NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF FINNISH POETRY IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the
Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more
closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western
poetry. Indeed it is supposed that the Finnish race is more akin to the
Tartar races, and therefore probably to the Japanese, than the races of
Europe proper. Again, through Longfellow, the value of Finnish poetry to
English poetry was first suggested, and I think you know that Longfellow's
Indian epic, "The Song of Hiawatha," was modelled entirely upon the
Finnish "Kalevala."
But a word about the "Kalevala," which has a very interesting history. I
believe you know that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the
"Kalevala" was not known to exist. During the first half of the century,
Finnish scholars in the University of Helsingfors (where there is now a
great and flourishing university) began to take literary interest in the
popular songs of Finland. For years the people had been singing
extraordinary songs full of a strange beauty and weirdness quite unlike
any other popular songs of Europe; and for centuries professional singers
had been wandering about the country teaching these songs to the
accompaniment of a kind of _biwa_ called Kantela. The scholars of the
University began to collect these songs from the mouths of the peasants
and musicians--at first with great difficulty, afterwards with much
success. The difficulty was a very curious one. In Finland the ancient
pagan religion had really never died; the songs of the peasants were full
of allusions to the old faith and the old gods, and the orthodox church
had often attempted in vain to prevent the singing of these songs, because
they were not Christian. So the peasants at first thought that the
scholars who wanted to copy the songs were government spies or church
spies who wanted evidence to justify punishments. When the fears of the
people had been removed and when they came to understand that the
questioners were only scholars interested in literary beauty, all the
secret stores of songs were generously opened, and an immense collection
of oral literature was amassed in the University at Helsingfors.
The greatest of the scholars engaged in the subsequent work of arranging
and classifying was Doctor Lönnrot. While examining the manuscript of
these poems he was struck by the fact that, put together in a particular
order, they naturally made one great continuous story or epic. Was it
possible that the Finnish people had had during all these centuries an
epic unknown to the world of literature? Many persons would have ridiculed
the idea. But Lönnrot followed up that idea, and after some years' study
he disengaged from all that mass of song something in the shape of a
wonderful epic, the epic of the "Kalevala." Lönnrot was probably, almost
certainly, the only one who had even understood the idea of an epic of
this kind. The peasants did not know. They only had the fragments of the
whole; parts of the poem existed in one province, parts in another; no
Finnish musician had ever known the whole. The whole may have been made
first by Lönnrot. At all events he was the Homer of the "Kalevala," and it
was fortunate for Finland that he happened to be himself both a scholar
and a poet--qualifications seldom united in the same person.
What is the "Kalevala" as we now possess it? It is an epic, but not like
any other epic in the world, for the subject of it is Magic. We might call
it the Epic of Magic. It is the story of how the world and the heaven and
the sun and the moon and the stars, the elements and the races of living
creatures and all other things were created by magic; also how the first
inhabitants of the world lived, and loved, and fought. But there is
another thing to be said in a general was about this magic. The magic of
"Kalevala" is not like anything else known by that name in European
literature. The magic of "Kalevala" is entirely the magic of words. These
ancient people believed in the existence of words, by the utterance of
which anything might be accomplished. Instead of buying wood and hiring
carpenters, you might build a house by uttering certain magical words. If
you had no horse and wanted to travel rapidly, you could make a horse for
yourself out of bits of bark and old sticks by uttering over them certain
magical words. But this was not all. Beings of intellect, men and women,
whole armies of men, in fact, might be created in a moment by the
utterance of these mystical words. There is the real subject of the
"Kalevala."
I told you that the epic is not like anything else in European literature
and not like anything else in the world as to the subject. But this is not
the case as regards the verse. The verse is not like Japanese verse,
indeed, but it comes nearer to it than any other European verse does. Of
course even in Finnish verse, accents mean a great deal, and accent means
nothing at all in Japanese verse. But I imagine something very much like
Finnish verse might be written in Japanese, provided that in reciting it a
slight stress is thrown on certain syllables. Of course you know something
about Longfellow's "Hiawatha"--such lines as these:
And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky like a prairie,
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendour,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
Westward, westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapours,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.
