MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS
OR
Ten Conversations
WITH
MARGARET FULLER
UPON
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS AND
ITS EXPRESSION IN ART
HELD AT THE HOUSE OF THE REV. GEORGE RIPLEY
BEDFORD PLACE, BOSTON
_BEGINNING MARCH 1, 1841_
REPORTED BY CAROLINE W. HEALEY
BOSTON
ROBERTS BROTHERS
1895
_Copyright, 1895_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE 5
MEMBERS OF THE CLASS 17
I. GENERAL MYTHOLOGICAL STATEMENT 25
II. GENERAL STATEMENT CONTINUED. R. W. E. PRESENT[1] 40
III. STORY FROM NOVALIS. APOLLO 60
IV. MINERVA. THE SERPENT 77
V. VENUS AND PSYCHE. R. W. E. PRESENT 95
VI. CUPID AND PSYCHE. MARGARET, AND ELISABETH HOAR 106
VII. PLUTO AND TARTARUS 123
VIII. MERCURY AND ORPHEUS. R. W. E. PRESENT 135
IX. HERMES AND ORPHEUS 147
X. BACCHUS AND THE DEMIGODS 156
PREFACE.
In 1839, Margaret Fuller, delicate in health and much overtaxed,
consented to gratify many who loved her by opening in Boston a series of
“Conversations for Women.” In a Circular quoted by Emerson, she says to
Mrs. Sophia Ripley:—
“Could a circle be assembled in earnest, desirous to answer the
questions, ‘What were we born to do?’ and ‘How shall we do it?’
I should think the undertaking a noble one.”
This was certainly the original intent of the famous “Fuller
Conversations,” which, beginning then, were continued at intervals,
until Margaret left Boston for New York in 1844.
It seems a little singular, therefore, to find her writing to Ralph Waldo
Emerson of this series, Nov. 25, 1839, as follows:—
“The first day’s topic was the genealogy of Heaven and Earth;
then the Will or Jupiter; the Understanding, Mercury: the
second day’s, The celestial inspiration of Genius, perception
and transmission of Divine Law; Apollo the terrene inspiration,
Bacchus the impassioned abandonment. Of the thunderbolt, the
caduceus, the ray and the grape, having disposed as well as
might be, we came to the wave and the sea-shell it moulds to
beauty....
“I assure you, there is more Greek than Bostonian spoken at the
meetings!”
Under the forms suggested by Mythology, Margaret proceeded to open all
the great questions of life. In a literary sense, she distinctly stated
that she knew little about the doings on Olympus, nor had she received
any help from German critical works,—of which at the present day she
would have found many.
These Conversations owed their attraction first to the absolute novelty
of her theme to many of those she addressed, and still more to the
variety and freshness of her own treatment. The opening, at the Boston
Athenæum, of the splendid collection of casts presented by Thomas
Handasyd Perkins, and many private collections of pictures, engravings,
gems, and miniature casts, had interested her intensely, and both mind
and fancy were absorbed in the contemplation of their themes. In these
Conversations she depicted what she had gained from Art, rather than
the little that she had acquired through study. If I may judge from
a later experience, her Latin studies rather injured than developed
her brilliant fancies. She never could remember what she had said,
never could repeat a brilliant saying, and, if obliged to read any
illustration, read it, as all her friends admitted, very badly. From a
statement made to Emerson, I quote the following:—
“Her mood applied itself to the mood of her companion, point
to point, in the most limber, sinuous, vital way; ... and this
sympathy she had for all persons indifferently.”
The communication of which the above is a sample I have always read with
amazement, for I never knew a person of whom it would seem less true.
When conversing with one sympathetic person, it was undoubtedly true;
when resting upon the affection and loyalty of her young women,—a most
gifted and extraordinary circle,—it was doubtless equally so; but when
the class of March, 1841, was formed, a very different aspect of herself
appeared.
The fame of her “talks” had spread. She had great need of money, and some
of the gentlemen who were accustomed to talk with her, and some of the
ladies of her day-class, suggested an evening class, to be composed of
both ladies and gentlemen, and to meet at the house of the Rev. George
Ripley in Bedford Place. Ten Conversations were to be held, and the
tickets of admission cost twenty dollars each, a very high price for
that time. It was in the book-room of Elisabeth Peabody that I first
heard them discussed. I was very young to join such a circle; and when
she invited me, Elisabeth had more regard, I think, to Margaret’s purse,
than to my fitness for the company. But it was a great opportunity. The
members were full of excitement over the projected opening of Brook
Farm. All were in good spirits, and bright sayings ran back and forth.
I had been carefully trained in the Art of Reporting, and at that time
made careful abstracts on the following day of any lecture that had
interested me. In these I trusted to my memory. It was not possible to
do this with the Conversations; so I invented a sort of short-hand, and
carried note-book and pencil with me. I sat a little out of sight that I
might not embarrass Margaret, but Elisabeth Peabody and Mrs. Farrar found
me out. Elisabeth wrote what she called an abstract, every night; but an
examination of her abstracts quoted by Mr. Emerson shows that what she
wrote was not what any one said, but the impression made upon her own
mind by it. These abstracts she always read to me, the next morning. I
wrote out my short-hand notes before breakfast and carried them down to
her about noon. I greatly enjoyed listening to her papers, and she was so
absorbed in them that she often forgot to ask for mine, which was a great
relief to me.
So far as I know, these Reports of mine are the only attempt ever made
deliberately to represent these or any of Margaret’s “Conversations”
word for word. Of course, much was omitted as not worth recording, nor
did I ever write down anything that I could not understand. Many of the
members I knew intimately, and fell naturally into writing of them by
initials and first names, as they always spoke to and of each other. At
times I fell back into the Mr., Mrs., or Miss, which was my own habit.
It is well to call those we love by any name they will permit, but the
familiar habit of the Transcendental circle was full of social peril to
the younger members, who, conceiving it a proof of genius, followed it,
when its origin was forgotten, and were much misunderstood in consequence
in later years.
I offer the Reports exactly as they were written. I should like to alter
them in several small ways if I could do it honestly. We met to discuss
Grecian Mythology as interpreted to Margaret’s mind by Art; but Latin and
Greek names were used as if they were synonymous, and Latin poems were
quoted, as well as Greek traditions. This confused my mind then, and does
still. Athene and Minerva, Zeus and Jupiter, are by no means the same
persons to me, Art or no Art.
It may be thought by those who cannot remember the persons who enacted
this little drama, or by those who do remember and know well how very
distinguished a company this was, that I should have eliminated my own
reflections, and dropped out of the story.
This would I think have been greatly unjust to Margaret, who never
enjoyed this mixed class, and considered it a failure so far as her own
power was concerned. She and Mr. Emerson met like Pyramus and Thisbe,
a blank wall between. With Mr. Alcott she had no patience, and no one
of the class seemed to understand how sincere and deep was her interest
in the theme. In no way was Margaret’s supremacy so evident as in the
impulse she gave to the minds of younger women.
It was the wish of Margaret’s mother and brothers, as it is also the
wish of her surviving relatives, that I should print these pages. After
Arthur’s death, Richard Fuller undertook to carry out a plan to which
both had agreed, and which Margaret’s mother had greatly at heart.
They desired that I should write a simple, straightforward account of
Margaret, including her residence in Italy, her marriage, the birth
of her child, and her death. This they intended to print at their own
expense, and they thought it might be so written as to put an end to many
absurd and painful rumors which had followed the publication of the first
Memoir. That I might prepare for this, all Margaret’s manuscripts were in
my custody for more than a year. The completion of the work was prevented
by Richard Fuller’s unexpected death. No surviving member of the family
was able to carry out his intention.
I still have in my possession the estimate of his sister’s character
which Richard made for my use.
I should like to add, that the scholar will see that the stories from
Apuleius and Novalis do not exactly correspond to the originals. They
were reported exactly as they were told.
CAROLINE HEALEY DALL.
Sept. 1, 1895, WASHINGTON, D. C.
A LIST OF PERSONS ATTENDING THE CLASS NAMED IN THIS REPORT.
_About thirty persons usually attended._
GEORGE RIPLEY. The well-known clergyman, settled over a
Unitarian church in Purchase St., Boston, afterward the
President of the Association at Brook Farm, and later literary
editor of the New York “Tribune.”
SOPHIA DANA RIPLEY, his wife.
ELISABETH PALMER PEABODY. A woman of remarkable accumulations
of learning, and as remarkable a breadth of sympathy. She
was a teacher,—an enthusiastic advocate of the Kindergarten,
and opened at No. 13 West St., Boston, a foreign Circulating
Library, which soon became a sort of Literary Exchange of the
greatest use to New England. Her own great powers did not
accomplish all they ought, because it was impossible for her to
apply them systematically.
FREDERICK HENRY HEDGE. The well-known German and ecclesiastical
scholar, whose remarkable scholarship and character have not
yet received the commemoration they deserve. He was at this
time settled over the church in Bangor, Maine.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. Already the pastor of the Church of the
Disciples, in Boston, and preaching at Amory Hall. The outline
of his lovely and useful life is preserved in a memoir by the
Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. The Concord philosopher.
MRS. FARRAR, born Rotch, the wife of the Harvard Professor of
Physical Science and Mathematics.
FRANCIS G. SHAW. The son of a well-known Boston merchant, to
be honored through all time as the father of Colonel Robert G.
Shaw, who was buried where he fell, with the negroes whom he
died to free.
MRS. SARAH B. SHAW, his wife.
ANN WILBY CLARKE, wife of a Boston bank-officer and the oldest
member of an English family of Wilbys, nearly every member of
which was at some time a teacher in Boston or its neighborhood.
MRS. JONATHAN RUSSELL of Milton, widow of the U. S. Minister
to Sweden (1814-1818), residing on the old Governor Hutchinson
place at Milton, and
MISS IDA RUSSELL, her daughter.
WILLIAM WHITE. The brother of the first wife of James Russell
Lowell, who was killed by a fall from the bluff at Milwaukee in
1856.
WILLIAM W. STORY. Sculptor, poet, and lawyer, and well known as
a contributor to Blackwood. Still living.
CAROLINE STURGIS, daughter of William Sturgis of
Boston,—married later to Mr. Tappan,—a most gifted and charming
creature.
MRS. ANNA BARKER WARD, wife of S. G. Ward, now living in
Washington.
JONES VERY of Salem. A Transcendental poet.
