Alors que les vieux soirs éclatent en blasons
Soudains, pour les gloires noires et angoissées.
ÉMILE VERHAEREN,
_Poèmes_.
_ATTRACTIONS_
Large masks of silver, by mists drawn away,
So strangely alike, yet so far apart,
Float round the old suns when faileth the day.
They transfix our heart, so immensely our heart,
Those distances mild, in the twilight deep,
Looking out of dead faces, with their spirit eyes.
All around is now silence, except when there leap
In the pallor of evening, with fiery cries,
Some fountains of flame that Godward do fly.
Mysterious trouble and charms us enfold,
You might think that the dead spoke a silent good-bye,
Oh! too mystical far on earth to be told!
Are they the memories, material and bright,
Of the Christian youths that in catacombs sleep
’Mid the lilies? Are they their flesh or their sight?
Or the marvel alone that survives, in the deep,
Of those that, one night, returned to their dreams
Of conquering folly by assaulting the skies?
For their destitute works--we feel it, it seems,
For a little love their longing cries
From horizons far--for their wanderings and pain.
In horizons ever of heart and thought,
While the evenings old in bright blaze wane
Suddenly, for black glories anguish fraught.
No. 4
And the following is a poem by Moréas, evidently an admirer of Greek
beauty. It is from page 28 of a volume of his poems:--
_ÉNONE AU CLAIR VISAGE_
Énone, j’avais cru qu’en aimant ta beauté
Où l’âme avec le corps trouvent leur unité,
J’allais, m’affermissant et le cœur et l’esprit,
Monter jusqu’à cela, qui jamais ne périt,
N’ayant été créé, qui n’est froidure ou feu,
Qui n’est beau quelque part et laid en autre lieu;
Et me flattais encor d’une belle harmonie
Que j’eusse composé du meilleur et du pire,
Ainsi que le chanteur qui chérit Polymnie,
En accordant le grave avec l’aigu, retire
Un son bien élevé sur les nerfs de sa lyre.
Mais mon courage, hélas! se pâmant comme mort,
M’enseigna que le trait qui m’avait fait amant
Ne fut pas de cet arc que courbe sans effort
La Vénus qui naquit du mâle seulement,
Mais que j’avais souffert cette Vénus dernière,
Qui a le cœur couard, né d’une faible mère.
Et pourtant, ce mauvais garçon, chasseur habile,
Qui charge son carquois de sagette subtile,
Qui secoue en riant sa torche, pour un jour,
Qui ne pose jamais que sur de tendres fleurs,
C’est sur un teint charmant qu’il essuie les pleurs,
Et c’est encore un Dieu, Énone, cet Amour.
Mais, laisse, les oiseaux du printemps sont partis,
Et je vois les rayons du soleil amortis.
Énone, ma douleur, harmonieux visage,
Superbe humilité, doux-honnête langage,
Hier me remirant dans cet étang glacé
Qui au bout du jardin se couvre de feuillage,
Sur ma face je vis que les jours out passé.
JEAN MORÉAS: _Le Pélerin Passionné_.
_ENONE OF THE CLEAR VISAGE_
Enone, in loving thy beauty I thought
(Where the soul and the body to union are brought)
I should mount, by strengthening my heart and my mind,
Till that which knows nothing of Death I should find:
Uncreated, which is not here ugly, there fair,
Nor cold in one part and on fire otherwhere.
I flattered myself that the better and worse
To a harmony perfect should move in my verse;
As the poet who serves Polyhymnia can bring
The grave and the piercing to concord, and ring
Notes loftier still from the nerves of his lyre.
But my courage which now does but faintly suspire,
Nigh to death, hath proclaimed that the arrow--ah, woe!--
Which pierced me, and first with this love made me moan,
Was no arrow dispatched from the easy-bent bow
By a Venus who sprang from a father alone.
But ’twas that other Venus who caused me to smart,
She, born of frail mother with cowardly heart.
Yet this naughty rascal, this hunter so bold,
Whose quiver does arrows of subtlety hold,
Who, laughing and shaking his torch (for a day!),
Never rests but upon tender flowers and gay,
And on a sweet skin dries his tears as they flow--
’Tis a God still, Enone, this Love that we know.
Let it pass, for the birds of the springtime are fled,
And I see the last rays of a sun that’s nigh dead.
Enone, my grief, ah harmonious face,
Humility grand, words of virtue and grace,
I looked yestere’en in the pond frozen fast,
Strewn with leaves at the end of the garden’s fair space,
And I read in my face that those days are now past.
No. 5
And this is also from page 28 of a thick book, full of similar poems,
by M. Montesquiou.
_BERCEUSE D’OMBRE_
Des formes, des formes, des formes
Blanche, bleue, et rose, et d’or
Descendront du haut des ormes
Sur l’enfant qui se rendort.
Des formes!
Des plumes, des plumes, des plumes
Pour composer un doux nid.
Midi sonne; les enclumes
Cessent; la rumeur finit ...
Des plumes!
Des roses, des roses, des roses
Pour embaumer son sommeil,
Vos pétales sont moroses
Près du sourire vermeil.
O roses!
Des ailes, des ailes, des ailes
Pour bourdonner à son front,
Abeilles et demoiselles,
Des rythmes qui berceront.
Des ailes!
Des branches, des branches, des branches
Pour tresser un pavilion,
Par où des clartés moins franches
Descendront sur l’oisillon.
Des branches!
Des songes, des songes, des songes
Dans ses pensers entr’ouverts
Glissez un pen de mensonges
A voir le vie au travers.
Des songes!
Des fées, des fées, des fées,
Pour filer leurs écheveaux
Des mirages, de bouffées
Dans tous ces petits cerveaux.
Des fées.
Des anges, des anges, des anges
Pour emporter dans l’éther
Les petits enfants étranges
Qui ne veulent pas rester ...
Nos anges!
COMTE ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU-FEZENSAC,
_Les Hortensias Bleues_.
_THE SHADOW LULLABY_
Forms, forms, forms
White, blue, and gold, and red
Descending from the elm trees,
On sleeping baby’s head.
Forms!
Feathers, feathers, feathers
To make a cosy nest.
Twelve striking: stops the clamour;
The anvils are at rest ...
Oh feathers!
Roses, roses, roses
To scent his sleep awhile,
Pale are your fragrant petals
Beside his ruby smile.
Oh roses!
Wings, wings, wings
Of bees and dragon-flies,
To hum around his forehead,
And lull him with your sighs.
Oh wings!
Branches, branches, branches
A shady bower to twine,
Through which, oh daylight, faintly
Descend on birdie mine.
Branches!
Dreams, dreams, dreams
Into his opening mind,
Let in a little falsehood
With sights of life behind.
Dreams!
Fairies, fairies, fairies,
To twine and twist their threads
With puffs of phantom visions
Into these little heads.
Fairies!
Angels, angels, angels
To the ether far away,
Those children strange to carry
That here don’t wish to stay ...
Our angels!
APPENDIX IV
These are the contents of the _Nibelungen Ring_:
The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine,
for some reason guard gold in the Rhine and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge
du Welle, Walle zur Wiege, Wagalaweia, Wallala, Weila, Weia, and so
forth.
These singing nymphs are pursued by a dwarf (a nibelung) who desires
to seize them. The dwarf cannot catch any of them. Then the nymphs
guarding the gold tell the dwarf just what they ought to keep secret,
namely, that whoever renounces love will be able to steal the gold
they are guarding. And the dwarf renounces love and steals the gold.
This ends the first scene.
In the second scene a god and a goddess lie in a field in sight of a
castle which giants have built for them. Presently they wake up and
are pleased with the castle, and they relate that in payment for this
work they must give the goddess Freia to the giants. The giants come
for their pay. But the god Wotan objects to parting with Freia. The
giants grow angry. The gods hear that the dwarf has stolen the gold,
and promise to confiscate it and to pay the giants with it. But the
giants won’t trust them, and seize the goddess Freia in pledge.
The third scene takes place under ground. Alberich, the dwarf who
stole the gold, for some reason beats another dwarf, Mime, and takes
from him a helmet which has the power both of making people invisible
and of turning them into animals. The gods, Wotan and others, appear
and quarrel with one another and with the dwarfs, and wish to take
the gold, but Alberich won’t give it up, and (like everybody all
through the piece) behaves in a way to ensure his own ruin. He puts
on the helmet, and becomes first a dragon and then a toad. The gods
catch the toad, take the helmet off it, and carry Alberich away with
them.
Scene IV. The gods bring Alberich to their home and order him to
command his dwarfs to bring them all the gold. The dwarfs bring it.
Alberich gives up the gold but keeps a magic ring. The gods take the
ring. So Alberich curses the ring and says it is to bring misfortune
on anyone who has it. The giants appear; they bring the goddess Freia
and demand her ransom. They stick up staves of Freia’s height, and
gold is poured in between these staves: this is to be the ransom.
There is not enough gold, so the helmet is thrown in, and they demand
the ring also. Wotan refuses to give it up, but the goddess Erda
appears and commands him to do so because it brings misfortune. Wotan
gives it up. Freia is released. The giants, having received the ring,
fight, and one of them kills the other. This ends the Prelude, and we
come to the First Day.
The scene shows a house in a tree. Siegmund runs in tired, and lies
down. Sieglinda, the mistress of the house (and wife of Hunding),
gives him a drugged draught and they fall in love with each other.
Sieglinda’s husband comes home, learns that Siegmund belongs to a
hostile race, and wishes to fight him next day; but Sieglinda drugs
her husband and comes to Siegmund. Siegmund discovers that Sieglinda
is his sister, and that his father drove a sword into the tree so
that no one can get it out. Siegmund pulls the sword out, and commits
incest with his sister.
Act II. Siegmund is to fight with Hunding. The gods discuss the
question as to whom they shall award the victory. Wotan, approving
of Siegmund’s incest with his sister, wishes to spare him, but under
pressure from his wife, Fricka, he orders the Valkyrie Brünnhilda to
kill Siegmund. Siegmund goes to fight. Sieglinda faints. Brünnhilda
appears and wishes to slay Siegmund. Siegmund wishes to kill
Sieglinda also, but Brünnhilda does not allow it, and he fights with
Hunding. Brünnhilda defends Siegmund, but Wotan defends Hunding.
Siegmund’s sword breaks, and he is killed. Sieglinda runs away.
Act III. The Valkyries (divine Amazons) are on the stage. The
Valkyrie Brünnhilda arrives on horseback, bringing Siegmund’s body.
She is flying from Wotan, who is chasing her for her disobedience.
Wotan catches her, and as a punishment dismisses her from her post
as a Valkyrie. He also casts a spell on her, so that she has to go
to sleep and continue asleep until a man wakes her. When someone
wakes her she will fall in love with him. Wotan kisses her; she falls
asleep. He lets off fire, which surrounds her.
We now come to the Second Day. The dwarf Mime forges a sword in a
wood. Siegfried appears. He is a son born from the incest of brother
with sister (Siegmund with Sieglinda), and has been brought up in
this wood by the dwarf. In general the motives for the actions of
everybody in this production are quite unintelligible. Siegfried
learns his own origin, and that the broken sword was his father’s.
He orders Mime to re-forge it, and then goes off. Wotan comes in the
guise of a wanderer and relates what will happen: that he who has not
learnt to fear will forge the sword and will defeat everybody. The
dwarf conjectures that this is Siegfried, and wants to poison him.
Siegfried returns, forges his father’s sword, and runs off, shouting,
“Heiho heiho heiho! Ho ho! Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho!
ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei!”
And we get to Act II. Alberich sits guarding a giant, who, in form
of a dragon, guards the gold he has received. Wotan appears, and
for some unknown reason foretells that Siegfried will come and kill
the dragon. Alberich wakes the dragon and asks him for the ring,
promising to defend him from Siegfried. The dragon won’t give up
the ring. Exit Alberich. Mime and Siegfried appear. Mime hopes the
dragon will teach Siegfried to fear. But Siegfried does not fear.
He drives Mime away and kills the dragon, after which he puts his
finger, smeared with the dragon’s blood, to his lips. This enables
him to know men’s secret thoughts, as well as the language of birds.
The birds tell him where the treasure and the ring are, and also that
Mime wishes to poison him. Mime returns and says out loud that he
wishes to poison Siegfried. This is meant to signify that Siegfried,
having tasted dragon’s blood, understands people’s secret thoughts.
Siegfried, having learnt Mime’s intentions, kills him. The birds tell
Siegfried where Brünnhilda is, and he goes to find her.
