing out the backbone like a linch-pin.
Ma l’errore della filosofia del professor Pearson è più profondo. In un senso, invero, la lotta arride sempre al forte; ma la forza si manifesta aggrappandosi come una patella alle proprie rivendicazioni, egoistiche o altruistiche, non cercando di mutare le proprie rivendicazioni per ingraziarsi la natura. Il mammut non sarebbe stato più efficiente nella competizione primordiale, ma meno, se avesse d’improvviso reclinato il capo da un lato e riflettuto se i mammut fossero in declino. Le varietà della biologia sono state prodotte da animali che affermavano con cieco coraggio i propri ideali di sé o di famiglia, non dal loro seguire i figurini cosmici. L’alce non andava in giro dicendo: «Le corna oggi si portano moltissimo», o «Tutte le persone migliori hanno l’unghia fessa»; egli semplicemente perfezionò le proprie armi per la propria difesa. Il primo elemento nel conquistare la natura è l’essere naturali, e non è naturale per noi divenire una razza di placidi assassini scientifici. Abbiamo, come razza, sviluppato il nostro insieme di idee, una delle quali è che, per una mente di ampio respiro, i deboli sono spesso preziosi quanto i forti. Uno sparviero non esiterebbe a mangiare un tordo, per la semplice ragione che uno sparviero (non avendo orecchio per la musica) ignora la sua potenza canora, e l’unico uso possibile che può fare di un tordo è mangiarlo. Ma non vi è ragione biologica maggiore perché un poeta mangi un tordo di quanta ve ne sia perché egli mangi Paderewski.
Lo stesso vale per la visione del professor Pearson circa la politica internazionale, nella quale, naturalmente, egli approva lo schiacciare e lo scacciare le nazioni più deboli o più barbare. La vera obiezione alla grande moralità biologica del prendere a calci un uomo quando è a terra non è soltanto che essa è crudele o insolente, ma che è vile. È il fare qualcosa che nessuno di noi ama fare né si stima nel farlo, unicamente perché i nostri cuori sono vivi di una bestiale paura della Natura. Generazioni di allevamento umano non daranno un grano di coraggio a un popolo privo d’indipendenza morale, le cui ginocchia gli tremano alla vista di una razza più forte. Saremo davvero stolti se penseremo che la Natura si lasci ingannare, che, poiché abbiamo un leone sul nostro stemma, ella non sappia che il cuore è una lepre braccata. Ecco la dannosa e distruttiva debolezza della moderna lotta delle nazioni. I grandi Imperi avanzano splendenti con i loro vessilli e le loro macchine da guerra, tutti muovendo innanzi in un sublime galoppo, per impadronirsi del mondo. Ma, per quanto sembri che nulla possa resistere a un simile assalto di valore umano, è solo un istante dopo che ci avvediamo della verità: che questa magnifica corsa delle nazioni non è affatto una carica, bensì una rotta; e attraverso il suono di tutte le trombe udiamo ruggire alle spalle il gran diavolo che deve ghermire l’ultimo.
Concordiamo calorosamente col professor Pearson nel dire che il sentimento patriottico «non è cosa di cui vergognarsi»; ma non possiamo convenire con lui che sia una protesta particolarmente necessaria proprio ora. Il guaio, al presente, non è che la gente reputi il patriottismo cosa di cui vergognarsi, ma che essa abbia sviluppato una certa varietà di patriottismo che è cosa di cui vergognarsi. Ma quando il professor Pearson dice che il suo atteggiamento non è ripugnante né immorale, poiché egli desidera vedere pace e concordia fra concittadini, cade in uno dei più antichi errori del razionalismo, la nozione che l’anima stia in compartimenti stagni. Egli dice che dobbiamo opprimere e sterminare i popoli più piccoli, ma coltivare la più grande generosità e simpatia verso i nostri connazionali. Tanto varrebbe dire che un padre dovrebbe tagliare la gola a un figlio ogni due che gli nascono, ma coltivare la più grande generosità e simpatia verso gli altri. Il buon senso della cosa è che, se un padre fosse davvero costretto da una qualche filosofia a perseguire un simile corso, tanto nauseante sarebbe l’umiliazione del processo, tanto oscuro il conflitto tra una vergogna insopportabile e una paura avvilente, che egli potrebbe restare al di qua di un manicomio solo indurendosi contro ogni sentimento cordiale. Così è per la coscienza nazionale. Se mai giungeremo a una condizione emotiva tale da udire con perfetta indifferenza o con gelido piacere di una razza di prodi barbari morenti con pietoso eroismo attorno alle loro rozze insegne, potremo esser praticamente certi che un processo di congelamento è cominciato e che finiremo con l’udire con eguale freddezza di prodi inglesi morenti attorno all’Union Jack.
È vero che nei tempi antichi gli uomini potevano uccidere i loro nemici senza crollo morale; ma ciò accadeva perché non avevano alcuna comprensione intellettuale di ciò che facevano. Finché gli uomini credettero davvero che i francesi fossero diavoli, è ovvio che potessero tergersi dalle mani il sangue francese come tanto fango. Ma ora che sanno che i francesi non sono affatto tali, ciò che un tempo era naturale diviene innaturale. Era perfettamente naturale per i cattolici medievali braccare gli Albigesi come detestabili ingannatori dell’umanità, ma sarebbe di certo ridicolo dedurne che, se gli ecclesiastici inglesi si mettessero d’improvviso a bruciare e torturare i metodisti wesleyani, non subirebbero alcuna degenerazione etica nel farlo. Se pur lo facessero, non sarebbe per fede, ma per paura, per l’opprimente filosofia del professor Pearson. Questo terrorismo etico è un’atmosfera in cui salute e forza sono impossibili. Noi stessi crediamo in un fondamento sentimentale dell’azione morale per una ragione semplicissima: che esso è il fondamento più favorevole alla sanità e alla pienezza della vita. Un uomo che sia continente, per esempio, dalla contemplazione della Vergine Maria, si trova in una condizione d’igiene morale immensamente migliore di un uomo che sia continente dal leggere gli Spettri di Ibsen, per l’ovvia ragione che l’attenzione del primo è rivolta alla bellezza, alla forza e al bene manifesto, e l’attenzione del secondo alla deformità, all’impotenza e alla malata perversione. Qui, come accade in genere, il sentimento si rivela immensamente più pratico della «praticità». Il Terrorista, sia egli il realista che ci insegna la castità col terrore, o il professore sociologo che ci insegna la virilità col terrore, o il comune anarchico lanciatore di bombe che ci insegna l’umanità e la benevolenza col terrore, è ovunque lo stesso uomo nello spirito. Non riuscirà mai, perché comincia con l’estrarre la spina dorsale come una copiglia.
And just as what produces health in a man is enthusiasm for something healthy, so what produces courage in a nation is enthusiasm for something honourable. Napoleon uttered the fundamental principle of Professor Pearson’s school of thought when he said that God was on the side of the big battalions. But the reason why Napoleon fell even before so ordinary a man as Wellington is simply that by inevitable reason the man of principle tends to outlast the man of destiny. Wellington was the type of national strength because he held fast by something beyond the reach of circumstance, even if it were nothing more than a somewhat poker-backed conception of.a gentleman. Men in the old times could often be cruel to their enemies without moral collapse, because their minds being limited, their desires were cruel. But nothing except moral collapse can come of actions being cruel when desires are humane. Here, then, is the weakness in practice of Professor Pearson’s theory of national life. It is in the people of principle that the bull-dog quality is bred, not in the people who are always, consciously or unconsciously, watching to see which way the cosmic cat jumps. There is a shrewd secular truth hidden under a theological language in the old saying that man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. For it is only on those in the struggle for existence who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn. A man who loves his country for her power will always be as weak an adorer as a man who loves a woman for her money. A great appearance of national or imperial strength may be founded on this fair-weather philosophy, but the crown of ultimate triumph and the real respect of Nature will always be reserved for the man for whom the fight is never finished, who disregards the omens and disdains the stars.
G. K. C.
The War of the Ghosts and Gods
—February 9, 1901, The Speaker
The Making Of Religion. By Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D. London : Longmans Green.
Supreme among the lost arts of mankind, larger and more completely lost than those connected with pottery or stained glass, is the lost art of mythology. Races in early times invented cosmic systems with the fancy and independence of a set of architects submitting to the Deity the plans of a prospective universe. One thought the world could be best arranged in the form of a huge tree; another that it could be placed on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise. Great as is our gain from science, we have lost something in losing this gigantesque scope of the human fancy; there must have been no little education in audacity and magnanimity in thus juggling with the stars. We have lost something in being tied to the solar system like a treadmill. It is especially hard upon those, like ourselves, whose peculiar talents, entirely useless in a civilised age, would have been, we are convinced, a great success in a time of impenetrable ignorance. In early childhood we manufactured many excellent mythologies. The best, from a savage point of view, was one in which the whole world was a giant with the sun for one eye and the moon for the other, which he opened alternately in an everlasting wink. This prose idyll would have made us head medicine man in a happier age. But we fear that the Royal Society, even if informed of the hypothesis, would remain cold.
There is, we fancy, too much tendency among able students of mythology to overlook the vagueness and aesthetic impalpability of these savage ideas, and this fault is almost the only fault we can find with Mr. Andrew Lang’s admirable book which now lies before us. Mr. Andrew Lang and any one of his opponents—such, for example, as Mr. Grant Allen-in the endless retorts and repetitions of controversy, tend more and more to speak in a hard, fixed way of what savages really believe; whereas the truth is, we imagine, that they do not believe anything in the sense that Mr. Grant Allen believed in Evolution or Mr. Andrew Lang in Homeric Unity. It is not so much that an old Scandinavian peasant believed in the tree Ygdrasil as that he never doubted it. He had never brought the thing into that clear intellectual presentment in which doubt or denial are conceived or required. This, as we say, is the only point in which we think Mr. Lang’s argument demands a continuous check or allowance. The great part of Mr. Lang’s book is devoted to an attack, and, as it seems to us, a rather successful attack, on the latest theory of savage deities, that they are all derived from the worship of ancestors, from ghosts rather than from gods. Mr. Lang maintains that this leaves wholly unexplained a vast mass of barbaric beliefs, which point to the idea of a general creator, a being who made the world. Against Mr. Allen’s and Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory, Mr. Andrew Lang sets a number of facts, which are certainly very striking, in favour of the theory that ancestor-worship was a half-civilized development, a kind of fashionable craze, which more or less obliterated a more primitive and obvious worship of creative deities whose existence explained the existence of things. To take one example at random, from Mr. Lang’s stores, there is a tribe of polytheistic savages one of whose gods, “an old serpent,” is described as having made everything, and as being, apparently, exceedingly sulky because he is not paid a proper degreee of attention. It is very hard, he thinks, when he put himself to the trouble of making the sun and stars, that the people desert their old friend for a race of new and dandified deities. This certainly looks like the traces of a monotheism choked by a polytheism. Another more familiar instance is the case of the Jews. If Jehovah was originally an ancestral deity, why were the Jews, who were more obsessed than any other nation with the idea of their deity, more indifferent than any other nation to the fate of the dead? If, as Professor Huxley maintained, the Jews borrowed their religious idealism from Egypt, why were they entirely without the one dominant and picturesque Egyptian conception, the conception of the judgments of another world?
E come ciò che produce la salute in un uomo è l’entusiasmo per qualcosa di sano, così ciò che produce il coraggio in una nazione è l’entusiasmo per qualcosa di onorevole. Napoleone enunciò il principio fondamentale della scuola di pensiero del professor Pearson quando disse che Dio sta dalla parte dei grossi battaglioni. Ma la ragione per cui Napoleone cadde perfino davanti a un uomo tanto ordinario quale Wellington è semplicemente che, per una legge inevitabile, l’uomo di principio tende a durare più a lungo dell’uomo del destino. Wellington fu il tipo stesso della forza nazionale perché si teneva saldo a qualcosa che stava al di là della portata delle circostanze, anche se non fosse altro che una concezione un po’ rigida e impettita del gentiluomo. Gli uomini dei tempi antichi potevano spesso essere crudeli con i loro nemici senza crollo morale, perché, avendo menti limitate, crudeli erano i loro desideri. Ma nulla se non il crollo morale può derivare da azioni crudeli quando i desideri sono umani. Ecco, dunque, la debolezza pratica della teoria del professor Pearson sulla vita nazionale. È nel popolo di principio che si alleva la tenacia del mastino, non in coloro che stanno sempre, consapevolmente o inconsapevolmente, a spiare da che parte salti il gatto cosmico. C’è una scaltra verità profana nascosta sotto un linguaggio teologico nell’antico detto che l’estremità dell’uomo è l’occasione di Dio. Poiché è solo su coloro che, nella lotta per l’esistenza, resistono ancora dieci minuti dopo che tutto è ormai perduto, che comincia a sorgere la speranza. Un uomo che ama la propria patria per la sua potenza sarà sempre un adoratore altrettanto debole quanto colui che ama una donna per il suo denaro. Una grande apparenza di forza nazionale o imperiale può fondarsi su questa filosofia da bel tempo, ma la corona del trionfo finale e il vero rispetto della Natura saranno sempre riservati all’uomo per il quale la battaglia non è mai conclusa, che ignora i presagi e disdegna le stelle.
G. K. C.
La Guerra degli Spettri e degli Dèi
—9 febbraio 1901, The Speaker
The Making Of Religion. Di Andrew Lang, M.A., LL.D. Londra: Longmans Green.
Suprema fra le arti perdute dell’umanità, più vasta e più completamente perduta di quelle legate alla ceramica o alle vetrate, è l’arte perduta della mitologia. Le stirpi dei tempi antichi inventarono sistemi cosmici con la fantasia e l’indipendenza di una schiera di architetti che sottopongono alla Divinità i progetti di un universo in prospettiva. Uno pensava che il mondo si potesse ordinare al meglio nella forma di un albero immenso; un altro che lo si potesse posare su un elefante e l’elefante su una tartaruga. Per quanto grande sia il nostro guadagno dalla scienza, qualcosa abbiamo perduto nel perdere questa gigantesca ampiezza della fantasia umana; non doveva esserci poca educazione all’audacia e alla magnanimità nel giocolare così con le stelle. Qualcosa abbiamo perduto nell’essere legati al sistema solare come a un mulino da tortura. È particolarmente duro per coloro che, come noi, i cui talenti peculiari, del tutto inutili in un’epoca civile, sarebbero stati, ne siamo convinti, un grande successo in un tempo d’impenetrabile ignoranza. Nella prima infanzia fabbricammo molte eccellenti mitologie. La migliore, dal punto di vista di un selvaggio, era quella in cui il mondo intero era un gigante con il sole per un occhio e la luna per l’altro, che apriva alternativamente in un eterno ammiccare. Questo idillio in prosa ci avrebbe fatto sommo stregone in un’età più felice. Ma temiamo che la Royal Society, anche se informata dell’ipotesi, resterebbe fredda.
C’è, ci pare, fra i dotti studiosi di mitologia, una tendenza eccessiva a trascurare la vaghezza e l’impalpabilità estetica di queste idee selvagge, e questo difetto è quasi l’unico che sappiamo trovare nell’ammirevole libro del signor Andrew Lang che ora ci sta dinanzi. Il signor Andrew Lang e ciascuno dei suoi avversari — come, per esempio, il signor Grant Allen — nelle infinite repliche e ripetizioni della controversia, tendono sempre più a parlare in modo rigido e fisso di ciò che i selvaggi realmente credono; mentre la verità, immaginiamo, è che essi non credono in nulla nel senso in cui il signor Grant Allen credeva nell’Evoluzione o il signor Andrew Lang nell’Unità omerica. Non è tanto che un vecchio contadino scandinavo credesse nell’albero Ygdrasil, quanto che non ne dubitava mai. Non aveva mai ridotto la cosa a quella chiara rappresentazione intellettuale in cui il dubbio o la negazione vengono concepiti o richiesti. Questo, come diciamo, è l’unico punto in cui riteniamo che l’argomentazione del signor Lang richieda un continuo controllo o una continua riserva. Gran parte del libro del signor Lang è dedicata a un attacco, e, a quanto ci sembra, a un attacco piuttosto ben riuscito, contro l’ultima teoria sulle divinità dei selvaggi, secondo cui esse derivano tutte dal culto degli antenati, dagli spettri piuttosto che dagli dèi. Il signor Lang sostiene che ciò lascia del tutto inspiegata una vasta massa di credenze barbariche, che rimandano all’idea di un creatore universale, un essere che fece il mondo. Contro la teoria del signor Allen e del signor Herbert Spencer, il signor Andrew Lang schiera un buon numero di fatti, certamente assai notevoli, a favore della teoria che il culto degli antenati fosse uno sviluppo semicivilizzato, una specie di moda in voga, che più o meno cancellò un culto più primitivo ed evidente delle divinità creatrici, la cui esistenza spiegava l’esistenza delle cose. Per prendere un esempio a caso, dai depositi del signor Lang, c’è una tribù di selvaggi politeisti, uno dei cui dèi, «un vecchio serpente», è descritto come colui che fece ogni cosa e come, a quanto pare, oltremodo imbronciato perché non gli si presta il giusto grado di attenzione. È ben duro, egli pensa, che, dopo essersi dato la pena di fare il sole e le stelle, la gente abbandoni il vecchio amico per una razza di divinità nuove e azzimate. Questo sembra proprio la traccia di un monoteismo soffocato da un politeismo. Un altro esempio più familiare è il caso degli Ebrei. Se Geova era in origine una divinità ancestrale, perché mai gli Ebrei, che più di ogni altra nazione erano ossessionati dall’idea della loro divinità, erano più indifferenti di ogni altra nazione alla sorte dei morti? Se, come sosteneva il professor Huxley, gli Ebrei presero a prestito il loro idealismo religioso dall’Egitto, perché mai erano del tutto privi dell’unica concezione egizia dominante e pittoresca, la concezione dei giudizi di un altro mondo?
But we ourselves, as we have said, conceive that the question is somewhat too genuinely savage to be settled by black and white civilised definitions. To express something deeper and older than language itself in mere language is a thing to be attempted humbly and tentatively; it is, on the whole, rather like trying to convey the text of “Hamlet” by a code of naval signals. As far as we can see, the chances are that a savage’s religion existed long before the oldest ancestor-worship or the simplest teleology. Long before he said that the thing which plagued him and blessed him and drove him before it was either his great grandfather or the First Cause, he probably said it was “Bonk” or “Chunk,” a “circumstance over which he had no control.” Probably he began by feeling the eternal fact that it rained whether he liked it or not; then this benignant insolence in the rain extended to the whole creation, and then, for all we know, it may have been attributed to the spirit of some one dead. But at the beginning the savage stood face to face with the fact that the very mercies which sustained his own being came by a kind of scornful miracle quite unexplained to him; he stood at the beginning face to face with the fact that he could not make a tree grow, and that, when all is said and done, is pretty much where we stand at the end.
This, for example, is very much what we think of the problem, discussed at some length by Mr. Lang, about the origin of Jehovah, the highest of all historic deities. We think it improbable that Moses thought Jehovah was a philosophical First Cause and still more improbable that he thought Jehovah was his great-uncle. But suppose that Moses said (or rather felt), not “Jehovah is the ultimate cause of all things” or “Jehovah is my family god,” but simply “Jehovah is with me: there was one who drove down the great lions so that I could slay them and who smote me with the evil pain when I ate the unlawful berries.” At the beginning and at the end of all life, learned and ignorant, there is the abiding truth, that in the inmost theatre of the soul of man, with a scenery of bottomless infinities and appalling abstractions, there is always going forward one ancient mystery-play, in which there are only two characters.
There is one aspect of the thesis of gods against ghosts which we should be inclined to suggest to Mr. Andrew Lang rather as a query than a divergence of opinion. Both Mr. Lang and his opponents seem to assume that the terminology of ancestor-worship must indicate a lower spiritual condition than the terminology of theistic creation. The case of Mr. Andrew Lang is, we imagine, that men in pursuing a race of mere tribal heroes forgot the humble Deity who, in creating all things, had become the servant of all. The case of Mr. Spencer and the rest of Mr. Lang’s opponents is, we imagine, that the title of “Creator of all Things” was ultimately bestowed on some ancestral hero somewhat as the title of “Brother of the Sun and Moon” might be bestowed on the Emperor of Japan. In both cases terms of paternity and procreation are assumed to represent a tribal superstition. But surely it is not impossible that the title of “father” or “procreator” might be a higher title for a cosmic creator, instead of “creator” being a higher title for a father. This is at least supported by the case of the noblest of religious reformers. Jesus of Nazareth found a conception of an universal creator and deliberately bestowed on him the title of an ancestor-he called him “Our Father,” which any old Campbell would have called Diarmid or any old Jew called Abraham. This was surely not a degradation: it was one of the three or four dazzling strokes of religious genius which made Jesus what he was. By thus raising before all men the vast and generous conception, not of a Creator, but of a Begetter of all things, he touched with one hand the oldest and with the other the newest philosophy. He embraced ancestor-worship by propounding a Deity with a touch of kinship. He reached out to evolution by announcing a creation by natural causes. Surely, even in dealing with the unquestionable superiority of the idea of a Creator to the idea of a mere ancestor, one ought not to forget that at one stage of religious evolution the two positions are reversed; and the name taken from any common father of four babies becomes the loftiest of all the crowns of God.
There is only one other fault of Mr. Lang’s work, besides this common tendency to take too scientifically the floating fancies of the barbarian. This latter indeed is equally typical of his opponents: Mr. Herbert Spencer, in particular, is an admirable writer, but it must be candidly said of him that he is a very poor savage. He has not in him the eternal savage who is in every poet: and this is what throws him out when he comes to deal with elementary and poetic things. But the other fault in Mr. Lang’s book is that it is really two books. He joins on to the first thesis that aboriginal religion came from creative and not ancestral gods, the totally distinct thesis, also very interesting in itself, that the savage legends of shades and spirits might be much better understood if we took them in conjunction with recent psychical research. We should not complain if Mr. Andrew Lang wrote two books: indeed we should rejoice if he wrote twenty. But we cannot see sufficient organic connection between the thesis that ghosts might be explained by modern philosophy and the thesis that original savage philosophy had nothing to do with ghosts at all. We must admit, however, that we think Mr. Andrew Lang’s protest against the tone of many scientists towards psychical inquiry very reasonable. Spiritualism in itself may be a very poor religion: no really religious person would think a dead stockbroker any more convincing than a live one. But no sort of reason can be rationally alleged against spiritualism as a form of psychological inquiry. Sufficiently large discoveries have been made in the field of mentality to justify any one who likes a dull science in considering it an entirely genuine one. Huxley was surely amazingly illogical when he declined to hear messages from the dead on the ground of their general futility, saying that he would take no trouble “to hear the conversation of curates and old women in the nearest cathedral town.” The answer is almost staringly obvious. However low may be the mental level of a cathedral town, it can hardly be lower than that of the animal world, which Huxley spent his life in studying: even a curate is probably wittier than a jelly-fish; and an old woman would probably be more fertile in information than an aged amoeba. The reason why Huxley studied these brainless creatures was because they were things to be studied, and, like a true man of science, he neither knew nor cared to what the inquiry would ultimately lead him. Why the same process should not be applied to psychical phenomena we cannot conceive. It is true that, for all we ourselves know (or care), no evidences of purely spectral influences have yet been found in this department. But no honest man can deny that the old, common-sense hypothesis has been as much upset by hypnotism and suggestion as it could be by a thousand spectres. If any rationalist of the dawn of the century had been asked to believe that a hypnotist, by thinking hard at another man, could produce a blister on his leg, he would have said immediately that he would as soon believe in the ghost of Banquo at once.
Ma noi stessi, come abbiamo detto, riteniamo che la questione sia in un senso troppo autenticamente selvaggia per essere risolta con nette definizioni bianche e nere della civiltà. Esprimere qualcosa di più profondo e più antico del linguaggio stesso nel puro linguaggio è impresa da tentare con umiltà e prudenza; nel complesso, è un po’ come cercare di trasmettere il testo dell’«Amleto» con un codice di segnali navali. Per quanto possiamo vedere, è probabile che la religione di un selvaggio esistesse molto prima del più antico culto degli antenati o della più semplice teleologia. Molto prima di dire che la cosa che lo tormentava e lo benediceva e lo spingeva innanzi fosse o il suo bisnonno o la Causa Prima, egli probabilmente diceva che era «Bonk» o «Chunk», una «circostanza che sfuggiva al suo controllo». Probabilmente cominciò col sentire l’eterno fatto che pioveva, gli piacesse o no; poi questa benigna insolenza della pioggia si estese all’intera creazione, e poi, per quanto ne sappiamo, può essere stata attribuita allo spirito di qualche morto. Ma all’inizio il selvaggio si trovava faccia a faccia col fatto che le stesse misericordie che sostenevano il suo essere venivano per una sorta di miracolo sprezzante del tutto inspiegato per lui; egli stava all’inizio faccia a faccia col fatto che non poteva far crescere un albero, e questo, a conti fatti, è più o meno il punto in cui ci troviamo noi alla fine.
Questo, per esempio, è più o meno ciò che pensiamo del problema, discusso con una certa ampiezza dal signor Lang, sull’origine di Geova, la più alta di tutte le divinità storiche. Riteniamo improbabile che Mosè pensasse che Geova fosse una filosofica Causa Prima, e ancor più improbabile che lo credesse suo prozio. Ma supponiamo che Mosè avesse detto (o meglio sentito), non «Geova è la causa ultima di tutte le cose» né «Geova è il dio della mia famiglia», ma semplicemente «Geova è con me: ci fu uno che abbatté i grandi leoni perché io potessi ucciderli e che mi colpì con un dolore malvagio quando mangiai le bacche proibite». All’inizio e alla fine di ogni vita, dotta e ignorante, permane l’imperitura verità che nell’intimo teatro dell’anima dell’uomo, con uno scenario di infinità senza fondo e di terribili astrazioni, si sta sempre svolgendo un’antica sacra rappresentazione, in cui vi sono soltanto due personaggi.
