Life Immovable Part 3

_The Grave_

In tracing the great life influences of our poet, we must not pa.s.s over the loss of his third child, "the child without a peer," as he says in one of his poems addressed to his wife, "who changed the worldly air about us into divine nectar, a worthy offering to the spotless-white light of Olympus." To this loss, the poet has never reconciled himself.

The sorrow finds expression in direct or covert strains in every work he has written. But its lasting monument was created soon after the child's death. A collection of poems, ent.i.tled _The Grave_, entirely devoted to his memory, is overflowing with an unique intensity of feeling.

The poems are composed in short quatrains of a slowly moving rhythm restrained by frequent pauses and occasional metrical irregularities, and thus they reflect with faithfulness the paternal agony with which they are filled. They belong to the earlier works of the poet, but they disclose great lyric power and are the first deep notes of the poet's genius. A few lines from the dedication follow:

Neither with iron, Nor with gold, Nor with the colors That the painters scatter,

Nor with marble Carved with art, Your little house I built For you to dwell for ever;

With spirit charms alone I raised it in a land That knows no matter nor The withering touch of Time.

With all my tears, With all my blood, I founded it And built its vault....

In another poem, in similar strains, he paints the ominous tranquility with which the child's birth and parting were attended:

Tranquilly, silently, Thirsting for our kisses, Unknown you glided Into our bosom;

Even the heavy winter Suddenly smiled Tranquilly, silently, But to receive you;

Tranquilly, silently, The breeze caressed you, O Sunlight of Night And Dream of the Day;

Tranquilly, silently, Our home was gladdened With sweetness of amber With your grace magnetic;

Tranquilly, silently, Our home beheld you, Beauty of the morning star, Light of the star of evening;

Tranquilly, silently, Little moons, mouth and eyes, One dawn you vanished Upon a cruel deathbed;

Tranquilly, silently, In spite of all our kisses, Away you wandered Torn from our bosom;

Tranquilly, silently, O word, O verse, O rime, Your witherless flowers Sow on his grave faith-shaking.

In another poem reminiscent of Tibullean tenderness, the corners of the deserted home, in which the child, during his life, had lingered to play, laugh, or weep, converse with each other about their absent guest:

Things living weep for you, And lifeless things are mourning; The corners, too, forlorn, Remember you with longing:

"One evening, angry here he sat, And slept in bitterness."

"Here, often he sat listening Enchanted to the tale."

"Here, I beheld with pride The grace of Love half-naked; An empty bed and stripped Is all that now is left me."

"I always looked for him; He held a book; how often He sat by me to read With singing tongue its pages!"

"What is this pile of toys?

Why are they piled before me As if I were a grave?

Are they his little playthings?

"The little man comes not; For death with early frost Has nipped his little dreams And chilled his little doings."

"His little sword is idle, And here has come to rest."

"And here his little ship Without its captain waits."

"To me, they brought him sick And took him away extinguished."

"They watered me with tears And perfumed me with incense."

"The dead child's taper burns Consuming and consumed."

"The tempest wildly beats Upon the doors and windows, And deep into our b.r.e.a.s.t.s The tempest's moan is echoed."

And all the house about For thee, my child, is groaning ...

THE WORLD BEYOND GREECE

Greece seems to encompa.s.s the physical world with which Palamas has come in contact. He does not seem to have travelled beyond its borders, and even within them, he has moved little about. With him scenery must grow with age before it speaks to his heart. Fleeting impressions are of little value, and the appearance of things without the forces of tradition and experience behind it does not attract him:

Others, who wander far in distant lands may seek On Alpine Mountains high the magic Edelweis; I am an Element Immovable; each year, April delights me in my garden, and the May In my own village.

O lakes and fiords, O palaces of France and shrines And harbors, Northern Lights and tropic flowers and forests, O wonders of art, and beauties of the world unthought,-- A little Island here I love that always lies before me.