Act III. Wotan calls up Erda. Erda prophesies to Wotan, and gives
him advice. Siegfried appears, quarrels with Wotan, and they fight.
Suddenly Siegfried’s sword breaks Wotan’s spear, which had been
more powerful than anything else. Siegfried goes into the fire to
Brünnhilda and kisses her; she wakes up, abandons her divinity, and
throws herself into Siegfried’s arms.
Third Day. Prelude. Three Norns plait a golden rope and talk about
the future. They go away. Siegfried and Brünnhilda appear. Siegfried
takes leave of her, gives her the ring, and goes away.
Act I. By the Rhine. A king wants to get married and also to give his
sister in marriage. Hagen, the king’s wicked brother, advises him
to marry Brünnhilda and to give his sister to Siegfried. Siegfried
appears; they give him a drugged draught, which makes him forget all
the past and fall in love with the king’s sister, Gutrune. So he
rides off with Gunther, the king, to get Brünnhilda to be the king’s
bride. The scene changes. Brünnhilda sits with the ring. A Valkyrie
comes to her and tells her that Wotan’s spear is broken, and advises
her to give the ring to the Rhine nymphs. Siegfried comes and by
means of the magic helmet turns himself into Gunther, demands the
ring from Brünnhilda, seizes it, and drags her off to sleep with him.
Act II. By the Rhine. Alberich and Hagen discuss how to get the ring.
Siegfried comes, tells how he has obtained a bride for Gunther and
how he spent the night with her but put a sword between himself and
her. Brünnhilda rides up, recognises the ring on Siegfried’s hand,
and declares that it was he, and not Gunther, who was with her. Hagen
stirs everybody up against Siegfried, and decides to kill him next
day when hunting.
Act III. Again the nymphs in the Rhine relate what has happened.
Siegfried, who has lost his way, appears. The nymphs ask him for
the ring but he won’t give it up. Hunters appear. Siegfried tells
the story of his life. Hagen then gives him a draught which causes
his memory to return to him. Siegfried relates how he aroused and
obtained Brünnhilda, and everyone is astonished. Hagen stabs him
in the back, and the scene is changed. Gutrune meets the corpse
of Siegfried. Gunther and Hagen quarrel about the ring, and Hagen
kills Gunther. Brünnhilda cries. Hagen wishes to take the ring
from Siegfried’s hand, but the hand of the corpse raises itself
threateningly. Brünnhilda takes the ring from Siegfried’s hand, and
when Siegfried’s corpse is carried to the pyre she gets on to a horse
and leaps into the fire. The Rhine rises, and the waves reach the
pyre. In the river are three nymphs. Hagen throws himself into the
fire to get the ring, but the nymphs seize him and carry him off. One
of them holds the ring; and that is the end of the matter.
The impression obtainable from my recapitulation is of course
incomplete. But however incomplete it may be it is certainly
infinitely more favourable than the impression which results from
reading the four booklets in which the work is printed.
PART XIV
TOLSTOY’S VIEW OF ART
The substance of the following article appeared in the _Contemporary
Review_, August 1900, as a reply to critics who had misquoted,
misrepresented, or misunderstood Tolstoy. Their attacks were too
ephemeral for it to be necessary to reproduce the polemical part of
the reply; but, as previously remarked, what is worth preserving
is an explanation of Tolstoy’s position, which as it obtained his
unqualified approval is conclusive on certain matters in dispute.
In order to give the statement in the words Tolstoy endorsed I have
retained some passages which have appeared in previous chapters of
this book, and can only apologize to my readers for these repetitions.
Tolstoy had great difficulty in presenting his opinions (especially
his religious and philosophic opinions) to the world. Several of
his books were prohibited in Russia. Those printed in Geneva were
carelessly edited, and (missing the attention Tolstoy usually gave to
his proof-sheets) contained errors that tripped up his translators.
Other works of his, permitted in Russia, were tampered with by the
Censor, who struck out what Tolstoy wrote and inserted words he
objected to, as, for instance, was the case in the Russian edition of
_What is Art?_
But, for non-Russian readers, the heaviest blow to Tolstoy’s
reputation as a clear and sane thinker was struck, not by the Censor,
but by translators who failed to reproduce his thought. Versions of
some of his most serious works appeared containing much absolute
nonsense. They were issued at a time when readers, surprised that a
novelist should undertake philosophic work, were wondering whether
they ought to regard Tolstoy seriously in his new rôle; and they
caused some to conclude that, as a philosopher, he need not be taken
seriously.[130]
A man who spoke the truth as he saw it under constant risk of
persecution, whose works were suppressed or mutilated at home and
badly edited abroad, who was translated so that he was made to assert
what he in fact denied, has a special claim to fair treatment at the
hands of reviewers. But this claim was not always recognized.
His rank among the foremost writers of fiction was not questioned;
but some of his philosophical works treating of human conduct,
activities, institutions, and beliefs, had a different fate. When
_What is Art?_ appeared, it had a mixed reception, though some
leading critics saw its value and one of them hailed it as “the most
important essay in pure criticism of recent years, and destined to
become a classic.”
Tolstoy had in this book said much that was new, startling, and not
quickly digestible; and he had expressed it so caustically, had
been so severe on critics, specialists, professional artists, and
art-schools, as well as on whole groups of people from spiritualists
to scientists--including fifty or more well-known people then living,
into the bargain--he had, in fact, hit out so freely and so hard that
counter-attacks of considerable asperity were inevitable. In reply to
such attacks the following pages were written.
No department of science, as Véron justly remarks, has been more
generally abandoned to the dreams of the metaphysicians than esthetic
philosophy. The task Tolstoy undertook was to clear up the “the
frightful obscurity which reigns in this region of speculation.”
What is Art? Its manifestations are “bounded on one side by the
practically useful and on the other by unsuccessful attempts at
art.” But what working definition of art have we that would enable
us to feel sure that this or that production of human activity is
a work of art? The answer at first seems very simple to those “who
talk without thinking.” They are accustomed to say that “Art is such
activity as produces beauty.” But this only shifts the matter a
step. We have now to ask for a working definition of beauty, and on
careful examination we find that this has nowhere been given. Every
attempt to define beauty _objectively_, as consisting “either in
utility, or in adjustment to a purpose, or in symmetry, or in order,
or in proportion, or in smoothness, or in harmony of the parts, or in
unity amid variety, or in various combinations of these” (p. 161),
has broken down utterly, and we have nothing left but a _subjective_
definition which amounts to this, that beauty is “that which pleases
us” without evoking in us desire. In other words, “Beauty is simply
a certain kind of disinterested pleasure received by us.” This
definition seems clear enough, but unfortunately it is inexact, and
can be widened to include the pleasure derived from drink, from food,
from touching a delicate skin, and so forth, as is done by Guyau,
Kralik, and other estheticians.
A yet more serious trouble is, that different things please different
people. Instead of getting a solid basis for a science, we get landed
in confusion arising from the fact that tastes differ. If we use the
word _beauty_ in our definition of art, and if beauty means “that
which pleases,” and if different things please different people--our
definition is useless. One man will say a certain thing is a work of
art because it pleases him, another will reply that it is not a work
of art because he does not like it.
And this is precisely what has happened and is happening. Is Walt
Whitman a great poet? Yes, says A, he is, because I like his poems
and agree with them. No, says B, he is not, because I don’t like his
poems and disagree with them.
Thus the science of esthetics has as yet failed to get even a start.
It has not told us what art is, still less has it enabled us to
judge of the quality of art. “So that the whole existing science
of esthetics fails to do what we might expect from it, being a
mental activity calling itself a science: namely, it does not
define the qualities and laws of art, or of the beautiful (if that
be the content of art), or the nature of taste (if taste decides
the question of art and its merit), and then on the basis of such
definitions acknowledge as art those productions which correspond to
these laws, and reject those which do not come under them. But this
science of esthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain set of
productions to be art (because they please us), and then framing such
a theory of art that all these productions which please a certain
circle of people should fit into it” (p. 164).
Such being the case, reasonable men should be not merely ready
but anxious to avoid the use of the word beauty in framing their
definition of art, and should select words which mean the same thing
to each of us who use them. Yet, strange to say, the estheticians,
the specialists, and the “cultured crowd,” cling tenaciously and even
fanatically to the use of a word they cannot define in a serviceable
manner. They are as angry with anyone who protests against its use
in a scientific definition, as the Scarboro’ roughs[131] are with a
Quaker who says that men ought not to kill one another.
“As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception
conveyed by a word, with the more _aplomb_ and self-assurance do
people use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so
simple and clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it
actually means. This is how matters of orthodox religion are usually
dealt with, and this is how people now deal with the conception of
beauty” (p. 137).
For his part, Tolstoy prefers to understand, and to let other people
understand, what he means by the words he uses, and he has therefore
framed a definition of art which avoids all obscurity.
“_Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man
consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others
feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by
these feelings and also experience them_” (p. 173).
Art is possible because we share one common human nature. One
touch of nature makes the whole world kin. All who are capable
of experiencing “that simple feeling familiar to the plainest
man and even to a child, that sense of infection with another’s
feeling--compelling us to joy in another’s gladness, to sorrow at
another’s grief, and to mingle souls with another” (p. 273), possess
the mental and emotional telegraph wires along which an artist’s
influence may pass.
A common crowd may be swayed by an orator, but not by the ablest
mathematical lecturer; for whereas _thoughts_ can only be transferred
to minds sufficiently prepared to receive them, the _feelings_ that
are the birthright of our common humanity are shared by all normal
people. When an orator fails to sway his audience, we say the orator
has failed, not the audience. But when a boy fails to understand the
fifth proposition because he has not understood those that preceded
it, we do not say that Euclid has failed but that the boy has not
understood him. Science is a human activity transmitting thoughts
from man to man: Art is a human activity transmitting feelings. They
have some features in common. Clearness, simplicity, and compression,
are desirable in both, and the same book or the same speech may
contain both science and art. It is desirable to discriminate clearly
between the one and the other, though both alike are “indispensable
means of communication, without which mankind could not exist” (pp.
175 and 321).
Before passing from definitions to deductions based on them,
reference should be made to the physiological evolutionary definition
of Schiller, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, which Tolstoy sums up thus:
“Art is an activity arising even in the animal kingdom and ‘springing
from sexual desire and the propensity to play’” (p. 169). This,
though superior to the definitions which depend on the conception of
beauty, is unsatisfactory because, “instead of speaking about the
artistic activity itself, which is the real matter in hand, it treats
of the _derivation_ of art” (p. 169).
Accepting Tolstoy’s definition of art, we at once see that art covers
a much wider ground than we have been accustomed to suppose.
“We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see
in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions; together with buildings,
statues, poems, novels.... But all this is but the smallest part of
the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human
life is filled with works of art of every kind--from cradle-song,
jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up
to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions.
It is all artistic activity” (p. 174).
But we generally use the word in a special and restricted sense to
mean, not all human activity that deliberately and with premeditation
transmits feelings, “but only that part which we for some reason
select from it, and to which we attach special importance” (pp.
174–175).
Before considering what kind of art deserves to be thus specially
selected for our highest esteem, we must clearly distinguish between
two different things: the _subject-matter_ of art and the _form_ of
art apart from its subject-matter. This distinction is fundamentally
important and, as soon as it is made, the vexed question of the
relation of art to morality solves itself easily and inevitably.
Let us take art apart from its subject-matter first.
“There is one indubitable sign distinguishing real art from its
counterfeit--namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man without
exercising effort, and without altering his standpoint, on reading,
hearing, or seeing, another man’s work experiences a mental condition
which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake
of that work, then the object evoking that condition is a work of
art” (p. 274).
“And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of
infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art.”
“_The stronger the infection the better is the art_, as art, speaking
now apart from its subject-matter--that is, not considering the
quality of the feelings it transmits” (p. 275).
From this point of view, art has really nothing to do with morality.
The feelings transmitted may be good or bad feelings, and may produce
the best or the worst results on those who are influenced by them,
yet in either case the man who transmits them is an artist.
“The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most
various--very strong or very weak, very important or very
insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for native
land, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed
in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of
voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a
triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humor evoked by a funny
story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape
or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful
arabesque--it is all art” (pp. 172–173).
If you have not lost the capacity--usually possessed by people
leading a sane and natural life--to share the feelings expressed by
others, you may try the quality of a production first of all by this
internal test: Does it unite you in feeling with its author and with
others who are exposed to its influence? Only if it does this, have
_you_ any right to testify to its being a work of art.