You will observe this is verse of eight syllables with four trochees to a
line. Now it is perhaps as near to Finnish verse as English verse can be
made. But the Finnish verse is more musical, and it is much more flexible,
and the rules of it can be better carried out than in English. There is
much more to be thought about than the placing of four trochaic feet to a
line. Not only must the verse be trochaic, it must also be alliterative,
and it must also be, to some extent, rhymed verse--a matter which
Longfellow did not take into consideration. That would have doubled his
difficulty. To make verse trochaic, alliterative and rhymed, is very
difficult indeed--that is, to do it well. Only one liberty is allowed; it
is not necessary that the rhyme shall be regular and constant; it is
necessary only that it should be occasional. But the interest of Finnish
verse does not end here. I have not yet mentioned the most important law
of Finnish poetry--the law of parallelism or repetition. Parallelism is
the better word. It means the repetition of a thought in a slightly
modified way. It is parallelism especially that makes so splendid the
English translation of the Bible, and the majesty of such passages in the
Book of Common Prayer as the Funeral Service. So that Finnish poetry is
anything but very simple. We may now sum it up thus--trochaic verse of
eight syllables, with alliteration and rhyme, a caesura in the same part
of every line, and every line reiterated in parallelism.
A little above I mentioned the English of the Bible. Long ago I explained
why that English is so beautiful and so strong. But remember that much of
the best of the Bible, in the original Hebrew, was not prose but verse,
and that the fine effects have been produced by translating the verse into
musical prose. The very effect can be produced by translating the
"Kalevala" into prose. Occasionally the passages are of surprising beauty,
and they are always of surprising strangeness.
It is in parallelism especially that Finnish poetry offers a contrast to
Japanese, but there is no reason whatever why, in the longer poems of
Japanese poetry, parallelism could not be used. All things have value
according to place and time, and this has value--provided that it has a
special effect on a special occasion. All through the "Kalevala," all
through five hundred pages, large pages, the parallelism is carried on,
and yet one never gets tired. It is not monotonous. But that is because
the subject is so well adapted to this form of poetry. See how the poem
opens, when the poet begins to talk about what he is going to sing:
"Anciently my father sang me these words in hewing the handle of his ax;
anciently my mother taught me these words as she turned her spindle. In
that time I was only a child, a little child at the breast,--a useless
little being creeping upon the floor at the feet of its nurse, its cheek
bedaubed with milk. And there are other words which I drew from the spring
of knowledge, which I found by the wayside, which I snatched from the
heart of the thickets, which I detached from the branches of the trees,
which I gathered at the edges of the pastures--when, In my infancy, I used
to go to guard the flocks, in the midst of the honey-streaming meadows,
upon the gold-shining hills, behind the black Murikki, behind the spotted
Kimmo, my favourite cows.
"Also the cold sang the songs, the rain sang me verses, the winds of
heaven, the waves of the sea made me hear their poems, the birds
instructed me with their melodies, the long-haired trees invited me to
their concerts. And all the songs I gathered together, I rolled them up in
a skin, I carried them away in my beautiful little holiday sledge, I
deposited them in the bottom of a chest of brass, upon the highest shelf
of my treasure house."
Now when a poem opens that way we may be sure that there are great things
in it; and some of these great things we shall read about presently. The
"Kalevala" is full of wonderful stories, But in the above quotation, I
want you to see how multiple it is, and yet it is beautiful. Now there is
a very interesting thing yet to tell you about this parallelism. Such
poems as those of the "Kalevala" have always to be sung not by one singer
but by two. The two singers straddle a bench facing each other and hold
each other's hands. Then they sing alternately, each chanting one line,
rocking back and forward, pulling each other to and fro as they sing--so
that it is like the motion of rowing. One chants a line and pulls
backward, then the other chants the next line and pulls in the opposite
direction. Not to be able to answer at once would be considered a great
disgrace; and every singer has to be able to improvise as well as to sing.
And that is the signification of the following verse:
"Put thy hand to my hand--place thy fingers between my fingers--that we
may sing of the things which are."
The most beautiful story in this wonderful book is the story of Kullervo.
It was after reading this story that Longfellow imagined his story of the
Strong Man Kwasind. Kullervo is born so strong that as an infant he breaks
his cradle to pieces, and as a boy he can not do any work, for all the
tools and instruments break in his grasp. Therefore he gives a great deal
of trouble at home and has to go out into the world to seek his fortune.
In the world, of course, he has just the same trouble; for nobody will
employ him very long. However, the story of Kullervo's feats of strength,
though interesting, need not now concern us. The great charm of this
composition is in the description of a mother's love which it contains.