C’è un aspetto della tesi degli dèi contro i fantasmi che saremmo inclini a proporre al signor Andrew Lang più come domanda che come divergenza d’opinione. Sia il signor Lang sia i suoi avversari sembrano dare per scontato che la terminologia del culto degli antenati debba indicare una condizione spirituale inferiore a quella della terminologia della creazione teistica. La tesi del signor Andrew Lang, immaginiamo, è che gli uomini, inseguendo una schiera di meri eroi tribali, dimenticarono l’umile Divinità che, creando tutte le cose, era divenuta la serva di tutti. La tesi del signor Spencer e degli altri avversari del signor Lang, immaginiamo, è che il titolo di «Creatore di tutte le cose» fu infine conferito a qualche eroe ancestrale un po’ come il titolo di «Fratello del Sole e della Luna» potrebbe essere conferito all’Imperatore del Giappone. In entrambi i casi si presume che i termini di paternità e di procreazione rappresentino una superstizione tribale. Ma non è affatto impossibile che il titolo di «padre» o «procreatore» sia un titolo più alto per un creatore cosmico, anziché «creatore» essere un titolo più alto per un padre. Ciò è quanto meno avvalorato dal caso del più nobile dei riformatori religiosi. Gesù di Nazareth trovò una concezione di un creatore universale e deliberatamente gli conferì il titolo di antenato: lo chiamò «Padre Nostro», ciò che un vecchio Campbell avrebbe chiamato Diarmid o un vecchio Ebreo avrebbe chiamato Abramo. Non fu certo una degradazione: fu uno dei tre o quattro abbaglianti colpi di genio religioso che fecero di Gesù ciò che egli era. Innalzando così davanti a tutti gli uomini la vasta e generosa concezione, non di un Creatore, ma di un Generatore di tutte le cose, egli toccò con una mano la più antica e con l’altra la più recente filosofia. Abbracciò il culto degli antenati proponendo una Divinità con un tocco di parentela. Si protese verso l’evoluzione annunciando una creazione per cause naturali. Certamente, anche trattando dell’indubbia superiorità dell’idea di un Creatore rispetto all’idea di un mero antenato, non si dovrebbe dimenticare che a un certo stadio dell’evoluzione religiosa le due posizioni si invertono; e il nome tratto da un qualsiasi comune padre di quattro bimbi diviene la più sublime di tutte le corone di Dio.
C’è un solo altro difetto nell’opera del signor Lang, oltre a questa comune tendenza a prendere troppo scientificamente le fantasie fluttuanti del barbaro. Quest’ultima è del resto altrettanto tipica dei suoi avversari: il signor Herbert Spencer, in particolare, è uno scrittore ammirevole, ma bisogna dire candidamente di lui che è un pessimo selvaggio. Non ha in sé l’eterno selvaggio che è in ogni poeta: ed è ciò che lo tradisce quando arriva a trattare cose elementari e poetiche. Ma l’altro difetto del libro del signor Lang è che in realtà si tratta di due libri. Alla prima tesi, che la religione aborigena venisse da dèi creatori e non ancestrali, egli unisce la tesi del tutto distinta, anch’essa assai interessante di per sé, che le selvagge leggende di ombre e spiriti potrebbero essere assai meglio comprese se le prendessimo in relazione alle recenti ricerche psichiche. Non ci lamenteremmo se il signor Andrew Lang scrivesse due libri: anzi, gioiremmo se ne scrivesse venti. Ma non riusciamo a vedere una connessione organica sufficiente tra la tesi che i fantasmi possano essere spiegati dalla filosofia moderna e la tesi che l’originaria filosofia selvaggia non avesse nulla a che fare con i fantasmi. Dobbiamo però ammettere che riteniamo molto ragionevole la protesta del signor Andrew Lang contro il tono di molti scienziati verso l’indagine psichica. Lo spiritismo di per sé può essere una religione assai povera: nessuna persona veramente religiosa troverebbe un agente di cambio morto più convincente di uno vivo. Ma nessuna ragione può essere razionalmente addotta contro lo spiritismo come forma di indagine psicologica. Sono state fatte scoperte abbastanza vaste nel campo della mente da giustificare chiunque ami una scienza noiosa nel considerarla del tutto genuina. Huxley fu certo sorprendentemente illogico quando rifiutò di ascoltare messaggi dai morti in ragione della loro generale futilità, dicendo che non si sarebbe preso il disturbo «di ascoltare le conversazioni di curati e vecchie donne nella più vicina città con cattedrale». La risposta è quasi lampante nella sua ovvietà. Per quanto basso possa essere il livello mentale di una città con cattedrale, difficilmente può essere più basso di quello del mondo animale, che Huxley trascorse la vita a studiare: perfino un curato è probabilmente più arguto di una medusa; e una vecchia donna sarebbe probabilmente più feconda di informazioni di un’ameba attempata. La ragione per cui Huxley studiava quelle creature senza cervello era che erano cose da studiare, e, da vero uomo di scienza, egli né sapeva né si curava di dove l’indagine lo avrebbe infine condotto. Perché lo stesso procedimento non debba applicarsi ai fenomeni psichici, non riusciamo a concepirlo. È vero che, per quanto noi stessi ne sappiamo (o ce ne importi), nessuna prova di influssi puramente spettrali è ancora stata trovata in questo campo. Ma nessun uomo onesto può negare che la vecchia ipotesi del buon senso sia stata sconvolta dall’ipnotismo e dalla suggestione tanto quanto potrebbe esserlo da mille spettri. Se a un qualsiasi razionalista dell’alba del secolo si fosse chiesto di credere che un ipnotizzatore, pensando intensamente a un altro uomo, potesse produrgli una vescica sulla gamba, egli avrebbe risposto immediatamente che tanto varrebbe credere di colpo al fantasma di Banquo.
We do not feel any disrespect towards this book because it contains two distinct ideas. It is a sufficiently sensational event in the life of a reviewer to find a book which contains even one. But we think it an unfortunate thing that two purely scientific conceptions should be mixed together, and we think it an inexpressibly unfortunate thing that any purely scientific conception should be treated (as sometimes seems the case with Mr. Lang) as if its assertion or negation could possibly affect spirituality. We think spiritualistic inquiry legitimate and interesting, but there is nothing particularly spiritual about spiritualism. If a human soul on earth does not strike us as a thing of splendour, it will not be made more splendid by such a trifle as death. We think Mr. Andrew Lang’s theory that monotheism preceded polytheism perfectly tenable; but it does not matter one rap to religion which came first. The idea of a forgotten omnipotence is certainly a thrilling one. But, surely, there would be as sublime a thrill for the man who, having long worshipped the tree as one god and the river as another, suddenly realised, with a shock fit for a detective story, that, under a hundred disguises, they were all the same person.
G. K. C.
“What We All Mean”
February 16, 1901, The Speaker
The Meaning Of Good. By G. Lowes Dickinson. Glasgow James Maclehose and Sons.
In this striking Platonic dialogue Mr. Lowes Dickinson presents, in his own personality, quite apart from all logical fencing, a deep and curious problem as to the uses and limits of philosophy. He discusses the idea of good and shows that this fundamental idea may be defined variously as an instinct, a compromise, a discipline, an indulgence, a truth, an illusion, a science or an art. At first sight this would seem like speaking of an object in front of our eyes and discussing, with some heat, whether it was a tree, a dog, a hat, a cloud, a problem of Euclid, a cathedral, a broomstick or a Conservative M.P. If a discussion about this latter point really occurred, there would undoubtedly arise a reasonable doubt as to the existence of the object and the personal sobriety of the philosopher. But the remarkable fact is, and it goes to the roots of the nature of verbal philosophy, that any one who reads between the lines can see that Mr. Lowes Dickinson never has at any moment any shadow of real doubt as to the existence of good in the most supreme and spiritual sense. He answers and inquires calmly and fearlessly, he canvasses the most heaven-shaking hypotheses with the bland toleration of a sceptic; but all the time we have an abiding consciousness that he believes in a supreme good for the same reason that we do-i.e., that he could not by any effort of his being do anything else.
This is no mere personality, it is a most interesting question. Mr. Lowes Dickinson is certainly neither a mystic nor a sentimentalist; he has none of that cheap contempt for logic and philosophy-that kind of contempt, as some one wittily said, which is not bred by familiarity. He treats all the wildest doubts of his interlocutors with sincere respect. But when all is said and done he suggests and, in fact, almost confesses, the truth of the conclusion of which we speak-that he is a man perfectly willing to discuss the possibility of tobacco if he may smoke all the while.
In a philosopher so acute and stringent as Mr. Dickinson this apparent contradiction must go down into the deeps of philosophy. And we must admit that to our mind there runs through the whole of the discussion in this book one initial and most simple difficulty, the difficulty of human language. Human language has been wrought by centuries of poets and orators into so fluid and searching a medium that we are apt to forget that it is only a code of signs and a crude one at that. That a man can give no reason for the faith that is in him is not necessarily the fault of the faith; it may be the fault of the tongue he speaks. We talk of our language, but we forget that we have many languages in various stages of advance. For example, railway signals constitute a language; but it is a language at so primitive a stage that it has not yet got beyond the two primal ideas-good and evil, yes and no, safe and unsafe. Any one who chooses may imagine the language of railway signals developed into delicacy and variety as the language of the tongue has developed. A particular tint of peacock green in the night signals might mean “The chairman of the board is recovering from influenza,” a certain tinge of purple in the red light might convey “An old gentleman wearing white spats has just fallen out of the train.” But to whatever extent the language of signals might be amplified, it is obvious, from their nature, that sooner or later a crisis might arise, an unprecedented event might happen, such, let us say, as the engine-driver going mad and thinking he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, the symbols for which were not down in the code, and which, therefore, however obvious it might be, it would be impossible to signal down the line. Now it is surely equally possible that something might happen in the human soul which was simply not down in the old code of language: to ask a man to tell you what had happened would simply be absurd; to ask him to think it had not happened, much more so. Unless we are very much mistaken, Mr. Lowes Dickinson and every other man has precisely such a dumb certainty in his soul and the only name we can give to it is “the universal good.”
Whether Mr. Dickinson agrees with our view of language or no, it is very remarkable that he acts in this philosophic drama of his in strict accordance with it. If logical language be abandoned as an ancient and clumsy machinery, the one thing left to check it by is practical action. If a man acts persistently and cheerfully in defiance of his philosophic summary of life, it is not unreasonable to infer that some alien and contrary force has arisen in him somehow; if a train, when everything signals it as stopped, still runs on at full speed, it is not unreasonable to trace in it the individuality of some such person as our engine-driver, engaged at the moment in discharging archiepiscopal functions. It is precisely this test of action that Mr. Lowes Dickinson applies with that polished and quiet shrewdness which marks all his progress through this intricate maze of cobwebs. He says (if we may associate him with the first person in the narrative) to the debater who denies altogether any validity in our individual conceptions of good, “But do you not yourself act systematically on the assumption that your good is really good?” The man cannot deny that he does. To the man who admits individual ideas of good, but denies that there is any common or general good, he says, “But do not you in speaking, voting, supporting charities, in fact act on the assumption that there is a general good?” The man cannot deny that he does. To some this may seem a mere argumentum ad hominem; to us it appears, properly considered, exceedingly to the point. The truth is that there is a force in all of them, either below or above language, which is vaguely expressed by the general drift of action. The entertaining young men who discuss this matter with Mr. Dickinson deal with all these points lightly, demur and quibble and elude pursuit in a very charming way. But if one of them had suddenly spoken out exactly what he really felt and knew, we fancy they would have all started at the strange and new voice. He might have said suddenly—“It is no good. Something has happened inside me: something has happened, I think, inside all of us. We do believe in a general good, only that is a silly name. I cannot tell you why I believe in good, because the signals all say the wrong things: they say old things and this is a new thing-perhaps only eighteen hundred years old. But we have emerged into an air and world where we cannot be solitary or selfish. All laws apart, I should no more torment or oppress another man than I should dye my beard blue or do anything else that I knew in my soul to be silly. No, there is something inside me. We cannot be utterly evil, even if we try. The kingdom of heaven is within us.”
Non proviamo alcuna irriverenza verso questo libro per il fatto che contiene due idee distinte. È un evento abbastanza sensazionale, nella vita di un recensore, trovare un libro che ne contenga anche una sola. Ma riteniamo cosa sventurata che due concezioni puramente scientifiche vengano mescolate insieme, e riteniamo cosa indicibilmente sventurata che una qualsiasi concezione puramente scientifica venga trattata (come talora pare accadere col signor Lang) come se la sua affermazione o negazione potesse in qualche modo influire sulla spiritualità. Riteniamo l’indagine spiritistica legittima e interessante, ma non v’è nulla di particolarmente spirituale nello spiritismo. Se un’anima umana sulla terra non ci colpisce come cosa di splendore, non sarà resa più splendida da un’inezia quale la morte. Riteniamo la teoria del signor Andrew Lang, che il monoteismo abbia preceduto il politeismo, perfettamente sostenibile; ma non importa un fico alla religione quale sia venuto prima. L’idea di un’onnipotenza dimenticata è certo idea emozionante. Ma, di sicuro, vi sarebbe un brivido altrettanto sublime per l’uomo che, avendo a lungo adorato l’albero come un dio e il fiume come un altro, d’un tratto si avvedesse, con uno choc degno di una storia da detective, che, sotto cento travestimenti, essi erano tutti la medesima persona.
G. K. C.
«Ciò che tutti intendiamo»
16 febbraio 1901, The Speaker
Il significato del bene. Di G. Lowes Dickinson. Glasgow, James Maclehose and Sons.
In questo notevole dialogo platonico il signor Lowes Dickinson espone, nella sua propria persona, del tutto a prescindere da ogni schermaglia logica, un problema profondo e curioso circa gli usi e i limiti della filosofia. Egli discute l’idea del bene e mostra che questa idea fondamentale può essere definita variamente come un istinto, un compromesso, una disciplina, un’indulgenza, una verità, un’illusione, una scienza o un’arte. A prima vista ciò parrebbe come parlare di un oggetto dinanzi ai nostri occhi e discutere, con un certo calore, se fosse un albero, un cane, un cappello, una nuvola, un problema di Euclide, una cattedrale, un manico di scopa o un deputato conservatore. Se una discussione su quest’ultimo punto avvenisse davvero, sorgerebbe senza dubbio un ragionevole dubbio circa l’esistenza dell’oggetto e la sobrietà personale del filosofo. Ma il fatto notevole è, e va alle radici della natura della filosofia verbale, che chiunque legga tra le righe può vedere che il signor Lowes Dickinson non ha mai, in alcun momento, alcuna ombra di reale dubbio circa l’esistenza del bene nel senso più supremo e spirituale. Egli risponde e indaga con calma e senza timore, vaglia le ipotesi più sconvolgenti per il cielo con la blanda tolleranza di uno scettico; ma per tutto il tempo abbiamo la persistente consapevolezza che egli crede in un bene supremo per la stessa ragione per cui vi crediamo noi, ossia che non potrebbe, con alcuno sforzo del suo essere, fare altrimenti.
Questo non è mero fatto personale, è una questione oltremodo interessante. Il signor Lowes Dickinson non è certo né un mistico né un sentimentale; non ha nulla di quel dozzinale disprezzo per la logica e la filosofia, quella specie di disprezzo che, come argutamente disse qualcuno, non è generata dalla familiarità. Egli tratta tutti i più arditi dubbi dei suoi interlocutori con sincero rispetto. Ma, a conti fatti, egli suggerisce e, di fatto, quasi confessa la verità della conclusione di cui parliamo: ch’egli è un uomo perfettamente disposto a discutere la possibilità del tabacco purché gli sia concesso di fumare per tutto il tempo.
In un filosofo tanto acuto e rigoroso quanto il signor Dickinson questa apparente contraddizione deve scendere nei profondi abissi della filosofia. E dobbiamo ammettere che, a nostro avviso, attraverso tutta la discussione di questo libro corre una difficoltà iniziale e semplicissima, la difficoltà del linguaggio umano. Il linguaggio umano è stato foggiato da secoli di poeti e oratori in un mezzo tanto fluido e penetrante che siamo inclini a dimenticare ch’esso è soltanto un codice di segni, e per giunta rozzo. Che un uomo non sappia addurre alcuna ragione della fede che è in lui non è necessariamente colpa della fede; può essere colpa della lingua che parla. Parliamo del nostro linguaggio, ma dimentichiamo che abbiamo molti linguaggi in vari stadi di progresso. Per esempio, i segnali ferroviari costituiscono un linguaggio; ma è un linguaggio a uno stadio tanto primitivo da non essere ancora andato oltre le due idee primordiali: bene e male, sì e no, sicuro e insicuro. Chiunque voglia può immaginare il linguaggio dei segnali ferroviari sviluppato in delicatezza e varietà come si è sviluppato il linguaggio della lingua. Una particolare tinta di verde pavone nei segnali della notte potrebbe significare «Il presidente del consiglio d’amministrazione si sta rimettendo dall’influenza»; una certa sfumatura di porpora nella luce rossa potrebbe voler dire «Un vecchio signore con ghette bianche è appena caduto dal treno». Ma per quanto il linguaggio dei segnali potesse essere ampliato, è ovvio, per la loro natura, che prima o poi potrebbe sorgere una crisi, potrebbe accadere un evento senza precedenti, quale, poniamo, il macchinista che impazzisce e crede di essere l’Arcivescovo di Canterbury, i cui simboli non erano previsti nel codice, e che perciò, per quanto ovvio potesse essere, sarebbe impossibile segnalare lungo la linea. Ora è di certo egualmente possibile che qualcosa possa accadere nell’anima umana che semplicemente non era previsto nell’antico codice del linguaggio: chiedere a un uomo di dirti cosa fosse accaduto sarebbe semplicemente assurdo; chiedergli di pensare che non fosse accaduto, molto più assurdo ancora. Se non ci inganniamo di molto, il signor Lowes Dickinson e ogni altro uomo ha precisamente una tale muta certezza nell’anima, e l’unico nome che possiamo darle è «il bene universale».
Che il signor Dickinson concordi o no con la nostra visione del linguaggio, è assai notevole ch’egli agisca in questo suo dramma filosofico in stretta conformità ad essa. Se il linguaggio logico viene abbandonato come un antico e goffo congegno, l’unica cosa che resti per verificarlo è l’azione pratica. Se un uomo agisce con costanza e allegria in dispregio del suo riassunto filosofico della vita, non è irragionevole dedurre che in lui sia in qualche modo sorta una forza estranea e contraria; se un treno, quando ogni segnale lo dà per fermo, continua a correre a tutta velocità, non è irragionevole rintracciarvi l’individualità di una persona come il nostro macchinista, impegnato in quel momento a esercitare funzioni arcivescovili. È precisamente questa prova dell’azione che il signor Lowes Dickinson applica con quella limata e quieta accortezza che contrassegna tutto il suo procedere attraverso questo intricato labirinto di ragnatele. Egli dice (se ci è concesso identificarlo con la prima persona del racconto) al disputante che nega del tutto ogni validità alle nostre concezioni individuali del bene: «Ma non agite forse voi stesso sistematicamente sul presupposto che il vostro bene sia realmente bene?». L’uomo non può negare di farlo. All’uomo che ammette idee individuali del bene, ma nega che vi sia alcun bene comune o generale, egli dice: «Ma non agite forse, nel parlare, nel votare, nel sostenere opere di carità, sul presupposto che vi sia un bene generale?». L’uomo non può negare di farlo. Ad alcuni ciò potrà sembrare un mero argumentum ad hominem; a noi appare, ben considerato, oltremodo pertinente. La verità è che vi è in tutti loro una forza, o al di sotto o al di sopra del linguaggio, vagamente espressa dalla generale tendenza dell’azione. I divertenti giovani che discutono questa materia col signor Dickinson trattano tutti questi punti con leggerezza, obiettano e cavillano ed eludono l’inseguimento in maniera assai graziosa. Ma se uno di essi avesse d’un tratto detto esattamente ciò che davvero sentiva e sapeva, immaginiamo che tutti avrebbero trasalito a quella voce strana e nuova. Egli avrebbe potuto dire d’improvviso: «Non serve a nulla. Qualcosa è accaduto dentro di me: qualcosa è accaduto, credo, dentro tutti noi. Noi crediamo davvero in un bene generale, solo che è un nome sciocco. Non so dirvi perché credo nel bene, perché i segnali dicono tutti le cose sbagliate: dicono cose vecchie e questa è una cosa nuova, forse vecchia solo di milleottocento anni. Ma siamo emersi in un’aria e in un mondo dove non possiamo essere solitari o egoisti. A parte ogni legge, non tormenterei né opprimerei un altro uomo più di quanto mi tingerei la barba di blu o farei qualsiasi altra cosa che sapessi nell’anima mia essere sciocca. No, c’è qualcosa dentro di me. Non possiamo essere del tutto malvagi, per quanto ci si provi. Il regno dei cieli è dentro di noi».
If this view be correct and the universal good be essentially a new and nameless thing, we can easily explain the diverse and contradictory definitions of good which Mr. Dickinson’s friends give in turn. One man finds good in science, and says therefore that goodness is a science; another finds it in instincts, and says therefore that goodness is an instinct. If a man could possibly remember nothing at all except a tame elephant that had saved his life, he would say that goodness was an elephant. So it is, among other things.
Mr. Lowes Dickinson states all the various points of view with conspicuous eloquence and justice. If there is one point that we should be inclined to criticise it is his stricture upon Walt Whitman, when he quotes him as an example of the untenable optimism which equalises all things. Walt Whitman has been singularly misunderstood on this point. Surely no one imagines that he really thought that all distinctions were unmeaning, that he drank coffee and arsenic in idle alternation, and went to bed on the kitchen fire as a change from his bedstead. What he did say and mean was that there was one plane on which all things were equal, one point from which everything was the same, the point of view of unfathomable wonder at the energy of Being, the power of God. There is no inconsistency in ranking things in ascending order on the practical plane and equalising them on the religious plane.
We may take a familiar parallel. There is nothing inconsistent in saying, “For what we are about to receive the Lord make us truly thankful,” and then complaining that the champagne is corked or the mutton raw. There is such a thing as a bad dinner and such a thing as a good one, and criticism is quite justified in comparing one with the other: but it remains true that both become good the moment we compare them with the hypothesis of no dinner at all. So it was with Whitman, good and bad lives became equal to him in relation to the hypothesis of no life at all. A man, let us say a soldier of the Southern Confederacy, was considered as a man, a miracle that swallowed up all moral distinctions, in the realm of religion. But in the realm of criticism, otherwise called the Battle of Gettysburg, Whitman would strain every nerve to blow the man into a thousand pieces.
We hope we shall hear more from the author of The Greek View of Life. We think the present volume a singularly good one, and, as we have explained above, we have an arrogant conviction that we know the Meaning of Good.
G.K.C.
Our English Goblins
—February 23, 1901, The Speaker
Ballads Of Ghostly Shires. By George Bartram. London: Greening.
In a remote and secluded corner of the British Empire, much neglected by the Imperial student, there is a little island, or rather peninsula, which has in its way contributed something even to the greatness of colonial expansion, and to which, in spite of its insignificance, its own inhabitants are deeply and mysteriously attached. This little outpost (which is called by its denizens England) has been almost incredibly neglected in the matter of poetical study. One section of modern poets, under the leadership of Mr. W. B. Yeats, revives the poetry of the small and unhappy peoples, such as the Irish and the Bretons, and swaggers about their misfortunes and enslavement until any one who has a vote or an income begins to feel quite degraded. The other section, under the leadership of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, seems to find English life only tolerable in remote and curious continents, exults in their flora and fauna and would appear almost to credit the British Empire with the humorous exploit of creating the kangaroo. Between these two extremes English legend and local colour would seem to be entirely neglected, and it is for this reason that we hail with the greatest pleasure Mr. George Bartram’s Ballads of Ghostly Shires, in which he makes a manly and spirited attempt to build again on the old foundations of English ballad and country tale, more especially those connected with the supernatural. This is not the first form in which Mr. George Bartram has attempted this wise and much-needed work of genuine patriotism: we have a pleasant remembrance of that quaint and vigorous tale of old rustic life, The People of Clopton. But it is in connection with fable rather than truth that the chief need exists, for error seems closer to the earth and the blood of nationality than any facts. Nations may safely import whole philosophies and constitutions, like so much tea or tobacco; but it goes ill with a people that has to import its superstition. The justly exultant discoverers of Celtic lore say that the English have no fine folk-lore. It may be our own English partiality, but we fancy that this only means they have no folk-lore at all like the Celtic. At the back of the Irish poetry and mythology there is an infinite hunger after beauty and rest: the Irish spirit is for ever working to disentangle from the rope of life the one blue thread, like the thread in the Jewish priest’s garment, which represents the eternal and the fulfilled. This is a great moral truth, and it has produced the noble folk-lore of the Secret Rose and the Country of the Young. But it is not the only splendid and eternal strand in the rope of life; through that rope there runs everlastingly a strand of the grotesque, the fierce and humorous energy in things, the defiant and wholesome ugliness of courage and experience. It is this exuberant twist or gnarl in the wood that is our English speciality, and it gives as much of a definite philosophic character to “Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham” as the thirst for perfection gives to the legends of the Gael. It is this spirit, the spirit of Robin Goodfellow, that Mr. George Bartram finely embodies in these ballads. “How the Youth was cured of his Mazedness” is a genial human interlude. With a certain coarse universalism which smacks of old England to the bone, he accepts the grotesqueness of the world, even in its tragedies, gibbets, cudgels, broken skulls, and men hanging are swallowed with the appetite of a giant: but the feeling is not a love of death, but a love of life; it is not cruel, it is rather a sort of daredevil kindness. Stevenson had this amicable bloodymindedness and the neurotics have never understood it. It is very significant that Mr. Bartram approaches the supernatural world in a very different tone and spirit from that in which it is approached by the average mystic. In a faulty but spirited poem which might be called an introduction to his whole work he describes himself as taking the kingdom of mystery, like the Kingdom of Heaven, by storm:-
Se questa veduta è corretta e il bene universale è essenzialmente una cosa nuova e senza nome, possiamo spiegare facilmente le diverse e contraddittorie definizioni del bene che gli amici del signor Dickinson danno a turno. Un uomo trova il bene nella scienza, e dice perciò che la bontà è una scienza; un altro lo trova negli istinti, e dice perciò che la bontà è un istinto. Se un uomo non potesse ricordare proprio nulla se non un elefante ammaestrato che gli avesse salvato la vita, direbbe che la bontà è un elefante. E così è, tra le altre cose.
Il signor Lowes Dickinson espone tutti i vari punti di vista con cospicua eloquenza e giustezza. Se c’è un punto che saremmo inclini a criticare, è la sua censura di Walt Whitman, quando lo cita come esempio dell’insostenibile ottimismo che pareggia tutte le cose. Walt Whitman è stato singolarmente frainteso su questo punto. Certo nessuno immagina che egli pensasse davvero che tutte le distinzioni fossero prive di senso, che bevesse caffè e arsenico in oziosa alternanza, e andasse a coricarsi sul fuoco della cucina come alternativa al suo letto. Ciò che egli disse e intese fu che c’era un piano su cui tutte le cose erano uguali, un punto dal quale ogni cosa era identica, il punto di vista dell’insondabile meraviglia dinanzi all’energia dell’Essere, la potenza di Dio. Non c’è alcuna incoerenza nel disporre le cose in ordine ascendente sul piano pratico e nel pareggiarle sul piano religioso.
