Kitabı oku: «The Germ: Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art», sayfa 13

Thus we have a formidable array of objections to the choice of present-day subjects: and first, it was objected and granted, that incidents of the present time are well nigh barren in poetic attraction for the many. Then it was objected, but not granted, that their poetic or pictorial counterparts will be equally unattractive also: but this last remains to be proved. It was said, and is believed by the author, (and such as doubt it he does not address) that all good men are more or less poetical in some way or other; while their poetry shows itself at various times. Thus the business-man in the street has other to think of than poetry; but when he is inclined to look at a picture, or in his more poetical humour, will he neglect the pictorial counterpart of what he neglected before? To test this, show him a camera obscura, where there is a more literal transcript of present-day nature than any painting can be:—what is the result? He expresses no anxiety to quit it, but a great curiosity to investigate; he feels it is very beautiful, indeed more beautiful than nature: and this he will say is because he does not see nature as an artist does. Now the solution of all this is easy: 1st. He is in a mood of mind which renders him accessible to the influences of poetry, which was not before the case. 2nd. He looks at that steadily which he before regarded cursorily; and, as the picture remains in his eye, it acquires an amount of harmony, in behoof of an intrinsic harmony resident in the organ itself, which exerts proportionately modifying influences on all things that enter within it; and of the nervous harmony, and the beautifully apportioned stimuli of alternating ocular spectra. 3rd. There is a resolution of discord effected by the instrument itself, inasmuch as its effects are homogeneous. All these harmonizing influences are equally true of the painting; and though we have no longer the homogeneous effect of the camera, we have the homogeneous effect of one mind, viz., the mind of the artist.

Thus having disproved the supposed poetical obstacles to the rendering of real life or nature in its own real garb and time, as faithfully as Art can render it, nothing need be said to answer the advantages of the antique or mediæval rendering; since they were only called in to neutralize the aforesaid obstacles, which obstacles have proved to be fictitious. It remains then to consider the artistic objection of costume, &c., which consideration ranges under the head of real differences between the things of past and present times, a consideration formerly postponed. But this requiring a patient analysis, will necessitate a further postponement, and in conclusion, there will be briefly stated the elements of the argument, thus.—It must be obvious to every physicist that physical beauty (which this subject involves on the one side [the ancient] as opposed to the want of it on the other [the modern]) was in ancient times as superior to physical beauty in the modern, as psychical beauty in the modern is superior to psychical beauty in the ancient. Costume then, as physical, is more beautiful ancient than modern. Now that a certain amount of physical beauty is requisite to constitute Fine Art, will be readily admitted; but what that amount is, must be ever undefined. That the maximum of physical beauty does not constitute the maximum of Fine Art, is apparent from the facts of the physical beauty of Early Christian Art being inferior to that of Grecian art; whilst, in the concrete, Early Christian Art is superior to Grecian. Indeed some specimens of Early Christian Art are repulsive rather than beautiful, yet these are in many cases the highest works of Art.

In the “Plague at Ashdod,” great physical beauty, resulting from picturesque costume and the exposed human figure, was so far from desirable, that it seems purposely deformed by blotches of livid color; yet the whole is a most noble work of Poussin. Containing as much physical beauty as this picture, the writer remembers to have seen an incident in the streets where a black-haired, sordid, wicked-headed man, was striking the butt of his whip at the neck of a horse, to urge him round an angle of the pavement; a smocked countryman offered him the loan of his mules: a blacksmith standing by, showed him how to free the wheel, by only swerving the animal to the left: he, taking no notice whatever, went on striking and striking; whilst a woman waiting to cross, with a child in her one hand, and with the other pushing its little head close to her side, looked with wide eyes at this monster.

This familiar incident, affording a subject fraught with more moral interest than, and as much picturesque matter as, many antique or mediæval subjects, is only wanting in that romantic attraction which, by association, attaches to things of the past. Yet, let these modern subjects once excite interest, as it really appears they can, and the incidents of to-day will acquire romantic attractions by the same association of ideas.

The claims of ancient, mediæval, and modern subjects will be considered in detail at a future period.

The Carillon. (Antwerp and Bruges)

In these and others of the Flemish Towns, the Carillon, or chimes which have a most fantastic and delicate music, are played almost continually The custom is very ancient.

 
At Antwerp, there is a low wall
Binding the city, and a moat
Beneath, that the wind keeps afloat.
You pass the gates in a slow drawl
Of wheels. If it is warm at all
The Carillon will give you thought.
 
 
I climbed the stair in Antwerp church,
What time the urgent weight of sound
At sunset seems to heave it round.
Far up, the Carillon did search
The wind; and the birds came to perch
Far under, where the gables wound.
 