ELISABETH HOAR was the daughter of Samuel Hoar of Concord,
Mass., and of Sarah, the daughter of Roger Sherman of
Connecticut. Elisabeth was not the least gifted of her very
gifted family. One brother, recently deceased, was President
Grant’s first Attorney-General; another is the well-known
Senator from Massachusetts to the Congress of the United
States; and a third, Edward Sherman Hoar, was distinguished
as a scholar and botanist. To great intellectual gifts,
Elisabeth added personal loveliness and a saintly serenity of
character. She was betrothed to Charles Emerson (a brother of
Ralph Waldo Emerson), who died of sudden illness just before
the time appointed for their marriage. He was also a rarely
gifted person, and after his death his family transferred their
tenderest affection to Elisabeth. The reader of the various
Lives of Emerson will see that she is often mentioned, and
several of Emerson’s letters are addressed to her. Had she
chosen to devote herself to literature, she would have been
greatly distinguished. The Life of Mrs. Ripley of Waltham,
written for “The Women of Our First Century,” and published
by a committee appointed at the Centennial Exhibition in
Philadelphia, was written by her. She died in 1878.
A. BRONSON ALCOTT of Concord. A memoir of him has been written
by the Hon. F. B. Sanborn of Concord, assisted by Wm. T. Harris.
W. MACK. A gentleman of great ability, who taught a school
in Belmont. His daughter was the first wife of Stillman, the
artist. The family is, I think, extinct, unless Mrs. Stillman
left a daughter.
SOPHIA PEABODY. A younger sister of E. P. P., afterwards Mrs.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
MARIANNE JACKSON. A lovely, beloved, and accomplished woman,
who died early. She was the daughter of Judge Charles Jackson,
one of the soundest jurists who ever sat on a Massachusetts
bench,—the sister of Mrs. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Mrs.
Charles C. Paine, and the aunt, I believe, of Mr. John T. Morse.
I have reserved for the last the name of the only sound Greek scholar
among us: Charles Wheeler.
CHARLES STEARNS WHEELER. Born in Lincoln, near Concord, Dec.
19, 1816, of H. U. 1837, distinguished as a Greek scholar from
whom much was expected. To economize in order to pursue his
Greek studies he built a shanty at Walden, which is said to
have served as a suggestion to Thoreau. He went to Germany
directly after these Conversations, and died suddenly of fever
at Leipzig, in the summer of 1843. His death was a great
grief and a great shock. I have not forgotten the sensation
it produced. Beloved and honored by all who knew him, the
community of scholars was especially bereaved. To this day, I
am able to trust fearlessly to any information obtained from
him.
“_Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness._”—LONGFELLOW.
MARGARET AND HER FRIENDS.
I.
_Monday Evening, March 1, 1841._
Margaret opened the conversation by a beautiful sketch of the origin of
Mythology. The Greeks she thought borrowed their Gods from the Hindus and
Egyptians, but they idealized their personifications to a far greater
extent. The Hindus dwelt in the All, the Infinite, which the Greeks
analyzed and to some degree humanized. All things sprang from Cœlus and
Terra.,—that is, from Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter. Rhea, or
the Productive Energy, and Saturn, or Time, were the children of Cœlus
and Terra. The progress of any people is marked by its mythi. Mythology
is only the history of the development of the Infinite in the Finite.
Saturn devoured his own children until the disappointed Rhea put a
stone (or obstacle) in his way, and she succeeded in raising Jupiter.
The development of human faculties was slow, therefore Time seemed to
absorb all that Productive Energy brought forth, until Energy itself
created obstacles; and of these was born the Indomitable Will. Jupiter
represented that Will, and usurped the rule of Time, fighting with the
low and sensual passions, represented by the Titans and the Giants,
until he seated himself securely on the Olympian Throne, the Father of
the Gods. This Will was not in itself the highest development of either
Beauty, Genius, Wisdom, or Thought; but such developments were subject to
it, were its children.
Juno is only the feminine form of this Indomitable Will. By herself
she is inferior to it, and whenever she opposes it, loses the game.
Vulcan, her child, is Mechanic Art, great in itself to be sure, but not
comparable to the Perfect Wisdom, or Minerva, which sprang ready armed
from the masculine Will. _She_ was greater than her Father, but still his
child.
Neptune, who raises always a “placid head above the waves,” represents
the flow of thought,—all-embracing, girdling in the world, Diana and
Apollo, or Purity and Genius.
Mercury is Genius in the extrinsic, of eloquence, human understanding,
and expression. All were the embodiments of Absolute Ideas, of ideas
that had no origin,—that were eternal. Love brooded over Chaos; and the
perfect Beauty and Love, represented among the Greeks by Venus and her
son, rose from the turbid elements. It is singular that even the ancients
should have maintained the pre-existence of Love. It was before Order,
Men, or the Gods men worshipped. The fable suggests the truth,—Infinite
Love and Beauty always was. It is only with their development in finite
beings that History has to do.
Here MARGARET recapitulated. The Indomitable Will had dethroned Time,
and, acting with Productive Energy,—variously represented at different
times by Isis, Rhea, Ceres, Persephone, and so on,—had driven back the
sensual passions to the bowels of the earth, while it produced Perfect
Wisdom, Genius, Beauty, and Love, results which were more excellent if
not more powerful than their Cause.
To understand this Mythology, we must denationalize ourselves, and throw
the mind back to the consideration of Greek Art, Literature, and Poesy.
It is only scanty justice that my pen can render to Margaret’s eloquent
talk.
FRANK SHAW asked her how she imagined these personifications to have
suggested themselves in that barbarous age.
MARGARET objected to the word _barbarous_. She believed that in the age
of Plato the human intellect reached a point as elevated in some respects
as any it had ever touched.
But the Gods were not the product of that age, but of another far
more remote, FRANK objected. Was not the infinity of Hindu conception
impaired, when the Greeks attributed to the Gods the duties, passions,
and criminal indulgences of men?
MRS. RIPLEY said that the virtue of the Hindu lay in contemplation. If a
man had seen _God_, he was exempt from the ordinary obligations of life,
and allowed to pass his life in quiet adoration.
MARGARET added that the Greek knew better than that. _He_ felt the
necessity of developing the Infinite through action, and embodied this
necessity in his art and poesy as well as in his myths.
FRANK seemed still to think that in losing the adoring contemplation of
the Hindu, and bringing their deities to the human level, the Greeks had
taken one step down.
E. P. P. had always thought it had been a step _up_, and ANN CLARKE
thought that the Greeks forgot themselves, merged all remembrance of the
Finite, in realizing the individual forces of the Infinite.
WILLIAM WHITE, who had not waded very far into the stream, thought the
North American Indian’s worship of the Manitou purer than the Greek
worship, for the very reason that the Indian ascribed to his Manitou no
passion that had degraded humanity.
MARGARET said that the Indian propitiated his God by vile deeds, by
ignoble treacheries and revenge. So the Hindu throws her child into the
Ganges, and an ecstatic crowd falls before the car of Juggernaut.
I thought a good deal, but did not speak. Did not William’s question
grow out of the simple Unity of the Indian worship? But the Indian does
not worship the Manitou because he recognizes a single First Cause,
comprehending in itself all beauty, wisdom, purity, and truth, but
because his heart is naturally lifted toward an unknown something,
which he has hardly yet considered as a Cause. The Greek recognized the
abstract forces of the Universe, but did not perceive their Unity, and
so personified them separately.
E. P. P. suggested that the Indian had no literature, and had left no
record of his Olympus!
MARGARET added that, if we compare the Indian Elysium with the Greek, the
difference in spirituality is perceived at once.
HENRY HEDGE said that Frank Shaw talked about Greek mythi, but nobody
could show a purely Greek mythos.
FRANK replied that he only meant that when the Greek mind had acted on a
myth, it had not refined it.
MARGARET added that it was a vulgar notion that the Poets of Greece
created her Gods; that the Poets were objective, and could give only
humanized representations of them.
HENRY HEDGE thought that there was a point to which philosophy aided and
prompted the creative power, but, that point passed, rather checked its
action. Analysis took the place of the objective tendency.
Well! said WILLIAM WHITE, would not the human mind, aided only by
culture, be incapable of any better idea than Frank Shaw suggested? Must
not revelation complete the work?
MARGARET said that the answer to his question would be determined by
his understanding of the word “revelation.” _She_ could not believe in
a God who had ever left himself without a witness in the world. As soon
as the human mind and will were ready, there was always some great Truth
waiting to be submitted to their united action, until it was worn out.
The beautiful Greek era had been succeeded by a period of inaction; the
Roman era by another, and so on. She was sorry we had wandered from our
subject so far as to doubt her very premises!
FRANK said, everything rested on those premises; so he thought that the
ideals of beauty, love, justice, and truth should be referred to the
Infinite Mind, and not to the Greek.
I wonder where he was when Margaret told about the Love which “was”
before Order!
HENRY HEDGE said that Culture was the Mediator between the Finite and the
Infinite.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE, alluding to Mr. Hedge’s previous remark upon the
growth of philosophy, and the loss of the creative power, said that if
that were a fact, it greatly diminished the probability of the birth
of pure Genius into the world. Plato wrote when philosophy was at the
turning point.
MARGARET said that there were many proofs in Plato that the philosophers
understood the personifications of the mythi. She thought that the gods,
the demigods, and the heroes of mythology represented distinct classes,
and that this was not sufficiently remembered. She referred to the story
of the burning of Hercules in Ovid, where Jupiter calls Juno to see how
well his son endures!
WILLIAM WHITE said that he thought the idea of Deity was degraded when
the Greeks changed a hero into a god; but if Culture be a Mediator, would
not Plato have been greater had he been born into the nineteenth century?
JAMES F. CLARKE said Platos were impossible now.
MARGARET agreed, and said that the pride of knowledge which he would
find in the world should he appear, would be a greater obstacle than
superstition once was.
Did somebody say a little while ago that Will indomitable was born of
obstacle?
MARGARET told William White that Coleridge had once said that he could
neither measure nor understand Plato’s ignorance! His mind had not
reached that altitude!
HENRY HEDGE, not willing to forego the possible birth of Genius, asked if
all the experience and discovery with which the world had been enriched
since Plato’s time would not furnish enough for the new-comer to act upon?
MARGARET replied that the mind could not receive unless excited. She must
go through all the intellectual experience of a Plato, to be as great
as he; but she might stand upon the general or even her own intuitive
recognition of the truths he had advanced, and go forward to greater
results,—but still that would not be to make herself greater.
But, said MRS. RIPLEY, in the first case you would be nothing _but_ Plato.
MARGARET acceded, but begged not to be understood as doubting that the
future would be capable of finer things than the past.
