The Browning Cyclopaedia Part 18

=Ivan Ivanovitch.= (_Dramatic Idyls_, First Series, 1879.) Ivan Ivanovitch, or John Jackson, as his name would be in English, was skilled in the use of the axe, as the Russian workman is. Employed one day in his yard, in the village where he lived, suddenly over the snow-covered landscape came a burst of sledge bells, the sound of horse's hoofs galloping; then a sledge appeared drawn by a horse, which fell down as it reached the place. What seemed a frozen corpse lay in the vehicle: it was Dmitri's wife, without Dmitri and the children, who left the village a month ago. They restore the woman, who utters a loud and long scream, followed by sobs and gasps, as, with returning life, she takes in the fact that she is safe. "But yesterday!" she cries. "Oh, G.o.d the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, cannot You bring again my blessed yesterday? I had a child on either knee, and, dearer than the two, a babe close to my heart.

Intercede, sweet Mother, with thy Son Almighty--undo all done last night!"

Then she reminds them how, a month ago, she and her children had accompanied her husband, who had gone to work at a church many a league away: five of them in that sledge--Ivan, herself, and three children. The work finished, they were about to return, when the village caught fire.

Then Ivan hurried his family into the sledge, and bade them hasten home while he remained to combat the flames. He bade them wrap round them every rug, and leave Droug, the old horse, to find his way home. They start; soon the night comes on; the moon rises. They pa.s.s a pine forest: a noise startles the horse--his ears go back, he snuffs, snorts, then plunges madly. Pad, pad, behind them are the wolves in pursuit--an army of them; every pine tree they pa.s.s adds a fiend to the pack; the eldest lead the way, their eyes green-glowing bra.s.s. The horse does his best; but the first of the band--that Satan-face--draws so near, his white teeth gleam, he is on the sledge--"perhaps her hands relaxed her grasp of her boy," she says; "for he was gone." The cursed crew fight for their share; they are too busy to pursue. She urges the horse to increased exertion. Alas! the pack is after them again; "Satan-face" is first, as before, and ravening for more. The mother fights with the monster, but the next boy is gone--plucked from the arms she clasped round him for protection. Another respite, while the fiends dispute for their share; but, as they fly over the snow, the leader of the pack tells his companions that their food is escaping; he leaves them to pick the bones, and--pad, pad!--is after the sledge again. All fight's in vain: the green bra.s.s points, the dread fiend's eyes, pierce to the woman's brain--she falls on her back in the sledge; but, wedging in and in, past her neck, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her heart, Satan-face is away with her last, her baby boy. She remembered no more.

And now she is at home--childless, but with her life. And Ivan the woodsman sternly looks; the woman kneels. Solemnly he raises his axe, and one blow falls--headless she kneels on still--

"It had to be.

I could no other: G.o.d it was bade 'Act for Me!'"

He wipes his axe on a strip of bark, and returns silently to his work. The Jews, the gipsies, the whole crew, seethe and simmer, but say no word.

Then comes the village priest, and with him the commune's head, Starosta, wielder of life and death; they survey the corpse, they hear the story.

The priest proclaimed

"Ivan Ivanovitch G.o.d's servant!"

"Amen!" murmured the crowd, and "left acquittal plain adjudged." They told Ivan he was free. "How otherwise?" he asked.

NOTES.--_Ivan Ivanovitch_ is "an imaginary personage, who is the embodiment of the peculiarities of the Russian people, in the same way as _John Bull_ represents the English and _Johnny c.r.a.paud_ the French character. He is described as a lazy, good-natured person." (_Webster's Dict._) _A verst_ is equal to about two-thirds of an English mile.

_Droug_: the horse's name means friend, and is p.r.o.nounced "drook." _Pope_ should not be spelled with a capital; it is merely the Russian term for priest--_papa_, father. _Pomeschk_ means a landed proprietor. _Starosta_, the old man of the village, the overseer.

