our myth. The hero of his poem, _Ahasuerus in Rome_ (1867), however,
is Nero, and not Ahasuerus. The latter is only, as by Klingemann and
Horn, a kind of Nemesis in the piece, a supernatural power intervening
in human actions. He presents a sharp contrast with Nero, who resembles
Faust in his immense love of life, whilst Ahasuerus has come to Rome
longing for death. He intends to accomplish Nero’s fate, for in
spite of their different natures, their mission is the same; both
are fulfilling and advancing the evolution of mankind. Especially
in a place where the decayed past struggles with new forms of life,
history needs such Titans of destruction as Nero, in order to hasten
the crisis of events and advance human progress. Ahasuerus therefore
makes Nero his unconscious instrument; he pushes him on and on in
his monstrous attempts. The supposed god, who can only operate by
destruction, Ahasuerus treats as the indestructible, and by this very
faith prepares the way of Nero’s humiliation. Ahasuerus animates Nero
to burn Rome, and swings the first torch; but he comes himself unharmed
out of the flames, spared by the fire, to show Nero that there is still
something on earth which to destroy is beyond his power; something like
a phœnix rising out of ashes--the immortal humanity. For a moment Nero
thinks himself equal to this new adversary. “I, too,” he cries, “am
indestructible: life in me is firmly anchored: nothing can ever change
me! I am I! I cope with you: our combat will show if my intellectual
indestructibility balances not thy bodily indestructibility!”
Ahasuerus accepts the combat with the certainty that the hour of death
has come for Nero. It arrives in the curse of satiety and disgust
which overcomes Nero. He has enjoyed the pleasures of earth, and
Olympus; they have no more for him; only one thing further remains
for him--Hades. By force of magic he summons the dead; his own
victims start up before him, and, smitten with horror, he falls. Now,
forsaken by his favourites and subjects, Nero escapes at the hand of
the only one remaining--a devoted German--under the secret guidance
of Ahasuerus, into the catacombs. He there finds a congregation of
Christians, his mortal enemies. He offers his head to their revenge,
and is told that they do not know such a sensation, that their hearts
obey the law of love, a law which did not exist for him, because he did
not feel anything above him, whither he could look with a longing eye.
For the first time Nero finds a God who, instead of being worshipped
and feared is beloved. He also understands that not pleasure but pain
saves the world, and cries: “I see that the ever-creating womb of the
human Mind is not exhausted! The outworn world falls to dust: the human
heart ever brings it forth anew.” Thus Nero pronounces the inner secret
of the Ahasuerus-myth (according to this poem). And although unable to
submit to the new doctrine, he consecrates himself to the god of the
infernal world, exchanging his longing for life with the ardent longing
for death, according to Ahasuerus’ prophecy. Ahasuerus himself appears
in the hour of his adversary’s death among the Christians, and the
poet, in an original conception, makes him assume towards the end of
his poem a gigantic shape.
According to this, Ahasuerus, who once despised Jesus, was already on
earth since time immemorial. For he is the first-born of the unborn,
the first of the created beings; he is the first child of man, the
first rebel, Cain, the murderer of his brother. Ahasuerus first
brought Death into the world, who now at the same time rewards and
punishes him by sparing him.
It is greatly to be regretted that the great brain which carried the
legend of _Faust_ to such noble fruit did not fulfil its design of
giving poetic expression to that of the Wandering Jew. In his _Dichtung
und Wahrheit_, GOETHE has sketched the design of this unwritten poem.
A clever shoemaker with whom he once lodged in Dresden was to be a
model for Ahasuerus. The shoemaker of Jerusalem was to be a character;
in his open workshop he talks with passers-by, and, after the Socratic
fashion, touches up everyone in his own way. Even Pharisees and
Sadducees like to talk with him, and Jesus with his disciples often
stop there. The shoemaker is a firm secularist, but he feels a special
affection for Jesus, whom he tries to persuade to give up his visions,
and leave off drawing people away from their work into the wilderness.
