If then we have seized the matter aright, we have reached a shape in
Fairyland, which represents what is hostile, actively hostile, to the
Greek institutional world, State, Family, Society. Ulysses stands in a
double relation to the present condition of things. The Cyclops is
really a picture of him in his negative character, a product of his
destructive Trojan spirit, yet he is just the man who must put down the
Cyclops, he must master his own negation or perish. Ulysses sees the
natural man, or rather, he sees himself with all culture taken away,
with all institutional life eliminated from his existence.
He may well be frightened at the monster, who is very real, though a
dweller in Fairyland. Nor should we forget that the Cyclops also
undergoes a change, he too is in the process and shows something like
development under the severe tuition of Ulysses.
As already said, the present portion is altogether the longest in the
Book, it is essentially the entire Book. The other two portions were
hardly more than a short introduction and a brief transitional stage;
now comes the full and highly elaborated tale, in which both the land
and its inhabitants are fabulous, supernatural. There are two distinct
divisions treating of the Cyclops: the first describes their race in
general, the second gives a description of the particular grand
Cyclops, Polyphemus, in his conflict with Ulysses.
I. This time there is no tempest, such as arose after leaving the
Ciconians, in order to reach the land of the Cyclops; that collapse of
the will seems to have pictured itself in the quiet deep. But who are
the Cyclops? A race "without law, addicted to violent deeds;" they have
no agriculture, "they plant not, neither do they plow;" they get their
products, "trusting to the Gods," that is, trusting to nature, since
the Cyclops have small regard for the higher Gods, as we shall soon
see. Another mere formula this, showing that the Homeric deity was
getting crystallized even for Homer. "They hold no councils" in common,
are not associated together, but "they dwell in vaulted caves on
mountain heights," such as the famous Corycian cavern which is near the
top of a mountain on Parnassus. There "each man rules his wives and
children," evidently a herding polygamous condition of the family; "nor
do they (the Cyclops) care for one another." Still further, "they have
no ships with crimson prows," no navigation, no commerce which seeks
"the cities of men" and binds them together in the bond of society and
humanity. Yet there is an excellent harbor and a good soil, "with
copious showers from Zeus;" nature has surely done her part, and is
calling loudly for the enterprising colonist to come and plant here his
civilized order. This passage must have stirred the Greek emigrant to
leave his stony Hellas and seek in the West, a new home; it suggests
the great Hellenic movement for the colonization of Italy and Sicily
from the 6th to the 9th century B.C. The poet has plainly been with
the frontiersman, and seen the latter's giants.
The main thing to be noticed in the present account is the
extraordinary number of negatives. No laws, no assemblies, no
association; no plows, no ships, no intercourse with other cities; the
whole civilized life of man is negated, and man himself is thrown back
into a state of nature. It is worth while to search for the purpose of
this negative procedure on the part of the poet. He might have given a
positive description of nature, telling what it is, and telling what
the Cyclops is, not emphasizing so much what he is not. But thus the
meaning would not come out so plainly; the Cyclops is just the negation
of the whole civilized world of Greece, which fact must be expressly
imaged in the very words used in the poem. He is not so much a simple
being of nature as a being antithetic to society.
At this point we can trace his connection with the great Trojan
experience, which, as already set forth, has begotten a negative
tendency in its participators. The war at Troy, like all war
long-continued, has bred men to be anti-social; they have to destroy
State, Family, Commerce, Agriculture, till destruction becomes habit,
yea principle, and takes possession of their intellect. The Cyclops was
generated at Ilium, and is a colossal phantasm of the spirit which
prompted the attack on the Ciconians.
It should be stated here that the Cyclops of Homer are different from
those of Hesiod and of other mythographers, inasmuch as the latter were
represented as the demons who forged the thunderbolts of Zeus, and were
connected with the volcanic agencies chiefly in Sicily and Italy. Mount
AEtna belching forth its lava streams may have suggested to the Greek
imagination the sick giant Polyphemus in its caverns, drunk on the red
destructive wine of Ulysses.
First is a small island, "stretching outside the harbor" of the land of
the Cyclops, woody, full of wild goats; there the ships of Ulysses drew
to the shore. It was bare of human dwellers, the Cyclops had no boats
to reach it; a good place for stopping, therefore, quite out of reach
of the savages. Nor is the fountain forgotten, "sparkling water flowing
from a hollow rock down to the harbor"--an adjunct still necessary to
every Greek village or encampment. "Some God led us through the dark
night" without our seeing the island till the boats struck it--surely a
providential intervention on our behalf.
