Browning's England Part 52

VI

I state it thus: There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept A word which vaguely names what no adept In word-use fits and fixes so that still Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain Innominate as first, yet, free again, Is no less recognized the absolute Fact underlying that same other fact Concerning which no cavil can dispute Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"-- Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find Distinct beneath that something. You exact An ill.u.s.trative image? This may suit.

VII

We see a work: the worker works behind, Invisible himself. Suppose his act Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports, Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts, Lays stone by stone until a floor compact Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less, Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same, Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame, An element which works beyond our guess, Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge, Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge, In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps Mind arrogates no mastery upon-- Distinct indisputably. Has there gone To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?

Still the successive labor of each inch, Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch That let the polished slab-stone find its place, To the first prod of pick-axe at the base Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all Mind's varied process except natural, Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe, After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe Of senses ministrant above, below, Far, near, or now or haply long ago Brought to pa.s.s knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence, Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread, Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,-- Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?

Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll This side and that, except to emulate Stability above? To match and mate Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest, Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink Ceaselessly, pa.s.sion's transient flit and wink, A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead, Run mercury into a mould like lead, And henceforth have the plain result to show-- How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know-- This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch That balks her of full triumph else to boast.

Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.

VIII

All Arts endeavor this, and she the most Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?

Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?

What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange, Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce Change, not creation: simply what lay loose At first lies firmly after, what design Was faintly traced in hesitating line Once on a time, grows firmly resolute Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot Liquidity into a mould,--some way Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep Unalterably still the forms that leap To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns To save its capture: Poetry discerns, Painting is 'ware of pa.s.sion's rise and fall, Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain: The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!

Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--pa.s.sions caught I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught, Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears, Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years, And still the Poet's page holds Helena At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they, My brothers, in the armament I name Hero by hero? Can it be that shame For their lost sister holds them from the war?"

--Knowing not they already slept afar Each of them in his own dear native land.

Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand Of G.o.d takes Eve the life-spark whereunto She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet, Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,-- The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing Unbroken of a branch, palpitating With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies, Marvel and mystery, of mysteries And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!

Save it from chance and change we most abhor!

Give momentary feeling permanence, So that thy capture hold, a century hence, Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day, The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena, Still rapturously bend, afar still throw The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!

Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound, Give feeling immortality by sound, Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas-- As well expect the rainbow not to pa.s.s!

"Praise 'Radaminta'--love attains therein To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said: Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead-- They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate, Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate As ever to go walk the world again, Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain Till Music loose them, fit each filmily With form enough to know and name it by For any recognizer sure of ken And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal Is Music long obdurate: off they steal-- How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day-- Pa.s.sion made palpable once more. Ye look Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!

Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire, Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,-- Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note The ever-new invasion!

The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any question about the appeal being ephemeral. He imagines the possibility of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs, we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.

IX

I devote Rather my modic.u.m of parts to use What power may yet avail to re-infuse (In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death With momentary liveliness, lend breath To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe, An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf Of thy laboratory, dares unstop Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine Each in its right receptacle, a.s.sign To each its proper office, letter large Label and label, then with solemn charge, Reviewing learnedly the list complete Of chemical reactives, from thy feet Push down the same to me, attent below, Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!

Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash As style my Avison, because he lacked Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked By modulations fit to make each hair Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!

I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast Discords and resolutions, turn aghast Melody's easy-going, jostle law With license, modulate (no Bach in awe), Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank), And lo, up-start the flamelets,--what was blank Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned By eyes that like new l.u.s.tre--Love once more Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March, My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years The step precise of British Grenadiers To such a nicety,--if score I crowd, If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap, Ever the pace augmented till--what's here?

t.i.tanic striding toward Olympus!

X

Fear No such irreverent innovation! Still Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will-- Nay, were thy melody in monotone, The due three-parts dispensed with!

XI

This alone Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne Seats somebody whom somebody unseats, And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats Of strength,--shall somebody as sure push down, Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown, And orb imperial--whereto?--Never dream That what once lived shall ever die! They seem Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit Measure to subject, first--no marching on Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison, As suited step a minute since: no: wait-- Into the minor key first modulate-- Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)

The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.

The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore will pa.s.s, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth which is preserved through it.

XII

Of all the lamentable debts incurred By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst: That he should find his last gain prove his first Was futile--merely nescience absolute, Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide, Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide, And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,-- Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe From human records, late it graced so much.

"Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.

"When we attained them! E'en as they, so will This their successor have the due morn, noon, Evening and night--just as an old-world tune Wears out and drops away, until who hears Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'

So will it be with truth that, for the nonce, Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!

Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file, Simply proves first of our delusions."

XIII

Now-- Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow, Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed-- Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope, Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,-- Were equally existent in far days Of Music's dim beginning--even so, Truth was at full within thee long ago, Alive as now it takes what latest shape May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape Time's insufficient garniture; they fade, They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine And free through March frost: May dews crystalline Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit As--not new vesture merely but, to boot, Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes, So much the better!

As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning demands of it:

"Dredging deeper yet, Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,-- The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing Unbroken of a branch, palpitating With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies, Marvel and mystery, of mysteries And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!

Save it from chance and change we most abhor."

This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its "eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt, despair, pa.s.sion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of G.o.d when trans.m.u.ted in the alembic of the brain of genius--which is not saying that he need experience any of these pa.s.sions himself. In fact, it is his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of pa.s.sion or emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.

It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique reached, _that_ music retains its power to move. It is also highly probably that in the earlier objective phases of music, even the contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation, etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are bringing to us in music.

There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.

On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He pa.s.ses from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry, music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own place in a mosaic pavement.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Avison's March]

The poem closes in a rolicking frame of mind, which is not remarkably consistent with the preceding thought, except that the poet seems determined to get all he can out of the music of the past by enlivening it with his own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic poem to the tune of Avison's march, in honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever _tour de force_ for the words are made to match exactly in rhythm and quant.i.ty the notes of the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness of the tune comes out by means of these enlivening words.

XIV

Therefore--bang the drums, Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats, Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar Mate the approaching trample, even now Big in the distance--or my ears deceive-- Of federated England, fitly weave March-music for the Future!

XV

Or suppose Back, and not forward, transformation goes?

Once more some sable-stoled procession--say, From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way, Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day Three hundred years ago! How duly drones Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak A cla.s.sic vengeance on thy March! It moans-- Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars Aside and filling vacant sky with stars Hidden till now that day returns to night.

XVI

Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both, Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's The cause our music champions: I were loth To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans Ign.o.bly: back to times of England's best!

Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym, The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.

Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest: Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn, --Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb, Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!

How good is noise! what's silence but despair Of making sound match gladness never there?

Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach, Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!

Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,-- Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!

Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then, Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"

Up, head's, your proudest--out, throats, your loudest-- "Somerset's Pym!"

Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den, Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"

Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held, "Tavistock's Pym!"