The ideal significance of the Mythology was further dwelt upon, and
much was said of the contrast between the thought of the priest and the
worship of the people. It was acknowledged as a matter of course, that
only a few preserved any consciousness of the original significance of
the Mythology.
HENRY HEDGE thought that this was the true key to the purpose of the
Eleusinian mysteries, whether in Egypt where they originated, or in
Greece where they were introduced. Through them, all who chose became
initiated into the interior meaning of the Mythology.
CHARLES WHEELER added, that in the flourishing times of the Athenian
Republic every citizen was compelled to initiate himself.
MARGARET closed our talk with a gentle reproof to our wandering wits. To
prevent such desultory prattling, she desired that a subject should be
proposed for the next evening. The story of Ceres or Rhea, in fact the
Productive Energy however manifested, carried general favor, and Margaret
said archly that she had thought the presence of gentlemen (who had never
until now attended one of her talks) would prevent the wandering and keep
us free from prejudice!
I thought she was rightly disappointed.
I cannot recall the words, but at some time this evening Margaret
distinguished three mythological dynasties. The first was the reign of
the Natural Powers. The second, represented by Jupiter, Pluto, and
Neptune, stood for the height, the depth, and the surface or flow of
things, the first manifestations of human consciousness. The third was
the Bacchic, Bacchus not being yet, in her estimation, the vulgar God of
the wine-vat and the festival, but the inspired Genius,—being to Apollo,
as she said, what the nectar is to the grape.
CAROLINE W. HEALEY.
March 2, 1841.
II.
_March 8, 1841._
Margaret recapitulated the statements she made last week. By thus giving
to each fabled Deity its place in the scheme of Mythology, she did not
mean to ignore the enfolding ideas, the one thought developed in all—as
in Rhea, Bacchus, Pan. She would only imply that each personification
was individual, served a particular purpose, and was worshipped in a
particular way.
Before proceeding to talk about Ceres, she wished to remind us of the
mischief of wandering from our subject. She hoped the ground she offered
would be accepted _at least to talk about_! Certainly no one could deny
that a mythos was the last and best growth of a national mind, and that
in this case the characteristics of the Greek mind were best gathered
from this creation.
Ceres, Persephone, and Isis, as well as Rhea, Diana, and so on, seem
to be only modifications of one enfolding idea,—a goddess accepted by
all nations, and not peculiar to Greece. The pilgrimages of the more
prominent of these goddesses, Ceres and Isis, seem to indicate the life
which loses what is dear in childhood, to seek in weary pain for what
after all can be but half regained. Ceres regained her daughter, but only
for half the year. Isis found her husband, but dismembered. This era in
Mythology seems to mark the progress of a people from an unconscious to
a conscious state. Persephone’s periodical exile shows the impossibility
of resuming an unconsciousness from which we have been once aroused, the
need thought has, having once felt the influence of the Seasons, to
retire into itself.
CHARLES WHEELER reminded Margaret that she had said that the predominant
goddesses, without reference to Greece, enfolded only one idea, that of
the female _Will_ or _Genius_,—_the bounteous giver_. He had asked her
if she could sustain herself by etymological facts, and she replied that
her knowledge of the Greek was not critical enough. Since then he had
inquired into the origin of the proper names of the Greek deities, and
found that it confirmed her impression. The names of Rhea, Tellus, Isis,
and Diana were resolvable into one, and the difference in their etymology
was only a common and permissible change in the position of the letters
of which they are composed, or a mere provincial dialectic change. Diana
is the same as Dione, also one of the names of Juno.
E. P. P. asked if Homer ever confounded the last two? MARGARET thought
not. Homer was purely objective. He knew little and cared less about the
primitive creation of the myths.
R. W. EMERSON thought it would be very difficult to detect this secret.
Jupiter, for instance, might have been a man who was the exponent of Will
to his race.
MARGARET said, “No; they could have deduced him just as easily from
Nature herself, or from a single exhibition of will power.”
R. W. EMERSON said that a man like Napoleon would easily have suggested
it.
“What a God-send is a Napoleon!” exclaimed CHARLES WHEELER; “let us pray
for scores of such, that a new and superior mythos may arise for us!” Is
it malicious to suspect a subtle irony turned against the sacred person
of R. W. E. in this speech?
MARGARET retorted indignantly that if they came, _we_ should do nothing
better than write memoirs of their hats, coats, and swords, as we had
done already, without thinking of any lesson they might teach. She could
not see why we were not content to take the beautiful Greek mythi as they
were, without troubling ourselves about those which might arise for us!
R. W. E. acknowledged that the Greeks had a quicker perception of the
beautiful than we. Their genius lay in the material expression of it. If
we knew the real meaning of the names of their Deities, the story would
take to flight. We should have only the working of abstract ideas as we
might adjust them for ourselves.
MARGARET said that a fable was more than a mere word. It was a word of
the purest kind rather, the passing of thought into form. R. W. E. had
made no allowance for time or space or climate, and there was a want of
truth in that. The age of the Greeks was the age of Poetry; ours was the
age of Analysis. _We_ could not create a Mythology.
EMERSON asked, “Why not? We had still better material.”
MARGARET said, irrelevantly as it seemed to me, that Carlyle had
attempted to deduce new principles from present history, and that was the
reason he did not _respect_ the _respectable_.
EMERSON said Carlyle was unfortunate in his figures, but we might have
mythology as beautiful as the Greek.