Leaving behind the other ships at this point, Ulysses takes only his
own and its crew, and goes forth to "test these people, whether just or
unjust, hospitable or godless." He cannot rest in ignorance, he must
have the experience and know the unknown. He soon sees "a cave high up
the mountain, not far from the sea, overarched with laurel shrubs;" he
observes also "an enclosure, made of stones set in the earth;" these
stones are not hewn (as some translators say), since the so-called
Cyclopean walls so common in Greece were not built by this kind of
Cyclops. In the enclosure were resting "many herds of sheep and
goats"--just such a scene as can be witnessed in the rural parts of
Greece to-day. This is the environment of "the man-monster," who is now
to be the theme of song.
II. Polyphemus is a Cyclops but he has characteristics of his own. He
has no family in his cave, he lives wholly for himself apparently; he
seems to be the largest of his race, "like no man who lives by bread;"
he towers alone "like the peak of a high mountain shaggy with woods;"
apart from others "he plans his unjust deeds." A portentous shape with
but a single eye in his head, a cave-dweller similar to the primitive
man; he has too an evil disposition in his huge bulk.
This is the being with whom Ulysses is now to engage in conflict, which
becomes highly dramatic. The conquest of the man of Nature by the man
of Intelligence--such is the theme through its various fluctuations.
This man of Nature, however, we are always to consider from his
negative side, as hostile to a civilized order; so the poet has
carefully represented him. He is to be put down; yet even Polyphemus
has his right, he is brought to a gleam of self-knowledge, and Ulysses
has to pay the penalty of his deed, which has also its curse. A very
deep current runs through the poem in this part, which we shall divide
into five different scenes, hoping thus to make its movement and
thought somewhat more distinct.
1. Ulysses, taking twelve of his bravest companions from his ship, not
forgetting a goatskin of wonderful wine, for he had a presentiment that
he would meet a huge wild man, who is wont to succumb readily to
civilized drink, enters the cave while Polyphemus is absent. A vivid
picture of that primitive dairy with its cheese, milk, curds; the men
fell to and helped themselves, as was natural. Then the companions
wished to depart at once, taking what quantity of cheese they could
carry, but Ulysses refused, he must "see the Cyclops and test his
hospitality." Just the opposite was the case in the land of the
Ciconians; there Ulysses wished to flee but his companions would not.
Why this difference? He must know Polyphemus, must see the giant and
subordinate him; that is just his supreme necessity now, he really can
no more run away from the monster than from himself. But that attack on
the Ciconians was an unjust, violent deed of which the penalty was sure
to follow; this Ulysses knew and sought to escape. In the present case,
however, no wrong has been done as yet, and he must meet and solve his
problem, while his weaker companions would shun the trial.
Polyphemus returns with his herds in due time, and closes the mouth of
the cave with a huge rock, "which not two and twenty wains could move
from the threshold." Soon by the light of his fire he sees the lurking
strangers and asks, "Who are you?" Ulysses replies, stating that they
are returning from Troy, but have been driven out of their way by
adverse winds; then he makes his human and religious appeal: We come as
suppliants, receive us; "revere the Gods," specially Zeus the protector
of suppliants. But the Cyclops scoffs at Zeus and the rest of the Gods:
"we are their betters." Thus is witnessed in the monster the denial of
the Greek religion, and an atheistic turn of mind.
Next follows in logical sequence his supreme negative act, he is a
man-eater. "He seized two of my companions and hurled them against the
ground as if they were dogs, then he devoured them piecemeal,
swallowing all--entrails and flesh and marrowy bones." Surely Ulysses
is getting some experience on the line of that Trojan deed.
Now we catch the entire sweep of this particular Cyclops. He has shown
himself as the representative of three mighty negations: of civilized
life, of religious life, and of human life. He destroys man, feeds on
him; so negation, war, revolution, must do in the end. The horrid
phantasm is the true image of the destroyer of the race. Nor does he
belong to the old Greek world and to the Trojan time only; he is among
us, and he can be translated into modern terms quite familiar.
Polyphemus is an anarchist, an atheist, and a cannibal; the ancient
poet wraps the three together in one mighty monstrosity. In the morning
the Cyclops devoured two more companions for his breakfast, then drove
his flocks afield, leaving the rest of the strangers shut up in the
cave with the big stone in the opening.