Possiamo prendere un parallelo familiare. Non c’è nulla di incoerente nel dire «Per ciò che stiamo per ricevere renda il Signore noi veramente grati» e poi lamentarsi che lo champagne sappia di tappo o che il montone sia crudo. Esiste una cosa quale una cattiva cena e una cosa quale una buona, e la critica è del tutto giustificata nel paragonare l’una con l’altra: ma resta vero che entrambe divengono buone nel momento in cui le confrontiamo con l’ipotesi di nessuna cena affatto. Così era per Whitman: le vite buone e le vite cattive divenivano per lui uguali in rapporto all’ipotesi di nessuna vita affatto. Un uomo, poniamo un soldato della Confederazione del Sud, veniva considerato come uomo, un miracolo che inghiottiva tutte le distinzioni morali, nel regno della religione. Ma nel regno della critica, altrimenti detto la Battaglia di Gettysburg, Whitman si sarebbe sforzato con ogni fibra di fare a mille pezzi quell’uomo.
Speriamo di sentire ancora parlare l’autore di The Greek View of Life. Riteniamo il presente volume singolarmente buono e, come abbiamo spiegato più sopra, nutriamo l’arrogante convinzione di conoscere il Significato del Bene.
G.K.C.
I nostri Folletti Inglesi
—23 febbraio 1901, The Speaker
Ballads Of Ghostly Shires. Di George Bartram. Londra: Greening.
In un remoto e appartato angolo dell’Impero britannico, assai trascurato dallo studioso dell’Impero, c’è una piccola isola, o piuttosto penisola, che ha a suo modo contribuito qualcosa perfino alla grandezza dell’espansione coloniale, e alla quale, malgrado la sua insignificanza, i suoi stessi abitanti sono profondamente e misteriosamente attaccati. Questo piccolo avamposto (che i suoi abitatori chiamano Inghilterra) è stato trascurato in modo quasi incredibile in fatto di studio poetico. Una fazione di poeti moderni, sotto la guida del signor W. B. Yeats, fa rivivere la poesia dei popoli piccoli e infelici, come gli Irlandesi e i Bretoni, e si pavoneggia delle loro sventure e del loro asservimento finché chiunque abbia un voto o una rendita comincia a sentirsi del tutto avvilito. L’altra fazione, sotto la guida del signor Rudyard Kipling, pare trovare la vita inglese tollerabile solo in continenti remoti e curiosi, esulta della loro flora e fauna e parrebbe quasi attribuire all’Impero britannico l’umoristica impresa di aver creato il canguro. Tra questi due estremi la leggenda inglese e il colore locale sembrerebbero interamente trascurati, ed è per questa ragione che salutiamo col più grande piacere le Ballads of Ghostly Shires del signor George Bartram, nelle quali egli compie un tentativo virile e animoso di edificare di nuovo sulle antiche fondamenta della ballata e del racconto campagnolo inglese, e più specialmente su quelli legati al soprannaturale. Non è questa la prima forma in cui il signor George Bartram ha tentato questa saggia e assai necessaria opera di genuino patriottismo: serbiamo un piacevole ricordo di quel bizzarro e vigoroso racconto della vecchia vita rustica, The People of Clopton. Ma è in rapporto alla favola piuttosto che alla verità che sussiste il bisogno principale, poiché l’errore sembra più vicino alla terra e al sangue della nazionalità di quanto lo siano i fatti. Le nazioni possono tranquillamente importare intere filosofie e costituzioni, come tanto tè o tabacco; ma va male per un popolo che debba importare la propria superstizione. I giustamente esultanti scopritori del sapere celtico dicono che gli Inglesi non hanno un bel folclore. Sarà pure la nostra parzialità inglese, ma ci pare che questo significhi soltanto che non hanno alcun folclore simile a quello celtico. In fondo alla poesia e alla mitologia irlandese c’è una fame infinita di bellezza e di riposo: lo spirito irlandese lavora eternamente a districare dalla corda della vita l’unico filo azzurro, come il filo nella veste del sacerdote ebraico, che rappresenta l’eterno e il compiuto. Questa è una grande verità morale, e ha prodotto il nobile folclore della Rosa Segreta e del Paese dei Giovani. Ma non è l’unico filo splendido ed eterno nella corda della vita; attraverso quella corda corre eternamente un filo del grottesco, la fiera e umoristica energia che è nelle cose, la sfrontata e sana bruttezza del coraggio e dell’esperienza. È questa esuberante torsione o nodosità nel legno la nostra specialità inglese, ed essa conferisce a «Robin Hood e lo Sceriffo di Nottingham» un carattere filosofico altrettanto definito di quanto la sete di perfezione ne conferisca alle leggende del Gaelo. È questo spirito, lo spirito di Robin Goodfellow, che il signor George Bartram incarna finemente in queste ballate. «How the Youth was cured of his Mazedness» è un geniale intermezzo umano. Con un certo rozzo universalismo che sa di vecchia Inghilterra fin nelle ossa, egli accetta la grotteschezza del mondo, perfino nelle sue tragedie, forche, randelli, crani spaccati, e gli uomini impiccati vengono ingoiati con l’appetito di un gigante: ma il sentimento non è un amore della morte, bensì un amore della vita; non è crudele, è piuttosto una sorta di temeraria bontà. Stevenson aveva questa amichevole ferocia e i nevrotici non l’hanno mai compresa. È molto significativo che il signor Bartram si accosti al mondo soprannaturale con un tono e uno spirito assai diversi da quelli con cui vi si accosta il mistico medio. In una poesia difettosa ma animosa, che si potrebbe chiamare un’introduzione a tutta la sua opera, egli descrive se stesso mentre prende il regno del mistero, come il Regno dei Cieli, con la tempesta:-
“They have shunned the naked steel; we have scattered wide their picket: There is light athwart the track; see the gate is close at hand. In a struggle brief and stern we have broken from the thicket To a flood of roseate sheen by an arch of cypress spanned We have forced the golden wicket: we are lords of Glamourland.”
The idea of colonising Fairyland may seem to some to be marked with some of the more foolish of the English traits. But we confess that we have much sympathy with the idea that there is, upon the whole, no likelihood of there being any district of the material or spiritual world in which a man will get on any the better for discarding his natural strength and his national virtues. Some of the more mystical decadents have tended at times to exhibit Fairyland as a kind of Botany Bay, in which the moral refuse of humanity would stand the best chance. Mr. Bartram’s verse may be too crude and bellicose, but we thank him for suggesting, consciously or unconsciously, that it is at least tenable that the entrance to the world of wonder is not a keyhole that only the thinnest can get through, but a wall that only the strongest can vault. At any rate, we hope that Mr. Bartram’s enthusiasm for English ghosts may be infectious. It is not that we care one rap for the supernatural element: but we know that in history, and especially in literature, it is only the supernatural life which will induce men to study and value the natural. We do not desire to create a general awe and reverence for turnip-ghosts, but we do desire to create a general awe and reverence for turnips.
—G.K.C.
“The Morality of the Hat” March 2, 1901, The Speaker
There was a time when we (like most ill-dressed people) were reformers of dress: we had indeed several proposals for which little can be urged but their originality. We thought that the waistcoat in morning dress might be constructed with a kind of flap which should fall down in the form of a tray to support the cup at afternoon tea. We thought that at private views and other such uproariously public occasions, the man of fashion might wear round his neck a simple and not ungraceful label inscribed “I beg your pardon. It is a fine day,” to save him the trouble of addressing all the valued acquaintances upon whose toes he trod. But as both these young ideals were accepted somewhat coldly (by the aristocrats among whom we move) we have fallen back rather upon the historic and conservative contemplation of things as they have actually developed. And here, as in every other department that we have studied, we have found that Radicals like ourselves are the only people left who have any reverence for the past.
We have concentrated our souls upon the hat: the loftiest, the most holy of questions: for was not swearing by the head in numberless countries almost a religious oath? But the particular ceremonial function which the hat fulfils in Western countries is somewhat peculiar.
Of course this use of the hat as a salute has, in modern life, an obvious practical convenience. There is no other part of dress that could be used as a sword or bayonet is used in military saluting. The French, with their genius for a natural ritual, have precisely expressed the matter in speaking of a coup de chapeau. The human mind cannot seriously contemplate a gentleman taking off his cuffs to a lady, or stopping in the middle of the street to detach his necktie and wave it respectfully in the air. Even the French would not wish any one to salute a neighbour with “a blow of the waistcoat.” But all this concentration of courtesy in the hat is merely a local accident of dress: other races of men have really expressed respect by the removal of other appendages. In the East, for example, the shoes are removed as an expression of reverence: and this is really quite as strange to our conceptions as those we have mentioned. We have only to imagine the condition of Bond Street if every time a gentleman met a lady he sat down on the pavement and began to unlace his boots.
The East and West seem condemned to be topsyturveydoms to each other, and it is but one of the thousand symbols of the fact that in one case the headgear is immovable and the foot-gear constantly shifted, and in the other the head-gear is constantly shifted and the footgear immovable. But the whole matter goes much deeper than this. The Eastern custom of removing the shoes on entering a house or temple has an obvious practical meaning. The Western custom of removing the hat can only, to our mind, have a meaning entirely philosophic, abstract and religious.
The meaning of the removal of shoes is clear: it is to preserve the house from the defilements of the street. But no one can suppose that a visitor can defile anything with his hat. It is unusual to see a gentleman rubbing his head on the road before entering a house or rubbing his hat on the carpet after entering it. If these customs are known, they are at least very recent developments of the fashion of “familiarity.” It seems to us that the whole question of the hat belongs (we use the phrase with no base intention) to a higher level.
It is not only true that many Eastern civilizations do not remove the hat as a sign of respect. One of the greatest, for example, the Jewish civilisation, assumes the hat as a sign of respect. And this, when we come to think of it, is a very natural and a very fine idea. To hide the face, to cover oneself from the terror of perfection, seems the natural movement of self-subordination. And if the actual appearance presented by a synagogue, where all the worshippers wear the black silk “stovepipe” is not poetic, this is certainly not the fault of the Semitic idea, but of the Aryan hat. At any rate, it is sufficient for the purpose of our argument to point out that this great people do connect worship with the wearing of the hat: some individuals, indeed, push the matter so far as to wear several hats; which may be taken as an expression of almost exaggerated reverence for the universe.
«Hanno rifuggito il nudo acciaio; abbiamo disperso ovunque la loro vedetta: c’è luce di traverso al sentiero; ecco, la porta è a portata di mano. In una lotta breve e aspra siamo balzati fuori dalla macchia verso un flutto di roseo splendore inarcato da una volta di cipressi. Abbiamo forzato il cancelletto dorato: siamo signori della Terra dell’Incanto.»
L’idea di colonizzare il Paese delle Fate potrà sembrare ad alcuni segnata da certi tra i più sciocchi tratti inglesi. Ma confessiamo di avere molta simpatia per l’idea che non vi sia, tutto sommato, alcuna probabilità che esista un qualche distretto del mondo materiale o spirituale in cui un uomo se la cavi meglio gettando via la propria forza naturale e le proprie virtù nazionali. Alcuni tra i decadenti più mistici hanno talvolta teso a esibire il Paese delle Fate come una sorta di Botany Bay, in cui i rifiuti morali dell’umanità avrebbero le migliori probabilità. Il verso del signor Bartram sarà pure troppo rozzo e bellicoso, ma gli siamo grati per aver suggerito, consapevolmente o inconsapevolmente, che è almeno sostenibile che l’ingresso al mondo della meraviglia non sia un buco della serratura attraverso cui solo il più sottile può passare, ma un muro che solo il più forte può scavalcare. A ogni modo, speriamo che l’entusiasmo del signor Bartram per gli spettri inglesi sia contagioso. Non che ci importi un fico del soprannaturale: ma sappiamo che nella storia, e specialmente nella letteratura, è solo la vita soprannaturale a indurre gli uomini a studiare e ad apprezzare il naturale. Non desideriamo suscitare un generale timore e riverenza per gli spettri delle rape, ma desideriamo davvero suscitare un generale timore e riverenza per le rape.
—G.K.C.
«La Morale del Cappello» 2 marzo 1901, The Speaker
Ci fu un tempo in cui noi (come la maggior parte delle persone mal vestite) eravamo riformatori dell’abbigliamento: avevamo, in verità, parecchie proposte a favore delle quali poco si può addurre se non la loro originalità. Pensavamo che il panciotto dell’abito da mattina potesse essere costruito con una sorta di risvolto che ricadesse a forma di vassoio per sostenere la tazza al tè pomeridiano. Pensavamo che, alle inaugurazioni private e ad altre occasioni così clamorosamente pubbliche, l’uomo alla moda potesse portare al collo una semplice e non sgraziata targhetta con l’iscrizione «Chiedo scusa. È una bella giornata», per risparmiargli la fatica di rivolgersi a tutte le stimate conoscenze sui cui piedi aveva pestato. Ma poiché entrambi questi giovanili ideali furono accolti alquanto freddamente (dagli aristocratici tra i quali ci muoviamo) siamo ripiegati piuttosto sulla contemplazione storica e conservatrice delle cose così come si sono effettivamente sviluppate. E qui, come in ogni altro campo che abbiamo studiato, abbiamo scoperto che i Radicali come noi sono le uniche persone rimaste ad avere una qualche riverenza per il passato.
Abbiamo concentrato le nostre anime sul cappello: la più alta, la più santa delle questioni: poiché il giurare sul proprio capo non era forse, in innumerevoli paesi, quasi un giuramento religioso? Ma la particolare funzione cerimoniale che il cappello adempie nei paesi occidentali è alquanto singolare.
Naturalmente questo uso del cappello come saluto ha, nella vita moderna, un’ovvia comodità pratica. Non c’è altra parte dell’abbigliamento che possa essere usata come si usa una spada o una baionetta nel saluto militare. I Francesi, con il loro genio per un rituale naturale, hanno espresso con precisione la cosa parlando di un coup de chapeau. La mente umana non può seriamente immaginare un gentiluomo che si toglie i polsini davanti a una dama, o che si ferma in mezzo alla strada per staccarsi la cravatta e agitarla rispettosamente nell’aria. Nemmeno i Francesi vorrebbero che qualcuno salutasse il vicino con «un colpo di panciotto». Ma tutta questa concentrazione di cortesia nel cappello è solo un accidente locale dell’abbigliamento: altre razze di uomini hanno realmente espresso rispetto rimuovendo altre appendici. In Oriente, per esempio, ci si tolgono le scarpe come espressione di riverenza: e questo è davvero tanto strano per le nostre concezioni quanto quelli che abbiamo menzionato. Basta immaginare in che stato sarebbe Bond Street se ogni volta che un gentiluomo incontra una dama si sedesse sul marciapiede e cominciasse a slacciarsi gli stivali.
L’Oriente e l’Occidente sembrano condannati a essere l’uno per l’altro mondi alla rovescia, e questo è solo uno dei mille simboli del fatto che in un caso il copricapo è immobile e la calzatura di continuo mutata, e nell’altro il copricapo è di continuo mutato e la calzatura immobile. Ma l’intera faccenda va assai più a fondo di così. L’usanza orientale di togliersi le scarpe entrando in una casa o in un tempio ha un ovvio significato pratico. L’usanza occidentale di togliersi il cappello può soltanto, a nostro avviso, avere un significato interamente filosofico, astratto e religioso.
Il significato del togliersi le scarpe è chiaro: è preservare la casa dalle contaminazioni della strada. Ma nessuno può supporre che un visitatore possa contaminare qualcosa col proprio cappello. È insolito vedere un gentiluomo che si strofina la testa sulla strada prima di entrare in una casa o che si strofina il cappello sul tappeto dopo esservi entrato. Se tali usanze esistono, sono quantomeno sviluppi assai recenti della moda della «familiarità». Ci sembra che l’intera questione del cappello appartenga (usiamo l’espressione senza alcuna bassa intenzione) a un livello più alto.
Non è solo vero che molte civiltà orientali non si tolgono il cappello in segno di rispetto. Una delle più grandi, per esempio, la civiltà ebraica, indossa il cappello in segno di rispetto. E questa, a ben pensarci, è un’idea assai naturale e assai bella. Nascondere il volto, coprirsi dal terrore della perfezione, sembra il movimento naturale della subordinazione di sé. E se l’aspetto effettivo offerto da una sinagoga, dove tutti i fedeli portano il «tubo di stufa» di seta nera, non è poetico, ciò non è certo colpa dell’idea semitica, ma del cappello ariano. A ogni modo, ai fini del nostro ragionamento basta far notare che questo grande popolo collega davvero il culto al portare il cappello: alcuni individui, anzi, spingono la cosa al punto di indossare parecchi cappelli; il che si può interpretare come espressione di una riverenza quasi esagerata per l’universo.
If, by the operation of other causes, it has become natural to us to uncover ourselves to anything or any one that we respect, the causes of this difference in the instinct of courtesy cannot be uninteresting to consider, though it would probably be hopeless to finally explore them. But it is at least to be suggested that reverence is in all cases compounded of the two elements of fear and trust. The old Hebrews had the element of fear just tinged and made dramatic by a touch of trust. The modern world has had, through Christianity, the element of trust just tinged and made dramatic by a touch of fear. The great danger of the life of our age is that in losing that one touch of fear in all its pleasures, it may lose the whole structure of happiness, like a palace in the Arabian Nights. But this new or Christian element of confidence in the beauty of things, rather than fear of it, is bound to have a suitable ritual. It is its nature, in its highest form, to love the beauty of the thunderbolt as much as the ancients feared the beauty of the flowers. It is possible then that this general instinct in modern civilization to uncover in the presence of the holy thing is an instinct towards simplicity and self-exposure, a modified form as it were of being “naked and not ashamed.” The modern black hat is instinct with the sense of shelter, protection, and privilege; it is itself a kind of portable roof. If it is true that the Englishman’s house is his castle, it is at least equally true that the Englishman’s hat is his house. Not in vain is it called a “chimney-pot” hat; the same beautiful object which lifts itself to the stars on the top of the middle-class house is carried in its lighter and more symbolic form on the top of the middle-class head. It seems to us at least possible that when an Englishman takes his hat off to a lady he is essentially coming out of his house; that impenetrable house of privacy, and self-approval, and consuming fear of humanity. He is believing, if for a single moment, that he may be crowned with the stars.
G. K. C.
Jews Old and New
—March 2, 1901, The Speaker
The Ancient Scriptures And The Modern Jew. By David Baron. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
It is certainly a singular fact that the more mysterious a matter is the more popular it is with the mass of humanity: this fact is perhaps the root of religions and is at any rate a very gratifying thing. Pure matters of fact which any one could find out who took the trouble, such as the number of Lord Roberts’s proclamations or the number of lamp-posts in the Borough Road, are treated with a semi-mystical terror and respect, as the prerogatives of a priesthood of specialists. But the things which are inscrutable and immeasurable in themselves-as enigmatic in a hard-boiled egg as in an Eocene rock, in a Star poster as in a row of Egyptian hieroglyphics-in these everybody feels at home. The cheapest, the most numerous, the most personal and frivolous class of books are probably those dealing with the Bible, the most tremendous of works on the most tremendous of subjects. The greater the book the more the average man feels himself capable of editing it. The man who turns out a little tract on Daniel or Saul every month would be worried if asked to interpret Spenser, completely embarrassed if asked to interpret Maeterlinck, and struck with mere grovelling terror if asked to interpret Mr. Stephen Phillips. Thus Mr. David Baron has written an interesting book called The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew, in the whole course of which it never seems to strike him for a moment that he is dealing with a riddle of ethics and history compared with which squaring the circle would be trivial; that if there is one thing that is more dark and remote to us than even the Ancient Scriptures, that thing is the Modern Jew.
He never seems to realise, even for one dazzling instant, the idea that a bland, black-coated Aryan gentleman sitting in his arm-chair with a creed formulated at the Reformation and a political system diluted from the ideas of 1740, may possibly not be in complete possession of all the abysmal spiritual divisions and eternal spiritual energies which alone could finally throw light on the destiny of an immemorial people, whose strange discoveries in the world of the soul, discoveries embedded whole and often undeciphered in our later systems, were made under strange stars and lost temples, as alien as the landscapes of another planet.
The first part of Mr. Baron’s work deals with the ancient writings, on which he argues ingeniously enough, but about which he ignores two small points-first, that they are ancient, and, secondly, that they are writings. A man cannot comprehend even the form and language of the Psalms without a literary sense. For what are the essential facts? A great though rude and wandering people lived thousands of years ago who had, by what, from any point of view, may truly be called an inspiration, a sudden and startling glimpse of an enormous philosophic truth. These bloodthirsty Bedouins realised the last word of scientific thought, the unity of creation. Opulent empires and brilliant republics all round them were still in the nets of polytheism; but this band of outlaws knew better. This is the immortality of the Jews. Them we can never dethrone: they discovered the one central thing no modern man can help believing: whatever we think, or do, or say we are all bound to the wheel of the stars which can only have a single centre.
This awful simplification of things they discovered, as it has since been discovered by innumerable sages. But their unique historic interest lies in this: that by a strange circumstance, that has every resemblance to a miracle, they discovered it in the morning of the world, in an age when men had and needed no philosophic language. Hence they threw it into poetical language. They spoke of this startling speculative theory with the same bold, brisk, plain-coloured imagery with which primitive ballads commonly speak of war and hunting, women and gold. If we imagine Spinoza’s philosophy written with enormous vividness in the literary style of “Chevy Chace,” we shall have some idea of that confounding marvel which is called the Old Testament. But Mr. Baron, in attempting an estimate of the relation of the Jews to the Old Testament, is merely interested in the theological and dogmatic side of the matter. He does not seem to be aware that the Bible is rather a fine book. He deals with the central interest of the whole matter, the gradual emergence (in Job and the Prophets) of this sublime monism out of a tribal creed and still under the literary forms of a tribal poem: but he does not seem to see it. He thinks, like all conventional dogmatists, that a sentence or two in the style of the Daily Telegraph will “elucidate” the style of Scripture, which is as straightforward as a nursery rhyme. He really supposes that to say that God is not “under obligation” for an “animal sacrifice” contains all that is contained in such a daring, simple, and unfathomable sentence as “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee.”
Se, per l’operare di altre cause, ci è divenuto naturale scoprirci il capo davanti a qualunque cosa o persona che rispettiamo, le cause di questa differenza nell’istinto della cortesia non possono non essere interessanti da considerare, per quanto sarebbe probabilmente vano esplorarle fino in fondo. Ma si può almeno suggerire che la riverenza sia in ogni caso composta dei due elementi del timore e della fiducia. Gli antichi Ebrei avevano l’elemento del timore appena sfumato e reso drammatico da un tocco di fiducia. Il mondo moderno ha avuto, attraverso il Cristianesimo, l’elemento della fiducia appena sfumato e reso drammatico da un tocco di timore. Il grande pericolo della vita della nostra epoca è che, perdendo quell’unico tocco di timore in tutti i suoi piaceri, essa possa perdere l’intera struttura della felicità, come un palazzo delle Mille e una notte. Ma questo nuovo elemento, cristiano, di fiducia nella bellezza delle cose, anziché di timore di essa, è destinato ad avere un rituale adatto. È nella sua natura, nella sua forma più alta, amare la bellezza del fulmine tanto quanto gli antichi temevano la bellezza dei fiori. È possibile, dunque, che questo generale istinto della civiltà moderna a scoprirsi il capo alla presenza della cosa sacra sia un istinto verso la semplicità e l’esposizione di sé, una forma modificata, per così dire, dell’essere «nudi e non vergognarsi». Il moderno cappello nero è tutto impregnato del senso di riparo, protezione e privilegio; è esso stesso una sorta di tetto portatile. Se è vero che la casa dell’inglese è il suo castello, è almeno altrettanto vero che il cappello dell’inglese è la sua casa. Non invano lo chiamano cappello a «tubo di stufa»; lo stesso bell’oggetto che si leva verso le stelle sulla sommità della casa borghese viene portato, nella sua forma più leggera e simbolica, sulla sommità del capo borghese. Ci pare almeno possibile che, quando un inglese si toglie il cappello davanti a una dama, egli in sostanza esca dalla propria casa; quella casa impenetrabile di riservatezza, di compiacimento di sé e di divorante timore dell’umanità. Egli crede, sia pure per un solo istante, di poter essere incoronato dalle stelle.
G. K. C.
Ebrei vecchi e nuovi
—2 marzo 1901, The Speaker
The Ancient Scriptures And The Modern Jew. Di David Baron. Londra: Hodder and Stoughton.
È certo un fatto singolare che quanto più una materia è misteriosa, tanto più è popolare presso la massa dell’umanità: questo fatto è forse la radice delle religioni ed è a ogni modo cosa assai gradevole. I puri fatti concreti, che chiunque potrebbe accertare dandosene la pena, come il numero dei proclami di Lord Roberts o il numero dei lampioni nella Borough Road, vengono trattati con un terrore e un rispetto semi-mistici, quali prerogative di un sacerdozio di specialisti. Ma le cose che sono in sé imperscrutabili e incommensurabili — tanto enigmatiche in un uovo sodo quanto in una roccia dell’Eocene, in un manifesto dello Star quanto in una fila di geroglifici egizi — in queste ognuno si sente a casa propria. La categoria di libri più a buon mercato, più numerosa, più personale e frivola è probabilmente quella che tratta della Bibbia, la più tremenda delle opere sul più tremendo dei soggetti. Quanto più grande è il libro, tanto più l’uomo comune si sente capace di curarne l’edizione. Colui che sforna ogni mese un opuscoletto su Daniele o su Saul sarebbe in imbarazzo se gli si chiedesse di interpretare Spenser, del tutto sconcertato se gli si chiedesse di interpretare Maeterlinck, e colpito da puro strisciante terrore se gli si chiedesse di interpretare il signor Stephen Phillips. Così il signor David Baron ha scritto un libro interessante intitolato The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew, nel corso del quale non pare mai sfiorarlo per un istante il pensiero di avere a che fare con un enigma di etica e di storia al cui confronto la quadratura del cerchio sarebbe una banalità; che se c’è una cosa più oscura e remota per noi delle stesse Antiche Scritture, questa cosa è l’Ebreo Moderno.
Non pare mai rendersi conto, neppure per un solo abbagliante istante, dell’idea che un blando gentiluomo ariano in nero, seduto in poltrona con un credo formulato alla Riforma e un sistema politico annacquato dalle idee del 1740, possa forse non essere in pieno possesso di tutte le abissali divisioni spirituali e le eterne energie spirituali che sole potrebbero gettare finalmente luce sul destino di un popolo immemorabile, le cui strane scoperte nel mondo dell’anima, scoperte incastonate intere e spesso indecifrate nei nostri sistemi più tardi, furono compiute sotto strane stelle e templi perduti, estranee quanto i paesaggi di un altro pianeta.
