Mrs. Browning's translations of Heine are quite the best in existence.
Emma Lazarus made an English version of "_Une Nuit de Mai_" that is
almost more delightful than the original. She might have enriched our
treasury of verse with priceless transferences; instead of which she
wasted her gifts upon unimportant "expressions of herself."
November 20.
Two Siegfrieds.
A---- says there is no definite, abstract standard of beauty or
perfection.
We were talking of Jean de Reszke's _Siegfried_. A---- was completely
satisfied with it. I explained that he was so only because he had not
seen Alvary in the part. A---- was sure that even if he had done so de
Reszke might still be best to his taste; asserting again that there
was no ideal good in art, but only preference. Of course he does say
this for the very reason that I advanced--because he had not seen
Alvary.
Poor beautiful young creature! He died recently in Germany in horrible,
useless, ridiculous pain. Wagner, I am sure, would have thought him the
ideal _Siegfried_, for he never made vocal gymnastics a fetish, but
demanded satisfaction for the eye as much as for the ear.
Alvary's _Siegfried_ was the very embodiment of splendid, golden,
joyous youth. Balmung beaten into shape, he sprang from the forge,
whirling it and laughing at its glitter as an ecstatic child might. The
splitting of the anvil was the mere sudden caprice of youthful bravado
and mischief. He looked about for an instant to find something on which
to test his new toy, and struck the iron in half as a boy would snip
off the head of a daisy with his new whip. All his movements had the
unpremeditatedness of youth.
Drunk with the struggle and the triumph of his contest with the dragon,
he killed _Mime_ more to sate this new lust of power than to mete out
justice or due punishment. He threw himself, sweating with exertion,
and swelling with a new realization of his manhood, upon the grasses
by the stream, and as the breezes cooled his body and spirit, and the
soft peace of the green world stole upon him, romance woke in his face
and voice: the rough uncouthness of boyhood fell away like a discarded
garment.
Who that once saw and heard it can ever forget those fresh tones or
that slim-waisted boy wandering away into the sunlit forest, his
beautiful dreaming face lifted yearningly to the thrilling bird voice
that sang of love?... Youth seeking passion--the sleeping woman ringed
with fire.
Ah me!--all our hearts ached after him; after our own splendid moment.
It is useless to say that this is not absolute beauty. It is impossible
that a heavy-footed tenor (whose belt would have served for a saddle
girth) with a square Sclav head and pendulous cheeks can be equalized
to the other by individual taste. Such taste is simply bad.
January 6.
A Door Ajar.
I have been reading Pater's "Greek Studies"; a volume which an amiable
friend presented to me as a Christmas gift.
It affects me physically as well as mentally. I must lay the book down
now and then, because I find my heart beats and my temples grow moist.
It is as if its covers were doors opening into the other world--that
world that is always just beyond one.
I don't know whether it is a common experience, but from my earliest
childhood I have always had a sort of belief that if one stooped very
low, held one's breath, and made a bold spring, one would break through
and under the barrier, and be _There_!
Or one might go very suddenly around a corner and be _There_. Always
there was the sensation that it was lying just beyond, just outside of
one's self, and that only a certain heaviness of the flesh, a certain
lack of concentration of attention, prevented one's participation in
it.
Twice the door almost opened. I sprang in spirit to cross the
threshold, and there was--nothing. The door was slammed in my face, but
I never forgot that I had nearly got through. It was like death. As if
one's brain and heart had suddenly grown vast and vapourized. Pater's
book rouses some echo of those sensations.
I can't define what the other life is. It is all around me. I feel
it in the water when I swim--a sentiency. If I could only look close
enough into the shifting depths, I should see--a hand clasped quickly
enough would grasp--what always just evades.
I feel it around me, breathing and watching in the woods. It is what I
cannot quite catch in the talk of the birds. It is what the animals say
with their eyes.
The Greeks understood it. They called it Pan, and Cybele, and Dionysus,
or dryads in the woods, or nymphs in the fountain, but those were
only terms by which they tried to express the inexpressible. It is so
subtle--so intoxicating. It is like love--a reblending with all the
elements of nature. One aches and strains toward it, and yet feels a
delicious, shuddering reluctance to know.