If you are infected by the work, and are therefore sure that it is
a work of art, the next question is whether it is a weak work of
“exclusive” art, or a great work of “universal” art. It may influence
you--who have, perhaps, been specially trained and accustomed to that
kind of art, or who share the prepossessions of the artist and belong
to his set, class, school, sect, or race,--but is it capable of
influencing men of other classes, races, and ages? Here the primary
internal test is supplemented by an external one. There are works
of “universal” art (using the word, of course, in a comparative and
not in an absolute sense). The _Iliad_, the _Odyssey_, the story
of Joseph, the _Psalms_, the Gospel parables, the story of Sakya
Muni, the hymns of the _Vedas_, the best folk-legends, fairy-tales,
and folk-songs, are understood by all. If only they are adequately
rendered, and are received not superstitiously but with an open mind,
they are “quite comprehensible now to us, educated or uneducated, as
they were comprehensible to the men of those times, long ago, who
were even less educated than our labourers” (p. 226).
Even a strictly national art, such as Japanese decorative art, may
be admirable and “universal.” “The _feeling_ (of admiration at, and
delight in, the combination of lines and colours) which the artist
has experienced, and with which he infects the spectator” (p.
295), may be so sincere that it acts on men of other races without
demanding from them any laborious preparation before they can enjoy
it.
When we find ourselves admiring “exclusive art,” we must beware of
flattering ourselves with the supposition that great masses of people
do not like what _we_ consider undoubtedly good--because _they_ are
not sufficiently developed, while _we_ are very superior people.
Perhaps we admire and enjoy these things, not because they are very
good but merely because we have trained ourselves to admire them
and have got into the habit of doing so. But “people may habituate
themselves to anything, even to the very worst things. As people may
habituate themselves to bad food, to spirits, tobacco, and opium,
just in the same way they may habituate themselves to bad art--and
that is exactly what is being done” (p. 224).
Nor should we let our self-sufficiency blind us to the obvious
lesson of history: “we know that the majority of the productions of
the art of the upper classes, such as various odes, poems, dramas,
cantatas, pastorals, pictures, and so forth, which delighted people
of the upper classes when they were produced, never were afterwards
either understood or valued by the great masses of mankind, but have
remained what they were at first, a mere pastime for the rich people
of their time, for whom alone they ever were of any importance” (pp.
194–5).
“Art is a human activity,” and, consequently, does not exist for
its own sake, but is valuable or objectionable in proportion to the
benefit or the harm it brings to mankind. Its subject-matter consists
of feelings which are contagious or infectious--that is, which can
spread from man to man. Is it not supremely important _what_ feelings
spread among us?
From this point of view the connection between morality and art is
intimate and inevitable. It is a fact of human life from which we can
no more escape than we can from gravitation.
Art unites men; and the better the feelings in which it unites them
the better it will be for humanity.
But which are the best and highest feelings? How are we to discern
or to define them? They have differed, and men’s definitions of
them have differed, from age to age; but, as Tolstoy explains, each
age has had its dominant view of life, which may be called its
“religious perception.” Humanity progresses, and our view of life,
our religious perception, is in many things different from that, say,
of the ancient Greeks. In relation _not to the forms of art but to
its subject-matter_ it would be a mistake to suppose “that the very
best that can be done by the art of nations after nineteen hundred
years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their
life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding
people who lived two thousand years ago, who imitated the nude human
body extremely well, and erected buildings pleasant to look at” (pp.
188–189).
And Tolstoy, having begun by giving us his definition of art,
concludes by giving us a statement of the view of life he has
accepted and which he believes is influencing us all whether we know
it or not. It is, he says, Christ’s teaching in its real--and not in
its customary and perverted--meaning.
“That meaning has not only become accessible to all men of our times,
but the whole life of man to-day is permeated by the spirit of that
teaching, and consciously or unconsciously is guided by it” (pp.
308–309).
“The religious perception of our time in its widest and most
practical application is the consciousness that our well-being, both
material and spiritual, individual and collective, temporal and
eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood among men--in their loving
harmony with one another” (p. 281).
And whether we accept this view of life or some other, it is certain
that the view we hold will influence our approval or disapproval of
the various feelings transmitted by art.
Accepting Tolstoy’s standpoint, we should allow the highest honour to
“positive feelings of love to God and one’s neighbour, and negative
feelings of indignation and horror at the violation of love”; but the
realm of subject-matter for good art includes much more than that.
“The artist of the future will understand that to compose a
fairy-tale, a touching little song, a lullaby or an entertaining
riddle, an amusing jest, or to draw a sketch in such a way that
it will delight dozens of generations or millions of children and
adults, is incomparably more important and more fruitful than to
compose a novel or a symphony, or paint a picture, of the kind
which will divert some members of the wealthy classes for a short
time and then for ever be forgotten. The region of this art of the
simple feelings accessible to all is enormous and it is as yet almost
untouched” (p. 318).
The artist should know that this art of the simple feelings of common
life, like the highest religious art, tends to unite us all and to
exclude none, as in the example Tolstoy gives on p. 287 of the effect
of music.
Thus, apart from subject-matter, the best art is that which best
accomplishes its purpose of infecting others with the feelings the
artist wishes to impart. And the best subject-matter is that which,
directly or indirectly, tends to forward brotherly union among all
men.
The good art of the future should be superior to our present art in
“clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compression,” for one penalty of
forgetting the primary aim of art is that we greatly lose that which
is a natural accompaniment of art--the pleasure given by beauty. We
are like men who, living to eat, eventually lose even the natural
pleasure food affords to those who eat to live.
Such, in brief outline, are Tolstoy’s essential views of art. Even
so bare and incomplete a recapitulation, stripped as it is of the
convincing arguments, the brilliant examples, and the masterly
support and elucidation which are crammed into the pages of his
remarkable book may suffice to show that it is a work deserving
careful consideration.
To the above, written soon after _What is Art?_ was first published,
I should like now, in 1924, to add a few words.
The chief idea in _What is Art?_ besides its definition of art, is
Tolstoy’s insistence on the need to discriminate between the _form_
and the _content_ of art. For its full assimilation this requires
reflection, which--either because the philosophy of art does not
interest them, or because they are satisfied with previously adopted
opinions they do not wish to disturb--not all are willing to accord
to it. But the test of a great philosophy, I once heard Tolstoy say,
is that the idea it generalizes can be so simply stated that an
intelligent boy of twelve approaching the subject free from prejudice
can understand it in half-an-hour: and I think both Tolstoy’s
definition, and his explanation of the need to consider the form of
art as a matter distinct from our approval and disapproval of the
feeling the artist transmits, will stand that crucial test. They
can be put so simply that an unprejudiced boy of twelve can readily
understand them.
One must however be on one’s guard against confusing the _subject_
treated of (a particular event: a murder, a seduction, a marriage--or
an object, such as the sea, the sky, a house, a tiger, or a baby)
with the _subject-matter of feeling_, which is the real content of a
work of art. In Tolstoy’s definition it is a feeling or feelings,
and their transitions, that when expressed by an artist, form the
subject-matter of art. The events treated of--in a book, a play,
a picture, or song--are merely material used in expressing that
feeling, and must not themselves be thought of as the subject-matter.
The affection of a child for its mother or its dog may be the
subject-matter of a work of art, so may an appreciation of the
effect of certain arrangements of colours and shapes, the mirth and
jollity expressed and inspired by a dance-tune or by the movements
of a dance, the feelings of awe produced by the representation of
a terrible storm, or any other possible feelings or transitions of
feeling: the rage of an excited crowd, the triumph of a victorious
nation, the despair of a man ruined or betrayed, or feelings evoked
by the play of light and shade, by the delicate bloom of a flower,
or by the graceful tracery of a tree seen against a winter sky. When
asking oneself whether a certain production is a work of art, one
has to consider whether we feel something the artist has felt and
caused us to share. If one feels that, it is evident that we have
before us a work of art--our own feelings witness to the artist’s
achievement. Sometimes however the pleasure this union of feeling
with the artist--and perhaps with many spectators, auditors or
readers--would naturally produce, is infringed by a consciousness
that one disapproves of, or disagrees with, the feelings that for the
moment have infected us.
For instance, many Irishmen are born orators, and oratory is an
art. Suppose one went to two great public meetings, addressed by
two really first-rate speakers. Each of these is moved by a genuine
and passionate feeling. Each has the gift of arranging his matter
admirably and expressing it forcibly and eloquently, and possesses an
excellent voice. Each sways his audience to laughter and tears, and
plays on their emotions as on an organ, compelling them to sympathize
with his detestation for what he abhors and his enthusiasm for what
he prizes. We may feel that we have heard great orations admirably
delivered, but the feelings underlying these speeches have clashed
with one another. One of the speakers was moved by ardent desire to
maintain and intensify an age-long struggle, and repudiates with
contumely any idea of union with a section of the population that
he hates and despises. He was genuinely moved by the recollection
of racial wrongs and sincerely devoted to leaders he regarded as
heroes and martyrs; but animosity, hatred, and revenge, possessed his
soul. The other orator was moved by a desire to bind up the nation’s
wounds, to forgive and forget past wrongs, and to see a neighbouring
people become a united and peaceful nation at harmony with itself and
its neighbours. One might sympathize with either tendency, but it is
impossible to sympathize equally with them both, or to close one’s
eyes to the fact that the welfare of human beings will be influenced
by whichever feeling prevails. Tolstoy explains that when we judge
whether a certain production (such as one of these speeches) is a
work of art, we must remember that our approval or disapproval of a
man’s purpose or aspiration must have nothing whatever to do with our
estimation of the excellence of the _form_ in which he presents his
subject-matter. To that extent art “has nothing to do with morality.”
The best and the worst emotions may alike be conveyed with great
artistic power and be great works of art, and that is just why art,
besides being vastly important, can also be very dangerous.
But when we have seen that a certain production is artistic, and
have even perhaps ourselves been touched by it, the question arises
whether the “content” (the subject-matter of feeling) dealt with
is good, bad, or indifferent. The actions of men flow from their
feelings. Their feelings are formed, nurtured, and swayed, by the
art they enjoy and partake of, so that there was much reason for
Fletcher of Saltoun to say, “Let me make a nation’s songs, and who
will may make its laws.”
We live in a world in which sane human beings cannot but distinguish
between what appears to them abominable and what appears to them
admirable. When therefore we are moved by our artists we cannot be
indifferent to the effect their works produce.
If art had nothing to do with the feelings of men it would be an
empty and insignificant amusement; but all that influences man’s
feelings affects his work, his conduct, and the society to which he
belongs. Yet, obviously, to say that the morality of an artist’s aim
decides the artistic merit of his work, and that, for instance, a
novel must be a fine one because it advocates temperance principles,
though people can only be got to read it if they are forced to do so,
would show that the speaker had never thought about the matter, or
that his artistic perceptions were atrophied.
But we are still not at the end of the matter. Who is to decide what
is good and what is bad in the feeling which forms the subject-matter
of art? Such judgment must vary from age to age, from land to land,
and even from man to man; for while all sane human beings have their
approvals and disapprovals, the outlook on life (or what Tolstoy
calls “the religious perceptions”) guiding such approvals and
disapprovals vary greatly.
It comes to this, that the subject-matter of feeling transmitted by
artists to those who receive their art is of necessity appraised by
us in accordance with our own outlook on life. Tolstoy rightly points
out this inevitable contact of art with ethics, but his own ethical
standards, his “religious perceptions” are not those generally
accepted among us. A discussion of his ethics would be out of place
here. Elsewhere I have ventured to join issue with him on some
matters, while on others it seems to me that he made straight the
pathway of the Lord.
Now obviously when--passing from the acknowledgment of various
productions as works of art because their form is adequate and
they achieve their purpose of infecting us with the feelings their
creators had experienced--Tolstoy discusses, as a separate matter,
whether certain feelings these artists transmitted are beneficial or
otherwise, it is inevitable that those who differ from his ethical
views should disagree with his conclusions. But this difference as
to ethics should not hinder an appreciation of the importance of his
understanding of art! He was a great artist, a first-class novelist,
dramatist, and story-writer, besides being an amateur musician,
keenly interested in painting, sculpture, and other forms of art, and
he was also well acquainted with artists of all kinds and with the
whole literature of art. Is it not worth our while to understand his
message and grasp his meaning clearly before attempting to answer him?