Kullervo brought misfortune everywhere simply by his strength and by his
great passions--at last committing a terrible crime, causing the death of
his own sister, whom he does not recognize. He goes back home in
desperation and remorse; and there everybody regards him with horror,
except only his mother. She alone tries to console him; she alone tells
him that repentance may bring him rest. He then proposes to go away and
amend his wrong-doing in solitude. But first he bids them all goodbye, and
the episode is characteristic.
Kullervo, the son of Kalervo, gets him ready to depart; he goes to his old
father and says: "Farewell now, O my dear father. Wilt thou regret me
bitterly, when thou shalt learn that I am dead?--that I have disappeared
from among the multitude of the living?--that I no longer am one of the
members of thy family?" The father answered: "No, certainly I will not
regret thee when I shall hear that thou art dead. Another son perchance
will be born to me--a son who will grow up better and wiser than thou."
Kullervo, son of Kalervo, answered: "And I also will not be sorry if I
hear that thou art dead. Without any trouble I can find me such a father
as thou--a stone-hearted father, a clay-mouthed father, a berry-eyed
father, a straw-bearded father, a father whose feet are made of the roots
of the willow tree, a father whose flesh is decaying wood." Why does
Kullervo use these extraordinary terms? It is a reference to magic--out of
stone and clay and straw, a phantom man can be made, and Kullervo means to
say that his father is no more to him than a phantom father, an unreal
father, a father who has no fatherly feeling. His brothers and sisters all
questioned in turn if they will be sorry to hear that he is dead, make the
same cruel answer; and he replies to them with the same angry words. But
it is very different when he speaks to his mother.
For to his mother he said--"Oh my sweet mother, my beautiful nurse, my
loved protectress, wilt thou regret me bitterly when thou shalt learn that
I am dead, that I have disappeared from the multitude of the living, that
I am no longer one of the members of thy family?"
The mother made answer: "Thou does not comprehend the soul of the
mother--thou canst not understand the heart of the mother. Assuredly will
I regret thee most bitterly when I shall learn that thou art dead, that
thou hast disappeared, from among the multitude of the living, that thou
hast ceased to be one of the members of my family. Floods of tears shall I
weep in my chamber. The waves of tears will overflow on the floor. And
upon the stairway lamentably shall I weep; and in the stable loudly shall
I sorrow. Upon the icy ways the snow shall melt under my tears--under my
tears the earth of the roads shall melt away; under my tears new meadow
grass shall grow up, green sprouting, and through that grass little
streams shall murmur away." To this mother, naturally, Kullervo says no
unkind words. He goes away, able at least to feel that there is one person
in the world who loves him and one person in the world whom he loves. But
how much his mother really loves him he does not yet know; he will know
that later--it forms the most beautiful part of the poem.
"Kullervo directed his steps once more to the home of his fathers.
Desolate he found it, desolate and deserted; no person advanced to salute
him, no person came to press his hand, to give him welcome.
"He drew near to the hearth: the embers were extinguished. By that he knew
that his mother had ceased to be.
"He drew near to the fire-place, and the stones of the fire-place were
cold. By that he knew that his father had ceased to be.
"He turned his eyes upon the floor of his home; the planks of the floor
were covered with dirt and rubbish. By that he knew that his sister had
ceased to be.
"To the shore of the sea he went; the boat that used to be there was there
no longer. By that he knew that his brother had ceased to be.
"Then he began to weep. For a whole day he wept, for two whole days he
wept; then he cried aloud: 'O my mother, O my sweet mother, what didst
thou leave thy son yet in the world? Alas! now thou canst hear me no
longer; and it is in vain that I stand above thy tomb, that I sob over the
place of thine eyebrows, over the place of thy temples; it is in vain that
I cry out my grief above thy dead forehead.'
"The mother of Kullervo awakened in her tomb, and out of the depth of the
dust she spake to him: 'I have left the dog Mastif, in order that thou
mayst go with him to the chase. Take therefore the faithful dog, and go
with him into the wild forest, into the dark wilderness, even to the
dwelling place, far away, of the blue-robed Virgins of the wood, and there
thou wilt seek thy nourishment, thou wilt ask for the game that is
necessary to thy existence.'"