January 7.
At Time of Death.
Oh High Heart of mine,
Now list to a wonder!
Thou shalt vent thy great rages
In lightning and thunder.
And the force of thy fury, more mighty than they,
Shall rock mountains, and rip them asunder.
When thou weepest, oh Heart!
All thy bitter deploring
In the white whirling rains
Shall have anguished outpouring.
And the salt and the sound of thy grief, like the sea,
Shake the night with its sullen wild roaring.
When thou lovest, oh Heart!
Into sudden fierce flower,
'Neath thy passionate breath
In one rapturous hour,
Earth shall blossom, all crimson and trembling with love,
Stirred to heart by thy rage and thy power.
Then, high Heart, be brave!
This death is but rending
Of limits that vexed,
And the ultimate blending
With the cosmical passions of Nature thine own,
Made immortal, insatiate, unending.
January 10.
The Curse of Babel.
Boutet de Monvel, who had been lending H---- a polite but obviously
fatigued attention, got up with alacrity as the clock struck ten and
bowed himself out, with that military bend of the hips characteristic
of French salutes. H---- passed his handkerchief around the top of his
collar and said:
"_Damn_ Babel!"
We all laughed.
"Now, here," said H----, indignantly, "is a man with a beautiful mind,
a man full of beautiful thoughts and visions, and because of those
infernal French verb inflections, because they will call tables and
chairs 'he' and 'she' instead of 'it,' I can't communicate with him
without boring him to death. We English-speaking people are a great
deal more lenient. Some of the pleasantest talks I've ever had have
been with foreigners who waded through a slaughter of my native tongue
to a positive throne in my respect. But no foreigner can ever tolerate
broken French or Spanish. They jump to the immediate conclusion that
a man who can't speak their abominable gibberish correctly must be
either a boor or a fool, and they don't take the pains to conceal that
impression. Why don't they learn to speak English, so that a human
being could talk to them?"
R---- told a story of recent experience in Italy, which he thought
suggested an equal arrogance in the Anglo-Saxon.
He had watched a young woman, an American, on the railway platform at
Naples, explaining in lucid English to the porter her wishes concerning
her luggage. The porter stared, shrugged, and seized a bag. The girl
caught his arm.
"Put that down," she said sternly. "I mean that to go in the carriage
with me. Those two trunks are to be labelled for Rome and put in the
van."
The porter began to gesticulate and gabble.
"There's no use making so much noise," she commented contemptuously.
"Just do as I tell you and don't lose time."
The Italian hunched his shoulders, threw his hands out in fan-like
gestures, and made volcanic appeals to heaven. R----, who is shy, but
chivalrous, and who speaks six Italian dialects, felt called upon to
take part.
"Excuse me, Madam," he said, "but you seem to be having some difficulty
with your luggage. As I speak Italian, perhaps I may be of service to
you."
The girl turned a cold eye upon him and waved him away.
"Thank you," she said, "you are very kind, but all the world has got to
speak English eventually, and there is no use indulging these people in
their ridiculous Italian now!"
January 14.
The Fourth Dimension.
I lunched with Mary R---- yesterday and heard a curious story. Mrs.
M----, who is ordinarily so amusing, seemed _distrait_ and disturbed
all through the meal, and when the other women had gone, Mary, who is
extremely sensitive and sympathetic to the state of mind of everyone
about her, led Mrs. M----, in a manner fascinating in its skilfulness,
to unpack her overladen spirit.
She said: "I have been spending the morning with a friend, who is
half mad with melancholia. She has had a terrible experience. She
is a Philadelphia woman. Her husband was a manufacturer of window
glass. He died about five years ago from typhoid fever and left her
with a small fortune and two daughters; one fourteen years old, one
seventeen--nice, rosy, wholesome, well brought up girls. They had
always wanted to travel, but during her husband's lifetime he was too
busy and she would never leave him. About a year after his death, they
concluded, as the lease of their house had run out, to store their
furniture and go abroad for a time, with the idea that the girls could
perfect themselves in languages and music and see something of the
world.
I don't want you to think there was anything sensational about them.
They were just quiet, middle-class Philadelphians,--you know the
type,--modest, conventional, devoted to the proprieties. That's what
makes their story all the more tragic.
