the modern English point of view in Hobbes’s translation of Pericles’s
_Funeral Oration_. His period of English prose appears to have been
ill-adapted for the translation of the Greek idiom of the time of
Pericles. To the usual cautions against translations in general, we ought
to add the caution against translations made in dissimilar epochs. It is
not at any time in the history of a language that a translation from a
foreign language can safely be undertaken. In all probability, indeed,
the proper period for translation is no longer in point of time than the
period within which the original itself was written. If the Periclean
Age lasted, let us say, fifty years, it is within a period in English
history of the same length that an adequate translation can be made.
Once let that period go by, and a perfect translation will be for ever
impossible. And equally the result will be a failure, if the translation
is attempted before its time has come. I do not think that the Hobbesian
period of English was in key with the period of Periclean Greek; nor,
again, do I think that our period for perfect translation has yet come.
A “masterpiece” of translation of Pericles’s _Oration_ is still, in my
opinion, to be done. But I am confident that we are approaching the
proper period, and in proof of this I would remark on the superiority of
Jowett’s translation over that of Hobbes. Jowett, as a writer of original
English, nobody, I think, would compare with Hobbes of Malmesbury. Hobbes
was a great pioneer, a creator of language; Jowett was only a good
writer. Nevertheless, the idiom in which Jowett wrote, was more nearly
perfect (that is, fully developed) English than the idiom in which Hobbes
wrote. And since, in point of development, the correspondence between
Periclean Greek and Jowett’s English is closer than the correspondence
between Periclean Greek and Hobbes’s English, Jowett’s translation is
nearer the original than Hobbes’s.
It would be a pleasant exercise in style to criticise Jowett’s
translation, and a still more profitable exercise to amend it. To a mere
student of comparative values in Periclean Greek and idiomatic English,
some of the errors in Jowett’s translation are obvious. Such a student
needs not to refer with the scholar’s precision to the original Greek
to be able, with the approval of all men of taste, to pronounce that
such and such a phrase or word is most certainly not what may be called
Periclean _English_. It stands to the totality of reason that it is not
so. We may be certain, for instance, that Pericles, were he delivering
his _Oration_ in English, with all the taste and training he possessed
as a Greek of his age, would never have employed such phrases as these:
“commended the law-giver,” “a worthy thing,” “burial to the dead,”
“reputation ... imperilled on ... the eloquence,” “who knows the facts,”
“suspect exaggeration.” Pericles, we cannot but suppose both from the man
and his age, spoke with studied simplicity, that is to say, with perfect
naturalness. The words and phrases he used were in all probability the
most ordinary to the ear of the Athenian, and well within the limits of
serious conversation. But such phrases as I have mentioned are not of
the same English character; they are written, not spoken phrases, and
approximate more to a leading commemorative article in _The Times_ than
to a speech we should all regard as excellent. It would be interesting to
have Lord Rosebery’s version of Pericles’ speech, or even Mr. Asquith’s.
Both, it is probable, would be nearer the original than Jowett’s, though
still some distance off perfection. In another fifty years perfection
will be reached.
NATURE IN MIND.—The _Quest_ contains an article by Mr. G. R. S. Mead, in
which he suggests—and, perhaps, rather more than suggests—an affinity, if
not an identity, between the “laws” of nature and the “laws” of mind.
Ever since I read the following sentence in Coleridge’s _Biographia
Literaria_: “The highest perfection of natural philosophy would consist
in the perfect spiritualisation of all the laws of nature into laws of
intuition and intellect,” it has been at the back of my mind as an aim
to keep before philosophy. Whether or not there is a drummer in every
age with whom the active thinkers keep in step, even without being aware
of the fact, I can only say that more and more evidence of this tendency
of thought is coming to light. Boutroux’s _Contingency of the Laws of
Nature_ may be said to have most explicitly attempted the sublimation—or,
dare we say, the humanisation?—of the natural laws; but Boutroux is
only one of many philosophers working in the same direction. Other
areas of study than that of “pure” philosophy seem to have yielded, or
to be yielding, the same result. Mr. Mead quotes, for instance, some
recent studies of Animism to show that Animism, which, together with
Anthropomorphism, we used to dismiss as merely a primitive mode of
thought, may, after all, prove to contain a truth, the truth, namely,
that Nature _is_ living and intelligent, and, on that account, not so
far from human nature as we had come to imagine. “The more we penetrate
Matter,” says Mr. Mead, “the more akin to Mind we find it to be.” The
world is a creation of mind; and the more either of the world or of mind
we understand the more we understand of both. It is a thrilling idea,
the conception of the world of nature as being the externalisation of an
intelligence akin to our own. At the same time, it is, like all thrilling
ideas, associated with considerable danger. The “superstitions” connected
with it are perhaps best left under the shadow that has been cast upon
them.