It was believed that there was a particular forest god, who protected the
trees and the wild things of the wood. The hunter could be successful in
the chase only upon condition of obtaining his favour and permission to
hunt. This explains the reference to the abode of the forest god. But
Kullervo can not go far; his remorse takes him by the throat.
"Kullervo, son of Kalervo, took his faithful dog, and directed his steps
toward the wild forest, toward the dark wilderness. But when he had gone
only a little way he found himself at the very place where he had outraged
the young girl, where he had dishonoured the child of his mother. And all
things there mourned for her--all things; the soft grass and the tender
foliage, and the little plants, and the sorrowful briars. The grass was no
longer green, the briars no longer blossomed, the leaves and the plants
hung withered and dry about the spot where the virgin had been
dishonoured, where the brother had dishonoured his sister.
"Kullervo drew forth his sword, his sharpedged sword; a long time he
looked at it, turning it in his hand, and asking it whether it would feel
no pleasure in eating the flesh of the man thus loaded with infamy, in
drinking the blood of the man thus covered with crime.
"And the sword knew the heart of the man: it understood the question of
the hero. And it made answer to him saying: 'Why indeed should I not
gladly devour the flesh of the man who is loaded with infamy? Why indeed
should I not drink with pleasure the blood of the man who is burdened with
crime? For well I devoured even the flesh of the innocent man, well can I
drink even the blood of the man who is free from crime.'
"Then Kullervo fixed his sword in the earth, with the handle downwards and
the point upwards, and he threw himself upon the point, and the point
passed through all the depth of his breast.
"This was the end of all, this was the cruel destiny of Kullervo, the
irrevocable end of the son of the heroes--the death of the 'Man of
Misfortune.'"
You can see how very much unlike other Western poetry this poetry is. The
imagination indeed is of another race and another time than those to whose
literary productions we have become accustomed. But there is beauty here;
and the strangeness of it indicates a possible literary value by which any
literature may be more or less enriched. Many are the particular episodes
which rival the beauty and strangeness of the episode of Kullervo; and I
wish that we could have time to quote them. But I can only refer to them.
There is, for example, the legend of the invention of music, when the hero
Wainamoinen (supposed to represent the Spirit of the Wind, and the sound
of the name indicates the wailing of the wind) invents the first musical
instrument. In no other literature is there anything quite like this
except in the Greek story of Orpheus. Even as the trees bent down their
heads to listen to the song of Orpheus, and as the wild beasts became
tamed at the sound, and as the very stones of the road followed to the
steps of the musician, so is it in the "Kalevala." But the Finnish Orpheus
is the greater magician. To hear him, the sun and moon come nearer to the
earth, the waves of the sea stop short, bending their heads; the cataracts
of the rivers hang motionless and silent; the fish raise their heads above
the water. And when he plays a sad melody, all nature weeps with him, even
the trees and the stones and the little plants by the wayside. And his own
tears in falling become splendid pearls for the crowns of kings.
Then very wonderful too is the story of the eternal smith, Ilmarinen, who
forged the foundations of the world, forged the mountains, forged the blue
sky, so well forging them that nowhere can be seen the marks of the
pincer, the marks of the hammer, the heads of the nails. Working in his
smithy we see him all grime and black; upon his head there is one yard
deep of iron firing, upon his shoulders there is one fathom deep of
soot--the soot of the forge; for he seldom has time to bathe himself. But
when the notion takes him to get married, for the first time he bathes
himself, and dresses himself handsomely, then he becomes the most
beautiful of men. In order to win his wife he is obliged to perform
miracles of work; yet after he wins her she is killed by wild beasts. Then
he sets to work to forge himself a wife, a wife of silver, a bride of
gold. Very beautiful she is, but she has no heart, and she is always cold,
and there is no comfort in her; even all the magic of the world-maker can
not give her a warm heart. But the work is so beautiful that he does not
like to destroy it. So he takes the wife of silver, the bride of gold, to
the wisest of heroes, Wainamoinen, and offers her to him as a gift. But
the hero will have no such gift, "Throw her back into your forged fire, O
Ilmarinen," the hero makes answer--"What greater folly, what greater
sorrow can come upon man than to love a wife of silver, a bride of gold?"
This pretty story needs no explanation; the moral is simply "Never marry
for money."