As an example of criticism tending to confuse matters, I will
instance this case: after making the broad distinction between the
form of art and its subject-matter, Tolstoy passes on to the totally
different question of what feelings commended themselves to him. He
says he attaches no special importance to the examples he cites but
offers them merely to elucidate his meaning. Among books expressing
feelings of which he approved, he instances _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_,
and immediately certain critics pounced upon this, and say that as
Mrs. Beecher Stowe did not write as well as someone else whom they
mentioned, Tolstoy’s example shows that he was incapable of judging
about art! Such criticism shows a curious incapacity to understand
what is being discussed. Similarly objections to pictures mentioned
by Tolstoy as good in subject-matter--on the ground of alleged
defects in form--miss the point of the discussion.
When a book deals frankly and plainly with an important subject it is
strange that anyone, instead of seeking the gold in the mine, should
prefer to search for obscurity, contradiction, over-emphasis, or any
ill-advised examples that can be detected; and that some critics
should go the length of asserting that the author meant the opposite
of what he plainly says.
I do not see why anyone should object to, or disagree with, Tolstoy’s
explanation of art and of its influence on life; nor with his
assertion that when we pass from a consideration of the form of works
of art to a consideration of the value of the feelings they convey,
our appraisement of these latter is inevitably influenced by our
outlook on life. But an important reservation must be made when we
come to his assurance that “the religious perception of our time,
in its widest and most practical application, is the consciousness
that our well-being both material and spiritual, individual and
collective, temporal and eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood
among all men, in their loving harmony with one another,” and that
“all men of our times already admit that the highest well-being
attainable by men is to be reached by their union with one another.”
If all men had such a religious perception, there would be a much
greater consensus of opinion concerning the value of feelings
transmitted by art. But it is just here, it seems to me, that the
real clash of opinion and feeling comes in. There are among us many
worshippers of Mars, Mammon, Venus and Bacchus (under whatever
disguises), and though they may not publicly proclaim or explain
their religious perceptions, it is impossible for them honestly to
sympathize with what Tolstoy wishes them to approve of. During the
last thirty years of his life Tolstoy disapproved of patriotism and
of private property. Rudyard Kipling approves of both. Each of these
men was an artist in words. The divergence of their estimates of
what is good and what is bad did not prevent them from producing
works of art; but neither of them could think that all the feelings
with which the other infected his readers were desirable. Before
considering the matter, people are sometimes apt to resent the idea
that ethical standards vary from place to place or from time to
time; or, on realizing that such is the fact, they try to think that
it is possible for a sane man to cease to approve or disapprove of
anything. It does not however need much experience to perceive that
men cannot live in the chaos that results when they have no sort of
chart or guide by which to steer their course through life. In other
words whether a man is a materialist or a spiritualist, and whatever
his aspirations may be, he always, more or less consciously and
definitely, has what Tolstoy calls “a religious perception.”
In an interesting essay on _Religion and Morality_[132] (1894)
Tolstoy classified existing “religious perceptions” in three groups:
(1) Selfishness--the religion, for instance, of all the babies who
desire as much milk and warmth for themselves as possible, and do
not care what happens to the rest of the world; (2) Patriotism--the
religion of all who make the welfare of their family, clan, group,
or nation (or even, as in the case of the Positivists, the whole of
humanity) the chief aim of their life; and (3) those who recognize
some supreme Lord or Law, whose service transcends any calculable
advantage accruing to themselves or to their group.
There is truth in that classification, but one need only admit it,
to realize that appreciation of the feelings conveyed by art _must_
differ among us according to whether we adhere to the first, the
second, or the third of those groups.
This divergence relating to feelings which are the subject-matter of
art, should not extend to what Tolstoy says about the form of art, or
its interrelation with the rest of life. Whatever God one worships
can be greatly served by means of art.
In an admirable little article on _How to Read the Gospels_
(1896)[133] Tolstoy says:
“To understand Christ’s real teaching the chief thing is not
to interpret the Gospels, but to understand them as they are
written. And therefore, to the question how Christ’s teaching
should be understood, I reply: If you wish to understand
it read the Gospels. Read them, putting aside all foregone
conclusions; read them with the sole desire to understand what
is said there. But read them considerately, reasonably, and
with discernment, and not haphazard or mechanically, as though
all the words were of equal weight.
“_To understand any book one must choose out the parts that
are quite clear, dividing them from what is obscure or
confused. And from what is clear we must form our idea of the
drift and spirit of the whole work._ Then, on the basis of
what we have understood, we may proceed to make out what is
confused or not quite intelligible. That is how we read all
kinds of books.
“Therefore we must first of all separate what is quite simple
and intelligible from what is confused and unintelligible and
must afterwards read this clear and intelligible part several
times over, trying fully to assimilate it. Then, helped by the
comprehension of the general meaning, we can try to explain
to ourselves the drift of the parts which seemed involved and
obscure. That was how I read the Gospels, and the meaning of
Christ’s teaching became so clear to me that it was impossible
to have any doubts about it. And I advise everyone who wishes
to understand the true meaning of Christ’s teaching to follow
the same plan.”
This advice, showing how “all kinds of books” should be read, is
particularly applicable to the reading of Tolstoy’s _What is Art?_
The views there expressed are those of a man born nearly a century
ago, who differed widely from ourselves in race, nationality,
up-bringing, circumstances, and class,--for he was a Russian nobleman
of the old régime. That some of his feelings and ideas should differ
from our own was inevitable, but the really remarkable thing is that
so much of what he says makes us conscious of oneness with him. He
was accustomed to express himself strongly, and assumed that those
who read his works would wish to understand them and would not
desire to twist his meaning. Those who deal with his work in the way
he advised can certainly obtain a clear view of the subject, as he
understood it. If what he has said is true, in whole or in part, it
is desirable to grasp that truth and, even if he be in error, it is
desirable to understand his meaning before attempting any refutation.
In _What is Art?_ Tolstoy says:
“I have accomplished to the best of my ability this work
which has occupied me for fifteen years, on a subject near to
me--that of art.... I began to write on art fifteen years ago
thinking that when once I undertook the task I should be able
to accomplish it without a break. It proved however that my
views on the matter were so far from clear that I could not
arrange them in a way that satisfied me. From that time I have
never ceased to think on the subject, and I have recommenced
writing on it six or seven times; but each time, after writing
a considerable part of it, I have found myself unable to bring
the work to a satisfactory conclusion, and have had to put it
aside.” (p. 321)
That was written in 1897, and the fifteen years mentioned bring us
nearly back to the time when his _Confession_ was written, and the
statement indicates that all the earlier essays in this book, while
expressing some part of his thought, fail to elucidate the matter as
he desired, and it is only in _What is Art?_ that we must look for
the final conclusions that solved the matter to his satisfaction.
PART XV
PREFACE TO POLENZ’S NOVEL “DER BÜTTNERBAUER”
W. VON POLENZ was born in 1861 and died in 1903. His novels, _Der
Pfarrer von Breitendorf_ (1893), _Der Büttnerbauer_ (1895), are
descriptions of village life. His _Grabenhäger_, _Thekla Lüdekind_
and _Liebe ist ewig_ (1900) describe the life of the landowning and
town classes. _Wurzellocker_ (1902) describes a literary society.
_Note by A. M._
“For you will find, if you think deeply of it, that the chief
of all the curses of this unhappy age is the universal gabble
of its fools, and of the flocks that follow them, rendering
the quiet voices of the wise men of all past time inaudible.
This is, first, the result of the invention of printing,
and of the easy power and extreme pleasure to vain persons
of seeing themselves in print. When it took a twelvemonth’s
hard work to make a single volume legible, men considered
a little the difference between one book and another; but
now, when not only anybody can get themselves made legible
through any quantity of volumes, in a week, but the doing so
becomes a means of living to them, and they can fill their
stomachs with the foolish foam of their lips, the universal
pestilence of falsehood fills the mind of the world as cicadas
do olive-leaves, and the first necessity for our mental
government is to extricate from among the insectile noise, the
few books and words that are Divine.”
Ruskin, in _Fors Clavigera_, Letter 81.
Last year a friend of mine, in whose taste I have confidence, gave me
a German novel, _Der Büttnerbauer_, by von Polenz to read. I read it
and was astonished that such a work, which appeared a couple of years
ago, was hardly known by anyone.
This novel is not one of those works of imitation-art that are
produced in such enormous quantities in our time, but a really
artistic production. It is not one of those descriptions of events
and of people, destitute of all interest, which are artificially put
together merely because the author, having learned the technique of
artistic descriptions, wants to write a new novel; nor is it one of
those dissertations on a given theme set in the form of a drama or
novel, which also in our day pass as artistic productions: nor does
it belong to the class of works called “decadent,” which particularly
please the modern public just because, resembling the ravings of a
madman, they present something of the nature of rebuses, the guessing
of which forms a pleasant occupation, besides being considered a sign
of refinement.
This novel belongs neither to the first, nor to the second, nor to
the third, of these categories, but is a real work of art, in which
the author says what he feels he must say because he loves what he
is speaking about, and says it not by reflections or hazy allegories
but in the one manner by which an artistic content can be conveyed,
by poetic images, not fantastic extraordinary unintelligible images
with no essential inner connexion one with another, but by the
presentation of the most ordinary simple persons and events united
one with another by an inner artistic necessity.
But not only is this novel a genuine work of art, it is also an
admirable work of art, uniting in a high degree all the three chief
conditions of really good artistic production.
In the first place, its content is important, relating as it does
to the life of the peasantry--that is, to the majority of mankind,
who stand at the basis of every social structure and in our day, not
only in Germany but in all European countries, are enduring trying
alterations of their ancient, age-long condition. (It is remarkable
that almost simultaneously with _Der Büttnerbauer_ there has appeared
a French novel, Réné Bazin’s _La Terre qui meurt_, which is not at
all bad, though far less artistic.)
In the second place, this novel is written with great mastery, in
admirable German, particularly forcible when the author makes his
characters speak the coarse peasant-labourer’s Plattdeutsch.
In the third place, this novel is thoroughly imbued with love of
these people whom the author sets before us.
In one of the chapters, for instance, there is a description of how
after a night passed in drunkenness with his comrades, the husband,
when it is already morning, returns home and knocks at the door.
The wife looks out of the window and recognizes him; she loads him
with abuse and is purposely slow about letting him in. When at last
she opens the door for him, the husband tumbles in and wants to go
into the large living-room, but the wife does not let him, lest the
children should see their father drunk, and she pushes him back. But
he catches hold of the lintel of the door and struggles with her.
Usually a mild man, he suddenly becomes terribly exasperated (the
cause of his exasperation is that, the day before, she had taken out
of his pocket some money his master had given him, and had hidden it)
and in his rage he flings himself upon her, seizes her by the hair,
and demands his money.
“I won’t give it up, I won’t give it up for anything!” says she in
reply to his demands, trying to free herself from him.
Then he, forgetting himself in his anger, strikes her where and as he
can.
“I’ll die before I’ll give it up!” says she.
“You won’t give it up!” he answers, knocking her off her feet and
falling on her himself, while continuing to demand his money. Not
receiving a reply he, in his mad drunken anger, wants to throttle
her. But the sight of blood which trickles from under her hair and
flows over her forehead and nose, causes him to stop. He becomes
frightened at what he has done and, letting go of her, staggers and
falls down on his bed.
The scene is truthful and terrible. But the author loves his
protagonists and adds one small detail which suddenly illuminates
everything with such a vivid ray as compels the reader not only to
pity, but also to love these people, despite their coarseness and
cruelty. The wife who has been beaten comes to herself, rises from
the floor, wipes her bleeding head with the hem of her skirt, feels
her limbs and, opening the door leading to the crying children,
quiets them, and then seeks her husband with her eyes. He is lying on
the bed as he has fallen, but his head has slipped from the pillow.
The wife walks over to him, carefully raises his head on the pillow,
and after that adjusts her dress and picks off some of her hair that
had been pulled out.
Dozens of pages of discussions would not have said all that is said
by this detail. Here at once the reader is shown the consciousness,
educated by tradition, of conjugal duty and the triumph of a decision
maintained--not to give up the money needed, not for herself but for
the family; here also is the offence, forgiveness of the beating,
and pity, and if not love, at least the memory of love for her
husband, the father of her children. Nor is that all. Such a detail,
illuminating the inner life of this woman and this man, lights up
for the reader the inner life of millions of such husbands and wives
who have lived or are now living, and not only teaches respect and
love for these people who are crushed by toil, but compels us to
consider why and wherefore they, strong in soul and body, with such
possibilities in them of good loving life, are so neglected, crushed,
and ignorant.
