Greek poet with the Latin poet, in order to perceive that the latter
received only a second inspiration, transmitted by the inspiring power
of the former. Vergil, less ardent, more tender, more correct, admits
at once the luminous distinction; far from blending the exposition and
invocation, he separates them, affects a tone more simple, promises
little, exposes with timidity the subject of his poem, summons his
Muse, and seems to persuade it, even less than the reader, to be
favourable to him. He employs these lines:
Je chante les combats, et ce Héros troyen,
Qui, fuyant Ilion aborda l’Italie
Le premier: sur la terre errant, et sur les mers,
En butte aux traits cruels de Junon irritée,
Il souffrit mille maux; avant qu’il établît
Ses Dieux chez les Latins, et fondât une ville,
Berceau d’Albe, de Rome et de ses hauts remparts.
Muse! rappelle-moi quels motifs de vengeance
Excitaient la Déesse, et pourquoi son courroux
S’obstinait à poursuive un Héros magnanime?
Tant de haine entre-t-elle au cœur des Immortels!
Arms and the man I sing, who first,
By fate of Ilium realm amerced,
To fair Italia onward bore,
And landed on Lavinium’s shore:――
Long tossing earth and ocean o’er,
By violence of heaven, to sate
Fell Juno’s unforgetting hate:
Much laboured too in battle-field,
Striving his city’s walls to build,
And give his Gods a home:
Thence come the hardy Latin brood,
The ancient sires of Alba’s blood,
And lofty-rampired Rome.
Say, Muse, for godhead how disdained,
Or wherefore worth, Heaven’s queen constrained
That soul of piety so long
To turn the wheel, to cope with wrong.
Can heavenly natures nourish hate
So fierce, so blindly passionate?
CONINGTON.
Arma virumque cano, Trojæ qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit
Litora, multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superûm, sævæ memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio: genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres atque altæ mœnia Romæ.
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine læso,
Quidve dolens, regina deûm tot volvere casus
Insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores
Impulerit. Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ?
It can be observed that Vergil, although he places himself foremost
and although he says, _I sing_, begins nevertheless in a manner much
less animated, much less sure than the Greek poet, who, transported
beyond himself, seems to impose upon his Muse the subject of his
songs, interrogates her, and then inspired by her, responds. The Latin
poet finishes, like his model, with a sentence; but it is easy to feel
that this apostrophe,
Can heavenly natures nourish hate
So fierce, so blindly passionate?
although very beautiful, contains less depth, less feeling, and holds
less intimately to the subject than this sublime reflection:
... and the men were perishing!
Someone has said that Vergil had imitated in his exposition the
commencement of the _Odyssey_ of Homer; this is a mistake. One finds
always in the exposition of the _Odyssey_ the real character of a
first inspiration blended with the invocation, although more calm and
less alluring than in the _Iliad_. Here is the translation:
Du plus sage Héros, Muse, dis les traverses
Sans nombre, après qu’il eut triomphé d’Ilion:
Rapelle les cités, les peuples, les usages,
Qu’il connut, et les mers où longtemps il erra:
À quels soins dévorants, à quels maux l’exposèrent
L’amour de la patrie et noble désir
D’y mener ses guerriers! Vain désir: ils osèrent,
Insensés! du Soleil dévorer les troupeaux;
Et ce Dieu, du retour leur ravit la journée.
Fais-nous part de ces faits, fille de Jupiter.
Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
The capitals of many nations, learned
The customs of their dwellers and endured
Great suffering on the deep; his life was oft
In peril, as he laboured to bring back
His comrades to their homes. He saved them not,
Though earnestly he strove; they perished all,
Through their own folly; for they banqueted,
Madmen! upon the oxen of the Sun,――
The all-o’erlooking Sun, who cut them off
From their return. O Goddess, virgin-child
Of Jove, relate some part of this to me.
BRYANT.
Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν,
πολλῶν δ’ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω·
πολλὰ δ’ ὅ γ’ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὧς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο ἱέμενός περ·
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον· αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεὰ θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.
The talent of Homer shows itself completely in the _Odyssey_; it
dominates the genius there, so to speak, as much as the genius had
dominated it in the _Iliad_. The fire which animates the _Iliad_ has
been, with reason, compared to that of the sun arrived at the height
of its course, and the splendour which shines in the _Odyssey_ to that
with which the occident is coloured on the evening of a fine day.