Jesus, on the other hand, tries to persuade his friend to his way of
thinking. When Jesus has become a public character, Ahasuerus warns him
that tumult will follow, and that he (Jesus) will have to place himself
at the head of a party. Finally, when things have gone their course,
Judas rushes into the shoemaker’s shop, in despair, declaring that in
endeavouring to hasten his master’s triumph he had only ruined him.
Ahasuerus is in great excitement about his friend, and when he sees him
passing his door reminds him of his warnings. Jesus does not answer,
but just then the loving Veronica covers his face with a napkin, on
which, as she raises it, Ahasuerus sees depicted the features of
Christ, not as a sufferer, but transfigured and radiant. As he turns he
hears the words: ‘Over the earth shalt thou wander till thou shalt once
more see me in this form!’ When the shoemaker comes to himself he finds
that everyone has gone to the execution. Through the empty streets he
moves, and begins his wanderings.
The way in which Goethe would have dealt with the theme is indicated by
the fact he elsewhere mentions, that he had meant to bring Ahasuerus to
a meeting with Spinoza. It will be seen, however, in this chapter, that
a number of the best pens which have dealt with this subject have been
spiritually moved by Goethe.
XVI.
THE NEW AHASUERUS IN FRANCE.
In the year 1833 Edgar Quinet published his “Mystery” entitled
_Ahasuerus_. It seems an amazing fact that a work of this importance
should never have been translated into English. It was well appreciated
in France, and was the subject of the excellent review (_Revue des Deux
Mondes_, Dec., 1833) which has already been referred to in this work.
It is an epic in prose. Amid the stately Miltonic forms of Biblical
and other mythology, and through a mist of mysticism, may be seen
Edgar Quinet himself bent under the doom of turning the faith of his
childhood, the illusions of all he loved, into mere conventionalised
foliations of a frame around the reality of a creature moving about
amid worlds for ever dead.
His early faith having suffered what he fondly hoped might prove to be
transient eclipse, he started upon those restless journeyings through
Europe and the East, which were still less restless than his spiritual
wanderings; but at no point could he see any faintest arc of a sun
returning from its eclipse. The old light had for ever gone down. As he
wandered there arose before him this other self, this doomed Ahasuerus.
Through ten years he was writing it; it was written, he has told us, on
foot, on horseback, in the gondola, at sea; in cathedrals of Germany,
basilicas of Rome, in the convent of Bron, in the villas of Naples,
and the almshouses of Morea. “Its aim is to reproduce some scenes of
the universal tragedy played between God, Man, and the World.” In the
end Quinet married a German lady, Rachel by name, who appears in his
dramatic epic also as the saviour of Ahasuerus.
The work is divided into four “Days,” with three interludes, a
prologue, and an epilogue. The first day is “The Creation;” the
second, “The Passion,” discussed by the devils as a rather poor
comedy. Ahasuerus appears in this second “Day.” He is seated on his
bench in an open door as Jesus passes with his cross, followed by a
crowd which praises Barabbas and Pilate. Ahasuerus believes Jesus a
magician, and when he says, “Is it thou, Ahasuerus?” the latter says,
“I know thee not.” “I thirst; give me a little water from thy spring.”
“My well is empty.” “Reach thy cup--thou wilt find it full.” “It is
broken.” “Help me to bear my cross along this hard path?” “I am not thy
cross-porter; call a griffin from the desert.” “Let me sit on thy bench
at thy house door?” “My bench is full; there is no room for another.”
“On thy threshold?” “It is empty, but the door is shut and bolted.”
“Touch it, and you can enter to get a stool.” “Go thy way!” “If thou
wilt, thy bench may become a golden seat in the house of my Father.”