MR. CLIVE BELL’S POT.—Mr. Clive Bell cannot escape the charge of literary
insolence by giving to his collection of essays the deprecatory name
of _Pot Boilers_. That the articles he has reprinted were designed to
boil Mr. Clive Bell’s pot, and did, in fact, keep it simmering, may be
true enough; for the _Athenæum_, in which most of them appeared, was an
eclectic journal with a surprising taste for the bad as well as for the
good. Mr. Clive Bell’s modesty, however, is titular only, for not merely
has he republished these ashes of his yesterday’s fire, but he imagines
them to be still ablaze. “It charms me,” he says, “to notice as I read
these essays, with what care and conscience they are done.... I seem
consistently to have cared much for four things—Art, Truth, Liberty, and
Peace.” These are things which a more modest man would have left his
biographer and eulogist to say of him; and even then not even friendship
would have made them true. To Art and Truth, there are, of course, a good
many references in Mr. Clive Bell’s essays, but the mere mention of these
names ought not to be regarded as an evidence of care for the things
themselves. Cannot the names of Art and Truth be also taken in vain? In
the two concluding essays of the book are to be found most clearly Mr.
Clive Bell’s conception of Art. It is indistinguishable from what may be
called the Bohemian conception. Art is not moral, art is not useful, art
is not a relative fact; it is an absolute to which all these other things
are relative. The artist, again, is not a “practical” person, and it is
no use expecting of him an interest in the non-artistic affairs of the
world. The war, for instance? It is only a means to art, and what should
be said of artists who abandon the end to occupy themselves with the
means?
But this Bohemian and superior attitude is consistent apparently with
some very mundane bitterness. Mr. Clive Bell does not appreciate the
war, which appears to have put him considerably out, in spite of his
Kensington Olympianism. He is shocked at hearing that “this is no time
for art.” But, on the other hand, he does not appear to be able to escape
from the war. The penultimate essay is about _Art and the War_, and the
first essay is a palinode for the state of affairs to which the war
put an end. According to Mr. Clive Bell, the world before the war was
in a most promising condition of renaissance—of æsthetic renaissance.
“Our governing classes,” he says, “were drifting out of barbarism....
‘Society’ was becoming open-minded, tired of being merely decent, and was
beginning to prefer the ‘clever’ to the ‘good.’” But with the war all
this was interrupted—probably never to be resumed; for what is the use
of attempting to establish an æsthetic culture upon the state of poverty
which will certainly ensue after the war? Poverty and art, he as nearly
as possible says, are incompatible; it is only by means of wealth, wealth
in superabundance, that art is possible. And since war is destructive of
wealth, “war has ruined our little patch of civility” without bringing
us anything in exchange for it. The Bohemian view of art is own brother
to the Sardanapalian view of culture in general; it presupposes great
wealth, while denying that art is a luxury. Art is not a luxury or an
elegant amenity added to life, says Mr. Clive Bell. At the same time, it
is only when Society is wealthy that art can flourish. The contradiction
is obvious, and it pervades Mr. Clive Bell’s work. It is not worth
dwelling on a moment.
THE CRITICISM OF POETS.—Professor Rudmose-Brown, the author of _French
Literary Studies_, is under the fatal illusion that it is necessary (or,
at any rate, proper), to write about poetry poetically; and his comments
are too often in this style: “The illimitable night of his obscurity
is strewn with innumerable stars.” But it is a style which is not only
repellent in itself, but doubly repellent from its association with
an exposition of poetry. Dr. Johnson has written about poetry in the
proper style. He was respectful in the very distance his prose kept from
poetic imagery. Cold and detached he may have seemed to be, but all good
criticism, comment, and even appreciation labour of necessity under this
charge. What would be said of a judge who demonstrated the emotions of
the persons before him; or, equally, of a judge who did not feel them?