MARGARET thought each age of the world had its own work to do. The
transition of thought into form marked the Greek period. It was most
easily done through fable, on account of their intense perception of
beauty.
EMERSON pursued his own train of thought. He seemed to forget that we
had come together to pursue Margaret’s. He said it was impossible that
men or events should _stand out_ in a population of twenty millions as
they could from a population of a single million, to which the whole
population of the ancient world could hardly have amounted. As Hercules
stood to Greece, no modern man could ever stand in relation to his own
world.
MARGARET thought Hercules and Jupiter quite different creations. The
first _might_ have been a deified life. The second could not.
CHARLES WHEELER said that R. W. E.’s view carried no historical
obligation of belief with it. We could not deny the heroic origin of the
Greek demigods, but the highest dynasty was the exponent of translated
thought.
SOPHIA RIPLEY asked if the life of an individual fitly interwoven
with her experience was not as fine a Poem as the story of Ceres, her
wanderings and her tears? Did not Margaret know such lives?
R. W. E. thought every man had probably met his Jupiter, Juno, Minerva,
Venus, or Ceres in society!
MARGARET was sure she never had!
R. W. E. explained: “Not in the world, but each on his own platform.”
WILLIAM STORY objected. The life of an individual was not universal. (!)
SOPHIA RIPLEY repeated, “The inner life.”
WILLIAM STORY claimed to be an individual, and did not think individual
experience could ever meet all minds,—like the story of Ceres, for
example.
SOPHIA said all experience was universal.
I said nothing, but held this colloquy with myself. Thought is the best
of human nature; its fulness urges expression: its need of being met, not
only by _one_ other but by every other, _craves_ it. This craving is the
acknowledgment of the universal experience. What is _purely_ individual
is perishable. _Identity_ is to be separated from individuality for this
cause.
MARGARET said the element of beauty would be wanting to our creations. A
fine emotion glowed through features which seem to fall like a soft veil
over the soul, while it could scarce do more than animate those that were
obtuse and coarse in every outline. (!)
“Then,” said WILLIAM STORY, and my heart thanked the _preux
chevalier_,—“then something is wanting in the emotion itself.”
WILLIAM WHITE said, stupidly, that sunlight could not fall with equal
charm on rocks and the green grass. (!)
I asked if the rock could not give what it did not receive? Flung back by
rugged points and relieved by dark shadows, was not the sunlight itself
transfigured?
STORY said every face had its own beauty. No act that was natural could
be ungraceful.
EMERSON said that we all did sundry graceful acts, in our caps and
tunics, which we never could do again, which we never wanted to do again.
MARGARET said, at last we had touched the point. We could not restore
the childhood of the world, but could we not admire this simple plastic
period, and gather from it some notion of the Greek genius?
R. W. E. thought this legitimate. He would have it that we could not
determine the origin of a mythos, but we might fulfil Miss Fuller’s
intention.
MARGARET said history reconciled us to life, by showing that man had
redeemed himself. Genius needed that encouragement.
Not _Genius_, SOPHIA RIPLEY thought; common natures needed it, but Genius
was self-supported.
MARGARET said it might be the consolation of Genius.
MRS. RUSSELL asked why Miss Fuller found so much fault with the present.
MARGARET _had_ no fault to find with it. She took facts as they were.
Every age did something toward fulfilling the cycle of mind. The work of
the Greeks was not ours.
SOPHIA RIPLEY asked if the mythology had been a prophecy of the Greek
mind to itself, or if the nation had experienced life in any wide or deep
sense.
MARGARET seemed a little out of patience, and no wonder! She said it did
not matter which. The question was, what could _we find_ in the mythi,
and what did the Greeks mean that we should find there. Coleridge once
said that certain people were continually saying of Shakespeare, that he
did not mean to impart certain spiritual meanings to some of his sketches
of life and character; but if Shakespeare did not mean it his Genius did:
so if the Greeks meant not this or that, the Greek genius meant it.
In relation to the progress of the ages, JAMES F. CLARKE said that the
story of Persephone concealed in the bowels of the earth for half the
year seemed to him to indicate something of their comparative states.
Persephone was the seed which must return to earth before it could
fructify. Thought must retire into itself before it can be regenerate.
MARGARET was pleased with this, more especially as in the story of
the Goddess it is eating the pomegranate, whose seed is longest in
germinating, which dooms her to the realm of Pluto.
GEORGE RIPLEY remarked that we saw this need of withdrawal in the
slothful ages when mind seemed to be imbibing energy for future action.
The world sometimes forsook a quest and returned to it. We had forsaken
Beauty, but we might return to it.
Certainly, MARGARET assented. A perfect mind would detect all beauty
in the hearth-rug at her feet: the meanest part of creation contained
the whole; but the labor we were now at to appreciate the Greek proved
conclusively that _we_ were not Greek. A simple plastic nature would
take it all in with delight, without doubt or question.
Or rather, amended EMERSON, would take it up and go forward with it.
It makes no difference, said MARGARET, for we live in a circle.
I did not think it pleasant to track and retrack the same arc, and
preferred to go forward with R. W. E., so I asked if there was to be no
_higher_ poetry.
MARGARET acknowledged that there was something beyond the aspiration of
the Egyptian or the poetry of the Greek.