We must not think, however, that the spirit of Palamas rests within the narrow confines of his native land. On the contrary, it knows no chains and travels freely about the earth. He is a faithful servant of "Melete," the Muse of contemplative study, a service which is very seldom liked by Modern Greeks. In his preface to his collection of critical essays ent.i.tled _Grammata_ he rebukes his fellow countrymen for this: "On an old attic vase," he says, "stand the three original Muses, the ones that were first worshipped, even before the Nine, who are now world-known: Mneme, Melete, Aoide--Memory, Study, Song. With the first and last, we have cultivated our acquaintance; and never must we show any contempt for the fruit of our love for them. Only with the middle one, we are not on good terms. She seems to be somewhat inaccessible, and she does not fill our eyes enough to attract us. We have always looked, and now still we look, for what is easiest or handiest. Is that, I wonder, a fault of our race or of our age? And is the French philosopher Fouillee somewhat right when in his book on the _Psychology of Races_ he counts among our defects our aversion to great and above all endless labors?" That Palamas is not subject to this fault, one has only to glance at his works to be convinced. There is hardly an important force in the world's thought and expression whether past or present, to which Palamas is a stranger. The literatures of Europe, America, or Asia are an open book for him. The pulses of the world's artists, the intellectual battles of the philosophers, the fears and hopes of the social unrest, the religious emanc.i.p.ation of our day, the far reaching conflict of individual and state, in short, all events of importance in the social, political, spiritual, literary, and artistic life are familiar sources of inspiration for him. With all, he shows the lofty spirit of a worshipper of greatness and depth wherever he finds them. Tolstoi or Aeschylus, Goethe or Dante, Ibsen or Poe, Swinburne or Walt Whitman, Leopardi or Rabelais, Hugo or Carlyle, Serbian Folk Lore or the Bible, Hindu legends or Italian songs, Antiquity or Middle Ages, Renaissance or Modernity, any nation or any lore are objects worthy of study and stores of wisdom for him. Indeed, very few living poets could be compared with him in scholarship and learning.

Nor does he lift his voice only for individual or national throbbings.

He sings of the great and n.o.ble whenever he sees it. One of his best lyric creations is a song of praise to the valor of the champions of Transvaal's freedom, his "Hymn to the Valiant," the first of the collection ent.i.tled "From the Hymns and Wraths," a paean that has been most highly lauded by Professor D.C. Hesseling of the University of Leyden (_Nederlandsche Spectator_, March, 1901). Here is a fragment of it, the words which the Muse addresses to the poet:

... Awake! Thou art not maker of statues!

Awake! For songs thou singest!

And song is not for ever The heart's lament To fading leaves of autumn, Nor the secret speech thou speakest, A Soul of Dream, to the shadows of Night.

For suddenly there is a clash and groaning!

The joy of birds sea-beaten, In storms of Elements And storms of Nations!

Song is, too, The Marathonian Triumpher!

Over the ashes of Sodoma, It is blown by the mouth of wrath!

Something great and something beautiful, Something from far away, Travelling Glory brings thee On her sky-wandering pinions.

Glory has come! On her wings and on her feet, Signs of her wanderings are shown, Dust gold-loaded and distant; And she brings aloes blossoming, first-seen, From the land that feeds the Kaffir's flocks.

In your aged summers, A new-born spring has spread!

From North to South, The Atlantic Dragon groans a groan first-heard; To the African lakes and forests, His groan has spread and echoed; From the Red Sea, a Lamia's palace, To the foam-shaped breast of the White Sea, A Nereid's realm.

Thinly the plants were growing On the bosom of the ancient Motherland; Winds carried away the seed And brought it to the Libyan fields And scattered it into deep ravines And on the lofty mountain lawns.

A new blood filled the herbs, And even the strong-stemmed plants Waxed stronger.

Men war-glad are risen!

And the waterfalls roar In the mountain's heart; Men war-glad are risen Like diamonds rare to behold That the earth begets!

You know them, heights, winds, horizons, High tides and murmurings of restless waters, Golden fountains, that shall become Their crowns!

And you, O gold-built mountain pa.s.ses, Castles fit for them, you know them; Their fame, thou heraldest with pride From thy verdant distant country To Europe Imperial, O Africa, O slave unknown!