The most distinctive poems--the most permanently rooted and with
heartiest reason for being--the copious cycle of Arthurian legends, or
the almost equally copious Charlemagne cycle, or the poems of the Cid,
or Scandinavian Eddas, or Nibelungen, or Chaucer, or Spenser, or _bona
fide_ Ossian, or Inferno--probably had their rise in the great historic
perturbations, which they came in to sum up and confirm, indirectly
embodying results to date. Then however precious to "culture," the
grandest of those poems, it may be said, preserve and typify results
offensive to the modern spirit, and long past away. To state it briefly,
and taking the strongest examples, in Homer lives the ruthless military
prowess of Greece, and of its special god-descended dynastic houses;
in Shakspere the dragon-rancors and stormy feudal Splendor of mediaeval
caste.
Poetry, largely consider'd, is an evolution, sending out improved
and-ever-expanded types--in one sense, the past, even the best of it,
necessarily giving place, and dying out. For our existing world,
the bases on which all the grand old poems were built have become
vacuums--and even those of many comparatively modern ones are broken and
half-gone. For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast as that
is, backs and maintains those poems--but a mountain-high growth of
associations, the layers of successive ages. Everywhere--their own lands
included--(is there not something terrible in the tenacity with which
the one book out of millions holds its grip?)--the Homeric and Virgilian
works, the interminable ballad-romances of the middle ages, the
utterances of Dante, Spenser, and others, are upheld by their
cumulus-entrenchment in scholarship, and as precious, always welcome,
unspeakably valuable reminiscences.
Even the one who at present reigns unquestion'd--of Shakspere--for all
he stands for so much in modern literature, he stands entirely for
the mighty esthetic sceptres of the past, not for the spiritual
and democratic, the sceptres of the future. The inward and outward
characteristics of Shakspere are his vast and rich variety of persons
and themes, with his wondrous delineation of each and all,--not only
limitless funds of verbal and pictorial resource, but great excess,
superfoetation--mannerism, like a fine, aristocratic perfume, holding
a touch of musk (Euphues, his mark)--with boundless sumptuousness and
adornment, real velvet and gems, not shoddy nor paste--but a good deal
of bombast and fustian--(certainly some terrific mouthing in Shakspere!)
Superb and inimitable as all is, it is mostly an objective and
physiological kind of power and beauty the soul finds in Shakspere--a
style supremely grand of the sort, but in my opinion stopping short of
the grandest sort, at any rate for fulfilling and satisfying modern and
scientific and democratic American purposes. Think, not of growths as
forests primeval, or Yellowstone geysers, or Colorado ravines, but of
costly marble palaces, and palace rooms, and the noblest fixings and
furniture, and noble owners and occupants to correspond--think of
carefully built gardens from the beautiful but sophisticated gardening
art at its best, with walks and bowers and artificial lakes, and
appropriate statue-groups and the finest cultivated roses and lilies
and japonicas in plenty--and you have the tally of Shakspere. The
low characters, mechanics, even the loyal henchmen--all in themselves
nothing--serve as capital foils to the aristocracy. The comedies
(exquisite as they certainly are) bringing in admirably portray'd common
characters, have the unmistakable hue of plays, portraits, made for the
divertisement only of the élite of the castle, and from its point
of view. The comedies are altogether non-acceptable to America and
Democracy.
But to the deepest soul, it seems a shame to pick and choose from
the riches Shakspere has left us--to criticise his infinitely royal,
multiform quality--to gauge, with optic glasses, the dazzle of his
sun-like beams.
The best poetic utterance, after all, can merely hint, or remind, often
very indirectly, or at distant removes. Aught of real perfection, or the
solution of any deep problem, or any completed statement of the moral,
the true, the beautiful, eludes the greatest, deftest poet--flies away
like an always uncaught bird.