La prima parte dell’opera del signor Baron tratta degli antichi scritti, sui quali egli argomenta con sufficiente ingegno, ma a proposito dei quali trascura due piccoli punti: primo, che sono antichi, e, secondo, che sono scritti. Un uomo non può comprendere neppure la forma e il linguaggio dei Salmi senza un senso letterario. Poiché quali sono i fatti essenziali? Un grande popolo, per quanto rozzo ed errante, visse migliaia di anni fa e ebbe, per ciò che, da qualunque punto di vista, si può veramente chiamare un’ispirazione, un’improvvisa e sconvolgente intuizione di un’enorme verità filosofica. Questi Beduini assetati di sangue colsero l’ultima parola del pensiero scientifico, l’unità del creato. Opulenti imperi e brillanti repubbliche tutt’intorno a loro erano ancora nelle reti del politeismo; ma questa banda di fuorilegge ne sapeva di più. Questa è l’immortalità degli Ebrei. Loro non potremo mai detronizzare: scoprirono l’unica cosa centrale che nessun uomo moderno può fare a meno di credere: qualunque cosa pensiamo, o facciamo, o diciamo, siamo tutti legati alla ruota delle stelle, che non può avere che un unico centro.
Questa tremenda semplificazione delle cose essi la scoprirono, come da allora l’hanno scoperta innumerevoli saggi. Ma il loro unico interesse storico sta in questo: che, per una strana circostanza, che ha ogni sembianza di un miracolo, la scoprirono nel mattino del mondo, in un’epoca in cui gli uomini non avevano né avevano bisogno di un linguaggio filosofico. Perciò la riversarono in linguaggio poetico. Parlarono di questa sorprendente teoria speculativa con le stesse immagini ardite, vivaci e dai colori schietti con cui le ballate primitive parlano comunemente di guerra e di caccia, di donne e d’oro. Se immaginiamo la filosofia di Spinoza scritta con enorme vividezza nello stile letterario di «Chevy Chace», avremo qualche idea di quella sconcertante meraviglia che si chiama Antico Testamento. Ma il signor Baron, nel tentare una valutazione del rapporto degli Ebrei con l’Antico Testamento, è interessato unicamente al lato teologico e dogmatico della faccenda. Non pare rendersi conto che la Bibbia è un libro piuttosto bello. Egli affronta l’interesse centrale di tutta la questione, il graduale emergere (in Giobbe e nei Profeti) di questo sublime monismo da un credo tribale e ancora sotto le forme letterarie di un poema tribale: ma non pare vederlo. Egli pensa, come tutti i dogmatici convenzionali, che una frase o due nello stile del Daily Telegraph «chiariranno» lo stile delle Scritture, che è schietto quanto una filastrocca. Suppone davvero che dire che Dio non è «tenuto» a un «sacrificio animale» contenga tutto ciò che è contenuto in una frase tanto ardita, semplice e insondabile come «Se avessi fame, non lo direi a te».
Another curious example of facile argument on an insufficient comprehension of the spirit of the matter under discussion lies in Mr. Baron’s arguments for a second Advent vitally different from the first. This is not the place, nor are we the arbiters, for the decision of such a matter in its religious aspect. But Mr. Baron’s own particular arguments show, in the literary aspect, a singular failure to grasp the nature of Jewish expression. He argues that, because there are prophecies which refer to a deliverer coming “in glory,” as well as those referring to a deliverer coming in simplicity, there must be another appearance of the Divine besides the historic appearance of Jesus. Never was there so irrational or, we may add, so common a misinterpretation of the tone of Christ’s utterances. The idea that Christ did not invariably act and speak “in glory” is simply a mark of being unable to read. He walked always with the full glory of heroic life; His habits were happy and liberal; His spirit was high and eloquent; His very literary imagery was (though no one seems to see it) large and impetuous, full of devils falling from heaven and mountains cast into the sea. Does Mr. Baron really think He would have been more “glorious” if He had sat on a hill and waved a sceptre? There was never anything ignominious about the Son of Man. He died upon the Cross; but He was not born on it, as some theologians would seem to imply.
The second part of Mr. Baron’s work, that which deals with the modern Jew, is infinitely more satisfactory. It would be quite unfair to Mr. Baron to say that this was because it contains two very interesting articles contributed by other people, for his own remarks on the Semitic problem of to-day are genuinely good in themselves. But he has certainly elucidated the problem in no small degree by including two chapters in quotation marks, one by a distinguished Jew, and another by a distinguished Christian. The modern Jew is unpopular in Europe, but chiefly, we fear, for his virtues. No one has the pleasure of the friendship of any Jews who has not noticed that almost weird domesticity, that terrible contentment which makes the life of parlour and nursery quite satisfactory to a Jew of the calibre of spirit and intellect which, if he were a Gentile, would make it a devouring necessity to him to “see life.”
It is this fomidable normality that constitutes the real power of the Jew. It is the survival of the blinding simplification of existence of which we have spoken. It is no mere accident that the most brilliant Jew of this age is Dr. Max Nordau; a man with whom, to speak paradoxically, sanity has become a madness. He spares nothing in his application of the religion of commonsense, the law that is written in men’s bones. Neither the hardness of Tolstoi nor the fragility of Maeterlinck; neither the bitter simplicity of Ibsen nor the drunken glory of Whitman can lure this old Hebrew from the strait path of judgment. Dr. Max Nordau, in the passage which Mr. Baron quotes, speaks with splendid scorn of decadents even of his own race-and the decadents of his own race are, in his opinion, the Jewish millionaires. No Gentile certainly would dare to speak of them as they are spoken of by a Jew
“These money-pols who despise what we honour and honour what we despise. Many of them forsake Judaism and we wish them God-speed, only regretting that they are at all of Jewish blood, though but of the dregs.”
In connection with this matter of the awful and indestructible sanity in the Jewish people, which strikes us chiefly, we must protest against some of the remarks of Mr. Baron’s Christian witness, Mr. C. A. Schonberger, as to the spirit of the Jewish Law. For the sake of backing up a particular Evangelical doctrine (with which, of course, we have nothing to do) Mr. Schonberger says:-
“It (the Law) was not given for life, but for death, to bring people to despair about the depravity of their moral nature. In one word it was given that the heart should be broken and not that it should become proud.”
We can only say that is not the impression left on any rational man by the Old Testament. “The law of the Lord is right, rejoicing the heart!”—“My delight is in Thy statutes;” we believe we could overwhelm Mr. Schonberger with quotations merely from memory. The truth is that the very soul of the Jewish Scriptures is in this idea of the rapture of cleanliness and obedience; the idea that if a man once gets into the right path he may dance down it all the way.
There is one lesson that remains to be drawn, more especially from the case of those Semitic plutocrats of whom Dr. Max Nordau speaks so disdainfully:-
“In an ordinary independent Jewish community,” … . he says with sharp, but just sarcasm, “they would not receive titles of honour such as those by which they are decorated by Christian societies.”
But the real lesson of the Jewish plutocratic problem seems to us a simple one, and one very much needed at present. It is the lesson of the utter futility of attempting to crush a fine race. In science men know that no force is ever destroyed; but the fact has yet to be learnt in politics. There are a thousand things that a wronged people may become-a rival, like America; a clog, like Ireland; an internal disease, like Jewish commerce; but it always becomes something. We forbade to the Jews all natural callings except commerce, and to-day commerce is what might be expected from being eternally recruited with all the most intellectual sons of a most intellectual people. We pray that the error may not be repeated in certain corners of the earth. To avoid a repetition of it would be far worthier than that frivolous Continental anti-Semitism which can find no answer to Jewish triumphs, except to flourish tauntingly the image of a martyred Jew upon an Aryan gibbet.
Un altro curioso esempio di argomentazione facile dovuta a una comprensione insufficiente dello spirito della questione in discussione si trova negli argomenti del signor Baron a favore di un secondo Avvento vitalmente diverso dal primo. Questo non è il luogo, né siamo noi gli arbitri, per la decisione di tale questione nel suo aspetto religioso. Ma gli argomenti particolari del signor Baron mostrano, nell’aspetto letterario, un singolare fallimento nel cogliere la natura dell’espressione ebraica. Egli sostiene che, poiché ci sono profezie che si riferiscono a un liberatore venuto “in gloria”, così come quelle che si riferiscono a un liberatore venuto in semplicità, deve esserci un’altra apparizione del Divino oltre all’apparizione storica di Gesù. Mai ci fu una interpretazione così irrazionale o, possiamo aggiungere, così comune del tono delle dichiarazioni di Cristo. L’idea che Cristo non agisse e parlasse invariabilmente “in gloria” è semplicemente un segno di essere incapaci di leggere. Egli camminò sempre con la piena gloria della vita eroica; le Sue abitudini erano felici e liberali; il Suo spirito era elevato ed eloquente; la Sua stessa immaginazione letteraria era (sebbene nessuno sembri vederlo) ampia e impetuosa, piena di diavoli che cadono dal cielo e montagne gettate in mare. Il signor Baron pensa davvero che sarebbe stato più “glorioso” se Si fosse seduto su una collina e avesse agitato uno scettro? Non c’era mai nulla di ignominioso nel Figlio dell’uomo. Egli morì sulla Croce; ma non nacque su di essa, come alcuni teologi sembrano voler implicare.
La seconda parte del lavoro di Mr. Baron, quella che tratta del moderno ebreo, è infinitamente più soddisfacente. Sarebbe assolutamente ingiusto nei confronti di Mr. Baron dire che ciò dipende dal fatto che contiene due articoli molto interessanti contribuiti da altre persone, poiché i suoi stessi commenti sul problema semitico di oggi sono genuinamente buoni in sé. Ma ha certamente chiarito il problema non poco aggiungendo due capitoli tra virgolette, uno di un ebreo distinto e l’altro di un cristiano altrettanto distinto. L’ebreo moderno è impopolare in Europa, ma principalmente, temiamo, per le sue virtù. Nessuno che non abbia il piacere dell’amicizia di qualche ebreo ha notato quella quasi strana domesticità, quella terribile contentezza che rende la vita del salotto e della nursery assolutamente soddisfacente per un ebreo di quel calibro di spirito e intelletto che, se fosse un gentile, lo spingerebbe a “vedere la vita” come una necessità divorante.
È questa formidabile normalità che costituisce il vero potere degli ebrei. È la sopravvivenza della semplificazione accecante dell’esistenza di cui abbiamo parlato. Non è un semplice caso se l’ebreo più brillante di questo secolo è il dottor Max Nordau, un uomo con cui, per usare un paradosso, la sanità mentale si è trasformata in una pazzia. Egli non risparmia nulla nell’applicazione della religione del buon senso, quella legge che è scritta nelle ossa degli uomini. Né la durezza di Tolstoi né la fragilità di Maeterlinck; né la semplicità amara di Ibsen né la gloria ubriacante di Whitman possono distogliere questo vecchio ebreo dallo stretto sentiero del giudizio. Il dottor Max Nordau, nel passaggio citato dal signor Baron, parla con splendido disprezzo dei decadenti anche della sua stessa razza - e i decadenti della sua stessa razza sono, secondo lui, i milionari ebrei. Di certo nessun gentile oserebbe parlare di loro come fa un ebreo.
“Questi politici di denaro che disprezzano ciò che noi onoriamo e onorano ciò che noi disprezziamo. Molti di loro abbandonano l’ebraismo e noi auguriamo loro buona fortuna, rammaricandoci solo che abbiano in sé sangue ebraico, anche se soltanto nelle sue scorie.”
In relazione alla questione della terribile e indelebile sanità mentale del popolo ebraico che ci colpisce soprattutto, dobbiamo protestare contro alcune delle osservazioni dell’esperto cristiano di Mr. Baron, il signor C. A. Schonberger, riguardo allo spirito della Legge ebraica. Per sostenere una particolare dottrina evangelica (con la quale, naturalmente, non abbiamo nulla a che fare) il signor Schonberger dice:
“Non fu data per la vita, ma per la morte, per portare le persone alla disperazione riguardo alla depravazione della loro natura morale. In una parola, fu data affinché il cuore si spezzasse e non affinché diventasse orgoglioso.”
Possiamo solo dire che non è l’impressione lasciata su un uomo razionale dall’Antico Testamento. “La legge del Signore è giusta, rallegrando il cuore!”—“Il mio diletto sono i tuoi statuti”; crediamo di poter sommergere il signor Schonberger con citazioni tratte semplicemente dalla memoria. La verità è che la stessa anima delle Scritture ebraiche è in questa idea dell’estasi della pulizia e dell’obbedienza; l’idea che se un uomo una volta si mette sulla strada giusta può danzare lungo di essa fino alla fine.
C’è una lezione che resta da trarre, più specialmente
dal caso di quei plutocrati semiti di cui il dottor Max Nordau
parla con tanto disprezzo: -
“Una normale comunità ebraica indipendente”, dice con sarcasmo acuto ma giusto, “non accetterebbe titoli di onore come quelli con cui le società cristiane la decorano”.
Ma la vera lezione del problema ebraico plutocratico ci sembra semplice, e molto necessaria al momento attuale. È la lezione dell’assoluta inutilità di tentare di schiacciare una razza nobile. Nella scienza gli uomini sanno che nessuna forza viene mai distrutta; ma questo fatto deve ancora essere appreso nella politica. Ci sono mille cose che un popolo offeso può diventare: un rivale, come l’America; un ostacolo, come l’Irlanda; una malattia interna, come il commercio ebraico; ma diventa sempre qualcosa. Abbiamo proibito agli Ebrei tutte le professioni naturali tranne il commercio, e oggi il commercio è ciò che ci si poteva aspettare dal fatto di essere costantemente rifornito dai figli più intellettuali di un popolo molto intellettuale. Pregavamo che l’errore non fosse ripetuto in certi angoli della terra. Evitare una sua ripetizione sarebbe di gran lunga più degno di quel frivolo antisemitismo continentale che non trova risposta ai trionfi ebrei, se non quella di agitare schernitoriamente l’immagine di un ebreo martirizzato su una forca ariana.
G.K.C.
A Denunciation of Parents
—March 9, 1901, The Speaker
Concerning Children. By Mrs. Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman. London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Mrs. Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman is a good example of a good class, the women whose ethical enthusiasm and readiness to remake heaven and earth constitute one of the few symptoms of that youth of the world which luxury and levity always miss and only moral severity can give. She has ideas, controversial ability, literary liveliness and hope. But she has also all the besetting faults of the school. She has, like her sisters in arms, a wholly insufficient sense of the complexity of life: it seems never to strike her that as it is almost impossible to say that any single man is wholly bad, it is even more difficult to say that any institution, the aggregate of a million varying men, is wholly bad. She has, again, that queer faith in the “expert” which is the mark of the complete amateur. She is very anxious that we should hire educational experts to tend our children. We might do so: we might hire distinguished prose writers to write our love-letters. No doubt they would be done better: but there are some things that should be done by an individual for himself, or not at all. Lastly, and it is the most important point, Mrs. Stetson Gilman is at one with the intellectual women of her type in attaching an enormous importance to the domain of “science” in ethics and politics and in manifestly not having the most remote or glimmering notion of what “science” means.
This ignorance as to the meaning of science most particularly vitiates Mrs. Stetson Gilman’s latest book, Concerning Children. The case rests almost entirely upon one statement which she makes with even more than her usual courage and clearness, and which is almost bewilderingly untrue. “Ethics,” she says, “is as plain a science as physics, and as easy of application.” As we should be sorry to think that Mrs. Gilman knows nothing about ethics, we take refuge in the assumption that she knows nothing about physics. But the remark itself is as wild as saying that Brighton is as big as the moon. Physics is a science: it has fixed methods, and final and demonstrated conclusions. Ethics is not a science at all in that sense; it is universally admitted and discussed, like literature or politeness, but no single iota of it has ever been demonstrated as the circulation of the blood has been demonstrated. Mrs. Stetson Gilman goes on to speak of explaining to children the value of truth. Can she prove to any opponent, small or big, by actual experiment, that truth-telling, with all its toils and troubles, is advantageous in the sense that she could prove, by actual experiment, the principle of the lever? A child can, and does, become convinced of the value of truth, as he becomes convinced of the kindness of a particular uncle, or the beauty of a particular meadow. These conclusions are quite as sure, or more sure, than the conclusions of science; but to call them science is to juggle with words and, in enlarging the realm of science, to dilute with sentiment and degrade with obscurities its own peculiar glory of certitude and calm. Talking wildly about the similarity of physics and ethics can only result in two exceedingly vile things, a sentimental science and a cold morality.
Hence comes the very peculiar quality of this book. Mrs. Gilman offers a number of suggestions which considered as suggestions are not only able and original, but sympathetic and true. Nothing could be better, for example, than the righteous eloquence with which she pleads for courtesy to children. But her unfortunate notion that she is dealing with fixed quantities leads her into that maniacal dance which is called “following a thing to its legitimate conclusion.” This peculiar pastime leads, in the case of the question of courtesy, to a cut-and-dried theory that people should never laugh at children. In discussing this she uses the words “laugh” and “jeer” as interchangeable: an admirable example of the blundering of exact ethics. Laughing and jeering are as different as throwing snowballs and firing Lyddite shells. To jeer at a child is contemptible; but not much more so than to jeer at a man. But to laugh at a child is simply the natural thing to do and a great compliment. Whence came this extraordinary idea that laughing at a thing is hostile? Friends laugh at each other; lovers laugh at each other; all people who love each other laugh at each other. And if Mrs. Stetson Gilman can by any possibility help laughing at a child the moment he puts his preposterous face into the door, she has a different sense of humour from ourselves. Does not Mrs. Gilman see that to suppress so essential a sentiment, to treat a baby painting his nose blue with portentous silence and solemnity is to create an atmosphere far more false, a cloud of lies a hundred times thicker than all the conventions against which she protests? The lovable grotesqueness of children is a part of their essential poetry, it symbolises the foolish freshness of life itself, it goes down to the mysterious heart of man; the heart out of which came elves and fairies and gnomes. So far from wishing that children should be treated with the ridiculous and pompous gravity with which civilised men treat each other, we ourselves wish that civilised men were treated as children are, that their blundering utterances were always laughed at in kindness, that their futile amusements were relished as quaint and graceful instead of vulgar and eccentric, that their sins were punished without morbid exaggeration, and their whole life frankly admitted to be a stumbling and groping and stammering after better things. If a stockbroker were gaily patted on the head when he had made a million, perhaps he would think less of his triumph; if a poet only had his hair pulled affectionately when he cursed God, it is probable that he would not do it again.
G.K.C.
Un atto d’accusa contro i genitori
—9 marzo 1901, The Speaker
A proposito dei bambini. Della signora Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman. Londra: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
La signora Charlotte Perkins (Stetson) Gilman è un buon esempio di una buona categoria, le donne il cui entusiasmo etico e la cui prontezza a rifare cielo e terra costituiscono uno dei pochi sintomi di quella giovinezza del mondo che il lusso e la leggerezza mancano sempre e che solo la severità morale può dare. Ella ha idee, abilità polemica, vivacità letteraria e speranza. Ma ha anche tutti i vizi tipici della scuola. Ha, come le sue sorelle d’arme, un senso del tutto insufficiente della complessità della vita: pare non venirle mai in mente che, come è quasi impossibile dire che un singolo uomo sia interamente cattivo, è ancor più difficile dire che una qualsiasi istituzione, l’aggregato di un milione di uomini diversi, sia interamente cattiva. Ha, ancora, quella bizzarra fede nell’«esperto» che è il marchio del completo dilettante. È molto ansiosa che si assumano esperti dell’educazione per accudire i nostri bambini. Potremmo farlo: potremmo assumere illustri prosatori per scrivere le nostre lettere d’amore. Senza dubbio verrebbero fatte meglio: ma vi sono cose che un individuo dovrebbe fare da sé, o non farle affatto. Infine, ed è il punto più importante, la signora Stetson Gilman è tutt’uno con le donne intellettuali del suo tipo nell’attribuire un’enorme importanza al dominio della «scienza» in etica e in politica, e nel non avere manifestamente la più remota o fioca nozione di ciò che «scienza» significhi.
Questa ignoranza circa il significato della scienza vizia in modo tutto particolare l’ultimo libro della signora Stetson Gilman, A proposito dei bambini. La tesi poggia quasi interamente su un’affermazione ch’ella fa con anche più del suo consueto coraggio e della sua consueta chiarezza, e che è quasi sconcertantemente falsa. «L’etica», ella dice, «è una scienza tanto semplice quanto la fisica, e altrettanto facile da applicare.» Poiché ci dispiacerebbe pensare che la signora Gilman non sappia nulla di etica, ci rifugiamo nell’ipotesi che ella non sappia nulla di fisica. Ma l’osservazione stessa è stravagante quanto il dire che Brighton è grande quanto la luna. La fisica è una scienza: ha metodi fissi, e conclusioni definitive e dimostrate. L’etica non è affatto una scienza in quel senso; è universalmente ammessa e discussa, come la letteratura o la cortesia, ma non un solo iota di essa è mai stato dimostrato come è stata dimostrata la circolazione del sangue. La signora Stetson Gilman prosegue parlando dello spiegare ai bambini il valore della verità. Può ella provare a un qualsiasi oppositore, piccolo o grande, mediante effettivo esperimento, che il dire la verità, con tutte le sue fatiche e traversie, sia vantaggioso nel senso in cui potrebbe provare, mediante effettivo esperimento, il principio della leva? Un bambino può convincersi, e si convince, del valore della verità, come si convince della bontà di un particolare zio, o della bellezza di un particolare prato. Queste conclusioni sono altrettanto sicure, o più sicure, delle conclusioni della scienza; ma chiamarle scienza è giocare con le parole e, nell’allargare il regno della scienza, diluire col sentimento e degradare con oscurità la sua propria peculiare gloria di certezza e di calma. Parlare a vanvera della somiglianza tra fisica ed etica non può che risolversi in due cose oltremodo vili: una scienza sentimentale e una fredda moralità.
Di qui viene la qualità del tutto peculiare di questo libro. La signora Gilman offre una serie di suggerimenti che, considerati come suggerimenti, non solo sono abili e originali, ma comprensivi e veri. Nulla potrebbe essere migliore, per esempio, della giusta eloquenza con cui perora la cortesia verso i bambini. Ma la sua sventurata idea di aver a che fare con quantità fisse la conduce in quella danza maniacale che si chiama «seguire una cosa fino alla sua legittima conclusione». Questo peculiare passatempo conduce, nel caso della questione della cortesia, a una teoria bell’e fatta secondo cui non si dovrebbe mai ridere dei bambini. Nel discuterne, ella usa le parole «ridere» e «schernire» come intercambiabili: mirabile esempio dei pasticci dell’etica esatta. Ridere e schernire sono diversi quanto lanciare palle di neve e sparare granate alla lidite. Schernire un bambino è spregevole; ma non molto più che schernire un uomo. Ma ridere di un bambino è semplicemente la cosa naturale da fare e un grande complimento. Donde è venuta questa straordinaria idea che ridere di una cosa sia ostile? Gli amici ridono l’uno dell’altro; gli innamorati ridono l’uno dell’altro; tutte le persone che si amano ridono l’una dell’altra. E se la signora Stetson Gilman può in qualche modo trattenersi dal ridere di un bambino nell’istante in cui questi ficca il suo faccino assurdo dentro la porta, ella ha un senso dell’umorismo diverso dal nostro. Non vede la signora Gilman che sopprimere un sentimento tanto essenziale, trattare un bimbo che si dipinge il naso di blu con portentoso silenzio e solennità, significa creare un’atmosfera assai più falsa, una nube di menzogne cento volte più densa di tutte le convenzioni contro cui protesta? L’amabile bizzarria grottesca dei bambini è parte della loro poesia essenziale, simboleggia la folle freschezza della vita stessa, scende fino al misterioso cuore dell’uomo; il cuore da cui vennero gli elfi e le fate e gli gnomi. Ben lungi dal desiderare che i bambini siano trattati con la ridicola e pomposa gravità con cui gli uomini civili si trattano l’un l’altro, noi stessi desideriamo che gli uomini civili fossero trattati come sono trattati i bambini, che le loro maldestre parole fossero sempre accolte con risa benevole, che i loro futili svaghi fossero apprezzati come bizzarri e graziosi anziché volgari ed eccentrici, che i loro peccati fossero puniti senza morbosa esagerazione, e tutta la loro vita francamente ammessa come un inciampare e brancolare e balbettare verso cose migliori. Se un agente di borsa venisse allegramente accarezzato sul capo quando ha guadagnato un milione, forse terrebbe in minor conto il suo trionfo; se a un poeta bastasse che gli si tirassero affettuosamente i capelli quando bestemmia Dio, è probabile che non lo rifarebbe.
The same profoundly unnatural rationalism marks the author’s observations on the virtue of Obedience, of which she profoundly disapproves. And yet the substitute that she offers for obedience is a hundred times more cowardly and fictitious. “The child can be far better protected by removing all danger: which our present civilization is quite competent to do.” Let us take the case of fire. The child is not to be told, what is an eternal and typical truth, “This is the most beautiful thing in the world: but you must not touch it. It is the thing which warms if you obey it, but bites if you disobey.” But the child is to be told, in effect, what is a silly lie, “There is no such thing as fire: you have never seen it in your nursery.” Mrs. Gilman complains that obedience discourages will and personality and then proposes to encourage those qualities by removing all danger and difficulty! Mrs. Gilman does not really understand what is meant by obedience. She always uses the word as identical with slavery, whereas it is inconsistent with it. A slave cannot be obedient; we might as well speak of a tree being taciturn or an oyster being good-tempered. A thing which cannot disobey is not obedient: obedience is a choice: and it is a choice involved in civilization. Mrs. Gilman is singularly out in her bearings in saying that the upholders of obedience have to fall back on the case of soldiers and sailors and that “they do not speak of it as particularly desirable among farmers and merchants.” Whether they do or not, it certainly is. Without some compromise of obedience in the matter, the farmer and merchant would both be bankrupt in a month. Every train that Mrs. Gilman travels in would be smashed up, every bank in which she put her money would ruin her, every house she lived in would fall down, if there were no established principle of one man promptly acting on the signals of another man. And this is all obedience is.
Obedience is simply a division of labour; and we do not know why it should be so impossible to let an intelligent child see that you really do know something that he does not. Mrs. Gilman takes the case of teaching a child arithmetic and not explaining the reason for a certain process. But will Mrs. Gilman tell us what she would do if a child chose to deny that a curly figure meant eight and a straight figure meant one?