 
In Antwerp harbour on the Scheldt
I stood along, a certain space
Of night. The mist was near my face:
Deep on, the flow was heard and felt.
The Carillon kept pause, and dwelt
In music through the silent place.
 
 
At Bruges, when you leave the train,
—A singing numbness in your ears,—
The Carillon's first sound appears
Only the inner moil. Again
A little minute though—your brain
Takes quiet, and the whole sense hears.
 
 
John Memmeling and John Van Eyck
Hold state at Bruges. In sore shame
I scanned the works that keep their name.
The Carillon, which then did strike
Mine ears, was heard of theirs alike:
It set me closer unto them.
 
 
I climbed at Bruges all the flight
The Belfry has of ancient stone.
For leagues I saw the east wind blown:
The earth was grey, the sky was white.
I stood so near upon the height
That my flesh felt the Carillon.
 

October, 1849.

Emblems

 
I lay through one long afternoon,
Vacantly plucking the grass.
I lay on my back, with steadfast gaze
Watching the cloud-shapes pass;
Until the evening's chilly damps
Rose from the hollows below,
Where the cold marsh-reeds grow.
 
 
I saw the sun sink down behind
The high point of a mountain;
Its last light lingered on the weeds
That choked a shattered fountain,
Where lay a rotting bird, whose plumes
Had beat the air in soaring.
On these things I was poring:—
 
 
The sun seemed like my sense of life,
Now weak, that was so strong;
The fountain—that continual pulse
Which throbbed with human song:
The bird lay dead as that wild hope
Which nerved my thoughts when young.
These symbols had a tongue,
 
 
And told the dreary lengths of years
I must drag my weight with me;
Or be like a mastless ship stuck fast
On a deep, stagnant sea.
A man on a dangerous height alone,
If suddenly struck blind,
Will never his home path find.
 
 
When divers plunge for ocean's pearls,
And chance to strike a rock,
Who plunged with greatest force below
Receives the heaviest shock.
With nostrils wide and breath drawn in,
I rushed resolved on the race;
Then, stumbling, fell in the chase.
 
 
Yet with time's cycles forests swell
Where stretched a desert plain:
Time's cycles make the mountains rise
Where heaved the restless main:
On swamps where moped the lonely stork,
In the silent lapse of time
Stands a city in its prime.
 
 
I thought: then saw the broadening shade
Grow slowly over the mound,
That reached with one long level slope
Down to a rich vineyard ground:
The air about lay still and hushed,
As if in serious thought:
But I scarcely heeded aught,
 
 
Till I heard, hard by, a thrush break forth,
Shouting with his whole voice,
So that he made the distant air
And the things around rejoice.
My soul gushed, for the sound awoke
Memories of early joy:
I sobbed like a chidden boy.
 

Sonnet: Early Aspirations

 
How many a throb of the young poet-heart,
Aspiring to the ideal bliss of Fame,
Deems that Time soon may sanctify his claim
Among the sons of song to dwell apart.—
Time passes—passes! The aspiring flame
Of Hope shrinks down; the white flower Poesy
Breaks on its stalk, and from its earth-turned eye
Drop sleepy tears instead of that sweet dew
Rich with inspiring odours, insect wings
Drew from its leaves with every changing sky,
While its young innocent petals unsunn'd grew.
No more in pride to other ears he sings,
But with a dying charm himself unto:—
For a sad season: then, to active life he springs.
 

From the Cliffs: Noon

 
The sea is in its listless chime:
Time's lapse it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth's large shell.
In a sad blueness beyond rhyme
It ends: sense, without thought, can pass
No stadium further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.
 
 
No stagnance that death wins,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Always enduring at dull strife.
As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.
 

Fancies at Leisure

I. In Spring

 
The sky is blue here, scarcely with a stain
Of grey for clouds: here the young grasses gain
A larger growth of green over this splinter
Fallen from the ruin. Spring seems to have told Winter
He shall not freeze again here. Tho' their loss
Of leaves is not yet quite repaired, trees toss
Sprouts from their boughs. The ash you called so stiff
Curves, daily, broader shadow down the cliff.
 

II. In Summer

 
How the rooks caw, and their beaks seem to clank!
Let us just move out there,—(it might be cool
Under those trees,) and watch how the thick tank
By the old mill is black,—a stagnant pool
Of rot and insects. There goes by a lank
Dead hairy dog floating. Will Nature's rule
Of life return hither no more? The plank
Rots in the crushed weeds, and the sun is cruel.
 

III. The Breadth of Noon

 
Long time I lay there, while a breeze would blow
From the south softly, and, hard by, a slender
Poplar swayed to and fro to it. Surrender
Was made of all myself to quiet. No
Least thought was in my mind of the least woe:
Yet the void silence slowly seemed to render
My calmness not less calm, but yet more tender,
And I was nigh to weeping.—‘Ere I go,’
I thought, ‘I must make all this stillness mine;
The sky's blue almost purple, and these three
Hills carved against it, and the pine on pine
The wood in their shade has. All this I see
So inwardly I fancy it may be
Seen thus of parted souls by their sunshine.’
 

IV. Sea-Freshness

 
Look at that crab there. See if you can't haul
His backward progress to this spar of a ship
Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip
His clipping feelers hard, and give him all
Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall:
So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip
In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip—
No wonder—curves in mirth at the slow drawl
Of the squat creature's legs. We've quite a shine
Of waves round us, and here there comes a wind
So fresh it must bode us good luck. How long
Boatman, for one and sixpence? Line by line
The sea comes toward us sun-ridged. Oh! we sinned
Taking the crab out: let's redress his wrong.
 

V. The Fire Smouldering

 
I look into the burning coals, and see
Faces and forms of things; but they soon pass,
Melting one into other: the firm mass
Crumbles, and breaks, and fades gradually,
Shape into shape as in a dream may be,
Into an image other than it was:
And so on till the whole falls in, and has
Not any likeness,—face, and hand, and tree,
All gone. So with the mind: thought follows thought,
This hastening, and that pressing upon this,
A mighty crowd within so narrow room:
And then at length heavy-eyed slumbers come,
The drowsy fancies grope about, and miss
Their way, and what was so alive is nought.
 

Papers of “The M.S. Society”¹²

No. I. An Incident in the Siege of Troy, seen from a modern Observatory

 
Sixteen Specials in Priam's Keep
Sat down to their mahogany:
The League, just then, had made busters cheap,
And Hesiod writ his “Theogony,”
A work written to prove “that, if men would be men,
And demand their rights again and again,
They might live like gods, have infinite smokes,
Drink infinite rum, drive infinite mokes,
Which would come from every part of the known
And civilized globe, twice as good as their own,
And, finally, Ilion, the work-shop should be
Of the world—one vast manufactory!”
 
 
From arrow-slits, port-holes, windows, what not,
Their sixteen quarrels the Specials had shot
From sixteen arblasts, their daily task;
Why they'd to do it they didn't ask,
For, after they'd done it, they sat down to dinner;
The sixteen Specials they didn't get thinner;
But kept quite loyal, and every day
Asked no questions but fired away.
 
 
Would you like me to tell you the reason why
These sixteen Specials kept letting fly
From eleven till one, as the Chronicle speaks?
They did it, my boys, to annoy the Greeks,
Who kept up a perpetual cannonade
On the walls, and threaten'd an escalade.
The sixteen Specials were so arranged
That the shots they shot were not shots exchanged,
But every shot so told on the foe
The Greeks were obliged to draw it mild:
Diomedes—“A fix,” Ulysses—“No go”
Declared it, the “king of men” cried like a child;
Whilst the Specials, no more than a fine black Tom
I keep to serenade Mary from
The tiles, where he lounges every night,
Knew nor cared what they did, and were perfectly right.
 
 
But the fact was thus: one Helenus,
A man much faster than any of us,
More fast than a gent at the top of a “bus,”
More fast than the coming of “Per col. sus.”
Which Shakespeare says comes galloping,
(I take his word for anything)
This Helenus had a cure of souls—
He had cured the souls of several Greeks,
Achilles sole or heel,—the rolls
Of fame (not French) say Paris:—speaks
Anatomist Quain thereof. Who seeks
May read the story from z to a;
He has handled and argued it every way;—
A subject on which there's a good deal to say.
His work was ever the best, and still is,
Because of this note on the Tendo Achillis.
 
 
This Helenus was a man well bred,
He was up in Electricity,
Fortification, Theology,
Æsthetics and Pugilicity;
Celsus and Gregory he'd read;
Knew every “dodge” of glove and fist;
Was a capital curate, (I think I've said)
And Transcendental Anatomist:
Well up in Materia Medica,
Right up in Toxicology,
And Medical Jurisprudence, that sell!
And the dead sell Physiology:
Knew what and how much of any potation
Would get him through any examination:
With credit not small, had passed the Hall
And the College–and they couldn't pluck him at all.
He'd written on Rail-roads, delivered a lecture
Upon the Electric Telegraph,
Had played at single-stick with Hector,
And written a paper on half-and-half.
 
 
With those and other works of note
He was not at all a “people's man,”
Though public, for the works he wrote
Were not that sort the people can
Admire or read; they were Mathematic
The most part, some were Hydrostatic;
But Algebraic, in the main,
And full of a, b, c, and n—
And other letters which perplex—
The last was full of double x!
In fact, such stuff as one may easily
Imagine, didn't go down greasily,
Nor calculated to produce
Such heat as “cooks the public goose,”
And does it of so brown a hue
Men wonder while they relish too.
 