Perhaps if we had his _Thebaid_, we would see those brilliant lights
which accompany the aurora, developed there, and then we would possess
in all its shades this immortal genius who depicted all nature.
There are people who, feeling by a sort of intuition that Homer had
been created the poetic incentive of Europe, even as I have said, and
judging on the other hand that Ariosto had made an epic poem, are
convinced that the Italian poet had copied the Greek; but this is not
so. Ariosto, who has made only a romanesque poem, has not received the
inspiration of Homer; he has simply followed the fictions attributed
to Archbishop Turpin and clothing them with forms borrowed from the
Arabs by the troubadours makes himself creator in this secondary
style. The rhyme is as essential to it as it is harmful to veritable
epopœia; this is why the eumolpique verses never conform to it in the
slightest degree. To apply them to it, is to make serious what is by
nature gay, it is to give a character of force and of truth to what is
only light, airy, and fantastic. I am about, however, to translate the
beginning of his poem, in order to furnish, by the shocking disparity
which exists between the romantic essence of his poetry and the epic
form that I here adapt, a new proof of what I have said.
Je veux chanter les Dames, les Guerriers,
L’amour, l’honneur, et les jeux et les armes,
Durant ces temps où les fiers Sarrasins,
Des mers d’Afrique, abordèrent en France,
Pour seconder les fureurs d’Agramant,
Le jeune roi, dont l’orgueilleuse audace
Pensait venger la mort du vieux Trojan,
Sur l’empereur des Romains, Charlemagne.
Je veux aussi raconter de Roland,
Chose inouïe, autant en vers qu’en prose;
Dire l’amour qui rendit furieux
Ce paladin, auparavant si sage;
Si toutefois celle qui m’a charmé,
Qui va minant ma raison d’heure en heure,
M’en laisse assez pour remplir dignement
Mon entreprise et tenir ma promesse.
Of Loves and Ladies, Knights and Arms, I sing,
Of Courtesies, and many a Daring Feat;
And from those ancient days my story bring,
When Moors from Afric passed in hostile fleet,
And ravaged France, with Agramant their King,
Flushed with his youthful rage and furious heat;
Who on King Charles’, the Roman emperor’s head
Had vowed due vengeance for Troyano dead.
In the same strain of Roland will I tell
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,
On whom strange madness and rank fury fell,
A man esteemed so wise in former time;
If she, who to like cruel pass has well
Nigh brought my feeble wit which fain would climb
And hourly wastes my sense, concede me skill
And strength my daring promise to fulfil.
W. R. ROSE.
Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gl’amori
Le cortesíe, l’audaci imprese io canto,
Che furo al tempo che passaro i Mori
D’Africa il mare, e in Francia nocquer tanto,
Seguendo l’ire e i giovenil furori
D’Agramante lor re, che si diè vanto
Di vendicar la morte di Troiano
Sopra re Carlo imperator romano.
Dirò d’Orlando in un medesmo tratto
Cosa non detta in prosa mai, nè in rima;
Che per amor venne in furore e matto,
D’uom che si saggio era stimato prima:
Se da colei che tal quasi m’ha fatto
Che’l poco ingegno ad or ad or mi lima,
Me ne sarà però tanto concesso,
Che mi basti a finir quanto ho promesso.
It is very easy to see, in reading these two strophes, that there
exists in the exposition no sort of resemblance either with that of
Homer, or with that of Vergil. It is a third style, wholly foreign to
the other two. Homer mingling the exposition and the invocation,
commands his Muse to sing what she inspires in him; Vergil
distinguishing one from the other, prays his Muse to acquaint him with
what he is about to sing; whereas Ariosto, announcing simply the
subject of his songs, makes no invocation. It is evident that he
relies upon himself, and that in the style that he adopts he
understands very well that he has no other Muse, no other guide than
his imagination. His subject is in accord with his manner of treating
it. If one wishes to reflect upon this decisive point, one will feel
and realize, for the first time perhaps, why in the opinion of all the
world concerning two works from the same hand, _La Pucelle_ and _La
Henriade_, the one is a poem, whereas the other, composed with a far
greater pretension, is not. Voltaire, in imitating Ariosto in a
subject that he has rendered romanesque and frivolous, has received
the second inspiration; but in imitating Lucan in an historic subject
he received nothing, for Lucan, creator of a mixed style, had no
inspiration that he could communicate.
