Vondel's Lucifer Part 19

A Word to All Fellow-Academicians and Patrons of the Drama.

To renkindle your zeal for art, and at the same time to edify and to quicken your spirit, the holy tragic scene, which represents the Heavens, is here presented to your view.

The great Archangels. Lucifer and Michael, each strengthened by his followers, come on the stage, and play their parts.

The stage and the actors are, in sooth, of such nature, and so glorious, that they demand a grander style and higher buskins than I know how to put on. No one who understands the speech of the infallible oracles of the Holy Spirit will judge that we present here the story of Salmoneus, who, in Elis, mounted upon his chariot, while defying Jupiter, and imitating his thunder and lightning by riding over a brazen bridge, holding a burning torch, was slain by a thunderbolt.

Nor do we renew here the grey fable of the war of the t.i.tans, in which disguise Poesy sought to make its auditors forget their reckless presumption and G.o.dless sacrilege, and to acquire a knowledge of nature instead; namely, that the air and the winds, locked within the hollow belly and the sulphurous bowels of the earth, seeking, at times, an outlet, accompanied by the violence of bursting rocks, and by smoke and steam and flames and earthquakes and dreadful mutterings, are vomited, and, rising heavenwards, again descend, strewing and heaping the surface of land and sea with stones and ashes.

Among the Prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel a.s.sure us of the fall of the Archangel and his faction. In the Evangelist, Christ, truest of all oracles, with His voice, out of the Heavens, enjoins us to hear; and finally, Judas Thaddeus, His faithful apostle; which parables are worthy to be engraved in eternal diamond, and, more worthy still, upon our hearts.

Isaiah cries: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning! How art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations!

"And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend to Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of G.o.d. I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north:

"I will ascend above the height of the clouds. I will be like the Most High.

"But yet thou shalt be brought down to h.e.l.l, into the depth of the pit."

G.o.d speaks through Ezekiel thus: "Thou wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. Thou wast in the pleasures of the paradise of G.o.d; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the jasper, the chrysolite and the onyx and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle and the emerald; gold was thy adornment. Thy pipes were prepared in the day thou wast created. Thou didst spread thyself like an overshadowing cherub, and I set thee on the mountain of G.o.d. Thou didst walk in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day of thy creation, until iniquity was found in thee."

Both of these parables are spoken, the one of the King of Babylon, the other of the King of Tyre, who, like unto Lucifer in pride and in splendor, were threatened and punished.

Jesus Christ refers to the fall of the rebellious Lucifer, where he says: "I saw Satan like lightning falling from Heaven."

And Thaddeus reveals the fall of the Angels and their crime, and the punishments which followed thereon, without any palliation, briefly, in this manner: "And the Angels who kept not their princ.i.p.ality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved with everlasting chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great G.o.d."

Stayed by these golden sayings, and in particular by that of Judas Thaddeus, disciple of the Heavenly Teacher and Amba.s.sador from the King of kings, we receive, as upon a shield of adamant, the darts of the unbelieving who would dare to cast a doubt upon the fall of the Angels.

Besides this, we are strongly supported throughout the whole period of antiquity by the most ill.u.s.trious of the devout Church Fathers, who, in respect to the plot of this history, are unanimously agreed: though, lest we detain our Academic friends, we shall be content to cite only three places, the first taken out of the holy Cyprian, Bishop and martyr at Carthage, where he writes: "When he who was formerly throned in angelic majesty and accounted worthy by G.o.d and pleasing in his sight, saw man, made in G.o.d's own image, he burst into malicious hate; not, however, causing him to fall by poisoning him with this hatred, ere he himself was thereby also undone--himself made captive ere he captured, and ruined ere he brought him to ruin. While he, spurred on by envy, robbed man of the grace of immortality once given him, he himself also lost all that he had before possessed,"

The great Gregory furnishes us the second quotation: "The rebellious Angel, created to shine preeminent among hosts of Angels, is through his pride brought to such a fall that he now remains subject to the dominion of the loyal Angels."

The third and last evidence we cull from the sermons of the mellifluous St. Bernard: "Shun pride; I pray you, shun it. The source of all transgression is pride, which hath overcast Lucifer himself, shining most splendidly amongst the stars, with eternal darkness. Not only an Angel, but the chief among Angels, it hath changed into a Devil."

Pride and envy, the two causes or inciters of this horrible conflagration of discord and battle, are represented by us as a team of starred animals, the Lion and the Dragon, which, harnessed to Lucifer's battle-chariot, carry him against G.o.d and Michael; seeing that these animals are types of these two deadly sins. For the Lion, king of beasts, encouraged by his strength, in his vanity, thinks no one above him; and envy injures the envied from afar, even as the Dragon wounds his enemy a long way off by shooting poison [from his tongue].

