Among Famous Books Part 3

"What, is great Mephistophilis so pa.s.sionate For being deprived of the joys of heaven?

Learn thou of Faustus manly fort.i.tude, And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess."

Goethe's Mephistopheles near the end of the play taunts Faust in the words, "Why dost thou seek our fellowship if thou canst not go through with it?... Do we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us?" And one has the feeling that, like most other things the fiend says, it is an apparent truth which is really a lie; but it would have been entirely true if Marlowe's devil had said it.

The Mephistopheles of Goethe is seldom solemnised at all. Once indeed on the Harz Mountains he says--

"Naught of this genial influence do I know!

Within me all is wintry.

How sadly, yonder, with belated glow, Rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round!"

Yet there it is merely by discomfort, and not by the pain and hideous sorrow of the world surrounding him, that he is affected. He is like Satan in the Book of Job, except that he is offering his victim luxuries instead of pains. In the prologue in Heaven he speaks with such a jaunty air that Professor Blackie's translation has omitted the pa.s.sage as irreverent. He is the spirit that _denies_--sceptical and cynical, the anti-Christian that is in us all. His business is to depreciate spiritual values, and to persuade mortals that there is no real distinction between good and bad, or between high and low. We have seen in the character of Cornelius in _Marius the Epicurean_ "some inward standard ... of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the period." Here is the extreme opposite. There is no divine discontent in him, nor longing for happier things. He would never have said that he would climb to heaven upon a ladder of razor edges.

There is nothing of the fallen angel about him at all, for he is a spirit perfectly content with an intolerable past, present, and future.

Before the throne of G.o.d he swaggers with the same easy insolence as in Martha's garden. He is the very essence and furthest reach of paganism.

So we have this curious fact, that Marlowe's Faust is the pagan and Mephistophilis the idealist; while Goethe reverses the order, making paganism incarnate in the fiend and idealism in the n.o.bler side of the man. It is a far truer and more natural story of life than that which had suggested it; for in the soul of man there is ever a hunger and thirst for the highest, however much he may abuse his soul. At the worst, there remains always that which "a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose."

One more contrast marks the difference of the two plays, namely, the fate of Faust. Marlowe's Faust is utterly and irretrievably d.a.m.ned. On the old theory of an essential antagonism between the secular and the sacred, and upon the old cast-iron theology to which the intellect of man was enjoined to conform, there is no escape whatsoever for the rebel. So the play leads on to the sublimely terrific pa.s.sage at the close, when, with the chiming of the bell, terror grows to madness in the victim's soul, and at last he envies the beasts that perish--

"For, when they die, Their souls are soon dissolved in elements; But mine must live still to be plagued in h.e.l.l.

Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!

No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven."

Goethe, with his changed conception of life in general, could not have accepted this ending. It was indeed Lessing who first pointed out that the final end for Faust must be his salvation and not his doom; but Goethe must necessarily have arrived at the same conclusion even if Lessing had not a.s.serted it. It is clearly visible throughout the play, by touches here and there, that Faust is not "wholly d.a.m.nable" as Martha is. His pity for women, relevant to the main plot of the play, breaks forth in horror when he discovers the fate of Margaret. "The misery of this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art grinning calmly over the doom of thousands!" And these words follow immediately after an outbreak of blind rage called forth by Mephistopheles' famous words, "She is not the first." Such a Faust as this, we feel, can no more be ultimately lost than can the Mephistophilis of Marlowe. As for Marlowe's Faust, the plea for his destruction is the great delusion of a hard theology, and the only really d.a.m.nable person in the whole company is the Mephistopheles of Goethe, who seems from first to last continually to be committing the sin against the Holy Ghost.

The salvation of Faust is implicit in the whole structure and meaning of the play. It is worked out mystically in the Second Part, along lines of human life and spiritual interest far-flung into the sphere that surrounds the story of the First. But even in the First Part, the happy issue is involved in the terms of Faust's compact with the devil. Only on the condition that Mephistopheles shall be able to satisfy Faust and cheat him "into self-complacent pride, or sweet enjoyment," only

"If ever to the pa.s.sing hour I say, So beautiful thou art! thy flight delay"--

only then shall his soul become the prey of the tempter. But from the first, in the scorn of Faust for this poor fiend and all he has to bestow, we read the failure of the plot. Faust may sign a hundred such bonds in his blood with little fear. He knows well enough that a spirit such as his can never be satisfied with what the fiend has to give, nor lie down in sleek contentment to enjoy the earth without afterthought.

It is the strenuous and insatiable spirit of the man that saves him. It is true that "man errs so long as he is striving," but the great word of the play is just this, that no such errors can ever be final. The deadly error is that of those who have ceased to strive, and who have complacently settled down in the acceptance of the lower life with its gratifications and delights.

