The Three Brontes Part 12

And he must have, further, a sense of the reality behind the illusion.

It is through her undying sense of it that Emily Bronte is great. She had none of the proud appearances of the metaphysical mind; she did not, so far as we know, devour, like George Eliot, whole systems of philosophy in her early youth. Her pa.s.sionate pantheism was not derived; it was established in her own soul. She was a mystic, not by religious vocation, but by temperament and by ultimate vision. She offers the apparent anomaly of extreme detachment and of an unconquerable love of life.

It was the highest and the purest pa.s.sion that you can well conceive.

For life gave her nothing in return. It treated her worse than it treated Charlotte. She had none of the things that, after all, Charlotte had; neither praise nor fame in her lifetime; nor friendship, nor love, nor vision of love. All these things "pa.s.sed her by with averted head"; and she stood in her inviolable serenity and watched them go, without putting out her hand to one of them. You cannot surprise her in any piteous gesture of desire or regret. And, unlike Charlotte, she made it impossible for you to pity her.

It is this superb att.i.tude to life, this independence of the material event, this detachment from the stream of circ.u.mstance, that marks her from her sister; for Charlotte is at moments pitifully immersed in the stream of circ.u.mstance, pitifully dependent on the material event. It is true that she kept her head above the stream, and that the failure of the material event did not frustrate or hinder her ultimate achievement.

But Charlotte's was not by any means "a chainless soul". It struggled and hankered after the unattainable. What she attained and realized she realized and attained in her imagination only. She knew nothing of the soul's more secret and intimate possession. And even her imagination waited to some extent upon experience. When Charlotte wrote of pa.s.sion, of its tragic suffering, or of its ultimate appeasing, she, after all, wrote of things that might have happened to her. But when Emily wrote of pa.s.sion, she wrote of a thing that, so far as she personally was concerned, not only was not and had not been, but never could be. It was true enough of Charlotte that she created. But of Emily it was absolutely and supremely true.

Hers is not the language of frustration, but of complete and satisfying possession. It may seem marvellous in the mouth of a woman dest.i.tute of all emotional experience, in the restricted sense; but the real wonder would have been a _Wuthering Heights_ born of any personal emotion; so certain is it that it was through her personal dest.i.tution that her genius was so virile and so rich. At its hour it found her virgin, not only to pa.s.sion but to the bare idea of pa.s.sion, to the inner and immaterial event.

And her genius was great, not only through her stupendous imagination, but because it fed on the still more withdrawn and secret sources of her soul. If she had had no genius she would yet be great because of what took place within her, the fusion of her soul with the transcendent and enduring life.

It was there that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on "the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for height and depth of supernatural attainment, there is no comparison between Emily's grip of divine reality and poor Anne's spasmodic and despairing clutch; and none between Charlotte's piety, her "G.o.d willing"; "I suppose I ought to be thankful", and Emily's acceptance and endurance of the event.

I am reminded that one event she neither accepted nor endured. She fought death. Her spirit lifted the pathetic, febrile struggle of weakness with corruption, and turned it to a splendid, t.i.tanic, and unearthly combat.

And yet it was in her life rather than her death that she was splendid.

There is something shocking and repellent in her last defiance. It shrieks discord with the endurance and acceptance, braver than all revolt, finer than all resignation, that was the secret of her genius and of her life.

There is no need to reconcile this supreme detachment with the storm and agony that rages through _Wuthering Heights_, or with the pa.s.sion for life and adoration of the earth that burns there, an imperishable flame; or with Catherine Earnshaw's dream of heaven: "heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy".

Catherine Earnshaw's dream has been cited innumerable times to prove that Emily Bronte was a splendid pagan. I do not know what it does prove, if it is not the absolute and immeasurable greatness of her genius, that, dwelling as she undoubtedly did dwell, in the secret and invisible world, she could yet conceive and bring forth Catherine Earnshaw.

It is not possible to diminish the force or to take away one word of Mr.

Swinburne's magnificent eulogy. There _was_ in the "pa.s.sionate great genius of Emily Bronte", "a dark, unconscious instinct as of primitive nature-worship". That was where she was so poised and so complete; that she touches earth and heaven, and is at once intoxicated with the splendour of the pa.s.sion of living, and holds her spirit in security and her heart in peace. She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her immersion.