And such truly artistic traits, which are revealed only by love of
what the author describes, are met with in every chapter of this
novel.
It is undoubtedly a beautiful work of art, as all who read it will
agree. And yet it appeared three years ago, and, though translated
into Russian in the _Messenger of Europe_, has passed unnoticed both
in Russia and in Germany. I have asked several literary Germans
whom I have met recently about this novel--they had heard Polenz’s
name but had not read his book, though they had all read the last
novels of Zola, the last stories by Kipling, and the plays of Ibsen,
d’Annunzio, and even of Maeterlinck.
Some twenty years ago Matthew Arnold wrote an admirable article
on the purpose of criticism.[134] In his opinion the purpose of
criticism is to find among all that has been written, whenever and
wherever it may be, that which is most important and good, and to
direct the attention of readers to this that is important and good.
In our time, when readers are deluged with newspapers, periodicals,
books, and by the profusion of advertisements, not only does such
criticism seem to me essential, but the whole future culture of
the educated class of our European world depends on whether such
criticism appears and acquires authority.
The over-production of any kind of article is harmful; but the
over-production of articles which are not an aim but a means is
particularly harmful when people consider this means to be an aim.
Horses and carriages as means of conveyance, clothing and houses as
means of protection against changes of weather, good food to maintain
the strength of one’s organism, are very useful. But as soon as
men begin to regard the possession of means as an end in itself,
considering it good to have as many horses, clothes, and houses, and
as much food as possible, such articles become not only useless but
simply harmful. And this has come about with book-production among
the well-to-do circle of people of our European society. Printing,
which is undoubtedly useful for the great masses of uneducated
people, among well-to-do people has long ago become the chief organ
for the dissemination of ignorance and not of enlightenment.
It is easy to convince oneself of this. Books, periodicals, and
especially newspapers, have become in our time great financial
undertakings for the success of which the largest possible number of
purchasers is required. But the interests and tastes of the largest
number of purchasers are always low and vulgar, and so for the
success of the productions of the press it is necessary that these
productions should correspond to the demands of this great mass of
purchasers, that is, that they should treat of mean interests and
correspond to vulgar tastes. And the press fully satisfies these
demands, having ample opportunity of doing so since among those who
work for the press there are many more with the same mean interests
and coarse tastes as the public than there are men with lofty
interests and refined taste. And since with the diffusion of printing
and the commercial methods applied to newspapers, periodicals, and
books, these people receive good pay for matter that they supply
corresponding to the demands of the masses, there appears that
terrible ever increasing and increasing deluge of printed paper,
which by its quantity alone, not to speak of the harmfulness of its
contents, forms a vast obstacle to enlightenment.
If in our day a clever young man of the people, wishing to educate
himself, is given access to all books, periodicals, and newspapers,
and the choice of his reading is left to himself, he will, if he
reads for ten years assiduously every day, in all probability read
nothing but stupid and immoral books. It is as improbable that
he will strike on a good book as it would be that he should find
a marked pea in a bushel of peas. What is worst of all is that,
continually reading bad books, he will more and more pervert his
understanding and his taste, so that when he does come on a good work
he will either be quite unable to understand it or will understand it
perversely.
Besides this, thanks to accident or to masterly advertisement, some
bad works, such, for instance, as _The Christian_ by Hall Caine, a
novel false in its content and inartistic, which has been sold to
the extent of a million copies, obtains, like Odol or Pears’ Soap, a
great notoriety not justified by its merits. And this great publicity
causes an ever greater and greater number of people to read such
books, and the fame of an insignificant, or often harmful, book grows
and grows like a snowball, and in the heads of the great majority of
men an ever greater and greater confusion of ideas forms, also like a
snowball, involving complete incapacity to understand the qualities
of literary productions. And therefore in proportion to the greater
and greater diffusion of newspapers, periodicals, books, and printing
in general, the level of the quality of what is printed falls lower
and lower, and the great mass of the so-called educated public is
ever more and more immersed in the most hopeless, self-satisfied, and
therefore incurable, ignorance.
Within my own memory, during the last fifty years, this striking
debasement of the taste and common sense of the reading public
has occurred. One may trace this debasement in all branches of
literature, but I will indicate only some notable instances best
known to me. In Russian poetry, for instance, after Púshkin and
Lérmontov (Tyútchev is generally forgotten) poetic fame passes
first to the very doubtful poets, Máykov, Polónski, and Fet, then
to Nekrásov, who was quite destitute of the poetic gift, then to
the artificial and prosaic versifier, Alexéy Tolstóy, then to the
monotonous and weak Nádson, then to the quite ungifted Apúkhtin, and
after that everything becomes confused and versifiers appear whose
name is legion, who do not even know what poetry is, or the meaning
of what they write, or why they write.
Another astonishing example is that of the English prose writers.
From the great Dickens we descend, first to George Eliot, then to
Thackeray, from Thackeray to Trollope, and then already there begin
the indifferent fabrications of Kipling, Hall Caine, Rider Haggard,
and so forth. The same thing is yet more striking in American
literature. After the great galaxy of Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell,
Whittier and others, suddenly everything crumbles and there appear
beautiful publications with beautiful illustrations, but with stories
and novels it is impossible to read because of their lack of any
content.
In our time the ignorance of the educated crowd has reached such a
pass that all the really great thinkers, poets, and prose writers,
both of ancient times and of the nineteenth century, are considered
obsolete, and no longer satisfy the lofty and refined demands of
the new men; it is all regarded with contempt or with a smile of
condescension. The immoral, coarse, inflated, disconnected babble of
Nietzsche is recognised as the last word of the philosophy of our
day, and the senseless artificial arrangements of words in various
decadent poems united by measure and rhythm, is regarded as poetry of
the highest order. In all the theatres pieces are given the meaning
of which is unknown to anyone, even to the authors, and novels that
have no content and no artistic merit are printed and circulated by
millions, under the guise of artistic productions.
“What shall I read to supplement my education?” asks a young man or
girl who has finished his or her studies at the high-school.
The same question is put by a man of the people who has learned
to read and to understand what he reads, and is seeking true
enlightenment.
To answer such questions the naïve attempts made to interrogate
prominent men as to which they consider to be the best hundred books
is of course insufficient.
Nor is the matter helped by the classification existing in our
European society, and tacitly accepted by all, which divides writers
into first, second, and third class, and so on--into those of
genius, those who are very talented, and those simply good. Such a
division, far from helping a true understanding of the excellences of
literature, and the search for what is good amid the sea of what is
bad, still more confuses this aim. To say nothing of the fact that
this division into classes is often incorrect and maintained only
because it was made long ago and is accepted by everybody, such a
division is harmful, because writers acknowledged to be first-class
have written some very bad things, and writers of the lowest class
have produced some excellent things. So that a man who believes
in the division of writers into classes, and thinks everything by
first-class writers to be admirable, and everything by writers of
the lower class or those quite unknown, to be weak, will only become
confused, and deprive himself of much that is useful and truly
enlightening.
Only real criticism can reply to that most important question of our
day, put by the youth of the educated class who seeks education, and
by the man of the people who seeks enlightenment--not such criticism
as now exists, which sets itself the task of praising such works as
have obtained notoriety, and devising foggy philosophic-esthetic
theories to justify them; and not criticism that makes it its task
more or less wittily to ridicule bad works or works proceeding
from a different camp; still less such criticism as has functioned
and still functions in Russia, and sets itself the aim of deducing
the direction of the movement of our whole society from some types
depicted by certain writers, or in general of finding opportunities
to express particular economic and political opinions under guise of
discussing literary productions.
To that enormously important question, “What, of all that has been
written, is one to read?” only real criticism can furnish a reply:
criticism which, as Matthew Arnold says, sets itself the task of
bringing to the front and pointing out to people all that is best
both in former and in contemporary writers.
On whether such disinterested criticism, which understands and loves
art and is independent of any party, makes its appearance or not, and
on whether its authority becomes sufficiently established for it to
be stronger than mercenary advertisement, depends, in my opinion, the
decision of the question whether the last rays of enlightenment are
to perish in our so-called educated European society without having
reached the masses of the people, or whether they will revive, as
they did in the Middle Ages, and reach the great mass of the people
who are now without any enlightenment.
The fact that the mass of the public do not know of this admirable
novel of Polenz’s any more than they do of many other admirable works
which are drowned in the sea of printed rubbish, while senseless,
insignificant, and even simply nasty, literary productions are
discussed from every aspect, invariably praised, and sold by millions
of copies, has evoked in me these thoughts, and I avail myself of
the opportunity, which will hardly present itself to me again, of
expressing them, though it be but briefly.
_1902._
PART XVI
AN AFTERWORD, BY TOLSTOY, TO CHEKHOV’S STORY, “DARLING”
There is profound meaning in the story in the Book of Numbers, which
tells how Balak, king of the Moabites, sent for Balaam to curse the
people of Israel who had come to his borders. Balak promised Balaam
many gifts for his service; and Balaam, being tempted, went to Balak,
but was stopped on the way by an angel who was seen by his ass but
whom Balaam did not see. In spite of this Balaam went on to Balak and
went with him up a mountain, where an altar had been prepared with
calves and lambs slaughtered in readiness for the imprecation. Balak
waited for the curse to be pronounced, but instead of cursing them
Balaam blessed the people of Israel.
_Ch. XXIII, v. 11._ “And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done
unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast
blessed them altogether.
_v. 12._ “And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak
that which the Lord putteth in my mouth?
_v. 13._ “And Balak said unto him, Come with me unto another place
... and curse me them from thence.”
And he took him to another place, where also altars had been prepared.
But again Balaam, instead of cursing, blessed them.
And so it was a third time.
_Chapter XXIV, v. 10._ “And Balak’s anger was kindled against Balaam,
and he smote his hands together; and Balak said unto Balaam, I called
thee to curse mine enemies, and thou hast blessed them these three
times. Therefore now flee thou to thy place: I thought to promote
thee unto great honour; and, lo, the Lord hath kept thee back from
honour.” And so Balaam departed without receiving the gifts, because
instead of cursing Balak’s enemies he had blessed them.
What happened to Balaam very often happens to true poets and artists.
Tempted by Balak’s promises of popularity, or by false views
suggested to them, the poet does not even see the angel that bars his
way whom the ass sees, and he wishes to curse but yet he blesses.
This is just what happened with the true poet and artist Chékhov when
he wrote his charming story, _Darling_.
The author evidently wanted to laugh at this pitiful creature--as he
judged her with his intellect, not with his heart--this “Darling,”
who, after sharing Kúkin’s troubles about his theatre, and then
immersing herself in the interests of the timber business, under the
influence of the veterinary surgeon considers the struggle against
bovine tuberculosis to be the most important matter in the world, and
is finally absorbed in questions of grammar and the interests of the
little school-boy in the big cap. Kúkin’s name is ridiculous, and
so even is his illness and the telegram announcing his death. The
timber-dealer with his sedateness is ridiculous, and the veterinary
surgeon and the boy are ridiculous; but the soul of “Darling,” with
her capacity to devote herself with her whole being to the one she
loves, is not ridiculous but wonderful and holy.
I think that in the mind though not in the heart of the author when
he wrote _Darling_, there was a dim idea of the new woman, of her
equality of rights with man; of woman, developed, learned, working
independently, as well as man if not better, for the benefit of
society; of the woman who has raised and insists upon the woman
question; and in beginning to write _Darling_ he wanted to show what
woman ought not to be. The Balak of public opinion invited Chékhov
to curse the weak, submissive, undeveloped woman, devoted to man, and
Chékhov ascended the mountain, and the calves and sheep were laid
upon the altar, but when he began to speak, the author blessed what
he had meant to curse. I, at any rate, despite the wonderful gay
humour of the whole work, cannot read without tears some passages of
this beautiful story. I am touched by the description of the complete
devotion with which she loved Kúkin and all that he cared for, and
also the timber-dealer, and also the veterinary surgeon, and yet more
by her sufferings when she was left alone and had no one to love, and
by the account of how finally with all the strength of her womanly
and motherly feeling (which she had never had the opportunity to
expend on children of her own) she devoted her unbounded love to the
future man, the school-boy in the big cap.
The author makes her love the ridiculous Kúkin, the insignificant
timber-dealer, and the unpleasant veterinary surgeon; but love is not
less sacred whether its object be a Kúkin or a Spinoza, a Pascal or
a Schiller, whether its object changes as rapidly as in the case of
_Darling_, or remains the same for a whole lifetime.
I happened long ago to read in the _Nóvoe Vrémya_ an excellent
feuilleton by M. Ata about women. In this feuilleton the author
expressed a remarkably wise and profound thought. “Women,” he says,
“try to prove to us that they can do everything we men can do. I not
only do not dispute this, but am ready to agree that women can do all
that men do and perhaps even do it better, but the trouble is that
men cannot do anything even approximately approaching what women can
accomplish.”
Yes, that is certainly so, and it is true not only of the bearing,
nursing, and early education of children, but men cannot do what is
loftiest, best, and brings man nearest to God--the work of loving,
of complete devotion to the beloved, which has been so well and
naturally done, and is done, and will be done, by good women. What
would become of the world, what would become of us men, if women had
not that faculty and did not exercise it? Without women doctors,
women telegraphists, women lawyers and scientists and authoresses,
we might get on, but without mothers, helpers, friends, comforters,
who love in man all that is best in him--without such women it
would be hard to live in the world. Christ would be without Mary or
Magdalene, Francis of Assisi would have lacked Claire, there would
have been no wives of the Decembrists in their exile, nor would the
Doukhobors have had their wives, who did not restrain their husbands
but supported them in their martyrdom for truth. There would not have
been those thousands and thousands of unknown women--the very best
(as the unknown generally are)--comforters of the drunken, the weak,
and the dissolute, who more than anyone else need the consolation of
love. In that love, whether directed to Kúkin or to Christ, is the
chief, grand strength of women, irreplaceable by anything else.
What a wonderful misconception is the whole so-called woman’s
question, which has obsessed (as is natural with every empty idea)
the majority of women and even of men!
“Woman wants to improve herself!” What can be more legitimate or more
just than that?
But the business of a woman by her very vocation is different from
a man’s. And therefore the ideal of perfection for a woman cannot
be the same as the ideal for a man. Let us grant that we do not
know in what that ideal consists, but in any case it is certainly
not the ideal of perfection for a man. And yet to the attainment
of that masculine ideal all the absurd and unwholesome activity of
the fashionable woman’s movement, which now so confuses women, is
directed.
I am afraid that Chékhov when writing _Darling_ was under the
influence of this misunderstanding.
He, like Balaam, intended to curse, but the God of poetry forbade
him to do so and commanded him to bless, and he blessed, and
involuntarily clothed that sweet creature in such a wonderful
radiance that she will always remain a type of what woman can be in
order to be happy herself and to cause the happiness of those with
whom her fate is united.
This story is so excellent because its effect was unintentional.
I learned to ride a bicycle in the great Moscow riding-school,
in which army-divisions are reviewed. At the other end of the
riding-school a lady was learning to ride. I thought of how to avoid
incommoding that lady and began looking at her. And, looking at
her, I began involuntarily to draw nearer and nearer to her, and
although she, noticing the danger, hastened to get out of the way,
I rode against her and upset her, that is to say, I did exactly the
opposite of what I wished to do, simply because I had concentrated my
attention upon her.
The same thing has happened with Chékhov, but in an inverse sense: he
wanted to knock down “Darling,” and directing the close attention of
a poet upon her, he has exalted her.
PART XVII
SHAKESPEARE AND THE DRAMA
I
An article by Ernest Howard Crosby[135] on Shakespeare’s attitude
towards the people has suggested to me the idea of expressing the
opinion I formed long ago about Shakespeare’s works, an opinion quite
contrary to that established throughout the European world. Recalling
the struggle with doubts, the pretences, and the efforts to attune
myself to Shakespeare, that I went through owing to my complete
disagreement with the general adulation, and supposing that many
people have experienced and are experiencing the same perplexity,
I think it may be of some use definitely and frankly to express
this disagreement of mine with the opinion held by the majority,
especially as the conclusions I came to on examining the causes of
my disagreement are, it seems to me, not devoid of interest and
significance.
My disagreement with the established opinion about Shakespeare is not
the result of a casual mood or of a lighthearted attitude towards
the subject, but it is the result of repeated and strenuous efforts,
extending over many years, to harmonise my views with the opinions
about Shakespeare accepted throughout the whole educated Christian
world.
I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I
had expected to receive a great esthetic pleasure, but on reading,
one after another, the works regarded as his best, _King Lear_,
_Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, and _Macbeth_, not only did I not
experience pleasure but I felt an insuperable repulsion and tedium,
and a doubt whether I lacked sense, since I considered works
insignificant and simply bad, which are regarded as the summit of
perfection by the whole educated world; or whether the importance
that educated world attributed to Shakespeare’s works lacks sense. My
perplexity was increased by the fact that I have always keenly felt
the beauties of poetry in all its forms: why then did Shakespeare’s
works, recognised by the whole world as works of artistic genius, not
only fail to please me, but even seem detestable? I long distrusted
my judgment, and to check my conclusions, during fifty years I
repeatedly set to work to read Shakespeare in all possible forms--in
Russian, in English, and in German in Schlegel’s translation, as
I was advised to. I read the tragedies, comedies, and historical
plays, several times over, and I invariably experienced the same
feelings--repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. Now, before writing
this article, as an old man of 75,[136] wishing once more to check my
conclusions, I have again read the whole of Shakespeare, including
the historical plays, the _Henrys_, _Troilus and Cressida_, _The
Tempest_, and _Cymbeline_, etc., and have experienced the same
feeling still more strongly, no longer with perplexity but with a
firm indubitable conviction that the undisputed fame Shakespeare
enjoys as a great genius, which makes writers of our time imitate him
and readers and spectators, distorting their esthetic and ethical
sense, seek non-existent qualities in him, is a great evil--as every
falsehood is.
Although I know that the majority of people have such faith in
Shakespeare’s greatness that on reading this opinion of mine they
will not even admit the possibility of its being correct, and will
not pay any attention to it, I shall nevertheless try as best I can
to show why I think Shakespeare cannot be admitted to be either a
great writer of genius, or even an average one.
For this purpose I will take one of the most admired of Shakespeare’s
dramas--_King Lear_, in enthusiastic praise of which most of the
critics agree.
“The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of
Shakespeare,” says Dr. Johnson. “There is perhaps no play which keeps
the attention so strongly fixed, which so much agitates our passions
and interests our curiosity.”
“We wish that we could pass this play over and say nothing about
it,” says Hazlitt. “All that we can say must fall far short of the
subject, or even of what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to
give a description of the play itself or of its effects upon the mind
is mere impertinence; yet we must say something. It is then the best
of Shakespeare’s plays, for it is the one in which he was most in
earnest.”
“If the originality of invention did not so much stamp almost
every play of Shakespeare,” says Hallam, “that to name one as the
most original seems a disparagement to others, we might say that
this great prerogative of genius was exercised above all in Lear.
It diverges more from the model of regular tragedy than _Macbeth_
or _Othello_, or even more than _Hamlet_, but the fable is better
constructed than in the last of these and it displays full as much of
the almost superhuman inspiration of the poet as the other two.”
“King Lear may be recognised as the perfect model of the dramatic art
of the whole world,” says Shelley.
“I am not minded to say much of Shakespeare’s Arthur”; says
Swinburne. “There are one or two figures in the world of his work of
which there are no words that would be fit or good to say. Another
of these is Cordelia. The place they have in our lives and thoughts
is not one for talk. The niche set apart for them to inhabit in our
secret hearts is not penetrable by the lights and noises of common
day. There are chapels in the cathedral of man’s highest art, as in
that of his inmost life, not made to be set open to the eyes and feet
of the world. Love and Death and Memory keep charge for us in silence
of some beloved names. It is the crowning glory of genius, the final
miracle and transcendent gift of poetry that it can add to the number
of these and engrave on the very heart of our remembrance fresh names
and memories of its own creation.”
“Lear, c’est l’occasion de Cordelia,” says Victor Hugo. “La maternité
de la fille sur le père; sujet profonde; la maternité vénérable entre
toutes, si admirablement traduite par la légend de cette romaine,
nourrice, au fond d’un cachot, de son père veillard. La jeune
mammelle près de la barbe blanche, il n’est point de spectacle plus
sacré. Cette mammelle filiale c’est Cordelia.
“Une fois cette figure rêvée et trouvée Shakespeare a créé son
drame.... Shakespeare, portant Cordelia dans sa pensée, a créé cette
tragédie comme un dieu, qui ayant une aurore à placer, ferait tout
exprès un monde pour l’y mettre.”[137]
“In _Lear_ Shakespeare’s vision sounded the abyss of horror to its
very depths, and his spirit showed neither fear, nor giddiness, nor
faintness at the sight,” says Brandes. “On the threshold of this
work, a feeling of awe comes over one, as on the threshold of the
Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling-frescoes by Michael Angelo, only
that the suffering here is far more intense, the wail wilder, the
harmonies of beauty more definitely shattered by the discords of
despair.”
Such are the judgments of the critics on this drama, and therefore,
I think I am justified in choosing it as an example of Shakespeare’s
best plays.
I will try as impartially as possible to give the contents of the
play, and then show why it is not the height of perfection, as it is
said to be by the learned critics, but is something quite different.
II
The tragedy of Lear begins with a scene in which two courtiers,
Kent and Gloucester, are talking. Kent, pointing to a young man who
is present, asks Gloucester whether that is his son. Gloucester
says that he has often blushed to acknowledge the young man as his
son, but has now ceased to do so. Kent says: “I cannot conceive
you.” Then Gloucester, in the presence of his son, says: “Sir,
this young fellow’s mother could; whereupon she grew round-wombed,
and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband
for her bed....” He goes on to say that he had another son who was
legitimate, but “though this knave came somewhat saucily before he
was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his
making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.”
Such is the introduction. Not to speak of the vulgarity of these
words of Gloucester, they are also out of place in the mouth of a
man whom it is intended to represent as a noble character. It is
impossible to agree with the opinion of some critics that these
words are put into Gloucester’s mouth to indicate the contempt for
illegitimacy from which Edmund suffered. Were that so, it would in
the first place have been necessary to make the father express the
contempt felt by people in general, and secondly Edmund, in his
monologue about the injustice of those who despise him for his birth,
should have referred to his father’s words. But this is not done,
and therefore these words of Gloucester’s at the very beginning of
the piece, were merely for the purpose of informing the public in
an amusing way of the fact that Gloucester has a legitimate and an
illegitimate son.
After this trumpets are blown, King Lear enters with his daughters
and sons-in-law and makes a speech about being aged and wishing
to stand aside from affairs and divide his kingdom between his
daughters. In order to know how much he should give to each daughter,
he announces that to the daughter who tells him she loves him most
he will give most. The eldest daughter, Goneril, says that there
are no words to express her love, that she loves him “dearer than
eyesight, space, and liberty,” and she loves him so much that it
“makes her breath poor.” King Lear immediately allots on the map to
this daughter her share, with fields, woods, rivers and meadows, and
puts the same question to his second daughter. The second daughter,
Regan, says that her sister has correctly expressed her own feelings,
but insufficiently. She, Regan, loves her father so that everything
is abhorrent to her except his love. The king rewards this daughter
also, and asks his youngest, favourite daughter, in whom, according
to his expression, “the wine of France and milk of Burgundy strive
to be interess’d”--that is, who is courted by the King of France and
the Duke of Burgundy--asks Cordelia how she loves him. Cordelia, who
personifies all the virtues as the two elder sisters personify all
the vices, says quite inappropriately, as if on purpose to vex her
father, that though she loves and honours him and is grateful to him,
yet, if she marries, her love will not all belong to him, but she
will love her husband also.
On hearing these words the king is beside himself, and immediately
curses his favourite daughter with most terrible and strange
maledictions, saying, for instance, that he will love a man who
eats his own children as much as he now loves her who was once his
daughter.
The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour’d, pitied, and reliev’d,
As thou, my sometime daughter.
The courtier, Kent, takes Cordelia’s part, and, wishing to bring the
king to reason, upbraids him with his injustice and speaks reasonably
about the evil of flattery. Lear, without attending to Kent, banishes
him under threat of death, and calling to him Cordelia’s two suitors,
the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, proposes to each in turn
to take Cordelia without a dowry. The Duke of Burgundy says plainly
that he will not take Cordelia without a dowry, but the King of
France takes her without dowry, and leads her away. After this the
elder sisters, there and then conversing with one another, prepare to
offend their father who had endowed them. So ends the first scene.
Not to mention the inflated, characterless style in which Lear--like
all Shakespeare’s kings--talks, the reader or spectator cannot
believe that a king, however old and stupid, could believe the words
of the wicked daughters with whom he had lived all their lives, and
not trust his favourite daughter, but curse and banish her; therefore
the reader or spectator cannot share the feeling of the persons who
take part in this unnatural scene.
Scene II begins with Edmund, Gloucester’s illegitimate son,
soliloquising on the injustice of men who concede rights and respect
to a legitimate son but deny them to an illegitimate son, and he
determines to ruin Edgar and usurp his place. For this purpose he
forges a letter to himself, as from Edgar, in which the latter
is made to appear to wish to kill his father. Having waited till
Gloucester appears, Edmund, as if against his own desire, shows him
this letter, and the father immediately believes that his son Edgar,
whom he tenderly loves, wishes to kill him. The father goes away,
Edgar enters, and Edmund suggests to him that his father for some
reason wishes to kill him. Edgar also at once believes him, and flees
from his father.
The relations between Gloucester and his two sons and the feelings
of these characters, are as unnatural as Lear’s relation to his
daughters, if not more so; and therefore it is even more difficult
for the spectator to put himself into the mental condition of
Gloucester and his sons and to sympathise with them, than it was in
regard to Lear and his daughters.
In Scene IV the banished Kent, disguised, so that Lear does not
recognise him, presents himself to the king who is now staying with
Goneril. Lear asks who he is, to which Kent, one does not know why,
replies in a jocular tone quite inappropriate to his position: “A
very honest-hearted fellow and as poor as the King.” “If thou be’st
as poor for a subject as he’s for a King, thou art poor enough,”
replies Lear. “How old art thou?” “Not so young, sir, to love a woman
for singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything,” to which the
King replies that if he likes him not worse after dinner, he will let
him remain in his service.
This talk fits in neither with Lear’s position nor with Kent’s
relation to him, and is evidently put into their mouths only because
the author thought it witty and amusing.
Goneril’s steward appears and is rude to Lear, for which Kent trips
him up. The King, who still does not recognise Kent, gives him
money for this, and takes him into his service. After this the fool
appears, and a talk begins between the fool and the King, quite out
of accord with the situation, leading to nothing, prolonged, and
intended to be amusing. Thus for instance the fool says, “Give me an
egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns.” The King asks what crowns they
shall be. “Why, after I have cut the egg i’the middle and eat up the
meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i’the
middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thine ass on thy back
o’er the dirt; thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou
gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him
be whipped that first finds it so.”
In this manner prolonged conversations go on, producing in the
spectator or reader a sense of wearisome discomfort such as one
experiences when listening to dull jokes.
This conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Goneril. She
demands that her father should diminish his retinue: instead of a
hundred courtiers he should be satisfied with fifty. On hearing this
proposal Lear is seized with terrible, unnatural rage, and asks:
Does any here know me? This is not Lear!
Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied. Ha! Waking? ’tis not so,
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
and so forth.
Meanwhile the fool unceasingly interpolates his humourless jokes.
Goneril’s husband appears and wishes to appease Lear, but Lear curses
Goneril, invoking sterility upon her, or the birth of such a child as
would repay with ridicule and contempt her maternal cares, and would
thereby show her all the horror and suffering caused by a child’s
ingratitude.
These words, which express a genuine feeling, might have been
touching had only this been said, but they are lost among long
high-flown speeches Lear continually utters quite inappropriately.
Now he calls down blasts and fogs on his daughter’s head, now desires
that curses should “pierce every sense about thee,” or addressing
his own eyes, says that if they weep he will pluck them out and cast
them, with the waters that they lose, “to temper clay.”
After this, Lear sends Kent, whom he still does not recognise, to his
other daughter, and notwithstanding the despair he has just expressed
he talks with the fool and incites him to jests. The jests continue
to be mirthless, and besides the unpleasant feeling akin to shame
that one feels at unsuccessful witticisms, they are so long-drawn-out
as to be wearisome. So for instance the fool asks the King, “Canst
thou tell why one’s nose stands i’ the middle of one’s face?” Lear
says he does not know.
“Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side one’s nose: that what a man
cannot smell out he may spy into.”
“Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?” the fool asks.
“No.”
“Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.”
“Why?”
“Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters, and
leave his horns without a case.”
“Be my horses ready?” asks Lear.
“Thy asses are gone about ’em. The reason why the seven stars are no
more than seven is a pretty reason.”
“Because they are not eight?” says Lear.
“Yes, indeed; thou wouldst make a good fool,” says the fool, and so
forth.
After this long scene a gentleman comes and announces that the horses
are ready. The fool says:
She that’s a maid now and laughs at my departure,
Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter,
and goes off.
Scene I of Act II begins with the villain Edmund persuading his
brother, when his father enters, to pretend that they are fighting
with their swords. Edgar agrees, though it is quite incomprehensible
why he should do so. The father finds them fighting. Edgar runs away
and Edmund scratches his own arm to draw blood, and persuades his
father that Edgar was using charms to kill his father and had wanted
Edmund to help him, but that he had refused to do so and Edgar had
then thrown himself upon him and wounded him in the arm. Gloucester
believes everything, curses Edgar, and transfers all the rights of
his elder and legitimate son to the illegitimate Edmund. The Duke of
Cornwall, hearing of this, also rewards Edmund.
In Scene II before Gloucester’s castle, Lear’s new servant Kent,
still unrecognised by Lear, begins without any reason to abuse
Oswald (Goneril’s steward), calling him “a knave, a rascal, an eater
of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; ... the son and heir
of a mongrel bitch,” and so on. Then drawing his sword he demands
that Oswald should fight him, saying that he will make of him a “sop
o’ the moonshine,” words no commentator has been able to explain,
and when he is stopped, he continues to give vent to the strangest
abuse, saying, for instance, that he, Oswald, has been made by a
tailor, because “a stone-cutter, or a painter, could not have made
him so ill, though they had been but two hours at the trade.” He also
says that, if he is allowed, he will tread this unbolted villain into
mortar, and daub the wall of a privy with him.
And in this way Kent, whom nobody recognises,--though both the king
and the Duke of Cornwall, as well as Gloucester who is present,
should know him well,--continues to brawl, in the character of a new
servant of Lear’s, until he is seized and put in the stocks.
Scene III takes place on a heath. Edgar, flying from his father’s
pursuit, hides himself in a tree, and he tells the audience what
kinds of lunatics there are, beggars who go about naked, thrust pins
and wooden pricks into their bodies, and scream with wild voices and
enforce charity, and he says that he intends to play the part of
such a lunatic in order to escape from the pursuit. Having told the
audience this he goes off.
Scene IV is again before Gloucester’s castle. Lear and the fool
enter. Lear sees Kent in the stocks and, still not recognising him,
is inflamed with anger against those who have dared so to treat his
messenger, and he calls for the Duke and Regan. The fool goes on
with his queer sayings. Lear with difficulty restrains his anger.
The Duke and Regan enter. Lear complains of Goneril, but Regan
justifies her sister. Lear curses Goneril and, when Regan tells
him he had better go back to her sister, he is indignant and says:
“Ask her forgiveness?” and goes on his knees, showing how improper
it would be for him abjectly to beg food and clothing as charity
from his own daughter, and he curses Goneril with the most terrible
curses, and asks who has dared to put his messenger in the stocks.
Before Regan can answer Goneril arrives. Lear becomes yet more angry
and again curses Goneril, and when he is told that the Duke had
ordered the stocks he says nothing, for at this moment Regan tells
him that she cannot receive him now and that he had better return
with Goneril, and in a month’s time she will herself receive him but
not with a hundred but with only fifty followers. Lear again curses
Goneril and does not want to go with her, still hoping that Regan
will receive him with all his hundred followers, but Regan says she
will only accept him with twenty-five, and then Lear decides to go
back with Goneril who allows fifty. Then, when Goneril says that
even twenty-five are too many, Lear utters a long discourse about
the superfluous and sufficient being conditional conceptions, and
says that if a man is allowed only as much as is necessary he is no
different from a beast. And here Lear, or rather the actor who plays
Lear, addresses himself to a finely-dressed woman in the audience,
and says that she too does not need her finery, which does not keep
her warm. After this he becomes madly angry, says that he will do
something terrible to be revenged upon his daughters but will not
weep, and so he departs. The noise of a storm that is commencing is
heard.
Such is the second Act, full of unnatural occurrences, and still more
unnatural speeches not flowing from the speaker’s circumstances, and
finishing with the scene between Lear and his daughters which might
be powerful if it were not overloaded with speeches most naïvely
absurd and unnatural and quite inappropriate moreover, put in Lear’s
mouth. Exceedingly touching would be Lear’s vacillations between
pride, anger, and hope of concessions from his daughters, were they
not spoilt by these verbose absurdities which he utters about being
ready to divorce Regan’s dead mother should Regan not be glad to see
him, or about evoking “fen-sucked fogs” to infect his daughter, or
about the heavens being obliged to protect old men as they themselves
are old, and much else.
Act III begins with thunder, lightning, and storm--a special kind of
storm such as there never was before, as one of the characters in the
play says. On the heath a gentleman tells Kent that Lear, expelled by
his daughters from their houses, is wandering about the heath alone,
tearing his hair and throwing it to the winds, and that only the fool
is with him. Kent tells the gentleman that the Dukes have quarrelled,
and that a French army has landed at Dover, and having communicated
this, he despatches the gentleman to Dover to meet Cordelia.
Scene II of Act III also takes place on the heath. Lear walks about
the heath and utters words intended to express despair: he wishes
the winds to blow so hard that they (the winds) should crack their
cheeks, and that the rain should drench everything, and that the
lightning should singe his white head and thunder strike the earth
flat and destroy all the germs “that make ingrateful man!” The fool
keeps uttering yet more senseless words. Kent enters. Lear says that,
for some reason, in this storm all criminals shall be discovered
and exposed. Kent, still not recognised by Lear, persuades Lear to
take shelter in a hovel. The fool thereupon utters a prophecy quite
unrelated to the situation, and they all go off.
Scene III is again transferred to Gloucester’s castle. Gloucester
tells Edmund that the French king has already landed with an army and
intends to help Lear. On learning this, Edmund decides to accuse his
father of treason in order to supplant him.
Scene IV is again on the heath in front of the hovel. Kent invites
Lear to enter the hovel, but Lear replies that he has no reason
to shelter himself from the storm, that he does not feel it as
the tempest in his mind, aroused by his daughter’s ingratitude,
overpowers all else. This true feeling, if expressed in simple words,
might evoke sympathy, but amid his inflated and incessant ravings it
is hard to notice it and it loses its significance.
The hovel to which Lear is led turns out to be the same that Edgar
has entered disguised as a madman, that is to say, without clothes.
Edgar comes out of the hovel and, though they all know him, nobody
recognises him any more than they recognise Kent, and Edgar, Lear,
and the fool, begin to talk nonsense which continues with intervals
for six pages. In the midst of this scene Gloucester enters (who also
fails to recognise either Kent or his own son Edgar), and tells them
how his son Edgar wished to kill him.
This scene is again interrupted by one in Gloucester’s castle, during
which Edmund betrays his father and the Duke declares he will be
revenged on Gloucester. The scene again shifts to Lear. Kent, Edgar,
Gloucester, Lear, and the fool, are in a farm-house and are talking.
Edgar says: “Frateretto calls me and tells me, Nero is an angler in
the lake of darkness....” The fool says: “Nuncle, tell me, whether a
madman be a gentleman, or a yeoman?” Lear, who is out of his mind,
says that a madman is a king. The fool says: “No, he’s a yeoman,
that has a gentleman to his son; for he’s a mad yeoman, that sees
his son a gentleman before him.” Lear cries out: “To have a thousand
with red burning spits come hissing in upon them.” And Edgar shrieks
that the foul fiend bites his back. Then the fool utters an adage
that one cannot trust “the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a
boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.” Then Lear imagines that he is trying
his daughters. “Most learned justicer,” says he addressing the naked
Edgar. “Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes!” To this
Edgar says:
Look, where he stands and glares!
Wantonest thou eyes at trial, madam?
Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me!
and the fool sings:
Her boat hath a leak,
And she must not speak
Why she dares not come over to thee.
Edgar again says something, and Kent begs Lear to lie down, but Lear
continues his imaginary trial.
Bring in the evidence.
Thou robed man of justice, take thy place; (_to Edgar_)
And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity, (_to the fool_)
Bench by his side. You are of the commission, (_to Kent_)
Sit you too.
“Pur! the cat is grey,” cries Edgar.
“Arraign her first; ’t is Goneril,” says Lear. “I here take my oath
before this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor King her father.”
_Fool_: Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
(_addressing a joint-stool_)
_Lear_: And here’s another.... Stop her there! Arms, arms,
sword, fire! Corruption in the place! False justicer,
why hast thou let her ’scape?
and so on.
This raving ends by Lear falling asleep, and Gloucester persuading
Kent, still without recognising him, to take the King to Dover. Kent
and the fool carry Lear off.
The scene changes to Gloucester’s castle. Gloucester himself is
accused of treason, and is brought in and bound. The Duke of Cornwall
tears out one of his eyes and stamps on it. Regan says that one eye
is still whole and that this healthy eye is laughing at the other
eye, and urges the Duke to crush it too. The Duke wishes to do so,
but for some reason one of the servants suddenly takes Gloucester’s
part and wounds the Duke. Regan kills the servant. The servant dies
and tells Gloucester that he has still one eye to see that the
evil-doer is punished. The Duke says: “Lest it see more, prevent it:
out, vile jelly!” and tears out Gloucester’s other eye and throws
it on the floor. Here Regan mentions that Edmund has denounced his
father, and Gloucester suddenly understands that he has been deceived
and that Edgar did not wish to kill him.
This ends the third Act. Act IV is again in the open country. Edgar,
still in the guise of a maniac, talks in artificial language about
the perversities of fate and the advantages of a humble lot. Then,
curiously enough, to the very spot on the open heath where he is
comes his father, blind Gloucester, led by an old man, and he too
talks about the perversities of fate in that curious Shakespearean
language the chief peculiarity of which is that the thoughts arise
either from the sound of the words, or by contrast. He tells the old
man who leads him to leave him. The old man says that without eyes
one cannot go alone, because one cannot _see_ the way. Gloucester
says:
“I have no way, and therefore want no _eyes_.”
And he argues that he stumbled when he _saw_ and that our defects
often save us.
“Ah! dear son Edgar,” adds he,
The food of thy abused father’s wrath.
Might I but live to _see_ thee in my touch,
I’d say I had eyes again!
Edgar, naked, in the character of a lunatic, hears this, but does not
disclose himself; he takes the place of the old man who had acted as
guide, and talks with his father, who does not recognise his voice
and believes him to be a madman. Gloucester takes the opportunity to
utter a witticism about “when madmen lead the blind,” and insists
on driving away the old man, obviously not from motives which might
be natural to him at that moment, but merely, when left alone with
Edgar, to enact an imaginary leap over the cliff. Edgar, though he
has only just seen his blinded father and learned that he repents
of having driven him away, utters quite unnecessary sayings, which
Shakespeare might know, having read them in Harsnet’s book,[138] but
which Edgar had no means of becoming acquainted with, and which,
above all, it is quite unnatural for him to utter in his then
condition. He says:
“Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of lust, as Obidicut;
Hobbididence, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of stealing; Modo, of murder;
and Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses
chamber-maids and waiting-women.”
On hearing these words, Gloucester gives Edgar his purse saying:
That I am wretched
Makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
That braves your ordinance, that will not see
Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly;
So distribution should undo excess,
And each man have enough.
Having uttered these strange words, the blind Gloucester demands that
Edgar should lead him to a cliff that he does not himself know, but
that hangs over the sea, and they depart.
Scene II of Act IV takes place before the Duke of Albany’s palace.
Goneril is not only cruel but also dissolute. She despises her
husband, and discloses her love to the villain. Edmund, who has
obtained his father’s title of Gloucester. Edmund goes away, and a
conversation takes place between Goneril and her husband. The Duke
of Albany, the only character who shows human feelings, has already
grown dissatisfied with his wife’s treatment of her father and now
definitely takes Lear’s part, but he expresses himself in words which
destroy one’s belief in his feelings. He says that a bear would lick
Lear’s reverence, and that if the heavens do not send their visible
spirits to tame these vile offences, humanity must prey on itself
like monsters, and so forth.
Goneril does not listen to him, and he then begins to denounce her.
He says:
See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid, as in woman.
“O vain fool!” says Goneril.
Thou changed and self-cover’d thing, for shame,
Be-monster not thy feature. Were it my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones:--Howe’er thou art a fiend,
A woman’s shape doth shield thee,
continues the Duke.
After this a messenger enters and announces that the Duke of
Cornwall, wounded by a servant while he was tearing out Gloucester’s
eyes, has died. Goneril is glad, but already anticipates with fear
that Regan, being now a widow, will snatch Edmund from her. This ends
the second scene.
Scene III of Act IV represents the French camp. From a conversation
between Kent and a gentleman, the reader or spectator learns that the
King of France is not in the camp and that Cordelia has received a
letter from Kent and is greatly grieved by what she learns about her
father. The gentleman says that her face reminded one of sunshine and
rain.
Her smiles and tears
Were like a better day: Those happy smilets,
That play’d on her ripe lip, seem’d not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp’d,
and so forth. The gentleman says that Cordelia desires to see her
father, but Kent says that Lear is ashamed to see the daughter he has
treated so badly.
In Scene IV Cordelia, talking with a physician, tells him that Lear
has been seen, and that he is quite mad, wearing on his head a wreath
of various weeds and roaming about, and that she has sent soldiers to
find him, and she adds the wish that all secret medicinal virtues of
the earth may spring to him in her tears, and so forth.
She is told that the forces of the Dukes are approaching; but she is
only concerned about her father, and goes off.
In Scene V of Act IV, which is in Gloucester’s castle, Regan talks
with Oswald, Goneril’s steward, who is carrying a letter from Goneril
to Edmund, and tells him that she also loves Edmund and that as she
is a widow it is better for her to marry him than for Goneril to do
so, and she asks Oswald to persuade her sister of this. Moreover she
tells him that it was very unwise to put out Gloucester’s eyes and
yet to let him live, and therefore she advises Oswald, if he meets
Gloucester, to kill him, and promises him a great reward if he does
so.
In Scene VI Gloucester again appears with his unrecognised son Edgar,
who, now dressed as a peasant, is leading his father to the cliff.
Gloucester is walking along on level ground, but Edgar assures him
that they are with difficulty ascending a steep hill. Gloucester
believes this. Edgar tells his father that the noise of the sea
is audible; Gloucester believes this also. Edgar stops on a level
place and assures his father that he has ascended the cliff and that
below him is a terrible abyss, and he leaves him alone. Gloucester,
addressing the gods, says that he shakes off his affliction as he
could not bear it longer without condemning them, the gods, and
having said this he leaps on the level ground and falls, imagining
that he has jumped over the cliff. Edgar thereupon utters to himself
a yet more confused phrase:
And yet I know not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life, when life itself
Yields to the theft; had he been where he thought,
By this had thought been past,
and he goes up to Gloucester pretending to be again a different man,
and expresses astonishment at the latter not having been killed by
his fall from such a dreadful height. Gloucester believes that he
has fallen, and prepares to die, but he feels that he is alive, and
begins to doubt having fallen. Then Edgar assures him that he really
did jump from a terrible height, and says that the man who was with
him at the top was a fiend, for he had eyes like two full moons, and
a thousand noses, and wavy horns.
Gloucester believes this, and is persuaded that his despair was
caused by the devil, and therefore decides that he will despair no
longer but will quietly await death. Just then Lear enters, for some
reason all covered with wild flowers. He has gone mad, and utters
speeches yet more meaningless than before. He talks about coining
money, about a bow, calls for a clothier’s yard, then he cries out
that he sees a mouse which he wishes to entice with a piece of
cheese, and then he suddenly asks the password of Edgar, who at once
replies with the words, “Sweet Marjoram.” Lear says, “Pass!” and
the blind Gloucester, who did not recognise his son’s or Kent’s,
recognises the King’s voice.
Then the King, after his disconnected utterances, suddenly begins
to speak ironically about flatterers who said “ay and no” like the
theologians and assured him that he could do everything, but when
he got into a storm without shelter, he saw that this was not true;
and then he goes on to say that as all creatures are wanton, and
as Gloucester’s bastard son was kinder to his father than his own
daughters had been to him (though Lear, according to the course of
the play, could know nothing of Edmund’s treatment of Gloucester),
therefore let copulation thrive, especially as he, a King, lacks
soldiers. And thereupon he addresses an imaginary, hypocritically
virtuous lady who acts the prude while at the same time, like an
animal in heat, she is addicted to lust. All women “but to the girdle
do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiend’s ...” and saying this
Lear screams and spits with horror. This monologue is evidently meant
to be addressed by actor to audience, and probably produces an effect
on the stage, but is quite uncalled for in the mouth of Lear--as is
his desire to wipe his hand because it “smells of mortality” when
Gloucester wishes to kiss it. Then Gloucester’s blindness is referred
to, which gives an opportunity for a play of words on eyes and
Cupid’s blindness, and for Lear to say that Gloucester has “no eyes
in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a _heavy_
case, your purse in a _light_.” Then Lear declaims a monologue on the
injustice of legal judgment, which is quite out of place in his mouth
seeing that he is insane. Then a gentleman enters with attendants
sent by Cordelia to fetch her father. Lear continues to behave madly
and runs away. The gentleman sent to fetch Lear does not run after
him but continues to tell Edgar lengthily about the position of the
French and the British armies.
Oswald enters and, seeing Gloucester and wishing to obtain the reward
promised by Regan, attacks him; but Edgar, with his stave, kills
Oswald, who when dying gives Edgar (the man who has killed him)
Goneril’s letter to Edmund, the delivery of which will earn a reward.
In this letter Goneril promises to kill her husband and marry Edmund.
Edgar drags out Oswald’s body by the legs, and then returns and leads
his father away.
Scene VII of Act IV takes place in a tent in the French camp. Lear
is asleep on a bed. Cordelia enters with Kent, still in disguise.
Lear is awakened by music and, seeing Cordelia, does not believe she
is alive but thinks her an apparition, and does not believe that he
is himself alive. Cordelia assures him that she is his daughter,
and begs him to bless her. He goes on his knees before her, begs
forgiveness, admits himself to be old and foolish, and says he is
ready to take poison, which he thinks she probably has prepared for
him, as he is persuaded that she must hate him.
For your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong;
You have some cause, they have not.
Then little by little he comes to his senses and ceases to rave. His
daughter suggests that he should take a little walk. He consents and
says:
You must bear with me:
Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.
They go off. The gentleman and Kent, who remain on the scene, talk in
order to explain to the audience that Edmund is at the head of the
forces and that a battle must soon begin between Lear’s defenders and
his enemies. So Act IV ends.
In this Fourth Act the scene between Lear and his daughter might have
been touching had it not been preceded in three previous acts by the
tedious monotonous ravings of Lear, and also had it been the final
scene expressing his feelings, but it is not the last.
In Act V Lear’s former cold pompous artificial ravings are repeated,
destroying the impression the preceding scene might have produced.
Scene I of Act V shows us Edmund and Regan (who is jealous of her
sister and offers herself to Edmund). Then Goneril comes on with her
husband and soldiers. The Duke of Albany, though he pities Lear,
considers it his duty to fight against the French who have invaded
his country, and so prepares himself for battle.
Then Edgar enters, still disguised, and hands the Duke of Albany the
letter, and says that if the Duke wins the battle he should let a
herald sound a trumpet, and then (this is 800 years B. C.) a champion
will appear who will prove that the contents of the letter are true.
In Scene II Edgar enters leading his father, whom he seats by a
tree, and himself goes off. The sounds of a battle are heard, Edgar
runs back and says that the battle is lost; Lear and Cordelia
are prisoners. Gloucester is again in despair. Edgar, still not
disclosing himself to his father, tells him that he should not
despair, and Gloucester at once agrees with him.
Scene III opens with a triumphal progress of Edmund the victor. Lear
and Cordelia are prisoners. Lear, though he is now no longer insane,
still utters the same sort of senseless, inappropriate words, as, for
instance, that in prison with Cordelia,
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage,
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness.
(This kneeling down comes three times over.) He also says that when
they are in prison they will wear out poor rogues and “sects of great
ones that ebb and flow by the moon,” that he and she are sacrifices
upon which “the gods throw incense,” that “he that parts them shall
bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes” and that
The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep,
and so forth.