THE PRIDE OF LIFE.
The curse of Iblis--Samaël as Democrat--His vindication by
Christ and Paul--Asmodäus--History of the name--Aschmedai of the
Jews--Book of Tobit--Doré's 'Triumph of Christianity'--Aucassin
and Nicolette--Asmodeus in the convent--The Asmodeus of Le
Sage--Mephistopheles--Blake's 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell'--The
Devil and the artists--Sádi's Vision of Satan--Arts of the
Devil--Suspicion of beauty--Earthly and heavenly mansions--Deacon
versus Devil.
On the parapet of the external gallery of Nôtre Dame in Paris is the
carved form, of human size, represented in our figure (15). There is
in the face a remarkable expression of pride and satisfaction as he
looks forth on the gay city and contemplates all the wickedness in it,
but this satisfaction is curiously blended with a look of envy and
lust. His elegant head-dress gives him the pomp becoming the Asmodeus
presiding over the most brilliant capital in the world.
His seat on the fine parapet is in contrast with the place assigned
him in Eastern traditions--ruins and desert places,--but otherwise he
fairly fulfilled, no doubt, early ideas in selecting his headquarters
at Paris. A mussulman legend says that when, after the Fall of Man,
Allah was mitigating the sentences he had pronounced, Iblis (who,
as the Koran relates, pleaded and obtained the deferment of his
consignment to Hell until the resurrection, and unlimited power over
sinners who do not accept the word of Allah) asked--
'Where shall I dwell in the meantime?
'In ruins, tombs, and all other unclean places shunned by man.
'What shall be my food?
'All things slain in the name of idols.
'How shall I quench my thirst?
'With wine and intoxicating liquors.
'What shall occupy my leisure hours?
'Music, song, love-poetry, and dancing.
'What is my watchword?
'The curse of Allah until the day of judgment.
'But how shall I contend with man, to whom thou hast granted two
guardian angels, and who has received thy revelation?
'Thy progeny shall be more numerous than his,--for for every man that
is born, there shall come into the world seven evil spirits--but they
shall be powerless against the faithful.'
Iblis with wine, song, and dance--the 'pride of life'--is also said
to have been aided in entering Paradise by the peacock, which he
flattered. [143]
This fable, though later than the era of Mohammed in form, is as
ancient as the myth of Eden in substance. The germ of it is already
in the belief that Jehovah separated from the rest of the earth a
garden, and from the human world a family of his own, and from the
week a day of his own. The reply of the elect to the proud Gentile
aristocracy was an ascetic caste established by covenant with the
King of kings. This attitude of the pious caste turned the barbaric
aristocrats, in a sense, to democrats. Indeed Samaël, in whom the
execrated Dukes of Edom were ideally represented, might be almost
described as the Democratic Devil. According to an early Jewish
legend, Jehovah, having resolved to separate 'men' (i.e., Jews)
from 'swine' (i.e., idolaters, Gentiles), made circumcision the
seal on them as children of Abraham. There having been, however,
Jews who were necessarily never circumcised, their souls, it was
arranged, should pass at death into the forms of certain sacred
birds where they would be purified, and finally united to the elect
in Paradise. Now, Samaël, or Adam Belial as he was sometimes called,
is said to have appealed to the Creator that this arrangement should
include all races of beings. 'Lord of the world!' he said, 'we also
are of your creation. Thou art our father. As thou savest the souls
of Israel by transforming them that they may be brought back again
and made immortal, so also do unto us! Why shouldst thou regard the
seed of Abraham before us?' Jehovah answered, 'Have you done the same
that Abraham did, who recognised me from his childhood and went into
Chaldean fire for love of me? You have seen that I rescued him from
your hands, and from the fiery oven which had no power over him,
and yet you have not loved and worshipped me. Henceforth speak no
more of good or evil.' [144]
The old rabbinical books which record this conversation do not report
Samaël's answer; nor is it necessary: that answer was given by Jesus
and Paul breaking down the partitions between Jew and Gentile. It was
quite another thing, however, to include the world morally. Jesus,
it would seem, aimed at this also; he came 'eating and drinking,'
and the orthodox said Samaël was in him. Personally, he declined to
substitute even the cosmopolitan rite of baptism for the discredited
national rite of circumcision. But Paul was of another mind. His
pharisaism was spiritualised and intensified in his new faith, to
which the great world was all an Adversary.