This is a variant of a Russian wolf-story which, in one form or another, we all heard in our childhood. The poet visited Russia in the course of his great tour in Europe in 1833, and he has told the familiar tale of the unhappy mother who saved her own life by throwing one after another of her children to the pursuing wolves, with all the local colouring and fidelity to the facts to which we are accustomed in the poet's work. Not merely as a tale dramatically told are we to consider the poem; but--as might be expected--we must look upon it as a problem in mental pathology. The superficial observer, looking upon the mere facts, and not troubling very much about the psychology of the case, will at once condemn the unhappy mother, and execute her as promptly in his own mind as did Ivan Ivanovitch with his axe. But rough and ready judgments, however necessary in the conduct of our daily life, are frequently unsound; and the voice of the people is about the last voice that should be listened to in such a case as this. If a man who is usually considered a sane and decent member of society suddenly does some abnormal and outrageous thing, we at once ask ourselves, "Is he mad?" If a mother, any mother, suddenly violates the maternal instinct in a flagrant manner, we immediately suspect her of mental derangement. The maternal instinct is the strongest thing in nature; the ties which bind a woman to her offspring are stronger, in the ordinary healthy mother, than the ties which bind a man to decent and ordinary observance of the laws of society. Old Bailey judgments are not to be employed in such a case as this; it is one for a specialist. And we apprehend there is not a competent authority in brain troubles living who would not acquit Louscha on the ground of insanity.

=Ixion.= (_Jocoseria_, 1883.) Ixion, in Greek mythology, was the son of Phlegyas and king of the Lapithae. He married Dia, daughter of Deioneus, and promised to make his father-in-law certain bridal presents. To avoid the fulfilment of his promise, he invited him to a banquet, and when Deioneus came to the feast he cruelly murdered him. No one would purify him for the murder, and he was consequently shunned by all mankind. Zeus, however, took pity on him, and took him up to heaven and there purified him. At the table of the G.o.ds he fell in love with Hera (Juno), and afterwards attempted to seduce her. Ixion was banished from heaven, and by the command of Zeus was tied by Mercury to a wheel which perpetually revolved in the air. Ixion, condemned to eternal punishment, is in the poem described as defying Zeus after the manner of Prometheus. It is impossible to doubt that Mr. Browning intends to represent the popular idea of G.o.d and his own att.i.tude towards the doctrine of eternal punishment. It is, however, only the caricature of G.o.d created by popular misconception at which the poet aims, whatever may have to be said of his opinions concerning eschatology. As Caliban thought there was a _Quiet_ above Setebos, so Ixion appeals to the Potency over Zeus. The truth is intended that both unsophisticated man in the savage state and the highest type of cultured man agree in their theological beliefs so far as to acknowledge a Supreme Being of a higher character than the anthropomorphic G.o.d of popular worship. Of course both Caliban and Ixion talk Browningese.

Ixion is represented as comparing himself with his torturer:--

"Behold us!

Here the revenge of a G.o.d, there the amends of a Man"--

a man with bodily powers constantly renewed, to enable him to suffer.

Above the torment is a rainbow of hope, built of the vapour, pain-wrung, which the light of heaven, in pa.s.sing tinges with the colour of hope.

Endowed with bodily powers intended to be G.o.d's ministers, Ixion has been betrayed by them. But he was but man foiled by sense; he has endured enough suffering to teach him his error and his folly. "Why make the agony perpetual?" "To punish thee," Zeus may reply. Ixion says he once was king of Thessaly: he had to punish crime. Had he been able to read the hearts of the criminals whom he sent to their doom, and had plainly seen repentance there, would he not have given them

"Life to retraverse the past, light to retrieve the misdeed?"

Zeus made man, with flaw or faultless: it was his work. Ixion had been admitted, all human as he was, to the company of the G.o.ds as their equal.

He had faith in the good faith and the love of Zeus, and for acting upon it was cast from Olympus to Erebus. Man conceived Zeus as possessing his own virtues: he trusted, loved him because Zeus aspired to be equal in goodness to man. Ixion defies him, tells him he apes the man who made him; it is Zeus who is hollowness. The iris, born of Ixion's tears, sweat and blood, bursting to vapour above, arching his torment, glorifies his pain; and man, even from h.e.l.l's triumph, may look up and rejoice. He rises from the wreck, past Zeus to the Potency above him--

"Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the G.o.dship and sink!"

The Zeus of the poem bears no relation whatever to the Christian's G.o.d.