To be a critic or judge of poetry, or of any art, requires, in the first
instance, an intense sympathetic power; but, in the second instance, a
powerful self-restraint in expression, manifested in poetical criticism,
I should say, by a prose style free from the smallest suggestion of
poetry.
“JOHN EGLINTON.”—Mr. “John Eglinton” has been called “the Irish Emerson”;
but the description of the “Irish Thoreau” would fit him much better.
He is transcendental, like Emerson, but after a different, and a
less high-falutin’ manner—the manner of transcendental common sense.
On the other hand, he shares with Thoreau the quality of passionate
independence, and what may be called adventurous solitude. “John
Eglinton” names his essays _Anglo-Irish_, and they answer even more
accurately to the description than the compound implies; for they are
essays upon the hyphen that joins them. Exactly as Thoreau was most
completely at home in no other man’s land between the world and the wood,
“John Eglinton” is at his easiest somewhere between England and Ireland.
He is not Irish, nor is he English. He is not Anglo-Irish either; but,
once more, the hyphen between them. It is this sense of difference from
both elements that makes of “John Eglinton” at once so attractive, so
significant, and so illuminating a writer and thinker. Being between
two worlds, and with a foot in each, he understands each world in a
double sense, from within and from without. To each in turn he can be
both interpreter and critic; and in these delightful essays he is to be
found alternately defending and attacking each of the national elements
between which his perch is placed. “Candid friend” would, perhaps, be
a fair description of his attitude towards both nations, if the phrase
were not associated with the disagreeable. But since “John Eglinton” is
anything but acid in his comments, and writes of both nations in a spirit
of mingled admiration and judgment, I can think of nothing better at
the moment than my image of the hyphen. He is alone between two worlds,
friendly but critical equally of both.
IRISH HUMOUR.—Mr. Stephen Gwynn’s _Irish Books and Irish People_ contains
an essay on “Irish Humour.” Mr. Gwynn is severe but just. He refers to
the “damning effects” of the “easy fluency of wit” and the “careless
spontaneity of laughter” which characterise Irish humour. It would be
terrible, however, to have to admit that these divine qualities are
“defects” in the accepted sense of qualities _manqués_; and the “defect”
arises, I think, not from the presence of these qualities in the Irish
genius, but from the absence of the counterbalancing qualities of
weight, high seriousness, and good judgment. It would almost seem that
the “elder gods” departed from Ireland centuries ago, leaving in sole
possession the “younger gods” of irresponsible and incontinent laughter.
As Mr. Gwynn says, “Irish humour makes you laugh”; it always takes one
by surprise. But the laughter has no echoes in the deeper levels of
consciousness; it rings true but shallow. Dogmatism on racial psychology
is dangerous, and I have no wish to exacerbate feelings already too
sore; but, as a literary critic, I venture my judgment that the Irish
genius, as manifested in literature during the last century, is wanting
in the solidity that comes only from hard work. Every Irishman, speaking
roughly, is a born genius; but few Irishmen complete their birth by
“making” themselves. Wit comes to them too easily to be anything but a
tempting line of least resistance.
THE LITERARY DRAMA OF IRELAND.—While exceedingly painstaking, thorough,
and well-documented, Mr. Boyd’s essay on _The Contemporary Drama of
Ireland_ cannot be said to add much value to the value of a record.
Unlike his recent volume of _Appreciations and Depreciations_, his
present work carefully, and I should almost say, timidly, avoids coming
to any large and personal conclusions, save in the case, perhaps, of the
plays of Mr. St. John Ervine. The reason for this diffidence I take
to be rather an apprehension of what he might discover were his real
conclusions than any inability to arrive at them; for I cannot think that
upon any other ground so usually decisive a mind would have been content
to leave his readers in the dark. But what then is it that Mr. Boyd may
conceivably have feared to discover? It is obvious enough, I think, to an
outsider—to one, I mean, who does not belong to the coterie that calls
itself the Irish literary movement; it is that the contemporary drama of
Ireland is the history of a rapid decline.