It was a tremendous concession, this giving up of the gay and beautiful
world, with its mirth and amusements, its fine arts and romance--to
the Devil. Unswerving Nemesis has followed that wild theorem in many
forms, of which the most significant is Asmodeus.
Asmodäus, or Aêshma-daêva of the Zend texts, the modern Persian Khasm,
is etymologically what Carlyle might call 'the god Wish;' aêsha
meaning 'wish,' from the Sanskrit root ish, 'to desire.' An almost
standing epithet of Aêshma is Khrvîdra, meaning apparently 'having a
hurtful weapon or lance.' He is occasionally mentioned immediately
after Anrô-mainyus (Ahriman); sometimes is expressly named as one
of his most prominent supporters. In the remarkable combat between
Ahuro-mazda (Ormuzd) and Anrô-mainyus, described in Zam. Y. 46, the
good deity summons to his aid Vohumano, Ashavahista, and Fire; while
the Evil One is aided by Akômano, Aêshma, and Aji-Daháka. [145] Here,
therefore, Aêshma appears as opposed to Ashavahista, 'supreme purity'
of the Lord of Fire. Aêshma is the spirit of the lower or impure Fire,
Lust and Wrath. A Sanskrit text styles him Kossa-deva, 'the god of
Wrath.' In Yaçna 27, 35, Sraosha, Aêshma's opponent, is invoked to
shield the faithful 'in both worlds from Death the Violent, from Aêshma
the Violent, from the hosts of Violence that raise aloft the terrible
banner--from the assaults of Aêshma that he makes along with Vídátu
('Divider, Destroyer'), the demon-created.' He is thus the leading
representative of dissolution, the fatal power of Ahriman. Ormuzd
is said to have created Sraosha to be the destroyer of 'Aêshma of
the fatal lance.' Sraosha ('the Hearer') is the moral vanquisher of
Aêshma, in distinction from Haoma, who is his chief opponent in the
physical domain.
Such, following Windischmann, [146] is the origin of the devil
whom the apocryphal book of Tobit has made familiar in Europe as
Asmodeus. Aschmedai, as the Jews called him, appears in this story as
precisely that spirit described in the Avesta--the devil of Violence
and Lust, whose passion for Sara leads him to slay her seven husbands
on their wedding-night. The devils of Lust are considered elsewhere,
and Asmodeus among them; there is another aspect of him which here
concerns us. He is a fastidious devil. He will not have the object of
his passion liable to the embrace of any other. He cannot endure bad
smells, and that raised by the smoke of the fish-entrails burnt by
Tobit drives him 'into the utmost parts of Egypt, where the angel
bound him.' It is, however, of more importance to read the story
by the light of the general reputation of Aschmedai among the Jews
and Arabians. It was notably that of the devil represented in the
Moslem tradition at the beginning of this chapter. He is the Eastern
Don Giovanni and Lothario; he plies Noah and Solomon with wine,
and seduces their wives, and always aims high with his dashing
intrigues. He would have cried Amen to Luther's lines--
Who loves not wine, woman, and song,
He lives a fool his whole life long.
Besides being an aristocrat, he is a scholar, the most learned Master
of Arts, educated in the great College of Hell, founded by Asa and
Asael, as elsewhere related. He was fond of gaming; and so fashionable
that Calmet believed his very name signifies fine dress.
Now, the moral reflections in the Book of Tobit, and its casual
intimations concerning the position of the persons concerned, show
that they were Jewish captives of the humblest working class, whose
religion is of a type now found chiefly among the more ignorant
sectarians. Tobit's moral instructions to his son, 'In pride is
destruction and much trouble, and in lewdness is decay and much want,'
'Drink not wine to make thee drunken,' and his careful instructions
about finding wealth in the fear of God, are precisely such as would
shape a devil in the image of Asmodeus. Tobit's moral truisms are
made falsities by his puritanism: 'Prayer is good with fasting and
alms and righteousness;' 'but give nothing to the wicked;' 'If thou
serve God he will repay thee.'