Then there is the story of Lemminkainen (this personality suggested the
Pau-puk-keewis of Longfellow)--the joyous, reckless, handsome, mischievous
pleasure-lover,--always falling into trouble, because he will not follow
his mother's advice, but always loved by her in spite of his follies. The
mother of Lemminkainen is a more wonderful person than the mother of
Kullervo. Her son has been murdered, thrown into a river--the deepest of
all rivers, the river of the dead, the river of hell. And his mother goes
out to find him. She asks the trees in the forest to tell her where her
son is, and she obliges them to answer. But they do not know. She asks the
grass, the plants, the animals, the birds; she obliges even the road upon
which he walked to talk to her, she talks to the stars and the moon and
the sun. Only the sun knows, because he sees everything and he answers,
"Your son is dead, torn to pieces; he has been thrown into the river of
Tuoni, the river of hell, the river of the dead." But the mother does not
despair. Umarinen, the eternal smith, must make for her a rake of brass
with teeth long enough to reach into the world of the dead, into the
bottom of the abyss; and out of the abyss she brings up the parts of the
torn body of her son; she puts them together; she sings over them a magic
song; she brings her son to life again, and takes him home. But for a long
time he is not able to remember, because he has been dead. After a long
time he gets back his memory--only to get into new mischief out of which
his mother must help him afresh.
The names of the three heroes quoted to you represent also the names of
three great stories, out of the many stories contained in the epics. But
in this epic, as in the Indian epics (I mean the Sanskrit epic), there is
much more than stories. There are also chapters of moral instruction of a
very curious kind--chapters about conduct, the conduct of the parents, the
conduct of the children, the conduct of the husband, the conduct of the
bride. The instructions to the bride are contained in the twenty-third
Rune; there are altogether fifty Runes in the book. This appears to me
likely to interest you, for it is written in relation to a family system
not at all like the family system of the rest of Europe. I think you will
find in it not a little that may remind you of Chinese teaching on the
same subject--the conduct of the daughter-in-law. But there are of course
many differences, and the most pleasing difference is the tone of great
tenderness in which the instructions are given. Let us quote some of them:
"O young bride, O my young sister, O my well beloved and beautiful young
flower, listen to the words which I am going to speak to you, harken to
the lesson which I am going to teach you. You are going now very far away
from us, O beautiful flower!--you are going to take a long journey, O my
wild-strawberry fruit! you are about to fly away from us, O most delicate
down! you are about to leave us forever, O velvet tissue--far away from
this habitation you must go, far away from this beautiful house, to enter
another house, to enter into a strange family. And in that strange house
your position will be very different. There you will have to walk about
with care, to conduct yourself with prudence, to conduct yourself with
thoughtfulness. There you will not be able, as in the house of your
father, as in the dwelling of your mother, to run about where you please,
to run singing through the valleys, to warhle out your songs upon the
roadway.
"New habits you must now learn, and forget all the old. You must abandon
the love of your father and content yourself with the love of your
father-in-law; you must bow very low, you must learn to be generous in the
use of courteous words. You must give up old habits and form new ones; you
must resign the love of your mother and content yourself with the love of
your step-mother: lower must you bow, and you must learn to be lavish in
the use of kindly words.
"New habits you must learn and forget the old: you must leave behind you
the friendship of your brother, and content yourself with the friendship
of your brother-in-law; you must bow lower than you do now; you must learn
to be lavish of kindly words.
"New habits you must acquire and forget the old ones; you must leave
behind you the friendship of your sister, and be satisfied with the
friendship of your sister-in-law; you must learn to make humble reverence,
to bow low, to be generous in kindly words.
"If the old man in the corner be to you even like a wolf, if the old woman
in her corner be to you even as a she-bear in the house, if the
brother-in-law be to you even as a serpent upon the threshold, if the
sister-in-law be to you even as a sharp nail, none the less you must show
them each and all exactly the same respect and the same obedience that you
have been accustomed to display to your father, to display to your mother,
under the roof of your childhood home."
Then follows a really terrible list of the duties that she must perform
every day from early morning until late at night; to mention them all
would take too long. I quote only a few, enough to show that the position
of a Finnish wife was by no means an easy one.
"So soon as the cock crows in the morning you must be quick to rise; you
must keep your ears awake to hear the cry of the cock. And if there be no
cock, or the cock does not crow, then let the moon be as a cock for you,
let the constellation of the great Bear tell you when it is time to rise.