St. Augustine, ascribing these two deadly sins to Lucifer, pictures the nature of the same most vividly, saying that pride is a love of one's own greatness; but envy is a hatred of another's happiness, the outcome of which seems clear enough. "For each one," says he, "who loves his own greatness envies his equals, inasmuch as they stand as high as he; or envies his inferiors, lest they become his equals; or his superiors, because they are above him."

Now, since the beasts themselves were abused and possessed by the d.a.m.ned Spirits, as in the beginning the Paradise Serpent, and in the holy age the herd of swine, that with a loud noise was precipitated into the sea, and since, also, the constellations are pictured on the Heavens in the forms of animals, as hath been thought even by the Prophets, as the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, and Arcturus, Orion, and Lucifer; so may it please you to overlook the elaborateness and the didacticism of this drama, if the unfortunate Spirits upon our stage, by means of the same, help and defend themselves: for to the infernal monsters nothing is more natural than cunning traits and the abuse of all creatures and elements, to the prejudice of the name and honor of the Most High, so far as He shall this permit.

St. John, in his Revelation, typifies the heavenly mysteries and the war in Heaven by the Dragon, whose tail drew after him a third part of the stars, supposed by the theologians to refer to the fallen Angels; wherefore in Poetry the flowered manner of expression should not be examined too narrowly, nor regulated by the subtlety of the schools.

We should also make distinction between the two kinds of characters who contend on this stage; namely, the bad and the good Angels, each kind playing its own role, even as Cicero and our inborn sense of verisimilitude teach us to picture each character according to his rank and nature.

At the same time we by no means deny that holy subject matter restrains and binds the dramatist more closely than worldly histories or pagan fables, notwithstanding that ancient and famous motto of the poets, expressed by Horatius Flaccus in his "Art of Poetry" in these lines:

"The painter and the bard did both this power receive, To aid their art with all that they of use believe."

Though here it is especially noteworthy to state how we, in order to inflame the hate of the proud and envious Spirits the more strongly, did cause the mystery of the future incarnation of the Word to be partially revealed to the Angels by the Archangel Gabriel, Amba.s.sador from G.o.d, and Herald of His Mysteries; herein to improve the matter, following not the opinion of the majority of the theologians, but only of a few, because this furnished our tragic picture richer material and more l.u.s.tre. However, neither in this point nor in other circ.u.mstances of cause, time, place, and manner (which we employed to render this tragedy more powerful, more glorious, more natural, and more instructive) has it been our purpose to obscure the orthodox truth, or to establish anything after our own finding or notion.

St. Paul, the revealer of G.o.d's mysteries to the Hebrews, extols most enviably--even to the prejudice of the kingdom of the lying and tempting Spirits--the glory, might, and G.o.dhead of the Incarnate Word, preeminent among all Angels in name, in sonship, and in heirship; in the adoration of the Angels; in His unction; in His exaltation at G.o.d's right hand; and in the eternity of His rulership as a king over the coming world, as the cause and the end of all things, and as the crowned Head of men and Angels: while the Angels, His worshippers, G.o.d's messengers, as ministering Spirits, are sent to serve man, the heir of salvation, whose nature G.o.d's Son, pa.s.sing the Angels by, hath taken upon Himself in the blood of Abraham.

By occasion of this justification, I do not deem it unsuitable here, in pa.s.sing, to say a few words in vindication of those dramas and dramatists that employ Biblical subjects, inasmuch as they have, occasionally, come into reproach; since, forsooth, human tastes are so various; for a difference in temperament causes the same subject to be agreeable to one which is repulsive to another.

All honorable arts and customs have their supporters and opponents, also their proper use and abuse. The holy writers of tragedy have, among the ancient Hebrews, for their example, the poet Ezekiel, who has left us, in Greek, the exodus of the twelve tribes from Egypt. Among the reverend Church Fathers, they have that bright star out of the East, Gregory of n.a.z.ianzus, who, in Greek dramatic verse, hath pictured the Crucified Saviour Himself; as also, not long since, we became indebted to the Royal Amba.s.sador, Hugo Grotius, that great light of the learning and piety of our age, who, following in the track of St. Gregory, hath given us the Crucified One in Latin, for which immortal and edifying labor we owe him both honor and thankfulness.

Among the English Protestants, the learned pen of Richard Baker hath discoursed very freely in prose concerning Lucifer and all the acts of the rebellious Spirits.

It is true that the Fathers of the Ancient Church banished the Christian actors from the community of the Church, and that from that time forth they were strongly opposed to the drama. But let us take into consideration the time and the fact that their reasons for this were far different. At that period the world, in many places, was yet deeply sunken in heathenish idolatry. The foundations of Christianity were not yet well established, and the dramas were played in honor of Cybele, a great G.o.ddess and mother of their imagined G.o.ds, and were esteemed a serviceable expedient with which to avert the land plagues from the bodies of the people.

St. Augustine testifies how a heathen archpriest, a minister of Numa's ritual and idol service, on account of a deadly pest, first inst.i.tuted the drama at Rome, sanctioning it by his authority.

Scaliger himself acknowledges that it was established for the health of the people by order of the Sibyls, so that these plays became a truly powerful incentive to the blind idolatry of the heathen, extolling their G.o.ds--a cankering abomination, whose destruction cost the first heroes of the Cross and the long-struggling Church so much sweat and blood; but being now long extirpated, hath left in Europe not a vestige behind.

That the holy old Church Fathers, therefore, for these reasons, and also because of their corrupting the public morals, and various open and shameless customs, as the employment of naked boys, women, and maidens, and other obscenities, should rebuke these plays, was needful and commendable, as, in that case, would also be so now. This being considered, let us not hold the good and the usefulness of edifying and entertaining plays too lightly.

Holy and honorable examples serve as a mirror, reflecting for our edification all virtue and piety, and teaching us, at the same time, to shun wickedness and its consequent misery.

The purpose and design of true tragedy is through terror and sympathy to stir the spectators to tenderness. Through the drama, students and growing youth are cultivated in the languages, eloquence, wisdom, modesty, good morals and manners; and these sink into their tender hearts and are impressed upon their senses, conducing towards habits of propriety and discretion, which remain with them, and to which they adhere even until old age; yea, it occurs, at times, that erratic geniuses, not to be bent or diverted by ordinary methods, are touched by this subtle art and by an exalted dramatic style, thus influenced beyond their own suspicion; even as a delicate lyre-string gives forth an answering sound when its companion string, of the same kind and nature, of a similar tone, and strung on another lyre, is caressed by a skilled hand, which, while playing, can drive the turbulent spirit out of a possessed and hardened Saul.

The history of the early Church seals this with the noteworthy examples of Genesius and Ardaleo, both actors, enlightened in the theatre by the Holy Ghost, and there converted; for they, while playing, wishing to mock the Christian Religion, were convicted of the truth, which they had learned out of their serious roles, filled with the pith of wisdom, rather than with trifling discourse to be mouthed for hours into the air and more vexatious than instructive.

They tell us in regard to Biblical subject matter that we should not _play_ with holy things, and, indeed, this seems to have some show of plausibility in our language, which hath given us the word _play_; but he that can stammer but a word or two of Greek knows that among the Greeks and Latins this word was not used in this sense; for _t?a??d?a_ is a compound word, and really means a goat-song, after the lyric contests of the shepherds, inst.i.tuted for the purpose of winning a goat by singing, in which custom the tragic songs, and, following them, dramatic plays, took their origin. And if one would, nevertheless, unmercifully bring us to task on account of this word _play_, what then shall be done with organ _play_, David's harp and song _play_, and the _play_ on the instrument with ten strings, and the other kinds of play on flute and stringed instruments, introduced by various sects among the Protestants into their meetings?

He, then, who appreciates this distinction will, while condemning the abuses of the dramatic art, not be ungracious towards the proper use of the same; nor will he begrudge the youth and the art-loving burghers this glorious, yea, this divine, invention, to them an honorable recreation and a refreshing amelioration of the trials of life; so that we, hereby encouraged, may with greater zeal bring Lucifer upon the stage, where he, finally smitten by G.o.d's thunderbolt, plunges down into h.e.l.l--the mirror clear of all ungrateful ambitious ones who audaciously dare to exalt themselves, setting themselves against the consecrated Powers and Majesties and their lawful superiors.

Lucifer

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Fallen Morning-star]

The Argument

Lucifer, the Archangel, chief and most ill.u.s.trious of all the Angels, proud and ambitious, out of blind self-love envied G.o.d His boundless greatness; he also became jealous of man, made in G.o.d's image, to whom, in his delightful Paradise, was entrusted the sovereignty of earth.

He envied G.o.d and man the more when Gabriel, G.o.d's Herald, proclaiming all Angels to be but ministering Spirits, revealed the mysteries of G.o.d's future incarnation, whereby, the Angels being pa.s.sed by, the real nature of man, united with the G.o.dhead, might expect a power and majesty equal to G.o.d's own. Wherefore, the proud and envious Spirit, attempting to place himself on an equality with G.o.d, and to keep man out of Heaven, through his accomplices, incited to arms innumerable Angels, and led them, notwithstanding Rafael's warning, against Michael. Heaven's Field-marshal, and his legions; and ceasing the fight, after his defeat, he caused, out of revenge, the first man, and in him all his descendants, to fall, while he himself, with all his co-rebels, was plunged into h.e.l.l and eternal d.a.m.nation.

The scene is in the Heavens.