when dealing with ‘The Master Builder,’ which is the one of Ibsen’s
dramas wherein this dialogue of the ‘second degree’ attains the deepest
tragedy, I endeavoured, unskilfully enough, to fix its secrets. For
indeed they are kindred handmarks traced on the same wall by the same
sightless being, groping for the same light. ‘What is it,’ I asked,
‘what is it that, in the “Master Builder,” the poet has added to life,
thereby making it appear so strange, so profound and so disquieting
beneath its trivial surface?’ The discovery is not easy, and the old
master hides from us more than one secret. It would even seem as though
what he has wished to say were but little by the side of what he has
been compelled to say. He has freed certain powers of the soul that
have never yet been free, and it may well be that these have held him
in thrall. ‘Look you, Hilda,’ exclaims Solness, ‘look you! There is
sorcery in you, too, as there is in me. It is this sorcery that imposes
action on the powers of the beyond. And we _have_ to yield to it.
Whether we want to or not, we _must_.’
There is sorcery in them, as in us all. Hilda and Solness are, I
believe, the first characters in drama who feel, for an instant, that
they are living in the atmosphere of the soul; and the discovery of
this essential life that exists in them, beyond the life of every day,
comes fraught with terror. Hilda and Solness are two souls to whom
a flash has revealed their situation in the true life. Diverse ways
there are by which knowledge of our fellows may come to us. Two or
three men, perhaps, are seen by me almost daily. For a long time it
is merely by their gestures that I distinguish them, by their habits,
be these of mind or body, by the manner in which they feel, act or
think. But, in the course of every friendship of some duration, there
comes to us a mysterious moment when we seem to perceive the exact
relationship of our friend to the unknown that surrounds him, when
we discover the attitude destiny has assumed towards him. And it is
from this moment that he truly belongs to us. We have seen, once and
for all, the treatment held in store for him by events. We know that
however such a one may seclude himself in the recesses of his dwelling,
in dread lest his slightest movement stir up that which lies in the
great reservoirs of the future, his forethought will avail him nothing,
and the innumerable events that destiny holds in reserve will discover
him wherever he hide, and will knock one after another at his door. And
even so do we know that this other will sally forth in vain in pursuit
of adventure. He will ever return empty-handed. No sooner are our eyes
thus opened than unerring knowledge would seem to spring to life,
self-created, within our soul; and we know with absolute conviction
that the event that seems to be impending over the head of a certain
man will nevertheless most assuredly not reach him.
From this moment a special part of the soul reigns over the friendship
of even the most unintelligent, the obscurest of men. Life has become,
as it were, transposed. And when it happens that we meet one of the
men who are thus known to us, though we do but speak of the snow that
is falling or the women that pass by, something there is in each of us
which nods to the other, which examines and asks its questions without
our knowledge, which interests itself in contingencies and hints at
events that it is impossible for us to understand....
Thus do I conceive it to be with Hilda and Solness; it is thus surely
that they regard each other. Their conversation resembles nothing
that we have ever heard, inasmuch as the poet has endeavoured to
blend in one expression both the inner and the outer dialogue. A new,
indescribable power dominates this somnambulistic drama. All that is
said therein at once hides and reveals the sources of an unknown life.
And if we are bewildered at times, let us not forget that our soul
often appears to our feeble eyes to be but the maddest of forces, and
that there are in man many regions more fertile, more profound and more
interesting than those of his reason or his intelligence....
THE STAR
THE STAR
WELL might it be said that, from century to century, a tragic poet ‘has
wandered through the labyrinths of destiny with the torch of poesy
in his hand.’ For in this way has each one, according to the forces
of his hour, fixed the souls of the annals of man, and it is divine
history that has thus been composed. It is in the poets alone that we
can follow the countless variations of the great unchanging power; and
to follow them is indeed interesting, for at the root of the idea that
they have formed of this power is to be found, perhaps, the purest
essence of a nation’s soul. It is a power that has never entirely
ceased to be, yet moments there are when it scarcely seems to stir;
and at such moments one feels that life is neither very active nor
very profound. Once only has it been the object of undivided worship;
then was it, even for the gods, an awe-inspiring mystery. And there
is a thing that is passing strange—it was the very period when the
featureless divinity seemed most terrible and most incomprehensible
that was the most beautiful period of mankind, and the people to whom
destiny wore the most formidable aspect were the happiest people of all.