It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of these antagonistic att.i.tudes. It is not only entirely possible and compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily Bronte was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the world and crystallized it in two lines:

The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and h.e.l.l.

It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has reached there. She too knew what it was

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.

She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics.

Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation.

In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary soul:

Shall earth no more inspire thee, Thou lonely dreamer now?

Since pa.s.sion may not fire thee, Shall nature cease to bow?

Thy mind is ever moving In regions dark to thee; Recall its useless roving, Come back, and dwell with me.

Few hearts to mortals given On earth so wildly pine; Yet few would ask a heaven More like this earth than thine.

"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment; and the human voice answers, resisting:

Play with the scented flower, The young tree's supple bough, And leave my human feelings In their own course to flow.

But the other voice is stronger:

The wanderer would not heed me; Its kiss grew warmer still.

"Oh, come," it sighed so sweetly; "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.

"Were we not friends from childhood?

Have I not loved thee long?

As long as thou, the solemn night, Whose silence wakes my song.

"And when thy heart is resting Beneath the church-aisle stone, _I_ shall have time for mourning, And _thou_ for being alone."

There are nine verses of "The Night-Wind", and the first eight are negligible; but, as for the last and ninth, I do not know any poem in any language that renders, in four short lines, and with such incomparable magic and poignancy, the haunting and pursuing of the human by the inhuman, that pa.s.sion of the homeless and eternal wind.

And this woman, dest.i.tute, so far as can be known, of all metaphysical knowledge or training, reared in the narrowest and least metaphysical of creeds, did yet contrive to express in one poem of four irregular verses all the hunger and thirst after the "Absolute" that ever moved a human soul, all the bewilderment and agony inflicted by the unintelligible spectacle of existence, the intolerable triumph of evil over good, and did conceive an image and a vision of the transcendent reality that holds, as in crystal, all the philosophies that were ever worthy of the name.

Here it is. There are once more two voices: one of the Man, the other of the Seer:

THE PHILOSOPHER

Oh, for the time when I shall sleep Without ident.i.ty.

And never care how rain may steep, Or snow may cover me!

No promised heaven, these wild desires Could all, or half fulfil; No threatened h.e.l.l, with quenchless fires, Subdue this restless will.

So said I, and still say the same; Still, to my death, will say-- Three G.o.ds, within this little frame, Are warring night and day; Heaven could not hold them all, and yet They all are held in me; And must be mine till I forget My present ent.i.ty!

Oh, for the time, when in my breast Their struggles will be o'er!

Oh, for the day, when I shall rest, And never suffer more!

I saw a spirit, standing, man, Where thou dost stand--an hour ago, And round his feet three rivers ran, Of equal depth, and equal flow-- A golden stream--and one like blood, And one like sapphire seemed to be; But where they joined their triple flood It tumbled in an inky sea.

The spirit sent his dazzling gaze Down through that ocean's gloomy night; Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze,-- The glad deep sparkled wide and bright-- White as the sun, far, far more fair Than its divided sources were!

And even for that spirit, seer, I've watched and sought my lifetime long; Sought him in heaven, h.e.l.l, earth and air, An endless search and always wrong.

Had I but seen his glorious eye _Once_ light the clouds that 'wilder me, I ne'er had raised this coward cry To cease to think, and cease to be; I ne'er had called oblivion blest, Nor, stretching eager hands to death, Implored to change for senseless rest This sentient soul, this living breath-- Oh, let me die--that power and will Their cruel strife may close, And conquered good and conquering ill Be lost in one repose!

That vision of the transcendent spirit, with the mingled triple flood of life about his feet, is one that Blake might have seen and sung and painted.

The fourth poem, "The Prisoner", is a fragment, and an obscure fragment, which may belong to a very different cycle. But whatever its place, it has the same visionary quality. The vision is of the woman captive, "confined in triple walls", the "guest darkly lodged", the "chainless soul", that defies its conqueror, its gaoler, and the spectator of its agony. It has, this prisoner, its own unspeakable consolation, the "Messenger":

He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise and change that kill me with desire.

But, first, a hush of peace--a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast--unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till earth was lost to me.

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals; My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels: Its wings are almost free--its home, its harbour found, Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.

That is the language of a mystic, of a mystic who has pa.s.sed beyond contemplation; who has known or imagined ecstasy. The joy is unmistakable; unmistakable, too, is the horror of the return: