Coulisses" and "The Undying One," which remind the reader, strangely
enough, of certain prose fancies of another son of Ushaw, Francis
Thompson. A healthier Lafcadio Hearn, with a broader vision and a
tradition more clearly English, might have written "Finis Coronat
Opus." And the thought makes one, perhaps, a little regretful that Hearn
was so sincerely a gypsy, that he was drawn away from the scenes of his
young manhood to a lovely but wholly alien land. Of course, he wrote
beautifully of Japan. But these youthful sketches show that Japan was
not necessary to his artistic expression. And to take on that strange
new culture he had to give up some heritages of thought and belief that
he could ill spare, the loss of which, it may be, is the cause of that
melancholy, shading sometimes into despair, which permeates even his
richest and most sympathetic Japanese studies.
Hearn did not ruin himself as a writer by writing about Japan. He ruined
himself by trying to be a Japanese. Now, one can write about Japan
without being a Japanese, just as one can write about hell without being
damned. But Hearn was not sufficiently imaginative to perceive this.
So he gave up European civilization for that of Japan. His Irish
father's faith held all that was noble of his Greek mother's pagan
tradition, but Hearn chose the novelties of Buddhism. He went to Japan:
he devoted the gifts that God had given him, and the technical skill
that the Jesuits had taught him, to the celebration of anti-Christian
legends and ceremonials. But cherry-blossoms bloom only for a
season--unlike Sharon's rose. And the tragic letters published after
Hearn's death show that this fantastic adventurer learned at last that
he had forsaken the splendid adventure first appointed for him. His
bitter revilings of the people and customs of the land he had spent
years in praising show that within Nippon's golden apples, too, are
ashes.
Hearn has been held up by the sentimentalists as a shining example of
humanity's cruelty to great artists. He is instead a shining example of
the minor artist's cruelty to humanity. He was not rejected of men. His
was not "divine discontent," his was the pernicious "desire for new
things." Therefore he became merely the maker of fair and futile
decorations, and he who might have been a poet, a creator, became a
clever wordsmith.
The essays in this little book of Hearn's earliest work show a strange
resemblance to the prose of Francis Thompson. What a contrast the lives
of the two men present! Both were vagabonds, both were physically
handicapped. But Francis Thompson was imaginative enough to be himself,
so he wrote "The Hound of Heaven." And Lafcadio Hearn was so lacking in
imagination as to want to be somebody else--so he wrote "Gleanings in
Buddha Fields."
It is not for a mere journalist to point out the moral significance of
the tragedy of Lafcadio Hearn. But I venture to suggest that the young
American and English poets who are kissing the silken hem of Mr.
Rabindranath Tagore's garment might profitably read Lafcadio Hearn's
later correspondence. Fame and happiness are not always the reward of
him who gives up the Occident for the Orient. Orientalism has its own
truths, its own splendors. But the writers whose words we cherish, whose
names are graven on our hearts, the makers of our literature, did anyone
of these sell his birthright for a mess of--rice?
SAPPHO REDIVIVA
Out of the dust of Egypt comes the voice of Sappho, as clear and sweet
as when she sang in Lesbos by the sea, 600 years before the birth of
Christ. The picks and spades of Arab workmen, directed by Bernard P.
Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt of the Egypt Exploration Fund, have given
the world a hitherto unknown poem by the greatest woman poet of all
time.
Of course it is not a complete and legible manuscript, this buried
treasure unearthed at sunburnt Oxyrhyncus. It is a little pile of
fragments of papyrus, fifty-six in all. And on one of them is the
tantalizing inscription, "The First Book of the Lyrics of Sappho, 1,332
lines."
To piece these fragments together has been a task more delicate and
arduous than to dig them out of the earth. Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt
succeeded in combining some twenty shreds of papyrus, and thus in
showing the nature of the original manuscript. And the chief product of
their labor and skill was a poem of six stanzas in the form to which
Sappho's name is given, a poem, however, from which two entire lines and
many words were missing.