It would seem that a secret force must underlie this idea, or that the
idea is itself the manifestation of a force. Does man develop in the
measure that he recognises the greatness of the unknown that sways him,
or is it the unknown that develops in proportion to the man? To-day
the idea of destiny would seem to be again awakening, and to go forth
in search of it were perhaps no unprofitable quest. But where shall
it be found? To go in search of destiny—what is this but to seek all
the sorrows of man? There is no destiny of joy, no star that bodes of
happiness. The star that is so called is only a star of forbearance.
Yet is it well that we should sally forth at times in search of our
sorrows, so that we may learn to know them and admire them; and this
even though the great shapeless mass of destiny be not encountered at
the end.
Seeking our sorrows, we shall be the most effectively seeking
ourselves, for truly may it be said that the value of ourselves is
but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet. As we progress, so
do they become deeper, nobler and more beautiful; and Marcus Aurelius
is to be admired above all men, because, better than all men, has he
understood how much there is of the soul in the meek resigned smile
it must wear, at the depths of us. Thus is it, too, with the sorrows
of humanity. They follow a road which resembles the road of our own
sorrows; but it is longer, and surer, and must lead to fatherlands that
the last comers alone shall know. This road also has physical sorrow
for its starting-point; it has only just rounded the fear of the gods,
and to-day it halts by a new abyss, whose depths the very best of us
have not yet sounded.
Each century holds another sorrow dear, for each century discerns
another destiny. Certain it is that we no longer interest ourselves,
as was formerly the case, in the catastrophes of passion; and the
quality of the sorrow revealed in the most tragic masterpieces of the
past is inferior to the quality of the sorrows of to-day. It is only
indirectly that these tragedies affect us now; only by means of that
which is brought to bear on the simple accidents of love or hatred
they reproduce, by the reflection and new nobility of sentiment that
the pain of living has created within us.
There are moments when it would seem as though we were on the
threshold of a new pessimism, mysterious and, perhaps, very pure.
The most redoubtable sages, Schopenhauer, Carlyle, the Russians, the
Scandinavians, and the good optimist Emerson, too (for than a wilful
optimist there is nothing more discouraging), all these have passed our
melancholy by, unexplained. We feel that, underlying all the reasons
they have essayed to give us, there are many other profounder reasons,
whose discovery has been beyond them. The sadness of man which seemed
beautiful even to them, is still susceptible of infinite ennobling,
until at last a creature of genius shall have uttered the final word
of the sorrow that shall, perhaps, wholly purify....
In the meanwhile, we are in the hands of strange powers, whose
intentions we are on the eve of divining. At the time of the great
tragic writers of the new era, at the time of Shakespeare, Racine, and
their successors, the belief prevailed that all misfortunes came from
the various passions of the heart. Catastrophes did not hover between
two worlds: they came hence to go thither, and their point of departure
was known. Man was always the master. Much less was this the case at
the time of the Greeks, for then did fatality reign on the heights;
but it was inaccessible, and none dared interrogate it. To-day it is
fatality that we challenge, and this is perhaps the distinguishing note
of the new theatre. It is no longer the effects of disaster that arrest
our attention; it is disaster itself, and we are eager to know its
essence and its laws. It was the _nature_ of disaster with which the
earliest tragic writers were, all unconsciously, preoccupied, and this
it was that, though they knew it not, threw a solemn shadow round the
hard and violent gestures of external death; and it is this, too, that
has become the rallying-point of the most recent dramas, the centre of
light with strange flames gleaming, about which revolve the souls of
women and of men. And a step has been taken towards the mystery so that
life’s terrors may be looked in the face.