They arrived in London; took quiet lodgings in Dover Street, and
concluded to spend six months in England, seeing the sights, and
making these London lodgings their headquarters. They had been there
all through the month of May, doing picture galleries, churches, and
the museums, and occasionally a theatre. One Saturday they had tickets
for a concert, and as the place was near and the day was fine, they
decided to walk to the place where the concert was to be given,
stopping at a shop in Regent street on the way to give an order about
something being made there. I don't know what it was, or where the
shop was situated, but at all events the three were walking abreast,
the girls chattering and joking about the order. The sidewalk was very
crowded, so that the mother stepped ahead, but heard her daughters'
voices at her elbow for several minutes.
The street grew clearer as she went, and she turned to beckon the girls
alongside again. She didn't see them, and stood a few moments for them
to catch up. After waiting awhile she walked back and still missed
them. It occurred to her that they might have passed ahead without her
noticing it, and gone on to the shop where they had planned to stop, so
she went there and waited twenty minutes. Then she imagined they might
have missed their way, and gone to the concert hall to wait for her.
By this time she felt sufficient anxiety to hail a cab, but no one had
seen them at the concert hall, and she herself had all three of the
tickets, so she returned to their lodgings, sure that they would turn
up there eventually in any case.
At six o'clock they were still absent, and really frightened by this
time she visited all the near-by police stations, but could get no news
of them.
That was four years ago, and from that day to this she has never seen
or heard of them. She has travelled all over Europe and returned twice
to America, has advertised in every possible way, and has employed the
best detectives of both continents. Now she has come back for the third
time, utterly broken in health and fortune. Their home in Philadelphia
has become a boarding-house, and she has taken a room and will spend
the rest of her life there, hoping that in that way, if they ever
return, they may be able to reach her. Nearly all her money has gone
in the search, and her mind is almost equally a wreck. She goes over
to Philadelphia this afternoon, and I went in the morning to tell her
good-by."
Mary said--her lips were white--"But, good heavens, Emily! where could
the girls have gone?"
"That's the terrible part of it," Mrs. M---- answered. "One can't
imagine. They were both so young. It was in a foreign country: they had
no money. As far as the mother knew, neither had, nor could have had,
any reason for going, nor anyone a reason for taking them. If one only
had gone one might suspect a lover, or a sudden aberration of mind, but
there were two; it was in broad daylight. Three minutes before they
had been beside her. There was no struggle, no accident. No one could
have silently carried off or made way with _two_ grown girls in Regent
Street in midday. One minute they were there, laughing, happy, and
commonplace, and the next minute they had vanished utterly and forever,
without a word or a cry."
"But why has one never heard of it?" I said.
"Well, of course, the mother kept it out of the papers. For a long
time she feared they might have been the victims of the sort of person
who preys on young girls, and dreaded that there should be a scandal
by which their lives should be ruined if they ever returned. To-day I
think she would be glad to find them even in the lowest brothel, if she
might only see them again."
"Hadn't any of the police or detectives a theory?"
"Oh, thousands at first, but they never bore any fruit. Consider all
the circumstances. They were sensible, self-reliant American girls.
By this time, if they were alive, they would have found some means of
communicating with their mother. She has published guarded appeals,
which they would understand, and always in the English language, in
about every paper in this country and Europe."
"But what do you think?"
"What can one think? Can you conceive of any solution when you consider
all the facts?"
"Has the mother no theory?"
"Well, she has, but then she is hardly sensible, you know, after the
strain of such an experience. You've heard of the Fourth Dimension,
haven't you? She says if that's not the explanation, she cannot imagine
any other. She doesn't really believe it, I think, but she says if
they did not stumble into it, where are they? And what answer can one
give her?"
By this time it was late, and I came away. Outside the sun was shining
and the trolley cars buzzing by. The theory of the Fourth Dimension
seemed absurd, but I wondered where those poor young girls could have
gone, and felt an oppression in my breathing.
January 23.
The Ant and the Lark.