'Cakes and ale' do not cease to exist because Tobits are virtuous;
but unfortunately they may be raised from their subordinate to an
insubordinate place by the transfer of religious restraints to the
hands of Ignorance and Cant. Asmodeus, defined against Persian and
Jewish asceticism and hypocrisy, had his attractions for men of the
world. Through him the devil became perilously associated with wit,
gallantry, and the one creed of youth which is not at all consumptive--
Grey is all Theory,
Green Life's golden-fruited tree!
Especially did Asmodeus represent the subordination of so-called
'religious' and tribal distinctions to secular considerations. As
Samaël had petitioned for an extension of the Abrahamic Covenant to
all the world and failed to secure it from Jehovah, Asmodeus proposed
to disregard the distinction. There is much in the Book of Tobit which
looks as if it were written especially with the intention of persuading
Jewish youth, tempted by Babylonians to marriage, that their lovers
might prove to be succubi or incubi. Tobit implores his son to marry
in his own tribe, and not take a 'strange woman.' Asmodeus was as
cosmopolitan as the god of Love himself, and many of his uglier early
characteristics were hidden out of sight by such later developments.
Gustave Doré has painted in his vivid way the 'Triumph of
Christianity.' In it we see the angelic hosts with drawn swords
overthrowing the forms adored of paganism--hurling them headlong
into an abyss. So far as the battle and victory go, this is just
the conception which an early christian would have had of what took
place through the advent of Christ. It filled their souls with joy to
behold by Faith's vision those draped angels casting down undraped
goddesses; they would delight to imagine how the fall might break
the bones of those beautiful limbs. For they never thought of these
gods and goddesses as statues, but as real seductive devils; and when
these christians had brought over the arts, they often pictured the
black souls coming out of these fair idols as they fell.
Doré may have tried to make the angels as beautiful as the goddesses,
but he has not succeeded. In this he has interpreted the heart behind
every deformity which was ever added to a pagan deity. The horror
of the monks was transparent homage. Why did they starve and scourge
their bodies, and roll them in thorns? Because not even by defacing
the beautiful images were they able to expel from their inward worship
the lovely ideals they represented.
It is not difficult now to perceive that the old monks were consigning
the pagan ideals to imaginary and themselves to actual hells, in full
hope of thereby gaining permanent possession of the same beauty abjured
on earth. The loveliness of the world was transient. They grew morbid
about death; beneath the rosiest form they saw the skeleton. The
heavenly angels they longed for were Venuses and Apollos, with no
skeletons visible beneath their immortalised flesh. They never made
sacrifices for a disembodied heaven. The force of self-crucifixion
lay in the creed--'I believe in the resurrection of the body, and
the life everlasting.'
The world could not generally be turned into a black procession at its
own funeral. In proportion to the conquests of Christianity must be its
progressive surrender to the unconquerable--to human nature. Aphrodite
and Eros, over whose deep graves nunneries and monasteries had been
built, were the first to revive, and the story, as Mr. Pater has told
it, is like some romantic version of Ishtar's Descent into Hades and
her resurrection. [147] While as yet the earth seemed frostbound,
long before the Renaissance, the song of the turtle was heard in the
ballad of Aucassin and Nicolette. The christian knight will marry the
beautiful Saracen, and to all priestly warnings that he will surely
go to hell, replies, 'What could I do in Paradise? I care only to go
where I can be with Nicolette. Who go to Paradise? Old priests, holy
cripples, dried-up monks, who pass their lives before altars. I much
prefer Hell, where go the brave, the gay, and beautiful. There will
be the players on harps, the classic poets and singers; and there I
shall not be parted from Nicolette!'