GEORGE RIPLEY thought we had not lost all reverence for these abstract
forces. The Eleusinian mysteries might be forgotten, but not Ceres. We
did not worship in ignorance. The mysteries led back to the Infinite. The
processes of vegetation were actually heart-rending! Here, _I_ thought,
was a basis for my higher poetry.
GEORGE RIPLEY acknowledged that it was so. He seemed to be more conscious
of the movement of the world than any of our party. He said we must not
measure creation by Boston and Washington, as we were too apt to do.
There was still France, Germany, and Prussia,—perhaps Russia! The work of
this generation was not religious nor poetic; still, there was a tendency
to go back to both. There were to be ultraisms, but also, he hoped,
consistent development.
CHARLES WHEELER then related the story of Isis, of her hovering in the
form of a swallow round the tree in which the sarcophagus of Osiris had
been enclosed by Typhon; of her being allowed to fell the tree; of the
odor emitted by the royal maidens whom she touched, which revealed her
Divinity to the Queen; of the second loss of the body, as she returned
home, and its final dismemberment.
There was little success in spiritualizing more of this story than the
pilgrimage, and R. W. E. seemed to feel this; for when MARGARET had
remarked that even a divine force must become as the birds of the air
to compass its ends, and that it was in the carelessness of conscious
success that the second loss occurred, he said that it was impossible to
detect an inner sense in all these stories.
MARGARET replied, that she had not attempted that, but she could see it
in all the prominent points.
CHARLES WHEELER said that the varieties of anecdote proved that the
stories were not all authentic. It was an ancient custom to strike off
medals in honor of certain acts of the Gods. To these graven pictures the
common people gave their own vulgar interpretations, as they did also to
the bas-reliefs on their temples and monuments.
E. P. P. said this accounted for many of the stories transmitted by
Homer. When sculpture and architecture had lost their meaning, his
inventive genius was only the more stimulated to find one.
CHARLES WHEELER asked what Margaret would make of the story that the
tears of Isis frightened children to death?
There was a general laugh, but MARGARET said coolly, that children always
shrank from a baffled hope.
Some one contrasted Persephone with her mother.
MARGARET assented to whatever was said, and added that she had been
particularly struck with it in an engraving she had recently seen, in
which Ceres stood with lifted eyes, full-eyed, matronly, bounteous,
ready to give all to all, while Persephone, dejected and thoughtful,
sat meditating; and the idea was strengthened by her discovering that
Persephone was the same as Ariadne the deserted. I could only guess at
the remark by Margaret’s comment. It seemed to imply baffled hope for
Persephone.
The Eleusinian mysteries were now alluded to. Although it has been said
that only moral precepts were inculcated through these, WHEELER urged
that a whole school of Continental authors now acknowledged that the
higher doctrines of philosophy were taught.
R. W. E. added, that as initiation became more easy such instruction
must have degenerated into a mere matter of form, and many of the
_un_initiated surpass the initiated in wisdom.
MARGARET admitted this. Socrates was one of the uninitiated. The crowd
seldom felt the full force of beauty in Art or Literature. To prove it,
it was only necessary to walk once through the Hall of Sculpture at the
Athenæum, and catch the remarks of any half-dozen on Michael Angelo’s
“Day and Night.” He would be fortunate who heard a single observer
comment on its power.
MRS. RUSSELL asked why the images of the sun and moon were introduced
into these mysterious celebrations.
MARGARET asked impatiently why they had always been invoked by every
child who could string two rhymes together.
I said that if Ceres was the simple _agricultural_ productive energy,
of course the sun was her first minister, its genial influence being as
manifest as the energy itself.
In regard to the etymology of the proper names, it seemed reasonable to
me that this energy should have gained attributes as it did names. Any
nation devoted to the chase would learn to call the lunar deity Diana;
any devoted to the cultivation of grain would project her as Ceres. The
reproductive powers of flocks and herds would suggest Rhea or Juno, and
philosophy or art would invoke Persephone.
When we were talking about beauty, J. F. C. quoted Goethe, and said that
the spirit sometimes made a mistake and clothed itself in the wrong
garment.
C. W. HEALEY.
March 9, 1841.
III.
The third conversation was delayed by Margaret’s illness, and finally
took place—
_March 19, 1841._
MARGARET again complained that we wandered from the subject, and told the
following story from Novalis.
Imagine a room, on one side of it Eros and Fable at play. On the other,
before a marble slab on which rests a vase of pure water, sits a fair
woman named Sophia. Her head rests upon her hand. Between her and the
children sits a man of reverend age, before a table at which he writes
whatever has been or is. This is History; and as he finishes each sheet
he hands it to Sophia, who dips it in the vase of pure water, from which
it often emerges a perfect blank. Sometimes a few lines, at others a few
words, sometimes only a punctuation mark, survive the test. This troubles
the old man. At last he rises and leaves the room. Fable springs to his
vacant seat, and scribbles as if in play till his return, when History
reproves her for wasting the paper, and passes the sheet to Sophia, when,
lo! it comes out from her vase unchanged. Fable has borne the test of
Truth. History is enraged at this, and succeeds in driving both Sophia
and Fable from their home, unfairly. Sophia is driven away, but the child
escapes by a back door, and, becoming bewildered in the central caverns
of the Earth, falls into the power of the Fates.