We are warmly in sympathy with those parts of Mrs. Gilman’s book in which she protests against the foolish restrictions under which children are placed; the idiotic idea, for example, that it is disgraceful to be sandy in playing in a sand-pit or muddy in making mud pies. We might as well think it dirty to be all over soap when we are washing. But we think these follies are the faults of individuals and periods, not of the institution of the family. We see no conceivable reason for supposing that State educational officials would not be as shallow, as hasty, as self-important and as childish as any parents; and with this horrible further touch, that in them there would be nothing to appeal to, no basic morality of blood and bone which might survive insult and division. So that we come back to Mrs. Stetson Gilman’s fundamental error, that she tries to preserve the salutary coldness of science in the midst of a subject which is simply not to be comprehended except in the furnaces of primal passion. Morality is not merely a matter of what is done; it is a matter of the heat and altitude with which it is done. No person can talk about children (unless he is merely talking about whooping-cough) if he has not clearly in mind the huge mass of tribal love and tragedy under which this globe has groaned from the beginning. If ever mothers like Mrs. Stetson become educationalists primarily, then, in rising to that height of moral cultivation, they will have sunk lower than the pole-cat or the wolf. In the vast sea of living humanity, upon which the whole of our educated class is a mere flake of foam, the family instinct is the indestructible mimimum of morality; the one germ of social seriousness. To kick down the ladder by which we have climbed is ungrateful, but to kick down the ladder when we are half-way up it is something else as well. If Mrs. Stetson Gilman carries too far her trust in education as a science in a great State temple of knowledge, she will indeed kill the goose that laid the golden egg. The builder of that cold temple shall see his folly in the gradual dehumanization of his own children before his own eyes. Upon the builder of that temple shall descend the literal fulfilment of that ancient and mysterious curse which was pronounced upon the rebuilder of Jericho: “He shall lay the foundation on his first-born; and on his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.”
G.K.C.
The Literature of Death
—March 16, 1901, The Speaker
Flowers Of The Cave. Edited by Laurie Magnus and Cecil Headlam. Blackwood.
The book which appears under the somewhat mystical and allusive title of Flowers Of the Cave has not, as might be supposed at the first glance, any connection either with geology or botany.
It is a collection of extracts upon death, very ably and thoughtfully compiled by Mr. Laurie Magnus and Mr. Cecil Headlam. But it is almost too comprehensive a project to publish an anthology on death. It is rather like publishing an anthology on Man, in which should be included “The Man for wisdom’s various arts renowned;” “There was a little man and he had a little gun;” “Man wants but little here below;” “He was a man, take him for all in all;” “There was a man in our town and he was wondrous wise;” “What is man, that thou carest for him?” and the whole text of “The Descent of Man.” Death is about as universal in literature as in human existence, and is infinitely more respectfully treated. If we tore the cover off The Golden Treasury, and substituted the title Flowers of the Cave, we should hardly find seven poems, we suspect, which did not contain some allusion to the subject of the mortal end. Death is involved in the discussion of any conceivable human subject. It is merely the full stop at the end of the word “life.”
Il medesimo razionalismo profondamente innaturale contrassegna le osservazioni dell’autrice sulla virtù dell’Obbedienza, che ella profondamente disapprova. E tuttavia il sostituto ch’ella offre all’obbedienza è cento volte più codardo e fittizio. «Il bambino può essere assai meglio protetto rimuovendo ogni pericolo: cosa che la nostra presente civiltà è pienamente in grado di fare.» Prendiamo il caso del fuoco. Al bambino non si deve dire, ciò che è una verità eterna e tipica: «Questa è la cosa più bella del mondo: ma non devi toccarla. È la cosa che riscalda se le obbedisci, ma morde se le disobbedisci.» Al bambino si deve invece dire, in sostanza, ciò che è una sciocca menzogna: «Il fuoco non esiste: non l’hai mai visto nella tua stanza dei giochi.» La signora Gilman si lagna che l’obbedienza scoraggi la volontà e la personalità, e poi propone di incoraggiare quelle qualità rimuovendo ogni pericolo e difficoltà! La signora Gilman non comprende davvero cosa s’intenda per obbedienza. Usa sempre la parola come identica alla schiavitù, mentre ne è incompatibile. Uno schiavo non può essere obbediente; tanto varrebbe parlare di un albero taciturno o di un’ostrica di buon carattere. Una cosa che non può disobbedire non è obbediente: l’obbedienza è una scelta, ed è una scelta implicata nella civiltà. La signora Gilman è singolarmente fuori rotta nel dire che i sostenitori dell’obbedienza devono ripiegare sul caso dei soldati e dei marinai e che «non ne parlano come di cosa particolarmente desiderabile tra i contadini e i mercanti». Che lo facciano o no, essa lo è di certo. Senza qualche compromesso di obbedienza nella faccenda, il contadino e il mercante finirebbero entrambi in bancarotta in un mese. Ogni treno su cui viaggia la signora Gilman andrebbe distrutto, ogni banca in cui deponesse il suo denaro la rovinerebbe, ogni casa in cui abitasse le crollerebbe addosso, se non vi fosse un principio stabilito per cui un uomo agisce prontamente sui segnali di un altro uomo. E l’obbedienza non è che questo.
L’obbedienza è semplicemente una divisione del lavoro; e non sappiamo perché dovrebbe essere tanto impossibile lasciare che un bambino intelligente veda che voi sapete davvero qualcosa ch’egli non sa. La signora Gilman prende il caso dell’insegnare a un bambino l’aritmetica senza spiegare la ragione di un certo procedimento. Ma vorrà la signora Gilman dirci cosa farebbe se un bambino scegliesse di negare che una cifra ricciuta significhi otto e una cifra diritta significhi uno?
Simpatizziamo calorosamente con quelle parti del libro della signora Gilman in cui ella protesta contro le sciocche restrizioni cui sono sottoposti i bambini; l’idea idiota, per esempio, che sia vergognoso essere insabbiati giocando in una buca di sabbia o infangati facendo torte di fango. Tanto varrebbe ritenere sudicio essere tutti coperti di sapone quando ci laviamo. Ma riteniamo che queste follie siano colpe di individui e di epoche, non dell’istituzione della famiglia. Non vediamo alcuna ragione concepibile per supporre che i funzionari statali dell’educazione non sarebbero altrettanto superficiali, altrettanto frettolosi, altrettanto pieni di sé e altrettanto puerili di qualsiasi genitore; e con questo orribile tocco ulteriore, che in loro non vi sarebbe nulla cui appellarsi, nessuna elementare moralità di sangue e di ossa che possa sopravvivere all’oltraggio e alla divisione. Sicché torniamo all’errore fondamentale della signora Stetson Gilman: ch’ella cerca di preservare la salutare freddezza della scienza in mezzo a un soggetto che semplicemente non può essere compreso se non nelle fornaci della passione primordiale. La Moralità non è soltanto questione di ciò che si fa; è questione del calore e dell’altezza con cui lo si fa. Nessuno può parlare dei bambini (a meno che non stia semplicemente parlando della pertosse) se non ha chiaramente in mente l’enorme massa di amore tribale e di tragedia sotto cui questo globo ha gemuto fin dal principio. Se mai madri come la signora Stetson divenissero anzitutto educatrici, allora, salendo a quell’altezza di coltivazione morale, saranno scese più in basso della puzzola o del lupo. Nel vasto mare dell’umanità vivente, di cui l’intera nostra classe colta è una mera scaglia di schiuma, l’istinto familiare è l’indistruttibile minimo di moralità; l’unico germe di serietà sociale. Buttar giù a calci la scala per cui siamo saliti è ingrato, ma buttar giù a calci la scala quando ne siamo a metà è anche qualcos’altro ancora. Se la signora Stetson Gilman spinge troppo oltre la sua fiducia nell’educazione come scienza in un grande tempio statale del sapere, ucciderà davvero la gallina dalle uova d’oro. Il costruttore di quel freddo tempio vedrà la sua follia nella graduale disumanizzazione dei propri figli sotto i propri occhi. Sul costruttore di quel tempio discenderà il letterale adempimento di quell’antica e misteriosa maledizione che fu pronunciata sul riedificatore di Gerico: «Ne getterà le fondamenta sul suo primogenito, e sul suo figlio minore ne erigerà le porte.»
G.K.C.
La letteratura della Morte
—16 marzo 1901, The Speaker
Fiori della Caverna. A cura di Laurie Magnus e Cecil Headlam. Blackwood.
Il libro che compare sotto il titolo alquanto mistico e allusivo di Fiori della Caverna non ha, come si potrebbe supporre a prima vista, alcun rapporto né con la geologia né con la botanica.
È una raccolta di estratti sulla morte, compilata con grande abilità e ponderatezza dal signor Laurie Magnus e dal signor Cecil Headlam. Ma pubblicare un’antologia sulla morte è progetto quasi troppo vasto. È un po’ come pubblicare un’antologia sull’Uomo, nella quale si dovrebbero includere «L’uomo famoso per le varie arti della saggezza»; «C’era un ometto e aveva un piccolo schioppo»; «All’uomo poco basta quaggiù»; «Era un uomo, prendetelo per quel che valeva in tutto»; «C’era un uomo nella nostra città ed era mirabilmente saggio»; «Che cos’è l’uomo, che tu te ne curi?»; e l’intero testo de «L’origine dell’uomo». La Morte è nella letteratura press’a poco universale quanto nell’esistenza umana, ed è trattata con infinitamente maggior rispetto. Se strappassimo la copertina al Golden Treasury e vi sostituissimo il titolo Fiori della Caverna, a stento troveremmo, sospettiamo, sette poesie che non contengano qualche allusione al tema della fine mortale. La Morte è implicata nella discussione di qualsiasi concepibile soggetto umano. È semplicemente il punto fermo alla fine della parola «vita».
In an unpretentious, but singularly able preface, the editors demur to the notion that the treatment of such a subject is necessarily very depressing; as they point out, the loftiest, and, we may add, the most lighthearted men of genius have faced it without a thought of it prostrating them. But though we fully applaud the editors for including all the various points of view from which this tremendous subject has been considered, no one could expect the poems and passages which they print to be uniformly or even generally of a character to elevate either the spirits or the soul. Death has called forth in literature not only much cheerfulness and dignity, much chivalrous hope and more chivalrous hopelessness, but also much panic, much paltry philosophy, much of dismal asceticism and more dismal frivolity, much of the self-indulgence of gloom and much of the gloom of self-indulgence.
On the one hand, the scheme of the work admits all the great poems which gather round the conception of eternal life, such as Wordsworth’s “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” which is, by the way, a magnificent example of the right way to sing about a common subject. Many realists, Wordsworth himself included, fell often into that futile realistic spirit which merely shows that a common thing is common. The higher realism shows that a common thing is uncommonly uncommon, and that all the trumpets of poetic style are not too sublime for its celebration. The case of idealism or truth to the soul, against realism, or truth to the tongue, might be tried on the issue of Wordsworth alone. He wrote two poems upon the idea of a child’s conviction of a life beyond death. When he was writing what, in his view, the child actually said, he wrote “We are Seven.” When he was writing in his own language what the child meant, he wrote the “Ode on the Intimations.”
But just as there is the white side of the philosophy of death, as shown in Wordsworth’s Ode, so there is the dark side also. There are poems rightly included in this volume, and adorning any volume in the literary sense, of which we should say without hesitation that they are baser than the foulest epigram of Catullus.
Most people know Bacon’s vigorous pessimistic poem in this volume, which begins:-
“The world’s a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span.”
and which concludes:-
“What then remains but that we still should cry For being born; or being born, to die.”
The poem is expressed in terms common enough in philosophy and religion, and to many its Vanitas Vanitatum will have a dignified and pious sound. To us, we must confess, this poem is the only one of the literary works of Bacon in which we see the Bacon of history, the Bacon who betrayed Essex, the Bacon who cringed to Buckingham, the shuffler, the coward and the snob.
In order to see how misleading are titles and philosophical descriptions in dealing with moral atmosphere, we need only compare Bacon’s poem with the exquisite and even more famous lyric of Shirley, beginning “The glories of our blood and state,” which is also in this book. Here there is, in a sense, a Vanitas Vanitatum attitude, but as different from the querulous cleverness of Bacon as a rich twilight from a yellow fog. Shirley’s melancholy is not for the ugliness of things, but for their beauty; it is that delicate and golden melancholy which is only possible to men with a great power of enjoyment. And because his sadness is a fullblooded and generous sadness, because it is a sadness over the goodness of things, he escapes in the last lines, like Thackeray, out of satire into a healthy and humble claim for happiness, in two of the most perfect lines in the language:-
“Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.”
The poem might be a motto for The Newcomes.
These two forms of melancholy pretty well cover the mass of extracts on the melancholy view of death. Melancholy, in the sound old Miltonic sense, had nothing to do with pessimism. Sorrow, indeed, is always the opposite of pessimism; for sorrow is based on the value of something, pessimism on the value of nothing. Men have never believed genuinely in that idle and fluent philosophy (a theme for the devil’s copybooks) which declares that earthly things are worthless because they are fleeting. Men do not fling their cigars into the fire at the thought that they will only last fifteen minutes, or shoot their favourite aunts through the head on the reflection that they can only live fifteen years. Nor is it from such thankless railing at this world that men have gained the best hopes for another. It is strange that sages and saints should have sought so often to prove the splendour of the house from the darkness of its porch. If we could really believe in the meanness of the meanest dust-bin, there would be no reason for not believing in the utter meanness of the stars. Surely it is far more credible that death is precisely the breakdown of our mortal powers of praise: that when we cease to wonder we die; that we have to be dipped once more in darkness, before we can see the sun once more.
G. K. C.
How Not To Do It
March 23, 1901, The Speaker
How To Write Fiction. (“How to” Series.) London: Grant Richards.
It is a very extraordinary circumstance that humanity appears to entertain an everlasting resentment against the fact that certain things cannot be reduced to a science. The most remarkable instance is the literary faculty and instinct. It is perfectly clear to any one who can think for a moment of the proper meaning of the word literature and the proper meaning of the word science, that we do not know the psychological nature of literary pleasure or the rules which will with certainty govern it. But yet the whole course of history is strewn with the ruins of the false sciences of literature, from the fixed canons of Aristotle to those of the eighteenth century. Each elaborate and classical edifice only existed until some natural man of letters trampled it into fragments without seeing it. But the “Art is Unmoral” school has arisen in our own time to define the indefinable once more. Such is the strange enmity of men towards the mysterious element in man-as if it were not, in truth, what makes life worth living.
In una prefazione senza pretese, ma singolarmente valida, i curatori contestano la nozione che la trattazione di un simile soggetto sia necessariamente assai deprimente; come essi rilevano, i più alti, e possiamo aggiungere i più spensierati, uomini di genio l’hanno affrontata senza pensare che li prostrasse. Ma per quanto plaudiamo pienamente ai curatori per aver incluso tutti i vari punti di vista da cui questo tremendo soggetto è stato considerato, nessuno potrebbe aspettarsi che le poesie e i passi ch’essi stampano siano uniformemente, o anche solo generalmente, di natura tale da elevare gli spiriti o l’anima. La Morte ha suscitato nella letteratura non solo molta serenità e dignità, molta cavalleresca speranza e ancor più cavalleresca disperazione, ma anche molto panico, molta meschina filosofia, molto tetro ascetismo e ancor più tetra frivolezza, molto del autocompiacimento della cupezza e molto della cupezza del autocompiacimento.
Da un lato, l’impianto dell’opera ammette tutte le grandi poesie che si raccolgono attorno alla concezione della vita eterna, come l’«Ode sui presentimenti dell’Immortalità» di Wordsworth, che è, tra l’altro, un magnifico esempio del giusto modo di cantare un soggetto comune. Molti realisti, Wordsworth stesso compreso, caddero spesso in quel futile spirito realistico che si limita a mostrare che una cosa comune è comune. Il realismo più alto mostra che una cosa comune è straordinariamente straordinaria, e che tutte le trombe dello stile poetico non sono troppo sublimi per celebrarla. La causa dell’idealismo, o verità verso l’anima, contro il realismo, o verità verso la lingua, potrebbe essere dibattuta sul solo caso di Wordsworth soltanto. Egli scrisse due poesie sull’idea della convinzione di un bambino circa una vita oltre la morte. Quando scriveva ciò che, a suo avviso, il bambino diceva realmente, scrisse «Siamo in sette». Quando scriveva nel proprio linguaggio ciò che il bambino intendeva, scrisse l’«Ode sui presentimenti».
Ma come vi è il lato bianco della filosofia della morte, quale si mostra nell’Ode di Wordsworth, così vi è anche il lato oscuro. Vi sono poesie giustamente incluse in questo volume, e che adornano qualsiasi volume in senso letterario, delle quali diremmo senza esitazione che sono più abbiette del più turpe epigramma di Catullo.
I più conoscono la vigorosa e pessimistica poesia di Bacone in questo volume, che comincia:-
«Il mondo è una bolla, e la vita dell’uomo meno di una spanna.»
e che si conclude:-
«Che resta dunque se non che ancora si pianga d’esser nati; o, nati, di morire.»
La poesia è espressa in termini abbastanza comuni nella filosofia e nella religione, e a molti il suo Vanitas Vanitatum suonerà dignitoso e pio. A noi, dobbiamo confessarlo, questa poesia è l’unica tra le opere letterarie di Bacone in cui vediamo il Bacone della storia, il Bacone che tradì Essex, il Bacone che si piegò servile dinanzi a Buckingham, il gabbamondo, il codardo e lo snob.
Per vedere quanto siano fuorvianti i titoli e le descrizioni filosofiche quando si tratta dell’atmosfera morale, basta confrontare la poesia di Bacone con la squisita e ancor più celebre lirica di Shirley, che comincia «Le glorie del nostro sangue e stato», anch’essa presente in questo libro. Qui vi è, in un certo senso, un atteggiamento da Vanitas Vanitatum, ma diverso dalla querula arguzia di Bacone quanto un ricco crepuscolo da una gialla nebbia. Di Shirley, la malinconia non è per la bruttezza delle cose, ma per la loro bellezza; è quella delicata e dorata malinconia che è possibile solo agli uomini dotati di grande capacità di godimento. E poiché la sua tristezza è una tristezza piena e generosa, poiché è una tristezza per la bontà delle cose, egli sfugge negli ultimi versi, come Thackeray, dalla satira a una sana e umile rivendicazione di felicità, in due dei versi più perfetti della lingua:-
«Solo le azioni del giusto profumano dolci e fioriscono nella polvere.»
La poesia potrebbe essere un motto per The Newcomes.
Queste due forme di malinconia coprono abbastanza bene la massa degli estratti sulla malinconica visione della morte. La malinconia, nel sano vecchio senso miltoniano, non aveva nulla a che fare col pessimismo. Il dolore, invero, è sempre l’opposto del pessimismo; ché il dolore si fonda sul valore di qualcosa, il pessimismo sul valore di nulla. Gli uomini non hanno mai creduto sinceramente in quella oziosa e scorrevole filosofia (tema per i quaderni del diavolo) che dichiara le cose terrene prive di valore perché fuggevoli. Gli uomini non gettano i loro sigari nel fuoco al pensiero che dureranno solo quindici minuti, né sparano in testa alle loro zie predilette riflettendo che possono vivere solo quindici anni. Né è da tale ingrato inveire contro questo mondo che gli uomini hanno tratto le migliori speranze per un altro. È strano che savi e santi abbiano così spesso cercato di provare lo splendore della casa dall’oscurità del suo portico. Se potessimo davvero credere nella meschinità della più meschina pattumiera, non vi sarebbe ragione per non credere nella assoluta meschinità delle stelle. Di certo è assai più credibile che la morte sia precisamente il cedimento delle nostre mortali facoltà di lode: che quando cessiamo di meravigliarci moriamo; che dobbiamo essere immersi ancora una volta nelle tenebre, prima di poter vedere di nuovo il sole.
G. K. C.
Come Non Farlo
23 marzo 1901, The Speaker
Come scrivere narrativa. (Serie «How to».) Londra: Grant Richards.
È circostanza assai straordinaria che l’umanità paia nutrire un eterno risentimento contro il fatto che certe cose non possano essere ridotte a scienza. L’esempio più notevole è la facoltà e l’istinto letterario. È perfettamente chiaro a chiunque sappia riflettere per un istante sul vero significato della parola letteratura e sul vero significato della parola scienza, che non conosciamo la natura psicologica del piacere letterario né le regole che con certezza lo governeranno. Eppure l’intero corso della storia è cosparso delle rovine delle false scienze della letteratura, dai canoni fissi di Aristotele a quelli del Settecento. Ogni elaborato e classico edificio esistette solo finché qualche naturale uomo di lettere lo calpestò in frantumi senza nemmeno vederlo. Ma la scuola dell’«Arte è amorale» è sorta nel nostro proprio tempo per definire ancora una volta l’indefinibile. Tale è la strana inimicizia degli uomini verso l’elemento misterioso che è nell’uomo, come se esso non fosse, in verità, ciò che rende la vita degna di essere vissuta.
Another school has also arisen to-day with the same idea in a much grosser form. It is the school which believes that everything can be learnt: that success in art and commerce is equally an ingenious trick. A series is issued entitled the “How To” series. It teaches in one volume “How to Choose Your Banker,” in another “How to Dine in Paris,” and in a third, which now lies before us, “How to Write a Novel.” It never seems to strike the writers of this school that there is some difference between the psychological profundity and delicacy of choosing your banker and that of choosing your idea. An idea is a nameless thing; it melts into all other ideas, whereas a banker is detachable and does not melt into any one. The same is true, though in a lesser degree, of the comparison which the author makes in his first chapter. He says, with some apparent reason, that as painting and sculpture require training on fixed lines there is no reason why such training should not be given in fiction. Surely the answer is distinct. Fiction is more dark and chaotic than painting because, though both arts symbolise spiritual conditions, painting employs as its symbol the bodily form, which has been measured, while fiction employs as its symbol the thoughts and actions which have never been measured. Painting deals with what a man looks like, which we can all know; fiction deals with what he means, which he generally does not know himself. It is not possible to know how many thoughts a man has; it is possible to know, with reasonable industry, how many legs he has.
Painting has an intellectual object also; and may modify physical facts to attain it, but only within limits. By giving a figure unusually long legs a painter may suggest heroic stature; but in no painting are a gentleman’s legs depicted as endless legs; whereas his thoughts and aspirations, the matter of fiction, are endless. It is this uncounted and eternal element in men that cheats all the sciences of letters, which destroys and survives all its own definitions. We have dwelt on this first thesis of the author because it is very vital to the matter. The author exhibits no reverence in approaching literature. He does not seem to realise that so divine has the art of writing always appeared, that the very word “scripture” has come to mean a sacred scripture. No man, as we say, can define literature at any time; but no man can even understand it unless he approaches it as a little child. It does not belong to the class of things that can be gained by mere experience, such as “How to Dine in Paris.” We understand the next volumes of this series are to be called “How to Become a Saint,” “How to Fall in Love,” “How to Die for One’s Country,” and “How to Reconcile the More Inspiring Claims of Ethical Citizenship with the Subtler Phases of the Inner Life.”
But if the didactics of literature would be enough to bewilder anybody, the didactics of fiction are peculiarly shadowy. For there is no such form of art as the novel; not, at least, in the sense that there are such forms of art as the lyric, the epic and the tragedy. We call any prose narrative of a certain length a novel, quite apart from the real nature of its structure. There is really less artistic kinship between Pickwick and The Scarlet Letter than there is between AEdipus Tyrannus and The Ode to the West Wind. And in this matter divisions made by the author of How to Write Fiction by no means satisfy us. His account of the “Realistic Novel” is that it is “life in action, without comment or philosophy, and minus the pre-eminent factor of art.” If it is really this (which we cannot think) a writer on the novel has simply no more concern with it than he has with a furniture catalogue or a Bradshaw, which is really life in action without comment or philosophy, and minus the pre-eminent factor of art. The next section he recognizes is the novel of manners, on which his remarks are unobjectionable, and the section after that, the novel of incident or romance. But romance is not, to our mind, mere incident. This is the error which is responsible for the flood of conventional historic romances in which the hero is never for an instant out of prison or a duel, in which swords and swordthrusts are innumerable, and in which the whole clatter of steel is as commonplace as a cutler’s shop. Romance is a condition of the soul, like all other phases of literature: a broker on a Putney omnibus might possibly be bursting with romance. But the exact note of place and time which tingles with romance in a novel is quite as recondite and hard to strike as the note of fear in Maeterlinck or vitality in Balzac. We hear much, for example, of the fights in Dumas, but really there are far fewer fights in The Three Musketeers than one fancies. Dumas did not employ to enliven his story one half of the combats which make dull those of his imitators. What there is in Dumas always is not fighting, but the sense of the sword at the hip; the sense of self-reliance and of the possibilities of life. His heroes pass their time in other matters, the greater part of it, perhaps, in eating, but in one man of Dumas sitting blandly on an innbench there is more romance, more sense of the inexhaustibility of existence, than in all the breathless obstacle-race of battles common in later stories. If the reader wishes for another instance of the same brooding spirit of romance, the disembodied soul, as it were, of incident, resting on a humdrum scene, we may refer him to the scene at the Colonel’s house in Guy Mannering. where the supper-party are awaiting the strange carriage that is to bring the chosen of Meg Merrilies. The conversation is almost entirely about ducks and peas, and is conducted between a fantastic old lawyer and a frivolous girl, and yet we know no scene in fiction where the cord of romantic excitement is stretched so tight.
Un’altra scuola è pure sorta oggi con la stessa idea in forma assai più grossolana. È la scuola che crede che tutto possa essere appreso: che il successo nell’arte e nel commercio sia egualmente un ingegnoso trucco. Viene pubblicata una collana intitolata la serie «How To». Insegna in un volume «Come scegliere il vostro banchiere», in un altro «Come pranzare a Parigi», e in un terzo, che ora ci sta dinanzi, «Come scrivere un romanzo». Non pare mai venire in mente agli scrittori di questa scuola che vi sia qualche differenza tra la profondità e delicatezza psicologica dello scegliere il vostro banchiere e quella dello scegliere la vostra idea. Un’idea è cosa senza nome; si fonde con tutte le altre idee, mentre un banchiere è staccabile e non si fonde con alcuno. Lo stesso vale, sebbene in minor grado, per il paragone che l’autore fa nel suo primo capitolo. Egli dice, con qualche apparente ragione, che poiché la pittura e la scultura richiedono un addestramento su linee fisse non vi è motivo perché tale addestramento non debba impartirsi anche nella narrativa. Di certo la risposta è netta. La narrativa è più oscura e caotica della pittura perché, sebbene entrambe le arti simboleggino condizioni spirituali, la pittura impiega come suo simbolo la forma corporea, che è stata misurata, mentre la narrativa impiega come suo simbolo i pensieri e le azioni, che non sono mai stati misurati. La pittura tratta di ciò a cui un uomo assomiglia, che tutti possiamo conoscere; la narrativa tratta di ciò che egli significa, che di solito egli stesso non conosce. Non è possibile sapere quanti pensieri abbia un uomo; è possibile sapere, con ragionevole diligenza, quante gambe abbia.