But such striving is, as Robert Browning tells us in _Rabbi ben Ezra_ and _The Statue and the Bust_, the critical and all-important point in human character and destiny. It is this which distinguishes pagan from idealist in the end. Faust's errors fall off from him like a discarded robe; the essential man has never ceased to strive. He has gone indeed to h.e.l.l, but he has never made his bed there. He is saved by want of satisfaction.

LECTURE IV

CELTIC REVIVALS OF PAGANISM

OMAR KAYYaM AND FIONA MACLEOD

It is extremely difficult to judge justly and without prejudice the literature of one's own time. So many different elements are pouring into it that it a.s.sumes a composite character, far beyond the power of definition or even of epigram to describe as a whole. But, while this is true, it is nevertheless possible to select from this vast amalgam certain particular elements, and to examine them and judge them fairly.

The field in which we are now wandering may be properly included under the head of ancient literature, although in another sense it is the most modern of all. The two authors whom we shall consider in this lecture, although they have come into our literature but recently, yet represent very ancient thought. There is nothing whatsoever that is modern about them. They describe bed-rock human pa.s.sions and longings, sorrowings and consolations. Each may be claimed as a revival of ancient paganism, but only one of them is capable of translation into a useful idealism.

OMAR KAYYaM

In the twelfth century, at Khora.s.san in Persia Omar Kayyam the poet was born. He lived and died at Naishapur, following the trade of a tent-maker, acquiring knowledge of every available kind, but with astronomy for his special study. His famous poem, the _Rubaiyat_, was first seen by Fitzgerald in 1856 and published in 1868. So great was the sensation produced in England by the innovating sage, that in 1895 the Omar Kayyam Club was founded by Professor Clodd, and that club has since come to be considered "the blue ribbon of literary a.s.sociations."

In Omar's time Persian poetry was in the hands of the Sufis, or religious teachers of Persia. He found them writing verses which professed to be mystical and spiritual, but which might sometimes be suspected of earthlier meanings lurking beneath the pantheistic veil. It was against the poetry of such Sufis that Omar Kayyam rose in revolt.

Loving frankness and truth, he threw all disguises aside, and became the exponent of materialistic epicureanism naked and unashamed.

A fair specimen of the finest Sufi poetry is _The Rose Garden of Sa'di_, which it may be convenient to quote because of its easy accessibility in English translation. Sa'di also was a twelfth-century poet, although of a later time than Omar. He was a student of the College in Baghdad, and he lived as a hermit for sixty years in Shiraz, singing of love and war.

His mind is full of mysticism, wisdom and beauty going hand in hand through a dim twilight land. Dominating all his thought is the primary conviction that the soul is essentially part of G.o.d, and will return to G.o.d again, and meanwhile is always revealing, in mysterious hints and half-conscious visions, its divine source and destiny. Here and there you will find the deep fatalism of the East, as in the lines--

"Fate will not alter for a thousand sighs, Nor prayers importunate, nor hopeless cries.

The guardian of the store-house of the wind Cares nothing if the widow's lantern dies."

These, however, are relieved by that which makes a friend of fate--

"To G.o.d's beloved even the dark hour Shines as the morning glory after rain.

Except by Allah's grace thou hast no power Nor strength of arm such rapture to attain."

It was against this sort of poetry that Omar Kayyam revolted. He had not any proof of such spiritual a.s.surances, and he did not want that of which he had no proof. He understood the material world around him, both in its joy and sorrow, and emphatically he did not understand any other world. He became a sort of Marlowe's Faust before his time, and protested against the vague spirituality of the Sufis by an a.s.sertion of what may be called a brilliant animalism. He loved beauty as much as they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who "failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery pa.s.sion of any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb--"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with such inscriptions on them--"The future is utterly useless, make the most of to-day,"--and Omar's poetry is full both of the cups and the inscription.

The French interpreter, Nicolas, has indeed spiritualised his work. In his view, when Omar raves about wine, he really means G.o.d; when he speaks of love, he means the soul, and so on. As a matter of fact, no man has ever written a plainer record of what he means, or has left his meaning less ambiguous. When he says wine and love he means wine and love--earthly things, which may or may not have their spiritual counterparts, but which at least have given no sign of them to him. The same persistent note is heard in all his verses. It is the grape, and wine, and fair women, and books, that make up the sum total of life for Omar as he knows it.

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.

A Book of verses underneath the Bough, A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

We are no other than a moving row Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go Round with the sun-illumined Lantern held In Midnight by the Master of the Show."