I have said what I thought of Camoens: it is useless to quote the
exposition of his poem that has nothing remarkable, particularly since
Tasso has so far surpassed him.
Tasso was worthy of receiving a veritable inspiration. His lofty
genius, his pure and brilliant imagination brought him nearer to
Vergil than to Ariosto; and if he had been inspired even through the
Latin poet, he would have shown Europe what the magnetic power of
Homer was, although acting only in its third degree. But the
prejudices of education working in him even without his knowledge, and
the influence that chivalresque poetry had attained in Italy, did not
permit him either to forsake entirely the chronicles of Archbishop
Turpin, or above all, to make any changes in the consecrated form. All
that he could do in a most grave and serious historical subject was to
mix a little allegorical genius with a great deal of romanesque
fiction; so that, becoming inspired at the same time with Ariosto,
Lucan, and Vergil, he made a mixed work, which, under the form of a
lengthy song, contained the essence of epopœia, of history, and of
romance. This work is one of the most entertaining poems that one can
read; the only one perhaps which a translation in prose can harm but
little. The inequality of its texture takes away nothing from the
interest that it inspires. It pleases, but it does not instruct. If
the eumolpique lines were applied to it throughout, it would not
sustain them; for it is in substance only a very beautiful ballad;
nevertheless, here and there are found parts which could become
sublime. His exposition, imitating Vergil, reveals them very well.
They are as follows:
Je chante les combats pieux, et le Guerrier
Qui délivra du Christ la tombe renommée.
Combien il déploya de génie et d’ardeur!
Combien il supporta de maux dans cette guerre!
Vainement les enfers s’armèrent; vainement
Les peuples de l’Asie aux Africains s’unirent:
Favorisé du Ciel, sous ses drapeaux sacrés,
Vainqueur, il ramena ses compagnons fidèles.
Divine Muse! ô toi dont le front radieux
Ne ceint point sur le Pinde un laurier périssable,
Mais qui, parmi les chœurs des habitants du Ciel,
Chantes, le front orné d’étoiles immortelles,
Viens, inspire à mon sein tes célestes ardeurs;
Fais briller dans mes vers tes clartés, et pardonne
Si, parant quelquefois l’austère vérité,
Je mêle à tes attraits des grâces étrangères.
I sing the pious arms and Chief, who freed
The Sepulchre of Christ from thrall profane:
Much did he toil in thought, and much in deed;
Much in the glorious enterprise sustain;
And Hell in vain opposed him; and in vain
Afric and Asia to the rescue pour’d
Their mingled tribes;――Heaven recompensed his pain,
And from all fruitless sallies of the sword,
True to the Red-Cross flag his wandering friends restored.
O thou, the Muse, that not with fading palms
Circlest thy brows on Pindus, but among
The Angels warbling their celestial psalms,
Hast for the coronal a golden throng
Of everlasting stars! make thou my song
Lucid and pure; breathe thou the flame divine
Into my bosom; and forgive the wrong,
If with grave truth light fiction I combine,
And sometimes grace my page with other flowers than thine!
WIFFEN.
Canto l’armi pietose, e’l Capitano
Che’l gran sepolcro liberò di Christo:
Molto egli oprò col senno e con la mano;
Molto soffri nel glorioso acquisto:
E invano l’Inferno a lui s’oppose, e invano
S’armò d’Asia, e dì Libia il popol misto;
Chè il Ciel diè favore, e sotto ai santi
Segni ridusse i suoi compagni erranti.
O Musa, tu, che di caduchi allori
Non circondi la fronte in Elicona
Ma su nel Ciel infra i beati cori,
Hai di stelle immortali aurea corona,
Tu spira al petto mio celesti ardori,
Tu rischiara il mio canto, e tu perdona,
S’intesso fregi al ver, s’adorno in parte
D’altri diletti, che de’ tuoi, le carte.