The Potency over all is the All-Father, the G.o.d of Love, who yet, in Infinite Love, may punish rebellious man, who conceivably may reject His love, may never feel a touch of the repentance which Ixion declared he felt, who suffering and still sinning, hating and still rebelling, may conceivably be left to the consequences of the rebellion which knows no cessation, as the suffering no respite.

NOTES.--_Sisuphos_, "the crafty": son of aeolus, punished in the other world by being forced for ever to keep on rolling a block of stone to the top of a steep hill, only to see it roll again to the valley, and to start the toilsome task again. _Tantalos_, a wealthy king of Sipylus in Phrygia.

He was a favourite of the G.o.ds, and allowed to share their meals; but he insulted them, and was thrown into Tartarus. He suffered from hunger and thirst, immersed in water up to the chin; when he opened his mouth the water dried up and the fruits suspended before him vanished into the air.

_Here_, in Greek mythology the same as Juno, queen of heaven and wife of Zeus or Jupiter. _Thessaly_, a country of Greece, bounded on the south by the southern parts of Greece, on the east by the aegean, on the north by Macedonia and Mygdonia, and on the west by Illyric.u.m and Epirus.

_Olumpos_, a mountain in Thessaly. On the highest peak is the throne of Zeus, and it is there that he summons the a.s.semblies of the G.o.ds.

_Erebos_, in Greek mythology "the primeval darkness." The word is usually applied to the lower regions, filled with impenetrable darkness.

_Tartaros-doomed_ == h.e.l.l-doomed.

=Jacopo= (_Luria_) was the faithful secretary of the Moorish mercenary who led the army of Florence.

=Jacynth.= (_Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess._) The maid of the d.u.c.h.ess, who went to sleep while the gipsy woman held the interview with her mistress, and induced her to leave her husband's home.

=James Lee's Wife.= (_Dramatis Personae_, 1864; originally ent.i.tled _James Lee_.) This is a story of an unfortunate marriage, told in a series of meditations by the wife. Mr. Symons describes the psychological processes detailed in the poem as "the development of disillusion, change, alienation, severance and parting." The key-notes of the nine divisions of the work are: I. Anxiety; II. Apprehension; III. Expostulation; IV.

Despair; V. Reflection; VI. Change; VII. Self-denial; VIII. Resignation; IX. Self-Sacrifice.

I. AT THE WINDOW.--The wife reflects that summer has departed. The chill, which settles upon the earth as the sun's warm rays are withheld, falls heavily on her heart. Her husband has been absent but a day, and as she thinks of the changing year, she asks, with apprehension, "Will he change too?"

II. BY THE FIRESIDE.--He has returned, but not the sun to her heart. As they sit by the fire in their seaside home, she reflects that the fire is built of "shipwreck wood." Are her hopes to be shipwrecked too? Sailors on the stormy waters may envy their security as they behold the ruddy light from their fire over the sea, and "gnash their teeth for hate" as they reflect on their warm safe home; but ships rot and rust and get worm-eaten in port, as well as break up on rocks. She wonders who lived in that home before them. Did a woman watch the man with whom she began a happy voyage--see the planks start, and h.e.l.l yawn beneath her?

III. IN THE DOORWAY.--The steps of coming winter hasten; the trees are bare; soon the swallows will forsake them. The wind, with its infinite wail, sings the dirge of the departed summer. Her heart shrivels, her spirit shrinks; yet, as she stands in the doorway, she reflects that they have every material comfort. They have neither cold nor want to fear in any shape, only the heart-chill, only the soul-hunger for the love that is gone. G.o.d meant that love should warm the human heart when material things without were cold and drear. She will

"live and love worthily, bear and be bold."

IV. ALONG THE BEACH.--The storm has burst; it is no longer misgiving, fear, apprehension: it is certainty. She meditates, as she watches him, that he wanted her love; she gave him all her heart He has it still: she had taken him "for a world and more." For love turns dull earth to the glow of G.o.d. She had taken the weak earth with many weeds, but with "a little good grain too." She had watched for flowers and longed for harvest, but all was dead earth still, and the glow of G.o.d had never transfigured his soul to her. But she did love, did watch, did wait and weary and wear, was fault in his eyes. Her love had become irksome to him.

