Symphonies and Their Meaning Part 22

"Often it seemed as if a special hate Against Achilles did possess her breast.

"Yet in a later moment, when His life was given straight into her hands, Smiling she gave it back, as though a present; His headlong course to Hades she did stay."

In midst of the dual battle between Achilles and the Queen, a Trojan prince comes storming and strikes a treacherous blow against the armor of the Greek.

"The Queen is stricken pale; for a brief moment Her arms hang helpless by her sides; and then, Shaking her locks about her flaming cheeks, Dashes her sword like lightning in his throat, And sends him rolling to Achilles' feet."

The Greek leaders resolve to retreat from the futile fight and to call Achilles from the mingled chase of love and war.

Achilles is now reported taken by the Amazons. The battle is vividly depicted: Achilles caught on a high ledge with his war-chariot; the Amazon Queen storming the height from below. The full scene is witnessed from the stage,--Penthesilea pursuing almost alone; Achilles suddenly dodges; the Queen as quickly halts and rears her horse; the Amazons fall in a mingled heap; Achilles escapes, though wounded. But he refuses to follow his companions to the camp; he swears to bring home the Queen wooed in the b.l.o.o.d.y strife of her own seeking.

Penthesilea recoils with like vehemence from the entreaties of her maids, intent upon the further battle, resolved to overcome the hero or to die. She forbids the Festival of Roses until she has vanquished Achilles. In her rage she banishes her favorite Prothoe from her presence, but in a quick revulsion takes her back.

In the next scene the high priestess and the little Amazon maids prepare the Feast, which Penthesilea had ordered in her confident attack upon the fleeing Greeks. One of the Rose-maidens recounts the pa.s.sing scene of the Queen's amazing action. The indignant priestess sends her command to the Queen to return to the celebration. Though all the royal suite fling themselves in her path, Penthesilea advances to the dual battle.[A]

[Footnote A: The law of the Amazons commanded them to wage war as told them by the oracle of Mars. The prisoners were brought to the Feast of Roses and wedded by their captors. After a certain time they were sent back to their homes. All male children of the tribe were put to death.]

In a renewal of her personal contest, regardless of the common cause, and in her special quest of a chosen husband, Penthesilea has broken the sacred law.

The flight now follows of the Amazon hosts. When the two combatants meet in the shock of lances, the Queen falls in the dust; her pallor is reflected in Achilles' face. Leaping from his horse, he bends o'er her, calls her by names, and woos life back into her frame. Her faithful maids, whom she has forbidden to harm Achilles, lead her away. And here begins the seeming madness of the Queen when she confesses her love. For a moment she yields to her people's demands, but the sight of the rose-wreaths kindles her rage anew. Prothoe defends her in these lines:

"Of life the highest blessing she attempted.

Grazing she almost grasped. Her hands now fail her For any other lesser goal to reach."

In the last part of the scene the Queen falls more and deeper into madness. It is only in a too literal spirit that one will find an oblique meaning,--by too great readiness to discover it. In reality there seems to be an intense conflict of opposite emotions in the heroine: the pure woman's love, without sense of self; and the wild overpowering greed of achievement. Between these grinding stones she wears her heart away. A false interpretation of decadent theme comes from regarding the two emotions as mingled, instead of alternating in a struggle.

Achilles advances, having flung away his armor. Prothoe persuades him to leave the Queen, when she awakes, in the delusion that she has conquered and that he is the captive. Thus when she beholds the hero, she breaks forth into the supreme moment of exaltation and of frenzied triumph. The main love scene follows:

Penthesilea tells Achilles the whole story of the Amazons, the conquest of the original tribe, the rising of the wives of the murdered warriors against the conquerors; the destruction of the right breast (_A-mazon_); the dedication of the "brides of Mars" to war and love in one. In seeking out Achilles the Queen has broken the law. But here again appears the double symbolic idea: Achilles meant to the heroine not love alone, but the overwhelming conquest, the great achievement of her life.

The first feeling of Penthesilea, when disillusioned, is of revulsive anger at a kind of betrayal. The Amazons recover ground in a wild desire to save their Queen, and they do rescue her, after a parting scene of the lovers. But Penthesilea curses the triumph that s.n.a.t.c.hes her away; the high priestess rebukes her, sets her free of her royal duties, to follow her love if she will. The Queen is driven from one mood to another, of devoted love, burning ambition and mortal despair.

Achilles now sends a challenge to Penthesilea, knowing the Amazon conditions. Against all entreaty the Queen accepts, not in her former spirit, but in the frenzy of desperate endeavor, in the reawakened rage of her ambition, spurred and p.r.i.c.ked by the words of the priestess.

The full scene of madness follows. She calls for her dogs and elephants, and the full accoutrement of battle. Amidst the terror of her own warriors, the rolling of thunder, she implores the G.o.ds' help to crush the Greek. In a final touch of frenzy she aims a dart at her faithful Prothoe.

The battle begins, Achilles in fullest confidence in Penthesilea's love, unfrightened by the wild army of dogs and elephants. The scene, told by the present on-lookers, is heightened by the cries of horror and dismay of the Amazons themselves.

Achilles falls; Penthesilea, a living Fury, dashes upon him with her dogs in an insane orgy of blood. The Queen in the culminating scene is greeted by the curses of the high priestess. Prothoe masters her horror and turns back to soothe the Queen. Penthesilea, unmindful of what has pa.s.sed, moves once more through the whole gamut of her torturing emotions, and is almost calmed when she spies the bier with the hero's body. The last blow falls when upon her questions she learns the full truth of her deed. The words she utters (that have been cited by the hostile critics) may well be taken as the ravings of hopeless remorse, with a symbolic play of words. She dies, as she proclaims, by the knife of her own anguish.