During the day the "man of many shifts" has an opportunity for
reflection in that dark recess. He dares not kill the giant outright,
"with my sharp sword stubbing him where the midriff holds the liver,"
for how could they then get out? No, the man of nature must be saved
and utilized; with all his might he is to be overborne by the man of
intelligence, and made to remove the big stone.
2. The plan of Ulysses with its successful execution is the subject of
the next phase of the conflict. By this plan three things must be done
in order to counteract the giant and to negative his power. He must be
deprived of physical vision, which becomes the more easily possible
from the fact that he has but one eye; if he had two eyes like the
ordinary man, he could still see though one be put out. That this
purpose be accomplished, he must somehow be shorn of his physical
strength; finally any resistance which might come from the rest of the
Cyclops outside must be rendered nugatory. Such are the three chief
points of the impending problem, which Ulysses has to meet and does
meet with astonishing skill and foresight; the Cyclops is blinded, is
made helpless by drink, and is befooled by a pun.
Ulysses burns out the eye of the monster with the charred end of a
stick of olive wood, which he prepares beforehand; huge Round-eye (the
meaning of the word _Cyclops_) has no eye now. Ulysses by means of that
miraculous wine, product of culture, makes the giant drunk, who thus
loses his physical superiority. The Ithacan evidently knew, as well as
the American, the power of fire-water over the wild man; that the wine
had some strength, is shown by the fact that one cup of it had to be
diluted with twenty measures of water, when taken by ordinary mortals.
Not without significance does the exhilarated Cyclops laud this
civilized wine in contrast to that of the wild grapes of his own land.
But the third scheme of Ulysses is the most subtle of all, and touches
the heart of the whole problem, though it be merely a pun. He calls
himself Nobody to Polyphemus, who, without sight or insight, is the
victim of a word. For a complete man must have not only a double sight
from his eyes, but a double insight from his mind, seeing before and
after in the latter case especially. The result is when the other
Cyclops, roused by the cries of Polyphemus, ask him from outside the
cave: What is the matter? he answers, Nobody is killing me. Whereat off
they go, dropping a word or two of cold advice, or perchance of
sarcastic humor.
We should, however, reach down to the essence of what appears on the
surface as a mere trick of speech. It may seem far-fetched to say, but
it is none the less the actual fact, that Ulysses is a Nobody, and a
very active one to Polyphemus. That is, he has shown himself the
negative power which overwhelms the giant, who is now himself quite
reduced to a nobody by Mr. Nobody. Or, in abstract terms, Ulysses has
negated the negation and has here suggested the subtle work of the
process in doing so. Has he not negatived Polyphemus, who was himself a
negative, so carefully and fully defined by the poet at the start?
Thus we come upon the deepest pun ever made, or possible to be made, a
literary form which the greatest geniuses have been fond of sporting
with; we can find puns in Dante, Goethe, and notably in Shakespeare.
The pun of Ulysses rests upon the duplicity inherent in the negative;
no-man is the man, especially to Polyphemus, whose brain cannot span
the two sides of the punning idea, who is not two-eyed but one-eyed by
nature, and this one eye is soon put out by the man with two eyes. Such
is the earliest instance of what may be called the Play of the
Negative, which is still subtly ensconced in the spoken and written
word, and winds in an elusive game of hide-and-seek through all
Literature. Many men, both writers and readers, are its victims, like
Polyphemus.
And all these floating metaphysical gossamers are found in Homer! Yes,
but not in a metaphysical form; Homer's organ is poetic, he lived in
the age ere philosophers had dawned. Still he too had before him the
problems of the soul and of the world. Nor would he have been a true
Greek unless he had grappled with this Play of the Negative, which had
some marvelous fascination for the Greek mind. It is the leaven working
in the Sophists with their subtle rhetoric, in Socrates with his
negating elenchus, in Plato with his confounding dialectic. Homer, as
the prophet of his people, foreshadowing all forms of Greek spirit and
of Greek literature, bring to light repeatedly this Play of the
Negative.
The modern German, in more respects than one the spiritual heir of the
ancient Greek, has not failed to give evidence of his birthright in the
same direction. Kant's Critique, and Hegel's Logic are the most
desperate efforts to grasp this slippery, double-doing and
double-thinking Negative, infinitely elusive, verily the old Serpent.