It would be interesting to discover from what point of view our latest
tragic writers appear to regard the disaster that forms the basis of
all dramatic poems. They see it from a nearer point of vision than the
Greeks, and they have penetrated deeper into the fertile darknesses of
its inner circle. The divinity is perhaps the same; they know nothing
of it, yet do they study it more closely. Whence does it come, whither
does it go, why does it descend upon us? These were problems to which
the Greeks barely gave a thought. Is it written within us, or is it
born at the same time as ourselves? Does it of its own accord start
forward to meet us, or is it summoned by conniving voices that we
cherish at the depths of us? If we could but follow, from the heights
of another world, the ways of the man over whom a great sorrow is
impending! And what man is there that does not laboriously, though all
unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of
his life!
The Scotch peasants have a word that might be applied to every
existence. In their legends they give the name of ‘Fey’ to the frame
of mind of a man who, notwithstanding all his efforts, notwithstanding
all help and advice, is forced by some irresistible impulse, towards
an inevitable catastrophe. It is thus that James I., the James of
Catherine Douglas, was ‘fey’ when he went, notwithstanding the terrible
omens of earth, heaven and hell, to spend the Christmas holidays in
the gloomy castle of Perth, where his assassin, the traitor Robert
Graeme, lay in wait for him. Which of us, recalling the circumstances
of the most decisive misfortune of his life, but has felt himself
similarly possessed? Be it well understood that I speak here only of
active misfortunes, of those that might have been prevented: for there
are passive misfortunes (such as the death of a person we adore) which
simply come towards us, and cannot be influenced by any movement of
ours. Bethink you of the fatal day of your life. Have we not all been
forewarned; and though it may seem to us now that destiny might have
been changed by a step we did not take, a door we did not open, a hand
we did not raise, which of us but has struggled vainly on the topmost
walls of the abyss, struggled without vigour and without hope, against
a force that was invisible and apparently without power?
The breath of air stirred by the door I opened, one evening, was for
ever to extinguish my happiness, as it would have extinguished a
flickering lamp; and now, when I think of it, I cannot tell myself that
I did not know.... And yet, it was nothing important that had taken me
to the threshold. I could have gone away, shrugging my shoulders: there
was no human reason that could force me to knock on the panel. No human
reason, nothing but destiny....
* * * * *
Herein there is still some resemblance to the fatality of Œdipus,
and yet it is already different. One might say that it is this same
fatality seen _ab intra_. Mysterious powers hold sway within us, and
these would seem to be in league with adventures. We all cherish
enemies within our soul. They know what they do and what they force us
to do, and when they lead us to the event, they let fall half-uttered
words of warning—too few to stop us on the road—but sufficient to
make us regret, when it is too late, that we did not listen more
attentively to their wavering, ironical advice. What object can they
have, these powers that seek our destruction as though they were
self-existing and did not perish with us, seeing that it is in us
only that they have life? What is it that sets in motion all the
confederates of the universe, who fatten on our blood?
The man for whom the hour of misfortune has sounded is caught up by
an invisible whirlwind, and for years back have these powers been
combining the innumerable incidents that must bring him to the
necessary moment, to the exact spot where tears lie in wait for him.
Remember all your efforts, all your presentiments, all the unavailing
offers of help. Remember, too, the kindly circumstances that pitied
you, and tried to bar your passage, but you thrust them aside like so
many importunate beggars. And yet were they humble, timid sisters, who
desired but to save you, and they went away without saying a word, too
weak and too helpless to struggle against decided things—where decided
it is known to God alone....
Scarcely has the disaster befallen us than we have the strange
sensation of having obeyed an eternal law; and, in the midst of the
greatest sorrow, there is I know not what mysterious comfort that
rewards us for our obedience. Never do we belong more completely to
ourselves than on the morrow of an irreparable catastrophe. It seems,
then, as though we had found ourselves again, as though we had won
back a part of ourselves that was necessary and unknown. A curious
calm steals over us. For days past, almost without our knowledge,
notwithstanding that we were able to smile at faces and flowers, the
rebel forces of our soul had been waging terrible battle on the borders
of the abyss, and now that we are at the depths of it, all breathes
freely.