Anche la pittura ha un oggetto intellettuale; e può modificare i fatti fisici per raggiungerlo, ma solo entro certi limiti. Dando a una figura gambe insolitamente lunghe un pittore può suggerire una statura eroica; ma in nessun dipinto le gambe di un gentiluomo sono raffigurate come gambe infinite; mentre i suoi pensieri e le sue aspirazioni, la materia della narrativa, sono infiniti. È questo elemento incalcolabile ed eterno negli uomini che beffa tutte le scienze delle lettere, che distrugge e sopravvive a tutte le proprie definizioni. Ci siamo soffermati su questa prima tesi dell’autore perché è assai vitale per la questione. L’autore non mostra alcuna riverenza nell’accostarsi alla letteratura. Non pare rendersi conto che tanto divina è sempre apparsa l’arte dello scrivere, che la parola stessa «scrittura» è giunta a significare una sacra Scrittura. Nessuno, come diciamo, può definire la letteratura in alcun tempo; ma nessuno può nemmeno comprenderla se non vi si accosta come un piccolo bambino. Essa non appartiene alla classe delle cose che si possono acquisire con la mera esperienza, come «Come pranzare a Parigi». Apprendiamo che i prossimi volumi di questa serie s’intitoleranno «Come diventare santo», «Come innamorarsi d’amore», «Come morire per la propria patria» e «Come conciliare le più esaltanti rivendicazioni della cittadinanza etica con le più sottili fasi della Vita Interiore».
Ma se la didattica della letteratura basterebbe a sconcertare chiunque, la didattica della narrativa è peculiarmente nebulosa. Ché non esiste una forma d’arte quale il Romanzo; non, almeno, nel senso in cui esistono forme d’arte quali la Lirica, l’Epica e la Tragedia. Chiamiamo romanzo qualsiasi narrazione in prosa di una certa lunghezza, del tutto a prescindere dalla reale natura della sua struttura. Vi è in realtà minore parentela artistica tra Pickwick e La lettera scarlatta di quanta ve ne sia tra l’Edipo re e l’Ode al Vento Occidentale. E in questa materia le divisioni fatte dall’autore di Come scrivere narrativa non ci soddisfano affatto. Il suo resoconto del «Romanzo realistico» è che esso è «vita in azione, senza commento né filosofia, e privo del fattore preminente dell’arte». Se è davvero questo (il che non possiamo credere) uno scrittore di romanzi non ha con esso più a che fare di quanto ne abbia con un catalogo di mobili o un orario Bradshaw, che è davvero vita in azione senza commento né filosofia, e privo del fattore preminente dell’arte. La sezione successiva ch’egli riconosce è il Romanzo di costume, sul quale le sue osservazioni sono ineccepibili, e la sezione dopo ancora, il Romanzo d’azione o Romanzesco. Ma il romanzesco non è, a nostro avviso, mero episodio. Questo è l’errore responsabile del diluvio di convenzionali romanzi storici in cui l’Eroe non è mai per un istante fuori dalla Prigione o da un duello, in cui le spade e le stoccate sono innumerevoli, e in cui l’intero fragore dell’acciaio è comune quanto la bottega di un coltellinaio. Il romanzesco è una condizione dell’Anima, come tutte le altre fasi della letteratura: un sensale su un omnibus di Putney potrebbe benissimo traboccare di romanzesco. Ma l’esatta nota di luogo e di tempo che vibra di romanzesco in un romanzo è tanto recondita e ardua da cogliere quanto la nota di paura in Maeterlinck o di vitalità in Balzac. Molto sentiamo dire, per esempio, dei combattimenti in Dumas, ma in realtà vi sono assai meno combattimenti ne I tre moschettieri di quanti se ne immagini. Dumas non impiegò per ravvivare la sua storia nemmeno la metà dei duelli che rendono tediosi quelli dei suoi imitatori. Ciò che in Dumas vi è sempre non è il combattere, ma il senso della Spada al fianco; il senso della fiducia in sé e delle possibilità della vita. I suoi eroi trascorrono il loro tempo in altre faccende, la maggior parte di esso, forse, nel mangiare, ma in un solo uomo di Dumas seduto placidamente su una panca di locanda vi è più romanzesco, più senso dell’inesauribilità dell’esistenza, che in tutta l’affannosa corsa a ostacoli di battaglie comune nelle storie più tarde. Se il lettore desidera un altro esempio del medesimo meditabondo spirito del romanzesco, l’Anima disincarnata, per così dire, dell’episodio, posata su una scena banale, possiamo rimandarlo alla scena nella casa del Colonnello in Guy Mannering, dove i convitati della cena attendono la strana carrozza che deve portare la prescelta di Meg Merrilies. La conversazione verte quasi interamente su anatre e piselli, ed è condotta tra un fantastico vecchio avvocato e una frivola ragazza, eppure non conosciamo scena in tutta la narrativa dove la corda dell’eccitazione romantica sia tesa così stretta.
Thus the author of How to Write Fiction is in reality wrong at the very start. He treats a novel as if it was based on its plot. There are some novels which are so based: The Moonstone, for example. But he does not realise that the real germ of a novel may be any kind of matter-a man, a society, a curse, a landscape, a vision, a school of thought, a joke. When Thackeray called Vanity Fair a novel without a hero, he spoke the strict truth, for the protagonist in Vanity Fair is not a man, but a crowd, jostling, noisy, and monstrous. The hero of Notre Dame is a stone church, the hero of The Wrong Box is a wooden barrel, the hero of Peleas and Melisandre is an atmosphere. The author of this book seems to us very much beside the mark when he says of Maeterlinck that his atmosphere, “put into bald language, means that he has succeeded in creating an artistic environment for his weird characters,” and proceeds to compare it with the darkness and strangeness of the first scene in Hamlet. In Hamlet the sombre background symbolises the human figure: in Maeterlinck the human figures themselves merely symbolise the sombre background. He does not “create an artistic environment for his characters:” the environment creates the characters and then kills them-no very difficult task, for they are a small and frightened race, like men created by a man and not by God. And this contradiction is merely typical of the thousand contradictions which render a science of fiction impossible. The fact is that every novelist begins to draw his figure at a different extremity. There can be no biology of these strange creatures of the brain in one of which the centre of life is in the tail, in another in the horns, in another in the stomach, in another in the wings.
Consequently we have nothing to say to Wilkie Collins and Sir Walter Besant and other authorities from whom explanations of artistic method are quoted here, except that, with the deepest faith in their talents and veracity, we do not believe a word they say. We do not believe that they wrote their books as they say and think they did; we know that the power to write a good story is one thing, the power to analyse one’s own thoughts quite another, and we simply find evidence in the books themselves that they had their origin in infinitely higher and more mysterious forces than the simple rule of thumb to which their authors ascribe them. We should not believe that St. Paul’s Cathedral was built especially for a stable even if Sir Christopher Wren said it was, nor do we believe that The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins because he had invented a certain plot which required a villain, and that villain must be a foreigner. A villain is a dull person both in fiction and in real life: Count Fosco was an inspiration from on high.
Sir Walter Besant gives an outline of an imaginary story about a jewel robbery, and lays down a series of rules, by violating each of which consistently admirable stories could be written. This is the sort of thing which clever men write when they conceive it to be their duty to bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion. “You will perceive the robbery must be a big and important thing; no little shop-lifting business. Next, the person robbed must not be a mere diamond merchant, but a person whose loss will interest the reader.” Why must the robbery be big and important? We can imagine Balzac or Stevenson making an incomparable story about the robbery of something that had no value at all. Why should not the reader be interested in a diamond-merchant if he was well presented, as much as in anybody else? These rules impress us as mere solemn gibberish. We feel as we should if someone said that every hero who was a Romanist must have red hair, that three successive scenes must not take place in Yorkshire, that a heroine may have either a dog or a mother, but not both, that every fifth chapter must end with the word “hat,” and that no Scotch accountant must be introduced into a forest scene. The best that could be said for these rules of ours would be that it might be possible to write a good novel while observing them. And that is certainly the best that can be said for Sir Walter Besant’s rules.
We do not wish to convey the idea that this book is without merit. Many of its remarks, especially towards the end, are useful and almost valuable. But in the author’s idea of a school of fiction we cannot concur. We think it would lead to nothing but a pseudo-science, like alchemy or astrology, to deceive the world for the hundredth time. The power of the man with the latest news and the best trick is increasing around us in many things. It must be resolutely proclaimed that into the world of wonder there is no gate but the low gate of humility, through the arch of which the earth shines like elfland.
G.K.C.
The Problem of Minor Poetry
—March 30, 1901, The Speaker
At The Gates Of Song. By Lloyd Mifflin. Deirdre Wed. By Mr. Trench.
The difficulty of dealing with the poetry which is produced yearly and daily is seriously increasing. The problem of minor poetry does not arise from the fact that the mass of it is bad; it arises from the dark, bewildering and sinister fact that the mass of it is good. The fact is, as it appears to us, that writing in verse is becoming as universal an accomplishment as writing at all. Moliere makes the ignorant man exult in the discovery that he has been speaking prose all his life; the ignorant man of a future satirist will probably exult in the fact that he has been speaking poetry. We see no reason why the power of expressing all our wants in rhyme and rhythm should not be attained by any one in the future. There is no reason why a man wishing his neighbour to pass the potatoes should not say quite naturally:-
Così l’autore di How to Write Fiction ha in realtà torto fin dal principio. Egli tratta un romanzo come se fosse fondato sul suo intreccio. Vi sono alcuni romanzi che così sono fondati: The Moonstone, per esempio. Ma egli non si avvede che il vero germe di un romanzo può essere qualsiasi genere di materia: un uomo, una società, una maledizione, un paesaggio, una visione, una scuola di pensiero, uno scherzo. Quando Thackeray chiamò Vanity Fair un romanzo senza eroe, disse la stretta verità, giacché il protagonista di Vanity Fair non è un uomo, ma una folla, che si accalca, rumorosa e mostruosa. L’eroe di Notre Dame è una chiesa di pietra, l’eroe di The Wrong Box è un barile di legno, l’eroe di Peleas e Melisandre è un’atmosfera. L’autore di questo libro ci pare assai lontano dal segno quando dice di Maeterlinck che la sua atmosfera, «tradotta in linguaggio spoglio, significa che egli è riuscito a creare un ambiente artistico per i suoi bizzarri personaggi», e procede a paragonarla con l’oscurità e la stranezza della prima scena dell’Hamlet. Nell’Hamlet lo sfondo tenebroso simboleggia la figura umana: in Maeterlinck le figure umane stesse non fanno che simboleggiare lo sfondo tenebroso. Egli non «crea un ambiente artistico per i suoi personaggi»: l’ambiente crea i personaggi e poi li uccide - impresa non molto difficile, poiché essi sono una razza piccola e spaurita, come uomini creati da un uomo e non da Dio. E questa contraddizione è semplicemente tipica delle mille contraddizioni che rendono impossibile una scienza della narrativa. Il fatto è che ogni romanziere comincia a tracciare la sua figura da un’estremità diversa. Non può esservi alcuna biologia di queste strane creature del cervello, in una delle quali il centro della vita sta nella coda, in un’altra nelle corna, in un’altra nello stomaco, in un’altra nelle ali.
Di conseguenza non abbiamo nulla da dire a Wilkie Collins e a Sir Walter Besant e alle altre autorità dalle quali qui si citano spiegazioni del metodo artistico, se non che, pur nutrendo la più profonda fede nel loro talento e nella loro veridicità, non crediamo a una sola parola di ciò che dicono. Non crediamo che essi abbiano scritto i loro libri come dicono e pensano di averli scritti; sappiamo che il potere di scrivere una bella storia è una cosa, il potere di analizzare i propri pensieri tutt’altra, e troviamo semplicemente nei libri stessi la prova che essi ebbero la loro origine da forze infinitamente più alte e più misteriose della semplice regola empirica cui i loro autori le ascrivono. Non crederemmo che la Cattedrale di San Paolo fosse stata costruita appositamente per una stalla, nemmeno se lo dicesse Sir Christopher Wren, né crediamo che The Woman in White sia stato scritto da Wilkie Collins perché egli aveva inventato un certo intreccio che richiedeva un malvagio, e quel malvagio doveva essere uno straniero. Un malvagio è una persona insulsa tanto nella narrativa quanto nella vita reale: il Conte Fosco fu un’ispirazione venuta dall’alto.
Sir Walter Besant traccia lo schema di una storia immaginaria intorno al furto di un gioiello, e stabilisce una serie di regole, violando coerentemente ciascuna delle quali si potrebbero scrivere storie ammirevoli. È il genere di cosa che gli uomini intelligenti scrivono quando si figurano che sia loro dovere legare i dolci influssi delle Pleiadi e sciogliere i vincoli di Orione. «Vi accorgerete che il furto deve essere una faccenda grande e importante; non un piccolo taccheggio da bottega. Inoltre, la persona derubata deve non essere un semplice mercante di diamanti, ma una persona la cui perdita interesserà il lettore.» Perché il furto deve essere grande e importante? Possiamo immaginare Balzac o Stevenson comporre una storia incomparabile intorno al furto di qualcosa che non aveva alcun valore. Perché il lettore non dovrebbe interessarsi a un mercante di diamanti, se fosse ben presentato, quanto a chiunque altro? Queste regole ci fanno l’effetto di mero solenne farfugliare. Proviamo quel che proveremmo se qualcuno dicesse che ogni eroe che fosse cattolico romano deve avere i capelli rossi, che tre scene successive non devono svolgersi nello Yorkshire, che un’eroina può avere o un cane o una madre, ma non entrambi, che ogni quinto capitolo deve terminare con la parola «cappello», e che nessun contabile scozzese deve essere introdotto in una scena boschiva. Il meglio che si potrebbe dire di queste nostre regole sarebbe che potrebbe essere possibile scrivere un buon romanzo osservandole. E questo è certamente il meglio che si possa dire delle regole di Sir Walter Besant.
Non vogliamo dare l’idea che questo libro sia privo di merito. Molte delle sue osservazioni, specie verso la fine, sono utili e quasi preziose. Ma nell’idea che l’autore ha di una scuola di narrativa non possiamo concordare. Riteniamo che non condurrebbe ad altro che a una pseudo-scienza, come l’alchimia o l’astrologia, per ingannare il mondo per la centesima volta. Il potere dell’uomo con le ultime notizie e il miglior trucco cresce intorno a noi in molte cose. Bisogna proclamare risolutamente che nel mondo della meraviglia non v’è porta se non la bassa porta dell’umiltà, attraverso l’arco della quale la terra risplende come il paese degli elfi.
G.K.C.
Il problema della poesia minore
—30 marzo 1901, The Speaker
At The Gates Of Song. Di Lloyd Mifflin. Deirdre Wed. Del signor Trench.
La difficoltà di trattare la poesia che viene prodotta ogni anno e ogni giorno va seriamente crescendo. Il problema della poesia minore non nasce dal fatto che la sua gran massa sia cattiva; nasce dall’ oscuro, sconcertante e sinistro fatto che la sua gran massa è buona. Il fatto è, come ci appare, che scrivere in versi sta diventando un’abilità universale quanto lo scrivere in generale. Molière fa esultare l’uomo ignorante nella scoperta di aver parlato in prosa per tutta la vita; l’uomo ignorante di un futuro satirico esulterà probabilmente per il fatto di aver parlato in poesia. Non vediamo ragione per cui il potere di esprimere tutti i nostri bisogni in rima e ritmo non debba essere raggiunto da chiunque in futuro. Non v’è ragione per cui un uomo che desidera che il suo vicino gli passi le patate non debba dire con tutta naturalezza:-
“Pass me those goblins, in the earth that grew, Those hells whose heaven is a blossom blue,”
whereupon the most prosaic of his companions would pass the potatoes immediately. A man who suspected another of having stolen his umbrella would exclaim with righteous indignation—
“Methinks thou cowerest in that dusky dome Wherein I also dared the floods to come:”
whereupon a person of the most impervious moral nature would immediately return the umbrella.
Such is the general impression produced on the mind by the horrible facility which a large number of modern men exhibit in the matter of verse. Owing to some inexperience of critical effects we are unable to say whether it would be considered a tribute to any class of poets to say that they express in language which no one can impugn sentiments which no one can help having. But this is assuredly the case with an enormous number of modern minor writers of verse. Sometimes, undoubtedly, the matter is somewhat simpler. One poet among those whose books lie before us at present exclaims in opening an address to the ocean—
My feeble powers, O mighty sea, I cannot strain to sing to thee,
which seems an excellent, manly and lucid excuse for not writing a poem to the sea, but not a very good excuse for writing one. The majority of modern poets, however, are not so conveniently disposed of. They have, in spite of generalisations, protests and criticisms, a decidedly indefensible habit of writing very good poetry, poetry at least adorned with a degree of style, dignity and judgment which would not have been possible in every age. We can only explain it as we say, by the theory that talking in rhyme is becoming an universal accomplishment, like signing one’s own name. We have no doubt that when language first existed, those persons who could emit certain screams and grunts expressive of the most simple necessities went about with long curled hair and a hyper-elegant demeanour to celebrate their poetic superiority.
An example of how well the thing can be done may be found in the book called At the Gates of Song, by Mr. Lloyd Miffln. Mr. Lloyd Mifflin is, we conceive, an American. His very name is a poem. And his sonnets are decidedly good sonnets; yet, such is the perversity of human judgment, we feel that after the first five every good sonnet decreases our opinion of the poet. About things turned out with such multiplicity and precision there is a strange smell of the factory. One of Mr. Lloyd Mifflin’s sonnets, if we found it alone, we should feel to possess all the pallid severity of the Parthenon. But twenty Parthenons in a row would be as commonplace as twenty Brixton villas.
If we may take Mr. Lloyd Mifflin as the type of the thoroughly polished and dignified craftsman, the author of Amor Amoris may be said to represent the opposite type, the type of the man with a personality, slight or recondite perhaps, but of delicate and individual colour. The poet is a sentimentalist, perhaps: indeed, Amor Amoris, the love of love, is surely the very definition of sentimentalism. But he has escaped the real hell of sentimentalism, the hell of least resistance, the hell of an unfathomable softness. He is not doomed, like so many aesthetes, to go mad in the merciless comfort of a padded cell. He knows how to show beauty bright against a black background.
Her hair is clustered bloom Makes fair this borderland of death
is a fine phrase, illuminating like an aureole suddenly lighted round a woman’s head. The author is always at his best when he brings the soft and the severe into this sudden and ringing contact, like two knights at a tournament.
Mr. Trench, in his volume Deirdre Wed follows the most mysterious section of the Celtic School. We are not ungrateful for the information conveyed in the title, for it is as well to know, at least, on sound external evidence, that whatever else happened to Deirdre she was really wed at some stage of her affairs. The poem, though dim and strange, or rather, because dim and strange, is genuinely fine. Yet we cannot help vaguely resenting the excessive gloom which hangs over all the poems of the renaissance of Celtic mythology. Ireland may have been as melancholy as this in the far-off days when she was a centre of civilisation; but she has certainly improved in spirits under her misfortunes. Amid all the Regency bombast of Tom Moore, there was far more sound analysis of the spirit that has kept his country alive:-
“Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow To sully a heart so gallant and light.”
In this connection we may mention another book of poems-The Love Letters of a Fenian-which is a continuation of the more romantic tradition of Ireland. Extravagant and pompous as it is, its gloom is more young and generous than the light of Deirdre Wed. It is said that there is an Irish legend in which a woman was turned into a harp. We prefer her when the transformation is not quite complete.
G.K.C.
Patriotism and Ethics
—May 18, 1901, The Speaker [Reprinted in The Living Age, volume 230, July-September 1901]
Every kind of moral and personal credit is due to Mr. Godard for his courage and conscientiousness in publishing this interesting book at this time. I cannot pretend to accept his theory; which is a proposal for the dethronement of the whole virtue of patriotism. But the shock of a logical challenge can do nothing but good to a virtue like patriotism, especially when that virtue is almost trampled to death, as at present, by inanities disguised in its costume. We hear much of saying “the right thing at the right time;” but there is a considerable value in the man who says even the wrong thing at the right time.
But there is, before I proceed to any details, one error which spoils much of Mr. Godard’s book from a philosophic point of view. It is that he, like His Majesty’s Ministers, appears to think the present Transvaal war a great war. Judging from the enormous amount of space occupied in his pages by this silly and disastrous adventure, one would think that there never had been a national enterprise in the world before. Patriotism can be tested by the Transvaal war just about as much as Christianity could be tested by Mr. Baxter’s prophecies of the end of the world. Mr. Godard had undertaken to study the whole nature of patriotism, and it was necessary for him to take some great theory of patriotism and systematically examine it. Some of the greatest men the world has seen have written upon patriotism-Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Milton, Victor Hugo, Herbert Spencer, John Ruskin. And Mr. Godard calmly selects for detailed study a lecture given by Mr. Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain does not pretend to be a philosopher; his opinion on patriotism has no more special value than his opinion on the Royal Academy. It need hardly be said that I entirely agree with Mr. Godard’s spirited denunciation of the present war, of Jingo intolerance, of the brutality of the idiots who wrecked Peace meetings. But what have these things to do with patriotism? What has Imperialism to do with patriotism? What have sky-larking crowds to do with patriotism? Above all, what particular connection is there between Mr. Chamberlain and patriotism?
«Passami quei folletti, che nella terra crebbero, Quegli inferni il cui cielo è un fiore azzurro,»
al che il più prosaico dei suoi compagni gli porgerebbe subito le patate. Un uomo che sospettasse un altro d’avergli rubato l’ombrello esclamerebbe con giusta indignazione—
«Mi par che tu ti rannicchi in quella fosca cupola Ove anch’io osai affrontare i flutti che vennero:»
al che una persona della più impervia natura morale restituirebbe immediatamente l’ombrello.
Tale è l’impressione generale prodotta nella mente dall’orribile facilità che un gran numero di uomini moderni esibisce in materia di verso. Per una certa inesperienza degli effetti critici non siamo in grado di dire se sarebbe considerato un tributo a una qualunque classe di poeti affermare che essi esprimono in un linguaggio che nessuno può contestare sentimenti che nessuno può fare a meno di provare. Ma questo è di sicuro il caso di un enorme numero di scrittori minori moderni di versi. Talvolta, senza dubbio, la faccenda è alquanto più semplice. Un poeta tra quelli i cui libri giacciono ora davanti a noi esclama aprendo un’allocuzione all’oceano—
Le mie deboli forze, o possente mare, non posso sforzarmi di cantare a te,
il che sembra un’ottima, virile e lucida scusa per non scrivere una poesia al mare, ma non una gran buona scusa per scriverne una. La maggioranza dei poeti moderni, tuttavia, non si liquida così comodamente. Essi hanno, a dispetto di generalizzazioni, proteste e critiche, un’abitudine decisamente indifendibile di scrivere poesia assai buona, poesia perlomeno adornata di un grado di stile, dignità e giudizio che non sarebbe stato possibile in ogni epoca. Possiamo spiegarlo solo, come diciamo, con la teoria che il parlare in rima stia divenendo un talento universale, come firmare il proprio nome. Non abbiamo alcun dubbio che quando il linguaggio esistette per la prima volta, quelle persone che sapevano emettere certe grida e certi grugniti espressivi dei più semplici bisogni andassero in giro con lunghe chiome ricciute e un contegno iper-elegante per celebrare la loro superiorità poetica.
Un esempio di quanto bene la cosa possa essere fatta si può trovare nel libro intitolato At the Gates of Song, del signor Lloyd Mifflin. Il signor Lloyd Mifflin è, immaginiamo, un americano. Il suo stesso nome è una poesia. E i suoi sonetti sono decisamente buoni sonetti; eppure, tale è la perversità del giudizio umano, sentiamo che dopo i primi cinque ogni buon sonetto diminuisce la nostra opinione del poeta. Riguardo a cose prodotte con simile molteplicità e precisione c’è uno strano odore di fabbrica. Uno dei sonetti del signor Lloyd Mifflin, se lo trovassimo solo, sentiremmo possedere tutta la pallida severità del Partenone. Ma venti Partenoni in fila sarebbero comuni quanto venti villette di Brixton.
Se possiamo prendere il signor Lloyd Mifflin come il tipo dell’artigiano compiutamente levigato e dignitoso, l’autore di Amor Amoris si può dire rappresenti il tipo opposto, il tipo dell’uomo con una personalità, lieve o recondita forse, ma di delicato e individuale colore. Il poeta è un sentimentalista, forse: in verità, Amor Amoris, l’amore dell’amore, è di certo la definizione stessa del sentimentalismo. Ma egli è sfuggito al vero inferno del sentimentalismo, l’inferno della minima resistenza, l’inferno di un’insondabile mollezza. Egli non è condannato, come tanti esteti, a impazzire nello spietato conforto di una cella imbottita. Egli sa mostrare la bellezza splendente contro uno sfondo nero.
I suoi capelli sono fioritura a grappoli Rendono bella questa terra di confine della morte
è una bella frase, che illumina come un’aureola improvvisamente accesa attorno al capo di una donna. L’autore è sempre al suo meglio quando porta il molle e il severo in questo improvviso e squillante contatto, come due cavalieri a un torneo.
Il signor Trench, nel suo volume Deirdre Wed segue la più misteriosa sezione della Scuola Celtica. Non siamo ingrati per l’ informazione trasmessa nel titolo, poiché è bene sapere, almeno, su solida evidenza esterna, che qualunque altra cosa sia accaduta a Deirdre ella fu davvero sposata a qualche stadio delle sue vicende. Il poema, per quanto fosco e strano, o piuttosto, perché fosco e strano, è genuinamente pregevole. Eppure non possiamo fare a meno di risentirci vagamente per la eccessiva tetraggine che grava su tutte le poesie della rinascita della mitologia celtica. L’Irlanda può essere stata tanto malinconica quanto questa nei giorni lontani in cui era un centro di civiltà; ma è certamente migliorata di spirito sotto le sue sventure. In mezzo a tutta la magniloquenza Regency di Tom Moore, c’era assai più sana analisi dello spirito che ha tenuto in vita il suo paese:-
«Non chiederle di versare una sola lacrima di dolore Per macchiare un cuore così galante e lieve.»
A questo proposito possiamo menzionare un altro libro di poesie-The Love Letters of a Fenian-che è una continuazione della più romantica tradizione d’Irlanda. Per quanto stravagante e pomposo, la sua tetraggine è più giovane e generosa della luce di Deirdre Wed. Si dice che vi sia una leggenda irlandese in cui una donna fu trasformata in un’arpa. La preferiamo quando la trasformazione non è del tutto completa.
G.K.C.
Patriottismo ed etica
—18 maggio 1901, The Speaker [Ristampato in The Living Age, volume 230, luglio-settembre 1901]
Ogni sorta di merito morale e personale spetta al signor Godard per il suo coraggio e la sua coscienziosità nel pubblicare questo interessante libro in questo tempo. Non posso pretendere di accettare la sua teoria; che è una proposta per il detronamento dell’intera virtù del patriottismo. Ma lo shock di una sfida logica non può che far bene a una virtù come il patriottismo, specialmente quando quella virtù è quasi calpestata a morte, come al presente, da inanità travestite nel suo costume. Sentiamo molto parlare del dire «la cosa giusta al tempo giusto;» ma c’è un considerevole valore nell’uomo che dice anche la cosa sbagliata al tempo giusto.
Ma vi è, prima che io proceda a qualunque dettaglio, un errore che guasta molto del libro del signor Godard da un punto di vista filosofico. È che egli, come i Ministri di Sua Maestà, sembra ritenere l’attuale guerra del Transvaal una grande guerra. A giudicare dall’enorme quantità di spazio occupata nelle sue pagine da questa sciocca e disastrosa avventura, si penserebbe che non sia mai esistita un’impresa nazionale al mondo prima d’ora. Il patriottismo può essere messo alla prova dalla guerra del Transvaal press’a poco tanto quanto il cristianesimo potrebbe esserlo dalle profezie del signor Baxter sulla fine del mondo. Il signor Godard si era assunto lo studio dell’intera natura del patriottismo, ed era necessario che egli prendesse qualche grande teoria del patriottismo e la esaminasse sistematicamente. Alcuni dei più grandi uomini che il mondo abbia visto hanno scritto sul patriottismo-Platone, Aristotele, Cicerone, Milton, Victor Hugo, Herbert Spencer, John Ruskin. E il signor Godard sceglie con calma per uno studio dettagliato una conferenza tenuta dal signor Chamberlain. Il signor Chamberlain non pretende di essere un filosofo; la sua opinione sul patriottismo non ha più speciale valore della sua opinione sulla Royal Academy. Non occorre certo dire che sono interamente d’accordo con la vigorosa denuncia del signor Godard della guerra presente, dell’intolleranza sciovinista, della brutalità degli idioti che hanno mandato all’aria le riunioni per la Pace. Ma cosa hanno queste cose a che fare con il patriottismo? Cosa ha l’Imperialismo a che fare con il patriottismo? Cosa hanno le folle sfrenate a che fare con il patriottismo? Soprattutto, quale particolare connessione c’è tra il signor Chamberlain e il patriottismo?
This is the primary and superficial objection to Mr. Godard, that he has meekly accepted the theory of the Government that the war is a great trial of English patriotism, instead of being, as it is, a vulgar and dirty experiment in a corner, different in no way from other frontier experiments except in the arrogance of its terms and the magnifying-glass of morbidity through which it is regarded. Mr. Godard, if he wished to study patriotism, should not have taken one paltry colonial squabble out of history, as one takes lots out of a hat; he should have reviewed the great wars of history in something like their proper proportion. But one thing is at least certain. If Mr. Godard does not think patriotism is a precious virtue, his sympathy with Boer resistance is inexplicable. He passionately, and most justly exclaims, “Does ‘justice’ decimate a nation because it refuses unconditionally to submit to a foreign yoke?” But if patriotism has no value a foreign yoke has no injustice. “Can we contemplate,” he continues, “the absolute annexation of the territory of two foreign States, ‘a penalty so extreme as to be without parallel in the history of modern nations since the partition of Poland?’” It is the opinion of many, including myself, that annexation is far too great a penalty. But if patriotism has no sanctity, it is not a penalty at all. If the lines between nations are really as needless and arbitrary as Mr. Godard represents, it is no more cruel to take over a Boer farm from the Republic to the Empire than to transfer a particular street from Fulham to Hammersmith. If there were a passionate patriotic feeling in Hammersmith; if the inhabitants delighted in boasting that the flag of Hammersmith had never fallen in war, that the women of Hammersmith were the most beautiful and the wines of Hammersmith the most rejoicing in the world, then I myself should thoroughly sympathize with Hammersmith, entertaining, as I probably should, similar convictions about South Kensington. But presumably Mr. Godard would not. He considers any peculiar attachment to a nation narrow and immoral. He must, therefore, I infer, consider the present resistance of the Boers a hideous and ghastly thing, the deluging of a whole country with blood by madmen fighting for a detestable prejudice. I do not.
I am very little terrified by Mr. Godard’s catalogue of the wars and woes wrought by patriotism. Of all methods of testing a great idea this method seems to me the worst. Mankind have always been ready to pay a great price for anything they really thought necessary; catalogues of dead and wounded only show how necessary they thought it. Mr. Godard declares that patriotism is, on account of its cruelties and its pride, inconsistent with Christianity. But if peace is the test, how will Christianity itself stand it? Again, he declares patriotism to be inimical to liberty and democracy. But if peace is the test, how will liberty and democracy stand it? The French Revolution has led to at least as much bloodshed as any national sentiment in the world. Rosseau is at one with a greater, in that he assuredly did not bring peace but a sword.
Mr. Godard wishes us to dethrone patriotism and substitute love of all mankind, because patriotism, he says, is only “reflex egoism.” I cannot comprehend this definition. In what sense is patriotism reflex egoism in which the love of humanity is not reflex egoism? If patriotism is exclusive, so is the love of humanity; it stops at the first ape. If patriotism includes pride in being an Englishman, does not the worship of humanity include pride in being a man? If the pride of being an Englishman makes a merit of something not in our control, does not the pride of being a man do the same? If patriotism asserts the interests of the nation, often cruelly, against other nations, does not the service of man assert his interests, often cruelly, against the animal world?
And does Mr. Godard really suppose that if the love of humanity became an universal popular virtue, its expression would not be as vulgar, as heated, as unscrupulous in many cases as that of patriotism? Mr. Godard quotes a list of silly and brutal remarks about President Kruger “singing psalms on the wrong side of his mouth.” and puts them to the account of patriotism. They belong, not to the ethics of patriotism, but to the psychology of cads. Does Mr. Godard suppose that if the love for humanity were made the basis of national thought, the fool who had just been saying, “One in the eye for Kruger,” would immediately begin to talk in the language of sublime liberality? He would merely change the cant. It would be as easy to represent Kruger as the enemy of mankind as to represent him as the enemy of England. It would be as easy for a ring of financiers with their eyes on a gold mine to pity Outlanders as men as to pity them as Englishmen. It would be as easy to break up the meetings of your political opponents because they were enemies of their kind as because they were enemies of their country. The old cosmopolitan Romans boiled Christians in oil because they were the foes of mankind. The French Revolutionists burnt priests in straw because they were the foes of mankind. These things do not arise either from the love of country or the love of men, but simply from folly, intemperance, vagueness and the heart of man deceitful above all things. Let Mr. Godard look abroad on Europe at this moment. There exists a school who hold, doubtless with entire sincerity, the pure love of humanity which he recommends, to the exclusion of all national preferences. The form it takes is to blow to pieces with dynamite hundreds of harmless people whom they have never seen. “Let patriotism be subdued,” says Mr. Godard. “Let it be removed from the pinnacle of a virtue and be replaced by humanitarianism, and there shall dawn the day of peace on earth and goodwill to men.” And of this cosmopolitan philosophy the first fruits are the Dynamiters.
Questa è l’obiezione primaria e superficiale rivolta al signor Godard: che egli abbia mansuetamente accettato la teoria del Governo secondo cui la guerra sarebbe una grande prova del patriottismo inglese, invece di essere, come in realtà è, un volgare e sordido esperimento condotto in un angolo, in nulla diverso dagli altri esperimenti di frontiera se non nell’arroganza dei suoi termini e nella lente d’ingrandimento della morbosità attraverso cui viene considerato. Il signor Godard, se voleva studiare il patriottismo, non avrebbe dovuto estrarre una meschina baruffa coloniale dalla storia, come si estraggono i biglietti da un cappello; avrebbe dovuto passare in rassegna le grandi guerre della storia in qualcosa di simile alla loro giusta proporzione. Ma una cosa almeno è certa. Se il signor Godard non ritiene che il patriottismo sia una virtù preziosa, la sua simpatia per la resistenza boera è inspiegabile. Egli esclama con passione, e con somma giustezza: «La ‘giustizia’ decima forse una nazione perché essa rifiuta di sottomettersi incondizionatamente a un giogo straniero?» Ma se il patriottismo non ha alcun valore, un giogo straniero non ha alcuna ingiustizia. «Possiamo forse contemplare», egli prosegue, «l’assoluta annessione del territorio di due Stati stranieri, ‘una pena tanto estrema da non avere eguali nella storia delle nazioni moderne dalla spartizione della Polonia?’» È opinione di molti, me compreso, che l’annessione sia una pena di gran lunga eccessiva. Ma se il patriottismo non ha alcuna sacralità, non è affatto una pena. Se le linee tra le nazioni sono davvero tanto superflue e arbitrarie quanto il signor Godard le rappresenta, non è più crudele trasferire una fattoria boera dalla Repubblica all’Impero che trasferire una data via da Fulham a Hammersmith. Se a Hammersmith esistesse un appassionato sentimento patriottico; se gli abitanti si compiacessero di vantarsi che la bandiera di Hammersmith non era mai caduta in guerra, che le donne di Hammersmith erano le più belle e i vini di Hammersmith i più rallegranti del mondo, allora io stesso simpatizzerei pienamente con Hammersmith, nutrendo, come probabilmente farei, simili convinzioni riguardo a South Kensington. Ma presumibilmente il signor Godard non lo farebbe. Egli considera ogni particolare attaccamento a una nazione angusto e immorale. Egli deve dunque, ne deduco, considerare l’attuale resistenza dei Boeri una cosa orrenda e spettrale, l’inondare di sangue un intero paese da parte di folli che combattono per un pregiudizio detestabile. Io no.
Ben poco mi atterrisce il catalogo del signor Godard delle guerre e delle sventure prodotte dal patriottismo. Di tutti i metodi per mettere alla prova una grande idea, questo mi sembra il peggiore. L’umanità è sempre stata pronta a pagare un gran prezzo per tutto ciò che riteneva davvero necessario; i cataloghi dei morti e dei feriti mostrano soltanto quanto necessario lo ritenessero. Il signor Godard dichiara che il patriottismo, a causa delle sue crudeltà e del suo orgoglio, è incompatibile con il Cristianesimo. Ma se la prova è la pace, come la supererà il Cristianesimo stesso? Ancora, egli dichiara il patriottismo nemico della libertà e della democrazia. Ma se la prova è la pace, come la supereranno la libertà e la democrazia? La Rivoluzione francese ha condotto ad almeno altrettanto spargimento di sangue quanto qualsiasi sentimento nazionale al mondo. Rousseau si accorda con uno più grande, in ciò che egli certamente non portò la pace ma una spada.
Il signor Godard vuole che detronizziamo il patriottismo e vi sostituiamo l’amore per tutta l’umanità, perché il patriottismo, egli dice, è soltanto «egoismo riflesso». Non riesco a comprendere questa definizione. In quale senso il patriottismo è egoismo riflesso nel quale l’amore per l’umanità non sia egoismo riflesso? Se il patriottismo è esclusivo, lo è anche l’amore per l’umanità; esso si arresta alla prima scimmia. Se il patriottismo include l’orgoglio di essere inglese, il culto dell’umanità non include forse l’orgoglio di essere un uomo? Se l’orgoglio di essere inglese fa un merito di qualcosa che non è in nostro potere, non fa forse lo stesso l’orgoglio di essere un uomo? Se il patriottismo afferma gli interessi della nazione, spesso crudelmente, contro le altre nazioni, il servizio dell’uomo non afferma forse i suoi interessi, spesso crudelmente, contro il mondo animale?
E il signor Godard suppone davvero che, se l’amore per l’umanità divenisse una virtù popolare universale, la sua espressione non sarebbe in molti casi tanto volgare, tanto accesa, tanto priva di scrupoli quanto quella del patriottismo? Il signor Godard cita un elenco di osservazioni sciocche e brutali sul presidente Kruger che «canta i salmi dal lato sbagliato della bocca», e le mette sul conto del patriottismo. Esse appartengono non all’etica del patriottismo, ma alla psicologia dei mascalzoni. Il signor Godard suppone che, se l’amore per l’umanità fosse posto a fondamento del pensiero nazionale, lo sciocco che aveva appena detto «Una nell’occhio per Kruger» comincerebbe immediatamente a parlare nel linguaggio di una sublime liberalità? Egli non farebbe che cambiare il gergo ipocrita. Sarebbe altrettanto facile rappresentare Kruger come il nemico dell’umanità quanto rappresentarlo come il nemico dell’Inghilterra. Sarebbe altrettanto facile, per una cricca di finanzieri con gli occhi puntati su una miniera d’oro, compiangere gli Outlander in quanto uomini quanto compiangerli in quanto inglesi. Sarebbe altrettanto facile disperdere le riunioni dei propri avversari politici perché nemici della loro specie quanto perché nemici del loro paese. Gli antichi Romani cosmopoliti bollivano i cristiani nell’olio perché erano nemici dell’umanità. I rivoluzionari francesi bruciavano i preti nella paglia perché erano nemici dell’umanità. Queste cose non nascono né dall’amore per la patria né dall’amore per gli uomini, ma semplicemente dalla follia, dall’intemperanza, dalla vaghezza e dal cuore dell’uomo, ingannevole sopra ogni cosa. Il signor Godard volga lo sguardo all’Europa in questo momento. Esiste una scuola che professa, senza dubbio con piena sincerità, il puro amore per l’umanità ch’egli raccomanda, a esclusione di ogni preferenza nazionale. La forma che esso assume è far saltare in pezzi con la dinamite centinaia di persone innocue che non hanno mai visto. «Sia soggiogato il patriottismo», dice il signor Godard. «Sia rimosso dal pinnacolo di una virtù e sostituito dall’umanitarismo, e allora sorgerà il giorno della pace in terra e della benevolenza verso gli uomini.» E di questa filosofia cosmopolita i primi frutti sono i Dinamitardi.
Of some of Mr. Godard’s arguments I will not speak at length, for we think he must have employed them in some haste. We cannot see the philosophical bearing of such a remark as that “patriotism fights against the best interests of the patria.” It seems to us like saying that we dislike total abstainers because we find they all drink. In that case it would not be total abstinence that we disliked, but drinking. If certain so-called “patriots” work against the patria the case against them does not lie in the charge that they are patriotic, but in the charge that they are not.
The fact is that Mr. Godard has erred by confusing two things. Christianity is a symbol, the dim and shifting symbol, of a certain love of all things, a certain loyalty to the universe to which we all rise in our higher moments. It is not the love of humanity, it goes out to cats and tadpoles. It is an inspiration far too mysterious to be bridled or counted upon; far too certain to be demonstrated; far too perfect to be praised. It has nothing to do with practical politics or material privileges; it extends itself with a calm conscience to the creatures we burden for transport and slay for food. It is a moment in which we realize our kinship with the stars and the stones in the road; in which our sensitiveness runs like a maze of nerves over the whole Cosmos until a falling star or a stricken tree is like a wound upon our bodies. But this gigantic self is a thing that even the greatest and purest only realize at certain seasons. It does not and cannot have anything to do with those working loyalties which we have to preserve in order to preserve our mode of life. That terrible truce in which the lion lies down with the lamb is a vision, not a daily rule. For natural purposes, we assert our family against our fellow-countrymen, our country against humanity, humanity against nature.
Mr. Godard never seems to realize that he does belong to a country. Great Britain is no more a geographical area than the Order of the Jesuits or the Cocoa Tree Club. Like them, it is a centre of power, numbering certain persons within its rules and responsibilities. It is not humanity which prevents Mr. Godard from being knocked down with a bludgeon; it is his country and his country alone. It is not humanity that makes Mr. Godard pay for a dog-license, it is his country and his country alone. The only real error of Mr. Godard is that he calls upon a mere abstract sentiment, however natural and beautiful, to take the place of what is a necessary working sentiment designed for certain definite relations of life. It is like saying, “Let a soldier’s obedience to his officers be removed from the pinnacle of a virtue and replaced by a love of all living things.” Patriotism is obviously a virtue so long as there is a patria. Mr. Godard seems to think that a nation will remain strong and independent automatically, without any assistance from patriotism. I should be inclined to ask what is keeping the Boer nation in existence at this moment.
The bill which Mr. Godard counts up against modern Jingoism is long and heavy. But of all the crimes it has committed, none is so black and ruinous as this; that it has made good and able men like Mr. Godard turn against patriotism itself. About patriotism itself I will say one thing only, on behalf of those like myself who are Nationalists at home and abroad. We also have had to breathe in a stifling vulgarity; to see a thousand faces fixed in one fatuous sneer. We also have had all the temptations possible to intellectual rebellion or to intellectual pride. If we have remained steadfast in a monotonous candor, we cannot claim that we were strengthened by ethical subtlety or new-fangled emancipation. We have remained steadfast because voices older than the hills called us to this spot; here in this island was to be our glory or failure. We have eaten its bread and been made wise with all its works. And if we are indeed near the end, and the madness of cosmopolitan materialism, the spirit of the present war, be indeed dragging our country to destruction, we can only say that at the end we must be with her, to claim our portion in the wrath of God.
G. K. C
- “Patriotism and Ethics,” By John Godard. London: Grant Richards. 5s.
Mr. William Watson’s Poems
—The Speaker, January 14, 1905
The Poems Of William Watson. Edited and arranged, with an introduction, by J. A. Spender. Two volumes. With portrait and many new poems. London: John Lane. Crown 8vo, 9s. net.
Any re-issue of Mr. Watson’s work is not only a pleasure in itself but is critically important and desirable, since he is eminently a man who not only deserves re-consideration but in some sense demands it. It may or may not be possible to decide that a literary work will not last, but it is generally possible to decide when it is not even meant to last. And this was true of much of the minor poetry (excellent in itself) which was springing up on all sides at the time when Mr. Watson first wrote. Not only was most of that work fugitive, but we may say that it was one of its merits to be fugitive, just as we may say that it is one of the merits of a bird to be fugitive, or one of the merits of an arrow to be fugitive. Some of the best of the minor poets were something better than poets; they were young men; they were comrades and lovers, so full of life as to be able to be superior to mere immortality. Others were idiots, but idiots so unique as to be valuable at least for a moment, for folly is too sacred a thing for man to enjoy it long. But of all of them it may be said that their poetry would not have been so good if it had been more great. Their work was full of wild and childish experiments, sometimes successful, sometimes a ruinous failure; but in all of them the failure was almost as interesting as the success, and in all of them the success was quite as absurd as the failure. In this sense extravagance is more modest than moderation, for extravagance does not claim to endure. Mr. William Watson does claim to endure. They piled their towers sky high, but they made them openly of earth and sand. He works more quietly than they, yet he is the most arrogant of all of them, for his material is a lump of that marble which was the mother of all the gods.
Di alcuni argomenti del signor Godard non parlerò a lungo, poiché riteniamo che egli debba averli impiegati con una certa fretta. Non riusciamo a scorgere la portata filosofica di un’osservazione come quella secondo cui «il patriottismo combatte contro i migliori interessi della patria». Ci pare come dire che detestiamo gli astemi totali perché scopriamo che bevono tutti. In tal caso non sarebbe l’astinenza totale a spiacerci, ma il bere. Se certi cosiddetti «patrioti» operano contro la patria, l’accusa contro di loro non risiede nell’imputazione di essere patriottici, bensì in quella di non esserlo.
Il fatto è che il signor Godard ha errato confondendo due cose. Il Cristianesimo è un simbolo, il fioco e mutevole simbolo, di un certo amore per tutte le cose, di una certa fedeltà all’universo a cui tutti ci innalziamo nei nostri momenti più alti. Non è l’amore per l’umanità, si estende ai gatti e ai girini. È un’ispirazione troppo misteriosa per essere imbrigliata o data per certa; troppo sicura per essere dimostrata; troppo perfetta per essere lodata. Non ha nulla a che vedere con la politica pratica o i privilegi materiali; si estende con serena coscienza alle creature che gravamo per il trasporto e uccidiamo per cibo. È un momento in cui ci rendiamo conto della nostra parentela con le stelle e le pietre sulla strada; in cui la nostra sensibilità corre come un labirinto di nervi su tutto il Cosmo, finché una stella cadente o un albero abbattuto è come una ferita sul nostro corpo. Ma questo gigantesco io è cosa che perfino i più grandi e i più puri realizzano soltanto in certe stagioni. Non ha e non può avere nulla a che fare con quelle fedeltà operanti che dobbiamo preservare per preservare il nostro modo di vivere. Quella terribile tregua in cui il leone si corica accanto all’agnello è una visione, non una regola quotidiana. Per fini naturali, affermiamo la nostra famiglia contro i nostri concittadini, il nostro paese contro l’umanità, l’umanità contro la natura.
Il signor Godard non sembra mai rendersi conto di appartenere davvero a un paese. La Gran Bretagna non è più un’area geografica di quanto lo siano l’Ordine dei Gesuiti o il Cocoa Tree Club. Come essi, è un centro di potere, che annovera certe persone entro le sue regole e responsabilità. Non è l’umanità a impedire che il signor Godard sia atterrato con un randello; è il suo paese e il suo paese soltanto. Non è l’umanità a far pagare al signor Godard la licenza per un cane, è il suo paese e il suo paese soltanto. L’unico vero errore del signor Godard è di invocare un mero sentimento astratto, per quanto naturale e bello, perché prenda il posto di ciò che è un necessario sentimento operante, concepito per certe determinate relazioni della vita. È come dire: «Sia tolta l’obbedienza di un soldato ai suoi ufficiali dal pinnacolo della virtù e sostituita da un amore per tutte le cose viventi». Il patriottismo è evidentemente una virtù finché esiste una patria. Il signor Godard sembra pensare che una nazione rimarrà forte e indipendente automaticamente, senza alcun aiuto da parte del patriottismo. Sarei propenso a chiedere che cosa stia tenendo in vita la nazione boera in questo momento.
Il conto che il signor Godard addebita al Jingoismo moderno è lungo e pesante. Ma di tutti i delitti che esso ha commesso, nessuno è così nero e rovinoso quanto questo: che ha indotto uomini buoni e capaci come il signor Godard a rivoltarsi contro lo stesso patriottismo. Sul patriottismo in sé dirò una cosa soltanto, a nome di coloro che, come me, sono Nazionalisti in patria e all’estero. Anche noi abbiamo dovuto respirare una soffocante volgarità; vedere mille volti fissi in un solo fatuo ghigno. Anche noi abbiamo avuto tutte le tentazioni possibili verso la ribellione intellettuale o verso l’orgoglio intellettuale. Se siamo rimasti saldi in un candore monotono, non possiamo pretendere di essere stati rafforzati da sottigliezza etica o da qualche emancipazione all’ultima moda. Siamo rimasti saldi perché voci più antiche delle colline ci chiamavano a questo luogo; qui, in quest’isola, doveva essere la nostra gloria o la nostra rovina. Ne abbiamo mangiato il pane e siamo stati resi saggi da tutte le sue opere. E se davvero siamo prossimi alla fine, e la follia del materialismo cosmopolita, lo spirito della guerra presente, sta davvero trascinando il nostro paese alla distruzione, possiamo soltanto dire che alla fine dovremo essere con lei, per reclamare la nostra parte nell’ira di Dio.
G. K. C
- «Patriotism and Ethics», di John Godard. Londra: Grant Richards. 5s.
Le Poesie del signor William Watson
—The Speaker, 14 gennaio 1905
Le Poesie di William Watson. Curate e ordinate, con un’introduzione, da J. A. Spender. Due volumi. Con ritratto e molte nuove poesie. Londra: John Lane. Crown 8vo, 9s. net.
Ogni ristampa dell’opera del signor Watson non è soltanto un piacere in sé, ma è criticamente importante e desiderabile, poiché egli è eminentemente un uomo che non solo merita di essere riconsiderato ma in un certo senso lo esige. Può essere o non essere possibile stabilire che un’opera letteraria non durerà, ma è generalmente possibile stabilire quando essa non è nemmeno destinata a durare. E questo era vero di gran parte della poesia minore (eccellente in sé) che spuntava da ogni parte al tempo in cui il signor Watson scrisse per la prima volta. Non solo la maggior parte di quell’opera era fuggevole, ma possiamo dire che era uno dei suoi meriti l’essere fuggevole, proprio come possiamo dire che è uno dei meriti di un uccello l’essere fuggevole, o uno dei meriti di una freccia l’essere fuggevole. Alcuni dei migliori tra i poeti minori erano qualcosa di meglio dei poeti; erano giovani; erano compagni e amanti, così pieni di vita da poter essere superiori alla mera immortalità. Altri erano idioti, ma idioti così singolari da essere preziosi almeno per un istante, poiché la follia è cosa troppo sacra perché l’uomo possa goderne a lungo. Ma di tutti loro si può dire che la loro poesia non sarebbe stata così buona se fosse stata più grande. La loro opera era piena di esperimenti selvaggi e puerili, talvolta riusciti, talvolta un rovinoso fallimento; ma in tutti loro il fallimento era quasi altrettanto interessante quanto il successo, e in tutti loro il successo era altrettanto assurdo quanto il fallimento. In questo senso la stravaganza è più modesta della moderazione, poiché la stravaganza non pretende di durare. Il signor William Watson pretende invece di durare. Essi ergevano le loro torri fino al cielo, ma le costruivano apertamente di terra e sabbia. Egli lavora più quietamente di loro, eppure è il più arrogante di tutti, poiché il suo materiale è un blocco di quel marmo che fu la madre di tutti gli dèi.
A certain amount of the literary importance of Mr. Watson can no doubt be traced to the bewildering eccentricity of everybody else. It is possible for originality to be so popular that it becomes vulgar. It is possible that the whole ground of obvious invention may be rapidly covered; that every kind of new thing should be brought sharply to the attention of everybody. The last man of science has declared not only that the moon is made of green cheese, but that he has eaten it. The last poet has declared, on the authority of a vision, that devils have halos and angels horns. It seems that there is nothing further that anyone can say that will make anyone else jump. The extravagance of what has gone before has made all extravagance tame. People are not merely at ease in Zion; they are at ease in limbo. Blood and thunder is so victorious that it cannot succeed; men are too blinded with blood to see blood. Men are too deafened with thunder to hear the thunder. It seems as if the universe had shown to men its most startling, and they are not startled. It seems that nothing will startle them.
But there is something which will startle them. Sanity will startle them, quietness will startle them, classical moderation will startle them. Any man walking easily and coolly in the conventional paths will touch with an explosion the deep conventions of the unconventional. Any contented man will seem to these discontented ones a sort of Anarchist. And this is one of the fundamental fascinations of the position of Mr. William Watson, both as a poet and as a philosopher. In a time when everyone was original, the only truly original thing left to do was not to be original at all. The still small voice of sanity came with a sort of hissing stab to remind us that the Lord was not in the thunder. The world caught its breath for a moment at the one genuine novelty of a man who did not try to be new.
This element in Mr. Watson, of what may be called the arrestingly ordinary, owes much of its impressiveness, of course, to his own perfectly placid courage and consistency in maintaining the attitude. He meets the disdain of the decadents with a disdain equal to their own; he is fully as proud of being conventional as they can be of being unconventional. Some of his finest work has been written in defence of himself and his method, and under the impulse of this passionate and pugnacious decency. Nothing in recent rhetoric has been finer than the whole of the poem called “Apologia,” and especially the passage in which in the middle of a grave and formal defence of classicism he turns dramatically upon the decadents:
“For though of faulty and of erring walk, I have not suffered aught of frail in me To stain my song; I have not paid the world The evil and the insolent courtesy Of offering it my baseness as a gift.”