Mr. Boyd is, of course, honest with his facts, and the material is thus
before us for a judgment. He does not conceal from us, for instance,
the illuminating circumstances that the Irish dramatic movement
actually began under the impulse of the Continental movement, and that
its earliest authors were desirous, not so much of creating an Irish
drama, as of creating a drama for Ireland. Mr. Edward Martyn, who was
undoubtedly the chief pioneer, was himself a follower of Ibsen and
aimed at writing and producing what may be called Ibsen plays. But this
praiseworthy attempt to reintroduce the world into Ireland was defeated
by the apparently incorrigible tendency of the native Irish mind to
reduce the world to the size of Dublin. In rather less than two years,
during which time some six or seven plays were produced, the Irish
Literary Theatre, founded by Martyn and Yeats, came to an end, to have
its place taken almost immediately by the Irish _National_ Theatre,
which was formed about the group of Irish players calling themselves
the Irish National Drama Society. But what has been the consequence of
this contraction of aim and of interest? That plays of some value as
folk-drama have resulted from it nobody would deny; but equally nobody
would maintain that the world has been enriched by it in its dramatic
literature. Ireland, in other words, has accepted a gift from the world
without returning it; her literary coterie has taken the inspiration of
the Continent and converted it to a purely nationalist use.
Even against this there would be nothing to be said if it succeeded; but
fortunately for the world-principle it can be shown that such a procedure
ends in sterility. As the reader turns over the pages of Mr. Boyd’s
faithful record of the course of the drama in Ireland, he cannot but
be aware of a gradual obscuration. One by one the lamps lit by Martyn,
Moore, and others, which illuminate the earlier pages, go out, leaving
the reader in the later pages groping his way through petty controversies
acid with personality, and through an interminable undergrowth of sickly
and stunted productions about which even Mr. Boyd grows impatient. The
vision splendid with which the record begins dies down to a twilight, to
a darkness, and finally to black night. The world has once more been shut
out.
MR. STANDISH O’GRADY.—Mr. Standish O’Grady’s _The Flight of the Eagle_
is not a romance in the ordinary sense; it is not an invented story,
but an actual historical episode treated romantically. The period is
Elizabethan, and the story turns mainly on the careers of Sir William
Parrett, an English “Lord-Lieutenant” of Ireland, who appears to
have suffered the usual fate of a popular English Governor, and Red
Hugh O’Donnell or Hue Roe of Tir-Connall, which is now Donegal. If
acquaintance with Irish history is ever to be made by English readers,
the means must be romances of this kind. History proper is, as a rule,
carefully ignored by the average reader, who must therefore have facts,
if he is ever to have them, presented in the form of a story. It is
only by this means, and thanks to Scott in the first instance, that the
history of Scotland has penetrated in any degree beyond the border.
Only by this means, again, have various countries and nations been
brought home to the intellectually idle English reader by writers like
Kipling. Both as a story-writer and as the first and greatest of the
Irish historians of Ireland, Mr. Standish O’Grady is qualified to do for
Ireland what Scott after his own fashion has done for Scotland, namely,
bring his country into the historic consciousness of the world.
MR. STANDISH O’GRADY, ENCHANTER.—_The Selected Essays and Passages from
Standish O’Grady_ is a priceless anthology of this neglected author. Very
few people in England realise that Mr. Standish O’Grady is more than
any other Irishman the rediscoverer of ancient and, in consequence, the
creator of modern Ireland. His very first work on the _Heroic Period_
of Irish history appeared in 1878; it was published at his own expense,
and had a small and a slow sale; but to-day it is the inspiration of the
Celtic revival. “Legends,” says Mr. O’Grady, “are the kind of history
which a nation desires to possess.” For the same reason, legends are the
kind of history which a nation tends to produce. I am not certain that it
would not have been well to leave the legends of ancient Ireland in their
dust and oblivion. They go back to remote periods in time, and seem, even
then, to echo still earlier ages. It is possible, for instance, that
Ireland was a nation over four thousand years ago. Some contend that a
Buddhist civilisation preceded the Christian. Characteristically, it has
been thought that Ireland supported Carthage against Rome. But what is
the present value of these revivals of infantile memories? They cannot be
realised to-day, and to dwell upon them is to run the risk of a psychic
regression from waking to dreaming. “Enchantment,” Mr. O’Grady tells
us, “is a fact in nature.” So potent a charm as himself has created may
have been responsible—who dare say?—for the recall to present-day Irish
consciousness of early historic experience that were best forgotten. Is
it not a fact that the mood of Ireland to-day is between the legendary
and the dreaming? Is not the “ideal” Irishman to-day Cuculain of Dundalk
talking and acting in his sleep? It is a question for psycho-analysis.