 
It therefore was that much alone
He studied; and a room is shown
In a coffee-house, an upper room,
Where none but hungry devils come,
Wherein 'tis said, with animation
He read “Vestiges of Creation.”
 
 
Accordingly, a month about
After he'd chalked up steak and stout
For the last time, he gave the world
A pamphlet, wherein he unfurled
A tissue of facts which, soon as blown,
Ran like wildfire through the town.
And, first of all, he plainly showed
A capital error in the mode
Of national defences, thus—
“The Greek one thousand miles from us,”
Said he, (for nine hundred and ninety-nine
The citadel stood above the brine
In perpendicular height, allowing
For slope of glacis, thereby showing
An increase of a mile,) “'tis plain
The force that shot and shell would gain,
By gravitation, with their own,
Would fire the ground by friction alone;
Which, being once in fusion schooled
Ere cool, as Fire-mist had cooled”
Would gain a motion, which must soon,
Just as the earth detached the moon
And gave her locomotive birth,
Detach some twenty miles of earth,
And send it swinging in the air,
The Devil only could tell where!
Then came the probability
With what increased facility
The Greeks, by this projectile power,
Might land on Ilion's highest tower,
All safe and sound, in battle array,
With howitzers prepared to play,
And muskets to the muzzles rammed;—
Why, the town would be utterly smashed and jammed,
And positively, as the phrase is
Vernacular, be “sent to blazes”!
 
 
In the second place, he then would ask,
(And here he took several members to task,
And wondered—“he really must presume
To wonder” a statesman like—you know whom—
Who ever evinced the deepest sense
Of a crying sin in any expense,
Should so besotted be, and lost
To the fact that now, at public cost,
Powder was being day by day
Wantonly wasted, blown away);—
Yes, he would ask, “with what intent
But to perch the Greeks on a battlement
From which they might o'erlook the town,
The easier to batter it down,
Which he had proved must be the case
(If it hadn't already taken place):
He called on his readers to fear and dread it,
Whilst he wrote it,—whilst they read it!”
“How simple! How beautifully simple,” said he,
“And obvious was the remedy!
Look back a century or so—
And there was the ancient Norman bow,
A weapon (he gave them leave to laugh)
Efficient, better, cheaper by half:
(He knew quite well the age abused it
Because, forsooth, the Normans used it)
These, planted in the citadel,
Would reach the walls say,—very well;
There, having spent their utmost force,
They'd drop down right, as a matter of course,
A thousand miles! Think—a thousand miles!
What was the weight for driving piles
To this? He calculated it—
'Twould equal, when both Houses sit,
The weight of the entire building,
Including Members, paint, and gilding;
But, if a speech or the address
From the throne were given, something less,
Because, as certain snores aver,
The House is then much heavier.
 
 
Now this, though very much a rub like
For Ministers, convinced the public;
And Priam, who liked to hear its brays
To any tune but “the Marseillaise,”
Summoned a Privy Council, where
'Twas shortly settled to confer
On Helenus a sole command
Of Specials.—He headed that daring band!
 
 
And sixteen Specials in Priam's keep
Got up from their mahogany;
They smoked their pipes in silence deep
Till there was such a fog—any
Attempt to discover the priest in the smother
Had bothered old Airy and Adams and t'other
And—Every son of an English mother.
 

June, 1848.

No. II. Swift's Dunces

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the DUNCES are all in confederacy against him.”—Swift.

How shall we know the dunces from the man of genius, who is no doubt our superior in judgment, yet knows himself for a fool—by the proverb?

At least, my dear Doctor, you will let me, with the mass of readers, have clearer wits than the dunces—then why should I not know what you are as soon as, or sooner than Bavius, &c.—unless a dunce has a good nose, or a natural instinct for detecting wit.

Now I take it that these people stigmatized as dunces are but men of ill-balanced mental faculties, yet perhaps, in a great degree, superior to the average of minds. For instance, a poet of much merit, but more ambition, has written the “Lampiad,” an epic; when he should not have dared beyond the Doric reed: his ambitious pride has prevented the publication of excellent pastorals, therefore the world only knows him for his failure. This, I say, is a likely man to become a detractor; for his good judgment shows the imperfections of most works, his own included; his ambition (an ill-combination of self-conscious worth and spleen) leads him to compare works of the highest repute; the works of contemporaries; and his own. In all cases where success is most difficult, he will be most severe; this naturally leads him to criticise the very best works.

He has himself failed; he sees errors in successful writers; he knows he possesses certain merits, and knows what the perfection of them should be. This is the ground work of envy, which makes a man of parts a comparative fool, and a confederate against “true genius.”