This haughty and warlike note is more important in Mr. Watson’s work than has, I think, been commonly allowed. He is a classicist, but, like many other classicists, from Pope to Matthew Arnold, he is a hard hitter when he deals with certain matters. On certain things he is, indeed, a doubter, but his very confession of doubt on these has that quality of clearness and severity which characterises the man who knows when he has a conviction and when he has not. A great many soothing writers give us the impression of never having experienced doubt when the quiet unity of their work really proceeds from their never having experienced belief. Mr. Watson in stating his uncertainties implies his certainties, and these latter are never very absent from his mind. Built into his very bones is that old English last-century thing which the flimsy moderns cannot endure or understand— the didactic spirit, the spirit which tells the great man to tell other men simply and fully the whole of his mind. As in the great English agnostics of the Huxley period, even ignorance itself has a responsibility. Even if he has nothing to say it is his duty to say so.
The main matter of Mr. Watson’s doubt or uncertainty is religion. The main matter of his faith or certitude is patriotism. He is absolutely convinced that he is standing, and rightly standing, for the whole great historic tradition of English letters and English landscape. He is defending it against a host of foreign influences, against the influence, against the turgidity and obscurity which we have copied from the literature of Germany, against the cheapness and over emphasis which we have borrowed from the literature of America, against the mistiness and melancholy which we have borrowed from the literature of Norway, against the fastidiousness and cruelty which we have borrowed from the literature of France. In fighting for the wholesome and massive qualities of great English poetry he feels, rightly, that he is fighting for something which is, like all precious things, in perpetual and incurable peril. His objection to Imperialism is, of course, wholly of this kind; he realises what all other serious people will realise very soon, that if the Imperialist movement goes on for another twenty years (which, fortunately, it will not do) it is doubtful whether there will be any English people left at all. Purely literary as Mr. Watson is, he has in his heart a certain still vigilance which is as military as that of a sentinel. His very traditionalism partakes of the nature of warlike obedience. He follows Milton and Wordsworth as he would follow a volunteer colonel or an impromptu captain if a foreign army were pouring through the gate of Dover.
G. K. Chesterton.
Leviathan and the Hook
—The Speaker, September 9, 1905 [Reprinted in The Living Age, volume CCXLVII, October, November, December 1905]
Because man is a spirit and unfathomable the past is really as startling and incalculable as the future. The dead men are as active and dramatic as the men unborn; we know decisively that the men unborn will be men; and we cannot decisively know anything more about the dead. It is not merely true that Nero may have been misunderstood; he must have been misunderstood, for no man can understand another. Hence to dive into any very ancient human work is to dive into a bottomless sea, and the man who seeks old things will be always finding new things. Centuries hence the world will be still seeking for the secret of Job, which is, indeed, in a sense the secret of everything. It is no disrespect to such able and interesting works as Professor Dillon’s to say that they are only stages in an essentially endless process, the proper appreciation of one of the inexhaustible religious classics. None of them says the last word on Job, for the last word could only be said on the Last Day. For a great poem like Job is in this respect like life itself. The explanations are popular for a month or popular for a century. But they all fall. The unexplained thing is popular for ever. There are weaknesses in the Higher Criticism, as a general phenomenon, which are only gradually unfolding themselves. There are more defects or difficulties than would at first appear in the scientific treatment of Scripture. But after all the greatest defect in the scientific treatment of Scripture is simply that it is scientific. The professor of the Higher Criticism is never tired of declaring that he is detached, that he is disinterested, that he is concerned only with the facts, that he is applying to religious books the unbending methods which are employed by men of science towards the physical order. If what he says of himself is true, he must be totally unfitted to criticize any books whatever.
Una certa parte dell’importanza letteraria del signor Watson può senza dubbio essere ricondotta alla sconcertante eccentricità di tutti gli altri. È possibile che l’originalità sia tanto popolare da diventare volgare. È possibile che l’intero terreno dell’invenzione ovvia venga rapidamente coperto; che ogni sorta di cosa nuova sia portata bruscamente all’attenzione di tutti. L’ultimo uomo di scienza ha dichiarato non soltanto che la luna è fatta di formaggio verde, ma che l’ha mangiata. L’ultimo poeta ha dichiarato, sull’autorità di una visione, che i diavoli hanno aureole e gli angeli corna. Pare che non vi sia più nulla che chiunque possa dire che faccia sobbalzare qualcun altro. La stravaganza di ciò che è venuto prima ha reso insipida ogni stravaganza. Gli uomini non sono soltanto a proprio agio in Sion; sono a proprio agio nel limbo. Il sangue e il tuono trionfano tanto da non poter riuscire; gli uomini sono troppo accecati dal sangue per vedere il sangue. Gli uomini sono troppo assordati dal tuono per udire il tuono. Sembra come se l’universo avesse mostrato agli uomini ciò che ha di più sconvolgente, e loro non sono sconvolti. Sembra che nulla li sconvolgerà.
Ma c’è qualcosa che li sconvolgerà. La sanità di mente li sconvolgerà, la quiete li sconvolgerà, la moderazione classica li sconvolgerà. Qualunque uomo che cammini con disinvoltura e freddezza per i sentieri convenzionali toccherà con un’esplosione le profonde convenzioni degli anticonvenzionali. Qualunque uomo contento sembrerà a questi scontenti una sorta di anarchico. E questo è uno dei fascini fondamentali della posizione del signor William Watson, tanto come poeta quanto come filosofo. In un tempo in cui tutti erano originali, l’unica cosa davvero originale che rimanesse da fare era non essere affatto originali. La voce ancora sommessa della sanità di mente giunse con una sorta di sibilante pugnalata a ricordarci che il Signore non era nel tuono. Il mondo trattenne il fiato per un istante dinanzi all’unica genuina novità di un uomo che non cercava di essere nuovo.
Questo elemento nel signor Watson, di ciò che si può chiamare l’ordinario che arresta, deve molta della sua efficacia, naturalmente, al suo proprio coraggio perfettamente placido e alla sua coerenza nel mantenere tale atteggiamento. Egli affronta il disdegno dei decadenti con un disdegno pari al loro; è pienamente fiero di essere convenzionale quanto essi possono esserlo di essere anticonvenzionali. Alcune delle sue opere più belle sono state scritte in difesa di sé e del suo metodo, e sotto l’impulso di questa appassionata e battagliera decenza. Nulla nella retorica recente è stato più bello dell’intera poesia intitolata «Apologia», e specialmente il passo in cui, nel mezzo di una grave e formale difesa del classicismo, egli si volge drammaticamente contro i decadenti:
«Poiché, sebbene di passo fallace ed errante, non ho sofferto nulla di fragile in me che macchiasse il mio canto; non ho reso al mondo la malvagia e insolente cortesia di offrirgli la mia bassezza in dono.»
Questa nota altera e bellicosa è più importante nell’opera del signor Watson di quanto, credo, non le sia stato comunemente concesso. Egli è un classicista, ma, come molti altri classicisti, da Pope a Matthew Arnold, colpisce duramente quando tratta certe questioni. Su certe cose è, in effetti, un dubbioso, ma la sua stessa confessione di dubbio su queste ha quella qualità di chiarezza e severità che caratterizza l’uomo che sa quando ha una convinzione e quando non ce l’ha. Moltissimi scrittori rassicuranti ci danno l’impressione di non aver mai sperimentato il dubbio, quando la quieta unità della loro opera in realtà procede dal non aver mai sperimentato la fede. Il signor Watson, nell’enunciare le sue incertezze, sottintende le sue certezze, e queste ultime non sono mai molto lontane dalla sua mente. Radicata nelle sue stesse ossa vi è quella vecchia cosa inglese del secolo scorso che i fragili moderni non riescono a sopportare né a comprendere: lo spirito didattico, lo spirito che dice al grande uomo di dire agli altri uomini, semplicemente e pienamente, tutto il suo pensiero. Come nei grandi agnostici inglesi dell’epoca di Huxley, persino l’ignoranza stessa ha una responsabilità. Anche se non ha nulla da dire, è suo dovere dirlo.
L’oggetto principale del dubbio o dell’incertezza del signor Watson è la religione. L’oggetto principale della sua fede o certezza è il patriottismo. Egli è assolutamente convinto di stare, e di stare a buon diritto, per l’intera grande tradizione storica delle lettere inglesi e del paesaggio inglese. La difende contro una schiera di influenze straniere, contro l’influenza, contro la turgidità e l’oscurità che abbiamo copiato dalla letteratura della Germania, contro la volgarità e l’enfasi eccessiva che abbiamo preso in prestito dalla letteratura d’America, contro la nebulosità e la malinconia che abbiamo preso in prestito dalla letteratura della Norvegia, contro la ricercatezza e la crudeltà che abbiamo preso in prestito dalla letteratura della Francia. Combattendo per le qualità salubri e massicce della grande poesia inglese egli sente, a ragione, di combattere per qualcosa che è, come tutte le cose preziose, in perpetuo e incurabile pericolo. La sua obiezione all’imperialismo è, naturalmente, interamente di questa specie; egli comprende ciò che tutte le altre persone serie comprenderanno molto presto, che se il movimento imperialista proseguirà per altri vent’anni (cosa che, fortunatamente, non farà) è dubbio che rimarrà ancora un popolo inglese. Per quanto puramente letterario sia il signor Watson, egli ha nel cuore una certa silenziosa vigilanza che è militare quanto quella di una sentinella. Il suo stesso tradizionalismo partecipa della natura dell’obbedienza guerriera. Egli segue Milton e Wordsworth come seguirebbe un colonnello volontario o un capitano improvvisato se un esercito straniero irrompesse attraverso la porta di Dover.
G. K. Chesterton.
Leviatano e l’Amo
—The Speaker, 9 settembre 1905 [Ristampato in The Living Age, volume CCXLVII, ottobre, novembre, dicembre 1905]
Poiché l’uomo è uno spirito e insondabile, il passato è in realtà tanto sorprendente e incalcolabile quanto il futuro. I morti sono attivi e drammatici quanto gli uomini non ancora nati; sappiamo con certezza che gli uomini non ancora nati saranno uomini; e non possiamo sapere con certezza nulla di più sui morti. Non è soltanto vero che Nerone possa essere stato frainteso; egli deve essere stato frainteso, poiché nessun uomo può comprendere un altro. Perciò immergersi in una qualsiasi opera umana assai antica è immergersi in un mare senza fondo, e l’uomo che cerca le cose antiche troverà sempre cose nuove. Fra secoli il mondo cercherà ancora il segreto di Giobbe, che è, in verità, in un certo senso il segreto di ogni cosa. Non è mancanza di rispetto verso opere così valide e interessanti come quelle del professor Dillon dire che esse sono soltanto tappe di un processo essenzialmente senza fine, la giusta apprezzamento di uno degli inesauribili classici religiosi. Nessuna di esse dice l’ultima parola su Giobbe, poiché l’ultima parola potrebbe essere detta soltanto nell’Ultimo Giorno. Perché un grande poema come Giobbe è, sotto questo aspetto, simile alla vita stessa. Le spiegazioni sono popolari per un mese o popolari per un secolo. Ma tutte cadono. La cosa inspiegata è popolare per sempre. Vi sono debolezze nell’Alta Critica, come fenomeno generale, che si vanno svelando solo gradualmente. Vi sono più difetti o difficoltà di quanti a prima vista apparirebbero nel trattamento scientifico della Scrittura. Ma dopotutto il più grande difetto nel trattamento scientifico della Scrittura è semplicemente che è scientifico. Il professore dell’Alta Critica non si stanca mai di dichiarare che è distaccato, che è disinteressato, che si occupa soltanto dei fatti, che sta applicando ai libri religiosi i metodi inflessibili che vengono impiegati dagli uomini di scienza verso l’ordine fisico. Se ciò che dice di sé è vero, egli dev’essere del tutto inadatto a criticare qualsivoglia libro.
Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book. In literature to be dispassionate is simply to be illiterate. To be disinterested is simply to be uninterested. The object of a book on comets, of course, is not to make us all feel like comets; but the object of a poem about warriors is to make us all feel like warriors. It is not merely true that the right method for one may be the wrong method for the other; it must be the wrong method for the other. A critic who takes a scientific view of the Book of Job is exactly like a surgeon who should take a poetical view of appendicitis: he is simply an old muddler.
It is said, of course, that this scientific quality is only applied to the actual facts, which are the department of science. But what are the actual facts? There are very few facts in connection with a work of literature which are really wholly apart from literary tact and grasp. That certain words are on a piece of parchment in a certain order science can say. Whether in that order they make sense or nonsense only literature can say. That in another place (say on a brick) the same words are in another order science can say. Whether it is a more likely order only literature can say. That on two bricks there is the same sentence science can say. Whether it is the sort of sentence one man would write on two bricks, or two men happen to write on their own respective bricks, only literature can say. Let me take an example from Professor Dillon’s own interesting introduction. Referring to a controversy among scholars about the possible indebtedness of the unknown Hebrew poet to other Hebrew writers, he says: “On the one hand it is doubtless possible that the words:
“Art thou the first man born? Or wast thou brought forth before the hills?
“were suggested by the verses in Proverbs, ‘Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth.’” Of course it is possible, but I cannot see (as a matter of literary common sense) why it is in the smallest degree likely. Surely two independent people or two hundred independent people might use so natural a phrase as that a thing was older than the hills. We might as well bind together in chains of plagiarism all the people who ever said that a thing shone like the sun or bloomed and faded like a flower. Outside the use of hills (those rare objects) and of being brought forth (that unusual and pathological process), the two passages are not in spirit or inspiration in the least similar, for the passage in Proverbs (if I remember it aright) is an abstract, mystical excursus of which the point is that a Logos or idea, preceded all physical phenomena, whereas the passage in Job is simply a sharp, savage joke, of which the point is that a man is an uncommonly unimportant fungus on the face of the earth. No poet would naturally take a thing from one to use it in the other: but then to feel this is simply a matter of poetic sentiment and science is no more use in the matter than gardening. Science can only say that the same Hebrew word is used; but whether the word is common, or natural, or forced, or affected, or inevitable is a question of pure literature; and it is the whole question at issue. The Higher Critic, as such, can only see that the words are the same; that is, he can only see what a child could see.
Let it not be supposed that Professor Dillon’s work is thus weak; he makes many wise suggestions and emendations. But when they are entirely wise they are also literary and entirely undemonstrable. To take one instance out of many, at the end of that noble Nihilist chapter three, in which Job curses his day, which is indeed the sublimest point of suicide, the very crest and imperial crown of cowardice, Job says in the authorized version: “For my sighing cometh before I eat and my roarings are poured out like the waters.” This is evidently an extremely literary and ingenious rendering by the original translators of a passage of which they could not make head or tail. According to the later version the meaning is simpler and stronger and more in the manner of good primitive poetry. In Professor Dillon’s book it runs “For sighing is become my bread, and my crying is unto me as water.” This has all the elemental energy of the primeval phrase; it would be difficult to express with more directness what is the worst part of pain or calamity, the fact of the abnormal thing becoming the normal, disaster becoming a routine. We can all endure catastrophe as long as it is catastrophic; it is maddening the moment it is orderly.
In a sense this small matter expresses the whole of Job. Professor Dillon analyzes very well the main and obvious idea that it is a protest against that paltry optimism which sees in suffering a mark of sin. But he does not, I think, quite pierce to the further and ultimate point of “Job,” which is that the true secret and hope of human life is something much more dark and beautiful than it would be if suffering were a mark of sin. A mere scheme of rewards and punishments would be something much meaner and more mechanical than this exasperating and inspiring life of ours. An automatic scheme of Karma, or “reaping what we sow,” would be just as gross and material as sowing beans or reaping barley. It might satisfy mechanicians or modern monists, or theosophists, or cautious financiers, but not brave men. It is no paradox to say that the one thing which would make suffering intolerable would be the thought that it was systematically inflicted upon sinners. The one thing which would make our agony infamous would be the idea that it was deserved. On the other hand, the doctrine which makes it most endurable is exactly the opposite doctrine, that life is a battle in which the best put their bodies in the front, in which God sends only His holiest into the hail of the arrows of hell. In the book of Job is foreshadowed that better doctrine full of a dark chivalry that he that bore the worst that men can suffer was the best that bore the form of man.
There is one central conception of the book of Job, which literally makes it immortal, which will make it survive our modern time and our modern philosophies as it has survived many better times and many better philosophies. That is the conception that the universe, if it is to be admired, is to be admired for its strangeness and not for its rationality, for its splendid unreason and not for its reason. Job’s friends attempt to comfort him with philosophical optimism, like the intellectuals of the eighteenth century. Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. Eliphaz gives one answer, Job gives another answer, and the question still remains an open wound. God simply refuses to answer, and somehow the question is answered. Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums. For the grand and enduring idea in the poem, as suggested above, is that if we are to be reconciled to this great cosmic experience it must be as something divinely strange and divinely violent, a quest, or a conspiracy, or some sacred joke. The last chapters of the colossal monologue of the Almighty are devoted in a style superficially queer enough to the detailed description of two monsters. Behemoth and Leviathan may, or may not be, the hippopotamus and the crocodile. But, whatever they are, they are evidently embodiments of the enormous absurdity of nature. They typify that cosmic trait which anyone may see in the Zoological Gardens, the folly of the Lord, which is wisdom. And in connection with one of them, God is made to utter a splendid satire upon the prim and orderly piety of the vulgar optimist. “Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? Wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?” That is the main message of the book of Job. Whatever this cosmic monster may be, a good animal or a bad animal, he is at least a wild animal and not a tame animal; it is a wild world and not a tame world.
G. K. Chesterton.
- “The Original Poem of Job.” Translated from the Restored Text by E. T. Dillon. London: Fisher Unwin, 5s.
I libri esistono per suscitare emozioni: se non siamo commossi da essi, praticamente non li abbiamo letti. Se un vero libro non ci ha toccati, tanto vale che non avessimo toccato il libro. In letteratura essere impassibili equivale semplicemente a essere analfabeti. Essere disinteressati equivale semplicemente a essere indifferenti. Lo scopo di un libro sui comete è naturalmente quello di farci sentire tutti come comete; ma lo scopo di una poesia su guerrieri è farci sentire tutti come guerrieri. Non è solo vero che il metodo giusto per uno può essere il metodo sbagliato per l’altro; deve essere il metodo sbagliato per l’altro. Un critico che adotta una visione scientifica del Libro di Giobbe è esattamente come un chirurgo che dovesse adottare una visione poetica dell’appendicite: è semplicemente un vecchio confuso.
Si dice, naturalmente, che questa qualità scientifica si applichi solo ai fatti reali, che sono di competenza della scienza. Ma quali sono i fatti reali? Ci sono pochissimi fatti relativi a un’opera letteraria che siano veramente del tutto estranei al tatto e alla comprensione letteraria. La scienza può dire che certe parole si trovano su un pezzo di pergamena in un certo ordine. Se in quell’ordine hanno senso o sono insensate solo la letteratura può dirlo. La scienza può dire che in un altro luogo (ad esempio, su un mattone) le stesse parole si trovano in un altro ordine. Se è un ordine più probabile solo la letteratura può dirlo. La scienza può dire che su due mattoni c’è la stessa frase. Se è il tipo di frase che un uomo scriverebbe su due mattoni, o se per caso due uomini l’hanno scritta sui rispettivi mattoni, solo la letteratura può dirlo. Prendiamo un esempio dall’interessante introduzione del professor Dillon. Riferendosi a una controversia tra gli studiosi sulla possibile influenza su un poeta ebraico sconosciuto di altri scrittori ebrei, egli dice: «Da un lato è indubbiamente possibile che le parole:
«Sei tu forse l’uomo primogenito? O sei stato generato prima ancora delle colline?»
“erano suggerite dai versi nei Proverbi: ‘Prima che fossero formati i monti, prima delle colline, io fui generata’.” Naturalmente è possibile, ma non riesco a capire (per un senso letterario comune) perché sia anche solo minimamente probabile. Certamente due persone indipendenti o duecento persone indipendenti potrebbero usare una frase così naturale come quella che una cosa era più vecchia delle colline. Potremmo altrettanto bene legare insieme in catene di plagio tutte le persone che hanno mai detto che una cosa brillava come il sole o fioriva e appassiva come un fiore. A parte l’uso delle colline (quegli oggetti rari) e del fatto di essere generati (quel processo insolito e patologico), i due passaggi non sono affatto simili nello spirito o nell’ispirazione, perché il passaggio nei Proverbi (se lo ricordo bene) è un escursus astratto, mistico, il cui punto è che un Logos o idea precedeva tutti i fenomeni fisici, mentre il passaggio in Giobbe è semplicemente uno scherzo acuto e selvaggio, il cui punto è che l’uomo è un fungo assai poco importante sulla faccia della terra. Nessun poeta prenderebbe naturalmente una cosa da uno per usarla nell’altro: ma allora sentire questo è semplicemente questione di sentimento poetico e la scienza non serve a nulla in proposito più che l’orticultura. La scienza può solo dire che viene usata la stessa parola ebraica; ma se la parola sia comune, o naturale, o forzata, o affettata, o inevitabile è una questione di pura letteratura; ed è tutta la questione in discussione. Il Critico Superiore, in quanto tale, può solo vedere che le parole sono le stesse; cioè, può solo vedere ciò che potrebbe vedere un bambino.
Non si pensi che l’opera del professor Dillon sia così debole; egli fa molte sagge proposte e correzioni. Ma quando sono interamente sagge, sono anche letterarie e completamente indimostrabili. Per fare un esempio su molti, alla fine di quel nobile capitolo nichilista tre, in cui Giobbe maledice il suo giorno, che è infatti il punto più sublime del suicidio, la vetta stessa e l’imperiale corona della codardia, Giobbe dice nella versione autorizzata: “Perché i miei sospiri vengono prima che io mangi e le mie grida sono rovesciate come le acque.” Questo è evidentemente un’estremamente letteraria e ingegnosa resa da parte dei traduttori originali di un passaggio del quale non potevano fare testa o coda. Secondo la versione successiva il significato è più semplice e forte e più nel modo della buona poesia primitiva. Nel libro del professor Dillon si legge “Perché sospirare è diventato il mio pane, e piangere per me è come acqua.” Questo ha tutta l’energia elementare della frase primordiale; sarebbe difficile esprimere con più immediatezza quale sia la parte peggiore del dolore o della calamità, il fatto che la cosa anormale diventi normale, il disastro diventi una routine. Possiamo tutti sopportare la catastrofe finché è catastrofica; è esasperante nel momento in cui diventa ordinata.
In un certo senso questa piccola questione esprime l’intero libro di Giobbe. Il professor Dillon analizza bene l’idea principale e ovvia che si tratti di una protesta contro quell’ottimismo meschino che vede nella sofferenza un segno del peccato. Ma non riesce, credo, a penetrare fino al punto più profondo e ultimo di “Giobbe”, che è il vero segreto e la speranza della vita umana, qualcosa di molto più oscuro e bello di quanto sarebbe se la sofferenza fosse un segno del peccato. Un semplice schema di ricompense e punizioni sarebbe qualcosa di molto più meschino e meccanico rispetto a questa nostra vita esasperante e stimolante. Uno schema automatico di Karma, o “raccogliere ciò che si semina”, sarebbe altrettanto grossolano e materiale come seminare fagioli o raccogliere orzo. Potrebbe soddisfare meccanici o monisti moderni, teosofi, o finanziatori cauti, ma non uomini coraggiosi. Non è un paradosso dire che l’unica cosa che renderebbe la sofferenza intollerabile sarebbe il pensiero che sia inflitta sistematicamente ai peccatori. L’unica cosa che renderebbe la nostra agonia infame sarebbe l’idea che sia meritata. D’altra parte, la dottrina che la rende più sopportabile è esattamente quella opposta, che la vita è una battaglia in cui i migliori mettono il proprio corpo in prima linea, in cui Dio manda solo i Suoi più santi nella grandine delle frecce dell’inferno. Nel libro di Giobbe si prefigura una dottrina migliore piena di un’oscuro cavallerismo: colui che sopportò il peggio che gli uomini possono soffrire era il migliore tra quelli che hanno la forma umana.
C’è un concetto centrale nel libro di Giobbe, che lo rende letteralmente immortale e che gli farà sopravvivere il nostro tempo moderno e le nostre filosofie moderne come ha sopravvissuto a tempi migliori e a filosofie migliori. È il concetto per cui l’universo, se deve essere ammirato, deve esserlo per la sua stranezza e non per la sua razionalità, per la sua splendida irrazionalità e non per la sua ragione. Gli amici di Giobbe cercano di consolarlo con l’ottimismo filosofico, come gli intellettuali del diciottesimo secolo. Giobbe cerca di confortarsi con il pessimismo filosofico come gli intellettuali del diciannovesimo secolo. Ma Dio consola Giobbe con un mistero indecifrabile, e per la prima volta Giobbe è consolato. Elifaz dà una risposta, Giobbe ne dà un’altra, e la domanda rimane ancora una ferita aperta. Dio semplicemente rifiuta di rispondere, e in qualche modo la domanda viene risolta. Giobbe scaglia contro Dio un enigma, Dio gliene scaglia indietro cento, e Giobbe è in pace. È consolato con degli enigmi. Perché l’idea grandiosa e duratura del poema, come suggerito sopra, è che se dobbiamo riconciliarci con questa grande esperienza cosmica essa deve essere qualcosa di divinamente strano e divinamente violento, una ricerca, o una cospirazione, o qualche sacro scherzo. Gli ultimi capitoli del colossale monologo dell’Onnipotente sono dedicati in uno stile superficialmente abbastanza strano alla descrizione dettagliata di due mostri. Behemot e Leviatano possono essere, o non essere, l’ippopotamo e il coccodrillo. Ma, qualunque cosa siano, sono evidentemente incarnazioni dell’enorme assurdità della natura. Rappresentano quel tratto cosmico che chiunque può vedere nei giardini zoologici, la follia del Signore, che è sapienza. E in relazione a uno di essi, Dio viene fatto pronunciare una splendida satira sulla pietà ordinata e metodica dell’ottimista volgare. “Gioccherai con lui come con un uccello? Lo legherai per le tue fanciulle?” Questo è il messaggio principale del libro di Giobbe. Qualunque cosa possa essere questo mostro cosmico, un buon animale o un cattivo animale, è almeno un animale selvaggio e non un animale addomesticato; è un mondo selvaggio e non un mondo addomesticato.
G.K. Chesterton.
- “Il poema originale di Giobbe.” Tradotto dal testo ricostruito da E. T. Dillon. Londra: Fisher Unwin, 5 scellini.