THE USE OF MUSIC AND DANCING UNDER THE JEWISH THEOCRACY, COMPARED WITH
THEIR USE BY THE MODERN FRENCH.
_March 10, 1867._
40. Having, I hope, made you now clearly understand with what feeling
I would use the authority of the book which the British public,
professing to consider sacred, have lately adorned for themselves with
the work of the boldest violator of the instincts of human honor and
decency known yet in art-history, I will pursue by the help of that
verse about Miriam, and some others, the subject which occupied my
mind at both theaters, and to which, though in so apparently desultory
manner, I have been nevertheless very earnestly endeavoring to lead
you.
41. The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam with timbrels
and with dances, was, as you doubtless remember, their expression of
passionate triumph and thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of
their deliverance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been by the
utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by stupendous miracle;
no human creatures could in an hour of triumph be surrounded by
circumstances more solemn. I am not going to try to excite your
feelings about them. Consider only for yourself what that seeing of
the Egyptians "dead upon the sea-shore" meant to every soul that saw
it. And then reflect that these intense emotions of mingled horror,
triumph, and gratitude were expressed, in the visible presence of the
Deity, by music and dancing. If you answer that you do not believe the
Egyptians so perished, or that God ever appeared in a pillar of cloud,
I reply, "Be it so--believe or disbelieve, as you choose;--This is yet
assuredly the fact, that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus
supposed that, under such circumstances of Divine interposition as he
had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish women would have been,
and ought to have been, under the direction of a prophetess,
expressed by music and dancing."
42. Nor was it possible that he should think otherwise, at whatever
period he wrote; both music and dancing being, among all great ancient
nations, an appointed and very principal part of the worship of the
gods.
And that very theatrical entertainment at which I sate thinking over
these things for you--that pantomime, which depended throughout for
its success on an appeal to the vices of the lower London populace,
was, in itself, nothing but a corrupt remnant of the religious
ceremonies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek mind, and
laid the foundation of their gravest moral and didactic--more forcibly
so because at the same time dramatic--literature.
43. Returning to the Jewish history, you find soon afterwards this
enthusiastic religious dance and song employed, in their more common
and habitual manner, in the idolatries under Sinai; but beautifully
again and tenderly, after the triumph of Jephthah, "And behold his
daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances." Again,
still more notably, at the triumph of David with Saul, "the women came
out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul
with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music." And you have
this joyful song and dance of the virgins of Israel not only
incidentally alluded to in the most solemn passages of Hebrew
religious poetry (as in Psalm lxviii. 24, 25, and Psalm cxlix. 2, 3),
but approved, and the restoration of it promised as a sign of God's
perfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of the Hebrew
prophets, and in one of the most beautiful of all his sayings.
"The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, 'Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving-kindness have I
drawn thee.--I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of
Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and thou shalt
go forth in dances with them that make merry,'" (Jer. xxxi. 3, 4; and
compare v. 13). And finally, you have in two of quite the most
important passages in the whole series of Scripture (one in the Old
Testament, one in the New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and
remission of, sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely,
in the rapturous dancing of David before the returning ark; and in the
joy of the father's household at the repentance of the prodigal son.
44. I could put all this much better, and more convincingly, before
you, if I were able to take any pains in writing at present; but I am
not, as I told you; being weary and ill; neither do I much care now to
use what, in the very truth, are but tricks of literary art, in
dealing with this so grave subject. You see I write you my letter
straightforward, and let you see all my scratchings out and puttings
in; and if the way I say things shocks you, or any other reader of
these letters, I cannot help it; this only I know, that what I tell
you is true, and written more earnestly than anything I ever wrote
with my best literary care; and that you will find it useful to think
upon, however it be said. Now, therefore, to draw towards our
conclusion. Supposing the Bible inspired, in any of the senses above
defined, you have in these passages a positively Divine authority for
the use of song and dance, as a means of religious service, and
expression of national thanksgiving. Supposing it not inspired, you
have (taking the passages for as slightly authoritative as you choose)
record in them, nevertheless, of a state of mind in a great nation,
producing the most beautiful religious poetry and perfect moral law
hitherto known to us, yet only expressible by them, to the fulfilment
of their joyful passion, by means of professional dance and choral
song.
45. Now I want you to contrast this state of religious rapture with
some of our modern phases of mind in parallel circumstances. You see
that the promise of Jeremiah's, "Thou shalt go forth in the dances of
them that make merry," is immediately followed by this, "Thou shalt
yet _plant vines_ upon the mountains of Samaria." And again, at the
yearly feast to the Lord in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in
the midst of the vineyards (Judges xxi. 21), the feast of the vintage
being in the south, as our harvest home in the north, a peculiar
occasion of joy and thanksgiving. I happened to pass the autumn of
1863 in one of the great vine districts of Switzerland, under the
slopes of the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable
plain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north of Zurich itself.
That city has always been a renowned, stronghold of Swiss
Protestantism, next in importance only to Geneva; and its evangelical
zeal for the conversion of the Catholics of Uri, and endeavors to
bring about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of salt
they needed to make their cheeses with, brought on (the Uri men
reading their Matt. v. 13, in a different sense) the battle of Keppel,
and the death of the reformer Zwinglius. The town itself shows the
most gratifying signs of progress in all the modern arts and sciences
of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle--has a railroad station
larger than the London terminus of the Chatham and Dover--fouls the
stream of the Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you
might even venture to compare the formerly simple and innocent Swiss
river (I remember it thirty years ago--a current of pale green
crystal) with the highly educated English streams of Weare or Tyne;
and, finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency in its
principal shop windows as if they had the privilege of opening on the
Parisian Boulevards.
46. I was somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving or
exultation would be expressed at _their_ vintage, by the peasantry in
the neighborhood of this much enlightened, evangelical, and commercial
society. It consisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the
servants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, collected in
knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse-pistols, from
morning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down
the hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks,
differing only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended
and insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased
human creatures.
47. I must not do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying
that this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A year before, in
1862, I had formed the intention of living some years in the
neighborhood of Geneva, and had established myself experimentally on
the eastern slope of the Mont Saleve; but I was forced to abandon my
purpose at last, because I could not endure the rabid howling, on
Sunday evenings, of the holiday-makers who came out from Geneva to get
drunk in the mountain village. By the way, your last letter, with its
extracts about our traffic in gin, is very valuable. I will come to
that part of the business in a little while. Meantime, my friend, note
this, respecting what I have told you, that in the very center of
Europe, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the
most refined and thoughtful persons among all Christian nations--a
country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions
of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest
patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the
very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient
virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men
betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards
the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have
been "illustrated" by Gustave Dore.
48. One word more is needful, though this letter is long already. The
peculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of festivity is in its utter
failure of joy; the paralysis and helplessness of a vice in which
there is neither pleasure, nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe,
wholly thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and dance
among us, though not indicative, by any means, of joy over repentant
sinners. You must come back to Paris with me again. I had an evening
to spare there, last summer, for investigation of theaters; and as
there was nothing at any of them that I cared much about seeing, I
asked a valet-de-place at Meurice's what people were generally going
to. He said, "All the English went to see the _Lanterne Magique_." I
do not care to tell you what general entertainment I received in
following, for once, the lead of my countrymen; but it closed with
the representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of the
world; and the dance given as characteristic of modern time was the
Cancan, which you will see alluded to in the extract given in the note
at page 80 of 'Sesame and Lilies' (the small edition; and page 54 of
Vol. I. of the Revised Series of the Entire Works). "The ball
terminated with a Devilish Chain and a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the
morning." It was led by four principal dancers (who have since
appeared in London in the _Huguenot Captain_), and it is many years
since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and accuracy
of art and fulness of animal power and fire are concerned. Nothing
could be better done, in its own evil way, the object of the dance
throughout being to express, in every gesture, the wildest fury of
insolence and vicious passions possible to human creatures. So that
you see, though, for the present, we find ourselves utterly incapable
of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which is presented
as characteristic of modern civilization is still rapturous
enough--but it is with rapture of blasphemy.