Even thus, without respite, do these rebel forces struggle in the
soul of every one of us; and there are times when we may see the
shadow of these combats wherein our soul may not intervene, but we
pay no heed, for to all save the unimportant do we shut our eyes. At
a time when my friends are about me it may happen that, in the midst
of talk and shouts of laughter, there shall suddenly steal over the
face of one of them something that is not of this world. A motiveless
silence shall instantly prevail, and for a second’s space all shall be
unconsciously looking forth with the eyes of the soul. Whereupon, the
words and smiles, that had disappeared like frightened frogs in a lake,
will again mount to the surface, more violent than before. But the
invisible, here as everywhere, has gathered its tribute. Something has
understood that a fight was over, that a star was rising or falling and
that a destiny had just been decided....
Perhaps it had been decided before; and who knows whether the struggle
be not a mere simulacrum? If I push open to-day the door of the house
wherein I am to meet the first smiles of a sorrow that shall know no
end, I do these things for a longer time than one imagines. Of what
avail to cultivate an ego on which we have so little influence? It is
our star which it behoves us to watch. It is good or bad, pallid or
puissant, and not by all the might of the sea can it be changed. Some
there are who may confidently play with their star as one might play
with a glass ball. They may throw it and hazard it where they list;
faithfully will it ever return to their hands. They know full well
that it cannot be broken. But there are many others who dare not even
raise their eyes towards their star, without it detach itself from the
firmament and fall in dust at their feet....
But it is dangerous to speak of the star, dangerous even to think of
it; for it is often the sign that it is on the point of extinction....
We find ourselves here in the abysses of night, where we await what has
to be. There is no longer question of free will, which we have left
thousands of leagues below: we are in a region where the will itself is
but destiny’s ripest fruit. We must not complain; something is already
known to us, and we have discovered a few of the ways of fortune. We
lie in wait like the birdcatcher studying the habits of migratory
birds, and when an event is signalled on the horizon we know full well
that it will not remain there alone, but that its brothers will flock
in troops to the same spot. Vaguely have we learned that there are
certain thoughts, certain souls, that attract events; that some beings
there are who divert events in their flight, as there are others who
cause them to congregate from the four quarters of the globe.
Above all do we know that certain ideas are fraught with extreme
danger; that do we but for an instant deem ourselves in safety, this
alone suffices to draw down the thunderbolt; we know that happiness
creates a void, into which tears will speedily be hurled. After a time,
too, we learn something of the preferences of events. It is soon borne
home to us that if we take a few steps along the path of life by the
side of this one of our brothers, the ways of fortune will no longer
be the same, whereas, with this other, our existence will encounter
unvarying events, coming in regular order. We feel that some beings
there are who protect in the unknown, others who drag us into danger
there; we feel that there are some who awaken the future, others who
lull it into slumber. We suspect, further, that things at their birth
are but feeble, that they draw their force from within us, and that,
in every adventure, there is a brief moment when our instinct warns
us that we are still the lords of destiny. In fine, there are some
who dare assert that we can learn to be happy, that, as we become
better, so do we meet men of loftier mind; that a man who is good
attracts, with irresistible force, events as good as he, and that, in
a beautiful soul, the saddest fortune is transformed into beauty....
Indeed, is it not within the knowledge of us all that goodness beckons
to goodness, and that those for whom we devote ourselves are always
the same; that they are always the same, those whom we betray? When
the same sorrow knocks at two adjoining doors, at the houses of the
just and the unjust, will its method of action be identical in both?