The captivating enthusiasm of Homer, the majestic simplicity of Vergil
are not there; there is a sweetness of expression, a purity of imagery
which please. This might be greater, but then the melancholy of the
romance would exclude it and the reader would demand the full force of
epopœia.
Besides, the Italians have tried, over and over again, to vary the
form of their verses; some have wished to measure them by musical
rhythm; others have contented themselves with making blank verse. They
have neither succeeded completely nor failed completely. Their
language sweet and musical lacks force whether in good or in evil. Its
words might indeed, strictly speaking, be composed of long and short
syllables; but as they terminate, nearly all, in the soft and languid
style that we call feminine, it results, therefore, that in the
measured verses the poets lack the long syllables to constitute the
last foot and to form the spondee; and that in the blank verse they
are obliged to terminate them all in the same style; so that with the
measure they create only lame verses, and without the rhyme they make
them all equally languid.[224]
I recall having sometimes read French writers who, not having
investigated the character of their tongue, have reproached it for its
feminine syllables and have believed that their concurrence was
harmful to its force and its harmony. These writers have scarcely
considered what this language would be, deprived of its feminine
sounds. For with the little force that it would gain on one side, it
would acquire such a harshness on the other, that it would be
impossible to draw from it four consecutive lines that would be
endurable. If all its finals were masculine, and if nothing could
change it otherwise, it would be necessary to renounce poetry, or like
the Arabs, be resolved to compose whole poems in the same rhyme.
We have just seen that the lack of masculine finals takes away all
energy from the Italian tongue; a contrary defect would deprive the
French of this _mélange_ of sweetness and force which makes it the
_première langue_ of Europe. The English language is lacking in
precisely what the writers of whom I have spoken desired eliminated
from the French, without foreseeing the grave disadvantages of their
desire: it has no feminine finals[225]; also it is in everything the
opposite of the Italian. It is true that it possesses great energy,
great boldness of expression, and a grammatical liberty which goes to
the full extent; but deprived of sweetness and softness, it is, if I
may say it, like those brittle metals whose strength is in stiffness,
and which is broken when one would make them flexible. The poverty of
its rhymes, denuded for the most part of accuracy of accent and of
harmony in consonants, has for a long time engaged the English poets
in making blank verse; and it must be admitted that, notwithstanding
the defect inherent in their tongue and which consists, as I have just
said, in the absolute lack of feminine finals, they have succeeded in
this better than any of the poets of other nations. These lines, all
imperfect in their harmony, are however, as to form, the only
eumolpique verse that they could make. Shakespeare felt it and made
use of it in his tragedies.
Shakespeare with the creative genius with which nature had endowed
him, would have borne dramatic art to its perfection in these modern
times, if circumstances had been as favourable to him as they were
adverse. Emulator of Æschylus, he might have equalled and perhaps
surpassed him, if he had had at his disposal a mine so rich, so
brilliant as that of the mysteries of Orpheus; if he had made use of a
language so harmonious, if his taste had been able to be refined at
the school of Pindar or of Homer. At the epoch of his birth, Europe
scarcely emerged from the gloom of barbarism; the theatre, given over
to ridiculous mountebanks, profaned in indecent farces the
incomprehensible mysteries of the Christian religion, and the English
tongue, still crude and unformed, had not succeeded in amalgamating in
one single body the opposed dialects of which it was successively
formed. In spite of these obstacles, Shakespeare stamped upon England
a movement of which Europe felt the influence. Raised by the sole
force of his genius to the essence of dramatic poetry, he dared to
seek for his subjects in the mythology of Odin, and put upon the
stage, in _Hamlet_ and in _Macbeth_, tableaux of the highest
character.[226] Like Æschylus he conducted one to virtue by terror;
but unfortunately the taste of the spectators, upon which he was
forced to model his, led him to degrade his tableaux by grotesque
figures: the English people were not sufficiently advanced to
comprehend the moral end of the tragedy. They must be amused; and
Shakespeare succeeded only at the expense of the beauties of the art.
Historic facts and trivial scenes replaced the mysterious and sublime
subjects.