Then it was that J. M. Edmonds, an eminent Hellenist of Cambridge
University, gave his attention to the matter. He studied the possible
relationship of the words, parsing and analyzing as diligently as any
youth whom only the implacable Homer separates from a strip of parchment
marked with the university's seal and his own name parodied in Latin.
"Anactoria," he saw, was vocative--and that was greatly significant. He
added accents, syllables, words, and finally he supplied--it was pure
guesswork, of course--two entire lines. And the result is undoubtedly a
close approximation of the original lyric, more nearly complete, indeed,
than most of the poems which have made critics call Sappho "the Tenth
Muse."
For Sappho is known only by two brief odes and a few lyric
fragments--"two small brilliants and a handful of star dust," they have
been called. She wrote, it is believed, at least nine books of odes,
together with epithalamia, epigrams, elegies, and monodies.
To account for the disappearance of all this poetry several theories
have been advanced. One, which is largely accepted, is that Sappho's
poems were burned at Byzantium in the year A. D. 380 by command of
Gregory Nazianzen, who desired that his own poems might be studied in
their stead, for the improvement of the morals of his people.
J. M. Edmonds has contributed to an issue of _The Classical Review_ his
amended version of the poem. He gives also the following prose
translation:
The fairest thing in all the world some say is a host of horsemen,
and some a host of foot, and some, again, a navy of ships; but to
me, 'tis my heart's beloved, and 'tis easy to make this understood
by any.
When Helen surveyed much mortal beauty, she chose for the best the
destroyer of all the honor of Troy, and thought not so much either
of child or parent dear, but was led astray by love to bestow her
heart afar; for woman is ever easy to be bent when she thinks
lightly of what is near and dear.
Even so you to-day, my Anactoria, remember not, it seems, when she
is with you one of whom I would rather have the sweet sound of her
footfall and the sight of the brightness of her beaming face than
all the chariots and armored footmen of Lydia.
Know that in this world man cannot have the best; yet to pray for a
share in what was once shared is better than to forget it.
I have roughly rendered the poem into English verse as follows:
Unto some a troop of triumphant horsemen,
Or a radiant fleet, or a marching legion,
Is the fairest sight--but to me the fairest
Is my beloved.
Every lover must understand my wisdom,
For when Helen looked on the whole world's beauty
What she chose as best was a man, her loved one,
Who shamed Troy's honor.
Then her little child was to her as nothing.
Not her mother's tears nor her father's pleading
Moved her. At Love's word, meekly she surrendered
Unto this stranger.
So does woman yield, valuing but little
Things, however fair, that she looks at daily.
So you now, Anactoria, forget her,
Her, who is with you,
Her, to see whose face, fairer than the sunlight,
Her, to hear whose step ringing on the threshold,
I'd forego the sight of the Lydian army,
Bowmen and chariots.
Never in this world is the best our portion,
Yet there is a vague pleasure in remembrance,
And to long for joy that has passed is better
Than to forget it.
No one would venture to criticize Mr. Edmonds's treatment of the Greek
text; his ingenious additions are a distinguished, scholarly
achievement. Nor can any fault be found with his prose translation of
the poem. But to readers of poetry who have not that peculiar
literal-mindedness which characterizes scholars his interpretation of
the translated poem, his explanation of Sappho's meaning, is anything
but satisfactory.
It gives "point" to the piece, he says, if we imagine Anactoria to have
fallen in love with a soldier. Sappho, he explains, clearly is away in
exile. Anactoria and the other woman are living in the same town,
presumably Mitylene. He gives this interpretation of Sappho's supposed
address to Anactoria:
You, who are lucky enough to be with her still, have forgotten, it
seems, a friend whom I would give anything to see again. For you
have fallen in love. And yet it is natural enough; and I cannot
blame you. But O, that I might have the joy you are throwing away! I
know it is no use wishing; but still, past delights are better
missed than forgotten.
Now, it is the scholars that have brought the poets into disrepute. They
insist on interpreting them and in being at once too literal and too
imaginative. Take, for instance, the obvious example of Shakespeare.
Plays and poems written for the entertainment of the world have been
twisted and tortured by erudite commentators who have seen in them
supernatural prophecies, scientific treatises, political tracts,
and--what is in this connection especially important--personal
confessions. Mankind cannot be restrained, it seems, from the attempt to
interpret all poetry as rhymed autobiography.
Why, it is respectfully asked, does it give "point to the piece" to
imagine that Anactoria has fallen in love with a soldier? Why drag in
the soldier? Surely a poet may mention the panoply of war without having
in mind any particular fighting man. The poem is simple and direct; it
may be taken at its face value without the addition of any love affair
other than that which primarily it celebrates.
Mr. Edmonds is, it may be objected, too imaginative when he supplies
Anactoria with a mysterious military lover. He is perhaps too literal
minded in the very essence of his interpretation. Strangely enough, he
seems for the moment to forget that a poet is not compelled always to
speak in propria persona.
Why should we believe that Sappho meant this poem as a personal message
to a friend named Anactoria? Why is it not possible--even probable--that
Sappho meant the poem as the utterance of someone else, of someone who
existed only in her own splendid imagination?
If this were so the case would really not be without precedent. "My
mother bore me in the southern wild; And I am black, but O, my soul is
white," was not (as scholars of A. D. 2,000 may gravely state) the
outcry of a little colored boy, but the work of an elderly English
gentleman. Walter Savage Landor's "Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel," was
not a personal expression--Mr. Landor, as his mother was well aware, had
no wheel to mind. Shelley was not the daughter of Earth and Water and
Browning never choked a young woman named Porphyria with her own hair.
No, in spite of the excellent advice that has been given them, poets
refuse to look exclusively into their own hearts and write. They refuse
to be consistently subjective, they insist on voicing the thoughts of
others. Therefore, not all the scholars in Christendom and heathenry
need keep us from regarding Sappho's newly found poem as anything but
what, on the surface, it appears to be, the address of a rejected lover
to a friend or sister of his lady.
If Mr. Edmonds's admirable prose translation be regarded in this
light--which surely is the light of nature--what is there about it to
perplex? That Sappho used the name "Anactoria" in other poems does not
prove that in that shadowy school on Lesbos there was a girl so named.
It is a good rhythmical name, fitting excellently into the middle of a
lesser Sapphic strophe; why should not Sappho use it? Was Pompilia among
Browning's acquaintances, or does E. A. Robinson write letters to
Fleming Helphenstine and Minniver Cheevy?
Even if, because of the ode which Longinus praised and because of other
references, we believe that Sappho really had an Anactoria, among her
friends or pupils, we are under no obligation to believe that this poem
was meant for her. Leigh Hunt--not to speak of Rossetti!--knew many
Jennies, but none of them ever sued him for libel.
Sappho, whom a contemporary called "the flower of the Graces," suffered
first from her enemies and then from her friends. That "small, dark
woman" who wrote immortal lyrics and counted among her disciples such
famous singers as Erinna of Telos and Damophyla of Pamphylia, was, after
her death, grossly calumniated by the ribald writers of Athenian comedy.
Those who believe in the anecdotes of her which fill those scurrilous
but entertaining pages cannot consistently refuse to credit also
Aristophanes's interpretation of the character of Socrates.
If we are to take any of Sappho's poems as genuine personal expressions,
certainly we cannot pass by her ode to her brother Charaxus, in which,
in the most strict, not to say puritanical, fashion she rebukes him for
yielding to the charms of the courtesan Doricha.
Nor can her correspondence with that Alceus, that "fluent poet of
fluctuating moods," as E. B. Osborn calls him, be neglected. Alceus
wrote to her, in an ode of which a fragment is preserved:
"Violet-weaving, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho, I wish to say somewhat, but
shame hinders me." And Sappho answered, primly enough, in another ode:
"Hadst thou desire of aught good or fair, shame would not have touched
thine eyes, but thou wouldst have spoken openly thereof."
The famous story of Sappho's vain pursuit of Phaon, and her death by
leaping into the sea from the Leucadian promontory, were, it may safely
be stated, inventions of the comic poets. Charles G. D. Roberts, in his
introduction to Bliss Carman's exquisite reconstruction of Sappho's
lyrics, suggests that the Phaon story is perhaps merely an echo of the
legend of Aphrodite and Adonis--who is, indeed, called Phaon in some
versions.