Who, I wonder, was the stupid phrase-maker guilty of saying that Genius
was only an infinite capacity for taking pains? And yet Shakespeare,
according to tradition, never blotted a line. How much pains had the
little Mozart taken when he began his first concert tour? Creation
comes swiftly and with heat. The man who must take infinite pains
in production is never a genius. Indeed, when one sees how little
the creation of beauty, harmony, or ideas is related to their human
creator, how little, in a way, he seems related to them, one is almost
inclined to imagine that somewhere there exists a great reservoir of
force and that the "genius" is merely a cock through which the creative
fluid runs. He happens to be the cock that is "turned on" while the
handles of the others are left untouched.
* * * * *
There was once a very ambitious and industrious Ant. Its home was in a
field where the grass and flowers bloomed.
This Ant had convictions as to the best uses of life, and wasted
no time. So many hours a day she devoted to the improvement of her
mind, and so many to her life labour, which was to build an ant-hill.
Early and late she toiled, and as she toiled she thought very deeply,
elaborating numerous excellent and noble theories. All her theories
concerned the best use of opportunities, and the doing of some work
which should make the world better because she had existed.
Once in a long while, when quite worn out by her labours, she would
climb to the top of a blade of grass, and look out into the world.
Sometimes the sun was just rising and the field was damascened with
the blue and white cups of morning-glories, and sometimes it was
evening and the moon silvered the dew-hung grass, which palpitated with
fireflies. At such times a divine yearning and great longing filled the
heart of the tired little emmet, and she would hurry down to her work
at once, saying bravely to herself:
"If I waste a moment my hill will never be high enough to look out upon
this beautiful world." And so would toil on without ceasing, taking
the greatest pains with every grain of sand, fitting and refitting it
into its place with infinite pains, and comforting herself for her slow
progress by saying:
"I am really not very old yet. I still have a great many days in which
to complete my work." And would make some excuse to herself for going
down to stand on the ground beside it and gain encouragement by noting
how much greater was the hill than her own stature, and then went
happily back to her task.
Near the Ant's hill a lark had built its home--a careless body, who
roughly kicked out the earth for a nest, and who, being dull as she
sat on her eggs, conversed at times with the Ant, for whom the matron
manifested an ill-concealed contempt.
"In heaven's name!" she said, "What is the use of wearing yourself to
skin and bone working on that hill? Isn't it quite big enough for your
uses already?"
"Yes," replied the Ant, patiently, "but it is every one's duty to make
the world as beautiful as they can, and I want to build the biggest and
most beautiful ant-hill in the world. And oh!"--she cried, clasping her
little paws and with a hungry look in her eyes--"I do so want to be
famous!"
"Fiddle-de-dee!" answered the brown bird, contemptuously.
"Famous!--what is that? Are you wearing yourself out for such nonsense?
As for me, give me a fat worm for breakfast and luck with my eggs, and
it's all I ask." Saying which, she tucked her head under her wing and
went to sleep, while the Ant hurried away to finish the daily task she
set herself.
In course of time a young lark was hatched. A great red, sprawling,
featherless thing, with a big bill and no idea but worms. The Ant used
to try sometimes, when his mother was absent hunting food, to teach the
ugly young thing some of her own excellent theories, but the bird only
blinked sleepily and scornfully and never answered a word, so the Ant
was reluctantly obliged to give up the hope of ever inspiring him with
the nobler ambitions of life.
She was growing much encouraged about her own work. All the other ants
in the field wondered at and admired it, and as one could nearly see
out above the grasses by standing upon her hill on tiptoe, the happy
insect began to dream of immortality.
By this time, too, the young lark had grown feathers, and one morning
he stumbled out of the nest, fluttered a moment to try his wings, and
suddenly, bursting into a flood of song, soared upward into the sunlit
blue.
The Ant fell to the earth, breathless and paralyzed, but in a moment,
stifling her pain and despair, she rose up and began, from mere habit,
fitting more grains of sand into her unfinished hill.
A Poet walked in the field that day, meditating some verses upon the
divine gift of genius. He cried aloud with joy at the lark's song, and
while he gazed upward stumbled over the Ant's hill and demolished it,
but in his note-book he wrote:
"Oh, miracle of Genius, that lifts the Sons of God on golden pinions
to the gates of heaven, while the dull myriads toil futilely at Babels
below."
January 29.
The Döppelganger.