In London, the dramatic muse was turbulent and licentious; as in
Madrid it had been chivalrous and gallant. Everywhere the theatre had
to accommodate itself to the taste of the people. The first regular
tragedy which Pierre Corneille composed in France was derived from a
Spanish ballad. Madrid at that time gave the tone to Europe. It needed
much of the time and all the prosperity of Louis XIV. to throw off the
unseasonable ascendancy that this proud nation had assumed over public
opinion.[227] Notwithstanding the efforts of Corneille, of Racine, and
of Molière, the Théâtre Français retained always the romanesque tone
that it had originally received. All that these three men could do
was, by lofty sentiments, by purity of forms, by regularity of the
customs and characters, to pass over what was, in reality, defective.
They came thus to give to modern dramatic art all the perfection of
which it was susceptible. Shakespeare had been in London the successor
of Æschylus; Corneille received in France the inspiration of
Sophocles; Racine, that of Euripides; and Molière united as in a sheaf
the spirit of Menander, of Terence, and of Plautus.
When I compare Shakespeare with Æschylus, I want to make it clearly
understood that I regard him as the regenerator of the theatre in
Europe, and superior to Corneille and Racine as to dramatic essence,
although he may be assuredly much inferior to them as to form.
Æschylus, in Greek, was inspired by Homer; while, on the contrary, it
was Shakespeare who inspired Milton. It is known that _Paradise Lost_
was at first conceived as the subject of a tragedy, and that it was
only after reflection that the English poet saw therein the material
for an epic poem. I will tell later on, in speaking of the _Messiah_
of Klopstock, what has prevented these two subjects, which appear
equally epics, from attaining wholly to the majesty of epopœia. As
many of the motives that I have to offer apply to the two works, I
will thus avoid useless repetition. I shall begin by translating the
exposition and invocation of Milton, by imitating its movement and its
harmony, as I have done with the other poets.
De l’homme, viens chanter la disgrâce, et la fruit
De cet arbre fatal, dont le goût homicide
Livra le Monde au crime, à la mort, aux malheurs,
Et nous ravit Eden, jusqu’au moment qu’un Homme
Plus grand, par son trépas, racheta le séjour
Du bonheur: viens, ô Muse! ô toi qui, sur la cime
Se Sinaï, d’Oreb, en secret inspiras
La Berger d’Israël, quand d’une voix sacrée
Il enseignait comment et la terre et des cieux
Sortirent du Chaos! ou bien, si tu préfères
Les sommets de Sion, les bords du Siloë,
Qui, près du Temple saint, roule ses flots, ô Muse!
Viens protéger de là mes chants audacieux,
Mes chants qui, surpassant d’un essor non timide,
Les monts Aoniens, vont raconter des faits
Que n’ont point encor dits la prose ni la rime.
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
This invocation is manifestly in imitation of Homer, from whom Milton
has received the second inspiration without the intermediary――Vergil.
One can observe in the English poet the same movement and almost as
much force as in the Greek poet, but much less clarity, precision, and
particularly harmony. Nearly all of these defects pertain to his
subject and his tongue. Circumstances were not favourable to Milton.
His lines could not have been better with the elements that he was
forced to employ. All imperfect as they are, they are worth much more
than those of Klopstock; for at least they are in the character of his
tongue, whereas those of the German poet are not. Milton is satisfied
with throwing off the yoke of rhyme, and has made eumolpique lines of
one foot only, measured by ten syllables. Their defect, inherent in
the English idiom, consists, as I have said, in having all the lines
bearing equally the masculine final, jarring continually one with the
other. Klopstock has aspired to make, in German, verses measured by
the musical rhythm of the Greeks; but he has not perceived that he
took as long and short, in his tongue, syllables which were not such
in musical rhythm, but by accent and prosody, which is quite
different. The German tongue, composed of contracted words and
consequently bristling with consonants, bears no resemblance to the
Greek, whose words, abounding in vowels, were, on the contrary, made
clear by their elongation. The rhythmic lines of Klopstock are
materially a third longer than those of Homer, although the German
poet has aspired to build them on an equal measure.[228] Their
rhythmic harmony, if it exists there, is absolutely factitious; it is
a pedantic imitation and nothing more. In order to make the movement
of these lines understood in French, and to copy as closely as
possible their harmony, it is necessary to compose lines of two
cæsuras, or what amounts to the same, to employ constantly a line and
a half to represent a single one. Here are the first fourteen lines
which contain the exposition and invocation of the Messiah: