A NOTE ON ROBERT BUCHANAN
Among the minor poets of the Victorian period, Robert Buchanan cannot
be passed over unnoticed. A contemporary of all the great singers, he
seems to have been always a little isolated; I mean that he formed no
strong literary friendships within the great circle. Most great poets
must live to a certain extent in solitude; the man who can at once mix
freely in society and find time for the production of masterpieces is
a rare phenomenon. George Meredith is said to be such a person. But
Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Fitzgerald, were all very
reserved and retired men, though they had little circles of their own,
and a certain common sympathy. The case of Buchanan is different.
His aloofness from the rest has been, not the result of any literary
desire for quiet, but the result, on the contrary, of a strong spirit
of opposition. Not only did he have no real sympathy with the great
poets, but he represented in himself the very prejudices against which
they had to contend. Hard headed Scotchman as he was, he manifested in
his attitude to his brother poets a good deal of the peculiar, harsh
conservatism of which Scotchmen seemed to be particularly capable.
And he did himself immense injury in his younger days by an anonymous
attack upon the morals, or rather upon the moral tone, of such poets as
Rossetti and Swinburne. Swinburne's reply to this attack was terrible
and withering. That of Rossetti was very mild and gentle, but so
effective that English literary circles almost unanimously condemned
Buchanan, and attributed his attack to mere jealousy. I think the
attack was less due to jealousy than to character, to prejudice, to the
harshness of a mind insensible to particular forms of beauty. And for
more than twenty years Buchanan has suffered extremely from the results
of his own action. Thousands of people have ignored him and his books
simply because it was remembered that he gave wanton pain to Rossetti,
a poet much too sensitive to endure unjust criticism. I suppose that
for many years to come Buchanan will still be remembered in this light,
notwithstanding that he tried at a later day to make honourable amends
to the memory of Rossetti, by dedicating to him, with a beautiful
sonnet of apology, the definitive edition of his own works.
But the time has now passed when Buchanan can be treated as an
indifferent figure in English literature. In spite of all disadvantages
he has been a successful poet, a successful novelist, and a very
considerable influence in the literature of criticism. Besides, he
has written at least one poem that will probably live as long as the
English language, and he has an originality quite apart and quite
extraordinary, though weaker than the originality of the greater
singers of his time. As to his personal history, little need to be
said. He was educated at Glasgow University, and his literary efforts
have always been somewhat coloured by Scotch sentiment, in spite of his
long life in literary London.
Three volumes represent his poetical production. In these are
contained a remarkable variety of poems--narrative, mystical,
fantastic, classical, romantic, ranging from the simplest form of
ballad to the complex form of the sonnet and the ode. The narrative
poems would, I think, interest you least; they are gloomy studies of
human suffering, physical and moral, among the poor, and are not so
good as the work of Crabbe in the same direction. The mystical poems,
on the contrary, are of a very curious kind; for Buchanan actually
made a religious philosophy of his own, and put it into the form of
verse. It is a Christian mysticism, an extremely liberal Unitarianism
forming the basis of it; but the author's notions about the perpetual
order of things are all his own. He has, moreover, put these queer
fancies into a form of verse imitating the ancient Celtic poetry. We
shall afterward briefly consider the mystical poetry. But the great
production of Buchanan is a simple ballad, which you find very properly
placed at the beginning of his collected poems. This is a beautiful
and extraordinary thing, quite in accordance with the poet's peculiar
views of Christianity. It is called "The Ballad of Judas Iscariot." If
you know only this composition, you will know all that it is absolutely
necessary to know of Robert Buchanan. It is by this poem that his place
is marked in nineteenth century literature.
Before we turn to the poem itself, I must explain to you something of
the legend of Judas Iscariot. You know, of course, that Judas was the
disciple of Christ who betrayed his master. He betrayed him for thirty
pieces of silver, according to the tradition; and he betrayed him with
a kiss, for he said to the soldiers whom he was guiding, "The man
whom I shall kiss is the man you want." So Judas went up to Christ,
and kissed his face; and then the soldiers seized Christ. From this
has come the proverbial phrase common to so many Western languages, a
"Judas-kiss." Afterwards Judas, being seized with remorse, is said to
have hanged himself; and there the Scriptural story ends. But in Church
legends the fate of Judas continued to be discussed in the Middle
Ages. As he was the betrayer of; a person whom the Church considered
to be God, it was deemed that he was necessarily the greatest of all
traitors; and as he had indirectly helped to bring about the death of
God, he was condemned as the greatest of all murderers. It was said
that in hell the very lowest place was given to Judas, and that his
tortures exceeded all other tortures. But once every year, it was said,
Judas could leave hell, and go out to cool himself upon the ice of the
Northern seas. That is the legend of the Middle Ages.
Now Robert Buchanan perceived that the Church legends of the punishment
of Judas might be strongly questioned from a moral point of view.
Revenge is indeed in the spirit of the Old Testament; but revenge is
not exactly in the spirit of the teaching of Christ. The true question
as to the fate of Judas ought to be answered by supposing what Christ
himself would have wished in the matter. Would Christ have wished to
see his betrayer burning for ever in the fires of hell? Or would he
have shown to him some of that spirit manifested in his teachings,
"Do good unto them that hate you; forgive your enemies"? As a result
of thinking about the matter, Buchanan produced his ballad. All that
could be said against it from a religious point of view is that the
spirit of it is even more Christian than Christianity itself. From the
poetical point of view we must acknowledge it to be one of the grandest
ballads produced in the whole period of Victorian literature. You
will not find so exquisite a finish here as in some of the ballads of
Rossetti; but you will find a weirdness and a beauty and an emotional
power that make up for slenderness in workmanship.
In order to understand the beginning of the ballad clearly, you should
know the particulars about another superstition concerning Judas. It is
said that all the elements refused to suffer the body to be committed
to them; fire would not burn it; water would not let it sink to rest;
every time it was buried, the earth would spew it out again. Man could
not bury that body, so the ghosts endeavoured to get rid of it. The
Field of Blood referred to in the ballad is the Aceldama of Scriptural
legend, the place where Judas hanged himself.
'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay in the Field of Blood;
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Beside the body stood.
Black was the earth by night,
And black was the sky;
Black, black were the broken clouds,
Though the red Moon went by.
. . . . . .
Then the soul of Judas Iscariot
Did make a gentle moan--
"I will bury underneath the ground
My flesh and blood and bone.
. . . . . .
"The stones of the field are sharp as steel,
And hard and bold, God wot;
And I must bear my body hence
Until I find a spot!"
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
So grim, and gaunt, and grey,
Raised the body of Judas Iscariot
And carried it away.
And as he bare it from the field
Its touch was cold as ice,
And the ivory teeth within the jaw
Rattled aloud, like dice.
The use of the word "ivory" here has a double function; dice are
usually made of ivory; and the suggestion of whiteness heightens the
weird effect.
As the soul of Judas Iscariot
Carried its load with pain,
The Eye of Heaven, like a lanthorn's eye,
Opened and shut again.
Half he walk'd, and half he seemed
Lifted on the cold wind;
He did not turn, for chilly hands
Were pushing from behind.
The first place that he came unto
It was the open wold,
And underneath were pricky whins,
And a wind that blew so cold.
The next place that he came unto
It was a stagnant pool,
And when he threw the body in
It floated light as wool.
He drew the body on his back,
And it was dripping chill,
And the next place he came unto
Was a Cross upon a hill.
A Cross upon the windy hill,
And a Cross on either side,
Three skeletons that swing thereon,
Who had been crucified.
And on the middle cross-bar sat
A white Dove slumbering;
Dim it sat in the dim light,
With its head beneath its wing.
And underneath the middle Cross
A grave yawned wide and vast,
But the soul of Judas Iscariot
Shiver'd, and glided past.
We are not told what this hill was, but every reader knows that Calvary
is meant, and the skeletons upon the crosses are those of Christ and
the two thieves crucified with him. The ghostly hand had pushed Judas
to the place of all places where he would have wished not to go. We
need not mind the traditional discrepancy suggested by the three
skeletons; as a matter of fact, the bodies of malefactors were not
commonly left upon the crosses long enough to become skeletons, and
of course the legend is that Christ's body was on the cross only for
a short time. But we may suppose that the whole description is of a
phantasm, purposely shaped to stir the remorse of Judas. The white
dove sleeping upon the middle cross suggests the soul of Christ, and
the great grave made below might have been prepared out of mercy for
the body of Judas. If the dove had awoke and spoken to him, would it
not have said, "You can put your body here, in my grave; nobody will
torment you"? But the soul of Judas cannot even think of daring to
approach the place of the crucifixion.
The fourth place that he came unto,
It was the Brig of Dread,
And the great torrents rushing down
Were deep, and swift, and red.
He dared not fling the body in
For fear of faces dim,
And arms were waved in the wild water
To thrust it back to him.
There is here a poetical effect borrowed from sources having nothing
to do with the Judas tradition. In old Northern folklore there is the
legend of a River of Blood, in which all the blood ever shed in this
world continues to flow; and there is a reference to this river in the
old Scotch ballad of "Thomas the Rhymer."
It was mirk, mirk night, and there was nae light,
And they waded in red blude up to the knee,
For a' the blude that's shed on earth,
Rins through the springs o' that countrie.
Judas leaves the dreadful bridge and continues his wanderings over the
mountain, through woods and through great desolate plains:
For months and years, in grief and tears,
He walked the silent night;
Then the soul of Judas Iscariot
Perceived a far-off light.
A far-off light across the waste,
As dim as dim might be,
That came and went like a lighthouse gleam
On a black night at sea.
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Crawled to the distant gleam;
And the rain came down, and the rain was blown
Against him with a scream.
. . . . . . . . .
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,
Strange, and sad, and tall,
Stood all alone at dead of night
Before a lighted hall.
And the wold was white with snow,
And his foot-marks black and damp,
And the ghost of the silver Moon arose,
Holding her yellow lamp.
And the icicles were on the eaves.
And the walls were deep with white,
And the shadows of the guests within
Passed on the window light.
The shadows of the wedding guests
Did strangely come and go,
And the body of Judas Iscariot
Lay stretch'd along the snow.
But only the body. The soul which has carried it does not lie down,
but runs round and round the lighted hall, where the wedding guests
are assembled. What wedding? What guests? This is the mystical banquet
told of in the parable of the New Testament; the bridegroom is Christ
himself; the guests are the twelve disciples, or rather, the eleven,
Judas himself having been once the twelfth. And the guests see the soul
of Judas looking in at the window.
'Twas the Bridegroom sat at the table-head,
And the lights burned bright and clear--
"Oh, who is that," the Bridegroom said,
"Whose weary feet I hear?"
'Twas one look'd from the lighted hall,
And answered soft and slow,
"It is a wolf runs up and down
With a black track in the snow."
The Bridegroom in his robe of white
Sat at the table-head--
"Oh, who is that who moans without?"
The blessed Bridegroom said.
'Twas one looked from the lighted hall,
And answered fierce and low,
"'Tis the soul of Judas Iscariot
Gliding to and fro."
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Did hush itself and stand,
And saw the Bridegroom at the door
With a light in his hand.
The Bridegroom stood in the open door,
And he was clad in white,
And far within the Lord's Supper
Was spread so long and bright.
The Bridegroom shaded his eyes and looked,
And his face was bright to see--
"What dost thou here at the Lord's Supper
With thy body's sins?" said he.
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot,
Stood black, and sad, and bare--
"I have wandered many nights and days;
There is no light elsewhere."
'Twas the wedding guests cried out within,
And their eyes were fierce and bright--
"Scourge the soul of Judas Iscariot
Away into the night!"
The Bridegroom stood in the open door
And he waved hands still and slow,
And the third time that he waved his hands
The air was thick with snow.
And of every flake of falling snow,
Before it touched the ground,
There came a dove, and a thousand doves
Made sweet sound.
'Twas the body of Judas Iscariot
Floated away full fleet,
And the wings of the doves that bare it off
Were like its winding-sheet.
'Twas the Bridegroom stood at the open door,
And beckon'd, smiling sweet;
'Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot
Stole in, and fell at his feet.
"The Holy Supper is spread within,
And the many candles shine,
And I have waited long for thee
Before I poured the wine!"
It would have been better, I think, to finish the ballad at this
stanza; there is one more, but it does not add at all to the effect of
what goes before. When the doves, emblems of divine love, have carried
away the sinful body, and the Master comes to the soul, smiling and
saying: "I have been waiting for you a long time, waiting for your
coming before I poured the wine"--there is nothing more to be said. We
do not want to hear any more; we know that the Eleven had again become
Twelve; we do not require to be told that the wine is poured out, or
that Judas repents his fault. The startling and beautiful thing is the
loving call and the welcome to the Divine Supper. You will find the
whole of this poem in the "Victorian Anthology," but I should advise
any person who might think of making a Japanese translation to drop
the final stanza and to leave out a few of the others, if his judgment
agrees with mine.
Read this again to yourselves, and see how beautiful it is. The beauty
is chiefly in the central idea of forgiveness; but the workmanship of
this composition has also a very remarkable beauty, a Celtic beauty
of weirdness, such as we seldom find in a modern composition touching
religious tradition. It were interesting to know how the poet was able
to imagine such a piece of work. I think I can tell a little of the
secret. Only a man with a great knowledge and love of old ballads could
have written it. Having once decided upon the skeleton of the story,
he must have gone to his old Celtic literature and to old Northern
ballads for further inspiration. I have already suggested that the
ballad of "Thomas the Rhymer" was one source of his inspiration, with
its strange story of the River of Blood. Thomas was sitting under a
tree, the legend goes, when he saw a woman approaching so beautiful
that he thought she was an angel or the Virgin Mary, and he addressed
her on his knees. But she sat down beside him, and said, "I am no angel
nor saint; I am only a fairy. But if you think that I am so beautiful,
take care that you do not kiss me, for if you do, then I shall have
power over you." Thomas immediately did much more than kiss her, and he
therefore became her slave. She took him at once to fairy land, and on
their way they passed through strange wild countries, much like those
described in Robert Buchanan's ballad; they passed the River of Blood;
they passed dark trees laden with magical food; and they saw the road
that reaches Heaven and the road that reaches Hell. But Buchanan could
take only a few ideas from this poem. Other ideas I think were inspired
by a ballad of Goethe's, or at least by Sir Walter Scott's version of
it, "Frederick and Alice." Frederick is a handsome young soldier who
seduces a girl called Alice under promise of marriage, and then leaves
her. He rides to join the army in France. The girl becomes insane with
grief and shame; and the second day later she dies at four o'clock in
the morning. Meantime Frederick unexpectedly loses his way; the rest I
may best tell in the original weird form. The horse has been frightened
by the sound of a church bell striking the hour of four.
Heard ye not the boding sound,
As the tongue of yonder tower,
Slowly, to the hills around,
Told the fourth, the fated hour?
Starts the steed, and snuffs the air,
Yet no cause of dread appears;
Bristles high the rider's hair,
Struck with strange mysterious fears.
Desperate, as his terrors rise,
In the steed the spur he hides;
From himself in vain he flies;
Anxious, restless, on he rides.
Seven long days, and seven long nights,
Wild he wandered, woe the while!
Ceaseless care, and causeless fright,
Urge his footsteps many a mile.
Dark the seventh sad night descends;
Rivers swell, and rain-streams pour;
While the deafening thunder lends
All the terrors of its roar.
At the worst part of his dreary wandering over an unknown and gloomy
country, Frederick suddenly sees a light far away. This seems to him,
as it seemed in Buchanan's ballad to the soul of Judas, a light of
hope. He goes to the light, and finds himself in front of a vast and
ruinous looking church. Inside there is a light; he leaps down from his
horse, descends some steps, and enters the building. Suddenly all is
darkness again; he has to feel his way.
Long drear vaults before him lie!
Glimmering lights are seen to glide!--
"Blessed Mary, hear my cry!
Deign a sinner's steps to guide!"
Often lost their quivering beam,
Still the lights move slow before,
Till they rest their ghastly gleam
Right against an iron door.
He is really in the underground burial place of a church, in the vaults
of the dead, but he does not know it. He hears voices.
Thundering voices from within,
Mixed with peals of laughter, rose;
As they fell, a solemn strain
Lent its wild and wondrous close!
'Midst the din, he seem'd to hear
Voice of friends, by death removed;--
Well he knew that solemn air,
'Twas the lay that Alice loved.
Suddenly a great bell booms four times, and the iron door opens. He
sees within a strange banquet; the seats are coffins, the tables are
draped with black, and the dead are the guests.
Alice, in her grave-clothes bound,
Ghastly smiling, points a seat;
All arose, with thundering sound;
All the expected stranger greet.
High their meagre arms they wave,
Wild their notes of welcome swell;
"Welcome, traitor, to the grave!
Perjured, bid the light farewell!"
I have given the greater part of this strange ballad because of its
intrinsic value and the celebrity of its German author. But the part
that may have inspired Buchanan is only the part concerning the
wandering over the black moor, the light seen in the distance, the
ghostly banquet of the dead, and the ruined vaults. A great poet would
have easily found in these details the suggestion which Buchanan found
for the wandering of Judas to the light and the unexpected vision of
the dead assembling to a banquet with him--but only this. The complete
transformation of the fancy, the transmutation of the purely horrible
into a ghostly beauty and tenderness, is the wonderful thing. After
all, this is the chief duty of the poet in this world, to discover
beauty even in the ugly, suggestions of beauty even in the cruel and
terrible. This Buchanan did once so very well that his work will never
be forgotten, but he received thereafter no equal inspiration, and the
"Ballad of Judas" remains, alone of its kind, his only real claim to
high distinction.
The poetry of Robert Buchanan is not great enough as poetry to justify
many quotations, but as thinking it demands some attention. His
third volume is especially of interest in this respect, because it
contains a curious exposition of his religious idealism. Buchanan is a
mystic; there is no doubt that he has been very much influenced by the
mysticism of Blake. The whole of the poems collectively entitled "The
Devil's Mystics," must have been suggested by Blake's nomenclature.