If you are pure, will not your misfortunes be pure? To have known how
to change the past into a few saddened smiles—is this not to master
the future? And does it not seem that, even in the inevitable, there
is something we can keep back? Do not great hazards lie dormant that
a too sudden movement of ours may awaken on the horizon; and would
this misfortune have befallen you to-day, but for the thoughts that
this morning kept too noisy festival in your soul? Is this all that
our wisdom has been able to glean in the darkness? Who would dare
affirm that in these regions there be more substantial truths? In the
meanwhile, let us learn how to smile, let us learn how to weep, in the
silence of humblest kindliness. Slowly there rises above these things
the shrouded face of the destiny of to-day. Of the veil that formerly
covered it, a minute corner has been lifted, and there, where the veil
is not, do we recognise, to our disquiet, on the one side, _the power
of those who live not yet_, on the other, _the power of the dead_. The
mystery has again been shifted further from us—that is all. We have
enlarged the icy hand of destiny; and we find that, in its shadow,
the hands of our ancestors are clasped by the hands of our sons yet
unborn. One act there was that we deemed the sanctuary of all our
rights, and love remained the supreme refuge of all those on whom the
chains of life weighed too heavily. Here, at least, in the isolation
of this secret temple, we told ourselves that no one entered with us.
Here, for an instant, we could breathe; here, at last, it was our soul
that reigned, and free was its choice in that which was the centre of
liberty itself! But now we are told that it is not for our own sake
that we love. We are told that in the very temple of love we do but
obey the unvarying orders of an invisible throng. We are told that a
thousand centuries divide us from ourselves when we choose the woman
we love, and that the first kiss of the betrothed is but the seal that
thousands of hands, craving for birth, impress upon the lips of the
mother they desire. And, further, we know that the dead do not die. We
know now that it is not in our churches that they are to be found, but
in the houses, the habits, of us all. That there is not a gesture, a
thought, a sin, a tear, an atom of acquired consciousness that is lost
in the depths of the earth; and that at the most insignificant of our
acts our ancestors arise, not in their tombs where they move not, but
in ourselves, where they always live....
Thus are we led by past and future. And the present, which is the
substance of us, sinks to the bottom of the sea, like some tiny
island at which two irreconcilable oceans have been unceasingly
gnawing. Heredity, will, destiny, all mingle noisily in our soul; but,
notwithstanding everything, far above everything, it is the silent star
that reigns. No matter with what temporary labels we may bedeck the
monstrous vases that contain the invisible, words can tell us scarcely
anything of that which should be told. Heredity, nay destiny itself,
what are these but a ray of this star, a ray that is lost in the
mysterious night? And all that is might well be more mysterious still.
‘We give the name of destiny to all that limits us,’ says one of the
great sages of our time: wherefore it behoves us to be grateful to all
those who tremblingly grope their way the side of the frontier. ‘If
we are brutal and barbarous,’ he goes on, ‘fatality takes a form that
is brutal and barbarous. As refinement comes to us, so do our mishaps
become refined. If we rise to spiritual culture, antagonism takes
unto itself a spiritual form.’ It is perhaps true that even as our
soul soars aloft, so does it purify destiny, although it is also true
that we are menaced by the self-same sorrows that menace the savages.
But we have other sorrows of which they have no suspicion; and the
spirit, as it rises, does but discover still more, at every horizon.
‘We give the name of destiny to all that limits us.’ Let us do our
utmost that destiny become not too circumscribed. It is good to enlarge
one’s sorrows, since thus does enlargement come to our consciousness,
and there, there alone do we truly feel that we live. And it is also
the only means of fulfilling our supreme duty towards other worlds;
since it is probably on us alone that it is incumbent to augment the
consciousness of the earth.
THE INVISIBLE GOODNESS
THE INVISIBLE GOODNESS
IT is a thing, said to me one evening the sage I had chanced to meet by
the sea shore, whereon the waves were breaking almost noiselessly—it
is a thing that we scarcely notice, that none seem to take into
account, and yet do I conceive it to be one of the forces that
safeguard mankind. In a thousand diverse ways do the gods from whom
we spring reveal themselves within us, but it may well be that this
unnoticed secret goodness, to which sufficiently direct allusion has
never yet been made, is the purest token of their eternal life. Whence
it comes we know not. It is there in its simplicity, smiling on the
threshold of our soul; and those in whom its smiles lie deepest, or
shine forth most frequently, may make us suffer day and night and they
will, yet shall it be beyond our power to cease to love them....