“Go, blaspheme where thou wilt! Thou hast already withered with thy
footsteps my vine and fig-tree; do not set foot on my stairway, it
will crumble under thy speech. Thou wouldst bewitch me.” “I wish to
save thee.” “Diviner, leave my shadow! Thy road is before thee. March,
march!” “Why hast thou said that, Ahasuerus? It is thou who shalt
march, even till the Last Judgment, more than a thousand years. Go take
thy sandals and travelling raiment; wherever thou passest thou shalt be
known as the Wandering Jew. It is thou who shalt find no seat whereon
to rest, no mountain-spring to slake thy thirst. In my place thou shalt
bear the burthen which I leave on the cross. For thy thirst thou shalt
drink what I have left at the bottom of my cup. Others shall take my
coat, thou shalt inherit my eternal pain. Hyssop shall germinate in
thy staff, wormwood increase in thy leather bottle; despair shall
cling as the leather girdle about thy loins. Thou shalt be the man
that dies not. Thy age shall be mine. To see thee pass the eagles
shall perch on their barn. The little birds shall half hide themselves
under the crest of the rocks. The star shall bend beneath the cloud to
watch thy tears falling drop by drop in the abyss. I go to Golgotha;
thou shalt journey on from ruins to ruins, from kingdoms to kingdoms,
without finding thy Calvary.”
This is about half of the sentence pronounced upon Ahasuerus. A hand
had written on his house, “The Wandering Jew.” Ahasuerus finds himself
alone, and calls for Jesus to return; he would speak only one word
more! After his sad soliloquy the angel Michael appears, and bids him
travel onward. Ahasuerus enters his house once more and attempts to
rest and eat with his father and children, but he cannot; he must go,
despite their pleadings.
After a long and pathetic farewell to his family and his home,
Ahasuerus passes out to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. Here, he says, he
would build his hut upon the rock could he only find some water. The
Valley bids him journey on: “I have neither well nor cistern; those who
dwell in my vale never thirst.” “Where are thy date-trees planted?” “I
have none. They who sojourn in my hill never hunger.” “Find in thy
brushwood some herb to heal this wound in my heart, which is like a
point of iron?” “My simples heal all pains, but not that of the heart
in which a thorn rests.”
After much converse the Valley bids him adieu. “Talk no more where the
dead sleep. I am silent.” After that, whatever Ahasuerus says, Echo
alone replies. His requests are successively in the words Jesus had
addressed to him at his door, and Echo repeats his own refusals.
The third “Day” is called DEATH. Death is represented under the name of
Mob. And now a human spirit comes upon the scene--Rachel. As we have
seen the tender Jesus passing out of life to blend with the remorseless
elements, uttering the curses which find their echo in the heartless
hills, and the winds whistling in the Valley of Death; so now, on the
other hand, we see a heart leaving the heavenly realm that smiles above
human agony to share the earthly sorrow. In the presence of God and
Christ, and the heavenly host, one angel has forgotten the wrongs of
Christ so far as to shed a tear for Ahasuerus. For that she is cast out
of heaven, banished to the earth, and made to dwell in the house of Mob
(Death). Rachel and Ahasuerus meet, neither knowing anything of the
other for a long time; they are in love with each other; and for a time
the drama somewhat resembles that of Margaret and Faust, Mob taking
the part of Mephistopheles. There is a very beautiful scene in which
the Angel of Death (Mob) leads Ahasuerus and Rachel into the cathedral
at Strasburg. There the mighty shades, royal and papal, demand of
Ahasuerus his name. He will not utter it; but Christ speaks from the
stained window and declares him to be the Wandering Jew. The dead curse
Ahasuerus, the cathedral curses him; but Rachel pleads for him. While
demons flash their flames around, Rachel cries: “Be blessed, Ahasuerus!
Mercy for him, Lord; open Thy heaven! Are these the angels that watch
at the gate of Paradise? Angels, angels, open for me the gate; there
is also a place for Ahasuerus, is there not? Oh, how flaming are their
swords! Oh, how heavy their bolts! Come, come, Ahasuerus: the stars of
Paradise are rising beyond the threshold!”
Another _motif_ from Goethe’s Faust rises in the fourth “Day,” the Day
of Judgment, where Rachel and Ahasuerus (whom she calls Joseph) are
seen in a desert, beside a waste ocean in the distance, and a ruin
emblematic of the world now in ruins. Ahasuerus has exhausted every
experience, except that of being loved by Heaven. Rachel tells him
that her Christ is a divine sea of love, into which they may together
plunge and lose all memories and all longings. As Faust’s contract with
Mephistopheles holds the latter to bring him to an hour when he shall
desire nothing beyond, an hour to which he shall say, “Stay, thou art
fair!” so Ahasuerus is moved only by the pledge of his angel Rachel
that no desire can arise beyond the divine Love. There is no water
near; so there in the desert Ahasuerus kneels, and Rachel baptizes him
with her tears.