Then you must quickly make the fire, skilfully removing the ashes, without
sprinkling them upon the floor. Then quickly go to the stable, clean the
stable, take food to the cattle, feed all the animals on the farm. For
already the cow of your mother-in-law will be lowing for food; the horse
of your father-in-law will be whinnying; the milch cow of your
sister-in-law will be straining at her tether; the calf of your
brother-in-law will be bleating; for all will be waiting for her whose
duty it is to give them hay, whose duty it is to give them food."
Like instructions are given about feeding the younger animals and the
fowls and the little pigs. But she must not forget the children of the
house at the same time:
"When you have fed the animals and cleaned the stables come back quickly,
quickly as a snow-storm. For in the chamber the little child has awakened
and has begun to cry in his cradle. He cannot speak, poor little one; he
cannot tell you, if he be hungry or if he be cold, or if anything
extraordinary has happened to him, before someone that he knows has come
to care for him, before he hears the voice of his own mother."
After enumerating and inculcating in the same manner all the duties of the
day, the conduct to be observed toward every member of the
family--father-in-law, mother-in-law, sister, and brother-in-law, and the
children of them--we find a very minute code of conduct set forth in
regard to neighbours and acquaintances. The young wife is especially
warned against gossip, against listening to any stories about what happens
in other people's houses, and against telling anybody what goes on within
her own. One piece of advice is memorable. If the young wife is asked
whether she is well fed, she should reply always that she has the best of
everything which a house can afford, this even if she should have been
left without any proper nourishment for several days. Evidently the
condition of submission to which Finnish women were reduced by custom was
something much less merciful than has ever been known in Eastern
countries. Only a very generous nature could bear such discipline; and we
have many glimpses in the poem of charming natures of this kind.
You have seen that merely as a collection of wonderful stories the
Kalevala is of extraordinary interest, that it is also of interest as
describing the social ethics of a little known people--finally that it is
of interest, of very remarkable interest, merely as natural poetry--poetry
treating of wild nature, especially rivers and forests and mountains, of
the life of the fisher and hunter and wood-cutter. Indeed, so far as this
kind of poetry is concerned, the "Kalevala" stands alone among the older
productions of European poetry. You do not find this love of nature in
Scandinavian poetry, nor in Anglo-Saxon poetry, nor in old German poetry,
much less in the earlier form of French, Italian, or Spanish poetry. The
old Northern poetry comes nearest to it; for in Anglo-Saxon composition we
can find at least wonderful descriptions of the sea, of stones, of the
hard life of sailors. But the dominant tone in Northern poetry is war; it
is in descriptions of battle, or in accounts of the death of heroes, that
the ancient English or ancient Scandinavian poets excelled In Finnish
poetry, on the other hand, there is little or nothing about war. These
peaceful people never had any warlike history; their life was agricultural
for the most part, with little or no violence except such as the
excitement of hunting and fishing could produce. Therefore they had plenty
of time to think about nature, to love nature and to describe it as no
other people of the same period described it. Striking comparisons have
been made between the Anglo-Saxon Runes, or charm songs, and Finnish songs
of the same kind, which fully illustrate this difference. Like the Finns,
the early English had magical songs to the gods of nature--songs for the
healing of wounds and the banishing of sickness. But these are very
commonplace. Not one of them can compare as poetry with the verses of the
Finnish on the same subject. Here are examples in evidence. The first is a
prayer said when offering food to the Spirit of the forest, that he might
aid the hunter in his hunting.
"Look, O Kuntar, a fat cake, a cake with honey, that I may propitiate the
forest, that I may propitiate the forest, that I may entice the thick
forest for the day of my hunting, when I go in search of prey. Accept my
salt, O wood, accept my porridge, O Tapio, dear king of the wood with the
hat of leaves, with the beard of moss."
And here is a little prayer to the goddess of water repeated by a sick man
taking water as a medicine.
"O pure water, O Lady of the Water, now do thou make me whole, lovely as
before! for this beg thee dearly, and in offering I give thee blood to
appease thee, salt to propitiate thee!"
Or this:
"Goddess of the Sea, mistress of waters, Queen of a hundred caves, arouse
the scaly flocks, urge on the fishy-crowds forth from their hiding places,
forth from the muddy shrine, forth from the net-hauling, to the nets of a
hundred fishers! Take now thy beauteous shield, shake the golden water,
with which thou frightenest the fish, and direct them toward the net
beneath the dark level, above the borders black."