These respectable old ladies find the little Fable very troublesome, and,
after some scolding, send her away to spin, when, lo! from the recesses
of the cavern all sorts of wonders and strange shapes are spun out. The
Fates are frightened, and they seek History to learn in what manner
they may best rid themselves of the intruder. However much they may
dislike her, she is under their protection, and History can do no more
than advise them to send her out to catch Tarantulas! Fable departs and
meets Eros, who gives her a lyre, upon which she plays, and the venomous
insects swarm about her. The Fates behold her return unharmed! They had
hoped she would be stung to death, and in despair Ate throws her scissors
at the child, who gracefully avoids them. Hereupon the Tarantulas sting
the Fates in the feet, at which they begin to dance. As their clothes are
thick and heavy, this is rather inconvenient exercise, and when Fable
laughs at their distress they send her away to spin them some thin
dresses. Fable is tired of wandering. She plays upon her lyre to the
Tarantulas, bidding them spin, and she will give them three large flies.
When the dresses are done, she carries them immediately to the Fates, who
begin again to dance. The ends of the threads are still in the bodies of
the Tarantulas, who do not like to be jerked about. “Behold the flies
which I promised you,” said Fable.
Thereupon the Tarantulas fall upon the dancing Fates, and a new dynasty
commences, in which Eros reigns, with Fable for prime minister.
MARGARET said that in the story she had told she had set us the example
of wandering from the subject, but she hoped to some purpose. She
hoped no one would have need to call upon little Fable’s body-guard of
Tarantulas.
The subject of the evening was Apollo in contrast with Ceres, or Genius
opposed to Productive Energy. The history of Apollo stood for the
history of thought, its progressive development and its unhappiness.
All the loves of Apollo are miserable. He never labors for himself. He
uses the instruments which others have shaped. He is so delighted with
the lyre, which Mercury, that is Sagacity, has made, that he gives him
the divining-rod, and would give him more, but he cannot. The earnest
simplicity with which Apollo begs Mercury to swear by the sacred Styx not
to steal his quiver or his darts is beautiful! The common understanding,
mere human sagacity, may indeed lay hands on the weapons of the Inspired
One, but it cannot possess them. The ray, the dart, the quiver, of Apollo
all stand for the instantaneous power of thought.
Delphi did not originally belong to Apollo. With the aid of Bacchus, he
wrested it from Terra, Neptune, and Themis; hence the name “Delphi,” or
“The brothers.” This is only another instance of his independence. All
things are made to his hand. The great contrast between Ceres and Apollo
lies in the success of each. Ceres is always full, always prepared to
meet the call of humanity. Apollo is always unsatisfied. He transmutes
whatever he touches, as he did one of his many loves, changed to a
bay-tree. His changes are always beautiful.
JAMES F. CLARKE asked how Margaret would explain the fraternal relation
between Bacchus and Apollo.
“Don’t you remember?” she retorted. “I don’t like to repeat it, it is so
smart and ingenious!” Apollo and Bacchus seemed to her the question and
the response. Bacchus was what the earth yielded to the touch of Genius.
The grape was genial. It typified the excess of the earth’s fruitfulness.
Bacchus avenges the wrongs of Apollo, who is said never to have seen a
shadow! He never perceives an obstacle, but instantly destroys an alien
nature. Whatever opposed Apollo met with terrible retribution,—if not
from himself, then from others. Genius cannot endure the presence of
anything that mocks at it.
CHARLES WHEELER said something about the flaying of Marsyas.
MARGARET said that this once seemed to her the most shocking of
cruelties, but she had lately seen a picture which reconciled her to the
deed! After looking at the self-complacent face of Marsyas, she did not
wonder that Apollo destroyed him. She longed to _see him do it_! Apollo
was never indignant at any sublime treachery. He forgave Mercury his
theft because it was god-like, because he did it so well.
MRS. RUSSELL said ironically that the destruction of the children of
Niobe must have been a gratifying sight.
MARGARET laughed, and said, “That is like being reminded of the ‘poor
mariner,’ when I say that I like to hear the wind blow.” The indignation
of Apollo seemed to her one of his noblest attributes. His perfect purity
separated him from all the Gods. Ceres seemed to be included in the idea
of many other Gods, as in Pan, Bacchus, Juno, and Isis; but Apollo, the
divine Genius, stands alone. There is none like him.
HENRY HEDGE asked whether holiness appertained to Apollo.
MARGARET thought not. Holiness supposed a voluntary consecration of one’s
self, but there was no need of this in Apollo. He was pure thought,
consecrated, but not consciously.
HENRY HEDGE said he had asked, because, considering Jesus to have, as
he certainly had, a mythological character, he thought there was a
resemblance between him and Apollo. His own words justified the idea,—“I
am the light of the world,” and so on.
MRS. RUSSELL asked suddenly why Apollo’s lyre had seven strings.
MARGARET said seven was a consecrated number.
MRS. RUSSELL asked if it did not have to do with the seven planets?
GEORGE RIPLEY said there were not so many in that day.
MARGARET liked the reason, and wished she had thought of it herself!
Some one asked about the connection between Diana and Apollo.
MARGARET said that Genius needed a sister to console him.
EMERSON asked what bearing the inscription over the Delphic temple had
upon the story of Apollo,—the Divine pun EI, which means equally “Thou
art” and “If,”—as grand a pun as that of him who, dying, said he was
going to see the great “Perhaps”!—“le grand peut-être.”
Better translated, I thought, as the great “May-be.”