Along with pretty Saracen maidens, or memories of them, were brought
back into Europe legends of Asmodeus. Aphrodite and Eros might disguise
themselves in his less known and less anathematised name, so that
he could manage to sing of his love for Sara, of Parsi for Jewess,
under the names of christian Aucassin and saracen Nicolette. In the
Eastern Church he reappeared also. There are beautiful old pictures
which show the smart cavalier, feather-in-cap, on the youth's left,
while on his right stands 'grey Theory' in the form of a long-bearded
friar. Such pictures, no doubt, taught for many a different lesson
from that intended--namely, that the beat of the heart is on the left.
Where St. Benedict rolled himself in thorns for dreaming of his
(deserted) 'Nicolette,' St. Francis planted roses; and the Latin Church
had to recognise this evolution of seven centuries. They hid the thorns
in the courts of convents, and sold the roses to the outside world as
indulgences. But as Asmodeus had not respected the line between Jew
and Gentile in Nineveh, so he passed over that between priest, nun,
and worldling in the West. In the days of Witchcraft the Church was
scandalised by the rumour that the nuns of the Franciscan Convent of
Louviers had largely taken to sorcery, and were attending the terrible
'Witches' Sabbaths.' The nun most prominent in this affair was one
Madeleine Bavent. The priests announced that she had confessed that
she was borne away to the orgies by the demon Asmodeus, and that
he had induced her to profane the sacred host. It turned out that
the nuns had engaged in intrigues with the priests who had charge
of them--especially with Fathers David, Picard, and Boulé--but
Asmodeus was credited with the crime, and the nuns were punished
for it. Madeleine was condemned to life-long penance, and Picard
anticipated the fire by a suicide, in which he was said to have been
assisted by the devil.
Following the rabbinical tradition which represented him as continually
passing from the high infernal College of Asa and Asael to the
earth to apply his arts of sorcery, Asmodeus gained a respectable
position in European literature through the romance of Le Sage ('Le
Diable Boiteux'), and his fame so gained did much to bring about
in France that friendly feeling for the Devil which has long been a
characteristic of French literature. A very large number of books,
periodicals, and journals in France have gained popularity through
the Devil's name. Asmodeus was, in fact, the Arch-bohemian. As such,
he largely influenced the conception of Mephistopheles as rendered by
Goethe--himself the Prince of Bohemians. The old horror of Asmodeus
for bad smells is insulted in the name Mephistopheles, and this devil
is many rolled into one; yet in many respects his kinship to Asmodeus
is revealed. All the dried starveling Anthonys and Benedicts are,
in a cultured way, present in the theologian and scholar Faust;
all the sweet ladies that haunted their seclusion became realistic
in Gretchen. She is the Nemesis of suppressed passions.
One province of nature after another has been recovered from
Asceticism. In this case Ishtar has had to regain her apparel and
ornaments at successive portals that are centuries, and they are not
all recovered yet. But we have gone far enough, even in puritanised
England, to produce a 'madman' far-seeing enough to behold The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The case of Asmodeus is stated well,
albeit radically, by William Blake, in that proverb which was told
him by the devils, whom he alone of midnight travellers was shrewd
enough to consult: 'The pride of the peacock is the glory of God;
the lust of the goat is the bounty of God; the wrath of the lion is
the wisdom of God.' When that statement is improved, as it well may
be, it will be when those who represent religion shall have learned
that human like other nature is commanded by obedience.
In this connection may be mentioned a class of legends indicating
the Devil's sensitiveness with regard to his personal appearance. The
anxiety of the priests and hermits to have him represented as hideous
was said to have been warmly resented by Satan, one of the most
striking being the legend of many versions concerning a Sacristan,
who was also an artist, who ornamented an abbey with a devil so ugly
that none could behold it without terror. It was believed he had by
inspiration secured an exact portrait of the archfiend. The Devil
appeared to the Sacristan, reproached him with having made him so
ugly, and threatened to punish him grievously if he did not make him
better looking. Although this menace was thrice repeated, the Sacristan
refused to comply. The Devil then tempted him into an intrigue with a
lady of the neighbourhood, and they eloped after robbing the abbey of
its treasure. But they were caught, and the Sacristan imprisoned. The
Devil then appears and offers to get him out of his trouble if he will
only destroy the ugly likeness, and make another and handsomer. The
Sacristan consented, and suddenly found himself in bed as if nothing
had happened, while the Devil in his image lay in chains. The Devil
when discovered vanished; the Sacristan got off on the theory that
crimes and all had been satanic juggles. But the Sacristan took care
to substitute a handsome devil for the ugly one. In another version
the Sacristan remained faithful to his original portraiture of the
Devil despite all menaces of the latter, who resolved to take a dire
revenge. While the artist was completing his ornamentation of the abbey
with an image of the Virgin, made as beautiful as the fiend near it was
ugly, the Devil broke the ladder on which he was working, and a fatal
fall was only prevented by the hand of the Madonna he had just made,
which was outstretched to sustain him. The accompanying picture of this
scene (Fig. 16) is from 'Queen Mary's Psalter' in the British Museum.