Yet another:
"O vigorous mistress of the wild beasts, sweet lady of the earth, come
with me, be with me, where I go. Come thou and good luck bring me, to
happy fortune help me. Make thou to move the foliage, the fruit tree to be
shaken, and the wild beasts drive thither, the largest and the smallest,
with their snouts of every kind, with their paws of fur of all kinds!"
Now when you look at these little prayers, when you read them over and
observe how pretty they are, you will also observe that they make little
pictures in the mind. Can not you see the fish gliding over the black
border under the dark level of the water, to the net of a hundred fishers?
Can you not see the "dear king of the wood," with his hat of leaves and
his beard of moss? Can you not also see in imagination the wild creatures
of the forest with their snouts of many shapes, with their fur of all
kinds? But in Anglo-Saxon poetry you will not find anything like that.
Anglo-Saxon Rune songs create no images. It is this picturesqueness, this
actuality of imagery that is distinctive in Finnish poetry.
In the foregoing part of the lecture I have chiefly tried to interest you
in the "Kalevala." But aside from interesting you in the book itself as a
story, as a poem, I hope to direct your attention to a particular feature
in Finnish poetry which is most remote from Japanese poetry. I have spoken
of resemblances as to structure and method; but it is just in that part of
the method most opposed to Japanese tradition that the greatest interest
lies. I do not mean only the use of natural imagery; I mean much more the
use of parallelism to reinforce that imagery. That is the thing especially
worthy of literary study. Indeed, I think that such study might greatly
help towards a new development, a totally new departure in Japanese verse.
In another lecture I spoke as sincerely as I could of the very high merit
in the epigrammatic forms of Japanese poetry. These brief forms of poetry
have been developed in Japan to perfection not equalled elsewhere in
modern poetry, perhaps not surpassed, in some respects, even by Greek
poetry of the same kind. But there can be no doubt of this fact, that a
national literature requires many other forms of expression than the
epigrammatic form. Nothing that is good should ever be despised or cast
aside; but because of its excellences, we should not be blind to the
possibility of other excellences. Now Japanese literature has other forms
of poetry--forms in which it is possible to produce poems of immense
length, but the spirit of epigrammatic poetry has really been controlling
even these to a great degree.
I mean that so far as I am able to understand the subject, the tendency of
all Japanese poetry is to terse expression. Were it not well therefore to
consider at least the possible result of a totally opposite
tendency,--expansion of fancy, luxuriance of expression? Terseness of
expression, pithiness, condensation, are of vast importance in prose, but
poetry has other methods, and the "Kalevala" is one of the best possible
object lessons in the study of such methods, because of the very
simplicity and naturalness with which they are followed.
Of course there was parallelism in Western poetry, and all arts of
repetition, before anybody knew anything about the "Kalevala." The most
poetical part of Bible English, as I said, whether in the Bible itself or
in the Book of Common Prayer, depends almost entirely for its literary
effect upon parallelism, because the old Hebrews, like the old Finns,
practised this art of expression. Loosely and vaguely it was practised
also by many poets almost unconsciously, who had been particularly
influenced by the splendour of the scriptural translation. It had figured
in prose-poetry as early as the time of Sir Thomas Browne. It had
established quite a new idea of poetry even in America, where the great
American poet Poe introduced it into his compositions before Longfellow
studied the "Kalevala." I told you that the work of Poe, small as it is,
had influenced almost every poet of the great epoch, including Tennyson
and the Victorian masters. But the work even of Poe was rather instinctive
than the result of any systematic idea. The systematic idea was best
illustrated when the study of the "Kalevala" began.
Let us see how Longfellow used the suggestion; but remember that he was
only a beginner, dealing with something entirely new--that he did not have
the strength of Tennyson nor the magical genius of Swinburne to help him.
He worked very simply, and probably very rapidly. There is a good deal of
his song of "Hiawatha" that is scarcely worthy of praise, and it is
difficult to quote effectively from it, because the charm of the thing
depends chiefly upon its reading as a whole. Nevertheless there are parts
which so well show or imitate the Finnish spirit, that I must try to quote
them. Take for instance the teaching of the little Indian child by his
grandmother--such verses as these, where she talks to the little boy about
the milky way in the sky:
Many things Nokomis taught him
Of the stars that shine in heaven;
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet,
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses;
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits,
Warriors with their plumes and war-clubs,
Flaring far away to northward
In the frosty nights of Winter;
Showed the broad, white road in heaven,
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows,
Running straight across the heavens,
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows.