But the modern admirers of Sappho have not hesitated to accept as
authentic such stories as that of her love for the mythical Phaon, in
spite of the fact that they originated 200 years after her death. The
Phaon myth, however, Sappho herself might forgive, because of the
literature it has begotten--Ovid's immortal epistle and Addison's
fantasy, to mention only two examples. But it is too doubtful whether
she would appreciate the eloquent but somewhat perfervid hysterical
dithyrambs of the late Algernon Charles Swinburne and his followers. The
"pure sweet-smiling" poet who scolded her naughty brother and snubbed
the ardent Alceus was not:
Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.
But she was a great poet. If it was not already known, the splendid
strophes recovered at Oxyrhyncus would prove it. E. B. Osborn, writing
in the London _Morning Post_, has called attention to their resemblance
to the Canticle of Canticles, to the way in which, as he says, Love
makes Lesbos and land-locked Sharon provinces in one principality. There
is a close kinship between the ideas expressed in the first and third
stanzas of Sappho's poem and those of these lines:
"I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's
chariots. (I., 9.)
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as
the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" (V., 10.)
Lesbos is on the sea, so the picture of the white-winged ships came
naturally to the mind of Sappho. But the poet of Sharon thought only of
Pharaoh's shining cavalry and of (magic phrase!) an "army with banners."
The world cannot be too grateful to Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt for their
literary mining, and to Mr. Edmonds for his marvelously ingenious work
of reconstruction. We may object to scholars and commentators, we may
regret their interpretations, but in this instance men of this sometimes
irritating class have made the world's literature their debtor. They
have recovered, they have almost recreated, one of the greatest poems of
the greatest poet of the greatest age of lyric poetry. It is already a
classic, this little song, whose liquid Greek syllables echo the music
of undying passion. It is a poem not unworthy of her whom the amazed
world called "the miracle"; of whom in our own time that true poet and
wise critic, the late Theodore Watts-Dunton, wrote:
Never before these songs were sung, and never since did the human
soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers, and,
from the executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in
that high, imperious verbal economy which only nature can teach the
artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the place of
second.
THE POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS
That Gerard Hopkins is to-day little known, even among rhymers, is an
inevitable result of his manner of life and work. He was a priest of the
Catholic Church and a member of the Society of Jesus. His faith was the
source of his poetry, but his arduous labors in its service left him
little time for celebrating it in verse, and made him so indifferent to
applause that he never published. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch put his "The
Starlight Night" in the "Oxford Book of Victorian Verse," and he is
represented in Orby Shipley's "Carmina Mariana" and H. C. Beeching's
"Lyra Sacra." Several of his poems are included in Volume VIII of "Poets
and Poetry of the Century" with a critique by his friend Robert Bridges,
and Miss Katherine Bregy has made him the subject of an illuminative
essay in her admirable book "The Poet's Chantry." A scant bibliography
indeed for a genuinely inspired poet, the most scrupulous word-artist of
the nineteenth century!
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out like shining from shook foil.
These opening lines of a sonnet illustrate clearly Gerard Hopkins'
spirit and method. Like that other Jesuit, Robert Southwell, he was a
Catholic poet: for him to write a poem on a secular theme was difficult,
almost impossible. He sang "the grandeur of God," and for his song he
used a language which in its curious perfection is exclusively his own.
One may search his writings in vain for a figure that is not novel and
true. He took from his own experience those comparisons that are the
material of poetry, and rejected, it seems, such of them as already bore
marks of use. For him, the grandeur of God flames out from the world not
like light from stars, but like "shining from shook foil." He writes not
of soft hands, nor of velvety hands, but of "feel-of-primrose hands." He
writes not that thrush's eggs are blue as the sky, but that they "look
little low heavens." The starry skies of a winter night are "the dim
woods quick with diamond wells," or "the gray lawns cold where quaking
gold-dew lies." In Spring "the blue is all in a rush with richness," and
Summer "plashes amid the billowy apple-trees his lusty hands."