As the world comes up before the seat of Judgment--cities, ages,
continents, islands--curses fall on Ahasuerus. Rome, Babylon, Athens,
the Highway, repeat the sentences of his doom in Jerusalem; the
Mountain offers to be his Calvary; the Forest proffers him a Cross,
and the Rivers would give him gall. But Christ speaks more kindly. Of
all the universe Ahasuerus and Rachel now only remain. Christ offers
now to give him his home in the East; but Ahasuerus says he does not
desire it. “I ask life, not repose. Instead of the steps of my house of
Calvary, I wish to ascend without pause the stairway of the Universe.”
“Art thou not weary from thy first journey?” “Thy hand, rising over
me, has already dried my sweat. With thy benediction, I depart this
evening towards those future summits where thou already dwellest.” “But
who will follow thee?” A voice of the Universe breaks in, “Not we! If
thou wilt, we will return on our steps; but we cannot mount higher.
Our wild steeds, our waves, our tempests are weary.” Rachel says, “I!
I will follow him; my heart is not weary.” Whereon the Universe cries,
“A woman has lost me, a woman has saved me!” “Yes,” declares Christ,
“this voice has saved thee, Ahasuerus. I bless thee, the pilgrim of
coming worlds, and the second Adam. Return me the burden of the Earth’s
pains.... Journey thou from life to life, world to world, from one
divine city to another; and when, after eternity, thou shalt have
arrived at circle on circle of the infinite summit whither all things
move, whither tend the souls and the years, the peoples and the stars,
thou shalt cry to star, to people and universe, if they would pause,
_Climb on, climb for ever: it is here!_”
The epic closes with an impressive Epilogue. Christ is alone in the
vault of the firmament. “Since the hour when Ahasuerus returned my Cup,
the wound has come again to my side; my tears fall into the abyss....
The heavens are empty; in the firmament I am alone. One after another
the angels have all folded their wings, like the eagle when it is old.
My mother Mary is dead: my father Jehovah has said from his couch,
‘Christ, my age is on me. I have lived enough of the ages; the worlds
burthen me to lift.... I am cold.... I am weary.... I thirst. My age
is too great; I see no more the light of thy aureole. Go! thy father
is dead.’... The firmament has cast its god from its branch, as the
fig-tree its leaves.... Farewell, worlds, stars, dews of the morning
and evening, which have saluted me by name when I was a child....
Is it true? in the night, in the day, afar, near, is there no one?’
Echo answers, ‘None.’ ‘Life, truth, falsehood, love, hate, gall and
vinegar mingled in my pyx--yes, the universe was I. I am a shadow; a
shadow that for ever passes; I am the tear that ever trickles, the
sigh ever renewed, the death that ever agonises; I am the Nothing that
ever doubts of its doubt, the Negation that ever re-denies itself.’”
Eternity alone hears the sorrow of Christ, but it cannot aid him to
weep, its eyes are dry; it cannot promise love to the orphan-worlds
he is leaving, for in its breast is neither love nor hate. ‘All is
finished!’ cries the universe-wanderer, who has no Rachel’s tear to
baptize him. ‘Lay me in the tomb of my Father. Be it so!’ Eternity
speaks: ‘For the Father and the Son I have digged a grave in a frozen
star which rolls companionless, without light. The Night, beholding
that pale star, shall say, ‘This is the tomb of some god.’”
Then Eternity crumbles the worlds, the sphinx, and even the void,
ending with a triumphant _Moi_.
=Icy Finit le mystère d’Ahasuérus.=
=Priez pour celui qui l’écribit.=
The romance of _The Wandering Jew_, by Eugene Sue (1844), from which
the majority of people have derived what impressions they may have
of the legend, is so “sensational” that its value as an illustration
of the myth is concealed. Whether intentionally or not, this novel,
so far as the Jew appears in it, reproduces very nearly the spirit
of an Arabian legend which belongs to the class discussed in this
work. The story of Al Khedr will be found in the Koran (xviii.). It
is said that Moses, having boasted of his knowledge, was told by God
of one wiser than himself; and having found out this man (Al Khedr),
he (Moses) journeyed with him. But the aged man had exacted from
Moses a promise that he would not ask any question, whatever he might
see. Al Khedr commits various crimes, and Moses cannot contain his
indignation. Al Khedr then reveals to him that each apparent wrong he
had done was a retribution, or a blessing in disguise, telling him
the story of each person who had apparently suffered injustice. The
Arabs have identified Al Khedr with both Elias and St. George (who
they say, recovered life after being thrice slain). The wisdom of Al
Khedr therefore lies in his continuity of existence. He represents
the primitive conception of a particular providence, seeing the end
of events from the beginning. They who have perused the history
of a single family whose records have been preserved for several
generations, may sometimes feel, with Browning’s Luria,
“The only fault’s with time:
All men become good creatures--but so slow!”
It takes the life of a family to round out and complete the events and
incidents which its individual members often find so out of joint, and
which have baffled the efforts of this or that generation to set them
right. And since the general pressure of the aggregate members of the
family, in all its generations, is toward the better conditions, the
tendency is such as to suggest a providential guidance by the Sleepless
and Eternal. This is reflected in Al Khedr; and the Eternal Jew of
Eugene Sue is related to him. In the drama built of this novel, which
I saw well performed recently as “All for Gold” in the Surrey Theatre,
the tableaus of the Wanderer were quite impressive. He appears on a
peak of Arctic snow, with the Northern Light behind him; his doom,
as that of his race, was recalled in a certain reddish hue of beard
and raiment, and he speaks of the children--who, seeming so helpless,
are struggling successfully as unconsciously for their bequest with
the hidden powers of Jesuitism--as representatives of a family which
represents the history of humanity.
Wherever Ahasuerus moves he leaves the sign of the cross on his
track--the last departing glimpse of the mark of Cain. Herodias, his
fellow-sufferer, comes up to the Arctic region on the American side--a
notable incident when it is remembered (see IX.), that her myth is
mainly Spanish and survives chiefly in Spanish America. Eugene Sue
brings both of the Wanderers to rest. Herodias enters the Abbey of
“St. John the Beheaded;” exhausted she sinks before his image. Weary,
footsore, as she had never felt before, even when passing over fiery
lava, sandy desert, or Arctic icefields, athirst, and in pain, she
looks into a fountain and observes the traces of age in her features.
Her youth, which had seemed endless, has passed. Her expiation ends at
the feet of the image of him her guilt had destroyed. She implores the
forgiveness of God for Ahasuerus also. The Wandering Jew, meanwhile,
has climbed Calvary and sits down at the feet of an image of Jesus
there. Suddenly he perceives that the face looks upon him as if it were
alive, with gentleness and compassion. Ahasuerus prays and is pardoned.
Ahasuerus and Herodias are finally seen together, under a shelter, at
peace, awaiting longed-for and approaching death.
In Ahasuerus, Sue represents the Workingman, an outcast from heaven
under sentence of drudgery, finding at last release from oppression.
Herodias is Woman, delivered at last from her political slavery.
So, in their widely differing spheres, have Quinet and Eugene Sue given
a nineteenth-century refrain to the seventeenth century song:
“Mais toujours le soleil se lève,
Toujours, toujours.
Tourne la terre où moi je cours,
Toujours, toujours, toujours, toujours!”
M. Pierre Dupont has written a poetical version of our legend to
accompany G. Doré’s designs (published by Michel Lévy in 1856). But,
as Champfleury says, the imaginatively created Jew of M. Doré, and the
modernised narrative of M. Dupont, are very uninteresting compared
with the rude pictures of the folk-books, and the quaint simplicity
of the folk ballads. The figure of the Wandering Jew which Kaulbach
introduced into his picture of the siege of Jerusalem might, as a
painting, be regarded as somewhat related to the New Ahasuerus of the
poets, but it is a subject that still invites artistic treatment.
And how suggestive of artistic effects the legend is may be judged
by the next and last French work to be considered here: _La Mort du
Juif-Errant. Par Edouard Grenier._