Or take again the story of the origin of the flower commonly called
"Dandelion":
In his life he had one shadow,
In his heart one sorrow had he.
Once, as he was gazing northward,
Far away upon a prairie
He beheld a maiden standing,
Saw a tall and slender maiden
All alone upon a prairie;
Brightest green were all her garments
And her hair was like the sunshine.
Day by day he gazed upon her,
Day by day he sighed with passion,
Day by day his heart within him
Grew more hot with love and longing
For the maid with yellow tresses.
Observe how the repetition served to represent the growing of the lover's
admiration. The same repetition can be used much more effectively in
describing weariness and pain, as In the lines about the winter famine:
Oh, the long and dreary Winter!
Oh, the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
In the ghastly, gleaming forest
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.
Oh, the famine and the fever!
Oh, the wasting of the famine!
Oh, the blasting of the fever!
Oh, the wailing of the children!
Oh, the anguish of the women!
All the earth was sick and famished;
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
This is strong, emotionally strong, though it is not great poetry; but it
makes the emotional effect of great poetry by the use of the same means
which the Finnish poets used. The best part of the poem is the famine
chapter, and the next best is the part entitled "The Ghosts." However, the
charm of a composition can be fully felt only by those who understand
something of the American Indian's life and the wild northwestern country
described. That is not the immediate matter to be considered,
notwithstanding. The matter to be considered is whether this method of
using parallelism and repetition and alliteration can give new and great
results. I believe that it can, and that a greater Longfellow would have
brought such results into existence long ago. Of course, the form is
primitive; it does not follow that an English poet or a Japanese poet
should attempt only a return to primitive methods of poetry in detail. The
detail is of small moment; the spirit is everything. Parallelism means
simply the wish to present the same idea under a variety of aspects,
instead of attempting to put it forward in one aspect only. Everything
great in the way of thought, everything beautiful in the way of idea, has
many sides. It is merely the superficial which we can see from the front
only; the solid can be perceived from every possible direction, and
changes shape according to the direction looked at.
The great master of English verse, Swinburne is also a poet much given to
parallelism; for he has found it of incomparable use to him in managing
new forms of verse. He uses it in an immense variety of ways--ways
impossible to Japanese poets or to Finnish poets; and the splendour of the
results can not be imitated in another language. But his case is
interesting. The most primitive methods of Finnish poetry, and of ancient
poetry in general, coming into his hands, are reproduced into music. I
propose to make a few quotations, in illustration. Here are some lines
from "Atalanta in Calydon"; they are only parallelisms, but how
magnificent they are!
When thou dravest the men
Of the chosen of Thrace,
None turned him again,
Nor endured he thy face
Close round with the blush of the battle, with light from a
terrible place.
Look again at the following lines from "A Song in Time of Revolution":
There is none of them all that is whole; their lips gape open for
breath;
They are clothed with sickness of soul, and the shape of the shadow
of death.
The wind is thwart in their feet; it is full of the shouting of mirth;
As one shaketh the sides of a sheet, so it shaketh the ends of the earth.
The sword, the sword is made keen; the iron has opened its mouth;
The corn is red that was green; it is bound for the sheaves of the south.
The sound of a word was shed, the sound of the wind as a breath,
In the ears of the souls that were dead, in the dust of the deepness
of death.
Where the face of the moon is taken, the ways of the stars undone,
The light of the whole sky shaken, the light of the face of the sun.
* * * * *
Where the sword was covered and hidden, and dust had grown in its side,
A word came forth which was bidden, the crying of one that cried:
The sides of the two-edged sword shall be bare, and its mouth shall
be red,
For the breath of the face of the Lord that is felt in the bones of
the dead.
All this is indeed very grand compared with anything in the "Kalevala" or
in Longfellow's rendering; but do you not see that the grandeur is also
the grandeur of parallelism? Here is proof of what a master can do with a
method older than Western civilization. But what is the inference? Is it
not that the old primitive poetry contains something of eternal value, a
value ranging from the lowest even to the highest, a value that can lend
beauty equally to the song of a little child or to the thunder of the
grandest epic verse?