This collection belongs to "The Book of Orm," which might have been
well called "The Book of Robert Buchanan." Orm ought to be a familiar
name to students of English literature, one of the old English books
also being called "The Ormulum," because it was written by a man named
Orm. Buchanan's Orm is represented to be an ancient Celt, who has
visions and dreams about the mystery of the universe, and who puts
these visions and dreams, which are Buchanan's, into old-fashioned
verse.
The great Ernest Renan said in his "Dialogues Philosophiques" that if
everybody in the world who had thought much about the mystery of things
were to write down his ideas regarding the Infinite, some great truth
might be discovered or deduced from the result. Buchanan has tried
to follow this suggestion; for he has very boldly put down all his
thoughts about the world and man and God. As to results, however, I can
find nothing particularly original except two or three queer fancies,
none of which relates to the deeper riddles of being. In a preface in
verse, the author further tells us that when he speaks of God he does
not mean the Christian God or the God of India nor any particular God,
but only the all-including Spirit of Life. Be that as it may, we find
his imagery to be certainly borrowed from old Hebrew and old Christian
thinkers; here he has not fulfilled expectations. But the imagery is
used to express some ideas which I think you will find rather new--not
exactly philosophical ideas, but moral parables.
One of these is a parable about the possible consequences of seeing or
knowing the divine power which is behind the shadows of things. Suppose
that there were an omnipotent God whom we could see; what would be the
consequences of seeing him? Orm discovered that the blue of the sky was
a blue veil drawn across Immensity to hide the face of God. One day,
in answer to prayer, God drew aside the blue veil. Then all mankind
were terrified because they saw, by day and by night, an awful face
looking down upon them out of the sky, the sleepless eyes of the face
seeming to watch each person constantly wherever he was. Did this make
men happy? Not at all. They became tired of life, finding themselves
perpetually watched; they covered their cities with roofs, and lived by
lamp light only, in order to avoid being looked at by the face, God.
This queer parable, recounted in the form of a dream, has a meaning
worth thinking about. The ultimate suggestion, of course, is that we do
not know and see many things because it would make us very unhappy to
know them.
An equally curious parable, also related in the form of a dream, treats
of the consolations of death. What would become of mankind if there
were no death? I think you will remember that I told you how the young
poet William Watson took up the same subject a few years ago, in his
remarkable poem, "A Dream of Man." Watson's supposition is that men
became so wise, so scientific, that they were able to make themselves
immortal and to conquer death. But at last they became frightfully
unhappy, unutterably tired of life, and were obliged to beg God to give
them back death again. And God said to them, "You are happier than I
am. You can die; I cannot. The only happiness of existence is effort.
Now you can have your friend death back again." Buchanan's idea was
quite different from this. His poem is called "The Dream of the World
without Death." Men prayed to God that there might be no more death
or decay of the body; and the prayer was granted. People continued to
disappear from the world, but they did not die. They simply vanished,
when their time came, as ghosts. A child goes out to play in the field,
for example, and never comes back again; the mother finds only the
empty clothes of her darling. Or a peasant goes to the fields to work,
and his body is never seen again. People found that this was a much
worse condition of things than had been before. For the consolation
of knowledge, of certainty, was not given them. The dead body is a
certificate of death; nature uses corruption as a seal, an official
exhibit and proof of the certainty of death. But when there is no body,
no corpse, no possible sign, how horrible is the disappearance of
the persons we love. The mystery of it is a much worse pain than the
certain knowledge of death. Doubt is the worst form of torture. Well,
when mankind had this experience, they began to think, that, after all,
death was a beautiful and good thing, and they prayed most fervently
that they might again have the privilege of dying in the old way, of
putting the bodies of their dead into beautiful tombs, of being able to
visit the graves of their beloved from time to time. So God took pity
on them and gave them back death, and the poet sings his gratitude thus:
And I cried, "O unseen Sender of Corruption,
I bless thee for the wonder of Thy mercy,
Which softeneth the mystery and the parting.
"I bless Thee for the change and for the comfort,
The bloomless face, shut eyes, and waxen fingers,--
For Sleeping, and for Silence, and Corruption."
This idea is worth something, if only as a vivid teaching of the
necessity of things as they are. The two fantasies thus commented upon
are the most original things in the range of this mystical book. I
could not recommend any further reading or study of the poet, except
perhaps of his "Vision of the Man Accurst." But even this has not the
true stamp of originality; and only the "Ballad of Judas Iscariot" is
certain not to be soon forgotten.