V. ON THE CLIFF.--It is summer, and she is leaning on the dead burnt turf, looking at a rock left dry by the retiring waters. The deadness of the one and the barrenness of the other suit her melancholy; they are symbols of her position, and as she muses, a gay, blithe gra.s.shopper springs on the turf, and a wonderful blue-and-red b.u.t.terfly settles on the rock. So love settles on minds dead and bare; so love brightens all! So could her love brighten even his dead soul.

VI. READING A BOOK, UNDER THE CLIFF.--She is reading the poetry of "some young man" (Mr. Browning himself, who published these "Lines to the Wind"

when twenty-six years old). The poet asks if the ailing wind is a dumb winged thing, entrusting its cause to him; and as she reads on she grows angry at the young man's inexperience of the mystery of life. He knows nothing of the meaning of the moaning wind: it is not suffering, not distress; it is change. That is what the wind is trying to say, and trying above all to teach: we are to

"Rejoice that man is hurled From change to change unceasingly, His soul's wings never furled!"

"Nothing endures," says the wind. "There's life's pact--perhaps, too, its probation; but man might at least, as he grasps 'one fair, good, wise thing,'--the love of a loving woman--grave it on his soul's hands' palms to be his for ever."

VII. AMONG THE ROCKS.--Earth sets his bones to bask in the sun, and smiles in the beauty with which the rippling water adorns him; and so she comforts herself by reflecting that we may make the low earth-nature better by suffusing it with our love-tides. Love is gain if we love only what is worth our love. How much more to make the low nature better by our throes!

VIII. BESIDE THE DRAWING-BOARD.--She has been drawing a hand. A clay cast of a perfect thing is before her. She has learned something of the infinite beauty of the human hand--has studied it, has praised G.o.d, its Maker, for it; and as she contemplates the world of wonders to be discovered therein, she is fain to efface her work and begin anew, for somehow grace slips from soulless finger-tips. The cast is that of a hand by Leonardo da Vinci. She has pa.s.sionately longed to copy its perfection, but as the great master could not copy the perfection of the dead hand, so she has failed to draw the cast. And so she turns to the peasant girl model who is by her side that day, "a little girl with the poor coa.r.s.e hand," and as she contemplates it she begins to understand the worth of flesh and blood, and that there is a great deal more than beauty in a hand. She has read Bell on the human hand, and she knows something of the infinite uses of the mechanism which is hidden beneath the flesh. She knows what use survives the beauty in the peasant hand that spins and bakes. The living woman is better than the dead cast. She has learned the lesson that all this craving for what can never be hers--for the love she cannot gain, any more than the perfection she cannot draw--is wasting her life. She will be up and doing, no longer dreaming and sighing.

IX. ON DECK.--It was better to leave him! She will set him free. She had no beauty, no grace; nothing in her deserved any place in his mind. She was harsh and ill-favoured (and perhaps this was the secret of the trouble). Still, had he loved her, love could and would have made her beautiful. Some day it may be even so; and in the years to come a face, a form--her own--may rise before his mental vision, his eyes be opened, his liberated soul leap forth in a pa.s.sionate "'Tis she!"

=Jesus Christ.= That Mr. Browning was something more than a Theist, a Unitarian, or a Broad Churchman, may be gathered from several pa.s.sages in his works, as well as from direct statements to individuals. Three lines in the _Death in the Desert_ (though often said to be used only dramatically), when taken in connection with the whole drift and purpose of the poem, seem to indicate a faith which is more than mere Theism:

"The acknowledgment of G.o.d in Christ, accepted by thy reason, Solves for thee all questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee to be wise."

In the _Epistle of Karshish_, the Arab physician says concerning Jesus, who had raised Lazarus from the dead:--

"The very G.o.d! think, Abib, dost thou think?

So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too-- So, through the thunder comes a loving voice Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!

Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine.

But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee!'

The madman saith He said so: it is strange."

_Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_ seem to be meaningless if they do not express the author's faith in the divinity of our Lord. Just as every believer in Him can detect the true ring of the Christian believer and lover of his Lord in the lines quoted from the _Epistle of Karshish_, so will his touchstone detect the Christian in many other pa.s.sages of the poet's work.