But the supreme attempt is the modern poetic one, made by Goethe in his
Faust poem, in which is embodied anew the mighty Negative, who is now
none other than the devil, Mephistopheles. Thus the last world-poet
reaches across the ages and touches elbows with the first world-poet in
a common theme.
Thus Ulysses nullifies the Cyclops, inflicting three deprivations
through his three means: the charred stick takes away vision, the
strong wine takes away strength, the ambiguous pun prevents help. The
pun also announces covertly to Polyphemus the nature of the power which
is undoing him, but he does not and cannot understand that. But the
problem of Ulysses is not at an end with simply nullifying the Cyclops;
he and his companions are not yet outside of the cave. Herewith we come
to a new stage of process.
3. This is the escape, to which the strong giant must be made to
contribute, he is skillfully turned against himself. The great stone is
removed by him from the mouth of the cave, but he places himself there
at the entrance, and no human being can pass. Still, the herds have to
go out to their pasture. Ulysses dexterously binds three large sheep
together, fastens a companion under the middle one, while he clings
beneath a huge ram, and out they move together. But the giant stops
just this ram and talks to it, being his favorite of the flock. The man
of nature is again outwitted by the man of intelligence, allowing his
enemy to slip through his very fingers. The conversation of the blind
Cyclops with the dumb animal is pathetic; his one solitary friend
apparently, the only creature he loved, is compelled to silent service
against its master. "Why art thou last to leave, who wast always first?
Dost thou long to see the eye of thy ruler, which has been put out by
that vile wretch, Nobody?" So the Cyclops speaks, without seeing or
knowing, yet with a touch which excites sympathy for his misfortune.
The special characteristic of this scene is that Ulysses does not now
destroy, but employs Polyphemus and his property. Nature must be used
by intelligence to overcome nature; the strength of the giant must be
directed to rolling away the big stone; his herds are taken to bring
about the escape of his foes, and he is turned into an instrument
against himself. Thus he is no longer negated as in the last scene, but
utilized; having been subdued, he now must serve.
Ulysses and his companions are outside the cave, having gotten rid of
those dark and fearful limits which walled them in with a monster.
Mind, thought has released them; soon they are on their ship in a free
element. But the end is not yet; even Polyphemus, the natural man, must
come to know who and what has subjected him, he too is in the grand
discipline of the time.
4. Two things Ulysses is now to tell to the Cyclops in the distance.
The first is the wrong and the penalty thereof: "Amply have thy evil
deeds been returned to thee," namely, his treatment of men. "Zeus and
the other Gods have punished thee," there is a divine order in the
world, which looks after the wrong-doer. Thus Polyphemus the anarchist,
atheist, and cannibal gets a short missionary sermon on justice,
religion and humanity. But he does not receive it kindly, he "hurls a
fragment of a mountain peak," and almost strikes the ship. The line of
danger is not yet passed.
Still Ulysses must tell something else though his frightened companions
try to dissuade him. But he must, he cannot help it: "If any one ask
thee, say it was Ulysses, the city-destroyer, who put out thine eye." A
great light this word brings to the poor blind Cyclops, almost the
light of self-consciousness. He recalls, he knows his conqueror, and
therein begins to know himself, to recognize his error. "Ah, woe is me!
the ancient oracles about me are fulfilled!" Of old there had been
prophecies concerning his destiny, but he did not understand them,
seemingly did not regard them. How could he, with his bent toward the
godless? The prophet Telemus had foretold "that I would lose my sight
at the hands of Ulysses." How shall we consider this prophecy? A dim,
far-off presentiment among the Cyclops themselves that they were to be
subjected to a higher influence; their limited, one-eyed vision was to
vanish through a more universal, two-eyed vision. Such a presentiment
nature everywhere shows, a presentiment of the power beyond her, of the
spiritual. What else indeed is Gravitation? A longing, a seeking which
even the clod manifests in its fall earthward, a prophetic intimation;
so the Cyclops, the natural man, had his prophet whom he now begins
rightly to recognize; truly he is getting religious, quite different is
his present utterance from his previous blasphemy: "we are better than
the Gods." Nay, he offers to intercede with his father Neptune, praying
the God to give a sending of the stranger over the sea. Moreover he
recognizes his divine father as the only one who can heal him in his
present distress. Possibly the words are spoken to beguile, but
Polyphemus here offers to do his duty to the stranger on his shores,
and he recognizes the Gods.
Manifestly we witness in this passage a striking development of the
rude Cyclops under the tough discipline of experience. He acknowledges
first his mistake in regard to the prophecy: "I expected to see a man
tall and beautiful and of vast strength, not this petty worthless
weakling who has put out mine eye." A hero of visible might, a giant
like himself, not a man of invisible intelligence, he imagined he was
to meet; great was his mistake. The conflict between Brain and Brawn
was settled long ago before Troy, and has been sung of in the preceding
Book. Here then is certainly a confession of his mistake, and, if his
words are sincere, an offer to undo his wrong.
5. At this point there is a change in Ulysses, his victory has begotten
insolence, he becomes a kind of Cyclops in his turn. Such is the demon
ever lurking in success. Listen to his response to the confession and
supplication of his wretched victim: "Would that I were as sure of
taking thy life and sending thee down to Hades, as that the
Earth-shaker shall never heal thine eye." The implication is that the
God cannot do it--an act of blasphemy which the God will not be slow to
avenge. But how true to human nature is this new turn in Ulysses, how
profound! No sooner has he escaped and experiences the feeling of
triumph, than his humanity, nay his religion vanishes, he sweeps over
into his opposite and becomes his savage enemy. What follows? The law
must be read to him too, his own law; he will hear it from the mouth of
Polyphemus, and it is essentially this: As thou hast done to me, so
shall it be done to thee.
Accordingly we have next the curse of the Cyclops denounced upon the
head of the transgressor. This curse is to be fulfilled to the letter,
the poet has fully shown the ground of it, Ulysses has really invoked
it upon himself, it lies in his deed. Possibly Polyphemus, when he
offered to give the dues of hospitality and to send the guest home, was
merely using the words of deception, which he had just had the
opportunity of learning, and was trying to get possession of his
enemy's body. Doubtless it was well for Ulysses to keep out of the
giant's hands. But that does not justify his speech, which was both
cruel and blasphemous.
Hear then the curse of the Cyclops, which hints the great obstructing
motive to the return of Ulysses, and marks out the action of the poem;
"Give Ulysses no return to his home; but if he returns, may he arrive
late and in evil plight, upon a foreign ship with loss of all his
companions, and may he find troubles in his house." Of course Neptune
heard the prayer, had to hear it, in the divine order of things. The
curse lay inside of Ulysses, else it could not have been fulfilled; he
himself could drop from his humane and religious mood in adversity and
become a savage in prosperity. His chief misfortunes follow after this
curse. But for the present he escapes to Goat Island, though another
portentous rock is hurled at him by the Cyclops. There he sacrifices to
the Highest God, Zeus, who, however, pays no heed--how is it possible?
Such is this far-reaching Fairy Tale, certainly one of the greatest and
most comprehensive ever written. It shows a movement, an evolution both
of Polyphemus and Ulysses; this inner unfolding indeed is the main
thing to be grasped. It is worth the while to take a short retrospect
of the five leading points. (1) The completely negative character of
the Cyclops as to institutions, religion, and even the physical man.
(2) This negative being is negated by the man of intelligence, who puts
out his eye, nullifies his strength by drink, and thwarts all help for
him by a punning stratagem. (3) He is made to help his enemies escape
from his cave by the skill of Ulysses who turns the force of nature
against nature. (4) The Cyclops reaches self-knowledge through Ulysses,
who tells his wrong and its punishment, who also tells his own name:
whereat the Cyclops suddenly changes and makes a humane offer. (5)
Ulysses changes the other way, becomes himself a kind of Cyclops and
receives the curse.
This curse will now follow Ulysses and drive him from island to island
through Fableland, till he gets back to Ithaca with much suffering and
with all companions lost, where he will find many troubles. In this
manner the return of Ulysses becomes intertwined with Polyphemus and
this Fableland, which furnish an underlying motive for the third Part
of the Odyssey (the last 12 Books). The curse here spoken is still
working when Ulysses reaches home and finds the suitors in possession.
Verily his negative spirit lies deep; in cursing Polyphemus, he has
cursed himself.
Thus the impartial poet shows both sides--the guilt as well as the good
in Polyphemus and in Ulysses. The man of nature has his right when he
offers to transform his conduct, and it shows that Ulysses still needs
discipline when he scorns such an offer. Polyphemus too is to have his
chance of rising, for he certainly has within himself the possibility.