The last lines of Prothoe are a kind of epilogue:

"She sank because too proud and strong she flourished.

The half-decayed oak withstands the tempest; The vigorous tree is headlong dashed to earth Because the storm has struck into its crown."[A]

[Footnote A: Translations, when not otherwise credited, are by the author.]

The opening scene--"Lively, vehement: Departure of the Amazons for Troy"--begins impetuous and hefty with big strokes of the throbbing motive,

[Music: (_Tutti_ with higher 8ves.) (Piccolo in 8ve.) (Ba.s.s in 8ve.)]

the majestic rhythm coursing below, lashed by a quicker phrase above.

Suddenly trumpets sound, somewhat more slowly, a clarion call answered by a choir of other trumpets and horns in enchanting retort of changing harmonies. Ever a fresh color of

[Music: (Flutes and oboes) (Answering groups of bra.s.s) (Lower strings _pizz._)]

tone sounds in the call of the bra.s.s, as if here or yonder on the battle-field. Sometimes it is almost too sweetly chanting for fierce war. But presently it turns to a wilder mood and breaks in galloping pace into a true chorus of song with clear cadence.

[Music: (Flutes with reeds in lower 8ve.) (Violins with upper 8ve.) (Lower strings and bra.s.s with lower 8ve.)]

The joyful tinge is quickly lost in the sombre hue of another phase of war-song that has a touch of funeral trip (though it is all in 3/4 time):

[Music: (Muted strings) (Horns and ba.s.soons)]

A melody in the minor plays first in a choir of horns and ba.s.soons, later in united strings, accompanied by soft rolls of drums and a touch of the lowest bra.s.s. Harp and higher woodwind are added, but the volume is never transcendent save in a single burst when it is quickly hushed to the first ominous whisper. Out of this sombre song flows a romance of tender sentiment, _tranquillo_ in strings, followed by the wood. The crossing threads of expressive melody

[Music: _Tranquillo_ (Strings) (In the midst enters a strain of solo horn)]

rise in instant renewal of stress and agitation. The joy of battle has returned, but it seems that the pa.s.sion of love burns in midst of the glow of battle, each in its separate struggle, and both together in one fatal strife. The sombre melody returns in full career, dying down to a pause.[A]

[Footnote A: In a somewhat literal commentary attributed to Dr. Richard Batka, the Amazons here, "having reached their destination, go into night-encampment--as represented by the subdued roll of the kettle-drums, with which the movement concludes."]

_Molto sostenuto_, in changed rhythm of three slow beats, comes "Penthesilea's Dream of the Feast of Roses." Over a thick cl.u.s.ter of harmonies in harp and strings the higher wood sing a new song in long drawn lyric notes with ravishing turns of tonal color,--a

[Music: _Molto sostenuto_ (Flutes, oboes and clarinets) (Rapid arpeggic figures of harps and muted strings)]

dual song and in many groups of two. The tranquil current of the dream is gradually disturbed; the main burden is dimmed in hue and in mood.

Faster, more fitful is the flow of melody, with hostile intruding motive below; it dashes at last into the tragic phase--Combats; Pa.s.sions; Madness; Destruction--in very rapid tempo of 2/2 rhythm.

In broad, masterful pace, big contrary figures sweep up and down, cadencing in almost joyous chant, gliding, indeed, into a pure hymn, as of triumph (that harks back to the chorussing song in the beginning).

Throughout the poem the musical symbols as well as the motives of pa.s.sion are closely intertwined. Thus the ident.i.ty of the impetuous phrase of the very beginning is clear with the blissful theme of the Dream of the Feast of Roses. Here, at the end of the chorussing verse is a play or a strife of phrases where we cannot escape a symbolic intent.

To _tremolo_ of violas the cellos hold a tenor of descending melody over a rude rumbling phrase of the ba.s.ses of wood and strings, while the oboe sings in the treble an expressive answer of ascending notes. A conflict is

[Music: (_Molto vivace_) (cello _molto espressivo_) (Violas) (Ba.s.ses and ba.s.soons with upper 8ve.) (Oboe) _espressivo_]

evident, of love and ambition, of savage and of gentle pa.s.sion, of chaos and of beauty. At the height, the lowest bra.s.s intrude a brutal note of triumph of the descending theme. To the victory of Pride succeeds a crisis of pa.s.sionate yearning. But at the very height is a plunge into the fit of madness, the fatal descending phrase (in trombones) is ever followed by furious pelting spurts in the distorted main theme.

At last the paroxysm abates, throbbing ever slower, merging into the tender song of the Dream that now rises to the one great burst of love-pa.s.sion. But it ends in a wild rage that turns right into the war-song of the beginning. And this is much fuller of incident than before. Violins now ring an hostile motive (the former rumbling phrase of ba.s.ses) from the midst of the plot against the main theme in trumpets. Instead of the former pageantry, here is the pure frenzy of actual war. The trumpet melodies resound amidst the din of present battle. Instead of the other gentler episodes, here is a more furious raving of the mad Queen (in the hurried main motive), where we seem to see the literal dogs of war let loose and spurred on,--each paroxysm rising to a higher shock.

Great is the vehemence of speed and sound as the dull doom of destruction drones in the ba.s.ses against a grim perversion of the yearning theme above, that overwhelms the scene with a final shriek.

Slowly the dream of love breathes again, rises to a fervent burst, then yields to the fateful chant and ends in a whisper of farewell.