It would show a sad lack of humour if we were to take this too seriously, and shake our heads over our eastern visitor. The cult of Omar has been blamed for paganising English society. Really it came in as a foreign curiosity, and, for the most part, that it has remained.

When we had a visit some years ago from that great oriental potentate Li Hung Chang, we all put on our best clothes and went out to welcome him.

That was all right so long as we did not naturalise him, a course which neither he nor we thought of our adopting. Had we naturalised him, it would have been a different matter, and even Mayfair might have found the fashions of China somewhat _risque_. One remembers that introductory note to Browning's _Ferishtah's Fancies_--"You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred; only, I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say they are Persian; but let them be changed."[1] The only safe way of dealing with Omar Kayyam is to insist that his garments be _not_ changed. If you naturalise him he will become deadly in the West. The East thrives upon fatalism, and there is a glamour about its most materialistic writings, through which far spiritual things seem to quiver as in a sun-haze. The atmosphere of the West is different, and fatalism, adopted by its more practical mind, is sheer suicide.

Not that there is much likelihood of a nation with the history and the literature of England behind it, ever becoming to any great extent materialistic in the crude sense of Omar's poetry. The danger is subtler. The motto, "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die," is capable of spiritualisation, and if you spiritualise that motto it becomes poisonous indeed. For there are various ways of eating and drinking, and many who would not be tempted with the grosser appet.i.tes may become pagans by devoting themselves to a rarer banquet, the feast of reason and the flow of soul. It is possible in that way also to take the present moment for Eternity, to live and think without horizons. Mr.

Peyton has said, "You see in some little house a picture of a cottage on a moor, and you wonder why these people, living, perhaps, in the heart of a great city, and in the most commonplace of houses, put such a picture there. The reason for it is, that that cottage is for them the signal of the immortal life of men, and the moor has infinite horizons."

That is the root of the matter after all--the soul and horizons. He who says, "To-day shall suffice for me," whether it be in the high intellectual plane or in the low earthly one, has fallen into the grip of the world that pa.s.seth away; and that is a danger which Omar's advent has certainly not lessened.

The second reason for care in this neighbourhood is that epicureanism is only safe for those whose tastes lie in the direction of the simple life. Montaigne has wisely said that it is pernicious to those who have a natural tendency to vice. But vice is not a thing which any man loves for its own sake, until his nature has suffered a long process of degradation. It is simply the last result of a habit of luxurious self-indulgence; and the temptation to the self-indulgent, the present world in one form or another, comes upon everybody at times. There are moods when all of us want to break away from the simple life, and feel the splendour of the dazzling lights and the intoxication of the strange scents of the world. To surrender to these has always been, and always will be, deadly. It is the old temptation to cease to strive, which we have already found to be the keynote of Goethe's _Faust_. Kingsley, in one of the most remarkable pa.s.sages of _Westward Ho!_ describes two of Amyas Leigh's companions, settled down in a luscious paradise of earthly delights, while their comrades endured the never-ending hardships of the march. By the sight of that soft luxury Amyas was tempted of the devil.

But as he gazed, a black jaguar sprang from the cliff above, and fastened on the fair form of the bride of one of the recreants. "O Lord Jesus," said Amyas to himself, "Thou hast answered the devil for me!"

It does not, however, need the advent of the jaguar to introduce the element of sheer tragedy into luxurious life. In his _Conspiracy of Pontiac_, Parkman tells with rare eloquence the character of the Ojibwa Indians: "In the calm days of summer, the Ojibwa fisherman pushes out his birch canoe upon the great inland ocean of the North; ... or he lifts his canoe from the sandy beach, and, while his camp-fire crackles on the gra.s.s-plot, reclines beneath the trees, and smokes and laughs away the sultry hours, in a lazy luxury of enjoyment.... But when winter descends upon the North, sealing up the fountains ... now the hunter can fight no more against the nipping cold and blinding sleet. Stiff and stark, with haggard cheek and shrivelled lip, he lies among the snow-drifts; till, with tooth and claw, the famished wild-cat strives in vain to pierce the frigid marble of his limbs."

Meredith tells of a bird, playing with a magic ring, and all the time trying to sing its song; but the ring falls and has to be picked up again, and the song is broken. It is a good parable of life, that impossible compromise between the magic ring and the simple song. Those who choose the earth-magic of Omar's epicureanism will find that the song of the spirit is broken, until they cease from the vain attempt at singing and fall into an earth-bound silence.

Thus Omar Kayyam has brought us a rich treasure from the East, of splendid diction and much delightful and fascinating sweetness of poetry. All such gifts are an enrichment to the language and a decoration to the thought of a people. When, however, they are taken more seriously, they may certainly bring plague with them, as other Eastern things have sometimes done.

FIONA MACLEOD