Vasari relates that when Spinello of Arezzo, in his famous fresco of
the fall of the rebellious angels, had painted the hideous devil with
seven faces about his body, the fiend appeared to him in the same form,
and asked the artist where he had seen him in so frightful an aspect,
and why he had treated him so ignominiously. When Spinello awoke in
horror, he fell into a state of gloom, and soon after died.
The Persian poet Sádi has a remarkable passage conceived in the spirit
of these legends, but more kindly.
I saw the demon in a dream,
But how unlike he seemed to be
To all of horrible we dream,
And all of fearful that we see.
His shape was like a cypress bough,
His eyes like those that Houris wear,
His face as beautiful as though
The rays of Paradise were there.
I near him came, and spoke--'Art thou,'
I said, 'indeed the Evil One?
No angel has so bright a brow,
Such yet no eye has looked upon.
Why should mankind make thee a jest,
When thou canst show a face like this?
Fair as the moon in splendour drest,
An eye of joy, a smile of bliss!
The painter draws thee vile to sight,
Our baths thy frightful form display;
They told me thou wert black as night,
Behold, thou art as fair as day!'
The lovely vision's ire awoke,
His voice was loud and proud his mien:
'Believe not, friend!' 'twas thus he spoke,
'That thou my likeness yet hast seen:
The pencil that my portrait made
Was guided by an envious foe;
In Paradise I man betrayed,
And he, from hatred, paints me so.'
Boehme relates that when Satan was asked the cause of God's enmity
to him and his consequent downfall, he replied, 'I wished to be an
artist.' There is in this quaint sentence a very true intimation of the
allurements which, in ancient times, the arts of the Gentile possessed
for the Jews and christian judaisers. Indeed, a similar feeling towards
the sensuous attractions of the Catholic and Ritualistic Churches is
not uncommon among the prosaic and puritanical sects whose younger
members are often thus charmed away from them. Dr. Donne preached a
sermon before Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall, in which he affirmed that
the Muses were damned spirits of devils; and the discussion on the
Drama which occurred at Sheffield Church Congress (1878), following
Dr. Bickerstith's opening discourse on 'the Devil and his wiles,'
shows that the Low Church wing cherishes much the same opinion as that
of Dr. Donne. The dread of the theatre among some sects amounts to
terror. The writer remembers the horror that spread through a large
Wesleyan circle, with which he was connected, when a distinguished
minister of that body, just returned from Europe, casually remarked
that 'the theatre at Rome seemed to be poorly supported.' The fearful
confession spread through the denomination, and it was understood that
the observant traveller had 'made shipwreck of faith.' The Methodist
instinct told true: the preacher became an accomplished Gentile.