I suppose that everyone who has reached maturity has been aware of
a sense of a dual personality--of a something within him that is a
_me_ and a _not me_; of opposing influences that puzzle his judgment,
weaken his resolves, and warp his intention. These natures he finds
engaged in an eternal conflict which sways him from the course he would
instinctively follow, and draws him along lines of thought and conduct
satisfying to neither side of his being, and achieving only a helpless
compromise between the two.
"To be?"--"Or _not_ to be?" contend the two at every crossing of the
tangled meshes of existence, and neither disputant is ever convinced by
the other's logic.
"To sleep"--says one. "Perchance to dream," replies the other coldly;
and so gives pause to Hamlet's swift intentions.
Which is the real man? The Hamlet whose soul lusts for sudden brute
revenge, whose promptings are the instinctive play of the natural man,
or that frigid censor who checks the impulses of the first speaker
and chills him with cold reasons and balancings of right and wrong,
so that the sword falls from his nerveless hand at the very moment of
opportunity? Or after all, is the real man the one whose actions are
a continual endeavour to steer between the two promptings; the Hamlet
whose doings are not in direct answer to either voice--are but furious
and confused outbursts of indecision?
If it were at all possible to decide between the two, one would incline
to think that the second voice, that chilling critic, was another self,
alien to us, though entrenched in the very depths of the soul--was the
_not me_, in everlasting opposition to the _me_--was the past warring
with the present.
The warm, impulsive, blundering _me_ we know, but who is that other?
Whence comes this double, this _alter ego_, this bosom's lord, and
strange, nameless ghost who haunts the house of life? How many thousand
deaths have we died to give him life? For he is inexpressibly aged,
infinitely sophisticated; and while the _me_ still crowns its locks
with youth's golden illusions, he is grey with knowledge and hoary with
disenchantment. Though a part of our most intimate selves, he is not at
one with us. He sympathizes with none of our enthusiasms, is tempted by
none of our sins.... Sins!... what should he do eating forbidden fruit
who is all compounded of the knowledge of good and evil?
"Ye shall be as gods, having eaten of that tree"--and like a god he
sits in the dusk of the soul's seat, knowing the past, predicating the
future, calmly beholding the fulfilling of our destiny. And yet is his
grim wisdom of no avail, since--a shadowy Cassandra--he warns in vain.
His deity-ship is of no more worth than that of the Olympian heavens,
which might punish or reward, but could not divert the decrees of a
power higher than itself. It is indeed the fate of all gods to have
their creations caught from between their shaping hands by the blind,
fumbling fingers with the shears. Gods may teach; may command; may ban
or bless, but the being once made is Fate's creature, not theirs.
This cynical, impotent _döppelganger_ goes by many names. His Christian
cognomen is Conscience, and his voice is raised to exalt Christian
tenets of clean living and high thinking.
"Thou shalt surely die," he declaims from the altar where he wears with
cheerful indifference the livery of a faith in which he has no part,
and we walk contentedly in the path he designates, flattering ourselves
upon being upheld and guided by the voice of omnipotent truth, until
passion trips our heels with some hidden snare, and, rolling headlong
in the mire, we lift our stained faces in astonishment to behold that
calm-lidded countenance all unstirred by our wild mishap. He foresaw,
but he was helpless to prevent, nor does he greatly care, since he
also knows that age after age every reincarnation of the spirit must be
tempted anew by the ever-renewed, ever-lustful, unalterable flesh.
Weissman diverts himself and indulges the Teutonic weakness for
word-building by naming this double self the "germ-plasm"--that
immortal, eternal seed of life that links the generations in an
unbroken chain; changing and developing only through the unreckonable
processes of time, and taking heed not at all of the mere passing
accidents of fleeting avatars.
Why should not this germ-plasm, this eternal ghost, be infinitely
sophisticated? What surprises can its mere momentary envelope contrive
for a consciousness as old as the moon? If temptations seduce the young
flesh, though the old, old soul declares with scorn that teeth are set
on edge by the eating of sour grapes, it is not surprised at all when
the body persists in its will to seize upon the fruit of its desire,
having seen in everyone of a myriad generations the same obstinacy and
weakness of the flesh, which learns little and very hardly from the
spirit.