Has not the poet derived the noble Arete and Alcinous and institutional
Phaeacia from the savage Cyclops? But Ulysses negatives Polyphemus just
at the start upward. The character which he showed in sacking the city
of the Ciconians is in him still, he is not yet ready to return.
The Ninth Book has thus run through its three stages and has landed us
in pure Fableland. These three stages--the attack on the Ciconians,
the Lotus-eaters, the adventure with the Cyclops--may now be seen to
be parts of one entire process, which we may call the purification of
the spirit from its own negative condition. The man, having become
destructive-minded (_oloophrn_) must be put under training by the Gods,
and sent to battle with the monsters of Fableland.
So we advance to the next Book with the certainty that there is still
some stern discipline in store for the wandering Ulysses.
_BOOK TENTH._
At the first glance we can observe a certain similarity between this
Book and the last one. There are in each three distinct portions or
adventures, two very short and simple, and one very long and intricate.
Each Book culminates in a fabulous being with whom the Hero has a
wrestle for supremacy, and in both cases he comes out victorious. We
are still in Wonderland, we have to reach into the ideal realm in order
to find out what these strange incidents mean. The two central figures
are Polyphemus and Circe, respectively, each of whom imparts the
dominating thought to the Book in which he or she appears.
The first thing we ask for is the connection, the inner thread which
joins these Books together. It was stated that Polyphemus was the
negation of the institutional world, he was individualistic, he
belonged to neither Family nor State. No laws, no councils, no civil
polity; he is a huge man of violence, hostile specially to man's social
life. Circe on the contrary, is the woman hostile to woman's domestic
world, the Family, first of all; she is the grand enchantress,
representing the power and seductiveness of the senses; she is the
enemy of what we call morals. To be sure, we shall find in her
something more, whereof the full unfolding will be given hereafter.
Ulysses is the one who is to meet those negative forces and put them
down. His companions give him special trouble in the present Book, they
seem to represent the weaker phases of man, possibly of Ulysses
himself. Already he has suppressed Polyphemus, or the institutional
negation; now he is to subordinate Circe or the moral negation. The
latter is a woman because she must have sensuous beauty and all the
charm of passionate enticement; the former is a man because he must
show strength and violence rather than the allurement of pleasure.
Nor should we forget that these forms are in Ulysses himself, and were
really generated out of his Trojan life; that spirit of his, shown at
the start by the attack on the Ciconians, has all these phases in its
process. He is traveling through an Inferno, seeing its entire demonic
brood, which he has begotten, and which he has to fight and subject. At
the same time these fantastic shapes are typical, and shadow forth the
universal experience of man, belonging to all countries and all ages.
As already stated, there are three different localities to which
Ulysses is brought. Three islands, bounded, yet in a boundless sea,
through which he moves on his ships; such is the outermost setting of
nature, suggestive of much. No tempest occurs in this Book; the stress
is upon the three fixed places in the unfixed aqueous element.
I. First is the island where dwells AEolus with his Family; hither
Ulysses comes after putting down Polyphemus who was hostile to domestic
life. In this spot the bag of winds is given into the possession of the
navigator, whose companions, however, release them, and he is driven to
the starting-point, with the winds at large. AEolus refuses to receive
him the second time.
II. Next is the city of the Laestrigonians, where is a civil life, a
State, to which Ulysses can come after subjecting the Cyclops, who had
no polity of the sort. But the State is verily a giant, a cannibal to
him now, with all the winds loose. Hence he has to flee for his life.
Whither now does he go?
III. Not to Penelope and Ithaca, but to Circe, and her isle. She is the
form which next rises before Ulysses, banished from the domestic world
of AEolus, and fleeing from the civil life of the Laestrigonians.
We shall try to bring the threads of connection to light, for it is our
emphatic opinion that these three islands with their shapes are
spiritually bound and wound together. Still further, they reach back
and interlink with the forms of the previous Book, which furnish
antecedent stages of the grand total movement of Fairyland. Separated
in image are these islands and their inhabitants, but they have to be
united in thought. Not a mere accident is the sequence, but a
necessity, a strict evolution. The work here, according our best
belief, is organic, and the reader must not rest contented with his
understanding of it, till he moves with the poet from place to place by
the interior path of the spirit.