Now, it may be that these exquisite figures would not entitle their
maker to high praise if they were isolated bits of splendor, if (like
the economical verse-makers of our own day) he had made each one the
excuse for a poem. But they come in bewildering profusion. Gerard
Hopkins' poems are successions of lovely images, each a poem in itself.
This statement may give its reader the idea that of Gerard Hopkins'
poetry may be said, as Charles Ricketts said of Charles Conder's
pictures, "There are too many roses." No one who reads his poems,
however, will make this criticism. The roses are there of right--all of
them. They are, it may be said, necessary roses. They are the cunningly
placed elements of an elaborate pattern, a pattern of which roses are
the appropriate material. And the red and white of their petals come
from the blood and tears that nourished their roots.
It is the overwhelming greatness of this theme that justifies the
lavishness of his method. The word "mystic" is nowadays applied so
wantonly to every gossiper about things supernatural that it is to most
people meaningless. For the benefit of those who know the difference
between Saint Theresa and Miss Evelyn Underhill, however, it may be
stated that Gerard Hopkins was more nearly a true mystic than either
Francis Thompson or Lionel Johnson. The desire, at any rate, for the
mystical union with God is evident in every line he wrote, and even more
than his friend Coventry Patmore he knew the "dark night of the soul."
This being the case, his theme being God and his writing being an act of
adoration, it is profitless to criticize him, as Mr. Robert Bridges has
done, for "sacrificing simplicity" and violating those mysterious
things, the "canons of taste." A sane editor of a popular magazine would
reject everything he wrote. A verse-writer who does not know that "The
Habit of Perfection" is true poetry is not a poet. Here it is:
Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorled ear;
Pipe me to pastures still, and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shelled, eyes, with double dark,
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.
Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!
Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!
O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street,
And you unhouse and house the Lord.
And, Poverty, be thou the bride
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-colored clothes provide
Your spouse, not labored-at, nor spun.
Walter Pater, Gerard Hopkins' tutor at Balliol, had no keener
sensitivity to the color and music of language. Gerard Hopkins'
purpose--a purpose impossible of fulfillment but not therefore less
worth the effort--was "to arrange words like so many separate gems to
compose a whole expression of thought, in which the force of grammar and
the beauty of rhythm absolutely correspond."
There will always be those who dislike the wealth of imagery which
characterizes Gerard Hopkins' poetry, because they do not understand his
mental and spiritual attitude. Perhaps for some critics an altar cloth
may be too richly embroidered and a chalice too golden. Ointment of
spikenard is "very costly."
PHILOSOPHICAL TENDENCIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Why do people write poems, stories and plays? The obvious and cynical
answer is that people write because they are paid for their writing; the
poet makes a poem for the same reason that the carpenter makes a bench,
and the dramatist has no motive other than that of the bootmaker. There
is some truth in this; if people do not begin to write because they
consider writing a means of livelihood they often continue to write for
that reason. Certainly it is easy to think of contemporary authors of
whom it may safely be said that they have no inspiration save the desire
for money.
But the existence of literature is not thus easily to be explained.
There are so many trades and professions easier and more profitable than
that of letters that he would be a very stupid person indeed who
selected it with nothing to influence him in that direction but the
desire to make money. There is something else beside the perfectly
legitimate desire to make a livelihood in the mind of the writer; there
is something that makes him undergo poverty and other tribulations for
the sake of his craft.
What is this influence? What is it that makes writers write? It is no
one thing. The will to write is related to nearly all the passions,
ambitions and desires of mankind; it is the result of instincts
immemorial and unchanging. There are those who hold a peculiar
inspirational theory about writing, who believe that an author is merely
the instrument used by some creative power. In so far as this theory
coincides with the truth that God is the source of all energy it is, of
course, sound. But those who hold it generally base it on some fantastic
idea of genius as a magic, unknowable power, irresponsibly wandering
through the world and selecting at random the men and women who are to
be through its mysterious spell creative artists. It is a fascinating
theory, but untrue, being supported only by the citation of numerous
particular cases, which cannot in logic establish a general rule.