LES SENTIMENTS DE JULIEN BENDA.—I thought for some time of translating
_Les Sentiments de Critias_, recently published in Paris by M. Julien
Benda. The style is excellent, and M. Benda has the gifts of epigram and
irony; but, upon second thoughts, the inappositeness of such a style to
the situation in which we find ourselves forbade me. As M. Benda himself
says, “there is no elegance about the war.” And success in writing about
it elegantly must needs, therefore, be a literary failure. Critias’s
“sentiments,” moreover, appear, when compared with the real sentiments
evoked by the contemplation of the war, a little literary. He is like
a sadder and a wiser Mr. Bernard Shaw flickering epigrammatically over
the carnage. Impeccable as his opinions usually are, they are expressed
too lightly to be impressive, and too carefully to be regarded as wholly
natural. And that M. Benda can do no other is evident in his _Open Letter
to M. Romain Rolland_, whom he considers a prig. If he had been capable
of impassioned rhetoric it is in this address that he would have shown
his skill, for the subject is to his liking, and the material for an
indictment is ample. But the most striking sentence he achieves is that
“We asked for judgment and you gave us a sermon.” It is pretty, but it is
“art.”
CONVALESCENCE AFTER NEWSPAPER.—Matthew Arnold used to say that to get
his feet wet spoiled his style for days. But there is a far worse enemy
of style than natural damp; it is too much newspaper-reading. Too much
newspaper not only spoils one’s style, it takes off the edge of one’s
taste, so that I know not what grindstones are necessary to put it on
again. Indulgent readers, I have been compelled for some weeks to read
too much newspaper, with the consequence that at the end of my task I was
not only certain that my little of style was gone, but I was indifferent
in my taste. The explanation of the _reductio ad absurdum_ to which an
overdose of newspaper leads is to be found, I think, in the uniformity,
mass and collectivity of newspaper literature. The writing that fills
the Press is neither individual nor does it aim at individuality. If a
citizen’s meeting, a jury, or the House of Commons were to perform the
feat of making its voice heard, the style of their oracles would be
perfect newspaper. But literature, I need not say, is not made after this
fashion; nor is it inspired by such performances. Literature, like all
art, is above everything, individual expression. _Gardez-vous!_ I do not
mean that literature is a personal expression of the personal opinion of
the writer. On the contrary, it is the rôle of newspaper to give common
expression to personal opinions, but it is the function of literature
to give personal expression to common opinions. And since it is only
personal expression that provokes and inspires personal expression,
from newspapers one can derive no stimulus to literature, but only the
opposite, a disrelish and a distaste.
How to recover one’s health after newspaper poisoning is a problem.
To plunge back forthwith into books was for me an impossibility. It
was necessary to begin again from the very beginning and gradually to
accustom myself to the taste for literature again. Re-arranging my
books, and throwing away the certainly-done with was, I found, as useful
a preliminary tonic as any other I could devise. In particular there
is a satisfaction in throwing out books which makes this medicine as
pleasant as it is tonic. It visibly reduces the amount left to be read;
there is then not so much on one’s plate that the appetite revolts at
the prospect. And who can throw away a book without glancing into it to
make sure that it will never again be wanted? Picking and tasting in this
indeliberate way, the invalid appetite is half coaxed to sit up and take
proper nourishment. This destruction and reconstruction I certainly found
recovering, and I can, therefore, commend them to be included in the
pharmacopæias.
Another nourishing exercise when you are in this state is the overhauling
of your accumulations of memoranda, cuttings and note-books. I have
sat for hours during the last few days, like a beaver unbuilding its
dam, turning out with a view to destroying their contents, drawer after
drawer and shelf upon shelf. It is fatal to set about the operation with
any tenderness. Your aim must be to destroy everything which does not
command you to spare it. The tragic recklessness of the procedure is the
virtue of the medicine. As a matter of fact there is little or nothing
now left in my drawers for future use. Nearly all my paper-boats have
been burned, including some three-decked galleons which were originally
designed to bring me fame. No matter; the Rubicon is crossed, and to be
on the other side of newspaper with no more than a thin portfolio of
notes is to have escaped cheaply.