Music made its way but slowly in the Church, and the suspicion of it
still lingers among many sects. The Quakers took up the burthen of
Epiphanius who wrote against the flute-players, 'After the pattern
of the serpent's form has the flute been invented for the deceiving
of mankind. Observe the figure that the player makes in blowing his
flute. Does he not bend himself up and down to the right hand and
to the left, like unto the serpent? These forms hath the Devil used
to manifest his blasphemy against things heavenly, to destroy things
upon earth, to encompass the world, capturing right and left such as
lend an ear to his seductions.' The unregenerate birds that carol
all day, be it Sabbath or Fast, have taught the composer that his
best inspiration is from the Prince of the Air. Tartini wrote over a
hundred sonatas and as many concertos, but he rightly valued above
them all his 'Sonata del Diavolo.' Concerning this he wrote to the
astronomer Lalande:--'One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed that I
had made a compact with his Satanic Majesty, by which he was received
into my service. Everything succeeded to the utmost of my desires, and
my every wish was anticipated by my new domestic. I thought that, in
taking up my violin to practise, I jocosely asked him if he could play
on this instrument. He answered that he believed he was able to pick
out a tune; when, to my astonishment, he began a sonata, so strange,
and yet so beautiful, and executed in so masterly a manner, that in the
whole course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So
great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened
by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in
the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody
which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed
according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I
ever produced. I have entitled it, 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so
far inferior to that which had made so forcible an impression on me,
that I should have dashed my violin into a thousand pieces, and given
up music for ever in despair, had it been possible to deprive myself
of the enjoyments which I receive from it.'
The fire and originality of Tartini's great work is a fine
example of that power which Timoleon called Automatia, and Goethe
the Dämonische,--'that which cannot be explained by reason or
understanding; it is not in my nature, but I am subject to it.' 'It
seems to play at will with all the elements of our being.'
The Puritans brought upon England and America that relapse into the
ancient asceticism which was shown in the burning of great pictures
by Cromwell's Parliament. It is shown still in the jealousy with
which the puritanised mind in both countries views all that aims at
the simple decoration of life, and whose ministry is to the sense of
beauty. On that day of the week when England and New England hebraise,
as Matthew Arnold says, it is observable that the sabbatarian fury is
especially directed against everything which proposes to give simple
pleasure or satisfy the popular craving for beauty. Sabbatarianism
sees a great deal of hard work going on, but is not much troubled so
long as it is ugly and dismal work. It utters no cry at the thousands
of hands employed on Sunday railways, but is beside itself if one of
the trains takes excursionists to the seaside, and is frantic at the
thought of a comparatively few persons being employed on that day in
Museums and Art Galleries. It is a survival of the old feeling that
the Devil lurks about all beauty and pleasure.
A money-making age has measurably dispersed the superstitions which
once connected the Devil with all great fortunes. For a long time,
and in many regions of the world, the Jews suffered grievously by
being supposed to get their wealth by the Devil's help. Their wealth
(largely the result of their not exchanging it for worldly enjoyments)
so often proved their misfortune, that it was easy to illustrate by
their case the monkish theory that devil's gifts turn to ashes. Princes
were indefatigable in relieving the Jews of such ashes, however. The
Lords of Triar, who possessed the mines of Glucksbrunn, were believed
to have been guided to them by a gold stag which often appeared to
them--of course the Devil. It is related that when St. Wolfram went
to convert the Frislanders, their king, Radbot, was prevented from
submitting to baptism by a diabolical deception. The Devil appeared
to him as an angel clothed in a garment woven of gold, on his head
a jewelled diadem, and said, 'Bravest of men! what has led thee to
depart from the Prince of thy gods? Do it not; be steadfast to thy
religion and thou shalt dwell in a house of gold which I will give
into thy possession to all eternity. Go to Wolfram to-morrow, ask
him about those bright dwellings he promises thee. If he cannot show
them, let both parties choose an ambassador; I will be their leader
and will show them the gold house I promise thee.' St. Wolfram being
unable to show Radbot the bright dwellings of Paradise, one of his
deacons was sent along with a representative of the king, and the
Devil (disguised as a traveller) took them to the house of gold,
which was of incredible size and splendour. The Deacon exclaimed,
'If this house be made by God it will stand for ever; if by the
Devil, it must vanish speedily.' Whereupon he crossed himself; the
house vanished, and the Deacon found himself with the Frislander in
a swamp. It took them three days to extricate themselves and return
to King Radbot, whom they found dead.
The ascetic principle which branded the arts, interests, pursuits,
and pleasures of the world as belonging to the domain of Satan,
involved the fatal extreme of including among the outlawed realms all
secular learning. The scholar and man of science were also declared
to be inspired by the 'pride of life.' But this part of our subject
requires a separate chapter.